[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] al qaeda is actually gaining strength down there in yemen. if you look at the queen of sheeba's old area, if you go along the coast and beyond what they are clearly doing is trying to set up the al qaeda folks on the peninsula are trying to set up routes that aim straight into the heart of saudi arabia from the coast and u.k. understand the freedom of maneuver that gives them. i think they are gaining

strength there but they are going to start running into trouble are the tribes that don't like to sort of islam that al qaeda promotes. at the same time they are gaining strength. they have made some degree of connection with al qaeda and that is not looking well for somalia, but at the same time, there is a lot of competing interests down there. will they be able to maintain their -- is subject to question. moving over, there is the al qaeda, just basically due west out of sudan and get out there all the way across south of the sahara. they are strong out there. but there is a number of forces both locals and some of our european allies working against them out there. they also have their sleeper cells obviously in europe and they are trying to do it here. forces, f.b.i., awl although

very successful but they are definitely losing in a number of areas. gaining in some and the epicenter has been pressured more than ever before. >> there have been several questions about countries outside of the a.o.r. and a couple that we're commenting on. the relationship of israel and the arab countries and how the unrest in the last year has effects that relationship? >> clearly israel is watching what is going on very closely. when you have what has happened with lebonese hezbollah in southern lebanon and what happened with the war there is a few years ago, you have syrian unrest causing problems and israel has to keep an eye on that. jordan is doing fine and that continues to be a very quiet, stable relationship.

egypt has maintained the military leadership -- has maintained the -- both the peace treaty provisions and a close working relationship with the israeli military as they try to reduce the threat out of the sinai. it is going ok, but there is a long ways to go and we will have to watch how that develops. the biggest concern that israel and not egypt or jordan or even syria. it is iran for obvious reasons. when you think of some of the statements by the iranian leadership and what the u.n. strictures to stop the enrichment which has not been stopped, obviously israel has a very focused interest in that issue. they are keeping an eye on it all. i think there are going to be some rough times going forward

but this is one area where i'm somewhat of an optimist. >> the emergence of turkey as a regional power. how has that affected centcom a.o.r.? >> i think that turkey -- i have seen positive impacts because in many ways, turkey is seen as a way for a nation to mature toward a more democratic approach. i have talked to several leaders there who actually have traveled to turkey to talk to them about how they created the kind of state they have created. they also -- they have been very helpful in trying to restrain assad. not that they have been very clearly but they have been very clear that what he is doing will not receive any kind of solace or support out of angora.

it is a positive influence that the turks have had. they are the one nato nation that fights against an active insurgency in their own southeast corner. they are also a nation that we work quietly with in a common cause. >> the next question relates to command relationships. could you talk a little bit about special operations command and its relationship with centcom and how that is coordinated for individual strikes? >> any special operations command troops come under my command when they are inside central command. special operations command provides me navy sales, army green berets, army rangers, air force special tactics, marines, and they come under my command. i have army, navy, air force, marine, and a special forces

commander and basically they work in an integrated way. we pick the force with the right skill set for whatever the mission is. it is a very close, warm, and respected relationship because we have been the combatant commander has used most of the special forces over the years. also after this many years of working together, ladies and gentlemen, we have grown up together, we know each other. there is a bond between us and it is a very smooth and integrated effort. sometimes we put u.s. conventional forces under special forces command. sometimes i will put special forces under the conventional command. it is whatever works right for the unique situation on the ground. in no small part, it is due to what you initiated when you were secretary of defense and the young n.c.o.'s think this

is how it's done. the experience we did in the 1990's have paid off. >> can you talk about the threats you see in a military sense in the persian gulf and in the g.c.c.? >> most of iran's threat will be unconventional or a ballistic missile. they know that if they take on their neighbors in a conventional sense, that they will be exposed immediately. that is not to say they would not do it because wars are often started by irrational impulses. they are growing their enormous ballistic missile capabilities, which is the one thingreceived a lot of attention that has from our military friends out in the region as they realize

how formidable their civilian populations are if the iranians start throwing in long-range rockets. sleeper cells, paid terrorists, that sort of thing. a lot it is their mischief they seem to be up to all of the time. you also have this ballistic missile threat that is far more mature, more advanced, more accurate, and much more numerous in terms of missiles than it ever has been before. the nuclear piece, nobody out there wantstorian have a nuke, but at the same time, -- wants iran to have a nuke. the nuclear peace, nobody out -- but at the same time they are unconvinced by and large that the international community will be able to stop it. that is their view, not

necessarily the american or e.u. view. >> we do comment on the volunteer force versus the draft. how has it affected the country? >> an all-volunteer force is more expensive. we have to compete for the best with colleges and businesses, but i will tell you that i have seen the military when it still had draftees and i've seen it today. when you have everyone there that wants to be there, it does change the tone. we do bring in very high quality men and women in. it is a highly capable force. it is truly a national treasure and the envy of any country in the world and not just for the technology but for what these young n.c.o.'s and junior officers are able to do. one of the reasons, general, i believe we are growing as a military somewhat remote from

the body politic in the mainstream of american life. that is something, i think, we have to look at. is it good to have an all-volunteer military with the sense of commitment that is not there and it is just a choice? i am not saying i want to see it reversed, but it is something to consider even if it is to come up with some other way of serving your country because we don't need a lot of people in military. we are drawing right now, we are meeting all of our recruiting quotas and the retention quotas. the reenlisting. we are doing this, by the way, before the economic downturn so do not think this is just an economic decision. these young folks believe in what they are doing. it is a great military. is this the kind of society that we want that has a military that is a little bit out there outside the

mainstream? that is a potential cost. >> one of the things that california is noted for is our technological advancements. can you talk a little bit about what has been done in recent years to make our job easier and what remains to be done that would continue to improve our ability to defeat our foes? >> we have to have good technology. we have to be at the top of our game. it is just that sort of a world. it is not a pacific northwest world. probably the most radical thing that i've seen in the last 15 years or so is the role to have re-- perfect world. is the role in the system. whether it be a drone that has a camera on it and allows you to look over the next hill. whether it isage armed drone that can wait up there hour after hour until you can spot

the enemy you want. we try to avoid killing innocent women or innocent people. that plote piloted vehicle has been a wonderful -- remote piloted vehicle has been a wonderful asset to have. they know over the next hill what is on their flanks and allows them to move with a higher degree of certainty against enemy. we need help with i.e.d.'s. we are losing a lot of lads to i.e.d.'s and if we had a way to detonate them, it would change the face of this fight. on one hand, we have had some very great advances. our body armor is better than ever. you can only do so many things on defense to i.e.d.'s.

you can only put so much armor on and eventually they are going to make a bigger bomb and find something to sneak around that jamming frequency or have a pressure plate down there and if we could find a way to prematurely detonate that i.e. d., we would save a lot of lives. >> can your give us your thoughts on the military in afghanistan and in iraq, with the press. what has changed is the nature of many of these men and women serving actually on the front lines with our forces. has that made a difference? do get a better story today than we did years past? >> got to be a little careful here. [laughter] after some of my public statements, it is a privilege

to be invited to my polite company anymore. the press does a fantastic job -- they have had cutbacks in their own budgets which means we have fewer embedded media folks out there now. but where they are out there with us and they see what we're doing, i'm very comfortable with it. 5% of them are -- 95% of them are great guys and gals out to tell the story and are committed to it and they really want to do a good job. they are not all good. there is always a few jerks anywhere but even jesus of nazareth has one out of 12 with mud on him. you're not going to have everybody be perfect all the fifmente at the same time, i think the press tells the story very well. the challenge comes when we had a complex war that is look out

through a soda straw. that can be a problem because you can then extrapolate from what we have seen in this one village, if you did that in world war ii i can prove to you that nor mandy was the biggest defeat the u.s. armed forces had in world war ii. our paratroopers were shot down. you have to just have to make sure that you have people who are giving as good an overall picture as possible. it was probably, i would say six months after the tribes in iraq turned in my area out in western iraq against al qaeda. it was probably six months before grudgingly in some cases some media folks basically acknowledged that they had come over. let me give an example here. in 2001, 2002. kandahar.

i said i want to open the school. they said we want to open the girls school. absolutely. have at it. they were so proud of themselves. they took me downtown. here on the day they opened school, these little kids, little boys with long shirts on an girls are little shawls over their head and white blouses, just completely white and long plaid skirts and little black shoes and little white socks and little book bag. it was like somebody took dehydrated students and poured water and poof, they all popped out. these guys were so proud. i doubt any of them had been to school. they learned to give the american thumbs up. as they walk down the street, we heard some people, the taliban were upset with this. they very much fear education. real education. they though what it does to free people's thinking.

we had u.s. army special forces, marines, navy seals along the street with automatic weapons and grenades and bandoliers of ammo and these little girls and little boys walked alongside these foreign soldiers very proud. they knew who were the good guys and who were the bad guys. they trusted us. i don't mince words. there are some news people who are not at the intelligence level of those 8-year-old girls in kandahar. [applause] but i will also tell you i remember pulling in into one of my bat -- battalion positions in baghdad after a difficult night. we had over 80 of our boys killed and wounded. as i pulled in, there were newsmen sitting there holding

plasma bottles over wounded marines. there are some great, great news people out there trying do the best job they can. i shouldn't focus on the couple who let us down. any human organization has some of that. the press is doing very well embedded inside the military. the words give them when they come in, just go down there and you can admire my truth. that is how confident i am that the bare naked truth of what we're doing will sell us across the world. >> jim, we're going to wrap up with that one. thank you very much. >> thank you. [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen, thank you general mattis. [applause] that was terrific. thank you so much. secretary schultz again. thank you for sponsoring this

lecture series. i want to thank again joe daniels for his performance and i forgot the mention the 23rd marines who provided that color guard. what great group of people we have in this area. i want to thank the audience. part of the success of any problem -- of any program involves the audience. >> in a few moments our road to the white house interview with jon huntsman, the former governor of utah. and our coverage of the iowa republican fundraiser including remarks by presidential candidates texas governor rick perry and representatives ron paul of texas and that is yuss mcconnor of michigan. -- thaddeus mcconnor of michigan. on "washington journal" this morning, we'll examine the federal government's flood

insurance program and the damage caused by hurricane irene. our guest is robert hartwig, president to have insurance information institute. "washington post" environmental reporter juliet eilperin will discuss the keystone pipeline and our series on the the weather with a look at disaster relief with michael greenberger. "washington journal" is live on c-span every day at 7:00 a.m. eastern. several live events to tell you about today on c-span including president obama's speech to the american legion's national convention in minneapolis at noon eastern. just after that, at 1:00 p.m., labor secretary hilda solis will be at the national press

club for interviews on jobs and the economy and then the atlantic council for training on afghan security forces. >> see what political reporters are saying and track the latest campaign contributions with c-span's website for campaign 2012. easy to use and helps you navigate the political landscape. candidate bios and the latest polling data and links to c-span media partners in the caucus states all at c-span.org/campaign2012. >> on "road to the white house" this week, we spoke to republican presidential candidate jon huntsman, the former governor of utah. this is a little more than an hour. >> when did you first think

about running for president? >> as we were departing china. there is always talk about higher office when you're a governor. i would dismiss that. as nonsense. presidency we retur folks who rganized and for another candidate who brought a real world problem solving approach to our challenges as a nation. we looked at the situation, analyzed it and as a family decided we would get in the race. >> what do you bring to this campaign? what's your message? >> well, i think i think we bring a very realistic common sense approach to, first of all, recognizing the situation that we face, which is a desperate dire difficult economic set of circumstances where you got high unemployment, record debt, the most difficult economic situation since the depression and people hurting and people not just hurting, but people downright frightened about

their circumstances and about their future. so i think in order to address that, three things are going to be important as we go forward. i think i bring all three of these to the race. one, private sector experience where you have got somebody who understands the fragility and the importance of the free market and what it means to job creation going forward, because as far as the eye can see into the 21st century, we have been creating jobs as a country. you need a president who understands the dynamic of the free market system, number two, having someone who has been a successful chief executive, a governor who has actually managed a state with something to show for it. in our case, taking a great state to number one in terms of job creation, the best environment, most pripicious for business, the best managed state in america. that is very important and the results speak for themselves. that would be a very important consideration by the voters. number three, someone who understands the unpredictable

nature of the world in which we live. it's not going to get any better going forward. it's going to remain unpredictable. it's going to remain a dangerous place. i have lived overseas for times. i have an intimate knowledge of our most significant economic relationship, china, and what i think is our most significant strategic challenge going forward as well, china. i think that is something that will be of great value in the oval office. >> i want to talk about your politics and experiences, i want to talk but. born where? >> born in california, raised in california. i was born in the navy. my father was in the navy at the time, born in palo alto. my mother left the naval base in san diego when my dad was out to sea on tour and i was delivered in palo alto. she went up to live with her parents for a little while. my grandfather at the time who had a small hardware store in palo alto was mayor of palo

alto. then palo alto had nothing more than leyland stanford jury university and a lot of undervalued real estate. my other grandfather was principal of palo alto high school. both families were in the bay area. following that we went back to san diego to the navy base and following my dad's departure from the navy, moved to los angeles where he took a job with a couple of my uncles in a very small egg distribution business. so i spent the first part of my life in southern california. >> what was your dad's experiences like? what were they like in the navy? >> well, he was in rotc. he followed what his father had done. his father was a naval officer, too. in fact, on both sides of my family, i come from naval officers. so there was an expectation in my father's family that if you did it right, you would rise up and become an educator like my

grandfather. you would serve in the navy, which is what he had done and his three sons all did the same thing. so my father was involved in the navy just right before the vietnam war, the early 1960's. so he served his two or three years consistent with the rotc commitment, got out and went into business after that. >> you dropped out of high school. why? >> i thought i could be a musician. i left a couple of classes hanging my senior year. i had been junior class president the year before, ran for senior class president, lost, thought i could make it in music. we started a rock band and i pursued that for about a year, year and a half only to find that wasn't to be my future and went back to more traditional life. >> what instrument did you play or instruments? >> keyboards, piano, rock

organ, sin -- synthesizer. i still play to this day. we used to practice in the basement of the governor's mansion. we would warm up for various bands that would come to town and visit the state of utah. i love all kinds of music. i have a daughter who is a concert pianist. i have a son who is a guitar player and one that is a drummer. music has already been an important part of my life. >> was there a huntsman band? >> there was in the basement of the governor's mansion. i played keys, one played guitar and drums. we had several musicians that rounded out the band. we played every now and then. we were decent. i'm not sure we would have made the cut to tour at a club act. if we spent a little more time of it we could have made something of it. >> did you ever write a song? >> yes, wrote some of our own

original music that was influenced more by the music trends of the 1970's where you had more art rock, more classical rock, long version songs where you had multiple chord progressions, you had solo breaks, the kinds of things that you don't find much in today's music, but was very much on display in the late 1960's and through much of the 1970's before disco then ran it out of town. >> in your perspective, who had the greatest influence in music, at least in your generation? >> oh, you would have to say probably the beatles or the rolling stones, since they were at the cutting edge of rock and roll, at least during my generation. they gave rise to, of course, the rock and roll that we experience in the 1960's and then into the 1970's which then turned heavily influenced by

the u.k., which then turned to more classical rock and more classical rock and inspired i think a lot of bands here in the united states who then picked up their own varieties through the 1970's and the 1980's. i'm a traditionalist in that sense. i think that probably the beatles and the rolling stones and the who were probably among the most influential bands of my generation. >> so what's on your ipod? >> my ipod would include some music from the 1970's, 1980's, and even the 1990's. a heavy dose of foo fighters. i'm a foo fighters fan, more of a recent band. i have music by muse. i have rack mondayoff's third con con charityo that i like. on the jazz side, stanley clark, some of the best musicians to come together to form a band. it's a fairly eclectic offering.

>> your own music career begins to fizzle away. you get your high school diplomacy, then what? >> i went on to college. i served as a mormon missionary overseas when i was 19 years old, lived in taiwan for two years where i was introduced to the chinese language which for me has been a fascination. it's taken me back to asia multiple times, something that i picked up and continued studying through college. it's all consistent with my fascination with the east asia region where i saw it on display as a young man in the late 1970's. i lived in taiwan right as the united states or shortly after the united states had pulled its diplomatic relationship with taiwan and recognized mainland china, the government in bay shank. so i saw the diplomatic technical tonic shifts taking place and for the first time felt the power of the united

states, the consequences of the united states from a foreign policy standpoint. you see and you feel that much differently living overseas than you do here domestically. that left a lasting impact on me. it certainly influenced my course of study in college which was political science and international politics. >> let's talk about asia, do americans understand asia and does the u.s. policy reflect a policy specifically towards china that you think is propose? >> we -- appropriate. we have insufficient knowledge of asia. we don't quite understand the economic implications of the rise of asia and what that means in terms of our own competitiveness. when you look into the 21st century, it's going to be a much different century because it will be a century based on economic competition. the players pretty much all reside in the asia east pacific

reason aside from the united states. the implications are fairly profound. if you visited china 10 years ago versus today, the differences are absolutely phenomenal. i'm one who believes that in order to truly understand the economic implications of the rise of asia and the way in which society has so transformed itself, you have to have visited on a very regular basis because the rise of asia and specifically the rise of china, it's all happened so quickly and the change of society, the development of society, the rise of their economy is so significant, so consequential with profound implications for our own country, i don't know that we have focused enough attention on what it means. so to have a president that is actually plugged into the raise of asia, what it means for the united states in terms of how we compete in the 21st century i think is going to be very important. >> so what should we be doing that we're not, specifically

towards china, economically, politically, foreign policy? >> well, i could give you a list of more academic answers, but i would have to tell you that we have to get our own house in order. if we're going to compete with the chinese, if we're going to do what needs to be done as a competitive nation in the 21st century, we have a little nation building to do here at home which is to say to get our economic house in order. our core is weak. our economic core is broken. we don't have the leverage we used to have in the u.s.-china relationship. i have to tell you that we're not going to project that might even though we're still 25% of the world's g.d.p. until such time as we get our own economic house in order. so longer term, i would argue that the best u.s.-china policy is that which must take place right here on the homefront and that's getting our economy back in working order, which is to create a more competitive environment here. we don't have an environment that is conducive to job

growth. our taxes are dilapidated. they need to be changed. they need to be updated. they need to be simplified, flattened and more competitive. we have regulatory barriers and a lot of red tape. that makes it difficult for business to start up and indeed for us to maintain any real industrial base in our country. there are things like energy independence that are real opportunities for this country that could be job creators and allow this economy to really move forward in ways that would benefit this nation. it's all there. it all needs to be done in order for us to rebuild that core and rebuilding that core i think will have a significant impact on how well then we're able to compete in the 21st century against the likes of china and india. >> you have talked often in the last couple of days about taxes and revenues. so clear up the issue of how you bring down a $14.5 trillion debt? do you do so by simply cutting

spending? should revenues be on the table? if so, where? >> i like the ryan play. first of all, we have to be realistic about where we are. our economy has hit the wall. if you were in the banking sector, you would say that effectively we're in a workout position right now. so you look at the ryan plan. you look at how it talks about medicare. we can't keep doing things the way we have been doing it year after year. we fundamentally have to change the dynamics of entitlements. that means social security, medicare and what the ryan plan calls for in terms of the changes to medicare i think are absolutely right on. that is, you know, creating more of a marketplace. creating something more akin to medicare part d, something very similar to what we have done in creating an insurance connector in the state of utah in trying to close the gap on the uninsured there. we have to choice. we have to change the rules of the game. you can guarantee people about 55 years of age that we will hold true to our commitment as a country, but those under 55 i

think that dynamic has to change. we have to show more flexibility. we have to broaden the marketplace. when you have medicare where the average human being is paying in over his or her last time and paying in $100,000 and getting paid $300,000, the system is upside down. i completely subscribe to the changes in medicare. in social security, we're going to have to take some bold measures as well. we have to back out the retirement age. why? because we have no choice. we're going to have to move it something closer to the 15th percentile of the average length of life. we're living a whole lot longer than we were in 1935 when social security came about. so a combination of moving the retirement age and indexing the underlying numbers to c.p.i. as opposed to the assumptions that today are being used. those two things alone i think

would make a significant impact on social security. >> so there should there be a means test nerms of your income and whether you should receive social security? >> absolutely there should be. a lot of people in this country who don't need social security, who don't need medicare and i think we need to look realistically as where we have to be drawing those lines, means testing, absolutely should be on the table. we got to look at these programs. this is 2/3 of our nation's budget. we need to look at these programs and say we can't afford to keep doing things the old fashioned way. it's going to bankrupt this country. you look at the current numbers and try to extrapolate it to 2020 for example. i tried to explain it to my kids the other day, their generation. following medicare and social security and interest payments on the debt, in 2020 there is nothing debt. what do you do about national security? what do you do about defense and disaster relief? we're on a trajectory that is

so dangerous economically for this country and it's got to stop, but we're just going to have to put entitlements on the table, look at them differently than we have in the past. same with the defense department. >> as you know, if you are the republican nominee, you'll face a democratic firestorm on the issue of social security and any titlement cuts. >> i understand that. we got to talk truth. we got to recognize the facts for what they are and we have to proceed by doing business differently than we have in the past. we have no choice. the people of this country understand that. they understand the implications of where we are going and the disservice we're doing to the next generation of americans. in the history of the greatest nation that ever was, we're not passing our standards upward. we're passing downward. that's the first time that we have done. it is less productive. it is less competitive. it is saddled with debt like never before. we should do better than that

we should do better than that for the next generation. they deserve better. we have to take some pretty bold measures and speak the truth to the american people about where we are and what needs to be done. it isn't a pleasant message, i understand that we're not in a good place right now as a country. >> you are john huntsman jr. who is john huntsman sr. what is your relationship like with your dad and what did he teach you about business? >> he is a great man. he is not only my dad, but my best friend. he is a great american entrepreneur, great family business success story that we were all part of building in life. as with any family business, you start small and you build it up. if you're lucky enough, some years it hits the wall economically. you face dire times. in other years, you do reasonably well. he is a man who has taught me first and foremost before we ever had a family business, service to your community. it doesn't matter what your background is, what your economic means are, you serve your community. you leave it a better place.

that was always something that he instilled in me at a very, very young age. number two, the importance of hard work, which i started doing at a very, very young age, either as a dishwasher having a lawn company selling records door to door, in fact i worked with my wife in a restaurant when i was 16 years old. i was a dishwasher and she was a salad girl still trying to get a investigate with her which i failed miserablely at. life placed us in the same restaurant at the same time which was an outgrowth of the work ethic that was instilled in me by my father and may have also had a side benefit by kind of starting a little romance at the time as well. >> it was a marie calendar restaurant? >> yeah. pretty unglamorous place, but it was work. >> growing up in a family with seven brothers and sisters -- >> i'm the oldest of nine. >> what are the dynamics in a family like that?

>> you know, when you can grow up in a family of nine kids and you can have a family business and you come out of it where each is respectful of the other, where you cheer each other on is probably a pretty rare set of circumstances. you know in family businesses these days there are fights, skirmishes, lawsuits, there is division and animosity. i have to say in our family, thanks to my good parents, probably also thanks to the fact that we didn't start with a family business. it kind of grew over time, so our philosophy has always been, we didn't start with anything, you leave life with nothing. you give it back. you find a way to benefit your communities. i have to say the family dynamic is a very good and a very healthy one with love and respect one for another. >> in fact, your dad had been quoted as saying he wants to die broke. >> yeah, i think he'll succeed. i think he'll succeed.

i think for the rest of us, for whatever we might have, whatever we might develop during our lifetime, that philosophy holds true. you enter life with nothing. you leave with nothing. you leave it behind directed at causes that will help the human condition, help your communities. we have the great privilege of starting a cancer institute that i was president and c.e.o. of. my father was chairman of the board back in the 1990's it started. for years and years and years, we started small and built overtime what is today a terrific cancer center. it does basic research and it does clinical work as well. i have to say, you can take politics out of the equation. can you take business out of the equation. this is what is important to people in life. finding a cure for cancer, giving hope to those who are absolutely hopeless when they have been diagnosed with this dreadful disease, that's what is important in life. that's what i take in my

journey life. some things are less important than others. that's truly important. >> cancer remains a leading cause of death in this country. are we doing enough to research the causes and the treatment of cancer? >> you know, you would like to see the national cancer institute receive more in the way of funding. you would like to see, aside from funding, more collaboration and coordination among our research centers. we have got some great universities in this country, the finest in the world, who are making some very, very good breakthroughs, particularly we're at the end of the human genome project. that has unlocked a lot of the mysteries of disease. the root cause of disease, who might be susceptible to certain types of diseases, the inherit ability of certain diseases like cancer, we know a whole lot more of it today. not only do i see cures around the corner, but i certainly see in the meantime being able to improve the quality of life.

so what would have been a death sentence for somebody 20 years ago means that you can live a longer life today with a better quality of life and the one thing that i would hope for would be greater collaboration among our research centers. you have universities with various smart people. they tend to hoard because you win funding and prizes based on what you discover. people are less likely to break down those barriers institution to institution to share some of the basic research that has been done. if we were to pool the basic research that goes on in this country, which is a very powerful engine, and let's just say begin greater collaboration with other countries, for example, in china, they have some very smart scientists in china. they have increasingly good research capabilities and development. if we were to blow the lid off the wall that now divides science and basic research and pool for of the discoveries, we would get to that end point

where curious are found, not only for cancer, but, for example, my daughter has juvenile diabetes. she is my hero in life because she has carried this disease with great dignity and without any kind of self-pity and she has to shoot herself up with insulin every single day and test her blood multiple times a day. i would love nothing more than to be a cure for juvenile diabetes. it's around the corner. we have the brain power. you wish they would drop those barriers that stand in the way of greater scientific collaboration. >> let's go back to your now wife mary kay. when did she yes to a date and when did you get married? >> she said yes to a date my junior year in high school and it was a one off deal because she had a boyfriend. i don't want to get into this

kind of romantic detail. i'm not sure it was important at all. i was successful once my junior year in landing a date. beyond that, it was a hard fought battle all the way to when i think i was 21 or 22 years of age and we ultimately married in 1983, in november of 1913 and we have been married ever since, seven kids to show for it, two of whom are adopted. >> walk through that process, adopting overseas, why did you do it? >> well, i had lived four times in asia, three of them with mary kay. i think it really started in the 1980's when mary kay and i were living, building a joint venture factory in taiwan in the 1980's and she would volunteer at a catholic church orphanage in our neighborhood. i remember her coming home one day saying we have got to bring one of these kids into our family. they have no life.

they have no hope. they have no future. there is a need. and selfishly i would say we have our own kids. let's make sure that they're raised to be productive contributing members of society and maybe we can revisit the whole idea of adopting someone. i never thought that i would be the father of adopted children. it just never crossed my mind early in life. now i wouldn't have it any other way. we revisited that whole thought many years later in the late 1990's. we lived in asia three times together and we had a real tie to that part of the world and we decided that we had a little more love to give after our own five biological children. it's hard to describe beyond words what i mean when i say we had a little more love to give. you just know it at the time. we started the paperwork and

went through the bureaucratics of adopting a child. at the time in 1999, the relationship was improving between the united states and china. it was right after we had bombed their embassy in belgrade as you remember that incident and the relationship had soured tremendously in the late 1990's. so the relationship was on the uptick and we waited probably six to eight months would be my guess before we were able to adopt little gracie who had been abandoned at two months of age at a vegetable market at a city in china, no note, no record, just a child found at a vegetable market. she apparently had a smile on her face because the name they gave her was happiness, so her chinese name is after the town

she was found and what means happiness or content president in chinese. we were lucky enough to bring her into our family at her being roughly six to seven months of age. the minute i laid eyes on her at that orphanage, the connection was complete. i knew she was ourselves. that bond of love and affection just happened instantaneously. that adopt so transformed our family and so transformed my own kids in terms of the way that they saw the world and the appreciation that they had for kids in every corner of this world who have such need, don't have families. they don't have a life to look forward to, they can't aspire to anything great in life because of their circumstances that some years later we decided to do it again. we had just been elected governor and our life was busy and it was frenetic.

it was about the last thing we needed, but, again, we had that love to give as a family and india is another country that has pulled me in over the last 25 or so years much like china. we thought if we're going to adopt another child, let's go to a region that has also had an impact on our lives and that was india. we went through the process. it was long and it was as torturous as anyone who has been part of this process knows and it took a long time, but ultimately we adopted from a catholic orphanage in rural india, little asha, which is hindi for hope. so her name translates to the hope of india. her circumstances were quite dire. she was delivered in a little field in rural india, left on

the day of her birth and for whatever reason discovered by some villagers. she has a very loud voice and she even at 5 years of age, she makes her presence known wherever she goes. i think it was that loud voice at birth that probably saved her life. she was handed over to the local catholic orphanage. we adopted her a little more than a year later. >> did your own children accept them immediately? >> they did. they were all part of the run up to the adoption. so the run-up to the adoption can be a very unusually gratifying emotional journey all by itself where you learn about the circumstances. you begin to bond with the child before you even adopt. and so by the time the adoption occurs, your heart is ready, your mind is ready, your family is prepared because everyone has been part of the application process, the wait,

the following of the journey from start to finish and so our kids were ready with both of them and embraced both gracie and asha immediately as they came into our family. it was a transformative experience, i just got to tell you, like few things that we have done in life, a completely transformative experience. >> let's talk about your tenure as governor. what was the most difficult you had to make and how do you go about making a decision as an executive? >> a lot of difficult decisions as governor, most of them dealing with families in difficult circumstances. decisions you make all the time, i think those that were most heart-wrenching for me had to do with dealing with families, for example, who had lost a loved one in the theater of combat. as governor, you're the

commander in chief of the national guard and when you lose a member of the guard and you have to sit down with those family members, when you have to preside and speak at those funerals, that's always a very, very difficult thing to do it was always for me a very heart-wrenching thing. i can say cutting budgets, dealing with the policy issues around cutting education and cutting human services, those are always very difficult things to do during a time of economic austerity. you do what you need to do to balance budgets. for me it was always working with families, either families of guard members who had lost their lives or, for example, we had a major mining tragedy in our state where we lost several individuals from a small town in utah, a mining town, a hard-working town that completely devastated that town and the county in which the town resided. and dealing with those families

and in trying to console them and trying to represent all the people of your state in lifting and boosting the morale of the town after a devastating thing. the eyes of the country and probably the world were on this small town in utah during this mining incident. for me, as i reflect back on my years as governor, it was the interaction with people that stood out as either the most gratifying or the most heart-wrenching, i guess, because i'm a people person more than anything else. you feel the pain -- you feel the pain of people in the state when they're going through it. you feel the difficulty of having to cut budgets, particularly in the areas of education and human services. you feel those lives that are impacted and you rally together communities where you can't afford to cover many some services by bringing religious groups, by bringing foundations, by bringing not for profit organizations to

step up and maybe contribute a little bit more, but i got to say, it was a terrific job and i love being governor. i love the rigors of presiding offense a state, being chief executive. i love the interplay with the legislature and the interest groups that are all part of it. i mean it's like running your own little country. you got everything that you would see on a national level. it's a microcosm of the country. the thing i like about the job most is the idea that you can create a vision for the state and you can share the vision with the people of your state. you can execute on that vision. you can actually pull the levers of power. through the power of persuasion and the power of the bully pulpit, you can get things done. then an interesting thing happens, you run for re-election and the people assess what you did. particularly in the case of governor and they remember what you said on the campaign trail

and they remember what you promised to do as governor and then they look at what you did during your first term and then they hold you accountable. for me, that was a very, very important lesson in politics because i ran on a very specific platform in 2004. i had a 10-point plan and it was all about economic recovery and getting on our feet and expanding the base and creating jobs, reforming taxes and reforming health care. it took us a couple of years but we got every single point done on the 10-point play. got unemployment down to 10.4%. we do the taxes to a flat tax. we were the hottest economy in the country based on what magazines were saying, the best managed state in america. i went back to the electorate in 2008 and i said if you like your state, if you like what we have done, i ask for your support. if you don't like what we've done, you have got an

alternative. vote for somebody else. and we got almost 80% of the vote for re-election. >> you were re-elected and you get a call from the president to go to china. how much time did you put into that decision? >> days. when it was put on the table and the white house called, there were a couple of days, two or three days where we had to think through as a family whether or not this was the right thing for us and for our state and our country. i love being governor. i mean, it was the greatest job in the world. we connected with people. we have been able to achieve a lot of things that a lot of folks had said were down right impossibility and we loved doing it as an entire family. and the thought of moving to the other side of the world, although we had lived there before, with a son who was a football player, they don't have football in china, kids who were in college, we

wouldn't be able to see them, a daughter who was soon to be married, we would have to disengage from all of that. it was a very, very painful thing to do as a family. we thought military families do it. foreign service families do it. folks who serve in embassies all over the world, they make a sacrifice. if they can do it, we can do it, too, if we can make our country a better place by stepping up in a bipartisan fashion and serving. it was really driven by the whole notion that if you love your country, you serve her. when you're president, ask you to step up in serve, in a bipartisan fashion, you step up and do it. that's a philosophy i was raised up with and i'll take it to my grave. >> if you run for president, you're running against the person that appointed you as ambassador to china? >> that's right, that's right. i served proudly and i would do it again. you don't resign your political affiliation and you don't compromise your world view when

you take u.s. ambassador to china. you bring to the job the skills that you have built up as a manager, as a foreign policy expert, as someone who knows china intimately well and you go at a job that under eight presidents has been a bipartisan spot. try your best to protect and defend your country's interests in what today is the world's most important relationship, the u.s.-china relationship. >> the person who has been appointed by the president, the head of g.e. to create jobs has a company that is leading jobs in the midwest and moving to china. is that part of business? >> you have a lot of international companies that are truly global companies and sadly enough, we don't have enough of a competitive foundation in this country to expand our industrial base and to do what i think is going to need to be done in the years ahead in order to expand our manufacturba