-- for free transcripts or to give us your comment, visit us at q-and-a.org. ♪ >> former lobbyist jack abramoff talks about his conviction on fraud, tax evasion and bribery charges and his time in federal prison. clarence thomas speaks at his home town of pinpoint, ga. appeared later, the top american leaders award. recipients include chris christie and sheila bair. tomorrow, the dedication ceremony for the new martin luther king, jr. memorial on the

national mall. president obama is among the speakers. that is at 10:00 a.m. eastern. each night this week, we are bringing you a different episode of our series "the contenders." tomorrow, a look at thomas e. dewey. >> up next --

>> welcome. this is the first of our new and for ethics and a professor here at the law school. as i describe this series, our aim is to have a conversation with a wide range of souls. these are people with a different kind of experience, sometimes a legal expense, sometimes ethical experience. but for such a conversation to make sense, we also have those who have demonstrated some reflection, and ability to reflect upon what they have experienced and how they can contribute to the work of this center. that, plus the willingness to engage in a conversation that

might advance our understanding of the ethical issues that are the -- that are at the heart of our work. i'm truly grateful tonight to jack abramoff for helping us launched this series. as everyone knows, jack abramoff is most famous and perhaps most infamous lobbyist. in january 2006,he pled guilty to felony criminal counts to a casino venture. yeah admitted to exchanging gifts for favors. -- he admitted to exchanging gifts for favors. he was sentenced up to 11 years for the full range of these counts that he was convicted of. in june last year, he was transferred from a federal correctional institution to a halfway house in baltimore. a year ago, he was released on probation and now lives under the constant surveillance of our criminal system with a continuing obligation to pay whatever money he earned in restitution back to the

government. jacks story has been told in the press and in the movies, including a documentary and a feature film starring kevin spacey. it must have been very cool to meet kevin spacey. [laughter] if you are a junkie for the sort of stuff as i am, after you read his extremely compelling accounts, in his book "capital punishment," i think that you will experience a russian mob of fat -- a rashamov effect. we're here to learn about the institution that he lobbied, congress, and the political system that he so successfully navigated. my aim is to walk through the

aspects. his experience has an enormous amount to teach us. if we are successful, it will be in part because we have been able to engage of a man who has been a part of it. he is a committed an orthodox jew. he has made religion they central park and central constraints in his life. he was not able to drive to meetings, so he had to walk through the philippines to the meetings space. if you have been to the philippines, late night is not the place for a non-native to engage in.

he was one of the key figures to revive the republican party after early 1980's graduating from brandeis. he has been a film producer, and philanthropist, and giving up to 80% of this income to various philanthropic causes. maybe the best summary of his character is his own hilarious summary of himself. "i was the power lifting, football-playing, orthodox jewish, right-wing republican opera buff. you know the type." [laughter]

i am grateful to jack for agreeing to engage in this conversation to help us all understand the there is more. welcome here tonight. [applause] i want to begin the conversation by trying to get our bearings. i was struck early in the book with two stories that you tell. one, which outraged you, and the other that you passed over without really recognizing any problems. it ...the first one that outraged you was the story about getting the ms -- the mx missile past. whatas you recount in the book,

you say, yes, sir, what canada for you? and bustamonte says that the defense department is -- what can i do for you? and bustamonte says, the defense department is looking to put in a new base. of.i hear they're looking and florida. got ouand you remarked -- this s your first moment, your first experience of true washington corruption. bustamonte was later convicted and sent to prison. corruption was at least in part of his soul. about the great richard gordon, who taught entertainment law at voinovich trying to get into his entertainment law class.

.you called him daily for a week. i invited him to the opera. i got my friend who work for the reagan administration had dining privileges at the west wing to give him an invitation to meet their daily. fortunately, my full press was ... ... effective and i got a spot in his seminar. this is an remarked in this story. this is just the story of how you got into his class. the thing you found corrupt, bustamonte, i was not quite sure of. he was a congressman working, not giving anybody any money. here is the deal. if five -- i will vote for you if you do this political thing for my district. and now you are suggesting to richard according to put you in his class because you offered him lunch at the white house. convince me that richard gordon did not get you into the class because of that. tell me why that is an problematic whereas the

bustamonte thing is deeply troubling? >> i think i wrote about my efforts to get into a class. itwhen i look back, i think " they're probably some law ... schools who think about lobbying it to get into a law class is not something that everybody has in mind. oughtbut that is what i was doing. whatyou are right. at a certain level, this is kind of the same problem where one is that bringing extraordinary means and irrelevant benefits into play to felt try to achieve a goal. i was 22, 23 perhaps, when i was " there an bustamonte called me " into his office and hit me with this.

and i discussed -- and as i discussed in the book, i was shocked that he would say such a thing. but he would give the seven boats for a naval base. i think i was naive and folks at padilla ... the white house probably thought i was silly about calling and " asking that question. of course, they approved it and then reagan got the mx missile. whaton the other hand, i went about doing similar things. a think the distinction i make in my mind then and maybe now come to some degree, but surly than, is -- but certainly then, is that, as i look back on it, my whole career became one of if a using my skills, whatever they were, to lobby to get public servants to give out comes. ifin this case, he was a public

servant trading arguably for the benefit of his district, by the way, and i would, in parsing it, viewed it as a citizen try to get ahead. at the end of the day, it is the case, whether one is doing that or offering candy to trick kids to come into your store so that parents by, at some level, there is a bit of corruption there. diamondswe have to confront each of these in our daily interactions and decide what level are we willing to play at. >> but when you said there was possibly a problem with what richard gordon did, he said it was because it was something irrelevant about the gift being offered. it that>> it was the related to the underlying issue. " -- it was not related to the

underlying issue. >> but i wonder if that is not too high a standard to apply in the context of politics. do we not have to have some politics that we can call non- corrupt or is it impossible to imagine? >> i do not think everything is correct. -- i do not think that everything is corrupt. i think lobbying is a good thing. i think lobbying is a cherished right that we have in a constitution. we can call on our members of congress, or have an agent to do so, or band together. >> bustamonte did not have money on the table. >> in a certain way he did. he was delivering jobs. i guess this was unusual for me. the horse trading up it all seemed to be so bizarre. we were trying to convince people -- my job at that point

was to convince members of congress to vote for a program, the mx missile program in this case, and i was lobbying on the merits in those days. later, i discovered that marriage are interesting, but they deny usually win. but in those -- they do not usually win. but in those days, it was merits. he said that he would give an outcome that i desired for something that had nothing to do with the merits of the mx missile. >> we can certainly agree that, when the relevant issue of money, campaign contributions or cash in your pocket, both of us think that raises troubling problems within the system. one striking fact in the book, when i was looking at this, i was much more charitable in my interpretation of what must be going on inside the system. your account of the role of money here is not charitable at all. you even said -- first of all,

you said that it is natural for people inside the system to expect that they need to be rewarded. there are benefactor's with contributions. and you say there's no question that these contributions had a significant impact on this process and the impact is not positive. we have a department here at harvard that would question that. but i think you may have an insight stronger than the department. and you say "that contributions in legislation are nothing but bribes inside of the system even though these are not for personal gain, but political gain." i found it interesting how you lay out how the distortion gets played.

you talk about tom delay meeting with a microsoft representative and suggesting that they needed to help out with the republicans to keep the republicans in power. and then delay says, freshman, he told them about approaching wal-mart for contributions. "the director of wal-mart said that wal-mart did not like to sully their hands with political involvement. staring intently at the microsoft involvement, "a year later, that representative was in my office asking to intervene to get an exit poll for the federal highway. i told him i did not want to sully my hands on such a task. you know what? they deny get their ramp -- they did not get their ramp. as we would often say in the lobbying business, they finally

got the joke and a $100,000 check was soon thereafter delivered to the republican congressional committee." my view, that is extortion. that sends a clear message saying that you play along are you deny guilt in need. -- or you do not get what you need. >> most members of congress were very subtle. i did not need to get these speeches from the because i got the joke myself. when i was lobbying, i was doing what i could to raise money for whoever it could. we raised millions of dollars. but other lobbyists need to be reminded what the standard procedure will be.

they will work with you on any issue or agree to support your bill and say, you know, by the way, i am holding a fund-raiser next tuesday. i am not sure if you got the invitation or not. that means, you better come up with some money if you want me to keep doing this. the lay what -- delay was known as the hammer. he did not mince words. eller holmes norton was infamously caught on tape calling a lobbyist just last year saying, i do not know if you know this, but i am the chair person of this committee and your coming to our committee for results and i cannot believe that i looked at my card in your not all lists.

why are you night giving me money? sometimes, it is subtle. and sometimes, it is very much out front. they are soliciting bribes in essence. unfortunately, it is spread throughout the system, whether they're subtle or not. >> is it your perception that it was always like that or it grew during a stern period? >> i think it was less settled years ago -- less subtle years ago. my new lobbyists who were active in the 1950's and 1960's and it was less subtle. there would be members of congress, you want to sit down with me? where's the check? it was not a $52,000 check. it was a $100,000 -- it was $100,000 in cash. it was more outrageous.

i think today, one of the ways that members of congress get around feeling horrible about these things is that they are trying to make it out to be something other than what it is. i am having a fund-raiser next tuesday night. if you happen to be in the room and there is extra money falling at of your pocket. so there are more subtle. that make it easier to feel good about yourself. >> so they are asking for money for things i do not directly benefit them. is it your perception that it shifts away from the kind of blagojavich or cunningham type of corruption -- what we do for my personal checking account? add more toward how do we exercise influence for these

things that benefit me? >> cunningham and blagojavich and bob ney, even, who have their hand at and want you to actually put money there -- that kind of stuff is rare. but the fact is that these members are not asking for contributions to something that they're interested in. this is for charity. oftentimes, these charities will hire their wives or their children. if they're asking for money from the republican or democrat congressional committee, it is because there is a requirement. they are raising money for things that they are involved in. it is not directly into their

bank accounts, but it might as well be, really. >> when there's this story that you tell. money is one technique that the lobbyist can deploy. many gifts become another aspect. you describe how lobbyists with great influence and certain representatives can cause the advent of congressional hearings and to do so utterly destroy in. this is the kind of weapon you can deploy to guarantee that people lined up in the way that you want. >> yes. i think those people do not think about the fact that the government has become a weapon for people. it is not merely a weapon to go

fight wars. it is a weapon to fight wars at home. and i am ashamed to tell you that sometimes this was the kind of lobbyist i was. if somebody called up for a hearing -- people think that house and senate hearings are like trials. you go up there and get a fair hearing in their things and the door -- it is not. most hearings are designed to achieve a goal that is not ever expressed. in the sense that lobbyists would pushing hearing, it would be for the purpose of putting your opponent, whether that might be, in the deep end and setting them back. a hearing that could theoretically landed in prison, by the way, if you perjure yourself or even if they decide to hold you in contempt of their body, the house or the senate. they have big jail cell in the building that they can put you in.

by the way, when i was called up for my hearing, the cell was there. it can destroy your reputation. it can destroy everything you have. but even after this route, you will spend $1 million preparing for your hearing. you will spend weeks and weeks not sleeping preparing for your hearing. you will not do anything that might be a problem, meaning any thing that your opponents might use to come after you. so it is one way to disable your opponent. unfortunately, it is done all the time. there are about 35 standing committees on the hill. and they hold hearings everyday. multiplied that out and you see how the lobbyist is able to play and how special interest are able to play in a way that most americans are completely unaware. and the people who get called to these hearings, who pays them to be going to these hearings?

>> like their expenses. if an ordinary person might from boston or california -- >> sometimes the committee will pay their expenses. not if they are not a target. >> we often think that the most important influence is the influence of a member. by using the the most important influence is the influence of a staffer's. >> right. >> and if you can signal to the staffer -- jim cooper, democrat from tennessee, described congress as a form league -- as a farm league for k street.

then you have a very valuable resource. his pay check may have been signed by congress, but he was already working for me, influencing his office for me. a perfectly correct arrangement even though no rules had been broken, at least not yet. is this just a jack abramoff innovation or is this a common practice? >> i did not indicate anything. as i look back on my career -- i did not innovate anything. as i look back on my career, i learned everything i did. i may have pushed some of them over the normal boundaries, which is what got me in trouble. but there are a lot of smart people in washington and they think about everything. one of the reasons that lobbyists laugh about the approach to reform the system it is because no matter what people throughout the system, they will overcome it.

one of becomes immediately apparent when you are a lobbyist or when you're working with congress, the truth is congressman used to have no staff. the great leaders of our past wrote their own bills, wrote their own first commons, lead their own meetings -- wrote to their own first comments, lead their own meetings. like corporations and other places, the staff runs the show. that becomes apparent to a lobbyist immediately. the ones who make the decision will give you access to the staff. you have to figure out very quickly that most members of congress are pretty lazy. they do not want to do the work. the run for office. they love the camera. they want to be on tv.

they want to raise money. and they want to win their elections. but they do not want to do any work. they certainly do not want to read the bills. that is for certain. >> why? i cannot understand why. [laughter] >> because they are reading comic books. >> they have no time for the bills. >> they are not really running the trains. the staff is. so when i started building my lobbying practice, most people would try to hire congressman because of the marquee value of the name and things like that. i had a different tact. i would never hire a congressman. i hired one congressmen. i was asked by the leadership, a nice guy who could i get a job. i hired him. but he turned at to be utterly worthless. i always hire staff because the staff was hungry and they were killers. and that was the operation i had. what i noticed and what i wrote

about in the book is that i would hire staff from the work immediately because i needed it. so come to work tomorrow or come to work next week. but then i started hiring chiefs of staff. when do you want to leave the hill? i know what to leave for two years. ok, in two years, i will hire you. i hired them right then. the moment they knew i would hire them, their whole job change. they're human. you know you are going somewhere else. you have to be at least be thinking about the next job. you do not want it to go away. so what they do, and portola, the real corrupt parts of the system and a completely legal and unknown entirely -- when i tell people this, they look at me and it is obvious when i sit, but until they understand it, the stepper becomes -- -- when i say it, but until they understand it, the staffer becomes my staffer.

those staffers can never become lobbyists. >> if you think about -- what is striking about the problems you described in the book is that they're completely unrelated, logically at least, to the actual crimes you're convicted of. >> right. >> you were convicted of crimes -- this may be an innovation that you want to be humble about, but mike scanlon, whose job was to recruit business leaders who might be affected by some particular legislation so you could produce 5000 very

powerful people overnight who would call upon this person and say, no, you cannot possibly do this. that is a steve jobs kind of thing. why did not everybody do this, but nobody was doing it. but you failed to disclose that you had a financial interest in that firm. that is one of the things you were convicted of. there is tax evasion because you're diverting funds to charity. and you had -- but none of the problems you're talking about had anything to do with your particular crimes. you could be describing lobbyists who never crossed the line at all and yet are producing all the problems you are talking about. so they're not criminals that

are at the source of this problem. >> there are very few criminals, very few bill jeffersons and jack abramoffs. i could not care for the line was. i just wanted to win, so i just kept going. there are some lobbyists who are lazy, too. that keeps them from becoming criminals, for better or for worse. i try to focus people on that it is not what is illegal, but what is legal that is the problem. the lines in the sand or so ridiculously drawn -- in the sand are so ridiculously drawn. >> i want to outline the reforms you have outlined.

then i want to hire jack abramoff, the lobbyist, to war game those reforms. if they were enacted tomorrow, now i wanted an expert and a 1 allele side of this time. i want an expert lobbyist to help me get around this reform world. the reforms to describe our key ones that i think are very important. number one, you want to eliminate entirely any contribution by those lobbying the government, participating in federal contracts -- you do not want to limit it. you want to eliminate it. you should not be able to give some much as $1, zero, you can make a choice.

you want to be a lobbyist -- if you want to get money from the government, but you cannot be giving. that is one important category. next, you want to eliminate the revolving door. you should be barred for live from working with a lobbying association that does work with the government. number three, you have a limited proposal. no. 4 is repealed the seventh amendment, which made senators elected so now we have -- originally, they were appointed by the legislature or the governor. sir repeal the 17th amendment. >> also, all laws -- >> all laws need to apply universally to everybody.

right now, congress exempts itself. so we have those reforms. congress has now passed it. overwhelmingly, the president has signed it. now i hire you, jack abramoff, to get my special-interest legislation through the system. what do you do? >> not going to break the law. [laughter] so what does a lobbyist to do in a non-corrupt environment. >> well, in this environment. >> if money is removed from the system, as a lobbyist, i have no ability to convey any money or gratuity or anything that could cause gratitude on the part of the public servant toward me and my client.

>> but you are not being creative enough, jack. you cannot tell me that you and mike scamming could not together a very nice operation. -- and mike scanlon could not put together a very nice operation. >> who are the six people in the united states that does not get some benefit from the united states government? >> when i say benefit, i do not mean social security checks. i'm talking about grants or contracts are getting special favors. >> what about wall street? >> yes. >> wall street can i get any money either. >> any body that gets special attention from the federal

government is exempted from giving money. can i give any money. >> -- cannot give money. >> will who cannot give money? >> farmers cannot give money. there are some who believe in certain congressmen and uncertain causes. let's take legalization of marijuana. [laughter] i want to have congress legalize marijuana or i want to have congress to ban abortion or do something in the general sense but applies to everybody. it does not apply to my company, my industry, or create a financial incentive for me. i have not drafted legislation

nor am i going to. >> i have just hired you. >> i am not a drafter. i have people who do that. but the world that i am trying to get to and that you're trying to get to and that any reasonable person is trying to get to is where bribery is taken out of the system. republicans want to cut the taxes of the very rich. >> the wealthy are getting a tax cut. you will see in some things that i think are special- interest and vice versa.

it is hard to drill into the details of this. i did not create my book in that way. i should maybe mentioned that, how i came up with these things, these bizarre kind of suggestions that are the opposite of what i used to be, i came up with them in the walking track in prison while i was thinking, what if i were still a lobbyist? what are the kind of reforms would i try to stop? who would i try to stop? the kind of reforms they have now, you cannot buy a congressman a meal. if they sit down and they use a fork and a knife and they eat on a plate, that is a meal. but if they stand up and they use their fingers, that they can do. they consider that a reform. you cannot buy and sell a $25 hamburger. i can i go to lunch and have a hamburger with you and it is

$25. but if i go to a fund-raising event and i have five $5,000 checks and say, here you go, that is completely legal. in no way is that reform. so what are the kind of things that i would stop? so putting aside the details of it for now, obviously, you drill into these things and they become difficult. but there are plenty of great minds who can do it. i am not one of them. if i were in a system where money was removed, where i could not get money, i could not buy them lunch, i could not take them to see the washington redskins -- although i am not sure that was ever a benefit to anybody -- i could not take into a football game or play golf or do airplane travel or anything anybody could do if they walked in, then everything

is on the merits politically or philosophically for them. >> i have no disagreement of the effectiveness of the narrow question about what lobbyists need to be allowed to gift or not a gift or give or even the idea of taking lobbyists' out of the business of giving money. charles fried came up with a proposal which is essentially the same, that lobbyists should not be in the business of raising money for people that they lobby. that is fine. but the question is whether that alone is enough. the way you have made it more than that is that it feels that you have written this morass in trying to decide when i am allowed to be giving whether or not the issue is special interest to me or a general interest. is a tax carrying the same

interest as the [unintelligible] is that a special interest or a general interest? i think that is the morass. a think the ball -- i think the alternative of having a more creative funding system would not be as effective without being so restrictive on the freedom of people to participate in the political process. here you are, jack abramoff, a libertarian, telling all sorts of people they cannot participate in the political process because they have a special interest. but the alternative is, what if we fund elections with small contributions? the fair elections act now says that you walked into a system where you get $100 from racism and that is matched by the government. i will rebate you $50 of your

taxes and you can use that as a voucher to give to people only take a voucher, plus $100. but all of the funding comes from small dollars. in that system, would we have to worry about the particular benefit i might get from the government is a special interest or not? >> i do not know. i am open to that. [laughter] anything that gets the money out of the system, anything the removes the bride's, basically, is worth considering. there are philosophical issues, like people interested in public financing and things like that. i think the essential message i'm trying to put forward is that, to stop the corruption, you have to take up the money. that is what i used when i was being corrupt. that is what does it. that is the deal.

>> thank you. we would like now to invite people to participate. our strategy for questions in all of our events is that i will control the queue. i will signal to you and you will get the mike and you will speak. let's start with to dennis. >> dennis thompson. several years ago, i wrote a book called ethics and congress. it obviously had an enormous impact on washington. [laughter] >> my favorite book. i saw the movie, too. >> we are waiting for the movie. kevin spacey was otherwise occupied. [laughter] this goes to something that larry was touching on.

why should we pay attention to somebody who is convicted of a crime that has actually nothing to do with the reforms that he is proposing? we do not ask barry bonds' about how to make baseball better. we might ask him about how to avoid the temptations of cheating and violating along. we might ask a lobbyist like you how to get reforms through. you did not answer that. what you did, in the book and tonight, was list half a dozen proposals, which i am not sure

you are in the best position to -- i want to know. what is the connection between your recommendation and your experience? one recommendation that larry did not mention and you did not mention, and it is major in the book, is that we should have a smaller government. that sounds like the plank of a political party. i am not sure, again, how that follows exactly from your own experience. could you tell us why it your experience really has anything to do with the reforms that you are proposing? >> i appreciate your question. i have been to probably 200 interviews since i got out of prison and it is the first time somebody asked it like that. i appreciate you doing so.

my response is i am not sure it is important you know whether i am sincere or not. i am not here to run for president or win a popularity contest. it is not my name brand. i do have the experience in this role. i have been in rooms a lot of people have not been in. i know what that role takes. once i had the benefit of a to buy for cracking the in the head and came to my senses in terms of the damage this role does, i am somebody who i think has something to say about it, in the sense that i happen there. in terms of the government part of it, there are 30,000 lobbyists. the number varies every day. let us say it is 20,000 lobbyists walking in washington, not because the government is the size it was in 1912.

it is because the government is the size it is in 2011. much of the frustrations people have is there are too many people lobbying with too many special interests. i would posit, and i do not know how one argues, that one of the reasons this is the case is because the government is responsible for a lot of things. i say the government needs to get out of a lot of stuff. i personally believe in having a smaller government. i am not big on government to begin with. i had to live with the government for 3.5 years. it was not fun. i believe that was consistent with wanting to get rid of special interests. get the government out of this. what lobbyists want and i want, to some degree -- you want power concentrated. if you could have it, you would have one person and every decision. you just make sure that person is in your pocket.

the more power, the more difficult it is for lobbyists. that is what it is important. >> anyway, can you hear me? i can hear you. >> i have not written any book of relevance. i have two questions. when is your specific, and one is more general. the second, you may have covered in the book, which i confess i have not read. it seems to me there are three functions of a lobbyist, three weapons a lobbyist has. one is the bride. to is the threat. three is the figleaf. what do i mean by the third? i mean giving the rep, senator, or what ever an excuse or rationale to do the unreasonable, to pretend to be in favor of a certain bill

because of some reason which is probably not valid. do lobbying firms have special teams whose sole job is to develop the figleaf, developed the cover story? or is it just generic in any lobbying firm? >> it is generic in any lobbyist. that is what lobbyists do. you want to give political cover to whoever you are asking a favor from. you want to make sure they have the important cover necessary to get away with it, to do it with a straight face and be able to explain it. even something that is reasonable, good, and wonderful, that always becomes part of the discussion with congressmen and their staff. how can we do this in their districts? my view was 435 congressmen represent the entire country. that are all sitting on different committees.

to me, it was nothing to go to a congressman from ohio for something in florida or texas, as i did. unfortunately, he also went to prison for this. but lobbyists do not view it that congressmen are just for their district. they are for everyone. so lobbyists, come up with reasons why this is an invincible at home. so it is part of every lobbying effort. >> how would you foresee reforms like you suggested actually coming into being? have you got any master plan? >> i did not know that was important. [laughter] it will be difficult. who benefit from this life style to get rid of this lifestyle. ultimately, it will be a question of the media shining daylight on this stuff and exposing it like what "60 minutes" did with insider trading.

until they did do that, nobody was thinking about that. when i was a lobbyist, we heard about members and staff and they would come in sometimes and said i made a killing in defense or something like that. there will be a big bill. frankly, i thought there were knuckleheads buying 100 shares of something and making $200. who cares? it didn't dawn on me. i did not focus on what they're saying. but it was insider trading, legally. but until the media started doing anything about it. then the bill went from six sponsors to 50 something sponsors in a week. if the media continues to focus on the space -- mind you, this is probably what accounts for the fact that congress has an approval rating of under 10%.

people look at the congress and look at the government and they think that you guys are a bunch of jerks. you are a bunch of blowhards were getting rich on our dime, usually, and it is not fare so they ignore the system or they they got an -- they get out and occupy something or they get 80 party or they organize an election. >> at harvard law school in the 1970's, i hooked up with stanley surrey. i became a tax analyst on capitol hill. years later, i was sitting on a board of directors in los angeles with alfred bloomingdale.

i spent a lot of time with that plan and i ended up on ronald reagan's kitchen cabinet. did they have much of an impact on you? you came from the same neck of the woods, i gather. that is a culture by itself that has not been discussed. but to ignore that culture, that was unique. >> my father was president of the diners club franchise. i met them a couple of times. but i do not think he had a big influence on me. frankly, i did not meet any of of their lives. it did not really impact me. what shipped me more than brandeis university where i basked in right-wing political bought activism -- political activism. >> here in massachusetts -- you mentioned lobbying at the state level. in massachusetts, we have no for the occasional speaker of the house.

because of your background in law being around gambling, i would be interested to hear if recently -- into recent gambling. there was some opposition to it, but it was roundly defeated. what should we have been looking for in the lobbying process here in massachusetts? and what should we be looking for? what should we be alert to in the ongoing decisions that will be made about where the damage will take place and who will get to profit from it? getting that information? >> everything about the gasoline industry is politics.

-- gambling is all political. i spent a lot of my time stopping -- everything about gambling industry is politics. i spent a lot of my time stopping gambling. i do not know what happened here. i have not followed it. but stopping gambling is easier than getting something through. the fact that they got it through is remarkable. generally, it does not happen. i am sure there was a lot of money involved, obviously. these campaigns are not cheap. in terms of going forward, what you need to be watching for? to the degree you can, you want to try to get some legislation through that is doable to prohibit anybody in that industry to giving any money politically to anyone in your state. they did this in new jersey and they kept casinos for years without having any real

political power in the state, other than as a an employer. to a degree that it is possible, if i were at this point trying to do something to control it, i would try to prohibit them from giving any money politically at any level. even at the local level, giving to a mayoral race or something like that, these companies can have a tremendous impact. do not forget what kind of trashi do not know if it is one casino or several casinos in the boston area. >> it will be three casinos. >> it will likely be very lucrative. if they are smart from the other side, if i were the casino, i would use my money to consolidate political control so that, number one, it could never be undone, and no. 2, when i wanted to expand, to do it, and number three, maybe the most important, to make sure that there are not pork in it.

>> i have not read the book. can you talk a little bit about the conversion process, the personal reflective, self inquiry-driven conversion process to have gone through to get to replace where you saw what you have done before and as the savory. and can you talk about what it is like to be the object of so much shame and derision and whether you -- and what your hopes are? >> i would love to say that, in the middle of my lobbying career, was making but loads of money and it hit me all of some -- all of a sudden that i should not have been in that

business. but i cannot say that. that business. maybe i am the kind of person who needed the entire house caved in on them before they in a house of cards. but that is what happened. with me, my aunt came rather suddenly, -- my end came rather suddenly. within a couple of months, everything was obliterated. it probably took a that. and then there was the two years in prison. for two years, i sat and basically tried to work through what was going on. what did i do? first, i thought what are they talking about? i did not do anything wrong? does.

i just did more of it. so i had 72 seats at the rangerswhat is the difference? that is the first thought i had. well, the first thought i had was that this would blow over. it was a little bump in the road. it was no problem. but when the first "washington post" article came out saying that i try is a lot of money to my clients, it was just like "the new york times" putting out an article saying that i had website. the first article was should we put this up on their website? is the picture okay? it was that kind of stupidity. it was a different universe.

i thought it would go away. basically, i was in denial. that did not last long, by the way. very quickly, i was able to somehow subjectively sit down and get out side of myself and look at what i was and look at what i was doing. i do not want to say that everything i did was wrong. it was not. certainly, most of what i did was legal. most of what i did in life, i do not think was wrong or bad. but i was involved in areas that were bad. and those are the areas that i went to prison for. and the things that i went to prison for, i was wrong about and i regret all of it. but it was not a matter of -- i had to look exactly what i did that was legally wrong.

i took the approach of let me look at what morally and should have been doing. the things i had studied my whole life that i had somehow separated. i separated by religious and philosophical beliefs from my activities. i'm not the first person to do that, obviously. many people do that. but the fact that i did it, when i woke up to a, it was dreadful and terrific for me. and i was in depression. i never thought i wanted to kill myself, but i thought, gee, what did not be better if i were never here. that is a horrible feeling. but i have a family. i have kids and wife who are also suffering. my mother and my father -- my mother passed away, unfortunately. necessary process. by the time i had gone to prison, i had reconstructed my

belief system. i had not been able to speak about it because the media was not interested in hearing from me, to be honest. i became a cartoon. i put on a rain hat because it was raining one day. i went to the courtroom. here is an idea of what it is like for someone in my shoes. the media sits outside your house. they accost her family. where are you go, they rush you. the paparazzi are not decent journalists like tom brokaw or things like that. what they want is for you to look at them because they want to get a picture of you looking at them. they will scream stuff that you that is unimaginable. or they will cost you physically. they will make you walk into them. i am not as strong as i used to be, but i am not completely week.

so i started walking right into them and knocking them over. they ran away. i did not care. that is a weird and horrible situation. so i went to court on a big day. it was january in d.c. it was cold and raining. i got up early. i left my house in the dark. i got to court hours before my court appointed time because i wanted to beat the media there. so i grabbed a hat. i am an orthodox jew. we have hats. it is part of the deal. so i put on his hat and upon his raincoat and i left. my wife was sleeping. she would have said, where you nuts? i went out and i walked in and there was none of the media there. i had some things on my mind that day.

i was pleading guilty to crimes and going to face the fact that i was being taken away from my family. so i finished and i was with the justice department and the fbi guy who treated me very fairly and very appropriately, never abused me in any way. i know that happens, but it did not to me. i put my hat on and my coat on to leave, thinking, ok. and i walk out and the media starts screaming at me. are you a gangster? are you a mafia guy? who are they talking to? no mobster dresses like this. and it was me. oh, my god, i should not have worn my hat and coat. and i became a cartoon. i could not talk to the media. i could not talk to anybody. but before i got to prison, this is what i was thinking.

i was thinking, you know, i am part of a system -- i am probably the razor's edge of a system that is destructive and is against everything that i have always thought about for our country. whether it was greed or power or wanting to win, whatever it was, i should not have been there. i should not have been doingand i am about to get punished. i knew i was going to prison. and when i went to prison, i did not know how long i would be there. it was not until i was there for 22 months that i was given my sentence. every night in prison is terrible. but to be there and not know when you are leaving prison is indescribable. finally, i got sentenced and i got more time than the justice department even asked for. ok, that is fine. i went back and i did my sentence. but when i was there, that is when i started doing my thinking. it is not enough that i know that i am wrong. it is not enough to know that i

will never do that again. obviously, i will never do that again. who will hire me as a lobbyist on capitol hill? lobbyist jack abramoff hidta see you -- here to see you. [laughter] it does not feel good to hear things about yourself like this said about me. and they are still saying. i guess you get some thick skin, but you don't get that fake a skin. but i should not be hiding. i should not go away. i should come back and do something about what i was doing. in my head, i had experiences of that world that are all like a lot of the people in our country. most of the people who know what i know are scared of talking about it because they are making money with it. i have been attacked pretty severely by my former world, not that i care.

a lot of people do not want to hear what i have to say. not for the reasons that they think you're a criminal or a felon or who cares about you. i understand that. but from the point of view of shut up, abramoff, go away and die, and get out of here, you are ruining it for the rest of us. i i consider -- i consider myself a part of the rest of us. [applause] >> jay livingston. your own capital athletics sign $40,000 to end illegal settlers polish and equipment and fighter train even though it was not a charity that performed what it stated what it was going to do.

why is it that unscrupulous people like you and tom delay feel so close to the plight of israel? >> i do not know. i like ireland, too. i do not know how to answer you. we do not agree on israel. what can i tell you? i went to jail for misusing nonprofit money. i am sorry i did do it. but i am unabashedly for israel. >> [unintelligible] >> they were not settlers. but we will have to agree to disagree. >> i am tom ferguson. i was with you on npr a couple of weeks ago on a program on insider trading.

i just want to ask you about the analytics of this. it is a very interesting discussion. there are a lot of folks who try to understand the logic of lobbying and have trouble trying to trace it through what they think about how does a congressman or woman price the services they're doing. i ask because of what you look at what is paid and what they get, you get some odd cases. i will make it 6% of the defense budget one night for two hundred thousand dollars. then a week later, somebody will contribute $1 million and get a gambling resort for something like that. could you shed some light on the process under which you might call the pricism. >> i do not think there is a rational answer to the question. it is a good question.

but my experience is that those members of congress, which is most of them, who are into raising money and trying not to necessarily do what they think is of an illegal quid pro quo, they are just trying to get as much money for anything they do, no matter what it is. if $1 million is available, they will try to get $1 million. if $100,000 is available, they will try to get that. i do not know that there is necessarily a rationale here. it is more that congress fears not being reelected and not dancing in the system and not becoming a committee chair person. they will try to get whatever they can get.

so it is not necessarily a pricing system. >> let me push a little bit more on the question. it is a very good question. it is one of the puzzles on whether money is it the center of the corruption. low. in your book, you talk about the return on been -- return on investment that you got from lobbying. you got some huge percentage return on investment. an economist would say how was that possible? why is it so irrational? does the government not hold out for more? if i am going to get a $1 billion subsidy, which people get because of the tariff, you should have to pay lobbyists more than just $1 million for that. you should be paying half a billion dollars for that.

>> because they are dealing in stolen goods. in essence. this is not a normal business. they are taking things out of the public trust and selling them. you're not going to get drupe cunningham this way -- drew cunningham this way. >> can you walk us through -- presumably, there are some idealists who get elected to congress to go with some public interest in mind. can you walk us through how you go about correcting them? [laughter] what is the rhetoric of that conversation? how do real them in -- how do you reel them in? >> when any member of congress shows up in washington these days, the first thing they meet is not a lobbyist. the meet their leadership. and the leadership introduce them to their lobbyists. and they do it this way.

you're a new member of congress. the most important thing for you is to get reelected. if we lose your seat, then we will have to fight to get back the time after that. so that is the most important thing. since most of them, 80%, come with the debt, the first thing you have to do is retired your debt. this is even before congress has convened. i am talking about december, after the november elections. here's a group of people who are very good at retiring your debt. that is where it starts. even if they are the best folks in the world and they have the greatest -- by the way, some of them will say it. i am not interested. i will not get involved of that. the first year. but then there's the second year. but in 20 years, i will take

that two thousand dollars, but i do not sell my vote for two thousand dollars. if somebody does something for you and your your decent person, what is the thing you wrote think in your mind? g. thomas -- g, somebody did something nice for me. you can be a decent person -- i will root for them. i cannot do that, but maybe i can do this. that is how it starts. it is not a moment where somebody walks in and gives 50,000 votes in casino chips. that is very rare. what i just described you is virtually everybody. it is just a matter of time before they're beholden to the lobbyists.

>> thank you very much for being here. i am a professor of pathology at harvard medical school. there is probably a lot of agreement in this room that the root of evil is the money. that is what you were saying. but if a miracle were to happen and there was legislation passed -- as some have been trying to do for a very long time -- to make the system a publicly funded system and get rid of some of the temptation, do you not think that the supreme court would rule lit a first amendment violation? in other words, there seems to be a hopelessness about the road to a solution for a problem because for which is rarely understood and excepted. how'd you get rid of it?

>> in north carolina, it bans lobbyist contributions in north carolina. it will be interesting to see where that goes. but somebody who chooses path a, their rights and not taken away. they're making a choice whether ever they are doing. right, you do have that. it may seem that that case in north carolina may be a seminal case in this regard. it does bring hope that, obviously, if the supreme court says that will not work, we will have to look at other remedies. there are ways around the supreme court, too. they're difficult.

there are constitutional amendments. and they're almost impossible. how many times -- when was the last time the constitution was amended? it is certainly before most of these people were born. we will see what happens. >> but david was asking about public funding. what you're talking about is limits. you want to limit people from participating. and you cannot in your heart of hearts believe -- you may have a very accurate political judgment about the likelihood of public funding -- but you can really believe that, if all we do islam is, the the wealthiest 1% will not find -- if all we do is limits, that the wealthiest 1% will not find a way around it. >> there are guys who sit around trying to work their way around the system.

i have been with them in prison. and they have been prosecuted. i do not want to see people in prison. but that is the penalty for playing games. let me tell you why i am against public funding. first of all, i am a libertarian-time conservative. -- military-type conservative. >> who wants to silence a bunch of speakers? >> i am giving them a choice. nobody is forcing anybody to be a lobbyist. i was not forced to be a lobbyist. people make a choice. like all things in life, you give up things a few choose other than. but in terms of public funding, i have a distrust of the government. i have to be honest with you. needless to say, i have a distrust after what i have been through. they say that a conservative is

a liberal who is mugged. well, a libertarian is a conservative who was indicted. [laughter] i am not trying to disparage everybody who works for the government. i lived in complete government control. but generally, i do not like the idea of putting in the hands of people power to make decisions. >> but then vouchers do not do that. >> i said i was more open to vouchers. >> when i read your book, i thought that was more than the franklin approach. i think it is very important that we talk about getting this stuff fixed. we need something that people on the right and people on the left will be able to agree to. i think that might be one way to do it.

>> i am jeff bridges. i am a student at divinity school. before was there, i worked in politics for 10 years. it really sucked my soul dry. i think you understand. coming here and going to divinity school, i got involved with occupy harvard. it was a redemptive experience for me. i came here thinking, it is jack abramoff who wrote a book to make money. that is what you do. something that happens and you write a book. but when you talk about your experience being arrested and reflecting on how you operated as a lobbyist, it really spoke to me. i believe you. i buy it. i want to know why you're doing what you're doing right now. what you hope to accomplish with the path you have chosen now.

>> as i said, what i want to do is that i have some role to play in solving this problem. it is a problem. it is something to recognize that it is a problem. you all recognize it intuitively. i am ashamed that i did not. not only was i in it, i may have read it. so what i am doing now, as hard as it is -- it is not easy to sit here and say everything that i am saying to you all. it is not. you're not the only ones i am saying it too. i have said it in front of big tv audiences. i have to believe in their heart of hearts, my family probably wishes i would not say it.

they also see -- none of my kids -- i was very political. my wife worked for the republican national committee. not one of my children wants anything to do with american politics, not just because of what happened, but they think it is utterly hopeless. so i want to do something for them. i want to do something to try to move the ball forward. i will not do it by myself. i wish i came to this when i was where i was. when i sat in prison, all you think about is how do i get out of here. even an hour earlier, just, please, god, get me out of here. it is impossible to describe what it is like. 24 hours a day, people screaming, six men in a 150- square-foot space.

it is a nightmare. you're thinking every minute how to get out of here. of course, i was thinking, don, why did i not think of this when i was a lobbyist -- darn, why did i not think of is when i was a lobbyist. i could've had the laws changed. i could of figured a way to get me out of here if it happened. that is silly. but i often sit back and think, would if i was still in that game? i could really do some damage. and it occurs to me what has occurred to me since. so i can speak about it. and i wrote about it. i have a book out. i have a $44 million restitution order. this book would have to outsell the bible for me to see any money. [laughter] i did not do to make money. people are not making unless your rawlings or whoever.

i'm not making a lot of money. i did it to let people know. and if they know, maybe they will get angry. and if they get angry, maybe they will do something. and maybe, maybe, this great country -- and it is a great country and a great people -- will rise up and demand change. >> the last question. make it really, really good. >> a lot of pressure now. [laughter] you were saying before, when your story broke, how you were in denial and you were in a different world. i wondered if you think that politicians and staffers are equally in the nile in a different world. >> yes -- equally in denial. >> yes. absolutely. think about folks who can go around trading on insider information and buying stocks on the one hand and then read in the paper that raj rajeratnam gets arrested for doing the same thing.

natalie do they not feel bad about it, but a few good about it. -- not only do they not feel bad about it, they feel good about it. they do not get it. why is it that we are so unpopular? i talked to congressman. it is quiet. they do not want to talk to me. why is there a 9% approval rating? how is it possible that obama has a better approval rating? are you kidding? they totally dissociate themselves from the reality that everybody else in tbilisi's. -- intuitively seas. as did i -- everybody else intuitively sees. as did i.. >> jack abramoff, thank you for

coming. [applause] you will go downstairs. >> ok. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> coming up next, supreme court justice clarence thomas speaks at his home town in georgia. then, the washington post presence of its top american leaders awards. that includes new jersey

governor chris christie and a former fdic chairman, sheila bear -- baire. -- bair. and president obama speaks at the white house reception for the kennedy center honorees. the look at efforts to get a third-party candidate on the ballot in all 50 states. then, an author and presidential historian on the legacy of a george washington. leiter, a look at efforts to improve the electoral process and the help america vote act of 2002. that is live at 7:00 a.m. eastern here on c-span.

>> next weekend, book tv and american history tv look of kind the scenes of the literary life of paton rouge, capital of louisiana. -- bahn ruche -- batton rouge, capital of louisiana. then we look at the book supposedly in the hands of john paul marat when he was killed. it may be the most famous political ad ever produced. and it served as a model for the civil rights boy cuts to come. historians and artisans on the impact of a bus boycott. also, tour the louisiana state archives, with materials dating from the louisiana purchase. there was a short-lived west

florida republic of louisiana. plus, state could documents. all next weekend on c-span 2 and 3. >> supreme court justice clarence thomas was going in 1948 -- born in 1948 in georgia. he returned for the unveiling of a church historical marker. thomas told the crowd he hoped he would bring honor to his hometown. after the remarks, a laying of a historical marker and a wreath laying. this is half an hour. >> he will come and give us greetings on behalf of the historical marker foundation. [applause] >> thank you all. i quickly found out, looking and this program today, that if i

could remember your name, i would know most of the people on the program here. >> on behalf of the georgia historical society, thank you for being here today. congratulations to the association on receiving this historical marker and the work year of done to help preserve and tell the story of this community. i am delighted to be in this church. my greatest fear today was not that i would get out here at a time the marker was not here or justice thomas had not gotten here, but that i would be standing outside with the gnats. so i am thrilled to be inside this church. [laughter] the georgia historical society is the independent statewide

institution that is responsible for collecting, examining, and teaching georgia history. we do that a variety of ways. one of the most important ways is through the historical marker program, which we have operated since 1998. it was privatized by the state of georgia and turned over to us to begin putting up the markers on behalf of the state of georgia. this is one of the great ones that we are thrilled to be able to put up today. it is one of the best programs we have. if you are ambulatory who -- if you can walk and read, you can learn georgia history. you do not have to come to a lecture or hear a speaker. you can learn anytime, any day of the week. this marker is a great example of what we have been trying to do. we did a survey and found out the diversity of georgia's history was not represented in

the marker program. we've worked very hard to tell the story of all the people of georgia. we have put up over 200 markers in the past dozen years. they are all over the state of georgia. they represent the stories of all the people of georgia. one thing we try to live by to operate our programs is something a wise person once told to me. he said how would the future ever be as it ought to be if we do not know the past as it really was. [laughter] [applause] with that, congratulations. the georgia historical society is delighted to approve this program. thank you all for being here today. [applause]

>> ok. we are now to a part of the program that is pretty special to me personally. we have in our presence the honorable clarence thomas, the supreme court justice, a first cousin. [laughter] and dr. lamar haynes. [applause] without further ado, in that order. [applause]

>> thank you, cousin, for that, on behalf of the people here. first of all, it is an honor to be here. i have never actually spoken from this side of the pulpit. i have never had any reason to. but i appreciate you all being here. when i left, it is hard for people to believe, but we all are contemporaries. we all grew up. we were just reminiscing that we were all going within months of each other in 1948. and a lot of us -- [laughter] someone said that he got on your

nerves are he had a lot of nerve. i said it is both. [laughter] i just wish that some horn clemens -- i wish that samuel leghorn clemens had been here, tom -- mark twain. instead of writing about the venture's on the river, he could ever to about these men. we could make some really good for offers out of those. it is interesting. at any rate, i would like to thank you all for being here -- my wife, my mother, my sister, my cousins. there are so many of you. when i left, it was serendipity,

because the house burned down and we went to savannah. not far, actually, from where we were last night over on west of the -- west duffy, which was replaced by frazier homes. i do not know what is happening with that. i always hoped when i left here -- as you go through life, it is a long, slow process, even learning standard english. someone asked me recently when i had gotten comfortable with english, standard english. i said, "i think it was the 1980's." it is a long, slow process. but i always hoped that by doing the right things or living the right way, i would bring honor to those who have been such an important part of my life. i had always hoped to bring honor.

when i brought my driver's license, i used to make a beaten path here. when i was at st. john's, i would get over to sandfly to tutor. i did not realize a lot of those kids were my blood relatives. the irony -- it is interesting. offspring also's works at the supreme court. i think it is her great- grandson. but she came over here to bring me into the world in 1848. you talk about gnats. there are none compared to what they used to be. you have to see them. there was not air-conditioning and pest control. a lot of people would not be

living down here. somehow, we figured out how to make some smoke out of old rags. so there was not a problem. the gnats are looking for help. [laughter] in any case, i would like to thank all of you for being here. i would like to thank the georgia historical society for today. i would particularly like to also thank the pinpoint betterm aent association, and everyone who kept talking about saving pinpoint. i was never in a position to do anything. what i have done is to live my life in a way to try to bring honor. but today is a long way from the reception pinpoint received when

i told someone when i was nominated that i was from here. the response was that i was lying because there is no such place as pinpoint. i think we all knew there was such a place, those of us who were going here -- born here. for us, pinpoint will always be home. i've been all over the country and other places in the world. but pinpoint who is always home. i am a son of penpoint. i played on the road. it was undeveloped and unpaved back then. we thought it was a big thrill when the plow came down, because all the sand was gone and you could really run. you saw pieces of snake as well. i do not know what the fascination was with snakes. but we loved it.

it made it easier when the road was plowed to roll rhythms and old tires down the road. to pull the little treys we used to pull down there. we walked down the road to catch the school bus. i only did that for half a year. but you went with the big kids. they would hold your hand. you are a little boy, so you are running in the ditch and the puzzle, and things like that. we all went to haven home school. >> amen. >> that was wonderful. i went with nerve, whenever nerve went to school. [laughter] but my memories of being out here are just wonderful memories. but when we moved to savannah in 1954, that was quite a

difference. i went to florence street school. i had no cousins there. that is a far different life. my own memories of living over there on the west side -- that was just horrible, and quite lonely. but here it was so different. adults were hard-working people, good people. i always come back to that word -- good people. they made do with what they have. you rarely heard anybody complain. in the evenings, they were knitting that's or working in a garden, or working on a low house or a motor that was not doing right, repairing something. they lived off the water and off the land. what we saw in this world who was self-sufficiency and decency and goodness and kindness. the only glimpse i sought and remember of the outside world where the blimp's going over, or

the old planes that would be going to the hunter air force base, beginning their lending pattern. for us as children -- we probably remember this. heaven was hearing the putt of the ice-cream man coming go on the road. there was another memory i always had. the was claiming to be [unintelligible] other people who had not churned would try to inflict themselves on you. and we would wear shirts -- it was absolutely have been. -- heaven. we walked along a little beach down the causeway -- down the creek. the causeway was not there. could walk around the beach out

of sight of our parents in the cravaack factory for the oyster house and hunt fiddler crabs. that was always interesting. we would go down to the creek and catch minnows in cans or jars, using old arts and crafts parts. i have often wondered, in coming back here over the years, who came before us. who were here? what did those live oak trees see? what would they say no? where did they come from? but there were those stories. people would tell you what they knew, but no one had recorded it. no one had written it down. a few years ago, i had an opportunity to visit with the wonderful assistance at the

foundation. that connected all the dots for me. if you ever have a chance, go over to ossabaw. it is where we began in the 17 60's, and lived there for over a century, until we came over here. i would encourage you to do that. it was the beginning of the sentence for me. i now knew where we were from. but that is true of the people over on hilton head. that is true of the people who used to be on ossabaw, people down in harris neck, all along the coast. we have that common history. not many have taken note of us back here. not many have taken note of that history. it is not part of a great battle. it is not some great book of philosophy or metaphysics, or a

book of mathematics. it is just us. and like people at this level, you, and you go. and look at the people who were over on hilton head. they are forgotten. those of us to go over there, our hearts for these, because we know what we had in common with them. the same thing if you go down to jekyll island, or the beach. we all know. pinpoint matters to us, but there are few others who knew or cared about this place. in fact, there are very few who knew about it. as i indicated earlier. i watched painfully as places like helton had simply disappeared. the evaporated into progress, and were soon forgotten.

but some work to make sure this did not happen here. how as i mentioned before, it is the association that dedicated itself to preserving the best of what has happened so that it is not forgotten. my hat is off to them. again, as i said to them, and i felt horrible -- when they asked me what i could do, my answer was uniformly, "there is nothing i can do but pray and hope that someone comes along." as my cousin said, the hope that there would be a miracle sunday. dr. barbara fertig, i would like to thank you. you have devoted much of your life and career to recording the history and culture -- [applause]

i could talk to you, because when it seemed that no one else cared about it, or cared about getting it right, he devoted yourself to just recording and listening to the people here. you were not trying to put it into a preconceived narrative. you were not trying to make us victims of anything. as you said to me, this is quintessentially american. we were here before the revolutionary war. we were here before the civil war. we have seen all the ups and downs of this country. and you tried not to give it your gloss, but leave it as it was, pure and unchanged, the culture. i thank you for that. [applause]

i deeply appreciate the georgia historical society for recognizing and commemorating what this small community has meant to so many of us, and to accept it and to recognize it as part of the state of georgia and the united states of america, which is something we have all worked to be a part of. i would like to think family, and also wish you have the birthday of. -- i would like to thank family, and also wish you happy birthday. the family is from texas, but she has understood almost from the beginning that this house to remain as it is, not as others would want it to be. she is the one who has worked diligently and who in the fatigue of lee -- diligently and

without fatigue on the heritage museum. i feel almost guilty even talking about it, since you did the work and were involved. i want to thank my good friend in absence, harlan crow, who against my better advice insisted that he would preserve the heart of this community from the bulldozers. the doctor, you remember meeting him. i told you what he said about many of the people here. he is a good man. if i were him, i would not have done it, because people insist on ulterior motives, and they come up with their own motives -- their own narratives. people cannot do things for goodness. my grandfather used to often make a stop vegetables off of people's houses when we had too much, for no other reason than it was the right thing to do.

how many people have brought fish to our houses? how many people said, "i have a basket of track. do you want some? i have extra oysters. i killed a deer, but can only use half." everyone of us, it is the same thing. it is a different thing. finally, i would like to think -- i think, in absence, all of those who have lived remarkable lives at the edge of the water, the edge of society, and the edge of savannah. many of them rest out here in unmarked graves someplace. many of them have moved away and drifted into the oblivion of anonymity. they showed so many of us as with the kids with potbellies running down this road how to

work. [laughter] you could not have been out here if you did not have a pot belly. but they showed us all how to work them survived -- worked and survive when there seemed to be little hope or reason to do so. what has happened in many places like this, it shows the best of people in some of the worst conditions offered in life. they did some of the best things in those worst conditions. they lived as a good people. the conditions do not determine the character of the people who live there. [applause] in a sense, the events of the

day are more reckless. you said in the video somebody had to work a miracle. you meant it. somebody had to work a miracle. in our conversation, somebody, somebody, and we expected nobody. somebody has to work a miracle. somehow, there has been a miracle here. in a sense, this is a part of that miracle. we commemorate and remember the spirit values, and legacy of those who once lived here with dignity. that is what i remember -- dignity. condition -- i remember, because a study in college, people tried to make it seem as

though the house or the clothes you war, the money you made or the degrees you received, determined whether or not you live with dignity. dignity did not come with those things. dignity preceded those things. as we say at the court sometimes, it is antecedent. this is a dignified, good place. perhaps by remembering them, we can merit a second nerco -- miracle, and restore those values and that spirit here and elsewhere, which kept us going. you all know, and i know, those of you who live here, the we have lost something. people talk about what we do not have. i think about what we once did have. [applause]

so it is my hope, and perhaps the hopes of those who are here, the we restore some of those values and some of those principles that have made it possible for us to survive. today there are very difficult times. perhaps these same values would allow others to prosper in a different time. but for today, let us just savor this miracle. >> amen. >> unlike other similar communities that are gone and forgotten, pinpoint has a chance to survive and to be remembered as part of the history of the state of georgia and the united states of america. and that is the way it should be. thank you all. [applause] ♪

[unintelligible] >> calling all the ancestors. calling all the ancestors. do you feel them? a at they are here. they are not in the ground anymore. they are all over us. we felt them as they did in the days of africa. bring them here today. we honor them. as we honor them, we cannot honor ourselves without them. keep calling them. call them in your heart. call them back and forth across the middle passage as they came to the -- came from africa. calling all the ancestors. calling all the ancestors.

calling all the ancestors. calling all the ancestors. calling all the ancestors. thank them. >> thank you. >> i will show you. >> and be here for us. be here for them. >> thank you. [applause] >> as we honor our elders, as we honor our ancestors, we also honor our young. we are going to ask someone to come forward to read.

>> pinpoint was settled in 1892, but a former slave. [unintelligible] was the successor to [unintelligible] and also served as community school until [unintelligible] construction followed, and it remains a focal point of the community. it was the site of several coastal industries, including shrimping and oyster farming. operations among these people

[unintelligible] it opened as a as burns and sons, which operated from 1986 through 1985. penpoint is the birthplace of the u.s. supreme court justice clarence thomas. [applause] represented by the georgia historical society and the community betterment association. [applause] >> that concludes the dedication and ceremony.

we call on the pastor to officially give us the benediction from this site. and we are going to move down to the museum. >> yes. there is a reading. george, you can go ahead. >>this is in memory and dedication of our ancestors. [applause] >> let us look towards heaven. the grace of god and the holy spirit. may it rests with each and everyone of us until we meet again. amen. >> thank you. for those who want to participate in a procession, we are going to walk them to the factory. it was newly renovated.

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> tomorrow, the dedication with a new martin luther king jr. memorial. president obama is among the speakers. that is at 10:00 a.m. eastern. we are bringing you a different episode of our series "the contenders." at 10:00 a.m., the look -- at o'clock p.m., a look at thomas dewey. >> michele bachmann is here. she is thinking of running for president. which is. because i hear she was born in canada. [laughter] yes, this is how it starts. >> it is so amazing to be in washington, d.c. all this history. yet, here we are, at the hilton. [laughter]

the red carpet was amazing. who are you wearing? what does it matter, and going into a hilton. >> with over 9 million hughes, c-span's covered from the white house correspondents' dinner. watch them on line on a youtube channel, youtube.com/cspan. >> educators, a journalist, and politicians were recently honored at the american leaders awards. the awards are given to those who work across boundaries. this year the honorees included chris christie and former fdic chill -- chairman sheila bair. this is just over two hours. ♪

>> good morning everyone. we are thrilled you are able to join us this opportunity to recognize exceptional leaders and the engage in thought- provoking conversation on leadership issues. all of you in this audience, students, readers, academic leaders, we are thrilled to welcome our online audience who is watching this on washington post live at.com. -- washingtonpostlive.com. we will also be posting highlights. if you are looking us at all for us on twitter -- for us on twitter -- you can check into today's event on four square. just look for washingtonlive forum.

forum, look today's for a section at washingtonpost.com, it is called on leadership. you will see many interviews, round tables, and analysis on leadership finally come before we get started, with the award ceremony, i would like to thank our partners. the harvard center for public leadership. their leader, you will hear from, and the selection committee, whose names you can find in your program. for the theater, for hosting us in this historic space. you will hear more from them. and hell and worldwide, a leader in the hospitality industry -- and hilton worldwide, a leader in the hospitality industry. we are fortunate to have hilton as an ongoing partner across all

of our events. i am now going to hand you over to our pulitzer prize-winning editor, a former foreign correspondent in tokyo, mexico, and the london, please welcome mary jordan. ♪ [applause] >> thank you. let's start into this exceptional program. it is not every monday morning we get to hear from a nobel prize-winning scientist, an unconventional governor, a globetrotting columnist, and ideas man uses technology for social change, a university president with a magic touch, a godfather of the arts, and a businesswoman who works for millions of americans behind the scenes. we are going to tell you more about each of our winners, why a

harvard committee of experts on leadership chose these people, and then we are going to hear from each of the honorees. after that, we are going to have 320 minute discussion. the first will be about leadership and governance, with the governor of new jersey, chris christie and sheila bair who ran the fdic. then we are going to have a discussion about leadership ideas and innovation with jared cohen, the director of google ideas, michael, who runs the kennedy center, and the president of the university of maryland, baltimore county. then we are going to close with a discussion about leadership on international stages. with nobel prize winner, well --

and a columnist of the new york times. let me welcome to the stage the 2011, american leaders -- 2011 top american leaders. ♪ [applause] to hand out there awards, i would like to welcome the publisher of "the washington post." and the director for the center

of public leadership at the harvard school. ♪ [applause] >> good morning. chris christie is the governor of new jersey, as you know, and a former u.s. attorney. the leader has reduced deficits, working closely with a democratically controlled state legislature. with his brusque and unconventional approach, kristi is not a traditional state leader. his willingness to wield the power, to fight teachers unions and cut thousands of public- sector jobs has and him as many enemies as it has friends. there is no denying his ability to get results. an editorial writer of new jersey called the alliance between the new work mayer and

chris christie, "the best example of services seem today." instead of working mike two independent municipalities, they are working as a team. even if christie a republican, andbooker, a democrat, are doing so to reach their own goals. christie told an audience in february, leadership today in america has to be about doing the big things. congratulations given a christie. -- governor christie. ♪

what's a typical introduction for me. i want to thank everyone. i was saying to folks, when this invitation came in -- it is a busy time of year for everyone. i was time to think i can make this work. my son, my 18-year-old son, a senior in high school, he is taking a leadership class. he saw it in the kitchen. he said, you are on the leadership page every day. you have to do this. a large assist to me being here goes to my son, andrew, and his class who are going to be watching this. i think that having ceremonies like this and honoring a diverse group of leaders in this time in our history is even more important than it may have been

10 years ago. the challenges that are placed in front of us as leaders are so significant. because of the failings of leadership before us. people like to say -- do not like to say that outlier, that we failed before, but we have. the circumstances we find ourselves in did not happen overnight. they are not the fault of just one party. they are a failure of leadership. so, for us to be acknowledge kinfolks -- acknowledging folks for leading, the matter where that happens, it is important to remind people that the one indispensable part of progress is leadership. i have a saying i use all the

time, i spoke with someone, i do not remember who, you have to stand for something. i tell folks, a leader without followers is just a guy out for a walk. how'd you get followers? i think heat get ball is by standing for something. what i found -- i think you get followers by standing for something. what i found is i have a lot of followers who do not agree with me. they feel compelled to move out of state in some direction -- to not stay stuck in quicksand. to not allow the green to be the rule. i think the best part of the introduction i got is that we have accomplished everything we have accomplished with a democratic legislature. i say often that the challenge to that leadership is there is

often a boulevard between getting everything you want and compromising your principles. i will never compromise my principles. i also know i am not going to get everything i want. that boulevard is sometimes broader or narrower. the job of a leader is to negotiate yourself and your followers onto that boulevard to move forward. hopefully, whatever example we may have said, it is one that shows people that progress is possible. that divided government can work, despite what ec in this town. that four executives to lead, you have to take chances and risks, and you cannot always play it safe. hopefully, that is some of the

example which started in new jersey. i feel happy and honored to be here this morning. i thank you for the honor. i look forward to hearing from the rest of you who are being honored. thank you very much. ♪ >> sons like a good deal. good morning. on behalf of the harvard-kennedy school, i am delighted to be here today. to ellen next leader. sheila bair served as chair of the fdic from 2006 until 2011. leaving that agency's average -- many believe she was an essential part to preventing the great depression.

under her leadership, the fdic also climbed to the number 1 slot in the 2011 best places to work in the federal government rankings. another sign of her leadership. she pushed hard for an aggressive mortgage refinancing program to help homeowners in financial straits. she managed a number of large build institutions at the height of the crisis, and played a key role in crafting financial reforms. the fdic, normally a low-profile agency, held a private spot during the financial crisis because of her leadership. they were cut years, -- they were tough years, but she pressed on her staff the importance of the agents to pose a mission. congratulations. -- of the agency's mission.

congratulations. ♪ ♪ >> thank you. this is quite an honor. after all of these years, i am still surprised of the public recognition of the job we did at the fdic. public recommend recognition can have its downside as well. once during the crisis, i was blind to give a speech. there was a lot of media scrutiny about whether the fdic was going to have enough money. i was sitting there on the plan. a young gentleman came by and he look down at me and said, are you sheila bair? he said, he must be running up of money, they have the flying in coach. i said, no, we always like coach. we have plenty of money.

it was an incredible run. it is our only as good as the people they lead. i had such a fantastic team. i think the best team that -- thing that a leader can do is to define its mission, provide clarity of purpose, make each individual person know that what they do is important. it matters to the achievement of that overall mission. leaders cannot make decisions et al. levels. you have to have good decision making. if you try to micromanage, it does not work. we got our priorities early. it was not to protect banks, it was not to protect bank management, and it was not to be like. margaret thatcher once said, you go into something wanting to be like, you compromise everything and achieved nothing. our mission was to protect the people who use the banks. make sure they have confidence, their money was there, it was

safe, they were going to have access to it. every decision we made was guided through that prison. -- prism. i thank you very much for this award. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. jared cohen is the director of googled ideas. focused on developing technology base solutions to confront challenges from counter-terrorism to non- proliferation. at the age of 24, during the bush administration, he was brought into the secretary of state paz of policy planning, the youngest person to serve in this capacity. i agree, nauseating. [laughter] he continued to serve under hillary clinton.

he championed the use of technology as a tool to empower the poor and those without voice. jared cohen is an informed of the work moves divers knowledge into action. congratulations. ♪ [applause] >> thank you very much. this is an incredible honor. as somebody who loves history, to stand up here at ford the there and look over there, it is really incredible. we were asked to say the things about leadership. having just turned 30 and looking at my fellow honorees, i think it is safer for me to tell you a story. it was inspiring to me and changed and shaped my view of

what a leader is. seven years ago, while i was in graduate school, i took a trip to iran. the purpose of my trip was to interview opposition leaders. a member of the older generation, known to the establishment, it made my research complicated. i found myself in trouble with the government and the revolutionary guard. i was pulled aside and said i need to keep a low profile. i flew to the southern part of the country and found myself in a marketplace in shiraz. i was feeling a mixture of frustration and i was having my curiosity piqued because i walked into this one busy intersection and saw dozens of young iranians doing something

that seemed strange. they were all in the busiest part of the marketplace capet away at the mobile devices. i was curious what they were doing. i went up to some of them and asked. they said, we are using bluetooth. i was perplexed because i always thought of it as that the vice we walked around talking to yourself -- as that the vice you use when walking around talking to yourself. these young iranians had found a way to call and text complete strangers to have a good time, to sell playing cards, to organize underground book clubs. it was extraordinary how they found these tools that i did not understand how to use. i had a group of young iranians around me. i ask them, you are all using

technology to break the law, aren't you worried about getting caught? they all laughed and said, don't worry, nobody over 30 knows what bluetooth is. i thought the summed up a generation gap. at the time, it would have been easy to write this off, say, so what if they are using technology to coexist with a regime that restricts their civil liberties. my point was always, do not pay attention to where they of the plan, pay attention to the tactic they are using. these young people on with nothing more than a mobile device will one day used as a mobile devices to organize around political action to the best forward to the green revolution in iran into the nine, the government shut down the internet. the only means of communication was the bluetooth technology. it worked.

-to-peer -- worked peer-to-peer. i tell you this story because for me it was inspirational. i had always thought of a particular pedigree that a leader had to have. this change it and shook my world. i thought about it every day. i still think about it every day at google ideas, but they're working on that works -- whether working on that works or how to use technology been weak and failed states. i am inspired because a look at the 52% of the world under-30, and they of the first generation brought up with technology. every one of them is an expert in technology. we need them to be the silent- busters. i consider myself lucky that at global i get to be with a handful of engineers who espouse his ideas.

thank you. ♪ [applause] >> and thank you. one of the marks of a lee there is one who helps us see things in new ways, which you have done. president of the university of maryland, baltimore county. he has led with inspiration and innovation since 1992. he has been named one of the top-10 college presidents in the country by time magazine and has been recognized for his efforts to increase minority participation in a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. with the philanthropist, he co-

founded a scholars program for high achieving minority students committed to pursuing advanced degrees and research careers in the stem of fields. based upon his impressive outcomes, that program has become a national model. today, graduates of the university of maryland, baltimore county, include a higher number of african americans who go on to earn a doctorate in important fields. any institution of which i am aware, a marvelous record of bringing people through. that is why our selection committee was drawn to him. he is a visionary leader with boundless energy serving as a vanguard of higher education. congratulations. [applause] ♪ >> thank you. good morning.

good morning. my students were sending me e- mails and text messages, giving me ideas about what i might say. let me begin by saying i accept this award with with gratitude on behalf of my colleagues. and the plan is in its duties to -- students who come from 150 countries. we were founded in our state, in maryland, at a time when most people went to one type of institution or the other. we were the first institution founded for students of all races rustin was, can we bring people together races. the question was, can we bring people together. it has been an interesting question to focus on for the past 50 years. i have had the privilege for the past 25 years of doing just

that. in most environment, people from underrepresented groups are at the bottom academically. the fundamental question we have as a society, as an american society, is this, how do we ensure that larger numbers of people from all races and all economic backgrounds are able, not simply to go to college, not simply to graduate, but to excel. some of you have read the new book "the social animal could go it point for me in that book is this -- each of us is a product of our childhood experiences. i was privileged to be a child leader with doctor king in birmingham. what that taught me as i spent a week in jail was that even children can make decisions about their lives that can have an impact on many others. if that is, for me, leadership

is not simply about the status of 1 people -- one person, but about the dreams and the use of groups of people. -- the values of groups of people. the message of my campus is a first of all, you can create a public university that can be known as a place where the life of the mind is active, we are second in the country in chester. [applause] -- chess. [applause] you can be a place where students are excited about greek and latin and biochemistry. most importantly, you can teach children if you do not have to be rich to be brilliant. it is the consummate regardless of your wrist, -- a place that can say, regardless of your race, i do not have the time to

be a victim, nothing takes the place of hard work. leadership is about creating a culture with groups that emphasizes hard work and discipline and excitement about learning, a passion for the work. most importantly, a lust for learning. thank you all very much. [applause] ♪ >> thank you. since 2001, michael has been the president of the john f. kennedy center for the performing arts in washington, d.c. he is a leader in the park management field -- -- >> our management field. hundreds of millions of dollars -- in the art management field. hundreds of millions of dollars are spent every year. only a small fraction is devoted

to training the people who will employ and market its performers. he has spread that around the world, bringing administrators to washington. he has also met with dozens of leaders in the arts in every state in the nation to help them keep the arts thrive in in the challenging economic times. great managers know how to whip a bottom line into shape and set a strategy that promote long- term growth. great leaders go beyond the concourse of their jobs and a brace even more responsibility. congratulations. ♪ [applause] >> thank you very much.

one of our honorees last night was barbara cook. i knew i wanted to be an art leader when i was taken to see the "music man" starting barbara cook. i knew that was going to be my career. i started by trying to be a singer. i was awful myself. that failed. i said, let me try running arts organizations. i had a little bit of success? in two troubled with innovations. -- success fixing two troubled organization. then i had the fortune to work in seven africa -- in south africa. i met a man who was the founder of the tweeted. he was a great the biggert develop -- director. -- was a great theater developer. he did not just create theater.

he wanted to change the world. he took his place and with them around the earth. he caught all of us about apartheid. i think a great deal of the political change that added insult epoch that happened because of the organization he give to us -- that happened in south africa happen because of the organization he gave to us. he taught me that leadership was about creating change in the world. all of the work i do is in honor of him. i thank you all very much. [applause] ♪ ♪ >> thank you for helping us appreciate not only leadership in the arts, but the art in the leadership and how important the arts are for leaders and helping

to see the world in new and fresh ways. a two time pulitzer prize- winning columnist for the new york times, he began as a reporter in 1984. he is known for his vote this on international human rights issues. including the prices in darker. -- crisis darfur. his work as a leader is how his writing has reshaped journalism, a testament to the important of reporting in the britain world -- and the written word. there is nobody who has done anything like it where he has done to figure out how poor people are living around the world. that was former president bill clinton in 2009. as a reporter, and as a

columnist, his work has proven to be powerful, leading american readers to become more active and committed on issues of global health, poverty, and human trafficking. congratulations. [applause] ♪ >> thank you a lot. thank you very much. when i got a letter from "the washington post" about this, i was concerned because "the new york times" has a lot of rules. i took this to one of the senior editors and showed it and said, what do you think? the editor thought and said, it seems to me it is more of a problem for "the washington post" to give it for us to accept it. i would like to start by offering a tribute to the washington post's brought mindedness.

i think people are surprised i devote some of the priciest real estate to darfur or famine in somalia. it arises of frustration after a became a columnist. when i became a columnist, i thought, wow, i'm going to be changing people's minds. it is not that way. if i am right about issues people have thought about the if i read about president obama, a gun control, when people start agreeing with me, they think, brilliant. when they start of disagreeing with me they think, misses the point. where we do have a town where is the spotlight that the carrier, the ability to shine it on something off the agenda.

helped put it on the agenda. that is the process of bringing about change. in my reporting career, one of the things that has struck me is the degree to which leadership comes, not from those who have the positions or resources to provide that leadership, but people who are driven to make a change. i think it is hard to find it secretary of education who has had more impact on education then the woman who started teach for america in her dorm room. i spent a lot of time covering the arab spring. right at this time going back to egypt. -- right after this i am going back to egypt. i remember, the thugs from the regime were attacking the square.

there was a clinic set up in the square, where volunteer doctors were treating people who had been injured by molotov cocktails, by teargas. there was a man who i thought epitomized his courage and leadership. he had been fighting for 24 hours. he had one leg in a cast, one arm in a cast. he had a 11 injuries. i took my camera and i was backing up so i could take a picture of him. i stumbled into a man behind me who was a double amputee in a wheelchair who was out fighting the troops. not very effectively, i may say, but still out there fighting. it underscored the degree to which leadership is above all else, a state of mind. thank you very much.

[applause] ♪ >> thank you. i think if there is a theme it is that successful leaders are people who start out wanting to change the world, whether it is the technology or policy or anything. we have another example of that. a nobel prize winner and professor of chemistry at the california institute of technology. he is renowned for his instant -- efforts and his academic leadership. for decades, he has worked for the education and economic development in egypt. this year, he is engaged in the transition to democracy by the recent revolution that has become known as the arab spring.

his ties to egypt and the united states used most powerfully when in 2009 president barack obama named him the first on boy to the middle east -- science envoy to the middle east. he has 40 honoraria degrees. congratulations. [applause] [applause] ♪ >> thank you very much. when one receives an award, in his or her own field, one feels good about the recognition of peers. when one receives an award that transcends professional boundaries and a knowledge as

services to humanity, it becomes exceptionally rewarding. i am profoundly honor to except the leader award from two of america's most distinguished institutions, "the washington post" and harvard kennedy school of government. early in my academic career, i received an offer from harvard. however, as i began to write, i realized that it was easier to receive an academic offer and to get an up ed -- op ed. into the washington post. [laughter]

ladies and gentlemen, leadership is the offspring of vision. the ability to inspire others with one's vision, to dream of a better future. as a boy growing up near alexandria, my parents were lucky enough to endow me with good team. it was then that i dreamt of acquiring knowledge and becoming a university professor. i did. coming to america, the land of opportunity, without being able to speak english, i learned how to make contributions to science. my group at caltech, i did it .

one is fortunate to reach the goal of a dream. we cannot limit our dreams to our personal gains. to go beyond, i have followed three basic values. not to forget about my own roots. second, preserve the two countries of my life, egypt and america. third, to be a citizen of the world, a world that needs the help of leaders, known that more than 80% of its population is developed -- developing or underdeveloped. my biggest and most complex dream turned out to be the one concerning the transformation of egypt to regain its past glory and participate affectively in the modern world. the vision was simple, but

clear. only through renaissance in government and education would my native country become a society. as it was dozens of years ago from giza to luxor to alexandria. this was impossible to realize under the mubarak regime. thes year's revolution, people are dreaming of a new future. despite the rocky road, i remain optimistic. a few days ago, more than 60% of local voters went to the polls in the first parliament election. a historic milestone. the revolution, besides its success in ousting a ruling, is

a vision that i dropped four. -- dreamt for. to ship a knowledge base society, it is beginning to materialize. the government has just enacted what we hope will become caltech of the middle east. this would not have been possible without the sacrifice of thousands of lives in the january revolution. to them, i dedicate this award. for their leadership in the pursuit of liberty and the hope they planted for the future. thank you very much. [applause] ♪

>> one more round of applause for all of the winners. [applause] you can stand up. [applause] ♪ >> let's begin by talking about how you win the confidence of the public. sheila bair, during the financial crisis it was an important part of your job to make millions of people feel confident in the bank. >> i think that is right.

when i became chairman, the man who chaired the agency, came by to see me. he said they resolved, caboshed public confidence. you have to interact with the media. if people had lost confidence, we would have been in a soup. on the flip side, it is not a happy got to deal with. it can be an unpopular task. explaining what we are doing, it was key. i think bank regulators are not as open as they should be. i think it is a positive. once people understand, they will support the. >> you need the public to be on your side. people say you a government by

youtube. you go right to the people. how'd you get millions of people to follow you? to have confidence in you? >> i think it is telling them the truth. it is a sad commentary on where our politics is. i am this guy from new jersey who has all this attention. all i am doing is doing what i promised i would do during the campaign. it has gotten all this attention. in the beginning, it was disorienting. what is the big deal? i did not get it. as we have gone further, what i understand is that the folks in my state and across the country are starving for people to tell them the truth, even hard and ugly truths they do not enjoy hearing. i think the way you get people to follow you is that way.

style is part of it too. it does not hurt to be entertaining every once in awhile. i think that is part of it as well. doing it in a way that is not intentionally trying to be entertaining. >> why is this guy getting attention? our other officials not telling the truth? >> sure. [laughter] >> do you what to name anybody? >> we only have 20 minutes. [laughter] >> and now for the entertainment portion. >> of course people are telling the truth. they have not been telling the truth for years. if someone said, here is what we are going to do, we are going to overspend of resources, we are going to run up debt, the states are going to do things the same way, we are going to put a strain on our financial system, and we are going to cause a lack

of confidence in our society that will lead people to be fearful for america's feature. i do not think people would vote for that ad. that is what they did. they could all kinds of bells and whistles around it. in the end, that is what they did. that is what they were doing. there are a lot of people who have not told the truth. it is no fun to come into a situation like i came into in new jersey where a week into my job my chief of staff and treasure came down to my office and said, if you do not compel an $2 billion in spending, we will not make payroll with it said it hit. of march. new jersey is the second-largest lake in america. we were not going to make payroll.

it is no fun to say i'm cutting $7 million from education. >> what do other debt to -- the vendors need to do? -- other governors need to do? what do you tell the other governors? >> i think it is about doing hard things quickly. that is an old political axiom. i think, when you are at the beginning of your term, you have the maximum amount of political clout. you have just been adopted. people are willing to give the benefit of the doubt. re-task is, the conflict is, they say i am so popular right now. if i do these things, my numbers are going to go down. i like my numbers. i am not going to do that. >> you were not worried about being popular. how the deal with criticism and enemies in the public eye? >> throughout the crisis it

bothered me that people tried to personalize these issues. there were some philosophical disagreement. we needed to be tough. everything we did was to achieve the objective. it was not a gratuitous, trying to get in fights with people. as much as we tried to engage with the media, youtube and other vehicles in the does it bother you when you see people criticizing you? -- = -- >> does it bother you when you see people criticizing you? >> the big issue was i was doing my job. point taken. i am cut of what we did. i think that is part of leadership too. you do not make friends.

>> u.n. not ruffling up others on wall street? >> we will not looking for fights. there were some mistakes. there were some managers that should have been held accountable. that is speaking the truth. one of the unfortunate things is everyone got painted. >> some people say you do look for a fight. is that fair? >> sure. [laughter] i fight the fights worth fighting. i am not looking for fights. >> to the critics call you? >> -- do the critics tell you? >> the answer is yes. what happens over time is to develop the ability to deal with it internally.

in my first couple weeks, if i got a scathing editorial, it would bother me all day. i would wake up thinking about it. now, when i get a scathing editorial, it bothers me for about an hour. i think he developed a bit of a shell. -- i think you developed a bit of a shell. my mom, when i was a teenager, it gave me this advice. she said, if you had the tours between being respected and being loved, always take being respected. if they respect you, love might come. of course, she was talking about women. [laughter] i think it applies to politics. >> did your parents give you any advice?

>> my parents were traditional. i am from the midwest. they had traditionally values. they were both products of the depression. my mom grew up in the dust bowl. she had some tough stories to share. it sticks. that instilled basic notions of thrift and hard work and planning by the rules and accountability and america is a great country who. . those were values i carried and still carry with me. >> given your experience and a heavily democratic state, what advice can you share with those who are bickering on capitol hill? >> i have done a little bit of

this lately i think. i think in our form of government, there is no substitute for executive leadership to resolve the bickering among the legislative branch of government. the legislative branch of government, we are waiting to the next with the idea, we are going to be waiting for a long time. they are not built that way. they are not. when they are bickering, when they are in their quarters, the executive has to be the person who brings folks into a world and says we are going to resolve this. >> you recently said, about our executive, you call him a bystander. >> i did. >> you said, what the are we paying him for? -- the hell are we paying him for? >> what i was asked about is the effort on debt and deficit.

i think it was a fair comment to say that the president asked for this report, as soon as it came back to put it on the shelf. that is his choice. he made a political choice not to take this on. >> can you give a critique of his leadership style? >> when i left last night, my communication said, please, been not make any news. please? >> that was bad advice. >> my main issue with the president, put aside any philosophical issues, there are areas we agree we have common ground. my main critique is that i do not think he has the first idea of how to use executive power nor much of an interest in it.

this goes back to the beginning of the presidency. the health care thing dragged on as long as it did. it became a hodgepodge of a whole bunch of different ideas without direction from him. >> maybe a couple of concrete things? >> you have to be there. the fact he is absent from this conversation. we keep hearing that the president had a plan for $4 trillion in deficit reduction. no one has seen it. it is not on paper. he whispered it to boehner. boehner bought it back. the fact of the matter is, for you to lead, you have to be there and you have to take risks. everytime i get together with democrats, i am at risk. >> do you think the president does not take enough risks? >> a absolutely not.

is the risk involved with crime to kill osama bin laden? absolutely. risk face it, the downside was relatively minimal, even if it had gone poorly. the american people would have said, with a try. -- worth a ty. that is a decision he made that was difficult, but relatively risk-free. >> a lot of people were virginia to run for president. if the president were here he would have some things to say about you. when it declined to run for president, there were quite a few people who wanted the two, you said the leadership is about doing the big things. why not go for this? >> it is two different things. the big issues. the fact is, running for

president is an essential personal decision. you have to feel in here, i believe, that you are absolutely betty and it is something you must do. if you do not feel that, i do not think you have the right to ask people for their money where their votes. no one knows other than me whether i feel ready to take on that difficult job you just mentioned. if i do not feel it in here, i have no business because i see a political opportunity. i am not a dummy. i saw the opportunity. the fact is, i said this to a group of students, you should never run for president because you say, i know i can win, i hope i am ready. >> do you think you will feel it in here later? >> i might have indigested later. i do not know. [laughter] what i'm focused on is doing my

job. this is another bit of advice that my mom gave me, she saw that i was an ambitious kit. she said to me, christopher, she called me christopher. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011]

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>> i think one of the things that sometimes washington doesn't appreciate enough is how much the president is the decider, does make the decisions. there's a lot of speculation, press reports about what the secretary of state thinks, what the secretary of defense thinks. what matters in our system is really what the president of the united states thinks. the n.f.c. system is really designed to put the president in a decision to make those decisions. we were talking earlier, most presidents, you know, by the time you run for the presidency and get elected, you think you're ready to make these decisions. and they are. so, then the question is how you design a system to help the president make those decisions, and it varies with the personalities. the president i served, george w. bush, he wanted his national security principles, his

secretary of state, secretary of defense, to have talked through the issues and to have worked the issue. and we would do that sometimes in formal meetings. but in the last three years, i starred having what we'd call the tuesday afternoon snack time. i would have the other principals in my office at 4:30 tuesday afternoon, and i'd serve soft drinks and cheese dip, and we would, over the next 2 1/2 -- it sweetened people's disposition. and we would walk through the most difficult issues, and we would air all the disagreements, and at the end, somebody, usually the vice president, would be saying, this has been a great discussion, how we need to have it in front of the president. and we would have it in front of the president, and that's what he liked. he was not a memo man, either in terms of reading them before or writing memos after. he wanted to have a direct interaction with his principals. and we would have a good

discussion, and then he would go off. and in the quietness of his own contemplations, he would make a decision and come back. and because of the problem henry talked about, when he would come back and he would say, i've made my decision, here's what it is, you call condi, condi rice, secretary of state, or you call bob gates, and tell him the decision, and i would say no, mr. president, you've got a phone right there that has a button, goes right to the secretary of state. push the button, you need to tell the secretary of state so they know it comes from you. they're the chain of command. i'm a staff person. you need to call them yourself. and he would. >> it won't surprise anybody to know that president clinton liked to be part of the conversation. and that made for a very lively set of interchanges. he's a person who's a voracious reader. he had a lot of sources of information and perspective beyond what he was hearing through the formal process, and he liked to get people in a room and discuss it. he was inherently suspicious if

you gave him a consensus. he would argue the opposite. if all your advisors think you should do x, and he would immediately say that sounds wrong to me, and he would tell you all the reasons why it was bad. often he would then come around and agree with the consensus, but he wanted to test it, he wanted to hear what the thinking was behind it. it was informal. we had some more formal around the cabinet room-type meetings, especially when there were very con essential decisions to be made, especially about the use of force. but in general, he wanted to understand the thinking and to test his own questions against the thinking of others. so, it was a very interactive process with him. he did not usually decide on the spot. he wanted to come back and think about it, but he liked to come back and tell people why he decided that. and he also -- and steve mentioned this as well -- became very conscious of his own responsibility for these decisions. he would always say after a difficult debate, he would say, at the end of the day, this is my decision, i'm the one who's taking responsibility for it.

i value your advice, but i'm not looking to point to one of you and say did i it because so and so advised me. it was his decision. certainly, as time went on and i was in the white house during the second term, that sense of confidence and responsibility, i think, grew. it's very impressive when you think about all the burdens and the temptation to say, well, i got bad advice. the presidents, they step up to the plate and say this is my mine, this is my responsibility. >> well, a couple of things. i haven't worked in the n.f.c., but from reading about president obama, he came to the presidency with very little foreign policy experience. he's turned into a voracious reader of intelligence information, apparently loves it. it is fascinating to read that stuff, and he's spent a large part of his presidency on foreign policy issues and has stepped up to some very tough ones, like the takedown of osama bin laden, for example.

from the congressional perspective, let me raise a couple of examples of the frustration dealing with this stuff. one is bush i, and then i was ranking member on the intelligence committee, and we were briefed, i was one of the so-called gang of eight, the gang of eight is the leaders, democrat and republican, of the house and senate, and then leaders, democrat and republican, of the intelligence committees. that adds up to eight. we were brought down to the white house to the situation room and told about a surveillance program that the bush administration was undertaking. we could not bring staff, we could not take notes out of the room, and we really couldn't ask anybody other than the briefers about anything because it was so highly compartmented and so secret. and this exposure to this kind of material comes under a procedure in the 1947 national security act.

at any rate, it was not until the president, president bush, revealed the existence of this surveillance program publicly that i could call a few people and check a few things out, at which point i learned that the president on which i had been briefed was being conducted outside of the law congress had crafted, the foreign intelligence surveillance act. i had not understood that from the briefings, which i can't describe them even now, because they're still classified. i had not understood it, although i believe i'm a reasonably trained lawyer. and what happened after that was a lot of jockeying around and finally congress was more fully briefed, and the law was amended to cover the activities in question. and i think that was the right result. it was awkward and painful, but

that's issue one. issue number two is libya. this was arguably, no one is absolute about this, something that should have been briefed to congress in much more detail on the front end and the war powers act should have been -- or possibly should have been involved. there's an issue about that, too. at any rate, that didn't happen. it didn't happen. and there's still enormous reis notment by many in congress. this panel may not be sympathetic, but members of congress, including a very senior republican -- maybe that will get some more attention on this panel -- are very upset about basically congress being disrespected in a process that certainly did involve, although

fortunately no u.s. life was lost -- an expenditure of a billion dollars and the deployment of defense assets by our country as part of an international mission. >> one thing we talked about in advance, is it much different when a president is re-elected and has another term? is the president more confident generally? does that re-election sort of magically make a president more confident in dealing with national security issues? i wonder, in your experiences, we have a wide rake of president to see deal with, and jane harman can talk about her perspective on this, but is the second term president much different? >> i can testify to that, because at the end of the first mix an term, one thought one

had everything lined upped, the vietnam war was over, there had been an opening to china. they had the triangular relationship between them. the next step was going to be to improve relations with europe. and that design could not be implemented, because between four months watergate blew up. the second term, the part of the second term that nixon got to serve, he still did some extraordinary things. but that is an example of crisis management under extreme circumstances, and it's not a good example of how the n.f.c.

system, maybe the only thing you can say is that it survived that strain. and that it enabled nixon to continue making decisive decisions at key moments. put i don't think one can draw lessons for the sake of the country. i think it was a national tragedy, self-inflicted, but also pushed to an extreme that maybe historians will think -- >> actually, as the watergate crisis intensified, what was that like dealing with national security issues?

>> i made an absolute decision. the energy personnel were not invited to, encouraged or participated in any domestic decision. there was no case until it flew over. we were challenged by the agreement and the mideast war, and we continued, but the amount of time that the president could devote to the detailed exploration of strength, as it does anyway in

a second term, because it had to be used to establish the protections of where we are in the world. and that was -- that was accentuated, so this was really -- we set up something before. the decisions were prediscussed and there was one period in which those had been asked to resign and no chief of staff had been appointed.

secretary shultlz, who was travel secretary, and i and the head of the federal reserve sort of screamed decisions because there was no system working -- i'm mentioning it only to indicate the really painful atmosphere at a moment that could have been -- that we talked had all the elements of substantial achievement. >> no one elected president really knows what they're in for. i think no one is really fully prepared to be president, and i think most people don't really

know what the job is like. if you've been vice president for a period of time, if you had a father whose president, but when it really is -- if you had a father who's president, but when it really is yours, it's all the difference in the world. so i think nobody is really quite ready for that job when they step into it. secondly, everybody hopefully learns on the job, and i think presidents do, and they learn very quickly. thirdly, over the first term, they made a lot of decisions, very tough decisions. president clinton had his, president bush had how to respond to the attack of 9/11, invasion of afghanistan, the decision about iraq. i mean, these are very tough decisions. and we've been through the crucible a bit. and fourth, as dr. kissinger said, by the end of the first term, the president knows what the president thinks, made a

lot of decisions, set a lot of policy frameworks in place. so the second term tends to be more about implementation and execution. so i think it is very clear that a second-term president is really very different than a first-term president, and the national security advisors role, and in some sense, the system needs to adapt to that transition. >> there's an awful lot of learning on the job. all presidents have faced enormous challenges in their first year or two, and they've had very difficult outcomes. i actually wrote a book before coming into the obama administration about the first year of presidential administrations in foreign policy. if you think about our history and how many perilous moments we've had during that time, so you have learning curves about how you make decisions, you have learning curves about how you work with your team.

you have learning curves about how you interact with your counterparts around the world. you have learning curves about what the dynamic is in the world that you're living in. so you do develop a sense of confidence, a sense of what kind of information you need, what kind of process you need, and where you want to take them. we'll see how they step up to play. in second terms, president cans then say, i kind of know where i want to go, i can set an agenda for my second four years and take it there. i work in the senate too for five years, soif a great deal of respect for the institution and the body. i think it is a challenge on how to make this work. it is true that the national security advisor doesn't testify before congress normally. but certain in the clinton administration, we try to find a lot of other mechanisms. both i and my boss had leaders

of congress down to our office regularly. there were a lot of informal consultations. i have to say, i'm not here as a representative from the obama administration, but on libya, the president called the leadership of the congress down to the white house three days before he made the decision. and we had extensive conversations, and there i was, a confirmed owe firm, i testified a number of times, both to the senate foreign relations committee and the house. obviously there's a deeply felt sense in congress, i don't dispute that at all that there was not enough engagement, and i know exactly who the senior republican is that congressman harman is referring to. but it is a legitimate -- it is legitimate for congress to expect that. whether we've succeeded, i think the white house administration always feels we're doing a better job than congress does, but i don't dispute the basic proposition that there has to be engage the and dialogue to reflect and respect the confidentiality of the advice the president needs,

but also reflect and respect the role of the congress in this process. >> i agree with that, but it is important to remember that our constitution provides checks and balances, and it does that for a reason. a good break, break, on presidential action when it works is a functioning congress that has bipartisanship and seriousness, and great expertise as some members do in foreign policy. when that relationship works well, i think it helps the country and helps us make better decisions. i think we agree on that. just a couple of comments about a second term. i think that frees them to do things they were reluctant to do as they were seeking re-election. many people talk about president obama in terms of,

well, when we get through this election, if he's re-elected, he might take on some issues that have been put off for the election season. i have my personal list, and i hope does he that. but that's another point. finally, the experience that -- the prior experience that a president has does matter. i'm thinking about eisenhower. as an extraordinarily skilled general, brought organizational skills to the security job in the white house that have been unrivaled since. he had a committee, the name of which i've forgotten, that took a 10-year look forward, and his cabinet -- >> the so will airport project. >> yes, i took the minutes of the clinton cabinet, the carter cabinet meetings, were much more interesting than those that some other president, i

would even say that president carter conducted, because rather than have a kind of show and tell exercise where each cabinet member would report what he or she had been doing, he put a topic on the table, and the cabinet was aware in advance, and they would interaction and discuss the topic, which i think is a -- i'm not sure how much was on foreign policy, but i think that that's a much more interesting way to organize very talented people who need to bond with each other and who actually, one would hope, bring their own skills to this. i think it will be interesting to see, if president obama wins a second term, how his foreign policy changes because he is freed from the re-election process. >> dr. kissinger has to leave shortly, so we'll have one more question for him before he leaves. i'll ask this to the entire

group. all of you have had to deal with very tough decisions over time, president nixon, president ford, vietnam, china, the soviet union, president bush, the war on terror, iraq, afghanistan, weapons, including the transition from a cold war and national security policy to something beyond that. i wondered, what was the toughest decision, looking back on it, that you had to make? >> that's a very good question. on the subject, we went to the crisis.

that was done under tremendous pressure. you had to make a quick decision. it was how to deal with vietnam. we had 550,000 troops in place. it was still on a schedule. nixon made the decision that we would begin to extricate ourselves. but how you extricate yourself when you are a leader in the middle of a cold war and how to , at the same time, maintain

the position of the united states as a potential leader fortunate free world and maintain the options towards the opening to china and elsewhere that we had in mind. but it was to try is military outcome which we thought was precluded. they were not made when our predecessors were in office. and we chose what we chose. but you're asking me about what was the difficulty. there were many crisis points where we spent long nights making decisions.

but the experience is it gets very quiet in a crisis because decisions fall away and events impose certain necessities. and you then have to feel your way fairly quickly to a decision. at least that's how it was in my experience. so it was a strain, but in my experience, the key people made the decision in the crisis moments we're together and we're not arguing, so i would separate the strain. i apologize for having to leave. this is not -- this is something i told the organizers

about. i was eager to do this. i just want to make one final point. in this year of division, people like us, it would be the same thing, that on the main outline, we'd be pretty close together, and we would feel we had built on each other, and we would look to each other and still consult each other. so this country is not as divided as it looks.

well, we're glad to have dr. kissinger for the time he was able to be here. i want to continue our discussion on the toughest decision that your president and you had to make when you were a national security advisor. >> i think for president george w. bush, it was three things. one was how to respond to 9/11. he told a group in 2008, he said, you know, i didn't campaign as a national security president, i campaigned as a domestic president. and he had a very robust domestic policy agenda. and a lot of it he got accomplished, some he didn't. but on 9/11, if you were here, he would say that all changed. and after 9/11, i became a

war-time president. and how to respond to that, we can have all kinds of discussions. you know, what was right, what was wrong. i think the bottom line is that, as you've seen with president obama and throughity rations now belatedly with the congress, what has emerged is a national consensus about how to deal with the war auto territory. there's still some disagreement, how to deal with the terrorist threat that has transcended two administrations, republican and democrat. that's a good thing. second was iraq. if you read the report that i read in 2004, 2005, into 2006, you know we were losing this war. i know when the president asked me to be national security advisor, i was very concerned about iraq, and i thought, great, i'm going to be national security advisor when we revisit the vietnam period, which i remember social

division over the war, an outcome that was problematic, an army that felt that it had both not succeeded on the battlefield and then rejected when it came home. i mean, it was -- those of you who remember, it was a dark time for our country. and the toughest decision i think the president made was the surge, the additional troops, the change of strategy, which transformed the situation on the ground. and it presented a situation whereby the end of this year all american troops will be out of iraq with honor, having accomplished their mission. the future of iraq is uncertain. it will be decided by the iraqi people, but i think that was the toughest decision he made, and it was certainly the right one. and then the third was the financial crisis. at the end of eight years in office, you know, at one point he said, mr. president, i think you've had everything in your

administration except the earth being, you know, hit by an astroid, and he said, shh, there's still time. and that's kind of how we felt he end of eight years. but again, very difficult decisions they had to make in order to prevent a repeat of the depression of the 1930's. >> it's a hard question, and there are different kinds of hard decisions. i think the decision a president has to make to send american service men and women into harm's way is the hardest decision almost by definition. it's a tremendous personal responsibility to ask people who volunteered to defend their country, to put their lives at risk. and i know, being involved in the president's decision, ultimately to intervene in kosovo, was something that weighed very heavily on him. i mean, he was persuaded he was right, but today continue to ask himself, will i able to look intos of their loved ones,

because you can't assume you're not going to lose. we were fortunate we dent, but you have to go in assuming that's going to happen. i think that has a kind of weight that there's no way to share it and there's no way to understand how weighty a decision that is until you have to watch a president make that decision. second decision will probably surprise you, but one i gave president clinton a lot of credit for was his decision to go to india. not only because there were questions about would have than effect on the image he was trying to portray in terms of building our relationship with india, but because of the serious risk to him that he was receiving about the dangers of going to pakistan, but he was so persuaded that we needed to not lose that relationship and the consequences of simply going to and not even trying to go to pakistan was so consequential that he decided he was going to do that over a lot of advice.

this is the kind of decision, but it was one he stepped up to the plate and made for himself, and i think it was the right decision to make. the third is more of a policy one. there was an attempt to build a new relationship with a new and democratic russia, and he knew that a decision to move forward would be deeply resent, had deep consequences for the relationship with russia, and he had to balance against that the deep yearning of the people of central and eastern europe to be part of this community that was so important. it had been their vision and aspiration for so long, and to weigh these two choices about what the landscape is like and what the different risks are in a very deep and long-term con quen shall way for american policy.

there was a one in which the president had to think deeply about what he thought the core values were, the core strategic interests were, and then make a decisive choice. you couldn't split the baby on this one. you had to go one way or the other. >> i remember the secret service having covered that president of the presidency, were very concerned, i guess it was really concern that someone would fire a missile at air force one, and so there was a lot of cautions taken on takeoff and landing. it was a very controversial decision. he didn't even want chelsea and hillary to be with him because of concern about his safety. it was that serious. as i remember, when he was

taking off, there was one point to have a plan to pretend to get on one plane and really get on another plane, and there was some debate, well, he won't get on the first plane, but people will think he's on the plane. and we'll put the press on that plane. we didn't appreciate that when we heard about the discussion later, but i don't think they did that in the end. but your perspective on this -- >> well, yeah. congress gets involved deeply in some of these decisions too. here i've been ragging on the executive branch, but on 9/11, for example, i was, at 9:00 in the morning, headed to the home of the cably to, which is when the intelligence committee was housed, it's now in a bunker called the capitol visitor's center, but out of nowhere came these attacks. well, that's not really fair. i had actually been on something called the

congressional commission on terrorism, which had been one of three commissions that had predicted there would be a major attack on u.s. soil. but nonetheless, to the surprise of everyone on that beautiful morning and all of you were involved in it too, this happened. and as a member of corroboration, with senior responsibility for national security, it was very personal to me, and congress immediately did the wrong thing, which was to close the office buildings in the capitol at a time of great crisis, the congress needs to be open serving our government. and it finally reopened later in the day, but trying to find the right roles and to be supportive of an enterprise when there was no disunity on that day, not any, everybody understood, this was an attack against america, not an attack against a political party or some subgroup here. it was all of us.

but we represent -- i used to represent 700,000 people who looked to me to represent them here, and i always took it very seriously. we're much closer to the ground level than a president is and representing 300 million people is a slightly larger group, and so the decision since 9/11 had been excruciating, very, very tough decision, the votes on some of these issues have been very, very tough. some were right, some were wrong, there were mistakes that congress made that i think presidents may have been -- there have been a number of mistakes. but i think something henry kissinger said is sticking in my mind, and that is that if you are focused on national security wherever you are, if

you're in a fairly senior chair and very serious about your work, there is a bond that is forged among those people. and i was in a rare position in congress where i got to know the senior national security people in both bush administrations and in early obama, on the intelligence side and the defense side, and i now serve on the defense policy board too. i got to sit next to henry kissinger for a day and a half this week, which is quite amusing and interesting. but all these people know each other, and they're different ages and from different administrations, but that's a good thing. you want that to happen. doesn't mean we've agreed on every decision, but the fact that there is some collegiality and some spirit of shared enterprise i think should make everybody a little bit more assured that the primary work of the united states

government, which is to protect the security of the american people and defend our country, is getting a lot of brain cells focused on it. >> if i could add something on that people probably don't appreciate and it's a chance to express my appreciation to steve, is that one of the times that's most important in presidential transition. you can't imagine how perilous a moment this is, when one president leaves, especially when there's a change of party and a new president comes in. these are moments when the world is watching, people who were not wish the united states well are especially watching. and i've been transitioned in and transitioned out, as has steve over the years, and it is remarkable that a degree of cooperation and support and commitment that takes place when we were preparing president obama's transition in. what steve and his team did in terms of providing us the information, the continuity, the work that needed to be done was extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary, and it is something that really is not only a testimony to the

professionalism of people involved, but the sense of a common enterprise, and often there are very vivid differences highlighted during the campaign, but still from others about this being a common enterprise. >> well, i'm going to open this discussion up to your questions here, so if you have questions, if you would make your way to the microphones, i do have one other question that i will ask the panel, and then we'll go to your questions. i'm not going to do what the moderators of the debates do and just ask you to raise your hand in answer to a question. that's a little too simple. i would ask, if you could just look at the range of challenges we have. i'd like to ask what you think the single biggest challenge to our national security is today. is it still terrorism? is it the war in afghanistan? is it our dealing with china, with iran, with nuclear proliferation? there's so many things that we're dealing with now. but if today pick one, what would it be?

>> one of the things about the modern world is people in national security positions now are dealing with 12 or 14 things at one time. it's just the world in which you're in. so there's a lot that's got to go anyway. but one, getting our economy back on track is a national security issue. [applause] it undergirds everything we need and want to do overseas. so that's number one. secondly, i think there are two areas over the next decade where a lot of important issues are going to get decided. what happens in asia, which is where most of the economic growth is going to happen over the next decade, and what happens in the middle east with the arab awakening, and these two things have to be a real focus.

and after some conversations today, i will tell you, i'm very worried about what's happening in europe. on the economic and financial challenges and the potential blow back here. so challeppings we got, as my old boss used to say when i would come in at 7:10 in the morning and i would tell him what the challenge of the day was, and he would say, hadley, inside of every challenge is an opportunity, and your job is to find it and take advantage of it for the united states. well, that's what the folks in the white house have to do now big time. >> well, i agree with steve. president clinton would certainly agree, it is the economy, and it's not stupid. and it's more than just kind of getting our fiscal house in order. it's the broader sustaining of our competitiveness. i'm very focused on making sure that we have opportunity for our young people. it's deeply distressing to me to see people coming out of

college and graduate school without a sense that they're going to have economic opportunity and a chance to build a future for their children, that we have the infrastructure that we support, science and technology, which is our huge comparative advantage in the world. that is the platform for america to sustain and preserve its interests around the world. without that, we can't do anything else. if you look at the history of the competition with the soviet union, the reason we succeed is because they couldn't sustain it, and we could, because we were free, we're entrepreneurial, we had a strong civil society, we had well educated people, and we have to sustain that. i'd add concerns about nuclear proliferation, which i think we're on the cusp of a dangerous period, not only are states acquiring nuclear capability, there were concerns about nuclear proliferation as well, but also the danger that nonstate actors will get access

to nuclear materials, and it's fashionable, but it is a concern as we think about the challenges of what's broadly called cyber, and the need to sustain our own interest in an open, vibrant use of these economies that can support our freedom, our vibrant civil lives in ways that don't threaten our security. but there are big challenges out there, and we can meet them. we can meet the challenge of rising powers if we do what we do at home to sustain that. >> last word, jane. >> i agree, but a couple of additional points. there's a very interesting piece in "the washington post" today about the future in this arab awakening. he points out the most important thing in these emerging democrats won't be constitutions, but smartphones. if you think about that,

smartphones that enable us to be linked to each other, and smartphones that enabled these early courageous protesters to build the crowds and communicate the messages and not be shut down. but the world has geometrically changed, and the challenges we have going forward are going to be ones we could not have imagined 10 minutes ago. i was going to say, at least on the foreign policy side, i think our biggest challenge is fashioning a narrative about what america stands for that is not perceived in much of the world as we're anti-muslim and what we do to project our powers, we bomb muslim countries. i think that's a misunderstanding of what we're about, but i think it's very important to talk about the values that were just discussed and say that is what we're about and demonstrate to millions of people all around the world that those are the values we actually live by.

>> we'll take questions now, from one side to the other. >> unfortunately, you preempted my questions, so i'm trying to think of some fallback question. it has to do with how important it is for a president to have some kind of understanding of the culture in history be sensitive to that of dmpt peoples, in which, in a shrinking world, we're much more intimately involved. i know the state department is supposed to be their expertise. but nixon seems exceptional in his grasp of the big picture. and i was wondering whether it is -- do you recommend that a president actually do some kind of scholarly boning up on the history of china or the middle east or so forth? >> jay jane, why don't you start? >> the question is whether people really need a cultural understanding of the dmpt parts

of the world. i would say yes, and a respect for differences in the world. i'd say yes to that too. i'm not sure any particular president needs to bring all that inventory into the white house, although here's a plug for woodrow wilson, our own ph.d. president, own ph.d. president, who was highly skilled at foreign and domestic issues. he was governor of new jersey before he became president of the united states. before that, he was a professor. i think not only a president, but congress needs to have some skills and understanding about the different parts of the world. and i think it is just appalling to hear numbers of fairly recent members of congress bragging about the fact that they don't have pass ports. it's not that everybody needs to take a vacation in beautiful wherever, pick one, but it is

being willing to travel to and learn about the trouble spots in the world torque take the tough trips. i've heard from north korea, libya, syria, all the garden spots, afghanistan, iraq, more than i can count, but it was extremely useful travel and helped me do my job better. i think that's a very good question, and i think we have a culture sensitivity gap that's huge, and it's one that we should both recruit people in our government who bring those skills, including language skills, but also reach out to people living around the world, to learn from them how they perceive their own lives and how they perceive us. a little humility would go a long way. >> i think what i found remarkable, with all the things a president has, it's amazing how voracious they are as

readers. it's extraordinary. i don't know where president clinton got the time to do it. i was exhausted at the end of the day, and he was working harder than i was. i think presidents do have this understanding that they need to deepen and find broader ways to get the understanding, they're not just reading options papers or memos from staff. they're looking for different sources of information, different perspectives in history and culture. i think it's great. i think people are well served by that. i think there is a need to get to this broader community. i think the old days when diplomacy could only be done, was only a matter of heads of state and foreign ministers dealing with each other are long pakistan, indonesia, or brazil, is every bit as important as understanding what the president or the vice minister is going to say to us when we meet at high-level meetings. i think some of the biggest challenges we've had is not because policy was poorly intended, but because we don't have a good sense of where we think we're doing the right thing, how it's perceived, as jane said, by the audiences we

need to reach. so having that understanding, having tuning your ear to what we do will be perceived by others is critical to making sure that we actually achieve the intended results. >> i think the more cultural experience and understanding you have, the better. but i would echo two things, one that jane said and one jim said. one is respect. you may not understand all these cultures, but if you go in and show respect to people, whatever their cultural background, it gets you a long way. secondly, prellses and members of congress travel. you get 70% credit just for showing up and showing people the respect that comes to them rather than expecting them to come to you. >> there's a lot of discussion about the process of the national security council and how decisions are managed when

there's time to make a decision. i'm more interested in when there's a crisis moment. how, as national security advisor, do you manage a crisis and how is the president hearing from who he needs to hear from? >> you're always at a difficult decision where you have to respond quickly or failure to act quickly is consequential in its own right, and you're balancing a need for a prompt and decisive response with having the information that you need. just one example, you know, from the clinton administration is after the bombings of our embassies in africa, there was a clear impulse to just act very quickly and respond because there was a need to show that we were not just going to take this, we were going to get out and have a response. there was a fair sense of where

it had come from and where it had happened. but there was back and forth to take more time to develop a stronger case and conviction before you respond, or are you risking by delaying that you won't have an effective response at all. and that was through the period of time which ultimately led to some military action by the united states that was constantly being balanced. more information versus prompt response. and i don't think there's a magic answer to it. you have to decide in each case how confident are you that you have the information you need to make that decision, what will be the consequences of turning out to be wrong because you thought you knew what had happened and then it turned out it was otherwise. and i don't think there's a magic answer, but it's enormously difficult challenge for the president, but also for the team to decide how you make those tradeoffs. i think in each case, it really does depend a little bit on the experience that the team itself has in being able to come together quickly, to use the

ability, especially now with technology being better, to convene the senior advisor instantly, to be available at all times, to try to get at least that first cut about what do we know, what don't we know, what might we know more of if we wait a little bit, and what are the consequences of waiting. >> but you can be sure that you won't know all you should know. you just won't. and yet you'll have to make a decision, and you'll make a decision on partial knowledge. and if it goes bad, as a lot do, there will somebody commission of inquiry that will have hundreds of people spending 10,000 hours, and they'll -- and they will find all the stuff you wish you had known but didn't know and couldn't have known. and that's how it is. and a lot of tough decisions you basically got an hour and a half to make. the world doesn't stop while you're dealing with a crisis.

there's a lot else going on, and you do the best you can, but you can be sure you won't have all the information you need, but that does not negate the need sometimes to decide. >> i think we probably have time for one more. one more question, and we'll go to this side. specifically my target is 24/7 news. and it seems that -- it seems to me that 24/7 news spends more time generating the news and interviewing each other rather than reporting the news. and i think it leads to a lot of polarization, not just between various cable channels that we're all aware of, but also sometimes the conservative channel or liberal channel, i'm

just wondering -- >> well, i'll start off because i'm a media person. >> i know you have thoughts on this one. >> it is a problem. i'm an old-school reporter. i'm not one who likes to take positions or will take positions on things, but it's not just the velocity of the news cycle of course it's the whole notion of the provocation in the news cycle. everything has to be pushed to its extreme. you have to have immediate decisions. i remember when president clinton first took over as communications director, his communications director said there was a missile strike or something, and he turned on the tv and said that the commentators were already talking about the sell or failure of the mission and they hadn't even landed yet. they were just fired. so i think, to me, it's a huge problem, but it's not just the 24-hour news cycle. it's the idea that more and more in our news business were pushed to make snap judgments to push things as far as we can in commenting on them, and i

think that doesn't help anybody. >> it's easy and fashionable to kind of dump on the 24/7 and all this. you obviously put some pressure on -- >> i know jane does a lot of it. >> it puts some pressure on the administration. i have to say, in some ways, if you look back over the last 20 years, i think president and decision makers are starting to get used to it and are beginning to figure out, at the end of the day, you're vindicated or lynched by the results of what you do. you make your decision. you know you're going to get beaten up and batted around as the stories unfold and everybody is trying to pick up the plant to see if it's growing, but in the end, you're judged by the outcomes, and i'm getting the sense now that in some ways we're learning, as policy makers, how to adjust to that and to at least kind of steel ourselves for the short term and hang in there when you have some convictions about what you're trying to do and

then fairly or unfairly be judged by the yet come and not by where you are minute by minute. >> i want to say one thing, then over to jane. we can talk about 24-hour news cycle, but one of the things that is important is that a free media is terribly important in this country. as a national security practitioner, the news was a terrific source of information, especially some of the reporters that are out in combat zones, in places like afghanistan for months on end and have a perspective that is perspective that is extremely important for people in washington to get. you know, there are tensions between the government and the press, but it is a terrific resource for this country. >> i agree. i would add one thing from my perspective, which is different i think from steve's and jim's, and that is, if you're running for elected office, the

pressures around you -- this is certainly true for a president, where the decisions are even bigger -- from organized groups of various kinds, they're huge, and they don't give you room to think and deliberate. i mean, it is hard to find room to think and thrib rate, and it takes enormous courage to tell any one of these passionate groups, let's assume they're well intended. i'm not sure that would apply to all of them, but passionate groups that are in your face about, you have to do this, back off, i'm going to think about this, and what i do may not please any of the passionate people yelling at me, but it's going to be what i think is the right thing to do, and marshaling the personal courage and energy to do that is very hard, and so i think it's human nature. people punt on some of these decisions. punt means take the easier

course, whatever that is. let's just do this one because the pressure will be too hard if we don't. and that's not so good for sound policy. and it is my hope that someday soon the screaming and screeching and the amount of money in our political system will reduce, and we will let our best people, encourage them back in to, including a lot of younger people who i think are very good at this, to run for office and to be in what was supposed to be the greatest deliberative body on earth, that would be the united states congress. i think that would be a huge help for our republic, and similar, as we elect presidents, instead of the silly season, where the most outrageous thing gets the most attention, wouldn't it be nice if the most intelligence thing got the most attention.

>> that will conclude our panel. i want to thank you all for being here and taking an interest in this very important theme. thank you very much. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> next, michelle fields. then today's "washington journal", live with your phone calls. is it later, the dedication ceremony for the martin luther king memorial in washington.

>> michelle -- michele bachmann is here, and chess thinking about running for president, which is weird, because i hear she was born in canada. yes, michele, this is how it starts. >> it's so amazing to me in washington, d.c. and all this history, all these amazing buildings, and yet here we are at the hilton. the red carpet outside was amazing. who are you wearing, what does it matter, i'm going into a hilton. >> with more than nine million views of president obama's appearance and 2.5 million buyers, c-span's coverage of the white house correspondence dinner ranked most the top 10 most viewed political videos. most viewed political videos. watch them on