>> on c-span tonight, remarks on corruption in washington and time in prison. then john bryson on dealing with china posted a trade policy. and later, the contenders series features former governor at a place stephenson who lost two presidential bids to dwight eisenhower. tomorrow, c-span's wrote to the let us focuses on next week's iowa caucuses.

at 11:30 a.m., newt gingrich was a town hall meeting -- hosts a town hall meeting. in the afternoon, mitt romney holds a meet and agree to discuss jobs in the economy. at 8:00 p.m., ron paul attend a rally at the iowa state fairgrounds in des moines. see it live starting at 11:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. now, a former lobbyist jack a. bon mot. he discusses political corruption in the washington. he talks about his book. he chronicles his experiences, of being convicted of felony charges and going to prison. he pleaded guilty to fraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy to bribe

public officials in 2006. from harvard law school, this is an hour and 25 minutes. >> this is the first of our new and occasional series. i am the director of the center 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. 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. 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. 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 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 in the early 1980's after 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. the first one that outraged you was the story about getting the ms -- the mx missile past. as 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. and you remarked -- this is your first moment, your first experience of true washington corruption. bustamonte was later convicted and sent to prison. it is not impossible to say that corruption was at least in part of his soul. about the great richard gordon, who taught entertainment law at georgetown, you talk about 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. when i look back, i think they're probably some law schools who think about lobbying to get into a law class is not something that everybody has in mind. but that is what i was doing. you are right. at a certain level, this is kind of the same problem where one is bringing extraordinary means and irrelevant benefits into play to 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 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. on 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 using my skills, whatever they were, to lobby to get public servants to give out comes. in 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. we 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 was the 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 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. questionay there's no 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. 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. and we might ask lobbyists like you about how to actually get reforms through. larry was hiring you. he was lobbying you for his proposal. [laughter] but you did not answer that. what you did was a book and do listed half a dozen proposals which i am not sure you are in the best position to suggest. i want to know what is the

connection between your recommendations and your experience. one recommendation that larry did not mention and you did not mention, the major one in the book, is that we should have a smaller government. that sounds like the plague of political parties -- the plank of political parties. that again i am not sure how that follows with your experience. >> i appreciate your question. i have done two hundred interviews since i first got out of prison. i was in the middle of the world. in terms of -- people ask me how do we know your sincere? how do we know you were telling us the truth? my responses that i am not sure it is important that you know that i am sincere or not.

i am not here to win a popularity contest. i do not think that i will win any popularity contests in the next century or so. but i do have the experience in this world and i have been there where a lot people have not been. once i had the benefit of a to buy for cracking in the head, i came a little bit to my senses -- a two by four cracking in the head, i came a little bit to my senses. there are 30,000 lobbyists. not because the government is the size it was in 1912. it is because the government is the size it is in 2011.

the frustrations that people have is that they're just too many people lobbying, there are too many special interests. i would posit that one of the reasons this is the case is that the government is involved in a lot of things. so when i say that the government needs to get out of a lot of this stuff, sure, i believe in having a smaller government. i am not big on government to begin with. i had to live with the government for two and a half years and it was not fun. but i believe that that is the system that is warning to get rid of the senate -- the special interests. but lobbyists -- what lobbyists want, by the way, and what i wanted to some degree is that you want power concentrated. if you could have it, you would have one person making every decision and then you could go lobby that person and make sure that that person is in your pocket.

>> right here. >> my name is irwin shapiro and i have not written any book of relevance. [laughter] i have to questions. it seems to me that there are three functions of the lobbyist -- three weapons that the lobbyist has. one is the broad, too is the threat, and three is the sick leave -- one is the bribe, two is the threat, and three is the sick leave. a ladder is the excuse of a rationale to do the unbelievable. do lobbying firms have special

teams whose sole job is to develop the fig leaf or develop the cover story? or is it just generic in any lobbying firm? >> it is generic in every lobbyist. you want to give political cover to whoever you are asking a favor from. you want to make sure that they have the political cover necessary to get away with it, basically, to do it with a straight face. even something that is reasonable and good and wonderful, that always becomes part of the discussion with congressmen and their staff. how can we do this in our district? my view was 40 to 35 congressmen represent the entire country. to me, it was nothing to go to a congressman and i want to get something done in florida.

congressman and not just for the district. there for everything. so lobbyists come up with reasons for why that is the sensible at home. >> 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. let's not kid ourselves. you're asking the very people 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 talking about it, nobody was 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 get angry about the system or 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 the others until toward the end of their lives. it did not really impact me. what shipped me more than anything was my experience at 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 problem with corruption, except for the occasional speaker of the house. because of your background in law being around gambling, i would be interested to hear if you have any insights into recently -- into recent legislation passed in massachusetts to authorize 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? and how would we go about getting that information? >> everything about the gasoline -- gambling industry is

politics. 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? i think that is probably coming 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 trash gets kicked out of a casino. i 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. it only hit me once i was out of that business.

maybe i am the kind of person who needed the entire house caved in on them before they realized that there were living 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? i just did what everybody else does. i just did more of it.

so i had 72 seats at the rangers stadium. what 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. but it is a process and it was a 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 doing that. and 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. one form is that the prices so 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 to engage in lobbying or what ever they are doing. for them to forgo on their 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.

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. 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. 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. 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. 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? 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. as did i -- everybody else intuitively sees. as did i..

>> jack abramoff, thank you for coming. [applause] you will go downstairs. >> ok. ♪ >> up next, john bryson on dealing with china's trade policy. later, the former illinois gov. stevenson, who lost two presidential bids to dwight eisenhower. that is followed by a debate on the role of government held in seattle. tomorrow road to the white house

focuses on the iowa caucuses. at 11:30, newt gingrich hosts a town hall meeting. then in the afternoon, mitt romney holds a meet and greet to discuss jobs and the economy, and then ron paul attends a salute to veterans campaign rally at the iowa state fairgrounds in des moines. see that live at 11:30 eastern here on c-span. commerce secretary john bryson bryson says that the u.s. cannot continue to except china violating trade rules. in his first major speech as secretary, he urged american citizens to invest and hire workers. from the u.s. chamber of commerce, this is a half hour.

>> good morning, everybody. thank you for joining us this morning for our policy insiders event. we are very pleased to welcome john bryson, the new secretary of the u.s. department of commerce. secretary bryson was appointed by president obama to be the 37th secretary of commerce. he was sworn in in october of october 2011. prior to the commerce department, he served as president and chief executive officer of edison international in california for 18 years. before the private sector, mr. bryson served as president of the california public utilities and chairman of the california state water resources control board. he was also a partner in the law firm of marsen and foerster. at the commerce department, secretary bryson will play an

extremely important role in president obama's economic team and will work to implement policies to address to the administration's economic priorities, including job creation. this morning, secretary bryson will discuss his agenda for the department of commerce, including issues related to international trade and manufacturing, increasing investment in the u.s., and, of course, job growth. ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming secretary of commerce john bryson. [applause] >> good morning to all of you. it is such a pleasure to be here. many thanks to the chamber of commerce. it is a pleasure to look across the room and see so many

wonderful friends, business people. i will name only one business person in the room, but it is kind of a special case. greg bachman. he served on our manufacturing council. most significantly, he was recently named the connecticut small business person of the year. greg, where are you? >> right here. [applause] >> i want to recognize a very special person who makes a real difference for us. he is the house ranking member. without you, the commerce department could not do the great work we do. thank you very, very much for that support. [applause]

and i want to acknowledge an extraordinary person, our deputy secretary at the commerce department, dr. becky blank. and along with becky, and our bureau heads, substantially home are here today. this is an extraordinary group of people. i have not been there for long, but i know. really smart, really hard working and doing everything they can to make a difference. would all of you who are here please stand up? one quick stand. [applause] let's see if we can find a way to get this a little higher.

>> as we gather here this morning, one challenge stands above the rest -- putting americans back to work. this has been president obama's focus since the first financial crisis since the great depression. it will be our focus everyday at the commerce department. americans cannot find work when they cannot find a career path. it ruins lives. nearly every american has a family member or a friend who is without a job. they know how hard it is. high unemployment is not just

that for individuals. it is bad for business. high employment will damage to the profitability and even the viability of many businesses, large and small. we as a country must act now to maintain america's hard position as the strongest economy in the world. the challenge to this urgent requires leaders in washington to put aside business as usual. that is what the american people expect and it is what they deserve. the world that i just left, the world that all of you business people are in, is about results. business leaders are judged by their ability to manage challenges and to take reasonable tough-minded risk to grow their business.

i remember well the biggest challenge i face as ceo at edison international. that was the energy crisis of the years 2000-2001. market manipulation reduced the supply of electricity. the electricity prices jumped as much as 800%. california is expected their utility to fix the problem. they did not want to hear whose fault it was. they did not want to hear excuses. it was not easy. but we worked day and night to keep the lights on. the availability of power in that year and half literally changed every single hour. if we did not succeed in keeping the lights on, businesses would close and we would fail our customers. we acted with the urgency

because that is what our customers and our shareholders rightfully demanded of us. when i hear business people express their frustration about washington, it is the lack of urgency and the lack of focus on results that bothers them the most. as you and i know, business people are generally pragmatic, not partisan. what they care about, what gets you all, all of us up in the morning is finding new opportunities to strengthen and grow businesses and to solve problems. business people do not see the same intensely focused practical results in washington. they get frustrated. i get this frustration. so does the president. that is why president obama has recently taken a series of actions to get people back to work and back on their feet. the president knows, as every american knows, that we cannot just do nothing for this congress to act.

the president is not giving up on the congress either. he will keep urging congress to pass critical elements of the american jobs act, including the extension of the payroll tax cut. and he will also continue to push the important priorities for the business community, including building a tax code that is more competitive internationally. we need to get rid of the loopholes and use those savings to lower the corporate tax rate for the first time in 25 years. at the commerce department, we are not waiting to act either. we have a major role to play at this critical time to spur job creation in america. we have an array of tools to make our business is more innovative, more efficient, and

more competitive around the world. and if you, as business people, have questions or concerns that need to be addressed, my door will be open and i will advocate on your behalf. i have been speaking almost daily to owners of businesses large and small since taking my new position. i want to know how this administration and the commerce department can best help you. some of these conversations, my discussions with the president and my own personal experience, i will prioritize one simple imperative. here it is. we need to help american businesses build it here and sell it everywhere.

[applause] you know that building it here and selling it everywhere is the way the united states became the greatest economic power in the 20th-century. in the 21st century, the competition has changed. the circumstances have changed. and america itself has changed. but the ingredients for a strong economy, the basic ingredients that create good jobs have not. we must be able to build things and we must be able to sell them competitively, not only here at home, but in markets all around the world. help american businesses build it here and sell it everywhere. the commerce department will be focused on this in the months ahead. support advanced manufacturing, increasing u.s. exports, and

attracting more investments to america from all over the world. let me say just a few words about each of those. first, i will begin with manufacturing and simple statement about why it matters. without a strong manufacturing base, we cannot create enough good jobs to sustain a strong middle class. and without a strong middle class, we cannot be a strong country. many people have misconceptions about manufacturing. they hear the word and they think of the old assembly lines. but today, and when we say manufacturing, we are often talking about the cutting edge industries of advanced manufacturing, like composite materials, specialty chemicals,

or those incredible life saving machines that you see in the hospitals. that is manufacturing today and it is the manufacturing of the future. over 11 million americans have manufacturing jobs. these are good paying jobs and every job inside a factory creates at least two more outside of it. any large manufacturer is supported by extensive supply chain. here is something more. manufacturing has also the biggest source of innovation in our economy. 67% of all the business are in the in our country is done by manufacturing companies -- 67% of all the business r&d in our country is done by manufacturing companies.

implementing the new cut reform legislation will help strengthen america's leadership in manufacturing. as long as we are building things here in america, we will be inventing things here, too. but if american businesses stopped building things here, it will not be long before the actual innovating happens elsewhere. that has already happened in some industries. the president and i are determined to reverse the tide and to revive manufacturing here. this week, the president named me co-chair of the white house office of manufacturing policy.

we are not wasting time. today, i am announcing a national program office. it is housed at the commerce department. it is to turn the president's vision for manufacturing into action. it will support the president's advanced manufacturing partnership that is bringing together industry, universities and the federal government to drive investments in emerging industries like and nanotech. in the last two years, the administration has invested in 68 innovative projects across the country to support manufacturing. next year, our national institutes of standards and technology will invest nearly $90 million in advanced

manufacturing, much of it in your research areas like smart manufacturing technology and new materials discovery. the next step is selling those things to the 90% of people outside of the u.s. businesses are not exporting nearly as much as they could. only 1% of our u.s. businesses export at all. of those that do, that 1%, only 50% sold to one market and one market only. that is typically canada and

mexico. that is why helping more companies export will continue to be a major priority for the commerce department. many companies would like to export. they have great products to sell. but they are just not sure how to get started. small businesses in particular often face big challenges getting export financing, building relationships with foreign suppliers or dealing with unfamiliar foreign rules and regulations. president obama's national mission is designed to help businesses overcome these hurdles. the initiative has already helped u.s. businesses expand exports 17% in the year 2010. 16% so far this year. so far, we're on track to meet the president's a goal of doubling exports by 2014. but giving the worldwide economic conditions we now face, we will simply have to greatly

intensify our efforts to achieve that goal. that is why the president recently signed the free trade agreements that will significantly boost exports as well as support tens of thousands of good paying american jobs. and the commerce department international trade administration will continue to find creative ways to connect u.s. businesses with opportunities abroad. one quick example -- as part of the nei, the commerce has been working with usps and fedex, the national association of manufacturers, those groups that help u.s. exporters and help them into new markets. building on this success, we recently, just three weeks ago, launched a new effort with fedex who will work with the u.s. foreign commercial service at the commerce department to

match their foreign customers -- fedex foreign customers -- with u.s. suppliers. in the months ahead, we are doing more. we will restructure our foreign commercial service to intensify their focus on strong export growth markets, including china, brazil, and india. the commerce department will also be working hard to build on the progress we have made reforming our dated export control laws. finally, we will see -- we will pay special attention to trade barriers to make sure our companies are competing on a truly level playing field. in particular, we will be focused on non-tariff barriers, the overly-narrow technical standards, onerous procedures, and other techniques that countries use to shut out competition. that is a particular concern in the case of china.

the u.s.-china relationship is one of the most important bilateral relationships in the world. in the past few decades, china has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and into a thriving middle-class. as china's economy increasingly opened to the world, we supported them, joining the wto exactly a decade ago. that was a landmark forward step and a really positive one. as the president has said, our economic relationship with china should be mutually beneficial if china abides with its global trade obligations. the united states has now

reached the point where we cannot accept china ignoring trade rules. it continues to subsidize its own countries, discriminates against foreign countries, and has four intellectual property protections. recent trade negotiations, a chinese counterparts made what were truly promising commitments in some of these areas. but we must see a follow- through. we cannot rely just on words. we need time frames and concrete results. anything short of that will be unacceptable. [applause]

we american business people just one trading partners to open their markets. businesses should succeed or fail based on the quality and the cost of their goods and services. this administration is deeply committed to ensuring the united states remains the most open economy in the world. that leaves now to my final priority. we want more investment coming into the united states. it is a simple equation. more investment equals more jobs. that is why we want everyone in the world to hear this message loud and clear. the united states is open for business. [applause] you all know that america is

the number one destination for foreign direct investment in the world. it is not hard to see why. we have the biggest economy, the best workers, the most outstanding universities, and the strongest ip protection. foreign companies already support more than 1 million jobs right here in america. and they employ workers in every single one of our 50 states. japanese carmakers, british banks, and german and chinese manufacturers, indian energy companies -- they come from all over the world to invest here. and there's plenty more we can attract here. but in recent years, the united states has been losing ground to our foreign competitors. some of this was likely inevitable. companies want to move closer to their competitors and to

fast-growing economies. until recently, we were the only major economy without a robust national investment program. we were the only one. although we have a strong climate overall, there are plenty of space for improvement. it is too hard to navigate local, state, and federal bureaucracies and they can i get timely answers on regulatory or permitting questions. we have heard these concerns and we have acted now by launching a new initiative called select usa. housed in the commerce department as the first coordinated federal effort to pursue and win new business investments here in the united states from both foreign and domestic companies. we are working with every

relevant federal agency as well as state and local governments to cut through red tape. this will make it easier and faster for companies to invest here. and we're training our foreign service officers to promote investment in america as a key part of their job. now is the time to be pushing for more investment in america. with the cost of business rising in emerging countries like china, we have recently seen u.s.-based firms such as ncr, ford motor co., coleman bring jobs back to the united states. we hope that select usa will help companies stay here at home while opening new investment as well. in my time with you today, i have talked about three areas.

ultimately, it is the businesses themselves that have to do the building and the selling. everyone's job is to create the conditions that allow both workers and businesses to succeed and to create sensible rules of the road that strengthen the integrity of the financial system and our economy. together, we made progress digging out of an unprecedented economic crisis. the private sector has created just for the past 21 straight month for a total of about 3 million private-sector jobs. but do not lose sight of this. we lost almost 8 million jobs

during the recent recession. so we have a long, long way to go. only a reenergize private- sector can get our economy back to full strength. that is why i would like to close these remarks with a very direct appeal to my colleagues in the business community. america needs you to invest here now. america needs you to put people back to work. i know you have reasons not to do that and now is uncertain. there is a financial crisis in europe. let's not forget the dysfunction in washington. having run a large business, i understand that, if you have cash available, it can be tempting just to sit on it. i get that. it seems sometimes like the prudent thing to do. but let me give you two reasons

to question that. first, while it is true that u.s. companies consistently make great products and some great profits, even those companies and our economy as a whole cannot succeed with so many americans out of work. it hurts us in the near term. and it hurts us in the long term. efficiency and cost cutting only get you so far. consumer demand will never rebound until more americans have good jobs, the kind of jobs that build the skills and will let them keep learning and earning for a lifetime. >> the second compelling reason for businesses to act on jobs and investments is because that

is what our economic competitors, all our big economic competitors around the world, are doing right now. and places like china, brazil, and india, businesses are investing in new industries, in new growth opportunities, looking to grab market share whenever they can. they are part of the same global economy we are. but they are not backing down at all. neither are their governments. these businesses are supported by governments with a very clear competitive strategy for economic strength. governments that have been educating their people in science and math, they have been investing in infrastructure to make their businesses more competitive. i'm here to tell you that the obama administration and the commerce department will provide energetic, tireless, and effective support to help american businesses compete.

but competitiveness in itself is only the means to an end. when you root for your favorite team, you do not want them just to compete. you want them to win. and i want the united states to win. [applause] what does that mean? winning means the best jobs in the world are found right here in america. winning means that the most cutting edge industries not only do their r&d here, but they also build their products in america. winning means that opportunity and prosperity are widely shared in america. that to me is what it means to win. the commerce department should

be judged, we should be judged, by how well we help american businesses and achieve these goals. i know the problems we face are big and complex. i also know that, as a nation, we are up to the task. people knock washington for a lot of good reasons. i am really happy to be here because i see a real opportunity to make a difference. i see an opportunity for the commerce department to help american businesses build it here and sell it everywhere. it is our time to shine. and it is a great time to be the secretary of commerce. thank you very much.

[applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011]

>> coming up on c-span, the former illinois governor adlai stevenson who lost two presidential bids to dwight eisenhower. that is followed by a debate on the role of government held in seattle. later, attorney general eric holder speaks at a forum on children's exposure to violence. tomorrow, c-span's rode to the white house focuses on next week's iowa caucuses. at 11:30 a.m., newt gingrich host a town home meeting. then in the afternoon atom 1:20, mitt romney holds a meet a greet in clinton. at 8 p.m. ron paul attends a salute to veterans at the i was sowa state fair.

this week on c-span 3, a special presentation of american history tv. wednesday, a look back at politics in iowa. you will hear campaign speeches from barack obama and hillary clinton and mike huckabee. then the 2004 democratic debate in iowa with the john kerry, john edwards, howard dean and others. later, it is the 2000 republican debate featuring george w. bush, john mccain, steve forbes and others. it is iowa politics wednesday starting at 8:00 p.m. eastern. midland high school students videohis year's

competition, we want you to tell us what part of the u.s. constitution is important to you. let us know and a five-a minute video. get it to us by january 20. there is $50,000 in total prices. this didn't documentary competition is open to students grades 6 through 12. for more information go online to studentcam.og. rg. >> ladies and gentlemen of the convention, my fellow citizens, i accept your nomination and your program. [applause] now that you've made your decision, i will fight to win that office with all of my heart and soul. with your help, i have no doubt

that we will win. help me to do the job in these years of crisis that spread beyond vision. we will justify our glorious task and the loyalty of millions who look to us for compassion, for understanding, and for honesty. we will serve our great tradition greatly. i ask of you all you have. i will give you all i have. >> that was our contender this week, adlai stevenson, accepting the democratic nomination for president in 1952. we are joined by richard norton smith in libertyville, illinois. who was this one-term governor of illinois?

>> for millions of americans, that is all he was. the one-term governor of illinois. they had never heard a voice like his. they did not know that a political revolution was being touched off that night. for the next decade, adlai stevenson would be the voice of the democratic party, someone who would transform american politics, even though he was never successful in his quest for the white house. >> how did he get the nomination in 1952? >> he is the last candidate to be drafted. he is the last candidate to require one more ballot at the convention. he did not want the nomination is the short answer. there was a vacuum in the democratic party. harry truman was retiring. there was no obvious successor.

adlai stevenson did a remarkable welcoming address at the chicago convention that had the effect much like william jennings bryant. it touched off this draft. a couple days later, he was delivering the speech you just heard. >> welcome to libertyville and "the contenders." this is the 9th in our 14 week series. we're looking at the men who ran for president and changed american politics. tonight, our focus is adlai stevenson, 1900 to 1965. we are joined by well-known author and historian richard norton smith. we're live from libertyville, illinois. we are at the stevenson family farm. bejust a minute, we'll joined by newton minow, who

worked and knew adlai stevenson. we will be joined by senator adlai stevenson iii, the son of adlai stevenson. he is a 10 year senator from the state of illinois. richard norton smith, before we leave the office, there are some things sitting around that we want to learn a little bit more about. first of all, what is this a hand? >> stevenson said that he suffered from a bad case of hereditary politics. there are multiple generations of stevensons in the story. the lincoln connection was a very powerful one. this is a cast of lincoln's hand. part of the famous mast created in 1860. >> also on the desk is an address book.

some of the names in this address book include eleanor roosevelt, jackie kennedy, john steinbeck. >> he was very unusual, a non- politician in many ways. millions of americans proudly declared themselves stevensonians. >> standing between us is this old office chair. >> this is stevenson's cabinet chair. he was made a member of the cabinet, this is the chair that commemorates that. somewhat difficult relationship that he had with the kennedy

administration. >> you referred to the dynasty, the stevenson political dynasty. here on the wall are some artifacts. very quickly. >> governor stevenson's grandfather was vice president of the united states. under grover cleveland. he ran again in 1900 under william jennings bryant. this is grandfather stevenson's hat. you can see campaign items from the grover cleveland campaign as well. >> thank you for joining us tonight. live from libertyville, we will work our way over to the barn on the family farm. we are currently in the study. next to it is a barn. this was a working farm at some point. it had animals, horses, sheep,

et cetera. we will work our way over there where there is a new display about adlai stevenson. first, we want to show you some campaign commercials so you can see some of the video of adlai stevenson. these are from 1956 and 1952. one of them was filmed right here in this study. >> i am sitting right here in my own library. thanks to television, i can talk to millions of people that i could not reach any other way. i am not going to let this spoil me. i am not going to stop traveling in this campaign. i can talk to you, but i cannot listen to you. i cannot hear about your problems, about your hopes and your affairs. to do that, i have to go out and see you in person.

that is what i have been doing. for the past several years, i've traveled all over this country. i have been in every state. i have met thousands of you and millions of you have seen me. ♪ ♪ >> stevenson! ♪ >> ♪ i would rather have a man with a hole in his shoes than a man with a hole in everything he says i would rather have a man that knows what to do when he gets to be the prez i know the gov will bring the dove of peace and joy ♪ adlai, love you madly what you did for your own great

state you are going to do for the rest of the 48 ♪ >> old macdonald had a farm back in 31 conditions filled him with alarm back in 31 ♪ to vote for adlai stevenson a vote vote here and a vote vote there

a vote for stevenson everywhere all america loves that farm vote stevenson today. ♪ >> if you should allow me to be your president, next november, i should be the better for having done it, i am sure. because i know that the strength and wisdom that i need must be drawn from you and the people. finally, i hope the next time we meet, it will be person to person and face to face. >> i am adlai stevenson. you and i have been hearing from our republican friends that things are so good, they could not be better. do you think that things cannot

be better for the small- business man, like this one? small business profits are down 52%. that they cannot be better for our farmers? like these? farm income is down 25%. are schools good enough for the richest nation in history? they need a third of a million more classrooms. what about you? are you out of debt? you have a comfortable bankroll in the bank? are you paying less for the things that you buy? or more? do you really think things cannot be better? of course they can. working together, we will make them better. >> vote democratic. >> rising cost of farming. lower farm income. caught in a squeeze.

vote democratic, the party for you, not just the few. vote for adlai stevenson. >> we are back live at the stevenson farm in libertyville. we are now joined by newton minow. he is the former chairman of the federal communications commission. for our purposes tonight, he has worked with and was an associate of adlai stevenson for many years. newton minow, if you could start by telling us when did you first meet gov. stevenson ? >> i was a law clerk at the supreme court. one of our professors came to visit one day. he later offered my co-clerk a

job as his assistant in springfield. it turned out that howard was not interested, but i was. i ended up being interviewed by the governor. at 7:00 for breakfast in the spring of 1952. he said to me, if i hire you, young man, it is there any reason why you would not take the job? if my current boss runs for president, and it was rumored that he would be a candidate, if he asked me to stay with them, i would like to do that. the governor looked at me and said, i do not think that is very likely. i then drove him to his next appointment. i went to work at the supreme court. i picked up "the new york times." it said "truman offers

stevenson the presidential nomination." this was the morning after president truman had asked him to run. i was hired and reported for work. >> what was he known for as governor? >> even as a student, i worked in his campaign in 1948. he was known as being totally honest, which was not necessarily a prerequisite for election in illinois. he was a different kind of candidate. he was honest, and he was an intellectual, he cared deeply about good government. he brought a whole different culture to the office of governor. >> richard norton smith, 1952, set the stage for us.

>> there was a sense that the democrats had been power for 20 years. even the most partisan democrat thought that perhaps the party and the country would be well served by a change. the great issue was which republican party would replace harry truman if harry truman were to leave? would it be be isolationist conservative midwestern party or would it be the international modern republican of the eisenhower? stevenson had to calculate the chances of which party he might be running against.

he was very reluctant to run. >> he did not want to run. he did not want to run against dwight eisenhower. it was like running against jesus christ. if it had been robert taft as the opponent, adlai stevenson would have relished running. there would have been a clear difference in philosophy. you have to remember the democrats tried to draft general eisenhower. the democrats tried to get eisenhower to run as a democrat. eisenhower was a candidate of both parties. >> newton minow, when adlai stevenson did the welcoming address at the democratic national convention in chicago in 1952 -- in 1952, was he considered a candidate?

>> he was not that well known. i remember the first time he appeared on national television. he was on "meet the press." he was never any good on television. he was a lot of fun and a great personality and you always went away feeling better about yourself. when you watched him on television, he was either nervous, but he was never himself. the country did not know him. >> he gets the welcoming address and he gets drafted, went on the second or third ballot. >> that is right. it was really unfortunate because the timing was wrong. if he had run for president against dwight eisenhower, he probably could have won.

>> who did he pick for a running mate? john sparkman, senator from alabama. he had to worry about keeping the solid south solid. >> exactly. john sparkman was picked at the last minute. >> did they have a relationship? >> not really. >> did he want to be on the 52 ticket? >> he was always interested in running for president. adlai stevenson did not like him. >> he ended up being the vice president in 56.

>> harry truman might have liked him even less. >> harry truman in 1952 and his relationship with adlai stevenson. >> he is regarded as a great president. the fact is at the time, he was a very unpopular president. the korean war was an unpopular war. he fired douglas macarthur, there is a consensus that he did the right thing for the right reason, but at great political cost. harry truman had been in power seven years. he had decided seven years was enough. he had the power to permit him

from becoming the nominee. he probably had the power to make adlai stevenson the nominee. with that power went the dead weight of the truman administration. my sense is that truamn and -- that truman and stevenson's relationship never quite recovered. >> there was another factor. there was a lot of corruption in the democratic party. there had been a scandal with one of president truman's assistants. it was not a happy thing to become the nominee in 1952. as i left the supreme court, i went to see the chief justice to say goodbye.

he was very close friends with truman. the chief said to me, your guy is not going to make it. i said, what? he said, i was with the president last night. he told me that he has lost patience with adlai stevenson. it is going to be barkley. they tried to get it for barkley, but everybody said, he is too old. >> we are live from libertyville, the stevenson family farm, about 40 miles outside of chicago. the phone numbers are on the screen because we want to hear from you as well.

the results in 1952, by the way, that election was held 59 years ago tonight, november 4, 1952. adlai stevenson won 27 million votes. he got 89 electoral votes and won nine states. dwight eisenhower, 442 electoral votes. he won the 34 million votes. he won the rest of the states, which would have been 41 states. >> one thing to keep in mind is compared with 1948. in losing, stevenson got 3 million more votes than truman had three years earlier. dwight eisenhower got 12 million more votes.

you have the largest increase in voter participation since the 1820's. you had two outstanding candidates. each were able to excite the electorate. >> here is a little bit more of adlai stevenson at the 1952 convention. >> what does concern me is not just winning this election. but how it is one. how we can take advantage of this great opportunity to debate issues sensibly and soberly. i hope and pray that we democrats will win or lose, can campaign, not as a crusade to exterminate the opposing party, as our opponents seem to prefer, but as a great

opportunity to educate and elevate a people whose destiny is leadership. let's tell the american people the truth, there are no gains without pain. we are now on the even of great decision. >> newton minow, where were you 59 years ago tonight? >> i was in the governor's mansion. one thing that taught the american people about stevenson was the way he conceded defeat. he gave the most graceful, patriotic talk. he pledged to support president eisenhower. he ended with a story that he remembered from abraham lincoln. it was a story about a little

boy who stubbed his toe in the dark. he said, it hurts too much to laugh, but i am not old enough to cry. people saw his character with that. he was a patriot who loved his country and was willing to support a new president. >> let's take some calls. the first call is paul in iowa. >> hello. i want to thank c-span for doing this. this is a great series. i have recently finished richardconrad black's m. nixon.

-- he puts forth a very negative view of adlai stevenson campaign for president. he claimed he spent too much time attacking nixon. it was a blemish on a very stellar career. do you think that the campaign was a low point of stevenson's political career? did he spend too much time attacking nixon? what could he have focused on to make the election closer? should she have focused on farm issues more? should he have focused on war and peace issues? thank you very much. >> let's start with newton minow. 1956 campaign. >> 1956 campaign, in my opinion, was not as stellar as it was the 1952 campaign. the reason for the emphasis on nixon in 1956 was the fact that president eisenhower had

suffered a bad heart attack and had some bad health problems. there was great concern in the country of what would happen if president eisenhower was reelected and he died during the second term and nixon became president. there was a good reason to go after nixon because nixon did not have the character to be president. >> i think the 1956 campaign, from a historical standpoint, it is the campaign that laid the groundwork for the new frontier. that is the campaign when adlai stevenson embraced the idea of a nuclear test ban treaty. that is the campaign when he endorsed a constitutional amendment so 18-year-olds could

vote. in terms of foreshadowing policy to come, 1956 turns out to be a fountainhead of ideas. you are right, the last speech on election eve where he said the medical evidence suggested a real possibility that richard nixon would become president. that is something that tom dewey had not done in 1944 under somewhat similar circumstances. you did not go there. in some ways, he paid a price for that. >> you are right. the nuclear test ban, which was a very unpopular point of view to take in 1956, he took it very courageously because he believed in it deeply. someone asked what the weapons

would be in world war iv, and he said there would be sticks and stones. >> between 1952 and 1956, was adlai stevenson going to get the nomination again? >> i would have to answer that with a yes and no. he hoped that he might someday be president, but he also knew that if he ran against president eisenhower again, the odds were very much against him. i was one of the few people around him that urged him not to run in 1956. he felt an obligation to the democratic party. >> here is a little bit of adlai stevenson at the 1956 convention. >> i come here on a solemn mission.

i accept your nomination and your program. [applause] i pledge to every resource of mind and strength that i possess to make a good win for our country and our party. four years ago, i stood in this same place and uttered those same words to you. four years ago, i did not seek the honor that you bestowed upon me. this time, as he may have noticed, it was not entirely unsolicited. [laughter] [applause]

there is another big difference. that time, we lost. this time, we will win. [applause] >> newton minow, you started laughing what you listen to that video. >> when he said it was unsolicited, it reminded me. in 1955, stevenson gave a speech at the university of texas and i was asked to go with them. it was right after president eisenhower had suffered his heart attack. lyndon johnson, the majority leader of the senate, had also suffered a heart attack. we were to spend the night at lyndon's ranch. we got there late. mrs. johnson was very upset

because the doctor told her that lyndon johnson should be sleeping. and he was up until 2:00 in the morning. on the way home, just the two of us for traveling. adlai stevenson said to me, if i want the nomination next year, i will have to run in the primaries. i said, they are right. if president eisenhower does not run, every democrat is going to want the nomination and you'll have to fight for it. if president eisenhower does run, you ought to forget about it. he said, i am not going to run in those primaries. i am not going to be a candidate like i am running for sheriff. i am not going to do it. of course, he ended up doing it because that is the way the system operated.

>> joe in los angeles, we are talking about adlai stevenson. go ahead with your comments. >> i want to jump ahead to the 1960's. what you thought his relationship with the kennedys was. i know he was nominated in that convention and because of that, there were still feelings with jack kennedy. what would have happened if he had been made secretary of state? would the situation in vietnam have been different? >> let's start with richard norton smith. >> that is a very wide subject. it is certainly true that it was not a warm relationship between the kennedys and governor stevenson. in 1956, he had done something

no one else had done. he had thrown at the nomination for the vice presidency open. he left the convention decide. jack kennedy came within eyebrow of winning the nomination. it introduced him to the country, paved the way for his campaign in 1960. one of the distinguished visitors that came to this house was jack kennedy. he very much wanted adlai

stevenson's endorsement, who did not give it. he did not go away with his admiration of the governor enhanced. if he was ever going to be secretary of state, i think that possibility went down the drain right then. >> we will talk a little bit later about the kennedy relationship and his years as u.n. ambassador. the results in 1956, adlai stevenson won 73 electoral votes. he got 26 million votes, about 1 million less than he got four years earlier. dwight eisenhower, 457 electoral votes. he won 41 states. it was the last election were there were only 48 states in the nation. dwight eisenhower won about 35 million votes.

our next call, akron, ohio. >> thank you. this is a great honor to be watching this type of program. i have a comment and a question. richard norton smith stole my thunder about the 1956 convention and jack kennedy. one of my favorite comments was something that harry truman said about adlai stevenson, that he spent more time thinking about what he was going to do rather than doing it. he spent a lot more time talking to college presidents than he did to cabdrivers. anyway, 1956, richard norton smith made a comment to adlai stevenson doing something unprecedented in, opening the convention to picking a vice presidential nominee. very few people really know there were two other candidates

in contention for that position. hubert humphrey and al gore, sr. seeing as how jack kennedy was out of it, would that ticket have been a little bit better had it have been al gore, sr. or hubert humphrey? also, i guess what i was going to say -- >> let's leave it there. that is a lot of questions. >> certainly, kefauver did not help. i think what richardson about --

richard said about kennedy was exactly correct. the opportunity to be at the convention and to be seen as a vice presidential possibility introduced jack kennedy to the country. i remember a few years later, i saw him at a dinner and i said, jack, if you are so interested, you can get be nomination for vice president next time. he said, vice-president? i am going to run for president. he was only 39 years old. >> the caller raises a point that i am sure that governor stevenson heard many times during his lifetime. the notion that he talked over the heads of people. what was his reaction to that? >> i think he did not talk over the heads of the people.

they used to call him an egghead. he is to make fun of that. eggheads of the world unite. you have nothing to lose but your yolks. i think he reached people. he had a great sense of humor. one time he gave a speech in san francisco. a woman came of to him after the speech and said governor, after that speech, every thinking american is going to vote for you. and he said, thank you, madame. unfortunately, i need a majority. he knew what the situation was. >> next call comes from tennessee. >> thank you. it is a great show. my father was an academic and i grew up in washington, d.c. i remember my father talking about how great adlai stevenson was.

the reason i am calling was that i was struck by the 1952 electoral map. it seems like the sparkman strategy won. he did not get tennessee and he did not get his own state, illinois. that reminds me of al gore in 2000. >> he had been elected governor of illinois by the largest margin in the history of the state. they elected this new deal liberal democrat and it was not surprising that he counted on winning it in 1952.

>> if he had run for governor in 1952, even with president eisenhower's running on the republican -- he would have won the governorship again by a larger margin. >> newton minow, today, we talk about taxes, spending, social security. those are some of the issues we look at during the campaign. in 1952, in 1956, what were the main issues that were talked about? >> 1952, the big issue was korea. we were bogged down in a war there. president eisenhower says, i will go to korea. the country thought he would end the war in korea.

which he did. the other big issues were the same issues we have today. we have the same issues that divided the country back in the 1950's. education, the economy was better than than it is now. there was less unemployment. this country is equally divided. if you look at the last 10 presidential elections, with the single exception of johnson and goldwater in 1964, they have all been decided by a few points. the country is equally divided. >> in 1956, here is a little bit of adlai stevenson talking about the democratic platform. >> to the threshold of a new america.

a new america of great ideals and noble vision. i mean a new america where poverty is abolished and our abundance is used to enrich the lives of every family. [applause] i mean a new america where freedom is made real for all, without regard to race or belief or economic conditions. [applause] these are the things i believe

in. these are the things i will work for. >> we are live in libertyville at the adlai stevenson farm. boston, you are on the air. >> i was very young and during the era of president kennedy and adlai stevenson. i want to share an emotional think i will probably take to my grave. in 1960, a couple of weeks before his assassination, adlai stevenson went to texas, where

they threw oranges at him from the balcony. he called president kennedy and told him not to come to texas. at least get a bulletproof car, which he did not do. on the other side of the question, i believe president kennedy and his brother had a little bit too much ego. if adlai stevenson knew that, there would have been more listening. >> we will get an answer from both our guests. they both started nodding their heads. >> i think it was a united nations event in dallas. afterwards, he was struck by

some protesters. i think he was spat upon. a classic rejoinder -- i do not want to prosecute them, i want to educate them. >> he was very aware of the dangers, but i would not go as far as the questioner did. president kennedy -- he made that commitment and wanted to keep it. talking about the relationship of adlai stevenson and president kennedy. during the 1960 campaign, norman vincent peale had organized a group of other clergymen and they said that jack kennedy was unqualified to be president because of his religion.

adlai stevenson was asked about it. he compared it to st. paul. he said, i find st. paul appealing and norman vincent peale appalling. he could always work in a joke. politics today has no humor. with the exception of bob dole, i do not see any politician today, either party, who has a great sense of humor. >> do you think it worked against stevenson? he always had these wonderful quips. >> abraham lincoln went around telling stories all the time. i do not think it hurt him. i think people like to have someone who has a sense of humor.

>> next call, poughkeepsie, new york. nick, good evening. >> hi. i would like to know when stevenson was a child, was there an incident where he accidentally shot his friend? how did that influence his presidential campaign? >> did he ever talk about that? could you give us a brief history of what the coller is -- that caller is referring to? >> there was a tragic accident in childhood when there was a loose gun in the family and adlai stevenson accidentally shot and killed another child. i never heard him say anything about it. i never saw any evidence that it affected him. who knows? >> he was 12 years old at the time.

one did get the sense that the family moved on. it was not something that they dwelled on. years later, he expressed astonishment that his wife knew about the incident. it would suggest that he really kept it very close to his vest. >> who was his wife? >> his wife was a woman who came from a very fine upperclass family. she was not very interested in politics. she disliked politics. when adlai stevenson went into politics, i do not think she was very happy about it. they came to a parting of ways. >> that was in 1949. >> he had been elected before the divorce. >> did the divorce hurt him during the 1952 and 1956 presidential campaigns?

>> president reagan was divorced. today we have public officials living without marriage with someone else. there has been a vast cultural change. >> one more instance of stevenson being ahead of his time. >> could be. >> we are live from libertyville. theodore is on the line. go ahead with your question or comment. >> i appreciate the program very much. i am a senior in a nearby senior retirement community. participating in a memoir group. we have been asked to write

what good things from the 1950's should be carried into the 21st century. i happen to be present at the 1952 election where he voted in vernon township. it was next to a congregational church. my question is, what significance do you place to that icon of the hole in his shoe? how would you summarize what could be carried into the 21st century? richard start with norton smith. >> stevenson was a man who flattered our intelligence. he spoke up to us. he did not speak down to us.

he is arguably the last national politician. you could say this of barry goldwater. he believed that a presidential campaign was first and foremost an educational exercise. >> what do you mean by that? >> he was forever running out of time. they would cut him off in the middle of the speech. he could not believe that people would not take sufficient amount of time to educate themselves, to listen to a thoughtful, sober, substantive issue-oriented appeals from candidate on both sides. that is how he approached running for office. that is how he approached governing illinois. i have heard him say more than once that a campaign was an educational exercise, not only for the public, but also for the candidate.

an opportunity for the candidate to educate himself or herself about the country. i also heard him say, there are worse things that can happen to someone then losing an election. >> what is a stevensonian? >> an egghead. wit, self deprecatory, someone who has been very little patience with the political claptrap that spin doctors have foisted upon us. i cannot imagine adlai stevenson being handled by any such individual.

>> it would never happen. i was much a member of an american delegation to a conference in japan and in our delegation was don rumsfeld. we were having dinner and i said, why did you go into politics? he said, it was all because of a speech given to my graduating class at princeton. were you in the class of 1954? he looked at me and said, how did you know that? i said, i know the speech. it is the best speech adlai stevenson ever gave in his life. it was a speech about why everyone should devote some of their life to public service. he read me a paragraph verbatim of the speech. he pulled out his wallet and

pulled out a torn copy of the speech. i said, that is why you went into politics? he said, that is why i went into politics. if you read his new book, he starts off by quoting from that speech. adlai -- his biggest contribution was making politics respectable and honorable. jack kennedy used to say politics is an honorable profession. i think he got that from adlai stevenson. >> adlai and ellen stevenson had three sons. adlai stevenson iii was a marine in 1952. >> he takes time out from his campaign to attend the graduation of his son from the marine officer candidate school in quantico, virginia.

it is a proud father and an equally proud son on an occasion important to both. >> live on your screen is senator adlai stevenson iii, he is in his father's study on the family farm. senator stevenson, thank you for opening up this facility for us. what was your role in the 1952 and 1956 campaign? >> in the 1952 campaign, i was in the marine corps. i did not have a role in that campaign. they were involved in the 1956 campaign. >> what role did korea play in your father's campaign?

>> korea became an issue though it was not an issue, but adversely affected my father's campaign. he was a device to say, if elected president, i will go to korea. that is exactly what general eisenhower said. my father refused to do that because he felt that if he made that commitment to go there and arrange a truce -- the eisenhower administration was weakened by this commitment of eisenhower to end the war. my involvement did not have any effect at all.

his integrity had an adverse effect on his campaign. >> he served in the u.s. senate from 1970 until 1981 for the state of illinois. he voluntarily stepped down in 1980, ran for governor twice for this state. what made you enter the family business? >> i was born with a hereditary case of politics. if by business, you mean my career. we did not think of it as a business. i am paraphrasing my father. >> of course, the first adlai stevenson served as vice president and secretary of state for illinois. and now we are joined by senator stevenson. he is in his father's study in libertyville. we are in what used to be the

barn and it is right next door. it is now set up with an exhibit. what is going on here? >> this home, which really became our base over the years, is now the home of the adlai stevenson center for democracy. we try to bring people together from all parts of the world to address the systemic weaknesses in democratic systems of government and continue the stevenson legacy. this was the home, but it really became the base from which we study the world.

the study from all the world was incessant. we never stop trying to learn about the world from with in it. in the marketplaces and slums, the monuments and ruins and the universities and ministries, trying to see the world from within it. that lifetime of on the ground study of the world from no ivory tower helped to create the record and make him an electrifying figure at home and in the world. president kennedy appointed him to the ambassador for the united nations. >> we have one hour left.

at place stevenson is our focus. our guest is newton who worked with at least even some and was a chairman under jfk and -- we're going to take this call from chicago. >> let me correct something. i am calling because adelaide stevenson was my first presidential -- when i was eligible to vote. i did whatever i could. i was crushed he did not win. in retrospect, he would

contribute some much more on the world stage as a statesman and in a way he did. i will never forget how disappointed we were. being a chicagoan, i worked at the tribune tower when the dewy- truman election. you never saw such panic in your life as was in the chicago tribune. i will let you go and give your response off air. >> i think we could talk to her all night. if we could start with you. you heard the motion in her voice. could you talk about his campaign style?

>> i would like to amplify. i think they have done a very perceptive of jobs. getting back to 1952. he was also reluctant to run for president because he had been elected governor of a state which we loved and are deeply indebted to. it succeeded a corrupt republican administration. he reached out and he recruited the best qualified professionals that he could find. it was not pay to play in those days. it was a sacrifice to serve. they were reforming state government. he wanted to finish the job. he was also reluctant because eisenhower would be very difficult to defeat. he was a returning war hero. i think secretly, not so secretly at home, he was also not convinced it was time for a change.

remember, he started that 1952 campaign. he was drafted. he started the campaign at the convention with absolutely no program, no money, no staff. it went on to electrify the world. for him, i may be repeating, for him democracy was not a system for acquiring power. it was a system for informing people so they could make a sound judgment. he said trust the people with all of the truth. what wins is more important than who wins. the 1956 campaign was more substantive. he had more time than the 1952 campaignhe used to the campaigns and the interim has leader of the party. he laid the programmatic

foundations for the new frontier and the great society. in fact, i heard arthur schlesinger, the famous historian who was close to jack kennedy -- we always called jack "jack" -- john f. kennedy, the executor of the stevenson resolution. those campaigns were aimed not only at the american people. they were substantive. he used half hour blocks of time for eloquent, substantive speeches. >> you talk about the 1952 and 1956 campaigns. your father lost books between those and a couple more states. what did he not do as well in 1956?

did he make mistakes? >> eisenhower is enormously popular. these were years of economic prosperity and growth. eisenhower was popular. the war ended and -- that would come later in korea. what happened -- one of the things that happened, eisenhower would have never gotten reelected anyway. with the uprising in hungary and the invasion of suez by france, britain, and israel, these international crises that rallied the country as they always do behind the president. from then on, they're just really was not much doubt about the outcome. >> richard norton smith.

>> i just want to go back to the 1952 campaign. it is accurate that he started out with nothing. in fact, there was a debate over where to have the political headquarters. harry truman expected it to be in washington. it was in springfield. the story was told, you can tell me if it is true or not, he did not expect it to be publicized which is revealing. one night to very shortly after the convention, he came back to springfield. conscious of the crushing responsibilities, he left the executive mansion one night by himself without guard and walked to jackson and eighth street, knocked on the door. the custodian recognized him. it was not then a national historic site. he let him in. he sat by himself in the lincoln parlor for some period

reflecting. meditating on a man who had confronted him with greater responsibilities a few years earlier. the interesting thing about that story is not only that it happened but that adlai stevenson did not publicize it. he did not expect anyone to know about that story. is that accurate? >> none of us knew about it until years later. i read this and said is it true? he did not talk about it. >> you have to understand. this story -- it goes back to five generations. i tried it to record it. american politics and history as we knew at -- he was lincoln's patron. lincoln was a constant presence in this family. lincoln was an inspiration. woodrow wilson, former president of princeton.

my father was a graduate of princeton. wilson was an influence also. the enlightened internationalism of wilson heavily influenced my father. lincoln, who might never have been president without the lincoln douglas debates, lincoln was an inspiration and a presence in this family. >> our next call for our guest talking about adlai stevenson comes from oak island, north carolina. jimmy, please go ahead. >> thank you for taking my call. i am a world war ii veteran who was part of the eisenhower army. i did not feel like at the time

-- i was from north carolina at which you could see it was one of the blue states for adlai stevenson both times. we felt that adlai stevenson was a politician and more able to handle the political things. eisenhower was more of a military person. even though times were good, i was wondering what do you think -- how would the united states had changed in that eight years if adlai stevenson had been president rather than dwight eisenhower? >> senator stevenson. let's start with you. >> dwight eisenhower has been quoted and recently by a member of his family as saying that if

he had known adlai stevenson was to be the democratic candidate, he would not have run for president. i think on the large international issues, there was probably not a good deal of difference between them. one thing my father really felt strongly about richard nixon, he was loathed just about by everybody in washington. his strength was at the grass roots. after that incident and the checkers speech and eisenhower's retention of richard nixon on the ticket, i think that caused some doubts in his mind about eisenhower. he respected eisenhower. my father was such a figure in the world that john foster dulles reluctantly made him an ambassador of the eisenhower

administration so that in his travels throughout the world he could efficiently represent the united states. a difference between the democrats and eisenhower wing of the party were the republican party or the taft wing. if my father had been president, you probably would have had the new frontier and the great society accelerated. medicare, federal aid to education, other social programs might have taken effect earlier. as it was, much of it did not take affect until after the assassination of kennedy when johnson shrewdly -- i remember consulting my father. what is your advice?

my father was taken back. he was very flattered. he said, i guess you should take some time now to put your program and administration together. he said, this is my moment. within 100 days, the program was through congress. since the 1952 campaign. little had my father won in 1952 or 1956. >> i think he has it exactly right, but i would add one thing. because adlai stevenson was so committed to getting rid of

nuclear war, i think we might have had faster progress than actually occurred later in dealing with the russians and dealing with nuclear disarmament. i think that was such a passionate belief that i think he would have given much more attention and persuasion to it than occurred. i think also we would have had more friends throughout the world then we ended up with at that time. >> it is interesting. it is hard to imagine -- that is what we are doing. we are imagining. it is hard to imagine president stevenson sending that u-2 plane on the eve of the great summit. one more thing. i do think they had respect for each other. i think they also learned to discover the weaknesses of one

another. i suspect eisenhower over time grew rather resentful of the implication that stevenson was the only wordsmith -- the only great eloquent persuader in american politics. he once said that if words are all that matter, the american people could vote for ernest hemingway for president. i think that was a criticism of stevenson. >> next call for our three guest calls from portland, oregon. >> thank you for taking my call. in 1962, i was a high school kid living in a republican house will. but in the 1956 i had spent the time as an intern and was fixed forever. i remember there was a disappointment at the convention because there was not a contest that there had been in 1952. i was wondering if you could elaborate on how the decision was made to throw it open to the convention whether it was

for everybody to have a good time or whether it was at least in part to be able to dodge the animosity of all of the candidates who did not get it. >> if you could start and then senator stevenson, we want to hear about your role. >> i think adlai stevenson felt he had seen it firsthand how the vice president was picked in 1952. it was so casually done. he realized it needed much more attention. he was also under a lot of pressure. he was fond of the hubert humphrey. he did not like keith laufer even though he had been in the primaries. he thought jack kennedy was very promising but very young and too inexperienced. he decided it would give a lot of excitement to the convention which had been pretty much pre arranged as to his own

nomination. he decided to open it up. i think it turned out to be as he predicted. it turned out to be an exciting contest. it introduced jack kennedy to the country. there were a lot of big things for it. >> the outcome of the presidential balloting was a foregone conclusion. to create some excitement, he decided to throw open the balloting for vice president. quietly, we were all rooting for john f. kennedy. my father adored hubert humphrey. i remember at the state house and the convention when the balloting was seesawing for vice president and kennedy was running downstairs to kennedy's suites where sergeant shriver's

brother-in-law was guarding the door, running in jack kennedy was pulling up his trousers. he shook his hand and congratulated him. by the time i got back up to my father's suite, i saw him lose. all of us were rooting to jack kennedy. this brought kennedy to the nation's attention. it also despaired him being involved in the failed campaign for president and vice- president. >> let's move four years ahead it to the 1960 democratic convention in los angeles. senator stevens, how would you describe the relationship between your father and jack kennedy in 1960? >> i think the relationship between my father and jack kennedy was close. i know my father respected kennedy.

i believe it was mutual. there was a circle or very protective circle around john f. kennedy, which is always fearful and resentful. in this case, concern that stevenson was a threat. people were pouring in from across the country. by the tens of thousands. they were literally hammering on the doors on the convention to demand another nomination for their candidates. eleanor roosevelt was there. mccarthy gave a brilliant nominating address for stevenson. this caused a little anxiety in the kennedy camp. it probably caused a little interest on my father's part that maybe if things deadlocked he could still win the nomination. he had felt that as a leader of the party and out of loyalty to eleanor roosevelt -- loyalty

should be neutral. the former secretary of labor who was also involved in state administration told me he was in my father's suite on the eve of the balloting. my father said when bobby kennedy calls, tell him i have gone to bed and i have left instructions not to be woken. sure enough bobby kennedy calls. he said i have to talk to the governor. you just tell him, this is his last chance. he better talk to me or he won't be secretary of state. he responded, i am sorry, but he has instructed me to tell you that he has gone to bed. that was the end of any chances for secretary of state. it signifies something about the relationship not with jack

kennedy but the very protective circle around jack kennedy. that would come back to create other problems like during the cuban missile crisis when my father was vilified. >> we are to get to that in just a minute. we are born to play two minutes of video here. we will start at the 1960 convention. adlai stevenson at the podium. here it is. >> i wanted to tell you how grateful i am for this tumultuous and moving welcome to the 1962 democratic convention. [applause] i have an observation. after getting in and out of the hotel and at this hall, i

decided i know who you will nominate. it will be the last survivor. [applause] >> the details of my participation have not been worked out, but i would drive the campaign where he wanted me to. i suspect that will be in the west and the east and everywhere in between. i hope so. >> what would you do about it? how would you go about it? >> i hope by the participation in the campaign i have not had much doubt that they would support the ticket. i hope they will support it vigorously in the same manner that i did. >> i hope it will fall you as

vigorously as you did in los angeles. >> i hope it will fall you as vigorously as they follow me at los angeles. >> we saw a little bit from the convention. and we saw a press conference after jfk got the nomination. >> i have the most extraordinary experience i had involving both adlai stevenson and jack kennedy was on may 29, 1960. it was jack kennedy's birthday. it was the day after the last primary in oregon. jack kennedy was flying from oregon to a family birthday party. bill blair, our law partner, had suggested that he stopped in chicago. bill and i would pick him up and drive him here to the farm. he would have lunch with adlai stevenson. we were hoping -- bill and i had both concluded it was adlai stevenson impossible adlai to be nominated again.

we were hoping it would come to some terms and adlai stevenson would support kennedy. we got in the car and drove out there. bill was driving, jack was in the front seat, i was in the back seat. jack kennedy said, the you think i should talk to him about secretary of state? bill was smarter than i was, he did not say anything. i cannot stand the silence. i said, i would not do that if i were you. he looked at me and said, why? i said, adlai stevenson will be offended. second, you should decide yourself you want if you are elected. came out here and adlai and nancy were here. they manage to get the two of them alone in the study. the minute they came out i could see it had not gone well. we were getting back in the car

to go back. i was dying of curiosity. i said, jack, did you say something about secretary of state? he looked at me with those eyes and said, you told me not to. i thought, what have i done? as soon as i got home i called him and i told him the entire thing from beginning to end. he said you did the right thing. i would have been very offended. besides, he should decide who he wants. then i decided i'd better try the kennedys. i called and they said jack had not arrived yet. i told bob exactly what i told adlai stevenson. i felt i had a clean conscience and had not screwed it up. >> can i ask you a question. we saw that clip with the rather lame joke that stevenson said

from the podium at a moment of maximum suspense. it was written that it was almost stevenson's moment and he threw it away. he was in a position with the right to remarks to have taken the convention a way. is that unrealistic? was that convention jack kennedy's no matter what happened? can you see a scenario in which stevenson at the peak of his form might have set something on fire. >> i think he knew it was not going to happen. they told him the illinois delegates were going to vote for kennedy. i think he knew at that point. we will see what adlai says if he agrees with me. i have always thought that's

mccarthy's speech was insincere. i thought he was working for lyndon johnson because he had never been that close to governor stevenson. i had just finished reading jackie kennedy's tapes, and she said jack kennedy said the same thing. there were two people who thought that mccarthy was making that -- >> i don't think that what to attribute that motive to mccarthy. the gossip i hate to repeat at the time was that he was jealous of jack was because it was that catholic instead of this catholic getting the nomination. i think that is unworthy of mccarthy. number one, my father would have resented it. i don't think there was a chance of the convention of him winning the nomination. he had encouraged everybody to go out and support candidates of their choice including

richard j. daley of illinois. the illinois delegation was pledged to john f. kennedy. you make a pledge, you don't break it. the nomination was sewed up. there was a lot of tension. there was a lot of dynamism in the works. after the convention, my father campaigned strenuously. he campaigned all over the country for john f. kennedy. bobby kennedy's first stop on the campaign trail was right here at the home where we had a great rally on the lawn for bobby kennedy. >> now, he referred it to jackie kennedy's new book put out called historic conversations on life with jfk. there were some audiotapes attached to this.

she talked shortly after the assassination. they were just released. here is jackie kennedy talking about adlai stevenson and jfk. >> telling you he had to have the un. i could remember jack telling me about that. >> did that give him a lot of difficulty? >> it was unpleasant. he did not like it. he was not going to give him the state department. at the earliest times we spoke of it, you new governor stevenson would get the un -- not state, which he wanted. it is unpleasant to tell somebody that. i remember their conference on the doorstep was rather vague.

stevens said he did not have anything to say or something funny. >> why do you think he decided not to have stevenson for state? >> it was not just bitterness. look at all the people jack took who had been a against him and for someone else. they knew he felt that man had a real disease of being done able to make up his mind. stevenson irritated him. i don't think he could have him coming in every day and complaining about something as secretary of state. it would have been a difficult relationship. >> senator stevenson -- can we get your reaction? >> unfortunately, i really could not hear it. i knew jackie kennedy. i can tell you that i don't think she was political at all. in fact, she was a very artistic woman. she was an intellectual who used to leave washington on weekends which were sometimes

spent at bobby's, playing football. she was not athletic. she would go to new york to go to the theater with my father. from what i could see they had a very good relationship. he gave her and escapes from washington. i have heard about these comments -- not just these, but all of her comments that are critical just about of anybody. i do not know what kind of credibility to place on that. from what i could see, her relationship with my father was very good. in some ways, they were closer than some of the kennedys. >> could you hear the audio tape and jackie kennedy? >> i was with adlai stevenson and jackie sometimes. i think they had a very good

relationship. >> what about jfk and adlai stevenson >> i had a very important experience about that. i had a very minor role in the cuban missile crisis. i was involved a little bit. when it was over, there was an article in the saturday evening post written by charlie bartlett and stewart alsop. in it there were some critical comments not attributed to any single person a bout what adlai stevenson had proposed which is actually what the united states did. we had closed our missile headquarters in turkey and

greece in exchange for a bargain that was reached by cuba. it was critical and i knew that adlai stevenson was upset about it. early one day the president called me at home. he said, will you tell your leader that i did not leak that story. there is a rumor around that i am the one who leaked it. tell him i did not leak it. i called the governor and i had his number. i got him on the phone in five seconds. he picked up the phone. he said i cannot talk to you now. i am on my way to "the today show" to be interviewed. i said give me one second. the president just called me and told me to tell you he did not leak that story. the governor did not say

anything. 50 minutes later i turn on the show and he gave jfk holy hell about the episode and got it off his chest. later jfk wrote him a letter apologizing saying he did not do it but he made it clear that what adlai stevenson contributed to the cuban missile crisis solution was indispensable. >> we have about 25 minutes left and our callers have been patient. damascus, maryland. bill, thank you for calling. please go ahead. >> can you elaborate on the influence of richard j. daley, the mayor of chicago. the influence he had on stevenson's rise in illinois politics. >> senator stevenson, can we start with you? >> it is the other way around. my father got richard j. daley started in politics.

as i mentioned earlier, my father recruited these extraordinary professionals. they came without the endorsements of political leaders and campaign contributors. there was one partial exception and that was richard j. daley who had been a state senator. he may be did have the endorsement of the cook county chairman. he served with great distinction and my father's cabinet as director of the department of revenue. he really was a pretty straight cabinet officer. later my father supported richard j. daley when he contested for mayor of chicago against an incumbent mayor of that city. this is incredible. the governor of the state siding with a challenger to be incumbent governor. my father had a lot to do with the rise of richard j. daley.

it was not the other way around at all. >> washington, d.c., go ahead, dave. we are talking about adlai stevenson here on "the contenders." >> hello. i just want to tell a story -- >> hi, congressman. how are you? >> does everyone know former congressman dave obey? >> i just want to tell a story about adlai stevenson in the 1960 campaign. i was a student at the university of wisconsin. adlai stevenson had come to madison to give a speech about the civil war roundtable. afterward he was scheduled to appear with the governor at the old park hotel. we had a large crop of democrats gather. they were over one hour late and the crowd was very restive. finally, adlai stevenson was ushered up to the front of the

room. he said, sorry we were so late. there were a lot of questions that the civil war roundtable. i have to get the governor over to the mansion and get him to bed. he has a long day tomorrow. i will give one of my typically short speeches. adlai stevenson butted in and said, i will give one of my typically long ones. he said, you do it and i will leave without you. adlai stevenson said go ahead, see who the crowd follows. the crowd erupted in laughter. i think adlai stevenson -- it shows adlai stevenson was on his feet and how clever he could be in making the audience feel good about it. he was my hero. >> a lot of talk this evening about the fact that adlai stevenson was the architect of the later great society. would you agree with that? >> i think he certainly defined in the 1956 campaign what most

of the issues later became of what to the democratic party ran on and stood on for years. he set the agenda for the coming decade in that campaign. >> that was congressman dave obey. we did not know he was going to call. a longtime congressman from wisconsin. thank you for calling. richard, hello. richard? >> thank you for letting me call. i am the author of a book about eleanor roosevelt and adlai stevenson published just last year. i would like to relay one of the anecdotes from the campaign trail. it was a favorite of the campaign team. this is about a gentleman who

came to him and said, "mr. stevenson, your speech was absolutely superfluous." to which he replied, "i was thinking about having it published posthumously." he said, "the sooner the better." [laughter] >> you are in your dad's office over there. there are a set of books of his speeches. they were best sellers, correct? >> yes. incidently, my own book is here. a black book which i tried to record a american politics as we knew it over those five generations including the humor which enriched our politics and could be used to very good effect. you could use it to denigrate an opponent without being mean spirited. the memories and the experience i try to record over these five generation starting with lincoln and ending in china and

an epilogue on the life cycle of nations and empires is aimed to recall what we are doing tonight, the values that created this country and contrast them with those that are undermining it today. >> we talk a little bit about this. richard norton smith, i want to get your reaction. the cuban missile crisis, adlai stevenson was u.s. ambassador to the united nations. >> it did not happen in a vacuum. one year earlier, talk about the strained relationship with the white house. the kennedy administration had put this ambassador in a bad position. one year later, one year and a half later in the fall of 1962, you have a situation in which we have irrefutable evidence that the soviets are in fact

installing offensive nuclear missiles on castro's cuba. what transpires is a great paradox. i cannot think of a less sound bite political figure it then adlai stevenson. if you go on youtube to that he is immortalized by one of the great sound bites of the 20th century. >> we will listen to it right now. >> let me ask you one simple question. do you deny that the u.s.s.r. has placed and is placing medium and intermediate range sites and missiles in cuba? yes or no. don't wait for the translation, yes or no? [laughter]

>> mr. stevenson, will you continue your statement please. you will receive the answer in due course, do not worry. [laughter] >> i am prepared to wait for your answer until hell freezes over if that is your decision. >> richard norton smith. >> one of the great sound bites of the 20th century. afterwards, one of the kennedys -- maybe it was the president or bobby -- he was allegedly to have said, i did not know he had it in him. >> that is true. >> you mentioned the bay of pigs earlier. he was fed a great deal of misinformation which he relayed to the security council. it came out this information was false. he felt very embarrassed.

it was the kennedy administration that was embarrassed. nobody doubted my father's integrity. the bay of pigs proposal by the kennedy administration was exactly what my father had proposed, mainly trading off obsolete bases in turkey for withdrawal of the missiles. the kennedy administration insisted on keeping the deal secret. my father did not want it to be secret because he did not want to embarrass khrushchev. he wanted to give them an opportunity to retreat. that did not happen. khrushchev was embarrassed just as my father feared. he fell. he was succeeded by a group from which he emerged brezhnev and the hard-liners and the cold war escalated. the kennedy administration had to be tough instead of

compromising and giving khrushchev an easy way out. >> one of the goals of "the contenders" is to figure out how they changed their parties and american politics. after we take this call we will move into the topic area. roots town, ohioplease go ahead. >> thank you for having me i was just curious as to whether or not you have heard of an organization -- if adlai stevenson had ever attended the conference before? >> thank you for your call. go ahead. >> this adlai stevenson has gone to a conference. i don't know about my father. i don't know how far that goes. i don't know what the implications are. conferences were occasional meetings of very senior meetings at which they got together to discuss problems facing the world. there was nothing sinister about them. this adlai stevenson has been to a couple.

i don't know if my father has or if they even existed. >> we are here in the stevenson barn. center stevenson is over in his father's study. there is a new exhibit about adlai stevenson. there is a photo that we looked at before this started. this was in 1945 of the un formation. you remember that photo around the table. >> i do. i don't have it in front of me so i am not sure. you have john foster dulles, you have governor stevenson, nelson rockefeller. you have the secretary of state who was about to be fired.

>> was adlai stevenson's role in the founding of the un? >> do you want to take that? it had to do with proprietary concepts. >> he was also a delegate to the conference in san francisco. the united nations was adopted or approved. but by 1945, we were living in london where he was the u.s. delegate to the commission which laid the foundation and actually started putting the building blocks together including the location in new york. he represented the united states at the commission were great men from all over europe and canada, they used to assemble at our home at night

because we had access to the commissary. an extraordinary group of people. he was in on the birth of the united nations. incidentally, he died 20 years later just a couple of blocks from our home in london in 1945. i was 65 and is still serving the united nations and his country. >> we want to talk about adlai stevenson and his effect on the democratic party. here he is in 1952 talking about the democratic party. >> i have been hardened by the -- heartened by the conduct of this convention. you have argued and disagreed because as democrats to care and do care deeply. but you have disagreed and argued without calling each other liars and thieves, without spoiling our best traditions. [applause] you have not spoiled our best

traditions and any struggles for power. you have written as a platform that neither contradicts nor evades. you have restated our party's record. its principles and its purposes and languages that none can mistake. nor am i afraid that the democratic party is old and fat. after 150 years, it has been old for a long time. it will never be indolent as long as it looks forward and not back. as long as it commands the allegiance of the young and the hopeful during the dreams and see the visions of a better america and a better world. you will see many people express concern about the continuation of one party in power for 20 years. i don't to be little this attitude. but change for the sake of change has no absolute merit in

itself. the people are wise -- wiser than the republicans think. the democratic party is the people's party. not the labor party. not the employers party. and not the farmer's party. it is the party of no one because it is the party of everyone. [applause] >> i think adlai stevenson's contribution to the country -- he hoped campaigns would educate people and he succeeded. he succeeded in teaching all of us that politics was something all of us should be at involved in. i recently met the governor of indiana, mitch daniels. i said, i am sorry you are not running for the presidency.

he said, why do you say that? i know you are a democrat. i said i learned from my boss adlai stevenson that the best people in both parties should run, not the worst people. i believe that. i think adlai stevenson taught that to all of us. i think that is a legacy to be extremely grateful for. his contribution is enduring today. >> i think historically he is a bridge between the new deal and the new frontier. he holds the banner of liberalism in the 1950's -- a difficult era. it is an interesting brand of liberalism. he believes in american exceptionalism every bit as many of the right do today. it was an exceptionalism that was about ideas and ideals. it was leading by example. it was not an exceptionalism

enforced by military force. he brought a whole generation of young people who were inspired by his words, his example, his approach, his very unorthodox approach to politics. >> we only have a few minutes left. carrie joe from minnesota, we want to hear from you. >> in 1952, i was 13 years old. i was privileged to meet adlai stevenson. he came to the hotel where my mom and dad owned the hotel. i was privileged to wait tables on him. we kids grew up at the hotel. after meeting him, i admired him the rest of my life. i am now 72-years old. i am still just so admiringly this wonderful democratic person.

i am so thrilled that he was a man of morality and he was a band that fought for the working people. we need more adlai stevensons in this world right now. i am just so happy that i met him. >> thank you for that call. let's let you talk to an adlai stevenson. senator? >> the question we are left with is, is an adlai stevenson possible today in this money drenched, corrupt, dysfunctional politics? would he even compete? could he compete for president of the united states going from stand it to stand, raising money for jingles on television, the half-hour blocks of time

would be impossible. i am not sure he would be possible today, let alone a franklin roosevelt. it would not have been physically possible for him. that is why we have created the stevenson center to try to address these systemic weaknesses that might make an adlai stevenson possible. we try as i do in my book to recall all of these values, this history that created this country and contrast them with our politics today. can a politics as corrupt as ours be expected to purify? reform itself? i think that is the issue we are left with. i don't worry about the american people. i have enormous faith in the american people. we are left with a process that represents everybody else. >> senator stevenson, if you

have to go to a store or show your name, do people react? >> some of the old folks -- i was in the store. i was in a store the other day and i saw a young woman looking at my credit card. she was looking at my name. i said, is that name familiar to you? she said, no, but it is cool. i think we are forgotten. i think our politics are largely forgotten as well. this has been a wonderful program to be able to recall another politics, another america. >> please go ahead with your question or comment. >> i would like to ask the group to reflect on an event late in the governor's life. i recently reviewed several hours of the events of november 22, 1963. throughout that afternoon walter

cronkite continuously referred to adlai stevenson visiting dallas a few weeks earlier and being accosted and warning the president not to go there. i researched that and it seemed an airport event -- a woman struck governor stevenson over the head with a placard. it seemed a little bit more than that. i'm wondering if the panel can reflect on that. any regrets from the governor not stressing the -- >> you talked about this earlier. >> very briefly. he had gone to dallas for a united nation event and had been confronted by some angry people including the woman with a sign.

i think he was spat upon and he was struck. he left with a vivid sense of potential dangers that the president might encounter. >> did he call the president and warn him, or was that just a thought? >> i don't know the answer to that. i am sorry. >> senator stevenson, you know the answer? >> my recollection is -- somebody said he was asked if he wanted this woman prosecuted. he said, no, i want her educated. my recollection is that he did not warn the white house. he deeply, deeply regretted it afterwards that he had not. i am sure had he called and described this experience it would have had no effect. he felt very guilty for not

having done more or anything to >> we have time for one more call. i want you to think about, what have we not talked about tonight that we needed to bring out. think about that. we will take this call from philip in fort worth, texas. >> good evening. this is one of the great series that c-span has done. i appreciate it. i grew up in the 1960 election -- i was 12 years old. i was just becoming politically aware. i grew up during the 1950's. while i am a conservative and have always been so, i doubt mr. stevenson and i would have agreed on much, i have been exposed to his speeches, his rhetoric, and a lot of things he said. i am of the opinion that he is one of the last really great political speechmakers in our age. we were speaking a moment ago about jingles and things like that.

i saw him making the speech, he was taking some of it from his notes in the pre teleprompter days. it was not coming off of the paper. he knew what he was saying. it was coming from his heart. i always admired his speechmaking abilities. i just don't see that in our political process today. he had something to say. he took a little time to say it at times. he was a man who knew what he wanted to say and said it well. >> he took great effort in those speeches. he worked on those speeches himself hour after hour. he was criticized by politicians for spending so much time on the speeches. in some ways, that is his legacy. as we wind up the program, i have to say one of the biggest surprises in my life is when he died so suddenly. adlai stevenson iii called me to say we were co-executors' of his will.

anythingt know about it. it was touching. even though he did not win, he won the hearts of millions of americans. he raised the standards. >> at the end of this father's life, it has become a focal our that ambassador stevenson was seriously contemplating resigning from the united nations.

they were opposed to the policies. that is what his sense of his debt. >> i feeding these labels conservative and liberals can be very misleading. why was in the senate, we were not democrats republicans. we were products of the enlightenment. of ideology did not play much of a role. he did not tell this to me. i did hear from a very) that he was planning to resign from the

united nations at the end of the year largely because he was very uncomfortable advocating policies that he did not support. i mean be a non. -- i mean vietnam. he died in july of '65. i think he was planning to resign quietly and no protests. that would not have been his way at all. the cannot continue to do that. >> that will have to be the last word. bloomington, illinois. senator adlai stevenson, thank you. this has been the "the

contenders." >> i say trust the people. trust the decency come in the state. trust them with the great decisions. it is time to take this government away from them. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> with the iowa caucuses next week, c-span series "the contenders" looks back at 14 candidates the ran for president but lost that had an impact. thursday, hubert humphrey. friday, george wallace. then on saturday, george mcgovern followed by ross perot. "the contenders" every night on

c-span. then eric holder speaks on a form on children's exposure to violence. it is followed by a panel of experts on the exposure to violence and what it can have on the community. tomorrow, the road to the white house focuses on the caucuses. a 11:30 a.m., newt gingrich close a meeting. then mitt romney told a meet in agree to discuss jobs in the economy. then ron paul attends a veteran campaign rally at the iowa state fairgrounds in des moines. see it wednesday live starting at 11:30 a.m. eastern here on c- span.

this week, supreme court arguments from this year's session. wednesday, the case looks at whether a person who works for a religious organization files for discrimination. this is all this week on our companion network. >> have you tried the c-span radio application? hear what they are saying. >> it is fast, easy to use and visually appealing. it is also free. it is an awesome application. it took me 10 seconds to learn how to use it. >> as well as all three c-span networks. you can also go to our interview programs.

it is available wherever you are. >> they faced off in a debate on the role of government. callers took place in an event from november. this is one an hour and 30 minutes. >> thank you for coming out tonight. my name is bob redmond. i am the program director. our special program is part of a national series of debates on first principles, presented by demos and the ayn rand institute.

the topic today is government -- what is it proper role? it features david callahan of demos and yaron brook of the ayn rand center. it is moderated by john mckay. coming up, naiomi prinse with a novel set in the great depression. a case for the carbon tax. and what is the economy for anyway?

also coming up is a physicist, the newly-formed watershed opera, a radio theater performance of "miracle on 34th street," and a collaboration between the bushwick book club in seattle rock orchestra. all of that is happening in the next two weeks. it is typical for town hall. if you want to stay in touch, you can find out more at our web site. the best way is to become a member. membership starts at just $35. it provides a discount on books, tickets, and more. best of all, it gives you a feeling you are part of everything we do here, over 350 events a year. we are a member-supported organization. you can pick up a membership card in the lobby or sign up online. tonight's debate will be moderated by a seattle native john mckay, who grew up on capitol hill and attended seattle prep high school and the university of washington. he served as u.s. attorney under george w. bush from 2001 through 2007, when he resigned with eight other u.s. attorneys. following that, he joined the faculty at the university school of law, where he continues to teach.

i want to turn the proceedings over to him now. he will introduce our debaters and tell us exactly how the evening will proceed. please give us a warm town hall welcome. [applause] >> good evening, everyone. it is my privilege this evening to be here at seattle's town hall, here in the great hall, and to welcome you to what is now the fifth in a series of national debates on very important topics.

tonight, we talk about the role of government. our title is government -- what is it good for? that may be a provocative line for our debaters. we are privileged to have with us here tonight david callahan. he is an author. he is a commentator and lecturer. his books, in particular "the cheating culture and the moral center" are tremendous commentaries, worthy of your consideration. he is a graduate of hampshire college and holds a ph.d. in politics from princeton university. to my left is yaron brook of the ayn rand institute, a well- known community advancing objectivism. he is a writer and commentator. we were talking beforehand. we are hoping our debate -- we are not using as a yardstick the presidential debates, just to put you all at these.

what we hope for tonight is engagement on important ideas, important issues. we have two a tremendous protagonists. we are asking all of you to participate. we will have plenty of opportunity and time for questions for all of you for our tremendous debaters. i would like to jump into our discussion tonight. my role will be simply to move this along to various topics, but not to be afraid to linger on important topics, as our debaters and chairman may

determine them to be. if we read from the headlines today, the first issue could only be characterized as failure. i am referring of course to the joint committee looking at the question of the reduction of united states' debt to, and the failure of the joint committee, the analysis failure. that might be a good place to start on what the government is and should be. i'm giving you each an opportunity to open in the context of the question. i want to give each an opportunity to meet. -- to speak. david, we will turn to you first. you make five minutes of an opening statement. >> it is great to be here tonight.

this is my fourth appearance at town hall seattle. as always, i am thankful to the fantastic team that makes these events possible. a town hall is truly one of the best venues for public discussion in the country, and i have been to a lot of them. on one of my previous visits to town hall, i was the only person on the stage. while it is certainly fun to be a monopoly provider like that, i am also looking forward to tonight. the role of government is the central issue of our time and our politics. i am thrilled to be here to make the case for a public sector that is strong, that is effective, and that can advance the common good. let me sketched out the way i see things. for starters, the questions here tonight -- the real question is not what should government be doing, as if government were some autonomous

entity with its own agenda. the real question is what do we, the citizens, want to do through government this is a democracy after all. government is our common tool to get things done. government is us. it is a tool we use when we want to do things that we cannot do as individuals. that we cannot do through the free market. the cannot do through a civil society or charity. the best way to think about government is as a set of public structures that we have built to make society better for everyone. in a great many ways, the story of america's success and prosperity over the past century is a story of how we together have built these public

structures and expanded the role of government to improve our lives. i will talk about a bunch of those good things tonight, but let me flag major and overarching rules for government. first, we use government to protect ourselves. protection is a fundamental role of the state. it goes beyond protecting ourselves from street criminals, or from foreign terrorists. we have also turned to government to protect ourselves from other things, like contaminated food, pollution. americans no longer die in droves from food borne diseases, as they did before the creation of the fda in 1906. we no longer took on the air we breathe in our cities. we also use government to protect ourselves from unscrupulous business practices. the government protect us or should protect us from being ripped off in financial fraud

or exploited by you serious -- usurious lenders, attracted by false and advertising are harmed by dangerous products. government protect us in the workplace. seven years ago, 100,000 workers died every five years on the job, because employers did not care whether they died. that was at a time when there were only 4 million people in the labor force. today, 5000 workers die a year in a labor force which is much larger. fewer americans are dying on our highways since the federal government stepped in to regulate auto safety in 1966. the auto fatality rate has dropped by 400%.

seat belts and air bags, regulated and mandated by government, have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. they want government to play this protective role, but for decades, powerful interests have been working to destroy these protections, often to increase their own bottom line. this helps explain why investors lost trillions of dollars when wall street was allowed to turn into a casino, why so many americans have lost their homes to predatory lending, why so much air pollution persist, causing asthma and heart disease were a government watchdogs are sleeping or have been put to sleep. bad things happen. yet all this bad stuff apparently is not enough. there are politicians trying to strip away even more of these protections, trying to kill the fda, the epa, and osha > a second major role for

government -- again, a role we have chosen together as citizens -- is to help build a stronger economy and ensure prosperity for everyone. capitalism is a great system for creating wealth. but it can also be a phenomenally harsh and brutal system. it allows some people to live like kings and others to start on the street. it can be a very unstable system, prone to booms and busts. this is not the kind of society

americans want. we believe in economic freedom. we want to use the market and business to build wealth, to realize our dreams. but we also believe in mutual obligation and taking care of each other. as a society, ideally we try to manage capitalism through government to get the best of both worlds, to get the prosperity and the freedom, but also the fairness and the security. we have not been doing that very well lately. we have not been getting the best of both worlds in that way, because government has been too weak. the evidence is everywhere around us. to many americans live in poverty. to many americans are unemployed. t 00 many do not have health care and cannot afford college. all of this at a time when the top 1% have more wealth than the bottom 90% of americans put together. that is not ok. it is not the kind of country you want to live in. it is not the country the founders envisioned. we can do better, and government offers us a way to do better together. i am going to come back to the super committee question.

>> may i ask you about the context of your remarks? you have talked about the weakness of government. it seems in the joint select committee, an enormous amount of power seemed to float into that committee, but it has been a failure. when you say the government is weak, would we strengthen something that, when given power, seems to fail? "super committee was a failure because the republican party has been taken over by anti- government ideologue's, who will not raise taxes under any circumstances despite the fact that taxes are at their lowest level in 60 years as a percentage of gdp, and we are facing the retirement of the boomers. that is what the super committee failed.

it is not the problems of government structurally. it is about the republican party has lost its line. -- lost its mind. [applause] >> let me turn to mr. bork in the context of your opening statement, to address the failure. we want to give you an opportunity to open as well. >> i would be happy to. this is my first appearance at the town hall. thank you for inviting me. hopefully, it will not be my last. you will have to let me know afterwards. i feel like david is more at home and i am, but i would like to be an home. >> you are very welcome here. >> i would also like to thank demos, and our moderator for being willing to moderate this discussion. i want to take a step back a little bit. i think we will get into all the different concrete issues that david has brought up. i am eager to comment on all of them, but probably will not get a chance to comment on even half of them. i would like to take a step back to ask the more fundamental question.

why do we need government? what is it for? is there something unique about this country and the experiment that is america? because i believe there is. i believe in the 18th-century, the thinkers of the time, and the founding fathers in particular, faced a crucial turning point in american history. they had to decide who each one of our lives belongs to. is your life the property of a king? is your life the property of a tribe? the property of a group? the collective? in democracy? is your life the property of someone else? because that is the way human beings have been living forever. before 1776, you as an individual did not count.

you did not. you are responsible to some other entity above and beyond you as an individual. but the enlightenment did, and what the founding fathers established, is the first country in human history where there was not true. the country was established with the idea that your life belongs to you, not to the king, not to your neighbor, not to any group. it does not matter. your life is not owned by the tribe. it is yours. it is yours to live as you please. the founding fathers -- this country was established on a moral principle of individualism. on the idea that we are autonomous entities that have a moral right to our own life, a

moral right to our own ideas, a moral right to pursue our own happiness, and infringed by majorities, by codes, by anybody. how do we live a life like that? hundley fulfill that individualism? how do we live in a society where everybody is pursuing their own interest in a harmonious way? the founders, following john locke, had a concept called individual rights.

the idea was if you live your life the way you wanted to live it, pursuing your own values, your own happiness, that was ok, as long as you did not use force against neighbor, as long as you did not impede your neighbors' ability to do the same. we all have this right to pursue our dreams, our happiness, our values. but we need an entity to prevent us from using force against one another. we know throughout human history, unfortunately, we are a pretty bloody race. people use force all the time. that is what this particular government was instituted to do -- to protect us from a neighbor who might decide to steal our stuff, to defraud us, to take stuff away from us. that is the role of government -- to protect our right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. that implies a very small government. that requires a government that just does these things -- military, judiciary -- and

leaves us alone otherwise, leaves us alone to live our lives. once a government starts doing all the things david would like them to do, they have to start infringing on my rights. let's say there is a really good cause out there. people need more health care. people are not getting the bill -- the best health care that could otherwise get. there are only two options ultimately to get me to help them. one is to ask. that is the system i like, a voluntary system where my rights are respected, where i get to make the choice of who to help and who not to help, under what conditions to help them, under what conditions not to help them. the only other choice is to force me to do it. and that is a violation of my rights.

that is a violation of my right to life. that is taking property away from me and using it in a way i do not want to use it, or that i have not chosen to use it. and that is fundamentally wrong. it is wrong when we do it to each other. but call it stealing. it is equally wrong when we get a group of people in the room and vote 51% to take my money away. it is still stealing. it is still wrong. it is still a violation of my rights. it is still the government the founding fathers warned us against, a government that tries to tell people how to live, what to do with their money, could to help and who not. my approach to this issue is very simple. government should do one thing only and do it really well. it should be as big as a means to be to do this one thing, and that is to protect individual

rights. everything else, all the wonderful things david might have for society, should be achieved or not by a voluntary association, individuals pursuing their own life and their own happiness. in terms of the super committee -- >> a failure, perhaps. >> in my view, the failure is not the failure of the super committee. it is the failure of 100 years of a mixed economy that has brought us to the brink of bankruptcy, administration after administration spending money on things the government should never have spent money on to begin with. the failure is spending money we do not have. the notion government should be able to borrow all the time, as much as they want, which leads to greece. it leads to chaos.

it leads to the violation of each one of our rights to live our life in the best way that we choose to live our life. the system we have today is the system of autocrats dictating how and what and where we should live. and yes, in some very narrow field, you could aggregate the numbers and say somebody is better off. but what if i am not better off? i do not accept the right of the government to dictate that. the super committee is a technicality. they failed. it is funny to blame it on republicans when the problem really -- >> would you blame both parties? >> republicans are awful. republicans got us to this point, right? the bush administration was one of the great disasters of a 20th-century. >> could we answer democrats

into the response as well? the you have the same antipathy to the democrats? >> i have a great antipathy toward the democrats. >> i did not want to leave them out. >> certainly would not want to do that. >> my view is that the problem in washington is spending and too much regulation. if the only solution is to cut, cut, cut and reduce the size and the scope, it significantly the scope, of government. -- you cannot do that by raising taxes. there is stuff you can do with taxes. we can talk about that. >> we will come back. death and taxes will come to all of us. but i would like to turn to davis -- david. we have heard a very narrow view of government, and a dramatic clash between our speakers, which is exactly what we hoped for. yaron mentioned the philosophy of government, the philosophy of our founding fathers, "and john locke, who famously said

our rights are life, liberty, and property, followed by thomas jefferson, who replaced the word property with, one might argue, "the pursuit of happiness." i am wondering if you have a comment on the basic view toward government in our society. is it a property right? is there a narrow view of government? is that the government came to be as we know it in the united states? >> i think government should be what americans want it to be through our democracy and the social contract. i think americans strongly support, for the most part, the government we have -- strong support for social security and medicare. strong support for a role in environmental protection. strong support for the fda and its role in protecting us

against bad food and drugs. strong support for food stamps, unemployment, and other key elements of the social safety net. strong support for investing in infrastructure. strong support for having government paperwork role in investing in science and ensuring we keep up in global competition. we have the government americans want. this is not some kind of autocrat dictating to us how your money should be used. we, as a democratic society, have made these choices. >> yaron says there is one aim of government. you said there were too. he said the governor should be there to protect us. there might be common ground in your first element and his. i am unclear as to your second point. you said that it was to address the question of capitalism.

i took it to mean the government should manage capitalism. am i wrong? >> absolutely. >> what is the disagreement in terms of the protection element between you and yaron? >> i believe in a more expansive role, as do most americans, for government protecting us from a bunch of things. not just from street criminals. not just from hard terrorists. frankly, whether or not i lose money because my house is burglarized or lose money because my financial investor rips me off because the securities and exchange commission has been downsized does not matter to me. i have still lost the money. whether i die because i am murdered or whether i die in a workplace accident because my employer is cutting corners does not matter.

i want protection, as do most americans, from a range of dangers that exist in modern society. >> to americans need to be protected in that way? >> no. this is the difference. i view force as unique, something very different. it is something people inflict on one another. it is the one enemy of human life. in my view, to be successful in life, to prosper as human beings, what we need is to be free to use our minds, to think, to reason, to solve problems, to engage with reality, choose between a variety of options, make decisions. we need to be free. when you have a gun stuck to the back of your neck, you are not thinking. you are doing what the guy says. the one thing that obstruct our ability to think, and therefore to be successful, is force. in my view, force is unique. it is not like cancer. it is not like a virus. it is not like voluntarily taking on a risk that maybe somebody else would not.

i believe people should be able to take their own risks. force is unique, and i want to banish it. the only thing i want from the government is to ban it. the example david dave is a little fuzzy. we both believe the government has a role to play in catching fraud. if there should be an s.e.c., it has only one job. that is to catch bernie madoff. the reason it cannot do that job is because it is monitoring every transaction i make. i have to file loads of paperwork. i am an honest guy. i am not cheating. i am no court in advance. they are just waiting to catch me. they are so flooded with a million forms that they do not have time to catch the real crux. we both agree the crux of -- i think.

>> what about catching the ceo of world,, who committed fraud. >> that is the job of the police, however you want to call it. catching crooks, catching people who defraud other people, is clearly the role of government. the role of government is not to look over my shoulder to tell me what kind of transaction i can and cannot engage in, how many shares i can or cannot buy, who can sit on a board and who cannot, and who can invest in stuff. when it is force, and i include fraud under force, the government has a legitimate role to play. but there is a fundamental difference between harm that occurs to us -- for example, safety. the notion is that safety came from government. all the statistics show that safety improves in an industry dramatically. the government puts in regulations. that reduces the rate of improvement. safety makes sense from a proper perspective. i know it is a shock to people who have never been in business. it is not a profitable activity

to kill your employees. it is not. [applause] >> before you proceed, the statement has been made by david, and i want to give you the opportunity to expand your comment. you talk about our financial system. he has suggested that capitalism needs to be managed. would you care to comment on that statement? we will give david an opportunity to expand as well. that is a different concept than protection. would you like to address that? >> obviously i am against it. i think government should only

do one thing. it should not be doing this. >> you do not see capitalism as a threat to individuals in any way? >> i see it as a contract. i believe it is a protection that causes the harm, not capitalism. i know a little bit about the financial crisis. i can address that. why did we have a financial crisis? this banking system is the most regulated business in the united states. capitalism and the mortgage business -- where? it was completely subsidized, completely controlled.

how many of you own your own home up right? thank you. all of you guys are subsidizing my mortgage. the government is everywhere in these industries. it is no accident that three of the most regulated industries in the united states led to a major collapse. the regulations caused the collapse. it is the regulations, the attempt to control a voluntary, healthy win-win interaction between participants and the marketplace which causes those transactions to become lose- lose, which causes the risk behavior you saw during the financial crisis. that is what causes the problem. that is not the solution to a problem. we never blame the regulators. we never been in the regulations. the last 100 years, we have always blamed the so-called free market, even when there is no sign of a free market in the banking space. anyone can see it. >> on this concept of managing capitalism, if one turns to the demos website, there is a statement supporting the occupy wall street movement.

can you tie that together in terms of managing capitalism? >> fundamentally, the occupy wall street movement is about taking on the excessive economic inequality that has grown up in this society. and it has grown up because starting a couple of decades ago we decided to take in more hands-off approach to the economy. we did not intervene as structural trends started to siphon more wealth and upward. globalization. technological change. not only did we not intervene to defend the middle class in the face of those trends, but we made situations worse in washington by lowering taxes on the rich, by making it easier for the people on wall street and the ceo's to make these huge fortunes by lifting compensation got out of control.

this is, i think, what occupy wall street is fundamentally protesting against. unless we manage capitalism, it does have a tendency to concentrate wealth at the very top of our society. that i think is fundamentally incompatible with american values. this is an egalitarian society apart. we need to intervene through our collective tool of government to preserve that egalitarian spirit in the face of an economic system that has total disregard for it. >> if one were to look at some of the photographs of the tea party movement, you will occasionally see a sign that would relate to the ayn rand institute. what does objectivism have to do with the tea party movement, if any? would you like to comment on the occupied -- occupy movement? >> i have a lot of sympathy for the tea party movement. i think it is very confused. it is, to some extent, impotent. it does not have a real agenda.

it knows what it does not want, and i am with them. they do not want big government. how they get there, they have no clue or plan. that is unfortunate. it is a huge missed opportunity. the fact that americans stood up and said enough is enough, to me is a wonderful thing. many of those people took inspiration from "atlas shrugged." occupy wall street is a very different movement. it is not about shrinking government. it is about expanding government. it is supposedly against cronyism. they are not against cronyism. that are against cronyism they do not like, wall street cronyism. i did not see signs that objected to the auto bailout. that are not against subsidized solar energy. they are for their types of

subsidies and corporate engagement with government. i would like to see government completely disengaged. i would like to see government stop subsidizing all business. this won't happen. if i had any position of power, the first thing i would do would be eliminate all tax subsidies to business. get the government out of business school. get them out. lower corporate tax rates dramatically and slowly phase out all the regulations. absolutely, government should not be involved in any of that stuff. i sense about occupy wall street is that they are very much -- in terms of inequality, this issue of wealth inequality.

now, i do not have a position on wealth inequality. i do not know what is right -- and i do not think david knows. i do not know what is the right inequality of wealth. i do know that inequality is a good thing. i do not think we should all be equal. tall people would have to have their legs cut off. >> let's give david a chance to comment on that. >> on the question of what is the right amount of inequality, there is no absolute answer to that. i think it would be a good thing if we lived in a society where all boats rose together, which was the case for most of the early post-war decades.

the rich got richer, made a lot of money, but the middle class rose, the working-class rose. starting in the 1970's, we entered a different kind of economy in which only the costs -- gots really went up. the income of the top 100% have grown by almost 300% since 1979 while the incomes of middle- class and working-class have barely moved at all. that is not the kind of society we want to live in and that is the kind of situation we get when we have an unregulated form of capitalism, when we take a hands-off approach. i think we need to do something about that if we're going to retain our egalitarian democracy. remember, inequality of income and wealth always translates into inequality of political power. people with money and wealth can easily translate those resources into a bigger say in our democracy, and that is not compatible with the values of this country. [applause] >> so, i said i do not know what the right mix is, but i know how to get there.

how to get there is freedom, is leaving people alone, is getting the government out of picking winners and losers and getting the government out of leaving some to falter while helping others. let people be rewarded based on what they produce, not based on what some bureaucrat thinks they deserve. >> let me put the question directly to david. is government pose a role to redistribute wealth? >> absolutely -- government's role to redistribute wealth? >> absolutely, yes. we do it through social security and medicare, which

enjoys wide public support. we do it through education. redistribution is a fundamental role of government. the last time we had a situation like yaron describes is 100 years ago before the income tax, before the regulations of government. what did that society look like? it was in effect an oligarchy. that is what we will get again if we try to go back in that direction. >> this is completely rewriting history. >> robber barons? >> from 1800-1850, average incomes in united states doubled. gdp per capita grew from the civil war to 1913 at the highest rates of human history. at the same time, the united states was absorbing millions and millions of the poorest of the poor from all over the world. freedom works.

was there disparity of wealth? absolutely. i am not against that. i think that is wonderful. if some people are making huge amounts of money, that means that we value the services we're providing. how do you make money in a free market? not today, were some people make it by getting subsidies from the government. you make it the way microsoft made money, by selling a product that people value. and you benefit from the service that product provided your life. good for bill gates. he worked to the max. he lived his life to the fullest. and at the same time, at the same time, he made all of our lives better and that has made him a lot of money. [applause] >> let me ask you, -- >> microsoft employees here in seattle. >> let me ask you, should the government role be to promote disparity in wealth?

>> know, the government is neutral. this is the radical position i take. let me just address one thing. he is right. america notes -- america wants what it once. this is not a debate about popularity. nobody likes i'm advocating for, but i am right. and believe in the separation of government from economics. i do not believe the government's should be involved in distributing wealth, managing capitalism. if you want to be a socialist, you can, as long as you can convince other people to go and live with you and a commune. if you want to bail at detroit, get a bunch of people together, pull your money and go bailout detroit.

>> is it important to have significant wealth disparity as a product of society? >> if it is a product of freedom, then yes. i am a strong believer that equality is an evil gold. the regime that came closest to achieving equality was in cambodia. they killed 40% of their population in the killing fields. who among you is equal? i do not believe in equality. i think it is an evil idea, an awful idea. when the founders talked about equality, they talk about equality for the law. in those days, if you were an aristocrat and you were accused of murder, the aristocrat on a much lighter sentence. what the founding fathers objected to was that kind of inequality.

the government should treat everybody the same. the marketplace is going to treat us all different because we bring different things to the marketplace. that is what makes it fun. >> i think we have our clash in terms of what the role of government might be, at least in terms of outcomes relative to wealth. let me turn to a point on which i think i perceive some agreement between our debaters, and that may be the role of the government in regards to national security. if you wish to throw in law enforcement, i would invite you to do that as well. this is it the that the one thing government should do is keep us safe. does that mean that you favor significant, even massive increases in our military budgets? >> i think we would both agree that government has a major role to play a national security.

we may even agree on the size of resources needed for that. >> should we increase it? >> at this point, clearly we need to reduce our military obligations. in fact, that is already going to happen under the budgetary deals reached by congress in august and also through the trigger agreement. we're looking at defense cuts of about $1 trillion over the next decade. i think that makes sense. we've been fighting two wars abroad. we need to turn to domestic challenges and we need to really focus on the economic challenges that we face to compete with the likes of china, brazil, india. it is a jeer-economic game, and we need to be more effective -- geo-economic game, and we need to be more effective at that

game. >> i certainly think it can be cut. i believe the military should serve one purpose and one purpose only. there is the theme here, right? that is to protect the lives and property of america. i do not believe we should be building democracies. i do not believe we should be helping the south koreans defend themselves when they do not want as helping them defend themselves. i believe the role of the u.s. military is to defend america. somebody attacks us, we should go find them, crush them, and come home. i do not think we need to build anything that breaks or rebuild anything that breaks. i believe in the military that is lean and mean in the sense that it does what is necessary, whatever is necessary, to protect the life and property of american citizens. >> we want to move soon to the point in which we involve all of you and the questions for our speakers, our debaters this evening. i want to turn his back before we do that to the question of why we have government in the first place.

i think is a fascinating question. each of you have touched on it. how are we supposed to evaluate the effectiveness of our government? whatever its size may be? and if i may be permitted an editorial comment, i think it is fair to say that if you ask americans today what is their view of the success, not what it should look like, but the success of government, you have a very poor response. people see dissension, dissension in politics, a lack of commitment at least even in the words to the pursuit of the common good but rather the acquisition of power. it seems to be a great infirmity in government today, at least that is how i think much of the public use it. what is the metric, from your different points of view, on how government can be successful? you mentioned the gross product of our country.

what is the output of our country? i think you could go to other parts of the world and they might choose a different kind of determinant for whether or not government is successful. is government successful when it promotes happiness? if that is true, how is it defined? is it common good, a financial success? is it the degree to which people can engage in leisure time? what is the metric of government success? >> i think that is a good and tough question. i think for too long we have been measuring the success of our society through narrow economic indicators. gdp is the dominant indicator we are always using to look at how things are going. taking the need to move beyond that to create indicators which capture how people's qualities of life are, and that involves a number of different things. involves how much time they have for leisure, the strength of communities, the cleanliness of the environment.

demos has a project right now called beyond gdp in which we are looking at these kinds of alternative indicators. bhutan famously has the gross national happiness. i think that is going in the right direction. one thing government can do is the instigator of some of those new indicators and create the kind of data necessary to major our progress. in terms of how you measure the met tricks -- necessary to measure our progress. in terms of how you measure the metrics themselves, that is difficult to do.

many americans in the abstract art disenchanted with government, but when you ask them about the particular things government does, they like it. they like social security. they think government has been very successful in ensuring retirement for older people, injuring the seniors have access to medical care. the allied governments -- ensuring that the seniors have access to medical care. they like the government's role in keeping the miming clean. today, under 10% of seniors live in poverty. that is a remarkable success for the war on poverty that has so often been derided. >> is there a metric for happiness? we have gross domestic product, we have a gross national happiness scale being proposed by others around the world. i fear that your answer may involve something more like well, the less the government does, the happier we are, but i want to invite you to offer a metric for government, even in a very limited view, what would be in metric for