their highest appointed positions as women. this is somethingthis is somethr romney and i did in massachusetts when we were in office. it is fairly easy to do if the infrastructure is in place to provide you with the names of interested, qualified women to fill the slot so it is an easy process. we reached out across the country. the person who did it best is right here with us today, tracy under in connecticut. she is now the model for this approach around the nation. we hope to replicate that and inspire other states to follow that, and to inspire and pressure governors to participate in this, because nothing is simpler than to elevate women to appointed posts where they're qualified. we know that there are plenty of qualified women out there to fill those posts.

we have a few minutes left for questions, and i know we have some questions coming off the internet. yes. >> judy woodruff with the pbs newshour. one of the things that certainly has marked this congress is the gridlock. on one issue after another, it seems that while there has been some cooperation, clearly there has also been a lot of disagreement on one issue after another. could one or two of you speak about the difference you think it would make to have more women? what issues could change in the congress if more women were elected. for example, the debt ceiling. >> i will open a little -- i will open by talking a little about process. in massachusetts, i found it was very easy to get legislation passed if you could reach out across the aisle and ignore the fact that perhaps you

have idealogical differences on every other issue, but find the one issue you agree on. people are different. you will find many different concerns on both sides of the aisle. really, if you are willing to reach out, get to know people, get to know their interests and view them as people, not as the opponent, you're very likely to be able to find someone on the other side of the aisle who shares your concern about a particular thing. we are trying to model that behavior today. well probably the members of the leadership team disagree about just about everything, except that we are all concerned that there are not more women participating in the highest levels of government. we're trying to come together with that one issue. we're hoping the part of the learning process can be that these kinds of collaborations' can occur with dignity and respect. also that the women who come up through this process will see

this and will be more open to collaboration across the aisle. but i will let others talk to specific topics. >> research shows that women, over and over again, are far more likely to reach across the aisle. the perfect example in the u.s. senate was olympia snowe and susan collins in the health care bill. i think we would not have these gridlock situation is with more women in the congress. >> we did have the motivation is different. when women run, they often run to solve a problem or because there prompted to advance an issue. that in and of itself suggests a different approach to why they are there. so, we know, and sam is right,

but i think the recent famous collaboration between susan collins and kingston chiller brand in the senate -- a houston -- kirsten gillebrand in the senate, they said if they would give it to us, we could get it done and go home. it is almost a challenge. i think they say, we know how to do this. we know how to set the other step aside. some of it comes from motivation, but a lot of it comes from state legislators. the women in the state legislators will tell you that they go out in the hall, grab someone from another party and say let's fix this. they are purposeful in a different way. has to do with substance and it has to do with just getting the job done.

it comes in part from women's sense of multitasking. it is not the only thing they have to do. they have to get it done and get on with the day. >> that seems like a perfect way to close this session. i would like to end with my most sincere thank you. >> sincerely. >> yes, most sincere is very strong for me. my most sincere thank you for convenience. this is a gift for all of us and to the women of america. thank you very much. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> if anyone has any questions they would like to stay and ask, i'm sure we can answer them. we had a c-span ending time, but i do not want to cut off questions. >> i am with the voice of russia radio.

talking about the issue of campaign finance and women running is always a hard problem when a lot of times women do not have the financial wherewithal that many of the men candidate to be even get into politics have. when you talk about starting a pipeline for particularly young women, women of color, some who have not been as enfranchised as the men they're going to be running against, can you talk about the issue of money and reaching out to those who never thought that they should run. >> we have found and research has shown that women, in the same way they win incomparable races to men, they raise money -- they win in comparable rates two men, they raise money in comparable rates of two men. stepping up and asking for

money for yourself is tough. women tend to come from professions that are not as many as men, so their networks are not as money to -- are not as moneied as men said their networks are not as moneyed. i talk to women who say i cannot ask for that money. i say you're not asking to redo your kitchen or go on vacation. you are asking to go to the state legislature or washington, d.c., in order to represent the interests of your constituents and their interests when you are elected. that is an important hurdle, i think, for a lot of women, but i think it really speaks to the issue that we see and hear from

women, that women who are in state legislators feel it was harder for them to raise the money than their male colleagues feel it was for themselves. >> that is why i brought up the point of being entrepreneurial. when you are a candidate, you are the business. you are the product that has to be marketed. to be entrepreneurial, you have to start off with capital. in politics, that is money. that is when you -- that is why it is important to have women in a network like this. you can start building and financial product line -- pipeline, because as we all know, money runs politics. you could be the best candidate, but if you are underfunded, people do not think you are serious. you do not have the ability to have the same presence as others. repetition creates reality. if you have money, you can go

out there and create whatever narrative you one. -- you want. in congress, people will send out mass mailings. there is a restriction now that economic do it every 90 days, but it could be an intimidation factor to keep people from running against you. this person has already spent $100,000 and i do not even have the money to file. it is absolutely important to be entrepreneurial, and do not be apologetic. >> let me just add because people get funding from different sources, i work at the kennedy school. i teach at harvard, and there has been some important research on the reluctance of women to negotiate.

it is like this. the gender gap. but as soon as you tell them, you can negotiate for more when you take this test. you could ask for more, negotiate for more, but it will go to someone who needs it, the gender gap disappears. if you can tell women, go out and ask for money because you are asking for this cause. it will come through you as a political leader, but it comes through the causes you care about. >> you are asking people. the money is attached to people and not everybody has the same level of access at the beginning to people with money.

part of the leadership development process is also really around how do we expand our ecosystem. how do we expand our network so that we actually have access to the people in a way, in addition to actually developing the wherewithal to do it. >> that is a great point. i would like to get to an on- line question. it says, is there another group in addition to political party that might have similar interests in getting people from different parties to work together? >> we have some reorganizations. i will tell you that in your the dicks so many organizations. i will tell you that -- we have so many organizations. one of them is the head of the christian coalition. i do not know if you can get any further right.

>> as a conservative, i can tell you that you cannot get for their right. >> the point i will make when we have that conversation is, i do not know what else we might agree on. do you want to increase the number of women in politics? i have worked internationally a lot. two different women from sweden who were in their seventies told me years apart -- they were in the group that broke in in the year of the women in sweden. they were like 12%. they said that as the number

increased to 20%, 30%, finally 40%, that they themselves, the same women, they said i dressed, i acted, i voted differently as that number increased. it is very hard to judge how women are ultimately going to break through. -- how they're ultimately going to break through the grid lock. that is why we have to get them in. >> we have another question that came in online. i would like to direct this to gloria if she would be kind enough to respond. it says why is it that even countries that are not as prosperous as america have more women in office? what are the stumbling blocks? >> well, we know the stumbling blocks for women running are that they are not asked, and perhaps in many other countries where women are in on the front lines of a lot of social changes

happening, they're put in positions where they know they need to run. they are not asked enough. going to your question, there is an institutional perception in both parties that women are right out of the gate and not as viable as men, they will not be able to raise the money to the way men can raise money. so you have very serious institutional blockades in place for women in this country, and that is exacerbated even more for women of color. the bias almost doubles against women of color. those are some of the most concrete stumbling blocks that we see in this country. >> there are a hundred countries in the world have a quota of some sort, sometimes constitutional, sometimes in the electoral law, sometimes the political party. in the political party, if you

have a quota that at least one- third have to be women, you have to say one out of the top three has to be a woman, one out of the next three, etc. >> do you want to go first? >> collaboration at work. >> i was just going to add that one of the things that has hurt women in this country within the state legislative level has been term limits. term limits were instituted, and one of the goals of term limits was that we were going to get rid of those incumbents and create a lot of open seats, and we would see women come flooding in. in fact, what happened is we term limited in about 15 states, and the women got term limits should just like the men,

but the recruitment process did not change. the same old, same old was getting included, which did not include women. that has really hurt us. there are some advantages and other countries like quotas that have helped women, but some structural things that have hurt women here in the united states. >> this is a curious thing. when we say other countries, many of the reasons other countries have a larger proportion of women is because they have either party requirement for a quota, or they have a constitutional requirement. in the u.s., we say that explains it, as if gender were not significant.

we need to understand that 100 other countries represent the incredible bind of women's participation, so they make it a lot. it is us, we have to make that happen. we will never did that requirement here, but it is the statement of the value of what we contribute. >> we are of prescribing an issue of political will. it is the definition of political will. our country, unlike others, has not even announced that political will. what we have to do is mechanisms like this to create the momentum, the energy, the collaboration to make it become a reality. and it does boil down to political will. the body of gender is not recognized in this country yet. >> i would like to thank our roundtable participants, the members who came so far to be

with us today for this historic announcement. thank you all for coming. we do like the last word? >> always. i think i am going to repeat what i said at the beginning, that one of the differences that research shows between if you ask women or men about why to run, mins a very lofty things. i knew when i was 10 that i could be a leader, or i have always had this dream. one of the best? do you remember those slogans? they will talk about why they can do such a good job. women have a whole different narrative. they will say, i have a child with diabetes. do you know little money is going into childhood diabetes? i work in a homeless shelter

for my church. we can solve this. i think of this not in terms of go, women. i think it in terms of the united states of america, and how the whole world looks at us. when they see us failing, when they see the dropout rate in our schools, the problems we have with crime and drugs, that has a ripple effect around the world. we can do better than that. it is not about quotas. we are allergic to quotas. it is about finding other ways. i am so proud of the people here who have joined in together. thank you, thank you, thank you. and thank you to our media friends for being with us. [applause]

>> for more resources in the presidential campaign, you can go to c-span.org and read the latest from candidates, political reporters and from social media sites. >> a tomorrow, a look at the current tax rate on a private equity income earned by executives. then, a discussion about the stock online piracy pact and protect intellectual property

act. then, a discussion about federal government funding. that is light at 7:00 a.m. eastern, here on c-span. >> mr. speaker, the president of the united states. >> it tuesday night, president obama delivers his state of the union address. live coverage begins at 8:00 eastern, including the president's speech and the republican response by mitch daniels. that's live on c-span and c-span radio. on c-span2, you can watch this speech with tweets from members of congress. >> now, a look at the 2012 presidential campaign with analysis from president obama's former communications director.

from the u.s. conference of mayors winter meeting, this is about one hour. >> i wanted to have a thoughtful discussion about the presidential and congressional elections. our collective concern is that the silence is deafening about the state of american cities. every year when we present the economy's report, it seems members of congress are living on some other planet.

they don't realize 90% of the gdp is generated in the are cities. 85% of the jobs created this year will be created in our cities. if we just talked about 10 cities, the 10 top cities in america, we are talking about an economy the size of france. if you talked about -- we are talking about an economy that would be the third largest economy in the world. it would be a $5 trillion economy, double the size of france. just the three largest metropolitan areas, you are talking about an economy the size of france. you would never know that talking to congress. getting the candidates to focus on domestic and metro parties is

important. getting them to think about and talked about and do something about infrastructure and the ongoing crisis, job creation, these are that issues we are here on. we had an opportunity to meet with president obama at the white house to discuss some of these priorities. by the major republican candidates to be with us -- but it is a busy on the campaign trail. i think they are in south carolina. to help us understand where this election is going, we have invited some of the nation's top political experts to from the current event -- to from the current debate. we have with us steve schmidt, the senior campaign strategist in john mccain campaign in 2008. he's a friend of mine and

someone who is -- to has advised my very close friend, the governor i work with, governor schwarzenegger. i also extremely pleased we have with us a needed done, who served as the senior communications strategist for president obama and the campaign and the white house. we are most fortunate to have at our moderator today, the chief white house correspondent for politico. he came to political from time magazine, where he was there white house correspondent. prior to that he spent years at the "washington post" where he covered president bush paused first term and the campaigns of 2000. they have been in the thick of things for a long time and have the scars to prove it. i know they will lead us in a

very meaningful discussion. >> thank you for having us. [applause] thank you for the honor of talking to you. we -- it is a great honor to talk to you because here in washington, we can talk all we want, but you and your colleagues have to do it. the last time i saw the mayor, he was in spandex. you will be happy to know it was not on "meet the press." we were both in aspen and we were doing a hike with lance armstrong. they have a hike and you went all the way to the peak. it did you get to ride the gondola back? he did it up and back.

it's a good time to be in washington. we're going to start with breaking news most of you have seen on your device in the last few minutes about texas gov. rick perry. he said he is going to pull out of the presidential race today and endorse newt gingrich. right into to plunge that. there's a debate at 8:00 tonight. 5:00, real time on cnn. how does rick perry's exit affect the chessboard? i tend to leave the prognosticating to the people in know about that party.

ande's a to our debates they were scheduled to have six or seven candidates and now you have four hours and didn't -- yet for kent it's an interesting dynamic in that santorum and gingrich are fighting with each other to be the romney alternative and yet they both have to take romney on directly. romney coming off what is arguably his weakest debate performance of the entire election cycle and he has become a very good debater, much better than he was in 2008. then you have ron paul to chart his own course at all of these debates. >> that was nice. [laughter] >> but frankly, he tends to do well in terms of his supporters because he is very clear and very straight forward and does not sound like a typical politician. i'm going to kick this to steve to get his analysis. >> for much of the year, this

has become the greatest reality show on television. if you look at the cast of characters who have run for president, some of them have fallen away, it has been an interesting process to watch. you have a number of balls in the air right now. we may find out today that rick santorum actually won the iowa caucuses. if the new cycle becomes rick santorum pulled ahead, that a further loss of momentum and altitude for mitt romney, who i think is having one of the toughest weeks he has had over the course of the primary election with the tax story, which i think was not handled particularly well by governor romney, and by the gingrich resurgence. he was down and on his back and

he appears to be up. there's going to be a controversial interview that takes place with his ex-wife this evening on abc and who knows what is going to come out of that. we're going to see the realization of hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. it will be an interesting dynamic over the next 24 hours. conventional wisdom is mitt romney will be the nominee. i think anyone you talk to who has been around campaigns believes that. i think the white house is preparing to run against romney

and i think newt gingrich is utterly implausible as a potentially victorious candidate in a general election cents. he has been incredibly erratic over the course of the campaign. one moment he's not going to attack his opponent, the next minute they are liars and looters. one moment he is the conservative candidate, the next his rhetoric is identical to people who could be carrying signs in the occupied wall street movement. it will be interesting to see what the outcome of south carolina is because ron paul will stay in this race until the last primary is over. he will pull somewhere between 18% to 25% of the vote. all the way through. he is not running for president. he is running to advance an idea and change the trajectory and discussion of american

politics to mainstream debt issues he cares about and he's doing an effective job. i think he has initiated what is going to become a big debate on national security issues in the republican party. saturday will be an interesting race and if mitt romney wins, the nomination fight will be effectively over. >> how much does he have to win by? >> he just had this to win. expectations were so low going in that it was never a must-win state. it has always been a determinative state in republican politics back to 1980. if he wins, it will begin to shut down whether santorum or gingrich gets out of the race or not. he will be well on his way to be the nominee. if not, he is likely to be that nominee but florida will be a painful weekend you will have a

long break before super tuesday and everyone will stay in the race. >> i need it is an adviser to president obama. steve says we are looking at an obama-romney race. how does that look to you? >> i think the president's campaign has always anticipated a tough and close race regardless of who the nominee was and in reality, most of the republican candidates who are running have ended up taking relatively similar positions on almost all the major issues, whether they are social issues. some of them came later in their careers than others. but they have all ended up in the same place, whether their social or fiscal issues. we have always anticipated from

an issues point of view that we would be running against a nominee who was going to be carrying the banner, like it or not, of these very unpopular policies this republican congress has seen fit to adopt over the last 15 months. as much as they would like to escape that, they will have that. in terms of moving forward, i think that one of the things i found interesting is in 2008, our prolonged primary process and that making president obama, than candid about, a much stronger candidate. i think the fight against now secretary clinton, against a really tough candidate, and ended up making him a much better candidate than if the process had wrapped up early. i have watched the republican process and i am not convinced this process has made whoever

the eventual nominee is a stronger candidate. the kinds of attacks you are seeing are ones we would have anticipated as the general election at tax -- general election attacks. whether you are -- whether you have spent your entire life at an investment firm or whether there questions around tax equity and whether or not investment income should be taxed the same way that people who work hard for a living and punch the clock should be taxed. this is not a primary process that has been helpful to the eventual nominee. from the president's point of view, he has known he would have a tough race where he would have to defend his record and has to put out a vision of where this country can go moving forward. that process is beginning and what you have seen since august is a president to is clearly stating not just the differences in policy but a very different

vision of what america could be. >> she's pointing out that during the primary process, romney has been pulled to the right on a number of issues and banged up on a few issues. will this make it harder for mitt romney to go up against president obama? >> i agree that there is a difference between the 2008 democratic party primary process and the republican process in 2012. it is basically this -- both barack obama, senator obama and senator clinton were both prepared and qualified to be president of the united states. whomever was going to be the winner of that contest, there was no question they were fit from a character perspective, from an intellectual perspective to take the oath of office. that is not the case with all of the republican candidates.

though it is the case with governor romney. when you are running against people in a primary process who are not possible commander in chief's, it becomes a diminishing experience as opposed to an elevating experience over the course of the debate. i think that's a big piece. i would also say much of the focus has been on the republican primary contest. the big political story over the last six months is though it is glacial, though it is slow, you have seen a steady improvement of the president's approval number from a very dangerous place in the context of trying to get reelected to a place where there is a vulnerability still, but where those numbers are improving into a range where we were in the 2004 bush

campaign. when you talk about the context of a close election, it is important to bear in mind that in 2008, which was the worst republican environment a republican candidate has ever had to run in and a race where we were outspent by $250 million, the president got 53% of the vote and john mccain, in the aftermath of a global economic collapse cut 47% of the vote. all of these messages that you hear, when you hear the republican message, 40% of the american population response to it when you hear the president's message, 47% of the population response to it. there is about 6% of the population that will decide the outcome of the election and it's interesting to see of that group evolves over the course of the next year. >> the reality is we have had

extraordinarily close elections, even 2008 was not by any means a landslide, but people remember it that way. >> president obama got 52.9%. >> 2004, 1996, bill clinton did not get 50% of the vote. he got 49.9%. he did not even get 50% of the vote. this is a very closely divided nation and continues to be and has been for several elections and you will see a very close election unless by some extraordinary set of circumstances that i cannot imagine, the republican party nominates someone who is deemed it an electable by the electorate. >> steve, you have pointed out there has been a glacial but

unmistakable increase in the president's approval rating. something else that matches that description is the economy. the economy is unquestionably getting slightly better. but it is tough to feel. statistics are pointing that way. does that removed a lot of the argument for mitt romney? >> when we set up here and talk about what's coming to happen in elections, we talk about them through the prism of the events that have already occurred. this election is it fundamentally going to be shaped by events that have yet to occur. for example, the euro crisis will have a dramatic impact on what ever nascent recovery american economy is under way. there is also the question of how the american people feel. if you look at the nbc/"wall

street journal" poll, you have 47% of the people who think the country is on the wrong track and is the 93rd consecutive month for people think the country is on the wrong track. >> that is a lot of bush months included in that. >> absolutely. this is the largest survey of its kind in the world public trust barometer. 30,000 people surveyed in 30 countries around the world. the trend is a total collapse of trust in government, not just in the united states. i don't mean this as a partisan statement because it's not. collapse in trust of the government applies to both parties. but you see it occurring globally. unemployment will remain high. people are pessimistic. people do not trust the government. people think the country is headed in the wrong direction. the fundamental challenge for the president in that

environment and all presidents who are incumbents have about a 66% chance of the odds of getting reelected. his challenge is to communicate that tomorrow is going to be better than today. i think his reelection is difficult absent the ability to communicate that because that is what the american people are either fundamentally looking for -- who is going to make this better because the one thing in a closely divided nation where republicans and democrats don't agree a lot is that everybody agrees universally that it is not going in the right direction and these are bad times. when you look at the instability in the congressional elections, we are in a cycle where if there is a 20-seat switch, which is entirely possible, in the house, it would be the first time since the 1950's where you have had a switch is that big.

it's all being fuelled at all this instability in american policy is being fuelled by that long track number and a deep sense of pessimism in the country. that will frame the election. >> steve talks about the president's communications challenge. among the many hats you have one is the president's communications officer. the president is probably one of the best communicators cents or ronald reagan. >> it always a challenge to keep that connection with the american people because you have so many hurdles. steve and i have both been on that side of the wall. the best laid plans can be waylaid easily by events outside your control. having said that, what you have seen it is not only the

beginning of the improvement of the economy, but you have also seen the president since aug. going out and communicating very directly with the american people about what his priorities are and where he wants to take this country and where we are going and how we have to get there and how he will lead us there. the contrast in message since august between the president and the republican candidates has been striking because the republican candidates as a group tend it to have an extraordinarily pessimistic message that has to do with going back and getting rid of this and that. but it is not at all forward- looking in terms of where we go and how we get there. it's a lot of going back to this and getting rid of this and getting rid of that. the president has begun to lay out a very tangible set of

values and visions for the american people in terms of an economy where hard work is rewarded. fundamental values that make this country great to begin with. i think that's going to be a real contrast. next week, he delivers his state of the union and that's the best chance to lay out what his vision will be for the year. as you progress, as challengers, republicans have to make the case against the president and why they are the best replacement. one of the great challenges they have is given at third base is such an angry base and appears to respond best to the candidates who deliver the most of red meat at any given time in terms of contrast with the president. that's a huge challenge.

the president has the ability to criticize the status quo while maintaining an optimistic message. i don't think any republican candidates have been able to strike that balance yet. >> steve made a very fascinating point -- that trust barometer where they do global opinion sampling found a collapse in support for government. this is not just a u.s. issue and it is not a partisan issue. both president obama and president bush seemed uniquely equipped to work across the aisle. why is washington frozen and what would change that? i think it is frozen fundamentally because of the

political violence or the intentions of the other political party in terms of trying to do right by the country are constantly called into question. >> you are one of the chief callers. >> when i was in the business of running campaigns, have done my fair share of it. ronald reagan talked about the fact that in this country, we don't have political enemies, we have political opponents. maybe because they fought against a real existential threat. men like ronald reagan and tip o'neill, while fierce partisan opponents could never look each other -- look at each other through the prism of an emmy. if you talk to people who have been in washington for a long time the social mixing that used

to occur between the lives of democrat and republican members of congress, as we have more women members, that just does not exist anymore. there is very little contact and very little mingling and everybody is geared up to provide content for the cable news entertainment industrial complex which does not reward the reasonable person who goes out and says this is a solution to the problem there was a fascinating charlie rose special. he had the mayor's and there were republicans and democrats. there was a discussion based in pragmatism and reality and people who have to make decisions and run stuff.

i found it so fundamentally detached from what goes on in washington. is an unhealthy process. >> when i worked at the democratic senate campaign committee, as i was listening to the mayor we tried to recruit him to run for senate and he always wisely refused to even have that conversation. we used to say when we were trying to recruit mayors and governors to run for the senate, we would say don't let them talk to former mayors and governors to actually got to the senate because they're all miserable. don't let them do that. people who actually have to do things actually have a very different outlook on politics -- if an issue is debated and

argued about and nothing happens, people move on. it's not a problem because we are talking about it any longer, but you can do that in a city. you've got to do something about. the closer you get to delivering services and being accountable, the better people feel about their government. >> what can change the conditions? >> i believe the voters have to be the first-line of changing this for the very simple reason that right now voters in both parties have been rewarding the most polarizing kind of behavior in the primary process. i think steve would agree that it started with our party back in the democratic wing of the democratic party days. i'm not saying that's a terrible thing, but the reality is

between redistricting and the primary process, it's not just for the presidency, but it's for the legislative office and congress in particular that the activist wings of both parties, thanks in no small part to the fact that campaign finance rules have changed and the internet has given people a portal to democracy which is a wonderful thing, but it also means that the people to make the most noise can often get the most support. voters who say they're sick and tired of the partisan gridlock, voters have to step up and take control of this democracy again. i'm a huge believer that at the end of the day, when voters say they have had enough of this behavior, people will change their behavior, but i don't see

politicians decided absent that. centrist behavior gets penalized and not rewarded at the voting booth. >> if you want to ask a question, stand up. >> bet 2012 election is shaping up to be just as much about the undue influence of lobbyists as the economy. you see this from the rhetoric of occupy wall street to the attack ads from newt gingrich. do you think it is disingenuous you are simultaneously being paid by autumn corporations to lobby against these reforms, specifically on childhood

obesity and predatory for-profit colleges? >> i would like to start by saying i'm not a lobbyist and have never been a registered lobbyist. i do public relations. >> what's the difference? >> i should also say to my friend over here that might cooling-off time from the white house because this president has instituted some of the strongest ethical reforms of any president ever been to i actually don't talk to anybody in this administration about any issue where i am doing public relations for two years after i left the white house. it's not possible to say i'm going to wall off this area. i don't talk to anyone in the white house and i do work with people and nonprofits and corporations. we are in a democracy and there is a dialogue. people have the right to be heard and the fact of the matter is most of the time when i work

with people, they have a story to be told that we tell it. this president has done things that allow my friend over here to say i am a regular visitor to the white house because part of the movement toward transparency to make sure anyone can go on any time and see who is visiting the white house. it sounds like a small thing but it is not. it means there is a greater degree of transparency and accountability. if this white house has, by and large, shutdown the revolving door because people believe the white house cannot lobby this administration on issues they worked on while they were inside the administration. this white house and this campaign do not take money from registered lobbyists. these are not rules congress applies to itself. as we move forward in the political process, one thing you will see is the voters will continue to demand greater transparency from everybody and

if you look at governor romney flagrant on whether he's going to release his tax returns -- a governor on the flailing around out whether he is going to leases tax return, there will not be a choice on transparency because the voters will expect of them. >> let me just say for future questions, i would like to start with the mayor -- >> go ahead and start. i will repeat the question. >> thank you for coming this morning. i have enjoyed that chat. i very simple question the last two presidents have put an antithesis on who they have selected as the vice-president looking for certain things in their running mates. if you were advising mitt

romney, what would you be advising him to look for in a running mate in someone running with him as vice-president? >> my wife says i should never give an answer about how to pick for vice president. [laughter] i think first and foremost, on that issue of you to pick for vice president, it is an important question and i think there are a lot of lessons to be learned from the 2008 campaign. also from the 2004 campaign. i think the selection process is fundamentally broken in the number of different ways. both parties have resulted in nominating people who were manifestly unprepared and

unqualified to be president of the united states. john edwards on the democratic side and of course, on the republican side, in 2008. there is a lack of having gone through this process on our part. in 2008, it's the story of assumptions that this person is a governor, therefore this person has a knowledge base and an issue space that the ministry would make them repaired to do this. that turned out not to be the case. it is also a story about outcomes that don't go the way you want them. no one had the intention of putting forward someone who was manifestly unprepared to be president of the united states. but the focus is on trying to win the election. the focus is trying to get

ahead. the story of ambition, it's a story of one thing to win. this is a process that requires a great deal of circumspection and i think on the part of the media and part of the press, it should be framed for what it is. this is the first presidential decision a candidate makes and decanted it really makes by themselves where they have to take the measure of them -- of the person they're going to put into the position of being the next in line. if you look at a history of the country, a lot of vice-president have had to come forward to take the 35-word of and assumed the duties of commander in chief. obviously, for my part, over the last couple of years, it has been an issue i have thought about a great deal because when

you run a presidential campaign or are involved in decision making of a presidential campaign, you never have the aspiration to have a result where someone was afforded to this that was not prepared. >> let's be clinical about this. if you were advising gov. romney, would you advise him to pick marco rubio of florida or rob portman of ohio? >> if i was in the room with him, i would say remember the two most important things are one, that you believe this person is prepared to be the president of the united states if, god forbid, happens and you have that confidence and can go out. as steve says, it is your first presidential decision. can you go out, let the american people in the eye and say this is the person. second, do you have a personal comfort level and trust this person?

the role the vice-president -- the role of the vice president has evolved. and has become an operational role and a very engage role, and that's a good thing. but that means the president has to have a certain degree of trust. can you set this person is preparedif you look at the two s that you said, run portman is somebody you can present to the american people as somebody who has served in government who has an understanding of the fiscal issues. it somebody who has been through enough vetting processes to playoff what steve said. he has the base of knowledge about national issues. with senator rubio, i do not know his record as well. he probably would want to do some significant vetting. i think that is something that cannot be underestimated.

you do not want to be surprised when to announce that person to the american people. i think at the end of the day, it is not my decision. it will be republican nominees decision. given the fact that if the republican nominee is mitt romney, at the gas is he probably does want to pick somebody who offered him regional diversity and somebody who offers him something to fill out his governing resume. something he does not have in his profile. i would also add that the ideas that a vice presidential candidate brings to their state or brings anything to the ticket, i regard it by and large as not true. many -- may be occasionally they can help you on an individual state, but at the end of the day you pick somebody you think can be president. >> i think also it is that the only criteria that should

matter is a is this person prepared to take the oath of office to be president of the united states? there is a list of people who meets that qualification in both parties and there are other people who do not. i think all of the political calculations have to be supported it to that. i think it is one of the chief questions of 2008. >> thank you for joining us this morning. i am the mayor of the city of davenport. my question is, in 2008 president obama won by 9 million votes nationwide, one of the biggest margins since lyndon johnson. he won with young people, students, african americans, poor hispanics. in 2010 we got the worst

shellacking since the civil war. i remember in 2008, 39 people got out of the homeless shelter to vote, more people than ever before. in 2010 and nobody voted from the shelter. what can you do to reassure me that things will be different. people in that these demographics will turn out when i see thousands of people protesting in the occupy movement, i see the highest poverty we have had up among our base. what are the poll's showing? how is the campaign going to get to them? what are we doing? what are the positive signs to see in these demographics that did not vote in 2010? >> in 2010, the election as

midterms are was a referendum. it was not a choice and it was not a friend as a choice. -- was not framed as a choice. presidential elections have a different dynamic than midterm elections. i think this presidential election will present a very clear choice to people. that is the first thing i will say is that rather having the people turn out to tend to be angry is that the administration, you always get a larger turnout in presidential elections anyway. there will be a very clear choice and the president will from the choice in a way that will motivate people to come out. it really is a significant difference. mayors always understand what the stakes are here because you have been living with the idea that somehow the federal government can just reduce all of the discretionary spending in the federal budget and we will all live happily ever

after. you know that is not true. there are significant needs in this country and investments that need to be made in education, transportation, in your infrastructure and sewer systems, in those things the federal government needs to do to build us for a stronger future. that is going to be a huge thing, especially for younger voters. young voters are the people who have a great stake in what happens next. i think a different vision of an america where hard work is rewarded and where we have responsibility and accountability for government, business, and for individuals where we do not have a on your own attitude but where people and government make investments, work together, have a private public partnerships whether it is infrastructure, education programs that all of you are doing in your cities, what ever it is where people are

working together to move the nation forward together. that is the president's vision and something that will be incredibly important and different from the republican vision that we have seen with this republican congress. that is, you are on your own, tough luck, let's cut all the critical programs that help disproportionately seniors and low income people so that we can keep taxes low for the people who do the best in this country. there is going to be a major debate in 2012. i think it is a healthy debate for this country to have. i think it will motivate people to come out and vote in a way they were not motivated and enter 2010 when it was not seen as a choice of very different directions. >> well, obviously on the frame of the issues have profoundly disagree.

i think the tax code is more progressive than it has ever been. the most compassionate policy government can have is a pro- growth economic policy. i think the federal debt is an enormous crisis for this country at 15 trillion dollars with no and in site. i think we will have an election that is based on a choice. in a midterm election, it is often a referendum on incumbent presidents who have only had two occasions where there were first term presidents had pickups. every other president has lost seats. as you talked about it earlier, i think there is a number of other factors driving instability. an election for president is a choice. this will not be an election in terms of the type of job that

the president is doing. it is a choice of who will do a better job, the republican nominee or the president backs there is an abc washington post poll that shows 57% of voters disapprove of the way the president is handling the economy. as a republican i look at that through two prisms. first, there is a lot of room to criticize the president of the economy. also because i think the president laura and this election is 47%, a very significant percentage of people who reject his handling of the economy will vote for him in the election. it will be a very close election. there are some elections were there are pale differences between the parties. if the choice is not painted in bold and a bright colors. i think this election will be one where there are clear lines, clear choices, and bold colors.

it will be a healthy debate because there is a fundamentally different vision offered by the president. i think it is ultimately by the republican nominee. >> at the mayor's introduction at the top, he talked about the deafening silence he hears. if i am a mayor of davenport are philadelphia, how do i connect with a washington that does not seem to be listening? >> i was going to say you and the rest of the country in terms of how you feel. i think it is critically important for mayors and particular to hold the candidates accountable of both parties at every level. you cannot separate out cities from suburbs. we all know how interconnected we are as a nation. i think the mayor's command

great megaphones in their communities. members of congress and senators are increasingly sensitive to their communities, much more so than they used to be. i am getting a little old now, when i was working in washington it was still possible for people to " say one thing in washington and another at home. now it is not possible for somebody to say one thing at a town hall meeting and something else five minutes later because it is already on you to but. -- it is already on youtube. people are -- elected officials -- part of what mayors need to do to connect to washington is to hold people accountable.

elected officials are sensitive to local criticism, particularly when it is linked very directly to how conditions are at home. i think your collective the voice is very important. there will be a republican nominee. there is a democratic president. there may be a third party or libertarian canada, but all of these people are going to come looking for votes in your area. all of these people will debate. your collective voice to put things on the national agenda is significant. i think picking a few critical areas whether it is transportation and infrastructure spending, which i happen to know some of you care about. whether it is education and education policy, which is obviously a huge debate in this country. to pick a couple of issues and make your voice heard withholding candidates accountable and also with their elected officials.

>> i agree with that. i think publicly communicating your issues which -- compared to an antiquated approach of solving these with one on one meetings, that does not work anymore. i think you need to communicate publicly. there was a story and "the washington post"or there were a bunch of members of congress who stood up and began quoting lines out of the movie brave heart and analogizing the payroll tax to the fight to the death that was taking place between the british and of william wallace. i think in the context of being a mayor and running something and having accountability and being responsible for services, that is just so off the wall to almost be unimaginable. i think there is a detachment between the reality that you live in and the reality that a lot of people in washington

live in. it is important to communicate your reality and enter a way that makes them accountable. i think all politicians as a species of animal have a high instinct for self preservation. to the extent that you are able to put a burden on to the member of congress that triggers that instinct by advancing your agenda in the needs of your constituents is probably an effective strategy. >> i will add one thing. due to the news cycle having accelerated exponentially, there is much less time for the in-depth policy reporting that one would like to see. that gives you a huge advantage because you can play that role. the conference of mayors can play that role in terms of

looking at the impact of the policies that the candidates are talking about. this is something that is not being done as much as it used to because nobody has the time or the space or the resources to have reporters do this. it is critically important to you and important to the people you represent in your cities. i would suggest one way to be in that dialogue is saying this is how it will affect you a in real life, not just a central canada rhetoric for an answer in a debate but in real life. >> mayor riley will have the last question. >> the tea party movement appears to have moved the republican party even further to the right. to what extent will that pose a problem or may yet prove to be a benefit to the republican nominee? >> i think the tea party movement is broadly misunderstood.

i think the reality is there has always been conservatives and the republican party and there will always be liberals in the democratic party. i think the fact that there are energized voters -- i think if you look at the two movements that have gotten a great deal of media attention over the last year, the occupy wall street movement and the tea party movement, i think the tea party movement is a movement that does good for the republican party. i think on an issue basis it has appealed in the middle of the electorate. i think one of the big unanswered questions is what does the occupied wall street movement look like in the spring? i do not think it necessarily helps the democratic party in the context of the general election in the fall.

i think of the two movements and what the impact will be on the general election, the one that is likely in my view to be consequential is the occupy wall street movement. >> i agree with that. the occupier was to movement is still in many ways at a very early stage. if you look at how quickly our national dialogue has changed to really address the issue nobody wanted to talk about which is the growing inequality in this country, i think that will be an issue central to the economic debate in 2012. we have republican leaders of p of paul ryan who felt it necessary to give speeches about a denture away six months ago they never would have. at least for 2012, the occupy a wall street movement will have a significant movement will have an affect on the national

dialogue will the tea party is more effective and then to organizing. >> i will see you on politico.com. i would like to thank steve schmidt and anita dunn. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> more from the new york mayor's conference now. this is one hour 15 minutes. >> i would like to introduce our next speaker,. tom friedman became the

columnist in 1995. in 2002, he was awarded the pulitzer prize for distinguished commentary, his third pulitzer for "the new york times." he has written award winning books. many of you remember "the world is flat," "a brief history of the 21st century." and receive the business book of the year award. "hot, flat and crowded" was published in 2008. and his sixth and most recent book, i recommend it to everyone of you. it is called "that used to be us, how america fell behind in the world we invented and how we can come back." it was co-written with michael mandelbaum and released last september. i had no opportunity to see tom

at a book signing and at a question and answer period. i told him he had to come to the conference. he has pushed for a green evolution and talk about infrastructure. as i stated yesterday, with the release of our latest metric, misreport, america's cities are the engines of america's economic future. at a time when our nation's mayors are working to promote a bipartisan agenda and job creation, there is no more fitting speaker for us to hear. so please join me in welcoming tom friedman. [laughter] [applause] >> thank you very much. thank all of you for having me. i was at your conference a couple of years ago. it was a great treat and opportunity. i will take the next 40 minutes

to talk about our new book. whenever we share with people the title of our book, the first question they always have is does it have a happy ending? [laughter] we tell everybody that it does. we didn't know if it is fiction or nonfiction. can i get a glass of water? one of the things you might naturally want to ask is how did to guess -- i am a foreign affairs columnist and my co- author is a tiered professor of international relations at johns hopkins. how did two foreign-policy geeks end up writing a book about american domestic politics? the answer is very simple and relevant to your discretion. we have all been friends for 20 years. we happened to be neighbors in bethesda, maryland. we talk almost every day.

we start every day talking about the world. but we noticed lillie we ended every conversation talking about america. and it was evident to us very quickly that america, its fate, future, and vigor and vitality was the biggest foreign policy and an issue in the world. if you do not have a strong and sound a domestic base and economy, we do not have a way to play in the world. michael and i are all american nationalists. we believe that america makes a lot of mistakes in the world -- we always have -- but we play an enormously constructive role in the world. we're the tent pole that hold up the global system. and if that tent pole buckles or phrase, your kids will not just grow up in a different america. they will grow up in a fundamentally different world. and that is really what motivated us to write this book. if there's a fear we have -- the book is built around a lot of movie scenes.

one of them is an old classic that really captures our concerns about the future. "touch of evil" is a murderer story. orson welles plays a crooked cop who tries to frame his mexican counterpart for a murder. marlene dietrich is the fortune teller a proprietor. "read my future for may," wells says. "you have not got any," she replies. "your future is all used up." that fear is one of the things that motivated this book. we do not believe that our future is all used up. but we do believe that we are in a critical juncture in this country, a time of real choosing. and we need to step up to it and we need to do it now, not in

2013, 2014, or 2020. let me share with you -- is there a pinging going on here? do you know what that is from? it is the lights. ok. i just wanted to make sure it was not me. let me share with you a couple of minutes the very few pages of this book. it is called "if you see something say something." this is a book about america that begins in china. i attended the world economic conference in china. it involved a 3 1/2 hour car ride from beijing to a polluted crowded chinese version of the trip. but things have changed. now you have to go to the beijing south railway station.

you buy a ticket from an electronic kiosks offering information in chinese and english and you go to a high- speed train that goes to another room modern train station. it is said to be the fastest in the world began in 2008. it covers 72 miles in 729 minutes. as if the convention center was not impressive enough, the conference's co-sponsors give some helpful facts and figures. the convention center had a total floor area of two 0.5 million acre-feet and construction started on september 15, 2009 and completed in may 2010. i started walking around my

hotel room, counting on my fingers -- eight and a half months. returning home to maryland from that trip, i was describing the complex and how quickly it was built to my co-author michael and his wife and. and will put them in his wife interrupted and said, " excuse me, tom, have you been to our subway stop lately?" we often use the metrarail to get to washington, d.c. i knew exactly which is talking about. the two escalator's there had been under repair for nearly six months. while the one was being fixed, the other was) at rush hour, this was creating a huge mess. everyone was to get on and off the platform. everyone had to screes single file. a sign on the close this letter said that its repairs were part of a massive escalator modernization project. what was taking this

modernization projects so long? we investigated. a spokesperson said that the repairs were expected to take six months and are on schedule. mechanics need 10 weeks 12 weeks to fix each escalator. a simple comparison made a starting point. china's construction group took 32 weeks to build a world-class convention center from the ground up, including two giant as leaders in each corner and it was taking the washington metric crew to 24 weeks to repair two escalators of 21 steps each. on november 14, 2010, "the washington post" ran a letter that said, as someone who wrote the metro for 20 years, for decades, the escalators ran sally and efficiently. but for the past several years, when its leaders are running, aging or ill fitting parts have generated terrific noises that sound to me like a tyrannosaur's racks trapped in a torpid screeching its dying screams.

the most disturbing came from "maryland community news." benjamin ross said my impression standing in line there is that people have sort of gotten used to it. people have sort of gotten used to it. indeed, that sense of resignation, that sense of this is how things are in america today, the sense that america's best days are behind it and china's best days are headed that our water cooler, dinner party, grocery line, and dinner partcrasher in conversatn every city in america. china will event of a -- we have written this book to explain why no american, young or old, should resign themselves or herself to that view.

we are not pessimists. we're optimists. but we are frustrated. weird to frustrated optimists. the title of the -- we are two frustrated optimists. the title of his opening chapter, did you see something say something, you know where that is from. it is from the homeland security. we have seen something and said something. what we see is hiding in plain sight. poses a greater threat to home and security than any than that of qaeda's. it is the worst sort of become a slow decline, just slow enough force to not drop their thing and put together as a country and fix what needs fixing. this book is our way of saying something about what is wrong, why things have gone wrong, and what we can and must do to make things right. that is have the book opens. the main argument is that our country faces four great

challenges. i can only talk about one in detail. the first is a perceptual challenge. how do we start our day in america? one thing i have learned traveling in the world is that it is successful companies, successful cities that as the simple question. what world am i living index what world am i living in? what are the biggest trends in this world? what are the policies i need to take advantage of? that is not how we start our day in this country. we start our day in this country with our to base party is taking out a large crowbar and asking how they can stick it in the wheel of the other party in order to win the 24-hour news cycle. as part of this research,

singapore and stuck in my mind. tom, we in singapore live in a vast hut with no doors. we feel every change in the direction of the wind picked we feel every change in the weather. you seem to feel nothing. but that house is developing some >> and that leads to -- some cracks and that leads to change. adapting our country and work force and children and cities to the biggest thing happening in the world today, the thing we should be talking about most, the merger of globalization and the i.t. revolution which is changing everything. i will talk about that in detail. it is a huge work force and education challenge. we have to challenges that we face that you are familiar with.

they are debt and deficit and all that nexus of issues of entitlements and how we manage them for the next generation. the fourth challenge is energy and climate, how we power the future of american a class and rising global milk passes without tipping this world into destructive climate change. those are the four big challenges -- how we look at the world, they will the globalization and i.t., how we manage the debt and deficit, and how we manage our energy needs in the world of a rise in the class. the worldwide t is the biggest thing happening today essentially, what has happened is that coming in the last decade, we have gone from a connected world to a hyper connected world. it has moved from connected to hyper connected and is really changing everything. the simplest way i can explain

this to you -- in 2004 i started working on a book called "the world is flat." it came out in 2005. that was about the world getting connected. when i sat down with michael to write this book, one of the first things i did was go back to the first edition of the world is flat. and i opened it up to the index. i looked under fssa and facebook was not in it. those other saying that the world this flat and we are interconnected for g was a parking place, lincoln was a prison, applications were mailed to college, and for most people skype was a typo. [laughter] [laughter] [applause] i love doing that. can i do that again? [laughter]

all of that happened in the last six years. all that happened after i said the world is flat. and that is what has taken us from connected to hyper connected. when i wrote the world is flat, i said we have connected boston and bangalore in india. when i wrote the world is flat, i said we have connected the todetroit and domestic and lade. where is there? that is the dusty border town were the serious uprising began. from there, they have been pumping out cellphone camera, text and video so much so that we have been able to watch the syrian uprising live even though

syria has banned every international news organization from its country, including aljazeera. that is what happens when you go from a connected to a hyper connected world. i love when i travel to look for small items in the newspapers. in october 2010, i was in india reading the hindu stand times over breakfast. i ran into a small news item. it said that nepalese telecommunications firm had just started providing third generation mobile network services or 3 d at the summit of mount everest, the world's tallest mountain. the story said this would allow thousands of climbers and truckers who from the region every year access to high-speed internet and video calls using their mobile phones. can you imagine how many phone calls are made every day now from the top of mount everest that began, "model, you'll never

guess where i'm calling you from?" [laughter] this gentleman said that he is the mayor of davenport. nearby davenport, in central iowa, is a wonderful town for my mother-in-law went to college. there were 1600 students. she was later chairman of the board. bernau college reported that -- grenfell college -- grinell college reported that most of their applications came from china. basically, we had a nice chinese exchange student. no, your kids today want to go to grinnel are competing head- to-head with students from ps29

in shanghai. that is a hyper connected world. what does this mean? first of all, for the work force and then for education. what it means for the work force is this. if the whole world were a single math class, in have been connected world, the whole global curve has risen. basically, every employer has access to more cheap automation, cheap software, cheaper robotics, cheap labor, and most importantly cheek genius than ever before. a wonderful article in a book the atlanta" is about the impact on their -- article in "the atlanta" is about the impact of this on the work force.

and as a dog and the man is there to feed the dog and the dog is there to keep the man away from the machines. [laughter] what is going on today in more and more factories in a hyper connected world. what does this mean for the work force. historically, it was segmented into three categories. there was a non-routine work. we all want to be non-routine. those are writers and singers and poets and engineers and scientists and professors. those are people who do work that cannot be described by an algorithm and therefore cannot be outsourced, automated, or digitized very easy if at all. you all want your kids to be doing on routine work. then there is routine work. routine work has been crushed. that is all the back room work that is art -- that is outsourced, automated, and to tide -- and digitize. then there are the persons who

have to do work face-to-face in a specific locale. their wages will depend on the overall health of your city and local economy. but the biggest thing that has happened, as you move from connected to her connected is what happened to non-routine work. non-routine work, the way we train people for that -- you will hear a lot of this in the educational reform movement -- is that we want people who do critical thinking and problem solving. that is the essence of non- routine work, something a machine or robot cannot do. basically, what has happened, very softly, as we move from -- very subtley, as we move forward, you now have to do creative non-routine work. you cannot just show up. so we have a chapter in the book that tries to explain this. the chapter's called "help-

wanted." we interviewed four to narrett generic employers. we interviewed low-end white- collar. we interviewed a blue-collar firm. and we interviewed the world's biggest green collar firm, the united states army. and the chief of its education corps. but here is what is really interesting. they are all looking for the same employee. they're all looking for an employee who can do critical thinking and problem solving .,., docked in order to get an interview. -- problem-solving dot, dot, dot in order to get an interview. an employer is looking for someone who can do their job and

reinvented job and reinvented while they're doing it. he or she cannot possibly know what is going on basically on the shop floor in the interface between the customer. to reinvent their job as they're doing it, and you will have a real problem. there are companies like zynga that now does quarterly reviews of their rich employees, their team leaders. very simple. they may be doing five product cycles in a year. they can wait until the end of the year to find out that -- they cannot wait until the end of the year to find out that they have a bad team leader. now they have team leader reviews every quarter. they are at the cutting edge of something that is not going away. so let's go to jeff less, the head of the nixon peabody washington office. he happened to be a family

friend. we started a conversation in 2007. lehman brothers has just melted down. we are in the heart of the subprime crisis print a set to jeff, what is happening with your law firm? we are laying off workers. that is interesting. in a law firm, who gets laid off first? is it last in, first out? he said not anymore. we cannot afford that. what is happening in our law firm is that, when we had a lot of work in the credit bubble and we had that non-routine work to our non-routine letters and they did it in a routine-non-routine way and handed it back, it was fine. now those who do it that way, they are the ones we're having to let go, some of them. the ones we are keeping, he said, are the lawyers who came to us and said that we could do this old work in a new way. we can do this non-routine work in a truly non-routine way or we could do new work in a non-

routine way. we just hired a chief innovation officer. how many law firms do you know that have a chief innovation officer? but at every front of it, whether it is of a " the new york times," a law firm or an accounting firm, they will have a chief innovation officer. at the green collar firm, general dempsey has become the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. we introduced -- we interviewed general dan to because he was the head of the u.s. army education corp. general martin dempsey was the commander of the first armored division that took baghdad from saddam hussein in 2003. here is the story he told us in the book. in 2008, he was promoted to be the head of cent,, the middle east military command -- head of

centcom, the middle east military command. he spent a couple of hours sitting with a capt. hearing about his job. he realized after a couple of that heth that captain had access to more fire power and access to more technical and national intelligence than martin dempsey could when he took baghdad from saddam hussein's five years earlier. that is how much it changed from moving from a connective world to a hyper connected world. how we choose that capt. and how we promote that capt. and how we train that capt. has to become a fundamentally different. one of the first things he introduces that what they might do in the camp is give you an iphone the day you show up at boot camp appeared in three weeks, the man asked you to download and at 12 the --

download an app and have you teach the course. i know what you're thinking. it is easy for you to say, mr. "new york times columnist, let me tell you about my dog. i inherited -- about my job. i inherited the desk of mr. rustin. i imagine he would come back to the office in the 1960's and 1970's and wondered what his seven competitors would write today. by the way, he knew all seven. i come to the office every morning and asked i wonder what

my 70 million competitors will [laughter] write] i have 70 million competitors -- i wonder what my 70 million competitors will write today. [laughter] i have 70 million competitors. by 8:00 p.m. sunday night or maybe 11:00 p.m. sunday night, somebody in india had posted a stress test of the entire i pad and all of the results in the comment section of my column. in the old days -- i became a foreign correspondent in 1982. i was in beirut. in those days, it took the new york times six weeks to get to beirut. i could write whenever i wanted. maybe someone in new york would call arafat on a long-distance scratchy phone line and say look at what friedman wrote about you. friedman! friedman?

what did you write and then the line would go dead. now you worry about $35 i pad in india and they post the stress test four hours later. if you do not think that is keeping me on my toes, you are not paying attention. another chapter is called "average is over." that is the world we live in. average is officially over. your boss now has access to so much more above average talent, software, automation, and robotics that everyone now needs to find their extra. what is that unique value contribution you can make? that is what every one of your bosses will be asking. what is your extra? everyone's extra is different. for steve jobs, his extra was

invented in the iphone and the i pad. maybe for someone, they're extra is working in a nursing home. they can put a smile on the face of your elderly parents. every time you come to that nursing home, you say i want to to deal with my mom. how much more do i have to pay? everybody is above average at something. but everybody has to find their extra. woody allen paulson dictum that 40% of life is just showing up is officially over. if you just show up, trust me, there is a machine or a robot or cheap labor or cheap genius or software system waiting to eat your job. they say in texas is that whenever -- if all you ever get is all you have ever done.

now, you'll get below average. there is nothing really down there anymore. 50 years ago, the biggest employer in baltimore was bethlehem steel company. you got a job there, drop out of high school, joined the union, get a job, having a career, by house, have a yard, and to kids and a dog, and lit a great job and get to orioles games. now, the steel company has gone. now the biggest employer in baltimore is johns hopkins medical center. they do not let you cut the grass at johns hopkins without a ba. [laughter] that is what is going on in every city in the country. we need to bring our bottom to your average so much faster.

writing,g, arithmetic -- if you do not have a high school degree that gives you access to post secondary education without remediation or any of all, there's basically nothing down there that will give you an average life style. at the same time, we need to raise their average to the global average so much faster. that is about creativity, collaboration, and communication and how we nurture those in our young people. we have a simultaneous dual education challenge. how do we lean into this world. i have two daughters in their mid-20's. i tell them i am an old fuddy- duddy. i am so close -- so lucky. when i graduate college in 1978, when i graduated from graduate school, i got to find a job could what i tell my girls is that you have to invent a job.

it may not be your first job. but to keep that first job, you will have to invent and reinvent that job in this hyper connected world. i have three pieces of parenting and vice -- parenting advice in the book. the first is to think like an immigrant. second, think like an arson. and the third is think light a waitress at perkins packinghouse in minneapolis. what do i mean by think what an immigrant? the emigrant thinks i just showed up here in washington, d.c. and there is no legacy place waiting for me at georgetown or howard university. i'd better figure out what is going on in this city, where the opportunities are, and pursue them with more energy, vigor, and consistency than anybody else. that is how the immigrant thinks. we are all new immigrants to the hyper connected world. think like an immigrant.

be hungry. second, think like an artist and. this is an idea from a great labor economist. the artists and is the person in the middle ages before mass manufacturing, before the factory, who made every item one off. every pair of shoes was made individually, every tensely, every piece of furniture. what did the best arsons do? they were so proud of their work that they carved their initials into it. they brought something extra. do your job every day as if you would be ready and desirous of carving your initials into it at the end of the day. think like an hardison. take pride in what you. -- b. and new hardison -- be an artisan. take pride in what you do. and third, think like a waitress at perkins because. i ordered three buttermilk

pancakes and scrambled eggs. can ordered three buttermilk pancakes and repaired after three minutes, the waitress brought the food and said one thing. i brought you extra for it. she got a 50% tip from us. that which did not control much, but she controlled the fruit little. -- the fruit ladle. [laughter] think like an immigrant, be hungry. hink like an artisan, take pride. and think like a waitress, find your extra. lake woebegone, where all the

children are fictional and all are above average. they are gone. i will lendl deficit and climate. let's talk a few minutes before we go -- i will not talk about deficit and climate. let's talk a few minutes before we go. our political system is broken and i do not think i have to tell the people in this hall that it is broken for a lot of reasons. it is broken because of gerrymandering of political districts. it is broken because of the media has been fragmented pitt and most of all it is broken because money and politics are completely out of control. our congress, i am not at all reluctant to say, has become a form of legalized bribery. that is exactly what it is, ok? [applause] and until we get over that, the political system is broken. one of my favorite quotes in

this book is very wise. it is an interesting story. when he was just getting started in politics, he had a friend in the ad business. he went to him for advice on how to think about negative campaigning. his friend told him this story. people often ask why did burger king never attack mcdonald's? why did burger king never take out ads that said mcdonald's burgers had maggots in them? he said a very simple answer. the first rule of advertising, never kill the category. friends, we have killed the category of politics in this country just when we need it most. that is what is going on. that is the first big problem. the second big problem is that we have had a fundamental values decline in this country.

we went from the rest generation from sitting and investing, baby boomers have done a lot of good things who also believe in borrowing. we have gone from value is that -- from values that sustain two businesses where you are to sustainable to fail to a generation believes that city -- that situational values -- do what ever situations allow. if all you want is to buy an $800,000 house, you can only show $10,000 in income and all you have is your delta sky miles card for identification, that is ok. sustainable values would tell me never to do that. but that is the huge values decline we have come to. what do we do about it? the most important thing we need to understand and this is why

our book as a backward-looking title but a foreign-looking theme is that we have within our history and our laws and our society all the resources to make this right. we did not get here by accident. we did not become the world's richest country, the most respected country by accident. we got here because we actually had a formula for success which we outline in our book. it dates back to hamilton and our first president and was nurtured and enriched by every president since. it has five key parts. one, we always educated our people up to and beyond whatever the technology was. when it was the cotton gin, everyone had universal primary education. when it was the factory, everyone had universal secondary education. now that it is the supercomputer, we need to make sure that everybody has universal post secondary condition.

-- post secondary education. second, we had the world's most open immigration policy in the last half century if not more. we invited in the world's most energetic and the world's most talented immigrants where they came and started new companies and lit a fire, a constant fire under our society. third, we had the world's best infrastructure, roads, air for airports, but the rest of the world copied. fourth, we had the rules for capital for mentioned to incentivize risk-taking and deter fraud. our venture capitalists could come and put off the best flowers and bring up these new companies. that was our five key formula. that was the essence of the world's greatest public-private

partnership year when people stand up and say that i was just one lonely guy and i did all this on my own. i say you did not do diddly- squat on your own. what you did, you did not build those roads. you did not set up their rule of law could you did not set up this telecommunications system. you did nothing on your own. we did it banks to a great public-private partnership where each wonder toward the other. [applause] will look at where we are today. thank you. ours do a little check on formula for success today. education, our 15-year-old in math and reading , mention is now with slovenia. immigration, if you watch the republican debate, who could put up more electric fences to keep people out? the message was "go away."

if you happen to come here and get your degree, taking a degree and get the hell out of here. dole and build a company that will compete with us and take our jobs. [laughter] [applause] on infrastructure, mayor, i hate to tell you this, but i flew from hong kong to lax the other day point that is like flying from the jets as to the flintstones. lax looks like a faded movie star. it has had one too many face lifts. this is a problem we have all over our country now. the four rules for education and investing? how did you like that financial crisis? think about it, friends. we're not here by accident. all of this happy talk about how we are exceptional and obama's

as we are not exceptional and appeared exceptional is not an honorary doctorate that you get to carry around with you. it is a batterinbatting average. you are your batting average. right now we are betting l.216. -- batting .216. we need a hybrid politics. we need to we need to cut spending because we need to keep promises we cannot keep, especially in health care. secondly, we need to raise revenue. there's no capitalism without safety nets. believe me, capitalism is a brutal, tough system. i'm a capitalist. i'm a market guy. one thing i understand is capitalism is about creative destruction, leaves people behind, no safety nets, no

sustainable capitalism. lastly, we need to invest in our airports and our roads and all of those elements of our formula for success. so our problem right now is very simple. our problem right now is that we need to do three things that do not correspond to the stated agenda of either of our major parties because we need to cut, we need to tax and we need to invest. we need a hybrid politics. and i'm still hoping that this election will not be an attempt for republicans to demonize president obama as a kenyan socialist, for democrats to demonize mitt romney as, you know, the essence of a rapacious capitalism. to see which one could win by 50.0001%. with no mandate to do what we need to do. we need a president who wins

this election to me with the following mandate. one is a plan, short-term plan to invest in major infrastructure projects, and i'm not saying this just for your benefit, in every one of our cities to upgrade our infrastructure and to invest in postsecondary education for more of our young people. we can borrow that money today at 2%. that's an investment which we need. we need to couple that, in my view, with the simpson bowles plan for its equivalent for long-term spending cuts to get our fiscal house in order. by the way, if you don't pair the two together, you're never going to good bipartisan support for either one. third, we need a plan that's fair. rich have to pay more. bountyful two decades but everybody has to pay something. we're all in this together. and lastly, we need a plan that's aspirational. it's not just about balancing the budget. i didn't sign up for tax day.

i signed up for the 4th of july. this is a 4th of july country. come to people and tell them you have a great plan for short-term fixing of our infrastructure, long-term fixing our deficits that will be fair and aspirational. i will tell you that person will be the next president of the united states. i think the country is so far ahead of our politics now and they're dyeing for someone to be bold in that way, radically responsible, radically visionary and radically honest. if we have a campaign that's about smearing each other, i will tell you, stash your money under the mattress. if we have a campaign of two competing visions of how we actually fix this country, oh, put every dollar you have in the stock exchange because it's going to go up by thousands of points. but that's what is in play right now and that's certainly what i'm watching for.

i send by simply saying this, i began by saying i'm a frustrated optimist. by now you're entitled to ask, mr. friedman, we get the frustration. where from comes the optimism? drugs, i use a lot of drugs. no, no. 4 nobody tweet that. that's a joke. my optimism comes very simply from being a reporter. and having traveled around this country to write several books now and the one thing that always keeps me an optimist about america is that this country is still full of people, thank god, who just didn't get the word. they didn't get the word we're down and out. didn't get the word we're in decline. we didn't get the word china get our breakfasts and germany gets our lunch and fix stuff and

repair stuff and collaborate stuff and invent stuff. if you want to be an optimist about america, stand on your head. the country looks so much better from the bottom up then the top down. i started this book -- my book tour up in connecticut, near new haven. sat down the president's office. first talk i gave, what's new here at the university? he said oh, we just started a new medical school. i said you just started a new medical school in the middle of the recession? didn't you get the word. no, they didn't get the word. one of my favorite quotes in this book is from a marine colonel in iraq which asked them why did you surge iraq? mr. friedman, we were just too dumb to quit. this country is still full of people too dumb to quit, thank god. in my last book, got to travel over the country and talk about energy, environment and energy innovation. i would end every talk with people coming up to me and

giving me their business cards of all of their energy ideas. amazing stuff. mr. friedman, i've got a duck. it paddles a wheel, methane, turns a turban. i heard the craziest stuff. i go back to my hotel room at the end of the day, rock stars get room keys. i get business cards but they're really exciting in their own way, i've got to tell you. what they tell you is the country is alive. oh, it's so alive. which is why i always said if i can draw a picture of america today, it would be a picture of a space shuttle taking off. the space shuttle, all of the incredible thrust coming from below. that's us. all of the innovators, all of the people too dumb to quit. all of the people who didn't get the word. unfortunately our booster rocket, washington, d.c., five-part formula, is cracked and leaking energy and the pilots in the cockpit are fighting over the fight plan. so right now we can't achieve

escape velocity. we can't get to where we need to go even to there's all of that thrust coming from below and that's why we have to fix the booster rocket and we need to get the pilots to stop fighting over the fight plan. it's not that complicated. and that's why friends -- thank you. as i said, we have a lot we can learn from china and india and brazil. but the theme of this book is not about any of those countries. the theme of this book is that everything i'm advocating we have done before. everything i'm talking about comes out of a formula for success that's 200 years old. the history books we need to read are our own. the country we need to rediscover is america. that used to be us and it can be again. thank you very much. thank you, thank you.

>> you know, tom, i read your columns religiously. i read the world is flat. that used to be us. i have seen you in an audience on a number of occasions now. quietly, you didn't know i was there. i could tell you every time i hear him, the wisdom that comes out of his mouth, the presence about what america needs to do and how we need to do it is i think the affirmation of that was the standing ovation you just got.

so i was mesmerized by your comments. let me say something quickly. i hope you will get a copy of common sense -- get you a copy of the common sense jobs agenda. one of the things mayors have been talking about last year when we put together our civility accord, after the tragic shooting of gabrielle giffords, this organization has been calling on the congress to reach across the aisle. many of us, in fact i spoke to that yesterday have said that simpson-bowles is a template for what we need to do. we need to make investments in infrastructure. we put a plan together not just to get behind a surface transportation bill but america fast foshed which 120 mayors signed on to sadse we will put up our own local money. you incentivize localities to do that. loan us some money. we will pay you back. it doesn't go against the deficit or debt.

we could cree can eight a million jobs. across the board, this organization by acclimation, by the way, over the last three years has taken a position in support of comprehensive immigration reform. there it is. we will give it to him. >> thank you. here, show it to him. and by the way, this common sense jobs agenda, we went the democratic and republican think tanks. we didn't just -- this is a bipartisan organization. we went to both think tanks and said what if people supported over the last 50 years had bipartisan support? these were some of the initiatives that we were told would get bipartisan support and virtually none of them have been approved by this congress. i want to thank you. i would like to open it up to you. we have -- how much? 10 minutes, maybe 15. i think there will be a few questions here.

i would like to ask the mayors, by the way. stand up and give your name. >> thanks. >> please. where are you from? >> mayor john dicker from racine, wisconsin. >> next door. >> not far away. come up and visit us some time. we have great-tasting water, which you're not drinking right now. [laughter] i know. >> you made a comment which i think is important which is that you said how do you get back, how do we get the politicians back? so i'm going to ask you to do something. you obviously have been on sunday morning tv shows. you are someone who is obviously well read. and i will beg to argue that when i have seen you on sunday morning tv shows and they usually have congress or senators there, one of the most dynamic sunday morning shows was when mayor nutter was on. and it was dynamic because well, the congressman and senators were going back with their

ping-pong balls, our mayor brought the issue back. to logic, to reality, to getting it done mentality. when mayor ville degrossia was on sunday morning tv show e. it's going back to the heart of the issue but the reality is they're on very little sofment what we see every sunday in the media is the ping-pong back and forth between congress, senate and the congressional democrats. so my question to you when do we get these guys back on tv to see the reality going on every day, talk about the answer to the questions. because the fact is, they have them. and that's what the country needs to hear. that's how we start bringing it back. >> it's a very important question. and i'm afraid you would need david gregory, host of nbc to be here to answer it, because i'm just a columnist for "the new york times" and don't have control of any -- any sunday morning shows. but your point is a very important one.

those tend to become so scripted, you almost know what everyone will say. it is a ping-pong game. having mayors talk about things like a common sense agenda i think could be very valuable and important. of course, you know the old story, tv looks for conflict. that's what drives viewership and what not. no question about that. but if you make things interesting, you know, i think you can keep yours and so i take your point and i will pass it along. thank you very much. please, yes. >> my name is shelly welsh. i'm the resident of the mayor of his my, a southern suburb. i was also in the media ten years with cbs news in washington as well. i would like to ask your opinion what responsibility the media has played in this changing world. we yesterday heard a very good report on citizen public opinion on a variety of issues.

all of which is in the public domain, most of which is not by our local media and seems to allow candidates to say whatever they want about anything as fact when the facts do not exist. >> right. >> i think this happened locally and nationally. >> sure. >> what role does the media play? good question. i always start by saying, i not here to represent the media only myself, and i can say "the new york times" but myself and not "the times." what strikes me with the web more than ever before, mark twain says faster twice around the world before you laced up your shoes. he wasn't talking about the web, talking about the telegraph. but here's what's changed, and i think we should look into this a little. counter also moves faster.

there's a political fact on "the washington post" that has a dedicated column by glen reynolds that i look every day. checks facts after every debate. i noticed republican candidates in the debate quoting the fact checkers against each other. so i think you should give the media a little due there. sometimes we react understandably. someone comes out and says something and it goes all over the world. and don't see actually how good and how immediate now a lot of the counter is. i think that's quite healthy. usually asem industry, counter comes the next day and that's a real problem. that's a real to be for you and for me. but that is -- the web is extremely good at correcting things quickly as well as it is december emanating them. so thank you. please, i will go back around. i'm sorry, go there. she had the mic and then over here. >> i have the mic.

i'm from fremont, california. i'm a first generation emigrant who moved to this country 15 years ago. >> from? >> bang lower, india. -- bangalore, india. my name is -- >> you're the mayor of fremont? >> yes, i'm the mayor of fremont. i take my 8-year-old back to india every year i'm alarmed how little she knows compared to an 8-year-old in bang adore. and when i come back to my community and talk about the mayors all of the silies are created between cities and school districted and lack of communication. besides the plan the mayor had to take over the school district, what would you suggest in terms of us i wo working together and creating an infrastructure not just for higher education but for a basic fundamental education for our kids? >> wow, that's touch a big, you know, question but very

important one. one we think about a lot. my wife is chairman of the board of the seed school foundation, which runs a charter border school here in washington, d.c. and my daughter did teach for america in d.c. as a teacher in the d.c. school system. we talk about this a lot. i am happy to brag on them but i'm telling you it's a subject near and dear to our heart. i will tell you how we deal with it in the books. and it's how we look generally at all of our problems today, which is that what ails america today we think fundamentally is we lost our ability to act collectively. and all of the problems we face require collective action. we cannot face the education program without a certain amount of collection action, energy problem or lord knows the debt and deficit problem. fundamental thing we lost was ability to act collectively. our view about education is very simple. we actually profile the colorado teacher reform bill, which we think is a really good bill that we're collaboratively with the teachers' union and won the

approval of one of the teachers' unions, usually the f.t., for their foreman and one that certainly puts teachers under review but does it in a fair way and collaborative way. so there's no question a great teacher can make a huge difference in a young person's life. we know that. and a bad teacher over several years can make a hugely destructive difference. we need to address that full on and michelle reid did a wonderful breakthrough job here in washington i think pioneering that. but now people are finding all different ways to go down that route and i really hail that. but we think it takes more than that. we think it takes a village. yes, we need better teachers. secondly, we need better parents. ok, we need parents who will take an active interest every day. i did a column a couple months ago, you can look up, it was with the people who conducted the ev global pizza exam for the

o.e.c.d. they did a study, i think it was 15,000 kids, actually went and interviewed their parents. they found parents who did as little as ask their son and daughter what did you do in school today? or as little as what are you reading? what are you working on? let alone have you done your home sps work and staying on top of it, those kids performed so much better ten years later in the pizza exams. first of all, we need better parents. i'm going to be honest with you, we need better mayors. we need mayors two travel around the world and look not to lower -- mayors and governors not to lower education standards in their districts so morse kids could falsely achieve certain levels but actually raise them. we need mayors who go shang pie and taipei and come back and say you understand if your kid wants to get in grenle who they are competing with? they're not competing with the kids in claremont or sack

cramentio. they are competing with a global audience. we need better leaders and neighbors who are ready to pay education taxes to support local schools whether they have kids in them or not, ok. because without that, i don't have to tell you, you're going to pay the school or you're going to pay for the new prison. there's a very direct line between failure of local schools and predicting prison population. we need better neighborsers. we need better business leaders. business leaders who take an ninet upgrading schools around them. don't say i can't get it here. i will go to bang la dore. ok. lastly we need better students. we talk in the book about a young woman profiled in "the new york times" that sent 4,500 text messages i month and wonder why she's getting c's and b's. if you're sending 4,000 text messages a month and not getting ready to understand and learn and to understand what a hyper competitive world you're in where average is over, then

you're going to be role kill. no new tways about it. i said when i wrote the world is flat, when i grow up my parents used to say to me, tom, finish your dinner, people in india, china are starving. i said girls, finish your homework because people and ireland and china are starving for your jobs. ok. i thought one of the worst movies ever made was about "race to nowhere" about how our kids were too stressed out. need to be on facebook and wrestling practice and play. we want kids to have a rich zrirnse experience. i don't want my kids to be stressed out. but i will tell what you stress is, stress is not understanding the thick foreign accent of your first boss. that will be stress. so we need to face up. i like the tiger mom. don't know if you read about her. only one thing we talked about her in the book, i can tell you about the tiger mom. she ain't alone.

there are millions and millions of tiger moms out there. and i'm sure you're one of them. so that's our view on education. >> we'll take two more questions. >> mayor pa lido? >> from the city of santa ana and california. earlier tau talked about how sometimes being too dumb to quit could be a real asset. i believe we're all too dumb to quit as mayors. we're in touch with our communities and our community don't often get the memo. as you go out and see people all the time up the great projects. up to making a difference. two questions for you, one, in california, we have yet as part of the whole highway 66, and they're actually is a cafe called the road kill cafe. and it's off the main highway now because you have highway 40. if we're not care,ful, we're going to be on the wrong highway

ourselves and part of what year talking about. the other portion you could allude to a little bit, earlier you mention if you killed the category then you kill everything. >> yep. >> i think we as mayors have not killed the category and that's a big difference. could we in any way do something in that area such maybe others could begin to stop killing the category,? because that really undermines our efforts. >> really important question. we have a chapter in the book on this subject. it's called "shock therapy." we think the system needs a shock. by the way, it's going to get a shock. it's going to come from the market, mother nature or middle. one of those places but we're going to get a shot if we keep going along like this. i hope it isn't from the market or mother nature. because that will be brutal and messy. i hope it's from the middle. and the chapter really is about a third party. i believe in incentives. life is about incentives.

move the cheese, move out mouse. don't move the cheese. the mouse doesn't move. i don't know if we will see emergence of a third party. a lot of talk around there about it. guy back and forth myself whether i want it. 6 seems to me if someone ran tomorrow a responsible person on this kind of centrist ticket that i talked about and showed they're 40% to 50% of the country that believe in that, that would be a huge piece of cheese that i think could be taken great note of by our politicians. let's remember teddy roosevelt did this in 1912. huge impact on progressive reform after this. george wallace did it in 1968. had a huge, i would argue negative, impact after him. ross perot did it, of course, in 1992. washington, d.c. made bill clinton a deficit reducer. and ross is a little [laughter]

down near the end the elevator wasn't going all the way to the top, yet ross perot, et cetera remember, won 20% of the vote almost. shows you how americans are really hungry. i just think if president obama, and i say because he's president, just said i'm going to chuck off the extra rod, plus go home. i going to run a radically responsible, radically bold, radically visionary campaign. one things democrats will always tell you, republicans are impossible, they're trying to stop everything. i'm not going to get in that whether it's true or not in the congress. i think there's a lot of truth to it. we can debate all of that later. my frustration is that may all be true in congress but i feel the administration of the presence has never actually gone to the people. ok, these guys are blocking me. not to my base. i will go to the people with the plan. i will call up simpson or bowles and republicans who voted for that and say boys and girls,

we're going to good on a road show. we will go all across this country and we're going to tell every american we we need a grand bargain, why it's good for us. what it will contain, why it's hard, why it was the solution? if he did that for a month i think the kind congress would get the message. that's that is my frustration. i know there's gridlock here. but what do we do j just sit back and say it's grit lock and i will shoot for 50.0001 by turning bayne capital into a four-lerd word? that's great. somebody wins by 50.00001 and there's no mandate. so we're back in the same suit. if we're back in the same soup, you know, it's -- we sometimes forget, we kind of toss this country around like a football. it's not a football. actual actually a faberge egg. you can drop t you can break it. i really don't want to be the

nextration that's known for not having had the responsibility to pass on the american dream to the next generation. but that's right where we're headed. so we've got time for one more? >> thank you. there's been a lot of talk recently some of the major companies who made significant gains and increased their bottom line by outscoring a lot of their work. recently, a number of companies announced that they're bringing some of work back because when obama announced incertaintyive incentives to create more of an insourcing environment. what is your view on that? >> you know -- >> and how can it be successful? >> i have not done a full-blown study. i hear it's going on. don't think there's a lot of outsource. the thing would you have to understand and if i did an update on "the world is flat"

this is what it would be about. we go from a connected to hyper connected world. outsourcing it -- is over. there's no more out and there's no more in. basically we're entering an age where the little sticker on your computer should say made in the world. because more and more things -- i mean made in america, not made in china or town. made in the world. the whole ideal of an export is really so 20th century. if you look at all of these products,. how do we think about made in the world? certainly we want to be part of that supply chain. where it's made. we want to share that. hopefully high-end manufacturing side of that. i think what we really want to aexpire to as a country is not just made in america. that's the part we want. part of that, i think what we want to inspire to is imagined in america. we want to be the place where things are imagined and orchestrated. they've done a study of the

ipod. i don't have the figures exactly right but they looked -- if the ipod made $1, basically 10 cents went to china and 90 cents back to cupertino of california and shareholders of apple computers. it's where projects are managed and where that global supply chain is orchestrated and how it's orchestrated. that's where the best jobs will be. so i think we have to get out of the heel outsourcing think tank because if you actually talk to global manufacturers, they live in a world now where they will go wherever the talent is and they can go. so you do not want to be kirk calson of s.r.i., stanford research institution. you have serrie on your iphone. serrie comes from k.r.s., they invented it. that's why it's called serrie. kurt has a saying you don't want to be best in class -- but when

have i a project. if apple says, gees, we would like to a phone that sits back to you. i don't sit and say give me best in demop do this. i on say best in class. who wants to be in the same class of people? i often want best in the world. what kurt does when he gets a project usually says who is the best in the world now? i see that i can now read the best columns in the world. i think the whole idea, we talked about this delicate and developing countries. it is very 20th century. i think we are going to a different world, high imagination enabling countries and low imagination enabling countries. we are the largest highest enabling in the world. we want to stay that way. that is where products are imagined and then orchestrated. and by the way, in cupertino,

when that is going on, not everyone works for apple, but the caterers and the service people, there is going to be a lot of jobs, many of them decent, good jobs, for everybody down the line, as long as we are at the cutting edge of that, so, basically, i see this in countries. what the high imagination countries understand is that basically the single most important comparative advantage as a country now is the ability to do this, sparked ideas. if i have got this now, i can go to taiwan, and they can developed. jumbo over to seattle, the fulfillment and delivery. good to freelanceer.com, they will get someone to design it for me, and craigslist will get my account. they are all commodities now

except this. what we want is a country full of people doing that basically. the more people are doing that, the more we will get the part of the orchestration, but the goal now has to be not just made in america. i do not want to throw that overboard. we do want that, but the real aspiration has to be imagined in america. thank you very much. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> can we take a picture? >> yes. >> so we can have these two. >> why do you not get on this side? you on that side?

>> more now from the u.s. conference of mayors with new york city mayor michael bloomberg on education and others, and in about 20 minutes, the senior adviser to president obama.

>> mayor, thank you. welcome. i had a good time with the lady gaga in times square. let me start by dispelling another rumor and that is that there is no truth to speculation that the only reason i came here was to collect on the bet i made with the green bay mayor jim schmidt on the packers-giants game. but if anybody is hungry for some wisconsin cheddar, i am demand tuesday. go, giants. the real reason i am here, and i want to thank tom cochran for the information, is to discuss an issue with all of you but i believe has -- critical juncture in new york and all around the country, and that is education

reform. it really is astonishing how much will is being said about our schools on the campaign trail because i think everyone knows, not just here, everyone in the country knows that education is a top concern. it is a top concern for parents and is a top concern for students. it affects them personally, but it has to be a top concern for those of us who do not have children or are not students, because it affects the country's future in some very profound ways. these are the people who are going to vote and those who will take care of us, those young people in schools, so you just cannot walk away. all of us have seen the report of how the schools stack up in other developed countries. you do not know the numbers when it comes to math and science. we are near the bottom of the pack, and when it comes to literacy, the best you can say

is that we are average. look at how many high skilled jobs are available today that companies just cannot fill, even though there are something like 13 million unemployed americans. the trip as they do not have the skills required for those jobs, and now, look at what is happening to the middle class. real wages have been stagnating for years, and too many young people are unable to find a clear path that leads them to the american dream. is there a connection between these developments? i do not think there is any doubt about it. if we're going to remain the world's economic superpower, we have to stop taking our success for granted. as the global economy continues to move, we have to move with it. as a matter of fact, we have to

lead that change, and the simple fact is we just cannot do that without a outstanding public schools. schools have been falling, and that was true for virtually every city in the country. over the decade, mayors and governors have led the charge for reform, overhauling dysfunctional school government structures, increasing the number of charter schools, helping parents get more information about schools, and holding schools accountable for success. mayors including rahm emanuel and kevin johnson, antonio in los angeles, and mayor booker, one of the strongest champions.

over the past decade, thanks to the leadership of these mayors and others, the number of students enrolled in charter schools has more than tripled. a good portion of that growth has come in new york city. we have opened 139 new charter schools in our city. we have created more than 500 new small schools that give parents, kids top-quality options. parents and students both deserve that. school choice is an important way to hold schools accountable when people vote with their is pretty obvious which direction they're going. i think it is fair to say we know we still have an enormous weight to go. work is only going to get harder. in new york and all run the

successful reforms are under attack from ideologues on the right and left. i remember a conversation i had with bill bennett, the former education secretary under president bush 41. and asked him why we did not have standardized, national testing. i have never forgotten what he said. never accept anything with the word "national" in its and the left will never accept anything with the word "testing" in it. i think that is right. ideologues are blocking national standards. comparing them to another distich -- district. that is not allow for

comparison with in the country or around the world. that is what accountability really is. i understand education is a local issue and localities running the schools. to do that, we can still have national standards that hold everyone accountable for success and to let us see where weif you cannot measure it, you cannot fix it. we have a saying in new york, in bring data. and we do not have the data that we need to know how well our schools are doing in each place. now, closer to that goal through something called common core standards. a common standard that nearly every state is adopting. that is something almost every state is adopting and that the obama administration strongly supports. just as the ideologues on the right are resisting national accountability with testing, ideologue's on the left are resisting accountability through any testing. without testing, there is no accountability.

without accountability, we're back where we were 10 years ago was schools failing and no one doing anything about it. some said they do not want testing in schools. stakes testing their about to face when they get out of school. it is how you get a job, how you make a decision on who you are going to live with, what you do. when it isin school, you have to make tough decisions. do you hang out with the gang or not? get pregnant when you are and -- when you are unwed or not? do you do drugs or not? those are high-stakes tests. our kids are subject to those tests. they have to answer those questions every day. to ask them whether they can read or write is something that will not put undue stress on them. unless we find out whether they

can do that, we cannot improve the quality of the education. we cannot help students with the things they need to focus on. there are ideologues that believe testing is ok as long as teachers cannot be removed from the classroom. requiring all teachers to be rigorously evaluated based on student achievement metrics. it was supposed to give us the ability to identify ineffective teachers to help them become effective. or if they cannot become effective,our school system has to be run for the kids and not for the people that work in the system. we are there to educate. [applause]

and our legislature -- thank you. our legislature passed that law. unfortunately, they put in a little thing, one giant roadblock there was anything but little. it was what made the difference. it gave the local unions the ability to veto any evaluation plan. and so now, here we are two years later, and not a single district has an evaluation program. instead, we continue to have a pass/fail system with a 98% passing rate. our students do not have the living. neither should our teachers. we have to raise the bar for them just as we are for our students. nobody thinks 90% of any group -- that 98% of any group is in the top 30% or top 70%. we have to raise the standards.

we have to help those at the bottom. if they cannot do the job, we have to replace them. the only way we're going to reform public education is by doing exactly that. around the edges. students first. york. it is the message our new governor is delivering as well. andrew cuomo has been governor for a year. he could not have been more that we put an effective evaluation system in, help teachers that need help, and that those who cannot perform get moved out. the governor and i both strongly supports the right to bargain. i have said i did not agree with wisconsin.

people have a right to organize. we have to decide what we're willing to do and what we'rewe should not be willing to have teachers who are ineffective in the classroom because we're leaving our kids out in the cold without the skills they are going to need to be self- supporting and without the education they need to american dream. our job is to do what is right net for our children. i have yet to hear how it is harder to remove ineffective teachers from classrooms. i can promise you we will not sacrifice our children's future by giving in on that point. the system has to be run for the people we're here to serve.

the attacks on education by ideologues on the right and left must be met and then it off by the sensible center. that is the people you are here with today, the mayors. mayors are pragmatists and problem-solvers. they do not have the luxury of being on both sides of an issue. they have to be explicit as to where they stand. they cannot say, i voted for it but did not vote to fund it. day -- it is like saying i am pro-choice but not for women. [laughter] mayors are where the action is. mare's pick up the garbage, educate the kids, keep calm down. economics work and increase life expectancy. them to do. they are expected to make hard- headed decisions based on the interests.

that is what the mayors have done on so many issues. that is what we have to do on education, including accountability measures like teacher evaluations and sensible plans to improve or find other careers for those teachers who are not getting their students to move ahead and get what they need to produce a paper in the great american dream. meaningless if our children do not have the skills to understand and participate and be part of the great american education is one of the basic civil rights. are so important is that all the best research tells us the single most important factor affecting a student progress is the effectiveness of the caution teacher.

got a lot of press about three weeks ago by harvard and columbia economists who found students with ineffective teachers are less likely to become pregnant, more likely to go to college, and more likely to get higher paying jobs. i think we all knew that intuitively. would anyone here want their child to be in the classroom with an ineffective teacher? of course not. we know how important great teachers are. we remember them from our own lives. great teachers make an enormous difference. if we expect the american school pack, the only way we will get there is with great teachers leading the way. the only way that will happen is teachers and replace ineffective ones. let me just take two seconds to tell me what we are doing in new york. teaching is probably the most important job there is today.

i have enormous respect for teachers and in the personal investments they make in their students. over the past in years, i have worked to invest in them by expanding professional development. we have raised base salaries by 43% in the last 10 years. a starting teacher in new york city now makes $45,000. that teacher can make well over $100,000. your mouth is. [applause] agencies in new york city have increased their compensation by inflation was 33% during that time. teacher incomes have gone up 105% because our teachers were underpaid. we were losing them to the suburbs. i cannot think of any better investment we can make them to have a better teacher in front of every single child. many student graduating from

college today have college loans that could lead them to cross teaching off of a list of possible careers. what we do to make more teachers apply to our school system? we cannot let it happen that they go elsewhere simply because they have loans to repay. we cannot let our top students who want to be teachers to decide they cannot afford it. one program we are in the process of instituting in new york city is we have proposed an incentive to anyone who finishes college in the top tier of the class to come teach in the new york city public schools. if you commit to stay, we will pay off up to $25,000 of your student loans. our teachers deserve it and so do our children. that is the recruitment. we also have to worry about retaining the best teachers by offering them a big raise. you know,teachers to they have lots of options. if you are a good teacher, you

are worth a lot of money in the private sector in many careers. not just as a teacher. and here in washington, teachers were given a choice to decide for themselves if they wanted a contract that would pay them an extra $25,000 a year if they were rated effective. guess what they did in washington, d.c.? the teachers said yes. they wanted to be rewarded for their success, just like any other person in any other job. why is anybody surprised about that? i do not know. we all want recognition and respect. and also, it would also be nice if we could get some money to enjoy more things. the harder we work and better the job we do, a thing most people would say, the better you should be rewarded. teachers' unions have unfortunately historically opposed merit pay. more teachers today are asking why. when they are given a voice, like here in washington, d.c.,

they say yes. by all accounts, the raises have been the essential to keeping effective teachers for moving out of the d.c. public school system. i think the question is, if imitation is the sincerest should be fired because we want to make the same offer to our teachers. we have proposed the following deal. for all of our teachers. if you are rated highly effective for two years, we will increase your salary by $25,000 -- $20,000 a year. our teachers deserve that and so do our children. it is something we have to bargain on with the teachers' unions. and the real question is going to be, will they stand in a way of the most effective members being rewarded for their work? i think this is an idea whose time has come. i am confident that teachers are allowed to decide the matter, they will support it in new york city the way they did in washington, d.c. now, as much as the battle for

these issues have gone on, we have already won the most important battle ball. -- battle of all. that is the battle for public expectations. 10 years ago, people said you cannot fix the schools until you cure poverty. the chancellor said to me that they had the wrong way. you cannot cure poverty until you fix our schools. too many people were resigned to the reality of bad schools just as they were once resigned to higher crime rates. world of high crime is not inevitable. if you used data-driven strategies and help people accountable for the results. mayor giuliani dramatically cut crime in new york city. we have cut it another 35%. since we have taken office. today, new yorkers expect the streets to be the safest of any big city in the country. the voters will not collect any -- will not elect any future

mayor who's not 110% committed to the bowl. if you expect the worst, you get the worst. if you expect to do better, you can do better. we're willing to take on the special's and the interests who find comfort in the status quo. when i took office, education was about as bad as it could get. graduation rates had been stuck below 50% for decades. school crime was the norm. kids were promoted regardless of whether they learned anything. promotion was often based more on political connections than merit. soft bigotry of low expectations. we expected more of our students. that meant expecting more of the adults in charge. so backman, ridgeback and then,

-- so back then, working with the state legislature, we abolished the broken board of education and handed control of the schools to a chancellor appointed by and serving at the pleasure of the mayor. by raising standards and inject accountability into schools, we raised graduation rates 40% since 2005. if you want to know how big that is, that is compared to 8% in the rest of the state. all the kids in new york state took exactly the same test. we have cut the dropout rate and school crime in half. we've increased the number of students taking advanced placement classes and students enrolling in college. are doing better. our school system is heading in today parents expect the schools to be first-rate. more parents are staying in our city rather than moving to the suburbs because of the change expectations. i realize many mayors do not control their own school

system, but we do have voices. we have the ears of other politicians. we have the parents as our constituents to expect us to stand up for their kids. let me conclude by sayingwe're all in this together. just as we have seen on many issues, when mayors stand together and speak together, we put problem-solving over ideology. we can make an enormous difference. if we stand together on school reform, we can make sure our kids nationwide get the education they need to keep the american dream alive in this new century and beyond. let's go get it. thank you. [applause] >> great job. >> thank you.

>> thanks, everyone. i am not going to start by singing out green. i went to think -- thank people. the president was in orlando, fla., yesterday. it will make them easier for foreign tourists. this is the kind of action we have taken. we cannot wait. we are scouring the government about what we can do on our air to help improve the government and the country, and something like this seem like a small procedural deal, but it as a big impact. all around the country, in communities often small, where people ram and rom can come and

spend money and go about our country, if you are a small business owner, more tourists mean more revenue, and if you are one of the many americans still looking forward, more revenue could mean more jobs, and for just but everyone in this room, tourist dollars to play a role. we were doing business in many other countries, and that has to stop, and it will. it will help people in communities all rehman country get through some of the toughest times than any of us can remember, certainly since the great depression. what is nice about talking to all of you, and i know that members of that a chance to visit with you, you are grounded obviously in the real world, that every decision we make in washington, that your governors make, that you make as mayors, these have direct impact on your constituents' in the moment and the kind of cities and towns that are going to be built for your residents in the coming years, so when we talk about

investing in education or reforming it, investing in transportation, about to create good, lasting, middle-class jobs, how we can become known for things stamped with those great words tipping made in the usa," you understand how much this means for people living in the cities. it used to be a lot more about scoring political points. it needs to be more about putting points on the board for you and your communities and the american people. the decisions we make in this city have a real, direct impact, for many of your constituents, it has never been more important that government live up to its responsibilities, and what is happening a lot rehman country is that people know if you are living up to your responsibilities. you are having to make tough decisions, state governments, people running businesses, having to make tough decisions, workers, family members. they have weathered this recession and have made adjustments.

they have been super responsible, and they want to see that same responsibility out of their institutions, and they certainly need to see more of that out of this city, and that is roughly what we will see in 2012. some of you might have seen the president's speech in kansas where he talked about the values that need to undergird our economy. we have to continue to create jobs. we have to get growth of and bring unemployment down. the central challenge facing the country is how to have more people in the middle class, have them feel more secure about it, and people fighting to be in the middle class, so many of you here represent people trying to get into the middle class, we have to have a country focused on that task for this maker

great moment for the middle class. i think what is reflected there is what is happening all over the country. for too many people in america, they are not sure if they work hard and as irresponsibly that they will be rewarded. they are not sure you will have the same opportunities the generations had. many americans have come to believe that is in question. we are seeing a wave -- wage stagnation as a problem. the average worker has been falling further behind. the growing gap between the wealthiest and everybody else. it is exacerbated by the financial crisis. dealingough people were hi

with wage stagnation heading into 2008, when you add in 2008, it makes the burdens even more challenging. the challenges we face were not created overnight. they were not created in 2008. these challenges have been going on for a long time. it will take for a long -- a long time for us to dig out of it. we need to have the same rules for everybody where everybody gets a fair shake. we're greater together than we are on our own. we all succeed when everybody plays by the same rules. that is true for our economy. just as important is that is the kind of america that people across america want to live in. there are the same rules in place for everybody. their hard work is just as valuable as someone else's. if you are not accountable,

there will be consequences no matter your station in life or how powerful your legal team. that is what we have to build in america. we know the jobs that will need to be created with some certainty in your communities to succeed going forward. we know we have to have a manufacturing sector now. the last two years, we have added manufacturing jobs. it has been a long time since we have done that. across america, you are beginning to see a manufacturing renaissance. we have to step on the accelerator. the president will talk about how we can do more. we know we have to have manufacturing jobs. they pay $20 or more an hour in communities. we have to have those so people can thrive. many of those will be in high- tech manufacturing. we have a moment where you are beginning to see more companies

make the decision that economically it makes sense for them to stay in america or relocate in america. you are seeing rising wages in china and the cost of business increasing their and in other countries. there is a window. the president had a comfort the conference on this a few weeks ago. countries -- companies talked about their decision to bring jobs back. they had great ideas of what the federal government could do to consent -- incent that. we have to seize the moment. we're clearly not going to get the job growth we need. the kinds of jobs will have to be a resurgence in the manufacturing sector, particularly in high-tech manufacturing. much of that will be in clean energy, health care technology,

and things our workers can export around the world. this is a unique moment we have. all over the country, companies are investing. they are bringing back 2000 jobs with ford. they are shifting production from other countries to michigan, ohio, and missouri. it was announced that after a long absence, general motors is now the no. 1 automaker in the world. we should all be proud of that. [applause] another great example from milwaukee is master lock. they realized their union workers in america were competitive with the workers in china. they're now exporting to china and europe. for the first time in 15 years, the milwaukee complex is running

at full capacity. the ceo of the health care i.t. company called galaxies solutions have hired 150 workers. they plan on hiring up to 50. we want to work with you on this. we will lay out ideas on tuesday. how can we create the atmosphere and incentives to make sure that companies will stay rooted in your communities and add capacity in your community? last year was a frustrating year in washington. one of the really troubling moments was that when the economy was already getting weaker, the economy began to

slow into the summer. washington made it worse. it was a self-and lifted wound to our confidence and economy. it has taken a long time to dig out of that. the debt debacle never needs to be repeated in washington again. -- it was a self-inflicted wound to our confidence and economy. we're heading into an election year. the election is still 10 months away. i am sure any of you do not have the luxury of not focusing on the task at hand every day. there is a sense in washington that it will be hard to get anything done in an election year and we will have to take these problems to 2013. demand of us and congress that is not acceptable. we will have an election.

there will be plenty of time to have the to and fro. there is a lot of work to be done now. democrats and republicans at the mayoral level encouraged congress to continue the tax cut for the middle class. your voices were enormously important. if you have not lifted up her voice, i think taxes would have gone up on everybody. you forced action so that taxes will continue to be cut this year. that will have a profound impact on every middle-class family and businesses. we still have work to do. we need your help to make sure that congress lands the airplane. that was a moment where the party was too late and too messy, but we finally came together. we have to make sure we extend a tax cut. we will continue to make the case that putting teetered back

in the classrooms and officers -- putting teachers back in the classrooms and offices back on the streets is the right thing to do. we are in a great competition. the last thing we can be doing if we are to compete with kids in singapore and beijing is to be shorting them in the classroom. we have to be pushing the accelerator down and not putting the brakes on. that has to be a central mission of this country. we will help you with that. there are job-producing ideas that have had bipartisan support that congress ought to work on. we may not solve all the debates this year. but we can do smart things to help you. we can do things to assist in the manufacturing sector that will help the middle class and small business.

we can work on education and reform. we can do some things around immigration reform. it is a long year. it is important you hold fire.gton's feet to the we have a lot of people hurting and a lot of opportunity. we will pursue every opportunity to work with congress. we have had some success. we have signed trade deals with columbia, panama, and south korea. we will be selling ford and chevy in south korea. we cut taxes at the end of 2010. don'tealed don't ask, te.. we will continue to look for every avenue where we can take action on our own. sometimes that is because there is gridlock.

sometimes it is because it is a good idea. if you have ideas, if you have ideas for executive actions we can take, we are all ears. you will have better ideas because you are on the other end of it. send them our way. we want to ask the customers and partners of the government for their ideas. the president will deliver the state of the union address on tuesday. he is working on it as we speak. the president gave a speech in

kansas where he talked about the values needed to animate our country and economy, about fair play, and the make or break moment for the middle-class, and how we can create more good jobs and reversed the wage stagnation and have more people getting into the middle class. it will take a long time. what he will lay out on tuesday is putting flash on the bones. he will play out his blueprint for how we can build an america that is here to last. at the end of the day, that is what people want and what the country needs. it is not a short-term economic moment built on bubbles or financial instruments. we need a durable economy and country with the real sense of

the things we need to do in terms of the right education and skills. some of that requires reform. the government -- the president announced he is asking for accountability to have reorganization authority. that means the president has the ability to give the congress ideas for how to make the government more efficient. we have a government that was built for the middle of the last century. it is not as efficient or strategic as it needs to be. it is not as customer friendly as it needs to be. we have made big improvements using technology. i hope you have seen a

difference. we have more to do. we gave ideas last week. if we have the authority, we would do consolidating, and smarter work. we want to reform the government so it is built to provide you and your city is the kind of government we need in this city. we have become ossified. policies and ideas are important. we will lay that out next week. in terms of skills, education, reforms, and more responsibility. that also needs to be directed here. we have to have big ambitions about the kind of reforms we need to bring to this government so that it is a true partner for you and with the private sector to unleash the

power of our people. this will be an important year, not just for what will happen in november. we have an economy that is still challenged. 22 straight months of private sector job growth. 2011 created more jobs than any year going back to 2005. given the deep hole we find ourselves in, it is not enough. we have external challenges. there is turmoil in the middle east. we still have instability in europe. we have the expiration of the bush tax cuts at the end of the year and the question of how we will get $1 trillion more of debt reduction. hopefully this town will do it in a smart way. we cannot do anything here that

would be another self-inflicted wound that was slow the economy. we need to do the opposite. in these tough times, what can we do in a collaborative way to play the role the government should to put more acceleration on the economy? the american people have been remarkable. they have dusted themselves off. they went right back to work. they started new businesses. they've got a new skills. they are saving. some have even had to adjust their dreams. they are doing it without complaint. they need leaders. you are on the front lines every day. this is more about our national leaders. they need to see their leaders are keeping more responsibility

-- acting more responsibly. we have big problems that will not be solved easily. there is common ground. i do not think the country wants us to wait until 2013 to make progress on our problems. the people on the ballot would probably be better served if they can show they will make progress. we look forward to working with you. you always give us great ideas and insights. please keep them coming. we need to be better partners with you. we need to be more innovative. you are all doing innovative things. we want to take a look at all of them. hopefully we can continue to make progress and build an economy that will last for all of our citizens. thank you. [applause] >> many of the initiatives you

have charted as priorities for the nation moving forward our initiatives we put together in our common sense agenda in september. they are extending the payroll tax for the rest of the year. they are investing in infrastructure and school construction. we supported the trade agreements and said we need reforms to promote tourism. you will see virtually all that you mentioned are things that on a bipartisan basis this organization has gotten behind. we are looking for practical solutions. many of these initiatives were

things where we went to democratic and republican think tanks to come up with this set of initiatives. they dovetail perfectly with the issues you have raised. we will be with you standing up with republican and democratic leaders who want to put the nation first. thank you so much. [applause] >> mr. speaker, the president of the united states. >> tuesday night, president obama delivers the state of the union address. live coverage begins at 8:00 p.m. eastern, including the president's speech, the republican response, and your phone calls. on c-span2, watched the president's speech with tweets

from congress and reaction from congressmen and senators. >> now, a recap of last night's south carolina primary and a look at the primary calendar ahead. from washington journal, this is 35 minutes. host: our sunday roundtable to welcome in washington, linda feldman from the christian science monitor. and charles bierbauer from the university of south carolina, also formally with cnn. i want to begin with this headline from the 2 q atlanta journal-constitution." what happened in your state and when did it change? guest: it changed rapidly, a 20-point swing in the last week. mitt romney had a 10 point lead at the start of the weekend he

is down now by 12 points. what happened is that there were two debates in which gingrich did extraordinarily well. very combative, but also very effective. and mr. romney did not do as nearly well. a lot of voters made up their mind in the last two to three days and that the debates were significance. host: your former colleague getting attention with the first question in charleston and as a professor of mass communications today, your reaction to the question, the timing of the question, and the response by newt gingrich. guest: i teach a class on media and the politics and you can bet that we discussed it. it was a question that had to be asked. it was front and center. i thought that john king did the right thing by getting it out first thing and then being able to move on. and he knew going end, i think, that newt gingrich, given his style, given his

aggressiveness, but probably take it on head on as he did. journalists have to be -- let new gingrich attacked the bridge attack the media and then get on. guest: i agreed that he had to bring it up because it was an elephant in the room. i am not sure that he should have a lead with a question just because it is not sensitive to the future of the country. it is a question about newt gingrich. it might be better placed in the middle. by leading with that question and getting the audience riled up against the media and for newt gingrich who looked under attack, it set the stage for a strong performance for speaker gingrich. host: let me go back to another point we have been talking about that when they write the book on the 2012 race, one chapter could be devoted to january 19. so much happened on thursday, a day that people were trying to keep track of all that. you're a ground zero in terms of what was happening in south

carolina. the day began with the announcement that rick santorum had won the iowa caucuses. the party out of the race. -- rick perry was out of the race. the question about mitt romney's taxes. and the interview with marianne gingrich. guest: that is a full day of news. i am not sure that the south carolina voters cared as much about whether santorum won iowa by a handful of votes are whether he lost it. good for santorum. but probably not a deciding measure for voters here. certainly the debate was. certainly the absence of rick perry, even though he was only polling at 5%, that it -- that is a handful of votes that have a place to go. so the dynamic was most

unusual, they have that many things happening at once, and then the question from speaker gingrich's second wife about his fidelity and the approach that according to her talking about asking for an open marriage, it was a big character question. and yet it did not seem to hurt gingrich because he turned to his advantage by attacking the media. host: charles bierbauer joining us from columbia, south carolina. and linda feldman from the christian science monitor. this headline to set the stage. what can we expect over the next 10 days? guest: the debates have been central to this race. newt gingrich has not had organization and monday, but he -- and money, but he has remediate the maximum a bandage.

maximumtaused free media to advantage. mitt romney was even talking about skipping some debate. now he has to take part and he will in the next two debates. foulard is the next primary on january 30 -- villard that is the next primary on january 31. -- florida is the next primary. in florida, you have 16% of the republican electorate that was non-white from the primary in 2008. you also have less of and evangelical vote. romney goes in back on his heels, but he certainly has an excellent shot. another thing about florida, many media markets. at least eight to 10 depending on how you look at it. you need a lot of money to compete in that many media markets. romney is well positioned to do

that. host: let me take that one step forward, because you are familiar with presidential politics. the more no. you are in florida, the more south you are as a voter. and more south you are, like miami dade county, the more no. you are because of snowbirds. describe the advantage of the politics of florida and the republican electorate. guest: you have outlined it very nicely. i am not a southerner. i do not sound like one. but for florida, -- many in the south, florida is not the south. it as southern new york, some people would say. or western cuba because of a large immigrant population that comes from cuba and other hispanic cultures. the demographics are significantly different. ford also does not have an open primary. south carolina has an open primary and about 25% of the voters identify themselves as independents. that would seem to help

gingrich, but some of the presumptions have gotten from now. among those independents, gingrich did better than running in south carolina, but he did gingrich did better than romney in south carolina, but he did better than him in almost every demographic except the better educated and better paid. that will not be the same set of characteristics that folks will be representing in florida. host: we are dividing our phone lines are among those who support the top four candidates. join us on facebook or twitter. here's a look to the results from the south carolina primary. a 12-point difference between newt gingrich and mitt romney. rick santorum a 17% and ron paul a 13%. let me ask you about some of the analysis last night, because some were saying that newt gingrich is better when he is behind. as he becomes the front runner,

he is not, but as he moves ahead, that he tends to lack discipline. how would you respond to that? guest: i think it is true. people talk about the good newt and the bad newt. he can become combative and exactly what the tea party people and conservatives really want third they want someone who will take it to barack obama. and when he wins, sometimes something happens and you talk about the bad newt are merging. it becomes on discipline, and he himself said that he thinks a a gig he becomes an undisciplined and he said that he thinks grandiose thoughts, a grandiose image of himself winning the nomination and the presidency. and then he makes mistakes. the likability factor comes in. i think all bets are off about how this goes forward. it is not saying that he cannot win the nomination, but his

history is erratic. both as a politician and a leader. host: charles bierbauer joining us from columbia, south carolina. linda feldman in our studios in washington. a supporter of newt gingrich joins us from boston. caller: the reason why i think newt gingrich has the only chance to beat president obama is that he is the true reagan conservative. he has always been supporting the republican party and the get negative there has always been a split in the -- there has always been a split in the republican party

now we have this 99%-1% debate, it will not work for governor romney. on the other hand, in addition, the issue with the media, i think newt is right to take on the media. a lot of people agree there is bias in the media. president obama was not that it all that well with his transcripts, -- vetted all that well with this transcripts, and the birther issue, and some issues with cocaine they were not covered very well. guest: the debate that has sprung up over the occupied wall street movement, it is true that it brings out the issue of mitt romney and his personal wealth and his tax returns. the fact that this has become central to the question about mitt romney, the way that he really failed in the last two debates was to look expensive and is -- as if he was hiding -- defensive and as if he was hiding something, and he has not been clear about when and how

many and it makes it look like he is hiding something. when we are having this very large public debate about the growing disparity between rich and poor, i think the extreme wealth of mitt romney is central to this. host: kwame to follow-up on this point. when do you think mitt romney will have to release his taxes? guest: the center, the better. -- the sooner, the better. the more he delays, it looks more like he is hiding something. he may not be hiding anything at all, but there is the appearance factor, and his responses on the questions in the debate, maybe i will do this or that, very equivocal, very much in contrast to gingrich. when he was confronted with something that had been raising eyebrows, he was head on. that is the distinction that people will look for. who is the person who can perk -- best handle crises, whether personal or national? host: on friday and yesterday trade, we heard that he should

release the information about how much you earned from fannie mae and freddie mac. is that a new line of argument from the romney campaign? guest: it parts -- it starts to put them on a more even keel. if you have economics or tax questions, let's find out what both of these gentlemen have been their tax returns. host: let me let you put on your professor hat. it gives you a sense of what was playing out of a last 48 hours. mike allen of politico pointing out in his daily playbook -- and this is available at their website. we can put it upon the screen. newt gingrich is doing every other show this morning.

your reaction. guest: that is demonstrative to be sure, but it also may be petulant. as linda was suggesting, and you can make mistakes and appear to be that way. but that the media will necessarily attack, but those are things to point out. gingrich can be very tempestuous in his temperament. guest: absolutely. he likes to take on the media and be very competitive, taking it -- combative, taking it out on abc for that interview. but i cannot emphasize this enough. he is so skilled at using the media. he did a great piece on politico about how he enjoys hanging out with the reporters embedded with his campaign. unlike mitt romney, who steers clear of the media and does not want to hang out, newt gingrich

has done multiple dozens of christian science monitor practices, as a plug to the monitor here. he has been engaging and likable in many ways. if anything, the lesson of this campaign is that you can use free media to maximum advantage and be a winner in the primary. host: from the washington examiner. our next caller support rick santorum from las vegas. welcome to the program. you are on the air. please go ahead. we will try one on time from las vegas. caller: my name is different. i support santorum because of

his religious beliefs. yes, i am with you. host: linda feldman. guest: in the iowa caucus, evangelicals rallied around present form. -- rick santorum. you had the houston meeting of religious leaders around the country throwing their weight behind nick -- rick santorum. in south carolina, the evangelicals went for newt gingrich. he is catholic. but he is preaching the religious conservative line on abortion and other issues. perhaps the key element in rick perry's exiting the race, not only consolidating the anti- rahm the vote in newt gingrich, but -- consolidating the anti- romney vote and newt gingrich, but also when rick perry spoke, he spoke of the power of redemption. and i am not evangelical, but my understanding is the key to evangelical thought that we are all sinners then -- and if you

repent and if you are seeking forgiveness from god, then you are good to go. so to speak. so this helped newt gingrich in south carolina. host: mark, a supporter of ron paul from boston. caller: thank you for c-span. i am a supporter of ron paul, but i have to give it to new. he handled himself massively in this debate as far as is the ability to debate. he is by far the strongest debater. his ability to think off the cuff is by far the strongest of the four candidates. the issue that should have put him on the defensive, his moral character, walking away from wife no. 1 when she is dying of cancer, and the second one, where he wanted an open marriage, you know, these are things that evangelicals -- he was able to redirect that to something more hated, the

control of corporate media. people distrust that and hated even more because they see the bias, they see the bias against ron paul. they want to give him much less time than anyone else, they talk about petty issues and not any real issues. it is quite obvious that they are telling us who to vote for. host: linda feldman, your reaction. guest: the role the media is very fascinating. many try to predict what is happening and we're trying to look at what happened in the past and what will happen in the future. that is very risky. this cycle is like no other. we've had three different winners in the first three contests.

in the past, the winner of the south carolina primary has gone on to win the nomination. but allen said that is not necessarily the case this time. i think it is easy to blame the media for picking winners and losers, but i think we see clearly that the people are striking back and they are not necessarily looking at polls and say, we should vote for mitt romney. they may be looking at polls and say, we will show them very we will go out and vote for the other guy. host: one of the themes from our face the page, some are calling at the hypocrisy of newt gingrich going after bill clinton and his own indiscretions at that time. how does newt gingrich respond to something like that? guest: i did not know that he has responded to it. i'm trying to recall if anyone has strongly confronted him with that particular question. but, yes, during the impeachment period for bill clinton, apparently mr. gingrich

was carrying on this affair. that is what people are focusing on when they talk about hypocrisy. it has not been front and center and certainly was not here. and for as much as we talk about the moral issues, but south carolina voters were saying yesterday is that economic issues are still their primary concern. we are a state that has the fourth highest unemployment rate in the country. some people were getting away from some of these hot-button issues, abortion, and where you are on the religious spectrum. i think the fact that the so- called evangelical vote was splintered with two catholics to choose from, it did not have the individual problems that perry might have seen, at that evaporated. except for the fact that there

is still skepticism about the mormon faith of mr. romney. i realize i have turned the question and a different direction, but the overriding issues here based on the exit polling are still economic. host: we're getting the perspective of charles bierbauer, a longtime reporter here in washington. is now the dean of mass communications at the university of south carrot -- columbia, south carolina. and linda feldman of the christian science monitor. you can join us on our facebook page or send us eight weeks. -- or send us a tweet. bop -- next we're going to william, a supporter of rick santorum. caller: i am amazed that no one has brought, that while mitt romney was governor of massachusetts, they had the

biggest overrun of the project, the tunnel, the big dig, and then when he went there with a hard hat on and declared that tunnel say, and then a piece of it fell on and kill some man's wife in a car. why don't they have that man, on and say how he feels about romney? guest: that is an interesting argument. in the main, romney gets credit for a decent job of running massachusetts in terms of fiscal matters. in the big dig, obviously that was a cost overrun which was astronomical. i'm not sure that mitt romney is to blame for that. host: a focus on mitt romney's many homes and some of the past references to money. let me share with the daily news is writing and get your reaction.

he famously tried to bed rick perry $10,000, a wager far out of reach for americans. he brushed off $375,000 in speaking fees as not very much. he had reports that he had planned to quadruple the size of as california digs -- he recently sold his $3.5 million home outside of austin. -- boston. guest: those are big numbers and they are in multiples that most people cannot relate to.

when people talk about having a place at the beach of the mountains, they call it a shack. never quite sure what it is until you see it. this is part of the difficulties that many voters, whether here or across the country, will have to deal with. how to relate to mr. romney who is clearly not the 1% but the 0.1%. but the challenge is greater for him than it is necessarily for the voters. the voters can choose whoever they like in that regard. the gap between gingrich and romney baby significant in and ofmaybe significant in and itself. it is much more incumbent upon governor romney to show that he is in touch. guest: this is central to the problem that mitt romney is having, he is not a common man. he was born into wealth. he is very fortunate and he does not have a good narrative, part of the problem. barack obama have a narrative. john mccain have a narrative

with his years as a pow. mitt romney was born into a wealthy family, and yes, he had to live on a limited income when he was off mormon missionary in france, but his impulses is to think that large sums of money are not really that large. in the exit poll, people were asked their opinion on his years at bain capital, which has become a problem for him lately, and 67% found that it was a positive. it is not that he is a businessman being a problem, but the way he portrays it and the way he reacts to it. host: linda feldman with the christian science monitor and charles bierbauer at the university of south carolina. more from last night, mitt romney talking about issues he has brought up in the campaign and moving ahead of florida, how capitalism and free enterprise are key to his candidacy. [video clip]

>> over the past few weeks we have seen a frontal side -- assault on free enterprise. we expected it from president obama. we did not anticipate republicans would join him. that is a mistake for our party and our nation. ours is the party of free enterprise and free markets. [applause] the republican party does not demonize prosperity. we celebrate success in our party. [applause] that is one of the big differences between our party and our president. he leads the party of big government. he believes an ever expanding entitlements. he is wrong and we are right and this is a battle we cannot lose. [applause] those who picked up the weapons of the left today will find them turned against us tomorrow.

host: the comments of mitt romney and the analysis of jeff zeleny of the "new york times." according to him, mitt romney is scoring thousands of early votes in florida as that is under way in the sunshine state. guest: it is a long haul. we're only three states down, and there are 50 of us. and appropriately so. this should not be decided this early. florida is a different kind of test. it should be a good opportunity for a greater swath of voters to make decisions, to see how well romney rebounds from defeat

here. he had come into south carolina almost anticipating he would be 3-0, and instead he is 1-2 with the rig count in iowa and the -- recount in iowa and the loss here. we have seen candidates stumble along the way in the early going and still survive and go on to the nomination. it is not without precedent. it is almost more the norm than to have one candidate squeak through and win it all. -- sweep through and win it all. host: and yet we heard this last night -- no republican since 1980 has gone on to win the nomination without winning south carolina. guest: that is a very small data said. since competitive contests. -- six competitive contests. an interesting fact but it is not productive. host: john from indiana, thank

you for waiting. caller: first i was going to vote for mitt romney. newt gingrich, i'm going to vote for him because president obama is going to eat him up because he is a racist. guest: the politics of race came up in a big way in south carolina with the raising of the food stamp president quote. as we move in the states that are more diverse, it is an interesting question. i'll look in florida at the latino vote. there is a large cuban-american community and three of the most cuban-american -- the most important cuban-americans in florida politics have endorsed mitt romney. endorsements have not been that effective in this country nikki haley of south carolina endorsed him and that did not do a lot of good. the immigration issue is important with the latino community.

jeb bush, the former governor of florida, said he will not endorse it in the florida primary. he has warned on the immigration issue. for newt gingrich, he is at times played the issue effectively. he said he does not favor deporting illegal immigrants who have been in the country for a long time. that is a popular position among latino voters. in contrast, mitt romney has been against the dream act, the proposal to allow young illegal immigrants to stay in the country if they go to college to join the military. -- or join the military parade -- if they go to college or join the military. the debate in florida will be very different from south carolina. i am not making any predictions. host: linda feldman has covered the united nations and moscow

for the science -- christian science monitor. charles bierbauer spent years at abc before going to cnn. let me ask you about all these debates. one of the questions as we look ahead to 2016, and as a professor who teaches this, we heard speculation that mitt romney will not participate in the two debates. the campaigns are complaining that there are far too many. it makes it difficult campaign. guest: i am not sure that should make it difficult. it should help them get a rhythm. we have seen far more debates. we have a very competitive media environment which is part of it. the network i used to work for, cnn, and fox news and nbc, every one of the networks wants its share of the debates, a good promotional tool, no question about that. it also shows there reporters and anchors has been engaged in

the process. ultimately it is free media for the candidates. it is an opportunity for them to hit national markets, to be seen nationally, as well as in the states currently being contested. and one would expect that the candidates understood that going in. they did not think that there would be quite as many, but you have to think that if mitt romney is going to rebound from this, the debates are one of the best places to do that. host: linda feldman, he used to be called the invisible primary. we did not see this in 2012. guest: we have so many debates, which has been fantastic, and unfiltered way for voters to see these candidates in action and take a measure of them. but we also have the super pac's, and because of a supreme

court decision allowing unlimited spending by outside groups, which in theory do not coordinate with a campaign, this allowed the money support to pour into these outside groups that have been in support of various candidates. this has been huge for newt gingrich. we will be watching to see whether a casino magnate does going forward. he poured a lot of money into newt gingrich's super pac, which put out the ads attacking mitt romney and his record at bain capital. the model for how to run a primary will change going forward. host: scottsdale, ariz., good morning. caller: this is been very good. i want mitt romney and everyone talks about his wealth. but the kennedys were camelot with their well. -- with their wealth. newt gets $60,000 per ft..

-- per speech. there will not be a lot of debates during the presidential. the other thing -- he yelled at fox yesterday because they asked him about freddie mac. he got mad. and the last thing, i have seven grandchildren, three of them are girls. 4, 14, and 22. i would like you to ask newt when he comes, he is such a historian, has there ever been a mistress and a white house? our moral values are better in the west and south carolina. they tell us how good in morrill -- how good in morals they are. when i listen to this, i shake. to think this is what the republic -- the republican party has always had morals over the democrats, and you look at the white house with a husband loves his wife and his children, and we are looking at new with this supposedly third wife?

you think we are -- there were only two other girlfriends? america, you look at these nights. -- you are nuts. i am sorry, i cannot believe the morals in south carolina. and they're only two debates that he will debate the president for. come to the west where we have morals. host: thank you for the call. charles bierbauer, your response. guest: i am not sure about the morals of south carolina 0.3 that was not the question being raised here. -- the point about the morals of south carolina. there was not the question being raised here. newt gingrich makes no secret that at a list of callis -- callista is his third wife. morals are judgments people make individually. can the except the man who has

been remarried twice? -- can they accept a man who has been married twice? this came up when ronald reagan ran for president because he had been divorced and remarried. he was the first president who had been divorced, who successfully had been elected. there are going to be moral questions throughout the process. that is part of what we're doing in an electoral process, examining the people who stand up in front of us and say i am good enough to be your president. i think that we'll look at them as walter mondale said with morals. if i can add one thing to what was said about the super pac's, we saw an inundation of ads from the super pac's, almost across the spectrum here in south carolina. and it was the second front of this competition, in addition to the debates. the ferocious advertising that has been unleashed. coincidentally, perhaps, two of

the supreme court justices were in colombia yesterday for a south carolina bar meeting. i had the opportunity to moderate a discussion with him. i raised the question of their opinion in citizens united, which was the case two years ago that opened up the way for the super pac gas. -- ads. it was a divided court opinion, 5-4, justice scalia with them but jardine, justice breyer with a minority. justice breyer said that money in speech and not necessarily acquitted. -- that money and free speech are not necessarily appointed. justice scalia said that when it comes to speech, the more, the better. very divisive when the court and it will be, i suspect, as americans look at this process going on from state to state, a lot of people shake their heads and think how did we get all of this vast spending and millions of dollars, some $12 million

here in south carolina, that is not as accountable as it is from the candidates themselves? host: charles bierbauer also covered the pentagon and the white house, two decades at cnn, before that abc and now is the dean of mass communication at the university of south carolina. linda feldman here in washington. let me follow-up on this from the kit you washington post." an opinion piece. the more you pick on a person, the more likely you will create sympathy, especially if that individual has been forthright in his confession. guest: right, fascinating point for that thing about newt gingrich is that he does not

pretend that he had a perfect life. this issue of committing adultery, carrying on with his third wife, the woman who became his third wife, when he was still married to his second wife, he will write off of that say, yes, i failed as a person in the past. i do not think -- first of all, the economy is way more important in this election than issues in the personal past. but mitt romney is married to his one and only y, 42 years, five children, 16 grandchildren. as people look at who their next president will be, they look at the whole picture, the whole family, the life, and people like the obamas, even if they are not happy with him as a president. they liked the picture of his

family separate from his performance as president. that will help mitt romney going forward. he will place more emphasis on character in the florida campaign. host: from twitter. charles bierbauer, your analysis. guest: it is early, and that is what we're dealing with. we have the voting capacity is so those who may have already voted in florida will not benefit or may not even care about how the debate unfolds on monday. and i believe thursday in florida. there is some risk to that. there is greater voting participation to be sure, but it also puts into question the last-minute shift in voter opinion that we saw here in south carolina. south carolina.