>> well, i had a somewhat spotty academic career. you might say. i am sure that has not happened to anybody here. but i was recruited to go to yale when i got out of high school and then -- well, i got kicked out twice. i ended up back in wyoming building power line and transmission line for some years and ultimately decided i needed to get an education. so i went back to school at the university of wyoming, and was seriously interested in the

young lady i had gone to high school with. she was an excellent student and graduated at the top of our class. she was not too sure about where i was headed. but after a year, she agreed to marry me, and we will celebrate our 47th anniversary this year. she was a strong motivator for me to work hard and be a good student. i got my ba and masters at the university of wyoming in the 1960's and then went on to the university of wisconsin where i was working on a doctorate, and i completed the course work for a congressional fellowship, in effect an internship with a stipend. it was a relatively small group, but we were able to pick a member of congress wanted to work for. i came to washington to stay 12 months in 1968, and i stayed about 40 years. i overran my schedule.

but the experience i had, a group of members of congress would come through during the orientation session, and i was very impressed with one young congressman from the north shore of chicago, a man by the name of don rumsfeld. he spoke for the group. i thought i would kind of like to work for him. i went to interview with him. he had me in his office, and he asked me what i was doing. i am explaining how i was studying the way congress voted into doing a ph.d. thesis and so forth and i was going to go back and become a professor. he listened about 10he listened, stood up, and said this is not going to work. he threw me out. he claims that is not what happened, but i took notes. i remember very well. a couple months later, he was named by president nixon, who was just starting his administration, to run the anti-

poverty agency in the office of economic opportunity. and i sat down shortly after he was announced and i wrote an unsolicited 12-page memo to him, telling him how he should conduct himself in his confirmation hearings, what he should do with the agency once he took over, and what kinds of policy initiatives he should undertake and so forth. i send it through the man was then working for and did not hear anything about it for a couple of weeks. then i got a phone call asking me to come down to the agency the next day to be part of the transition group to advise rumsfeld. this was the day he was sworn in. i went down. came in. he spoke to the big group and left. he sent a secretary in and she came in and said, is there anybody in here named cheney? i held my hand up, and he took me back to his office. he looked at me and said, you, you're congressional relations. now get out of here. [applause] that is how he hired me. he did not say i liked your memo.

he did not say, would you like to work for me, he said, you are congressional relations, get out of here. so i went out, got directions, it took over. >> and you were how old? >> at the time, i was 37 -- no, excuse me, i would have just turned 28. >> a question from ariel. >> i want to thank you first for this opportunity. my question has to do with your book. when writing your book of memoirs, was there in any event or moment it would have done it differently at any regrets in your early years of politics that you wish you would have done? >> things i wish i would have done in political life? >> yes. >> not really. i look back on that -- two thoughts stand out. one, i was very fortunate. i had some great opportunities that came my way.

but that was, in part, because of people willing to take a chance on me. after a career like mine, it is easy to look back on it and sort of get into the mindset that somehow i earned it all by myself. that is not true. that is almost never true. if you think about it, you're able to advance on what you do in the forward progress in a career because people are willing to help. i can identify john rumsfeld, bill steiger, a congressman from wisconsin, jerry ford who was willing to hire me to work for him. i actually went down in the day he took over to be part of the transition, eventually to become chief of staff, when i was very young. my subsequent career has turned on those decisions that other people made when i was here as a young man.

i did not expect to stay more than 12 months. but those are the things i think about. in terms of what i would have done with my own career, i did everything i set out to do. and it was obviously varied. had to do a bunch of things. i was glad to be there to work in the aftermath of watergate. and i was finished working for president ford, i went on to wyoming because i decided i wanted to run from congress and that was the place for me to run from. but everything here during the nixon and ford administrations laid the groundwork all the relief for my campaigns, and fortunately i won all of those and then i got to be secretary of defense and vice president. you cannot plan it. there is no place you can go to the job fair and say that is the package i want.

i was extraordinarily fortunate. it has been, from my standpoint, it has been a wonderful career, and i have loved every minute of it. i am only sorry i am not young enough to do it all over again. >> thank you very much. >> let me ask about the 40 years. you're not part of his administration when he pardoned richard nixon. but you said the impact of the pardon would have been lessened if more thought would have been given to how the pardon was announced. you said it was the right decision. but in terms of public relations, what you think ford should have done or the people around him? >> rumsfeld and i came in and helped with the transition for about two weeks, i guess. then we both laughed. i went back to the private company i was working at. he went back to nato. we got called back a couple weeks, after the president had been there about a month and he decided he needed a new chief of staff.

that is the job he gave rumsfeld and the name be his deputy. it was during that couple of weeks' time span between our tours that he issued the pardon for nixon. i thought it was the right thing to do from a standpoint that it was just, in a sense. nixon was resigning under fire, the only president to ever do so. he made a very, very difficult call. and president ford made the decision he did because he thought it was the right thing for the country. put watergate behind us so we can move on and deal with other things. the only problem i saw in that i talk about in the book was the president announced the pardon on a sunday morning on a nationwide television. nobody is up watching a nationwide television on sunday morning unless your, you know, a glutton for punishment and you watch "meet the press" or fox on sunday mornings. but in those days, very few people actually saw the

broadcast. if you go back and look at those old tapes, you can see the sun streaming into the windows of the oval office. the leaves are in the trees. early in the timber still. it is a beautiful day and a fantastic setting. ford gave a great speech, but nobody heard it. there had not been any effort made to sort of laid the groundwork. you know, maybe, for some, some leaks to the press or maybe bring in congressional leadership and briefed them in advance. so everybody was really surprised by it when it happened. it dropped us about 30 points in the polls. we went from a 70% approval rating down to about 40%. it was a burden we carried on the way through the 1976 election. i take it contributed to our defeat. but the thing i really loved when i think about it was when president ford died, with a lot of people remembered and we're

reminded of was that he had had the courage knowing full well it might well cost and the presidency to make that decision and to stick by it. and he was a remarkable man, and as i look back on it now, i think one of the things that proved that was, in fact, his decision to pardon nixon. >> westfield state university. >> thank you so much for being here. i want to go back to the beginning a little bit. you start off as an intern in washington, d.c. and work your way up to chief of staff and vice president. the feel that your internship was vital to that process, and what kind of lessons did you learn there that you cannot have learned anywhere else? >> well, i did an internship in the wyoming state senate, but they only get 40 days every other year, so it was not like it was an extent, which is, by the way, the way congress should meet.

when i entered that, i was sort of nonpartisan. i was a graduate student. then i work for the government of wisconsin for a year. both of those were with republican state senator and republican governor. out of that, then i got the summons, if you welcome the opportunity to go to washington as a congressional fellow, which was a yearlong proposition and also paid. i had to feed my family. the predominant impact of those experiences -- i really thought i wanted to be a political science professor. i worked hard at that. i had done everything except the dissertation for ph.d. in wisconsin, and it is grade school with a very strong department. what i found after had been back here for awhile, based in part on those early experiences, was

i decided i was much more interested in doing it and then i was teaching about it. so when it came time for me, after we lost the 1976 election, i had to go fight. what i really wanted to do was to go run for congress, put my name on the ballot. i was impressed and felt very strongly that if somebody like jerry ford, don rumsfeld, bill steiger could serve in congress -- that was honest work and those are great guys. those experiences really lead to the change in my basic life, and i never did finish the dissertation. i never did get my ph.d. i never did go back and teach. there are probably some political adversaries in wyoming who wish i had instead of

running for congress, but i got caught up in the political wars. it was fascinating. it was interesting. it was something that fundamentally changed my life. that is how i met norm mineta,

back in the 1980's. >> thank you. >> there is a juxtaposition in the book which is emblematic of the american political process. he began the morning of january 20, 1977 in the white house. by midafternoon, you and your family were having lunch in a mcdonald's at andrews air force base. take that metaphor and what that tells you about politics in america. >> well, it was a unique kind of experience to go through. i did not know at the time that was ever going to get the chance to go back to the white house or go back to senior levels of government. we lost the election in 1976. jimmy carter was taking over. we had run a transition. on january 20, i went up to capitol hill on the president's motorcade and restorer in president carter. then we got in the president's helicopter and flew over the city a couple times and then out to andrews air force base. the president of the helicopter and walked over and caught on air force one. it was the first time in as the time i had been working for him, the first time he had been on air force one all by himself without me. and that was a bit disconcerting. as his plane took off, a guy in a trenchcoat came out with the big aluminum suitcase that he laid open on the ground in front of us. i was there with my staff, our advanced men, military assistance, and so forth, those who work for me in my capacity as chief of staff. he said, ok, gentlemen, i need everybody's radios. throwed in the aluminum suitcase.

then he closed it up and walked off and said, it has been great working with you guys. that was it. we were out of work. my family was there, so we stopped at the mcdonald's across the street from andrews air force base and had a little leisurely lunch. big macs. it was an interesting time. in part, because at that moment i was out of work. i had two young kids. lynn, my wife, was finishing up her ph.d. she got hers. >> so she finished and you did not? >> she finished and i did not. we had to decide what to do. that is when i made the basic decision that wanted to go back home to wyoming. if i was to run for office, that was the place to do it. that was home. in that spring, since school was out, we loaded up the u-haul

truck and hauled home to wyoming. that fall, a few months later, the incumbent congressman announced his retirement and surprised everybody. we thought he was going to run for reelection. but he did not. that was my opening, and i jumped in and won a tough three- way primary and won the general election. less than two years after i left, i was back here as a freshman congressman from wyoming. >> there is a story about you running for reelection and one of your constituents did not know who you are. >> well, that happened on more than one occasion. i am trying to remember which -- >> they said -- >> well, my favorite story was -- had to do with a fellow down in torrington, a house painter. this is one of the guys who runs all the time anyway and

never wins anything. he actually ran his dog one year. that was an insult, by the way, when he ran at the dog. but i ran into him -- i am trying to remember the exact event, but we were at a big barbecue that came along later in the campaign down in torrington, along the nebraska border. the farm groups were out that day. i had a guy come up to me at the barbecue, as i recall, and i was introduced as the dick cheney candidate for congress. he said, are you a democrat? i said, no, sir. he said, are you a lawyer? i said, no. he said, i am voting for you. that is all he wanted to know, if i was a democrat and if i was a lawyer. no offense. >> thank you for being with us.

he started as chief of staff in the ford white house and later as vice president with president george w. bush. i was wondering if you could tell us the similarities and differences between those two roles both in the white house, and then how your position as chief of staff helped you to be better prepared to serve as the vice president? >> thank you. >> that is a good question. the thing, when you study political science -- when i came away from my years as a student and a scholar, we were always looking for similarities across administrations, trying to identify institutional factors that you can look and

see under each congress are each presidency, what they had in common. after i was involved doing that for awhile, i changed sort of my attitude in terms of what was significant and concluded that, especially from the standpoint of the white house and the president, that what was really distinctive about the job was it was a different for every president, and it depended a lot upon the time in which they govern it. you usually cannot forecast what it was that they were going to have to deal with. the bush administration, when i ran with then governor bush, we were focused on a lot of domestic issues. he had been governor of texas. tax policy, education, and so forth. in eight months into the administration, 9/11 happened. 3000 americans killed by terrorists that morning. that fact and our responsibility to defend against any further attacks and so forth, is what dominated the

rest of our presidency for the next seven years. that was the prime focus. the other thing that was crucial and vital is the personal characteristics of the individual behind the desk in the oval office, and each one of them is dramatically different. it is very hard to protect how dwight eisenhower might have dealt with the kind of thing we had to deal with, or fdr, who obviously had not only world war ii but also the depression to cope with. we were fortunate during some of our times of great crisis to have individuals who could step up and do what needed to be done. but it is interesting. i just finished a book on dwight eisenhower, a new biography called "eisenhower: war and peace." it covers his life. what i come away with is a much

higher regard for president eisenhower then the sort of conventional wisdom that the academic community may see. from time to time, they will list presidents and the historians will rank them in terms of who was the best and so forth. i would have to say that those rankings, there is almost no resemblance at all to my experience in terms of how i look at those individuals. the chief of staff's job, it is very different from being vice president. it is focused very much on what the president needs to have done. he needs to have somebody around him who is going to be there from early in the morning until late at night and do whatever he needs to have done and you can speak with the authority of the president, never to use it, never mistake his own position as chief of staff for what the president is doing. you only have one president. he is the guy that runs for

office and put his name on the ballot. you're totally expendable as chief of staff. it is very, very important that you function, i think, in a way that emphasizes the staff part of that title. we, from time to time, have had chiefs of staff that did not do that. they spend a lot of time in front of the tv camera. they sought the ability to be sort of a major public player, putting a voice to their views in various issues, sometimes even a sort of managing the process to get the policy outcome they want. that is not why you're there. you are there to meet the president. you have to have the confidence to carry out his instructions and to do what he needed to have done. the vice president, on the other hand, mayor may not have much to do. it is a very interesting proposition. part of what you do, obviously,

is your there in case something happens to the president. beyond that, it is really up to the president and what his relationship is what the vice president in terms of how much you're asked to do and what you get to do. it is really totally in his hands. we have had a lot of vice presidents that nobody remembers, because there were never asked to do anything. in my situation, the first, was offered a chance to be on the list to be considered for the job, i said no. i had a good private sector job and had 25 years in politics, and i did not want to come back to washington. eventually persuaded me that i was the guy who he needed in that post. he put me in charge of the search committee. and some of my friends subsequently said, yes, cheney

went to work and he searched and searched, and he found himself. that is how he got to be class president. that is not accurate, but it is a charge. a very different kind of function, you're not in charge of anything. you're not in charge of white house staff. you're not in charge of troops or civilians. there is a huge difference between cabinet members and a vice president on the one hand and a staff on the other. i love both jobs. there were absolutely fascinating. but they were very, very different. >> why did not work for richard nixon or nelson rockefeller? they did not like the job of vice president, nor did lyndon johnson. yet, you enjoyed it. al gore said he had a lot of responsibilities. what works and what does not? >> well, the norm has been, i guess i was the 46th vice president, and when you look at the typical pattern, my guess is he may have somebody who is a very diligent student who could

name all our vice presidents, but i could not. oftentimes, it has been described in various ways by other politicians or the vice presidents themselves, some were not even allowed to go to cabinet meetings. eisenhower and nixon had a somewhat strained relationship. they did not really know each other before nixon was picked. and it never was a close relationship. a lot of that i think had to do with nixon's own background. he had been the supreme allied commander in europe throughout world war ii. he ran a military-style operation. there really is not a place in that for a "vice president." you can add the deputy commander, a chief of staff that runs things on behalf of the supreme allied commander, but

that style of operation was very much to delegate a lot of authority down, especially to the cabinet. he did not delegate much of anything to the vice president. then he would focus on the big issues himself. in other cases where i was involved, president bush was -- he spent a lot of time thinking about it. when he asked me to help him find somebody after i said no the first time around, i had the opportunity for several months to hear him talk about what kind of individual he was looking for. what he really wanted was somebody who could be part of the team and heavily involved in policy-making. and that is, in effect, what he offered me. what he said to me after we finished the search and we reviewed all the candidates, he turned to me and said, dick, your the solution to my problem. at that point, he basically put the arm on me and a few days later made the decision to sign me on. but it worked well in our case.

i got to do an awful lot. part of it was because i happened to have a set of experiences as secretary defense, intelligence committee, and congress, that was very relevant after 9/11. so i was a valuable commodity in that sense. he asked me to spend a lot of time on those kinds of issues. but i became persuaded that, in fact, what he wanted -- she was not worried about a big state. wyoming is the smallest state in terms of population. only three electoral votes. but in 2000, that was the difference between victory and defeat, but that was not ordinarily the case. i did not have any special appeal in terms of ethnicity or gender. there are a lot of reasons people talk about hiring vice presidents, but he decided that he wanted me, primarily because of my past experience and i

would guess also he consulted with his father, someone whom i had worked for as secretary of defense back in the early 1990's. i think those things came together. >> you make it a point in your book, your code name was back seat as chief of staff. >> right. it was. but i took that as a point of honor. secret service gave me that. we had a dinner when i left, and they gave me, as a token of affection, the back seat at out of an old beat-up junker of a car. it had rats living in it. it was a bad piece of equipment. they presented it to me that i to commemorate my secret service code name.

but it was in the sense of keeping your head down, doing everything you could for the president, and trying to stay out of the line of fire, do not become a target, if you will, for the president and other politicians. >> thank you for taking your time to speak with us today. i wanted to know, have you felt that there were times when you stood alone on an important issue, if so, how did you handle that issue or the situation? >> well, there were times when i -- i guess i felt outnumbered. that is easy to do sometimes when you are a republican in the house run by the democrats, for example. but i had the attitude i suppose i am trying to think about some of the controversies we were involved in. some of the strongest controversy surrounded some of our post 9/11 policies.

we had to do a couple of things that i felt were very important. the president made the basic decision and signed off on it. i did not do it by myself. but one was to set up our terrorist surveillance program that lets us collect intelligence on people calling from outside the united states to people inside the united states if we had reason to believe that that call may have come from an al qaeda type. the other was our enhanced interrogation techniques that we applied to a handful of al qaeda terrorists when recaptured them that were controversial. i will not bore you today here with everything, but we were careful to make certain they were legal and we stayed within the limits, but we did develop a vital techniques for collecting

information from people like khalid shaikh mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11. when we captured him in the spring of 2003, he was not very cooperative in the outset. after he was involved with the enhanced interrogation techniques, waterboarding, he decided that he wanted to cooperate. and then it was a wealth of invaluable information for us in terms of putting together our program against al qaeda. leon panetta, when he was cia director of at the time he got osama bin laden, said he believed that their ability to get bin laden had been influenced in part by a lot of the intelligence we collected through that means before, and it gradually led to the location of the bin laden when president obama and the seals took him out. >> thank you. >> zachary is next, from tennessee. >> mr. vice president, thank you for joining us today.

i am from tennessee tech university. what attributes do have as an older professional that you wished you would have had whenever you were a younger professional in washington? >> well, i would almost state it the other way in terms of now that i am and older professional -- [laughter] >> experienced, how about that? >> experience. one of the most valuable experiences that i learned over time that i did not have when i started was i thought when i started that the quality of my contribution was directly related to how many hours a day i put it into my desk, and the longer i stayed in the harder i work, the more i was contributing. that was sort of my mind set. that was not true. what i did not understand until later was there was such a thing as quality. and it was important not just to be at your desk, you know, sending memos out and

responding. you have to do all that sort of thing. but it is much better to be organized in a way that helped. have staff working for you in getting them to focus on the things and give them guidance, and focus on the big issues yourself. but also to pace yourself. to take that time to occasionally grab a day with the family, seven days a week. sometimes it is necessary. but there could be a crisis. it will wear you down. i also made the mistake of smoking two or three packs a day when i was younger. the last one i had was when they wheeled me into the emergency room with my first heart attack, but that came only about two years after i left the white house. and there is something to be

said for the notion that the way i lived during the first cycle in government, if you will, drinking a lot of black coffee, smoking cigarettes, not getting much sleep or exercise, and to some extent i brought it on myself because i did not take care of myself. what i learned over the years since is that there is such a thing as quality, and sometimes less is more. it is very important if you're going to make a career out of it, as i have, and pursue it over a long time, you need to develop that capacity. know what is important and less important and be able to focus on the big things and do not sweat the small stuff. >> thank you. >> in your book, this is the conclusion, but it might be a question on the state of politics. is that our political battles are messy, shrill, and sometimes cruel. yet, for all of that, you say the system has a way of producing courageous and compassionate action when it is needed the most. in terms of what you're seeing today in congress in american

politics, what are your thoughts? >> well, i am still looking for it in this cycle. i think about it in terms of -- when i am asked today lots of times, people will say is this the worst time in american politics, the worst time when the rhetoric is more harsh and the relationships are more strained and people are nastier to one another? but then, you know, i think back and i think, let's see, when i came to washington in the summer of 1968, martin luther king had just been assassinated. bobby kennedy had just been assassinated. the cities had been in flames as a result of riots and protests. when i came to washington to find an apartment to live in the summer, i came down for a day and came back to wisconsin. they had troops stationed on the steps of the capital. elements of the 82nd airborne

had been moved into washington to maintain order during that time span. 12 people had been killed in rioting gear that summer. that was a difficult time. we were not sure if it was a civil war, the bloodiest conflict in our history, over 600,000 dead. and it was -- oftentimes we look at it, and at a time like now, and we say, gee, it has gone bad and nasty out there, and they do not remember the struggle we had, for december, to end slavery and to build freedom and democracy as we know it today. so some of those struggles were

very, very tough and very difficult. what we go through today, we have a lot of people talking as though this is the worst of all times, but it is not. we have got a media operation now that tends to dramatize events. partly because that improves ratings. not saying that negatively, but it is the way our technical process works. as a nation and as the people, we have come through some very difficult times. we have survived. we have prospered. we have gotten more right and wrong. i think back on those times, and i feel pretty good about things. i think we will get through this, too. this is difficult. i will not deny it. we're not making much progress, obviously. i am a republican, and i do not agree with the administration. but we are about to have an election. it will be a good, hard-fought

election, and that is as it should be. and we all get a chance to participate. that is pretty rare. that is not happen very many places. >> our last stupid question. >> our great moderator address to the question i initially had. but i am curious, as interns, we will not always agree with the stances our supervisors have once we go into the workforce. since leaving the white house, you have become more outspoken and supportive of gay rights, while you're more silent in washington. was it more difficult for you to be more silent while you had the podium in washington? >> well, i did not feel like i was silent about it. one of my daughters is gay. we have lived with that as a family, and we crossed that bridge a long time ago. i remember in my first vice presidential debate in 2000 against joe lieberman, i made a strong statement about how freedom means freedom for everybody and that people should be able to make choices of their own.

so it has not been my standpoint, something that i spend a lot of time worrying about. i think there has been a significant, i guess, a process of enlightenment over the course of the last several years. things have changed a lot since i first came to washington. it is important, obviously, if you feel strongly about an issue that you jump in with both feet and it actively and aggressively involved in it. that is a different proposition then if you want to the public about it while you're working for somebody else. you have got to reach some kind of a accommodation or understanding on their point. one of the things you learn as a staff person, you get to express your point of view to your boss, whoever that may be.

occasionally, you may fundamentally differ. the differences are big enough, you have got to leave. he is the boss, and you can go find some place else to work. on the issue of gay rights, when i worked for president bush, he used -- he felt strongly about and supported the effort to amend the constitution to define marriage. i did not agree with that. he and i talked about it on more than one occasion, and he expressed his views, i expressed mine. so it depends in part upon that relationship. you know, there are various ways to participate in the process. if you are going to be a staff member for president, he is the boss and got elected. you did not. you have to remember that in terms of how you participate and

whether or not you support his policies. as i said, if the differences are big enough, then you should probably move on and find another line of work. but you may also want to participate with the boss as an advocate. you might want to spend full time worried about your particular issue, whether it is gave rights or environmental issues or the deep party organization. i mean, there are a great many ways to be a part of the process. you do not have to run for office. you do not have to only serve as senior staff person for the president of united states. some of you will probably have that chance eventually. there is also the basic fundamental fact that when you're working for an elected official, he or she is the one that will put their name on the ballot and went out and worked hard and got themselves elected. and your first obligation is to them, unless it is an issue you feel so strongly about that you cannot accept that, and then you need to find somebody else to work for.

>> thank you for the question. for mitt romney, what advice would you give him and his team as they go through the process of running for president and finding a vice president? >> i have been involved in a couple of vice presidential searches. some or more successful than others. the things that i think is important to remember is that the decision you make as presidential candidate on who your running mate is going to be is the first presidential- level decision the public sees you make. the first time you're making a decision that you're going to have to live with. it gives the public a chance to watch you operate and see what you think is important, what kind of individual you choose to serve as your running mate, what the criteria are. the single most important criteria has to be the capacity

to be president. that is why you picked them. a lot of times in the past that has not been the foremost criteria. it really varies administration to administration. you watch the talking heads out there now, and they say you better get a woman or a hispanic or you better pick somebody from a big state. those are all interesting things to speculate about, but it is pretty rare that an election ever returns on those kinds of issues. it is much more likely to turn on the kind of situation where they will judge the quality of your decision making process is based on whether or not this individual is up to the task of taking over and is serving as president of the united states should something happen to the president. that is why you are there. aside from serving as president of the senate, that is your only constitutional responsibility. >> do you have another book in you? >> not yet.

i am thinking about it. we could have written five or six of these, but we tried to keep it at a reasonable links. about 600 pages, which is what the publisher wanted. it is a good book. i recommend you read it. [laughter] >> on behalf of the washington center, thank you very much for being with us. we appreciate your time. >> thank you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] [applause] >> enjoy your time here in washington. it really is a remarkable opportunity. you'll have a great time and learn a lot. jump in with both feet, and some of you might even find honest work as a result. good luck.

>> thank you all. [applause] witon "washington journal" todaa look at the treasury report on social security. our guest is margo sanger-katz. we will preview the supreme court oral argument over a result of immigration law. and"washington journal" every

morning starting at 7:00 eastern on c-span. camera year's today competition as students across the country what part of the constitution is important to them and why? today's second prize winner selected article 5. ♪

the about the progress we have made in the past two centuries. we are true beaten up for democracy with the broader and more consensual vision of citizenship. among they among u people has truly come to life for everyone. the real success is not the start of a great nation, but we installed a system for great nation that would enable us to become a great nation. desire fort the progress is truly an american value. the power of the constitution is the ability to live but within a society warranted by the inclusion of the amendment

process. >> if there had not been an article 5, there would not have been a constitution, because many of the leading citizens, and the foremost among them would be jefferson, would not cut supported the constitution without article 5. >> i know also that walls and institutions must go hand in hand. as that becomes more developed, more enlightened, new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, but manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances. institutions must advance and keep pace with the times. let us provide for provision. what these. should beat nature itself and the case. there should be an opportunity for doing this every 19 or 20 years, and that should be provided in the constitution.

he felt that was a generation, a new generation. >> the genius of medicine was not explicitly written with in the constitution, rather and the humility invented in article 5, as they knew no document they could write would solve the problems of the article that would later surface. they knew no system could be perfect. the real genius was that despite the collective intellect with in the room, they acknowledge their own inherent imperfections and built in the system for change that would enable the evolution of the countries that they created. >> the amendment process is a very arduous and complicated constitutional process. >> we only have 27 mmx. we only have 25 amendments. consider the fact that 10 of them almost came with the

constitution, a condition for ratification by a number of states, we've really only made significant changes 15 times. there is another alternative, and that is to have a constitutional convention. the states can't is two-thirds of them or 34 states were to call for a constitutional convention, each state would send representatives to a state similar when it was first written. >> abridging the freedom of speech or the right of the people to assemble and to petition the government for approval. through the amendment process, the bill of rights insured personal freedoms and liberties for all american citizens.

>> when it is necessary come each generation has amended the constitution. >> with a guarantee of free speech or abolition of slavery or given to women -- giving the women the right to vote. all of those things required a constitutional amendment. >> this facilitates the perfecting of the union. it it colleges that -- acknowledges we are not likely to get everything right. there is a way citizens can redress. >> they have broadened our idea, conception to democracy, and now our representative democracy does include the vast majority compared to the rest of american history. if we do not live in nevada, we live at 10 degrees south of it.

>> over the decade the united states has seen the progression of the ideals. however, the living nature of the constitution and influence of judicial precedents are still actively debated. >> the living constitution is an idea that is controversial, the idea that the constitution, as was drafted in 1787 and has been amended as you time since then, that the constitution has to evolve. >> many would say that the evolution of our federal government has gone way beyond what our constitution had originally intended, and that the correct way to change the federal government if you wanted to do things that are not in the constitution, is to amend the constitution. >> the founders understood this. they knew as the time went on, we would discover pieces of the

constitution that should have been written, but were not because they did not think of it. >> the amendment process has only just begun. as we move into the future, article 5 will continue to allow us to move towards the unimaginable milestone that can be reached. this will always hold the american values of freedom and equality. with the firm foundation set by the framers, the progress of the constitution lives on, propelling the country on word into the next 200 years. >> go to studentcam.org to watch all of the winning videos. continue the conversation on our facebook and twitter pages. >> this weekend the president will attend the annual corresponded dinner. you can see live coverage saturday as 6:30 eastern here on

c-span. charles colson, special counsel to president nixon who pled guilty and went to prison for his role in the watergate cover- up died this past weekend at age 80. he talked about the white house taping system in 2007. >> he had the right, although he abused it, to come into the oval office without having someone announce him. he could just walk in when he wanted to. nixon told him to feel free to come in and interrupt anything. henry would do it for a trivial reason. one day nixon was really ticked off for a variety of reasons, and we were in the executive office.

the four-door rose open -- with open. i knew he knew was henry. he said i think it is time we use nuclear weapons. he stood in the doorway absolutely paralyzed. someone is going to hear that on the tape. nd he did bring out the bursdak side of things. it was pure humor. he loved it. >> hear about his career in later work in prison reform online at the c-span video library. available on your computer any time. here is a look at some of our coverage this morning -- the bankruptcy investigation. they will hear from them up

global trustee. coverage starts at 10:00 eastern here on c-span. the senate will take a procedural vote on the violence against women measure. the chamber will turn its attention to resolution on the labor board ruling on union elections. the senate could take a series of votes on restructuring the u.s. postal service. over on c-span3, a hearing on the constitutionality of it arizona immigration law, which the supreme court will take up tomorrow. live coverage from the senate judiciary committee begins at 10:00 eastern. coming up this hour, the conversation on the medicare trustees' report released yesterday by the treasury department. health care correspondent, margot sanger-katz is our guest. we will take a close