the president accepted -- excepted, of course. because it appears that the foreign policy that we run into from president obama's administration is we have people around the world that hate us, want to destroy us, so we're going to give them money, we're going to buy them an office in qatar, as we've offered the taliban, we're going to be releasing their murdering thugs that we've got in detention, and then maybe they'll like us enough to agree with us. . >> sounds like somebody time community organizing and not studying history. that's no way to negotiate. if one wishes to approach an individual and like in my situation being a christian, we are supposed to help the needy,

blessed are the meek, weattitudes are quite compelling but government has a different role. the government is to protect the people. as romans 13 points out, if you do evil, be afraid, because the government does not bear the sword in vain. the government's role is to protect people so they can live the kind of life that so much of our heritage embraces. the government is supposed to supposed to protect the people, is supposed to punish evil and actually is supposed to encourage good. we have gotten so far off track. back in the 1960's,

well-intentioned, we began paying young women to have children out of wedlock, born out of the best of intentions, deadbeat dads were not helping, so let's help them out. instead of what they do is get women away from a high school education and in many cases have many of them come before our court and get them out of a rut they couldn't get out. women on social security embrace marriage and a living situation and they have guilt because they can't live on what little they have and they know if they marry another person -- i have heard from folks like this, they live on social security and their social security will be reduced

if they get married so they live together. in the president's own proposal, although he has been out saying he is going after millionaires and billionaires and when you look at the specific proposals which he finally put in print and see in print what he really believes, as he continues to say, we are going after millionaires and billionaires, the buffett tax and look at the specific proposal and goes after everybody making more than -- 1 25,000 if you are single, $ 250,000, if you are sing am, it could be 220, 225 and wants it to be evidenced by what he provides money for. and we know that we have been told by this administration

repeatedly, look if we just show the taliban how good a people we are and how good our motivation is, they'll fall into line. i have said and will keep saying, you don't have to pay people to hate you, they'll do it for free. we have wasted trillions of dollars overall these many years. so this administration continues to try to buy the affection of the taliban. let's see, here is -- this article is from cnn and reiterate the heads of the house senate intelligence committees and said the taliban was imagining ground. president added the administration was indirect discussion with the taling ban,

saying the group can be a part of the group's future and renounce violence and abide by afghan laws. we saw that same kind of effort by this administration -- there was a taliban leader, who was released with the consent of this administration, basically because it was the humanitarian thing to do, let him go die in peace. well, he was released from detention and as the afghans who have been buried family and friends while fighting with american troops against the taliban initially before this

administration threw them under the bus, they said, hey, that taliban leader that you released, u.s. authorized the release because he was going to go die and this would be the humanitarian thing to do, guess what? he is back in afghanistan and he was on afghanistan's biggest television station. he said three sthings, two of them were, it is very clear to the world that the united states has lost and that's why the united states as everyone knows, the united states is begging the taliban to come -- just sit down and negotiate with us. please. we know you've murdered thousands of americans. we get that. that's ok. just sit down with us. we'll keep releasing you murdering thugs if you just agree to sit down with us and talk.

we'll even buy you a wonderful office in qatar so you will have international international prestige to spread whatever goodwill you wish to spread. that would be known, mr. speaker , the president would pay attention, that would be known as radical jihad. that is what they wish to spread. here's a news report today from foxnews.com from kabul, the u.s. has been secretly releasing captured taliban fighters from a detention center in afghanistan in a bid to strengthen its hand in peace talks with the insurgent group, the "washington post" reported monday.

who in the world has ever studied history comes around and says we are releasing the murdering thugish war criminals to strength nen our war hand. we are releasing the murdering thugs to strengthen our hand. perhaps a community organizer would think that. the article says, the strategic release program of high-level detainees is designed to give the u.s.a. bargaining chip in some afghanistan where international forces struggle to exercise control, the report said. under the risky program, the hardened fighters must promise to give up violence and are threatened with further punishment but there is nothing to stop them from resuming

attacks against afghan and american troops. quote, everyone agrees they are guilty of what they have done and should remain in detention. everyone agrees that these are bad guys, but the benefits outweighing the risks, unquote, a u.s. official told "the post." in a visit to afghanistan last week, president obama said u.s. is pursuing peace talks with the taliban. there was once a policy in this country that we do not negotiate with terrorists, but that is the old days. this administration's policy is, not only do we negotiate with terrorists, we give them stuff. what do you want? you want more, murderering thugs released and 1,000 800, is that

enough? you want to kill more? if you just say we won't kill if you let us go, then we'll let you go. it reminds me of the naivete of secretary madeleine albright and president bill clinton who told north korea, look, we will give you everything you need to make nuclear weapons if you'll promise us that you will only use it to make nuclear power. really? north korea basically said, really? all we have to do? you know you have caught us in lies repeatedly, but all we have to do is we'll never use it for nukes and give us all this stuff?

sure. yeah. you caught us in so many lies, what's one more? who has nuclear weapons that we worry about. the same people, the clinton administration, give nuclear materials and information simply on the promise that they wouldn't use it to make nuclear weapons. what a lovely world it would be. back to the article from fox news, quote, we have made it clear that they, the taliban, can be part of this future, if they break with al qaeda, renounce violence and abide by afghan laws. many foot soldiers to leaders have indicated an interest in reconciliation, a path to peace

is now set before them, unquote, obama said. the upcoming nato summit in chicago, they will set a goal to take the lead in combat operations across the country next year. look, mr. speaker, it makes sense that all of us should want peace. all of us i know in this body want peace. but just as we have seen signs around this capitol since i have been in congress saying war never brought peace, there is a naivete of some people who think that if you apply individual --

turn the other cheek, those kinds of things, from a government standpoint, that other governments, controlled by terrorists, war criminals, madmen, that they will respond to that. when the truth is, that's an individual approach, that nation , government, must be about providing for the common defense, number one, against all enemies foreign and domestic, we should be doing that. and that means when there are murdering thugs in the world who have sworn to do everything they can to destroy the united states of america, we have to take them seriously and take them out if necessary. we have that obligation to the people who were sent here to protect.

when i took an oath to the united states army, same kind of oath we were supposed to serve and protect. and best of intentions, goodwill does not defeat terrorists who have made clear they will not stop until they're dead and they think in paradise or we are dead and our government gone. now, we know that the term islamaphobe and been pushed by the islamic conference as a way

to further their goals. anybody who stands up to point out that there are radical islamic jid haddists who want to destroy everyone who does not believe as they do, we know that those people were behind 9/11, killing over 3,000 innocent people and that the only regret that those individuals had was that more people were not killed. they thought perhaps 50,000, 55,000 would be killed in the two world trade centers. . you can't as the united states government just turn the other cheek when there are people coming into this country

illegally wanting to destroy us, they're not just people coming for jobs anymore. there's the o.t.m., as they're classified. so some of us who will call radical islamic jihad what it is , a policy of a minority, a small minority of muslims, they want to call some of us islamphobes. islamphobes. give me a break. two weeks ago i was in afghanistan, karzai didn't want our friend dana rohrabacher to go in. dana, ever the patriot, he was persuaded by secretary clinton not to push the issue because talks were in such delicate shape at the time.

delicate shape? we pull out, don't give any more money and karzai collapses, he'll either be out of the country with money he stowed away or he'll be subjugated by the taliban if we pull out and don't provide any assistance, and we have to go begging him for talks, excuse me? delicate talks? we know that president karzai is pashtun, he can deal with the taliban, it appears he's dealing with them somewhat like maliki is dealing with the iranians who want to take over iraq. caving as necessary to keep his position. there are ways to execute

foreign policy that don't cost thousands of american lives, that don't have to exist on the good intentions of people who are sworn to murder and destroy us. the enemy of our enemy is our friend. and that was seen once again a couple of weeks ago in afghanistan, congressman rohrabacher had hoped to be at the meeting with our northern alliance friends. most of them are part of the national front now. i would hope that one of them would be elected president of afghanistan. my friend, his older brother might have been the one person to unite the country, but the day before 9/11 the taliban knew that, so they assassinated him. his father-in-law was

assassinated last september. a general, many consider the great hero of late 2001, early 2002, when the northern alliance tribes defeated the taliban on horseback, fearless warriors. and this administration thanks them by publicly calling them war criminals. these were our allies. these are the enemy of our enemy. yes, muslim, no islamphobe here. because i recognize the enemy of my enemy is my friend. those people fought with us and for us, there is something very strong in the bond or should be between people of the united

states who fought, buried family or loved ones, and those in the northern alliance who fought with us and buried family and loved ones, friends. there's bond there. -- a bond there. but instead of embracing that bond and utilizing that bond, those who fought for us and with us did most of the fighting when the taliban was initially defeated, now they're being thrown under the bus. so when they were gathering on sunday, two weeks ago, and they wanted to meet with someone, three members of congress went, at first we were told, well, gee, there's just not enough security to get you there. and as i pointed out to the person coordinating security for our proud members of congress,

sir, you see that gate out there of the embassy? you're going to have to take me down before i get out the gate, he said, sir, we're not authorized to take down a member of congress. and i said, well, then you will not stop me, i'm going to see our friends, security has ensured me they're going to have bullet-proof vehicles to pick us up and i'm going with them. amazingly 30 or so minutes after our next meeting we had american security taking us to the meeting. we were quite safe there. they made sure of that. they didn't want anything to happen to their american visitors. congresswoman michele bachmann, michael burgess, we would have had to take an additional vehicle, had more than three members gone, and so john carter , being like the gentleman,

said, mike burgess, why don't you go? and mike burgess, michele bachmann and i went to see our friends. and numerous other leaders of the national front. now, it's interesting, they pointed out, you know, you probably heard about karzai saying, gee, he believes so much in our constitution and the constitution says if you serve two terms you can't run for a third term, he believes so much in that he may resign a year early. so your people, your leaders in america seem to be eating that up. the truth is people that are advising karzai, they're all trying to figure out, how can we get around that prohibition from

running for a third term? and they think they may have it. they think that if he resigns a year early, somebody else takes over afghanistan for a year, with or without an election, then he could say, gee, i never served two terms. i didn't make it two terms. i resigned before the second term was up. so now i can run for a third term and, gee, the u.s. is going to have troops out by 2014, therefore i could run in 2014, the u.s. will be -- will not be around with any strength to enforce such an agreement of me not running, and, gee, what if the people really want me to run? well, we know there's been corruption in those votes over there. but the system that's set up in afghanistan is a system that

creates conduits for fraud. and we could strengthen afghanistan if we would simply allow the people to elect their regional provincial governors, elect their mayors, let them pick their own chiefs of police. not the president karzai cronies. that's a system that's fraught with the kind of danger you found, fraud you found in the old roman empire, where they would appoint a governer of a region but of course you had to kick back to the one who appointed you. that's the kind of system they have right now in afghanistan. and in talking there's some who say, well, there's some surprised the taliban is coming from the northern of -- north of

pakistan, but most people were saying, we think the taliban is getting most of their supplies through southern areas. well, they've been terrorized for decades by northern pakistan. before 1947, 1948, when lines seemed to be arbitrarily drawn, creating countries, they'd never been a part of pakistan. for decades now they have. the people have been terrorized. after congressman rohrabacher and i met with, and steve king also mets with those leaders -- met with those leaders, the idea struck me, since these leaders, they're tired of being terrorized by northern pakistan, the leaders in islam bad, they -- islamabad, they could be

quite self-sufficient, having natural resources, much of what the nation would need to survive on its own. and they're our friends. there may be a lot of muslims, this non-islamphobe knows that the enemy of our enemy is our friend. we can support them, we can help each other. so that's why congressman rohrabacher and i proposed a bill that would support the creation of an independent beluchastan. as one person in the region over there said, wow. if they were independent that would change everything. i know this president is not gifted on foreign policy. i get that. but it doesn't mean he can't learn. and you look at pakistan and

while this administration is trying to play footsy with pakistan and they're trying to play footsy with china, who was it they let in to see our stealth helicopter -- china. who was it that they harbored in their country? the greatest enemy, public enemy number one of the united states, they'd kept him there supposedly for years, and this administration wants to placate them how they can, just like it's trying to do with the taliban and our other leaders. maybe we can buy them off, maybe we can do something to show them how sweet and kind we are. those type of people see that as weakness. and it's like blood to a shark, they're drawn to it. and they will devour us if we don't show strength rather than weakness.

so an independent beluchastan became an interesting idea. congressman rohrabacher and i had done a op ed that was published and it was my conviction that we stick in there a line about the potential for for an independent beluchistan. interestingly after that was published, there was an article published in the pakistan daily news, i thought i had a copy of it here. must not. oh, here it is. published back in january and it says this in the article if ygs the pakistan daily times." in another interesting

development, louie gohmert, a u.s. republican representative, proposed that in order to beat the taliban, the u.s. should carve out a new friendly state, beluchistan from within pakistan to stabilize afghanistan's western border. the article goes on, even if mr. gohmert does not necessarily speak for washington, it is logical to assume that he may -- made this observation after picking up the buzz in american political circles. the u.s. wants a consulate but so far pakistan has resisted this request. the g.o. strategic location of beluchistan and its potential in minerals, gas and oil, is something that interests the world's sole superpower, so says the "pakistan daily times." .

they say it's one of the few if not the only one that has not been declared a terrorist movement which the -- by the u.s. the u.s.'s soft attitude toward this resistance movement does not necessarily mean that they're enamored of the complaints and aspirations of the people, but that the americans have their own vested interests there. they may now want to snip away at the roots of the pakistan military's duel policy in the war on terror by a flanking move in beluchistan. before this loud thinking is embraced as policy by washington, the pakistan daily times says, for our own territorial integrity, we should do away with our double game and the war on terror and politically settle beluchistan's issues, by helping the afghan taliban and other jihaddy

groups, we have only weakened our own country. . it is time that the military realizes this fawley. and its intelligence agencies cannot and must not be tolerated. the political leadership must talk to the beluch resistance. only can the issue be settled peacefully. now the enemy of our enemy should be our friend. and that's why when congresswoman bachmann, congressman burgess and i got to the home of a friend mas omp ud and other international front leaders waiting, they know my

heart. they know we are friends who have the same enemies. and there was embracing all of them, because it truly was good to see them, to see them alive and to see them in their own country in masoud's own home. they fought with us, fought for us and in late 2001 and 2002 when they were routed initially. we added over 100,000 troops, got over 100,000 under this president. and things are not going as well as they were when the northern alliance was fighting them with simply a matter of hundreds of americans embedded with air support. it's not going as well as it was

then. occupiers in afghanistan, russia for example, are going back to alexander the great, as we know he died leaving that area. things didn't go as well as he might have hoped. and the occupiers don't do that well in afghanistan. empower the enemy of your enemy. don't try to buy off your enemy that is sworn to destroy you. empower the enemy of your enemy. mentioned earlier about the taliban leader that we allowed released, who is now back with the taliban. i mentioned one of the three things he said. apparent to everybody, u.s. has lost because they are begging us to come to negotiate. another thing that is consistent with shria law and pointed out that anyone who is not

supportive of the taliban in the past, first needs to come to the taliban and under karzai they have been able to be more public, and they have a public presence, he said come to us, ask for forgiveness and ask for our protection and you may be spared. my understanding of shria law, you can avoid being killed under shria law if you come ask for forgiveness and protection in just such a way as this taliban leader, fresh from his u.s. reprieve, is out there saying. and again, the taliban position is, you know, he probably can't defeat the u.s. in a single

battle. we don't have to, we just got to be here when you leave. and the heartbreaking as pkt of that, for those of us who have attended too many funerals of americans who have paid the last full measure of devotion is that if we leave and we leave a situation where the taliban is empowered again, other americans will have to come down the road in the future and fight the taliban and more american lives will be lost. it's not necessary. had president carter realized in 1979 that when he welcomed the cow mainy back into -- could mainy as a man of peace, had he

realized that americans would be dying in america to protect america because radical islam had then been given a country in which to be nourished, you hope he had not taken the staple steps. after his failed presidency. perhaps even president reagan, with the best of intentions, if he had realized that we were in a war, but only one side knew we were at war, when our marines, those precious marines were killed in the explosion in beirut, perhaps we wouldn't have run out so quickly. but for heaven's sake, as

american buildings, embassies, individuals were attacked, and in 1993, the first attempt on the world trade senter, another act of war -- center, another act of war, since 1979, these people have been at war with us, khobart towers, uss cole, we were at war and didn't know we were at war. and then we come to 9/11, and we were totally shocked, totally unprepared, because we did not realize there was a war going on. we just didn't know we were in a war. now this administration seeks to go back to september 10. so, it is cleansing its training materials of any reference to islamic jihad and bringing in

noncitizens, and bringing in members of the muslim brotherhood to advise it. it is bringing in officers of named co-con spiritors in the holeedlyland foundation trial supporter of terrorism. bringing in people who have ties supporting terrorism, bringing them in to dictate our policy to a radical islam. and what they have said, the first thing, you have to eliminate any reference to islam and jihad. the department of justice, department of state, department of defense, intelligence agencies, has been very compliant, and that is ongoing and as one intelligence official

said, we are blipeding ourselves in the ability to -- blinding ourselves in the ability to see our enemy. what's going on these days will be the subject of historic articles that will continue for centuries to ask how this nation could be so naive and/or stupid that we would be at war and not know it for 30-plus years. and that in the fight of such a war, we would bring in people who support our enemies' actions to tell us how to fight the war. there will be articles, history

books that will repeat the question how could they not see what they were doing was going to bring either an end to america or devastation to america, one or the other. well, we know that in the news this week, we have such people and at guantanamo guantanamo -- the 9/11 detainees as they are referred to, "new york times," talking about the detainees showing defiance, kalid sheik muhammad, the other detainees, 9/11 mastermind, four to be

arraigned, that was last week. muhammad joined by four co-defendants in pleas a couple of days ago. outage insists women cover themselves. what happened to freedom that the military are fighting for. amazing. defending 9/11 suspects wearing birkha out of respect. well, it's a great article. and it's certainly wasn't recent. but the bsh -- but this points out they are ready to plead guilty and ready to come in and

plead guilty and this is a "new york times," five charged in 9/11 attacks seek to plead guilty. most people have not seen that title. all they have been hearing about is how they are disrupting the pleadings and this trial could go on for years and years and the reason people haven't seen this title of this article, five charged in 9/11 attacks seek to plead guilty that the "new york times" is because it was published december 8 and 9 of 2008. 2008. these detainees indicated they were willing to plead guilty. these detainees, kalid sheik muhammad had been through a lengthy questioning by the judge. he had spelled out his role in different things, not only in the 9/11 plotting, but his role

in other terrorist acts. he had filed a six-paged pleading san sets out if we praiseal awe, he says if you are jewish or american you deserve to die, you are an infidel. and pray that allah would continue to terrorize america. one thing happened on the way between those guilty pleas in late 2008 and here, four years later, virtually nothing has been accomplished. in fact we are further back than where we are in 2008, because we had the h.n.o. policy of gee, we are going to give you the chance. this isn't what they said, but

anybody who has eyes to see and eyes to hear can understand what the taliban, what the al qaeda, what radical islamic jihaddists, we are going to give you a show trial. why would you want to plead guilty? so these guys as of december, 2008, say, whoa, this guy, eric holder, hey, he has represented terrorists, he'll identify with us. the president, community organizer he is, he's going to help us, so they're going to give us a way that we can have a show trial. the attorney general wants to give us that show trial in downtown new york. wow. allah be praised and we go back to the scene of the crime and recreate the heartache for the

people of manhattan. well, congress fortunately said that's not going to happen. he will be tried at guantanamo, but the damage had been done by the holder and obama policy to give them a show trial. it had taken hold and had developed the imaginations of the 9/11 plotters and planners and so now we are having a show trial, this time in guantanamo. fortunate, not in the middle of where so much grief and anguish took place in new york city. . some had said at the time, hey, this is new york city. you're an outsider, you have no business saying anything about what we do in new york city. this was an act of war. against our country. the whole country suffered together and came together as

one on 9/11 of 2001. it does pertain to the whole country. as our friend, representative weiner from new york, chastised me, he said, we all want to see them put to death in new york and you have no right to say otherwise. i've been a judge and chief justice, i know those kind of statements would be exhibit a and b of any motion to transfer venue that he can't possibly get a fair trial. they were normal really reasoned -- well reasoned comments. so here we are going on four years later, justice has none been done. a travesty has been done. to all the families of the victims of 9/11. they can forgive, they can turn the other cheeks, but as a

government our role is different. we're to provide for the common he can fence, we're to punish evil, we're to encourage good and that means any nation in the world who has a government that wants to declare war on us, then be advised. many of us don't believe like in iran. we don't believe we should go to war with iran. but we'll take out the government that wants to go to war with us. obviously this administration feels like we can buy time and has even given hints that they think they can live with a nuclear iran. well, a lot of people would not live with a nuclear iran, a lot of people would die. because of a nuclear iran. it does not need to be allowed to happen.

one other comment, though. there is a great article today out about one of the bains to my existence and that was tarp. george w. bush is a great man. he got a bad rap, accused lying when he did no such thing. he didn't boggetter to defend himself -- bother to defend himself when truck loads of yellow cake uranium were taken out of iraq, feeling that history would judge him fairly. but he trusted a pitiful secretary of the treasury, hank paulson, and we had something called tarp. it was a great article in "human events" from today, inspector

general report admits that quart turned a profit. and he goes on and points out very clearly, that the money hadn't been paid back as promised. some of it's been paid back by other giveaways and gifts and loans by the federal government. and the government printing money to pay debt, and then having interest on the new money they've printed is somehow making a profit, when the truth is, as the article points out, it's tricky to track $700 billion of emergency funding that was haphazardly dropped into the economy by a panic-stricken government. when accounting for the fannie mae and freddie mac bailout, the

american taxpayers probably owed somewhere in the neighborhood of $237.7 billion, but we were told it's all been paid back. yeah, right. though some estimates are far higher. and there will be more. the treasury department says that a large part of the money lost via tarp is the result of the housing and car bailouts also not paid back. when the next fannie mae and freddie mac rescue comes as a number of reports have indicated will be needed, taxpayers will be on the hook. most of the banks that were too big to fail when tarp was i.ed -- implemented are now even bigger. the report to congress points out that a recent working paper from federal reserve economists, quote, confirms that tarp encouraged high-risk behavior by insulating the risktakers from the consequences of the failure. that's why you never set aside free market principles to save the free market. if you have to do that, the free

market's not worth saving. but it was worth saving and there were free market principles that could have been followed to get us out of that mess, to avoid encouraging further risktaking and i would commend, mr. speaker, people to mike frank's work, heritage foundation, that clissdess -- disclosed that despite the rhetoric of the president, how he's going after fat cats on wall street, the wall street executives and their immediate family donate -- donated to president obama four to one over mr. mccain, senator mccain. and they've done extremely well under this president. it's almost as if there is a deal, look, i'll call you fat cats, i'll call you all kinds of names, millionaires, billionaires, i'll trash you, but you'll make more money than ever and then i'll put taxes on

those that make over $15,000, and then i'll say i'm going after major oil, big oil, and probably nobody will read the bills, i read it. i read the president's own words. he's going after independent oil companies, he's eliminating their deductions, not the major oil, he's not going to hurt major oil from what he's proposed. but he'll put the little ones out of business, the majors will make more money than ever because 95% of all oils drilled in the continental u.s. are drilled by independent oil and gas producers. so he said he's going after major oil, but he'll -- they'll make more money than ever if he gets his way. one other thing, this is an election year. and my colleague from texas was really going after texas over the voter i.d. i would point out to my friend from texas and any others, mr. speaker, that the fact is that

bill in texas says if you can't afford a state i.d. card, we'll give you one. there are people who volunteered to even get you there to get it done. let's avoid fraudulent elections further and with that i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. does the gentleman have a motion? mr. gohmert: at this time i move that we do now hereby adjourn. the speaker pro tempore: the question is on the motion to adjourn. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the ayes have it. the motion is adopted. accordingly the house stands adjourned until 10:00 a.m. tomorrow >> bills to repeal and change

the previously negotiated sequester agreement are expected to be voted on this week. members will also consider 2013 extending for the commerce and justice departments and science agencies later this week. live coverage always here on c- span. republican presidential nominee mitt romney campaign in cleveland today to talk about jobs and the economy. that is next. then a panel discussion on the 2012 presidential election moderate by lesley of 60 minutes. leon panetta met with china also defense minister today. they spoke to reporters after the meeting. that is later.

this week, live from london. the ceremony and pageantry of the state opening of parliament. until recently, parliament's official opening was held towards the end of the year with changes to their election rules, it is now been moved to the spring. wednesday, queen elizabeth will formally outlined the government's priority -- priorities for the upcoming year. live coverage starts at 5:30 a.m. eastern on c-span to. >> mitt romney held a town hall meeting with supporters in the euclid, ohio. the former massachusetts governor focused on the economic record of the obama administration. ohio has picked the winner of every resident -- presidential race since 1954. president obama kicked off his reelection campaign in ohio on saturday. >> thank you some much.

-- so much. he speaks well, doesn't he? great guy. thank you for being here today. middle of the afternoon. a rainy day and you came out to see me. i appreciate the chance to say hello to some many folks from northeast ohio. what wonderful place this is. you are lucky to live in such a beautiful state with such wonderful people. [applause] i have had the occasion over my life to get to know our country pretty well. the last couple of years, i have been campaigning but before that, i worked in the private sector and had the occasion of helping organize the olympic winter games in 2002. [applause] that was a real thrill. i came into the olympic games at a time of scandal.

there was a report of bribery and the people of utah who normally you look to to help support an event like that were pretty discouraged. there was a call on the part of some people to send the game is back. do not have them. give them back to the international olympic committee. i took the job because i knew we needed about 25,000 people to volunteer to work of the olympics. and it is 17 straight days. 17 days without pay. and without tickets either. you work for the olympic games and you host the figure skating in the downhill skiing and so forth but you do not get to see them because you are in the parking lot, taking tickets or manning the security booths and so forth. i wondered if the people of america would show up given the

scandal. just before the games began, reran and at -- we ran an ad -- no pay, no tickets, no benefits. thein the quick, the positions are going fast. -- sign up quick, the positions are going faster [applause] [laughter] much our surprise, some 47,000 people signed up. [applause] this is an amazing country of people that will do extraordinary things for their friends and make a difference in their lives. i heard a story -- i will not tell you exactly when but very recently about a small business owner. she had two employees, one of them was her husband and the

other was the technician. the business has not been doing very well during the obama economy. she ultimately lost her house. the business shrunk by about 40%. she made sure that her technician did not see a decline in incomes over technicians still lives in her house. she made a priority of keeping her technician in her house. it is an amazing country. the kind of sentiment we have, the sense of right and wrong. these have been tough years. these last three and a half, almost four years. for years of tough times. as i've gone across the country, i have heard stories that sometimes break your heart. i was with one couple. they are planning for their retirement. both the that the other 60's. they bought a couple of duplexes -- both in their 60's.

they bought a couple of duplexes but the values have collapsed that they now do not know if they can retire. i met a barber in a 70's. i said why haven't you retired? he said because my investments are not worth much anymore and i cannot afford to retire. i met a woman who said she and her husband had one child and wanted another child but needed to take out a second mortgage on their home. this was in florida. to be able to pay for the expenses of the second child. so they took out the second mortgage. then everything collapsed. the value of their home collapsed and that mortgage, like the first mortgage, became under water with their equity. she wondered how they're going to make things through. i was at a rally in norfolk last week shaking hands with people as i will at the end of this of that and a young woman came up to me and said i have been out

of work for a year. can you help me? it touches your heart. i said i will do my very best to help you. in millions of other people who are out of work. this is very different than what we were promised. as the mayor said, at the democratic convention about four years ago, the president spoke about hope and change and together we can do anything. buddy has not lived up to those expectations. -- but he has not lived up to those expectations. the american people are a good part of people. we hope in this president would be successful. i sure did. and he has not been. i know how many people are struggling. i want to do my very best to help them. i am convinced that my experience will help me get this economy going and people back to work with good jobs, which they need. [applause]

the president in his speech said he measures progress in an unusual way. i thought it was kind of a usual way but he said it was different. he measures progress by whether people can find good jobs, whether they can pay a mortgage. the last three and a half years, not enough people have been finding good jobs and a lot of people lost their homes. that is a promise he was not able to keep. he is now very excited about the fact that the unemployment rate has gone from 10% down to about 8.1%. we will not degette the fact that when he was putting in place $787 billion of borrowing in his first few months in office that he said that borrowing -- the borrowing would keep the unemployment rate below 8% to r.

it is still not below 8.1%. that number -- you might assume that number came down because of all the jobs that have been created. that assumption would be wrong. the reason that% came down was because of the people that dropped out of the work force. if you go back to the 10% from october 2009, the percentage of workforce age americans in the work force was 58.5% and today it is slightly less. so it is that the number of people have dropped out of the work force and that is what that percentage has come down. i want to see a low unemployment rate in more people working in good jobs and can afford good mortgages. [applause]

in just a moment, because this is a town meeting, you will just -- you will get a chance to ask questions and i will do my best to answer them. a hand is already up back there. we will get there in a moment. this is a good sign. i would just say a couple of things. i will begin by saying this -- president obama is employing policies that have not worked. you know that by virtue of looking at the results. we do not have enough people that have got good jobs. incomes have dropped. the median income in america has dropped by 10% over the last four years. the median household income is down $4,000 theory this is at the same time that costs have gone up. health care is up, gasoline, food prices -- it is harder.

the middle class is feeling squeezed, even if they have a job. and obviously most of our citizens have jobs but boy are these tough times during as though to a recent college graduate. she has three jobs, all part time. well beneath the level of skill she was trained for. wondering how she will possibly make ends meet when those college loans start coming due. you ask it obamacare make it easier for small businesses to create new jobs? no. did the financial-services regulations make it easier for small banks, community banks to make loans to people or renegotiate mortgages? no, no, absolutely not. and did the effort to change the deal between labor and management and to put labour --

the labor relations board, that make it more likely for businesses to say let's hire more people? no. thank you, i appreciate that. did the energy policies of cutting back on the leases on federal lands by about half, saying no to drilling in anwa, make it those things more likely for americans to work in the energy sector? no. the president's policies have not encouraged americans to add jobs. they make it harder for small business to do so. we need a president who understands what it takes to get the economy going again, not what policies of the past that in the work. but a vision for the future that would put american people back to work and in good jobs. [applause]

the president and i have very different visions of what it will take to get america working again. his visit is to keep spending about $1 trillion more the we take in. in my view, that is immoral for us to pass those obligations on to the next generation. [applause] his vision is that it is ok for a small business to raise taxes from 35% to 40% of small businesses. i do not want to raise taxes on small businesses, i want to lower them. [applause] his vision is that in order to

doubt to the extreme environmentalists, we should not build the pipeline for take advantage of our oil, coal, gas. i like energy that comes from all sources and i will get that pipeline into our country. [applause] his vision says it is okay to cut our military. that is okay to cut the budget even as the world is not safe. his vision would reduce the number of ships in our navy. the number of ships in the u.s. navy is smaller than any time since 1917. our aircraft in our air force, it is smaller than any time since it was founded. do you know how many troops -- he wants to cut the number of armed services personnel. my view is very different. i want to add to shipbuilding,

purchases of aircraft. i would more troops in our military and the want to give our veterans the care they deserve. [applause] we will take america in a very different place. he is taking america on a path towards europe and europe is not working there. it will not work here. europe is in trouble as their debt amounts and people demand more and more from government and the government has to borrow more to satisfy their demands. we believe it until the freedom of individuals to pursue their dreams, and courage small businesses to grow and thrive. this is a land of freedom that drives an economy based on freedom. [applause] so i want to think the mayor for his introduction. i want to thank bill.

this is his plant. thank you. [applause] i want to thank the auditor for introducing me. i think he is in the back. and the chairman of the republican county. will he raise his hand? he is around here somewhere. thank you. ofwith that, let's start with this man. i will give you my microphone. >> what is the first issue you n ll check -- tackle o june january 21, 2013? was there are some things that have to be dealt with immediately. there is a cloud hanging over

the health-care sector, the employment sector. you have employers wondering what will happen to their capacity to provide insurance for their employees. this is a huge crowd. so the first thing i will do is to take an action to stop obamacare in its tracks. [applause] it is classic. health care has some issues. there are some things we ought to do to make sure we saw those issues. people that have been working and develop a sickness, a so- called pre-existing condition and then change jobs. let's say they have been previously insured and now they

have changed jobs or move somewhere. the fact they cannot get insurance again would not make any sense at all. people should not be dropped from insurance because they get sick. we have to fix that as well. right now we make it hard for individuals who want to buy insurance. if you are an employer of one person yourself, the but getting an insurance policy that is affordable. we have to make -- good luck getting an insurance policy that is affordable. we have to make it easier. we have to fix those things. the president that i have the answer. let's have government take it over. that is not the answer we need in the 21st century. we need health care to work more like a consumer market with a kind of -- the kind of provisions that the cost down and quality up. i will do that and get health care to work for the american people. get rid of obamacare. thank you. [applause] >> thank you for taking my

question. in this age of tough foreign competition, we need to invest smart in america to help our country grow. based on that, i would appreciate your comments on an investing strategy that seems to have resulted in several million dollars of your personal income taxes being paid to foreign countries instead of hours. i'm referring to page 169 of your 2010 income-tax returns where you took over $1.5 million in foreign tax credit in 10 years. i appreciate your comment. >> i will look at it. [laughter] i did not think i paid to any foreign income taxes but i will be happy to look at it. others? yes, please. what were the most important qualities of leadership that he

would say and what is an example of someone you would say would be a good role model as a leader? >> thank you. the best qualities of leadership -- beijing, of course. capacity to see what other people do not see. the capacity to see change and make adjustments before the change occurs. you look for leaders that have that kind of insight and capacity. integrity. people will not follow someone who they do not believe follows their own principles. [applause] loyalty. and loyalty to the principle and the nation that follow them. ability to work hard. to lead not just by pointing but by walking forward and running hard and making sure others recognize it in you. you do not does have some of his speech well but who also works well and hard.

-- who speaks well but who also works well and hard. my father was undaunted. despite the odds and circumstances, he plowed ahead. leaders do that. when things are tough, they did not get turf -- terrified and turn in the other direction. they do not blame other people. they acknowledge their own mistakes. [applause] my father did not get a college degree. did not get the time and money together to actually get a degree. when he married my mother, they could not afford a 50 honeymoon. they drove across the country in an old car. my father sold paint out of the car to tell it -- paid for gasoline and hotel bills. he went on to become the head of a car company and became

governor of a state where he once sold aluminum paint. determined. undaunted. the qualities of leadership are many. i appreciate the fact that we have been led by good men and women over the years as a nation. from our founders. even through these days we have around as many great leaders. i like your governor a lot. i think he is doing a heck of a job. [applause] thank you. i spoke with sarah before the meeting began here and she is seven-years old and a first grader. she raised her hand. tissue really have a question? she does-- does she really have a question? >> how are you going to stop wasting money for my feature? -- future? [laughter] [applause] >> for those who did not hear

it, how will you stop wasting money for your future? let me tell you. that is a very good question. what we have right now is politicians promising lots of free stuff, free for me and my generation and maybe for a lot of view but not free for her. ecause as we spend -- of you could not free for her. because as we spend, we are borrowing money from nations and we have to repay with interest. it is like a credit card. right now by virtue of a series of financial mechanics, they are able to keep the rates low but in the future, the rates are likely to go up and you will have to pay for it. i find that unacceptable. so here is what i will do -- i will take everything that government does, print out a list of programs and say to those programs, is this one so

critical that it is worth a borrowing money from china to pay for it? if it does not pass that test, i will get rid of it. [applause] and i will also take a lot of programs that are critical and send them back to the state where they can be run more efficiently and with less fraud. [applause] so my job is to get america on track to have a balanced budget. i will not cut $1 trillion in the first year. why not? the reason is taking the $1 trillion after -- out of a 15 trillion dollar economy would cause it to shrink and put a lot of people out of work. but i will eliminate programs and solve our long-term problems so we get a balanced budget and america to a position where we can get rid of this

extraordinary debt that will strangle future generations. thank you. [applause] >> we have a president right now that is operating outside the structure of our constitution. [applause] i want to know -- i do agree, he should be tried for treason. but i want to know what you are going to be able to do to help restore balance between the three branches of government and what you will be able to do to restore our constitution in this country. [applause] >> i happen to believe that the constitution was not his billion probably inspired. i believe the same thing about the declaration of independence. [applause]

and i believe unlike what the president said about the supreme court where he suggested that it was -- he said it would be unprecedented for the supreme court to overturn a decision by the legislature. actually that is their role and has been since the early 1800's. i will respect the different branches of government if i am fortunate enough to become president. [applause] one more thing i will mention in that regard. if you have some specifics you want me to address in terms of policy, i am happy to. the wellhead. >-- go ahead. >> some of the executive orders he has made with regards to the secret service and their protection of people and people

being allowed to exercise their first amendment rights to protest. in the presence of the secret service. and some of those other types of the executive orders he has done just recently. >> i am not familiar with the orders with regards to the sick service -- secret service but i will be happy to take a look. we obviously have a right to protest in this country and express our viewpoint. at the same time, we want people being protected and not be in danger. i will see specifically what he has in mind. obviously we have all been disappointed by the number of things that have happened at the government level. but i will look at those executive orders. i would reserve the right as our president to put in place executive orders. one i would put in place is i would have in place an executive order that grants a waiver from

obamacare to all 50 states. [applause] i will use the provision in ways i think are appropriate constitutional. and ultimately the congress and supreme court and i will have the experience of defining exactly what those lines might be. thank you. let's see. there is a young man there with a microphone. >> i could to medical school at case western reserve university. school at medical case western reserve university. we talk about a vesting our future and borrowing too much. graduates who is expensive and my mother is not able to pick up the $70,000 a year tab. what are your thoughts on education and financing still more individuals like myself who cannot afford it can still often be the future of america?

what's the answer is not to say let's have the federal government give unlimited and loans with no interest to everybody that wants them. you are going to hear that in an effort to try and reach college and graduate students to get involved in the obama campaign. in an effort to get them in case, he will promise giving a lot of free stuff to them and say i will pay for your education or get rid of the loans. i am only guessing but my expectation is he will find promises of free stuff as a way to try to get people to vote for him. we have heard that time and time again. but we cannot promise you -- money we do not have. so what do i do? how do i help? we have to find a way to get higher education to be more competitive and to take

advantage of the technology of the day. businesses like this one used technology, software, computer systems to bring down their costs and become more productive. colleges and institutions of higher learning need to take advantage of some of those things. one college is saying that every semester people are supposed to take one cyber course, one online course to help bring down costs. harvard and mit have a joint program that provides an education to people online. we will have to take advantage of some of these innovations in get education -- get these institutions of higher learning to compete with one another to find ways to provide the same educational experience at a lower cost. it sounds like forever go but there was a time when people by and large could pay for college with their summer job and by working during the school year. i am seeing some people here --

that is not the case anymore. that is $70,000 after-tax dollars. we have to find a way to say why is education -- has education become so expensive and how do we get it to become more cost- effective? writing checks from government is not the right way to get it done. thank you. question over there. >> i have the microphone. pardon me. mr. romney, when rob portman was campaigning in 2008 in ohio, he addressed the republican club and from the floor i raised this question -- i asked if he could elaborate on this small subcommittee in the house somewhere from about 1984 that has been working up a bill to nationalize the retirement plans of everybody in this room. iras and 401ks.

he knowledge that has been happening. where is that legislation and what would you do about it? >> never heard of it. i cannot imagine nationalizing the iras or 401ks. if i'm president, i will not nationalize them. here is a gentleman up here. there is a microphone to your right. there you go. --president rodnmney [applause] i am one of 17 million veterans, not all alive now, from world war ii. [applause]

my companions and i all kind of agree when you speak about the situations and the one that concerns us is the young people that we now have in the armed services, regarding their welfare and the foreign situation in the world that seems to require our intervention in every little thing with a loss of american lives. sometimes it seems as if they are neat list. i know they are not in the are doing their jobs but you cannot blame the soldiers, sailors

and marines during their jobs. i am wondering what can we do and what are your ideas guarding -- regarding foreign affairs and our entanglement's? >> thank you. that is a big topic. i happen to believe that in foreign affairs and dealing with nations that have a choice to make -- whether they will be friendly to human-rights, to principles of freedom and democracy or whether they will instead become more entrenched in authoritarianism. it is important for these nations to know exactly where we stand in for us to stand for our principles and for america to be strong. by that i mean this -- our communication with other nations and our ability to help

lead them toward prosperity and freedom is enhanced if america is strong morally, economically and militarily. [applause] so i want to make sure we have a strong military not so that we can win awards -- wars, but to prevent wars and to help encourage people to move towards an american and eternal principles of freedom and opportunity and human-rights. there are circumstances in the world today which are threatening and of concern. number one on the list is iran becoming nuclear. iran is the world's national supporter of terror. and has as its objective in the

words of their president, the elimination of our friend israel. iran with fissile material which they could provide to has the law or other terrorist groups could execute terror here and in other parts of it is important for us not to allow iran to become a nuclear power and provide material to any entity that would use against us. i would reserve the right to take whatever action is necessary to prevent iran from becoming nuclear. [applause] at the same time, there are other nations that are charting the course, developing nations deciding what their future will be. i would like to work with them. i want to increase trade with them and encourage them to move towards modernity, to move toward an economic system that provides for greater freedom for

their people. that is something i consider part of the role of the president of the united states and his administration. one more point with regards to iran. there is a little sliver of hope with regard to iran and it relates to syria. syria is iran's source of access to the mediterranean. syria is iran pose the only arab ally. syria has been a source of iran being -- syria is iran pose the only arab ally. arab ally.nly the president of the united states should be leading an effort to help encourage syria to make that change, rather than waiting for someone else to do it. [applause] >> walgren to cleveland,

governor romney. ideas wanted you to know -- wanted to know about what your time line is on the xl pipeline, if you were to be elected. ohio is blessed with an abundance of gas and oil. terps -- how does ohio fit in your energy policy? [applause] >> oh, well has natural gas, oil, coal -- ohio has after gas, oil, coal, and those natural resources or in short supply around the world and abundant here and abundant in america. the idea of making it harder and harder to take advantage of those resources makes no sense to me. in my view, the efforts to make it almost impossible to mine coal economically or to use it economically, to suggest that building a new coal powered

electric plant would put you bankrupt, that is not the kind of policy that makes sense in a nation that has the kind of coal we have. the efforts to try and stop the fracking for natural gas does not make sense, in my opinion. natural gas is an extraordinary blessing. we have the capacity for natural gas and coal and oil to make is that extraordinary energy producer and to make energy lower-cost in america. by the way, manufacturing goes to the point where the costs are most competitive. it is not just labor. it is energy, transportation costs, taxation costs, regulatory costs. but energy is a big piece of it. in some businesses like this one, my guess is the energy bill here is pretty substantial. look at the size of that press. how many tons press is that?

800 ton press. 3,000 ton press. my guess is when the electric switch is turned on, it draws a little power. the capacity of manufacturing to be in ohio or to be in america is directly related to what the cost is of electricity. windmills and solar are great and we are going to develop them and perhaps that technology will become economic, but right now is multiples of the cost of natural gas or oil or coal. i want to develop those resources aggressively, and get the pipeline. i cannot tell you the exact date, but as quickly as we can get it. so we can show to manufacturers who are here are thinking about moving here that as they think about making plans to expand in america, that energy costs would be reasonable, the sources of energy will be reliable, therefore they will make those investments, hire people, and we can get more demand.

how'd you get higher wages for folks? the answer is, you have so many employers competing to hire people so they have to raise the benefits and the wages to be able to secure you. it is supply and demand. you can try to artificially raise wages, but that collapses over time. if he artificially raise wages, the employers go elsewhere, to other countries or other states. you have to the competition between employers. i want to make this a place that manufacturing wants to come again, where jobs come back to america. [applause] energy is a big part of that. i am told i get one more question here. there is a hand right there. here comes the microphone, right behind you. >> there are two things i think are critically important.

things that i want you to be passionate about. number one, our country's relationship with israel, and number two, i am very concerned about partial birth abortion. >> thank you. on the latter, i agree with you, and will do all in my power to prevent partial birth abortion from being legal in this country. number two, i also agree with you with regard to israel, and also with our other friends in the world. israel is in a very dangerous place, so we pay a lot of attention to it. israel is surrounded by a lot of folks who do not like them. some of those nations suggest that hostile intent toward israel and towards its existence. that puts on us a special

responsibility to stand by our friends, is probing among our greatest friends on the planet. -- israel being among our greatest friends on the planet. [applause] they are are friends, not just because they are nice to us, but because we share our values. they believe in freedom. they believe in freedom of speech. i am told if you want to find a place that is critical of israel, just go to the israeli newspapers. it is like our newspapers. this is a wonderful thing in a free economy to have the capacity of people to express their views and to do so publicly. so we will stand with israel. we will show something i think this president has not done well enough, that is the better to be an american friend than an american fold. we will stand by our american friends -- than to be an american fole. whether that is on one side of

the world or another, this is a nation that respect those who share those values. we are in a bit of a global competition. this cannot military, except perhaps with regard to the radical, biology hottest it would attack one another and attack us -- radical pilots violent jihadists. russia, likewise authoritarian and blessed with extraordinary energy resources, is becoming resurgent. it has a very different view than ours with regard to freedom and human rights. and then there is ourselves, or combine economic freedom and political freedom and personal freedom in a way that has changed us and changed the world.

we will stand with people who stand for freedom, and help move the others towards freedom as well. [applause] you guys are very kind to be here and spend some time with me. it counts. what we are doing matters. this is an election where former first lady barbara bush said, this is the most important election in my lifetime. given the fact that she has a husband and a son who were presidents, that is saying something. you may have gotten robocalls in ohio from first lady barbara bush. she has never done robocalls before. but we asked her to help out, and she said yes, this is important. this is a question about what kind of america we are going to have. this is a question about whether we are going to have an america more and more and more dependent on government, which gets deeper and deeper in debt, or whether we will be a nation that returns to the principles

of freedom and free enterprise. [applause] thank you so very much. ♪ [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012]

♪ ♪

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪

>> presidential primary voters go to the polls tomorrow in indiana, north carolina, and west virginia. go to our web page to watch the latest videos of presidential candidates and president obama on the campaign trail. goat to c-span.org/campaign2012. tomorrow, ron paul will chair a house subcommittee hearing on changing the federal reserve system. live coverage starts at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span3.

>> saturdays this month, c-span radio is airing more of the nixon tapes from the collection of secretly recorded phone conversations from 1971-1973. this saturday at 6:00 p.m. eastern, here conversations with deputy national security adviser alexander haig. >> very significant, this new york times expo's day of the most highly classified documents of the war. >> you mean that was leaked out of the pentagon? >> a whole study was done for mcnamara and after mcnamara left up by clifford and thepeaceniks over there. >> listen on ex-im channel 119, and that c-span radio.org.

>> now they form on this november's presidential election. they discussed the role of money, technology and media in this year's race. this one-hour event is moderated by 60 minutes correspondent lesley stahl. >> good evening, everyone, and welcome to the historical society. i am vice-president for public programs and i am thrilled to welcome you to our spectacular auditorium. if you have not already had the chance to visit our new installation an exhibition throughout our renna at its bases, i hope you'll have time during the regular museum hours. i would just like to ask how

many people here are members? instead of asking you to become a member, i would ask you to think about giving the gift of membership to someone very special. i know when i give the gift of membership, people love it and they are very happy. we also have our new children's museum which is a great membership gift. think about that, and tonight, just stop by and talk to one of the staff members. it is great to have so many members here. we really love it. tonight's program is politics and power, election 2012. this is part of the bernard and irene schwartz distinguished speaker series, which is the

heart of our public program. i would like to thank mr. and mrs. schwartz for their support, which has enabled us to invite so many prominent authors and historians. let's thank them so much. >> they are the most wonderful sponsors. the program tonight will last an hour. toward the end of the program, lesley stahl will invite audience members to approach two standing mikes in either aisle, where we will have them set up. we ask you to do this, so that the speakers on stage and everyone in the audience can hear you. also, our programs are recorded and many of them are posted online. we want our listeners all over

the world to hear you. so on to introducing a wonderful speakers tonight. lesley stahl has been a correspondent on cbs "60 minutes" since march 1991. prior to that she was cbs news white house correspondent during the carter, reagan, and george h.w. bush presidency and served as moderator of the sunday public affairs program "face the nation." she has a collection of emmy awards for her reporting, including the lifetime achievement emmy given in september 2003, and wrote her experiences covering washington in a book. her latest gig is as one of the host of wow radio. wednesday it 10:00 you can hear her. also joining tonight's program

is joe klein, who writes a weekly political column ", in the arena" and is a regular contributor to a political bloc. he is a former washington correspondent for the new yorker and political columnist for new york magazine. he is a two-time winner of the national headliner award for best magazine column and the author of several books, including the acclaimed novel " primary colors." richard reeves is senior lecturer at the annenberg school for communication at the university of southern california and author and syndicated columnist. he is the former chief political correspondent of the new york times and the former national editor and columnist for esquire

in new york magazine. he has also made six television films, winning various awards. he is author of a renowned biography of president kennedy and president reagan and is currently working on the book about the internment of japanese and japanese-americans by the united states governments during the world war ii. we are also pleased to welcome back beverly gage, associate prof. of 20th century u.s. history at yale university, where she teaches american political history. she is the author of "the day wall street exploded" and is currently working on her next book, "j. edgar hoover and the american century." she has written for numerous gerlach -- journals and

magazines including "the wall street journal" and "the new york times." she has been with us several times, so welcome, beverly. i would ask that you please turn off your cell phones and electronic devices. please note that photography is not permitted with the exception of the new york historical society photographer. and now, please join me in welcoming our guests. [applause] >> thank you. can you hear us? don't you just love the new york historical society? [applause] can you believe we have this panel tonight? we are filled up to the very top. you are all political junkies, right? my husband always says the only

time anybody ever knows what they are really talking about is when they talk shop talk. so tonight we are going to have the most explicit shoptalk there is, the -- because we have the most brilliant political thinkers we could gather on a stage anytime, anywhere. so can we start with the issue of inequality, class warfare? i always hear that candidates who bring up the inequality issue never get any mileage out of it. where as a so-called aspirational country -- i am always baffled by it. i don't understand why does not get traction. joe, can you discuss this issue and tell us what you think president obama is actually going to get anywhere with that? >> let me say what a relief it is to be here, after six months on the road with the republican candidates.

[applause] on the other hand, you guys look like a real tea party audience. inequality is not a big seller in american politics. it has not been. if you look at polling data, people are more interested in providing opportunity for people who have not had them and providing money and redistributing wealth in america. however, let me just say that the political spectrum, during the last 30 years, has tilted so far to the right that at this point, we have gone beyond questions of redistribution and inequality to questions of simple justice, were the wealthiest americans are contributing less and less to the society, and the very idea of productivity, which came with

the income tax in 1913, is in peril. so i think there is some mileage for the president here, as long as he emphasizes things in addition to the redistribution of wealth. like the redistribution of opportunity. >> beverly, talk about this issue historically. has it ever work? are there times when inequality was so out of whack, so pronounced, that it actually has worked? >> i have been teaching a course at yale on 1900-1945. i think about moments when class and inequality have been really big issues. you have to look at the 1930's. my students have been shocked to look back to the progressive area at the turn of the century, for 20 years, and look at the

time of radical challenges, but also of the sort of language when income tax came into being as the moment when it was more in common with things we are seeing today. if you look 1912 and most of the major candidates, the state famous -- big famous, woodrow wilson, he won. he was a democrat. you had theodore roosevelt, running not as a republican. he is running as a progressive challenger to the republican candidate who is william howard taft. this is the only election where a socialist, has played a significant role. what is interesting about that election is that all of the

candidates are running a with a cross language and they're having real mobilization around the issue. society and of being different. we think of roosevelt and running around class language in 1936. the issue is not as much inequality because some many people are poor. i think the interesting parallel because of the political language and because of, to my dismay, we are where we were at the beginning of the 20 a century. >> at the constitutional convention, john adams caught in an argument with john dickinson of pennsylvania. dickinson said are you never going to understand that people

would rather have that chance of getting rich and face the reality of being poor? >> that is counterintuitive. i covered an election two years ago. it was an initiative on the ballot to just tax the top 1% in the state of washington. bill gates and his father were supporting this initiative. it did not pass. i was astonished it did not pass. is an act counterintuitive? >> that thing that happened is that over time people have come to see "the bigs" -- the government, big labor, as equally impressive. there is a fair amount of sentiment out there about defeating the beast. -- feeding the beast.

when people pay their taxes they think of giving money to the poor instead of themselves. >> here is another issue i am confused about. i keep hearing we are a centrist country and that candidates have to give it back to the center because that is where we are. yet you have the republican party that is in no way in the center in terms of their issues. they are clearly out of the main stream on rolling back 70 years of legislation. >> they are running against the progressive era. >> when you read these folks, when you read magazines like national review and listen to them on fox and the radio, they

are railing about woodrow wilson, not lyndon johnson. >> what about woodrow wilson? >> he was the birth of progressivism. i wrote a piece for the times a few years ago. glenn beck was obsessed with woodrow wilson. there is another interesting character percolating, one is william sumner. he was a writer who wrote a defense of the inequality as a great thing. he was a spokesman of social darwinism. >> i am not talking about inequality, i am talking about privatizing social security. if we are a centrist country, i

do not think we are, how come when all of these issues come up, it is always 50-50? it is. >> it is 60-40 on the part of the people who want to keep these things. >> democratic-republican at 50- 50. every poll is down the middle. it is. how come -- why do we keep saying we are a centrist country? >> i think we are a schizophrenic country. personal identification, they say that in terms of -- are more self-described conservatives and liberals in our country. in many of those people who are screaming about socialism want to see medicare stay as it is.

by 70-30, they want to see social security state where it is. by 90-10, they want to see politicians compromise rather than stick with their positions. , i go into the country and talk to civilians on road trips. they are all astonished at the power we in the media have given the tea party folks. they say -- >> they win elections. >> we know who they are. they show up at the city council and complain about fluoridation. >> they are running congress. >> that is in part because if you give people a choice between nothing and more government, they are going to choose nothing. look at the last two elections. this shows you how fractured our system is.

by 80%, americans said they were satisfied with the health care they were receiving. what does barack obama do? he tries to produce a universal health care plan, originally a republican plan. he is clobbered for this by the republicans. what do they do? they tried to destroy medicare, which is approved by 80% of the country. or is this coming from? the bases, nancy pelosi and the democrats and from john boehner's republicans. >> and us. >> the media? >> it is the story we go after first. to try to get some friction going. >> you had said they are running

against the 1960's. when you said that, we got diverted. sorry. i am thinking of them bringing up contraception. >> rick santorum talking about woodstock. they lost them. they think the country went to hell. there should be a column called sex in the 1960's. that is what they talk about. i do not mean a real people but politicians in states and they believe have a lot of catholics. catholic and voting is not that different but they think they can -- [ringing] >> is that you? [laughter]

>> they still talk about those wedges. >> can it work? >> it can. >> i think they are committing suicide. >> maureen dowd quoted that fellow, don't they and their stand people like sex. -- they understand people like sex? [laughter] >> this is the gripe by how with democrats as they forget about the m part of omb. making sure they get rid of all, useless regulations so they do not pile up in sedimentary layers. romney had a convincing campaign but is the first time i have seen this in 10 campaigns. it is so embarrassing. romney's stump speech got worse

as he went along because he was lured away into talking about things like immigration and contraception. the first time contraception came up in a debate, romney had a great dancer. he said nobody cares. santorum brought it up. romney gets right into the thick of it. he says santorum voted for planned parenthood. one of the few rational reasons a person would like santorum. [laughter] >> you think obama would walk away with this thing. let's talk for a minute -- >> the republican side changed the rules which davis a new system -- gave us a new system

and is ripping apart a republican party. they have been running for six months and democrats have not. >> beverly, citizens united. >> citizens united, we are waiting to see what is going to happen but there are all sorts of structural changes that have been occurring over the past 20 or 30 years around money and politics. i also think around how congress operates and how the two-party is are structured. in many ways, they are not the driving force of the election but explain a lot of the things we have seen in terms of what it is obama is able to do, not able to do, why the discussion in washington is geared toward particular interests. and it does not in the rest of the country. to the degree the tea party is trying to get something that is

substantive, it is that sense of disconnection. >> when i hear citizens united, i think koch brothers. a very small number of people -- i think this is what you're suggesting. >> in the old days, you know, if they did not do well, it did not get money and they were gone. >> case in point, newt gingrich. the loss vegas casino magnate, in a single issue, he was pro-

benjamin netanyahu, pro- sediments, anti-iran, and he is troubled $10 million to keep newt gingrich going -- he shoveled $10 million to keep newt gingrich going. i have been mired his creativity. he is creative about ideas. he is a jerk when it comes to politics. when you have a single payer system like that -- [laughter] -- a problem as if we hold their feet to their fire, which we should do more of, there is credibility. >> i want to say that history professors across america are very glad that the newt gingrich is no longer in the race and is no longer the face of our profession.

[laughter] >> he did not even get tenure. did he > ? >> can we stay on the subject of the wealthy. there is so much money into the campaign, candidates have their own ads, being able to be so vicious with distorted adds, and how this is tilting the campaign in a way we have not seen before. >> it is part of a continuing trend. the last book i wrote was about how the need to get on the air on television created the need to raise money, created this industry of people who told you how to spend the money and television, all of these pull my sisters and so on. it has been going on for a long

time -- pollsters and so on. it has been going on for a long time. if you look at wall street over the last 30 years, the financial community has distorted american and capitalism away from products and toward making deals. the democrats are complicit. people like bob rubin are not poor. the rest of the crew of democratic bankers who put a bill clinton, funded barack obama. >> it is both sides. what about the rest of us? >> it is so skewing and the court has made the decision -- it is not just the money, which is certainly alarming enough and if you look back to 1896.

william mckinley's presidency, that is the first moment of a big money in politics. then you have a century of people pushing back against this. it is not just the money, it is also the lack of transparency. they have a very innocuous- sounding names. you do not know where your money is going. they know, but we do not know what forces are behind it. >> it is not for nothing that the mckinley campaign was karl campaign inite american history. >> to you think we will begin to push back against this? >> i think in the system is breaking as we see it because

the republican party is not going to be knighted on anything -- united on anything. our political rules and regulations are contracts between the parties to preserve each other. when you get to the presidential level, it seems to me that the new guys always win. whether it is karl rove or james carville. there are the only guys that read the rules. it is so clear the republicans -- it was so clear that the republicans were sure that they did not know what the rules work. we elect a proportional representation. the have a long campaign. >> let's talk about some of the issues out there that will

really, seriously, influence the way the election will go. the first one is the gender gap. how, when you hear there is a 20. and gap with women siding with obama over romney, you think to yourself, well, romney cannot win. is this a that decisive a number? can romney narrow the gap? >> he can air it some, but he -- narrow it some, but he will not get a majority. >> i have been sliding poll -- citing poll numbers since we started talking. let me criticize myself. one of the things that we overdue in the press is to try to quantify presidential campaigns. they are essentially on quantifiable. -- unquantifiable.

issues like the gender gap can disappear in a heartbeat. in my experience, again, economists say -- not over big issue. if the gdp is below 3%, than the incumbent gets kicked out. i do not believe any of that. in my experience, presidential campaigns are about to, is sometimes a three guys standing on a stage in october. the general public since it at -- tunes in at that point. they're not like you guys. they are not political junkies. they're not listening now. they even know who rick santorum used to be. [laughter] you get two candidates. the presidency is the most intimate office we have in this country. the president lives in your house. you see him for the next four years. and people make a gut-level decision about which person is more reassuring and more comfortable to be with. at that moment, at gender gap

issues, all of these other issues -- health care, economy, they all move away. economy, too. >> if osama bin laden had been killed two weeks before the election, he would have won two to one. those things now are more likely to come from abroad. romney has zero knowledge of foreign policy. and the other guy has been the president. he has had no choice. >> there is one exception to that, by the way. i think. first of all, but one of the key insights i have had in to run the's character is his

absolute unwillingness to tell the truth about obama's middle east policy. he continually says that barack obama wants to return to the 1967 borders and israel. full stop. the other part of the sentence is with mutually agreed upon land swaps, which is been the position of every american president since richard nixon. he will not say that. if he persists in lying. i cannot think i'm the only journalist who has called him on this. not everybody, sadly, reads "time" magazine. [laughter] romney, who so far, has not shown the evidence of conflict -- of conscious or honor, decides to demagogue china. that is one area that people are concerned about and the ident is not willing to demagogue. >> f romney gets traction on an issue, is it fair to say that obama was not strong enough to come back? why isn't he fighting back? why is that the public

listening to him, obama? >> against ron paul? >> against romney. >> you can see that of merging. -- emerging. it seems like obama has been holding back and letting them fight amongst themselves. he is going to step up. this question of the events and events driving alexian's is -- elections is really a stunning. it is stunning how much longer, how much more we talk about elections now. it used to be, a 50 or 60 years ago, you would have found out who they are in july or august. ali's those stories that are not news stories. the dog on the car, they change so quickly.

>> my point is that is still the way most americans experience alexian's. -- elections. >> right. what things are going to look like in october, of the answer is we will know in october. >> i want to challenge it joe for one second on the idea that it all comes down to the debates and people make their decision when it comes down to debates. what i'm struck by, and maybe it has always been true, that people in the country make up their mind pretty early. they decide, that is my guy. everything the other guy says is stupid or wrong or is going to hurt of the country. everything my guy says is wonderful or right. this perpetuates by the echo chambers. the voter decides who they will listen to. this is polarization. they are making up their mind now, if they have not already.

the number of undecided gets a smaller and smaller. >> in the old days, they did not make up their minds. this got paid. of the fact is that the country is not nearly as polarized as we portray it. it becomes very clear to me -- by the way. when i take these road trips, i will be announcing one on wednesday. i'm going to go to some battleground states. but the viewers and "time" readers make up the itinerary. if you want to talk politics of me, let's do it. these are not focus groups. what i find is that the vast majority of them are somewhere in the middle. the vast majority of them are incredibly frustrated that politicians in washington cannot come to an agreement. cannot compromise. which is why there will be a backlash against those tea party politicians this year.

one guy in arkansas, a furniture dealer, said to me, why don't you guys ever talk about the things that the two presidential candidates agree on? why you always talk about their disagreements? the guy has a point. >> what do they agree on? [laughter] >> the fact is that up until the point, maybe one month ago when mitt romney came up with his supply-side tax cut, they were like this. barack obama and romney were like this on tax plans. and on economic plans. really, they were. >> but they are not now. >> they are not that far apart. >> why is there a gender gap? >> well, i was in paris.

the students would always ask the same question first. that is, how can you tell the difference between a democrat and republicans? these people who go from communist to monarchists. i said, they smell different. republicans a smell better. however, you walk into a room, and you know who is who. our politics have gotten pretty rotten. the rhetoric has been raised. we have had a lot to do with raising the rhetoric, too. the debates are important to us because we are looking for someone to make a mistake. >> the public is the exact opposite reason, by the way. >> here is something that has happened over the last couple of years that is frustrating to me. that is when you say, we the press.

and then the press is a big salad bowl. who is in the press? rush limbaugh is in the press. fox is in the press. msnbc is in the press. all these people who are devoting themselves to little slices of the pie are in with the so-called mainstream media. we are all the same thing to the public. we're not the same thing. >> can i ran for a second against marketing? we have been marketing -- >> we have been ranting. >> the central principle of marketing is that the things that divide us are far more important than the things we have in common, off because those are the things you sell. we do not have three networks

like we grew up with. the fierce marketing for audiences on cable has led to an atmosphere. and now the internet has led to an atmosphere of a press intolerance. it is a media riot that has taken place. the victims are the american public and those who really want to understand the issues. >> i think that is right. we are now being pushed off by what we listen to to become more extreme. he keeps saying, this is where we started. half are we a country in the middle? or are we no longer a country where the majority of us are in the middle? >> there are structural things about the way the american election is run. on the one hand, the media, which tends to take these

items,, particularly now that we have a political media that is explicitly politicize one way or the other. i would point of this is more of a return to what it was like 100 years ago where everyone had a party affiliation. you've you're reading a socialist newspaper or a democratic paper. this moment of object to the was -- of objectivity was something of a historical and anomaly. >> it was a gentler country that point. >> i'm not sure about that, either. >> there were big issues. mccarthy and what not. now, joe said something about things happening so fast. how long this an issue, even an important one, last in this media environment? >> right.

that is true. the media gives us one picture of politics. and then the way our voting system actually works does a different story, which is that the most important thing to understand to me about what elections play out in a particular way that they do and why they say the things they say, is because of the like pearl college. -- the electoral college. it does not matter if you mobilize and win by three votes. you get the same number of electoral votes. he did not get the same kind of mobilization. we will start moving -- we're gonna talk about michigan, ohio, pennsylvania, and a florida. this is a not very smart way to set up your democracy. >> i have a proposal them.

i would like to combine the states of north and south dakota, montana and wyoming, into a single state. it less than the population of brooklyn. [laughter] but it will only have two senators instead of eight. will make things a lot easier for us to actually pass legislation in this country. [laughter] [applause] >> absolutely. >> to give them to canada. [laughter] >> north dakota is prosperous. we need their tax money. >> before i invite the audience to come up to the microphones that will be in the aisle, can we talk of the importance of likability, which is my issue. i'm always thinking that one of the great influences in an election is what the public sees and feels in their guts. you talk about this being a

factor. it is about likability. i am so interested right now with what the candidates, particularly obama, what they're doing to make you like them. they do these little television and i guess on the web now, too. these little visual vignettes. and obama, i love this. he is playing out the dog issue. he is talking about dogs. being seen with his dog. any guy is seen with a dog is likable instantly. clinton had his monica lewinsky issue. all of a son, clinton had a dog. -- sudden, clinton had a dog. where did that go? >> checkers. [laughter] >> and now this portuguese water dog has his own blog.

so that you will all be remembered that romney's dog was stuck on the top of a car. [laughter] >> of this is confusing to me, because obama also admitted to eating dogs in indonesia. they had a joke, what is the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? the pit bull is a delicious. [laughter] >> is a people's gut as important as the economy? do you all think that? >> barack obama would be even more likable than he inherently is. people do find him, aside from his job creating, their approval of him as a human being is very high. if you're doing better on the economy he would be even more likable.

it becomes a zeitgeist. >> when obama was still at his candidacy, his wife invited him. it is the first time or the black men were on a platform and the white man were -- the editor of the n.y. times said, what you think? he said, he is too nice to be president. we are finding out, and republicans have not gotten yet, how tough he is. he may be nice. he is nice. my daughter is a speech writer for the president. [laughter] i shouldn't have said at the beginning. his personnel policies, it does not get better than that. [laughter] i lost myself.

>> he is tougher than the public realizes. >> i mean, we are playing hardball all over the world. a lot of it is secret. >> certainly, we are withdrawn. -- with drones. >> the only time he has hesitated was syria because it was just too much to take on. >> it is not just that it is too much to take on. in syria, you are running the risk of a regional war. you have the iranians in there and the leadership. you can get into trouble by supporting one side or the other. >> so it is smart. >> i think it matters of far

more than the economy. the thing that is so interesting to me about this electoral cycle is that when we have had these really shift from democrats to franklin roosevelt, then you have democratic dominance. and then you have this economic crisis of the 1970's. that produces this big ship. you have reagan coming in. this conservative moment that last for several decades. and a lot of people bought in -- thought in 2008 that we were on the cusp of this new moment. it seems to me that the election will be both a referendum on

whether or not we have had a fundamental shift about how people think about politics. but also, we will see if that pattern holds or not. it seems like he will probably remember those pictures of obama and fdr in 2008 after he won. why it hasn't happened or if we are actually experiencing it and we just cannot understand it. that will be the biggest question of 2012. >> i like your daughter's employer, but i think they made several mistakes in this area. first of all, if you talk to people in the country and look at the statistics and ask people, what are you concerned about? they say, the economy. they do not care about deficits. obama got captured by a washington conversation about

deficit reduction that is a long-term problem, but a short- term impediment to economic recovery. he lost sight of the public on that one. the other place i think he arguably lost sight on what our country's future should be is he turned away from paul volcker and all those other left-wing radicals who thought he should break up the big banks. do we continue to have this situation of moral hazard in this country where there are six banks that control something like 70% of the assets and are too big to fail. as long as that happens, we are in peril. >> what an irony that he did not break up the banks and yet wall street has turned against him. they're putting all their money into romney. >> let me ask you one final question and then we will have

people come up to the microphone. incumbency. how big of a factor has that been historically? how much of a leg up does is give obama? >> it matters. it really matters. that is the big question in terms of obama. the scary parallel for him is the jimmy carter parallel. will the end up being a jimmy carter who is understood and not able to rise to his moment? fortunately, he is running against mitt romney and not ronald reagan. the incumbency is going to serve him. he is very well established. and to some degree, the conventional narrative is right. he was a great campaigner. he has been a so-so president in getting them to work in ways he wants them to work.

the question of 2012 but comes, -- becomes, can you, once again, be a really good candidate, if you the party been a kind of so-so president who has disappointed a lot of your base and does it still work for you? >> a tremendous in the vantage -- advantage because people had seen the man do the job. assuming he has done a better than 50/50 job. it must be very hard to run without any kind of foreign policy record. all the stuff about, i am a businessman.

i don't think anybody cares about that. >> last point. >> one example. while it is ridiculous to look at paul this early in the -- polls this early in the campaign, i would point out to you that in ohio, which is traditionally a conservative state, obama has been running consistently ahead of romney. there is a basic reason for that. the auto bailouts. chevrolet is running triple shifts building the chevy cruze which gets 40 miles per gallon. honda is doing very well. the auto sports manufacturers throughout the state are doing extremely well. romney opposed the bailout. and he becomes a lot less likable when all he talks about is not giving bailouts and firing people. the president seems more likable when you have a job. >> i am with you on the likability, by the way.

>> ok. if anybody has a question, please go out to the aisle. there is a microphone so everyone can hear the question. please, no speeches. just a quick question. >> one area that you hadn't talked about -- can you hear me? >> there you go. >> one area it you did not talk about is particularly with the states and the republican governors, they started to build obstacles for the public to get access to the polls. do you think that will be a major factor in the election? >> it is a major factor. 41 states are passing or in the process of passing new voter suppression rules. voting by mail, no. voting by the internet, no. all designed -- a thing in nyu

law school specializes in voter suppression. they think 5 million people will not vote. who are those people? poor people. people who had trouble with the law. young people. >> they have to have government identification cards with them. >> we had a chief justice of the united states who started in politics in arizona as a poll watcher. of course, they put uniforms on of these guys. or they were white men with ties. and you could literally see, some poor black guy coming and the seas will look like an fbi agent and walks away.

adding the republicans feel they can play that big time. a 11% of people in the country do not have a government id. >> good question. >> i am curious to know what the impact of the vice president candidacy would be in this election, given the reflection of the last election that we had, at least for the republicans. >> i think that is a great question. historically, democrats tended to go with a senior statesman as their vice presidents. lyndon johnson, etc. republicans intended to go with junior executive types. richard nixon was 41 when eisenhower named tim. -- him. dan quayle. sarah palin. [laughter] i think romney is a little trapped now. because of all the policies and the flip flopping, he does not want to seem too political and obvious. he does not want to do

something too obvious like mamie hispanic -- naming a hispanic like marco rubio. the best course from is to go back to where he began. do what clinton did which is double down on his strengths. double down on his message. in clinton's case, it was a new democratic party. in romney's case, it is, i am a manager. the obvious risk for him, which means he will not take it, is the senator from ohio who was the director of omb during bush. he is a smart, serious, decent guy. he has an extensive organization in ohio. >> doesn't hurt him that he was the budget director in bush's time? >> off something will always heard a candidate. -- hurt a candidate. you have not had jesus run for public office. [laughter] >> ok.

>> woodrow wilson said that the whole purpose of a democracy is that we take counsel with one another so as to depend not upon the judgment of any one man, but upon the common council of all. doesn't that say that you really cannot judge the process in a particular election until it is finished? until all the views are distilled and all of the voters go in the booth and a final decision is made? in the last analysis, it is the total of what was heard -- >> throughout the whole time. >> throughout the whole period. >> i agree. the need about 30 years before you could say anything that matters. >> and joe has to write a column next week.

>> how are we going to get rid of minority rule? we talk about the president doing this and doing that. but 70% of the bills that have been put before the senate in the last two years have been supported by a minority of filibuster and nothing has been able to be done. how do we get rid of that type of a situation? >> that is my favorite question. >> the democrats will not do it because they expect to be back in power. they want to have that same power. it would take breaking up the two party system as we know it. >> i am not sure about that. there are moments of congressional reform. the last one was in the 1970's where you went from a committee system dominated by old democrats.

those reforms have since come around and become corrupt and their own ways. it tends to be, for better or worse, that those kinds of reforms can take place. i do not know what level of crisis people would consider. i think the other thing that really matters in a big, party animosity sort of way is the fact that we have two illogically defined parties now. -- ideologically defined parties now. for better or worse, into the democratic party. increasingly, parties are in the logically divided.

>> someone used to say that development was the single most compelling argument against listening to historians. all of the historians thought that the system would work better if rather than having coalitions we would have ideologically distinct parties. we got to them and we lost to the people in the middle who lost to the deals. >> i think it now we have this romance of this great moment, and bipartisan cooperation when the democrats and republicans would did together. often they got together around blocking civil rights legislation. >> there is a small romantic. about the way washington.

-- changed. their kids went to school together. now they do not know each other. they go home every weekend. >> speaking of technology, when there were three networks, it is not an accident that the country was more to gather, there was a larger center treated everybody watched the same thing. technology is putting us and making us more polarized because we are now able to only listen to what we already agree with. the oil we are in echo chambers more and more and more. technology has done it. >> my daughter is a member of the mtc tribe, my father the

espn tribe, and we do not have a common -- >> you could trace all politics as being driven by technological change. we will not going to that. >> my concern is not technology. i want to know what is to be, of those of us who do not have the money -- become of us who do not have the money. there are those candidates who we might support with $10, $300, which cannot possibly elect those people who are up against the super pacs on the opposite side. what should we do it? >> i think it is a problem of the local level because the presidency everyone is

interested in. even to the congressional level. people do not know who their congressperson is. when you get down to the city council, and i would want to raise the local school board vote in harlem or the teachers union used its strength to destroy or hinder the charter school movement. those kind of organizations have more power at the state and local level. >> i am wondering what the internet to a is going to do to change this, to change that balance. then people will have more power to directly talk to their constituents without having to go on television, which is so much more expensive. i do not know where it is going to take us.

>> we are trying to have a democracy without citizenship in this country. i named a character in a primary colors after this. machiavelli says he is the greatest enemy of a republic. indolence. machiavelli was concerned about keeping a rare public coherent when does not at war. ever since world war ii, we have not had a threat on the country. we have had prosperity. we have lost the habits of citizenship. we have to figure out how to bring it back. as richard has been saying, blame us. blame the media for the way we have gone about it. >> uh-oh. [laughter] quick.

>> my question is about the house. numerically, what to you think is the effect of redistricting? >> i have not studied it this time but i have to say that gerrymandering, including, and especially racial gerrymandering, has been a disaster for american democracy. >> sure. it is another thing that has deprived us of the metal. >> there has been a conspiracy in the some states between white legislators and black legislators to carve districts that are either conservative or liberal, white or black, and there are no more district for a congressman has to appeal to people of both races. which is a disgrace. >> who follows things like that?

>> i have read about a. >> ron brownstein does it. >> you can google it and i bet you will see a hundred articles. >> thousands upon thousands. >> back to your question about the gender gap in the election. i want to broaden it to little bit. do you think and the subjects, or issues, of government in bedrooms and sexual preference determining who can serve is going to be an issue? >> ido. >> my guess it will be a disaster for republicans. i think this country has moved on from those issues. people are concerned about the

amount of money government spends. that is a republican issue, one that they can capitalize on. there are people out there who might be fiscal conservatives who also have gay nephews and nieces. you go to a tea party meeting in you see people who are scared because the country has changed underneath them. you go to a meeting in arkansas and they are looking at a country where the south asians from the mini-marts and motels. there are mexican americans all over the place and their grandchildren are married out of their race. the president is not black or white and his middle name is hussain. -the jobs they used to be able to hold without a diploma have disappeared. as a new yorker, the things they

are most afraid of are the things i love about this country. their fear is genuine and it is becoming a minority fear because this country is diversifying so much, which is one of the reasons i love it so much. [applause] to give beverly the last word. >> i wanted to say something about the gender gap. i appreciate the question because when the media talks about it, people tend to turn to issues of sexuality and abortion and family. those are important but the question of employment, what women see the government doing for them in terms of tangible opportunity, him being a secretary of state or workplace protection, those are important parts of the ways in which women relate to politics but tend not to get translated into

conversations about the gender gap and where it comes from. >> i think we have had a brilliant panel. [applause] thank you. joe klein, beverly gage, richard reeves, and all of you for coming. come back. thank you very much. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012]

military officer is visiting the u.s. this week meeting with leon panetta today. they spoke to reporters about some of their goals. that briefing is next on c-span. then, a form on the news and digital media. then mitt romney campaigned outside cleveland. tomorrow, north carolina will vote on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. we will talk with darlene lipper. howard marlow joins us.

later, we will take your phone calls about the elections in france and greece. "washington journal" each morning at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. this comes after a diplomatic dispute. the military leaders spoke to reporters of the pentagon. good >> it is my privilege and honor to welcome general leon

back to the pentagon. i am pleased when it in the course of his visit to the united states, he has have the opportunity to visit a number of important military installations and received briefings and demonstrations from our military leaders. we just finished a very productive meeting, our first since i became secretary of defense.

discontinued the regular dialogue between military and political leaders between the united states and china. earlier this year i was honored to be able to host vice president xi at the pentagon during his visit to the united states. i was pleased by the successful outcome of last week's strategic and economic dialogue and the second strategic dialogue none of which are acting secretary of defense when the department delegation -- second strategic

dialogue, of which our acting secretary of defense led the delegation. in my meeting with general leon, i express my commitment to achieving and maintaining a stable and reliable and continuous relationship with china. as a symbol of that, general leon invited me to visit china, and i look forward to doing that in the next few months.

the united states and china are both pacific powers, and our relationship is one of the most critical in the world. we share many interests across the asia pacific region and beyond, from humanitarian assistance to concerns about weapons of mass destruction to terrorism to trade to counter piracy.

it is essential for our nation's communicates effectively on a range of challenging issues the united states and china have worked together in a variety of areas. we are expanding our cooperation in disaster relief and counter piracy.

on counter piracy, china has ably conducted maritime operations in the gulf of nagin for more than three years, and these have helped to secure vital sealanes from the red sea to the indian ocean. i thank general leon for these efforts, and later this year the united states and chinese ships

will conduct a counter piracy exercise in the gulf of aden. on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, i convey my appreciation of china cochairing a group dedicated to these on behalf of the ministers plus. on regional security challenges, andalked about north korea

other areas of mutual interest but require continued cooperation and dialogue. and on other issues, we discussed maritime carriers, cyber space, nuclear defense as well. as you all know, the united states department of defense recently released a new defense strategy, and recognizing no region is more important and asia pacific for our country's future of peace and prosperity.

our goal is to enhance cooperation throughout their region to enhance the relationship with china so we can promote peace and stability throughout the region. we recognize the united states and china will not always agree on every issue, but we believe our dialogue is critical to ensuring and we avoid dangerous misunderstandings that could

lead to crisis. a positive, a cooperative united states-china relationship is absolutely essential to achieving a secure asia-pacific region and a more secure future for both of our nations. thank you for your leadership, and let me turn it over to europe during your -- let me turn it over to you.

>> ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. [speaking chinese] at the invitation of secretary panetta i am leading a delegation to visit the united states. i envisioned the friendship between the chinese people and the chinese military.

the purpose of my visit this time is to implement the important agreement reached by president hu jintao and president obama on developing a relationship, to increase understanding, to promote mutual trust, and to raise the level of our relationship, in particular our military relationship and to ensure this can continue in a stable manner.

[speaking chinese] the u.s. side attaches great importance to my visit this time. in particular, secretary of canada has made considerable

arrangements -- secretary panetta has made considerable of arrangements. i have been very glad during the past three days. i was in a lot of military units and received many benefits and inspirations. i would like to thank the usa for its considerable arrangement and warm hospitality. this morning i had a meeting with deputy secretary of state.

we had an in-depth discussion and candid discussion on security and interests of common interest, and we discussed our relationship. just now i had a meeting thwith secretary panetta and the attitude of handedness and friendship. deep.e discussion has been th we have reached many agreements during that meeting.

i can candidly showed we have reached the following agreements. the first agreement both sides reaffirmed the china u.s. military relationship as an essential component of relations and admitted to the building where reliable relationship in accordance with president hu jintao and barack vision.

[speaking chinese]

both sides reaffirmed the need for a continuous strategic communication and upheld that the two sides should enhance strategic thrust through dialogue and consultation and properly handled differences and sensitive issues. the chinese side invited leon panetta to pay a visit to china in the second half of this year, and just now secretary panetta release five. both sides agreed to take talks and the military maritime agreement as important channels to deepen understanding and

improve mutual trust and reduce differences here ago -- reduce differences. both sides agreed the two militaries should agree to strengthen cooperation of all levels across all areas with a view to expanding, and interest. zero sides agreed to enhance exchanges and cooperation with respect to humanitarian assistance and disaster relief,

military environmental protection, military archives, and other fields. both sides acknowledge the security situation in the asia- pacific region has been complicated and cooperation in

security areas is conducive to peace in the region and serves fundamental interest. in response to the range of threats and challenges, they should further advance cooperation in non-traditional securities fraud. both sides agreed to conduct joint exercises on counterpart receipt of this year. -- counterpart received -- on counterpiracy this year. i will ensure you the chinese side will implement these agreements with our country's

actions. and we would like to work together to implement those agreements in our country's actions. [speaking chinese]

the china-u s relationship is on a new starting line in history to build a new military relationship based on the quality, cooperation, and mutual benefit in accordance with cooperative partnership. is a common responsibility of both parties and the common aspiration of regional parties. china would like to work with the u.s. to seriously implement these agreements to respect each other's core interests and to properly handle disagreements and differences, pushing forward the sound and stable development of our relationship

through enhanced dialogue and deepen cooperation. thank you. >> we have time for two questions. i will call on my chinese counterpart to call on the first question. >> [speaking chinese] [speaking chinese]

>> i have two questions. the first goes to minister leon. harvey you comment on your visit to the united states, and how you expect military relationships and -- how you comment on your visit to the united states, and how do you expect military relations to develop? the united states has been strengthening its presence in the pacific. the u.s. military frequently conducts joint exercises with china's neighboring countries. critics say the purpose of such actions is to try to contain

china, and also the courage for the provocation of china comes from u.s. support. how do you comment on these? >> i would like to answer the first question. to theent on my visit u.s. is time to record -- is time. [speaking chinese]

my visit to the united states this time at the invitation of secretary panetta was the first in the last nine years and is the most important program in military to military engagement this year appear eager -- this year. [speaking chinese] we can see that both sides have

a task of great importance. ever since last year the united states launched its round of arms sales to taiwan, we have launched several programs, including my visit to the united states and secretary to the net of costs visit to china, and i am visiting the united states now, and i am inviting secretary panetta to visit china this year, which are believed is a turnover after the arms sales leader of the arms sales to taiwan. [speaking chinese]

this is one side of my assessment of my visit, and i am glad i will be able to exchange candidly views with secretary panetta during the meeting. we have evaluated our cooperation over the past years, and we have raise the achievements we have made zero garrett we discuss those issues in areas we have disagreements.

-- the achievements we have made. we have discussed those issues in areas we have made this agreement. i think it is fair to say we haven' an objective assessment that are militaries and joy, and both sides have remained a calm and clear mind. the attitudes from both sides are quite positive in regards to the future development of this relationship.

[speaking chinese] [speaking chinese]

[speaking chinese] >> the third aspect is during our meetings both of us have mentioned one important issue, how the military's should act to build a relationship in accordance with our overall bilateral a relationship. discussions are under way at china and the united states should go a new state to state relationship that two major powers are predestined to engage in conflict. during the meeting i propose the military's need to build a new type of relationship, featuring

military cooperation and mutual benefit. i believe these proposals can serve as the most important guidance or directions for further development of our military relationship, as long as the military's grass these guidelines, i believe we can raise the level of this relationship and enhance cooperation in our areas. i believe my visit this time would be a complete success, and i believe i can reach our expectations. earned by the united states and

china are powers, -- the united states and china are powers and the pacific, and our goal is to establish a relationship for the future. the purpose of our strategy is to work with countries in that region to help develop capabilities so they can deal with common challenges " china and the united states faces in that region. as i indicated to the general,

my goal is to establish the same kind of constructive relationship with china serve both the united states and china can work together to make sure we confront common challenges and provide for the stability and safety of the region together. >> mr. minister, mr. secretary, the united states has been very blunt about its perceived threat of cyber attacks from china,

including the take away of data. what specifically did you discuss about this threat and this problem, and can you talk about what is the united states and china can do to improve cooperation regarding these cyber threats? how concerned should the united states public be about the latest terrorist threat but was apparently thwarted by the administration? what should we be taking away from this, and can you say where the perpetrator is? is this person in custody, of

what kind of threat is miss emma -- who what kind of threat is this? >> [speaking chinese] [speaking chinese]

>> i will respond to the first question. i would like to do that. >> [speaking chinese]

we did talk about the cyber security issue in our meeting. our talk about this for many other occasions, during which occasioned the journalists from the united states us about the question of me and secretary and also china and the u.s. discuss this issue of strategic dialogue.

before our release the contents of this discussion, i would like to ask you to consider your proposition, which i could hardly agree that they are directly coming from china. during the meeting, secretary panetta also agreed and we

cannot attribute the cyber attacks into china. [speaking chinese] i would like to make the following play theory give first is server attack is really important and attaches are great importance to all the nations of the world.

it concerns the security of many areas including people's livelihood. did you have a deposit in the vague, while this was hijacked by other people and money -- for example, you have a deposit, and while this was attacked by other people. ibarra believe it is correct to pay such great attention to cyber security. -- i believe it is correct to pay such great attention to cyber security.

in our discussion, we also talked about the possible ways to china and u.s. headwork to try to find ways to strengthen cyber security pure your -- cyber security. also, we did not touch upon the details or technical issues in this regard. we will leave that to experts. to summarize, we do share the same position and the same view regarding cyber security. ying? answer satisfy

>> i appreciate the frankness ea.h regards to the cyber aria both the united states and china have developed advanced technology with regard to the cyber a renowrena. is it is true we agreed obviously there are other countries, others that are

involved in some of the attacks both of our countries received. because the united states and china have developed capabilities in this arena, it is important we were to return to work to avoid misperception that could avoid in crisis in this area.

i appreciate the generals willingness to see if we can develop an approach to having exchanges in this arena in order to develop better cooperation when it comes to cyber. with regards to the question on the act of terrorism and was evidently released today, i do not comment on specific classified operations, other than to say that the united states engages in a number of operations to go after of

alchton's region -- go after qaeda and their allies who would try to attack the united states. this country has to continue to remain vigilant against those who would seek to attack this country, and we will do everything necessary to keep america safe.

[speaking chinese] >> thank you, thank you all. >> tomorrow, a presidential paul will chair a hearing on the federal reserve system. ron paul has been a critic of the federal reserve to regulator in the day, house negotiators will work on trying to reconcile spending measures. you can see live coverage of 3:00 eastern on c-span 3.

now a discussion on journalism and digital media. industry professionals talk about freedom of expression and the role of social media. >> i am the ceo, and it is my distinct pleasure to welcome all of you. it is an honor for us to host such a wonderful event, the celebration you are all participating in, and it gives us more credibility in what we are doing to host wonderful events like this. it is my great honor to introduce victor. he has had such a distinguished career. if i went through the list of his accomplishments, i would

consume all the time you have with a recitation of everything he has done. he was the editor from 1978 until 1995. he was an editor of from 1995 until 2005. he has been an author, a lecturer, a visiting scholar, and without a brief introduction, i will turn it over to victor -- with that brief introduction, i will turn it over to victor. >> i just want to say the scene did me the honor of asking me if i would share the oldest media monitor in the country -- chair

the oldest media monitor in the country. it has this legacy of trying to uphold standards in journalism, and now it has a new challenge of figuring out of business model that can work, and it is a here, and weo d.cbe have just completed a search for editor in chief, and we ended up with a marvelous person, and i am going to let her speak for herself. >> i am not going to tell you about me, because this is not about me. this is the latest in our road show of our 50th anniversary celebration. it is an exciting time, partly because of what they% and because now more than ever journalists need help trying to

figure out how to survive the hamster wheel and figure out what is working and what is not working. we have a new home page and that makes it easier if you only have three seconds to figure out what is new, and we are now available at the newsstand, and we will shortly be on the nook, and so all platforms. part of the reason this is possible is due to people who help us find our work like to google. i am about to introduce the director of public policy. >> thank you, cindy, and thank you for getting us involved in this.

the only place worse to be in washington is between people and alcohol and between people and the people they came to see, so i will be brief. i spend my days doing this for google, and if anyone is interested, we are going to have our own conference in a couple weeks, so please come talk to me afterwards. my job is to introduce our monitor for the day. he is the recipient of the john chancellor award and the most distinguished dropout the school has ever had. he is the recipient of an underground degree from columbia in 1968. sorey to date you. i apologize, and i will let

roberts take it away. >> thank you for a much for getting my academic credentials of their -- out there. to say we live in a time of great change in news media should be self-evident, because we always lived in a time of significant change. good cable news was a revolution that permitted a single channel but could be devoted to rock videos or news. i have been working for a radio network for the past 25 or 30 years. we benefited enormously from the landscape.

this would have been and editors pipe dream, so times change, and we face questions of who gets to control who is articles, but in the search engine region -- whose articles pop up in the search engine? these are all questions which fit under the broad rubric of freedom of expression and the digital age, and we have an extraordinary panel said to address these questions and others. he had an illustrious career as a television correspondent.

he was a correspondent for npr as well. he took time to run communications in kabul, and now he is running the voice. he is now the global editor at large for reuters, which is a highly respected news agency. they were added when the technology was carrier pigeons. she was a former deputy editor of the financial times in london and the u.s. financial times, and again, working for everyone with a lot of people to cover, and eventually writing a

terrific new boat -- terrific book. the president of columbia university. he made a study of the first amendment a little over a year ago. we will hear some remarks from rebecca mckinnon. she was almost raise to the task, having been taken by academic parents to beijing and put in chinese public schools. she is a senior fellow at the new america foundation. her book addresses some of the challenges we will face today.

you have made the most explosive proposal for how we should address this crisis today. let me give briefly your diagnosis of the problem and what the solution should thbe. >> my brees is really about public policy relating to the press, so that is my lodestone. i have also been connected to the press and a variety of ways, including running a small so i have watched the evolution of the press from one in which there really was a monopoly that define a press in this country, and i think to the

credit of journalists, those very favorable and privileged positions in the country were utilized to deepen the quality of journalism, so many of institutions we have in the united states really develop their expertise in areas of law and profits made it impossible to do that. many of them are the closing of operations that made it possible to cover the world. that is happening at the moment

where we live in an increasingly globally interdependent world. we have global technology -- global communications technology. we have never had anything like that before. we develop now we are at a point where we have a great global issues. we have a global communications technology, and we need to know more and more about the world. we need to be able to deal with issues of censorship around the world. at the very time when our capacity to do that is declining. my thought is, we really have to face up to this in a variety of ways. one way is to have more public funding. of course, the journalist generally, that is anathema.

i know it is very controversial and we have to be prepared to talk about it. i believe there should be more public funding. two people on the panel already are the beneficiaries of public funding. my thought is, somehow we need to create an american world service, funded, protected, make it bigger than what we have now -- find it, protect it, and make it bigger than what we have now. >> and american world service in a particular medium, or in various media? >> my thought -- this is something where one can take a variety of views. the journalism school at columbia year ago, two years ago, published a report, very famous and to some people, infamous, of advocating public support for press generally. i thought would be that this really ought to be an area of

what we have now. npr, pbs, and the voice of radio free europe. somehow to take what we have now and build it into an independent journalistic enterprise and give it much more funding. the funding level is now a half billion dollars, a billion dollars, in that magnitude, which is tiny in terms of public expenditures. so for just doubling that, you could build something of really great worldwide significance, which would both help the world, help us overcome censorship, and help the united states. the form of it is less important to me at the moment than getting the concept. >> first i want to hear from rebecca, either about these proposals specifically, but also about this new world of digital media, and to what degree is a

liberating and to what degree is it providing resources for foreign coverage. >> it sort of comes back to why i left in the first place. 2004, always being told that my expertise was getting in the way and could i please cover my region more like a tourist. >> in the region was growing dramatically at the time? >> east asia, kind of important. no guys with ak-47s were running around blowing things up. but at the same time, in 2004, i happened to go on leave at the harvard kennedy school and started playing around with blogs. it was in 2004, when you really started to see blogs coming out and really challenging those authorities as well as the authority of mainstream media. not only in the united states,

however, but around the world. there were some fascinating blogs coming out of the middle east, africa, asia, and so on. i ended up not going back to cnn. i was excited about the idea that we, the corps and -- foreign correspondents, do not have to be gatekeepers anymore. the people of that region deserve to be covered. it does not matter so much anymore, because the people of that region can cover themselves, or have the opportunity to take matters into their own hands. if they feel the international media is failing to represent them property. i got together with a colleague. i have been a perpetual fellow. you are supported by public funding, i am supported by foundations and random rich people.

but we created something called global voices on line. we basically invited loggers around the world to curate the conversation coming out of the media around the world -- we invited bloggers around the world. i do believe we need professional journalism for all kinds of reasons that we can talk about war. i am not saying that blogger should replace journalist. it is tremendously important, powerful, and a second point when it comes to the subject of my book, my experience working with bloggers around the world for global voices, and research i've done about censorship and surveillance around world has also really brought home to me that we take the internet too much for granted. has not been around very long, but a lot of journalists and people assume that it is the way it is, and what you can do it, the extent to which it is

decentralized, is just the way it is. but the fact that you can do what you can do today with the internet is the result of a whole series of engineering choices, programming decisions, business decisions, and regulatory framework over the past several decades. those are constantly changing. it is very possible that the internet could get a legislative and engineered in a direction that will make this sense impossible because surveillance -- it will make dissent impossible. working with the bloggers around the world, i have seen firsthand of the committee being tremendously empowered by the technology. the number of people who face life-threatening situations as a result of surveillance and as a result of some of these threats, that a number of actors are posting to the internet are not trivial. you cannot assume the endeavour at -- the internet is going to

automatically democratize and liberalize everything. >> when we refer to public funding, i should clarify that in pr, public radio is about 10% funded by the publication for corporate broadcasting -- npr. first of all, you worked for many years for a newspaper supported by advertising. do you gag at the thought of government support, and do you think we are only trying to support old media when the new world that rebecca just described is out there? >> well, i am a comedian, so publicly funded media for meat is actually the most natural thing in the world. i lived in britain for a long time, so it is pretty natural, too.

i will respond to what rebecca anne lee had to say. i was nodding athlete -- to what rebecca and lee had to say. -- i was nodding madly when they were speaking. it comes from the newsroom of the washington post, the l.a. times, and maybe the new york times. it is not necessarily one that comes from what people experience. something i think about a lot, is also a very coastal the narrative. i grew up in a small town in northern alberta. what we could read when i was a kid was peace river record is that, our local paper, once a week. and the edmonton journal, which was delivered at about 6:00 at night by greyhound from edmonton. that was it.

today, my dad is a former and very interested in the global story because the farmers are all in saying futures traders predicted actually trade futures from their tractors because they are gps and wifi enable. so they care a lot about china. he reads reuters, bloomberg, the new york times, and the wall street journal. he can do that from a tractor in his field. if you feel like information has been cut off from people, it depends on where you are in the information space. i agree strongly with rebecca's point about the internet been tremendously in powering in terms of access to step around the world. i was a foreign correspondent in the soviet union for about 10 years. when i first started, someone who became my ex-boyfriend said

being a foreign correspondent is not that hard if you can read russian and ukrainian. just read the local newspaper and lord -- and then write down what they say, and that is the story the next day. it was a terrible thing to say, but not entirely untrue. that does not happen anymore. i follow russia and ukraine quite closely. my main source of information is twitter. you can follow some great people on twitter. you do have to read russian, but that kind of directness, it does not matter how many people are in the bureau. people in moscow have so much more information. we should not forget those big positives. the second thing i would say, counter to the narrative of decline is there are some new

players out there. in particular, will come from reuters and bluebird. -- from mortars and bloomberg. -- from reuters and bluebird. that is a lot of journalists. -- from reuters and bloomberg. it is all about building a news halo on top of the big, monster, capitalist, professional platform. there are some issues there. i wrote a piece a couple of years about this -- a couple of years ago about this. if your member of the plutocrat class, are you going to have privileged access to news an intermission? you cannot neglect to notice that that step is there, and

then in the emerging markets, huge organizations are being built. al jazeera, the chinese are out there, the russians also. again, they have issues, but that is more stuff in this space. having said all that and returning to my canadian routes, i am actually a big believer in government supported news -- returning to my canadian roots. to me, what has happened is not a lack of information. we have more, and more is good, and more direct than ever before. what i think is missing, and i see in this a big reason why u.s. politics are quite different from canadian or even british politics. it is the lack of a common space. but we do not have now is an arena where everyone feels that have to go, and where they can

be held accountable. that does have it -- i think that contributes to something that people in washington talk about a few hundred times a day, which is the polarization of politics. >> what would be an example of that? >> stephen harper, the canadian prime minister, hates the cdc. it is seen as being a little bit to the left of the country, certainly to the left of the tory party. he constantly wants to give it less money, and so on. that is the issue with the tories and the bbc in the uk. nonetheless, you have to go and talk to the cbc, because everyone in a position of authority has to. they feel an obligation to try to be objective.

having that arena where everyone has to go, i think it helps you move to a space where everyone can have their own opinions, but not everyone can have their own facts. that is an issue today. >> let's hear a different perspective on this. but,voa is not broadcasting to the rest of the world about us, is -- is not broadcasting to us about the rest of the world, but as broadcasting to the rest of the world about us. >> as was mentioned earlier, we are now operating in a rapidly changing space, both all the different platforms and all the new players. the chinese budget for this kind of thing has been variously described as $7 billion to $10

billion. al jazeera, there are all these new players. i am intrigued by the idea of an american world service. to some extent, we are what you might call the roots of one. if i could, i would just lay out who we are. a lot of americans don't really know what is voice of america. it is still there. we are a source, as close as you can get, to objective journalism. we reach over 140 million people a week around the world, in 43 languages. we do train of journalists. we set up fm's and africa. we stand for freedom of the press. we condemn violence against journalists, including one of our own who died in pakistan in january. we try to explain america to a

sometimes rather befuddle world. not many people here know that much about us, and some have inaccurate notions about what will broadcast an hour impact. but we are platform agnostic. we are on short wave, which is where it started in 1942, but we are on medium wave, at them, satellite tv and radio. we use facebook, twitter.com youtube, and skype actively, every day. we have a charter signed by president ford in 1976 that orders us to serve as a consistently reliable and a portrait of source of news and orders us to be accurate, objective, and comprehensive, and we try. some of the best dories for us or when things do not go well in the united states, because it helped burnish our credentials as objective journalist. -- some of the best dories for us or when things do not go well

in the united states. -- some of the best stories for us are when things do not go well. we have 38 million viewers every week in indonesia. it is mostly tv there. in nigeria, a very solid reporting on the radio, and we are the second-largest after the state broadcaster. in afghanistan, we are the evening news on the state television. i was until just recently of you are. here is a graph that shows the media trends in pakistan. this underscores something we may want to dwell on a little bit. the dotted line is the use of social media. it is skyrocketing right now. this is our future, clearly, the mobile device. between february and march of this year alone, the growth in use of voa mobile sites was 6%, to almost 3 million visits per

month. one of our jobs is to penetrate closed media environment, china, iran. we use satellite tv, and that is today's short way. the iranians and jammed that too, but they damage other broadcast signals as well, and they get a lot of protest. and we do get through. we are gearing up right now for a two-hour daily satellite television program in mandarin to china. more than 10% of china has a dish or access to it. we think that will be a big potential way to get in. some of our programming is not blocked. teaching english, and here is a good example, if i may. this program has had 9 million dues in china. [video clip]

[speaking foreign language] [laughter] >> and one more quick teaser. in iran, we use satellite tv and the internet to get through television programming, and people selling on the black market. people get it one way or another. the private sector helps us a lot there. here is a sample of are, the satire show about the ayatollah.

it is kind of like "the daily show." [video clip] [speaking four languages foreign language] ♪ >> i know that sanctions are sometimes controversial.

>> those are just examples of the kind of a jeep, not typical of voice of america. most of what we do is straight forward news -- examples of the kind of edgy -- we are trying different formats and different platforms to reach more people. we are facing budget cuts. we are facing cuts in fiscal 2013. unfortunately, it is all over, but media changes. tv is getting cheaper to do. social media offered huge new audiences and opportunities. we could use more resources, but we do interesting stuff with what we do have. >> we have all remarked on social media as becoming the

real media. what does that say in terms of the way in which information is presented? are we talking about a medium that will take brevity to its absolute or ultimate conclusion? the tweet, is there room for the investigative project from reuters? >> i think of twitter as social media for old people, like myself. although it is very short, i use it mostly -- and i think it gets used mostly as a way of clinking to longer things. -- linking to longer things. the foreign minister of sweden said to me that he thinks his own twitter activity is probably the single most effective promotion of sweden

that the foreign ministry has ever done. he has like 135,000 twitter followers. he is tweeting you about interesting conferences he is at and things like that. we are rebuilding our website right now, all of our platforms, debuting in the fall. o work core idea is to adapt to this dream experience -- to the -- our core idea is to adapt to the stream experience. >> is the gateway to see what your friends and people you follow -- is taking new to video and long investigative pieces that people are sharing, and you would not know where to find otherwise.

i am seeing a large percentage of things in my twitter feet are linking to large pieces. -- in my twitter feed. >> does any of this leave you to rethink your proposal for an american broad service? rethink't leave you to your proposal? >> i think everyone on the panel probably agrees that public funding of journalism in some form is a good thing. you don't have to make the case that journalism about the world, by traditional media, is declining. you don't have to make that case in order to accept the proposition that we should have increased public funding. so i think that is cynthia's point, and i share that view. i do think that we are living in a world that we are just not

thinking about seriously. and how to get the information and the ideas we need about the world and to get ideas that journalism provides to the rest of the world, in the way that american journalism can do it. we are not doing what we didn't with the development of the first amendment -- what we did with the development of the first amendment, which is a 21st century focus. we are not doing what we did in the 1960's with public broadcasting. we are not thinking about the post world war ii era with radio free europe. it is bizarre that voice of america is legally prohibited from rebroadcasting back into the united states. why? because when it was developed in the 1940's, it was thought this is the propaganda arm of the u.s. government, and it would be

inconsistent with our notions of freedom of the press in the united states to allow them to use that propaganda that we are bringing to the rest of the world, and to come back and show it to u.s. citizens. that is a bizarre notion in today's world. >> it is also inconsistent with the first amendment, and really ought to be changed. it is just another example of how we are living with a set of ideas about information and journalism that is so out of date. we do not have national plans for how to be part of a global economy. we don't have national plans about how to be part of it in terms of information and ideas. >> before we see a little bit of video former on the world, i realize she said let's try to ignore political realities at this moment, but despite the unity among the panelists of the need for more public funding of journalism, the simpson-bowles

recommendation for the corporation of public broadcasting was 0. everybody is cutting, and people do recognize the spending problem in washington. can we say something about another model that is out there? >> perhaps it is broader in that we have seen a trend with commercial news companies where there is more -- and has gone more and more towards news properties that are owned by large companies of which news is only one very small part of their business. certainly my former employer was this way, where it went from a family company to being something where the stock price was paramount, and ratings for paramount. part of it is not necessarily only public-private funding, but what kind of private funding? is a private funding that takes a long-term view and that

considers news to be a public trust? or is it the kind of public funding that only cares about quarterly earnings? that is also part of the picture. they used to be a time when you have a lot more family-owned newspapers, where as long as you break-even and a little bit of profit, we don't need to maximize returns for shareholders. so there are different ways to approach the news business. the key is to look at what is public value and how are you creating it, and who is responsible for supporting it? >> with blunt the columbia journalism review with great, great pride. it is one of the real treasures of columbia. i toyed with the idea, facetiously, during the crisis of using part of the columbia

endowment to purchase the new york times, and then we would run it like a medical hospital. we train our journalists and others in the company. >> how long did you harbor this? [laughter] >> could i just respond quickly? to rebekahs point about the great, golden age of the family- run newspaper. as it happened, we are now owned by a newspaper family. we experience a little bit of that now, but i want to point out that it was not purely being benign, it was also the margins on newspapers were fantastic. it was not that hard to be benign when we were making tons of money. i do think also, there is

different kinds of private capital. there is the old goldman sachs. we used to talk about how we believe in long term greed rather than short-term greed. that can be true of the new be months -- behemoths. one of the things i love about twitter, it opens up academia. economics, research papers. i don't read the journals as part of my normal life, but twitter points out interesting papers a lot. this is not what you would think of a classic journalism. i think the internet has moved the academy much more into the business of what journalism would do in a way that is fantastic. >> i would just add that in most of the country, geographically,

one would expect to find a public radio station. that role is very important. here is some really it inexpensive video. this is a new way in which many of us saw what was happening during the arab spring. this is a video first from egypt and then from syria. let's roll egypt first. [video clip] >> i think we are all used to this experience. there is no narration. we can see a tremendous number of people. we are not being given a crowd estimate by anyone. this is a citizen journalist video of a story that was simultaneously being covered by mass media, sometimes with some

interference from the authorities. there is that international, global rhythm of the protest chants that has been adapted for tahrir square. the interesting contrast i find is with our next video, which is from syria, where news organizations have been able to get the occasional visa for their reporter who hangs out in beirut, knocking on the doors. anthony entered through another border and gave his life entering this country. syria is a story that will largely see through videos of this kind. [video clip] this was a peaceful gathering. you video people can make your judgments about how well it has been shot.

>> poorly, is what i hear. it is a large crowd. >> but there is no professional there to document this protest otherwise. >> otherwise, nobody would see this. part of what i see when i see these videos, coming originally out of local radio, is they are supplying footage to people on television who are going to be able to look like that actually covered something. in an of itself, a wonderful contribution, but are they giving the completely -- the television network that has no interest in covering any news at all, the pictures to say that we can read wire copy over these images. >> i don't think that is the value. i think to look at it in that way would not be right. the issue that people point out is that if you are relying only on stuff off of you to, you have

issues of verification and all kinds of issues. -- only on stuff on youtube. in the case of syria, there has been a lot going on in syria that professional simply have been unable to document. when you have people self documenting what is happening, that has changed a great deal of the dynamic in terms of what we understand with syria. it is not either/or, it is that the citizen media coming out of a lot of countries, in the ideal world, is a symbiotic, synergistic relationship with the professional journalism, which you need people going out and fact checking in verifying things and so on. you see with news organizations that rely entirely on agency footage, sometimes they get things wrong because they have not done their homework. so yes, you need a combination of different things.

>> this has totally changed the world, this kind of video. it has changed the way we cover things. there are witnesses. everybody in the world is a witness. president assad now has to live with that and operate with that assumption. i don't know how long he will last in this new world that he finds himself in. maybe quite a while, but it utterly changes the way he and others like him have to think. it is a tool for us. as rebecca said, we have to be very careful. we have to make sure it -- we spend money trying to verify that the video was shot in the place that it is claimed to have been shot, and sometimes it has not been. >> would you run video saying we cannot really verify it? >> if it has a real news value to it, and shows something that really matters, will say this is claimed to be x, and we have

every reason to believe it is, but we do not know, take it as it is. >> there is huge demand among people consuming news for this kind of stuff. what we have discovered, we are the aforementioned producers of the agency video that people read copy over on broadcast tv. it is a huge stigma for us. we have found that one of our producers had an idea of putting it on a website. we do something called rough cuts, where we just put two or three minutes things. no reporter narrates. these are among our most popular videos online, and it turns out that a lot of watchers or web users are not that interested in the voice of god telling them what happened at the demonstration. they are happy to jesse to her three minutes of what actually

happened. >> i find it helpful to think about the role of institutions in our world, in providing information and ideas. in general, we have the events that are happening, and journalists are that. then you have the midterm thinking we look at stories and look at issues in a deeper way. investigative journalism has done that. then you have this sort of long term, really researched things for several years, may be many years, and universities have done that. a great parallel between the role of universities and the role of the press. you need institutions as part of that. citizen journalists are fantastic. it is a great new thing, but you must have institutions. just imagine if universities were to close down and there were said, look, you can get a course on plato if you want on the internet. get it when you want it, listen

to some lectures on shakespeare when you want it. why the need to come and be part of an institution that is the university? the answer is, it is the culture of the place, the professional standards that develop, the ability to shift some of those resources, the give-and-take of ideas. >> some other elite universities are toying closely with the model you just described. >> it is a tiny fraction. >> if you are not going to do your reading without a deadline anyway. >> let's look at one more video from greece. i am beginning to see that the large crowd demonstrations, maybe with security forces nearby, is by rolle news videos what the fire at night is for the 11:00 local news. this is the basic scene from athens. [video clip]

this is ironic, because we are looking at this as it happens, right after the greek election. the party that endorsed the austerity view lost 60% of seats, that are now with parties that opposed the austerity deal with europe. a party of the extreme right is giving the nazi salute the night before the election is now in parliament. this is an anti-german demonstration, a demonstration against the country's creditors, and those demanding austerity. we see a scene that the riot police are fairly testy. as police would always say, we did not hear what this person just said to that riot police officer before things got a little nasty.

film, not journalism, not reporting, but video. is it calculated to just make us sympathize with whoever is being victimized for those five seconds? what do you think of this? >> is steadily of value. here we are in washington. we have -- it is definitely of value. where i see the biggest -- of the greatest value, we talked a little bit about syria. we are seeing a huge impact of the internet and social media in russia right now. it will make it much harder for suppression. whenever they beat somebody up, it is immediately on a live journal, and it can be counterproductive for the regime. >> lee, you had a forum for

these issues at columbia in which a government minister spoke. he made a case against the american notion of the first amendment. he basically said we are an island, a small city state. we have a very fragile ethnic balance. we price stability. we have a very open economy. these groups that great freedom of the press write us below guinea and iraq and zimbabwe. singaporeans are not killing one another. this is a stable society and as long as the media operates within certain constraints, so be it. singapore is a very small place, but that seems to be a view out there that you can develop your economy, moving people in a larger asian countries like the ones that rebecca covered by the

tens of hundreds of millions of our rural poverty. we don't need your ideas. your ideas are culture back. what is the answer to that argument? >> the episode you described was really the highlight of the conference, as you can imagine. free speech in the united states begins not at the beginning when the first amendment is put into the constitution, but in 1919. no supreme court case in the united states until 1919. at that moment, three cases come to the supreme court, and one of them involves a candidate for president of the united states, a socialist party candidate. he was thrown in jail, and the supreme court, in the first case ever accepted, oliver wendell holmes writing the opinion, saying no free speech here. he goes to jail, and while in

jail he gets a million votes. the united states develops over the next 70 years the most robust protection of free speech in the united states, but it does not always live up to it. we have the mccarthy era and so on. we think we have the best system, but now we are in a world of or have -- where we have a global communications system, and censorship anywhere, like in singapore, is censorship everywhere. it is not human rights anymore, it is our interest in knowing what is happening in singapore and in the world. when the minister of law in singapore says we completely reject your notion, it is not because we want to be an oppressive government, it is because we believe that you are showing, by the way you constructed your free speech, that you cannot have a functioning system. look at the polarization in your society. look at what happens when you

let people say anything. look what happens when people can say how the judiciary is lying or corrupt. look what happens when people speak disrespectfully about the government. you are getting what it is that that free-speech system is. and we have a different view. -- what that free-speech system is. we have to engage in the world on these issues and we have to begin developing the case for why this should be the norm, if we believe that, for the world. that is a very hard thing to do. we have to do for the world actually what happened and what we did for this country in the last century. >> voa us people of newscast about logjams for the congress and budget bills that call for constantly. is it making an active case

about america's approach to debate? >> there is no more powerful expression of the value of freedom than to display it in all of its messy glory. we have audiences in africa, in asia, that are very interested in what is happening here. they are also very interested in hearing what is happening in their own countries. it would cover an intimate details of what is happening in northern nigeria for an audience that does not get in a straightforward way from anyone else. we feel that we are doing something that is valuable for them and that it is in our interest for them to have the real story. >> the issue does not break down nation state by nation state. pakistan has had a huge debate going on recently about

censorship and the government proposing a nationwide internet filtering regina. a bunch of non-governmental organizations and activist groups or finding a way to band together with business and other interest in the community to say no, this is not what we want. so robust debate is going on, and in india next door, the indian government is trying to impose increasing amounts of censorship on social media companies, requiring googling facebook and other companies to take down content -- requiring googled and facebook and other companies to take down content. there is a growing segment that is pushing back against this. there is a global community of people who share certain values about freedom of expression that

are increasingly linking together and strategizing. another thing i want to say about the american dahlia that i am hearing a lot from the communities i connect with around the world is that while we are quite good on first amendment freedom of expression, on privacy and surveillance -- you are hearing -- i am hearing from people in egypt and a lot of different countries, in china, who say my government is losing -- using the patriot act in using this legislation that is getting passed in the house of representatives as an excuse for why blatant, unaccountable surveillance is complete standard international practice, and why we should do it, too. and with american companies creating the technology that authoritarian governments around world are using to surveil their

citizens and put them in jail. this comes down to what is internet freedom? what is free expression on the internet? without some reasonable amount privacy from surveillance, it is going to be very difficult to use the internet as a medium for empowerment. >> there must be a larger, global discussion about what free-speech and free press means on a global stage. has to happen, because we have now the technology -- it has to happen because we have now the technology. we are sitting in the embodiment of the first amendment. i bet the number of people here who actually know what article 19 of the universal declaration of human rights says, would not

be able to describe it. yet that is the foundational, legal document, the equivalent of the first amendment on the global stage. our ignorance about how to make this debate happen on the global stage is very troubling. >> we are talking about values, ideals, laws, all very good, but we have to remember it is also about best interest. it is not just about having good arguments explaining to the chinese why american values are correct. this is very threatening to regina's that are very powerful. that is why they don't want it. -- it is very threatening to regimes that are very powerful. >> should we take the view that while singapore is right, we should not bother them? we have clearly decided that is

information that we should have and everyone should have, and has a right to. >> let's take some questions from our audience. let's get the microphone to the gentleman in the front. >> i am sitting here thinking what a marvelous panel, and i am agreeing with everyone on at about the importance of public funding, first amendment, no censorship, etc., and globalizing the conversation. but i am worried about technology. we did a survey where we found -- we looked at the relationship of magazines to their web sites. we found that even a magazine like the new yorker does not fact check its online step with the rigor that it does for its print magazine, arguing that he needs be because you need traffic. even the best magazines do not

copyedit with the rigor online that they do for their print publications. the online convention is, everyone has a handle, whereas the traditional media, convention is that you do not use anonymous sources except when it is absolutely necessary. traditionally have a separation of advertising and editorial, and with the on-line world, it is all mixed up together. the question i have for all the panelists is, how do you maintain or achieve and uphold appropriate standards for the new technology media in this complicated world that you are all talking about? >> who wants to take that? >> i will be the example -- i will give you an example. we cover russia pretty closely

and are internet presence is strong there. -- our internet presence is strong there. we work played by someone impersonating of lager -- we were played by someone impersonating a blocker. -- a blogger. we checked with him and he said it was not him. but there you are. what is the responsible news organizations opposed to do in that circumstance? you quickly back and check your source. you go back to where it came from. he says is not him. we immediately said he says this is not him. how interesting. whichrse, we don't know agency or entity was impersonating him, but this is the kind of thing that happens

on the internet, as you said. and we do have to move quickly. if he makes comments that are interesting, people are going to want to quote them, but we have set in some more strict standards on how to check that you really got it. >> the notion of saying we don't quite have this yet, let's hold off until we really nail this down. that is a real old media thing to say. >> i have worked on tweet street as well as in new york. once i heard in the newsroom is "too good to check." it is not just about internet versus print. it is about cultures, and working at reuters has been a

revelation for me in that they are a 24/7 culture from the get go. we think of 24/7 as being amusing, but there are new sculptures -- as being a new thing, but there are cultures that have been 24/7 forever. i think it is a lot about culture. i also king victor is right, there is more of a kind of lucy goes the cultural acceptance on the internet. -- loosey-goosey cultural acceptance on the internet. i read a thing about whether a political think it is ok to publish a rumor before they know is true or not. that is kind of a cultural choice, not just because the internet exists. the pressure of everybody being

there, and the pressure of journalist feeling they are competing, not just with other journalists, but with everybody who has an iphone. there is a flip side, to . >> -- a cliffside, to -- a flip side,too. they feel like old media is insufficiently fact checked. one of the things that drives them crazy is anything that does not have a link to the source. being inaccurate with your sourcing is much harder on line than it is in print, because you can just go check that link right away. i think the internet community can keep you lot more honest. in the old days of foreign correspondents, they would write about people who were never in a

million years going to see what they wrote. >> people will always say, the new york times just did such and such a story and it came from a certain blog. another story that i saw somewhere misquoted somebody or completely misconstrued what happened, because i was there and i saw it. that certainly adds value. then you have the other problem, who reported first on the helicopters in pakistan and getting osama bin laden? a blocker who said a helicopter crashed a few blocks away. people then have to start reporting. i would rather that the journalists get in there and let this go on twitter, rumor spreading for a long time before

any journalist actually weighs in. coming back to singapore and to transpose this conversation into some other cultures, you sometimes hear nonprofessionals should not be allowed to report first, because they do not have their facts right, as an excuse for censorship. and as an excuse to say these are the people who are allowed to report the news, and if you are not given a badge or a card, you cannot report the news, and it is illegal and you can be arrested. so we have to make sure as we are having this conversation, this is really a global context for media, that we are not saying there are only certain types of people who are allowed to be journalists, and any other

way of conducting journalism somehow is irresponsible and bad for the public and should be shunned. we have to be careful about how we frame that. >> i think this is an argument for what victor reyes, for multiple kinds of media -- for what victor raised. you just get a different type of voice that comes out of a publicly funded bbc and npr and voice of america. commercial pressures coupled with the nature of the new technology are pushing inexorably towards this type of highly current source of news. you really benefit from having multiple systems, multiple voices, and in fact, that is what we have had in the united states for the last half century. we have broadcasting, which was

regulated, and we had print media and public broadcasting. >> two quick points and then a question. co.m an editor at politica we do not print rumors. another ivy league president is devoting a lot of time to changing the culture in singapore by partnering with a national university there and trying to instill our values in that culture. my question is this. if you were sitting around yesterday and you had the choice, as anyone in washington did, of watching an exciting game between the red sox and orioles, or watching the