interview by purdue university students. from chicago, c-span.org interviews senior obama campaign strategist david axelrod. >> this week on "q & a," dan balz answers questions from university students. >> what is the difference reporting today for newspapers and back in 1972? >> i do not think of us as being

newspaper people any more. i think of us as being news people. the world has changed so dramatically that we are posting online and doing video. we are doing so many things today and doing it around the clock. it is a transformed business in that sense. i have to remind myself that that is only one of the ways we are disseminating information. it is a much more competitive world. it is a more fast-paced world. there is less time to report because events are moving faster. >> how do you compare the information you have one candidates compared to that band. >> we know less than we did back then, and in some ways, much more. one of the things i worry about in the way we move so rapidly

today is that it is hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. we can get separated. people in the political community can get separated. we can get sidetracked from the main issues of the day and the important things you really need to know. >> moved ahead to september and october and your the moderator for the three debates. what needs to be asked and answered in order for voters to have the best information going into the election. >> one of the things that needs to be answered in a more concrete and systematic way is, what would they actually do if they were president? we are spending a lot of time at this point we litigating the past.

the president is really getting -- relitigating the bush years and suggesting romney would take us back to that time. most people want to know why this recession has dragged on as long as we have? technically, we are out of deep recession and into the recovery. we still have unemployment above 8%. we should not think that because it has come down, we are at a good point in the economy. the economy is fragile. the percentage of people unemployed more than six months is in area up 42%. those are astonishing numbers. when you think about what the candidates are talking about, it is not clear that he did the president or governor romney has laid out a plan that says, i have a path forward. here are the steps i am going to

take and here are the likely results. >> what are the specific questions you would ask? >> i would ask president obama -- one of the major crises he had to deal with was the foreclosure crisis. why have been various things the administration has tried not work? what do you have left in your tool kit to try to deal with that? one of the realities of this period is that there are so many people who are under water in their homes that their homes have lost a considerable amount of value. they are frozen economically. why, given the significance of that problem, the administration has not been able to do more? with governor romney, i would ask him why he believes the kind of significant tax cuts would

stimulate the economy? the bush tax cuts that were passed at the beginning of the bush presidency did not lead to an 8 year. bank of dramatically robust growth. there was some growth -- to 8 years of growth. and why the programs he has put on the table would not create continuing problems with the deficit? he has not been specific enough in talking about the trade-offs he has had to deal with and the trade-offs of those. >> we have 18 students from purdue diversity. he graduated from another small school not to bank far away. when you were there, did you have any idea of where you would

end up? from 1978 until now covering all of these presidential campaigns. >> i had a hope i would end up in washington. when i was a sophomore in college, on the recommendation of my brother, who is three years older than i am, i joined the student newspaper. that following summer i did an internship here in washington for the congressman that represented my home district. he later ran for president as an independent in 1980. the confluence of working for the student paper and then being out here in washington kind of hooked me on journalism and federal government and being in the nation's capitol. i really wanted to come back here as a journalist. i did not know what the past

was. i thought working for the chicago tribune bureau here or a big newspaper bureau here -- i was lucky enough to get a job at the national journal in 1972. i was able to get here relatively quickly. i was there for five years and i was lucky enough to get a job at the washington post. i have pinch myself ever since. >> over the years, which contest, which candidate do you remember the most? not that you particularly like them or dislike them, but which ones were the most -- disliked them, but which ones were the most interesting? >> president clinton was the most natural character i have covered in politics. i had very little contact with reagan.

i was in texas during his first term and then i was national editor at the post during his second term. i did not have a lot of contact with him on the campaign trail. the clinton campaign and bill clinton as a candidate was a whale of a story politically, given all of the ups and downs he went through. to see the ability of somebody who is under fire, which all candidates are at one time or another, and his determination to push through that. also, i thought what he did in terms of we imagining the democratic party after the losses in 1984 and 1988 and trying to rethink what the democratic party needed to do to bring middle-class voters back to their side was an

intellectually interesting experience. every campaign is a fascinating campaign. they are unpredictable. the country is always in a different place politically and economically as we go through these campaigns. the human side of these campaigns is fascinating. one of the things i love about being a political reporter is that it forces you not to spend all your time inside the beltway. you get to know politicians in different states. as you are following the surface of the presidential campaign, you are getting a graduate seminar every four years on wednesday country is. >> from your experience, what percentage of people have already made up their mind? >> probably 85% to 90%. we are a polarized country and have been for some time.

there is nothing that has happened in this presidential cycle that suggests that is beginning to listen. we are in the middle of the recall battle in wisconsin where governor scott walker is facing a recall on june 5. everybody i talked to about that race, it does not matter which side they are on, they say this is the most polarized stake in the country. there was a recent poll that came out that indicated that in wisconsin, there is probably less than 5% undecided at this point. these are remarkable numbers when you think about it. people's self identification is either republican or democrat. that has locked them into a voting pattern that we had not seen until we got into this period. i do not think a lot of minds

are going to be changed. >> let me get our students involved. rob has agreed to be the first to ask a question. >> thank you. i just graduated from purdue with a degree in history. my question is, how do sites change the job you do as a journalist? >> those enterprises have had a huge effect on the way campaigns are operating now. they are enormously in valuable to readers. they do what we are supposed to be doing in defeat -- routine course of business. if you are one of the people

assigned to governor romney, if something happens, you are expected to post it quickly. there is little time for a reporter who is on a bus or driving a car in the middle of i was somewhere to be able to do all of the background research that you would do if you were writing a newspaper story about it. that check has the resources to go back and began to unravel some of these things. claims made by campaigns often stretch the truth. it is important to have a rigorous and regular accounting of that and a place leaders can go to. it's i do it in the context of a story and i make -- we will people's attention spans are

pretty short. they may cut to the first page, but they may not click to the second page. to have a fact check in our print edition makes a huge difference for readers. >> hi, i understand you are. >> all of two different books. ing altered your writing style at all. >> i did a book with ron brownstein and with a former colleague at the washington post. there are great things to say

about collaborating with someone else. both of my partnerships were terrific. i could not have asked for a better collaborator or co- author. the one challenge is to make a book with one voice. it does not altering the writing style of either alter or co- author. the process is, you trade back- and-forth chapters. somebody else takes the lead on a particular chapter. that chapter goes to the other, author and they do some rewriting and they do some tweaking and restructuring and some smoothing. out of that, the two voices of the two co authors blend into one. it would not have a good book if it was obvious who wrote to each chapter. in both books, no one has been

able to figure out which ones i wrote. i am working on a book by myself on this campaign. i wake up in the morning and think, boy, it would be nice to have a collaborator. >> hello. how do you approach book interviews differently from news reporting interviews? >> i think of the book interviews as gathering history. i think up interviewing when i am working on the news side as gathering contemporary information. generally, when i am doing interviews from the book, i am delete is something that happened six months or four months ago -- dealing with something that happened six months or four months ago.

when you are reporting for the post, which you are looking for is where is something going today and tomorrow and in the next couple of weeks. you are always trying to pitch forward as best you can. you are trying to dig out what has not been revealed. that is what we do day-by-day. we are trying to scoop the opposition and find things out that campaigns do not necessarily want to come out. there is a distinct difference in that. >> i am a senior in communications and psychology. my question is in reference to your roots. i was wondering how growing up in a relatively small midwestern town has shaped the way you cover and you -- and view

politics? >> that is a good question. i do not know if i can answer that directly at -- directly except to say we are all products of our upbringing. midwesterners tends to be pretty nice people. when you grow up in a smaller community. where i grew up, it was 25,000 people. it was far enough away from chicago that we were not a big city. a curiosity about the world comes from that. what is the rest of the world like? you understand what are the values of the place you are in. carrying those with me through the rest of my career has been valuable. one of the things you try to do

as a political reporter is to understand why voters are thinking about. the degree to which you have contact through your own life with different kinds of people is important. as i say, the other aspect of that is, you are wondering what is life like on the east coast or the west coast. it is the curiosity to know about other places as well as where you grew up. >> i am a senior in electrical engineering. how has mitt romney's campaign compared to the 2008 campaign and the strategy compared to be one he did last time? >> there are a lot of differences. the biggest difference starts with he began his campaign being the front-runner.

he began his 2008 campaign as a little known governor from massachusetts running against people who were nationally known. john mccain, who had run in 2000 and was a significant figure, and rudy guiliani who was the mayor of new york at the time of the attacks on september and 11. he had a national profile. as a result, the strategy he adopted was different from this one. he had a need to make a mark, to try to convince people, voters, donors, people pay attention and that he could play in the same league as mccain and giuliani. he did early advertising to drive his numbers up in iowa.

he competed hard in the iowa straw poll to put himself on the map. none of which in the end gave him the nomination. he started his campaign and said, we are not going to do it that way. they ran a much leaner, smaller operation than they did four years ago. if you went to the headquarters a year ago this time compared to four years ago, it was night and day. it was a much smaller, tighter operation. they started much slower and paid less attention to the other candidates. they said, we can run the race we are going to run and we are going to be in pretty good shape. there are a lot of significant differences between the two campaigns. >> i am a senior in electrical engineering. how has social media changed your line of work?

>> significantly. the change between 2008 and 2012 has been one of the most dramatic we have seen. the internet has had a pretty significant impact over a number of cycles. social networking has been one of the most significant changes. twitter is not a primary news source for anybody to covers politics or pays attention to politics. twitter did not exist four years ago for all practical purposes. this book is important. the obama campaign created their own version of facebook in 2008. they had the help of some of the original facebook people. now, it is the way the campaigns think about organizing, creating networks, creating communities.

those two facts alone have significantly altered the way we approach what we are doing. a real time example would be when the candidates are having a debate. there used to be a spin room when, at the end of the debate, the candidate's handlers come in and tell you their candidates did best. it is a ritualized process and we all go through it. it is mostly useless, but we do it. because of twitter, campaigns can see instantly as people are watching the debate, whether reporters or ordinary folks, they could be creating the conventional wisdom of what is happening in that debate. by the time it is over, the spin room is irrelevant.

they can already know what were the highlights of the debate and who made a mistake and who did not. that is happening in real time. campaigns monitor it closely to come to the conclusion of, we have a problem on our hands, or we have had a good night or something in between. it is so much more real time than it used to be. be going into my senior year in electrical engineering. the republican primary was the first election process to be impacted by citizens united's decision and the superpacs. there is a lot of debate on that. do you think there will be an effort or is the unlimited money

not a good thing and will there be an effort to curtail its? >> if you access the average person what they think about money in the average campaign and most of them will think there is too much of it. unlimited money is not a healthy thing for the political system. there is no groundswell at this point to change that. as a voting issue, money in campaigns rarely rise to the level of the economy or health care or education. the role of money in this campaign has been significant and it's and from what we have seen. the existence of the superpacs made it possible for newt gingrich and rick santorum to stay in the campaign longer than they would have.

it also made it possible for governor romney to put down the rise of newt gingrich. when santorum rose up as a formidable opponent, the super pacs rose up to take him down. there is no question they had a significant effect on elongated the process. the other element of this is that there is essentially no

separation and people take for granted there is no separation. the romney campaign cannot coordinate with the super pak that is -- superpac that is working in its behalf. the present's campaign is helping to raise money for priority usa . the other element of this is that a lot of super pak are taking money under conditions that they have to repeal who the donors are. there are others who are taking it to do issue advertising. they do not have to repeal -- reveal. there is almost no way you can

take money out of politics. smart lawyers find a way to get money into campaigns in significant amounts. maybe until there is a radical transformation, that is a given. if that is the case, candidates should be for as much transparency as possible. we are in an era where transparency is easy to do. it can be almost instantaneous. if that weren't the case, at least there would be some check on it and the public would be able to say, we know where that money is coming from. they could say, we have suspicions, but we do not know exactly who is giving it. it has an impact on people's perceptions of whether or not this is an open process or not. >> i am studying political

science. will the economy be the biggest factor in voter decisions? >> yes, unless something else eclipse it. if we had been sitting here four years ago, we would not have said the collapse of the economy would totally changed the last six or 8 weeks of the campaign. an outside event can transform things. you could foresee something like that potentially happening. having said that, it is likely that the economy will continue to be the biggest issue. whenever you talk to people about what is on their minds are what they are worried about, it is some aspect of the economy and the economic insecurity so many people feel. people are not feeling to be comfortable.

in one of our most recent polls, a significant percentage said they do not think we are truly out of the recession. when you have that as the overriding mood of the country, there is no doubt that economic issues will dominate. >> i will be a senior next year in education and political science. my question is about the republican primary process and how romney had to appear more conservative to win the crucial votes. where does he go to move that back toward the middle? >> he could not focus on the issues that he focused on in the primaries.

i think the problem that he potentially has with latino voters is significant. in the rocky mountain states, they will be particularly in play. the obama campaign said they will try to put arizona in play. we will see if they can do that. the gap that governor romney is facing among latino voters is part of a function of what happens during the primaries. his appendix -- his pivot at this point is to try to get back to where he wanted to be during the

i think of this as trying to write a narrative about the campaign. when i'm covering day to day, you know, i'm taking a moment in the campaign and trying to analyze it often. where are we at this moment and why? what's happened today and why? what's behind the latest attack or the latest mistake? where are we in terms of the electoral map? so it's an effort as we go through this to as best as i can to step back a half step and try to make sense of it. when you're doing the book, you have the great luxury, in a sense, of unpacking everything and putting it back together and trying to get people to

understand it in a much broader context. when you're in the moment there are certain things you don't know and when you're able to talk to people about what's going on at that moment, you sometimes come away with a better understanding and you obviously learn things about specific tensions and debates in a campaign. you see things in a different way and i think that when you're trying to write for a book audience, what you're trying to do is say here's the story in full. we told it to you minute by minute, tweet by tweet, newspaper story by newspaper story but now you can read it whole and to some extent we're putting to the sides things that may have seemed important at the moment that i may have written three stories about but in the long run didn't prove to be significant. in the book you say we don't have to worry about those

things. here are the things and why. >> mike croft, i'm a senior majoring in political science. my question is when covering an election so diligently, how difficult is it to remain impartial in your reporting and not get caught up in the hype of one campaign or another? it's not as difficult as you might think. i learned journalism when i was your age. i had a lot of good mentors. and this was an era in which the idea of being a reporter was to be as objective as you can be. we all know everyone has biases and prejudices and world views depending on how you were raised and where you were raised and where you went to school and where your friends were and what your parents' politics views and all that.

i will try to as best as i can to give people a full understanding of what is happening in this campaign. it's not as difficult to put your biases to the side and i think a lot of good reporters don't have that much ideology, you know, but there was a colleague of mine who covered the white house many years ago who passed away much too young named ann devroy who was one of the best reporters ever. and somebody said of her, her only ideology was the ideology of she hated incompetence in government. so she covered the white house in a way in which there was incompetence she would root it out and she would bring it to the floor. peter harp who is a democratic pollster and who does with bill mcenturf, the nbc/"wall street

journal" poll said something to me when i was just starting out at "the post" doing political reporting that i always remembered and i think it's particularly apt today. in which everyone is trying to be a handicapper and handicapping is great sport and we all have a lot of fun with it. he said the job of a political reporter is not to be a handicapper. your job is not to sort of sit there and try to predict who is going to win the senate race and who will win this house race or who is going to win the presidency and which candidate in the presidency is going to win ohio and which one will win michigan and which one will win nevada. he said, what you should be thinking about always is that when people are watching on election night or wake up the next morning and see in the paper or see on tv so-and-so is declared the victor in this presidential campaign, your

reporting would have helped them understand why that happened. not that you predicted it would happen but they would have an understanding of the forces that were at work that were driving the election. they will have an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates that made it possible for them to either win or to lose. and i've always thought that was really sound advice because when you look at a presidential campaign, you look at it at a number of different levels. one is, you know, the daily back and forth, the combat that goes on between the two campaigns, the effort to put a message out, the effort to knock an opponents off to the side or knock them off your game at a whole other level the country is always moving.

demographics have a impact on where we're going and the economy has an impact on what we think about. that's another element of the campaign that has a huge impact on how the campaign is going to turn out. you watch different states change over time. you watch a state go as new jersey once was to a real swing state to a swing state that's predominantly democratic in elections and how and when did that happen? what were the reasons that happened? what were the issues that turned a state like that? why did california go from a state that often voted republican in a presidential campaign to one that consistently voted democratic. those forces are out there and what you're trying to do is understand those. it's all of those things. it's when you approach a campaign and campaign reporting like that, i think that you're not thinking about your own

particular ideology and so you stand back and try to do it that way. i will say that we're in an era where that kind of reporting is less prized than it was when i first started out and in some ways people are critical of it. their view is all people covering campaigns should put all their, you know, biases out on the table and talk about it. i think there are still a lot of people in this country who simply want them, want us to tell them the way it's unfolding and let them come to their own conclusions. >> my name is kyle walker and i'm a senior in political science.

in the past americans got their news from print media from the 7:00 news or the radio if they're on their car on the way to work. how do you think the evolution of web journalism, blogs and twitter will change the relationship journalists like yourself and your colleagues? have with reporting election issues in a meaningful way. they say they get their news from their phone. and that is the way of the world and we are all adapting. and i know at the post.

how do we make sure we are delivering information to the way we want it. so in a sense, the delivery changes. the news cycle is different. we went from -- when i started out afternoon newspapers have been the dominant side of journalism. they were dying out because people were working at different hours. and the morning newspaper was coming to the floor and television was becoming dominant in political coverage. we are now back in the sense that the morning -- by the time something lands on your doorstep, if you subscribe to a print copy of the newspaper, by the time it lands on your doorstep, there's much of the news in that newspaper you already know and you probably already checked your phone or

blackberry for your email that morning and if something is breaking, you know, you're 24 hours or 12 hours ahead of the printed edition and yet there is still material in that printed edition you didn't know. that we can deliver to you, whether it's a smart analysis or a deeper importanted piece that wasn't based on yesterday's events. but in terms of the flow of information, it's instantaneous and that's why we do so much more. we do news alerts in ways we never used to think about, not because everything that we alert is earth shattering news, but because people want to know about it and people want to know quickly about it. so i think that just changes, consumers change and we have to change with them. how that affects the way political campaigns are run or who wins political campaigns, smarter people than i are going to have to figure that out. all i know is we are adapting as quickly as we can to the new

world and, you know, at all news organizations are. >> hello, my name is scott oliver and i'll be a senior covering communication. and my question is in 2008, the obama campaign was successfully able to can't slight the younger audience and now these individuals will be at the voting age. and how is romney going to identify with these individuals and capture the votes? >> i don't know that he's going to be able to do it very easily. i think younger voters i think people who voted in 2008 were captivated by president obama. i would say they are not as captivated today as they were, you know, four years or 3 1/2 years in the presidency takes a toll on everybody and it's clearly takeno toll on this president in terms of the way people perceive him. but i think in terms of where he stands on issues, a lot of younger people identify more closely with that than governor

romney. the younger generation is pushing its way through the electorate in a very significant way. we're adding lots of people to the voting roles who are young for the first time and we'll continue to do that election by election. the younger generation is a much more diverse generation that has grown up in a world that is far different than i grew up in or bryan grew up in or for that matter than barack obama grew up in or governor romney grew up in and different experiences. i think that the hope in the romney campaign is that there will simply be overall less enthusiasm among young voters and therefore they will not turn out in as big of numbers. i don't think that there is a belief they can significantly change the kind of margin between the president and governor romney but if fewer of

them turn out, the composition of the electorate will be more favorable to governor romney than it was before. >> my name is ball brennan, a senior in nuclear engineering from keller, texas. there's been a lot of talk in this election as usual about the swing states. if you have to play the devil's advocate in states that traditionally swing in one way, what would be your dark horse favorite for either side of the campaign to flip a state? >> well, i mean, flipping states is all that romney has to do. the president doesn't need to flip states at this point. if the president were to flip a state, they would say in chicago, arizona would be their first target. because john mccain was the candidate four years ago, senator from arizona. they didn't put a lot of effort into that. the latino population is growing there. therefore, they think at some point that state comes into

play for the democrats. they don't know whether it's this time or not. they'll obviously spend some time and money probing that. we'll see in the end whether they do that. for governor romney, there's a whole slew of states. he'll start with -- karl rove has this nice shorthand movement of what he has to do called the three, two, one plan for winning the electoral college. the three is to win back three states that traditionally have gone republican that obama flipped last time, north carolina, virginia, and indiana. and indiana almost certainly will go back to the republican columnist time. the obama team thinking they can hold north carolina and they won by a slim margin and will be a tough state to hold and virginia of the three will be the big battleground and i think virginia will be the big battleground to the end of election. historically it's voted republican since 1964 until

2008 but that state is changing demographically. so it is a true swing state at this point. beyond that romney has to look at the two big states who often have been the key states in winning elections in this last decade, ohio and florida. ohio can be tough for president obama. there is a significant portion of white working class voters in that state that's not a constituency he's done well with in the past and that will be a competitive state. florida, he did pretty well there in 2008 but we'll see whether that is as easy this time. i think that will be a tough state for him. then he's got to win somewhere else that the president wanted, whether it's iowa or -- the romney campaign says they will try to put michigan in play. michigan has in the last five elections voted democratic.

the romney campaign thinks because he was born and raised there, they have an opportunity to put that state in play. i think a lot of the political analysts are skeptical whether they'll be able to do it. but as with the obama campaign in arizona, the romney campaign will begin to probe it and see what they can do. >> hello, my name is jude wachovia, i'm a senior from nigeria and my question has to do with vice president candidate for mitt romney. you think with the fiasco with sarah palin he will have to take special care in picking a candidate this year? >> yes, absolutely. i think the experience john mccain went through with sarah palin has ahead it much more difficult and really, frankly, highly unlikely that governor romney will sit there in the last couple of weeks before he makes a decision and says we really have to roll the dice,

let's take somebody who is not on anybody's radar and elevate them to vice-presidential running mate. i also don't think that that is kind of in the d.n.a. of mitt romney. if you look at -- there was a wonderful moment in the campaign and sarah palin is on his way to meet him in sedona, arizona, for the interview and he's on the phone with the lawyer who handled the vetting process. had called the house and just completed the vetting of sarah palin, it was done quite late and rather hurriedly and many people think not particularly thoroughly. and the last thing mccain said to call the house is a.b., give me your bottom line and call the house. say john, high risk, high reward. and mccain responded, should have told me that, i've been a

gambler all my life. which is true. he's a gambler. mitt romney is not a gambler. mitt romney is solid, stayed, you know, that sort of thing. and everything that every signal that has come out of the romney campaign to date is that they are going to pick a governing choice, somebody who will be instantly seen as capable of becoming president in the event that something happened to the president if romney were to win. i think we're looking at a quite different model, influenced both by the problems that occurred four years ago, but also i think the difference between the two nominees. >> maggie. >> hi, my name is maggie watford, i'm a nuclear engineer from austin, texas. i was wondering how the excess media coverage on health care has affected the other important political topics. >> i'm sorry, which? >> health care. how that's affected other important topics such as energy

and educational reform and things like that. >> well, sometime this summer we're going to have health care come roaring back in the presidential campaign when the supreme court hands down its decision on the obama health care law. you know, health care was a significant factor in shaping public attitudes about president obama. it was a combination of the stimulus package but also the health care plan that helped to repolarize this country very rapidly after he got elected. so health care is an important issue to people simply because of the cost and affordability and availability of health care in the absence of insurance for, you know, 45 -- roughly 45 million americans. so it's a bread and butter issue, but it's also a

politically charged issue. and when the court makes its decision presumably sometime near the end of its term, at least for a time, that's going to be front and center. and again, reshaping the way the political debate carries out. by the time we get to september or october, i don't know whether -- how many swing voters will have health care front and center or whether it will be some other aspect of the economy that will drive, but it is obviously a big issue and will have its moment sometime in the next few weeks. >> dan balz, this class is from purdue university, as we said earlier and their leader, professor ann curiel is sitting here. i want to ask her to explain to our audience who listen to this discussion who these folks are. >> it's a very diverse group, actually, from purdue university in that we have liberal arts representative,

communication, history, political science, we have psychology as well. but we also have a group of engineers, the second year of this class, first year we've had them, and the feeling is it will help to round out the education that purdue provides these young people. we also have an international contingent, five of our students are not u.s. born, they are foreign students, including from el salvador, nigeria, china, india, and i missed one. which one is it? >> jordan. >> jordan. sorry, saif. so the experience that they have been having has been in many ways what i call washington from the outside in. and for many of them, a first look at the capitol, we've had meetings at the white house, capitol hill, state department, we had lunch yesterday with the

"new york times." next year i hope with "the washington post," dan. >> you're always welcome. >> and the question we've been asking often is formulas for success. you've come to a town, obviously very competitive on so many levels and you made a huge success doing a very tough job, political reporting, in a political town. and you've had staying power and you've had just monumental success with a huge newspaper. what would you advise these students who are thinking of coming to washington themselves? >> hold that thought. i want everyone to know carolyn curiel is a former "washington post"er, "new york times" editorial writer, a clinton speechwriter and ambassador to belize. go ahead. >> speaking of success stories. the ambassador. >> go ahead. >> i guess the advice i would

give people, i'm not one to -- who is very good at giving advice. we all have talents that we were given and we all have doors that were opened, and we all have people who were mentors or guides or just people who gave you a push along the way. and i look back at a succession of people, you know, starting in free port, the university of illinois, some professors who were just fabulous, some who were practicing journalists, some who weren't but some who were enormously helpful, people that i met in washington when i first arrived, people i worked with at "the post," you know, beginning and sometimes ending with dave s. broder, who for years was the political reporter in this town who defined what political

reporting is and always should be, and who was the most generous colleague any of us ever knew, who made time not in a kind of heavy-handed way of saying here's how you should do it, but just made time to give you the space to do what you were trying to do and gentle encouragement along the way. i think that for anybody starting out, i was lucky, i had a sense of what i wanted to do, as i was saying at the beginning, i knew fairly early on that i wanted to try to get to washington as a reporter. and i was, again, lucky enough to be able to do that. every door that's opens other doors, every door that's closed on you moves you in a direction where another door will open. my first experience as a reporter after graduate school

was at "the philadelphia inquirer" in 1972, and i lasted there about 12 weeks, and it was not a particularly happy experience. they were not -- i can say with an understatement, they were not enamored with me and it was a difficult summer because it was clear to me this was just not a good fit. it wasn't because, you know, i didn't think it was because i was doing things i shouldn't do or wasn't measuring up, but we kind of had a different world, but it was obviously not going to work. lucky enough "national journal" came along and had an opening here in washington and i leaped at the chance to do it. so you have -- everybody has moments of success and moments of, you know, either setback or worry and stress. have confidence in yourself.

if you don't have confidence in yourself, others won't. believe in yourself. have a sense of what you want to do. and also, i mean, the other thing i always said, find something you really like to do. it sounds obvious and it is obvious, but if you like what you do, it's a lot easier to get up every morning and go do it. and you'll do a better job at it. so those are the things to think about. i mean, the education you get is important. i mean, one of the reasons i've always liked reporting in a sense more than editing, is you're constantly forced to learn things. you're always out learning. and, you know, the education of any journalist should never stop. it keeps on from the time you leave school and take your first job to the time you quit working. so, you know, all of that is kind of the way i have approached things. approached things. but as i