me, i am right, texas should be annexed to the union, and mrs. tyler, i want you to know that i would rather be right then be president. and i replied, my dear sir, my husband is both. and i replied, my dear sir, my husband is both. i truly think that the reply is almost better then the statement from clay which we hear so frequently. >> how significant was julia tyler's role in the ultimate decision to annex texas? >> well, she's keeping tabs of where people stand because she's going to congress. she's listening to the debates. she's trying to twist the arms. i don't think she's that important to it. she's representing her husband's interests certainly.

she's supports that. but whether or not she has influence over any particular congressman, i'm not so sure about that. >> do you have an opinion about that? >> she certainly believes she has a lot of influence. i'm with dr. medford, there are were much more complicated in the political area of the texas annexation issue that julia tyler would solve, especially the months after the election. people know james polk will be the next president. the treaty to annex -- the treaty to annex texas had already been defeated by the senate. and they have come up with a new, not terribly constitutional way to accomplish it if they're going to accomplish it at all so they have to go through the machinations of the joint revolutions through december 1844.

but that involves much broader political questions and in terms of where people are from -- in this political realignment and of america that's going on at the time. wigs are breaking down. obviously, the republicans have long broken down. anti-jacksonians. but she firmly believes that she's responsible. john tyler believes that she's responsible, when on march 1, 1845, he signs the joint resolution to annex texas. he gives her the pen, the pen that he sign it's with. and she put it around her neck and wore it as a trophy. >> let's take our next question. it is from haren in greenfield, california. >> hello. >> you're on. welcome. >> my question is about john tyler's second wife julia. in the years after he left the presidency, about the time when the civil war began, he was trying to stop virginia from

seceding but he was unsuccessful. later he supported the succession movement in virginia and because of that he was considered a traitor but he died in 1862. so my question is, how did -- was his wife julia trying to redeem his good name after he died in the years following the civil war? >> well, actually, we're bog to let that story unfold over the next 15 or 20 minutes. thank you for asking the question. we will move on there in a couple of minutes. let me ask about as you're talking about the evolving role of the first lady. we learned that the whole -- madison era, bringing her name up again, practiced the art of parlor politics and that was emulated by her successors. is this the first instance of a first lady get much more >> whenlly involved in a you're talking about a main matter of public legislation, of public policy, i think it's tough to find another first lady who is so overtly engaged in kind of effort whether it's --

whether that level of influence is successful or is meaningful or not. she's certainly being out there actively supporting her husband's position on annexation. she's talking to everyone she can about it. she's writing a great deal about it. she is holding all of the social events at the white house order to influence that piece of legislation. so if we're talking about favorite lady as being involved in a matter of national public policy and being involved explicitly so, i think maybe you can take that to julia tyler. >> here's a question about first ladies and their perceived influence. jennifer sherman asked on twitter -- tyler having gotten to washington as first lady of the united states, secret service lingo, i think, believed she had a lot of influence rightly so. based on first ladies seen thus far, do you think they all felt this way, they were influential women as spouses of their

influential husbands? >> i'm not so sure all of them wanted to be. that's the first thing. she's perhaps the first who really wanted to get involved in that way. the other women i think are willing to simply play the traditional role, although you have some woman who may be saying all kinds of things to their husbands. they're not making it public. we don't know exactly what we're saying for their husbands. in terms of that influence. but in terms of influencing outside of their own household, it's not likely they even care to serve in the next capacity, most of them. >> next is a question from linda spiro or spyro? >> spyro. >> welcome. >> good evening. >> good evening. i would like to know how did it affect his relationship with julia and their marriage with their children from letitia? how did the relationship affect

them? thank you for taking my call. >> thank you very much. did the criticism from the daughters affect their i think that's the question? >> no, there's no evidence that it did. in fact because the daughters came around relatively soon, except again for letitia, they real blame very big, fairly close-knit family all gathered there for the most part at sherwood forest. the civil war does a lot of in bringing them more close together because the members of the family that are cast in other parts, like her son robert, who is in philadelphia, they have to come back to sherwood forest but they do see, start to see julia not necessarily as a stepmother but they refer to her, some of them refer to her as a sister and certainly come to love her and appreciate her and accept her into the family as such so that her children and letitia's children, although there are considerable age difference,

they do end up more than reconciled. they become very, very close. >> you spoke earlier with party politics, john tyler was castigated by the wigs essentially, thrown out of the party for some of his positions. so he was the man without -- president without a party when the next selection came around in 18 4. no chance of him being nominated. >> especially since he alienated the other parties. there was no one there to really support him. >> it was certain to be a one- term president. >> absolutely. >> and with his loss then, how did the tylers recognize their departure from washington? >> partied, of course, and champagne. tyler -- the last two weeks of the tyler presidency is really nothing but julia gardiner at her -- gardiner tyler at her absolute extravagant best. they start off with a party for like 3,000 people. two weeks later this have a party to celebrate james knox polk and annexation of texas. and john tyler then says, you

can no longer serve and the man was out a party. >> and they returned to sherwood forest. we're going to see a little bit of their life there next. before we do that, let's take a question from robin in norman beach, florida. hi, robin. >> hi, there. i'm following along at home my first lady flash cards. >> perfect. >> i have a question with regard to fashion. was the bonnet or head dress so prevalent in earlier portrait for first ladies, with miss -- the first lady harrison, was that more matronly first ladies or personal preference? and for tyler, when would the first president wear what we would regard a modern neck tie, what year? thank you. >> thank you. >> the development of the modern neck tie from the provad, -- from the cravat, i think

you're starting to get -- you're starting to get well into the late 19th century by the time you're seeing something like that. the way that the fashion the presidents and shock my historian friends by even going into this subject. but the way that, that develops over time is really interesting in the 1820's and 1830's after james monroe leaves the white house. monroe is the last of the folks who are sort of holding on to the 18th century way of dressing. so year able to see much more modern dress progressively after that. >> on the women's side of fashion question, we follow rachel jackson also wearing sort of head bonnet as we did with anna harrison. was that city versus country, regional or was it changing companies? >> that had nothing to do with it but you see with julia tyler something very different. you see the beads in her hair. she has feathers in her hair from time to time. so she dresses very differently. so it's probably more

cosmopolitan with some of the first ladies because of the urban influence and age too. age does have something to do with it. >> anna harrison was if her mid--to-late 60's and julia tyler 24 years old when she came into the job so brought young sensibility with her. they left washington in 1845 and returned to their homes in the virginia tide water area, sherwood forest. by the way, how did it get its name >> it got its name because during one of -- during one of john tyler's breaks with the wigs, he was referred to as robin hood. so he embraced that and, therefore, called their home sherwood forest and julia embraced it too. she got there, she basically gave uniforms and gave uniforms to the enslaved men who rode the riverboat so she had bows and arrows as part of their -- as part of -- sewn on the collar as part of their uniforms. >> let's return to sherwood

forest and learn more about what the tylers' life was like after the white house. >> the tylers, john tyler was born in charles city county at greenway. and he purchased this house at the end of his presidential term. he came down here once before he retired from the presidency, brought with him julia gardiner. they were married. she said the hand of god and nature have been kind to my sherwood forest, but i can improve upon it. which she did. she had a look around the ceilings. she had moldings imported from italy. she had the mantel pieces brought in from italy and the knocker on the front door has -- you have to look hard to see it, it has sherwood forest on it but it's been meticulously polished through the years and that was one of her contributions to the house.

julia and her mother were very, very close and we are exceedingly fortunate to have many letters written between julia and her mother from this plantation. in the hot summer weather. this house is only one room wide because want the breezes to go from the north to the south and from the south to the north. and so they would sit in the hall quite frequently and she sat in the open doorway that led to the south porch and wrote letters to her mother. and quite frequently she commented on the president, who kept his feet on the banister. and would read his newspaper and throw it on the floor, in the gray room is a table and it's the table upon which we are john tile -- tyler sent julia tyler breakfast in her bedroom after he had been around the house. after his horseback ride, woe go to that table have breakfast

with his wife, which he personally would carry in on a tray because she was still in bed. and also her mother writes her, and as i understand from other people that visit you that you sleep until 9:00 in the morning. and that the president brings you breakfast in bed. and she says, please do not take advantage of an elderly gentleman who dotes upon you. in the afternoons, julia writes to her mother frequently what she's doing on this plantation. she reports almost every purchase of furniture in the house, her brothers, david and alexander, who were still at princeton came upon the suggestion of mrs. gardiner her buying agent. for instance, the mirror was ordered from a store called daudans and when it comes, she's very distressed because the edges of it cover at the bottom the edge of the mirror face of the window facing.

andmother writes her back and minutia. she did love to entertain and we do have the record of all which she had. in honor of her sister margaret, who came here very frequently, and the portrait here is a portrait of julia and margaret. she was two years younger then margaret and this portrait was painted obviously to represent gardiners allen because you can see the water in the background and they were very, very young when the portrait was done. anyway, the moral -- ball she had for margaret started at 9:00. then she said they danced the virginia real and waltz until the sun rose and finest champagne flowed unceasingly among one thing that julia did here for entertainment is they allowed all of the house servants' children to play continuously with the children of the big house.

the matters, julia tyler speaks of her children playing with the children in the yard and she speaks of their dancing with the children in the yard. the supervision of a house servants and there were many. there were a total of almost 90 slaves. vacillating number between 61 and 92 on the plantation. so the house servants. i think there were 13 house servants here. and they were totally her supervision as was the care, the medical care of the other servants in the plantation. they were happy in this household. and she loved it. she refers to the melody of his voice. she always refers to his intelligence. she had a wonderful time here. >> and also the newlyweds then commenced raising the large

family that we talked about. seven children born to the tylers before he died in 1862. is that when he passed? >> i think. >> so a question, she refers to the slavery issue which we have come back to throughout the program and country itself is marching inexorable towards the civil war. what was john tyler's post white house role in that momentous period of time? >> well, in 1861 there was an attempt to stay succession and john tyler was very instrumental in that particular, that last-ditch effort to do that. there was a peace conference held in washington and he was very much -- in february of 1861. that. once that failed he decided to back the confederacy, to back succession and so when he died, he had been elected to the confederate congress. he was very much a secessionist.

and when he died, his coffin was covered with the confederate flag. and the north, the union, did not acknowledge his having passed. >> so we have a former president of the united states, who gets elected to the con fed rid congress. put that into perspective for us. >> it's really extraordinary. and john tyler, previous caller tried to stem succession. i think not really sure how much his heart was in the washington peace conference that met in the old willard hotel, especially after there was a meeting in the middle of the conference with abraham lincoln, in which abraham lincoln would not back off from his pledge to halt the expansion of slavery. and the document he is all in when it comes to succession. and he's likening succession to 1776, that virginia has finally recovered all of the sovereignty that it had moved to

the federal government in the constitution. and so they're back in the state that they were in 1776 in order to be able to achieve their independence. but then virginia for a brief period is again a sovereign, independent state. he's instrumental in the negotiations that bring virginia full bore into the confederacy. one of the interesting things about the washington peace conference is that that exact time that he's here in washington, ostensibly trying to ward off civil war, his granddaughter letitia is in the montgomery, alabama, dedicating the new capital of the confederacy by raising the new stars and bars over that building. >> we have been showing you some of julia tyler's letters and here's one she wrote to her mother about the civil war. she wrote, the southerners are worn completely wrought up to it and would not be tampered with any

longer. if such a thing should occur, it would be unfortunate for the north. not a good predictor what would happen. how did the civil war impact julia's life especially after john died? so what happened to her after john died? >> she leaves and she goes to -- to staten island to live with her mother and she spends the entire -- i think she actually goes to bermuda for a short period of time. yes, so she's not at sherwood forest. and, of course, she's impacted financially by the war because she loses her enslaved laborers, first of all, and she doesn't really -- she returns try to get it into some kind of order but she doesn't live there again, i don't believe. she spends the remaining years, i believe, in richmond.

she has rented a home there and so she spends a lot of time in richmond but not in the county anymore. >> what is the public perception of her post war? >> in the south, quite good. in the north, not quite so good. she's still referred to in the south as the ex-president tress and something she insists upon. john tyler's memory is still revered in the south after the war as being somebody who's title legitimize the cause of the confederacy and julia gardiner tyler certainly is contributing kind of to this lost cause notion of something she refers to as holy southern cause. so she never -- there really sent demand of rehabilitation of her husband because in the south she doesn't feel like he needs to be rehabilitated except when it comes to getting her pension. which is something she desperately needs. they have two homes, sherwood forest and summer home near

hampton, virginia and they -- which actually goes through the same kind of damage that sherwood forest goes through. she has to sell that property in order just to maintain sherwood forest, which again is mostly for them effectively to live in and spend a lot of the time fighting for her pension, which she doesn't get until 1881 when she's awarded $1,200 a year the main argument against it is yes, she may have been first lady but your husband actually became a traitor to the united states so there's no reason why we should ever honor that. >> on the phone with us now is christopher leahy. he's an associate professor of history in new york and with his spouse is coeditor of the julia gardiner tyler papers. areleahy, how voluminous her papers? and what is the broad scope of what we can learn about this woman and the white house from them?

>> well, her papers are very voluminous. there are two major collections. one at the sterling library at yale university and the other major collection at the college of william and mary. and we can learn pretty much everything about her life from the time that she marries john tyler in 1844 until just about the time that she dies in 1889. these are very rich source that cover every aspect of her life and her children's lives. >> we have been spending the past 45 minutes or so trying to paint a portrait of her. what does it feel like this added to that from her work with your papers? >> well, you know, i think that history tends to remember julia for the verolty and the fact she was a young first lady for the first eight months but i think that obscures her true character. remember, she lived 27 years after her husband died so she

had another life, literally another life after her husband passed way in 1862. and her papers reveal her to be a very strong woman, a practical woman, a very serious, self-possessed, self-assured, adaptable and very devoted to her family. she could be quite tenacious about her family, particularly her children if she felt their interests were being threatened. >> and what is happening with these papers? is there contemporary interest beyond your own is scholarship? talk to us about historical interest in julia tyler. >> well, the main problem with julia's papers is that she has penmanship only a mother could love. fortunately, my wife has become very adept at reading and going through the work, going through the papers. they're very difficult to read, which i think is part of the reason why scholars have not really exploited them for the potential that they hold. i think our work hopefully will

bring more of her actual experiences to life, particularly the post- presidential years and particularly the years after her husband passed away in 1862. >> how did you get interested? >> well, i did my dissertation on john tyler's pre-presidential career and i am currently at work on a manuscript, book manuscript on john tyler and it just seem a natural fit, natural progression from there once i got into the julia gardiner tyler papers, i realized i wasn't very good at reading them because of the penmanship and my wife very courageously, i think, dove into them and is transcribe them for me so i can do my work on the writing end. >> if someone is interested learning more, are any of the letters published online so they can read some of the letters for themselves? >> yes, i think there are some online. again, very difficult to read. she had a tendency to write -- she would write going left to

right and then she would turn the paper and go left to right upside down so there's a very difficult process trying to read these. i don't know exactly if there are any online, how easy that would be for a researcher. >> thank you for telling bus your scholarship and we look forward is -- as your work progresses to learn more about this period of history through the writings of julia tyler. thanks for your time. >> thank you very much. i would want to get a few more calls in. next one is from bill in fisher, indiana. hi, bill. >> hi, susan, enjoying your show very much and enjoying your two guests as well very much. i was wondering was julia a religious person? and i was wondering about her conversion to catholicism and how that influenced her later life. thank you. >> do you know? >> i think i will leave julia's document. >> was she religious, do you know?

>> not really but she does join the catholic church later in life and i'm not sure why she actually does that. perhaps the church gains more by that then she does because she's always been that tension between protestants and catholics in this country. even though we don't have an official religion, most people think of america as being protestant place. but the fact that she did have a former first lady joining the catholic church in such a public way, i think, sort of elevated the status of catholicism a little bit. >> when in her life did she do this? >> this was i think -- i know it was later in life. yes, much later. a few years before she died, i believe. >> and john tyler is not especially religious guy. even by -- even sort of by the fiscal standards, letitia was a very strong episcopalian, his first wife.

he really admired the strength of her faith in her. but john tyler was more of a -- more of a jeffersonian epicurean then he was anything else. >> and brett fred is watching us in san francisco and you're on now, fred. >> yes, hi, thank you. i was -- the three most powerful men in washington at the time were, of course, clay, webster and calhoun. i was wondering if there were any -- even letitia but julia more importantly, what was her attitude towards those three men? >> thank you. >> she certainly would have been very comfortable with calhoun. not so much clay. even though tyler had supported clay at one point. but as tyler became more separated from the wig party then she was going in that direction as well. webster, i'm not so sure but certainly calhoun would have been the person that she would have been closest to in terms

of politically. >> at least webster had stuck in tyler's cabinet longer then any of the other original members of the harrison cabinet. but i think you're absolutely right. it does come down to where were they in terms of john tyler's politics as to exactly how she felt about them. >> this is margaret watching us from ft. river, new jersey. hello, you're on the air. >> hello. i'm enjoying this very much. i was wondering what president tyler died from? i read that he was elected a virginia representative to the confederate congress and that when he was attending the session, he died just a few minutes after midnight in 1862 and he was 71 years old. also, how old was he when he>> all right. that's a question mr. stoermer, you know the answer to? he was never sworn in as a member of the confederate congress. he was just about to be.

so he was in richmond for that session. since it was early in -- in '62, from what we know, he had caught a cold and died at that age. the last child that they had, i think that he was 68 -- >> because she was 2 years old when he died. >> yes. >> next was a question from darla in austin, texas. after this history lesson in your state's annexation. what is your question for us? >> any question is was the controversy over the annexation of texas only about slavery or were there any other considerations such as considerations about the location and geography of texas being so close to mexico? >> thank you very much, anna medford? edna medford? >> it was all about slavery. in the 1840's and '50's, you can't really separate the whole

struggle over the expansion of slavery into the west. it's about texas. it's about kansas later on. it's slavery front and center. >> now, we have been three, four minutes left and as we close out our discussion here. we had learned that julia tyler as a very young woman was very adept at publicity and creating an image for herself. gary robinson asked, how did the united states view her death or had she become private and largely forgotten by then? did she call upon those public relation skills to ensure her legacy? >> not really by the end of her life. she died in 1889. obviously there were a lot of other things going on in the country by then. she had been largely focusing on her family, focusing on her -- focusing on maybe a personal legacy in that sense in maintaining what the family could hold on to. something like sherwood forest so they can pass that on. in terms of the broader kind of working on that image later on

in her life, so much of her energy was devoted to -- was devoted to the pension fight. was devoted to other things. that was far from her mind by then. >> as we close out here, we talked about a few things she did to advance the role of first lady in this country. how should we remember her historically? >> as the vivacious person she was. quite a bit ambitious. and i think that her story conveys the possibilities for first ladies not all of them pursued her path but she was able to do some things that were significant. >> and what would you say about that question, what is her legacy? >> i say the jury is still out. i think one of the great things about this particular series is helping us re-evaluate what we mean by the first lady, by the institution of the first lady as part of the presidency itself and so you can see, again, the possibilities of a woman in that position.

on the other hand, you can also see perhaps some of the limitations as with letitia and number of women we talked about throughout this program. and so i think maybe by the end of this series we can get together again and talk about, well, what have we learned about what is the first lady and therefore see what julia tyler's legacy really is. >> what should we think about john tyler's presidency? what was his contribution to america? >> i'm glad you got that question. >> oh, my god, you know, i cannot change my opinion of him. his a person who turned back on his own party. ok, that's one thing. thatpported a cause actually was creating serious issues for a whole group of people, a whole race of people. he was more than willing to perpetuate slavery forever if possible. so i can't separate his legacy

from that. >> and next week we will learn about the life of his successor in the white house, james k. polk. and we look forward to you being involved with that when we do that. let me say thank you at this point to our two guests on the harrison and tyler presidency, edna greene medford, howard university here in washington, d.c. which she chairs the history dept and taylor stoermer, historian for colonial williamsburg. thanks to both of you. this is produced in cooperation with the national white house historical association and we thank them for their help. thank you for being with us. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

"a wellmonday night, educated women." for the 1800's. we will trace the life of sarah polk, and she helps to write his speeches and lobbies members of congress. then, margaret taylor, who was, i was.h of a leader as margaret wanted nothing to do with politics and apparently prayed for her husband's defeat in the 1848 presidential race, and although he wins the election, he dies 16 months from taking office. andvice president succeeds, abigail fillmore becomes the

first first lady to have a job before entering the white house, turning it into a cultural center for the arts, while lobbying for funds to have the first-ever white house library. live next monday night at 9:00 p.m. eastern on c-span and c- span3, as well as c-span radio and c-span.org. our website has more about the first ladies, including a special section, welcome to the white house, brought to you by our partner. what life was like during the tenure of each of the first ladies, and we are offering a book. first ladies of the united states of america. presenting a biography and portrait of each first lady, and thoughts from michelle obama on the role of first ladies throughout history, now available for the discounted atce of $12.95 plus shipping

c-span.org/products. created by american cable companies in 1979, brought to you as a public service by your television provider. but in a few moments, and look at the faa plans to close more than 100 traffic control towers because of sequestration spending cuts. in a little less than one hour, a discussion of the iranian weapons program, and then the economic global outlook. tell youive events to about tomorrow here on c-span. representative elijah cummings speaks at the national press club about gun trafficking legislation. that is at 10:00 eastern. at 11:00 a.m., the national rifle association releases a report on preventing gun violence in school. a federal appeals

court hears arguments in a lawsuit over whether the transportation security administration procedures violate constitutional guarantees against unreasonable searches. tomorrow, the cato institute looks at aviation security and governance -- government surveillance at noon eastern. discussion of the government plan to close nearly 150 air traffic control towers due to sequestration cut. from "washington journal," this is 40 minutes. at thee are looking control tower and surrounding area in lakeland, florida. it is expected to close on april 21 due to sequestration. here to talk about what is in store for control towers, the former inspector general of the transportation department. they do so much for joining us from south carolina this morning.

located? these towers >> these hours are located all over the country, and most of them are contract hours. i worked on these as inspector general. we determined they had such little air-traffic activity that they were selected for a program where the tower activities are actually performed by contractors, and the faa pays the contractor to perform those services for the united states government, and these are some of the 149. there are actually 250 contract towers. here is the difference. over 19,000 airports. almost 6000 are public use

airports, but we only have 514 towers, so most of the aviation in this country goes on without showers. that does not mean that the airport is closed. it means the pilots will have to fly as they are trained without it traffic control. in fact, that is how you learn to fly when you want to get your license. host: how does it work? what do the pilots do? guest: you have to come in and have the proper radio frequencies. you have to have an fcc radio license, and you report that you are entering the pattern, and every airport has a set up way that you enter the pattern, and you report in as you are entering the pattern, and as always, you are supposed to be looking for a traffic. you literally get in line. it is like up for your position in landing, and you report out your position

on the communications line, and then you turn your base lake, and you are kind of perpendicular to the runway, and then finally you do your turn into final. you have to be careful. it is your job to look around for traffic, an air-traffic control towers, not only do they have radio communications, they literally have people with binoculars to find planes if they do not see them. now, with radar, you can see the planes, but in the future, we will not have that. we will have an entirely computerized air traffic control system. it is going to be run by airplanes talking to each other, collision avoidance, and also talking to the ground and satellite, so it will be a totally globally positions system with computer programs. you have been in the role from 1990 to 1996, and she has

been doing a partner job for more than a decade. a plan to close control towers. here are the numbers to call -- why have any air traffic control towers anywhere? you have just laid out why we do not need them in some airports. >> -- guest: in some airports. the biggest -- busiest airport is atlantic, 980,000 operations per year. that is almost 1 million operations per year. they are very busy. parallel runways. u.s. planes landing seconds apart, side by side, and we have increased the separation vertical and horizontal.

you absolutely must have air traffic control. let's look at the lowest in branson, missouri. it has over 7000 operations per year, so you have 1 million versus 7000 operations per year. that is a huge difference. 7% of the air traffic in america is handled at just 32 hours, so what we have done, we have compacted our flights, just 30 places in the united states of america. have hugesays we skies and unlimited aerospace, yes, we do, but we all went to be in the 30 airports. just 30 places. hours and the 30 airports rather than spread out among the 5,700 other public used airports. we have a plan to keep us all flying safely. in that plan, we said this is a good place for a tower. some are not busy enough to justify -- we have a stair

stepping of airports. the busiest, most crucial airports, literally, about 50 airports handle all of the traffic. traffic. greate have is a andaction in certain areas, make no mistake. those areas are difficult to fly in. the various aerospace -- we have categories of airspace. people who are not pose a problem. inre is a difficulty separating traffic. in the united states of america. in the busiest airports, you must be equipped and you must be under their guidance. that you a good thing are, but in the rest of the airports, you don't have the

equipment. in general aviation planes, unless you are flying into these control areas, you do not even have to have a transponder. a transponder allows you to communicate your position with the air traffic control and our new air-traffic control system, global positioning, next-gen, that equipment will allow your position to be known to air traffic control and to other traffic. and it is a wonderful system that will keep the plains separated. if it works properly, literally, it should make mid-air collisions in possible. -- impossible. that assumes all planes will have that equipment. no matter how many eyes we have, watching from the towers, allour en route centers, radio-controlled guidance aircraft, it will not work unless the planes are able to fly in the system.

there are other layers of safety. besides the air-traffic control towers that we need to have our thatraft equipped with, and is some of the ways you future. saye are some people that that it will be so good, in the future the computer can do it automatically. the air traffic controllers will be our safety eyes. need air-traffic controllers, but the new system will allow the planes to coordinate with air traffic control and with the airports, landing systems, and runways and each other. the but it only works if the planes have the equipment. the basic unit allows you to communicate your position. to a very expensive, very lifesaving equipment, including -- there is on board rader and collision avoidance.

even collision avoidance has its levels, and the more basic is tis, traffic information system. int allows you with a screen your aircraft, a computer screen allows you to see were other aircraft is and gives you an alert when other aircraft are close. surprising, a lot of planes have that equipment, but pilots do not use it. they do not turn it on. you need to be trained. the commercial aircraft have a collision avoidance system. you the alerts, and it will take over the plane. a plane will divert if you are on a collision course. host: we want to get to some calls as we're speaking with mary schiavo. we have a tweet by sport-dog. explain how the human element comes into play. respond to this

story in "the washington post." nextgen air was behind schedule and over budget, according to a report in "the washington post." is now the time to be closing these air traffic control towers? guest: this goes back to the federal aviation administration. once again. it is their job to be on top of this. next-gen , the contract, we are not talking millions of dollars, we are talking billions of dollars. we were seeing tremendous waste. what is important and why we have to stay on the faa back continuously is this is all we are going to have. we are already taking down primary radars and not replacing them. we have put all of our eggs in that basket, to use a bad example. but that is what we have decided our future is.

the planes will be sequenced by the computers. information must be put into the next gen computers. that is what is going to separate the trafficked. we will still need air traffic controllers to make sure the equipment talks with each other. the air traffic controller all now have the computer workstations. we kept the paper slip as a backup. the air traffic controllers will be there to keep the safe. we want them there, but the computer system, as we are building it, if they get up to schedule and get out, they will do this by computer. you'll have to have your nextgen equipment and proper transponders to communicate with it.

host: dave from chicago, illinois. independent line. go ahead. caller: thank you for taking my call. i'm a flight instructor and i have to correct you. former military. back in a civilian capacity. your dependency on technology is swayed to one side. so far. when i get kids who want to come in and learn how to fly, first of all, they are astounded with all the video game technology. i turn it off. they have to be able to look outside the window. that willtwo things take you out in this profession. not looking out the window, swapping paint with another plane in flight. ground in an unusual and on wanted attitude. when we go so far into technology that kids don't look

out the window, i cannot even hire them. they bust up our airplanes. they come out of the faa system that they are always talking to. the problem starts at the top. the basic citizen does not understand the basic complexity has been shoved down our throat. we cannot do it anymore. humans are flying the airplane. not the computer. host: let's get a response. guest: he is absolutely right. away my age now. i got my private back in 1974. i flew in the old system. if you do not look out the window, you have lost observation. otherve to see and avoid aircraft. and you need to be looking out the window and paying attention to what you are doing, and at

all times, people talk about sitting back and watching the scenery. around insoaring comfort. that's not how you fly. particularly in chicago. oh, my goodness. that is a busy airspace. since he is a flight instructor, he knows this. when we were taught, you have to learn a sweep pattern. you had to sweep the sky and back to your panel and you didn't stop that pattern the whole time you were in the air. you did that continuously. i have the teenage son and he wants to go to flight school. microsoft with controller and a joystick. that is what he thinks flying -- that is what he thinks line is, so -- thinks flying is,

so the caller is right. eyes in the sky are importing. host: john from michigan. caller: a politician complaining this sequester is going to break the bank is ridiculous. they got us into this position and they should have to put up with this including their retirement benefits. i hate this idea. i will tell you what will fix it. the first time a politician and his plane almost gets hits by an independent airplane, they are going to change all this. that's what i believe is going to happen. "we need more people at the air traffic control towers." that is what i think is going to happen. guest: i think you are right. we tend to legislate by anecdote. when somebody has a near miss that is an important person in

washington, i think they will get serious by requiring a higher performance level. it is interesting. between the contract hours, the ones that have the 149 of the 250 they are closing, actually, they compared apples to apples and compared to hours of the -- same of the same -- size, faa and contract. the contract hours beat the faa. a faa tower cost about million dollars and the contract tower said fewer errors. meaning mistakes made by air- traffic controllers. it is about accountability and responsibility. when you have these problems in the towers, you have to ask yourself why? why do they have a better rate than the faa personnel? why does the contract our have a better rate? holding their feet to the fire

it to do a better job. accountability. the computer system that we have, nextgen will have to separate traffic. not just human traffic. remember, we are undergoing a period wherethe faa has roles in the making to allow drones to fly in our air space. it is a new way of flying. i learned to adapt. we are putting more in the skies than just planes and pilots. it is going to take everybody performing at their utmost level, but, unfortunately, i think he is probably right. we to legislate by anecdote. a politician will have a near miss and hopefully we will do better.

we have higher performance levels. there should be no reason why an air-traffic controller is caught sleeping on the job or out of the building when they are supposed to be controlling trafficked. that should never happen. host: let's look at the faa budget. fiscal year 2013, $15.20 billion. we are talking about $600 million in planned spending cuts. we have a tweet from jody. guest: no. we should not eliminate established safety requirements. the problem for the federal aviation administration and the sequestration cuts -- remember, the $15 billion was only part of the sequestration. orre is another $11 billion $12 billion on top of that. remember, when we set up the air

traffic control system, it was back in the 1930's it was set up. theid not want to pay for rich and fat cats. that is to was flying in the 1930's. we set up the trust fund that we have. the official trust fund was set up in 1970. transportationd as something to be paid by user fees. jet fuel taxes and by other fees that the airports put on. the whole idea was that the user paid for the system. that the user is pays for the system, and so, that worked. we started out stripping this ability. the pay provisions got stalled in congress. general aviation did not want some fees. they did not want increases on those fees. so funding for aviation got stalled. in fact, at one point, the funding mechanism went away

entirely, and we lost several weeks into this trust fund for aviation. now we don't all pay for with our ticket taxes and our fuel taxes. some is a direct transfer from the government. what has happened since the year 2000, which was kind of a peak, and there are lots of reasons, of course, 9/11 in 2001 was part of it, but we are now down about 25%-30%. commercial aviation has fallen off since 2005 by about 26%. so it is not that we are relaxing our safety rules. in fact, there is not a safety rule that has been changed. it is every department. the department of transportation. you cannot justify leaving them out of the sequester. when they have had a reduced workload. the faa, their own documents, published friday, a forecast, there is an extended forecast into the future.

from 2013 toecast 2033. one of the first lines is that the faa workload is down for the fifth year in a row. as much as 26%. that is why they are taking a cut like everybody else. traffic and demand is down. i agree with you. it is supply and demand. we should never compromise safety. if it gets to the point of that, particularly, the ig has to be on top of this. has to be on top of this. they had better be all over it, and they will be. host: mary schiavo was inspector general to the transportation department back in the 1990's. she was a professor, and then she started as a partner. let's look at the towers scheduled to close because of sequestration.

mostly general aviation traffic, and 13 of them averaged one arrival and departure per day in 2011. we say a list of the faa contract our closure list, and ne of our tweeters wrote in , we once had a contract our back in the 1990's, and you can see a list. mary, are some states being hit harder to prove our rural communities taking the brunt? ?- harder are the world community is taking the brunt? >> is places where there is not a lot of traffic. when takeoff and landing per day, it is hard to justify the spending when we have so many of the things in the country we should spend money for. should we tax mom and pop in

peoria, though are having a hard time paying their medical bills and their food, so we can have a traffic control tower in palm springs. i have been in and out of there. i love having a traffic tower there, but

and emmett till air force base. there is 86,000 flights that come in and out of there. there is cooperation amongst the airports in terms of helping guide airplanes. the tower has recently been renovated. i think it is a bad decision to pick that tower away. host: let's show our viewers a story from cnn.

among the towers to be closed are those in frederick, maryland, at near st. petersburg, florida. they have been open less than a year. guest: right. again, there is an element of lack of long-term planning or lack of a reasonable funding. we know how much money we have to spend. we put a lot more money into the pipeline. withrust fund is paid for ticket taxes and fuel taxes. there is a lot of competition for that.

airports and runways and you name it. there is also, sadly, waste of that money. you audit where that money goes. we found a golf course built with that money. you have to stay on top of with a spend that money. i would look carefully at both decisions. why did you do that? we have runway overrun safety aprons. inhave outages of equipment busy areas. that is an important point the caller has made. all those towers in the area --

it is important to coordinate them. in new york, they coordinate. newark coordinates with la guardia and kennedy. they have to coordinate, too. if florida wants to keep all their airports open, they can pay the government to do them and the faa will be able to keep those towers open. host: we have some comments on twitter. host: bill is our next caller in massachusetts. caller: good morning. i got my license and a controlled airport.

it may for a more complete education. one of the airports that are closing in massachusetts is norwood. norwood is only two miles outside of the boston tsa. there is 19,000 airports in the united states and most have flight schools. with the closing of these towers, with respect to the that are close to tsa's, it make for a close situation. you'll have pilots who used to

be afraid of flying into norwood. that now be venturing it within two miles as the crow flies. this will be an unsafe situation. the traffic space is incredibly congested. i feel they should re-review the towers and maybe revaluate 3 or four of these closings. i have not done a study on this. i would be interested in their comments about close to high density aerospace. host: thank you, bill.

guest: i learned to fly and a controlled towered airport. ohio state university has their own tower. that is one that is slated to close. you learn from day one and they let you go up and solo, york air traffic controller is your friend. they are your lifeline to the ground below. it makes for a different learning experience. if you need that experience, we're still going to have -- 514 towers and 149 are closing. it will be incumbent to make

sure that students get that air traffic control experience. four airports that are close to busy airspace, i hope the faa has looked at that closely and not just to get a head count on planes. he is right. it is a different learning experience. i think you follow all the rules because you do not want the air traffic control yelling at you. learningt was a great environment and i want students to be able to have that training. they will have to be sent on

training flights through those airports. host: wesley in san diego. caller: what if our privacy -- doe we have a right to privacy regarding these controls? that is a main point, privacy. host: you are talking about drones. caller: they use drones for spying. i am against that. host: mary schiavo is shaking her head. guest: there is a notice of proposed rulemaking. they have sought to designate a

number of airports as places for trial runs for drone traffic. andols are to bring safety order. where can they fly and where can they not fly? it is considered something that you're free to photograph if it is visible by the public. how close can they get? backyardsnto people's or into their windows? this is an issue where the law has not caught up with technology.

the drone laws are being debated. anybody can comment on these laws. it is pretty important. host: you can talk with mary schiavo about air traffic control towers scheduled to close. here are the numbers. our last caller was from san diego. there's a story from the associated press last week. host: does that concern you? guest: it does. they have a specific need in a specific area. the faa has been planning the national airspace system. vitalan airport that is

to california, and in california should pay for that. we cannot have them everywhere. we can have 5700 and public use airports. that sounds like an airport that has great regional and statewide importance. i think they should step up and try to keep that tower open. they have 18 aircraft and they

get to keep their towers when atlanta has 980,000. there is a huge difference in how the money is spent. host: greg in ohio. caller: hi. listen, mary, i flew years ago from my non controlled airports. you have the atis, used to have, air-traffic information system, responsible for your air-traffic. i am concerned with the turbulence on the aircraft. do you have -- you have turbulence which is the for text of the wing tips from the

larger aircraft. the smaller aircraft people are taught to hold free longer period of time until you make contact. how will this affect on these non controlled airports? how was going to affect this? guest: the bigger aircraft -- the 747's were studied a lot. they have unique flight characteristics, especially if they are loaded. it varies with the plane and

the weight of the plane that is following. you can have an upset event. there were a series of light jets and they were lost and did not recover and crashed after getting behind a heavy 757. you have to stake a minute and a half or several nautical miles behind the plane if you are light following a heavy. the vortices are like tornadoes on the end of the plane. thehave to stay behind vortices and up. if you get over here, you can have an upset event. the air traffic controllers have to tell you you're behind a heavy.

if she cannot hear what is going on, they will tell you, behind date heavy." you simply get out of line and not take off behind a heavy aircraft. you have to be cognizant of that. you need a warning that you are following a heavy. pilots are going to be responsible for that. some of these airports did not have heavies because the runways are too short. that is something a pilot has to watch out for. i was a student pilot out of toledo.

a big plane took off in front of me. minuted longer than a and a half. that is a scary proposition for a smaller plane. host: we have this on twitter. what would you do with these closures? some of these towers can close. what should happen next? guest: the faa has to do its job. its job is safety. on they have to concentrate now is safety. they have to be careful to evaluate this. contract power operators have less errors than the faa. they cost 1/4 less than a

comparable faa tower. shouldn't we spend more money on more contract hours and less faa towers. our controllers are only as good as our controllers. this makes no sense to me. workload is down for the fifth straight year. theirnce 2005, yet mistakes are up. ground collision avoidance warning systems on the plains. collision avoidance systems have saved innumerable lives as well as t-warnings in the cockpit. better icing equipment. we have to make sure this

equipment is required and installed and used in all aircraft in america. that will save a lot of lives. host: mary schiavo, it is this morning from south carolina. thank you so much. guest: thank you. they are the winners of c-span's stuckey cam competition. .> $100,000

>> $3 million. over half a million dollars. ♪ >> economy is approaching the fiscal cliff. the deficit is overwhelming. government spending is a huge part of problem. we need a solution. help us. please. >> the average american family. the average income is $45,000 a year. the federal government earns an income of $2.50 trillion. there is a huge difference

between these incomes. the american family spends $47,000 per year. only 4% of their spending is not just defied by their budget. the federal government spends 3.5 in openers trillion a year. one-third of their spending is not justified by the budget. that is a lot of spending to eliminate to avoid debt. >> the level of concern about the debt is high. >> the nation's debt is the most significant problem in the country right now as far as i am concerned. >> we have a total national government that that is approximately the size of the national economy. you have a problem. , it is over $16 trillion of gdp. it is less than that. >> part of the problem is what has happened over the course of the last several years with the

recession. the recession led to declines in tax revenues. congress then introduced tax cuts that cause the deficit to grow further. we have federal government spending, so-called stimulus spending. highermuch -- a much level of spending that was the case before the recession started. >> the recession hit and the debt skyrocketed. what caused the debt to reach such a high point in the first place? >> the american people. because we want the government services, we want the military spending, we want the welfare spending, we want all the spending of the federal government and we do not want to pay the bill. you can think of this says going to the mall with your dad. credit card. it is fun. yet to go shopping, maybe there is some limitations placed on

that trip but in the end, you are not the ones paying the bill. but you have to think of it a different way. you're going to the mall with your grandchild by sigrid cards. that is what we're doing right now. we're making all these promises to provide programs and benefits, things the public demands. we're passing that bill forward two generations without their involvement in the process. >> now that we know where the problem began, we must tackett -- attack it. >> the fact the largest spending we do is taxes. we give more tax cuts to people who probably would not say deserve it than we do in giving money to a program like a farm subsidy program or to a housing program or to an education program. that is the secret we will

discuss as well as the fact that most of the money we spent, people think of it in terms of the operating budget. that comes out of the department of defense. onwe spend so much more national defense than any country in the world. you could add up many countries of the world and you'd be hard- pressed to find the military spending. >> how to control growth in social security and medicare. those are great and wonderful. someone is going to pay the bill. and the bill is placed on all of us. through the tax system and payroll. especially the payroll tax system. that is two programs without question, the cigna. spending problem. they dwarf any problems with my dream up with regards to food stamps, welfare program, all the

things that are the traditional scapegoats for federal budget problems. >> another way that government. you cuts feeling is back on small things like groceries, buying store brands instead of name-brand. cutting back the small things makemake a difference will a difference in programs such as social security, medicare, and medicaid. if you could cut spending from the overfunded programs, which programs would you redirect the money to? >> i would take the money away from military spending and i would invest in this nation's infrastructure, roads, transportation networks generally, and i would invest it in education. none. i would not cut spending to cut spending. redirect to

underfunded programs. we do not have that luxury right now. >> we cannot keep looking our children in the i believe that we're going to give them a future because we are spending their money today. >> that is the problem. i think that is why you might be concerned as an eighth grader about the future here. you are going to pick up the tab for your grandparents, demands for public services. >> we need a solution. one that will help us on the road to recovery. here are few ways we believe we can get there. effect all ofwhat us. we have to put aside our interests and that the special interests salvador and to try to come up with a solution. >> i think we need more accountability in terms of information about what government is spending its money on. what is spending our taxpayer dollars on. ultimately we have to come together. the deficit problem is a problem

that we have together treated and is only by working together in a civil way that we will be able to address the nation. the deficit problem. >> you can find this video and the other winning documentary is studentcam.org. iran pose aion of nuclear program. a forum on the global economic alone. then a discussion of finance raising. events to tell you about tomorrow. marylandah cummings of speak to the national press club about his legislation on gun trafficking at 10 eastern. at 11:00 a.m., the national rifle association releases a report on preventing gun violence in schools.

former congressman asa hutchinson will present the report for the nra. this week a federal appeals court hears arguments in a lawsuit over whether transportation security administration procedures violate constitutional guarantees against unreasonable searches. tomorrow the cato institute looks like aviation security and government surveillance at noon eastern. next, a brookings institution forum on iran posing nuclear program. this is an hour-and-a-half. >> thank you very much for inviting me. been said, i was in charge of the negotiation for a long time. when i was the first visitor to

tehran. 2010 to today, i have been and i maintain some lines of communication. i do not have any responsibility from there on. important how this process has gone. what to my mind has been the most important moment in which this would have taken place. and the last moment i would say how i see the next steps that putd be taken in order to the process in shape. then by 2003, the first time we went to tehran.

we signed an important agreement. it was important that we sign what we called the tehran agreement. stop. would at that time we had to stop very little. we would [indiscernible] and economic health. the commitment was to sign something very important. that went for year and everything went ok.

the general elections, it was a little changed. did not sign the original protocol. the whole thing [indiscernible] time, a couple of years we saw the contract. and the supreme leader appointed someone with whom we did most of the negotiations. somebody that you can talk to difficultit was a part of this negotiation. this was the rational part of the negotiation. to make a long story short i will tell you that it started

from -- we would offer you something. the rightot suspend -- the tree would be maintained. and remember two words. ne is the word -- [indiscernible] dignity in a way. interest.is self ent have to find an agreem between dignity and self- interest. the question that has not been able -- [indiscernible] two conscience. when they ask for dignity we could not get it. [indiscernible]

to accept this gain. are that in mind because we talking about that. we had a proposal which was phrase for phrase. take this out and we maintain the old of [indiscernible] that was an interesting proposal. you know that fate. they did not want to take the [indiscernible] right.ing up his so then we continue didd with

freeze forere was a freeze program. energyas currents from and other fields. the most important thing was signed by everybody. the minister always signed the letters. certain shot. the americans get into the picture [indiscernible] we thought that would give some oxygen to the process but as you know, that was a failure. went to see the supreme leader taking this hush -- proposal.

we found a solution create so pretty bad moment. then they appointed a new negotiator [indiscernible] capacity.sn't have the he is somebody that would tell doese have received but he not have the flexibility of going through the negotiations. we went up to geneva. two dozen i was very important meeting for the first time. 2009 was a very important meeting for the first time. that was a very good meeting. bilateral for a

meeting and that it wasn't matched, we thought we had about gingrich and uranium. 20%. that would be reaching outside the country. but yet there is much more information [indiscernible] do think that at time it was the moment when i saw the closer possibility of an agreement. there was the sentiment. we agreed formally but as a hours.dum for 48 let me tell you the problems i

see in front of us. one, a problem of calendars. tehran.elections in it would be difficult to get something going before the presidential elections. we have present -- elections from israel, we do not know about the agreement between netanyahu and president obama. it will not be heard very long. i do not think it would be possible to move on tehran without syria. syria has a relationship with iran that is really the. i heard somebody tell me our relationship with tehran is .eeper even militarily

they have a very intense relationship. we thought it would be difficult [indiscernible] important actor. we need to get all the possible pressure. we have two problems which are linking to iran and syria and we have the p-5. we have a pretty bad situation. that is what i think we have in front of us. the other thing that i would like to mention is sanctions. sanctions have to review before the end of the summer. we have been able to put the sanctions on iran that are hitting the economy.

it is still maintaining of the problem. imagine that for a moment that the economy goes better. there are more needs of oil. to china.lling gas if the economy grows it would be very difficult to stop the most important thing that we have to stop. oilran does not export any at all. if they want to make real any of the sanctions.

we have a complicated picture in front of us. i think that the iranians are concerned and they know that they're going against self- interest as far as the economy is concerned. they keep saying the same. we do not want to be a nuclear power. we want to be recognized as a regional power. say is what the continue to whenever you meet with them. more things to say. and many more things to the white house. >> thank you.

javier has done a great job of describing the ups and downs and difficulties of trying to negotiate a nuclear deal. my expectation is that those ups and downs and difficulties and frustrations are going to continue for the foreseeable future. why? there is a fundamental difference among the parties on what the objective of these negotiations are. from the standpoint of the united states, working through the p-5 plus one, we're trying to limit iran pose a capacity to produce nuclear weapons. i physically limiting their ability to produce fissile material and by increasing means of monitoring their nuclear programs so that we can detect future efforts to cheat and build secret facilities. that is our objective. from iran's point of view it is the opposite. they want to create the capacity to produce nuclear weapons.

having an unrestricted program was limited monitoring as possible. whatever is required. both sides have a very different view and national interest in terms of what we're trying to achieve. there is a fundamental disconnect in terms of what i would call the legal framework that the peak -- p-5 plus one and iran approach these negotiations. the onus is on iran to demonstrate that its program is peaceful by complying with the various u.n. security council resolutions and iaea resolutions that call on iran to do certain things including suspension of some parts of their nuclear program and cooperate and so forth. from iran policy standpoint these security council's and are not considered legitimate.

from iran's standpoint they are not required to comply with any of these resolutions. they should be treated like any of enjoyingin terms an extensive civil the clear program under the safeguards. from the legal perspective, the two sides are approaching this negotiation from a very different standpoint. given these fundamental differences and interests in perspective, the fairing of the p-5 plus one is to get an agreement on some modest measures that would limit iran pose a nuclear program in some ways and exchange for limiting sanctions treated in the hope that that would create confidence and create a context that would make it possible to try to negotiate a more comprehensive agreement. at the same time slowdown and a clear program. even in this modest area, the sides are very far apart in

terms of the quid pro quo. both sides accept the basic concept that we're talking about limits on a nuclear program in exchange for limits on sanctions. when you get down to the details they're very far apart. the p-5 plus one are asking for a pretty substantial actions on the part of iran in terms of limiting their nuclear program, , shipping out a large portion of the 20% of the stockpile that iran has in exchange for some modest concrete sanctions relief. they're demanding total lifting of all sanctions in exchange for stopping the production of 20%. something that could reverse overnight. even in terms of the quid pro quo for a modest step, there is a long way to go where the two sides could come to an agreement. the do not expect there to be an

agreement. nonetheless both sides have an interest in keeping this process alive. i would expect the talks to continue and there is some incremental progress in terms of these big differences. i do not think it will come to an agreement. at the same time even if there's not a formal appeal i do not think the iranians are exercising some constraints on the program for political reasons. mainly because in my view the supreme leader is focusing on managing the presidential elections and does not want to have to do with the foreign policy crisis. the iranians are deliberately converting enough of their 20% of enriched uranium oxide form to stay below the red line that president netanyahu identified.

iranians areat the deliberately slowing down this parts of the program they fear trigger either more sanctions or even a military strike. that may change but for now there seem to be some limits on the program. for the future i think the most important question is whether or not it is possible to increase the current level of sanctions by cutting even further the market that iran enjoys in terms of its oil exports. question.real up to now the sanctions have been remarkably successful in terms of limiting iran's's oil exports because there has been sources for oil. iran's customers have been willing to cut back and that has had a substantial impact. whether that can continue in the

future is very uncertain. it will depend upon the global balance of supply and demand for oil. and on economic activity. what impact that has on oil. that question if overran's oil exports, that is their greatest concern and if it is possible for additional cuts to be made, it makes much more likely that but there can be an interim agreement that would limit further sanctions in exchange for some limits on the nuclear program. and create a basis for trying to negotiate a comprehensive agreement. even if that negotiation fails, it still creates some breathing room in terms of limiting the program and slowing down the nuclear block and making a military attack less necessary. one question to both of you.

the iranians walked back and thereears that in iran are differences in negotiating this question. 09 was important for many reasons. another facility for enriching uranium. international p-5 rout found

that was going on. we had information about that before september. it was made public. that was a big shot. it was discovered and made public that they had another facility that had not been declared. -- let iran with [indiscernible] , the u.s.e first time allowed an american to be [indiscernible] arranged it for him to have a bilateral talks in geneva.

the climate was very good. we agreed of something very important for iran. iran was running out of fuel. putin did not do their reactor. historically argentina has been but thentry that at -- country that [indiscernible] to produce isotopes. there was a difficult moment for that. the countryt out of the same amount that we put in. there were two elements leading toward a facilitation in the

relationship. they said we had a good meeting. we had a press conference [indiscernible] we would not contradict each other and that was ok. thought we celebrated. and gary knows what happened. and thes a big battle supreme leader did not accept the deal. i can maintain some talks -- this is not the best friend that you can imagine. he is now running for president. he is an important figure. if hesee how he behaves is elected president.

the supreme leader is the one [indiscernible] you have a system of naming interlocutors. on the other side you may not match the interlocutor with the other. this is another added complication. >> i agree with that. the decisionmaking process inside tehran is very obscure. makes itt probably much more complicated in terms of trying to reach an agreement the politicalause competition among the various figures in iran becomes intertwined with the nuclear negotiations. and so for the 2009 episode was a good example where the president was clearly in favor

of the deal and to some extent the opponents were motivated. there were motivated by a desire to try to prevent him from taking credit for making progress. the collapse of a 2009 deal i think was a critical turning point at least in terms of what the administration's perceptions were. it demonstrated how difficult it would be to get even a very modest agreement and this was it an extremely modest agreement. and shifted the president's policy to one that emphasized increasing pressure as a way to gain leverage in purchase cuffed and we embarked on a very difficult six months negotiation for another un security if account resolution. most of you remember brazil and turkey and iran announced an agreement which was viewed in

the white house as a pretty transparent effort to delay the sanctions. we went ahead with those sanctions and since then we have been locked in this sort of spiral where we keep increasing sanctions as the negotiations make no progress, they keep going ahead with their nuclear programs and both sides are trying to build up bargaining leverage. we have not reached the point where some kind of agreement that would relax the sanctions and the nuclear activities is possible. let me open up the floor for questions. please wait for microphone. let's start right here. >> i am in washington

correspondent for in self career agency. -- a south korean agency. post reported onpost ties between iran and north korea. what is your assessment of the problem? i am sure but let me ask you about north korea nuclear tests. what is your opinion about that? thank you. >> as to what kind of material was used in the test, i do not think we know. there was no way to measure but there was plutonium or highly enriched uranium so it could have been either. in terms of nuclear ties before -- between iran and north korea, i am not aware of any but it is something we have to be

concerned about. there is extensive cooperation in the missile area and one could imagine that north korea could provide substantial assistance to iran in terms of in richmond. i expect the north koreans are considerably more advanced than the iranians are in terms of mastering centrifuge technology. it is something we have to keep a very close in and we know that north korea has been willing to sell materials such as the reactor there were building in syria. ok. >> what is our rationale for threatening war against iran in order to perpetuate the israeli monopoly on nuclear weapons in the middle east and why is a nuclear weapon-free middle east not part of the discussion? remember 2009, it was made

clear the other facility [indiscernible] it was the first time [indiscernible] i and i do not know how many years. is to workagreements hard in two years to get the possibility of beginning the discussion about the free trade zone in the middle east. [indiscernible] it has not taken place. 2009 was a moment in which motion in that direction was started. i think that we will continue in

2013. it did not take place for lack of agreement among the most important players. something that was on the table for the first time. president obama put it on the table in a general assembly. the intelsating of level of the signatory members of the treaty. >> i would add president obama has explained why he thinks and nuclear-armed iran is not acceptable from the standpoint of u.s. national interests. the risk that it would lead to further proliferation from the region. that iran would threaten our allies, israel and the saudis and others. the risk that a nuclear-armed iran might on purpose or

inadvertently provide weapons of fissile material to terrorists. basisesident has a clear on which to say that he will use many -- any means necessary to stop iran from having a clear weapons. the fact that israel has nuclear weapons is a separate issue and there is a process to try to achieve progress toward a nuclear weapons free zone in the middle east. that is not going to bear fruit any time soon. especially given current circumstances in the region. all countries support such a weapons free zone including israel. the question is what kind of conditions would be necessary before you could put that in place. the conditions are not ripe for that right now. good to see both of you back.

i have two questions i would like your views on. as long as we're talking to the iranians will not be bombing them so in that sense talking has value and also, the virus which the obama act administration inherited.

. .

we haveto emphasize, done some very good work on this. we will be doing more with that. we hope to have an event with jack and some actual negotiators in the coming weeks. i believe you are next. >> mark finley. thank you for another great event. for does this world being exchange rates? how does the ongoing discussion around currency wars are efforts to stimulate domestic demand play into that? nice of you? i will let dave take that. i'll make a programming note. i hope you're doing this consciously. we will have a potentially ground-breaking conference

tomorrow from 9:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m. in this very room on currency manipulation, currency wars, trade retaliation, legal implications. this is done under the leadership of joe danny and -- ganyon. obviously fred will put in his work as well. we have a distinguished legal about legalng retaliations in linking to the wto. i will be chairing a luncheon panel with the deputy governor of the bank of canada, deputy governor of the banco de brazil, talking about tensions in the currency field. this is the time to come to spend the day tomorrow. the wordsou see playing out in this forecast?

>> basically, i would expect the dollar to firm somewhat over the first half, three-quarters of this year, but then move sideways in nominal terms, given inflation differentials, probably some decline in the real dollar over the course of the next three years. that is part of what is providing us all a little bit of an upward impetus from external sectors. some of that is a pickup in activity, and some is a small decline in the real value of the dollar. i am not really anticipating any sharp or marked movement in the overall broad, real dollar. do not disagree with dave at all. that foreign exchange markets take all their cues from policy makers today and that they do not care about economic fundamentals, rather,

they only care about what policy makers say, if that is true, which i think is doubtful, in that sense, i would expect the european central bank to be the least willing -- they will sit on the fence. there will not do major kiwi, despite the japanese, the bank of england, and the fed continuing. despite the japanese, the bank of england, and the fed continuing. will fear from an exit prevent them from going. this will not happen in the midst of a german election. >> to restated slightly from a different point of view, i think monetary decisions are not going to be primarily driven by exchange rates, even in japan. they've already gotten depreciation. cd, for the reasons jacob

said, will not be sacrificing other goals for exchange-rate goals. obviously some smaller questions made. the question is whether switzerland or brits sold or turkey, how that plays out. to pick up on the exit point, there will be a premium on reverse musical chairs. no one will want to be the first to tighten, even though it is probably good news creek no one will want be the first to tighten because that will probably have a big short-term exchange rate impact. that may come back to buy this in a minor way. >> somebody in the back now. >> alan wolff. a question about china. my assumption is that nothing next three the

years, but what is the trend? is there some internal balancing that is going to go one, greater domestic demand, and moved in the direction the u.s. has been proselytizing, or not? have followed everybody else and pet -- and pivoted this panel to asia, instead of reminding people non- asia. a man standing next to who will give you a canned summary. i will give you my distilled version. as has been articulated in proposals, there is a path that the chinese regime can follow to rebalance domestically. it is reasonably consistent with their stated priorities. it requires some financial measure of liberalization, and

it is doable in skill. in taiwan, they are making chip -- similar shifts in these tell, moving into a more balanced economy. is that fair? touches base with all of our regional experts. when we put in that bullet point about 8.5%, that would be nick's assessment of where the trend will be over the next few years. richard? about result?more brazil seems to be the betweent swing country capitalism and the 21st century. where do think brazil is going? what is the impact on other countries on both sides of the communist-capitalist fence?

>> that is an appropriate characterization. it is the swing state between the 21st century socialist and 21st century capitalist -- it has emphasized some of the aspects of social spending, somewhat less protectionist compare to argentina, which is currently the winner in latin america in trade protection. obviously has slowed down in terms of its growth. whether you think that a fromtural or a hangover there aretimes -- things that brazil needs to do. the press has picked up on this, purcell the longer being the country of tomorrow, but the country of today. i think that is unfair.

a fair do think there is comparison with mexico is that brazil has some of the same microeconomic challenges mexico is currently addressing. perhaps some of mexico's difficult but important reforms will help with purcell undertaking politically challenging reforms. obviously, education is a challenge, and another is infrastructure. is real problem in brazil the brazilian cost, where companies that invested while brazil has been growing, and brazil has a wonderful internal market -- it is the sixth or seventh largest economy -- that is immaterial -- there is a large cost of business in

brazil. that brings down brazil in terms of competitiveness. that is not an easy step. work on at of hard lot of different planes. this is a time for brazil to take a look at that. take a look at its position concerned with openness. it is not a very open -- and not a very open economy. if you look at economies that capitalist, countries, they're looking at asia, they are trying to harmonize their trade agreements, they are trying to barriers,some of the the costs that are keeping them from participating fully in global such pot -- global supply chains. brazil is focusing very much of probablyrica, that is keeping brazil back. >> there is such are rich world

out there. are really covers brazil. we chose to emphasize some of the swing stories. we completely agree that brazil is a swing state. could ask you, barbara, the drawings you bought one step further, your characterize in where theyopenness, were most backwards or anti- market was in terms of international investment policy. maybe i'm wrong about that. the investment freedom, i think, was where they were doing poorly. could you say a little bit more about in the current political situation, what the ideological content? are they pragmatic? how do you see the investment issues in brazil? good market efficiency was a little lower than investment freedom. i think that impacts investment.

we've talked to companies that want to increase their investment in brazil and seem to be in line with brazil's policies, trying to promote high-tech development, higher value development, which makes sense, but then they impose these tariffs which make it difficult for companies to import necessary inputs. it brings up the cost for them of production. it brings up the cost of investing. it increases the cost of consumers. inflation in brazil is hitting the upper bound of their target, which is about 6.5%. think, yes, in terms of limits on some of the -- probablyes taxation, i probably should have included something on the

efficient tax mechanisms. that gets complicated. in terms of their good market controls, that is probably just as important. >> thank you for clarifying. anybody else? taking internal questioners. yes, you do. go to the back. [laughter] do not pass go. >> this is a question for dave. you said the threshold would be a trigger. could you elaborate on that? they're notan telling us the whole truth now, or do you think by the time we get there, they will become scared or there will be political pressure? why do you think that these two things will get together?

>> i should qualify my assertion. i'm thinking that it is going to be closer to trigger than a threshold because the unemployment rate will be on a steady downtrend when we hit 6.5%. they will be looking ahead. there will be uncertain about what level of unemployment is the natural rate or full employment. two, they will be getting that point with growth above potential and a downtrend in the unemployment rate. looking ahead, when they actually get to 6.5%, they will use that opportunity quickly to have an initial increase in the funds rate. if that is wrong and we are approaching 6.5% on a shallow or trajectory, i could see that being more of a threshold than the trigger. they might decide to be a little bit more relaxed about the unemployment rate, wanting to make sure that the improvement they have seen it will be sustainable. i do not think they are

deliberately attempting to mislead us. this is more of of forecast about how they will approach a mattermployment, than of thad communication being an attempt to talk down interest rates when they do not mean it. in fact, i think they have been reasonably clear about that. that sort of my view on that issue. >> thank you, dave. anyone else? have we beat you into submission with our mastery of the entire world? no, i see a gentleman trapped there. give him a microphone. i wanted to ask, there is a lot of talk between the u.s. and european union about expanding trade relations, but how will that affect 24 session -- 21st century socialist

countries? do you think there will open up now that two of the most powerful economic forces would expand their trade? >> that is an interesting question. whether the ttip could cause pressure on the 21st century socialist countries, in the short term, that probably would not be the force i would be looking at for changes in economic policy. haveof these countries strong relationships with both the u.s. and the eu, but are not actively engaged in trade negotiations and do not have preferential trade negotiations, trade agreements with either of those countries. a lot ofs you see trade diversion as a dive -- as whichult of the ttip,

given the commodity exports of most of these nations is unlikely, i do not think it would be a pressure point. but it is an interesting thing to think about. they do not seem to be swayed by other trade agreements or other countries entering into free trade agreements with the united states. in the case of venezuela, that has caused them to take a more inward actions, abandoning the community, colombia, peru, and becoming a full member of america del sur. they are in negotiations with the eu, but have been since the early 2000's without any real movement there.

those negotiations accelerate and something actually happens, that would be exciting. >> that would be competitive liberalization in action. ten determine? -- truman? >> one comment and one question. on,comment, you all touched the first move in monetary policy, whenever it comes in the world -- i agree we will not see it right away -- i'm not sure history bears you out, adam, that that will produce a big surge in the exchange rate of that country. the lesson of 1994, which is what everybody is talking about in the bond market, it was the reverse. thatate went down in period substantially. it had something to do with the

beginning of the clinton administration and punitive trade wars with japan, but it was a classic example where the exchange rate did not follow interest rates. -- thises to a question is not a criticism -- how do we put it altogether? the united states is doing a bit better -- a bit better. europe is going to be where it has been for the next 18 months. latin america is going to be somewhat mixed. not much better. countries, and other emerging market countries, will be a mixed bag. we're looking for maybe a little more growth this year than last year in the world as a whole, but decidedly subpar. i'm looking for some confirmation in terms of the

take away. that does have some implications the other side of the currency were, like whether, how many countries will go the route of active depreciation of their currency to try to get out. i think is pretty difficult for any major country, including now meaningo actively -- sell their domestic currency on their foreign exchange market -- to do so. i do not see the u.k. or the ec or the united states doing it. cb or the united states is doing it. i would be interested in the comments on that. >> do you want to do this coming up? >> i have drunk the kool-aid. bank story, major

central bank stories, that they are pursuing their domestic objectives with very expansionary monetary policy is in fact what is proceeding. it is not principally organized around an effort to have a competitive devaluation. i think they must recognize that that is not necessarily even possible, but as you point out, the global economy, certainly the major advanced economies, are also weak that i think this application of expansionary policy, maybe not so much the ecb, but certainly in the united states, we will see more in the united kingdom, we are already seeing the bank of japan, more active discussions, and that this is both necessary in the current setting -- to some extent, central banks have been

placed in a position that they are uncomfortable with, they did not ask for, but they've got it. despite the fact that major central banks have lost some credibility over the past five or six years in the wake of the financial crisis, they are still the most credible policy game in town, certainly relative to the fiscal authorities. it would be great if we could have a different mix of ies.cies across the economy i it could take some pressure off of the extreme pressure center banks have been forced into. i do not see that coming. i have a slightly different view than adam does, at least on this issue of fear about being the first when the time comes. actually, i doubt that the fed is going to be too deterred by fear, especially of a currency

appreciation. they will take that into account. there will be more fearful that there will be bumps in the road when the tightening begins. there will be bonner abilities that the fed does not see cropp it will not be a smooth process. i think when the time comes there will be looking at domestic circumstances and they will take the plunge. they might do so slowly to test the waters. the fed did not tell the markets anything about its policy intentions back then. we just did it. now i think there will be an active to have a more communication policy, prepare the markets for when the time comes. that will not ameliorate all the vulnerabilities, but

it will certainly help. >> thank you so much. dave has the last word on the federal reserve. thank you you all for joining us -- thank you all for joining us i hope you'll join us tomorrow live for tomorrows currency conference. mark your calendar for six months when dave and another pair of senior fellows will give you the global economic prospects from the peterson institute. we will see many times in between. this meeting is adjourned. [applause] >> in a few moments, a discussion on campaign fund- raising with the finance chairs of the obama ann romney 20 toll presidential campaigns. "washington journal" is live at 7:00 with a focus on partisanship in the senate, the country's infrastructure, and

the use of domestic drones. several live events to tell you about today. representative elijah cummings of maryland speaks at the national press club about his legislation on gun trafficking. that is at 10:00 eastern. at 11:00, the national rifle association releases a report on preventing gun violence in schools. former congressman and a son hutchinson will present the report. this week, a federal appeals court hears arguments on a lawsuit over whether the transportation security administration procedures to violate constitutional protections against unlawful searches and seizures. that is at noon eastern. now a discussion on thant -- on campaign fund-raising with the finance cares of the obama ann romney 20 toll presidential

campaigns. their discussion includes the significance of online donations and super pacs and how campaign fund-raising may change in 2016. this form was hosted by the university of chicago's institute of politics and is moderated by bloomberg columnist jonathan alter. a half. [applause] >> thank you. and thanks everybody for coming. this is an exciting deal to have student of politics at the university of chicago as a chicago native, i'm just thrilled by this and thrilled to be able to take part of in it. and i wanted to start out tonight with a quote from a man named. marka -- mark hannah who lived and was more than more than 100 years ago. and he was william mckinley's campaign manager in the

election of 1896. which had a lot in common with 2012, as i'm going to mention in my's book. and hannah said there are three essential things in america politics, money and i can't remember what the other two are. and hannah went around to all of the heads of the largest corporations in america in 1896 and he got them all to make major donations to the mckinley campaign including cyrus mccormick whose corporation is based in chicago, mccorpsic -- mccormick reaper. and he just blew out william jennings bryant, the boy orator

from platte, nebraska, who is the populist, and that year the economic party candidate. this time around, 2012, the money raised was a lot more even. and contrary to a lot of expectations, as we'll get to, but i wanted to just start out with some basic facts before we start our discussion. let's start with you, spencer. how much did you raise altogether, and how much of for division and the other important functions of the campaign? >> thanks, jonathan. let me start by saying thank you to everyone at the institute of politics. david, thank for you hosting me

here and allowing me to be here. coming from boston and from the romney campaign, i got an invitation to come to chicago and come to the institute of politics and pause and say well, gosh, i wonder how i'm going to met at the institute of politics and president barack obama's back yard. and i have to compliment everyone here at the institute of politics for the way you have welcomed not just me but other members of the romney campaign, so thank you for allowing conversations like this to take place where we can look beyond the partisan nature of politics and have a real conversation about political campaigns and what's happeningo . to answer your question, jonathan, we raised just under $950 million for the romney campaign. now, that includes money that was raised of course in the primary that we raised and spent in the primary, about $100 million. we weren't able to use in the general election. you look at the overall spending of the romney campaign

, about 2/3 of it really went into advertising of some kind, whether that was web advertising or tv advertising. and the other sort of largest line item was other than get out the vote political a ratous, whether it was done through the digital team or the political field operations. but those are the biggest line operations. we raise the money and the political strategists spend the money. there's always a healthy debate as every campaign strategist knows in every budget meeting about trying to forecast how much will be raised and where it's going to be spent. we tried to limit as much as possible the overhead of the campaign. and try to maximize every dollar going to turn out the vote. we're not always successful in doing that, but about 2/3 goes into advertising. >> juliana, you had the first

billion dollar campaign, is that right? >> we ultimately raised $1.1 billion and it was exciting. when we hit the billion, we were like oh, my god, we never thought we'd get there. but as far as a the spending goes, you have the same issues on your side, too, the push and pull between the raising and spending but as everyone knows we had a huge g.t.o. effort and we spent significantly on that and on tv, too. i don't know exactly the breakdown but pretty close. require think it's close or a little less on tv? >> it's probably a little less on tv. >> you probably know the breakdown. was it less, just for the record? >> yes, i think it was less. > less than the 2/3. >> a reason for that. >> maybe in the q&a we can get

you to address that a little bit. >> there was a lot of publicity about this billion dollar goal early on in 2011, and people on the campaign were telling me, no, no, no, we'll never raise a billion dollars and that it's too bad it leaked out because it's not really in the cards. that's a ridiculously high number. so why, other than the fact that people like the president and -- what was the -- how did you split the atom on online fundraising and the other things that got you up over a billion dollars? >> well, i mean, we started out like we did in the 2007 and 2008 race. we did a lot of major donor fundraising which is usually comprised of events with the president. those tend to be the higher ticket items. and with that people want to

come and get their photo taken, you know, with the president or the first lady or you can say with axel rod. we did a number of events like that early on. we did some online fundraising but the online fundraising basically kicked in the last half of 2012. which makes it a little bit difficult to budget but we sort of knew, we raised $880 million in the 2007-2008 campaign including the d.n.c. we thought ok, maybe we can get close to what we had before we raised then so that's how we sort of budgeted it. >> you didn't have the same allegiance from the donor base, you know, a lot of people on wall street had been with the obama campaign in 2008 kind of pieled off. your early events were a little bit underwhelming in 201 1. you weren't quite behind the eight-ball but you weren't doing as well as you had anticipated. so what changed? >> well, i think we had set

goals and we reached our goals. there were no events we didn't reach our goal. so in that case we were very satisfied with the money we were raising. it was harder this time just in we had three million donors in the 2007-2008 race and ended up with 4.5 on this campaign and 1.9 of them, i think that's right. no, 2.9 of them were new to this campaign. to the current year. so we had a lot of new excitement, new people joining the campaign. i don't think it's a lot of folks weren't excited, it's just different. we didn't have the primaries, or the events, if you will, leading up that were just covered in the press. we had to create our own event. so going to a dinner out in los angeles, that's not going to get the press coverage, nor should it. if there's a debate somewhere, that would get coverage. when we were able to have the excitement with the president

and hillary and edwards and chris dodd during that time. >> a lot of it with john edwards. >> yeah. >> so 2.9 million new donors, these are people who they'd gone all the way through 2008 and hadn't given, despite all the excitement. >> right. >> who were those people and where did you find them? >> we did a lot of online advertising, found a lot of new online contributors. we, you know, talked to a lot of new donors that could give at the higher level and were able to get a the lo of new bundlers and those who followed what the president was doing and wanted to be a part of this campaign and for whatever reason hadn't been involved in the last one. >> what was your breakdown between the percentage that ave over $100, or $250, if you want to mesh occur that way? >> our average contribution by the time it was all said and done was $66 which is pretty amazing.

so about 97% was under $250. >> ok. now, this is not really a question that you probably want to answer, spencer, but how about for you guys? >> didn't look quite like that. the obama campaign had more new donors in 2012 than we had total. so just to put that in perspective. we had about two million donors and about four million contributions. over the course of the campaign. so about half the number of donors. when we started, we recognized that we had a -- had to go through a primary process or there wouldn't be a lot of online excitement. you can't build a big online fundraising in the primary because people aren't paying attention to the race in the primary. we knew that would come later and we were asked in every

fundraising money early on, how will you raise money the way the obama fundraising does without getting millions to join the team and we were running against newt gingrich and rick santorum trying to convince the voters that will happen at some point, not to the measure of the obama campaign. it did happen later on but early we had to build a fundraising strategy based on a high dollar approach. individuals that would give in the primary $1,000-plus. so our structure we put together was based on people that could go out and raise in $2,500 or $1,000 increments, $50,000 or $100,000 or $250,000. it was a much smaller group are people writing and raising larger amounts of money than the obama campaign. >> can you give us a little idea how much smaller? what percentage of your donors gave less than $200?

>> i'll give you a couple of these that i'm sorry to read them to refresh my memory but that list is now looking through the course of the entire campaign. start with the -- our highest level which is individuals who were responsible for $1 million. we had over 100 people on the campaign who were responsible for $1 million. >> bundlers, basically? >> as bundlers. >> right. >> in terms of giving, we had what we called the founding memberships and founding partnerships with individuals. and we looked at the giving guidelines or giving limits for the republican party. and there are always these trange numbers, $33,322. we've got to get rid of that, let's do $50,000 and $100,000 as a couple. so we marketed $50,000 founding memberships. we raised $100 million from couples that gave $50,000. we raised $80 million from

people who gave $100,000 as a couple. so 50 and 100. so you're close to $200 million just from people writing at least a $50,000 check. let's see. our club mitt program, which raised about $50 million for individuals who gave $2,500. so you can see where i'm going as you look at these numbers overwhelmingly, well over 50% of our money, more like 70% program. high dollar it wasn't until the very last three months of the campaign where we started to see large amounts of money coming in over the internet, average sized contribution towards the end of the campaign would have been over the $1,000 mark. it's very different in 1966. >> was there a time -- you were enormously successful with this, much more successful and

spencer was really one of the stars of the campaign for those of us who are following all of this, so you were enormously successful, but was there a point when you realized, you know what, by getting all these small donors, obama is turning them into volunteers and he's getting buy-in from average people who are giving as little as $3. >> yep. >> with the original ask for the obama people. and that they are turning their small donors into people who can really help with g.o. tv and other parts of the campaign and that's a weapon we don't have. did you guys confront that? >> we did. we thought a lot about it. it wasn't something that we pretended didn't exist. we knew every time the obama campaign got someone to write a check for $2, that individual will follow their investment and turn out to vote. they were going to be there as a volunteer.

it wasn't that we didn't want that, it's just that that's not where we can get the money and we were asked why do you rob banks? that's where the money is. my job was to go out and raise money. we originally thought we'd raise -- we set a goal of $500 million and that's what we said we think we can raise $500 million based on what john mccain and george bush did. then we heard this incredible number from the obama campaign that we were going to raise $1 billion. we had a meeting and got together and asked, how do we raise $1 billion? and sure enough, they delivered $1 billion. we quickly changed the structure how we were going to get $1 billion and we came very close and we ran it like a business. every state, every region had state chairs, city chairs, our finance operations is probably you losest thing to the -- know, i don't want to compare it to the obama political

machine because that's a -- you know, a whole other stratosphere but in terms of what we get on the finance side, holding people fired able, i mean, we volunteers, for instance that weren't hitting their goals. but you have to do that. if you're going to hold people to a standard and say these are the goals, these are the metrics, we measured them every day. and if they weren't working, we tried something differently and i think that's the reason we were able to come as close as we did on the money side. >> did some of them work on commission? >> i'm talking about -- these are volunteer -- >> your professional -- >> no, we -- it's a good question because in previous campaigns, many of these individuals, these consultants in various places work on a commission structure. we changed that and set a very high goal. we said look, we can go out and raise hundreds of millions of dollars and here's what that means for you in illinois. here's what that means for you

in los angeles. and in every market, we had a state chair that was ultimately responsible. that state chair is a volunteer individual who is able to hire, fire or promote the staff within that region. the staff were not paid on a commission, they were paid a fee if they were a consultant. if they were an employee, they were paid as an employee and then given a bonus based on us hitting certain goals. >> let's talk about the subgroups a little bit. wall street. any sense of how much money you raised from wall street altogether? > a lot. >> i think that's right. >> we were fortunate, i think, to get a lot of people from wall street who had been previous donors to the obama campaign in 2008 or to the clinton campaign in 2008. and so if you look at what we did in new york in the primary of 2008 versus what we did in

the primary 2012, comparing primary to primary, our new york number was up by about 85%. so if you're looking at wall street, and i would say overwhelmingly, those individuals gave money or voted for barack obama or hillary clinton in 2008. >> wow. >> we had meetings with folks in new york who we would do a little survey and without telling us who they voted for in the primary, on the democratic side, it was clear that the overwhelming majority of the room voted for and gave money to one of the democratic candidates and they said we're not doing that this time. >> it's been scary for you. >> it was really scary, it was. you know, we heard all the chatter from our new york folks. we had staff in new york, we had a small office there and they were a little nervous. the great thing is we were able to find new dollars in different communities, the lbgt community, we were able to find

new donors. and came out in droves they gave with their checkbook, too. >> any note, any idea of what percentage of your total money came from wall street? >> if you take new york city, it's probably the closest we can break that down, more than 15% of the money from the entire country came from new york city. >> and how about you guys, any sense of how much came from wall street? >> you know, we tried to do that. it was substantially less than what we did before but it was not -- i don't know the percentage. >> you measured everything, juliana. >> i don't know what you're talking about. >> everything. can you give us ballparks? >> we did really well in new york. if you look at it, it might have been, you know, the couple

-- one of them may have worked on wall street but we might have gotten a check from the other. >> sometimes you get one from the wife and maybe the husband would be -- since there was a gender gap -- >> right. >> maybe one would be giving to romney and the wife to obama? >> possibly. >> was there some of that? >> i don't know. we didn't really look at that too closely but probably. >> we would see that from time to time in places like new york and l.a. and boston. that would definitely be the case. remember, as juliana said, a lot of the fundraising at the high dollar level is event-driven and means the candidate or the president shows up to a market and they have an event and that's what drives a lot of the excitement and money raising. when the sitting president of the united states shows up in any market, i don't care where it is, there's going to be excitement and people will -- who may otherwise not be inclined to write a check

without an event get very excited about that. >> and the president was doing as many as six fundraisers a day, right? >> we did a lot of fundraisers. >> you have any idea how many he did altogether? >> i don't know the answer to that. it's a lot, though. more than has been done in the past. but, you know, the difference in 2008 and 2012, you know, he's a sitting president. we had, you know, the secret service we had to take into account their restrictions of where we could do events which would limit the space for the number of people we could raise from. even as fundraisers, we wanted to add 20 people who could write the maximum and sometimes space restrictions we weren't allowed to do that. that was a different befall. we had to do more events. >> right. so after the gay marriage announcement, did you see donations from the lbgt community just spike? could you actually see it? >> we had folks that were

trying to figure out on their calendars when they could do events, folks that would host fundraisers. we had several calls that day coming in. i think we can do it next month if it works for the president's schedule or vice president biden. so it kind of opened up a lot of events, people were ready to actually make the commitment and do the event. >> and spencer, how about in the mormon community, how big of a deal was that? any rough idea of what percentage of your money came from that community? >> throughout the campaign, no. it was a much bigger part of our fundraising in 2008 in the primary, to be honest, it ecame -- we raised records amounts of money in places like salt lake city, utah, in the primary of 2008. we actually raised more in the primary of 2008 in utah than we did in 2012 in the primary. there was definitely an evening out of the support.

it wasn't just from, you know, you start a fundraising campaign and you start with people who the candidate tends to know, has a long-standing relationship with. so we started with people that governor romney had known many years from his church, from his business in private equity, from the boston community. but that definitely evens out over time. >> while we're on this subject, spencer comes from normalon -- mormon royalty and his father, correct me if i'm wrong, your family dates back to joseph smith, right? and you were in the original group of the inner core of the original mormons and your father was one of the most -- is one of the most important people in the mormon church. >> i don't date back quite that far. actually, my grandfather joined the mormon church when he was 17 years old. >> ok. all right. i don't know why i -- in any

event, your father is a -- i'm glad you corrected me on the history. this part is correct, is one of the senior most officials. >> he is. >> in the mormon church. so were you surprised that there was not more discrimination against mitt romney based on his faith than there turned out to be? there were quite a number of evangelicals who had told pollsters they just could not vote for a mormon under any circumstances and then they did. was that a surprise? >> not so much a surprise that they voted for him because we knew they weren't going to turn out and work for president obama. the question is, were they actually going to mobilize for mitt romney? so we weren't worried they were going to leave the republican

party and go help president obama. but, you know, it's something you deal with -- we talked a lot more about it in the primary than we did in the general elections. remember, governor romney was still a mormon when he became the governor of massachusetts. people say, well, how -- this is going to be a big problem in the general election. we said remember, this is a guy that the mormon millionaire who won for governor in massachusetts. so i don't think -- we never really saw it as a problem from the general population. it was something we talked about much more in the primary than the general. >> and did it hurt him in the primary? you think he might have wrapped it up earlier if he had not been a mormon? >> i think the running in 2008 certainly paved the way for him in 2012. -- questions we got in 2018 2008 didn't exist in large measure in 2012. >> ok. let's talk about the online

dimension of this. juliana, why don't you talk a little bit about the quick donate button and the, you know, what they sometimes called drunk donating, like drunk texting where things would go wrong for the campaign, you know, people would just donate -- >> buy a bunch of t-shirts and wonder what shows up at their door? >> was that that big of a deal, the quick donate? >> it was a big deal in that, you know, when we were able to get it happening, it was a huge help for most people, for the majority of folks but there were times when people would say, i don't want the -- you know, the 10 obama t-shirts i wordered. i don't recall ordering them so we would send them back to folks. but even when you shop online, it's great when you go to the same site twice and it auto

fills everything and has a record. that was great to be able to have that. and we came up -- i don't know if you use that this much but remember the texting to donate on your phone? we raised about a million with that one that got approved, too, which was a quick way for folks to give. >> i heard it was a lot more than that, the phone -- >> about a million in our champagne. >> it was late in the campaign when it finally got approved to where you could do it. because cell phone providers and others didn't want that to necessarily happen, so there was -- i know there was a big push to try to get it done early on in the campaign. i can't remember when it was, but it was late in the campaign when that finally was approved. >> juliana, could you talk a famous it about the email that -- the headline of which, i will be outspent from the president which was tested over and over again and

eventually started yielding, i think it was $12 million on that one email, and how the kind of cracking the code on online fundraising helped? >> sure. you know, the online community is an interest -- it's a diverse community, as we all know. we're all part of it, too. we knew that would work when the super pac would get a big contribution. there would be this panic. we've got a lot of people. we just need to get them to give. ultimately, people did pay attention.

we are in jeopardy of losing this election. it was a matter of doing it over and over again. >> and always worked better when things were going badly in the campaign. after the 47%, your fundraising went down. >> a little bit. >> how important was it to get over the fear of being obnoxious and in knowing with all the e- mails that people complain about? didn't you end up finding that the more e-mails ---isn't it true that the more you sent out, the more money came in? >> we could not be too obnoxious. . got the same e-mail four * we will look into it and say, you have a jibril account, a hot metal count. we would try to help people annoyed by us. out e-mails tod

get the money online. >> did you guys ever figure, maybe we should send more e- mails? you started with the $3 ask, which became popular. did you ever noticed that you could not be too obnoxious? too obnoxious? >> we were constantly sending out e-mails and constantly soliciting online. you got to be creative how you solicit whether it's a contest of some kind. so it's not just another e-mail from the campaign. you look at how we raised our money at the romney campaign, the finance focus was on the high dollar community. people will say that was a mistake you shouldn't have done that. we tried to get creative

in how our leadership team would so solicit fund. we provided e-mails and so it didn't just come from the campaign. if you're the state chair of illinois or market chair for los angeles, you begin to send out solicitation e-mails as opposed to coming from the national campaign. >> that's interesting, they will send to their business associates and that would be more influential coming from somebody in boston? >> we also created towards the middle of the general election something called a vertical mark program. we ended up raising about $60 million doing this. we realized that governor romney time was at premium when he would travelly to chicago, -- traveled to chicago, we can do an event there. or travel to dallas. he spent some time in boston.

we would have him in boston for an extended period. we could contact industry leaders from whether it's the insurance base or the financial services or pick an industry and try to find a uniting issue around all the leaders would be supportive of. then we used an e-mail from one of those industry leaders saying come and support this event. those were fantastic. that was basically a $65 million gift because we had ceos and other industry leaders trying to leverage other people from within their industry. when someone that is an industry leader and my industry sends me an e-mail rather than the campaign headquarters, i'm much more inclined to respond. >> a skeptic might say those folks were encouraged to get in order to buy favors if mitt

romney was elected. how would you respond to that? >> you can certainly say that about every single donor. if that's why someone give that they're going to be disappointed. >> what level do they have to give where they get access? if you're giving $66, you're not getting access unless you win the lottery to have dinner with the president or something like that. what level in the romney campaign did you get an audience with the candidate? >> towards the end of the campaign, there really were no audience with the candidate. he will show up and do events but there were no events with less than several hundred people set drug. it wasn't exactly one on one audience with the candidate. but we would use issues that were important to that industry and encourage a leader in that industry to bring others in because of two or three issues based on what governor romney

feel on that issue versus president obama. you would use broad issues as opposed to detail policy. mr.let's talk about super pacs. neither were your campaigns allowed to coordinate with the super pacs. you guys liked your smaller super pacs that weren't yours. you had bill burton doing on behalf of the president. you kind of liked what he was getting done. but in boston, not so much. you weren't thrilled with -- feeling like the super pac spending was getting its money worth. >> the law said you can't coordinate with the super