>> a live look at the capitol this morning, both bodies of congress out this week in their districts for the memorial day recess. they return for legislative business next week. economic news out of washington -- the number of americans seeking unemployment aid rose 10,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 354,000 assigned layoffs increasing. still the level of application is consistent with steady hiring. unemployment rate has dropped to 7.5%, and that is a four-year low will stop that is from the associated press. also, the economy grew at a fromt 2.4% annual rate january through march. that is likely slower than initially estimated.

consumer spending was stronger than first thought, but more slowly,stock and state and local government spending cuts were deeper. tonight we will look at the economy. the u.s. budget deficit and the future of science research. enriquez,is juan founder of the life sciences project. tenconomy. bio >> let's pull ourselves out of the business of discussing the fiscal deficit and talk about things that are important, which are the long-term trials. right now the fiscal debate is taking up all the oxygen in the room. you are either on the side or on the side. you have all kinds of fights about stuff which are reasonable compromises that have not happened. when you do that, what ends up

happening is you don't understand the truly important transitions taking place because you are focused all day, all the time, just on this. the bigmight be missing picture. here is what the big picture looks like. humans are the only species on earth to transmit data consistently to their kids across time. so maybe a dog learns commands, maybe a parent learns words, maybe we all have songs, but there is not an animal on earth that rights on cave walls. it is up to human beings. why is it so important to write on cave walls? is is how we have a baby, this is how we fish, this is how we dress. this is how we cook. these are musical instruments, and you just learned a whole lot about what is happening in argentina 2000 years ago. as you think about how we transmit knowledge, it is not enough for a tribe or an empire. why? because you have to go to the

cave to learn what is going on. and empire, on the other hand, looks like this. two things have happened. you have put the language on paper, papyrus, or clay, meaning you can transmit data across time, and you can also learn the lessons of why egypt fell. all of you clearly know that you can read that, right? , "cut thely says deficit." then what you do is you standardize line which, you put it in 26 letters, and it looks like this. and you can have huge libraries and transmit data across time. and then what has happened over the last 30 years is you collapsed all language into ones and zeros. that is the single creators -- single greatest creator of wealth humans have ever seen. they were not focused all the time on current problems but

were looking at the future that generated an enormous amount of wealth. you want to understand silicon valley, boston, singapore, bangor, india, is that transition right there. recent fiscalm a summit held in washington, d.c. you can see that entire event tonight at 8:00. enriquez that, mr. will join us live from boston to respond to questions. that is tonight on c-span. >> when the attorney general arrange me, he indicated that he wanted the death penalty on each of the three charges, that he wanted the death penalty three times. that made me realize how serious they were, and again, it made me realize it was not about me because first of all i could not be killed three times. it was about the construction of

this imaginary enemy, and i was the embodiment of that enemy. >> she was not that interested in talking about what happened am a this period, the crime, the .mplications of the fbi the love story. she was not interested in talking about it. she is one of these people you do not necessarily go to directly, and i was trying to get to her directly. i figured out there were very important people in her life, from the people she knew and trusted. i was able to get them to write letters, let them see my previous work, and slowly she came around and she agreed to meet me. lynch on theshola life of 1960's activist angela davis, send a at 8:00 on "q&a."

and washington became the first two states to legalize marijuana last year, and according to a pew study, about half the country supports legalizing marijuana. a recent study conducted by the brookings institution shows that views have changed but the support is not so clear-cut. all of you in this room know that last month the states of colorado and washington legalize marijuana in the teeth of u.s. federal prohibition, something that no jurisdiction in the modern world has done, outright legalization of not only consumption but distribution, sale, and so on. those two states are not likely to be the last. there are bills in the legislature to legalize in rhode island, massachusetts, nevada,

oregon on, maine, pennsylvania, that i know of. initiatives likely in 2014, 2016, states that may include california, oregon on, maine, alaska. we are just seeing the beginning of something, but what? states began decriminalizing, allowing the use of medical marijuana back in the 1970's, so there is nothing new about that. but something very different seems to have happened lately, as if this iceberg suddenly surface above the water with legalization, and a new kind of momentum. what is going on? how durable is it going to prove to be? what are the implications not just for drug policy but for american politics more generally in this very new territory we are entering. i would like to welcome you all here to discuss that and thank you for it. this event is part of a series that brookings and our partner

organization, the washington office of latin america are conducting. we thank peter lewis for making this possible today. i especially thank our panelists, who as you are about to hear have done a pretty remarkable job. i hope all of you have picked up a copy of their paper, which is released today on brookings website, on the new politics of marijuana legalization. it is a gold mine of information. are verydj experienced, very distinguished scholars of public opinion, and that helps, but it also helps that they had access to i think it is safe to say more data in one place than anyone has ever had on this issue before, including some data that is not publicly available, and they did cross tabs in ways that no

one has ever even conceived of. you will get the fruits of their research in just a moment. a word about each of them. you can read the bios on your own, so i will keep this short. bill is a senior fellow at brookings, the holder of the chair at brookings government studies program. he is a participant in six presidential campaigns. i am trying to work out how you get to six. i was going to say, was it smith or roosevelt? he is the author of eight books. dion, to his left, also known as a syndicated columnist of "the washington post," a professor in the foundations of democracy and culture at georgetown university. a great title, by the way. i would like to have that on my

business card. they will talk about 10 minutes each on different aspects of their findings. and ao speakers -- greenberg is the senior vice greenberg quinlan russert research. she has a spirit to both -- she has worked with many elected officials, many advocacy groups, directly on point for us, she has done extensive polling and research for advocacy drug policy reform and, including, among many other things, she led the research supporting washington successful initiative 502, the legalization initiative that passed in november. she has also been active in this come in other states california, oregon on, alaska, south dakota, and the list goes

on. lgbtas expertise in rights, politics, women's tohts, and i would like thank republican for equal access to a gold mine of data which she and her colleagues have developed, and of course their research over the last two years. i panelists will agree they benefited greatly from access to that book. last but hardly least is my favorite rising star in the world of political commentary, and man to watch if there ever will was one. a reformed lawyer, but no one is perfect. electionse senior analyst for real clear politics. he is someone i have always watched because he does his own thinking, his own research, and looks at the statistics every morning to understand what is really going on. he is the author of the 2012 book "the lost majority: why the future of government is up for grabs and who will take it."

and he is the co-author of the 2014 edition of the almanac of american politics, often called the bible of american politics, which he will be co-authoring with the distinguished michael barone. are onlinef you who and following on twitter or who want to tweak a question, we are taking questions via twitter today. hashtag is #mjlegalization. >> it is a pleasure to be part of this panel. each of us has 10 minutes. i have seven points to make in my opening remarks, so i will be risk. academics 50 minutes for a lecture, i would share with you my analysis of how the

change in sentiment about the legalization of marijuana tracks cultural history of the past 4.5 decades, american history. i think a rise in the early 1960's through much of the 1970's, a decline in support, a dramatic decline in support starting in the late 1970's and moving through much of the reagan years. a gradual rise during the clinton years. stabilization during much of george w's -- or chubby bush's term, and then a take off like a rocket in the last eight years or so. pro-legalization sentiment is up 20 points in just over a decade, e.j. willpart, as the rise in liberalism

among young adults. that is my first point. dramatic upsurge in support for legalization. isnts 2 -- this upsurge broadly based. in recent years, support for legalization has risen in every subgroup we examined. men and women, blacks, whites, hispanics, republicans, and independents as well as democrats, conservatives, moderates, as well as liberals, and all ages at every level of education. three -- this shift is not ,riven by moral conviction unlike many other social issues. yes, the share of americans who view marijuana use as immoral has fallen 50% to 32%. as moral that view it

has barely budged and now stands at only 12%. so what is this missing half of the population? they don't see it as a moral issue at all. that, it seems to me, is close to the heart of the matter of the shifts. so they don't see it as a moral issue at all. what do they see when they look at it as a practical issue? well, this brings me to my fourth point. public perceptions of basic facts have changed in ways that prepare the ground for a shift toward prolegalization sentiment. let me list two of the major perceptual shifts. first of all, marijuana is no longer considered worse than alcohol along the dimensions that most americans bring to that judgment. second, and perhaps even more important, there has been a

sharp decline in the percentage of americans who see marijuana as a gateway drug to things that are harder and even more dangerous. that percentage now stands at who do notersus 58% see marijuana as a gateway drug. here is the other aspect of the shift toward the practical topic. , a mains we can see pole in the tent of the prolegalization shift is the difficulty and consequences of enforcement of marijuana prohibition, and this is much like the shifting sentiment during the 1920's, early 1930's, about prohibition. 72% of americans now believe that government efforts to

enforce marijuana laws cost more than they are worth. this consensus includes the majority of every population subgroup we examined. here was a striking finding. even when respondents are told is stilljuana use prohibited under federal law, 60% of respondents in the pew survey say that the federal government should not enforce its own law in states that have legalized the use of marijuana. again, this anti-enforcement sentiment is extremely broad- based. among the subgroups that we examined, there is no group a majority of which supports federal enforcement against the states. point 6 -- in our analysis, this issue is not fully analogous to other social

toues that it is tempting try to compare it to. unlike abortion, there has been a strong shift towards one side of the debate that is unlikely to be rehearsed -- reversed anytime soon. entrance into the pool of adults in the american population for purposes of survey research, anyway, is on balance about twice as likely to be in favor of legalization as are those who are exiting the pool of adults, through death. but, unlike same-sex marriage, many of those who favor legalization are nonetheless uneasy about their position. there is a fair amount of residual ambivalence. there is not a lot of them to z as him. i suppose on some college campuses you could find some

enthusiasm, but in the population as a whole, there is ambivalence and a kind of that theon to the fact effort to enforce marijuana , so its been so costly is not worth it anymore. seventh and finally, there is a key unknown. the extent of which is hard to assess. it is possible -- i underscore the word possible, that as millennial's age, get married urge -- get married, and have children, they will shift towards caution much as their boomer parents did in the late 1970's, laying the basis for a more conservative tide. nonetheless, we view it as unlikely that the dramatic shift of public opinion that has occurred particularly in

the past 10, 11, 12 years, will be fully reversed in the decades to come. thank you. >> thank you. a marvelous summary. e.j.? >> thank you. i want to thank jonathan. there is no one more enthusiastic among the people who work with him as jonathan. andnt to thank karen davis ross who checked all our numbers. this paper is full of numbers. if there is anything wrong in here, it is surely not their fault, and i'm grateful. and lastly, mike and make -- and and a greenberg, mike of anna -- mike was extraordinarily helpful. and some of the other people at brookings i could think. the fact that this room looks a lot younger than most brookings rooms suggests one of two things.

either lots of in terms have started arriving in washington, or our analysis in the paper is correct -- and maybe both are true. because when you look at this theretoward legalization, are two important facts. one you can see if you have the paper on the chart on page two. where the movement, even in the last few years, since 2010, in favor of legalization crosses all groups, and is marked among older respondents. it is important among middle- age respondents, and there is even an increase among those who are most hostile to marijuana legalization or those over 65. but the other aspect of this that makes it so interesting to speculate about what the future on this issue is, is an interesting clumping by age.

it has some things in common with the movement toward support for gay marriage, but also there is a difference. on the one hand what it has in common is there is a large gap between those under 30 and those over 65. if you look at chart one on page 12, you will see the numbers are almost exactly reversed. to 34, the 18 to 29 -- year-olds favor legalization by 33 -- by 33 to 64, people over 65 oppose legalization. -- that wouldjust thatst that we are -- would suggest we are unlikely to return to a time where there is strong overwhelming opposition to the legalization of merrill wanda by virtue of generational change. is the clump in the middle much more closely divided.

53%g 30 to 64-year-olds, to 65% favor legalization. or is a shifting in that group that favors legalization. that makes it somewhat difficult -- that makes it somewhat different from gay marriage, and i will come back to that. where opinion is almost on a straight line by age. theort just regularly rises younger the cohort gets. it must be fun to poll on this issue because it is not like all other issues we are dealing with. one of the things that struck bill and me when we were going through the data is that this is not -- this does not have quite the partisan or ideological flavoring that so many other issues have. yes, there is partisanship, and ideology here, not surprisingly, democrats and liberals more

likely to favor legalization than republicans or conservatives. and if you put them together in the smaller groups, liberal democrats are very strongly for legalization, conservative republican strongly against. but what is striking is there are very large minorities in each of these groups -- liberal, conservative, republican, democrat -- who dissent from the dominant view. that is 37% of conservatives and republicans favor legalization, thus do 39% of democrats and 25% of liberals oppose it. the relatively small part of the gap in comparison with other issues can partly be explained by the fact that republicans are not nearly as likely as democrats to say they have used marijuana. 43% of republicans reported past use him as did 47% of democrats -- past use, as did 47% of

democrats. whites ande him on blacks is identical but much lower among hispanic. there is agreement across partisan lines, and this goes to one of the central points that bill underscored, that government efforts to enforce marijuana laws cost more than they are worth. you will see this on one of the charts. his view is held by 72% of all americans, 78% of democrats, 71% ofi am sorry, 78% independents, 71% of democrats, 61% of republicans. a similar split among liberals, moderates, conservatives. even among opponents of legalization, there is great skepticism about the value of enforcing laws against marijuana, and significant

support for giving states that legitimize it, it turns out there are a lot of conservatives who not only mouth slogans about states rights but actually believe them. conservatives are among the shortest opponents of legalization, yet their traditional sympathy for states rights and their skepticism about government efficacy weakens their support for strong enforcement. ,f you, on the direct question this from the pew survey -- if the federal government enforces ,errill wanda laws in states 57% -- of marijuana laws in and 52%57% of liberals of conservatives said the federal government should not enforce its own prohibitions. the gap among republicans between the proportion supporting legalization and the proportion who nonetheless want

the federal government to stand down in the face of legalization efforts is 20 points. for conservatives, that gap is 15 points. it is also in a way nice to know that democrats and liberals are somewhat consistent on this as well. there is no states rights gap for democrats and liberals. the proportion of democrats who oppose legalization is 39%, and anti-who favor federal marijuana -- enforcement of marijuana laws in the face of state action is 35%, a four- point gap. liberals are almost identical on the two questions. so that if the argument -- i think this could have some very important consequences as the debate over what the federal government should do on this issue goes forward. democrats and liberals won't want the federal government to

enforce these laws because they are sympathetic to legalization, but a lot of republicans and conservatives won't want the federal government to enforce these laws because they are sympathetic to states rights. there is a way in which the issue is a classic social issue. twog religious groups, only show clear opposition to the legalization of marijuana, again, from the pew numbers. white evangelical protestants, 59% opposed. -- 51%c catholics, 50 oppose. the other groups were closely split. unaffiliated, and this overlaps, were overwhelmingly in favor of legalization. a similar and stronger pattern emerges based on attendance at religious services. those who attend once a week,

63% oppose legalization. among those who never attend, .3% oppose legalization white evangelicals in particular, for most of the country it is not a moral issue, but for white evangelicals it is. 32% overall say marijuana is morally wrong, but 55% of white evangelicals believe this. there is some interesting evidence which we can talk about in the discussion on the parental gap. it appears from the pew data there is no gap between parents and nonparents, but a difference between married parents and unmarried parents. there is a parental gap -- and i anna might elaborate on that a little bit. so we can move on to the

discussion, i want to close this way. of trend i think in favor legalization is unlikely to be reversed radically, but there is a lot to play for on this , and a great deal depends, because of ambivalence on this, about how these marijuana legalization experiments work, and here i think what we could see is, for a proponent to legalization, the fear should be prohibition in reverse. lost public support because of the unintended consequences, what people who support legalization will have to do is make sure there are not untoward unintended consequences. a lot of times in these haveenda, people supported legalization for reasons somewhat ancillary to legalization. that it is a waste of public

resources, that it is spotty and unfair, or that it can be taxed and provide a new source of public revenue. whether these trends continue will depend a lot on the kinds of regulations that are imposed, and whether they are successful, and very much on how the federal government decides to deal with these states on this question. on all this hangs whether strong support for marijuana legalization among young americans and doors and whether they have the capacity -- and doors, and whether have the capacity to create a new majority on a cause that was once supported by only a few. thank you. >> thank you, that was marvelous. let me put a question to the two of you. i urge you all to read in the paper, as detailed as that summary was, there are

surprises all the way through it. for instance, with marijuana, unlike gay marriage, if you know gay people, especially gay couples you probably support it. not true with a ravana. it is not who unit -- not true with marijuana. knowing people who smoke or use our wanda does not have an effect. about thequestion future. if i am reusing -- if i am reading this paper, what you are saying in effect is the consensus has shifted far enough so there is no going back to a sustainable one-size-fits-all policy of prohibition, that that is unlikely to be supportable in the future. is that a correct reading? >> i thought you were asking them. >> i will ask these two and then bring the two of you in. is the consensus shattered to a point where we can no longer

have a national policy of prohibition of marijuana? or does that depend on these outcomes? >> i would respond this way. i think it is much more likely in the next decade or so that we on a state- pursue by-state basis, and the congress of the united states will be loads to touch the legal status quo with any length poll that we care to designate. my hunch is that it will be patchy. that there will be some states where the prolegalization majority is close to permanent. unlikely to be turned back. there are others where it is not true, and we may very well be a patchwork nation on this issue for the next generation.

of anclude, the idea dramatic change in the legal status of marijuana at the national level, i think, is not a conclusion that flows from these data, as least as -- at least as i see it. at adon't think we are tipping point. i do think we are at a tipping point on gay marriage. what we see in national surveys are close splits nationwide. pew had it at a slight majority. other surveys show a slight majority the other way, but they are all within the margin of error of each other. i think there will be a lot of interest on the part of a lot of members of congress to try to avoid this issue for a while while it works its way through. >> wonderful. anna, your experience with this is so granular, how does it sound to you? >> i decided to charge my ipad,

so if it dies, i will need help. beingf the work proprietary and used by campaigns to talk publicly about it, it is sort of fun. i wanted to basically expand upon a few of the things you talked about. in the context of understanding why legalization may be different than gay marriage or abortion, for example -- the first one is importance of personal experience. in a transactional way, it is true that if you do a model on support for legalization, it is whether or not you use is how long it has been been. if you use in the last 10 years, you are more likely to support band if you are a baby boomer in college and have not smoked it for the last 25 years.

personal experience is hard to change. you cannot change somebody's personal experience. if they have personal experience that leads them to have a particular attitude about legalization, they are not persuadable. in the country's demographics -- we call it generational displacement -- generational replacement -- if you have somebody who has a cousin who smoke pot all day and never got off the couch and never got a job and then started doing other sorts of drugs, you will never convince that person that it is not addictive, even if it is not physically addictive, and you will never convince them it is not a gateway drug. even though the overall landscape has shifted on these issues, it is hard to convince anybody who has had that kind of personal experience. on the other hand, if somebody themselves as smoked marijuana in college and is a productive

member of society, they are much more likely to support legalization because they don't have a personal experience with all these negative consequences. thatny ways, that issue shapes us, it is really your personal experience. you can understand the lack of a parental gap in the same way. in the research we have done, we have not seen much of a gap in parental attitudes. kids under the age of 18. when you talk to parents, it is kids access to alcohol. if kids want it, they have almost unlimited access to alcohol, and they currently have almost unlimited access to marijuana. what they think is it might make things better because trying to have a regulatory system in place that potentially puts drug dealers, some drug dealers out of business, on the black market, how it is all going to

work, potentially makes it less available or more expensive for people under the age of 21. some parents say i would rather them be high then drive drunk. that is a minority of parents. but if my kids are going to do something, i would rather it be itohol then in terms of -- is very hard to think about trying to influence peoples use in those issues. on the other hand, something that we used as part of our strategy in washington, there are some people that are movable on the issue. that makes it different than abortion. -- forery hard to someone who thinks that a fetus is a living baby, you cannot change the line which because they know it is not. that is a core belief somebody has. similarly, if a woman believes it is part of her body and --

their view cannot be changed as well. i started working on marriage equality in 2004, and we spent time trying to change people's views in the context of surveys and the campaigns they were running and we were not able to do it. more and more people coming out has changed people's experiences. this is where marijuana is different. it goes to issues raised by that kinds of arguments used for legalization. which is the system is broken, it is not a good use of law enforcement resources. and it can be a source of potential revenue. i think that because there is the model of medical marijuana in some states, that has actually -- and you can see it in states that have medical marijuana, the attitudes toward legalization are different. people are more likely to support legalization. i just want to note, jonathan, while it is true knowing somebody who smokes does not

predict support, knowing somebody who uses medical marijuana does. you can see someone who gets the benefit and that it does not destroy their life and civilization does not collapse. it is a personable experience -- it is a personal experience, someone who uses medical marijuana. it is amazing, we get experimental work with media market experiments, trying to see response ads, and we tracked over the course of the campaign the-- what was happening at subject level. it is hard to move people, this country is so polarized ideologically and politically. but we saw a real movement. my view is that part of why we move people is first of all there is a lot of common sense. people actually don't think it is working, that prohibition is not working, that people are smoking as much as they want to

and wherever they want to for the most part, so generally people think it is not stopping it. and they think it is true that probably law enforcement resources could be used for a violent crime or for taking down gangs that are selling as opposed to dealing with individuals personal use. the other piece of it that i think is is fascinating is that they are essentially conservative arguments. if you look at the advertising in washington state, you will see a woman pouring herself a coffee shop, in a saying, "it is not that i like it, all right. is a value associated with it in that sense, and she is a middle-aged woman, and she says, "it is not that i like it, but the system is not working," and she talks about law enforcement and revenue. law enforcement as

spokespeople -- former prosecutors, former u.s. attorneys, those sorts of also talkedwho about this was not a good use of law enforcement resources and the system was broken. you might also think we are trying to back down on marijuana as opposed to legalizing it. what you see is that while it is true that in the polling you cited, 53% of people over 65 opposed legalization. 44% supported it in washington over 65. the essentially conservative arguments that we can stop this for kids toharder get it -- there is a conservative argument -- some people see it happen in real life, and that is why the medical marijuana example is helpful. i was in colorado springs where there are medical marijuana

dispensaries, and there was a middle-aged suburban housewife who said, wow, the lights got turned back on in the park and they are taking the garbage out of the park because of the revenue generated because of american -- because of medical marijuana usage. regardless, it was powerful because she had this personal experience with medical marijuana revenue. where do we go from here? e.j.ee with both bill and that the medical marijuana argument matters a lot. it is the case that if there were a federal effort -- and i am saying if because you could easily see this going the wrong way with the federal government, depending on how it is handled -- but it could have an effect.

on the one hand, if the federal government basically just thered it, then potentially systems get put in place, it does not make a big difference, there is some revenue and we see the kind of changes you are talking about at the state level, that state-by-state it will get passed. how these schemes are implemented makes a big difference, and how the ballot language is written and how the statutes are written matters a lot, and how you actually collect revenue. all of that is sort of an unknown. of there some models medical marijuana dispensaries. we still don't know. did on prop 19 in california, around l a county, where you have the

medical marijuana dispensaries, and a lot of stories of it going awry, there was a lot of impact on public opinion for legalization. two other things -- in terms of public opinion, there are plenty of people who support legalization who do not want it tightly regulated with taxes imposed on our wanted because in some places like california you have -- it is so easy to get medical marijuana referrals, i guess, not a prescription. so you have to be careful in the political sense from the left. in the other pieces, we don't know what is going to happen on the right. one of the things that makes it different from both marriage equality and abortion is there is not really opposition, funded opposition. there is no mormon church funding, not the massive pro- , ballotding

initiatives, and there was very little spending. there was some spending in colorado, no spending in washington against it. it is hard to see where that unlessomes from somebody has a personal interest in it. but there is not a lot of organized opposition to it, but that could change, that could evolve. i think the future is very uncertain. and while i agree i do not see public opinion reversing itself, in part because of the importance of personal experience and the experiences of the state and what that ends up doing to the electorate, which is in my view more and more accepting over time and maybe the benefit of a regulatory system. i think the voters in washington and colorado saw the benefit of a regular system -- of a regulated system versus an unregulated system. we don't know what the impact will be. >> fantastic. here is your unfair production

question. over the next five to 10 years are we talking about hard-fought battles or a shift of opinion that leads to a wave of adoption of legalization, regardless of what legalization supporters do? >> i think it depends on how it is pursued. if it is pursued legislatively, it is a hard-fought battle, but if it is through ballot we took the -- washington and colorado and they both would have passed. we don't have a lot of paid out positions, so i am not suggesting by any stretch that passing these initiatives is easy. it takes a lot of money and professional campaign and research and done right. that being said, without -- >> you have research. >> i do, lots of research. , it is the legislation

not as hard-fought. >> would you care to guess on the next couple of legalization states? >> no, i would not. [laughter] to haveespecially glad you here because you are new to the debate, and what is happening here is not just about marijuana, it is part of a large cultural story about politics. talk about that, if you would. >> i did want to start out thinking brookings for having me. i am in some really prestigious company. leaguerobably a bush move for me to admit that i am a awe,e bit in all, -- in but i am. talking about the marijuana forces and with the prolegalization forces have framed the debate, essentially

subsumed -- some conservative arguments in some respect. the question is, we hear about , and the question is is this some sort of shift -- are younger voters more liberal? in a sense that is almost chronological, that you have these more liberal decisions being embraced. in a more specific sense, i think that is a little bit too simple, because there are these other issues associated with social liberalism or libertarianism, attitudes on pornography, prostitution, abortion, and a few others. you have really not moved that much over the last few years, and so what i think we really see has to do with what i think is one of the most important factors in american politics, that people do not really talk about, is class. it is one of my kind of meta- series of america, which someday

i will write about. theoriesseries -- meta- of america, which someday i will write about. we have framed these debates in terms of medical american -- of middle american values. gay marriage is as american as apple pie today, and young people exposed to it in this frame are accepting because it is within the american tradition. whereas things like pornography and prostitution and abortion have not been framed as well in that particular way. this is long-standing. you can go back to argument over prohibition. i'll call will keep those immigrants in line. people like gustav, my great great grandfather managed to drink himself to death with cirrhosis of the liver at age 40.

i am not sure how he did that. there is nothing new about premarital sex, there is the lack of a strong class angle to it. you go back and you ask why is marijuana, which seems to many of us such a harmless drug, especially compared to alcohol, why was it illegal in the first place -- why was it legal in the first place? it was brought to america, perceived as being used by african americans, and he got lumped in as a street drug. you can at letters -- there is a wonderful and horrific letter from a law enforcement officer in louisiana to herbert hoover in the 1920's that says, "i can tell you this stuff is more dangerous than cocaine or opium, in my experience." this is the way it was framed to the silent generation and the greatest generation -- films that we now consider can't be

like "reefer madness," and there were a whole -- that we consider can't be -- that we campy like "reefer madness." of people who were over the age of 50 believed it should not be legal. when it got down to the baby boomers, it was a closer split. the reason is what we were talking about. baby boomers encountered it in college. some of them continue to use it in their later life, and if you have been around people who are high on drugs, it becomes immediately obvious the last thing they are going to do is go out and beat someone up. i would rush -- i would much rather be around someone high that i know than someone drunk. what did i say?

>> drug. >> if you look at the data, the wonderful chart, you will see that actually the class angle to it is inverted. it is people with low incomes that are more likely to think it is a gateway drug, that are more likely to think that it should not be legalized. it is even more striking when you consider the people in the lowest bracket probably include a lot of college students. skewing that upward from adult in low income brackets and what they agree -- what they believe. withame thing homosexuality. to someone born in the 1920's and 1930's, it is unthinkable. they did not even know what whatexual he meant -- homosexuality met, talking to my grandparents.

what is going on during that time? the face of the gay-rights movement is -- it is gay pride parades, and then you see this tick up starting in 1996, and i don't think it is accidental that that is when ellen to generous comes out of the degeneresthat ellen comes out on television. view, let people do what they want to, that hate is not a family value, puts it in the strong tradition of the american family. if you look before ellen, some of the people depicting homosexuality in the media, sexualled it as a dirty events -- things like " deliverance."

even with this different exposure -- in fact, in 1982, 61% of college graduates thought that sodomy should be legal. that is a one percent split among all the cohorts in the gallup polling. you compare this with some other issues. adultery and polygamy are still .n single digits in most polls adultery is bad because it is bad. polygamy is not something you think of your next-door neighbor doing. people in cults and weird places in utah. that is the face of polygamy. i have always thought that if three or four hollywood couples came out as pro-polygamy, you would probably see that number jumped up to 30% pretty quickly because the face of the changes. the way we think of it changes. and if the argument were to become about family and so forth, the thinking of the

changes. pornography -- this shocked me. attitudes towards democracy have not changed over the past 30 years. 31% thought it was moral in 2013. the reason it shocked me is the internet. but it is still not something that is really discussed in polite conversation. i think when you get up to an age where people are married, the adultery factor plays in there, but it is not mainstream yet. prostitution is still something that you go to the bad part of town to engage in. and abortion is something that something younot see a lot of celebrities admitting to. it is not something that is celebrated. most americans see it as something that is a necessary evil. there is a majority of support for abortion, but if you ask about the morality of abortion, those numbers are flipped.

again, to me, this really is not about the liberal or libertarian cultural shift, it is the way that these things are argued about in society. even marijuana, you think about the depiction of it in "back to 1985 movie. a it is a black musicians getting out of the car and smoking marijuana. today it is all about the housewife, to the suburban jungle. inthere is an interest pushing other issues forward, the real lesson is it has to be framed in terms of law enforcement, in terms of family, in terms of money, things that appeal to the great american middle class. >> that is a brilliant observation. a habit of has framing unfair headlines, and

yours would be "analysts say pot smoking is a boy joo family bourgeious family value." [laughter] >> even on alcohol i will be real brief. people forget about it when you get to rural counties in the south, there are a lot of dry counties out there. oklahoma did not legalize liquor until 1986. you had to bring your bottle of booze and write your name on it and put it up on a shelf. >> you wanted to say a word on this? >> first, sean has no need to feel awe. that was a great discussion. we will wonder how that happened. here's is an interesting thing.

i totally agree with you that morale and he is often defined in class and racial terms. i don't think there is any doubt that a long time ago marijuana use was associated and african- americans and therefore disdained by large parts of white middle-class america. what is striking now is its crossover, and i don't think the data shows that marijuana legalization is quite as much of a class issue now as that analysis would suggest. our own numbers from pew -- there is not a whole lot of difference either by income or by education, the two together often and decent measure of class. there is a bit of a gap but not an enormous class gap. i think the interesting question is when it crosses a certain point, the class disappears. anna.i can toss this to

anna's presentation, there are two things that struck us in our paper. people who want to legalize the people that want to veryize marijuana were smart to begin with efforts to legalize medical marijuana because there was an norma's difference in attitudes toward the goal marijuana versus marijuana for recreational use. one way to put it is ethical are gatewayserenda to legalization referenda. that does appear to be the case. again, it goes back to do these experiments work? there was a referendum in l.a. last week in connection with the mayoral election. which puts limits on the medical marijuana dispensaries. again, how these experiments of various kinds work, i think,

will make an enormous difference. i'm curious on the class questionnaire >> i think you are making a different point, which is not that there are class differences now, but once an issue moves over to the middle class, then it becomes noncontroversial. >> i agree. i think that is right. >> in terms of numbers now, i do not see a great class split on this issue. >> it is not that it is turned upside-down, it is that the split has gone away, bill? >> i actually have many more questions than answers. so, i actually have a question for anna about data and a question for sean about data, which i think will be in your wheel houses. i would first note that when you go back to prohibition, there

was a medical exception written in. that was a very important safety valve. and a religious exemption. >> a lot of the illegal sale of sacramento wine. -- sacramental wine. [laughter] >> on many social issues, women are more tolerant or liberal. i would be interested in your interpretation on that. and for sean, carlin bowman of aei just e-mail me this morning the ucla matriculating freshman data. going all the way back to the late 1960's. >> the question here is should marijuana be legalized. >> should marijuana be legalized.

1968 -- 26% of matriculating freshman said yes. 51% said yes in 1977. one decade after that it was down to 17%. >> the 1980s? they lasted a couple of years ago, and i am sure that it is significantly higher now. given your broad cultural views, how is one to interpret these dramatic swings among people of similar ages and backgrounds. these are matriculating college freshmen. what is going on in your hunch? >> no problem. i do not know that i have a gender explanation for this, but men no more likely to smoke marijuana than women.

once you control for the gender differences, it disappears. >> does that not just push it back a step? >> i do not have any hypotheses as to why men are more likely to do drugs, alcohol, everything than women. more likely to be alcoholics. i am sure that somebody from the psychology department or biology department could tell me why, but just in terms of the political consequence of it, it is also the case that i andy's initiative fights that women tend to be lower information voters and tend to gather information late. the most moveable voters are low information voters. when you talk to women about revenue and the system being broken, tagging it to health care, use tend to see more movement among women and they start to look more like men. information has an impact. >> just to underscore the point

from the survey, they cited a 54% of men but only 42% of women said they had ever tried marijuana. a big deal difference in the numbers. >> what do you think accounts for this yo-yo among the numbers? >> in 1986, relatively cold in texas where we were at the time, i was sitting in a football stadium with all of the middle school students from the northeast school district. nancy reagan is on a football field and we are all shouting at the top of our longest -- just say no, just say no. it was effective. and it was a part of a general argument that was meant to counter the counter cultural depiction of marijuana. we were taught all of the same things. that this is a gateway drug. that this is a drug that is addictive.

i think that that made an impact on high-school students going to college. they are using the drug now. the people today are supportive of marijuana. again, that kind of goes to the experience. you get to college and see the friends smoking up, glaze over. maybe that depiction was not entirely fair. if anything there is a class argument that is inverted today. there is a slightly distinct shift. if anything has gone to the point where upper class people are more supportive than lower class. not a huge distinction, but it is striking how much i expect that has changed. if you had done this with income cohorts in the 1950's it would have been down at the bottom. >> you could argue that the last time you had a swing back in opinion among college freshmen toward prohibition it was because the wrong kind of people were doing it and we were worried about it, but now you have people thinking the right

kind of people are smoking marijuana. >> i think that that was true in the '80s, though. i think that those numbers were great and interesting questions. i am not sure it had to do with the point and not sure that it explains those numbers. >> can i make one more point about class? you have to be careful when it comes to race. african-americans have a very different experience in the sense that you have the impact of the way it is in force and enforced and racial injustice around sentencing and enforcement. african americans tend to be against legalization because of the crime in their communities and what happens to the young men. you can see that want to talk about how you have a set of drug policies that are enforced differently with different consequences, you have a very vocal grassroots set of african-

american activists on this issue, but i think that there is a wrinkle on it that is different as it impacts the class argument. >> you could see more of this, a very smart opponent of legalization is making the argument that it is easy for wealthy white people in the upper class to talk about legalizing marijuana because they can handle it, but they will not be responsible for the places in society that cannot handle it. we have got a lot of amazing people in the audience. i will be asking for two or three at a time and we will try to get to as many as possible. starting in the far back corner, a gentleman in the red tie and dark suit. please, by the way, everyone keep your questions short. we have got a lot of folks here. >> thank you. i am john with the national

council on alcoholism and drug dependence. i'm curious, as we look at this as a political issue we have to deal with the facts of the issue as well. the fact of that is that the number two in treatment centers across america, alcohol is the number one drug being treated and no. 2 is marijuana. i am curious why that continues to be bantered about as that marijuana is not addictive. because it is. >> thank you. let's take another one from the back. same row, white shirt. >> i am the u.s. correspondent from the austrian press. small question, are we only talking about marijuana, or did you also test opinions on hemp and cannabis? if so are these the same sort of people that have the same sort

of attitude towards these two? sort of same the different drugs. second question, if you think the u.s. will continue with this state-by-state piecemeal approach toward legalization, what do you make of the experience in the netherlands, one of the european countries where it is legal under certain conditions, who have actually introduced a more severe regulations because they have seen a huge influx of people who only come to the netherlands simply to get high and behave in not particularly pleasant ways. >> one more from the back. how about the gentleman in a blue shirt here? >> i would like to ask anna in particular how it is possible to frame persuasion for parents,

in the same way the other question about actual addiction. i was a parent of young children in the 1980's and it was clear that a lot of parents my age and younger were willing to support the just say no campaign because they were afraid that something really bad would happen to their kids. how you frame an argument, how do proponents frame that argument to persuade parents? >> great set of questions. on the first one we do not have addiction experts here. it is not that kind of panel. it is an interesting question as to why it is perceived as fairly benign. does that -- is that what the polling shows? >> the main way that we tested it was relative to alcohol and there is this perception that it is safer than alcohol, both in being less addictive and that you are not impaired in the same way when you are high from marijuana as you are when you are impaired by alcohol. people say that no one dies from being too high but you can certainly die from being too drunk.

there is that, relative to alcohol. i am not a scientist and have not done the research on the addiction. my understanding is that no one is suggesting that you cannot abuse marijuana. they are suggesting that it is not the same as nicotine and narcotics. maybe someone in the audience can be more clear about it. no one is suggesting that you cannot abuse it, i think, including legal substances. >> a point that you make it is very important, the big take away of the paper, very few people are viewing marijuana as a positive, good, or benign good thing. they see prohibition as a lesser of evils. >> greater of evils. >> right, legalization as the lesser of evils. >> first of all, just to be clear, at least in my own

remarks i was careful to report on public sentiment. i do not recall reporting my own on the other question. the question that i was reporting on was not the addiction question, it was marijuana as gateway to harder drugs. there the sentiments are pretty clear. but we make no representations about the relationship between public opinion on this question and underlying medical data. that would be well beyond my competence. >> this is why results will matter. >> but that was only a piece of the question. >> go ahead. >> i cannot remember the other. >> we have a lot on the table. >> i do not think that we in this paper can make claims as to addiction or whatever. the paper does not take stand on the issue whatsoever.

we are trying to look at why the debate seems to have gone the way it has gone. we do not have any data on the gentleman's question about the fine distinctions between hemp, cannabis, and the like. i am not sure that the public makes the distinction. anna would know better than i. >> not talking from actual data, but in focus groups about whether it is addictive or if people think it is, it is that comparison to other kinds of drugs that people react to. i think that is what drives the comparison to other things in public opinion. can i talk about kids? >> please. >> this is an important question, one of the bigger vulnerabilities around legalization, the impact on kids. there is an actual impact itself, though parents tend to

be realistic, and do nothing that legalization will change access, in fact it might make it harder for kids to get access. the other piece that is harder to answer is that for parents, for people who think it is a gateway drug, they think it is a signal you're sending to kids that it is ok to do drugs. drugs that people perceive as much more harmful than marijuana. it is important for us to answer that question. the heavy emphasis on the kinds of penalties associated with selling to kids under the age of 21 or 18. just like alcohol. the kinds of regulations in place around the background checks, try to create a system that is reassuring around what it can do to prevent younger

people from smoking, because obviously the current system does not prevent younger people from smoking. it is about putting pieces in place with reassurance about it not being a sort of -- not a free-for-all to just do drugs but rather a way to regulate access. >> what i will volunteer as an answer to the question from the austrian gentleman about what you do about what if washington and colorado become the suppliers for the country because you cannot control the flow outside of their borders? that is the number one thing i think the federal government will be looking at in evaluating the medical marijuana legalization in those states, number two will be accessed by children. it will be a disaster for proponents of legalization if they cannot control that. that is why i and many cases it is legalization proponents advocating reforms like medical marijuana in california.

they want to see a regulatory system in place so that they do not throw the baby out with the bath water. another round of questions, we have plenty more. let's start with the front this time. there is a microphone coming. >> rick blake, strategic health resources, representing pharmaceutical firms interested in using cannabis for therapeutic uses. first of all, there are over 900 strains of cannabis. what are we talking about when we talk about medical marijuana? we actually do not know because of fda regulations in terms of these clinical trials. we actually do not know we are doing. >> that is reassuring. >> [laughter] >> no, but this is in terms of medical uses. there is a lot of anecdotal evidence for the application of

it in hiv patients. i am just saying that given that this is a public policy forum, do you see the shift in the landscape of political opinion in terms of changing some of the impacts on how we conduct our clinical trials and the growth that we could use in terms of cannabis in clinical trials in this nation because we are missing the boat, or at least we think so, in terms of the therapeutic uses of cannabis? >> thank you. the lady behind you had a question. >> alicia caldwell, associated press. can you address the california models, the first to address medical marijuana, some describe it as more dispensaries and starbucks, which is astounding for most of us, and now we are stepping back to limit it to 135 dispensaries in los angeles. the supreme court ruled last

month that states or cities can limit or zoned out dispensaries. they voted down proposition 19 and seemed to be taking that step back as washington and colorado took steps forward. >> thank you, let's get one from this gentleman in the front with the yellow and brown tie. >> my name is andrew stevenson. i'm with the consortium of social science associations. you mentioned nancy reagan. do you think that in society we have reached a point where it is too late for another nancy reagan? can there be another moral movement? >> great question. impact on clinical trials, has anyone tested opinion on a research for medical marijuana? >> the vast majority in this country seem to support people having access to it. it would not surprise me that we

would question whether or not you would be doing research. i would assume that the majority support that as well. the obama administration said basically at the beginning that they would not go after medical marijuana. i am not suggesting the obama administration was going to let nih do clinical trials, but certainly they were taking a step back relative to previous administrations. from the public opinion perspective i have to believe they would support during that research. >> i was going to say the same. the difference between medical marijuana views on legalization for recreational purposes is so large that i expect there would be support. on the -- could there be a step back. you know, alcohol is the subject on which opinion in america has really gone up and down and up and down over a long time and it would not surprise me if we had

that pattern to some degree on marijuana, which is to say that the movement for prohibition sort of went way back in our history, at times as suggested to a movement against immigrants because the irish were said to drink a lot, german immigrants were said to drink a lot. it actually divided the upper class in interesting way. we passed it, it failed, so it was repealed, but we have had a return to semi-prohibition when we raised the drinking age all over the country. you know, there is now a movement among some folks in college town is to try to push it back on the grounds that 18- 21 year olds are drinking anyway and you are turning them into criminals. it would not shock me if there was some evidence on this.

even though we say in our paper that we do not think it will ebb as much as it has in a recent past. >> i think that that analysis helps to frame the history of the california model. because -- recall what we found, number one, continuing ambivalence about marijuana. very few people think that it is a positive good. people can see pluses and minuses. but second, this is driven by very practical considerations about enforcement, the cost of enforcement, and the unintended consequences of enforcement regimes. it does not surprise me at all to learn that there can also be unforeseen consequences of

palmeiro legalization that for the same set of practical reasons might incline people to drawback without doubling all the way back. >> i would guess that what you will see in california is continued public movement toward favoring a general regime of legalization coupled with a regulatory movement to further restrict that. both of those things can happen at once and i suspect it will. >> i think you should be careful, if you promise to indicate an attitudinal -- attitudinal shift. hoax on the left and right, people involved in the current production do not like the line

language, and we saw this reform before the for legalization, and it was not very well funded. as you know it is incredibly expensive to run initiative campaigns in california and running a funded campaign is basically a precondition for running these campaigns. third, 2010 could not have been a worse year for democrats. i want to be sure that we do not look at that reaction as a move away from legalization reaction. >> looking at the chance to go backwards, the nancy reagan example, the one example i can think of is tobacco. i actually think of that is tied up with class. you watch "madmen."

of course they would not want to make them illegal, everyone is smoking. in my generation very few of our friends grew up smoking because we had public health campaigns that seemed validated by life experiences, grandparents dying of emphysema. you have to go practically stand in the street to smoke a cigarette. that is tied up for class. if there were to be a major surge against marijuana, it would probably have to be that we legalize and we find out it causes a lot of cancer. we find out that it is addictive. i used the words not addictive. i think it is have it forming, it -- is habit forming, which is an important distinction. and you know, something along those lines. we have seen a huge surge of people driving stoned. these externalities', you might see a push back on legalization. >> let's see if we can get in three or four more questions. a gentleman with a yellow tie who has been patient, a gentleman under the television who has been patient.

>> thank you for your comment. office of the national drug controll policy -- i was just going to talk about tobacco and relating to the discussion to the public health issue. the question is with your research are any of you familiar with asking the public -- is legalization of marijuana and public health concern? i am curious if you have brought that up in any of your research. >> i am curious to ask you. [laughter] >> i cannot speak on that right now. >> what if we ask super nice? [laughter] >> there are a few more. gentleman in the back, i will get to you whether you want it or not.

>> i am brandon levy from the criminal justice policy foundation. is there any data, is this strictly limited to marijuana or do americans view prohibition in general -- are there americans that think we should move more to the european model, like portugal in 2001? >> great question. gentleman back there, i am coming to you because i always sit in the low visibility seats and hate never getting called. i am looking at a gentleman. raise your hand again? there you are. thank you. necktie, blue shirt. >> i am from the council on atmospheric affairs. you talk a bit, briefly, about support amongst hispanic respondents in this new poll. what possible explanation would you have for that? >> excellent question. has anyone told marijuana as a public health problem perce? when framed that way, what do you get? >> i do not think so. at least, i have not. but when we asked people in an open-ended context about the significant concerns, i do not hear the public health concern.

i hear the safety concern. people operating heavy equipment, performing operations or flying airplanes while they are high. are kids getting the wrong message. those of the kinds of things people mentioned. i am going to speculate that because people think anyone who wants to smoke is smoking, they do not see the legalization of it as something that is creating a new health concern. if there is one, it is there any way. >> that might be an issue that surfaces quickly if there are problems with legalization. what about drugs generally? they move in a different path or a similar path to marijuana? >> i am really mad that i did not look that up. i would guess that it is different. there was a big cocaine seen at my law school. most of us do not have a lot of contact with cocaine going through college.

certainly not with heroin. those are considered street drugs. if you do have experience with people on them, they do live up to their reputation. they are bad news. >> i did this for brookings a few months ago. people are carving out a marijuana exception. not much change on heavy, hard drugs. it is the perceived differentness of other things. it is moving into the alcohol or even tobacco category. hispanics -- any idea? >> i am very glad you asked that question. it was something that jumped out at me as an excellent question. i could not find in the data that we had a good answer to that question. >> i guess i would query that just a little bit.

if you asked the question just flatly, do you think the use of marijuana should be made legal or not, non-hispanic whites, 52- 45. hispanics, 51-47. no significant difference. african americans are a little bit more prone legalization than whites or hispanics. there is not the hispanic exception. if you ask a factual question, let's look at chart number two on page 13. does marijuana lead to the use of hard drugs?

here again, you have 38% of whites and 39% of hispanics saying yes. 58% of whites and 59% of hispanics saying no. no difference whatsoever. once again, african-americans are a little bit different. not starkly. probably still inside the margin of error. >> in fairness to the gentleman that was responding to something i said, among be religious groups, hispanic catholics were one of two groups to show a majority. perhaps the difference is not as big. it just happened to be a majority. it jumped out compared to the other religious groups. perhaps the fact that it is a majority is not that important because the other numbers are not that different.

they did seem to stand out from the other groups. that is why i want to turn to anna. >> i have not done specific research on hispanics. what we know on lots of social issues is that generation plays a huge role around issues whether it is gay marriage or abortion. i would not be surprised if generational issues exist among hispanics. personal experience that somebody has if they were not born here is the country that they grew up in. i do not know enough about mexico and el salvador and all of the countries of origin for it hispanic immigrants. whatever that experience was, probably influences their view about this. for hispanics born here, especially if they speak english, they look like everybody else on all of these issues.

the numbers on hispanic catholics may deal with whether somebody is first-generation. >> one of my big takeaways from this paper is that the filters were off. issue polarities or partisanship ideology and ethnicity, those turn out to be significantly less important on this issue which cuts across personal experience and pragmatism. it is a different kind of issue. i urge you all to read the paper. it is a marvelous piece of work. i thank my partner for helping fund this. especially our panelists. sean came all the way down from columbus, ohio to be with us today. peter lewis. peter lewis, i apologize. thank you all very much. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] >> a look at the white house today. president obama will be returning to the white house from a fund-raising trip in chicago. he was in his hometown wednesday to raise money for democratic congressional candidates. he is excited back about three clock p.m. this afternoon. amid reports today that he is comey as thejames next director of the fbi.

attorneyve as deputy general from 2003 2 2005. if confirmed by the u.s. senate, succeed robert mueller. here they look at what is ahead on c-span. up next, a discussion discussion of terrorist threats in new york city. with that city's police commissioner. it is followed by a look at the presidential transition process in 2012 election. later, marine corps commandant general james a most. that is all coming up here on c- span. >> the public's fascination with francis cleveland really extended to her) she was a real fashion icon. women emulated her hairstyle, her clothing. she populated everything she had ended. this is a dress from the second administration. in a way, this is the most prized piece of all because this is the inaugural gown.

this was her inaugural gown from 1893. it became a family wedding dress. this was used by her granddaughters. even francis cleveland's everyday clothes were stylish. a lot of them look like something you could wear now. , a wonderfulket bolero jacket, black with .eautiful purple-blue velvet this is a more evening appropriate piece. the bodice would've had a matching skirt. you can see the beautiful lace and sequence, netting, beating. vest. ornate daytime this would have a matching color. again, you could wear this with a shirtwaist and skirt. >> our conversation on francis cleveland is now available on our website, www.c-span.org /firstladies. tune in monday for our next

program on first lady caroline harrison. >> next, police commissioner raymond kelly talks about the 16 terrorist plots against new york city that have been ported since 9/11. any city's measures to protect itself. this discussion is from the 2013 new york ideas festival hosted by the atlantic, the aspen institute, and the new york historical society. >> good morning, everybody. [applause] commissioner kelly, welcome. it's wonderful to have you here. we are going to get right into it. i think we should start with boston. it was a wake-up call for a lot of us. for a lot of us who maybe have taken for granted changes that you made here in new york post- 9/11. tell us what your take away from boston is. >> first of all, we were not surprised something like this

happens. frankly, we thought it would happen sooner. people talk about the new normal. actually, the new normal is our old normal. after 9/11 when mayor bloomberg came in, we knew we had to do more to protect this city than just rely on the federal government. so we have invested heavily in personnel, money and we have been able to receive federal money that has helped us put in defensive systems that i believe is more than any city. we have 1000 police officers every day that work on our counterterrorism efforts. that's a major commitment for us because we are down 6000 police officers from where we were 11 years ago. but we have been -- >> just due to budget cuts? >> yes, budget cuts. we have been the big them of two successful terrorist attacks.

we had 16 plots against the city since that time. they have been torted as a result of your luck, good work on the part of the ei and nypd nypd -- the fbi and nypd. no other city had that target on its back like we have. so we have made that investment and we are going to continue to do it. >>what do you worry about most being under threat in this city subways, landmarks? what keeps you up at night? >> i don't think we can single it out. this is a target rich environment. we have a lot of iconic and events where large numbers of people come together. we are concerned about certainly

the event in bostin. we have had these types of radicalized young man trying to attack us in the city. most recently, two individuals were arrested in miami for scouting out targets in new york city. it received very little press but it happened. they were arrested this year. we had an arrest for attempting to blow up the federal reserve bank. he thought he was detonated 1000 pounds of -- when it was an fbi sting. so, a constant stream of individuals trying to come here and kill us. when you say what do we worry about, we worry about the whole spectrum. we are paid to think the unthinkable. we have to worry about a nuclear

event happening in new york. we have worked with the federal government. we have a program called securing the cities. we have 150 other jurisdictions in the area that we signed on with provide a radiological detection ring around new york city. so we are not able to say we are worried about that thing only. it is a whole array of threats that are out there. we don't see any diminishment of threats. we see it as being relatively constant. >> can you be specific about what you are doing, what measures you are taking in this city that other cities could implement? that boston could be doing? what measures do you think have been the most effective? >> we are not in a position to advise anybody. they have to make their own decisions. it depends on the level of the perceived threat, the culture, a

lot of things. but we have done more here than any other city because we felt we had to. we have a security initiative, 1.7 square miles south of canal street. we have thousands of cameras, license plate readers, radiation detectors. we monitor with public and private sector people, stakeholders. we have taken that concept and migrated up to midtown manhattan. 30th to 60th street. we are increasing the numbers of cameras we have in place. now tying in cameras in other parts of the city. we do have our own investigations. we have the most diverse police department probably anywhere now.

in our last seven police academy classes, of 1000 or more recruits, each one of those classes have recruits born in 50 or more countries. that diversity gives us a lot of flexibility and helps us interact with the many communities of this city but also enable us to do investigations. so we have personnel and we have the technology committed to the issue. you will see uniformed personnel, critical response vehicles. you will see them deploy at iconic locations and other sensitive locations. we do that on a daily basis. mostly in manhattan. uniform, plain clothes, technology. we had 17 investigators working with the joint terrorism task

force. now we have over 120. we have our own personnel stationed abroad in 11 cities. they act as tripwires and listening posts for us. abu dhabi, jordan, tel aviv, paris, london, madrid. >> is that repetitive with what the cia is doing? do you feel like you need to do it yourself because maybe the federal government is not providing information given what you are trying to do? >> we are supplementing -- we need the federal government to continue to do what they are doing but we see ourselves at a higher risk than other cities. these officers are funded by the police foundation. these are not taxpayer funds. our offices are embedded in these police department.

they are not in the u.s. embassies. it is a unique experience for our officers and very much welcome on the part of the host countries. they send their officers here. we do training with them. and a lot of interaction takes place. >> you mentioned radiation detectors, a dirty bomb being a potential threat, something you are obviously thinking about. port security has always been an issue. i know that's something you spend a lot of time working on. do you think there has been progress on that? is it still a huge concern? >> there has been progress. the u.s. customs commissioner before, we were concerned about it then. this was pre-9/11. some progress have been made but the vast majority of goods

that come into our country simply are not searched. it would be impossible to. so there is a risk analysis in place. some items, the shipping containers are being checked in other cities. before goods come to united states. has there been progress in that area? yes. still a lot more needs to be done. in hong kong, for instance, there is an x-ray of all goods going in and out of the port. that is a major undertaking. it would be very expensive for us to do that. but it's something that should be examined. >> i was talking to the guys backstage about crowd sourcing and the impact that had particularly in boston and the investigation in those 48 hours the bombings happen.

talk a little bit about how you are using technology on that front to -- when you know there is a threat, a plot, to address it. >> you mean in the aftermath of the boston bombings, looking at films, that sort of thing? >> yeah, or the engagement of community through the social networking that took place. there are pros and cons to that, obviously. >> obviously social networking is a major factor these days. it is something investigators look at all the time. i know it was examined right away after the boston bombings. the camera work of course was very important. our cameras, many i mentioned, are smart cameras. you can do video analytics. we can put in a formula that will set off an alarm if a package is put down for a

certain amount of time. let's say three minutes, if the package is unattended, and alarm will go off. not all of our cameras do that with an increasing number of cameras can do that. or you can look at see somebody three weeks ago the path in front of a particular camera wearing a white shirt at 2:00 in the afternoon. we can do that very quickly. that is where technology is moving. it's getting smarter and smarter. and more and more private sector companies have cameras. more public cameras are out there as well. what we have done is tied them together. technology has been a major factor in allowing us to operate. crime continues to go down here.

part of it is a result of technology. >> the city is also facing an enormous budget crisis and the stuff is not cheap. >> thankfully that federal government has helped with lower manhattan security initiatives. the federal government is facing its own problems with sequester. i believe other cities, i know they are coming here now to take a closer look at what we're doing. but it's not cheap. it's an expensive undertaking. more and more cities will look at aspects of what we do. >> putting costs aside for a second, let's talk about what you are up against. everyday you are under fire from members of the government, city council, civil rights organizations, almost every candidate running for mayor, maybe with the exception of joe loda.

talk about targeting mosques for intelligence gathering, go through those. what do you say to your critics? >> let me give you a number that i think is important. in the 11 years of mayor bloomberg's administration, there were 7346 fewer murders than there were in the previous 11 years. those lives saved are largely people of color, young people of color. we think we are saving lives. we know we are saving lives. stop and frisk is something -- that practice has been embedded in law enforcement throughout the world. not just throughout the country. it was validated by supreme court decision terry versus ohio in 1968.

legislation or laws exist in all 50 states in the country. it's a practice not invented here. one of the things that has happened is we have started to record it more accurately. as a result, there is a perception that the numbers have gone up dramatically. it really hasn't. we have done a lot of training. we are not unaware of the controversy it causes. it's an ongoing training program for a police officer but it is a tool. only a tool in the toolbox. it is not the be-all and end- all. we are doing a lot more to adjust the problems. last year, was the lowest year

for murders in the city and the lowest year for shootings in 20 years. this year, we are running 30% below that number. so something right is going on here. it translates into saved lives. we understand people running for office -- there is a perception that a narrow number of people will vote in the primary and their views are very much against this type of activity that's how you get the nomination. but we are going to continue to do what we think is the right thing pursuant to the law. as far as the allegations of spying on muslims, we adhere very closely to the law. we have a cadre of first-rate attorneys that monitor everything that we do.

there are a series of articles put out by the associated press complaining in essence about what we do. i believe those writers missed the authorization to do what we do, under the modification of an agreement from 1985. in 2002, we petitioned the federal court to change the agreement from 1984. they did change it. it allows the new york police to go any place where there is a public meeting, any website available to the public and to do studies and reports to help us to protect the city. this is the most litigious environment in the world. i get sued literally every day. [laughter] it's the fact that we are being

sued -- it is nothing new. we believe we are doing our work according to the law and we will continue to do it. >> but they are creating an inspector general for nypd did you think is a terrible idea. why? >> we have more oversight than any police department in this country as far as i am aware. we have five district attorneys in the city, unlike most cities that have one. we have two u.s. attorneys. we have a civilian complaint review board that exists totally to oversee some functions of the nypd. we have a commission to combat police corruption, headed by a commission general counsel, michael armstrong. they look at every case of corruption allegation that comes in. we have an awful lot of oversight.

another layer is not needed. i think it causes confusion. >> if we believe the polls right now, there's a good chance in november we will have a mayor who they are saying now wants to undo a lot of what you have done. how worried are you? >> i am doing my job. the citizens are the ones that are going to have to take all this into account and vote accordingly. >> it's not too late to run. [laughter] to run for mayor yourself. it is not too late to run for mayor yourself. [applause] >> i'm focused on my job right now. >> classic politician non-

answer. i think a lot of people may be glad to hear it. let me just say -- boston has made a lot of us think about this. so much time passed and nothing happened post-9/11, and then boston came along. how do you stay vigilant? how do you keep the nypd vigilant, your officers, when we go through these periods of calm? our memories are very short. >> we have had to confront against the city. >> to us, it is felt like calm. because you stopped them >> if it is prevented, it is a one-day story. the right away, looking at the law enforcement saying you should have done x, y, and z.

we are vigilant, we have to be partly because of the number of cases that we have seen. we have had azazi in 2009. and he tried to dump the formula down because he was afraid of being seen and recognized before the event took place. we have had jose, he built 3 bombs right here and was arrested by our intelligence division. these do not get much press. therefore the public thinks things are looking pretty good. then when boston happened, it is a huge shock to the public

psyche. not to us. we can see where these things could easily happen. we did -- two of our intelligence analysts, did an outstanding study in 2007 on the radicalization process. these two young men fit into it. they put together a schematic of the process. a pre-radicalization period then self identification than they indoctrinate themselves.

that's when they often times meet a sanction or. in the boston case, the sanction is believed to be anwar alwaki. then they decide to act. we have been looking at this issue for a long time. we are alert. i hope we continue to be alert. new york is the number one target in this country. why? it is the communications capital. the financial capital. if you accept the proposition that terrorism is theater, this is the world's biggest phase. if they cannot do it here, they may do it someplace else. that is our job, to prevent them from doing it here. so far, so good but there are no guarantees.

>> kelly, we appreciate your vigilant in your time this morning. thank you. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> here is a look at the primetime lineup tonight. " book been featuring tv." olympia snowe. on american history tv, stories from civil rights activists. here on c-span, a look at the economy and the future of science research with the founder of the harvard business school's life-sciences project. discussingness of

the deficit and start talking about things that are important, the long-term trends. the debate is taking the option out of the room. you have all kinds of sites about stuff which is reasonable compromises that might not happen. you might be missing the big picture. here is what the big picture looks like. humans are the only species on earth that transmit data consistently to their kids across time. maybe a dog learns commands,, an animalhere is not that rights on cave walls except humans. why is that important?

this is how you have a baby, this is how we dress. this is how many of us there are. these are musical instruments, and you just learned a lot of what was happening in argentina two thousand years ago. as you think about how we transmit knowledge, it is not enough for an empire. here you have to go to the cave to learn what is going on. an empire looks like this. two things have happened. you have established a language and then you have put it on papyrus or paper. all of you clearly know that you can read that, right question mark it basically says cut the deficit. then what you do is you standardize the language, you put it in 26 letters, and it looks like this. you can have huge libraries and transmit data across times, and

you can write sentence that say cut the deficit. then what has happened over the last 30 years is you have into onesall language and zeros. that is the single greatest creator of wealth humans have ever seen. it is the country that thatstands this transition generated and a norm is amount of wealth. you will not understand the rise of silicon valley, singapore, if that transition right there -- >> that is from a recent fiscal summit held in washington. you can see the entire event tonight at 8:00. --lowing that mr. henriquez will join us live.

christopheritt and liddell talks about the operations from the romney transition team. >> good morning, everybody. it is a pleasure to be here. my name is max stier. we are a nonpartisan organization trying to make our government better. there is no and more important topic than the one we have today, presidential transitions, and i am honored to have the opportunity to host the book release and lessons learned from the romney readiness project, was a truly amazing project. the topic is of critical importance to my mind.

we live in the most powerful country in the world. the government is the most complicated, powerful organization in the world, and one of the things we learned as children is that democratic and peaceful transfer of power, and what that means is you have among other things 4000 new political leaders that have to come in and the right people have to be selected, they have to prepare the agenda for running that organization. frankly, historical record has not been good about the prep work that has been done to do that. a formal transition time has been from the election day to inauguration day. we know how you begin to set the stage for everything that comes later. 1/2 months is not enough. we will learn today that many

of you have participated in putting together, it is fundamental to our ability as a country to meet the new challenges we face to have a government that is ready to go on day one and in a world in which we have more complicated things occurring, which require a government that is ready and able to deal with unexpected things immediately. we know that the point of transition is also the point of maximum folder ability, and there are individuals that try to take advantage of that. getting this right is essential. the readiness project was a therkable effort, both with depth and effort that went into being prepared. equally important with the effort made to document the work that was done. we live in an environment with transition where by and large it

has been one of oral history without a effort to capture how to do this right. this is an important contribution for the future and something we can talk more about. it is an exceptional audience we have. i want to of knowledge of few of the folks here. beginning with governor mike liddell.and christopher hote who washave chris lu instrumental in putting together the book that you have a copy of. the partnerships board i want to acknowledge a person who is a master of leadership and it is terrific to have him here. sean o'keefe is not here, but will be here shortly, and is a member who is one of my heroes. from government, we have don fox, the director of the office

of ethics. we will hear from chris lu, who is here, but he both was the head of cabinet affairs for the obama administration, the executive director of the obama 2008 campaign. we also have josh sitting here and it is driven to have him here. also clay johnson, who not only ran the transition coming in, but is an expert in the issue of transitions. zealot.u we have any the and steve. dave is someone who we got to work when he was in the bush

administration, one of the true stars in the bush administration. john is here, who ran the department of homeland security 's first transition ever. martha who is a scholar and a great expert on the issue of transitions and much more. terrific to have you here. and blair who is that head of the organization, a great ally. the partnership is done and it is supported by a consulting , and peter is here, or there are folks from that organization here, who have helped us in a number of ways. a legendave tom who is and a constant voice of reason and a capacity in all things related to presidential work.

it is great to have him here. i wanted to recognize christine simmons who is my colleague at the partnership right over here. she has led all this work. she does all the work. we have done work has been driven by her. also, shannon carol who has put together this event. we are amongst friends here. she has done a great job. before we get to the main attraction and we will hear from governor leavitt and have a conversation with him, chris, and bring in folks and voices that are knowledgeable, i wanted theive you some context on partnership's work. we started in 2007 focusing on presidential transitions. in may of 2008 we brought together at that point the democratic primary was not resolved, but representatives of of the mccain campaign and

the bush administration and in a small form to talk about how you prepare well for transitions. at that stage of the game, the expectation of public -- you do not do this. you do it in the dead of night. it was an interesting conversation that was brought to me that understood how the process was done well. we shared information. from that we developed recommendations that became the basis of legislation in 2010. probably the most important element of that was rooting up the time from election day to the culmination of the conventions, at which point the government would provide official transition support. is wef the purpose believe it was important to flip the switch, to move the presumption that you did this in the dead of night, you did it

publicly because it was part of your responsibility. the romney campaign was the first to operate under that new legislative and firemen, and in 2012, we had the pleasure of meeting governor leavitt, chris, and a few other folks from the romney campaign to help them connect them to people who understand how to best understand transitions. it is important that the work that has done here is foundational, will provide an opportunity for all future campaigns to do this better, the foundation for our country so we have governments that are ready to govern when we need them to be ready. art of our process is not only to hold before forum, but also tried to come up when we have a set of ideas that we want to set up here, additional legislation and putting

together a transition guide that will be built off the work that is but here and lay out in a more complete way the things that campaigns need to be thinking about. ,hat is as fast as i can speak because this is important to get to the main attraction. i look forward to this conversation. first, over and are, all yours. >> thanks very much, and thanks to the center for organizatioing this. we have not seen each other for a time. this is a positive experience for all of us, and i am pleased so many are here. to re-emphasize a couple of things that max made reference to. first, i would like to begin with an acknowledgment of the obvious. thisd not transition, and was a planned transition.

i think the true test of any plan is actual execution, and he ought to acknowledge the fact that many of the challenges that face at administration, this does not recount, but it recounts good preparation and it does also acknowledge the fact that this is the first presidentialt 2010 transition act had been operated under, and we felt it was important we document to the .egree possible our experience i would also like to acknowledge this is not about what might have been. it is about what we learned. our conversation ought to be focused on that. when we determined to put together this book or report, our charge was to make it practical. this is not a historical tome.

it is designed to be a practical recounting of our own experiences in an effort to be useful to others. it is i think it important to remember that we are three years away now from two transitions being formed, when our government will begin to transition to a new administration. i will acknowledge that it was that in mind that we chose the name the romney readiness project. we would have changed to the romney transition had the election result been different, but from the very beginning we acknowledged and recognized that we were in the process of a planning effort. would like to just review briefly if i can do major contents of the report, and then at the same time take a couple of comments on my own personal reflections. the first month, may a year eight toas a group of

10 of us that took out a temporary office over on new jersey avenue to begin this process. we were operating under the ofsidential transition act 2010 and the work had been legitimized by the law. there was still a concern that we not be seen as a distraction to the campaign, and there was a worry and there will be with any, if information and the curiosity that is naturally there to begin to surface, it could be a distraction. we began very quietly, and that was an extraordinarily important. , because it was during that time when we as i suspect any transition effort has done in the past, we started by reviewing all the literature we could find about this. star records as primarily being boxes that have passed from one person to the next, and sorting

through and trying to bring order to it. there have been a number of good pieces of literature written in. martha gave me a shelf of 20 books, and i am happy to tell you that every one of them were ,ead, and we reviewed them some consistent things, but they were an important foundation, and most of what is written tends to get focused not so much on the structure but on the color that surrounds them. our effort has been as much to focus more on the structure and less on the color. some important decisions that were made and were covered in chapter two of the book. we laid out a series of basic deliverables. put it essentially into four pockets. the first was a deliverable to develop a 200-day plan. we chose that as a horizon

because 100 days was traditionally spoken of is just too short. the 200 days tends to coincide with the august recess of congress, and it has been the observation we made at looking at other transitions at administrations have between inauguration day and the august recess to create the big push to get their initiatives on the ground. was the in the plan framework of a budget, which is the means by which most administrations are able to actually get their initiatives through. the second big deliverable was putting a team on the ground. cabinet, white house staff, national security team, the national economic team 100 or 150n the top most important senate confirmed positions or keep laces. -- key places.

i want to acknowledge clay johnson who early on wooded at this as a very important priority, and i came to believe that he is absolutely right. it is efficiency frankly and the way our government response to transitions, and it is so hard to get a team on the grounds that we knew we had to put a sustained amount of emphasis there. the third would have been a congressional relationships. obviously if you are going to put a president into a new administration and have an agenda, congress has to be prepared. the third was preparing our relationships with congress. the fourth was the office of the president-elect, until there is a white house. those are the four basic buckets that we organize. in chapter three you will see we created a master planning schedule. we broke our effort into essentially four phases are the first was the planning phase

until the convention. as second we referred to the readiness phase. the presidential transition act of 2010 essentially engages the federal government in a formal way three days after the nominating convention of the party. while we were not able to take government space until that point in time, we were actively engaged in the early phase with gsa and other planning so that when the three days following the convention arrived, we would be ready. the third was what we called the transition phase, from election day until the inauguration, and the last was the handoff. those four different time frames framed our work. in chapter three you will also begin to see some basic decisions that were reflected in all of our work.

i would like to talk about some key principles that we followed that you will see reflected. the first and i think a distinguishing part of our le oft was the principa going narrow and deep as opposed to expensive and shallow. that's me describe what i mean by that. if there is a tendency and you have an opportunity to plan a new administration, to allow it to become a tournament of priorities, and anyone who is involved would have the ability to define what they thought ought to be done to make the world a better place. we concluded to focus exclusively on the commitments that mitt romney was making in the campaign. and we actually form a document that you will see reflected in the book cut we referred to as the general instructions. these are charges that were made by the candidate, mitt romney, to meet as the chairman

to prepare. our effort was focused and onciplined on delivering those items. i believe one of the components of our work that will have value for others to view our a series of interlocking charters following theted general instructions. we took the general instructions and said here are the narrow things we have to come pushed in a deep way. we then wrote charters that essentially laid out a work plan for each of the departments of government. if you would have looked at our work from a high level you would see that we aspired to create a federal government in miniature. if you walked alcohol at the building, you would see the state department, the defense

department, the treasury department, hhs, etc., and in each of those areas we populated them with a group of highly experienced policy people who had actually served in those departments. as we took a piece of the general instructions, and i will use as an illustration the authorization of the keystone pipeline, which was a commitment that governor romney had made at it would happen on the first a, one thing to say we are going to do it, it is another thing to be ready. that would require actions by the state department, by the energy department, commerce, interior, epa, and a number of other agencies of the federal government. it would require actual words being drafted, require that we had thought through a series of contingencies. in essence at the building we created a federal government in miniature, we gave each department a charter that tied

back to the general instructions, and then organized a series of interagency processes using the keystone pipeline as an example, brought them together into a task force resolve the issue so that on day one we had a deliverable that could in fact be executed. another important component i think of our process was the discipline around what we referred to as the one-page project manager among which was a system that was brought to us. clark hamill was the originator. it was something that i used at hhs to get everything down to one page. you will seed 26 the federal government in its entirety on one page. i am happy to acknowledge that on that day, election day, when that was done, you will see that all the boxes were green. that was not without

substantial effort and there were times when it was not all green, but on election day it was all green. i want to recognize that there one-page project managers blew that one page that you can see the entire federal government on. that was an important discipline. decision to do that and to maintain a systematic approach i think will prove to be an important and valuable lesson. another principle was that , andy was made in boston washington and our readiness project was about execution. it was clear that our general were our charge, and it was not our decision as to whether or not a commitment should be made or what should be made a priority. those were the decisions of the candidate who was aching

commitments to the american people. as a result we had a close working relationship with the policy shop in boston. the person who ran that shop was a close ally and was consulted every step of the way among because when it came to making it decision about whether the keystone pipeline be authorized on the first day, that was a discussion that was going on between the governor .nd the person and his team we had opportunities to influence the process if we chose to, but the reality was we were focused on policy which was done in boston. the next principle was a unified voice in congress. inct on then instan part of congress to want to become involved in the preparation for a transition. that was understandable. we had a principale that when we members of congress

it was with one voice, it was a discipline that i believe we work hard to maintain. lastly i will just say that while our preparation was no was a, confidentiality key principle and our phrase was the readiness project has no voice. we did not speak for governor romney. it was not our role to talk about policy. our job was to prepare to execute the commitments that he had made. ,oving on into chapter five you will see that as we move into the planning phase of my lot happened. i mentioned we took over 129,000 square feet. i would like to acknowledge that gsa had an excellent job in preparing for us. on the third day after the convention we moved into a business-ready environment.

the organization began to scale quite dramatically. i will also acknowledge that at that point we began to stand up the agency review process. again, according to our general instructions. jim quickly did a good job with that. we began to develop names, we developed what will be referred to later as the bedding bunker. at highly coveted showplace. .ou had to be cleared into it we were wanting to protect the privacy of those that were being considered. vet bye not able to se making contact or interviews, but we did as much as we could to be prepared. i will mention just and moment a level of our preparation. we developed a white house organizational structures. we talked about landing teams.

we began to create presidential readiness for the office of the president-elect. i will pause there and make this comment. we completely underestimated the size of that job. i want to just mention steve preston, excuse me. we were friends in the bush cabinet, and it was a great -- he of luck that he was had a is this sale and had some time and he just did a great job in being able to do that. we began to develop a presidential schedule. we had 10 days framed in in the process to go forward, and you will get a chance to see that. we will not catch all the color of this, but we

hope we created a basic structure. on page 131, there is a series on one page, a series of major lessons learned. i will call your attention to those. let me conclude by making a couple observations of my own. the study that we did in depth 45 dayshe first 30 two of artwork revealed to me that those administrations who do this well have historic opportunities. those that do it poorly often never recover. this is a very important discipline. i would like to emphasize what max suggested earlier that the failure to prepare for a proper transition of power truly does put the nation at risk, and it is not possible in 77 days to prepare a nation for a transition of that magnitude. starting early is important. i think the presidential

transition act of 2010 made a to thisul contribution effort. i am sure there are configured -- continued refinements, but it needs to only become more disciplined. i want to note the senate leadership was useful in not only what was done, but with insights great i also want to mention the center for asked practices and the franchise that they developed and formally looking after this process. also the aspen institute. i mentioned clay johnson and his work as a self-declared zealot. that.rld needs josh bolten has also been acknowledge. i also want to acknowledge the obama administration was responsive and very useful. they were good to work with. people would have been proud of

the since of bipartisanship that existed in these interactions. i also believe that abundant credit is due to george w. bush for setting what i believe to be a very high standard, repeatedly, officials of the obama administration acknowledged the tone that was set in the 2008 transition. and they were committed obviously to hold themselves to that same standard in dealing with us. -- ourly, our product preparation was never tested. it is clear to me that everyone was intending to make this a professional and statesman like proposition, and in fact i am confident it would have been. i have acknowledged that gsa and their good work. they were resolved to make this

a professional effort. finally, i want to recognize that the book mentions the names of everyone who was involved. and it is impossible really to adequately talk about or acknowledge the extraordinary that wereeople involved. i do want to acknowledge that at the very beginning, a couple of people who were there at the foundation of this work, chris iddell, jim quigley, and others. the first thing you want to do is find a person and has a better rolodex in washington than anyone else, and i am convinced that that is jamie. we had worked together at hhs and she had been in a number of

different roles, and most of the team you can see in this book reflects in some way directly or indirectly people's willingness to respond to her. i have acknowledged that on many occasions how many times you have a chance to surround yourself with people like the former cfo of microsoft and general motors and the former chairman of the lord, like jim , andrews, doug, steve maloney. brian hook. i also want to mention with special appreciation clark , notell and daniel cruz just for their work in putting this report together, which you but the is exceptional, key role they played in the management process, and daniel and many others -- daniel would be my nominee for the unknown

soldier award. he and many of his colleagues were there day and night through thick and thin and good weather and bad, and so there was some bad weather, by the way. that is important. finally, i think important to acknowledge mitt romney, who deployed all of us in the nation's service. i have come to appreciate the fact as a person who has them outlook service is up and run ,or office a few times myself i have come to appreciate the fact that those who run for office and those who work with them, when they do not win, they have done some of the hardest public-service there is. it is in in fact a public service. ummary i would say we built a great ship, but it did not say all. others are going to benefit from our design, and we are grateful to have done it. max?

>> thank you very much. [applause] there is like a thousand questions i have. we will start with leadership. we will hear from chris, two. -- too. you have had a remarkable career as a governor. you saw transitions. as a cabinet secretary you saw transitions. it's thoughts -- it starts with the leaders. what qualities do you think are important for future chair people? >> that is an important question, and i will acknowledge that is dealt with here, and while i am thinking about it, we have arranged this book to be available on amazon .com and through the center for those whose future years will want to find -- to be able to

use it. i talked a bit about it a about the wrote important characteristics about the relationship between the candidate and the person that they call on and what those might be. the first one is a relationship that has been preestablished. having a relationship with the candidate where you can speak candidly with them and at a still beings not worked out is important. and i have that kind of relationship with mitt romney, and it was obvious to me that that would be important. i think a trusted relationship with campaign organizations cannot and should not be underestimated. --re is a natural penchant tension between the campaign and the transition.

the campaign is worried about what those people are doing. there is not a lot being said about it, but the they are worried they might get in the way of the campaign or do something that could be distracting from the message toward the end. they are worried about are they dividing up things we might want to have a hand in, are they doing things that will not be easy to undo? having a relationship with the senior members of the campaign was an important part of that process. a person who shares basically the ideology and understands the policy instincts of the candidate was important. i think having an extensive personal knowledge of washington is really important. i think if i had the benefit of re-think here as part of the cabinet, sitting in a couple of rolls of the cabinet, being

governor, that does not mean everyone needs to, but in some way they need to have had some washington experience. having an extensive network of people or having access to one -- i mentioned jamie, who had worked in that area in previous administrations and had relationships that were valuable, having some executive leadership responsibilities in the past -- and being able to devote full time to it. this is a very demanding role, and i became convinced this needed to happen here in washington. that is where the government is, where the resources of the gsa are going to be under the presidential transition act. i recognized there are those who the importance of it otherwise. also not a job seeker. it is important that that person be able to comment this

and walk away from it and leave the administration, turn over the keys on inauguration day. >> to your point, chris, the governor said a stellar record you have in the private sector, and i am interested in what you think about the government, about the transition? [laughter] >> can i say there is no one person who deserves more acknowledgment in the way this unfolded dan kristen bell -- chris liddell. he was the ceo of microsoft. highly sophisticated businessperson. our relationship was one where i was able to focus on many of the things i alluded to. chris made this work. i want to acknowledge there were many people who played roles that were important, but it is important we knowledge -- and his role.ris

you are free to speak out. [applause] there is a set of principles that apply to any cop located project, whether in the private or public sectors, and we applied those principles to this project. that was why it was so successful. in simple terms, let's say three -- start with a clear objective, have a clear vision that you can communicate about what you're trying to achieve, and secondly, rake that down into a set of very manageable and discrete and in some cases parallel and in some crisis sequential tasks, but a cord native set of tasks that add up to the vision you want to achieve.

third, people. all that sounds simple, but actually it is, and if you come it isrinciples amazing how much you can achieve and how well you can organize things. the parallel i would say is the previous role that i had is similar to the role i had here. the previous role was cfo and vice chairman of general motors, and i helped that company it back on its feet again. was to role that i had organize design the resources initial public offerings. that was about a nine-month project with a very defined target, with the goal of taking the company back public. we raised $23 billion. -- somee in frame timeframe, and it is the same basic set of principles. he had a clear objective, to get the company back public.

, wehis case, mitt romney were associated with him transitioning to the federal government. we broke it down into a series of tasks. we had five clear deliverables against which we were planning and then we broke those five deliverables down into a very clear series of allocations of responsibilities through work that clark campell did. there were some great people, and the governor referred to jamie and the team she dealt. he ended up with close to 500 people. i have to say, anecdotally to one of your things, i was incredibly impressed but the quality of people we were able to attract, and you said surprise coming from the public- sector question mark a pleasant surprise was how good people were, the quality of people came in and the dedication. it says in the book 85% of

people came in as volunteers. people were coming in so they could make a lot of money out of contributed their time for free. whoot first class people were passionate about it, coming in because they believed in what they were trying to do and were just an outstanding team. the general principles that i have applied in the private sector are applied here in the public-sector, and they are exactly the same. to me, the only thing you have to toggle around is the balance between how much you make definitive, how much is just literally set out, how much is flexible for either individual initiatives or course corrections along the way. we did course corrections. we set out with a clear objective, but inevitably things came out as the campaign changed and events came along.

only difference in any individual project. certain set of principles and you are rigorous about them and you reinforce them, can indicate them, any large-scale project can be successfully achieved. >> were there any other surprises, things that you wished you had known at the front and? >> i wish i had [indiscernible] [laughter] it would be easier the second time around. rning on-the-fly. you alluded to the conference that we had, which was useful, and we have the ability to tap into resources. this is one of the key learnings. you should not have to relearn, you should not have to read a bit of information here and there. that is just not a good way of

approaching this. one of the key objectives the governor alluded to for us doing this and documenting it is people are not going to do it the same way we did, but hopefully they can pick up a body of knowledge and not have .o drag pieces over it when you think about how important the u.s. government is and how important the transition is, it is something that should be as well researched and as systematic as it possibly can. >> excellent, and one other way was the fact that you did this work in real time, that you actually collected information rather than waiting three and a half years when memories are foggy, when the boxes are strewn in diverse locations. it is a great contribution that you actually did this while you were doing everything else, just amazing. >> we had a couple of months we did not expect.

[laughter] inyou did start this project september, is that right, in terms of collecting it, so you knew you wanted to document the work that you were doing which is a great contribution. whetheruld document it we were successful or not. >> can we take one minute to focus on the legislative charger we have here and talk about the 2010 transition act and the opportunities that it provided you. are there things beyond the direct support at the point of the convention beyond that that you found useful from the 2010 act, and are there things that you think going forward when we talk about moving it forward, not rolling it back, but are there additional tweaks that you can make that would benefit future transition efforts? areas where timer

will refine process. there was written into law a requirement that we negotiate with gsa a memorandum of understanding. i suspect it took longer the first time than it will in subsequent years to do that. of of the big contributions i think the presidential transition act of 2010 was providing access to federal agencies to do security clearances at a certain level early. there is a need literally from the election forward to have people who are cleared and have the clearances required to receive sensitive and classified information. having the ability to do that weeks in advance in certain situations was a critical and important response. again, i would acknowledge that the justice department and

others who were involved in that process did their job in a professional way. i think we can streamline that it iss still, and important because when you are dealing with the days ticking it isand election -- like a fuse burning. it is going to happen. a day that is lost is a day that is wasted. in terms of readiness. i think being in a position to improve those processes, not that they were done poorly, but they had not been done before, and now they have and some discussion in advance will continue. there may be the slate of tweaks. there are not things that i'm prepared at this point to speak about, but that process ought to be refined. we should say to congress ear is what we learned, and hopefully what we have learned is what will be achieved. ask we need to formalize things

that are informal. we had great cooperation from the white house. this thing is like, as the governor mentioned, the bush transition and a great job that they did. there were things we learned from that that would become more focal lysed and commended so that future transitions do not have to start from scratch. the thing i do not think we need is a department at transitions. [laughter] adding a lot of people or creating new positions or adding a layer of bureaucracy to the process. having said that, in particular, when you know there's going to be a transition, as there will be the next time, there are certain things that happen on an informal ad hoc basis that i processmore systematic will allow for a better transition. >> one thing i have thought about hypothetically is in 2016

there will be two of these going on at the same time. i hope gsa is planning to have them in separate locations. [laughter] there is a lot of sensitivity about that for understandable reasons. while that represents more costs, this is a very small amount of money by comparison as an insurance premium on the continuity of government and the stability of the united states. that is not overstated in any way. and so i think as we move into the time between now and 2016, some thought needs to be given to this unique situation where you will have two teams transitioning simultaneously and making preparations for that. and is a traffic point, a person from gsa who ran that effort is not here today, but did do an exceptional job. i can put my own little

commercial plug-in there, it seems to me that we need to have more effort to highlight the good things that the agencies are doing. that was a vital effort and it receives very little attention, where if something goes wrong, there is a huge amount of attention. we need to pay attention to both, what goes wrong and what goes right. in earlier presidential years there have been allegations of a candidate measuring the drapes or celebrating early. why didn't that happen in 2012? >> i think the presidential transition act of 2010 provided the necessary authorization for us to be doing this in a forward-thinking and proper way. that is part of the contribution of the act am a was simply the legitimizing of that process. that is an important contribution. it is also a challenge for any transition to maintain the

-- maintain the proper profile. it was not a surprise, but it was notable how willing people are to be involved in this process, and it is a function of how important it is, and people like to talk about that. a handful of situations where our discipline broke down, gratefully and not a way that created problems am a but i think it is a combination of the 2010 act and then i think we worked hard at maintaining the proper profile, and that is something that future transitions can learn about and not allowed to become a matter of conversation. there will be a certain amount of political banter that goes around it, and it will become

those traditional things that happen in every campaign. evil will still talk about out and figure what happened. the combination of the act and the proper profiling created an atmosphere where it could happen. >> you set the right president -- precedent. as you alluded to, much of the challenge in setting up a new administration involves bringing in the right people. how did you prioritize the positions, because 4000 appointees, you cannot do them all at once, and what kinds of qualities were you looking for? >> we started by assuming that we had to stand up to white first priority. we had to have a national security team, national economic team. it was in many cases driven by our general instructions. what did we have to have in

place in order to deliver and execute on the things that mitt romney had committed to do as a candidate. we were prepared on the thursday following the election with -- to begin the process of choosing a cabinet and the white house staff. we had chosen as i indicated vetted up to eight pre- candidates for each of those positions that would not have forestalled other names from surfacing, other input, but it was a place to start, and we were prepared to start on the day after the election. we prioritized according to our general instructions and the issues we need to deliver during the first 200 days. , thenit works for you maybe we can invite chris to come up and join the conversation here.

you alluded earlier to the andration that you felt, i think again from a nonprofit perspective, it is one of the things that i most admire you have a set of dedicated people committed to making government work right and leave aside the political differences, recognizing that at the end of the day we want our country to succeed. this is an area where there has been unremarkable corporation. it really is a great pleasure to have the three of you up here. chris, this must be interesting for you having done the 2008 transition, and i wanted to start, if you had some initial observations about your sense about this process and what happened this time versus when you were responsible. >> thank you for having me, and i want to acknowledge the president bush's administration. president obama has been publicly appreciative about the important operation, pictured in

their efforts that the bush administration divided to us to the extent that we had a good transition. it was because of the good planning the bush administration had done. i want to complement governor leavitt and chris for putting this document together. when i was taft to be gay second of director, i met with jim and he goes into the closet and pulls up boxes of documents, which included some documents and headed that often me and i sifted to them. after senator kerry lost, he had kept a research system on for about a week afterward cap lumia. after our transition i did the same process, tried to updated for the 21st century and put it on a flash drive. i do not think we would ever put out a book, but i will recommend having read the book

last night, i will recommend it to future transitions because this is a remarkable accomplishment that you have done here. from that perspective, having read the work that you have done, three major differences for us were our operation was significantly smaller. i think by election day we probably only had around 15 people on payroll and when you include these unpaid volunteers, we were probably maybe 75. in part that was the company -- that was the confidentiality concern. kerry had the office about the subway on massachusetts avenue on the senate side, and i do not know where your office is, but these were not great, and you could smell the subway sub shop all the way along. we had a much smaller operation. we had to operate in secret in a way that the rummy folks fortunately did not.

the third thing that we had was we were operating in putting together a transition in a time of remarkable change in the world. situation in the fall of 2008, and the plans we put together in the summer of 2008 quickly became inoperative by the fall. we were trying to plan a position and the world is changing around you. it is a privilege to be here, and to be here with you on this project. >> since we have really, truly, the state of the art represented, are there, in addition to what you described so far, any other key lessons thinking forward to 2016? what would be the short form key points you would make to folks thinking about what they would need to do? >> we have a number of people who led key parts of sitting on the front row. i think we have got a

microphone. i would like to hold the question open to them in their individual situations. i mentioned earlier i completely underestimated the rigor that had to go into actually planning the office of the president-elect, the scheduling process, sufficient that the president-elect could in fact serve well, transportation, housing, the media, when there is no white house, but you have got all the duties that are coming. that is a big deal. if there is one money i will pass along, it is, start early on that. i mentioned steve in his good efforts in providing that. i would be interested to hear your response and the things you would see as lessons in what you learned? handle all the domestic policy,