it's competition with myself, but i had a 5th grade teacher who did something a lot of teachers don't do now, which is she would give you a gold star every time you did well on an assignment. and i wanted to collect those gold stars. but i didn't know how to study. so i was trying to figure it out, and i couldn't because if i had known how to do it, i would have done it. ok? [laughter]

she was a little shocked. i am often asked, what is the greatest obstacle? is a fear of not asking for help when you don't know something. i know i've seen it in my 20-plus years as a judge in my different courts. you ask them a question, they don't know the answer. and instead of saying i don't know the answer, they blunderbust and try to make something up. and then they're skewered by the judges.

ok? it's not much fun. but they seem to fear more the saying i don't know, the embarrassment of that, than the embarrassment of failure in finding the right answer. and i think for me, i understood very, very early on that asking for help is the most important thing to do. that's what finding mentors is about. for me, who should be your mentor? someone who can do something you can't do. and someone who can do something you can't do and knows how to do it well so that you can learn from them, so you can take from them their experience, their knowledge, and try to adopt it to fill in a hole that you may have in your learning.

that's how i define a mentor. and everybody -- one person doesn't have to do everything for you. a lot of people think that a mentor has to be the only person you go to to ask questions. i think you look around in every part of your life and you try to figure out who is doing that thing that i would like to do better, knows how to do it, and what can i learn from them. now, obviously when you pick a mentor, please pick somebody that you respect and like. it should be someone whose values, whose sense of integrity, whose sense of interacting with people are things that you think are worthwhile to emulate. if you do that, you're likely to be picking a person, a, who has

a heart and, b, who will take the time to teach you. if you find somebody that you can't make a mentor of through your efforts, then they may not be worth it. look more broadly as to why not. because i do think that people who have those qualities i spoke about -- integrity, a sense of fairness, a sense of caring -- they're people who if you work with them will give back to you. >> absolutely. and you. >> those values fit perfectly with another theme i wanted to ask you about which is the importance of public service. there's many moments in the book, in your life, that you've had the opportunity either to seek out some important kind of public service or that somebody has asked you to participate in public service. so i wanted to just ask you to reflect a little bit about why and how you sought those opportunities out and maybe what they taught you about yourself and the world.

>> there's nothing more boring to me than living in my own head all the time. no, seriously. if you spend your life in the i, i need, i want, i think, i feel, that becomes pretty boring and very limiting because your sense of self is only fed by you and that's limited by you. and by that i mean you can only give so much to yourself because you need to feed yourself in positive ways to be able to create and give back in more meaningful ways. so i understood that from public service mostly when i got to

college where i began to do a little bit of it and realized that each experience gave me so much more in return, than i gave it, because it taught me about people, about their needs, about the structure of society. some of its weaknesses in helping people. in one of the first community projects i got involved in in college, it came as a result of reading in the local newspaper that a gentleman had been coming from puerto rico and the plane had been diverted from a new york airport to newark. while at newark, when it landed, he became a little bit upset because he didn't understand what was happening around him. today we think of the u.s. as

being filled with bilingual people, but remember, we're talking about the 1970's where there was a sizeable hispanic population but it was not as sizeable as it is today. and bilingualism wasn't as welcome the back then as now. anyway in his agitation he became a little bit unruly and the police stepped in and took him to trenton psychiatric hospital. it took weeks for someone who understood spanish to interview him and to determine that he wasn't crazy but that -- what had happened and reach out to his family before he was released. that story shook me. the idea this a group of patients in a hospital had no one to talk to in their own language really bothered me.

so i went to the latino community on princeton's campus and i asked them whether they would join me in volunteering there once a week. we would take turns. and just go to talk to the people there. we had holiday parties. we had get-togethers. we played games with them, for those who could participate, obviously. and we just provided companionship. it wasn't as if we were treating them. we didn't have any capacity to do that. but that experience actually made me feel better about not myself but better about understanding the world and trying to change it a step at a time.

a lot of people think that the only change you can do that's meaningful is change that i do in the position i hold. it's pretty impressive sometimes when i get to write a really great opinion or when i'm in the majority in a really great opinion. [laughter] when i'm in the dissent, it's a little disappointing but even then i've been a voice in the conversation. those big things impress a lot of people, but they're not the things that matter to most people. it's those little things. it's the human companionship. it's the trying to make the community you live in a little bit better, a little bit happier. so that's what i think public service is. it's the kind of public service that says to people, you don't have to be a politician. you can work in almost any endeavor you want and make a difference in people's lives by just giving some time and some

effort to that enterprise. judge katzmann mentioned dean treanor earlier. you know that dean treanor here and as he did in his prior deanship, has always believed that the law should have some practical effect and that students who are in law school should be working in that area so that it's not always theoretical. you can remain theoretical. and boy, do i do that a lot. ok? that's what a lot of my job is about. but the other part of it is being a human being and giving in those small circles around you. >> i'm going to follow up on that -- >> so hence my first day of meeting the people in the

cafeteria. >> right. right. right. right. so i'm going to ask you now a little bit about your day job but also in sort of the context of the previous two judicial day jobs you held. i think when president obama nominated you, i think he said -- well, you had 17, i think, years of judicial service, which i think he said was more than any other justice had had in the past 100 years. that's a lot of experience. so you are sort of uniquely qualified to talk a little bit about the differences in the kinds of work you've done at each of those levels. maybe for the students here you could just talk a little bit about your role as a district court judge, role as a circuit court judge, and how those things contrast or compare with your current job. and maybe if there's anything you miss about your work on the other two courts that would be interesting to hear also. joern new york. we know you miss new york. >> horribly.

the supreme court would be perfect if i could cut it out and put it in lower manhattan. [laughter] some people are clapping. i actually miss all of my two prior jobs because each was very different and important in meaningful ways. quoting a colleague, rina rodgey who once said work a district court is controlled chaos but chaos nevertheless. ok? the pace of a district court judge is like -- judge's life is non-stop. you are running from, every day, 200 and whatever days a year you work if not more, from one judicial activity to another. you're having hearings, but you're having multitude of different kinds of hearings, whether they're suppression

hearings, discovery hearings, plea hearings. i could keep naming them. there's a wide variety of types of interactions that you're having with lawyers and different kinds of legal situations that you're dealing with. this is on top of sitting in on trials where a wide variety of procedures take place that are each different in and of themselves -- picking the jury, working with lawyers on opening statements, the presentation of evidence, the preparation of charges afterwards so that can you tell the jury what it's supposed to do, and then supervising the jury's deliberations. all of these things are constantly taking you from one point to another. at the end of one activity to another, all day long, at the end of my first year i once said, "i now know why the brain is a muscle. this job has showed me how much it can stretch."

there was so much new information my first year on the bench that i was absorbing that i didn't have a headache, i had a head that ached. there's a big difference. that was what continued for my five years on the bench on the district court. you do get to interact with the lawyers in the courtroom. you get to see a lot of human nature in terms of witnesses and what they're talking about. but the job of a district court judge is to develop a record, to get the evidence out, and then to rule on it. and i've often described their job as doing justice in the individual case. they've got two parties. they have to resolve that

dispute according to the law. and so they're worried -- basically their attention is focused on these two people who sit before them. you get on an appellate court and you're no longer the master of your courtroom. you now have to share responsibility with three people. and things that were routine as a district court judge now become a conference. the first day that i had to confer with my colleagues about giving an extension on the number of pages that somebody's brief had to be, i thought to myself i'm going to hate this job. [laughter] it seemed like such a silly waste of time. ok? it was a silly waste of time, but, but not institutionally. because that collaborative decision making is what appellate work is about. it's sharing the responsibility of thinking through whether a

lower court has made an error of law. and that is a process that takes some of the burden out of judging. because when you can share your thinking and your analysis with two other people and when you can work at convincing them that either you're right or they're wrong or however you want to approach it or them convincing you, it's a very satisfying job. what circuit court judges are doing is more deciding justice for the law. you see, circuit courts are announcing what the law is for that circuit. there's 13 circuits in the united states. a number of states are divided up among the circuits. mine was three states. but the 9th circuit out in

california has nine states. and some -- three i think is the minimum, if i'm remembering correctly. but some have four or five or six. the circuits were divided according to their historical entry into the union. so the second circuit was actually the mother court. we take pride in claiming that we were the first court, the first circuit got started right after us. maybe on the same day, but we still call ourselves the mother court. at any rate, what you're trying to do is find the legal errors in the decision below. in doing that you're trying to determine what you believe the law is as dictated by precedent. so what happens when you get on the supreme court?

if you didn't think you were master of the courtroom when you had three people, when you have nine, you're nothing, alone, because you have to decide something with at least a majority, with five people. convincing five very independent, sometimes hard-headed -- myself included -- people is not an easy -- not an easy task. but what you're doing on a supreme court is announcing what the law says in a case where precedent doesn't necessarily control. by definition, the supreme court generally only takes, with few exceptions, only takes cases when there's a circuit split. what that means is that circuits below among the 13 have disagreed as to what the answer is under the law.

assuming, as i think you should, that most judges, and certainly in panels of three, are trying to do what's right under the law, the fact that they've disagreed means that there's no clear answer. and what you're asking the supreme court to do is to provide that clarity. but that also means that the responsibility on us is enormous because our decisions generally involve matters that affect not the law of your circuit alone but the law of the country and sometimes of the world. and so the supreme court is really the court operating where there is no clear answer in virtually every one of their

cases. there is a real problem relying on the news to tell you what supreme court cases say. and i know we make it a little bit hard because when you pick up our opinions, they tend to be long and they often have a lot of jargan. i encourage you, however, not to rely on the news as citizens. read the opinions. when you do, and if you actually read them with an open mind, you'll often come out saying they both seem right, how can that be? well, that can be because the law is unclear, because precedents don't really settle that question. and you have to believe, the way i do, that this group of nine are each passionate about trying to find the right answer.

and even though we disagree as to what that answer may be or may not be, we all are filled with the same passion. that's how i can stand being, sometimes, on the losing end of a case. >> a more personal question about your day job before i turn to the student questions. what has surprised you about the day job, working with the nine or the kinds of cases that you get? maybe we'll leave it at that. what surprised you? and five years in, are you doing something different now than you did when you started? >> worrying more. seriously. after you're a judge for 17 years you don't take your responsibilities lightly, but

you do understand that you're not the final word, that there are courts ahead of you. if you're on the district court, there's an appellate court. if you're on the appellate court, you know there's a supreme court. so on those unclear cases there's a lot of comfort from knowing that you're not the final word, that if you're wrong, someone can fix it. when you're on that last, final court, you recognize that if you get it wrong, you are really affecting people's lives if not forever for a very, very long time. it takes a long time for congress if it can at all, to change any statutory decisions we make that they think are wrong.

and obviously if we're wrong on our interpretation of what the constitution means, then it takes even longer to undo that if at all. and so the burden of this job and how much i feel it came as an enormous surprise to me. it's not a bad one, but i have more restless nights. >> in a way that i hope will not give you more restless nights, i have some student questions. so i'm going to turn to them now having been instructed that now is the moment to do so. >> ok. i don't know who pointed that out. whoever asked the question -- asks the question, would you please get up? if you're up there, with the lights, i can barely see up there, just say "i'm here" or something like that. at one place i said, "say yo." but, you know -- [laughter] i just like knowing who's asking the question. so i don't want to embarrass

you, but please do stand up. >> so the first question is from maria mendoza. mirah mendoza. hi. >> hello. >> now i feel silly reading her question since she's there. but i will continue on as instructed. hello. her question was, what's the one piece of advice you would tell your younger self as a female? and that's underlined. >> not to lack confidence so much. i was afraid an awful lot. as i have lived to almost get to the age that i am -- if i'm saying it, it's because it's surprising me. and my friends know this. i'm about to turn 60, and i'm shocked. ok? [applause] it's a little disturbing. because the problem is that inside myself, the image i have

of me is still that 9-year-old kid with the curls running down that street in puerto rico i end my book with. ok? that's the image i still have of myself and the idea of having grown to what they say is the new middle age is shocking me. ok? but in this i've had a lot of opportunity to talk to a lot of women of all ages, older and younger. i know that for many of us, and it's still a problem, we don't come to our lives with the same self-confidence that sometimes men do. and i think part of that may be because of societal gender treatment differences. but whatever the causes are, i think women are more afraid of taking chances. if i could talk to the younger

sonia, i would spend a lot less time in that state of constant fear, include doing this job. eloise can talk about it. i spent my first year petrified. it takes -- zaps a lot of energy out of you. and i still have moments of it and probably will forever. and i wish i could change that. as i said, embarrassment or the fear of embarrassment holds you back. and the lack of confidence may not hold you back but it certainly burdens you unnecessarily. >> here's the question from josh. >> josh, where are you? ahh. hello. thank you for being here. >> thank you.

>> thank you all for coming. i know i've taken you -- some of you or a lot of you -- from classes. so thanks. [laughter] >> i'll, again, read josh's question. with a career in the law, particularly one which involved so much time on the bench, have you found it appropriate to set goals or are you weary of having an agenda? >> oh, i'm assuming from the question that you're talking about professional goals or goals as a justice. josh? he's shaking his head yes. i don't know if i'm afraid of having an agenda. i don't think that that's what motivates me against having goals. i think what motivates me is understanding that it's not within my control, meaning we respond to cases as they come to us and it does happen that a lot

of those cases are important but when they come and how they come, in what factual setting, is not within our control. and neither is are you going to have colleagues who are going to agree with you. and i think if you're a sensible person, you understand that although you might have confidence in what you think your vision is and what the law should be, you might be wrong. and you should take pause when people are disagreeing with you to think through carefully their side of things. now, that doesn't mean that principle won't lead you to still disagree. i've had already my fair share of single descents, but i do do themnts, but i

because i think there's an important reason to do it. but my point is that i don't think i do it from fear of setting an agenda but more from the recognition that my agenda may not be the best. that's really dangerous to think that you have all the answers. so i do try very hard to grow with my job, to teach -- to deal with each case on its own terms, and to understand each side of the arguments being presented so that i can render a decision based on that set of facts, that issue, and not my idea of what's right or wrong. the most dangerous thing in judging is playing god. that, to me is the most dangerous thing. >> here is a question from bibi

-- >> hi. >> [inaudible] >> thank you. >> again, i'll read her question. [laughter] >> well. >> i follow direction. which aspects of your childhood have been most salient in your legal career? >> hmm. you know something? i don't think that there's one salient aspect of anything you do in life that should take over who you are in your work or in your personal life. the person we become is a mesh of a whole bunch of different experiences. who i am as a judge is not sonia

from the bronx. ok? [laughter] it is being a prosecutor. it's become a civil litigator. it's being a trial judge. it's being a court of appeals judge. it is all of those things that i learned about, about our society, about how it functions, about our place in. and all of that influences my career and has influenced my career. i think, and i hope -- you may have gone through my book. but if you didn't and you read it, i wrote it so that people would take my life journey with me, to understand how each stage of my life, what new

understandings it gave me and to, i hope, evoke in people as they read it reflections upon what they learned from each part of their life. i talk in the book -- i start the book with describing when i was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes and the discipline and determination that it taught me. and that condition will be with me my entire life. it has been and will be. and that discipline and that determination have been with me and will be. but so has every other experience, whether it's the sort of love that my grandmother gave me and the understanding of family and loyalty to it that has been a part might have career -- a part of my career in the sense, as the chief judge said, i make time for my family

and friends and i was taught that from my childhood. so everything influences you. you can tell i'm very spanish. can't you? i talk with my hands. [laughter] actually, i don't know if it's only spanish. it's very mediterranean. [applause] >> here's a follow-up question from chris, college 17. [laughter] >> hello, chris. >> so chris asks, what challenges have you faced reconciling your hispanic background with a traditionally anglo-american institution? he's got a sneaky follow-up, which is, what do you read for pleasure? [laughter] >> there has not been a lot of that. ok? that.ought you would say >> a lot of my reading has been legal reading.

if you talk about the times i did pleasure reading, i love sci-fi. [laughter] i really -- it is a perfect escape from this world, ok? even with all the lectures, lessons it does about human nature -- i just adore it. if it has dragons and elves and dwarves, i like it even more. ok? [laughter] i was a harry potter aficionado. [applause] i often think of myself walking to the supreme court -- when you come to see the building, you know what i mean. lots of marble and lots of portraits, mostly of men. ok? men, not a lotf of women except sandra day o'connor up on the walls. i would walk through on the weekends and hear my footsteps

on the ground, and think, these paintings are going to talk to me. [laughter] and, you know, it was a little bit scary. i will tell you my favorite story that first year. remembersow if eloise it. i came to work one day, and i was leaving to go to a meeting. i walked around the corner and i stopped. there was a stairwell there. i looked at the stairwell. i looked around and i said, did i turn the wrong way? i looked all around, thinking, i am lost. how do i get -- how do i get to my office? i went back to my office, with my face in a total state of shock. ok? i looked at my assistant, who had been justice souter's assistant at the time. i said, shelley, i think i am going crazy. and she said, justice, they took the wall down last night. [laughter]

they had been doing construction in the building, and they had balls up in places i did not know were artificial balls, you know? i'm so sci-fi is really important to me, ok? [laughter] anyway. but that is what i tend to read. going back to your question, this is a line i say in my book, about talking to hispanic students who share my background, and who find themselves going into institutions where they are not in the majority, or which are, as princeton was to me, completely alien environments. and i talk about the need to -- to find comfort in your own

community, because i do not think that without the latino students in princeton, who had more similar backgrounds to me, that i would have felt at home there at all. and i could not have stayed unless i found commonality somewhere. but i also understood that i was being given an opportunity to learn about a world i knew nothing about, to learn about people who did things and came from places i knew nothing about. and that it was very, very important for me to use my community as an anchor, so i would not fly away, but not as an anchor that did not let me reach out and fly away when i needed to. it had to be a removable anchor, up and down.

it was important to me, when i was there, to be a part of every world i could be, to learn as much about other worlds as i could. and that is how i have navigated. i still do that, you know? i certainly had continuing involvement with the communities i came from. but i also am very and mashed -- enmeshed in the world i am in, and i am navigating and by learning about it, but becoming part of it. not separate from, but building bridges between the worlds. that is what my book is about, to show the wider world what my life was like, but also to show them the commonalities we have.

i cannot tell you how many people from vastly different backgrounds than my own have come to me to share stories about how similar something in their life was. justice ginsburg read my book, as most of us have yet to read anything during the term, with small breaks at a time. she read it in chapters over a series of a few weeks. every time she finished a section, she would come and tell me, share something about her life that is similar. and yet we have very, very different lives, and yet the same. -- i hopell find that everybody who reads the book will experience that. that is what the book is about. not to talk about our differences, but to talk about

our commonalities. >> here is a question from marja -- marta. >> marta? ah. >> thank you for coming today. >> thank you. >> she wrote that on a card, and i was going to read it to you. she also wrote a big thank you. point.tion her question is, what do you think is the most significant barrier to female and latino leadership? >> it is a slightly different question. not that i have not been asked that before. i am trying to think, what can i think that is.

i think we are getting better at it. but we do not have one culture. we come from very, very different countries and backgrounds that the larger community in the united states paints us with the same brush often does not mean that translates to us feeling like we are one group. we laugh. i was at dinner with some friends the other night, and we were talking about the differences in words that guatemalans, puerto ricans, dominicans, and mexicans use. those were the people there. and we were having fun trying to figure out each other's words. we were having fun about it, but it is a reflection of the difference in our cultures.

i think we are, as communities, going to understand that at least here in america, we have to create our commonality. we have to work toward understanding that that will give us greater strength. and once we do that, i think it will be easier for us to recognize leaders. because until we do that, we will not be able to speak with a common voice. not one voice, by the way. i think that is a mistake. i do not think any ethnic group speaks in one voice. ok? there are common issues we talk about. if we can do that, leaders will form. >> here is the last student question we have. >> i am going to ask them to pass up some more. >> there is water right now. >> pass up some more questions. i think we are early. pass up some more questions, you guys.

[laughter] [applause] >> i need ricky. >> where is ricky? did she leave? pass up some more of those questions. [laughter] them am not going to cheat out of time. >> i will ask the last question. >> well, ask the question, and maybe they will recognize it. >> here is a question from thomas. people. this is what professors like it when you type your exams. thomas's question is, how has your status as a minority giving

you motivation and strength during your professional career? >> thomas, where are you? hello, thomas. >> could you describe your experience? like how do you -- during your undergraduate career, how was -- >> speak up, i cannot hear. >> how was your identity as a minority important in terms of integrating yourself? >> i think there are two different questions. your first question, the one on the paper -- i know i use my minority status and people's lack of expectations of me to my advantage. and i still do that. by that i mean, you will read in my book about my being in law school and being asked by an interviewer whether i felt i had gotten into yale simply because i was a minority. it helped a little bit that i was summa cum laude phi beta kappa from princeton.

[applause] and that is what i told him. [laughter] but i remember being in the courtroom as a district court judge. here i am, all of 38 years old. a young hispanic woman. sitting in a courtroom with an attorney who i know had to have been practicing about 40 years. and he was treating me dismissively. i could respond to that, or i could do what i did. just kept asking him

questions. and i kept asking him questions. and all of a sudden, he who had been standing there, just looking to the side with a note of being exacerbated. not even looking at me, and i know he was frustrated for a while, and then, all of a sudden, i asked him a question. i saw him turn around and looked up and look at me. i realized he realized, i had better be careful. she's not dumb. i got his attention all right. i do not worry that much about what others expect of me. i try to worry about what i expect of myself.

sometimes, one others expect of me does bring me down. when i do that, i end up not liking myself. because i realize i am setting the wrong standard. when i concentrate more on proving what i can do, i am a happier person. i think that is what can give you strength as a minority. it is not to go through life living to the expectations of other people, but just working on advancing yourself. every step you take to become a better student, to become a better professional, to educate yourself, both in terms of knowledge and skill -- that is what counts. i think that if you are a minority, where people are not

having expectations of you, it is really satisfying to prove them wrong. you can take well-earned pride from that. now, the question you asked when you are standing up was -- you were talking more about, what do you do when you are here, either to take a ride in that identity or to prove it in some way. and i do not think that is a helpful way to look at it all stop as i explained earlier, i think it is more helpful to think about, how do i build bridges in this larger community? what do i do to learn more about people and community who have lived different lives than me? and how do i share with them the

life i have lived, recognizing that both have equal value? if you can do that, you will live in both worlds relatively comfortably. and occasionally still feel a stranger in both. look. you are at georgetown. if you come from the background i did, you are going to find that people in the communities you came from -- they are going to start treating you differently. the reality is that you are no longer going to be completely like them. you are going to be better educated. you are going to have more opportunity. in some ways, you are going to speak differently. these are not bad things. this is the reality of the opportunities you have been given. it does not mean you have to feel badly about those things.

it means you accept them and give comfort to the people who love you, by reminding them you are there. still you. the first year i was on the supreme court bench -- as you know, i got a lot of public attention. i went to my family holiday party, which my cousin miriam hosts every year. i walked in and sat down. for about 10 minutes, everybody was silent, waiting for me to talk. [laughter] and at some point i said to them, [speaking spanish]. [laughter] [applause] what is wrong with you? i said, do not tell me you have fallen for the stories they are telling you out there. they started to laugh and started to do what they always do -- talk over each other,

screaming each other. [laughter] mean, i guess i they had come to the white house and seen the sworn in at the court. had a reception at the white house. it is a little bit scary, scary for me. imagine for my family, who had never visited washington. i knew that. but i had to take time to remind them that sonia was still sonia. >> i saw two more questions passed up for me. thanks. ok. so this is -- ok. so aziya jawadi. hello? hi. >> you are welcome.

>> he asks, what are your thoughts on the retirement age for supreme court justices? [laughter] >> you know something? when i started my job as a judge, i was 38. and my assistant teresa, who is still with me, started with me. from the first week or so, the other judicial assistance in assistant -- judicial assistants in the court took her out to lunch. and she came back from lunch, and she said, justice -- actually, she called me sonia. private.e were in sonia, i feel kind of stupid. would you please tell me what senior status is? every one of those assistants knew when their judge would take senior status to the year, month, week, and day. senior status is when a judge

can retire. i looked at her and said, teresa, i am 38. we are far away from thinking about it. it is never going to come. well, i am now 60. it would be five years away. and now i have a job for life. ok? [laughter] little crazy. the only person who is a few years away from retiring and takes a job that is longer, but i did. i do not know the answer to that. and i will tell you why. i worked with john paul stevens, who retired at 90. he was smarter, more active, and more insightful than any judge i have ever met at 90. and i was heartbroken when he left the bench. but he said to me, when he

talked about his decision, that he wanted to leave on top, and not in his declining years. and that he still felt that he was on top, but that he feared that the turn might happen and he would not realize it. justice souter retired at 70. when i asked him why, he said to me, because he had lived at a time when some justices who had stayed longer than they should have. so what is the answer? it is not making fixed rules, because fixed rules are very, very dangerous. they deprive you of the wisdom and the knowledge of people.

because of your fear that one or two people might stay a little longer than they should. we have a vibrant court of nine people. if one of them is a little bit not quite at the top of their game, you have another eight that can hold on until they make their decision with big day. -- with dignity. and i think the founder's belief that keeping us immune from political pressure by giving us life tenure has made our institution as strong as it is. i think that has value for our society. i am not quite sure that i think there is an actual age. the reality is that age tells you nothing about a person's capacity. it is more complex than age. >> i think this really is going

to be the last question. >> ok. i know i have probably run over a little bit. president, i do that all the time, and i am sorry. >> this question is from yvonne hernandez. >> hello. [speaking spanish] >> on the card, how do you build consensus around an idea or a position? >> one at a time. [laughter] that is seriously. one at a time. it is not easy when you are working with a group of nine. it was much, much easier on the court of appeals. a group of three is more manageable. a, because each person can talk more, longer.

and because there is a sense of each being so vital to the conversation that each engages more. when there is nine, there is sort of the group dynamic that smaller groups can support each other around ideas. and that makes it harder to be off one vote at a time, on occasion. but we end up doing it one person at a time. sort of talking and re-talking. we do vote on cases, but we continue to talk after the voting in smaller groups. and our writings, as they get circulated, there is still conversation going on. there are still discussions with those people who have expressed doubts or expressed reservations about the votes they have cast.

it is a dynamic that is ongoing. frankly until the day the decision is issued. i should not say quite that day. you know when it is finalized? when we clear the decision for announcement. and that is usually the friday conference before the week of announcements. that is basically the end of the conversation. >> this has been an incredible conversation. and in a minute, i know the audience is going to join me in thanking you. i have been asked to do two more things before i bring the conversation to a close. so the first thing is that if i read your name, or if your question was asked, please after the event is over, after you do get a chance to clap, which i know you want to, please come to the front row. the justice is going to come say hello. in a minute. and the second thing i have an

asked to do is to -- >> and take a picture. with you. >> and take a picture. and the second thing i have been asked to do -- i know it kills you -- is to invite professor bailey on to the stage, chair of the government department, who is going to make a few closing remarks. and then i know we will all thank the justice with enthusiasm. well, thank you. being here and having this event makes me realize how good we have it here at georgetown. not only do we get the chance to do the theory and the history and the analysis and so forth, but we really get a chance to see this on a personal level -- see the law, the justices, how it plays out, and the personal connections. that is not what everyone gets to be able to do, so that is pretty neat. not only do we have a good georgetown in general, we in this room have it good that we are getting books.

and so, i want to give you a couple notes on how we are going to do that. this set of folks is going to exit first. when everyone else is exiting, you will take your orange ticket, and in the main lobby, we will be distributing a book. distributing the books, and you will exchange the orange ticket for those books. they have been generously and probably laboriously signed by justice sotomayor. that is pretty neat. i would also like to thank -- there are a lot of people to thank for this. , the government department several have been in important in setting it up. we appreciate the lecture fund students, as always giving very able service for this. we appreciate the friends of argaret better than stein --

bernstein, who made this possible. when they set this up, they basically bound the judge to this. they had the foresight to say he would be involved in this whether or not he was at georgetown. they seemed to know what your future was even back then, and that has been very fortunate for georgetown. a big thanks to the judge for all he has done. he is a huge asset for georgetown and for the government department. think you, professor pascoff for guiding a fun and stimulating event. most of all, i am sure everyone joins me in thanking justice sotomayor. the event has been great. [cheers and applause]

[applause] >> you stay at the front. i want to take a picture with you. you are the youngest person in the audience. >> thank you, everyone. have a good evening. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute] >> a little later today, remarks from president obama in oso, washington, the site of last month's deadly mudslide that killed dozens of people. the president is touring the area today and meeting with

victims families. see his comments today at 6:50 c-span-2. chris crist will speak at a dinner. you can see his remarks life at 7:15 p.m. eastern here on c-span. earlier this month, three whistle blowers discussed the challenges they faced when they wrongdoings se and violations of law. e heard it from daniel who broke the "new york times" paper story. >> snowden looked at chelsea manning and realized that he had to be out of the the country if he was going to put out this amount of information and be able to tell what he had done, why he had done it, to comment as he has been doing it, to speak now. i was personally, 40 years ago

able to speak. i was out on bail, on bond throughout my trial, and i was able to speak to lectures and demonstrations. there isn't a chance in the world that snowden would have been allowed to do that as he knew. he would be in an isolation cell like chelsea for the rest of his life essentially. no journalist today three and a half to four years since this came out, no journalist has spoken to chelsea manning. no interviews, nothing. and they went. you are not allowed to speak to him in prison. snowden morals had to be out of the country. he learned from that. he said you needed to put out current documents, and all the more reason he had to be out.

>> what makes a whistleblower? it is pretty heart. many new the secrets, and many of them knew this involved life and death matters on which major lies were being told, and yet they didn't speak out. i think we have to change the culture of secrecy, change the benefit of the doubt that is given wrongly to politicians and to the president in terms of what the public should know and should not know. to even think of thinking, affection, that clapper, or keith alexander, or the president should be the last word on what the public should know about what they are doing in our name, represents kind of a kind of culpable ignorance at this point unless you are 16 years old or something like

that. these people do not deserve the benefit of the doubt at this point. behind the veil of secrecy, extremely bad, disastrous policy-making goes on without accountability. as we learned from the pentagon papers, as we learned from documentation, as we learned from snowden. if we got the iraq papers, which we still don't have, but there have been a number of leaks, authorized leaks in a number of cases, decision-making is actually very bad. it is not only criminal, stupid -- it is also stupid and ignorant. to a large extent it is not subjected to a larger debate even within the government, or the congress, let alone within the public. and the reason that the constitution that tom has been talking about so much is not indeed obsolete. it was a good idea then, and it

is still a good idea, has to be defended against people, starting with two presidents, and their minute ons, and many people in the press. we have after 9/11, a new order for which the constitution is not suited. e need a different form of government that, as nixon said, if the president does it, it is not illegal. we have to leave it up to him to decide what not to tell us. >> that was a portion of an event held earlier in southern california. you can see the event in its entirety at 8:00 eastern. tv, and 2, book c-span 3 a look at the life of malcolm x. >> for more than a year there

have been allegations and insinuations that i knew about the allegations about the watergate break in, and that i was involved in an extensive plot to cover it up. the house committee is now investigating these charges. on march 6, i ordered all materials that i had previously furnished to the special prosecutor turned over today. these included tape recordings of presidential conversations and several hundred documents from white house fold. april the they issued subpoenas tapes for 42 additional conversations, which it said were necessary. i agreed to respond to that subpoena by tomorrow. >> 40 years ago, president nixon responded to a subpoena for watergate tapes. his response, sunday night at

8:00 eastern, part of american history tv this weekend on c-span 3. >> last month the manhattan institute held a discussion on the future of conservatism and the represent party. authors, columnists and journalists talked about several issues, including the economy, health care and foreign policy. this is an hour and 20 minutes. >> what is the future of conservatism? what policies should it embrace? >> there are a number of people

well qualified to debate these questions, but with it falling squarely on the shoulders of the next generation, we have assembled a number of leading edge jurrjensists, scholars and authors to engage in a discuss about what the way forward could be. deeply versed in the nuances of policy, they will not basically agree, but perhaps in a discussion we will illuminate the finer points of the debate. it reminds me of the early days of city journal when people like health, george and others who would be characterized as classic conservatives managed to get together and form a conservative policy that was both coherent and very successful. we are ike in many ways at the same kind of point in history. we are glad to bring together this group. disappoint their youth, their

resume's are very long and they are very accomplished for their age. i won't go through all the resumes, but i am happy to welcome our panelists. josh baro. ivol evan, meeting and from bloomberg, mcelroy, a senior ellow. ryan. a contributing editor of national review. and we are grateful to our moderator this evening, david brooks, columnist for the norblingt, whose career has been directed towards what is new and interesting in the world of ideas. thank you for being here this evening, and thanks to those who will be watching over the internet. we look forward to the conversation. join me in welcoming the moderator of this evening's discussion, david brooks. [applause] >> thank you, larry. i was thrilled when i was called to ask if i would take

part in a panel on the future of conservatism. then it became clear i am actually too old to be a panelist. i used to be one of these people, and now i am no longer on the leading edge. i am just a dying emwe are, fading -- a dying ember, fading on the line. judging by the days when we worked together, he is just waking up. [laughter] it is good that he rolled out of bed in time for this. we are just going to have a bunch of quick questions, and hopefully not too long answers, and hopefully you will cut each other off. what is the problem with conservatism. i am going to mangle conservatism and the republican party together. why are we here? what is the problem? >> i was going to say we don't know how to make an entrance. in the most generally sense i would say that the key problem is conservatism and the

republican party are not connecting with the problems of the day, are not speaking to the american public in terms that make sense with people's experience. a lot of people are finishing sentences that other people started in the 1980's, and they have forgotten where those sentences started and why. they are meanable to conservative ways of thinking and solutions, the republican party is not doing the work of decking their ideas to today's problems, and voters know it. voters consider it to be out of touch because in a lot of ways, it is out of touch. >> megan, do you agree, and if so, what are today's problems? >> there is a big problem with the coalition that came up in he 1960's and 1970's and 1980's. the republicans forgot to declare victory and go home. for a long time there was this

insistent of tax cuts. that was the one thing we had -- we could agreed on. but it was not speaking to the problems that people had, especially after the financial crisis of 2008. s t isn't where the american want to hear solutions for their parents' generation, but their generation. they feel like they are not going to move up. they feel like things are contracting, and they want to hear the republican party speak to that. >> what you have mentioned are problems with conservatism, but there is another problem. that problem is the lack of diversity in the people who vote republican and who represent the base of the conservative movement. not just in terms of ethnicity and race, but also in terms of regionalism. it is a southern party, not a northern part. n interior party not a coastal

party, it is a rural party. i think the democratic party party ore legitimate national party. >> what about the question looking for a white america that is never coming back. >> you hear that on fox a lot. this is not the america i grew up in, for which that is a rhetorical statement. that is part of it. if we step back a minute from that, what we might understand is that conservatives pride themselves on thinking we treat everyone is is as a individual. it is the other party that treats them with race, ethnicity and other interests. i don't think that is the case anymore. it has become a little more

about the interest groups that have assembled in the republican coalition, and i think we have it step outside of that and realize that some of these people who don't vote republican, they are individuals to, and we treat them as democratic voters and we don't need to reach out to them. >> the poverty problem, the mobility agenda and then the demographic problem. is one more important than the other? >> i think the core problem is the policy problem. i think the identity problem is a real thing, but if you have the right policies, those problem becomes easier to fix. dempsters had the civil war and managed to consolidate the black vote in time because they made the correct appeals on policies. on the policy side, it is not just that the republicans are going after problems that are fixed. a new set of problems has arisen that conservatism doesn't have ideas to address. there are two main ones. over the last 40 years there

has been a de-coupling from proximity growth and wage growth. one of the prop sixes has been worry first about growth and we shouldn't worry too much about distribution. but if you have returns occurring disproportion naturely at the tape, you don't have the appeal to the lower classes. then we went through a recession and recovery. i think we thought we had beaten the business cycle, and we haven't. conservatives have been made the same economic policy prescriptions as they were making in 2007. there are two problems. one is it is wrong. two, it doesn't appeal to people who are facing real economic paper in recession. another one of the bronxes that conservatively puts out -- bronxes that conservatism puts out is you don't want to give too many programs, because

while they create a safety net, it slows growth. if we are in a risky economic session, that trade-off of more security for less growth can lookt appealing, especially if would growth we do get is occurring at the top. what can conservatives say about the new policy? i think it is a very difficult policy question but one that needs to be addressed. >> instead of rising tide the g growth, what about de-coupling risks? >> because our mental model is wrong, we gravitate to the long solutions. when we think about globalization, we tend to think of a mental model in which we see jobs sucked from the united states to china or something along those lines. you see companies that are kind of competing in this more

vigorous way, when in fact, the division of labor is now global in scale. you still have hierarchies. you have more privileged parts and less privileged parts. the big change that happened after the late 1980's is that you have many countries that became integrated into a specialized division of labor. the best places to be are still in the united states and countries like it. the people at the top are not all-americans or this country. when you look at u.s. corporations, they manufacture 40% of what is made in the world. but the value, the profits that are flowing to the corporations are not flowing to the entire population. capitalism is working extremely well. it has been miraculous in terms of raising living standards around the world. when you think about how capitalism is impacting americans right now, the problem is that you have a

chunk of the population that is exactly where you would want to be in terms of how that works. then you have another chunk of the population that is in another place. they think other people can do this work better than they can, et cetera. that is a core challenge that i think conservatives have the right instincts about, but there hasn't been enough rigorous thinking about that problem. >> the value of that, it was like $347 million per employee. that suggests a lot of value to very few employees. does anybody disagree with this basic notion that capitalism is not functioning automatically the way the 80's conservative model assumes it would? >> one way to think about the problem we are facing, the change we are facing, and another reason why some people say this sentence the america i used to know, is that our idea of what america is, is shaped

by a post-war america that couldn't possible come back. it didn't exist before the war and is never going to exist that way again. all its competitors burned each other to the ground. for decades could basically contain in itself the growth of level capitalism. all boats did rise in a way, at least to some extent. that model defines our expectations in a way that is going to need to change, and it is going to be very difficult to change that. you can look, for example -- i had the interesting experience last year of reading charles murray's new book right after reading "the conscience of a liberal." they both start with an introduction that is pure nostalgia for the 1960's, and they are right. those were years that we should miss. there is a lot about them to miss. but our politics is far to oriented around can we bring

that back rather than thinking what does the look like now and how can we make the most of america's strengths today? both parties are failing that. they are both intellectually exhausted in a way that is very bad for the country. >> there is 50's nascar tal gentleman for the unions and for labor. economic s a lot of dynamism, but that doesn't mean we can do it today. >> i know you guys don't remember the 60's. you were busy on that thing you call the internet. >> technically we weren't born then. >> not just technically, we really weren't. >> that is why i enjoyed them. [laughter] >> one way to think about that is an important difference between the two parties is the democrats tend to think about that future in terms of large institutions. republicans, when they think

about it at all, which is not enough, tend to think about it in more de-centralized terms. republicans may be better situated for offering a vision of that future than the democrats, but they have to think it through. they have to think about speaking to a culture that is used to having an incredible amount of choice in a very de-centralized space. that is what the few looks like. there is a lot of work to be done to think through what public programs look like in that space. >> i would amplify that further by saying that the information economy is a fundamentally different kind of economy than the industrial economy. i think the political class in general that has been raised on the industrial idea is not equipped to think about how the information economy is fundamentally different. that leads to a different set of policy problems. what do you do with unskilled male workers left behind.

but it goes beyond that. it is about a pace of innovation, and a type of innovation and a type of a labor force that is very different. political people and intellect wals tend to be old school in the way they live their lives. they write and read. that is not necessarily what the average person is doing today. people in that economy are much more attuned toe that than the people who comment on it. >> you say what you want to say, but i am going to throw something at you. >> i want to push back on that a bit. i think the 50's and 60's were very innovative. people's lives were changing materially every year with massive improvements in the standard of living. we are less innovative now than we were in that post-war period. my thinking is we are going to be less innovative in the world because of the aging of the

world. older people tend -- as i am looking down becoming one -- but they tend to be more conservative. you here is this thing and to 57, i -- you are going say give me half your savings and you have the opportunity to be a billionaire. what, i am going to have new carpet in my nursing home? now the median age is the highest it has ever been at 38. that is a huge challenge that no party is speaking to at all at this point. that a de the point company issue is centralization versus de-centralization. i will get back to that in a minute. let's get back to megan's point. that reminded me of a book that

argued we are winding down productive, or at least we are in a period of slow productive and growth. and that implies that america is sort of on a downward slope. do you buy that? >> i don't know. i am not sure there is that much that policy can do about that. ? think the pace, the likely -- likely thing is it is slowing where people don't think they are getting a standard of living growth. we have been in an environment where you have had a defacto weakening of a lot of intellectual property protection for copyrights and patents. t doesn't seem to have had impacts on which kinds of i.p.'s are getting better. >> is that a weakening? >> well, dwact ott.

there is rampant piracy in music. as far as i can tell, music has not gotten worse. the model of television and movies has been disrupted. it is bad for producers, but it looks good for consumers. what it makes me wonder is for the quantity of innovation, does the i.p. policy matter that much? it is a question whether we are going to be more innovative in the future. but it is not where i would tepid to direct my energies. >> i respect tyler, but i completely disagree with his thesis. if we think about the evolution we are in r biology, the first pitch of our knowledge of how the cells, brain and body works.

but i think the thing we are missing when we are too optimistic about that side. a catastrophic financial crisis. that got me into this world. we have more of a conception of what that could look like because of 2007-2008, but we are so far removed from the depression that we really don't understand what a true catastrophic financial crisis would look like. >> didn't we just go through one? >> no. it wasn't as bad as the depression. >> something that conservatives haven't fully processed is how bad this has been for the country. >> and it is nothing compared to what could come. the past is not a predictor of the future. >> sure. let's get this core question of the future left-right divide in

the country. you have all put something on the table. centralization and de-centralization, does that strike everybody as true? >> no. i think the core fight is the one we have had over the recent years. it is about redistributing poor and middle-class interests. it is not a fight we are done having. to put it bluntly, it is sort of where is my grole, and where is my piece of this economy. >> but my impression is there is going to be some sort of wage amelioration that is going to be de-centralized? >> i think the two closely decked. there is a real logic to the left and right's ways of thinking about the role of government in our economy. there is a real difference between them. the left does seem to think bout managing lots

institutions. it is a coherent, logical argument. i don't agree with it it, but bad certainly not a argument. >> for society to flourish is very chaotic. it looks like chaos, and it is in many respects. that is how innovation happens, but also how problem-solving happens one-on-one, through markets, local governmenting, through institutions, trial and error ways, pilot programs. not a centralized, here is the technical answer. we are going pack to the difference where they are becoming apparent. and we are getting to something like employing economy on the table. economics is consumed by an argument about priorities, which in turn is consumed by an argument of what american life

is really all about. conservatives could be in a better position than they seem to be in ways to make sense to voters. society is de-centralized, and it offers them a huge number of options, and younger people like that, expect that and want that. ou see it in the health care debate. the here is consultation of large systems involved in the left way of thinking is not appealing to a lot people. but conservatives don't go around saying we have a view of what government does that involves creating a space, subsidizing entry. that is what conservatism is in practice. is not qually, it that. i think the dwap has to be close. you can see it happening. it is imaginable, but that

doesn't mean it is happening. that is some of the work these folks are trying to do. >> i have two stories in terms of how i think about the future of the left-right divide. one story is that the left is the party of democracy, and the right is the party of diversity. the other start is the left is concerned about inequality, and the right ought to be concerned about inclusion. when you are contrasting a corporation and a republic, they are both similar entities. they are both legal institutional entities that own themselves and have their own cultures and codes. they can organize themselves in a lot of different ways, and you have one that succeeds, and all the other corporations mimic that model until better occurs. on the left, we have gal taryne decision-making in the organization. it leads to a different type of decision maverick making.

that has been an attractive story to tell. we now have things in the society to make it more democratic. they say well, it is a good thing to have that trial and error process that you have described. you can't say what works and determine what works through a randomized trial and distributed it to everyone through a central library. it is actually about what works where. the nation of the problem is going to change over time. but the other story that i have become more and more interested and concern about is the idea that the left is concern about distribution of resources in the idea. the real problem is that there are large populations, growing populations i would suggest, that are marginized from the pieces of our culture and

society that are working well. when you think about civil society, you think about formal institutions. when you think about how upper middle income people think about their friendships as vehicles for upward mobility. when you think about inclusion and the goal of inclusion, it leads to different policies. if you are an advocate of increased minimum wage, it raises household income. it leads to fewer jobs for 500,000 theme or some arbitrary number. inclusion is actually a big deal. the idea of locking out some swath of the population that allow people to accumulate resources and build social connections, to break out of that isolation that is toxic,

that suddenly becomes a very big deal. that is not to say that inequality is not a problem at all. but maybe we ought to think about the inclusion problem. then we are going to look differently at a host of problems including immigration, and integration. that is the debate i would want to see. >> let's get a concrete view. i will introduce two characters. john is 42 years old, used to work as a mill, is now working hour.arehouse for $9 an stagnant wages where he is employed, not going anywhere, sort of falling through the cracks. jane is a waitress making $ 27,000, two kids, no dad around the household. what do republicans offer these people? >> that is the question. the problem with this nebulous idea of the de-centralized

system of networks where we are not telling it what to do and building the environment, we have this per received and actual economic risk over the last few years. what the left has is they have a suite of centralized programs to offer that are designed to mitigate the risks. the pitch we are proposing to offer from the right is basically we will have the pilot programs, and we will figure things out, and you will have a civil society and such. that creates a lot of risk that in various places this isn't going to work. when you look at actual republican politicians in place, they have not expressed a lot of interest in doing these kind of policy innovations. on these corvo economic issues at the state level, although they have been innovative on issues less core to the debate today. on one side there is a credibility issue here. on the other it is not

responsive to this broad new risk. the way conservatives can adjust to that is move away from fiscal policies in emphasis. there are still de-regulatory opportunities at the lowell level in occupational licensing, planning and zoning. there are opportunities on the federer level where you can unleash market forces, create faster growth, beat down rents in a de-centralized manner, but i don't think there is a creditible way to meet those needs in a de-centralized way on fiscal policy. >> there is a way to talk about this that the conservatives and dempsters are. we are talking about reciprocity. one way to view the world is to think about what happens economically either as a foreager does. you go out hunting, and there

is nothing there. it is not because you are a bad hunter. there is just no animal there. they share a lot. they have very broad insurance. or you can look at it as a farmer. you put it in the ground, you o the work, you should get the crop. how many we judge things comes down to you think this outcome is fundamentally risk or outcome? they have tightly linked reciprocal networks. it is not like i give you stuff and you have no reciprocal obligation to me. the democrats are in the position that the rich have taken too much. we need to take it from them. what obligation do these people have? none. they have been competed. ra republicans can do is look at a policy emor things that say if you do the right things, then it should be possible for you to get ahead.

it should be possible for you to stay connected to the labor market. looking at policy through that lens, things like trying to get the long-term unemployed back to work through payroll tax rebates and what have you. you are doing the right stuff, and therefore we have an obligation to you. if you are not doing the right stuff, then we don't. if you are not trying to work, then we don't have it. it has to be two-way. i don't think either party has captured that space yet. it is the way to go. >> how do wage subsidies work. >> you have americans that are not competitive with chinese works, or they are not competitive at the level their parents worked out. they are downwardly mobile because doing what they are dad did doesn't pay what it used to. what a lot of them are saying

is no. why should i do this? this is demeaning i should have to do it for a pit ands for the rest of my life? so they go on to stability, which is a terrible program. it is becoming like this back door trap unemployment are insurance, and it is not good on that role. what you can say is we are going to make up that difference. we are going to playmake it easier for you to support a family at the basic level your dad it at least on the same kind of work. your larry bird is not worth it, and you are not going to go back to college and welcome an electrical edge. we are dwrg to make it possible to -- going to make it possible to maintain what we think is a accident minimum wage, provided you work 40 to 50 hours a year.

>> the eitc is basically a wage subs can i. in some ways you can't link the for that. >> that is an important part of the solution, but i want to raise a couple of points related to your original questions. the middle wage worker is in a different situation. country singly wealthy can do more. the mill worker, that job is gone and not coming back. there are discreet problems. neither party has a solution. we talk about income inequality, but we don't talk about the importance of cost of living relative to income

inequality. if you live in a low-cost part of the country and your wanes are low, it is not that bad. it is harder in new york. at the local and federal level we have done things to drive up the cost of housing, food and all the things that a low coin come would happen. we are going to drive the course of our health insurance down. we are going to drive the course of your housing, mortgage and rent down. we are going to make it easier for you to live your life. >> does everyone here agree the wage subsidy is a decent idea? >> it is a decent idea, but with the caveat of dumping it into the labor mark, where there are a lot of people looking for work relative to firms looking to hire people. a wage subsidy is going to further imbalance that by

drawing more people into the labor mark. to have ays better wage subsidy translate into higher incomes. >> i disagree with that. what i see in the labor market right now, basically two markets. you have the long-term unemployed and others. this labor mark is fine and recovering. it is about where you want it. this labor market, one thing you could try doing is making that way cheaper. rebate the payroll tax. it is effectively a 15% wage subsidy for hiring the long-determine unemployed. it is not going to fix the prop, but we could say we know you want to work and you have been stuck in this employment situation. we have going to help them by

making it more attractive for employers to a hire you rather than some other guy. i think the labor market for people currently in work is basically fine. >> fine, with the exception that we have this long run trend that has been worse in the last few years of slow wage growth relatively to g.d.p. growth. relative. that is >> we have had slow growth in health care costs and fairly anemic wage growth. it is related to a cultural problem that there is a deadlining work ethic or less pride that people take in work. part of it would have to do weavened act of the wage growth. i think it points to the place

of work in the larger economic debate emerging in the last few years, and especially prevalent in the last few months. there is really a lot of room for conservatives to highlight about the ways in which they are thinking of henninger the poor and the lower middle-class have centered around work. senator rubio has something out there now that would distinguish in a very sharp way benefits that go to people who have a job and don't have a job. he is not ending help for people not working. but that would be end time benefits, help with housing, food, and medical coverage. for people ememployed, it would be cash ben fits. using the same amount of money. a cash benefit is a lot more appealing than an in-kind benefit. ? that sense, not to even shift

the emphasis or the degree of help offered to people in different circumstances, but to make people the center of what it takes to rise in america, that is extremely important. t gets to another toews -- debates are more about priorities more than about technical questions about how to get the economy growing at this or that rate. that is healthy. i think the democrats have not worked out their side of this argument very well, and the republicans have worked out their side as well. it shows itself in the health care debate, labor depth, safety net and welfare. it is a big part of politics going forward. >> you have worked as a hill staffer, as a white house staffer. how big a gap between this

conversation and the conversation that elected officials are having? >> how big have you got? i think there are a few members of congress who are very much in this kind of conversation. i think it is unrombl to expect there will ever be more than a view. at this point i don't think they are influential enough. some of them are in positions of prominence in leadership. i think paul ryan and dave capp think about some of these questions. mike lee is talking in ways that are very interesting and constructive about these kind of issues. mike lee is not in leadership. he is at the back of the list the minority party in the senate. there is a lot of room to go. in a way, though, the debate that is happening about that, about what the agenda ought to be is still a debate about

whether to have an agenda and what it to the to be. in a sense we are filling the vacuum. it is a power if you thing because of inertia and political arguments that make is ens to me and a lot of other people. the country is so unhappy that y, y or z means they are going to vote against it. that is basically the logic of the romney campaign. dark -- never quoof never work very well. that is a debate we have to be able to win. > a lot of this is about to be shaped by a primary season. let me ask how one looks at the one l candidates and how

sees divides that will emerge. what are the ones that seem obvious? >> to build on that question and what you have all just said, this is why i then the demography is the antecedent of the policy. the people who vote republican aren't especially interest in that aspect of the republican policy agenda. the key thing i think about . uld be mo can expand who what happened? you have the iron will and finesse of l.b.j., who ran through civil rights over the objections of conservative democrats. helped e that is what dempsters get the motte earn

voter. >> so are you saying they won't hear policy proposals like the ones we have just been hearing about unless immigration reform comes back? >> i don't know if i would put immigration reorm on the top. that the ex-teamly unaffordable nature of health care in this country, they don't deserve have a broader base for their support. >> i think we are now at the point where it should be more a matter of us being outraged hat serious presidential candidates don't have a serious health reform agenda and a serious labor market agenda, those are two crucial pieces. but in you don't have something to say about wage stagnation and about what is an actual

viable alternative to obama care. then i think he should be -- that you should not be taken seriously. there could be a couple of exotic tax reform proposals, and by exotic, i mean lafble. we have enough enough of an infrastructure and a body of bare medium a that we have a fair market around taxes. the truth is that i have found certain developments in the republican presidential field moderately disspiriting. maybe there was someone or some people i was excited about in the recent past, and that is less the case now. intellect willie --

intellectually feasible. >> everyone needs to understand they need to have a serious agenda and engage with the arguments. i do something weird has happened. there are many ways to achieve conservative celebrity. i think actually some people are seeing that actually saying interesting and new things about real problems that exist, that is not necessarily the number one way to get attention. i think that is really new and very exciting and positive. >> it is a return. it used mcintosh in the early part of presidential season, candidates would give a series of worthy speeches. i am here, president push gave a speech. the last couple of cycles they haven't been giving the speeches.

if i am not muss marco rubio is the only one doing that right now. >> there is more ferment like that going on in the party than there was four years ago. part of it is there are more ideas out there. in a sense, the policy vacuum on the right itself has been the fault for a lock time of people like us. i think that is less true now because some of the work has been done from -- some of the thinking has been done and the working out of the political agenda has been done. if they exist and on the ground when a politician is thinking about ying something what i am going to say and do. if there is a pile of papers in front of him, that is the cutting edge. look at us. that is the way in which we can be useful. [laughter] >> well, not everybody. some of us can. just look at me.

i think the ways in which people think about policy can help. but to make hur she's conversations are happening, they are not separate from the political process. they prepare the political process so that when it is time for a politician to think how do i speak to the party and the country about issues people face, there are actual ideas out there rather than thinking about the only way i can do is is get this amount of face time on fox. that has been a failure of the infrastructure of policy development. things are better, but still a lot of work to do. >> earlier there was a rising lillibridge tayshaun wave, let's get golf. is that still true? >> i think it is on some issues. gay marriage is an issue where basically the republicans have lost on that. i think that is going to be the future of the party, that that

is going to there collapse on both sides. the uniform policy, a lot less enthusiasm for invading middle eastern countries than we had in 2003. to that extent, i think it is true. it is hard to say. in 2012 -- the 2012 election was interesting because both candidates seemed to be desperate to say as long as possible about what they would do. can anyone name any policy agenda that either obama or romney had rather than the care. there was excellent work on care there. >> i wish mitt romney had noticed. >> there is a reason for that, hich is money. people want to tutt my pudge,

and they want to raise taxes on people who make $2 million a year. even when you point out to them that this is mathematically impossible. they say no, only raise taxes on those four people. what i fear is that is going to be in 2016 as well. what i hope is that is the way to win. obama won because not saying anything. romney could have won by not saying anything. i hope we are going to talk about these problems because they are huge and really need to be addressed. it is no longer possible to sit on the sidelines. >> i agree with mcgahee on that. one exception that proves the rule is mitt romney's tax plan. was balked into a countrier

-- into a corner. the numbers added up that you had to either raise taxes on the middle-class or it had to be a net revenue loss. the word was mitt romney was too specific on policy, and should have been vaguer. >> they concluded they should not of a policy agenda. it was a very frustrating process. some of us were involved in it in ways that left us with a headache. it was not that they had no idea how it would work. they thought the policy itself would be something. that has to change. something we haven't talked about this evening is the cultural conservatively is fragile intellectually and in terms of what appeals to broad section of america.

there are a lot of reasons for that. we all like to talk about economic policy. we like to walk out. but we have left to decide a lot of that -- a lot of younger people today grew up well after the 1960's. hey put last night's date or instagram and other place. we as conservatives have still not moved past of the battles of the 1960's, surf as are we comfortable with the fact that a vast majority of americans have engaged in premarital sex. that is something republicans don't have a good solution to. where we will end up probably is we are a pro-life policy. >> i am not sure i agree with that. gay marriage is one issue where i think republicans are ifing to lose, but if you look at

marriage as a whole, it is in disastrous shape. it matters for economic policy because if the families republican there, then the government has to support the kids. on a personal level marriage makes people happier and healthier. it is actually good for people. you have serious parenting where people have multiple children by different parents. the fathers tend to invest in the kids of the mother with whom he gets along with. i actually think there is a way they can use the gay marriage issue to make a morrow bust claim. we have a robust economy and now everyone get married. >> what is the public policy to make that happen? >> i am not sure. i think some of this -- like actually having people voice cull policy matters. look how influential hollywood

was on gay marriage and how much that changed the hollywood positions, how much that changed public opinion on the matter? that e should take over situation? >> i have looked over pro marriage policies, and my conclusion is none of them worked. my parenting skills and coaching does work. activehat requires government policies. they involve partnerships that government could fund and other things. with -- with people on this panel support those kinds of policies? policies likeded partnerships or early childhood education? >>