that was a mistake. i got interviewed by a reporter from the toronto sun before i even did the toronto show and oberlin was after that and she said to me after the interview over, she said i never met a conservative before and i said i'm not surprised. [laughter] >> but what she meant by that was, you seem so nice. and she is right. i had a friend of mine, a good friend of mine, when i hear you really speak i hope you don't take this the wrong way you kind of sound like a liberal. i sound like a liberal because i genuinely care about these things. i just want to do it right. i don't want to do what feels good i want to know what does good. sometimes the things that feel the most good do the most harm and the feels that do the worst do the most good. when i went to these college campuses and my job was not to convey conservative principals my primary mission was to

convince these kids that i was an actual my has an being with real feel skpeugz cared just as much as they did and further more the solutions i had in mind did actual real good and theirs didn't. who is the real compassionate person here. if you feel good about something that does harm and i does something that does good that may not be attractive politically who is the real person? who has got the real virtue? once you start talking to people they think maybe there is something to this after all. and they start thinking about the arguments and it's game over. i couldn't flip the whole country. i could flip 97%. there are 3% that are the true believers that understand these ideas destroy freedom and prosperity. they want to rule over the ruins. those people we cannot flip but the rest of them we could and we have to do it by being honest and by being emotional and connecting to the emotional argument. we have obamacare.

as a national law today not because of the benefits of obamacare. we later found out just a few weeks or months ago, the entire purpose of the stack of documents was so make it so obtuse that no one could understand it. that was the mission. make it un-intel i thinkable. why do we have it? not because of the brilliant argument because barack obama would stand on the floor of the house of representatives clouded in the glory of america, surrounded by the podium, the flags, the dome, everything, all of america power and prestige is focused on this one individual standing there and he didn't say if we have socialized healthcare this 14% reduction or 9% or 8% coverage, no, he said, ladies and gentlemen, i'd like to you meet miss bernice johnson. would you stand up for a minute. little old lady stands up and waives. she said she had a preexisting

condition. she was burned through her life savings and husband former veteran and preexisting condition bankrupted her. but due to this legislation which we signed she's expected to visit her grandchildren and live a full and loving life. we're happy to have you here this evening and every single person who watched it, me included me included conservatives, super gladiator warrior myself, looked at that woman and said, i don't want that woman to die. i don't want her to die. i don't. i don't want her to die. so, okay, whatever. yeah of. let's do it. but what we didn't see wen't it see the millions of people who will die because of healthcare that eventually gets rationed and the nightmares of the national healthcare system in great britain and all the people who were going to be taken off of healthcare with these

ridiculous mandates. my personal coverage includes mammograms and birth control. it costs money and i have it. thank you mr. obama and all the consequences are not discernible because they're not real. but that woman is. and the person who understood this most fully was the most evil man who ever lived. he understood this without the slightest hesitation. joseph stalin said a single death is a tragedy a million deaths a statistic. right? it's a statistic. we are argue statistics. they put a face on what they're trying to do and most of us and even all of us would say i don't want anything bad to happen to that woman and we lose the ability to think rationally. if we don't understand the language and we need to start showing people whose lives have been ruined by socialized held care and over here is a person's who life is saved by private

healthcare we're going to lose to these weenies. i'm done. i'm done with losing to these losers. i got to get on the airplane. thank you so much for having me. [applause] on the next "washington journal" the weekly standard discusses how foreign policy issues are impacting potential 2016 presidential candidates and then adam green of the progressive change

campaign committee looks at the political and legislative agenda for progressives and the 117 congress. after that william of the national national national talks about countering on violent extremist. "washington journal" is live on 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> sunday on news makers, utah governor and advise chair of the national governor's association gary herbert on issues facing states. he'll talk about the healthcare law and medicaid expansion and budge set ands immigration and common core education standards. see it at 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. tomorrow's meeting starts at 11:00 a.m. eastern with remarks from homeland security secretary jay johnson on cybersecurity efforts at the federal and local

levels and at three eastern epa administrator gina mc carthy susz energy and water security. see both here on c-span. the academy award are sunday and we're taking a look at some of the real life stories about people featured in this year's nominated films. first remarks from john lewis on his involvement with thecivil rights movement something portrayed in the film "selma" and then chris kyle discusses his auto bybiography "american sniper" and stephen hawking in the "theory of everything." see all though events tomorrow 12:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. the c-span city's tour takes book tv and american history tv

on the road traveling to u.s.sys it to learn about their history and literary life. we partnered with time warner cable. >> most of the seats were empty. i remember when i got there except for college students. except most everybody else was like i'm not going down there because anything might happen. so there's these empty seats and it's quiet and we go and sit down and wait, you know, to see what's going to happen. a waitress came by with a tray of knives -- she was so nervous that the knives were rattling. i was so nervous i didn't know what she might be doing with those knives, but i could tell that she was scared. she was as scared as i was, you know. we sat there with our text books trying to study.

i remember her saying we can't serve y'all or we don't serve colored. i'm going to have to ask y'all to leave. we had this instruction that don't say anything, just keep sitting. don't say anything. just -- if they ask you what you were like and you ask for a couple of coffee, they never asked us what we wanted. they knew they weren't going to serve us. >> watch all of our events from greensboro three out the day on book tv and sunday afternoon at 2:00 on american history tv on c-span3. u.s. governor's gathered in washington for their annual winter meeting. this opening section has keynote remarks from danny myier. colorado governor john hick enlooper shares with utah

governor gary herbert serving as vice chair. >> now we're getting there. it's actually pretty good for us on a saturday morning. welcome. great to see so many friends who i haven't had a chance to see in the meeting so far. certainly as cherry want to take this opportunity to welcome everyone to the 2015 winter meeting. we have a very exciting weekend ahead of us. i'm very glad to see all of you here. appreciate the effort you all made to get here. part of the rules requires that any governor who wants to submit a new policy or resolution for adoption at this meeting is going to need a 3/4 vote to

suspend the rules to do so. a long standing rule. please submit any proposal in writing by 5 o'clock tonight. also want to take this opportunity to welcome the new governers who were able to make it here. i think they're all here, maybe 1 or 2 had earlier meetings, but just kind of stand up and waive. massachusetts governor charley baker. i know he'll try to get here. pennsylvania governor tom wolfe.

not here rhode island governor gina. you can tell who had the really good evening last night. virgin island governor. [applause] >> so congratulations all the new governers. we're delighted to of you here. also want to recognize our guests from the white house governmental affairs. thank you both for being here. where are you guys? they're here somewhere. there they are over there. we also have a significant international presence at the winter meeting this year. i'd like to take a moment to recognize our guests. governor jorge herrera from durango, mexico. eduardo ambassador to mexico from the

united states. they led a sizeable delegation from mexico. and paul davis from new finland labrador is here. and ambassador gary of canada to the united states. and i think they have a delegation from canada as well. david sullivan and ambassador from the european union. there you are. and then delegations and representatives from chile japan, new zealand and peru and singapore singapore. thank you for all making the effort. at this time we want to recognize several companies as we always do that have maintained a sustained commitment. it was established in 1988, facilitates the exchange of

expertise and knowledge between governers and america's leading companies with their contributions more than 125 participating companies provide crucial financial support for the center for best practices. their relationship with private sector leaders are invaluable in helping the sentser achieve its mission in providing tkpwofbers that are evidence based. today there are several that have reached major milestones. please join me in changing the companies in n.g. a. corporate fell lows programs. if could you join me at the podium. daniel womack with the dow company, 25 years. [applause] >> just in case you doubted there was a reason to remain a committed partner, you get

these -- after 25 years you get these remarkable weights. [laughter] >> general electric has also been with us for 25 years. [applause] >> little known fact that it happens to be one of the best squash players in all the world of government relations. pretty narrow universe. roman gabriel with pru den shall financial. they've been with us for 25 years. [applause] paoeurpb /*

and then last richard buckley. they've been with us for 20 years. [applause] >> thanks. give a hand for all of their outstanding support. [applause] i want to take a minute to talk a little. the goal of this initiative is to make state government work in the most affect the cost-efficient ways possible. the state government touches

lives and touches people's lives in so many ways. the initiative focuses on improving the effectiveness of course to government functions and have the state can hire and develop talented teens. they show you state-of-the-art systems for making sure we not just tired talent, but adopt innovative performance and management practices that use data and evidence to prove policies that we are constantly to create continuous improvement. thirdly, engage stakeholders and constituents to improve regulations and requirements to protect the public good. make sure we have a level

playing field. at the same time, get rid of owners regulations and rules from state government. those are the core tenants of delivering results initiative. we have spent a lot of time in colorado. many have worked on these efforts. governors of the chief executives of their states. we all have a unique ability and responsibility to improve the way government works. you can argue that whether government should be larger or smaller. and we all believe government has got to work. many states adopt practices used by businesses or universities are others to address the fundamental issue of how we deliver better governmental results to people.

when example in michigan there's a website that provides information to the public on performance in key areas such as economic growth, strength, health, education, things that people care about. in washington, a wide reaching effort to ensure all of state governments focus on achieving instead of high priority goals including world-class education and a prosperous economy. my own state of colorado, one of the things we did was travel around the state and engage communities and business leaders to see what they thought the state should be doing a great and economic development from the bottom up. what we heard again and again was to get rid of unnecessary rules and regulations. the response in colorado, to this day not white sure with

the name came from, but reviewed rules and regulations are more than half were eliminated or significantly modified and simplified. we have adopted lean process management the state capital. many lean processes now. it means our government processes are constantly trying to be more efficient and faster and less troublesome to the citizens we are serving. the initiative seeks to shine a spotlight on cutting edge practices so we could learn from each other's work and implement it more easily fall 2014, we had a series of experts to roundtable and learn practices in management hiring practices, government process improvements and corporate regulations. we had thought leaders from around the nation and from

different states sharing lessons learned and making suggestions. the experts identified several key roles governors played in delivering results come including setting clear goals and priorities for the states, helping to ensure state agencies stay focused on these goals, creating a real culture of excellence. i use the word culture intentionally. problem-solving and continuous improvement are the norm. and commuting this commuting priorities and successes with stakeholders. on april 23 and 24th, i will host a summit on the initiative in denver and i hope many of you will be able to get there. if your schedule does not permit your attendance, hopefully you can send a representative or a team to attend. the summit will be able to spotlight innovative processes

that states are already using to deliver results. and continue to share information with new governors and your teams about how we can put those ideas into practice. our priority for this initiative is to provide all governors with examples of best practices and tangible resources to help save taxpayer money, use resources in tangible resources to help save the best way possible. i hope this initiative will leave you with new ideas, tools, information to help you achieve your goal. today, i get to introduce our speaker. i wanted to make sure we had as much time as possible for our speaker. we don't often get a chance to hear people like danny meyer. some will say, who is danny meyer? i would not say that.

[laughter] some of you might. if you are not in new york, a lot of what he is achieved, you might not be aware of. he is the chief executive officer of a company called union square hospitality. he really is one of the greatest restauranteurs in america today and one of the great restauranteurs we've ever had in this country. at the tender age of 27, he launched his business with you here. he was retaking a part of the city and using hospitality to transform it. he is pioneering a new breed of american eateries with imaginative food and wine, enveloped in real caring hospitality and making sure the surroundings were comfortable

and they delivered real value. unlike so many restaurants, he went a number of years before he opened a second restaurant and made sure everything was right. he has always been a thoughtful, very intentional person about how we extended his company. in 2004, he launched shake shack. since then, new shake shack locations have sprung up along the east coast and internationally. late last month, shake shack became a public company worth $12 billion. congratulations on that. we invited him before the public offering. [laughter] even before i knew that shake

shack was even going public. [laughter] he is also an author. he wrote a book called "setting the table." one of the best works on hospitality that i have ever seen. he examines the power of hospitality, not just in restaurants, but in business and life. the customer service really is a key to success in life. many of you have heard the james beard award, one of the most prestigious awards -- at the same level of difficulty as the nobel peace prize. danny or his restaurants or chefs have 125 james beard awards -- won 25 james beard awards. [applause] i am so grateful for taking --

we had a wonderful dinner last night. the meal was good enough for me to plug it right here. i'm so grateful for him to take time out of his life to share his experiences in his perspective on the world with us today. we will talk about his focus on innovation, quality, customer service and how he has worked those into his life and businesses over these years. without further do, let me introduce danny meyer. [applause] >> thank you, governor hickenlooper and thank you to the national governors association and all the governors who minded their business last night so they could wake up this morning and be here today.

i'm very honored and grateful to be here. you must be wondering what is a restaurant guy is doing up here speaking to us governors? i'm just about as fascinated by what you do as i could possibly be and i want to say that as an american, i'm so grateful to this organization, because of what you are doing to restore faith in government works. it feels great. i believe in government. i grew up in the midwest in st. louis, missouri. i grew up an interesting family because my mother's family were democrats and my father's family were staunch republicans and i was the middle child of three. my head was going left and right every night at the dinner table. we were having real debates. this was during some 12 swiss -- tumultuous times in the 1960's and 1970's.

we went to the harrington hotel. i got to be in a film with tom eagleton at the age of whatever i was and i got to work in the united states capital as an elevator boy when i was 18 years old. when i went to trinity college as a political science major, i got to work in the state capital for the speaker of the house at that point. because i wanted to be you when i grew up and i'm so glad i did not -- [laughter] the very first job i had after college was with my centrist leanings working for a fantastic presidential candidate in 1980 that most of you are too young to remember by the name of john anderson. this was in chicago.

i got to be the field coordinator because the democrats and republicans got all the guys with experience. i love what you do and i honor what you do and i want to say thank you as an american for what you are doing to restore faith that government can work. [applause] one of the things the governor and i were speaking about last night, as another restaurant guy we are constantly running for office when we run restaurants. we are trying to get as many votes as we can possibly get. a city like new york has 26,000 restaurants. fair enough, it a 2000 when you eliminate the pizza parlors that only 16,000 when you eliminate votes as we can possibly get. the pizza parlors. it is not enough any longer to say this is the best restaurant because they had the best roast chicken. there are 60 incredible chefs who could argue they have the

best roast chicken. in the old days, it was good enough to do that. now, we have the internet. the internet was to level the playing field in terms of being a leader based on being the best at what you did. you still have to be the best at what you do. s&s the word got out that this -- smf the word got out that this restaurant has the best roast chicken, anyone who wanted to figure out the recipe for the rustic and or design for the flyers or getting open tables, just copy it. everything is knowable. everybody in the world is walking around as a reporter with their camera, plagiarizing every good idea on earth. that is good, anyway. the level of quality goes up everywhere. what we have learned -- this is just about applicable to any organization.

you guys are all ceos. you have an organization that relies on good employees -- great employees pay you have to please request were scum just like i do. -- please customers just like i do. you guys are all ceos. we have investors. every organization on earth has the exact same five stakeholders. i want to give you one thing and this is not for any kind of every organization on earth has round of applause, just to make a point. if you were to open up the 2015 is a gap survey -- zagat survey for new york city, you wouldn't notice that, of all the restaurants they cover in new

york city, there is a category called new york's favorite restaurants, which is separate restaurants they cover in new from the list of who has the best food and the core and service. if you looked at this year's guide, you would see three of the top six of new york's favorite restaurants are our restaurants. in a city of 26,000 restaurants. including our 20-year-old restaurant and number 6, 30-year-old restaurant, union square cafe. we do not have three of the top six food scores. we have good food, but we did

not make the top six for food or service. we did not even make three of the top 100 decor scores. our places our joints. [laughter] what did we learn from that? we learned the recipe that has worked time and time again and is the reason that people come to our restaurants time and time again and love them. we are in politics as well. at the end of the day, is there a higher compliment that someone he could pay you or a restaurant or your state or a hotel then to say that is my favorite fill in the blank? if i were to say that is my favorite professor or this is my favorite dry cleaner, i could not pay at a higher compliment. you cannot be somebody's favorite without being really, really good at what you do. you also have to be good at how you make people feel.

nobody can argue with me if i say this is my favorite watch. this is my $39 timberland watch. it would not be my favorite watch if it did not keep good time. it has to work. it also would not be my favorite watch if for whatever personal reasons i have it didn't make me feel good. because of the internet, we are at a time where this equation works for every organization on earth. we have all these recipes that are hard to cook in our restaurants. here is a real simple one. two ingredients only. 49 parts performance and 51 parts hospitality.

you will say to ourselves, what does hospitality have to do with government? we grew up hearing about it. we go to our grandmothers for thanksgiving, it's a nice hug one of those feel-good kind of words but it doesn't really historically have an organizational application. i want to argue the opposite. today, being the best in the world at what you do, which is so critical, will only get you 49 out of the 100 points you need if you want to be summit is -- somebody's favorite anything. if you want to be an essential part of people's lives. the minute a great idea gets out it gets shared. that's a good thing. that's what you're doing this weekend. you are not holding back on really good ideas in the hopes

that other people don't embrace those ideas and put them to work. you all stand for good government, which is what i started i'm saying that i'm so grateful for but i'm saying that's not enough to get reelected. what we have learned is that 49 parts performance and within performance in my business, did we get the right food to the right person at the right temperature at the right time? did we get your coat back to you? did we have your table ready on time for your 8:00 reservation or not? you expect that. service, the word i grew up hearing my whole life, one thing my family can agree on, you have to have good service. service is often misused because it service belongs in the 49% category. service is a way to describe the technical delivery of the product. did the product or organization

or restaurant do what you expected it to do? if i rent a car, my family goes or restaurant do what you to a vacation and we want to have a minivan, did we get the minivan? that is good service if we got the minivan. did it smell like smoke when we asked for a non-smoking minivan? did it come with a gps? that's what service means. it's a lot like air-conditioning. nobody raves about it when it works anymore. the only time you hear about service and performance is when it doesn't work and you all know that. you have constituents, a whole lot more constituents than i have. today, we will probably serve in our restaurants about 50,000 people. that doesn't include shake shack. shake shack, we will serve close to 200,000 people today. we will be making mistakes left and right. every time we make an honest human mistake, it will diminish our 49 points.

that's ok. i have gotten about two 100's on tests in my life. let's talk about the 51 real quickly. the 51, the hospitality is the part that elevates any organization into best, favorite breed. hospitality. hospitality is something that exists when the person on the receiving end of your performance truly knows you are on their side. that you are doing things for them. if i do get the right food to the right person, cooked the way the person asked for it, did i do something for them? i did what was expected. if i remember governor hickenlooper likes to have his salmon cooked medium rare and i remember that, and i acknowledge that when he comes

in or i knowledge his favorite table or a remember you came in last time and it was your birthday, now i'm getting into the realm of doing something thoughtful for somebody. the preposition "for" is always present when hospitality exists. the more and more high-tech we get in life, the more people need high touch in their lives and the more your constituents my constituents need to know that we are agents and not gatekeepers. for too long, whether it's city government that has regulations -- i remember how hard it used to be to try to open a restaurant in new york city. it was almost as if they did not want us to be out there employing hundreds of people. today, 4500 people throughout

seven of your states. government was acting as a gatekeeper and not an agent. gatekeepers have no place in the world of hospitality. i told a story in my book that impressed me so much -- when he was governor, jeb bush in florida, a good friend of mine had just set up a brand-new business in the state of florida. and did not make any fanfare about it whatsoever but because somebody was tracking every business that had been incorporated and how many employees that business was going to have, my friend got a call from governor bush -- my friend was ohio -- from ohio. he said, i want you to know how welcome you are in this state.

if you need additional dish and additional exit from the highway for your 6000 employees, i can't promise we will do it but i will want to know about it. that's called being an agent and that is called hospitality. i will end my remarks very shortly. what i'm most excited about is to welcome your questions. so that we can stir it up just a bit here. what i do want to say is this -- we have named what we do. enlightened hospitality. not that we are a bunch of gandhi people strolling through the avenues of new york city. that's not what i mean at all. when you prioritize your stakeholders come in any organization in the following

order, you can create a virtuous cycle that is the most sustainable engine for both excellence and hospitality and making an organization perform at its highest peak and creating a situation where for every one of those stakeholders, you become somebody that made their lives better, which i know is all of your missions. everyone in this room would probably solve the problem differently if everyone were asked how can i make my constituents lives better. there's always wonderful room for debate. that's what i grew up with. i don't think anyone would disagree if you have the opportunity that at the end of your term, everyone who worked for you, everyone of your

constituents, everyone of your communities, everyone of your suppliers and every one of your investors set by virtue of that governor being my governor, my life got better. i think everyone would have to agree with that. what we have learned time and time again is to create this virtuous cycle, we begin each and every time by saying something i did not learn growing up in st. louis. we put our employees first because whatever metric there is to suggest how much our customers love coming to any of virtuous cycle, we begin each our restaurants, that metric will never be any higher and cannot be any higher than the degree to which our employees love coming to work because they cannot fake it. you go to a government agency or a restaurant and it's clear to you that the employees are not well trained, not well hired not enjoying their jobs, you can be sure that you are not going to have a great experience yourself. to the contrary, all i look for

when i go to and you restaurants -- any of our restaurants are two things. our people performing up to peak performance? are they doing what they do as well as it can be done? are they having fun with each other as they are doing it? if we hold our staff members accountable for the 49%, we will train you, hold you accountable -- if you are not doing it, you don't get to be on this team. you will only get promoted if in addition to what you do as well as it can be done you're doing it in a way that makes the rest of your team feel great. what is awesome about setting that cycle in motion is that our guests feel it and they have a great time when they come in. that's why unleashing our staff members hearts and minds -- whether it's fighting hunger -- i want to

thank, many of you have invested your time and resources. whether it's supporting or building a park or working for a hospice unit. when you hire the right people they not only want to use their heads, they want to use their hearts. finally, we take great care of our suppliers. we don't wield our incredible financial muscle. we bring -- buy more portrait than most other restaurants in new york city. we don't say what you need to do

is to do everything we say. we offer that same hospitality to the suppliers. this virtuous cycle is at the end of the day our investors by virtue of putting them last -- we did not put them last because we want to make last -- one could think each leading to something better. when we have happy investors guess what they do. they re-up. we have wonderful opportunities to promote both financially and professionally the people on our team by virtue of opening new restaurants after that. i want to say thank you very much. a huge honor for me to be with you all today. thank you. [applause]

>> we start with governor walker. >> thanks for your comments. we are all very inspired by that. thank you for having a shake shack over at the spy museum. it makes me think of midwestern custard stands. >> i spent seven summers of my life in your great state, going to the dairy queen in wisconsin. >> that's what the shake shack's are like and that's why we love them. just a question -- for all of us, we are interested in all that you said but when you talk about the 49 points versus the 51 points, you talked about training. could you go deeper for us -- i

get the training and i think the analogy is perfect. it's exactly what we talk about with all the services we provide. you can have all the great people at the top but if the frontline person is not doing it, that's where everyone -- everything breaks down. how do you take the people that are interacting directly with your customers and train that 51 points you need for hospitality? how do you get to that magic spot? >> i think it's a great question. i will start by saying that the 49% performance is very trainable. you can come to work every day and probably incrementally get a bit better. some people cannot get better and it's important to recognize that. on 51 parts of hospitality that is a harder place to

improve if you are not innately someone who has a high hospitality quotient. everybody in this room has an iq. it is not going to change for the rest of my life. i can read the encyclopedia tonight and my ability to learn information is not going to change. somebody's hq, defined as the degree to which anybody actually feels better themselves when they make somebody feel uplifted in life -- the key thing is this. it is hard to go retroactively in organization that was not thinking about both sides of the recipe than to say now we are going to start reviewing you, 49% for your technical skills and 51% how

well you made other people feel -- it is hard to do that retroactively but you have to start somewhere. nobody can convince me if you know this secret that you would say because it is hard i won't do it. what we do -- i was going through an afternoon of this yesterday. in addition to having 360 degree reviews, those reviews are focused on what i said. you will get points for how many of the 49% technical skills he showed and points which leads to your bonus. 51% dependent on your emotional skills. here is what you can do. most organizations in the world -- i'm not talking about your states, but most organizations are basically highly transactional. if it were a restaurant, you give me money and i give you food.

that's not what we are interested in. we don't think our employees are interested in a job that i do what is -- what i was told and you get me a paycheck. we want to be champions. it is fun to be on a championship team. picture your favorite baseball or football team and look at the championship dugout. visualize that and say why can't we be that. by naming it, what we have learned is like almost anything else in life, among people with hq's, it is a bell curve. you can shine the sun on them forever and they are not going to have a high hq. there are people you could keep in a closet forever and after five years, how can i help you. most people lie somewhere in here.

when you begin to prioritize in an organization, even to reward behaviors -- behaviors that promote hospitality, most people already have this in their heart. it was never something properly embraced by anybody they worked for. >> when you interview prospective employees, are there certain things you look for that is an indication of where they would have that high hq? >> absolutely. there are six emotional skills we are intentional about looking for. when you hear them, you will go,

that is the second grade stuff but you would be surprised that if you make it intentional, your batting average goes way up. the first one is somebody who is kind and optimistic. it doesn't really help an organization if the guy you are working next to is relying upon other human beings. everybody has a job and a role. if somebody is not nice and you don't enjoy working with them, that is not a good thing. the optimistic part is also huge. somebody who sees the glass as being half-full believes their actions can make an impact on the world. you would not be governors if you didn't think you could actually make things better. people who are pessimists are skeptics don't help our

organization to much. the second emotional skill we look for is curious intelligence. people who look at each day as an opportunity to learn something new. they like to share what they learned with the rest of the team. other members of the team love coming to work when the people they work with our nice, optimistic and from whom they can learn new things. the third is work ethic. you can have an organization that is awesome that you can have the world's best training but if the teammates don't have the emotional skills to say not only do i know how to do it but it's important to me to do it as well as i can be done -- it can be done. the fourth one is empathy. we want people on our team who when they go through life, it matters to them how their behavior makes other people feel.

that doesn't mean that you can't be tough and roll lines but you control lines in a way that does not diminish some reason -- somebody's self-esteem. we call that the wake of the vote. if you imagine each one of us is a motorboat or a canoe going through life, we are leaving our wake in our path and we need to take responsibility for what that wake does. if it's doing something for other people, we have hospitality. the next emotional skill is integrity. having the judgment to do the right thing even when nobody else is looking and even when it is not in your own self interest. we hold people highly accountable to that. people either have that or they don't. self-awareness, people who know what makes them tick. every day i wake up, my job is not to feel chipper every day.

some mornings i wake up tired or anxious. just like the weather outside. some mornings it is hot and humid, some mornings it is beautiful. being aware of what -- if you are going to be on this team hospitality is a team sport and you need to be aware that you are having an impact on everybody else. the last thing we want is to work with skunks on our team. they skunk sprays when it's afraid or angry and everyone within five miles gets to spell -- gets to smell it. those are the six emotional skills we look for. we named them, we interviewed people -- we don't say do you have integrity. yes, i do. [laughter]

we ask questions that can help us understand it. tell us about a time when you really had to use your integrity to make a tough choice. >> thank you. welcome. we are honored to have you with us and congratulations on your great success. my question has to do with your journey. i don't know of your background or humble beginnings but for most governors, our number one issue is developing the economy and our states. tell us about your journey. did you find opportunity? what were the roadblocks you had to overcome as an entrepreneur? do we still have upward mobility in this country? we hear talk that opportunities are gone and we have stagnation. tell me about upward mobility

and your progress and your success and tell us, what should we be doing? what are we doing right and what should we be doing better? >> thank you. you need to eat at more restaurants and everything will be ok. another fantastic question. governor hickenlooper promised me i would begetting a lot of good questions today. you are absolutely right about that. my beginnings, just to be as candid as possible, were not that humble. my family instilled an amazing work ethic. but we never had to wonder about when our next meal was going to be put on the table.

we never had to worry about would we be able to have a family vacation as springtime. i just want to be as candid as i possibly can about that. but, like other families who did not have to struggle, we were imbued with the kind of valleys that said your job is to care for your community. as i said, one grandfather ran in st. louis and one supported democratic candidates, never ran for anything himself. the goal was not this policy or that policy. that's why i think with our restaurants, typically, we try to go to neighborhoods and communities that are not developed yet. we try to go to places where we can use restaurants as a community maker.

furthermore, what we try to do -- i would say that 80% of the hourly employees we have at shake shack have never even had a job before. nobody talks about how it is almost a job training program and behold these people too high standards and pay above the minimum wage. after you have been with us for six months, we share 1% of our sales with you as a bonus. which means we are letting our hourly workers know what the sales are at that particular restaurant. we create a stairway to success, because it is not enough to say that whatever hourly rate you're getting, is not nice -- isn't that nice? the american dream is about climbing. we create a stairway that makes it very, very clear what skills you need to get to the next rung on the ladder.

i am very proud to say that an enormous number of our managers, including general managers started off as hourly workers. when we had our ipo three short weeks ago, we made not only 100% of our managers options in the company, which is kind of what they have been doing in the tech world on the west coast for quite some time now, but furthermore, every single employee, including hourly workers, was given an opportunity to buy stock at the ipo price, rather than using it as an opportunity to rewards friends and family. there are ways -- by the way i'm going to back off shake shack and remind you that the first restaurant, union square cafe, is now three years older

than when i opened it. it will be 30 years old this year. that is not stop me from asking two questions. whoever wrote the rule that you cannot yet 30-year-old startup? the second question i would ask, what would it take for us to become the company that if only it existed, would actually put us out of business? that is what i mean when i say that we are running for office every day. we are running as if we are 20 points behind and we are running as if every time we do something, someone is going to want to each us for lunch. we know there is nothing better we can do that to provide jobs for the right people, the right kind of training, the right kind of culture. i think culture is everything. i'm going to make a quick

metaphor, and then i will be done with this question. we sell a lot of wine in our restaurants and it is the metaphor. you will never have a bottle of wine or glass of wine that will ever taste any better than the worst root stock of the grapes. that is where it starts, with the grapes themselves. you can get the best stock -- some guy from california can grab vines from burgundy and plant them in sonoma, that is still not enough. the next thing is to make sure that the soil, also known as the culture, is as healthy as it can possibly be. our job is to constantly enrich our culture. culture is another way of saying how we do things around here. you can get the best root stock

and put it in toxic soil, no good. the grapes are not going to taste good. the fourth thing that impacts all of us are things that we cannot control. i don't know how you deal with the kind of natural and man-made disasters, macro economic forces, that are going to impact everything you do. but i will say this. what we know about great winemakers -- because they have the greatest root stock, soil, and know how to train their vines, that is the kind of thing we are about.

it is really about enriching human beings and not doing it ever -- you have to earn it. you don't get to be on our team if you're not accountable for what is expected for you. >> i just have to ask you about the concept of tipping, which i find to be very confusing. i was always brought up, if the service is good, you tip more. if the service is bad, you tip less. the friend of mine told me that in most restaurants, all the gratuities are thrown together and at the end of the evening, all the waiters and waitresses basically divide up the tips does that even mean anything?

in europe, 10% is considered a good tip. in the united states, 15% is a minimum tip. who decides these things anyhow? some people don't payment amount wage because they feel they can count the tips as compensation. that is a big issue. and then all the business about people not paying taxes on the cash tips, and that is the really good part. >> that was not a question i was anticipating today. [laughter] i will do the best i can, as briefly as i can. i don't know who makes these rules up. they're customs and they are often customs country to country, even state-by-state. what is frustrating is that they are also different federal laws

-- excuse me, the federal law is often very different then each and every state law. it leads to cultural confusion operational confusion. i will tell you that one category of people who win in this confusion are the kind of lawyers who love to make money by finding the gap between federal laws and state law in the confusion. even businesses who intend to do the right thing are often in trouble because of that. as a consumer, what i will tell you is that it is reasonably clear to me, watching the tea leaves, that this country at some point will beginning up -- be giving up tipping. i think it will be a good thing when that happens but it is going to be difficult to see that happen piece by piece. why? we have a huge disparity in income from people who work in

restaurant kitchens and people who work in restaurant dining rooms. if you go back to the 30 years i have been in business, prices on menus have gone up, probably two and a half times, just the check average alone, over the course of 30 years. if you are a tipped employee your percentage -- during that same time, the u.s. dinner tip has gone from 15, to 17, 18, 20% -- a higher percentage of a check average means it is a good deal to spend a few years as a waiter as you're waiting or as a profession for the rest of your life. as a cook, the hourly rate over those 30 years has basically remained completely unchanged. the gap between what a cook can

make, having spent all kinds of money to go to culinary school and not be able to pay that back, and was a waiter is making, is great. restaurants and organizations, every business owner would say the sales team often makes more than the manufacturers. that is what waiters and cooks are, but that should not be growing and growing. what you are starting to see are restaurants that would like to say, in the same way that the $24 you are paying for your entree relies upon me as an operator to determine how much of that should go to the floors and how much to the grill cooks and the dishwasher and reservationist and maitre d' why did we single out this group of people and say you the consumer know how much the waiter should make? you don't know and you don't the fact that the reason your food was late had nothing to do with

that waiter but all kinds of things out of her control. what we would like to do is to find one price that covers everything. everyone becomes a taxpayer -- i would not say that waiters do not pay their taxes. it is kind of the uber syndrome. there is no tipping with uber. you pay one price and you have an opportunity for both the driver and the passenger to rate each other. imagine what happens when there is just one price in a restaurant and you can pay with your phone because that is one of the innovations that is happening. nobody likes to have that moment where they really want to leave but they can't find their waiter

to get their check or the waiter shows up too soon with their check and the guest feels rushed. in the next five years, the situation in this country hopefully with federal and state meeting eye to eye so there is no more confusion, you can use your phone to pay. >> that was an excellent answer and thank you for joining us. as all his troubled me in my state. i know the folks doing the hard work pushing the food are working for tough wages and often the folks who are serving and are doing a good job are making a lot more money. and sometimes it is tax-free. i wanted to ask you another question. you mentioned care for community. we governors are governing at a time where congress has never been, at least in my memory, less able to address real

challenges. we are doing tough decision-making that sometimes congress aren't making. one issue we are struggling with in vermont, the president raised it in his state of the state address, is the issue of compensated sick leave. particularly in the hospitality industry -- low-wage workers who are really sick and cannot go to work, cannot pay their rent and get the kids to school. i would be curious how you feel about us legislating sick leave when folks really can't be working and frankly we would not want them to work because we have to eat the food they would make and be at the receiving end of their illnesses. where are you on that? in vermont, it is a robust debate.

as a business person, business communities often go, do not do that. common sense says yes, yes, yes, do it. >> i struggle sometimes to answer when something i believe in should become a law. it is up to you to decide whether this rises to the level of being in the public good. for example, in 1990, soon after my own father died from lung cancer, i was so upset about that that we eliminated smoking at our restaurant units. i was angry with smoke and coming home every night smelling like an ashtray.

also angry about -- remember the old days when there is smoking on airplanes and there is that last row of non-smoking in the first row smoking and neither were happy? when mayor bloomberg wanted to make that law in new york city there was an enormous outcry from the whole industry saying that if you eliminate smoking in restaurants, we are all going to go out of business. the mayor asked if i would testify that our business had only increased because we had cut smoking. in that year, the two top restaurants in terms of new york favorites were those two restaurants. what i will not testifies that i think that will become law.

i'm not a politician, a mayor, a governor. i know there is a law eliminating trans fats. i understand why that became law. you cannot see a trans fat in your food so you are not making a choice. you can do something not good for you without knowing you are doing it. with regards to paid sick leave, we absolutely do it in our company and we do it because there are so many -- i think we do it selfishly. we use our template of hospitality and say is this doing something for our team? to say, if you feel sick but still need to pay your rent, you must come into work? it is not doing anything for it is not doing anything for that individual and it is not

doing anything for the rest of the team that no may -- now may get sick. it might not be doing anything for community. the kinds of strains of things there these days -- that are out there these days can be really difficult. one quick story -- that is what we do, i don't know honestly, all of the pluses and minuses you were up against in terms of making these decisions for yourself. but i will say that we get better employees because of it. because we're not just competing for customers with 26,000 restaurants, -- 2600 restaurants, we are competing for the best employees and they're going to want to come to our organization over someone else's. this is going to sound crazy to you but when i first learned about obamacare, i was upset but maybe for a different reason than some other people in this room might have been upset.

i was upset because we were already doing more than that for employees and i was upset this law is going to level the playing field and we were going to lose the advantage we had as recruiters. so that is where we are at on that. >> we have time for one more question. >> first of all, a very proud son of visual music. -- the show me state. congratulations on all your success. you said that more high-tech means more high touch. people don't really think of the business you are in as a technology business but a lot of what you talked about today is how technology is affecting your business model and the delivery of both the product and the style you do it. what did you learn over the years? and look forward on trendlines on how technology is going to affect our services and businesses as we look forward? >> thank you governor. and thanks for taking good care of my mom in your state. she is still in st. louis and loves it.

our industry has completely transformed itself tech wise and thankfully, to my knowledge, even 3-d printers cannot make your cheeseburger for you, yet. we will see what happens. we will see what happens. [laughter] with respect to restaurants, what technology has really done the most for is what everybody in this world wants. which is i want what i want and one in this world wants. -- and i want it now. everyone who is walking around with their smartphones. is looking at it as the remote control for the desires and their lives -- in their lives. i have the great pleasure and privilege of going on the board of directors of a company called opentable which was a private company based in san francisco in 1999, company that went public in 2008, that pretty much

eliminated the handwritten reservation book. there is only one in every restaurant. the phone call was come in and you didn't know if the book was in the basement or on the balcony or at the front desk and you are yelling trying to see if we have a table for six at 7:30 p.m. next saturday night. and what opentable did for consumers was to give them a chance wherever they were, on the telephone or computer desk in paris and -- say you -- they didn't have to wait for business hours to find out not only the table was available or where they could each of the world without making one phone call. it gave us an opportunity to apply more hospitality because embedded in it is a record of -- every guest experience. we know your favorite table, allergies, etc. that was shot number one across the bow. today, in our industry, there are so many restaurants that

people go to in what is called fast casual or fine casual. chipotle is a great example of that. and rather than waiting until they get to that restaurant to place their order, there is now great technology where you can push a button and it will sense when you get to the -- and your 're paying for it -- and your order is cooked and you skip the line. that restaurant never knew who you were because you don't make a reservation to go to chipotle or shake shack. and now that restaurant knows something about you and what your preferences are and they can add more hospitality. there is more technology, where the entire world is a restaurant critic with a camera. and so the amount of feedback that we have capacity -- the

whole world has always run by word-of-mouth, probably since you could go to the piazza in rome. 2000 years ago. what smartphones have given everybody in the world everybody wants to know what everybody else is thinking. whether it is social media, it is out there. and what that does for all of us is everybody else is thinking. it gives us the opportunity to listen to that word-of-mouth and respond in real time and make things better, to hear what people are thinking on the spot. we even have a technology where -- you have probably heard of a company called foursquare. make things better, to hear what and you could know who is commenting in your restaurant at that moment. and you can intervene. i have gotten messages that say, can't believe the bartender is taking 20 minutes to make my drink. and we can actually get right on that and fix that problem and turn it into a rave at that

moment. i don't know if answers your question but i do believe that technology is absolutely here to stay and what i meant by my comment was that the more time we spend either behind a computer or using our thumbs on our smartphones, it doesn't obviate the need for a hook. -- a hug. the last thing i want to say about hospitality is that the metaphor for hospitality is a hug. because the only way to give one is to get one and the only way to get one is to give one. i think human beings, whatever century we are in, they want to hug. that is culture to culture to culture. it might not be a literal hug. there are people who don't like being touched. but people want to know from the organizations that they do business with, that the act of providing the service or the

product, is as pleasurable as the act of getting it. think about the last time you ordered a pizza and the joy you get when the person brings that pizza to your table and you go that's going to be great. it will taste even greater if the person delivering it is delivering that pizza with the same kind of joy you are receiving it. thank you so much for this great opportunity. [applause] awesome. [applause] >> i don't think i overpromised. i won't say that his, denny's "setting the table," -- when i read it, he wrote my book before i had a chance to write it. i mean, the philosophy of how

service works and how would ridges the giver and -- did in ridges the giver and receiver -- it enricvhhes the giver and receiver and the six qualities he described, it is really useful. i would urge everyone to get it and read it and give it to your chief of staff. let's its whisper down the wind. the other thing we want to talk about is whether you are running a state or a restaurant, three things are the same. you never have enough cash never have enough capital, you have a diverse group of people you have to make into a team and to the public is always angry about something. [laughter] now i want to introduce you all know i am going to west virginia the summer. i want to a one -- ask governor tomlin to give a few words about the upcoming summer meeting in west virginia. >> thank you very much and i am honored to be here and talk about one of my favorite rings best favorite things and that is

-- favorite things and that is the state of west virginia. while most of us have been thinking about the snow and below zero temperatures, we only have five months and two days until the 2015 nga meeting in west virginia. so i just want everyone to get your thinking caps on and make your reservations. the meeting this year will be from july 23 through the 26th. we encourage you to come a couple days early and stay a couple days late. if you have not experienced the greenbrier, it is known as america's resort. we have got great programs lined up for this meeting at the greenbrier. you will experience great food. mr. myers you may want to come to the greenbrier along with us. there are several professional golf courses, a world-class law, -- spa flyfishing, white water rafting, zip lining, just a

couple of the things we have in west virginia. we would encourage you to think about it. we would love to have you this summer. we have a loose -- set up outside the main west virginia. door -- bo oth set up outside the main door. thanks for the opportunity and please be in west virginia in july. thanks. [applause] >> one more little thing. these little brown boxes, there is a family in west virginia that makes salt. for over 100 years. the dickinson family. it is a gourmet salt produced in west virginia and the little salt dish that goes with it. something to think of to remind you about west virginia this coming july. >> thank you. i am personally looking forward

to getting there. i've heard nothing but great things and i hope that we can get as great a turn as we have had for this session. i remember when governor fallin last year was the chair, she finished her session and she had this look of radiance and gratitude. that said thank you all for being part of this. i feel that same sense of radiance. i can't express the same kind of radiance that governor fallin can but i do feel the same pleasure and gratitude for you guys. thank you again to danny meyer and his wife audrey for coming down and sharing their time with us. our morning session is now finished and we will head over to lunch. thank you. [applause] [crowd noises] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [crowd noises]

>> on the next "washington journal," daniel discusses how foreign-policy issues are impacting presidential candidates. then add in green of the congressional change -- adam green professio -- congressional change committee looks at me progressive agenda. and then the white house summit on countering violent extremism. close your facebook comments -- plus your facebookand comments and tweets. >> sunday on "newsmakers," gary herbert on issues facing state. he will talk about the medicare law and common core education standards.

to an cigar p.m. on c-span eastern -- 10:00 a.m. and is :00 p.m. on c-span eastern. -- 6:00 p.m. c-span eastern. at 3:00 eastern, gina mccarthy discusses energy and security. see both events on c-span. >> of the academy awards are sunday and here on c-span we are taking you look at the real-life stories of people featured in films. first, remarks from georgia congressman john lewis on his involvement in the civil rights movement. then the former navy seal chrysotile discusses his autobiography "-- chris title

discusses his autobiography -- chris kyle discusses his autobiography. cold: 30 a.m., c-span -- 12:30 p.m. c-span. >> of the memories come flooding back for so many people who had lost soldier did part of their childhood. released after the war, some buried the memories and wizard the history of this camp. more than 60 years -- with it the history of this camp. >> the only family internment camp in world war ii in crystal, texas and what she says was the real reason. >> the government comes to the fathers and sons, we have a deal for you. we will reunite you with your families if you will agree

to go voluntarily and then i discovered what the real secret of the cap was -- camp was. they had to agree to voluntarily repatriate germany and japan if the government decided they needed to be repatriated. the truth of the matter is that the crystal city camp was humanely administered by the ims. -- ins. but it was used as roosevelt's primary prisoner exchange program. >> sunday night at 8:00 eastern and pacific. but it was used as roosevelt's primary prisoner>> next, a look at conservative messaging for the 21st century with remarks from commentator and author bill whittle. he looked at ways to make political candidates more appealing and reaching young

voters. this is an hour and 45 minute. >> writes featured speaker, -- tonight's featured speaker, bill whittle, is making his second visit. his first was in may just under two years ago, a few months after the electoral disaster of 2012 when barack obama was returned to office for four years. at the time of bells visit, i was still depressed -- bill's visit, i was still depressed. bill had a nice metaphor. he said it was like is the captain of the titanic backed up to take another run at the iceberg with a handful of steam. -- head full of steam.

the election this past november went a little better for those of us here tonight and i am pleased to be able to welcome buklill november back in a more auspicious time. a time when conservatism is no longer in a defensive crouch. when voters no longer accept the startist spending of the west. -- left. a visit to his website billwhittle.com, reveals a wealth of ideas. the house posted videos on gun rights education, terrorism, ebola -- i could go on and on. but his ideas are not just about better policies, he also understands how to communicate those policies and how to persuade those who do not

currently support our principles to reconsider their positions. the understands how the left has used dominance over prominent institutions -- entertainment education, the news media -- to pull young people to believing -- fool young people to believe in the vision of a nanny state but fails to defend interests overseas. he has fascinating ideas on how to turn the tide, to make conservatism not just write but cool -- right but cool. to make young people who believe themselves socialists to realize that they are like the rest of us self-interested capitalists. a writer blogger, film director, dvd editor, and instrument rated pilot, he is a man of many talents. he is an articulate and outspoken defender of

conservative principles. please help me give it warm welcome to mr. bill whittle. [applause] >> hello, everybody. i would like to get is closer to me in case i decide to pick up a little religion, i can take a step back. it is a pleasure to be back here, i did not realize last time close this is to berkeley and i was surprised my skin did not burst into flames but i interested degree or two warmer than i would be otherwise and it is actually great to be up there. we have a flames large, large problem ahead of us. many times we talk about problems in the real world demographic in terms of the west disappearing, just demographically disappearing.

we have a problem as conservatives in terms of the country. ever since civi was removed from high school history, we face the fact that younger people are becoming more left-wing. they are not taught about founding principles and so they are becoming more left-wing. and what we look at conservatism today is we see a group that seems to be giving older. this room is not too bad but i have better to party events where the average age is deceased. [laughter] that is a problem. that is a serious problem. in order to understand the problem, in order to do something about that problem, in order to make traction with young people who are extremely conservative, we have to understand something in our bones and we are reluctant to understandproblem, in order to do something about that this. we have to understand that

people do not vote the way they think, they vote the way they feel. that is not a bad thing, and a lot of people look down on that but feelings are more emotions and these are core values. feelings are what drive personalities and if people vote the way they feel and they feel bad about conservatives than they will for emotions and these are core liberals just because they do not like us. and that is the simplicity of the problem we find ourselves in we do not get the votes because we are perceived as being the balance. exit polling after the election of mitt romney, exit polling not forecasting or models, people coming out of voting booths in 2012 said that mitt won on the issue they considered most significant, the economy. mitt romney, and exit polling after the 2012 election, won on every question that people asked with one exception and the one exception where he lost, lost by

89% in favor of obama, was think cares more about you. -- who you think cares more about you. 89%, 91%, something like that. that is why they voted the weather did, because mitt romney was turned into a villain. i am here to tell you about the power of story as if we do not understand the power of story we will never win elections against these weaklings the times of kids were at student council meetings telling you if you vote for me i will give you longer recess, it out of my face. we will keep losing the times of kids were at student council if we do not understand the power of story, the power of pop-culture. before mitt romney even get into the fight he was the villain and people do not vote for the villains.

the best villain was in a movie called "star wars," i saw it on the roof of a station wagon. you see this tiny ship, this vast force fighting this tiny group of individuals trying to escape. you get inside the spaceship and you see the troopers and they are humans with spaces and they are nervous and scared. outcome white storm troopers in plastic outfits that suggest skulls skeletons coming out of this red gaping hole killing individual people and then this seven and a half foot tall creature dressed in black with a nazi helmet on and a mask that looks like a living soul, breathing like an artificial monster robot steps out of the gates of hell and i turned to the person sitting next to me and said, i bet you that is the bad guy. [laughter] you will not vote for the

villain, you won't. and mitt romney let himself be demonized and vilified. you cannot and vilified yourself, the only thing you can do -- unvilify yourself, you leaving you can do is to vilify the opponent. but that did not happen because we do not understand the power of story we do not understand the power of what they did when they said that mitt romney is a vampire who causes cancer in his employees, who wants to put women in binders and ship lady parts to china. by the time the election started the election was already over. if we do not understand the power of this we will never win again and i do not want to lose to these people. can't we at least lose two machine guns and tanks or someone that you can respect nazis were communists? -- or communists? do we have to lose to these drug

year narcissists because they can tell a story -- jug-eared narcissists because they can tell a story and we can't? we have to understand the power of story and the power of how the left gets is measured into people's hearts -- its message into people's hearts. they do not do it through pamphlets or brochures or speeches. the young people who vote for barack obama have never, ever ever listened to a speech of barack obama, i assure you that this is the case. the have never listened to a state of the union address. they voted for barack obama because jay-z and johnson voted for obama and lady gaga vote for obama and everyone they do like votes for obama and that is why they vote for obama, it is the power of the pop-culture. if you do not understand how powerful pop-culture is, i am about to give you a short education. let's say that i am a political

operative and i have control over your brain space so if i can start a sentence you could finish that sentence for me. if i know you well enough that i could start a sentence and you can finish it for me, i would have you right? i would have your heart and mind. we are going to do it and we're going to do it three times because we have three different age groups. there is how we are going to start. i am going to start a sentence and you are going to finish it for me. there is the power of the pop-culture. look up in the sky. it is a bird. >> is a plane. >> it is superman. exactly. ♪ just sit right back and you'll hear a tale. the tale of a fateful trip ♪ right. have a couple of young people in the back trying to make a hasty escape. the tale of a fatefulthis is for the four or five of

you younger than the rest of us. i am a young man in the conservative movement, 55. young people, this is for you. ♪ it seems today, but all you see ♪ what have we just on their? -- done there? i started the same to "the family guy" tv show and none of you had to go to a website or look it up on the internet, you know the end of those things because you have seen them hundreds if not thousands of times, you have taken them into your brain in it what you do not in things when you read or get a pamphlet. the suspension of disbelief drops, there is true leaves in a suit -- george reeves in a suit in his flying. we call this the willing

suspension of disbelief. if you are one of the people that can finish, you can do that because superman got into your heart, he got into your heart you did not even know it. everything associated with superman get into your heart as well because superman is america. superman was a positive view of america. superman is a god that lives on earth that is unlimited in power and is only inhibited by his own moral decency. that is what america is. in his motto is i stand for truth, justice, and the american way. the virtuous control of unlimited power went into your head when you watch superman, and everything about america that superman represents is in your heart. now i am a little younger, i remember seeing "superman" as a little boy but i remember

"gilligan's island." the only thing you can learn as if you want to get off of the island, all you have to do is kill gilligan and you will be off next week. problems are over. however, there is a lot of political messages in "family guy." they know all of that anti-american message in anti- christian message and anti-conservative message that comes into that show every single week that is deep in their head. we are paying people to those messages into the minds of our kids. they could recite this stuff in their sleep. they don't have to go to "the family guy" website. this is an example of the power of pop culture. pop culture is not just a fish in the ocean. controlling pop culture is not just landing a wheel in the ocean -- whale in the ocean.

pop culture is the ocean. everything swims in pop culture. it is everything. it is the air we breathe. we have to get into this battle space. get in to win. we have to be able to control our messaging. when i talk about messaging, i talked about the rapper. there is nothing about the conservative ideals and message i would change. not a dot or a comma. i have a religious all about the cost -- awe about the constitution. the amount of work study history, constant debate, the work it took to produce that. i'm not talking about changing the message but i and talking

seriously about changing the package we put that message in ? . it is a message of collectivism and envy and bitterness and hopelessness and entitlement that they are putting in a cartier diamond box. we are wondering why no one is buying it. no one is buying it because we do not know how to sell it. if you are a politician on the right and you cannot sell freedom to people, you are probably in the long -- wrong line of work was that how hard is it to sell freedom, virtue, private property to people in this country? if you cannot do that, you need to find another line of work. let's get down to the actual message and then we talk about packaging. on behalf of our c-span viewers marco rubio, i do not know what

i would do without you. thursday work up. [applause] -- thirsty work up here. so what is the message? well what is it we believe? we have pamphlets, brochures constitutions, websites. the simpler it is, the better. a simple message is better than a hard one. albert einstein determined the relationship between matter and energy. it could have filled 60 black wards of equations. it could -- blackboards of equations. when he said e=mc squared, it was so simple, it had to be true. i think it is three things and three things only. this is what we need to sell.

freedom, private property, virtue. how do we do that do young people today? they do not know anything about these terms. they have not been told anything about the founders. we have to start from scratch. if we say freedom to young people, all they hear is freedom, of course there is freedom. no, freedom is a bubble formed by then and women to keep that world of horror away from this disneyland of freedom we live in. they do not appreciate that. we have to get down to the brass tax. if you want to sell freedom to young people, it is simple. freedom means, do you want to be left alone or do you want to be told what to do? which one? if you go to a group of college students anywhere and say to

them, do you want to be left alone or told what to do? they will also fit -- all say they want to be left alone. i am pretty sure it was oakland -- overland. it is where freedom and logic go to die. i was in a room full of students and a reasonably full crowd. about seven out of 10 thought they were socialists. i said to them, well, i'm a capitalist. what is your core belief? you ask them to defined what they believe and they could not tell you. after a time, i said it is not my job to argue your position for you but i will do it anyway. aren't you basically saying from

each according to his ability? if you look at this group of students and say to these liberals and you ask them, but as i do labels -- but as i do labels and raise your hand if you want to be left alone and they will. raise your hand if you're the kind of person you like to tell other people what to do. some of them do but none of them will raise their hands. not one of them. [laughter] if you want to be left alone, that means the value freedom. who is it that is trying to tell you that you have to have a certain kind of health care only approved by a certain number of people? there should be thousands of choices. which party tells you you acted

like a safety helmet when you want to take a shower. which party is talking about loud guns and fast cars and hot women and trying to tell you you have to have this kind of car, this is your temperature setting, which party are the weenies saying no, you cannot do that. the other party is saying, leave me alone. if you want to be left alone don't you want the smallest government possible because they are the only people --if you do not like mcdonald's, don't go there. if you do not like being told what to do, wouldn't you be in favor of reducing to the smallest loss of both size the only thing out there that can

force you into doing what you do not want to do? yeah. congratulations, you are a third of the way to being a conservative. we are on the same page. private property is tougher to sell. wealth has been demonized by the left cut their entire reason for existence is by saying to some people, vote for me and we will use the power of the guns of the so, wealth has to be demonized because if wealth is not demon eyed and if it is in fact a reward for hard work and more hard work, then taking it is stealing and steal is wrong. we don't want to be thieves do we? no. they have to take more than their fair share which is what justifies stealing it from them. it's tougher with the private property but you can pull this off too and here's how i did it.

you have a group full of students who claim they're socialists. 70% raise their hands. i say fair enough. what kind of phone do you have. i have an i phone five and i'll get a six as soon as i get the upgrade. first they look at you a little suspiciously like, why do you want to know? i'm not going to steal them from you. i'm not a democrat after all. and those of you who are socialists, brings those smart phones down. why do you want our phones? well, you were the ones who said from each according to its oblt to each according to its need, right? bring down the phones because given the number of people who who identify as socialists we bring these phones over we'll have $2,000 worth of electronics and we'll put them in a basket. i'm gone to take them.

i'm not the government. we'll take your cell phones and we'll go to downtown cleveland and find a pawn shop and take these phones and we'll lickquidate them and sell them for $2,000 and we'll go through the streets of cleveland and distribute that money to the poor. bring 'em down. and guess what? they don't bring them down. you know why? because they're not socialists that why. it's because they're rock ribbed william f. buckley conservatives who believe in this wealth redistributed as long as it's somebody else's but when it's time to take their wealth and redistribute it to other people all of a sudden they think ronald reagan is a swell guy and that is where you can put people in a position where they have to put their money where their

mouth is. of course they're in favor of wealth redistribution, you're college students. you don't have any wealth to redistribute. you want other people to give you stuff and you will until you start getting jobs and start paying taxes at which point your opinion will change and that's normal. this is in fact my phone. it's mine. you know why i have this phone because i work as a slave is why. i get every day and work seven days a week. i work very, very hard and this is one of the benefits of the extra work that i do that i don't have to do. i earned it and it's mine. it's my phone. mine. [applause] and those phones are yours. well technically they're your parents but we won't split hairs. you can put them on their moral

code. make them live up to their own moral code. i'll say to some of these students, they'll say the wealth and so on and so forth, you have an xbox. you have something. i'm a gamer too. i know you're out there playing call of duty and all these games. let's just remember one thing here. the poorest americans are richer than 93% of the rest of the population of the earth. that toy that you go home to every night if you were to take that toy to the pawn shop and sell it, you could probably feed a village in africa for a year and you don't. you don't. you say you would, but you don't. none of you do. you're all hypocrites. it's your property. you want it and you want to keep it you and feel like you earned it and you probably have. but you could take that xbox and sell it for $300 and ship it over to africa and feed a family certainly for a year and you don't. because you're not socialists

and you understand that these things are products of the life that you lead and you're willingness to be charitable is not determined by whether or not somebody has a gun to your head. that's not charity. you can get people, young people to understand the value of private property when you ask them if they're going to be willing to sell any of theirs in order to live up to their value incredibly advanced moral superiority and the answer is they won't do it because they're not socialists. they're regular people just like us who feel like if they work hard they should be entitled to a reward for that work. pretty simple really. third thing you need to sell and the last thing is virtue. now you say virtue to young people and they think that that means not having sex until you're 70. but that's not what virtue means. virtue is very simple. virtue just means don't be a

jerk. when i'm talking to college students i say don't be a dick. aim same thing. it's don't be a jerk. raise your hands out there, college students of america. raise your hands if you think you have the right to hit somebody or the right to take what's in their backpack right now? do you have the right to take what's in that person's backpack, yes or no? no, of course not. i agree. you'd be kind of a jerk if you hit them and/or took their stuff. so if you don't believe in hurting people and hitting people and you don't believe in taking their stuff then that means that you're virtuous and the cool thing about that is if you're virtuous then we can leave you alone. remember how you said you want to be left alone? swell. if you're not a jerk we can leave you alone. because if you behave without hitting people and taking their stuff we can let you do whatever you want to do limited by the

point where you start to hurt people or take their stuff. if you're not a jerk we can leave you alone; however, if you are a jerk, and you do want to steal from people and take their stuff or hurt them, now all of a sudden we need policeman and cameras and wardens and prison guards and the whole thing that is necessary to stop some of you from being jerks. i don't know why the rest of us have to pay that penalty because some of you are jerks. i think we ought to deal with those of you who are jerks and leave the rest of us alone. that's what i think. [applause] >> and that's virtue. and congratulations, you're three thirds of the way. you're all the way of the there. you're a rock rib con serve actives because you understand they're not the principals of hatred or anything, they're simple common sense freaking core values that we all share. everybody wants to be left

alone. and everybody wants the rewards of their stuff and everybody agrees that it's wrong to hurt somebody and to take their stuff. pretty simple. if you of these three simple things couple of simple things how do you actually sell this stuff? well i had a really remarkable epiphany about this. and every single time i go i go virgin america. i'll fly virgin america to towns i'm not going to. that's how much i like virgin america of the there's a point to this so stay with me. first time i flew into that virgin america flight, i walked into a room that was dark and the lighting on the airplane was purple and red. and the seats were white plastic and black leather and the music they were playing was the kind of jazz you only hear in the coolest clubs i had ever been in. i was like, this is the freaking

nightclub. this kicks butt. about a year ago, little over a year ago virgin america did something that i really seriously would like you to go home and watch. about a year and a half ago virgin america which used to have an extremely animated safety video spent i think it must have been millions of dollars to do a new airplane safety video. so if you get a chance and go and go virgin america safety video and it's been seen by an 11 million people and i put about 40,000 of those hits on myself. i get off of virgin america flight having watched the safety video in my chair and got in my car at l.a. x. and driven home and got my head sets on and gone to youtube because i want to hear it again. that's how good it is and it is that good because the music is that good and the dancers are that hot and the movement is so sexy and so interesting and so cool. couldn't get enough of it. and it was only after about the time i came back and saw it for the eighth or ninth time i

realized i just got off the plane and it's 2 o'clock in the morning and i wanted to see it before i went to sleep. why? i'm doing it because it's so entertaining and so well done that i am willing to spend four and a half minutes to hear the most boring information on the face of the earth. here's how you operate a seat belt. here's how you blow up your emergency vest. here's how you don't tamper with the smoke detectors and here's the exit doors. it's the most boring information in the world and i heard it 200 times and totally blanked it out on every flight i've ever been on but i couldn't get enough of it and i couldn't get enough of it because it was magnificently choreographed and beautifully done and each one of these and gorgeous girls and tremendous kicking soundtrack and fantastic. i realized if this video can

make me watch the most boring information in the world for the 20th time, after hearing it 300 times commercially and 11 million people on youtube have watched this safety video, then this is important. it's important. and i'm going to show you why. we need to reimagine our values for young people, not reinvent help them or change them but reimagine them. there's a great example i can give you. when you talk to young americans about george washington, young millennials who don't know anything about him other than he owned slaves, when you talk about george washington what would they say? they would say well, he had a frillsy shirt and kind of old stockings and a waist coat and looks like an old guy and

carries a musket. that's pretty much what george washington looked like. you're going to look a little stupid 250 years from now. you may not believe me but take my word for it. that little hoodie will look pretty absurd somewhere 100 years from now. 200 years from now you'll look like a caveman and 250 years from now people will laugh at you because of how you're dressed. what i said is this, not many people know this, during the revolutionary war george washington snuck through enemy lines to london, england with whom he was at war with for 6, 7 years now. it was to a taylor in london. he said i would like to purchase four waist coats in the latest designs using the most fashion colors currently available.

i'd like the buttons ornate as possible without being 0s ten taeurb should yous. why did he go to a london tailor? because george workashington was probably the best dressed man on planet earth. he was a likely was the best dressed and he thought being president of a new president meant it's especially important that i be the best dressed. so i say to high school kids if george washington next to me he would not be wearing what he wore then. if he were standing next to me, he was 6'4" sew would be 6'6" and $20,000 armani suit and $900 hermes shirt and $800 air cut

and holding a r-14 because he was a swinging deadly dude. george washington here day would look like money because he was money. he understood the power of the image. that's who george washington is. if he were standing here today he wouldn't be dressed like that. he would be dressed in a $20,000 suit. and i thought to myself how do we get this idea acrossed to young people? because the people who knew him wanted him to be king. they fought an entire war against kings and the first thing they wanted him to is make him king because he was so overwhelmingly glamourous and interesting and sexy and cool. he was every sing celebrity you know today rolled into one and founder of the nation. they wanted him to be king. they wanted to refer to him as his excellency. he said no, you'll call me mr. president. we're all heequals here. when

young people hear this the whole thing becomes new again. george washington with an $800 haircut is accessible in a way that an old guy in a powder hat isn't. and you can do it for all of it. if i was going to tell the story of george washington i'd have a guy standing there in the tricorner hat with the wig and the waist coat and with a musket and then three of the hottest young women on earth and they live in a town i live in and they're in los angeles i see them every day and walk up to this model, this 6'5" model and they would grab this outfit and they just pull it off and it would be a break away costume and he'd be standing there this 6'5", 35-year-old super god wearing a pair of boxer under wear and these women would circle around him and they would start to put him in this hermes suit and put a nine$9,000.

he would do one of those -- they put mousse in his hair and mess him up. that's who he is. that's not me was. that's who he is. when he said, no, i'm not going to be your king. that's why we love the guy. that's why we love the guy. that's the power of reimaging these things. and you can do this all the time. you can especially do it by using the language of the pop culture and using the language is very, very important. i was at an event in phoenix and afterwards during the q & a period i thought about this. a young woman, probably 16-year-old woman from the local high school said, hey, bill, i have a question for you.

we want to start a tea party group at our high school. we wonder if you had any ideas. i said i do. my first idea is whatever you do do not call it a tea party group under any circumstances. don't call it that. forget about the fact that the tea party has been unfairly demonized. you talk about and they don't know that the actual boston tea party who were a bunch of college kids drunked out of their minds and utterly incensed that a one tax on tea. they can't charge us or wi-fi? they can relate to that. but they can't relate to this idea of a tea party. tea party is something old people do. i said if i were you i would print up a little brochure and the brochure would say that at 4 o'clock on tuesday in room 228 there will be the first meeting of the rebel alliance. [applause] >> i could see that she just lit

up and she lit up for the first time ever an actual conservative was speaking to her in a language she understood. i'm speaking the language of star wars. and that's not a trivial thing. how do we expect the american people to conservative was speaking to her in a language she let us run the country if we don't understand our own mythology. we don't deserve to run the country if we can't speak the language of the american people. my friend said on some level barack obama is more american than mitt romney. he knows family guy and downloaded from itunes and hangs out with beyonce. this is the language that americans speak today. if we can't speak this language we can't govern the country and we don't deserve to. she said what do i tell people i said if someone comes up to you what you need to do is look at them and say this isn't for

you. what do you mean it's not for me? no this isn't for you. you're not cut out to be a member. >> you don't know. maybe i am. what do you mean i'm not a member? >> no, you have to understand. if you're going to be a member of the rebel alliance you have to understand on our best days we're out numbered 100 to 1. on our best day we're out numbered 100 to 1. you have to be smart. you have to understand that things that might be true may not be true. as a matter of fact it's only through a lifetime of study of these advanced jedi skill that's allows a handful of us to get into these pieces of junk and get up there and fly through wave and wave. and get the hell out of there before this death star blows up and takes all of this with it.

you'd better hope we're successful while you're sleeping because if we are not, you are going to wake up one day and they'll be roasting rats over burning tires in the streets. if you think you can handle this rebel alliance be prepared. you see what happens. because that's what we're talking about. we're talking about freedom. we're talking about rebellion against authority and talking about what makes this country great. we're talking about leave me alone and get out of my face and step off and don't tell me what to do. this is mine and i own it. that millennium fallcon belongs to me. that's my ship. leave me alone. i'm a good guy. i don't need to be told what to do and get out of my way and they're right there. because you're speaking their language. when it comes time to messaging, one of the things we can do is

steal their language. they call themselves liberals. there is nothing liberal about today's liberals. nothing liberal about them at all. i'm in fact -- i don't mean to split hairs with you, but i'm a conservative because i'm trying to conservative classical liberalism. the liberalism of the founders is the idea of private property and individual rights coupled with responsibility and fighting an entire empire because they decided to put a $0.01 tax on tea. we think we can spend our money better than the king can. all the ideas about the american founding we value as conservatives are liberal ideas and the so-called liberals who are big state socialists collectivists believe that only the smart people should have the power and everybody else will do what they tell them to do for their own good of course. this progressivism is not new.

the idea of a small elite people ruling everybody else and parsing out little garbage i phones and transportation to keep them happy so they keep them in power is ancient and goes back to the romans and predates the romans and empires and shaws and all this other stuff. limited government and large people. large individual people. so i don't call them liberals anymore because they're not. i just don't call them liberals. they're not. why are you conservative they'll say to me? i'll say because my commitment to diversity. you republicans with diversity. no no, no. how can you be the party of diversity. look at us. african-americans for obama and asians for obama and women for obama. lochness monster