>> the risk assumed to be endogenous. >>'s agility figure monetary policy you think of them being and dutch in this -- endogenous? >> both come i think the risk premium depends on the risk appetite. that might be affected by things outside of monetary policy like global and political risk. at the same time, i think the monetary authorities recognize that what they do and how they ,re perceived to be operating and what the future brings, and whether they can convince people it is a good teacher does have an effect.

you think what were talking but here is the end of capitalism? that the banking system is gotten to the point where we can't accept a market economy with banks that are privately owned? mr. kashkari: not at all. the market economy is still the key to our future. we just need to have a market economy where you can have a prosperity, and innovation, and take up some of the risk of collapse of the table. >> pretty briefly, why now? yourhy you in terms of leading on this issue? i just started, so i'm going as fast as i can. i feel at what i bring to this is a unique perspective. of few people on the front line responding to financial crisis.

that really colors my thinking and my views as i look at what has been implemented. does have a the fed lot of expertise in large banks. i think bringing these things together to say i think we can do more, let's go do more, the last thing i would say -- i'm repeating myself -- there are a lot of experts around the country that have strong ideas about this. have thesuppose we answers. we are trying to bring those experts together and say let's find a better solution. >> welcome back to brookings, it is great to see you. i was concerned that you are not more enthusiastic about the single point of entry approach. it seems like, if you have capacity so income that it would be hard for any bank to run through it you will basically say that taxpayers are not going to support big banks.

single point of entry, you can resolve that. not disrupt the system. by creating a bridge bank, you can allow subsidiary to operate. why haven't we solved the problem? why do you want to do things that might warm up the gears more? one of recognize this innovation for what it is? my concern is -- it really is not go to trigger contagion, then it'll probably be price like equities. why don't we just raise the equity requirement to the banks? instead of adding all this complexity, there is tremendous complexity and all the regulations. i will give you an example. m memory directly for some thing about fannie and freddie in '08. they were never supposed to be the responsibilities of the u.s. government.

but yet, we had to step in. hang on, they also had subordinated debt. thended up protecting subordinated debt. in theory, that was there specifically to provide protection for the senior creditors. >> there's two different points here, one is you are saying that basically we can't take the government at its word. in a crisis they will never allow the bondholders to take the hit. right? mr. kashkari: that is stronger that i would say it, but yes. mr. stern that is separate mr. wessel: that is separate, why are the issuing bonds that can become capital? what is the advantage of that over just having them hold more equity? >> i think it is diversified, it appeals to different investors.

it is probably a little less expensive than equity. it is something we will pay interest on until it converts to equity. ofhink these are new types instruments. particularly those convertible bonds that we were talking about earlier. in the u.s., they are not issuing those. more equity but more preferred shares. and other subordinated debt -- but i do think it is -- there are different investors. different characteristics, i assume it will be -- , there wasi: go back no legal requirement for the banks to bail out. i don't see the analogy here. in the midst of a crisis, all of a sudden, if you to analyze the balance sheet, they look healthier. in the management said we have a reputation requirement to stand

behind. mr. kohn: you think of a concern about the reputation of the convert the bonds? mr. kashkari: there is that, but i'm saying the less is that these very clear legal frameworks are not so clear the time of a crisis. mr. stern are you going to go to market to market accounting? it seems to me that is critical here. lossesse regulators, the get delayed. is swampingd out it capital. i know a lot of people and , there was avices rat running around the room. model to lead a model, so what is better? mr. kohn: i think regulators

have been pushing more than they have in the past. the market to market is very useful but is tricky on the liability side of the balance sheet. -- when these bonds a selloff, the banks have more equity. it is a tricky issue. recognizing the value of the assets, and the impairments, it's absolutely critical for the health of the system and the market discipline. the gentleman in the front that will call it a day. >> i wanted to go back to the announcement of the minneapolis initiative. you look knowledge is that it will eventually require congressional action.

that is probably the biggest obstacle given that a lot of members of congress don't agree with your initial premise. how does your initiative address this impasse? >> we are seeing variations in the global economy right now. possible to next financial crisis could be triggered not from here but from a foreign market? mr. wessel: are you going to fix congress while your at it? mr. kashkari: we could go disappear into my closet and come out to nine months and come up with our answer. the reason we are having a public process with bringing the experts in is to also educate the public along with us.

hopefully, we can get members of congress in both sides of the aisle to pay attention and take this seriously. we have to do it if we can to try to get there. >> will it have its origins somewhere else? i think that is pretty high. many of the weaknesses be blubbering about is less of the we ared more overseas -- hearing about is less in the u.s. and more overseas. but also anchoring systems throughout, and to agree on resolution regimes, to agree on higher capital. to agree on a framework that will make the system much safer and more resilient to shocks, wherever they come from.

everyone is very aware they could come from anywhere. neel's point it's absolutely true. whatever trigger something bad coming down we probably won't see it until it is right about the less. earlier, somebody mentioned oil prices. should we have seen that? i don't know anybody who said there was an oil bubble and we need to take action to protect various sectors of the economy. things happen. we need to be humble about how well we can predict them. >> i don't think we will identify the next source before the crisis happens. i think that is highly unlikely. the best thing we can do is be as prepared for it as we can. ande, that means getting straightening out the incentives. mr. wessel: do you think we're better off the day before this all started in 2007?

yes, i think we are clearly better off. we may be on second or third base. where home plate is. at least, i think i know what home plate is. we have to get there. mr. wessel: with that, please join me in thanking our panel. [applause] >> in 2012, statistician nate silver correctly predicted the presidential election outcome and 50 out of 50 states. we hear from him next on c-span. after that, former u.s. ambassador takes part in the talk about the future of iraq. later, president obama is asking of the current supreme court vacancy following the death of justice scalia over the weekend. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] >> on our next washington the chicagoalked to

tribune and l.a. times about the death of justice scalia. aaron klien of the bipartisan center about the negative -- changes to interest rates. you can join the conversation by phone on facebook and twitter. washington journal's library morning at 7:00 a.m. on c-span. >> american history tv on c-span3 features programs that tell the american story. this weekend we continue our special series on the vietnam hearings 50 years later. we will hear special consultant to president johnson's opening statement. followed by committee questions. >> our position is equally clear and defined. president johnson did so in the -- our objective

is the independence of south vietnam and its freedom from attack. we want nothing for ourselves, only that the people of south via be allowed to guide their own country in their own way. this is been our basic objective since 1954. it has been pursued by three successive administrations. and it remains our basic objective today. >> next saturday, secretary of state dean rusk gives his testimony. but the complete american history tv we can schedule go to www.c-span.org. >> next, fivethirtyeight founder nate silver talks about polling data and the election. he spoke at george mason university.

>> thank you for coming back. it is important for them to take some breaks. say tyler has many interests as you know. i cannot tell you what tyler and nate are about to discuss. i can promise you this -- it will be challenging. it will be fascinating. above all, it will the entertaining. so please join me in welcoming tyler cohen and nate silevr. -- silver. [applause] tyler: nate doesn't eat much of an introduction. he is a phenomenon in the area of data, sports, politics, online media and all the growth sectors basically.

i think of you as dedicated to the idea of numbers, and data. wanted to apply that to as many different areas as possible. if you had to say, of all the areas of human life, where can data being the -- bring the biggest improved aware with that the? nate silver: that is a pretty heavy question. you know, look, i think the answers are probably obvious in some sense. where health is an area. is incredibly valuable. doctors are not known for being terribly analytics driven. i don't of the culture enough as to know why. --terms of areas that we are that i would like us to focus on eight, criminality and criminal justice. in part, because you have a lot of issues with data. know how manyo

people are killed by police officers you don't really know that very well. education is another area where he could have a lot of data use. it is used poorly, as well as data used well. urban planning is something we're fascinated by. we did a big analysis of uber data. we spent $2 million of our own which is that uber in new york was not adding car should the streets. tyler: if we applied more data to the law, what kind of improvement can you imagine we might come up with? nate silver: i think them up in the last field where you would have -- a noncitizen a pejorative way -- -- i don't say this in a pejorative way. answer that is at

least approximately right. whereas the legal sector i think relies more on precision. you want to very sites -- precise answer. that is kind of what you're avoiding sometimes and fiscal analysis. tyler: i sometimes wonder, how much data to people want? i went back to your high school yearbook as prep for this. i took a look at the quotation you left it is from the combat. -- macbeth. liars and swimmers are full's, because there are enough to be the honest man." nate silver: you are entitled that of high school, i think. [laughter] tyler: when you give a lot of people a chance to view the quality of the hospital, or doctor, they aren't interested. as a citizenry, how much dated you think people want? do you think it is a kind of

entertainment? do people want to see real data on how good or how honest they actually are? nate silver: my partner got really into 23 and want honesty do. you actually tell you all that much. i don't want to stress about a bunch of things i can't necessarily affect. i don't know. empowering people to make better decisions with their own health is a noble notion. i am enough of a free marketer that i say you should give people the information, whether or not they use it well it is their right. i'm not sure at a firm conclusion whether or not it leads to better decisions. amongression is that doctors, and hospital administrators, they are not , despitedata-driven

their rigorous work in other respects. tyler: i think of you as a kind of super forecaster. do you think you can beat prediction markets? nate silver: not all the time, but a smidgen above average. if this were a game and we were all investors, at the end of 40 years you have some excess returns. i think made by small amount but not enough to make up the variance. it's been to what market you are talking about. i think the market in politics are not all that liquid, or that sophisticated. i know the various sports hubs we have have tended to beat they guess not by a lot -- vegas. not by a lot, but 52% of the time. tyler: that is a lot.

nate silver: it is a lot, and it does what i spend a lot of my time taking about. arrogant to for anyone to think they can beat markets. right? at the same time, the more worshipful we become of markets and the less useful they become as well. know donaldell, i trump is going to win because he's up to 52% -- it is lower now -- but is that fair? that i think doesn't add any value to the conversation. i am more interested as a person in providingrcher, information that other people can aggregate. if you are talking about

our political market -- the first question is how good our markets? the answer to that is pretty is not verye air linear. when it is off they can be off by quite a lot. is the person who knows when they are off? that is harder to do. tyler: what is the difference between forecasting in futurism? do you have any predictions for the year 2050? not great, just better than the market. think i am mildly pessimistic in some ways. tyler: what is the biggest source of your pessimism? [laughter] nate silver: i don't know. there's probably some survivorship bias. willing about how our way persevere forever forever, and ever.

we were talking backstage about how you go to asia -- not as often as you do -- but if you want to feel optimistic but civilization then go there. but, some of it is thinking about this donald trump phenomena. tyler: i have heard of him. nate silver: it just made me consider that a lot of assumptions people made about how american politics work really based on the relatively narrow slice of history. 2000world war ii through or so. or 1980-2000. it is gotten a lot of history. in many other contexts, they're all types of places run the world where nationalism is a much bigger phenomenon that it is in the united states. and racism is embedded in a

great deal of political turmoil in the united states. in some ways, i wondered after the great recession how come we haven't seen more upheaval, more social upheaval. maybe we're seeing that a little bit delayed. it is more of a revolution of rising expectations. a the same time, there is tendency now to focus on -- i don't politics to focus on a specific -- i know in politics to focus on a specific picture. there is a lot of wonderful news in some sense in terms of poverty rates going down globally, income inequality going down, diseases being eradicated. muchder to some extent how the media culture tends to focus the lens on negative aspects society. optimistically, do you think data can improve

matching? should we just follow the algorithms, or that a potential that end? or does it just focus -- force you to choose someone to get you out of a decision? [laughter] nate silver: i think the market would say that people find online services fairly useful. maybe it removes some spontaneity. i met my partner at a bar which feels almost old-fashioned now, really. pills,ld be like these or the placebo effect. nate silver: i think there was a lot of over optimization. almost across any sector you want to talk about where data is being used to optimize a short-term equilibrium. it is much harder to measure the long-term. before, you couldn't measure anything at all. the navy your shirt -- then maybe your services were that bad.

what is going to get my website the next traffic -- most traffic 36 hours from now isn't necessarily the best decision in the long run. you can measure some things come and not others, that can make you quite myopic. tyler: you mentioned donald trump a moment ago. i told quite a few people i didn't think trump could get very far. it is not obvious that i was right, paul krugman said early on that hit quite a good chance. what is it that he saw that i did not? nate silver: i was one of the skeptics, too. let me say, i thought you'd ask a version of this question. tyler: i wasn't allowed to blame you. [laughter] that is important, i think. i got a little frustrated because before saying rutrump

will instantly evaporate in the polls list up we said that could happen but there were a lot of candidates like pat buchanan and or 30% ofill get 25% the electorate and they have a high floor, low ceiling advantage. that could still wind up being true. thing,at said, for one we're dealing with a fairly small sample of relevant election. people look at the primaries going back to 1972, and one basic lesson is that when you 15, thereple size of is nothing you can do to make it not a sample size of 15. no matter how compelling you can make a rationalization to say we have fear he as well as empirics here.

i think maybe making people more conscious about saying unlikely verses never. the record will show we said unlikely, and not never. still, it is a lot of things to give up. i don't know. you talk about what super forecasters are supposed to do. priors, and it said that the prior to win the nomination. what signs could i find that would violate that assumption? it is not necessarily performing well in early polls, lots of candidates -- unusual candidates -- have done well in early polls. lots of unusual candidates have won iowa or new hampshire, not usually both. tois the ability

consolidate the field after that to become a consensus choice of the party this been more unusual. that assumption still might prove to be true. i do think that i, and a lot of other people, overrated the ability of the republican party to stop what i think is a radical insurgency within the gop. tyler: the party is weaker than you thought. what other ideas about the world you think we should revise? paul krugman would say republicans are racist and many other people would believe. nate silver: that is a little bit of what i wanted to resist. i think one lazy, in my thinking are thosep, is there weapons consistent for a long time. i thought the people who were approached trump were generally

mp were people whose opinions i would not wait eight as highly. i think it is lazy, and quite dangerous. tyler: does michael bloomberg have a chance, if he chooses to run? nate silver: give me a probability. i think as a 2.8% this morning. is that too high or too low? of becoming president. nate silver: probably about right. in some ways, the climate could be as fertile as ever for some type of third candidate running. but bloomberg, i don't know. i don't know if he differentiates that much from clinton, with whom he is a lot trump from whom he is the same character. ,ut between sanders and trump or clinton and trump, everything is quite left of center.

when he was thinking about running as an independent in 1999 had a platform but it involved a wealth tax coming with anti-immigration even then and pro-choice. he said he would reconsider his stances if he began the republican nominee. today, the more viable candidate in that case would be like a mitt romney, condoleezza rice ticket persimmon like that. tyler: let's move past the esoteric and give people what they really want to hear. let's connect in 1968, the world -- let's go back to 1968, the world series. he took mickey stanley, pull them out of center fielder but the minute shortstop for stop.

no one had ever done this before. you were advising at that time -- how do you start digging but that problem? -- start thinking about that problem? nate silver: we know a lot more now about the value of defense than we did in the late 60's, or even 10 years ago. if anything, defense to the to be quite a bit more important that people would have thought. that was ironic when some of the conventional scout and wisdom was confirmed as data got more advanced and more sophisticated. if want to get really complicated, and to the tigers had denny mcclain and a strikeout have a pitching staff maybe you worry about defense a little bit less, tiger stadium is a park conducive to low batting average is to begin with. it is not obvious to me that it was the best move. it is interesting that all of a sudden, baseball teams in football teams become, in -- correct when

they have more on the line. in the world series, usage is a lot better. you bring your best guy in the eighth inning of the seventh-inning and in the nfl teams will go for two more often. it will go for it on fourth down more often. when the stakes are high, and the outcome of the game is all that matters, then things are different. tyler: who is the underrated candidate in the republican race this year? [laughter] to impose a kind of consistency on you. nate silver: i mean, i don't know. tyler: you have to go along with someone. nate silver: i think the markets are fairly close to correct right now. rubio optimist for

a while in the very that he is the only candidate who really has appeal to all the various sectors in the gop. that may be a fraying party, but he has the highest favorability rating in the party. speaks the language of conservatives without being too extreme. the big question is where is trump's ceiling? 35%the start of 25% in iowa, is much harder to the case when he would be harder to stop. half ofnew hampshire, republicans there said they would not want him as their nominee. the question is -- can the non-trump candidates organize themselves into one candidate. then does he a 35%, or 40%? if he gets a 51%, then it doesn't really matter. suppose, i think rubio at

3-to-1 should be more like 3- to-1. tyler: what about the ted cruz there he? that you knew less cover my's in canada to bring up the violent conservatives very don't devote. and that there is a lot of them and cruises more electable than more electables than rubio? nate silver: talking but the priors and kind of occam's razor . the reason why that is relevant senators are easier to measure their ideology because they legislate. we also have a much larger sample size. not a price that can be overcome if we go into a big recession or if clinton or bernie has huge problems.

youcruz would probably cost three or four points relative to the median generic republican. tyler: last i saw, bernie's it share with coming at 17%. at that price to go long or short? nate silver: probably short, but it is also not radically mispriced. what people miss is that unlike on the gop side where trump has passed the first test. people are out there willing to vote for him. there was some doubt about that after iowa. sanders we haven't really seen can he win states that are not very white, and very liberal? maybe he can, nevada seems to be pretty close. we haven't really received that much information that would make you update your priors about sanders all that much. he probably has to win by a

little bit of room to spare. if it is a tie, then clinton will probably win on the basis of superdelegates. if she loses by a couple of points but it is close enough. if you're an underdog in a football game and you lose unless you win by more than a field goal, that reduces your win probability quite a bit. theou're the favorite, maybe it wouldn't. that is tricky. when underdogs when they tend to win narrowly. becauseon wins superdelegates turning arrow bernie when by a field goal into after further review we have an overtime quarter. i think 10 or 15% is more in that range probably is about right. tyler: let's turn to a nobler endeavor -- sports. fan of baseball.

i would like to ask you come up all the different baseball records, which one is most impressive to you? -- the largest statistical moderation. with the 36 triples in 1912. what is the most politically impressive baseball record, and why? nate silver: the biggest outlier is the intentional walks the barry bonds drew. was att closest player 50 when he had 168. there was no other record i can think of where the recordholder has three times as much as the nearest player. tyler: to the streaks in place -- impress you more or less than other people? things like cal ripken, mickey those.

nate silver: one of the area where simple answers might not have been totally correct. there was a lot of talk for a long time about how the hot hand theory was false. basically things are random. now there is more argument against that. if you have a task that has low power, then you made a mistake. oft may result four-legged -- may result in a negative result. you'd expect there is some variation in some behavior in the day today. it was lester guinness and you might think. -- we have a greater or lesser extent to that than you might think.

we have some unpublished research that a colleague of mine is doing. it looks like if you maybe predict batting average up or down, or on-base average 20 or 30 points from a baseline. in baseball terms, that is pretty relevant. if you have aguy in the leadoff spot and he's really a340 in his current condition, then he should be demoted down to the 8th spot in the lineup. things.true of a lot of fromnow, the first cut data is over simple five. -- simplified. tyler: what do you think based on the evelyn's -- evidence that we have, like with the houston rockets run by daryl morey. it seems to be supersmart, and right now the big debate in houston is which of their two star players they should trade,

or maybe both? they might not even make the playoffs? how does regression in data analytics work in sports? nate silver: the golden state warriors might be the best examples. tyler: clearly, it increases your variance. so the good examples will look really good. but as a predictor how hard it d we be selling it? nate silver: you talk about how hard it is. there was a little bit of this in sports. a colleague of mine just wrote a book that is not published yet but he and sam miller and givenr stat head were run of a minor league team for a year. they encountered baseball culture in a very head-on way.

the team did pretty well, it was a very obscure minor league. the baseline, if is making cap your decisions orht and you make 55% right, 53% right, that is a pretty big gain at the margin. ort as noisy as baseball, it will take a long time to show up. basketball is less noisy, but in areral i think the spurs fairly analytics friendly, the rockets come and the warriors. i think basketball is probably the best example. tyler: there is not much of a natural time unit. it is hard to squeeze in commercials. they're not always well-defined. defense is more confusing to this american than criquet.

did market salaries of soccer players are determined. the small amount of data seems to predict does very well. the fact that soccer being a normal ways, does that mean we can still get it all done with limited data? or does that mean having more data doesn't help for a much and in all sports are a little bit like soccer? i feel like i will answer all your questions in the far i which is analysis is from perfect. you'll make a lot of mistakes. at the same time, pretty good is hard to beat sometimes. things that develop over time about how to evaluate people at different positions. the don't appropriately value goalkeepers all that much. we are in soccer that in the very early stages.

there hasn't been very much data collected. it is not the mba -- like the nba where you have defensive stat. for espn a fewem years ago. the only data that has been captured long-term and soccer is goals, and red cards and yellow cards. until not have assists recently. you can maybe get time on the pitch if you parse play-by-play records. we don't have crossing passes. i think there is still a lot of room for upward improvement in soccer. live in a global economy with billy and delivers. why don't more people learn the knuckleball? dickey on the cy young with the knuckleball he taught himself. why so few knuckleballer's?

why isn't that a more regularize process? twornate silver: i have answers. wonders their diminishing returns of a number of knuckleballer to have in the league. when you have a second, it affects his success. i think there is a second thing which is that sports tends to engender conformism. do.t of walks of life that is the whole tension that comes up. on the one hand, the market is usually pretty good. on the other hand, there are powerful biases that can form. tyler: trumpet but the knuckleballer politics, then? therump is like knuckleballer of politics then. yeah, kind of.

the other fiscally to think about it is when you have some sayhat is unusual you can that trump on average would get less than a vote and someone higher in the polls was done but he is a much longer pay off on the side. that is no reason to not be dismissive of him. in the early going whenever one was a long shot. tyler: in all of these interviews, we do a kind of game called underrated versus overrated. i name if you think you tell me if you think there underrated or overrated. you're free to pass on any. i -- upperty, the east side? nate silver: i think a little overrated. but look, new york is efficiently priced.

we tried to if years ago say what was the best neighborhood. the problem is, cost accounts .93 in our quality index. it is hard to improve your life in new york at the neighborhood level. good hold thefind wall places to eat. the ramen shops are getting better. i would judge everything by food. tyler: the short as avenue in manhattan, is six blocks long. overrated, or underrated? littlelver: a underrated. it is short, and a very dynamic section of town. tyler: even with all the bookstores close down? the idea legalizing drugs, overrated or underrated? crowd,lver: by this

probably rated properly. [laughter] nate silver: i mean, i don't know. l libertarian.e i think the government ought to have a stronger reason to intervene in places that people are making decisions. to me, it makes no sense to treat marijuana as being a more serious substance than alcohol, for example. i don't think in my heart of hearts if i were running for office or in the senate that i bill tote for a legalize heroin, or cocaine. but decriminalizing it, perhaps. ofhink the kind consequentialist case for a long time was probably underrated. it meant gone too far into the other direction.

i would say if it is close, then you give people the choice. tyler: musical group my bloody valentine. they put out an album in 2013 after almost a 20 year hiatus. overrated or underrated? nate silver: the group, or the album? tyler: the album. nate silver: i think the album was properly rated. tyler: singapore, overrated or underrated? nate silver: just by you. i know exactly why you would like it, it is like a little laboratory experiment. we were talking before about youapore is a place where could have some constraints that might seem slightly strange. maybe having a few you constraints is helpful.

you talk about the -- my sister lived in germany for a while wile. if you're there in the shop and it will close at four clock at doesn't matter if you have a huge lot of groceries, the store will close down and you have to put your stuff back. and then you come back tomorrow which seems irrational. but the germany has little weird quirks. it seems to be doing, i do know, fairly well in some ways. or scandinavia, or something, if you give up a little bit of freedom to have more freedom. i thought i could organize freedom, how scandinavian of me. singapore feels a little bit like that. tyler: this is a big compound question about a few things. hisof them is sports, one fantasy sports, and one is gambling. what is your take, what do these actually do for us? how socially productive are

they? ask a comparable question about gambling legalization or liberalization. externalitysocial on this mix of sports, fantasy sports, and gambling? nate silver: one of the things regular fantasy football link that you are in with your friends is that you get a lot out of it. you get to see people you wouldn't see very often. especially as you get older, you get to watch a lot of games with more of a rooting interest. daily fantasy sports is that a lot of that is really taken away. it is very much like a brute force approach to watching sports. basically, i had a program that was randomly generating high-scoring lineups. you scrape that data than you

loaded up to underline that a time. it kind of took all the joy out of it. it isn't quite what you're asking, right? tyler: right. [laughter] --e silver: i think tyler: what if people just watch sports? if it is a good game, i enjoy it. don't feel like i need to gamble on it. i want to read you, or other analytics, then watch the game. what am i missing? what they can but gambling in fantasy sports is it is a good way to teach people about analytics. i think this has a measurable benefit to society. look, this is a case where, unlike drug legalization where there aren't a lot of countries where drugs a part of marijuana

-- worldwide people are much more relaxed about gambling. it is normalized, you can go to the betting shop. it doesn't seem to ruin society. maybe you have come and low-paying leagues or in canada the occasional betting scandal which is not great. i think it is a way for people to enjoy sports. they can develop critical thinking skills. again, if it is close, i say let people do it. i feel that way about gambling. you do have examples of many westernized countries where betting on sports is legal. it seems not to be a grave societal harm. tyler: you run the website fivethirtyeight. you developed it, founded, to

get to espn. over those years, what is the most important thing you learn about managing? nate silver: basically, there are three strategies. three fundamental strategies of management. when you disagree with something one of your employees is doing. up.of which is you can give you can say i will not take this bat to the fight. there is a consequence of this person's morale, or i have other issues. you can capitulate. number two, you can fiat. you can say i'm the one that signs the checks. you will not publish that article. you can try to persuade instead. that is perfect except the persuasion is really time-consuming. [laughter] nate silver: figuring out which tos of those three tactics

use, and in what ratio, is i think important. i honestly found overall there is a little bit more value in micromanagement and i thought. not about everything, but strategically saying i will spend a lot of time going into detail on this one part. which sports coach or manager are you most like? who do you draw inspiration from? -- i amver: i am like fiare, fair -- laissez but when i weigh in on something i will do it directly. if you hire really well, and it is a culture of creative

journalists. journalists are strange and wonderful people. if the trust people to make their own decisions. a big thing to his figuring out which one of my deputies, the other managers and editors on the staff, what is my agreement ratio with them? it is valuable to have someone who come without your intervention, agrees with you 80% of the time. in the 20% of time they disagree they are right as often as not. if it goes to 95% and there is is probably bad. if they go to 60% then you might as will do the work yourself. you find people who listen to you but also challenge you at the right time. tyler: you mentioned food before, let's take a data intensive approach to food.

what is a restaurant we could consult or advocate others consulting in this endeavor? is a fairly this basic one. i would rather looking at yelp porch of advisor, the number of review to the better cigna visor -- signifier than the average star rating. especially relative to how long a place has been open. when you adjourn for more diverse segment of people, -- towards are drawing more diverse segment of people. a lot of 9/11 conspiracy books ated pretty well in amazon but none of the conspirators bothered to read them. [laughter] rate silver: whereas othello o eth, people who have to be to could lead a -- leave a

bad review. but it comes and places where employees will drive to my not like that cuisine as much. when i go and i used to do more yelping. place, to a mom and pop there's almost no way i will leave a negative review for that place. anyone'sant to hurt feelings. study showed that yelp reviews dollars inousands of business for a restaurant that has under 50 reviews. tyler: is a better food on the avenues or the streets in new york city? i have read yiou on this. weird,lver: new york is there are three of them from a culinary perspective.

there is the rich, michelin star new york, the hip williamsburg and there's the ethnic new york -- for lack of a better term. if you limit a list of places small three types of those, there are some rules that work well in one of those lanes that don't work well in the others necessarily. you have a high reference of new york it is so competitive that i think you rule out the weirdest thing on the menu. some places that isn't true because it is a hypercompetitive that the menu could not afford to lead people astray. sometimes the menu is clearly pointing you towards the kind of thing that you would want to order instead. that might not be true if you go ns, or something like that. probably pound for pound the food is better in manhattan, or

brooklyn. you can read a whole book, maybe about eating food in new york. before, one of my dreams to someday you write a quantitative history of new york city. this would be one of my favorite books. weather --out the whether reporting. forecast, are over why is that? is this even true? nate silver: nate silver: it is true the further downstream you go. meteorologists in tv -- on tv want to get high ratings. they are trying to scare you. tyler: it is like they want the iraq war so people turn on cnn. nate silver: the data the government produces is well calibrated and does not have a bias.

interesting in my shoes going from someone who was a total outsider to someone who has more reputational risk. to a first approximation, i think it might make someone a worse forecaster intentionally. thing, thing about trump my early view that child had a trump had a- that low chance of winning the nomination is not based on a former model. i wonder even if i had a fairly bad model instead. the good thing about building a system model is it commits you to rules. instead of saying early polls are not very predictive, therefore probably not.

itis you down and says -- pins you down and says early polls are not predictive, but what point does it become more predictive? when trouble went from 25 -- when trump went from 25 to 35% in the polls, how significant is that? answer designed ahead of time may be more helpful than people would think. i guess a long way of saying it better not sure i'm any than the average pundit unless i have a model. doing your thinking in advance and setting up rules of evidence is probably quite important. tyler: i have a question about the economics and sociology of sports. this has puzzled me for a while. i am struck by the relatively small number of professional athletes who have come out as being gay.

in hollywood, it is a lot of people. a very washington, conservative town, i would not say is a lot of people, but it happens in a quiet kind of way. in sports, why is there so little? if we applied some kind of economic or statistical model, in which sport would you expect to see the new breakthroughs coming when they come? nate silver: i am sure there are a lot of athletes in the closet. i don't assume it is 5% or whatever the population averages. i assume it is lower than that. i don't know. i think people forget about how much the economics change when you are talking about people in the 0.001% of something. until fairly recently, until maybe a few years ago, and in many parts of the country still now, until fairly recently,

thatng up gay is something requires a lot of bandwidth or energy. data about how hockey players are born in january. just because they start earlier than their peer group, that is a powerful effect versus being born in november or december instead. minor and haveat that profound and effect, where there are twice as many nhl players from january as december. been something as important to your identity as gay, that is a competitive disadvantage. there are also correlations and what kind of skills and traits people have. i don't know. but we will see three i guess the prediction is that very is

true is as it has become more normalized and now people who are growing up in middle school and high school where being gay is not as much of the disadvantage, you would expect from that generation there would be substantially more gay athletes. tyler: in which sport will that happen first? what is the applied prediction? we see a bit of it in women's tennis. individual sports over team sports, yes, no? nate silver: you would think in tennis and golf, you might see it first. the nba where talent is so manifest and one player can make so much difference. lebron james could come out as gay tomorrow and i think it would not hurt his ability to get a contract at all. tyler: but it could heard endorsements -- heard endorsements -- hurt endorsements. nate silver: it could.

i think it is not so much about sportsng side as much -- is still a very conformist culture. the reason i might say the nba is i think it is more individualistic as a culture. guys are free to express themselves more. listen to baseball players talk. they are boring. kevin durham, these guys are smart and interesting. kareem abdul-jabbar. i would think basketball might be a sport where you would see it relatively soon. tyler: let me ask you a general question about forecasting. i worry about this in the context of finance. i see a lot of money managers. he saw one basic point about real interest rates, made billions off of that on a great run. now it is not obvious he and his team do better than anyone else. peter lynch had fantastic

insights into considerable -- consumer-products. he believed that an age when consumer products. were taking off. warren buffett, worked great for a while, a lot of big failures in recent times. is it possible like the so-called true model is always shifting and there is a selection bias were different forecasters are elevated and have a run for however many years and in the true model shifts and what they're good at is not valued and we replace them with other forecasters? as our best forecaster -- our best forecaster, do you worry about this? nate silver: sure. even if you are skeptical about the efficiency of markets, if you are picking up $100 bills off the ground, you can extend that by three or five years by ducting and evolving -- adapting and evolving, that is on the extreme high and.

three to five years is a fortunate run. verythough now we are immersed in the election cycle, that is part of why i wanted to make sure fivethirtyeight was not just an election site. we are going to blow an election sooner or later. we might blow this one. we are doing a diverse array of ofngs to actually and -- things is important. those who have skills to find the next underway did opportunity is trickier -- under weighted opportunity is trickier. i think a lot of people have one or two good insights. if you are very lucky, that can take you a long way. tyler: here is a related worry. it is clear stock market volatility is correlated over time. that is another way of saying

those returns for a while are hard to forecast, and stay hard. this year politically is already a big surprise to me and a lot of people. could it be the case where -- we are entering a new era where political volatility is higher at all forecasters will do worse than they have been doing? nate silver: it is possible. the people take to be equilibrium baseline condition may have been an outlier instead. you have this relatively stable long boom, politics, economics and the 1950's through the early 2000's. that could potentially reverse itself. looking at examples outside of the united states i think is instructive. maybe i am more of a believer in american exceptionalism than i thought. but you see constituencies that are trying -- trumpian in

different parts of europe for a long time. maybe america got really lucky for 50 years. in some ways, the world is getting weirder. there is the example of plane crashes. claims used to crash a lot for normal reasons. the engine would fall apart. we more resources in making planes safer. i just read last year there were zero deaths from jetliner crashes other than terror attacks. we have strange events like the germanwings pilot flying into the outs, malaysian air disappears and no one knows why. we are left only with the weird ones. do you think we are headed toward a future where we will only be talking about weird, hard to forecast events, precisely because we get good at involved -- avoiding a lot of problems? nate silver: for sure. there is some stupid metaphor i

use in the book where one of the problems with comparing how shortstops play is you always kind of evaluate players on the edge of their range. can they make a spectacular diving catch? a first approximation, everyone is equally good at the edge of their range. the question is how much territory they cover in between, the non-spectacular plays we can miss potentially. it is probably more true. one reason why i like when we forecast sports is you have a chance to build up your sample size. a perfectly routine wizards versus cavaliers game where we have the cavs favored at home and they win, you get hundreds of those over the course of a season. in politics, you are more drawn to the spectacular and weird events. a lot of models are good when

conditions are fairly normal, and they don't deal all that well with the edge cases because of the design or because they have small sample sizes or whatever else. do models deal with the weird cases versus others? i am not sure. maybe the advantage is more in the baseline case is instead. tyler: other than skill with data, what are the personal qualities of good predictors? nate silver: i think you have to have a certain mistrust of conventional wisdom. it is a tricky thing. on one hand, we know i am not that smart. this room is way smarter than me. a market is way smarter than me. at the same time, people are social beings. they behave in herds sometimes.

this is easier in politics than almost any other field because the political press corps literally is kind of a herd. it is like the perfect example of it where you have a few hundred journalists who travel around together, talking to one another. it is not like 500 really smart people. it is like one or two really smart people and 489 followers instead. i don't know. we get ourselves in a little trouble little bit at fivethirtyeight at times because we are fairly combative. for a long time, i thought this is part of my personality. i think they are sides of the same coin. when you read the "new york nots" or "the post," factual statements where they say today donald trump was in arizona, but when there is a piece of analysis that is not necessarily obvious, to say

there might be a 40% chance that is basically wrong, right? that leaves you in a replace kind of -- in a weird place kind of. that is a source of healthy skepticism and some of our failings sometimes. tyler: let me get to the question maybe the crowd most wants to hear. who will be the next president of the united arab emirates? [laughter] questionis is a trick because it is a hereditary monarchy. here is my background question. intelligence agencies and scholars did very poorly forecasting the arab spring and did very poorly forecasting isis. you are put on the case. someone from washington, they call you in and say, what variables should we be looking at to understand the middle east that we are under waiting now?

i know it is a tough question. but who would be the next president of the united arab emirates? will there be a next president? i don't know that much about international politics to speculate that much. airlines -- iris flew via emirates airlines. tyler: four more years out, this nation, what is your best pick on who will be elected president? nate silver: who will be president in 2020? tyler: correct. nate silver: probably hillary clinton still. tyler: number two, next best pick? nate silver: i think it is close between donald trump and marco rubio. trump might be a

one-termer. tyler: if that. [laughter] tyler: who is the most likely next vice president? maybe.lver: john kasich seems tailor-made for vice president joe. -- vice presidential. tyler: in if hillary were to win, he is the most likely to be vice president? nate silver: hillary has a lot objectives she want to fulfill. i think it is a shorter list for the g.o.p. can we use that to pick the next supreme court justice? nate silver: potentially. there are fleshly -- fledgling attempts at supreme court analytics. we are kind of in a sample size of zero. you have a nominee unlikely to be confirmed -- likely to be

confirmed but there are still high political stakes. my uninformed guess would be maybe trinivasin who was confirmed 97-0. i don't know. the theory is either obama nominates someone with unimpeachable credentials and ores them look unreasonable he makes a pick that trolls republicans in place to the democratic base. i am more of a believer in the former as obama's mode of doing things. someone atmight have the risk of -- the republican base as opposed to the other way around. tyler: my last question before we get to the crowd. as you said before, we have a lot of the same interest, food, travel, sports.

i am not sure politics counts as one of mine. but in a broad sense, politics. you have taken a lot of trips. if you apply data analysis to those trips, what do you learn about what makes for a good trend and what can we do to have better trips? travel.ver: i love i had an unintended experiment where i went to hawaii two christmases ago. for some reason, i sat on my phone and my phone did not work. we were flying through portland for some reason. we were flying new york to kansas city to portland to honolulu. don't ask why. the day i was in portland, i was panicked. we were at the strip mall on the edge of town. you have to wait in line two hours to replace your phone. i did not have a phone and why. it was the most amazing thing. tyler: you have repeated that

experienced each subsequent trip? nate silver: no. i was in thailand this past christmas. build the primary election model. , workingbit of work 20% of the time reduces your enjoyment by 70%. [laughter] tyler: here is how we are going to do questions. we have two mics, one on each side. s. will run two que if you start making a speech or statement, i will cut you off. please just ask a question. it is fine to introduce yourself if you wish and then nate will respond. i will start over here. first question, please. >> my name is caleb.

we talked earlier about super forecasters. i wondered if you have ever considered incorporating the work of super forecasters into fivethirtyeight. nate silver: the guys who wrote the book? >> getting a market of super forecasters to help you make your models. findsilver: i guess i crowdsourcing sort of boring. as a journalist, i find it boring. even though if you are in a business setting, that is exactly what you should do. we are doing that a little bit with the oscars this year. we found eight different people who created different models. we are seeing how well they do. ax awards is not near sufficient sample size to deal with something like that. i don't know. i am very process-driven

as a person. for me, a lot of the joy is digging through the process of it. reading a book like this is useful. it talks about a process that is great. it is almost beside the point in the sense that you are still probably dealing with sample sizes too small to tell you that much. when you start to do that, it takes the focus away from thinking about process. it is kind of an unsatisfying answer, i guess. tyler: we have printed out a lot of nate's columns. there are many of them here. there is plenty you can ask about. >> my name is michael lily. if it winds up being clinton versus trump, is that the first time we've had to candidates with the highest unfavorables going against each other? nate silver: i would think so.

romney was basically breakeven when he was nominated as obama was. clinton is -10. trump is -25 or something. there probably will be some reversion to the mean in both cases. imember, one reason why -- would say trump is a fairly heavy underdog. but it is a conditional probability. conditional on having won the g.o.p. nomination, trump will have had to display some staying power and acumen. you will have to get beyond 35% to win 50% or so. and probably will have done something to improve his image with people who are not in his core constituency. it would be unprecedented certainly. i wonder if he has to adjust. in baseball, you have to adjust stats for the era. if you're in the home run or steroid era, the home run does

not matter as much. like maybe now obama with the 48%, would be like 56% park adjusted rating. [laughter] nate silver: i am not sure, maybe. tyler: expressed in. >--next question. >> my name is tom. he brought up the question about how much data people want. does the amount of data people want, is that influenced by the way data is presented? the second part would be, what advice would you give as far as presenting data or visualizing it? ite silver: visualizing might be some of the advice. people seem to learn better from visualization. one thing i think a lot about as a journalist is preferring simple models to more complicated models. there are other virtues of simple models. people can also take it too far.

to havernalist something i can say this is a benchmark and i understand what it is doing, and i can what it is doing, and i can also understand what the limitations of it might be. i kind of know which direction to lean relative to that baseline. i think that is more useful than some datay we fed into a random number generator or a magic machine, and here is what it spent out. i highly prefer regression-based modeling to machine learning where you cannot really explain anything. to me, the whole value is in the explanation. when youk likewise explain and say we have the same interest in mind, to say this is pretty simple when you start peeling away the b.s.

to me, that approach works a lot better in the long run than the approach of saying arguments of authority -- from authority, this is rigorous and empirical. explain to people why it is not that complicated and why you're making defensible assumptions, how that leads you to an answer that might surprise some. tyler: next question. >> frank mannheim school of policy. could you put numbers on the to elect presidents? for example, emotions, personal acquaintance, rational concepts, information, and so on. nate silver: the kind of classic political science answer is people are deeply concerned about the economy. 50% ornomy might make up so of what people vote about.

there is room to dispute that. now, i that aside for don't know. iguess one of the reasons why was initially skeptical about trump is america has a history of not nominating candidates and electing candidates who are blatantly unfit for office. [laughter] i have a follow-up question to that. tyler: we are in the state of virginia. to the best of my knowledge, you are the only person to have calculated correctly the chance if you are a voter in virginia your vote will sway a presidential election. nate silver: individual voter? is the chance your vote in the state of virginia will matter? if you don't remember, i do. it is from your paper. nate silver: 10% divided by 4

million. tyler: one out of 10 million, the highest of any state. if you are going to vote anywhere, vote here. next question. >> tyler o'neill, a reporter with p.j. media. you mentioned how difficult it is, the weakness of empirical models when predicting president elections. is it possible to look at congressional elections, house of representatives races, and draw more information and modeling from those? nate silver: yeah. i think we would say even though it is less sexy to predict senate races or congressional races that having larger quasi-independent samples would be the better test ultimately. we saw in the senate races last year how the polls were off on average by three or four points, which is pretty bad. the problem is all those errors

were in the same direction. a lot of races around the country they were underdogs in. virginia was almost a major upset. yeah. form of the purer exercise to do data mining on congressional elections versus fundamentals and whatever else. tyler: next question. >> my name is harold. you mentioned some things like limited data, limited observations, nonlinearity, and things of that nature that make traditional tools difficult. what are your thoughts on more computationally intensive methods for dealing with things like herd behavior that make some of these analyses more difficult? nate silver: agent-based modeling is interesting.

if you can simulate the underlying mechanisms, this is how weather forecasting works by the way. weather forecasting is not statistically driven. they are creating a model of the atmosphere. if you have reason to know exactly how certain people would behave and how they behave as a system, agent-based modeling could give you insights you could not get from regression analysis. if you are wrong about those assumptions, things can go very haywire in a hurry. when i am building models myself now, i spend a lot more time thinking about the edge cases. let's put some really weird inputs in here on the edge of plausible and see how the model response to those. function have a

approximately linear. for example, if you have a model saying hillary clinton will get 106% of the vote in washington, , i used to think who really cares? she is going to win d.c. anyway. she may. you can vote twice in some parts of d.c. [laughter] nate silver: now, that bothers me more. i'm trying to think more about the correct functional form of a model that would apply when the going gets weird. when the going gets weird is when things are interesting. tyler: we have four minutes left. next question. >> my name is richard, i am an intern at the house of representatives. do you believe facebook and twitter has led to possible confirmation bias and led to people choosing more extreme views of political ideologies such as socialism, nationalism,

marxism? nate silver: perhaps. the traditional two-dimensional political spectrum is a strange and contrived thing, too. it is the result of a very messy process of coalition building between parties. i mentioned reasons to be pessimistic earlier. a reason to be optimistic as a fan of democracy is you are seeing voice given to quirkier ideologies that are no less in thectually coherent democratic versus republican axis we have in the united states. i kind of believe in the notion of a filter bubble where people surround themselves where they are getting like information and not confronting themselves with unpleasant facts necessarily. you saw that a lot during the 2012 election where the polling was a lot more straightforward, and people still were kind of

cherry picking data to tell themselves romney might win. you saw democrats do the reverse in the 2014 midterms more or less. as someone who is a critic of media, i think the way people consume media is important and has probably fairly large effects on our politics. tyler: last question. >> i am a law student here. i get my coverage of the election exclusively from fivethirtyeight. largely because of the unbiased nature, except for terry's unabashedly for chris christie. i noticed specifically in your debate coverage, one of the things you always mention is the mainstream media's portrayal of the debate matters more than anything else. when they say someone wins, that coverage carries.

at the end of those pieces, you and your staff put together grades for how the candidate did. you may see where i am going with this. you strike me as someone who would rather predict that influence. do your sea -- do you see yourself where you could carry some weight in this election? nate silver: that is why primaries are tricky. in the general election, people are fairly sensible and retreat to their quarters. drivenes are so momentum it is a little bit weird. i am sure people do read what we say and so forth. it is not the type of influence i want. isthe same time, the fact all news coverage is influential. i would say at the very least, we promise some self-awareness. we are aware the way the events are covered by the press can affect voters' views.

sometimes the press can be surprised it does not go the way they expect. you can have these big feedback loops. i am surprised how difficult it is. i'm glad you read us. i think one big edge we have times" is we york can talk about the media as a political actor. we are the media, too. and i am aware of the circularity of that. frankly i think one reason why during the primary sometimes the conservative fights are more is that theyo read also start out being more suspicious of the media. sometimes in ways that i think are wrong, like about the polls in 2012. i think having that skepticism of the media as a political actor instead of a benevolent right way to do

things and is reflected in our coverage. i guess sometimes at the risk of being a little bit hypocritical potentially. but we do try and be very transparent about what we think is a fact, what is an opinion, what is an analysis. kind of what is a provocation. one reason i like your blog is you have a lot of provocations. are. clear what they it is clear they are provocations meant to incite discussion and debate. we will have a few of those at times. speaking in the first person i think is important and breaking from the voice of god where a storm cloud descended on new hampshire today. speaking as an individual trying to understand what the objective

world is like this a lot of what we are all about. i think that should be reflected at least in the tone and approach of our coverage, even where we wind up getting things wrong in the end. tyler: here is nate's book. read nate's site. thank you for a great chat. [applause] south carolina republicans are not the only ones going to post on saturday. in nevada, the democratic caucuses will be taking place. gle writes for the "washington post and is joining us. this has often been called hillary clinton's firewall. the can we expect when results come in saturday evening from nevada? david: expect something closer than they would have liked a month ago. erhaps better than they are

anticipating now. the clinton campaign first organized in nevada. in 2008, this was a state that broke late that hillary clinton narrowly won thanks to support from white voters and latino counties but where barack obama won by roo organizing numeral a. her campaign manager was the winner of that nevada process. a better organization, a better understanding of how to organize the state. i understand sanders has caught up with clinton. been a lot have not of accurate polls because the process is so different in nevada, taking place saturday afternoon. also as you point out, a big push by the bernie sanders campaign on the ground in the state. what did you see? david: i saw a lot of activity from the sanders campaign.

by activitytmatched from the clinton campaign. the sanders campaign has 12 offices around nevada. clinton has seven. clinton had seven before sanders had seven. the campaign offices are basically the same. a lot of younger people. they are happy to tell you why they are russian about the candidate. there is not an enthusiasm gap like in other states. the difference in who is doing the organizing is the national nurses union is out there for bernie. the cornucopia of other unions are there for hillary. i talked to a lot of folks who had come in from california for both campaigns, with the preponderance for clinton. the unions endorsed her. they were going to come out and work for her. host: with the hospitality

industry such a huge factor in nevada, clark county accounts for most of the democratic votes. there are about 65,000 members of the culinary union, and so far no endorsement. why? david: that is a good question. from my conversations this last week, because your union felt burned -- culinary union felt earned -- burned from 2008 in a couple of ways. it did not appreciate the campaigns campaigned in casinos. even though the union in forced -- endorsed obama, they watched a lot of members go for hillary. they were a little skittish about this year even before it got hot. when it did get hot, they were alienated by the sanders' campaign aggressive approach. this culminated in a truly bizarre fight that i don't think enough attention. some sanders supporters snuck into the dining halls open only

to culinary workers in some casinos trying to lobby them and turn them to supporting sanders. it was kind of amateurish. it was called out. it was then called out in the media. the culinary union threw up its hands at that point. host: are the campaigns doing internal polling? how do they guarantee people come out on a saturday caucus in nevada? going to you were design something to maximize the turnout of more working-class people, this would not exactly be it. but it is better than a rush hour caucus like iowa. there is interning: -- internal polling. the clinton campaign is talking about it less than they used to. the sanders campaign is within striking distance if everything goes the way. that is why you have seen hillary clinton change her schedule to doing four stops in nevada.

she will be back here. sanders will be back here. it is competitive. i don't want to say the delegates don't matter. i think they matter less than the entrance polls we are going to see saturday morning that tell us whether sanders has broken through with latino voters and people who supported in a statet time where she was supposed to have organization and ties. the clinton campaign has traded happily off the idea that sanders support is fairly elite, white, very little at stake in the election compared to black and latino voters. if ity break through, turns out latino voters in nevada can be converted as much as white working-class in new hampshire, that will be the story of the caucus even if hillary wins. host: a tightening race threatens clinton firewall. the reporting of david weigel,

his work available online at washingtonpost.com. announcer: the south carolina primary and nevada caucuses are saturday. we have live coverage here on c-span. here are some of the political ads airing in those states. postman thatwas a told me you stand on your own two feet. you go out and change the world. my parents were killed by a drunk driver. but my parents did not die in vain. i was transformed. i discovered my purpose by discovering the lord. i believe the lord put us on this earth to use the gifts we have been given to bring about healing. that is the motivation for me. i am john kasich and i approve this message. >> who is jeb bush relative to all the others? jeb bush: i'm the most proven

conservative with the most proven record. i do believe life begins at conception. my faith makes me believe that. as an n.r.a. number for the past 15 years, the sound of our guns is the sound of freedom. i am the most pro-life governor on this stage. i had six pro-gun hunting bills, a record for florida. >> no one has the consistent, proven record. >> it is morning again in america. today, more men and women are out of work than ever before in our nation's history. people are paying more in taxes than they will for food, housing, and clothing combined. nearly $20 trillion national debt for the next generation, double what it was just eight years ago. this afternoon, almost 6000 men and women will be married. with growing threats and growing government, they will look forward with worry to the future.

it is morning again in america. and under the leadership of barack obama and hillary clinton, our country is more vulnerable, divided, and diminished than ever before. why would we ever want four more years again of that? i am ted cruz and i approve this message. >> i'm capable to changing to anything i want to change to. trump and partial-birth abortion? >> no. >> planned parenthood serves a good function. >> hillary clinton? >> i think she does a good job and i like her. >> south carolina cannot trust donald trump. >> i'm capable of changing to anything i want to change to. >> don't give him that chance. >> i am donald trump and i

approve this message. >> he was a 17-year-old football star gunned down outside his home. his killer, an illegal immigrant thing member who just got out of prison. his dad is supporting donald trump for president because he knows he will end illegal immigration. >> trump is the only one saying you will be dealt with. we will enforce that. that is a beautiful thing. i believe donald trump wants to make us great again and he loves america. ♪ it feels good to be a clinton a politician that always plays her cards right got a crew for the fight on the airwaves if clinton it ever needs to explain a real clinton knows they are entitled and you don't get to know what they do

a clinton plays the victim for promotion a clinton killed them off with a smile it feels good to be a clinton it feels good to be a clinton nothing ever hits with a sting ♪ ♪ >> i am adamantly against illegal immigration. i voted numerous times to build a barrier. >> we need to build a wall. >> a chance to do whatever they want to. >> killings, murders, crime. >> people have to stop employing illegal immigrants. >> we need to keep illegals out. make america great again. >> yes, we will! announcer: the republican south

carolina primary is on saturday. we will have more coverage tomorrow on c-span. donald trump campaigns in waterbury, south carolina, that is live at 5:00 eastern. marco rubio holds a town hall meeting. afterwards, we take your phone calls. that begins at 6:00 eastern. [applause] cycle, we areion reminded how important it is for citizens to be informed. >> c-span is a home for political junkies and a way to track the government as it happens. >> it is a better way to stay informed. >> there are a lot of c-span fans on the hill. my colleagues say i saw you on c-span. >> there's so much more that c-span does to make sure people know what is going on inside the beltway. now, a discussion on the future of iraq. we will also hear from the

former utah governor and ambassador to china, jon huntsman. from the atlantic council, this is two hours. welcomeld like to everyone on behalf of the atlantic council family. it is a great honor to welcome you to this afternoon's launch event of the task force on the future of iraq. right off the top, let me say the number of our executive committee is here. we thank you for what you have done to make the center a reality and its work so recognized. i would like to offer thanks to our conrad and the university of iraq for the generous support of the iraq task force. let me note our event is on the

record and is being live youamed online for those of on twitter, i encourage you to #futureiraq i am delighted to welcome our distinct group of speakers could we have two former ambassadors to iraq. ryan crocker and jim jeffrey. a former commander of iraq and nato training mission, general michael barbero. thank you for joining us today. with four civil wars in 2015 and isis' rapid growth over the past 18 months, the middle east continues to be fraught with conflict and instability. that has exacerbated security concerns around the world. we are here today to do a deeper dive on one particular state, iraq, that holds strategic

importance in the middle east and across global communities. as defeating isis dominates the agenda for many countries in the middle east including iraq, it is crucial we also take into account the deep-seated dynamics pre-existing in each of these countries that will need to be addressed when crafting sustainable solutions for peace. inspired by the ongoing work of the atlantic council's middle east strategy task force that is chaired by the executive vice chair of the atlantic council and the honorary board director, madeleine albright, iraq task force seeks to go beyond the defeat of isis and conduct substantial research into the iraqi case. the task force will bring together a broad array of regional stakeholders and international experts to collaborate in identifying ways to stabilize the iraqi state, reconcile its warring communities, and build a basis for long-term stability in the

country. the group will think through the demobilization of iraq's militias, the future of iraq's sunni community, the prospects for kurdish independence, paths to improving economic performance, and plans for reintegration of internally displaced people. we have gathered a team of 25 of the world's leading experts on iraqi politics chaired by ambassador ryan crocker, who we will hear from shortly. the worst of the task force will culminate with a book and series of policy oriented papers complete with recommendations for governments and the international community. but the middle east strategy task force and iraq task force are part of a broader atlantic council effort to inject strategic thinking on u.s. foreign-policy. with the specific aim to empower the international community and regional players with long-term

approaches to respond to the challenges within the middle east. we hope to develop a comprehensive set of policy recommendations for the long-term support of iraq's stabilization in time for the transition to a new administration in the united states. without further a do, i would like to turn it over to executive director of the iraq task force, beside the younis -- nussaibah younis, who will introduce the panelists. >> thank you for joining us on the future of iraq. passion project of mine for a long time. a lot of you have given me advice and guidance on how to put it together and which questions to focus on and how to move forward with this so that it is the most useful it can be to the u.s. government in terms

of devising a long-term strategy for the stabilization of iraq beyond the defeat of isis, but also to develop useful policy tools to share with the kurdish regional government and iraqi government in baghdad. we really aim to bring policy measures to the forefront, learning from the mistakes we have made and also from the lessons we have learned from over a decade of u.s. involvement in iraq. i have with me a distinguished panel who have years of experience in iraq and who i'm going to ask difficult, reflective questions to try and draw out how we can bring lessons learned to bear on our future engagement with a rock -- iraq. tried tos we have

turn away from it, it is a country in which we need to have long-term strategic engagement. the more foresight and strategic thinking we can bring to bear on that, the better for us all. i'm going to start with ambassador crocker. you were ambassador to iraq between 2007 and 2009, which was a time of quite dramatic stabilization in the country. when you reflect on that time, how do you account for the shift from violence to stabilization part of thet from population being very alienated from the political process towards their willingness to take part and get back of a chance? ambassador crocker: thanks. it is a pleasure to be here. let me say a word about our larger purpose. the future of iraq task force.

iraq will have a future. the question is whether the u.s. is going to be part of that shape, seeking to channel, guide processes to a better place than what we are seeing now. this with the 25 experts assembled, all of whom know more about iraq than i do. as we go into the task force, it is with a very open mind to take , make a series of assessments, to challenge each other as we do it, and then try to provide something useful to a new administration. arguably over the last dozen , we did too much as a government and now are doing far

too little. nestledl be our effort steve the fantastic work hadley and madeleine albright did on the middle east to try to provide a way forward for a new administration, which is going to need it. of course, everything good that happened in 2007-2009 was entirely due to meet. -- to me. there is nothing like being in the right place at the right time. i think jim and mike would agree with that. i think there were a number of factors that led to the achievement of relative stability and relative inclusivity on a political level. the search really can -- the surge really counted.

i got there in the early days of the surge in 2007 and could watch it work. dora as week, i went to the surge troops were moving in. a completely devastated neighborhood where the only protection the largely sunni inhabitants thought they would ever have from marauding militias was al qaeda. with the surge troops, not just the number, but the changing mission, protection of the population, you could see how had aame back because we small operating base there. the surge and the sense of security it brought to

populations primarily in baghdad but really around the country made a huge difference. with that, politics could be workable again. i worked closely with maliki and others. prime minister maliki came from a certain background and had a called highlyiew sectarian. but he knew what he needed to do for the country. i mentioned to jump over lunch -- to jim over lunch that we taught the iraqis a lot of bad things. maybe the worst was the budget supplemental process. iraq's first budget supplemental in september of 2007, $250 million, went to the sunni province of anbar.

it took a fair amount of lifting with the prime minister to get them there, but he could see how important that was to pull iraq out of the chaos of civil war and provide at least the hope of a unified country. security, security, security. security to trigger a political process. we saw that in the course of , how deals could be done in parliament bringing kurds, sunnis, and shia together. for compromises. compromises they could not quite fashion on their own. but if the u.s. was in the middle of it giving something here and there, we can help them put it together. i certainly start with that bias, if you will, and would be

interested in what jim thinks about it. we were the essential middlemen when i was there. for lots of reasons, the horrors of the saddam years, the s beagle -- unspeakable tragedy of the conflicts. compromise was just not something the iraqis were going to do. but we could get in the middle of it and make those things happen. i would haves, interesting conversations with the kurdish leaders at that time. got way too , reminding, i would say me, what were the very worst of iraqi-kurdistan? there would be some debate

because there were a lot of bad times. almost always, they would come awfulo the >> never been so good. don't blow it. don't overreach. recognize that future within unitarian iraqi state. provide solid economic basis for budget. beginning in early 2007. no guarantee search would work.