the word democracy is a combination of two greek words, demos, the people, cracy, the ruler. in the end, people get what they want. people complain about negative advertising but as you know very well, anderson, the polls show consistently that it works. they're moved by them. people complain now about partisanship but one of the fundamental reasons is that the public, individuals like all of us are capable of holding and advocating contradictory views at the same time. we all want them to work it out but we want them to work it out in a way that brings about a conclusion we like. and so it's tough on the politicians but that's the challenge of leadership, to reconcile the conflicting demands of their constituencies with the needs of the larger society. i think it can be done. i think that an agreement on the fiscal cliff is really possible because i think both sides have an incentive to do it and do it right. >> you think going over the cliff is unacceptable? >> well, i think they will end up taking steps to make it less of a cliff and more of a little hill or a slope, if yo

. >> the larger issue here, which is the military is not a mayor i tok cracy. most qualified people are serving in these roles. in my experience in the marine corps serving with infantry men for two years, many of the most qualified people were women. less qualified men were assigned to various positions. that was a problem for me as i company commander. i couldn't assign the most qualified women in my units because they did not have the mos of an infantryman. >> that insight is so important. gender discrimination means that the military is not a meritocicy. >> you don't get the best talent rising to the top or being able to get at the top. one thing we need to mun chenen that 114 women have died. they have died in the deployments to iraq an afghanistan. it is not as if the policies we are doing here are helping the military or those women. >> being here with veterans, it is hard to be in the conversation, because i feel an emotional desire to protect you. i'm a civilian but i'm also a man. you can understand what i'm going through. i'm sure if we did anything,

to cut through the prophecy and red tape to provide the assistance -- through the burea cracy and red tape to provide assistance. i visited countries recently to help advance that growing partnership. also made an effort in a new joint u.s.-indian initiative to boost cooperation and trade and streamline our control processes. in order to remain the security partner of choice, the united states must maintain our decisive military edge and adapt to meet in emergency threats. the fourth elements of the new defense strategy is we must always remain capable of being able to confront and defeat aggression from more than one adversary at a time, anywhere, anytime. that means if we are engaged in a conflict on the karim peninsula and iran --korean peninsula, we must be able to preside -- to both locations. maintaining our ability to simultaneously operate in multiple theaters by investing in critical power projection capability is, our aircraft carrier fleet, our big deck amphibious fleet, a new flow forward staging base and long- range strike capabilities. we are also making investments in t