>> -- Collins the Joan and
Sanford Weill Dean here
at the Gerald R. Ford
School of Public Policy
and we're delighted
to have so many of you
with us here this afternoon.
I'm particularly pleased to
host the city group lecture this
afternoon on behalf
of the Ford School
and the International Policy
Center and we're very pleased
to have the director Jan
Svejnar with us as well.
It's a special honor to have Dr.
Jessica Tuchman Mathews with us
to deliver our Citigroup
Lecture for 2010.
The Citigroup Foundation
Lecture was made possible
by a gift from-- in honor
of President Gerald R. Ford
from the Citigroup Foundation
and we're very grateful
for this generous gift which
has enabled us to bring a number
of distinguished thought
leaders and policy makers
to the Ford School and
to our broader community.
Dr. Mathews is the President
of the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace which is
a major nonprofit organization
that is dedicated to advancing
cooperation between nations
and promoting active
international engagement via the
United States.
Dr. Mathews has held
positions in the executive
and legislative branches
in management and research
in the nonprofit arena
and in journalism.
She is one of the nation's most
important and influential voices
on international affairs
and foreign policy.
She was a senior fellow at the
Council on Foreign Relations
from 1993 to 1997 and
served as Director
of the Council's
Washington Program.
From 1982 to '93 Dr. Mathews
was founding Vice President
and Director of Research of
the World Resources Institute,
an internationally know
center for policy research
on environmental and natural
resource management issues.
She's also served on
the Editorial Board
for the Washington Post covering
energy, environment, science,
technology, health and
arms control issues
and later became a weekly
columnist for the paper.
She earned a bachelors degree
from Radcliffe and a PhD
in Molecular Biology
from the Institute
for Technology-- of Technology.
As I said earlier we have
in large part the
Citigroup Foundation to thank
for being able to invite
Dr. Mathews to join us today
but I suspect that there's
somebody else who had a hand
in our bringing her here
and that someone is a second
year MPP student our very own
and Dr. Mathews'
son Oliver Mathews.
And so we're very grateful
to him for his role in that.
He's working on a joint degree
with the Business School
I know he's very busy
and so we're very pleased
that he has taken the time
out to be involved in helping
to chair our Charity Auction
and I know he's working with
many other community members
on that activity as well,
so thank you Oliver.
So on behalf of the
International Policy Center
and the Ford School I
could not be more pleased
to welcome Dr. Mathews.
[ Applause ]
>> Well thank you and good
afternoon and thank you Susan.
It's-- as someone who has
spent their whole working life
on working on public policy it's
a great pleasure to be with you
at one of the nations leading
schools of public policy
and an honor as well
and I thank you for it.
What I'd like to do today is
to put before you a proposition
to explore with you, you will
see it's a somewhat depressing
one but the outcome
is not determined
and in the years ahead I hope
that people in this room,
students here at Ford can
play an important role
in reversing the trend
that I believe that I see.
Simply put, I think our country
is losing the ability central
to the health and
wellbeing of any state
to address its big problems,
to respond to the major
challenges that face it.
I exempt from this,
threats from abroad
and we retain an
enormously strong sense
of patriotic nationhood
and a readiness to act
against any such threat.
But as you will hear
in a minute,
an actual attack brings the
country back together again,
if only briefly, but nonmilitary
threats and challenges
of foreign policy
are not exempt,
not least because they depend
to an increasing degree
on our policies at home.
The single central factor
holding back the global response
to the many threats
of climate change
for example is the absence of
a US Domestic Energy Policy.
There are many examples in
history of empires and countries
that for one cause or
another have lost the capacity
to respond to the problems
that they face and their--
and that then fall into decline.
And it's not at all impossible
that this should happen
to us now, but the question
of course is, is it happening
and what is my evidence
that it is?
My criterion for being unable
to address a problem is a
generous one, to qualify it has
to be a big issue with
major implications
for national well being
and its features have
to be essentially
unchanged and unaddressed
for at least a quarter
of a century.
All but one of the examples
that I will cite today
have languished actually
for far longer than that.
Before I describe those
let me set the stage.
I'm agnostic to skeptical
about the value
of most public opinion polling--
issue polling, because
so much depends
on the way the issues
are phrased.
And as anyone who's ever had to
respond to one knows usually,
answering is often a matter of
picking the least distasteful
of three or four options,
all of which sound wrong.
But there is one enormously
important I think poll that's
conducted by the American
National Elections Studies Group
here at Michigan and
also at Stanford.
This group has been asking
Americans the same question just
about every 2 years since 1958.
And the question is "Do
you trust the government
in Washington to do what is
right all or most of the time?"
The results speak volumes
about where we are although they
certainly haven't been heard.
From 1958 to the mid 1960s,
75 percent answered
yes to that question.
A slide began in 1966 and it
continued steeply downward
for the next fifteen years, so
that by 1980 only 25 percent
of Americans said
yes to that question.
In the interim, of course, with
the Vietnam War, the Watergate,
the impeachment of the
President, the Arab oil embargo
so there were plenty of
good reasons for people
to feel estranged or
even antagonistic.
But think what it means for a
democracy that three-quarters
of its people do not
trust the government
to do the right thing
most of the time.
What happened next though is
I think what really matters,
and that is that the
trust did not recover.
For the last three decades
the approval level has bounced
around in the region
between 20 and 35 percent.
It climbed briefly to 40 percent
during later Reagan years
and again for the last 2 years
of President Clinton's term.
The one outliner, the
one exception was 2002
which I think proves
my earlier point.
Because following the
9/11 attacks 55 percent
of responders said they
trusted the government.
The attacks briefly brought
Americans back together and back
into a feeling of
connection with Washington.
But then the number immediately
began to fall and plummeted
for the remainder of
President Bush's term back
to 30 percent in 2008.
During the earlier downward
slide the trust percentage fell
below half in about 1972.
What this means is that
for anyone under the age
of forty they've lived
their entire life
in a country the majority
of whose citizens do not trust
their own national government
to do what they think is right.
Through four long decades none
of the massive changes they
have voted for in leadership
and ideology have changed that.
It's astonishing really
when you think about it.
It has to seem as though
this were the natural order
of things, the inevitable
order of things, but it is not.
I alas had not under forty
and I have known a
very different America.
In four years during
the presidency
that we almost never remember
that of Lyndon Johnson,
Congress passed more than 200
major pieces of legislation.
Legislation on a par within
and many cases far bigger
than the two big laws Healthcare
Reform and Financial Reform
that our present Congress almost
tore itself to pieces over
and which took the better part
of eighteen months to pass.
The list begins with the
three revolutionary laws
that transformed this country
the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
the Voting Rights
Act of the same year
and the Fair Housing
Act of 1968.
When the Voting Rights Act
passed there were three hundred
black elected officials
in this country.
>> By 2001 the latest
numbers I can find there were
ten thousand.
Democrats at the time
were very well aware
and that discussed actively
that by championing and voting
for this package of laws they
were saying goodbye to a South
that had been solidly in the
Democratic camp for decades,
yet they did it anyway.
And immediately in
the mid term elections
of 1966 the effects began to be
felt with the loss of 47 seats
in the house and 3 in the senate
and you know the
longer term effect.
This was political courage by
a President and by a Congress
of a sort that if you were
under forty you have never seen.
Opposition to ending
segregation was fierce.
It took the assassination
of Martin Luther King
to finally drive though the Fair
Housing Act three years later
but support was also by part
as Republican leader
Everett Dirksen
and his many moderate Republican
colleagues played a central role
in all three laws.
But this was only the beginning.
Medicare was created in those
four years and Medicaid,
food stamps, Head Start, two
new cabinet agencies, Housing
and Urban Development
and transportation also the
National Transportation Safety
Board, 35 new national parks,
the first federal assistance
to higher education,
student scholarships, grants,
loans work study programs
and the first to elementary
and secondary education, VISTA
volunteers, legal services,
Job Corps, The National
Endowments for the Arts
and for Humanities,
the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting
and the powerful Freedom
of Information Act.
I'm just skimming the top here.
There was much, much more
from urban mass transit
to international
monetary reform.
For those who want to know more
about this extraordinary
period I refer you
to a wonderful speech given in
2008 by Joe Califano an aide
to LBJ and the former
Secretary of Health Education
and Welfare entitled
"Seeing is Believing".
I don't mean to suggest
that Washington was always
like this, obviously it wasn't.
We've never seen as good a
legislature president as LBJ
or as pure a politician in
the sense of knowing how
to pull the leverage of power
in order to get a desired result
and we likely never will.
Johnson also had the
legacy of JFK to build on
and his own massive victory
over Goldwater as a mandate
but my point is that
Washington's ability to act
in 1964 and its ability to act
to today are two completely
separate universes.
So let me turn to the cases
that I think illustrate
my proposition.
What are these problems we've
been able-- unable to address?
The first for me is energy
policy, for more than 35 years
since the shock of the Arab
oil embargo we have been trying
and failing to formulate one.
We've talked endlessly about
energy independence a goal
that is neither feasible
nor desirable.
What we have done
is very little.
Automobile mileage
standards have been the single
major achievement.
Congress has wasted untold man
years fighting over symbols
like the pitons of oil
in the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge, ANWR.
Through 3 major oil crisis
the plot line has been nearly
identical when oil prices
are low we ignore surging
consumption just when it
makes most economic sense
to raise the prices
to bring it down.
When a crisis hits we try
to boost short term
domestic production
through tax incentives
at exactly the moment
when incentives are redundant
in the face of the price spike
that caused the crisis.
Next we search for that
year's silver bullet,
the new technology that will
somehow solve all our problems.
We've been through oil
shale, through hydrogen,
fuel cells, ethanol et cetera.
Government subsidies
spark investments,
sometimes very large
investments in these,
but the enterprises fail
when oil prices fall back
and Congress repeals
the subsidies.
As the price spike ebbs
the efficiency mandates
that have worked to bring down
demand are weakened or abandoned
and consumption starts
to rise again.
Soon the cycle repeats
itself and we again pay
to foreign suppliers through
higher prices what we might have
paid to ourselves in a targeted
tax spent for domestic benefit.
Why is this?
There are three reasons,
first, a deep unwillingness
to confront the necessity
of raising energy prices.
The strangle hold
of special interests
in this case energy
interest over Washington
and a strange national blind
spot about energy demand.
States notably California
of course but others
as well have been able to act
but you cannot make a
national policy state by state.
We've been willing to do almost
anything but face the prospect
of sustained high energy prices.
In 1973 there was talk
of invading Saudi Arabia.
Rapid deployment forces for use
in the Middle East were funded.
We've been willing
to endure inflation
and other unnecessary economic
pain but we've never had,
excuse me, we've never
seen the political courage
to explain the truth
to the American people.
The mere word tax is enough to
frighten away the politicians
of our era even though the
revenues could be refunded
completely in any
number of ways.
It has been 17 years since we
last raised the gas tax during
which time the cost of building
and maintaining our highways
and transit has risen
by 40 percent.
In Europe today the
gas tax is between 4
and 5 dollars per
gallon, the tax.
Our is on average combined
state and federal, 45 cents.
The results of this
is that we are one
of the only developed
nations in the world
in which transportation
does not pay for itself.
The Highway Trust Fund is broke.
We have somewhere 60
and 85 billion dollars
of needed maintenance
that is not getting done,
a deferred tax on our children.
And this critical
element, transportation
of our national infrastructure,
is not fit to support a renewed
period of economic growth.
By the third factor
energy demand,
I mean of course improved
energy efficiency.
We have a massive resource of
waste built into our system.
Every expert including
these days the leaders
of the major oil
companies will tell you
that by far our largest energy
resource and our cheapest
and our most quickly
accessible is what can be mined
from wasteful use.
Yet our National Policy
Discussion continues almost
entirely focused on the hunt
for new sources of supply.
It's been one of my
greatest disappointments
about President Obama's period
in office that he has focused
so much on renewables which are
about in the short term one
twentieth the dimensions
of the efficiency resource.
Healthcare is of course
the second example.
It took 45 years to take the
first major step beyond Medicare
and Medicaid towards
universal healthcare coverage.
But the new law does not
come near to doing what has
to be done to contain costs,
namely to address the way
healthcare is delivered
and paid for.
Healthcare cost in the US are
today in the neighborhood of two
and a half trillion
dollars per year more
than 17 percent of GDP.
At their current rate of
growth healthcare alone would
constitute one fifth of our
entire economy soon after 2020.
I think it's obvious that this
is not a sustainable situation
in a healthy economy.
Most important we
spend per person more
than double what most
European countries spend
with poor outcomes as measured
by public health measures,
life expectancy,
infant mortality,
and so on, twice as much.
We know that paying people
on a piece work basis
which is what fee for service is
encourages more use of services.
We know that medicine an
interaction between sick
and frightened and ignorant not
stupid but ignorant patients
on the one hand and highly
educated providers is not
and cannot be a normal
competitive market place.
We can see and measure the
differences between what we do
and what happens in Europe and
Canada and we could even see it
within the United States
through the work of Wenburg
and his colleagues at Dartmouth.
Through 40 years
of data collection
and analysis they have
shown that there can be
and frequently are 2 to 3 fold
difference in the consumption
of medical services in
different places even sometimes
in neighboring towns which
are correlated to the supply
of hospital beds and physicians,
not to the characteristics
of the population and not to
differences in health outcomes.
>> Their work suggests immense
savings on the order of 30
to 40 percent of what
we currently spend
if all healthcare were delivered
on the same lines as it is
in the low expenditure areas.
We know all this and yet how
long do you believe it will be
before we are able to address
it at the national level?
My third example is the
wildly diverging shares
of household income that have
marked the past 30 odd years.
During this time 80 percent
of American households have
lost ground economically,
although this was the period
in which a huge proportion went
from one income to
two-income households
as women entered the workforce.
The vast majority of gains among
the lucky 20 percent actually
went to the top 1 percent, so
average income is 1.9 million.
And the same is true
for the top 0.1 percent
who took home nearly all
of that 1 percent share.
The same pattern holds only
slightly less dramatically
for a real after tax income.
Another indicator is the
ratio of CEO pay to the pay
of average worker,
which went 40 in 1960
to more than 400 in 2005.
How, you wonder,
could this be true
or at least I wonder about it.
How in a country built
on being the land
of opportunity could 80
percent stagnate for more
than 30 years while immense
wealth accumulates among the top
1 percent?
How could this happen when
the cost of high inequality
to both economic growth
and political cohesion
and stability is
so well documented?
Why hasn't been there
been a reaction?
The answer is that cheap
credit, the housing bubble
and the home equity loan
disguised what was happening.
Now they are gone and that
is the principle reason
for the pain and anger that
has erupted, sometimes frantic
and unreasoning anger.
Remember the sign "Keep the
government's hands off my
Medicare" that we
see in the tea party.
It seemed like the American
dream was still in force
and then seemingly all
of a sudden it wasn't.
But this huge economic shift
has actually been a long
time coming.
My last example is the failure
to get over the Cold War.
It doesn't exactly fit
my criterion I admit
because it's only been
20 years rather than 25.
But here we are today facing the
failure of the New START Treaty
in the senate, I think
more likely than not.
On its merit the
treaty is unimpeachable.
It has been endorsed by
virtually every Secretary
of States, Secretary of Defense
and National Security Adviser
of both parties for the past
three decades and unequivocally
and unanimously by the
current military leadership.
I'm talking about endorsements
from Secretary George Shultz,
Kissinger, Powell,
Slazenger, Scowcroft,
Steven Hadley all
Republicans, all endorsed it.
The questions that
have been raised
through 18 senate hearings
have been answered,
there's no constraint on
future missile defenses,
the nuclear triad is
preserved, inspection
and verification is robust and
yet, the administration has
to keep promising
more and more money
to modernize our nuclear
weapon systems, an amount now
up to 80 billion dollars
and still Senator Kyl
and the obedient
Republican votes waiting
on his decision is
not satisfied.
He wants more.
The truth that doesn't
surface in these discussions is
that we don't have a use for our
nuclear forces these days beyond
deterrence of nuclear
attack and for that,
we already have far more
than enough capability.
If the New START Treaty is not
ratified the consequences will
be far reaching.
There will be no boots
on the ground inspection
of Russian nuclear forces,
there will no next round
of arms control to
address the thousands
of tactical nuclear
weapons in Europe,
the US-Russian relationship
will be damaged,
perhaps significantly in terms
of cooperation on Afghanistan
and Iran but not fatally
but the impacts on efforts
to control nuclear proliferation
globally will be huge.
The greatest threat
we face today
and everyone knows this is
not from Russia or from China
but that a broken
state or a group
of terrorist will get heir
hands on nuclear materials.
To stop that access
to technologies
that provide weapons
usable fuel must be limited.
The regime is gonna
have to be tightened.
Yet the non-nuclear
weapon states believe
that the nuclear states have
failed to live up to their end
of Nonproliferation
Treaty the NPT bargain,
which was nuclear disarmament
by the nuclear weapon states.
Without progress in that
direction there is no absolutely
no realistic hope except
perhaps the after math
of a nuclear catastrophe of
their agreeing to give up more.
Rejection of this modest treaty
by the United States
would be heard loud
and clear around the world.
Yet there are today and I
don't mean to be partisan,
but accurate, senate
Republicans behaving
as though Russia were
still the Soviet Union
and that US nuclear
forces have to be prepared
for an imminent nuclear
World War III.
I could name several
more examples, I won't.
Climate change of course
would be near the top
of my list but there are others.
It would be both exhausting
for you and too depressing
for all of us, I think.
But I think the case is made.
The question is why can't
Washington tackle the big issues
any longer?
And if we understand
what has gone wrong,
what can be done to fix it?
There are many reasons for
our strangled government.
One that belongs at the
top of the list is money.
I think one of the strangest
paradoxes of what's happened is
that we have been willing to
pay more and more and more
to elect governments that we
like less and less and less.
The last presidential
election cycle came
in at 5.3 billion dollars, up 70
percent in the last two cycles.
The Center for Responsive
Politics
which compiles these
numbers believes
that the 2010 midterms
we've just suffered
through will cost
nearly 4 billion
up 300 percent in ten years.
The money doesn't stop
at elections of course.
It provides a daily opening
for the lobbying industry.
It has been reported that this
industry spent 1.4 million
dollars a day during the
healthcare debate and more
than a billion during the debate
over the Financial Reform Bill.
To pay what have become
astronomical campaign costs
members of Congress have
to begin fund raising
for the next election
basically on the day
after they're sworn in.
That's one of the reasons
members go home every weekend,
and one of the reasons therefore
that we have a three-day
legislative work week.
That means that they don't bring
their families to Washington
and they no longer
socialize with colleagues
because there's no
time, and certainly not
with members of the other party.
It's much easier to hate
someone you don't know.
And it's much harder to hammer
out a tough compromise with--
and much harder to hammer
out a tough compromise.
And this of course feeds
the bitter partisanship
that we see in the Congress.
Campaign Finance Reform as hard
as it is to be both effective
and to meet constitutional
requirements
in my view absolutely
will have to be a part
of a better American future.
The Senate in particular
is a broken body crippled
by secret holds, arcane rules
that are designed for delay
and by threatened filibusters
which have grown completely
out of control in recent years.
In a splendid New Yorker piece
this summer, last August.
George Packer quotes freshman
Senator Michael Bennet
from Colorado who was appointed
last year to fill an empty seat.
And Bennet says "Sit
and watch us
for seven days, just
watch the floor.
You know what you'll
see happening?
Nothing. When I'm in the chair I
sit there thinking I wonder what
their doing in China right now."
External changes are for which
Congress has no control have had
an effect as well.
In that same piece, Senator
Dodd remembers "I used
to have 11 Connecticut
newspaper reporters
who covered me on a daily basis.
I don't have 1 today and
haven't had for several years.
Instead, DC publications"-- and
here he's talking about bloggers
and the five political dailies,
five that cover the Hill,
"Instead DC publications
only see me
through the prism of conflict."
>> President Carter
started a trend as the first
to campaign explicitly against
the people in Washington.
President Reagan escalated that
to campaign against government,
much has flowed from both.
I don't know all
the forces that have
so deeply eroded Americans
confidence in their government
and no one I think knows which
have contributed, how much.
But they have produced
a government, I think,
that is manifestly smaller, less
able, less worthy of respect
than this country
deserves or needs.
I do believe that the
diagnosis of what has changed
over these last 3
decades, three and half
and of what it would
take to reverse it is
by far the important
policy issue we face.
The farther backward you can
look Winston Churchill said,
like a good historian,
the farther forward
you are likely to see.
And I think that's where we have
to cast our mind back
over this period.
I hope that some of you will
contribute to the massive task
of figuring this out, providing
the answers and helping
to find the solutions.
And I thank you for listening
and look forward
to our discussion.
[ Applause ]
[ Inaudible Remark ]
>> Doctor Mathews has kindly
agreed to take some questions
and I'll ask her to repeat them
so that our video viewers are
able to hear the full exchange.
>> Yes sir?
>> A wonderful talk
and I agree completely
with every word you said except
I think it's too optimistic.
[ Laughter ]
>> Climate change is one
that [inaudible] I think
at this point a large segment
of the American people are
in the groups of
religious fundamentalism,
market fundamentalism,
constitutional fundamentalism
and as those things
play themselves
out under the [inaudible] market
fundamentalism play that's going
on, [inaudible] I think
we're in store for a number
of additional crises
and problems whether it's
the teaching of evolution
or it's the legality of
Medicare, constitutionality of--
where does it say
in the constitution
that we can have Medicare?
Where does it say we
couldn't-- we could buy Alaska?
But-- [laughter].
[ Inaudible Remark ]
>> But I think those three
fundamentalisms are gaining
strength and I think we'll
be increasingly deflected
in the next Congress
maybe beyond.
>> Do you want me
to repeat that or?
[Laughter] Well the-- I
mean it was a comment rather
than a question which is
fine to the nice effect
that the gentlemen thought
I was too optimistic
which is great to hear.
And that we are caught
in the grip of--
the American people are
caught in a grip of a series
of what he calls
fundamentalisms.
What I sometimes, you know,
I think we have to be--
I'm an empiricist so I like
to have data which I've tried
to share with you,
about what's happening.
And, you know, it's easy
to have strong feelings
about what's going on
but I think this is
such an important question that
we have to-- we have to know,
we have to figure
it out with data.
I wonder whether we--
and this is a wonder
to match your wonders,
whether we came
out of the slide I described
from the mid '60s to 1980,
that dark turbulent period
and discovered ourselves
split with--
in a country with two
different sets of values.
And, you know, that the pain
and anger and profound upheaval
of the Vietnam War separated
us into camps and that part
of the inability to find
leadership again came
because you can't achieve
leadership unless there is a
body of shared values.
But I don't know, you
know, that's speculation
and feel but that's all.
Just one other comment I'd make
to yours, I know, I mean there--
I could have extended
the list as I said
and climate story
is a terrible one.
But on the other hand, this
country has great powers
of innovation in the
social sector as well
in technology and science.
And I don't give up, I think
we're in a scary period
because I, you know, at
some point trends do become
irreversible, at some point.
I don't believe we're there yet.
But I think in order not to get
there we better really focus
on this and I don't see it
generally defined this way
or happening, so I-- yes?
>> My question has to
a little bit with one
of the issues probably
also found in your list
that you didn't get around
to and that's education.
I'm mostly thinking that
we've got school systems
that are highly dysfunctional
and huge amounts of places.
We've got people who are
segregated by economics
and are going to only some
kind of schools as opposed
to other kinds of schools.
People are across these--
in these ideological gulfs
that you were talking about,
are having much to do
with those who aren't
like them anymore,
positive or negative.
Bob Putnam in his Bowling Alone
and other subsequent studies
talked about coinciding
that that period, the mid
'60s, being the high point
of civic societies,
civil societies
where people broadly were
engaged in everything
from scouting to like healthy
animal [inaudible], the elks,
the moose, PTAs and it
started declining in the '65
and I think it's
emblematic of our time.
Tom Frank in What's
the Matter with Kansas?
People voting against
their economic interest
because of ideology helping
it, and people wanting
to feel comfortable off in
one pure place as opposed
to the muddy center,
[inaudible] gone on that
and whether we got
fundamental failure of education
which goes along with the
daily newspapers [inaudible]
and people just listening
to what they want to hear.
>> Well, the question
has to do with the state
of our education system and I
am not an expert on it at all.
It is certainly true
that the advent
of cable news has transformed
news from-- television news,
from a place that provides
information to a place
that provides ammunition.
And blogs and online media tend
to be directed and read by--
and chosen by people
to reinforce what
they already believe
and that I think is a big
part of what's happening
and as Dodd quote, I
shared with you suggest--
there is a big shift in what
is being covered from news
that is relevant to
peoples wellbeing
and inside political
conflict and inside stories
of political conflict.
I can't say too much
about education 'cause I just
am not-- I don't know enough.
My hunch about these issues
is that they are contributors
but they're not the core of it.
They've probably
made something worse
but I just have the feeling we
haven't peeled the onion back
far enough to know to have
found those core things
yet and-- but that's a hunch.
Yes? Who wants to go first?
You go first and then you, yes?
>> I'm very pessimistic in some
sense but I'm very concerned
about the solutions
to our problem.
I think the one thing you did
not mention though I suspect
you're very aware of is peak
oil which I'm very convinced
that we've hit and it's
gonna really present us
with very difficult
situations of country.
>> We have to think about and
I think that the positive thing
when I was an under graduate
student [inaudible] France,
a new constitution in 1958 that
made profound impact I think
in terms of the effectiveness
on the French governor,
it was still the
same French man.
I think that you can make
institutional changes
and they can improve things.
I have my own ideas on this
but I'm very curious what ideas
you might put out in terms
of what changes can we make
so that our political
system serves us well?
>> When-- you're first
sentence, you said a word
that I didn't catch that
this question was aimed at.
>> I meant very pessimistic--
>> Oh, peak oil, peak oil.
>> Peak oil, yes.
>> You know there's a paradox
about what we call
renewable resources
and so called non-renewable
resources.
The problem-- the so
called renewable resources
in fact, can disappear.
You can make a species extinct.
Non-renewable resources
are badly named
because they never run out.
The price just goes up
until we stop using them.
So, in fact, they're named in
a completely confusing way.
I-- we've been on a downward
slope on oil production
for some time and-- but proven
resources are still growing,
natural gas resources
are growing steeply.
We have a whole new universe,
shale gas out there now
that could be tapped.
I-- the problem I see
with energy and, you know,
there were a lot of
environmentalists worried
about peak oil in 1974.
It's not that we're gonna
run out of oil, we're not.
The problem is oil is too cheap.
The problem is we have to choose
to price energy at its real cost
which includes climate, which
includes other pollution,
which includes national security
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And if we do that out there
is this gigantic resource.
I-- you know, for years I
worked a lot on the ozone issue
and for years and years
and years, in fact,
it took about 17 years to deal
with the problem
of ozone depletion.
And people were screaming that
there was no possible substitute
for chlorofluorocarbons because
they were inert and easy to deal
with and cheap and abundant
and did this wonderful thing
in all the uses that
they were used for.
And there were studies that
put the costs of replacing them
in billions and billions
and billions of dollars
and this fight went on forever.
When we finally took action
on banning chlorofluorocarbons
there was--
after the treaty
was finally signed,
an international technology
fair sort of thing 3 months
after the treaty was
signed and there were more
than 300 exhibits of
chlorofluorocarbons substitutes.
All that technology was
sitting in the closet.
It existed already.
And the cost of banning
chlorofluorocarbons is probably
the negative, that is the
substitutes have been cheaper.
I think the same thing is
gonna happen with energy.
I mean you've got, you know,
you don't have to listen
to environmentalists you've
got the McKenzie Institute,
McKenzie Company
estimating the waste resource
at 40 percent of current use.
You've got Edison
Electric Institute
which is the research arm
of the electric utility industry
estimating it at 25 percent
of electricity use, this is
with existing technologies
and we've spent almost
nothing on R&D.
This doesn't make a
tremendous lot of sense
to spend an awful
lot of money on R&D
when there's no demand pull.
You know, you've got to
raise the prices first
and then the market provides
the demand pull instead
of the government.
So this is, I think, gonna turn
out to be an infinitely
simpler technical question
than we think.
The problem is not
that it's not out there
and that we can't
have plenty of energy.
The problem is political will.
The problem is not the cost to
society the problem is the cost
to the existing distribution
of winners and losers.
There are gonna be
different winners and losers.
And the current winners have a
whole lot of political power.
Yeah?
>> So given that the
Carnegie Endowment
and [inaudible] worked
globally I wonder
if you can give us a little
comparative international
perspective on your argument
in other words is
it just a US problem
or is it a problem we're facing
in other advanced
countries as well?
Give you an example that
might lead to that kind
of thinking the European
countries were trying
to pass the new constitution
totally oblivious
to the fact the voters were
not on board and in fact,
[inaudible] down in France
and Netherlands and so on.
So is this in some
sense a crisis
of the western civilization more
broadly or is it just the US
and if it's differential,
does that lead to ideas on how
to tackle it given that
there may be examples
of countries that have [noise]?
>> I don't think it's European.
In fact, I'm struck by the
opposite and, you know what?
I recognize I'm speaking
to a European.
But, you know, I think Americans
have poo-pooed and missed--
and missed the importance
of European Union
for 40 years, you know?
And every stage as it moved
along, every American said well,
it will never go
further, you know?
And it will never get
the common currency.
And, you know, every
stage, right?
Meanwhile the United States was
trying to balance the interests
of Ohio and Vermont
took 15 years
on acid rain while Europe did
8 air pollution agreements,
long distance air
pollution in the time
that we've fought
over acid rain.
And when I think what has
to be struck, you know,
it's true that the
closer you get
to the EU the worse it looks.
It looks better from far away.
But-- and it's true, as you say,
there have been major problems.
But I think the fact of
it is enormous relative
to what we have done
in this period
and took an enormous
amount of political energy.
You know, in fact, I think
it has drained an awful lot
of political energy
out of everything
else and continues to.
But you have to be struck by
what's happened for example
in the UK in recent
months, you know?
Faced by a really horrible
economic situation they elect a
coalition government, it
takes office, it's stable.
It is un-- you know, it is
cutting spending in a way
that would-- would be
completely impossible here.
It's talking about
adding a 20 percent--
you know the VAT tax on top of
a gasoline tax that is 4 dollars
and 86 cents a gallon, the tax.
So-- and I think Europe
is responding to--
I mean European countries
have made some, you know,
terrible mistakes as did we
but I think there is a degree
of readiness to confront
it with some things--
it's hard for me to imagine
there being the political will
to do here, so I see a
different picture, yes?
>> Hi I'd be very curious
to hear your response
or your opinion about
the Rally for Sanity
that took place a
couple of weeks ago.
Two hundred and fifty
thousand people perhaps were
on the National Capital I
think that that is a statement
of some sort that got
very little analysis.
And is an energy that is not
being directed necessarily--
government people
weren't there so it's kind
of this free floating energy.
And perhaps is at some sort of
foundation where we could go,
you know, to try to answer some
of these things that you raised.
And to follow up on your
comment about the people,
I'm especially interested
in nuclear energy issues,
Nuclear Energy Law.
And to take that power away from
utilities, it's hugely funded,
and really have the-- you
know, create a political will
that could actually
answer this problem
in a much more constructive
manner that subsidies
for nuclear, long guarantees
for nuclear energy companies
in my opinion, could you,
you know, is there some sort
of like connection between this
free floating high energy level
that went to the national
mall and this need
for a political will to shift?
>> I love Jon Stewart
but I have to tell you
that I find it depressing
that our political
leadership is being offered
by television entertainers
either
on the right Glen
Back or the left.
And that's not where it's
suppose to come from so,
you know, it's great
that after--
that he answered the
Beck Rally and showed
that the country is not
that country completely.
But to me the fact that
those rallies happen
in that context is
a sign of weakness.
It's a sign of--
when something wrong.
I wasn't there.
I talked to a lot
of people who were.
It apparently felt really good
but you couldn't hear anything
or see anything and so-- I
told you my sense about it.
I guess that Stewart wouldn't
object to what I just said,
you know, that this
is a problem,
this not where leadership
belongs.
On nuclear, nuclear could have--
I could have used
as another example.
I mean we have been
trying to find a solution
for nuclear wastes since 1950s
and we don't have one
yet or even close.
And I think nuclear has to be
a part of our energy mix and,
you know, there's lot more
that I could say about it
but I don't think it, you know,
nuclear is a weird problem
because it's never gotten over
the circumstances of its birth.
That the government
said "Hey guys,
we've got this neat
new way to boil water
and it's easy ad it's
cheap and it's simple."
And none of that was true.
And the utility industry,
the nuclear utilities grew
up with this sort of--
when that turned out not
to be true we just kind
of chip on their shoulder
where they keep thinking
people don't understand.
And they keep trying
to take short cuts
and it always back fires.
It's an industry that could've--
it's just not well run.
And-- in a strategic sense,
I think, and could have been
and could well be,
you know, so yes?
>> I always keep wondering about
this survey you've talked about,
I forget when you-- they
started at 58 or so?
>> Yeah.
>> But having been a war baby
myself, I'm wondering in where
after the war the United States
had absolutely no competition
with our industry.
I wonder if part of this
response you're hearing is a
frustration of people trying
to figure out where we're--
where the United States now
has lots of competition and,
you know, a frustration people
with different economic outlook
maybe, or trying to figure
out their place,
so I don't know.
>> It could well be true.
I'm sorry.
The question had to do
with whether in the 1950s--
as early as the '50s and
the early '60s whether
with the US world
economic dominance,
whether that was a heavy
influence in this--
in the 75 percent of people who
felt good about the government.
I think that's true, you know,
we've had a Post
War Policy designed
to spread economic growth.
We've invested an awful lot in
the growth of other countries
and we succeeded at
some cost to ourselves.
It was still the
right thing to do.
But you may be right and it
may also have been partly a--
the after glow of the war
still, things take a long--
take some time to fade.
World War II was a period when
the country was together as--
I mean that's the one
thing about wars they tend
to do that in societies.
And-- but we also have
to remember the '60s were
terrible time, you know?
Our cities were burning,
people were being assassinated.
It wasn't just the happy
after glow of World War II
or a period of, you know, of
great economic well being, yes?
>> With like the relatively
new and I guess currently
like nearly extreme, I
guess thought processes
of party politics
being, you know,
like you're with us
or you're against us.
And there's like a solid
divide between parties like--
what do you envision is the
solution to this mentality
and like the gridlock or
the conflicts of interest
that causes our Capitol
Hill or do you see this
as like the slow
evolution of the--
like the [inaudible] safeguards
that the founding fathers built
into our governmental system.
>> Well, I think the
question was what do I think
about this [inaudible]
in a sense, right?
And, you know, as I told you I
mean the only honest answer is I
don't know what the answers are.
I think what I can offer is
fixing our attention on a trend
that I think is there and trying
to give it some specificity
and some concreteness rather
than sort of a general feeling
of things aren't right.
I don't believe that there's
anything fundamentally wrong
with our system of
constitutional checks
and balances but I think
there are things wrong, many,
some of which I suggested
with how the system
is currently working.
And, you know, the difficulty
is that for example if you start
to talk about how Congress has
changed since the 1970's its
over determined, right?
There are too many
reasons you could cite
for this horrible decline.
And in a situation when you've
got too many reasons it's
awfully easy to find the
wrong ones, you know,
because you don't
know what to fix.
As I mentioned, right,
Jimmy Carter--
he was the first presidential
candidate to campaign
against Washington,
that was new, 1976.
And then Regan came
in and he campaigned
against government and-- but
they were presumably tapping
into something they
already knew was there.
So we have to look a little
bit further back and, you know,
then we had the-- enormous
shift in the Republican Party.
In the 1970s there were
17, I think is the number,
moderate Republicans
in the Senate.
Today there are none.
I mean they were a
major force and some
of those were the great men
of the Senate Jacob Javits
and a whole list, Edward
Brooke, the whole bunch of them.
So there-- and, you know,
then Newt Gingrich came in
and told members "Don't bring
your families to Washington.
Stay home.
Stay close to the people."
And that as I described
just sketched a little bit,
that produced a whole
different set of people.
And now that we are where we
are the atmosphere is so toxic
that it attacks a different
kind of people as candidates,
so the system sort of
begins to self-perpetuate.
I can't give you as I
said, a more precise answer
as to exactly what the
cause are because I can't.
And I don't anybody can.
But I think I've
identified something
that needs our deepest
attention.
I'll leave it there.
Yes?
>> You described the
slide very well and many
of us are old enough to say "Oh,
yeah we saw it happen, yeah."
And I noticed you've
touched on polarization
and all the factors
involved in the slide.
I'm wondering if you have
an opinion about how we get
out of this hole,
particularly I think some
of us would say the only thing
that ever seems to get us back
on track is a crisis
in this country.
It's the nature of what we do.
Is there more possibility than a
crisis like 9/11 to get us back
on the right track
or-- what do you see?
>> Shall I repeat that?
So the question was, you know,
well how do we get back
on the right track.
>> I don't-- well, first
of all, the crisis,
unless it's a continuing
war as I described
with 9/11 won't get us
back on the right track,
all it did was this sort
of a temporary reprieve.
And it brings its own real
risks, water boarding and,
you know, the rebalancing
of civil liberties
and the things we know about.
And, you know, I'm very
much afraid that were we
to have another terrorist attack
the country's reaction would be
a repeat of what happened in
those respects far, far worse.
But I-- again, I cannot
give you, I'm afraid,
answers until I think we
all have a clearer sense
of why it happened, and
there I can only guess, so.
Yes?
>> You seem to make a
big deal about the--
this problem that
congressmen specifically House
of Reps are spending
more time at home instead
of in Washington but--
>> Senate too.
>> Senate as well--
>> Yeah.
>> Isn't this-- isn't that
[inaudible] aren't they supposed
to be representing
their district instead
of the nation at large?
I mean their representing
for the district in order
to see the problems that
district needs to face.
Shouldn't they be
home most of the time
to actually see what
their district needs?
>> Well, hopefully they knew
what their district needed
before they ran.
But, you know, I mean here's
what their life is like,
they go home-- member, when
I worked on the hill members
of Congress lived in Washington,
their families were
in Washington.
So their work week
except when they went home
which was depending where
they lived from time
to time was a seven-day
work week in Washington
which included, as I mentioned,
time to know both their
colleagues and their own party
and then the other caucus.
Now, they leave their
families home,
they camp out in these terrible
living conditions in kind
of dormitory like
conditions in Washington.
They tend to arrive back
midday Monday and they're gone
at the end of the day, Thursday.
And people who come from
Montana and Alaska and Idaho,
they go home too every weekend.
And I don't know
what the percent is,
I was about to say half of what
they're doing is fund raising.
And I think you're point
is perfectly valid,
I think that there is a balance.
They do have time for
town halls and meeting
and hearing what their
constituents want
but their job is not just
reflecting what their
constituents want,
their job is voting
for what they see is
a national interest
and that I think is
more and more missing.
Yes?
>> Do you think there's
something we need to look
at about the evolution
of democracy?
Something that we don't yet
understand about a system
of government that we've had
for several hundred years
that has been shifting and
moving and perhaps in ways
that we don't understand no
longer reflects the needs
of our people, or that our
people are no longer educated
to understand the basic
values of democracy?
>> Wow.
[ Laughter ]
>> The question was very-- I
can't-- it was very eloquent,
is there something
about the basic nature
of democracy we don't understand
and the changing conditions
and particularly
perhaps that we--
that Americans are not
adequately educated
for being citizens in a
democracy in these conditions.
[ Inaudible Remark ]
>> I am sure-- I'm not sure.
My hunch is that
values have changed.
I don't know exactly
how and exactly why.
We-- I don't know for example
whether fewer Americans today
understand the requirements
of democracy, know the basics
of their government, et cetera
than did forty years ago.
I just-- I don't know-- I
don't know if the data exists.
I tended-- clearly, you know,
I'm scientist originally so I
like to do experiments
where one variable changes
and everything else
is held constant
and unfortunately
we can't do that.
So we've got to get pretty
good at trying to single out,
you know, the really
important factors.
And certainly the sense
of anger and frustration
with Washington not
with all government,
because it isn't visited against
state and local government,
I was saying earlier
in a conversation this
afternoon it's really striking
that especially the
western states,
they do not ideologues
as governors.
They elect moderate
people as governors
and then they send these
ideologues to the Senate to walk
around in cowboy boots
and talk crazy stuff.
[Laughter] But they don't want
them at home making decisions
that have to do with
the highways [laughter]
and their, you know?
They don't.
And you can look at this
it's a nationwide pattern.
And the same is true with
local government, right people?
So what is so troubling
is that the sense of anger
and frustration has taken itself
out in the answer being "Well,
the best thing then
is to send somebody
who doesn't know anything
about the issues."
You know? Just-- I
don't think they would--
you know, that the electorate--
this would be an
interesting question,
their going to elect somebody
like that to be governor?
I doubt it.
So that's a horrible thing
because there are a whole bunch
of decisions only the
national government can take.
And if we got a bunch
of people who think
that the right approach to
it is not to know anything
about the issues 'cause
that's simpler, you know?
Give me half the facts
I need to make decision.
You know, what's going
to be the outcome there?
Yes?
>> You said that you don't thin
we can suggest any solutions
to the problems that you
proposed so eloquently
until we know what caused them.
And I guess I would argue
that we can't afford to wait.
I once had a philosopher
who said
"Don't bring me a problem
unless you also bring me a
suggested solution."
And so I'm kind of
putting that to you.
[ Laughter ]
>> You know I get the
picture there but [inaudible].
>> Let me ask an intermediate
question and that is
if you don't have a
ready made silver bullet,
can you identify things/signs
which suggest to you
that there are green shoots
that maybe the trend
might be turning around?
[ Laughter ]
>> Can you?
[ Laughter ]
>> I mean no, I can't.
No. I don't see, I'm sorry,
the question was do I
see any green shoots
that suggest a reversal
in this trend?
No. I mean I think, you
know, that the last couple
of years have been
some of the worst.
>> No, I'm sorry, I didn't
mean to make it that difficult,
what I meant was what--
what if you saw it,
would you take as green shoots?
>> What would be possible green
shoots signs of a reversal?
Well, you could think of lots.
And remember, I did
suggest one solution,
Campaign Finance Reform.
We have got to drain the swamp
of this much money and we've got
to figure out a way to lower the
costs of campaigns and we got
to figure out a way to do it
in some constitutionally
acceptable way.
>> I just don't see--
there's, you know,
how arrive at a body
able to think in terms
of a national interest
rather than an accretion
of special interests when
its life blood is daily need
to fund raise.
You know senators with
six-year terms have weekly fund
raising goals.
So progress in that direction,
I mean, almost any one
of the number of
things that I described
if it were the reverse would
be a green shoot so, you know,
I could see lots of
things happening,
signs of political leadership,
I mean a change in the culture
of what our leaders
feel they can say
to constituents and be heard.
A change in the way cable
television operates,
a less shouting at
each other mode
of communication would
be an enormous help.
You know, many things but I just
unfortunately don't see them.
>> Probably make this
the last question.
>> Okay last question,
red sweat shirt.
>> I think it seems fair
and pretty non-controversial
to agree that there
hasn't been a ton
of huge policy game changers
over the last 40 years.
But I think it will be unfair to
say that there hasn't been a lot
of significant incremental
change during that same time.
So why don't we look at the
source of incremental change
and positive movements in
those areas as a source
of optimism rather than looking
at the lack of game changers
as a source of pessimism?
>> I think that's a perfectly--
the question is why don't we
look at incremental change
in a positive sense rather
than just being depressed
by the absence of game changer,
major changes in
the negative run.
I think that's a
perfectly fair comment.
I mean it-- when you
make a proposition
like the one I laid before you
today, you have to be very aware
that you're taking a
partial picture of a country
that is a much different place.
The lives of women in this
country are a whole lot better
today than they were in 1960 and
one could-- and that's major.
And one could cite others I'm
sure a little time to think
about it, you know, but
I think that doesn't--
I think a race, I can sense
you all feeling "Well,
don't come here and
tell us this bad news
without giving us an answer."
And usually, I used to write in
a newspaper column and my rule
for myself was don't write
one unless you have something
constructive to say in the last
two paragraphs about that answer
and I almost never did.
[ Laughter ]
>> No. I mean I almost
never wrote one--
[ Laughter ]
>> I hate news paper columns
that just sort of rant
about how off-- you know,
as terrible things are.
But I was trying to
say there is something
that I think has gone
very wrong in the period
since the early 1970's to now.
There are I'm sure
many reasons for it
but we don't know what they are.
It has manifested itself
in a prolonged period
where we cannot confront issues
that are pretty well defined
and that holds really serious
implications for our future.
So here at a school of public
policy I'm handing you a whole
lot of work [laughter]
to figure it out.
The whole country has to figure
it out because we can't go
on indefinitely without--
in a globalized world,
without a central government
that can solve its
major problems.
It just-- maybe we
can muddle along
for a long time but
we can't thrive.
And the world, I
expect, can't thrive
with a muddling along
American government either.
[ Applause ]
>> Well thank you very much
but before you leave the front
and before we close and
I formally thank you.
I'd like to invite Oliver
Mathews to make a presentation
on behalf of the Ford School.
[ Pause ]
>> This is the first
time I've seen this
so I'm just taking a
second to look at it.
[ Laughter ]
>> Dr. Mathews.
[ Laughter ]
>> Sir.
>> This could be the first
time I've ever actually said
that out loud.
It is my great pleasure
and honor
to give you this
certificate of appreciation
from the Gerald R. Ford School
of Public Policy particularly
because I get to give it to
a person not only whom I love
but who is an inspiration.
[ Applause ]
>> So we have had a very
thought provoking steps and how
to action I think
is gonna keep us
at the Policy School
busy for a long time.
But we've got to move
quickly 'cause these are
important challenges.
Before we do a final thanks
to Dr. Mathews I did want
to make sure you knew we
have a reception outside
and we can more informally
continue some
of this conversation.
I hope you'll stay and join us.
So once again, thank
you so much.
>> Thank you Susan.
[ Applause ]