 A participant in today's ceremonies honoring President Ford with the dedication of this wonderful school for the Ford School of Public Policy here at the University of Michigan. It's a tribute, as has been said many times, to President and Mrs. Ford for the dedicated service they've given to the country. And so I'm honored to be here as an admirer, as we all are, even if we may have held differing views. The type of leadership that was served by President Ford through all phases of his life and his career is an example. And perhaps that's the best we can say for what is important as we think about ethics. I'd also like to make a comment about my colleague here on this panel, Alice Rivlin, because I served on the Budget Committee in the Senate when I first went to the Senate. And she had to testify from the CBO to the Budget Committee. And as I told her, everyone always respected what she had to say, although she took a lot of abuse from those who wish she hadn't said it. And my admiration for her is keen as well. I would just like to say this topic of personal ethics and public decision making has caused me more heartburn over the past several weeks as I've thought about it than almost anything else that I've thought of for a speech in recent years. It isn't an easy topic and I would like to begin with a quote that I saved from an article that President Ford had done, I don't know how far back, six years maybe, and it was an article that was a piece that he wrote on not slamming the door on therapeutic cloning. But this was something from that article that I thought was that column that he did was very good. It's a troubling paradox of American politics. All too often the issues that most cry out for thoughtful, dispassionate consideration are reduced to sound bites. Whether distorted in the name of ideology and partisanship, they can become oversimplified to the point of caricature. And I think as we try and sort through what we represent and how we can exemplify the best of valor and judgment in making decisions, it was best exemplified by the ability to think through the issues that are before us. I've served on two ethics committee. One was the early ethics committee in the state of Kansas that was appointed by the governor. And then when I was in the Senate, you don't volunteer to be on an ethics committee, you're assigned. And through the various discussions both places, often you spend hours trying to decide how many angels could dance on the head of a pen. And I'd like to just review a little bit of the history of my thinking at this point. We all have a role to play. I think each and every one of us, whether it's small or large in helping shape policy decisions, every single person in this room, every single person that attends this school has a role to play. And since the beginning of time, societies have struggled to hold and check the striving for power and money. And today in business and in politics and in education, accountability is the new mantra. So regulations and rules and legislative mandates are designed to provide a check on corruption and greed. I worked hard and was a strong supporter of campaign finance reform because I believed that so much money was going into political campaigns that we were finding it hard to be able to or lost the ability to be able to individually get out and go door to door and the base grassroots that became important in politics, I thought. And now with the advent of ever more negative ads and the ability that we thought we had with regulations that were drawn up for campaign finance reform, only loopholes occur. And so you have loopholes upon loopholes and more paperwork and more paperwork in education, more requirements to do testing and standardized testing. Where do we find an answer? I personally think that it really starts at young age and it really relies on education as much as anything. I think that by example, it's what as President Ford, I love the quote in the speech that was given this morning that he was prepared to give when he said this was something he grew up with, work hard, tell the truth and come to dinner on time. For those of us of a certain age, getting to dinner on time was important or you tended to miss out. But I think that ethics in our decision making comes from how we view history, how we view the values that come from those either as a parent, a teacher, a neighbor that we see, that we're with, that we know. A security in recognizing there are times of conflict and decisions and you may have a buddy in school that is doing something wrong. You know it's wrong but he's a friend, what do you do? Do you try and tell him it's wrong? Do you go along with him? And it goes with us all through life. And that's why I believe the strength that comes from a sense of the importance in that very quote given by President Ford who I think stepfather had that as something that was important in his life, really says it all with a sense of self-discipline and respect. I don't think we can legislate tolerance. I don't think you can legislate honesty or respect. And I think it has to come with a sense that we have, for a better understanding of history, a better understanding of what we're all about and that's why I believe something like this School of Public Policy has a very important role to play and I'm sure President Ford would be particularly proud to have his name associated with an arena where we can come and look at the different balances, the different questions we each have to ask. I was always asked, do you pay more attention to your constituents or your own opinion? And I always liked Edmund Burke's answer when he said it's important to be mindful of your constituents and exercise your own judgment as well because otherwise what good does it do to be there helping serve in public service, but to bring your views that come with a background of knowledge, a background that has been given you through education and through which we can gain by having those around us who we look to for strength of ethics. It really is a sense of judgment I think that comes from those that we are surrounded by who at some point it may be a peer, it may be a parent and particularly I would say a teacher that gives us that essence of ethics, personal ethics that we bring to bear on our own judgments. Thank you. I too am privileged to be part of this wonderful event honoring President Ford who was certainly a calm, steady hand at a chaotic moment in United States history and the nation owes him a great debt. He also has been for quite a long time now a wonderful ex-president and that's an important role. I was privileged in 1988 to serve on a commission or committee or something or other that he and President Carter pulled together to see if we could fashion some bipartisan advice for the next administration, whoever it was and those two sensible men working together were a sight to see. It was very, it was very inspiring. Unfortunately, the partisanship gap has widened since then and Senator Casablanca and I, as she said, go back a long way and I've admired her ability to keep her focus on what was good for the country and work with her colleagues of both parties. May you may have forgotten that she worked a lot with Ted Kennedy and tried to put together legislation with bipartisan support in several areas. Despite her family heritage, she is not an ideological or deeply partisan person. She's more focused on getting to the right decision. So through the leadership of President Ford and the generosity of Sandy and Joan Weil, I've got 10 minutes to impart what wisdom I have on the relationship between personal morality and public policy. I want to use those 10 minutes, not actually to talk about my personal morality, this is an example of ignoring the questions, or my own public policy career, but to talk about yours, you the students of the Ford School and the opportunities that you have for moral leadership and some of the conflicts and obstacles that I think you may face. Now, you've made a moral commitment just by coming here and devoting a couple of precious years to learning how to be effective in the world of public policy. You came here because you wanted to make the world a better place. You wanted that more than you wanted to make a lot of money or to be a compassionate medical professional or to prove how tough you were in the courtroom or to explore how creative you could be in the arts. You're here because you think public policy matters and you want and because you perceive that there's a lot of room for making it better, and there is. And you thought that if you learned the tools, you could influence public policy and improve the lives of other people. Now, public policy career doesn't necessarily mean working for the government. It may mean implementing, writing about, influencing, teaching about public policy from lots of different vantage points, which may well change as your career progresses. But I applaud you for making the choice to be here and for putting in the effort that it takes to complete your studies at the Ford School and plunge ahead on a public policy career. So what are the obstacles to turning your idealistic moral vision into a satisfying reality? Let me start with two I think won't happen. First, you may picture yourself in a national or state administration where the leadership is pursuing a policy you disagree with and you have to decide whether or not to resign. Well, actually, I think this is a rare dilemma and I believe almost always it is best resolved by continuing to do your job well and trying to improve the public policy rather than by making the grand and usually feudal gesture. I was a young assistant secretary at the Department of Health Education and Welfare as it then was at the time of the Vietnam War. And we were trying to improve programs of the great society, make them work better, evaluate them, administer them better. But a lot of my friends from graduate school were out marching against the war and calling me up and saying, how can you stay in this government that's doing these terrible things? And I would say, well, I'm not in charge of the war. I'm here trying to make health and education and welfare better. And I don't think my resigning would do any good. Colin Powell faced a more difficult dilemma, but I didn't know him terribly well, but I knew him well enough to know he wasn't going to resign. He was too good a soldier to do that and I think it was the right decision. Second, I doubt that you will be tempted to put personal financial gain ahead of service to the cause or to an organization. You're not that kind of person. And if you cared a lot about personal wealth, you probably wouldn't be at the Ford School. But more important, the world of public and nonprofit organizations just doesn't offer much opportunity. Sure, there are some crooks in the government, the kind of people who put Gucci handbags on their government credit card or steer a contract to their brother-in-law. But actually, there aren't very many. They usually get caught and the stakes are laughably low. It's much harder in Sandy Wild's world where the stakes are enormous. So if Andy Fastow is your role model, drop out of the Ford School right now. But let me give you four other dilemmas that I think you will face repeatedly and you'll watch your colleagues dealing with. And all our questions, as Nancy said, of finding the right balance. One is the exhilaration that goes with personal power. The danger is losing sight of the public good because it feels so good to be in charge. And yes, fellow females, it's okay to feel good about being in charge. When Nancy and I were girls, it wasn't, but it is now. The problem is that leaders in the public policy world, like those of the business world, have to have self-confidence. They have to believe in themselves. They have to be optimists. They have to have the ability to inspire others to get things done. But there's the ever-present danger of getting carried away, of believing too much in your own gut reaction. So leaders need constant reality check with smart, sensible people that don't work for them, giving them some feedback. A related threat is excess loyalty to the organization because that leads to turf wars. And again, it's a balance question. We need team spirit and pride in an organization. We need commitment and loyalty to the organization to get things done. But like personal charisma, it can get out of hand. And then the CIA doesn't talk to the FBI, and the Army tries to beat the Navy, not on the football field, but in the battlefield. And I think the turf battles that arise are one of the real threats to good government. And another, something related to that is excess partisanship. And again, it's a balancing act. I believe in the two-party system. We need that to surface and articulate differences. But when the election is over, we need to work together to move the country forward. And we seem to have forgotten that. The level of partisanship now is too high for the country's good. Everybody is blaming, finger-pointing, and that doesn't get the job done. We seem to engage in debate, but not dialogue, and they're different. Debate is when you try to score debaters' points and win. Dialogue is when you talk about the differences you have and how to get how to resolve them and get the job done. There are not very many people working on this. I watched James Baker and Lee Hamilton, two of my own heroes, the other night on Jim Lehrer's news hour, and I thought, they didn't say anything, actually. But the important point was they were there together, and they are trying to find a way out of the dilemma in Iraq. And finally, I think there's the danger of thinking too small. There's the danger of getting immersed in the details of public policy and the policy analysis and never saying, wait a minute, maybe our whole approach is wrong. Maybe we should do something quite different in this situation. Warren Buffett once said to me, he'd never regretted speaking up. He often regretted not speaking up. And I think that's really right. You may get eyes rolled at you, but keep it up without being a pest and maybe somebody will listen. In sum, I think the moral issues of public policy require constant balancing, and that's why it's so challenging. And that's why it's important that the Wiles and the University of Michigan have given you this opportunity at the Ford School to sharpen your skills and think hard about the moral judgments that you actually make every day and that you'll be making for the rest of your life. Thank you. As an alumnus of the Ford School, it really is just a fantastic place and I see a lot of friends and it's very much a family. And in fact, Professor Levenson's first cousin is one of my best friends in the school and still is to this day. I think it's obvious, your first glance, who doesn't fit on this panel? And yesterday at dinner I had the privilege of sitting with Brent Scowcroft, Paul Neal, Susan Ford Bates and their spouses and me and I think it was obvious as well who was the newcomer to the table. And to be here speaking about my personal convictions in public policy making is really just quite an honor. I want to thank the school and I want to thank Dean Blank for that honor. And I want to apologize in advance because you got me a month out from an election here in Michigan where certainly we are having tense campaigns and probably the most well-funded campaign per citizen of maybe any state ever in terms of our gubernatorial campaign and hugely important campaigns for the state house and the state Senate. And I am very much engaged, particularly in those state house campaigns and as a candidate for the House Democratic leader. And sometimes it's tough to shift gears about what are my personal convictions and how do they affect public decision making? But maybe it's the exact right moment actually to be thinking about those questions because I can tell you that spending three to four hours a day on the phone raising funds, creating teams which sometimes means making so-called deals about the leadership team that will run the House Democratic Caucus. All of that probably is the underside of what we want to think of as sort of this pure white snow of being a citizen legislator. Now the topic, personal convictions in public policy making. And I just want to reread what Jim Levinson said, one of the questions was that I received from Dean Blank, when should private beliefs and ethics, including religious beliefs, influence public actions? When shouldn't they? What are some of the criteria that might distinguish public issues where private benefits are relevant and where they are not? I mean, wow. I mean, for a legislature, is this the restatement of the famous Burkean Dilemma, the English philosopher Edmund Burke on whether or not I represent my constituents or whether or not I do the job to the best of my ability? It was Dean Blank asking me for my personal philosophy of secular humanism and how it relates to being a legislature. And probably for me, more importantly, given that I'm in the midst of all these campaigns, where's the money people in the room and where are the swing votes and how do what I say, how are they going to influence those issues? I regret that President Ford was not able to be with us over the last evening and today because all I heard last night was how much he brought a sense of personal integrity and sound public policymaking and a desire to do what was best in every situation. And I heard that continuously in the conversation at my table last night. And Secretary O'Neill's words, he said he always asked for the facts and always asked why you had drawn your conclusion. So he not only said, can I see the stats on that? Can I see the analysis? But he said, well, why is the analysis saying that? And why did you pull that way? Or why did you study that factor? And Secretary O'Neill last night went on and sort of lamented that it seemed like so few public policy makers cared about the facts and what the data said and had already drawn their conclusions. And I assert that this is a real problem for the Ford School and for an institution that is training people in thinking about public policy from a rational scientific method and to deal with the modern political agenda that is so often based on foregone pre-drawn conclusions and partisan ideology. I think it goes even deeper than that as than being just a problem for the Ford School. I think the founding fathers would be shocked to learn what comprises American politics in the modern era and that if they thought through and we had some of our founding fathers or even great leaders in the last century talk about personal convictions and public decision making and then reflect on what is the current climate of affairs. I'm just gonna go through a litany of maybe what it looks like to me sitting in the seat that I'm sitting in and in the midst of it all right now. We have candidates who are forced to take positions on issues such as guns, abortion, illegal immigration, gay rights, flag burning if it comes up that I can tell you they do not personally espouse. I see it time and time again in dealing with candidates that are running for office on both sides of the aisle. We have voters that are gonna make decisions based on issues that have been hand served to them by campaigns that will never actually see the light of day once we get into office. We didn't have any death penalty votes in the 93rd legislature in Michigan and we're probably not gonna have any in the 94th. Last year, this past summer in New Hampshire they passed a sweeping set of protections against illegal immigration. This is in New Hampshire okay. A third sort of ill of the system is that we have sitting raps and this happens day in and day out on the house floor who are fear casting votes on the Birkin side of the issue on how they personally feel and they fear that they're going to be attacked for the votes that they take. And I'm happy to say that the 30 some Democrats who I sat with in my caucus room when they voted for an English only bill on the house floor those 30 I think to a person they probably were holding their nose as they took that vote. There are a number of people in this state who voted on giving civil immunity to anybody who was shot during a home invasion or anytime anybody personally feared for their safety who probably didn't feel that way. I think that majority of the house members who voted to put a citizenship check box ID mark on their driver's license here in the Michigan house probably didn't think that that was a good idea. Even those who probably repealed the SBT in this state and said, you know what? I think the best business strategy is to go forward into 2007 and tell businesses, we have no idea what taxes you're gonna have. That's the best thing to do to attract businesses to the state of Michigan or those who vote continuously in our state legislature to take to Detroit water. We have sitting raps who cast votes out of the needs to finance their next race, okay? And those issues are a little stickier but who literally sit next to me and you either overtly or covertly, you see the wheels churning. Where is the money on this? And there's no doubt that when more than half the legislature signs a bill to ban a mail order wine shipments and the largest pack lobby in the state is the Michigan beer and wine wholesalers that before the bills even considered, you have a bet that a lot of people are paying attention to who writes the checks for their campaigns. We have a legislature that won't take up ethics laws that are obviously in the public interest but maybe against their own personal ones. We're the only one of three states that has no personal financial disclosure. If I ran for US Congress, I'd have to reveal where I get my personal money from but if I run for governor or state rep in this state, you don't have any right to know which companies are paying me, well how much they're paying me and I could be a consultant to any company that I wanna be and I'm not required to disclose it. We do have an ethics requirement that I self disclose any conflicts once I'm in the legislature but you as a citizen voter don't get the right to check up on me to make sure I'm doing that job. We have a revolving door, I can lobby the same legislature and my colleagues the day after I walk out and then we can get into the meals, travels and gifts. And then we have the last ill that I wanna talk about before I get to my own views on this is are the campaigns that we run that destroy our societies and that some of these issues that we run in these campaigns have long-term impacts. I can tell you that I've been driving around this state and the city that I represent legislators across the state are being attacked by 527 that a lot of, I mean it's obvious, I'll tell you the Democrats, our state house party has our 527, the state republicans have their 527. I don't know if I have the proof to say that but it's obvious and I stand behind that. But their 527 has faulted Democrats for sending money to Detroit and then citing a bill that says Detroit gets $8.8 million more in education for children. Now first of all, I didn't know that that was a bad thing that we put $9 million to educate the least affluent of our citizens across the state but it's a bill that passed 103 to three. So all our republicans voted for this exact same bill but the fact that you can say they sent $9 million to Detroit and then cite the bill number and just say, you know, public act such and such, roll call vote such and such. It doesn't matter that the candidate that they're arguing that you should vote for would have voted the same way. That creates division in our state and that creates an attitude where we have the most racially polarized region, the greatest segregated region of any large city in the country and it may be no accident that it has the highest poverty rate as well. I think that the answer to these issues is the need for the people of this room to be engaged and the need for us to support the Ford School and what it does so that it educates and empowers citizens who are gonna go forth and bring sound public policy. I don't think the question to the, to the, that the question is really, what are my personal convictions and how do they influence my public policy decision making? And it's not a question of, you know, where do I personally stand on abortion and how to secular humanism inform my own decision? We are going to have different views on that based on our religious and our personal beliefs. The real question is how do we engage and utilize the tools of sound economics and sound public policy? And the real question is, and the real problem is how do we build on the foundations of learning that comprise the coursework and education at the Ford School and ensure that those principles are shaping our government. We can lament that American politics have devolved, but we, the people in this room, the believers, I think, in sound public policy are responsible for engaging the system. And so as somebody who never thought, even while I sat through four years of education in the Ford School and the law school and even while I was working on Capitol Hill in college and president of my young Democrats chapter in college, I never thought I would run for office. And I wanna encourage all of you to rethink that question, that the people with the Ford School degrees are the people we need to run for office and are the people we need to assume the mantle of leadership. The people in this room need to support the candidates and need to make decisions on those candidates, not just on party lines and not just based on your religious and personal ideology, but you must bring the politics of sound public policymaking to your donations and who you give money to. And that if you have a candidate out there who's not doing those things, you say, I'm not gonna work on your campaign. I'm not gonna provide that check. And then give your time and talents to those who are doing the right thing. And finally, I think we need to bring the ethics of sound public policymaking to the jobs that we do as budget director and the administration, working for other members of Congress, working for the local school system, teaching in classrooms, working in businesses, et cetera. Because if we don't, we, the believers in sound public policy don't reform American politics and the government, who will? My question is based on the advent and increasing use of negative campaigning and what you think we should do about negative campaigning? Pretty much everybody hates negative campaigning, but if you look at a focus group, everyone says, oh, we hate negative campaigning, but then what they remember about the other candidates, what is stated in the negative campaign, right? And so what do you think should be done about negative campaigning? Should anything be done about negative campaigning and how did you work that in your campaigns? Mrs. Kousenbog, we have grown in your current campaign to try to limit those influences. You're in it now, so you go first. Well, I, first of all, I have the privilege of being in state house races on a personal level, and it's a different race. I'm not on TV, I'm not in the newspapers, and so it's a very much a one-on-one door-to-door kind of thing, and while in my second race, my opponent took on negative campaigns on myself, we thought about going there, but we thankfully didn't do that and we didn't need to do that, and so I've never had to deal with that on a personal level. I can tell you that there's a whole, even as an office holder, and I believe me, I had a lot of people say a lot of horrible things about me the first time I ran, the second time I ran, even just seeing that, getting that robot call at my house and getting that piece of literature, there's a sinking feeling that it has on a personal level. I think that we, as I said, we, the believers in good public policy-making, need to be responsible and use our leverage on a personal level to not support those kinds of issues. Now, is it realistic that I can withdraw my support from the current gubernatorial candidate who I do believe in on a personal level because I don't necessarily appreciate what the Democratic Party has done with this trade issue in the state of Michigan? I don't think it's realistic that, that I'm not gonna go out and support my gubernatorial candidate, but the hope is that the next gubernatorial candidate will say, you know what? Certain things, maybe that is over the top, maybe I won't do that. I do think the electorate has some sensibility on this a little bit, although not as much as we would like, and that as somebody who's, I've been walking door to door in probably a dozen districts across this state, and these are the swing districts, and this is where the real mud flies, and when it gets to be, I mean, we have a candidate who was a Howard Dean supporter, and so she's now supporting terrorism. That's clearly what the ad is saying, and I think the voters see through it. You know, this is a Sunday school teacher. This is a woman who taught the public schools for 20 years, and they get this piece of mail that says, you know, this candidate is a terrorist, and you just look at this nice mom of two, and it doesn't make any sense. So, I think that sometimes voters are rejecting it more and more, and the question is, I think we have to engage the system. I might just say, I think times have changed, even since 1996 when I left the Senate. In 78, in my three campaigns, we really had no negative ad advertising. My hardest was in 78, and there were not really negative ads. There were, I had protestors and so forth, but it was not the same environment it is today. But I think it's important to remember that there's been scurrilous, maybe even more so than today. Flyers that went out, newspapers that were printed just for one candidate or another from the very beginning of our country. Today, the difference is, I think, it's television. It's constant. It's on talk radio and chat rooms, and you can't get away from it. I think, and I know there are people who say, and there are pollsters who say negative ads do make a difference, and it catches the public's attention for a while. But I think the overall effect is deadening, and I think it is ruining the ability to have an energy and a creativity in our political process. And I think we have to stand up and say, even if you lose an election, I will not use negative ads. And I think the public is willing to accept that. If everyone would be willing, if even one or two people in a campaign would be willing to stand up and say that. It might start a whole new, you might start here in Michigan. Or Kansas or Tennessee, I'm not. But I do think we have to be willing to look at that. I'm Gil Oman with faculty and donor, and welcome all of you. At the local level, we have a fight in many states, including Kansas, about what should be taught in the science classroom at a time when the math and science preparation of our students to be competitive for jobs that are internationally competitive is lacking. We have a problem in this state that was recognized in the early 90s, but not addressed at this university or in the legislature. The governor had a plan to move imprisoned persons from Detroit and other cities to the most lily white counties of the state. In a prison building program, it was jobs creation. And with no thinking of what would happen to these people and they were finally let out. No address was made to that set of issues, I'm aware of. And finally, at the federal level, we have this persistent problem about health insurance that our employers are living under a scheme that was a quirk of World War II wage and price controls that our employment based health insurance started in 40s. And it's just a burden which is not shared by the international competitors where there are government supported and otherwise funded health insurance schemes. Any one of those subjects would be a good one. Thanks, Gail, large order. The health issue, both health coverage and health costs is a huge issue that needs national dialogue, but it can, I believe, start in public policy schools. It's got to grow from there to a much broader arena. But the polls show Americans are concerned about the health system. They know it isn't functioning terribly well. There are a lot of people who aren't covered. The costs are rising too fast. But they aren't clear what the solutions are and even what the big questions are. That's where I think the public policy schools could take a good deal of leadership and put into dialogue form some of the major questions about how to resolve the health issues and debate them in classes, not in some class on conflict resolution, which is sort of separate, but in all of the classes that address, in one way or another, the question of healthcare. Then I think we've got to escalate it to a more national level. Engage the media, get a national dialogue going on a major issue like that. One of the recent issues was this so-called Michigan civil rights initiative that the signatures were gathered by fraud and by misleading people who signed that thing. And yet it's still gonna go on. What can we do to make sure that something like this will never get to happen again? Again, I think that's incumbent upon us to stay involved in the political process. And I know that it's frustrating because now it seems like there's new tactics and there's new negative ads and there's new, these paid canvassers and up and down the line, there's tough issue after tough issue. This is maybe not as emotional, not as on point, but I'm a strong believer in the city of Detroit where one of the very few seats, it doesn't have council by district. So as a result, our city council is totally unresponsive to local community needs. And I firmly believe in districts, but the issue is people keep saying, well, you as a legislator, won't you support that in Lansing? And the idea of legislating what canvassers can say or the idea that I'm gonna mandate from Lansing how Detroit should govern its own city council to me is we have to get beyond that. We have to not be so focused in terms of talking about how to deal with the new kind of tactics to say that we're gonna outlaw those tactics, but really just redouble and reengage our own efforts and go out and do the hard work. And that means, and the issue of the city council by district, that means going door to door and getting voters and explaining to them so that they will put it on the ballot and pass it. I've been on the wrong side of ballot initiatives before I supported Proposal E in the city of Detroit to give more centralized power to the schools. I didn't do enough work. You have to live with the results, but I think the answer is to work harder and to be smarter about how we work rather than to try to outlaw the process. You're going to have constituents who disagree with you on policies that feel very important to you. And so my question is how much do you weigh those two things and how much public opinion would it take for you to vote against your own beliefs? That's a good question. And I sort of tried to answer it with the Edmund Burke quote, but I'll give you a specific example on a vote. I was very supportive of banning semi-automatic weapons. It was a gun control issue. It was bitterly fought by the NRA as a Second Amendment right, which I didn't think that it really was, but that's been an issue that has been strongly held by many people. Most of the rest of the Republicans were supporting banning semi-automatic assault weapons, and there was a lot of pressure to vote against it. I had thousands of phone calls. It was probably the most vicious issue, and that includes abortion that I faced. I felt, and it was my own view, that you don't always hear from those who support an issue. You hear from those who are opposed. So everyone was opposed, most of them saying the same thing, because they had scripted what they were supposed to say. On the other hand, it was a very strong, I heard from some very close friends of mine who could not understand how I could vote on that issue in banning those weapons. But I felt, and that's where I suppose my own judgment came into play, that it was important to do. And I went out to Western Kansas right after that vote, because that's where a lot of strongly felt opinion, as well as the cities came from, and I had one farmer say to me, well, you don't know how it is out here with the prairie dogs. And I said, well, it certainly doesn't take a semi-automatic to get a prairie dog. As you know, in this last Congress, the reauthorization failed. So the ban is no longer in effect. But that's one example, and I would have to say there's where my own judgment outweighed what I heard from those who called and wrote. And I think, wouldn't you say that most times you do hear from people who, you don't hear from supporters of an issue, you hear from those who are opposed, and maybe that's a given in a democratic society, and you don't wanna lose sight of the importance of that. But I think you do have to weigh certain things out that you feel, and then let the voters decide if that was the wrong thing. I think that, first of all, the first rule in politics, answer the question that you wanna ask, not the one that it is asked, but no. I think you have a core set of principles and beliefs, and you bring those in, and you absolutely don't compromise those. And then there's a lot of procedural votes and all those other kinds of things, and you weigh the pluses and minuses each time you do it. I think that the sickness is the weighing of your own personal reelection and campaign finance as opposed to, well, I might not feel this way, but my district feels this way, and while I don't necessarily agree with them, I understand why we're going this way. So it's, and there's no easy answer. I take, I don't know how many thousands of votes a year, and I'd say every fifth one you end up with one of these questions like that, so. I think it was Lyndon Johnson who said, it's not doing the right thing that's so hard. It's knowing what the right thing is. But let me give you an example, and I have not run for elective office, but I found myself by appointment with a lot of power over the district of Columbia as chair of the so-called control board that the Federal Reserve, that the federal government put in when the city was in bankruptcy. And one of the last things that we did, and we had the power to do it, was close the public hospital. Now, that was a very controversial thing to do. It was absolutely necessary. This hospital was badly managed. It wasn't serving very many people. It was hemorrhaging money. But as you can imagine, this became a black-white issue, a rich-poor issue, and it attracted not only the leadership of the genuinely affected, namely the labor unions who represented the people who worked there, but the crazies from all over the country. And young people who didn't come from the city at all came in in droves and protested and picketed. But it was the right thing to do. And it didn't sound like the right thing to do. What we did was close that hospital and create something called the D.C. Health Alliance to pay for the healthcare of low-income people who were not eligible for Medicaid. That made a lot of sense. But those of us who took that position are still living with it. For a long time, I got heckled everywhere I went, as did the mayor, and he had to run for reelection. If I may just add to when you speak, though, to the larger issues like healthcare or social security, which is a huge issue that we need to continue a far, far more serious dialogue on President Bush initiated it, but there were pros and cons, but there's where I think on the bigger issues, you compromise. You have to compromise. The emotional issues, sometimes there are no compromises, but the bigger issues, it doesn't mean you lose your own sense of value and principles that guide you. But to achieve the end result, it does take a give and take. And that's where I think partisanship, as Alice pointed out earlier, has become so mean, spirited, that it's very hard to reach some of the compromises necessary. I'm worried about my vote about that as well, and how do you think we ever got to a point where in this country we have a way of voting with no way to see if it really does come with some kind of paper trail? I don't know the answer to that question, and again, I'll answer the question I want to answer. No. But the fact that you're worried about your voting is more of a symptom, I think of, and it should go on my list of the ills, is that we have people who worry about voting, and it's become so competitive in the system that we're fighting for every vote, and we have this huge debate about who should vote, and all the machinations, and the IDs, and the this, and the that, and what the system is gonna be in both sides. There are sort of radicals on each side, alleging that massive voter fraud is going on on both sides, and so I think again, if you had more faith in the people who were writing the rules and the laws, and you didn't see them bickering with all the negative ads and everything else, you'd probably be sitting in your seat with maybe even the same or a similar voting system and not have to worry that your vote didn't count, but I think it's more, I only see it as much, mostly as a symptom, and I don't wanna get into all my politics on it, but in terms of personal decision-making. So you're satisfied with your decision? No, no. And my question sort of takes off from Dr. Rivlin's comment about the dangers of thinking too small, and my question is about any ideas, any of the panelists might have about ways to alter incentives or institutional structures to try to have greater consideration given to issues that occur over longer time horizons than quarterly earnings and the next election, and the specific case I'm thinking about is global climate change and the ways, so I'm wondering if you have any suggestions about tactics or strategies that you might feel effective at changing people's value systems in order to generate the kind of political will that's necessary to bring about rather substantial policy changes in a rather short period of time to try to address those kinds of issues. Let me start. That's a wonderful question and I've worried about it a lot. Climate change is a good example, but one I've thought about more is the federal budget. The president yesterday or the day before was touting the fact that the deficit has come down to only a quarter of a trillion dollars. In the current year, and that's good. It's lower than it was, but what nobody's talking about is what is going to happen as medical care costs continue to rise and the baby boom generation retires and we're all living longer. And anyway, you look at it, those projections, and they're not terribly uncertain, are daunting and nobody is talking about it. In the political discourse. I don't know what we do, but some of us have been writing about it, going out on something we call the fiscal wakeup tour, which is taking a couple of conservatives and a couple of liberals in the middle of the road people and going around the country saying, this is a problem. People have different solutions to it, but this is a problem. Listen to it, pay attention. I think the political system underestimates the intelligence of the American voter and the interest that people have in the longer run, including older people. The way to get older people focused is to say, what kind of world do you want for your grandchildren? And they're very willing to think about it, but politicians often just don't realize that. They think that people only think about the near term. Sometimes you might disagree with something that you're charged to do. And if you're an ethical person, you want to be honest, and you're gonna do your job to the best of your ability, but there are certain tools that you can employ that you might be able to do, such as leaking, or not serious, you know what I mean, but within certain areas are just trying to figure out different techniques to encourage thought, to encourage things to be said that aren't being said, and how would you go about doing that? And if you weren't possible, if that wasn't possible to bring about the change that you were thinking or even the thought that you were thinking, at what point would you consider leaving? I know Dr. Rivlin talked about how oftentimes that's not very prudent, and so I was just wondering how, I just got through reading Robin Cook's Book of Time to Leave, and so I was wondering like what, I think it's a tough decision, and so I was just wondering what your thoughts were. I hope you understood the question. Yeah, very nice. Let me just recommend a book that I think is wonderful is Doris Kearns Goodwin, a team of rivals, and those of you who are interested in politics and public policy and leadership, I think that's an important book. You know, how you deal with something, now I, this passed after I was in Congress, so, but leave no child behind the educational legislation that passed. I would say now I have to believe I would have voted against it. It is not legislation that as a former school board member in a rural area, I think addresses some of the needs, we really need to think about it, and it moves federal education into elementary, secondary education in ways it hasn't been there before. But saying that, it's now law. Do we work to address ways it could be changed that would make it more effective and beneficial, less mandatory and costly? Does it really aid us in improving our educational system? I mean, those are questions that are good for public policy debate, because it's there as law, what do you do? And that's a responsibility I think, both at the federal level, the House of Representatives and the Senate don't exercise very well as oversight. Oversight legislation that's passed, so that you can review it in committee to see what's working and what isn't, and be willing to try and either eliminate or improve or change it in such a way. So yes, those are things, I think there are very few elected officials, well not officials, elected representatives in the Congresses or in the state legislatures that would resign as such. You might not be re-elected, which I think is the way to handle it if you don't like the way your representative is voting. But I think on the appointed level, if a president's can, I can remember when Cyrus Vance resigned because of, at the time of the Iranian, you're too young to remember, but. I don't know who Cyrus Vance was. Secretary of State at the time of the Iranian hostages being held, and he objected to the policies of President Carter. And so, but that's rare, and the question always is, would you do better staying and trying to make it work or resign at protests? But that's where I think at the cabinet level, it would be more likely. Yeah, I think within an administration, it is a very interesting question. We have pretty much, I think, in administrations that work well, a spirit of it's a team. You argue your position in the team, and if you lose, then you support the policy. And in a sense, it depends how important it is. If, and the leak question has come up a lot recently in connection with Iraq. Leaks aren't always handled well, but I think occasionally the moment to leak comes, the Pentagon Papers probably were a very useful set of documents to get out into the public domain, and those who did it paid the price. But I'm glad they did. But those occasions come rather rarely. A lot of leaking, unfortunately, isn't concerned with the right policy. It's more concerned with turf battles. Those guys didn't do this right, we did it right. That sort of thing, which is unfortunate. So I think it depends on how important it is, but in general, I think you don't have a well-run government if people can't trust their colleagues to keep a secret, and if people don't feel that they have to support the policy unless it's a life and death matter after you've had your say and you've lost.