 policy and I'm delighted to welcome all of you here this afternoon on behalf of the Ford School and the International Policy Center. It's a great honor to have Senator Chuck Hagel with us in Ann Arbor to deliver the Ford School's 2009 City Group Foundation lecture. Just last week we were very pleased to welcome Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman to campus and for us to have two such prominent visitors within a week of each other has just been wonderfully exciting and we're again thrilled to welcome many of you back to join us. The City Group Foundation lecture series was made possible by a gift from the foundation several years ago in honor of President Gerald R. Ford and we're extremely grateful for the foundation's generous gift which enables us to bring such distinguished policy thinkers and leaders to our campus. Senator Hagel is one of the nation's most important and influential voices on international affairs and on foreign policy. He's currently a distinguished professor at Georgetown University and the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He is also chairman of the Atlantic Council and a member of the Secretary of Defense's Defense Policy Board. He's the author of a recently published book called America Our Next Chapter. Senator Hagel stepped down from the United States Senate in January of 2009 after serving two terms representing the state of Nebraska. While in the Senate he was a senior member of three key committees. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Banking Housing and Urban Affairs, and Intelligence. Before running for Senate he had a very successful career in the private sector. He was president of McCarthy and Company, an investment banking company in Omaha, Nebraska, and in the mid-1980s he co-founded Vanguard Cellular Systems, a publicly traded corporation. Senator Hagel's thinking about foreign policy has been informed by his own combat service in Vietnam, where as a 21-year-old enlisted man he spent the year of the Tet Offensive leading an infantry squad and he earned two purple hearts during this time in Vietnam. Throughout his career in public service, Senator Hagel's voice has come to represent the sort of politician who can reach across the aisle. His time in the Senate and his work since has been characterized by civility, moderation, pragmatism, and a non-ideological approach that enables him to forge partnerships on issues that matter to American lives. He's also been very generous with his time for us already and we're very grateful to him for what I understand was a lively and informative discussion with some of our students. I couldn't be more pleased to welcome Senator Chuck Hagel to the podium. Thank you. Susan, thank you. I am grateful for an opportunity to be here. I want to thank Citi Group as you have already noted in your introductory remarks. Of course, the University of Michigan and the Ford School. I know it probably wasn't a simple or easy suggestion to take seriously that you would invite a cornhusker to this great state, this great university. Although we do have a couple of things in common. One is Jerry Ford. Many of you know that he was born in Nebraska. We take some credit for shaping him, molding him. He picked up his bad habits in Michigan. But nonetheless, we're as proud of Jerry Ford in Nebraska as you are in Michigan. We also share another common interest and that is that we were the college football national champions in 1997, which we shared. I know you believe we were not worthy of that recognition. But nonetheless, those who were far wiser than any of us made that selection. And I recall getting on a plane at Andrews Air Force Base at about six o'clock in the morning after the polls had come out. And those polls had suggested there was a split in the two champions. One pole giving Michigan the national championship and the other Nebraska. And I was with then your junior senator, Spence Abraham. And he did not speak to me the entire way we were, I think on our way to China. But nonetheless, I did what I could and acted in a rather civil way. Not that he didn't, but nonetheless, you try to inform your colleagues as best you can. I want to particularly thank the students who are here. Not just because you are here, but more as to why you are here, your purpose. And it has nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with you as you are preparing yourselves. And you are absorbing not just what great institutions have to offer like this institution. But you are widening your horizons and you are widening your lens as to engaging in a new dynamic challenging world. And I, after this afternoon's opportunity to spend some time with some of the students, am fortified in my recognition of once again, of this generation. For you will inherit as probably an exciting time in the world for mankind as there has ever been. Not without problems, not without significant challenges. But you will have an amazing capacity to deal with those challenges and truly make a better world for all people. I also want to recognize the two senators from Michigan. Carl Levin and I have over the years forged a very strong relationship. As you know, your senior senator is the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He presides over that committee at a particularly important time in our country and in the world. And I know the president, the president's team will continue to rely on Senator Levin very much. I've always appreciated Carl Levin's style, his outreach, his, as you term, civility. He has always been the kind of senator we need more of. I'm going to talk about that in general when I address President Ford in more specific terms here in a moment. Your junior senator has been adjusting very well to a pretty fast pace over the last couple of years. You have two United States senators, in my opinion, although they are not of the same party I am, that you can be very proud of. They work hard. They know the issues. They're informed. They do what they believe is right for their state and their country. And I don't know how much more you can ask of your public officials, and they conduct themselves. They conduct themselves in a way that you can be proud of. I want to begin my thoughts today with a Gerald Ford quote. And I came across this quote as I was finishing a book that I read twice. It was a paperback. And many of you, I suspect, have read it. It's called 31 Days. And it is about the 31 Days from the time Vice President Gerald R. Ford assumed office, assumed the presidency, and when he pardoned Richard Nixon. That 31 Days is quite instructive. And if you've not read this book, you should read it. It's quick reading. But it tells you an awful lot about this man called Ford. It tells you about what he put as first on his agenda of priorities, how he saw his job, but also, and more importantly, how he saw himself. And we all know each of us in our lives, and our students here will know this more and more as they ascend more and more responsibilities. The central dynamic of anything in life is being true to oneself. You compete with yourself. You don't compete with anybody else. There is competition. But in the end, you compete with yourself. And you answer to yourself. And in the end, when you take an inventory of your life and what you've done, what you've not done, the mistakes you've made, the right decisions you've made, it is all about you. And you and only you are accountable. We can make excuses. We can blame other people, influences and forces outside of our control. But that's life. That's life. But this man from Grand Rapids was particularly instructive on two principal areas of what I've always believed to be the two indispensable requisites for leadership, the two indispensable requisites for life. And they are character and courage. And without those two qualities, you really don't have much. And I don't believe you've got much at all in a leader if that leader does not possess both of those qualities. And I'm going to read just a very brief quote from the book on what Ford said about his decision to pardon Nixon. And it is, of course, a very small part of the prelude that leads up to the last chapter. But it's instructive, as I said, about the man. And this is the quote, As president, my primary concern must always be the greatest good of all the people of the United States who serve and I am. As a man, my first consideration is to be true to my own convictions and my own conscience. End of quote. Well, I think that says an awful lot about Gerald Ford. And he, in fact, lived that. He didn't just say that. It wasn't an excuse. And because of that action he took, and historians are still working through that, and historians will still be writing about that in, I suspect, in 50 years, and everyone has their own opinion on that, whether that was the right thing or the wrong thing. But he fully appreciated what he had said in motion when he did that. It was very unlikely that he was ever going to be elected president of the United States. And he recognized that. He could have deferred it. He could have let it go to trial. He could have maneuvered to after an election to insulate himself on that. But he didn't do that. He hit it straight on, straight up, and honestly. And again, you'll make your own decisions, come to your own conclusions on whether it was a right decision or not. I believe it was a right decision. Not for Richard Nixon, but for the country. And because in the end, Gerald Ford said, you have to be true to your own convictions and your own conscience. And that's the way he saw it, knowing full well the consequences that were coming. In a world that we live in today, which is as complicated, as interconnected, as combustible, as it's ever been, with very little margin of error, a world of six and a half billion people soon to arrive at eight billion, character and courage, and why studied leadership are required more than I suspect any time in the history of man. Now, I haven't been around for all of it. But even as a United States Senator, I read occasionally. And I don't know of a time quite like this time. This is a time that requires Ford's statesmanship like never before. This requires a weaving into our process, into our politics, into our decision-making, into our national character, into our leadership, into the optics that the world sees of us, forms an opinion of us based on their optics. Not our optics looking out, but reversing those optics. And so people of the world look at us and say, what kind of a country is this? We have great issues to define. We have great issues to settle. We are engaged in great debate today, over two critically important issues. One is the future of health care. You will decide where you come down on this, as you should. But make no mistake, this is one of those issues that has very significant long-term consequences. If for no other reason, there are entitlement programs in this country called Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, that are essentially unfunded and will go unfunded. And for these young students sitting out here today, they will be required to finance these systems. And the latest GAO numbers over the next 75 years on these three programs alone, the unfunded liabilities that those programs represent, they are now in law. We are obligated, as citizens, as a government, to fund those programs. If no more programs, new programs are in place, over $50 trillion in unfunded liabilities is what those three programs represent. Now that means that we have obligations of over $50 trillion over the next 75 years that we don't know how we're going to pay for. We don't know where the money is coming from. Health care is the core of that. So this is a big debate. This is an important debate. And if we would have had in the middle of this debate, as it starts to wind down, a Jerry Ford, someone who was always focused on building a consensus to government, building a consensus to reach an objective, there are partisan differences, philosophical differences, there should be. There should be alternatives, and you debate those out. But you do it with a certain responsibility, knowing that you need to arrive at an objective at some point. Some consensus must be built. That means some compromise must be built. The pressures that are now on institutions of self-governance are immense. Those pressures are more significant than at any time in the I am sure in the history of man. And those pressures come from the outside. There are political pressures. There are uncontrollable pressures. There are media pressures. There are pressures that come on leaders and on issues and on events from every side. All politicians, all leaders, leaders of universities, leaders of any institutions have so much capital. You have so much capital that you will use to lead. Because if you're leading, you're not going to have agreement on every issue all the time. And there will be those who will question your leadership or your decisions. And that's okay. But that political capital is finite. You use it up. So today, as we see the institutions of self-governance try to find a solution or at least some accommodation or some resolution to some of these great issues, we are finding that we are essentially paralyzed. It is a raw partisan political paralysis that has struck our system. Whose fault is it? Well, it's everyone's fault. It's a Democrat's fault. It's a Republican's fault. It's our citizen's fault. It's not the fault of the system. It's not the fault of the process. It's our fault. Leadership does matter. Leadership matters. And at a time when our nation in the world requires steady, strong, wise leadership, I fear we are failing ourselves as we see a political system constantly debased and defined down to the lowest common denominator of negative political campaigning. The leaders, the politicians have to take responsibility for that. Those running for office, the candidates need to take responsibility for that. It's not good enough to say, well, gee, I didn't know my television guys were going to put those ads on against my opponent. I didn't know that. Come on. Of course you did. Accountability. Responsibility. We have drifted, I fear, in a way that we have come loose of our moorings in a standard of expectation in our leaders. Jerry Ford never let that happen. He never let that happen. Now, Jerry Ford was not perfect. No one, I've ever met is. We all make mistakes. These are big issues. You can't defer the big issues. You can't study them and then come back in a year or two and say, well, maybe we'll try this. Second big issue that's going on today is President Obama and his national security teams analysis of Afghanistan. What should we do? It is my sense that what's going on now is the wisest, the most responsible course of action. If for no other reason, then it's critically important to question assumptions. What are the assumptions here? Is this a campaign against terrorism, against insurgency? Is it counterinsurgency, counterterrorism? Is it nation building across southern Asia? How do we factor in Pakistan? Which surely is connected to anything that happens in Afghanistan and certainly the future of Afghanistan. What real threat does that present to us? Is the smart, wise way to do that, to bog down large armies in historically complicated areas of the world, or not? The point being to review your reference points, review your larger frame of reference as to why we're there. Today, marks the 8th anniversary of our invasion of Afghanistan. Within six months, our time in Afghanistan will surpass the two longest wars America has been in. Vietnam has been the longest, the American Revolution was the second, right now, Afghanistan's third. In six months, Afghanistan will be the longest. That may be right, it may be wrong, but where we are is where we are. So the President taking time to try to work through this, to try to find the best solution for our interests and all the collateral interests that always encompass these, our role in the world, how people see us in the world, the region, this is a tough area of the world. On one side of Afghanistan, you have Iran, the other side you have Pakistan. It's the convergence of three nuclear powers, all along the same border with Iran emerging as a power, a nuclear power. This is very dangerous, obviously. And to take time and work through this, in my opinion, is the right thing to do. But this analysis and this working through the process cannot be done without some consensus among our leaders, Democrats, Republicans, independence, that we have a common goal, we have a common possibility. We have a common objective. And that is to find some consensus as to where we go in this effort. And when we debase a system and we minimize the importance of a political process and we lock ourselves into cul-de-sacs of raw partisanship that both sides, the right, the left, that essentially have dominated the two parties in the process over the years say, no, there is no compromise. And you see the battle lines being drawn now in the Congress of the United States essentially between the two parties on this issue of whether more troops are needed or less troops needed or where do we go. That's not the way you fix a problem. You can't fix a problem when you destroy the process. I wrote in on the plane this morning with Tom Friedman. He was going to Grand Rapids. I'm glad you didn't go. I'm glad you stayed here. He was speaking in Grand Rapids this afternoon, and I think all of you know who Tom Friedman is. If you follow his columns in the New York Times you have probably noted that over the last month he has written three columns on exactly what I'm talking about. And we talked about that on the plane ride in to Detroit. And just to prove my veracity since I once was a politician so there was some question about that, I produced a couple of copies of his column to in fact show him that I was intending to reference him in the subject matter of those columns. And we had a long talk about it. And as Friedman is around the world and I think one of the best thinkers in the business today and you can't be a good writer without being a good thinker his contributions continue to become important as others, what David Brooks for example, the conservative voice on the op-ed page of the New York Times this weekend talked about this issue as well. He talked about it in a more narrowly focused area of talk radio that the talk radio people consume a certain amount of that airtime on just continually ripping down the individuals. Now I've always thought that these talk radio people are so brilliant with all the answers that it's unfortunate they don't run for president themselves or not to deprive America of their great leadership because they are so smart. But I I've never found one that actually does that. They're good at criticizing everyone else and as I said debasing the man or the woman who actually as Teddy Roosevelt once talked about who actually is willing to subject themselves to the arena. It's not easy to run for office it's not easy to be a leader of any institution but much credit should go to those who are willing to expose themselves and put themselves out on a firing line and take the criticism and take the hits and it's easy for the other guy to stand out of the arena and point fingers and make fun of it that's not how we change the world. This world that Jerry Ford helped produce his generation and his service to his country anchored much by his time here at the University of Mission as he developed traits and characteristics and expectations of his country and his system and of himself World War II and then went into elected office public service and the House representatives and then Vice President he in his generation essentially built a new world order after World War II and that World War II post-World War II world that world order was built around what I refer to as coalitions of common interests they built institutions all imperfect, all flawed but they built institutions that were anchored by and centered around common interests United Nations NATO General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade which is now WTO IMF World Bank dozens of multi lateral development institutions, banks all built around that common premise of you define your relationships based on your common interests you do not, you cannot define relationships based on differences if for no other reason and those differences and we have differences and we're going to continue to have differences you will never ever get to a point where you can resolve the differences if there's no relationship based on some common interest if there's not a platform high enough up to deal with those differences those great leaders after World War II which Jerry Ford was one of them understood that understood very very well and that world order worked better than any world order for that period of time with more people on the face of the earth than ever before now we are over 60 years past the time that world order was structured institutions must be relevant leaders must be relevant you must be relevant to the challenges, to the issues to the realities of your day and so there is always a recalibration of leadership, of institutions to make those institutions and that leadership relevant to those challenges, to those threats NATO is a very good example after the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1989 and everything that came as a result the question was why do we need NATO there is no longer a threat of Russian tanks rumbling down the folder gap in Germany what's the point as well disband NATO no more threats in the world well we've now come to understand that wasn't quite the case really throughout history never has been the case there's always been a threat and there'll be more threats and there'll be threats that these young students will be dealing with that all of us sitting here today can't not yet conceive just as I suspect most people in 1989 1999-91 didn't think a lot about terrorism didn't think about the insidiousness of that extremism what that does to malign religion and use the good things in the world to manipulate people for an evil end but we know it's happening we know it's real there are people out in the world today that want to destroy civilizations or societies total intolerance that's real it's not manufacturing and what again we're doing today in Washington is trying to figure out what the smartest way to do this to deal with this but what Jerry Ford and his generation also taught us is you can't do this alone there isn't a challenge that faces mankind today in the United States in every state in every country every group of people that is not interconnected every challenge that faces us take the inventory proliferation of weapons of mass destruction pandemic health risk swine flu we don't know where that goes swine flu is just a blip as to what could happen in the world they don't know any boundaries environmental issues the need for six and a half billion people to have water to have protein food energy extremism intolerance we need not look beyond the current situation as we work our way out of the worst global global financial crisis since the great depression it washed over everyone it started here basically but it hit everybody there was not a country not a person in the world by this global financial crisis so we are now all citizens, truly citizens of the world as well as citizens of our countries and there's always going to be a permissible false choice in this in that somehow you give up your sovereignty or you give up your American standards or your American so called values if you want to be part of that global community no not at all but at the choice never was the choice the reality is we will I suspect for some time to come I don't know for how long we will still all be part of a global community of nation states of boundaries of sovereign countries but also we will all be part of a larger component of interconnected interest that only those interconnected institutions can deal with these great issues because there are no boundaries and it affects us all in the same way all in the same way Ford also understood that the basic common denominator values of all people don't change now I have not been to every country in the world I've been to a lot of I've met a lot of leaders and I have yet to ever meet a group of people and you can catalog it measure it by religion by ethnicity, by region by culture, by societies by tribes to find that one of those groups loves their family more than the other groups or one of those groups has the high road of morality the rest of Maremore no the fact is all people have the same kind of human instincts about each other now they manifest it differently African tribes and their traditions certainly manifest their affections and their realities and their leadership of their communities differently than we do as a democracy in the United States but that doesn't change the basic fact that they dismiss the human dynamics of respecting their elders respecting their people their rights issues women's rights that are different than what we believe and we must understand that in order to deal with all these differences and accommodate these differences that we have to show those same common denominator elements of what we value most respect for others because we we appreciate and certainly demand respect your opinion is as good as my opinion you're no better than I am I'm no better than you are just basic tenets of civilized intercourse we impose our values, our standards our realities, our former government around the world, it will not work never has worked and so as all these people are elbowing each other in the world today for these resources and how are they going to survive and how are these leaders of China and India and other emerging countries going to provide for their people and our standards are probably as high here in the United States our expectations of our job market expectations for our young people expectations from our government and how are we going to accommodate all that with all these other issues well it's wise, steady, careful leadership and make no mistake the world does value what we say don't always agree but the world is also watching us very carefully there was a time certainly for the first 50 years after World War II when the United States did not have to be particularly cognizant of a reversal of all optics our world pretty much was because we were the richest, most powerful country on earth no one was close to us other than the Soviet Union having more nuclear missiles than us but everyone was fairly confident that insanity would not prevail on either side that that nuclear balance of power that deterrent value of nuclear weapons was what it was but the fact is there isn't anybody in the world that did not understand that the United States was the most dominant powerful nation on earth and so we really didn't have to care much about the optics on the other side our world was through our optics through our lens how did it affect us that's a different world today but again the false choice is it doesn't mean we're going to be weaker it doesn't mean we have to lose power because China is ascending into a significant power we're not going to stop that the smart way to work with China or any other country is to find partnerships we want China to do well we want India to do well we want other nations to do well if they define their conduct and behavior on international standards and that's why it's always good to have them in these institutions like the WTO and others organizations like that these countries represent markets and the more these countries prosper the more they are invested in their own country the more they're invested in peace and prosperity well to all of us which again Jerry Ford understood very clearly is instability it's not terrorism we'll deal with terrorism it's instability when the world is unstable when people are locked into cycles of despair and hopelessness and there is no dignity then there isn't much and people are capable of doing a lot of different things and they are easy prey for those who would use these other forms of governance of philosophy of religion to turn that on organized society and Ford understood that the world is defining itself today in a way that we've never ever seen before the rate of change in the world that's going on today is unprecedented you don't need to go much beyond just take the internet how the internet has changed the lives of everyone and I don't believe we're even close to taking this where it's going to go it certainly has changed politics look what Barack Obama did with the internet the internet is now in a position to replace much of the functions function and many of the functions of political parties you can raise money on the internet you can define your candidacy on the internet you can communicate on the internet you can coordinate on the internet you can do everything on the internet you needed a political party to do that you don't need that necessarily anymore Barack Obama took the democratic nomination away from Hillary Clinton using those techniques as much as anything else this is a powerful, powerful new tool now the bad guys know that too but that's not new the advancement of technology for man is out there for good guys to use and bad guys we just have to be smarter about it all these things are changing the world order that we can't control the G7 there is no G7 anymore now it's what? G20 why is there a G20 and no longer a G7? don't like each other? I don't think so the reason there's a G20 is because the 20 largest economies in the world are now the economies that are in the best position to deal with these great issues and even the largest 20 economies in the world aren't big enough to deal with these great challenges so we are sailing into a different kind of world than we've ever been in before that does not mean that we somehow lose our ability to lead the world because there is no country out there we take the Middle East the Israeli-Palestinian issue take any big issue uncertainty of North Korea or of Iran without the United States leadership there will be no prospect for resolution now we can't impose peace in the Middle East we can't impose anything but we can lead we can bring consensus just what I was talking about earlier about in the Congress of the United States to make it better accessible, affordable quality healthcare for all our people worthy cause I think I don't know if anybody would disagree with that these are the kind of things that we now have to frame up as responsibilities of our government of our leaders and I think it is going to take a higher standard of expectation for our leaders what we demand from our leaders our citizens have to also take some responsibility for this we can't just blame it on the politicians politics reflects society politics doesn't lead it reflects society politics and politicians respond we react how well we react and how well we respond and how well we lead the process that we use and if you destroy that process then there is no road map there is no way to fix problems because the result is chaos the result is is not being able to structure a system to define the problem and then fix the problem well I want to before we get to questions because I am especially interested in hearing from our students I want to make one more general comment the world that we live in today whether you like this world or not is the world that we have and with all the challenges with all the facilities and all the real threats there is another element of this larger frame of reference that occasionally gets missed and that is the capacity that we have to not just deal with these great challenges but to actually do something about them I don't know if there has ever been a time in history I doubt it when one nation productivity technology culture, society every measurement of a country every measurement of a society wealth resources never has there been one country with so much capacity to do so much good for so many the only limitation we have is ourselves if we are not wise enough to fulfill that potential history will mark us as maybe the greatest failure ever and I think of the 3,500 votes that I cast in the United States Senate in my 12 years I didn't cast a vote or Jerry Ford's 25 years in the House of Representatives I didn't cast one vote for today that day that I voted I certainly didn't cast a vote for yesterday everything was about tomorrow we can control to some extent tomorrow we can define to some extent tomorrow we can do something about tomorrow and with all these resources and all this capacity we are limited only by ourselves and this is not just a political issue this is not just a political leadership issue every institution in this country you start with the great universities like this one is in this school that helps develop these young minds but more importantly helps promote and instill the energies and the passions and the beliefs and the decency of these young people to go out and make a better world because after all that's what public service is about there's no other way to define it describe public service than making a better world for all people period that's it all those tools that we have to do that are right here right here and that's the most important part of where we go with all the issues that I talked about and you know about all the things that we've got in front of us these are all man made these are all man made man made problems have man made solutions things that God did nature does don't always have an easy quick man made solution but we made the problem we can fix it and that's where we are and that's the great challenge I think that history will record when history starts to reflect on this time and I don't know of anyone who has been more integral or central to setting a standard for our country by his leadership by his character, by his courage by who he was by the fabric that he helped weave in this country that Gerald R. Ford and for that reason and many more I am particularly proud that I would be invited today to share some thoughts with you and to certainly recognize what President Ford meant to all of us and I also want to say to the instructors and our teachers professors which some now classify me in that group I'm certainly truly unworthy of that but in fact my brother Tom who was in Vietnam with me in 1968 is a real professor if you consider law school professors legitimate but I was just joking he thinks I have set back American education by generations by being allowed to have anything to do with young people in classrooms but he's always been quite envious of me like that or sisters but I want to thank the teachers, the professors who are at this every day in the Chinese culture the greatest profession of all is teaching and why is that well this wonderful 5000 year culture of the Chinese understood long ago that teachers influence the world and the outcome and personalities and people more than any other group of people except parents and in many cases the teachers are more important than the parents unfortunately when young people don't have parents or parents that don't pay attention it is the teacher that we look to it is the teacher that we always rely on it is the teacher that we take for granted so along with our students and our administrators and our teachers for what you continue to do and especially do at this school thank you very much thank you very much Senator Senator Hegel has graciously agreed to take some questions I would like to invite people who would like to ask questions if they could come to the microphone that's in the center aisle and I'd also like to ask people if they could be brief so that we can allow more of you to be able to thank you and I'll be brief with my answers Senator thank you for coming my name is John Slumrod I'm a senior here in 1997 you were obviously co-sponsor of the Bird Hegel resolution in the Senate which correct me if I'm wrong but basically said that the US should not enter an international agreement on climate change if other countries particularly China and India don't have their own restrictions thank you the Bird Hegel resolution which was passed in August of 1997 which you correctly note that I was the co-sponsor of with Bob Bird from West Virginia said two things you mentioned one of them and that is that the Senate is on record saying that it would not ratify any environmental treaty if it did two things but all nations of the world in addressing this in their own way in some way partly that was a result of geologic China now is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world surpassed the United States how in the world were we going to get to a resolution if it was global and the environment if we didn't ask all nations to participate second part of that resolution was economic damage to the economy do you know what the vote was on that resolution 95 to 0 yes 95 to 0 and I was in Kyoto at the time and when they voted on it Vice President Gore came in and signed it but President Clinton never submitted it to the Senate and unfortunately what happened with it the reason he didn't submit it because he knew that the Senate 95 to 0 was on record saying that they'd vote against it but I always thought there was a little dishonesty in that and what happened was because if you believed in something you signed it why wouldn't you bring it forward to the United States Senate where constitutionally we had the responsibility to debate it at least debate it let the American people hear both sides of this but we never saw that happen unfortunately what happened in 2000 when you had Bush and Gore running is Bush took a very strong position in anti-Kyoto and of course Gore was the one who signed Kyoto and therefore there was no middle ground or consensus to well where do we go from here and unfortunately it has cost us time it has cost us credibility I was asking the spring of 2001 with the new Bush administration to come brief the President, the Vice President on what my thoughts were on what should be the position of the new Bush administration on an environmental protocol and what I did and the President wasn't there the Vice President was there and I think all the cabinet was there what I did say in about a 45 minute briefing to the cabinet was I thought the the Bush administration should come forward with an alternative environmental proposal that they could table at the UN General Assembly in September of 2001 well we know what got in the way partly it was September 11th, 2001 but I don't believe the Bush administration ever had any any intention to go forward certainly it didn't happen in 8 years now there were pieces that they did but never a larger context of a treaty and the reason I felt strongly about that because first I thought we the United States did have some obligations and responsibility in this area and that we couldn't just walk away and say well we don't like that one and then never hear from us again that was hurting us terribly with our allies around the world and it was not in our interest to do nothing so that's a little bit of an embroidered part of where we are I still believe today that the Kyoto Protocol didn't work, doesn't work, would never work and I hope we'll be able to come up with something in Copenhagen in December that is far more realistic because we do need to do something about this thank you Senator Hagel thank you very much for coming today you talked a lot about partisanship in Washington and how people who are more bipartisan who are willing to perform compromises and work across the aisle with the recent death of Senator Kennedy we heard a lot of commentators talk about he was the last senator to represent the older age of the Senate where we had a lot of that bipartisan compromise so my question to you is why do you believe United States Congress Washington in general has become hyper-partisan do you think we can return to an age of bipartisanship and compromise well let me start with Senator Kennedy Senator Kennedy represents a tremendous loss for the institution of the United States Senate regardless of whether you agree with him or not whether you like him or not that's irrelevant this is a man who believed in the institution who always tried to make the institution better and he strengthened the institution he read Alexander Hamilton's papers and you bright students I'm sure have all read the Federalist Papers maybe three or four times the Federalist Papers are the implementing documents of the Constitution you all know that and especially two or three of them I think 89, 87, 88 or something like that are about the Senate how should the Senate work why is there a Senate you all know the basics on why we have a Senate Kennedy he strongly believed in the value of that institution within the walls of what goes on that no one person was bigger than the institution no one president is bigger than America no one individual is bigger than anything you remember the great de Gaulle quote graveyards are full of indispensable men that's it and he's a great loss Kennedy is to this country I think too by the way I left the Senate in January this year with some of those kind of people John Warner World War II generation Pete Domenici some of those who really understood the institution and the responsibilities of the institution and responsibilities as us as custodians and fleeting stewards of the institution I do think it's generational I do think it's generational we only have about three maybe World War II veterans left in the Senate incidentally both from Hawaii well no we got three and you can see the difference in attitude in thinking about how they frame up issues and where we should go and I think we'll get back to that I think we're living through one of those blips in history a very narrow partisan band of thinking that's brutal that's nasty that's also I think much instigated by the talk shows that I heard that I mentioned everything is about confrontation the news channels the the so-called news shows most of them have turned into just high drama entertainment very few real news programs maybe the Lair hour probably as much news as any of them all these things have crowded in on what I was referring to institutions of self-governance I think we will come out of this and I think we'll come out of it because of your generation I really do your generation has a wider band of understanding that doesn't necessarily mean you're smarter you're better but you've been conditioned differently and your width is much wider than any generation by many times over I've got a daughter who just started college this year son who's a junior in high school and I watch over the years how they've developed computers, internet, no big deal but they have been exposed themselves to both good and bad but incredible things that they just start with knowing that no generation ever has now that doesn't mean you won't squander it you might you could screw it all up I don't think you will I have great confidence in your generation that you will write it again but these are historical blips but again I go back to this last point we're living in a time when there's a little margin of error you can't recalibrate screwing up big decisions like you used to be able to you could make bad decisions and make mistakes and you'd have some time to self-correct the magic of America has been as much as any one thing in our constitution the ability to self-correct half of the people in this room 90 years ago could not vote women could not vote in America 90 years ago we fixed that through a constitutional amendment unless you were a white male landowner when this great republic was formed you didn't have all the rights anybody think that the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue would be there today without the Voting Rights Act Civil Rights Act of 1965 I doubt it we can self-correct without killing each other we can self-correct without going to the streets and having a revolution that's the magic of America as much as anything that's what we need to seize on using that self-correction process I think your generation will get it but it's a lost institution when we lose people like Kennedy and Warner and those people but that's life no indispensable men or women hello Senator Hagel thank you for coming based on what you were speaking before in regards to hyperpolarization the strict party lines that both sides of the aisle are starting to go down if you were to run again and I realize it's a very big if would you identify yourself or run more as a moderate Democrat as a conservative Democrat or as a moderate Republican I would run as Chuck Hagel I always have and I've been affiliated with the Republican Party philosophically when I first cast a vote as a young 21 year old sergeant sitting on top of a tank in the Macon Delta in 1968 my first vote I voted for Dick Nixon and for the Republican running for the Senate and the Republican running for the House in my district in Nebraska and I did that I suppose my father had died when I was in high school he was a World War II veteran but he followed politics I'm the oldest of four boys my father died when I was 16 he influenced my thinking I think in my grandfather did Republicans but I was just closer philosophically I thought to what I knew what the Republican Party or what I thought the Republican Party stayed for versus the Democratic Party I mean that's what parties are they're large philosophical statements about the role of government no more no less and I identified myself as a Republican caucus with Republicans voted my voting record would be if you go back and look at my 3,500 votes it would be clearly I think a Republican voting record so called as far as the philosophical lineup but I crossed the aisle many times and I got the scars to prove it but I was never conflicted by that so if I'd run again I'd run on my record I'd run on who I am and that's the way I'd do it reading what you said earlier about your beliefs and people have to look inside and are only accountable to themselves and if environmental factors are just part of life do you think that's a uniquely American idea or does it exist internationally as well what idea is that the idea that you can pull yourself up by the bootstrap I don't know I'm not a sociologist anthropologist or any otherologist I'm not an expert on anything I'm a former senator I think there is some uniqueness that can be attributed to our system to our country you can make of yourself anything you want to make of yourself within the boundaries of your God given talents I've hired many many people in my life as many of you have in many jobs many capacities the one attribute that I have always found that's most important when you're hiring someone is attitude and you give me a mediocre student or an average thinker with the right attitude and I'll take that person because if you've got the right attitude you can do about anything I've seen incredible stories as you all have I bet there are a lot of them right here of the right attitude can transform you can transform things the right attitude can't prevail over and I think there is some Americanism in that I don't think we invented that I mean there are other stories around the world of people I see every day whether you go to Africa whether you go to Asia incredible stories about individuals pulling themselves up in very severe situations but I think that we can take some credit for that and I'll tell you for no other reason we have a system that allows that now the fact is we all know this we're all not born equal I mean I'm sorry but we aren't height, weight color, brains rich, poor Michigan, Nebraska, New York and I acknowledge that I got an unfair advantage in life being from Nebraska but we all don't have that so we each start at our own starting gate our own way and I don't know that person in my life and I'm 63 that there has not been some tragedy something happened to that person or his family or her family everybody gets a share of this and I know it's easy to say well that person's lucky that person's got it all that person was born rich he's never had to do anything well some people are but in the end you can take anybody and a tragedy with your children with whatever it's what you do the opportunity you have to get above that and prevail over that and America is I think unique in that sense that we have a system that allows you to do that public education probably has been as important as any one thing in the development of this country and allowing poor people people of all kinds of races and creeds some equality to get ahead in life a good public education system and now other countries have good public education too but our country has been consistently good and I know there are variations in that big city schools a lot of them we've got problems in Washington DC huge problems New York does I know that we've got problems but just the fact if you've got the right attitude for your life and you feel it strong enough you can do it you really can do it what's your name Josh Fangmire oh yes yes you look a lot better no I I think education has been helping you it's this Michigan client thank you great to see you again thank you my question is regards to last described your calculations nice to see you again too thanks for your good work I have to go back and look at your record and I want to talk to your teachers as well about this I didn't calculate anything and here's what I did I made a decision and John McCain is a very close friend I was co-chairman of his presidential campaign in 2000 no one I respect more than John McCain but John and I our view of the world the wars foreign policy the people that John had around him I just could not support that and John and I talked about our offices as you remember we're right next to each other our offices on the Florida Senate we're right next to each other I just couldn't honestly I suppose I would quote Jerry Ford quote you've got to follow your own convictions and your own conscience I mean I'm wrong but that was my conviction that was what I believed that it would have been wrong to do that for me I just I couldn't do it I couldn't agree with John a lot of this stuff and I thought the people around John were dangerous and I didn't want to see them in power now I did not endorse Obama because I told John and I told Obama this that I would not hurt him I was not going to go out and campaign against him and I would not endorse Obama Obama asked me to go to the Middle East with him I did he asked me over the last year and I got to know Obama very well the last four years we were in the foreign relations community together for advice I gave it to him I gave John advice if he asked for it I'd give it to him what I did then the political climate that political year last year is I just turned all my attention to what I thought was right for my country and what I could do to help make a better world and that's the way I handled it I was honest with both of them upfront with both of them told them both what the deal was and and I talked to the president vice president often I talked to the vice president Sunday night and so I have opportunities to weigh in they do ask my advice I suspect I have no influence nothing's new but at least they humor me and call me and ask me but that's why I did what I did thank you thank you for being here today couple of years ago you sponsored a bill for comprehensive immigration reform that got tabled if you were to attempt such a bill under the circumstances what would you do differently I'm sorry I didn't hear you talk about immigration reform bill yes and the question was if I was what if I so if you were to do this again under the circumstances how would you do differently well my immigration reform bill was I introduced the first comprehensive immigration reform bill with Tom when Dashel was the majority leader and then minority leader and we never could get any traction and then finally after unfortunately after Dashel was defeated I joined with Ted Kennedy and Barack Obama and Democrats and McCain and Mel Martinez a strong bipartisan group of senators and we actually passed the Hegel Martinez immigration reform bill with I think 64 votes you all know we have 100 senators 64 votes represents a rather significant bipartisan vote what happened though I thought it was a good bill what year were you an intern in my office okay this was right around that time you remember this well the House of Representatives passed a bill that they said was immigration reform but it wasn't it was border security is really what it was border security is not immigration reform I mean you need border security of course any sovereign nation needs to secure their border and I didn't object any of that no one else did but to try to pass that off as immigration reform was complete folly was dishonest when this has ever happened that I'm aware of at least in modern times so you had two different bills big important issue the speaker of the House then Dennis Haster refused to call a conference of the two bills and that's the way as you all know you reconcile the differences between House and Senate bills the speaker refused to call a conference so the congress plays out immigration reform is dead and I really thought that was such an irresponsible thing to do and incidentally as you know President Bush was very much out front on this immigration reform bill in fact he was on the other side of the Republican Party on this on this you know and I was one of the first supporters of what he wanted to do and first sponsor of the conference bill I brought him to Omaha I remember on this but the Republican Party was against their own president on this but that's that's what happened if I was there today I'd come back again and try to do it put something back together I would expect that with the Democrats controlling the House and the Senate and Obama knowing where he is because he was a co-sponsor of my bill that next year they may try to move something on immigration reform obviously this year there's not much time left this year and they've got a couple of other fairly significant issues that they're dealing with thank you about establishing common ground and I was wondering how do you go about that and what so often seems a polarized society for instance we have so many governments that seem uninterested in doing so well I think it's like anything when you're trying to develop a relationship with someone or institutions whatever the situation when you talk about common ground common interests you find what is important to the other person and you try to blend that priority or priorities of the other person with your priorities and with this guy's priorities and this lady's priorities and so on and so on and you can find those kind of things healthcare my goodness next to water and food and oxygen I don't know what is more common ground than healthcare for everybody richer poor everybody gets something I mean none of us are going to live forever I don't think there's always something and I don't know really other than those three things I mentioned what's more common ground than healthcare and it ought to be at least simple enough to move forward on trying to figure this thing out identifying that common ground so you find those bands of interests and commonality that you can blend together that Jerry Ford did so skillfully in his years in the house and you try to make that work it will be imperfect there is some sanding down and it's never exactly the way you want I've never saw a bill ever come out of the committee I was on or in the Senate that I voted for or voted against that was in my mind 100% ideal that I could not improve on that bill I just never saw one that doesn't mean that I'm right it doesn't mean I would have improved maybe I would have made it worse but in my own mind if I had a chance to rewrite that bill I would have rewritten at least parts of every one so you've got to find that but I go back and answer the question over here about attitude if your attitude is wrong if your reference point is wrong if your intention is to use healthcare to destroy the other party or destroy the presidency of Barack Obama it's very unlikely you're going to find much consensus from people who want to use healthcare as some republican senators have said publicly that if we kill Obama on this and we destroy this and we defeat him that will drive a state through his political heart through his administration I just find that is about as irresponsible a thing that I can think of and I'd say a democrat republican doesn't mean you do us what are you there for in the search for someone to blame for the economic crisis a lot of people have put the blame on the CEOs with the golden parachutes pushing for deregulation and as a businessman to what extent do you think this is true and they do bear the blame well I think there's no question that the leaders of our financial service industry have to take a tremendous amount of responsibility for what happened and I think it's even debatable so do regulators in Washington so do all of us I mean I sat in the banking committee for 12 years and I watched this nonsense unfold that doesn't mean I have a better view or I'm smarter than anybody else but for example I watched the ratings agencies that rate the IPOs and rate the stocks for investors Moody's, S&P, so on come before our committee and I would ask this question more than once how can we or an investor have any confidence in your rating of a stock or a bond when you're getting millions of dollars in consulting fees and advisory fees from that same company that you're rating I don't think that's complicated to understand that maybe it is I don't think so that is as pure a conflict of interest as I can envision but the culture we allowed to develop we all did the media played with it the media was lazy the regulators were lazy the Bernie Madoff thing now we know the investigators looked at Madoff stuff and said wow maybe a little unorthodox it's fine my god how can you continue to do this there were so many people that were going to the enforcement division of the SEC this guy is up to something this is a clear fraudulent pyramid scheme that you got to do something well I don't know but he's a buddy of one of the many here and the financial service people certainly do and I probably would give them the edge on who I would put most responsibility on it'd be them and what is astounding to me and I know many of them and I'm on some advisory boards of some of these different companies none of the bad ones but how they are so disconnected so many of them from America when they can't understand why Americans upset why are Americans upset you know I said wait for most Americans this is not a complicated issue most Americans play by their rules they pay their taxes they work hard they try to raise their families they try to live a decent life and they have a couple of things that they like whether it's church synagogue music baseball bowling whatever it is and they see you guys in New York doing these obscene things the wealth is just obscene there's no other way to say it and then you crash the system and then these same decent people all over America have to bail you out with their tax dollars and you don't understand why people are upset now there's two issues here one is institutions and I I was there up until January and was in most of those meetings with Bernanke and all of them and I don't think Bernanke and Bush and Paulson and Geithner and Obama had any choice you had to save the institutions because if those financial service institutions went down that would collapse the entire financial system in the world I mean you talk about chaos and instability the other piece so one was the institutions the other piece were the individuals now a lot of these individuals are being picked off they're leaving and gone some are being indicted some will go to jail before this is all over and the law will catch justice will catch up with many of them just like when the Enron explosion occurred and WorldCom a lot of those guys are still in jail and on some of the baby bells these guys were buying these things on loading up leverage and debt and then just ripping everything apart and then selling off pieces just destroying the companies destroying people's lives and so yeah we're going through a very difficult part of this but I think what will come out of this and it will be difficult we will come out of it it's painful it's unfair to a lot of people but what will come out of it will be a better system a more responsible accountable system there will be a lot of people hurt that shouldn't be hurt and it will be unfair but in the end we will come out of it and it will be better and I talk about our young people here the students this will condition them this will frame their reference their point of reference and everything they do until they die this experience watching this experience watching what their parents went through and all the rest they will never forget this one of the reasons we talk about the greatest generation I mean that World War II generation they were defined by they are anchored by the Great Depression my mother my father went through it my mother was one of seven girls her dad had an old scrubby farm out in western Nebraska he lost it in the Depression I mean that's not an unusual story a lot of people had the same thing happening as my mother did my father had the same story but that conditioned them this group of young people will be conditioned by the same thing but thank you very much thank you very much Senator Hagel for your candor and sharing your insightful perspectives with us we appreciate it greatly I'd like to invite all of you to stay and join us for a reception that will be held right here in this room we actually have food and beverages on either side and I know there are some who did not get to ask questions but we have a more informal time to have some interaction so again thank you very much for joining us for our 2009 City Group lecture and thank you Senator Hagel