 My name is Erwin Shamarinsky, I'm with Dean of the Law School. I think my role this afternoon is to apologize for the room being warm. This is when after I came in, we're really good about having air conditioning in the winter and heat in the summer. But we do have fans and hopefully the room won't be too intolerable. This is a wonderful occasion for the Law School. This is the first annual and I hope to be meeting John and Mary Carrington Lecture. I'd like to begin by introducing you to John and Mary Carrington here in the front row. I'm very grateful for their generosity in providing for this lecture. Just a word about each of them, they had tremendously distinguished careers. John has been the CEO of five different companies. He's now the CEO of a company called WebSense, which focuses on computer security, some tremendous amount of volunteer and pro bono work, especially with the young president's organization. Mary Carrington is a very distinguished career as a lawyer, she's a general counsel of many companies. She has a real passion for women's issues, including serving on the women's leadership board of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and she's been wonderful in donating her time to many organizations, including helping us here at UCI Law School. And I say thanks to their generosity we're here today, and it was a wonderful occasion to hear from Fred Fielding. I could spend all of our next hour telling you the accomplishments and honors that Fred Fielding has received. I'll just briefly introduce him to you because it's a much longer biography in the program. Fred Fielding went to Gettysburg College in the University of Virginia Law School, and after that he had career in both public and private service of great distinction. Back when I think of somebody who could be a real role model for our students in terms of public service at Fred Fielding. He served as a deputy White House counsel during the Nixon administration. He was the White House counsel for five years during the Reagan administration, and there's again the White House counsel during the administration of George W. Bush. Between these stints of high level government service, he served in private practice. During all of this time he was often serving on government boards and commissions, and he's now a partner in the litigation group at Morgan Lewis. Please join me in welcoming Fred Fielding to the Law School. Mr. Fielding, to mark the occasion of this being the first John and Mary Carrington lecture, we have a plaque for you that says, acknowledgement of the honorable Fred Fielding delivering the inaugural Mary and John Carrington lecture. It's for this state. Well thank you very much. I guess I don't need to speak. Thank you. That's very special, and I appreciate it. Is my mic on? Okay. Wave if you can't hear me, please. But thank you. Thank you for the very generous words. Thank you. And thank you for inviting me here. It's an honor, and it really is a pleasure, and I must tell you, this is really an exciting place. I spent some time here after I landed until today and until now, and you're doing really exciting things. And so I guess at the outset, let me congratulate you, your dean and my host for your outstanding stewardship of this institution. It's new, but I must tell you it's been noticed by the profession and you've been able to attract a faculty that would be the envy of many law schools. So congratulations. I've been asked to speak today about public service and my experience of public service and the mysteries of Washington and political loyal and that sort of thing, but I must tell you my experience has been the trustee of an educational institution and from observation. If you really want to experience high drama of politics and you want to see the high dungeon of intrigue on many issues, try being a dean. So my congratulations to you, certainly sir. Also on my behalf and on yours, I'd like to thank the Carrington's very, very much. I think this is an honor to be delivering your inaugural address candidly and I think that your devotion to this school bespeaks of just what I'm talking about because obviously the Carrington's had many, many exposures to other educational institutions and for you to pick this one is outstanding for this one and certainly bespeaks of the confidence that you have in them. So thank you very much. When I was approached by my longtime friend Carolyn Beeson to present this lecture, she suggested that I fashion the remarks that we're talking about and discuss my experiences in public life and it was her thought that that would mean more to you and you'd enjoy it much more than my selection because I had a clever title called Coping with the Dormant Commerce Clause. But she seemed to think that plights and pleasures of public service might be a little more interesting to you, so we'll proceed. And at the outset, I really must say and I mean this sincerely, I've been very, very blessed in my professional career, my professional life and especially my personal journeys in public service and I've had the honor and the privilege, as just was mentioned, and the opportunity to directly serve three presidents over a period of 40 years. Each was a very different leader, very different era, facing very different challenges and although I will concentrate my remarks today on those experiences and how they relate to public service, but I also must tell you, I had a very unique opportunity a few years ago to be a commissioner on what is now known as the 9-11 Commission and I must tell you that that was probably the most rewarding and challenging public service experience I've had. We had to deal over a period of almost two years with the history and the origins of that tragic event and to discover its causes and define and craft possible solutions for issues that none of us thought but all of us have to live with now. So again, it's not just political appointees, there are other avenues of public service that are intriguing. People often refer to public service candidly as a great sacrifice. For lawyers, this is wonderful. You don't have to keep time records. You only have one client and you don't have to send out bills every month. Now, it certainly makes your financial situation more interesting, though. I guess I should say that. But exactly what is the role of counsel the president is what I'd like to discuss briefly with you. You should know that in Washington, there are all sorts of positions with cryptic titles. There are more special counsels, special advisors, special prosecutors in that city than you would want to know and by and large, you don't want them to know you either. But I must say that counsel the president sounds a little less threatening. Nevertheless, people in Washington have often, many years as they've been there, don't really understand what that office entails. Part of the reason for that is that it's an evolving office. I used to, when I first was in the Reagan administration, I described the job as an analogy to a legal air traffic controller. Then President Reagan fired all the traffic controllers. So I stopped that analogy. But in shorthand, the responsibilities are as broad and as consistent with the president's prerogatives and the president's authorities because that's your job is to help the president in fulfilling his constitutional obligations. And there's no statutory, unlike most federal positions, there's no statutory position that says counsel to the president of the United States. There are in every White House an allocation of assistance to the president. And so the press secretary is an assistant to the president. The chief of staff is an assistant to the president and so forth. And then each of those, the way it's set up these days, has their own constituent offices underneath. But all pointing to the cabinet, if you will, for the president or his assistants and you meet every day. The office of counsel to the president itself is relatively recent. The first one was in 1943 when Roosevelt decided he wanted one of his old friends from New York to come down and work with him and give them some advice. And he didn't know what to call him, so they finally ended up calling this the special counsel. He was the first one. And over 70 years it's varied in its title, its rank, and its importance depending on the president and the president's wishes because that's where you get your direction. And I think it's safe to say now that this office is now institutionalized since the Reagan administration. It kind of pulled together certain responsibilities that now are, even though there's no title counsel to the president, there are statutes, laws, and regulations that say such and such shall be handled by the counsel to the president. But as I noted, it differs with each president, the personality of the president, the prior relationship that you may or may not have had with the president, and also the relationship that he has with the attorney general. Because although counsel to the president is the counsel to the president, the attorney general is the chief legal officer of the United States, and they should not mix. They should not mix. But for instance, President John Kennedy, obviously his brother was the attorney general. I don't think there was many calls to the White House counsel's office during that period of time. But, and Johnson had three. And they each thought they were counsel to the president. Each had the same title, but there were three of them. So, as I say, it varies. In my case, the three presidents that I was privileged to work with, each were very different in their style, very, very different in the problems we faced. President Nixon's was a very structured staff. He had some very, very extraordinarily able people. And what history will someday uncover is the breadth of plans that the president had for the second term for reorganizing the government into very much more functional systems than that sort of thing. Of course, he opened door to China, but no one else could have done. But, by the same token, they also had Watergate. And the tragedy of that and the destruction that it that brought, not only to the people involved, but also to the natural psyche and to the people's really trust in their government that their government can do anything wrong. Because there, suddenly, you had Vietnam and then suddenly you were faced also with Watergate. And so there was a shaken public confidence that really is, I'm not sure we're over it yet, but by the same token, the Nixon administration was, as I say, that way. Ronald Reagan, I was there from the beginning. And as you know, you just heard that I went to the end of George W. Bush's administration. If you have a choice, start at the beginning. Don't pick it up at the end. But Reagan from the start, he's a great client. He organized his White House on policy operations and messaging. And it was very, very outstanding administration. It accomplished an awful lot. It had its ups and downs. It had an assassination attempt. It had all sorts of interesting economic fights by the same token up until the Iran Contra. It was pretty much an error scandal-free administration. I left seven months before Iran Contra and was accused of knowing it was coming. But I'm sorry I didn't. George W. Bush, I came in after he'd been in office for six years. We had just lost, the Republicans had just lost both houses of Congress and the House had announced that it was going to close down the White House with oversight, publicly announced it as a goal. And I think that's why they brought me in, because I had some experience and had dealt with both sides of the aisle as well. They had 9-11 during that administration. They had a war, and they also have a cyber war, which is tremendous and very, very invidious, and we're still fighting that. Anyway, he was a great client, extremely accessible. He was fun. He had a nickname for everybody. By the same token, unlike the rumors of President Reagan, he got in there really early. I used to get in at 6.30 in the morning because although he officially started at 7, he had this telephone by his desk in the Oval Office with a button that said Fred on it. And so if he pushed that button at 6.35 in the morning, you really wanted to be there, because that's what he did to start his day. Then he would start his formal day at 7 o'clock. So the size of the staff, just to fill it out for you, it depends again. Ronald Reagan, I think the most we ever had at one point when I was there was eight lawyers. The Clinton era when they had two counsel's offices during Clinton, one to handle the scandals and one to do the regular stuff. And the one that had the scandals had its own press secretary. So anyway, I'll leave that where it is. And again, the Bush administration, when I came in, I added a deputy, a formal deputy, because of the oversight load that we had. So we had to use a lot of manpower and womanpower to deal with those as well. As far as the functions of the counsel's office, just to give you a feel for this, there are, it's very broad as I said, but there are some fixed responsibilities that are consistent with the presidential obligations and the preservation of executive branch prerogatives. To give you an example, everyone knows about executive privilege. That varies between both administrations as to how it's important, and also it varies as to how much the president really is concerned about preserving executive branch prerogatives for his successors. Toward the end of the Clinton administration to give you a hypothetical, he was permitting and directing, for instance, his counsel, the president, to go up and testify before Congress, something that had never been done before. But again, then the next president tries to pull it back because of the equilibrium that every executive branch seeks and every congressional reign seeks as well, and it ebbs and flows back and forth. Another fixed area responsibility are pardons. We all know about infamous pardons, but there are a lot of pardons that go on that are not so infamous. Ethics compliance is part of the president's prerogative and his responsibilities because he's chief executive, he's a commander-in-chief, and he's head of his political party. And though the twain shall not meet, you have to make sure that they don't meet and you have to make sure that ethically that there's a separation. Judicial selection is handled out of the counsel's office and is a very important part of an administration if the president in incumbent cares about it. And I say that with caution because some of them don't have as much a priority about judicial selection as you would think. After all, this is your legacy. This does last beyond the four years or the eight years. And yet some are willing to fight very hard for their nominees. Others are not willing to fight hard because it's a political trade-off. The other functions down, I'm wrapping up my list here, the clearance of all executive branch officials are done through the White House Counsel's Office where that means somebody is going to be an assistant secretary for agriculture. You have to review their business. You have to review their finances. You have to review their FBI files. You have to have a nice conversation about what the FBI may have missed. And because that could be a terrific embarrassment to the president of the United States if something comes up and he has a nominee that they're fighting for to get confirmed and turns out that the person has a serious problem of one of those natures. Why? Because it undermines public confidence in the president and his ability to think, his ability to make decisions. And also if it becomes patent that he's made decisions purely on a political basis, that becomes apparent very rapidly as well. And again, affects public opinion. The other responsibility that's fixed is the Council of the President of the Arbiter of Disputes Between Departments and Agency General Counsel. There has to be some place of transportation and defense or fighting over something. There has to be somebody that can sit them both down and talk to them. So that's the function as well. As I say, there are other constitutional issues. We had a big gun control issue in D.C. in the last two years of Bush 43. Another area which you may laugh about is gifts. You always have to worry about gifts. People always want to give the president gifts. They want to give people on the staff gifts. Or you go to a foreign trip and all of a sudden there's a set of cufflinks. And it's from the Chinese, somebody or other. And they don't look very expensive. And they usually not. But boy, they look expensive when on the front page of the Washington Post. So I mean, that's what you have to deal with. And as I mentioned before, the NSC operation is now an integral part of the menu for the White House Council primarily because of areas like cyber war. And then there are first family issues. Every. You know, sometimes I wish that presidents weren't allowed to have children. Or brothers. Because there are an awful lot of problems that come up. But anyway. Or that the first lady doesn't like to take gowns from designers and keep them in her closet. I mean, these are all the kind of problems that you deal with. And you say, OK, that's silly. But by the same token, somebody's got to do it. And it has to be done right. Because again, you're protecting your client, the president as president. Then there's the other category other than fixed. And this is expect the unexpected. Because you never know what's coming in when you walk in that day. Remember March 30th, I was sitting there talking about, there's an awful thing about, I think this is public, I hope it's public, about somebody wanting to appoint an entertainer whose last name was Sinatra to something. And I was sitting there talking to Deputy Attorney General about, and all of a sudden we got the word that the president had been shot. And just your whole world just suddenly turns around. We had issues that day and also subsequently when the president Reagan had cancer and he had to have an operation. Do you exercise the 25th Amendment? It had never been exercised before. And so the president didn't necessarily want to be the first to exercise it for a simple operation. It wasn't a tooth pole, but it was a simple operation. By the same token, he didn't want to, but by the same token, he was going to be incapacitated. And we didn't know how long he was going to be. And so if you, history will show the letter he signed basically says, I'm doing this, I'm turning this over to the vice president. But nobody else should feel that they have to layer. I mean, it's the practical problems of dealing with somebody who cares about his office but also cares about the precedence that he's going to set. The last administration, of course, was the beginning of a lot of issues about Guantanamo, detainee issues, all of which you had to deal with in the last two years. We had the U.S. attorney firings, discharges, whatever you want to call them, that suddenly became a big deal up on the Hill as well. They couldn't find emails. So everybody said that the emails had been destroyed. Well, they hadn't been destroyed. They had just taken them from one system and nobody could find them. When they changed systems, we finally did it because the taxpayers hate to think how much. But there again, that was one of the issues you may all remember the pat-goes strike from the air traffic controllers I made a reference to earlier. That would come under the expect the unexpected category as well. Again, just remember, of course they're discipline and dismissals. I mean, we've had the loss of deputy secretaries of defense and head of the GSA, and it sounds like that's coming around again. And the chief of enforcement, the SEC. I mean, you have to deal with these problems because people get in trouble. And people not only get in trouble in their personal life, but sometimes get in trouble in their performance of their duties. And then at the end, of course, there's scandals. Anything that's got a gate on the end of it is a scandal in Washington now. A debate gate, travel gate, cylinder gate, I don't know what that one's called, solar gate, I guess. The problem with that, if you're counseled the president, is you have to do the unthinkable in Washington. If there's a problem, you get your client away from it, but you have to get in the middle of it. But that's just part of the job. You have to because otherwise you won't understand what the problem really is and you're delegating it to other people. And then there are special assignments. They're mostly in national security. You get to attend economic summits and things like that which are kind of very interesting, especially if you're a lawyer. Everybody says, what's a lawyer doing at an economic summit? Usually not much. But that's the brief summary of the job. It's the Wikipedia version, if you will. Now, in real life, what does the job mean? You leave a meeting in this situation room concerning a pressing intelligence matter and you return to your office and find that there's a question of can the president accept the use of a mountain bike from a family friend for the weekend? I mean, it's just... Or you're going from the Oval Office and you've been dealing with the legalities and the intricacies of setting up a TARP fund. And you go back to your office and find out that somebody, and arrested for shoplifting. And it's just, what I'm saying is it runs the gamut. And you may recall during his Supreme Court hearings, John Roberts had to regale everybody with the explanation for why he wrote a memo to me when he was on my staff in the Reagan administration in which he recommended that President Reagan not send a letter of praise to Michael Jackson for some charitable act that Jackson had done. But I mean, they just go on and on. Every rose and every flower in the United States has been named after a First Lady and then people try to exploit it. The human imagination is wonderful. But, and I think what I'd like you to remember and I've always maintained this is that the client in this case is the President, as President. And what does that mean in practice? That means you must be prepared to provide and advise him and his closest advisors not only about the law but about the institutional considerations as well as the legal considerations. And it also means that you have to give him advice so it's only in the President's official capacity not in his personal capacity. Sometimes that's hard because you know personally what the President may want to do but if you're giving advice based on that and you're not doing your job I guess what the position really boils down to is you have a constant legal crisis management job. I mean that's really what it is when you boil it down. Now during my service to the Reagan presidency don't forget how cold the Cold War was during that period of time. It was still pretty tense. By the same token an event took place that stood out in my mind which I'd like to share with you because it's the best illustration I could think of one can give the best legal advice in the world but you have to understand the President's role and his constitutional role and his obligations are so awesome and call for the highest sense of conviction and courage in making those things and you have to provide more than legal advice. I made reference to the pat-go-strike twice now but you know he had a decision he was going to fire 1150 I mean 11,500 people if they went out on strike. They threatened to strike and the President was outraged because not only they threatened to strike and closed down the air system of the United States but they had signed an oath that they would not strike and that is what really bothered the President as much as anything else. So we marshaled all the legal forces of the government, the FAA and the Labor Department and the Commerce Department the Transportation Department, we had outside counsel, everybody's looking at this. We arranged for replacements to operate the whole airline system if they went on strike and of course what happened was the ultimatum came and they said we're going to strike. So he was preparing to sign something and we had a conversation and he said now I'm doing the right thing aren't I? And I said yeah Mr. President you're doing the right thing unless there's a crash in the first 48 hours because this was a young presidency if there had been a crash in the first 48 hours it wouldn't have mattered how sound the legal advice was. His judgment would have been called into question it probably would have been a one-term presidency. So that's courage that's high stakes and that's leadership and that's what the president has to do and so your job is to really support him as best you're able in that job. You've been very indulgent with me as I've walked down my memory lane of public service and I just would like to finish with a parting thought. Public service can be one of the most rewarding personally and professional experiences you can imagine. It gives you an opportunity to really make a difference. It's not just you want a big award, it's not that you drafted the perfect lease or that you wrote the perfect contract you really can make a difference and it provides the opportunity to give back to your nation to your state, to your local community something and to use your talents and skills to do that and so even today's climate especially the national and the federal level where public service can be devastating to somebody's career for some reason that somebody else has done somebody gets caught, you can get caught in a scandal due to the circumstances of the acts of others or due to your own hubris and your own carelessness and we've all painfully witnessed television where you read the press, the reaction, the instant judgments that come out of an event are presented by the media they're presented by partisan opponents either side of the fence then you can it almost ensures that the real facts of what took place good or ill will really never get the same level of attention so that's a real danger and it's a danger and it's a problem of affecting the recruiting of good people to come in together because you can't turn a mistake into an axe murder by the same token that's what sometimes happens to people but having even said that I really, really want to urge everybody that I can to do public service one stint, two cents I mean everybody laughs when I say we really do need a revolving door it's horrible revolving door is necessary in our kind of democracy we need to take people that are experiencing the public in the private sector apply those skills working with the support of career public service so that you really have citizen public servants and it's really important because ultimately the vitality of the system of government that we have which is unfortunately presently so flawed and deadlocked it's the only way you're going to get that to get people in there that are doing things that are thinking ahead that are doing it for the right motivations not because they think they're going to get ahead so I urge you to support anybody who wants to do public service I urge you to support public servants and I urge you to do public service if you have the opportunity I mean it's very important I think we all must remember the cautions of Plato and I will quote up a little but the message was that wise men who declined to serve their own government are condemned and doomed to be ruled by unwise men and that's the problem so thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you I've enjoyed it very much I want to have Q&A I'd be happy to try you're wonderful for some questions for a long time after Watergate it was kind of a thing about a gossip where you were accused of being deep-throated until Brandi finally came out years later and said that you weren't I think that story is playing very well how did you deal with that? I dealt with it because at one point first of all it was inconsistent with somebody being a lawyer if you're entrusted with things you don't like, you leave you don't violate your confidence by the same token the views of people in the country were very mixed I had a dear friend of mine who sent me a telegram of all things and it said knowing you as I do I know you wouldn't be deep-throated but if you are I'm proud of you but I mean that was the kind of thing you have but actually I thought the strangest part of the deep-throat business was this school in Illinois I think it was a journalism school but they spent, that was a course they spent three years trying to figure out who deep-throat was this was the journalism course spending your money for this they first decided after two years it was Patrick Buchanan they made the announcement they said you're crazy and then they went back and so when they made this great announcement out of huge fundraiser at the National Press Club I should add I didn't react I didn't respond and it drove that professor crazy because I wouldn't respond because that was the end of the story and he knew it, he was a journalist one day story, nothing ended story but it was an interesting thing from the young associates in the firm would kind of look at you like maybe he is yes, please in the Reagan area era did you protect Reagan from the dementia gate from the what? dementia gate no, no, there was no way to protect him from that the only thing that was interesting about that was his response once he realized what his problem was he really did in a great way it was a good signal for other people facing it and other families facing it he did with a lot of dignity the question of whether it was in place the last two years I think it's been pretty much debunked by the people that were there there were one or two people who were uged out that then later said I had a lot of interviews about it I'm confident it wasn't then I have the unique opportunity my law office the office manager is Kathy O'Connor married to John Taylor everybody may know she was White House chief of staff her to Nixon when he left he was the executor of the Nixon estate we've had many many conversations interesting about the evolution of partisan politics over the years could you comment briefly on how partisan politics may as we come closer to the Obama administration and past administrations how it affects the office of the White House council it not only affects the office of the council but it affects the whole operation of the White House but in fact for instance the really that I saw was the attempts right before I went into the bush 43 can you imagine brazenly saying we're going to close down the White House if that isn't partisan politics they didn't have a target yet they were just going to close down the White House to shut it down with their oversight that's terribly abusive look I could stand here for a half hour and talk about the evolution that you're talking about because it's something that I've studied and I've read about and I've thought about quite a bit I think it started as I mentioned earlier I think it started during the Vietnam and then Watergate and the press was instantly finding they could be heroes if they wrote didn't matter necessarily that it was true or not in the Watergate case a lot of it was true but by the same token they were doing things that the press had never done looking into politics fair game but in addition to that you had another problem you had a problem where Congress was really feeling its oats Senate and House both sides but they started a proliferation of subcommittees at the same time that was happening they had a breakdown in political party discipline so what happens you have the press and they're eager they're doing everything you have a young congressman from wherever who decides he or she wants to get on television it's easy to do it you just say something outrageous and everybody focuses in on you and then you're off to the races so what has happened is you've had this terrible breakdown between the party between the branches there is very little comedy matter of fact there's very little comedy between the House and the Senate regardless of who's in and who's out and a lot of this with the White House has been my own personal view has been exacerbated by Obama himself but that's a personal observation I don't mean to launch into a political thing there was a squandering opportunity of goodwill and it was squandered had a chance where you might have been able to break this cycle of comedy so what do you have you have mayhem up there and nobody's talking to anybody they deadlock and it's like it's like these stories you hear of Balkan villages where there's a murder in the streets and it's because he's avenging his great-grandfather who was murdered in another place a hundred years ago it just keeps going back and forth and it's into a very bad cycle I didn't mean to ramble about your question we've had hours you can have hours about it it's a very serious problem given that you've said that your job description has varied with each of your clients did you ever feel ever or more than other times that the the description between your duties and the attorney general blurred or was it always very separate and very well understood whose territory it was I worked very hard for it to be that one I had there were times when when we had problems in the bush 43 administration because there were serious problems within the department for periods of time there you just have to you can't get in each other's way I mean I wouldn't but by the same token there's a lot of things I haven't mentioned one of the things that I've always set up is that when I'm the counsel of the president I am the only person in the White House that can talk to the attorney general or the deputy attorney general or the head of the criminal division about a criminal matter no one else in the White House can they'll be dismissed otherwise people will abuse it or it will be perceived to have been abused if the head of the political operation calls up and asks about it you know appending indictment forget it does that answer your question? I think so I was also sort of curious as to have there been occasions where you've had to sort of assert to the president, your client has asked you to do something that this really belongs with the attorney general or you see something with the attorney general within the attorney general's office both have happened both happen but that's not trying to usurp that's recognizing that there is a problem that's right you sit down with the attorney general and just say look this is what I think this is what you think nobody wants to say let's go to the boss and then I'm there so I can go as it changed more with certain presidents and others is it a function of staffing different I mean the Nixon staffing was so different from the Reagan staffing so your situational differences exist ask him who is favorite president who's your favorite child right you can tell us you can tell us others please Dean why don't you pick them out going back to your early years what led you or what brought you to become a associate counsel to the Nixon White House this is a shaggy dog story I thank you for the question I unfortunately a lot of young lawyers say okay I want to do what you did how do you do that and there's no conventional way to do it practicing law in Philadelphia and there was a change in counsel's office in the Reagan administration and the word went out to the DC law firms that they were looking for a young lawyer who could back up the young young counsel the president named John Dean Dean was 32 years old I was up in Philadelphia I was 31 but in Washington one of the law firms that they asked was Morgan Lewis and Bakias and the head of the office didn't think there was anybody in the Washington office but wanted to suggest this young litigator up in the Philadelphia so that's how it happened I came down I was asked to come down to interview with John Dean he asked me some piercing questions like how many branches of government there are things like that but but if you stop and think about it I was perfect for John Dean because I had no political base and he did and that's the way he was used to operating that way and of course I was just a lawyer so you can't you can't pick it up I always tell young people just be as good as you can whatever you're doing seek opportunities to help and get involved if you're interested I've been involved in political involvement I had prior to that was working on the Pennsylvania Constitution only because I thought it was interesting Dean you want to be a referee you mentioned you commented on judicial appointments do you think it's in the public interest for justices to serve life terms I do indeed I firmly do and I think that they have to be above the fray if you look at state supreme courts where they up for re-election all the time it's the same game so I do really believe that yeah I'll leave it at that yes sir I was wondering if you might comment on how today when law school is trying to find ways to justify their existence how a law school might best train students and young lawyers to enter into the public service what do you think the best way for young lawyers to engage in the public services well this is kind of a back way of what he asked me but if you're interested engage yourself I mean get involved even if it's non-partisan but sooner or later if you really want to get into politics and I'm talking about non-elective politics where you want to do public service in and out the only you're going to have to sooner or later pick a side just because the neutral person admirable as it may be is not going to get picked over somebody who is at least philosophically inclined the way the party who's appointing him but I mean I just urge everybody to do it and start at the local level but if you really want to be a congressman or a senator when you ultimately if that's your game and your goal make sure that you that you don't start too low because there may be a long ladder that you have to walk up and you may run out of gas the other thing I've known young people and I used to admire them because they were very very involved in politics when I was doing nothing except trying cases and they had their life planned and in each instance each of them fell off because they missed a milestone and therefore they couldn't react properly to it and so I always urge people don't set goals that are to the exclusion of everything else because a lot of things can happen in life who knows this is the money question no but from your description of what you did it sounds as though you're like the ultimate general counsel your client is the president and the United States of course is the ultimate winner or loser of what you're advising your client to do so having advise clients a lot how did you convince the president to do what you thought should be done or what was legal when all clients have their own ideas and so you have to figure out these I mean that must have been the ultimate way it's like any general counsel you have to get the client's confidence and for instance I didn't know Ronald Reagan at all when he picked me when George W. Bush I did know Nixon I didn't know at all but it took a while for us to kind of with Reagan to kind of size each other up I don't understand but he has to trust your judgment but the other thing that's neat about that is if you walk into your counsel to the president and he knows there's an answer that can only come from the counsel to the president he's kind of stuck with you until he fires you but it's confidence is what it is and it's relationships it's building relationships just like it would be in a corporation we have a reception outside and I have so much to share with you and please join me in thanking for building for a wonderful inaugural lecture in the John and Mary Caring's lecture series