 I, Dwight D. Eisenhower, do solemnly swear I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and will, for the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States the Constitution of the United States So help me God So help me God So help me God Thirty-four years in Congress What's your mental attitude most of the time about how to solve problems? I guess my mental attitude is that this is a very tough country to govern and people do not always appreciate how tough it is When you hear somebody say, that's un-American What should that mean? It should mean that the principles that we hold dear are being eroded that they're not being adhered to and of course it means different things to different people I don't think the job of a president is to change the presidency is to make sure the presidency is not damaged for any successor I think each of us has the responsibility to say to elected officials look, we want you to be a forceful advocate, but we want you to be polite I'm optimistic because democracy is contagious and I want to make sure that it continues to be contagious but I do worry that we don't have civil digital dialogue Our dialogue is more civil than our tweets Edna Manfred? Yeah, I don't think I've felt more American than when I've been outside of the country It really does make you realize what you do have but having said that, we can do better In many ways, this is an odd panel because it's based on panel discussions at Purdue University which is a place where students go, some 45,000 of them and all of us on this screen right now are 70 or above So let's keep that in mind as we go through this discussion I want us to think about the students because they're the ones of the future and the important ones but we'll get to know each other as this hour goes on I want to start with Edna Manfred, who is at Howard University and ask her about this transition that we experienced today What's your reaction? What did you see? Let me say first of all, I am not 70 yet I've got three more months to go So I'm keeping those I was trying to be careful But today's inauguration was both historic in good ways and in ways that gave me pause Certainly looking at the city of Washington cordoned off with troops, it's 25,000 I hear It was very difficult to deal with the fact that Americans cannot go to the mall and celebrate this transition But at the same time, it gave me hope because the inauguration did go on as planned Certainly it's important that we keep those traditions There's nothing that says we have to have the ceremony only the oath, but it's important that we keep those traditions And I was so struck by the fact that it was so inclusive strategically so It was wonderful to see And of course the fact that we have the first African American the first woman, the first Asian American vice president That is so important, not just for our children but for our old folk as well For those of us who are 70 and older it's very important because it gives us hope that there are possibilities for change still that we have this opportunity to do something really grand and as a people we can do it And this is an example of it Dr. Bedford has been at Howard University for 34 years and she is first and foremost a historian and an expert on the Civil War and the reconstruction period and Abraham Lincoln And Andy Card was Chief of Staff to George W. Bush He was there today What was your reaction when you saw him there and what was your reaction to this transition? I was thrilled that President Bush, George W. Bush had Laura went to this inauguration, was critically important I was excited, you know, I had tears in my eye on January 6th when our Congress was stormed and there was a violation of trust and I just was so upset with that there were tears of sadness Today I actually had tears of joy and celebration because I thought this was a remarkably good inauguration and I just loved the inaugural address that the President gave I loved the poetry that was delivered I loved the prayers that were said I loved the hymns that were sung and I loved the visual presentation of the President being there with former presidents and yes, I think President Trump should have been there and I was disappointed that he didn't go but I was glad to see Vice President Pence there I thought we sent a good signal to the world I did not like to see the troops surrounding the Capitol and protecting everyone because that is not the image that I want the world to see I'm the outgoing Chairman of the National Endowment for Democracy I love helping to spread democracy around the world That organization, that institution has been there for 35 years and the Chairman's job is a volunteer job but it was wonderful to be part of that organization and everybody around the world looks to America for the best example of democracy and the word we in our Constitution is a very big word and it's our government and yes, it's important that we recognize that so the responsibility for this inauguration to be good I think was extraordinarily high and I do agree that President Biden gave an inclusive inaugural address he said, I'm going to be president of all of the people I want all of the people to have the courage to speak civilly to each other and to me and he will listen that doesn't mean that he has to agree with everyone but I know that he will be a good inclusive president and he won't try to divide us, he'll try to unite us and it's got a lot of work to be done I hope that there are lots of allies on Capitol Hill Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals and progressives that will say we're going to work together you know when I got involved in politics my grandmother had been a suffragette so I was brought up and the definition of politics was we had more rug than fringe today democracy seems to have more fringe than rug and I want to say get off the fringe and start standing on the rug let's help build this nation up and there's more common ground than most people want to acknowledge Andy Card is in Jeffrey, New Hampshire the interesting thing besides having been the secretary of transportation and also working for George Herbert Walker Bush and George W. Bush he was president of a college named after a president Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire our next guest 34 years in Congress lots of other things that he did Lee Hamilton is in Bloomington, Indiana as a Purdue graduate I must say that it gives me pause that we have somebody from Indiana University in this group today but I think we can get over it and I'm sure that you went to the pause so had you been to Purdue and IU you got the whole state covered anyway Lee Hamilton what was your reaction from today? I think the inauguration is the great ritual of representative government it's a wonderful time we all kind of come together and at least for a few hours seem to agree with one another we are inspired by the people that we see in front of us we're inspired by the musicians we're inspired by the speeches and I just come away from an inauguration feeling good feeling good about my country and the people that inherited so I find the whole the most impressive thing I find I guess is kind of the tone overall it's uplifting, it's inspiring it makes us all better better people doing our jobs is better and we put aside for at least a little while with the visit and this and polarization that has so marked our country in recent weeks so I guess the important message is keep hope alive you can't do much without hope and this gives me a lot of hope this group of panel discussions four of them during the day put together by Dean Ryan Gold who's the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Purdue and Laurie Sparger in itself has become controversial you all wouldn't know this and I'm going to read a note from two professors at Purdue who are not happy with this day's events and give you some of the flavor of it and the reason I'm going to do this is because they get to issues that they would say are not being discussed in this in this day of panel discussions and this comes from Professor Rosalie Clauston who used to be the head of the Political Science Department at Purdue and Donna Reilly who is the head of the School of Engineering Education and let me just read a little bit of what they said about these panels today the program participants are not representative of our nation's racial and ethnic diversity part of what they wrote is the series of events today through Purdue fails to address the crisis at the heart of our need for this programming they also suggested by the way that we had nobody of color on these panels and I think maybe Ed and Medford might disagree with that but I'm not sure I'll give you a chance to deal with that the issue that they're most concerned about is that present day reality of white supremacy I'm reading from their note and the violent views to establish, protect and enshrine it now Joe Biden talked about white supremacy he also talked about systemic racism can you three deal with this please and help our professors at Purdue understand where you're coming from let's start with Andy this time go ahead well first of all I think President Biden did give a very inclusive inaugural address and not only that he gave an invitation but he also gave an obligation to think about how we should be participatory in such a way that we are inclusive rather than exclusive so I give him credit for what he did and I thought the poetry that was read was also very appropriately convicting and inviting us to do a better job of inclusiveness so look at is America perfect? so are we always seeking better perfection? yes and I'm glad that we don't have something that is perfect because then we would give up trying to make it better so it's and the definition of perfection my grandmother used to tell me bring your definition of perfection to the debate but do not be stuck on it have the courage to work for perfectly good because if you get your view of perfection all the time you're a dictator and that's the enemy of a democracy so bring your view of perfection to the debate don't deny the debate and stay involved in the debate you may learn something and when you walk out of the room you'll be smarter than when you went in Lee Hamilton what would you say to the two Purdue professors who are not happy with the makeup of these panels and not dealing with race and the way that they think it should be dealt with well we have to understand that this is a great big complicated country and there are many many races creeds people differences of views and the overriding problem at least for a public official is how do you make the country with all of its magnificent diversity work how can we pull it all together and the message for me in a day like this is that I draw inspiration from the fact that Americans recognize some of the problems not all of them I'm sure that the professor and that we commit ourselves in our little corner of the world whatever that may be to do what we can and things better and that makes a worthwhile event there are plenty of other forums in which we can discuss the differences we should do that but it's nice to see the country coming together at least for a short time it's hopeful it's inspiring I've attended a lot of the inaugurations now my first inauguration was at Johnson in 1965 and I've attended them all this one since so I find it a hopeful day and one that inspires me and makes me want to be a better American Dr. Medford did you happen to teach the I think 82 graduate of Howard named Kamala Harris unfortunately no she left I think a year or two before I got to Howard I would have been delighted to have taught her but let me take this opportunity to say that our motto at Howard is veritas e utilitas truth and service and Kamala Harris obviously learned that lesson very well certainly it started with her mother and the community that she grew up in but when she got to Howard that would have been drilled into her head the idea of truth and service and so if she can help us get back to that get back to a real understanding of the importance of truth and the importance of service especially in this country today then I think this will be a truly great thing that will happen for the nation in terms of the diversity on the panels let me say that I am a proud woman of African descent and I think that anyone looking at my photo on the website would have known that but I should indicate that my photo was probably added late and so that's why they didn't know that there was someone of color on the panel diversity is extremely important especially on panels like this and especially as our nation tries to heal I think we've all been aware for a long time that white supremacy is at the center of a lot of what's wrong with America and has been wrong with America for generations and I think that if we don't address that we're going to get deeper and deeper into trouble and we're going to be divided in a way that we can't recover so for the sake of the nation we need to start thinking seriously about what white supremacy has done to our national image and what it does to individuals I remember many years ago and I'm going to get personal here many years ago being in Virginia Beach and having a young man who was driving by in a car a little red sports car I'll never forget it he stopped at a stop light and he stood up in the car it was a convertible and he spat on me I was there with my husband and my daughter doing absolutely nothing and he felt it was okay to do that a young man who felt that was okay I can't explain to you the humiliation of that the dehumanization of that maybe if I had said something to him or done something to him it would have been understandable but I did nothing except be a black woman who happened to be present at the time that he felt it was okay to spit on me so those kinds of things they may not happen every day but there's so many other things that happen because of white supremacy things that are so far worse than that people who are being killed people who have been beaten people who are being denied opportunities so I think if we're going to consider ourselves the leaders of the free world and the standard bearers for democracy we're going to have to think about our actions as a nation and change or we're not going to survive Andy Card, when you hear white supremacy and you're a white man what do you say to Professor Medford? Give me the courage and challenge me to listen try to introduce concerns so that I understand them give me a perspective that I may not be able to find on my own and teach me walk me through it I want to learn I don't want to be exclusive I want to be inclusive I'm fortunate that I went to high school and we had more diversity than a lot of other high schools in Massachusetts when I went there I didn't give a lot of thought to color I had African American really close friends and classmates but I then went to the University of South Carolina on a Navy scholarship and I remember taking the train from Massachusetts down to college in 1965 and I get off the train and it arrived very early in the morning and I went into a diner that was right near the train station to get some breakfast and I sat down at a countertop and no one would wait on me and then finally a waitress came over and said if you want to be served you have to sit on the white side of the table and I didn't know what that meant and she escorted me by grabbing my arm and moving me down about 15 chairs on the other side of a line that was on that countertop and that's where I could sit if I wanted to be served I was appalled I said what have I done to come to South Carolina it was completely foreign to me and I then ended up I delivered newspapers seven days a week when I was in college I delivered them all through high school I went down in South Carolina I went and applied to be a paper boy and I'm delivering newspapers in the morning and the area that I had to deliver to was African American neighborhood in Columbia, South Carolina and they were shocked to see a white boy delivering newspapers to their homes and I didn't realize that was unusual and I happened to move into a dorm that had just been constructed and it was the first time the dormitory had been made interracial and there were protesters and I remember standing with an African American friend and said I'll walk into the dorm room with you we'll go in together so yes I've witnessed the reality of preference the reality of I'm gonna say ignorance on the part of people who may not know they're putting people down but they do and I try to work every day to find the right conscience to do the right thing and I'm not pretending that I can find it on my own I do encourage people to tell me when I've got the wrong bias the wrong expectation or take the wrong actions so help Congressman Lee Hamilton what do you say about white supremacy? Well I recognize that I had a very secluded privileged environment in which to grow up I didn't know the problem of black America they never entered my head until I got well along probably in college and even beyond I grew up in the world of sports and I became acquainted with some marvelous black athletes and wanted them on my team and I wanted them to show me how to play the game like it ought to be played so I've had a kind of a privileged secluded upbringing I guess and didn't recognize the agony anxiety the anxious black folks in this country endured on a daily basis I tried to become like Andy more sympathetic to those problems that I've been and I hope I have improved somewhat at that point I'm not there yet I believe nonetheless that you and I live in a great country that it has its faults and we've talked some of them and we all know what those faults are but what impresses me most about this country I guess beyond anything else is its process of renewal that we try to better that we strive all the time for a more constant for a more inclusive and a better society and that's what I've ingrained in myself that's what I want to ingrain in others as well so I'm delighted to be in America I think I understand some of our faults as a country and I want to correct those and make it more inclusive and better so that we really are the city on the hill and a beacon as we like to say for justice for liberty and justice for all I like our ideals I know we have a long way to go Dr. Medford Purdue University has about 58.9% of its student body who are from Indiana the state in this last election gave 500,000 more votes to Donald Trump than they did to Joe Biden back in 2008 when Barack Obama ran he won the state by one percentage point then he lost the next time around so the state is even though it's known as a very conservative place did when the time came voted Barack Obama in first what would you say to a state that voted 500,000 more votes for Donald Trump to a student body what do they need to do there if anything I mean I know you're not familiar with Purdue and what it does but when you hear these statistics there is another side to this story well I certainly do believe that everybody has the right to hold whatever political beliefs they want and they have the right to support any candidates they want my hope though is that the students at Purdue people throughout Indiana will look at candidates based on our democratic principles what we say we are and what we want to be and not vote based on color I think we do have a tendency to do that we vote for people because we like the way they look or whatever something that's very subjective things but we have to recognize that in a democracy we have to do what's best for the country first and so party politics should be secondary it doesn't bother me that a state goes for one candidate versus the other it's just why that occurs why is it that you think that what are you voting for why is it that you think that you're okay to vote for someone who is not inclusive who does not believe in American democracy and does things to tear down that democracy so that would be the only question that I would ask and I would encourage the students and as I said Americans throughout Indiana to really look strongly at why they're voting for a candidate with their choices then there's nothing really that I can say to change that Mr. Card well I believe in our participatory democracy we are a republic so we do get a chance to pick people that will help to make our laws we don't make them ourselves generally and I respect that I think our founding fathers gave us a remarkable document to have this experiment go forward but as we're doing it we want to be inviting people to be part of that solution rather than trying to force them away so I worry when systematic racism or bias towards a particular view says don't participate no I want people to participate I don't want to exclude people I want to include people to participate in the election a record number of people voted in the United States the greatest number of people ever to vote in fact the losing candidate had more votes than anybody else who had ever run for president except the person would beat them in that race I was celebrating that I didn't call it fraud I didn't call it misuse that was a celebration of our democracy and so I don't want the social nature of the election to discourage people from participating I want them to be all the more encouraged to participate in vote get out and vote I agree with Dr. Medford yes, do your homework make up your mind I may not like the decision you finally made but I will respect that it's your decision and that you put the effort into it to make that decision make an informed decision don't run away run toward our democracy don't run away from it just don't run toward the Capitol to destroy an institutional democracy Lee Hamilton, I'm going to run 40 seconds of video this is from Donald Trump's inauguration speech from four years ago and then we're going to come back to you and get your reaction to Donald Trump and the transition and what you think of the four years we're like let's run this video and we'll be right back to this panel what truly matters is not which party controls our government but whether our government is controlled by the people January 20th 2017 will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again the forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer Lee Hamilton your reaction to those words by Donald Trump and his presidency well I like the words I think he has had some very high ideals for us I don't think he can govern that way and that makes all the difference of course I think one of the good things about American politics is that if you're going to participate in it you have to be very inclusive you don't get elected by shutting out people by shutting out groups you get elected by bringing them into the process and broadening your base I think President Trump spoke well but the way he governed was he turned to his base and his base was very he didn't try to expand his base like most politicians do he seemed to focus on solidifying his base and I think that's another good way to govern that was the core of a lot of the problems that I had with President Trump now he did some good things President Trump I deal a lot in the question of the foreign policy I think President Trump recognized the importance of China and we had not sufficiently recognized that prior to his coming in and so I see some contribution made others name that are positive but then I do not think he was the normal strong President and I do not think he would go down in the history book of American Presidents indeed I think he would go in in the bottom tier of American Presidents whatever that may mean now I think that's one advantage Joe Biden has Joe Biden brings to the office of the presidency a lot of experience in American politics it's he's always been reaching out to other processes I think he'll try to do that whether he'll succeed I don't know but I wish him that he in that respect will govern very differently than President Trump President Trump wanted to restrict his base most politicians want to expand the base I think that's the way to go and I think the way that the way it usually works is you do try to expand your base that's one of the good things about American politics I have a column here from yesterday in the Wall Street Journal by Gerard Baker he comes at the world from a conservative point of view and I'm going to ask you of course about Donald Trump but he says the best argument for Donald Trump was that he led and gave voice to millions of Americans who had been leaderless and voiceless for decades should I guess that you were an anti-Trump person based on your association with George W. Bush who obviously didn't care much for him yeah I had a problem with Donald Trump I don't think this is kind of not his fault but he never was involved in an institution where he had to listen to constituents he he hadn't run for local office I was in local government I was a state legislator I ran for governor of Massachusetts I think the building block of democracy's leadership comes from participating and understanding what it means to lead people in a democracy where you have to listen to them you represent them and you want to learn from them and you don't have the privilege of representing some of the people that you serve in your district you represent all of the people in your district that doesn't mean that you reflect their views all the time but you lead them you are their voice and it's incumbent you to understand all of the voices in your constituency and you have to have a handicap because he had never had a responsibility to represent people even in his company he didn't have shareholders that he had to represent and so he did not govern the way Mitch Daniels would have done if Mitch Daniels had been president of the United States Mitch understood what it meant to lead people in Indiana I would have been a huge fan of a great president but I think that's where my problem was I also didn't like the divisiveness that Donald Trump brought to the Republican Party during the primary season in 2016 and he just encouraged people to fight each other rather than to describe what it meant to be a Republican and what do we stand for so I think that he tore his opponents down rather than reinforced I think the institutional respect that the Republican Party had for believing in certain things we were the party of Lincoln the party of inclusion the party of free trade the party of opportunity and I don't think that he reflected those values I think he hijacked the Republican Party and turned it into a Trump party personality driven party rather than a philosophically driven party so no that's a pretty thank you because this gets to a group of people and you'll recognize it right away and I want you to tell us what you would tell them about this transition and about this new president he writes about the deplorables we all remember the reference from Hillary Clinton to the deplorables the men and women on the media the government and corporate human resources types never meet in their local whole foods but deride as bigots and brutish neanderthals this is when you go back to the original letter that I wrote that these two professors that produced sent out to their colleagues and then you go to this side and then Joe Biden comes in today and says he wants unity put it in perspective for us please well you know I think it's easy for us to to believe that Trump was able to come in and fill a void fill a vacuum that existed that no other politician dealt with and so he appealed to a certain percentage of the American population that felt it had the right to be aggrieved and certainly there are issues with people's lives I mean there's no doubting that people are suffering but what you need in an instance like this when people are suffering is you need someone who understands what it means to suffer someone who has compassion someone who's willing to help them help themselves help them understand what the issues are and help them address those issues and help solve those issues for them but what we see I think in the last administration is a group a leader and a group that was more interested I think in taking care of their own needs I don't know that the base really got any better in terms of economics if we look at what's happening or what has happened with how the government dealt with the pandemic people are out of work because there was not leadership in the beginning and so his base was affected just as much as anybody else if not more so by that lack of leadership so I think that people need to recognize that just because someone gives you the other to blame for your legitimate problems that doesn't mean that that person is looking out for you that is the thing that we're going to have to fight hardest against we're going to have to help people get back on their feet look at the legitimate concerns that they have but also help them understand that not everyone who tells them that someone else is responsible for their troubles is telling the truth and that's going to be a really tall order because the truth hasn't mattered in this country and certain circles for some time now so it's going to be very hard to go in now and tell people what you heard were lies and they were lies that affected you personally and your day-to-day living and is affecting your country that's going to be very hard to do the part of this panel discussion is supposed to be about American statesmanship let me ask the three of you to give us an example of an experience you all had in your own lives where you saw statesmanship where you saw people that were rising above the day-to-day you can even go back to what Edna Medford said about lying we've seen a lot of it in this country since basically from my lifetime since the Vietnam War and anybody Andy Carr do you have a good example of statesmanship? among my heroes in public services George H.W. Bush the first President Bush and I had the privilege of being Deputy White House Chief of Staff and then Secretary of Transportation and his administration but when the Berlin Wall was breached and was coming down and danced on the wall and declared victory and kind of rubbed in the nose of the communists and challenged Russia and I was very impressed with the prudence and I'm going to say the resolve not to be hyperbolic around that remarkable witnessing of the Berlin Wall President Trump actually, I mean President Bush actually said I'm going to think about this from the Russian point of view I'm going to think about this from the German point of view the East German point of view and the West German point of view and I'm going to make sure we're part of the solution not part of the problem and he exercised phenomenal diplomatic leadership and discipline in his government to be able to unify Germany to help Gorbachev not see this as an enterprise risk to his leadership and to calm the waters so that the world could end the Cold War without having a hot war and it was pretty remarkable so my example would be George H.W. Bush and the time that the Berlin Wall came down and the world cried out sometimes in fear over what could happen and proving that good things could happen if we just had dialogue with each other and helped people and really President Bush helped Helmut Kohl helped Margaret Thatcher helped Gorbachev and created a climate where we could go through that transition better than anyone had anticipated we would be able to get through that transition so George H.W. Bush would be my hero in terms of someone who rose to the responsibility of a true statesman and did it in the context of a political environment We've got about 15 minutes left Lee Hamilton, your example of a statesman person, statesman I think of Vietnam when I first aged in the problem of Vietnam everybody in this country supported the Vietnam War 80, 90 percent and I decided to go with it myself so I made three or four trips over a period of a few years not only in Vietnam but around the country and I began to see leaders appearing all over the place people like Tip O'Neill for example George Bush 41 and many others who saw the futility if you would of the war in Vietnam and the lesson that we began to withdraw we began to get over there the lesson for me was that democracy works doesn't work all the time doesn't work as fast as we'd like it to most of the time but it works and you can shift into the country if you can persuade enough people that's a hard job to do democracy so I come away from my experience in Congress with a strong bias if you want for a representative for democracy I think there's a system not flawless bias but it's a lot better than anything I've seen as an alternative that representative democracy works you're cutting out a little bit and I just want to repeat that you said you came out as a big fan of representative democracy and we heard the earlier part of it you served in Congress from 1965 to 1999 so it gives us a sense of the years that you were there and it basically was very active in 65-66 and the Medford states person statesman your example well first of all I'd find statesmanship more from a domestic perspective because I think that although our international presence and how we deal with the rest of the world is very important it's even more important how we deal and so there are any number of people that I would think have been great statesman from a domestic perspective and that certainly would be someone like Lyndon Johnson I'm talking about recent times I don't want to go back to someone like Lincoln I want to come up to the present and just a little past so it would be someone like Lyndon Johnson who did attempt to make America better not just for people of color but for people who were poor as well I think of someone if we're talking more recently and we're talking about someone in Congress I would say a Mitt Romney a Republican attempted to show statesmanship when he on occasion at least did stand up against an administration that he thought was not operating in the best interests of the nation and he did so at great sacrifice I think to his political career that we don't know what's going to happen eventually that might actually eventually hold him in good stead but for the moment I mean for a while there he was certainly vilified by his colleagues but to me that's what statesmanship is it's doing what you know needs to be done without consideration for how it's going to affect you politically I wrote down a bunch of words that President Biden used today in his speech he just popped out as I was listening to what he had to say he said we have much to repair much to restore the dream of justice for all and he said no longer he talked about white supremacy we must confront and defeat it he talked about obviously as you know uniting America he said this is there's a lot of anger in the country resentment and hatred we can deliver racial justice forces as divided are deep history, faith and reason show the way of unity so when you have been through this before what would you say that he has to look out for for more than anything else if he really wants to unify the country Andy Card? I think he's got to follow through number one he respects the institution of the Senate in particular that's a place where his respect will help to invite respect in that body having a divided government has divided the House and the Senate have virtually tied so I would say that how he deals with Congress and how he finds or invites people to find common ground and works together will be critically important it can happen I'm not sure that it will right off the bat I will admit to being troubled by moving to an impeachment process right now so I'm running against common thinking but I was hoping that Speaker Pelosi would keep the articles of impeachment in her purse and not take them out until after President Biden is able to build some momentum for some of the things that he wants to do number one get his cabinet in place number two make sure he gets the pandemic solution well on the road to success and number three deal with the economy and number four protect America because the world is dangerous so I was kind of hoping that moving to a trial in the Senate wouldn't suck all of the oxygen out of what President Biden needs to get done but that's where I would come down right now and what we have to do and hopefully we can do it I think it's most important President Biden has to demonstrate that he hears the voices of those who didn't support him and he is going to be ignorant to their concerns that doesn't mean that they will all be addressed the way people expect but I want him to at least be sympathetic and maybe even show a little empathy to some of the concerns that the critics of President Biden may have as he governs Adam Edford one of the things he said and Andy Card basically just said it let's begin to listen to one I don't know that you're willing to do this but you're on a campus that's primarily African-American and I would ask you what's the percentage of African-Americans in the student body it depends upon whether or not you're looking at the undergraduate program or the graduate program we're pretty diverse in terms of our graduate program in our professional schools the undergraduate probably is about 87% African-American but it's changing every day a lot more Hispanic students in we're getting students from all over the world we have people from Nepal who are students at the university now so we're very cosmopolitan well at Purdue there are probably a thousand African-Americans I may be off some but not much there are four or five thousand international students there but what is said inside an African-American, primarily African-American undergraduate school white supremacy what do people say that they're not saying out loud to us white people that they are mostly angry about give us some insight in terms our student body is very aware of white supremacy and the challenges that they're going to face as they go out into the world they know that many of them come to Howard because they've been at predominant institutions before coming to Howard they've been to all white high schools or whatever or if they're coming to graduate school they've been at predominantly white undergraduate programs and they're coming to Howard to get the kind of assurance that they can be successful and so they come knowing that there are issues they are determined that they're going to help in the world and in America and in the world they are out on a daily basis letting the rest of the world know what their concerns are they're not silent and neither are the professors in the university the professors are well aware of what they've faced throughout their careers and their lives they try to prepare the students to be the very best that they can be because we know that they're going to have tons of obstacles in front of them when they go out and so it's not that they're silent they're very clear about what the issues are but they're trying to encourage the students to go for it anyway we would never have had someone like Kamala Harris if there was not an institution to assure her that she was just as good in terms of her abilities as anyone else and that's what the university attempts to do the university also tries to help the students understand that they have a mission that it's not just about getting a degree and trying to make money but also trying to make other people's lives better and I think that's what makes the institution so unique we're going back to this speech today Joe Biden said he said that we talked about this earlier but truth is absolutely necessary in politics he says lies told for power and profit what do you say I mean there's a great suspicion in this country on all sides that we're not hearing the truth from public officials truth is critically important if our leaders aren't wearing the belt of truth as they do their job they are not serving their constituents well so I can't tell you yes we are in a truth void right now and part of it is I felt kind of social media where people can be more outrageous than they would be if they had to use their voices to communicate I also find that we are very selective we get stuck on stupid and turn on our we wake up with an opinion turn on a television show on a cable network that agrees with us and we're convinced we're right it used to be that we woke up without an opinion we got our news from ABCCBS and NBC AP and Reuters and United Press International and then we formed our opinion now we wake up with an opinion we frequently get it reinforced and we don't have the courage to challenge even our own bias so I do think that we have a systematic problem in America centered around what is truth and where does it come from and how do we understand it so I'm hoping that all of our leaders from the president Biden all the way down to our local elected officials on the planning board the school committee in Peterborough, New Hampshire tell us the truth and allow us to try to educate you and you have the courage to educate us but please be grounded in truth and try not to fall into the trap of hyperbole Lee Hamilton back to you, what about truth what's your response to that issue and if they do you wouldn't admit it for sure look the politician always has to wrestle with the question of truth how far do you go telling people your presence when you know they disagree with a lot of it how do you shade your position so you appeal to that group of people do you discern the truth do you tell a lie the politician constantly has to wrestle with the question of truth now it's easy to say we have to be truthful and all of us want to be truthful but I know myself in trying to go to different groups you shade the truth you don't tell them everything you know and that's not admirable but keeping in mind the politician is working to get a life and that's his number one goal and don't kid yourself they weren't powered that's why you run for office you weren't powered and you're willing to shade the truth if shading the truth will help you get to power I believe I'm probably guilty of that like any politician but they'll make you free and we ought always to keep it in front of us and do our best to be as truthful as we can in the second sense sometimes I felt it wasn't the best to let people know the truth in a given situation that it would discourage them that it would turn them off from the system that it would make them say all politicians are SOVs so this is a tough problem the truth it's easy to say that an armchair blooming to an Indian and say yeah I figured the truth I'm for the truth it's a practical matter what I'm looking for in a politician is principle of course but I also know that they have to be pragmatic and if they're not pragmatic and that covers a lot of ills probably and some good truths and untruths they're not going to be elected you have to be pragmatic so it's a constant battle for the politician we are out of time and I want to thank Dr. Medford at Howard University history professor first and foremost also been a big help to see span over the years and our presidential survey that we do after every time a president leaves and it won't be long before that project where Donald Trump ends up Lee Hamilton is in Bloomington, Indiana left congress in 1999 was there for 34 years and Andy Card was chief of staff to George W. Bush among other things is in Jaffrey, New Hampshire and we thank you all very much for participating and wish you a good day thank you Brian thank you