Convinces me that we can meet those challenges and seize big opportunities too. We have the human and Natural Resources to do it. We have the knowledge to do it. We have the will if we decide to exercise it to do it. We can build a growing economy of shared prosperity and a more equal sharing of responsibility for a secure world. Thats what america has always done and its time to summon that spirit again. Too many people only get excited about president ial campaigns. Look, i get excited about president ial campaigns too. [applause] but those campaigns only happen every four years. And every two years youre electing members of congress and senators and state officials who will have a big say in the quality of your schools, your healthcare, your lives. So use the enthusiasm that iowa is so well known for every president ial year and channel that into these upcoming elections. Dont wake up the day after the election and feel bad and wonder what more you could have done. Do everything you can now to make sure when you wake up that morning after the election, you breathe a big sigh of relief bazz you will have done everything you could to make sure that toms legacy of service, of fighting, of standing up and making it clear whose side hes on will continue. Its time to heed the push of our values and the pull of our future. Its time to right that new chapter in the american dream. Because remember, when we show up, we win. And i thank tom and ruth for always showing up and showing us the way. Its really great to be back. Lets not let another seven years go by. Thank you all very much. [applause] good things always happen when bill clinton comes to iowa. [applause] i just want to say about the steak fry, this is his fourth. I remember in 2003, president clinton came. We had terrible rains but we needed toth rain. We had a drought. But it rained two or three days before and that morning. It was a sea of mud. How many of you were here . It was just muddy. It was all over the place mud. We came down here and all the candidates had spoken, bob graham and howard dean and a bunch of others. Then president clinton came down. Those of you who were here will remember we came up on the stage to introduce president clinton on the stage, the clouds disappeared and the sun came out. I thought to myself boy this guy has friend in really high places. So mr. President , were thankful for the sunshine today. But were also thankful for the sunshine of your leadership through all these years. Thank you for what youve done for our country and the world. [applause] we can do this again. We can take that bridge to the future that he started building by creating those 22 million jobs, lifting 8 Million People out of poverty, shared prosperity like hillary just said. He turned the deficits into the biggest surpluses in history. If we had continued with the clinton economic program, we would have paid off the National Debt in 10 years. [applause] he pursued peace relentlessly. I have an irish ancestry. I happened to be in ireland the weekend after the good friday accords that brought peace finally to ireland. He hammered that out. He wouldnt give up on that. And he brought peace to that country. [applause] he never gave up on seeking peace in the middle east. Who can forget that photo of arafat shaking hand and there is clinton pulling them together . And since leaving the white house he went on to establish the clinton foundation. Fighting global warming, combating childhood obesity, bringing global lead together to find solutions to our worlds biggest problems. Mr. President , it is great to welcome you back to the 37th steak fry. Let me just say personally, i ran against the governor of 1992. As back in 1991 to and it was not a sad day when i dropped out of the race because i knew that there was another person thatin that race that was going to take our country to a higher level, going to bring people together, who was going to build that bridge to the 21st century. So it didnt take me very long after i dropped out of the race. I went up to new york, we met. And i came out and supported him whole heartedly and i got to tell you, i am so proud, so proud of bill clinton. So thankful for his leadership and so grateful for his friendship to me and ruth and our family through all these years. Lets give it up for a great president and a great friend of iowa, bill clinton. [applause] thank you. Thank you very much. Youve all been out here quite a while and i dont want this to be like one of these officers installation bank quets where everybody said everything that needs to be said but not everybody said it yet. Ill try to be brief. Ut i will say first to tom and ruth harkin, i wanted to be here to honor you torks spend my sunday with my wife, to wear the birthday present she gave me last august. What do you think . You like my shirt . [applause] i was kind of worried i looked like a table cloth at a diner but she said it was cool so im feeling good. But we wanted to be here because you two are part of our family history, you two are making history in iowa today with the last of the steak fries and youve been an important part of history in the last 30 or 40 years. Ruth ran an agency a lot of people dont know about, the overseas private corporation but it has a big impact on whether we can have fair trade and not just free trade, a big impact on whether we can sell things in other countries and create jobs in america. And aim grateful to her for doing that. When i became president , i had as tom said, we had worked together through the 192 campaign and i was impressed. I really did like the guy. I hated it when we were running against each other. I always felt like there was something not quite right. And when we started working together, it always sort of clicked. And i love being here in 1992. And i thank iowa for supporting me. And then i loved coming back in 1996 because then tom had one of his rare tough elections and looked like i could help. I was telling a group of sponsors in that whole eightyear period when i was president , there was like a 36 hour window when my aapproval rating in iowa was higher than his and he made sure i flew in here and he took advantage of it. And i got out of town before anything bad could happen to him. And you reelected him. And im very grateful. 2003 it rained like crazy. A 20 somethingas at wood stock. Only thing is marijuana wasnt legal yet anywhere and we were addicted to music now and we were addicted in politics in 2003, but i was glad the sun came out so we didnt look totally i had ot i can doing what we were doing. Im grateful. But you need to know some other things. Tom harkin, besides taking good care of iowa and knowing about agnieszka projects and trying to help promote the healthcare coverage that came to fruition in the Affordable Care act but healthier lifestyles through nutrition standards that our friend has been trying to work through with the schools here. He was at least, when i was involved, the reigning authority in the senate on the activities of the National Institute of health and what should be invested and how we should spend our investment money and give younger people a brighter future. And also, by the way, grow our economy in a good way. He was along with senator chris d. O. D. Of connecticut, one of the strongest voices for restoring democracy to haiti in 1994 because the military dictator down there was putting tires around peoples necks and setting them afire. They were our nearest neighbors. They had been told they had to go and iowa is going told that nobody gave a rip about haiti and it was crazy. We did it and no shot was fired. Nobody got hurt. And largely because we had a few brave members of Congress Like tom harkin to do it. When that eric hit haiti americans gave a billion dollars and i still work there and were still getting stuff done and im convinced even though theyve had a lot of ups and downs, a lot of it never would have happened if america had walked away and allowed dictate tors to kill people virtually on our borders instead of give them a chance. And i thank tom harkin for that. [applause] he talked about the americans with disabilities act. There was another great disability act passed at the end of my presidency. And tom was one of the people that brought to my attention that it was fine to say that people who were disabled couldnt be discriminated against. It was fine to say they had the right to go to work but did they really have the means to go to work because there were so many people who were disabled and required 100,000 worth of care a year to be maintained and if they went to work for 20 hours a ek and earned 20,000 or whatever, they would be then rendered ineligible to keep their health care. We were trapping millions of people who were classified as disabled who were in fact quite able to make a contribution to themselves, their families, their future and to our country by having this crazy rule that said im sorry if you make any money we have to take your medicare or medicaid away. We changed that in the late 10eu9s and enabled huge numbers of people with disabilities to have abilities in the forefront and live a better life and make a contribution to the United States and we owe thanks to tom harkin for that. [applause] and since, as hillary said, were doing our best to be in the right zone to be good and i hope not too doting grandparents. I dont think most people in iowa ever knew that tom harkin did more than any other member of the United States congress to make sure america was leading the charge and on the right side of the International Effort to bring an toned abusive child labor practices all over the world. [applause] so i always liked him but every day i served with him, i knew why more. I think the happiest day we ever had together it was day he came to the oval office and he was able to be with me as we called his brother to have the first conversation ever had with the technology that allowed people who were deaf to communicate over telephones with people who were not. [applause] so im here more than anything else because the shining life of tom harkin and ruth proves that politics can be a noble profession, that good things can come from tough elections, that people who disagree can get together, Work Together and find common ground. I want to thank tom and ruth for their service and friendship. I want to say that everything tom said about bruce is true. But im going to tell you a story that will make it more meaningful and i hope will make a better case at least indirectly for jack and Monica Vernon and for all your ongressional candidates. I think a mother with six kids belongs in congress and ive heard some of those sexist say anybody that can raise six kids can run a foreign 500 company, they can certainly handle a seat in congress and do it justice. Hope you will help stays. Stacy. I thank Brad Anderson for running for secretary of state. Effort a republican wins a secretary of state job they try to restrict Voting Rights and i dont like that too much. Thats what wanted to say. I want you to think about what all this means. What does it mean to say that we respect our opponents and we dont mind it if they disagree with us, vote against us, do whatever, but in the end we have to find a way to Work Together, to make agreements to get the show on the road. They think they are right all the time and if they make an agreement with us, its somehow compromising, besides they might lose a primary election. Now this is a modest reflection of the kind of conflict that is going on all over the world today. Hear what is going on everywhere. We live in the most interdependent nage human history. Age in hupen history. Iowa farmers can find out what is happening to comparable crops all over the world instantly. You follow the price of inputs, e price of out puts, the probably weather conditions. We are more interdependent than ever before. We are more diverse than ever before in america. But our main political problem shows you what the worlds problem is. Think about america. We are less racist, sexist and homophobic than weve ever been. Continuing ve one problem. We dont want to be around anybody that disagrees with us more than ever before. We are living with complex problems with a lot of moving parts that require people with good minds and good experiences and different experiences to come together. Thats what i always loved about harkin. He never stopped being a good progressive liberal democrat, but he never did go to work with his ears plugged up. He never did go into a situation and put blinders on so he couldnt see what was plainly before his eyes. That is hurting america. Everywhere in the world that peoples interaction are characterized by constant onflict, winner take all, good things are not happening. Everywhere in the world the situation reflects inclusive government, cooperation between the public and private sector and different groups for the purpose of getting something done, good things are happening. Everywhere in america its true, everywhere in the world its true. In this interdependent age, sadly in the last couple of months all weve been reading about are the most painful headlines. But there are some good things happening. There has been a huge drop in the last 10 years in the amount of extreme poverty in the world. Healthcare goals for people all over the world, were going to reach them. Mority is down, infant mority is down. Fewer babes are dying in their first five years during life because of water born illnesses. The aids rate is down. But there is a lot of violence out there. Because power is dispersed. That mens that apart from any specific issue, every time you vote, you need to be looking for somebody that first agrees with you and will stand for what you believe in, but will go to work every day with their ears unplugged and their eyes wide open prepared to reach a principle compromise and stand up and explain it to you if you disagree. We have got to pull this country together to push this country forward. [applause] thats really why i want these folks to win. This is most important for bruce s race but it has implications elsewhere. Look, ive run for office a lot of times. I never tried to put on a Television Ad that i thought would turn people off. Without being dishonest, you want to appeal to as many people as you can. And when bruces opponent put that ad on, i wish i could think of as diplomatic a way to describe it as tom did, but i never graduated beyond the cows in my great grandfathers herd when i was six so im lothed to try to up my game at this late stage. Here is what i want to say. A lot of these republicans spent all their time dising the president and dumping on the snalt majority leader harry reid. If you listen to them, half the time they are not even running against their opponents. They are trying to get you to check your brain at the door, start foaming at the mouth, push some hot button. The last thing they want to you do is think. Now here is something i read the other day and i read it twice to make sure i wouldnt misrepresent it to you. There was a rather revealing article in the press sometime in the last couple of weeks about a speech the Senate Republican leader who wants to be majority leader by getting you to erase all our candidates from congress and our candidate for the senate and see only the people that they are allegedly clones of taking orders from. It was senator Mitch Mcconnells speech to the coke brothers Political Forum supposedly in secret. Again, this was highly informal and informative. So mcconnell first of all said when he became majority leader, he wanted them to know that they would begin by using the budget to take over the government because the budget is the only thing that you cant filibuster. It takes majority vote. So they were going to put an amendment on every budget of every department to get rid of anything that had been done since president obama had been in office or before they didnt like and if he vie towed it they would shut the government down over and over again this. Is not an allegation. He was bragging on this like he was ion sign the discovering the theory of relativity. He found the secret to personal nant gridlock. Oh happy day. What i found even more important and revealing was at the end senator mcconnell said according to the transcript released from the meeting that the worst day in his 30 year political life was the day that the mccain bill was signed into law. Now for those of you who dont remember it because the Supreme Court has gutted its impact. It was a bipartisan bill designed to limit Campaign Contributions in size and to eliminate inso far as possible secrecy in Campaign Contributions so wed have to fess up and if somebody was trying to get to us, wed know who was paying for it. How could you think thats the worst thing that happened . Only if you thought the best thing that happened was if the coke brothers could run black bag operations in every country and spend all this money driving people crazy and getting them to stop thinking and never be found out. I thought some of my friends were mad at senator mcconnell. I was profoundly sad. When i look back on my life in politics, after all those decades and fights and all those campaigns, if the worst thing that ever happened to me was an attempt to limit black bag Campaign Contributions. What about 9 11 . What about the financial meltdown . What about the farm crisis in the 1970s and what about the middle of the countrys Manufacturing Base hollowing out in the 1980s . And what about in his fative kentucky 70 of the coal miners losing their job before the e. P. A. Said a word with no way to put them back to work in other ways . How could you possibly say the worst thing that happened to you was not being able to black bag unlimited amounts of money. In politics when all of these things have happened to americans . One thing i know, everybody up here will be just like tom harkin was in one respect. They will be in this for you when you need it. They may make mistakes. They may do things you dont agree with. But you will not have to worry that if you elect them 30 years from now they will actually stand up with a straight face before a bunch of rich donors and say the saddest day of my life was when i couldnt take it all from you and keep it a secret. [applause] so remember this is way more than just what everybody said. We are going to define the terms in which we will relate to each other and relate to the rest of the world. You cant get a divorce from the rest of the world or the rest of your neighbors around the corner and across the country. We are interdependent. We are in this together. Are we going to build the future together or play a winner take install is it going to be conflict or cooperation . You know what it ought to be. You know what you ought to do to this week on q a, our guest is rick perlstein. Well talk about his book, tracing the evolution of american politics