I think bureaucrats today are really politicians with tender. Thats whats happened or they havent become civil servants. They become politicians of tenure. I dont know how were going to do it. The state to become less and less important. These 50 places of experimentation are being shut down. I think it has to start in washington first. I think washington is the key to unleashing these 50 places that can really produce innovation. I think washington is where it has to start and filter down. Final question or was that it . Thank you again. Thank you for joining in the big tent. [applause] copies of the book our personal. He can state an autographed impartially and even wander outside. We do thank you for your kind attention. Hope to see you again soon in the future. Thank you all. [inaudible conversations] on the go, afterwards is available via podcast. Visit booktv. Org and click podcast on the upper left side of the page. Select which podcast youd like to download and listen while you travel. Coming up next on booktv, gerald f. Warburg talks about his memoirs, trenton. He argues young people today should be optimistic about Government Service and learn from those who worked in congress when it was more productive. Professor warburg, it was instrument and crafting the Nuclear Nonproliferation act and antiapartheid sanctions act, discusses his service in congress and his post Congress Work as a lobbyist and attorney for the nixon family. This is just under one hour. Good afternoon, everybody. Thanks so much for coming. Im Harry Harding, the dean of the Batten School of Public Policy here in virginia. Its my pleasure to welcome all of you to the celebration of the publication of the new book called dispatches from the Eastern Front a political education from the nixon years to the age of obama. Gerald f. Warburg is the assistant dean for external affairs at the Batten School and is also a Senior Member of what we call our practitioner faculty. And, in fact, jerry is an exemplar of why professional schools, including professional schools of Public Policy meet practitioner faculty, practitioner to faculty with knowledge of the academy, just as they need first rate academic scholars who are deeply engaged in the profession that they are teaching. Gerry brings to this position very extensive experience in the world of how the policy. He has served as a staff member on capitol hill innocent for many years. He was also a very Senior Leader in one of the most prominent lobbying firms in washington. So he knows what he teaches to his students. In addition not only does he bring a rich experience in the world of washington but he also has rigorous academic training. A graduate degree in Political Science at stanford that enables him to not simply tell anecdotes and war stories as interesting and cluster the as they are bound to put these into a clear, rigorous Analytical Framework for his students. He is a very highly effective teacher. He has been named by the students in the Batten School as the Commencement Speaker a year or so back. Hes been nominated for a number of Teaching Awards at the university and his courses both the graduate and undergraduate courses on congress 101 for graduate students at a new course called policy challenges of the 21st century for undergraduates have gotten rave reviews from the students. But its not just his ability to lead a class or to give a great lecture. It is his deep willingness to engage regularly one on one as a mentor of students, very much in the tradition that Thomas Jefferson tried to create when he founded the university of virginia. In addition to his role as a very effective scholar and teacher, gerry is also a prolific writer. He has written in virtually every genre. Hes written a novel. He has written scholarly articles and chapters. He has written opeds, and now he is the proud author and we are proud with them, of a memoir on his life in washington. So as dean of the Batten School it is enormously gratifying for me to introduce an honored member of our faculty, a distinguished author and a very present observer of the washington scene, gerry warburg. Gerry . [applause] good afternoon and thanks for joining us. So what drove the creation of this very quirky book, and what insights might you gain by reading it . Who became the heroes and villains of the baby boomers and a career like mine in politics . Ill try to shed light on these questions in my opening comments, and i look forward to your questions at the conclusion. First of all of which is a special thanks to my friend Harry Harding, and my colleagues from the Batten School get the university of virginia. This school has grown under harrys personal leadership from just three faculty members in a temporary facility on Hospital Drive to over 250 students and one of the countrys best Public Policy schools to what i believe is one of the world rages public universities. Thank you for rescuing me from the toxic swamps of washington and bringing a recovering politician here to the university. This university is also blessed was some remarkable minds and generous colleagues who helped me improve the book. I want to thank a magical storyteller, a National Book award winner, john casey with us, and my good friend and reader ben congress. Thank you so much for at least saving me from it few embarrassments. As i said im grateful for my time here at the university of virginia. Its been a wonderful joy and i look forward to more years to come. I want to try to accomplish for things in my opening comments tonight. I want to try to shove the ideas about the craft of writing. We live in an age of instantaneous tweets and in permanent unedited blogs. So why the heck would somebody write a book and why do we read them . Why would a Public Policy professor with a Political Science degree write such a candid memoir . Ill try to answer. Second, i hope to entertain you a little bit, continue with the sunshine out on the lawn and family responsibility, but id like to read a few short passage from the book to get a little flavor of where im coming from and how i tried to tell the story. Ill try to share a bit of light on a very unusual approach i took in this book, ma blending a twentysomething heat of the moment letters home to family on the west coast to a more sober dispassionate analysis of the politics of our time from nixon to obama. Ill try to explain the methods of this madness can this very quirky architecture of the book. Third, i want to push back against some of the conventional wisdom that washington is hopelessly broken. You will hear a heartfelt plea to engage in civic affairs. Indeed invite any agenda tonight, it is this, to try once more to exult the nobility of Public Service. Enough of the shotgun attacks on every citizen who tries to serve their immunity. Enough of the cynical vilification of the men and women who we elect to represent us and enough of the whining from folks who dont follow the news and dont vote. As i said in a recent oped, a brief advertisement from this oped and a number of these scribblings are available on the Book Publishers actual website, www. Dispatchs memoir. Com. As i said in its recent oped, the government is not some distant alien other, particularly those of us of Northern Virginia no on its us but its our fellow citizens. Taxpayers and voters. Here at the Batten School weve had a very strong recitation of Legislature Come through, coming to the classroom to engage drug director with her students. Nearly a dozen over the last year. They are acceptable. To engage the government we can make it work better and be a positive force in our citizens lives. As i suggested this book is counterintuitive. He concedes our politics are broken, yet i argued theres no better time to get involved in politics. Its a book about politics and reform that calls people to Public Service and its written by, i confess, an incurable optimist. We baby boomers met a lot of the challenges. After four decades in politics i know in my gut the millennials can and will save us from the toxic group of problems as part of our baby boomer get to them. Fourth and finally, im eager today to answer your questions so we can talk both about politics and about the challenge of writing. This is my marco rubio moment where i need water. Now, a word on why this book, why would a Political Science professor write a personal memoir . The best book ive ever read about washington is about a staff guy, about his death guys life in politics. Written by Harry Mcpherson who came to washington to do good. He stayed and did well. He was a series young man from texas came to work for junior congressman named lyndon johns johnson. And his writing is so in during earnest, he tells the story of the remarkable rise and fall of Lyndon Johnson it seems from insight to this guy from texas from teachers college. With each chapter of his book as he progresses, you see in the boys that he is getting a little wiser, getting a little smarter, getting prepared for the twist of the night, for the high highs and the lolos of politics. It is in this comment is getting of the motion will intelligence, this perspective that i thought to replicate i confess in my own writing. I even tipped my hat to Harry Mcpherson in the title, this book was about a political education and its a nod to his outstanding writing that i worked out into a very wordy title. This book is a gem and i commend it to you. Reading Harry Mcpherson, i saw the washington fissures through the eyes of one staff member, i needed to know who won and who lost in the battles in the 40s, 50s and 60s. I saw some of those events through the eyes, the eyes of any man. It is his readers can his readers see what life look like to the small town public schoolboy who showed up in oz. I have the same feeling when i first appeared intent in 1975. Extreme excitement and my enthusiasm lasted for decades. Let me try to describe in a couple of passages the excitement i had and how much interacting with the people making these policies shaped my thinking. Page six for those who do keeping alone. It was the people who took me. It was the people in pursuit of power who fascinated me. Their passions, off the cover was principles and endless testing of character they experienced. The politicians who populate official washington i soon learned come from country and city, from Ivy League Schools and community colleges, from hick towns and boomtowns, they are the 4h club leaders, ambitious class of the taurus, but also the dissenters and the rebels, the idealistic critics of the status quo. They share a common sense of mission. All yearn to have some impact on our national affairs, all are eager to leave so mark and to from the common existential desire to be present. Although to leave evidence of their work. Their triumphs as was their failures are reassuringly human. They are drawn to washington as i was by the backing arena. Some come to do combat over policy, many want to save the world. Others stayed to make money, we getting their expertise to the highest bidder. Some a court issues and adopt causes only as a means to an end, holding power. Potomac fever they call it. Its a disease like drug addiction. They take just one hit and cannot escape and crave for more. Their story ends badly, always. The individuals and institutions they serve suffer. We see the capital as the National Movie screen where we projector greatest hopes for progress. We feel called to washington to engage. It is an invisible call to Public Service. One fuel in equal parts by altruism and ego. As my kids point out to me this is personal at times. But it inspires the universal perspective, tries to capture what it felt like to be there. It tries to repair the next generation for the challenges ahead in the policymaking arena. How do you build a coalition . How to scout the opposition . How stuff gets done. A word about memoirs, im a history club junkie and in my experience memoirs about politics are written for three reasons. One, kind of a secret but one is therapy. People have to get out of this is to pick the second is revenge. Payback, revisionist history. The third is to enlighten, to try to achieve and to share some thoughts. Youll be shocked to know that i believed that was, the latter was my motivation. To tell the truth and to let the chips fall where they may. Thats what motivated the voice in dispatches. It doesnt by focusing on a handful of characters, rea we dd will know and recognize, people i got to know sometimes are close up, particularly inside United States capital. By looking honestly at the people who shape our policies and asking over and over again, what drives them . The book had very unusual origins to it began i confess as a service of letters home to my family in california. I would sit for weeks on and on will staff chair in the senate floor between the majority leader and the floor manager and i could hear everything. My job was to count votes and invoke what the search strategy to i had a lot of time to kill. There were mind numbingly slow quorum calls and filibuster. I started making notes. About what was going on, but the characters and personalities. Notes i scrawled on sheets of lined yellow legal pads, notes that became letters that i bowled off in bulging with envelopes in the days before email with stamps attached to them. Years later my mom produced some of the summer library. These letters had been written with exuberance and idealism of youth. That chronicled the strange rituals of politicians backed beast as we californians called it. Some of the state address working in a address working in the file by might irrepressibly literary mama. It is these snail mail dispatches from the Eastern Front that reappear lightly edited in parts of the book. They help get the dispatches narrative some Chronological Order from 1975 when i first became, first began working in congress until 2010 when dean Harry Harding blessedly rescued me. In editing these papers, the great folks at bancroft prize worked to encourage me to leave some of that naive and enthusiastic impressionable boys in, and i didnt. So what you have here are some stories about washington, about moscow, about meeting with Andrei Sakharov and jimmy Carter Committee with brave Political Prisoners overseas, meeting with the nixon family, ted kennedy and with the young senator barack obama. They are stories about freshmen senators, guys like howard baker and john kerry and joe biden when they first showed up on the Foreign Relations committee in the sense where i was the leadership staffer working for the committee. There are stories of people but it came to know in different aspects, people like nancy pelosi and Julie Nixon Eisenhower who became one of my true heroes and so i greatly admire. So you got stories about president ial campaigns and intelligence and investigations of Nuclear Weapons proliferation. Stories that leaking stories to the Washington Post and the New York Times and trying not to get caught doing it. Most of them i confess i had never intended to publish and i blame it on you guys. I blame it on my students. When i stand up in class they tell basic tell us more war stories. Tell us what really happened. Dont give us the organizational chart. Tells how things really get done. So i sough i have sought to ince of these specific illustrations and avoid the generalities of some of the cautious case studies we use in the classroom. Ill let you readers judge for yourself whether i succeeded in that. A word about chronology. These accounts from 75 to present our and oddnumbered chapters and they flow in Chronological Order from nixon to obama but they are bracketed by short evennumbered chapters written in a much more mature voice i hope and these are sort of flashforwards, bookends. They tried to lend grayhaired wisdom and perspective. More than anything a try to answer the question that you guys asked and that my states asked most persistently, what do you wish you knew then that you know now . I have the great good fortune of teaching students in the weeks sometimes right before they go off to washington or new york or sierra leone to work with government, to work with ngos, to work with the private sector. Part of my classroom ritual is to make sure that we use Everything Possible as a teaching moment. We even have a special april fools day unit on policy failures and thankfully our government, our executive branch and once again today our Supreme Court give us plenty of raw material to consider. I can assure you that the work at hand is not merely the talks there before recovering political adviser. Yes some of the passages have a ton of baby boomer confessional. How much of this do how much of it is an ego trip . A simple hunger for power . I also plead guilty in the book giving an adrenaline junkie. They have called me out on this repeatedly. Early on i got addicted to the excitement of being in the cabinet room at the white house or being in the Conference Committee weeding india with committee chairmen. I also have an awful lot of fun both wholesome and illicit but it was the proximity to the power that was addictive and energized me as well. The book deliberately avoids score settling. Weve all read those massive book of the month club films that could be subtitled how right i was about iraq war or my political opponents are idiots. These books are so predictable and they are so rarely enlightening. There are plenty of pedestrian villains in washington and several times in the book i can their washington to high school. Think about your high school. You have your usual quota of heroes and bombs, teachers bets and class clowns. Dispatches strive to look at the people inside these stories come to understand what motivates them, especially those i disagree with, passionately from Newt Gingrich to Ronald Reagan, to the nixon family. I tried hard to see the ability of the motives and what was their worldview and what the heck was that they were trying to accomplish. Ed also tried, as my good friend john casey so kind and notice from his generous blurb, it tries to chronicle some of the political history of our times. Here, for several is the opening of the chapter about engaging with the soviet union at the height of the cold war. 191. Will the cold war waxed and waned for decades but for those of us who came of age, it was a conflict marked by fits and starts. Some days and episodic spike in tensions with iraq. Leaders would scare the hell out of citizens of both nations putting to the forces on alert and unleashing rhetoric. That sounds like today. And the crisis would pass and you would forget for months at a time that some of the 60,000 Nuclear Warheads loose in the world were targeted on our home communities. Skip ahead a bit. I talk about the time we met with the head of the soviet nuclear forces, a gentleman named marshall took the soviet official in charge of Nuclear Weapons. We drove to a military complex not far from red square. Hi5 and hallways with a dimmed lighting yielded to a more formal chamber that felt a bit like the office of an Elementary School principal. Our escorts bowed nervously and back out the door. Standing before us, i was with said Alan Cranston of california and senator max mathias of maryland, Standard Poors was the man who controlled tens of thousands of Nuclear Weapons targeted at the United States and our allies. I kept thinking, if war breaks out this is the guy who will kill my family. He had a dark olive complexion that seem to blend with his drab fatigues which were bedecked with dozens of metal. His demeanor was a serious at his face seemed sad. He was like a grandfather worrying about his progeny. Could a limited nuclear war ever be contained, cranston asked . Know, he stated through translator. Escalation is inevitable. Good Missile Defense for protection, star wars plans for his Missile Defense was the issue of the day. No, he responded matteroffactly after waiting for the translation. Offense is cheaper than defense. Interceptors can always be overwhelmed. Could either side ever win once a Nuclear Launch was initiated, cranston pressed . He tossed for the translation before interrupting, no. Mutual suicide. He said it in english more in sorrow than in anger. I want to try to sum up explosives some of the lessons i learned on the senate floor or in moscow or the cloak rooms or in white house negotiations. Some of these lessons were sought the hard way making mistakes in the public eye when stakes are quite high. Others were momentary triumphs, each serve to educate me. Some were embarrassing but i included them anyway. And i trust the review more truths with more universal applications for readers. And narrative tries at times to offer a third person perspective come to put the authors voice out there in sort of any man, the staff and looking in the back of 110 shots. And asks the leader what would you do . What should i have done . In that sense it is a teaching tool, not a dear diary confessional. We sure do need to take Lessons Learned from our mistakes. Think about obama we doing the about of that raid and said they can we better add a third helicopter. Or what was wrong with hillary care . Lets do the opposite and see if it works. Thats one recent one of my favorite textbooks i subject all of my students to, taking this judgment is thinking in time, a book that challenges us to look at policy history but always to ask what do we really know . What is unknown and what most dangerously is if we assume without evidence . You will be amused to know that over the last couple of weeks doing all sorts of quickie tv shows and interviews by satellite with anchors at odd hours, the mainstream media, the first question you always asked is tell us about your screw ups. I concede we do need to learn from our past. We need to succeed in that time was just on that mission of returning to where we started and to know the place and to know ourselves for the first time. A couple more points before concluding. The book recounts a whole bunch of adventures. Talk about spiriting documents out of the soviet union, bringing Andrei Sakharov memoirist to the United States, meeting with foreign leaders and spies. But traveling the world and meeting heads of state, i found the most Common Element with all these folks that unites all humanity is our hunger for narrative. We all learned through stories. We connect the dots through stories. We listen to the evening is eager for a story to be told to us. We hunger to find a reassuring narrative arc. So when i tried to sum up Lessons Learned, that my vehicle was to my great surprise a very personal story. If you shop for books to read one political hack shred another, dispatches will disappoint you. Go watch bill oreilly or al sharpton if you want your prejudices reinforced. Fulfor that item, the only folki call that my name in this book are a couple of prominent reporters who i worked with for years who bitterly disappointed us and disappointed me by failing us on the whole iraq wmd question whether failed us by engaging in so much caricatured about congress or about lobbying that i thought theyd gone over the deep end. Im going to wait and hope you cut that out. In conclusion, in conclusion, this is a book about people. Its about idealists. Its about the eagle scouts and the valedictorians i spoke of earlier, the young men and women who pour into washington from 50 states determined to reshape the world. Finally, it is also an explicit call to Public Service. I remain in its retelling and an incurable optimist. I grew up in the california wonder years where government was a positive force in our lives building bridges and dams and highways and what within the nations very best public schools. I have seen democracy at its best and ive seen it up close at its worst, and i remain very confident that it contains the seeds of its own renewal. Hopefully readers of dispatches will reach the same conclusion. I thank you very much for your interest, and out i very much welcome your questions and your thoughts. [applause] you mentioned cranston and mathias. I think of them as examples of bipartisanship in Foreign Policy that a dont see much of anymore. And first i would like to hear what you think of the notion of bipartisanship, particularly in Foreign Policy. And if you agree if it is faded, went to that begin to happen and what were the causes . Thats a wonderful question, in case obi didnt hear it its about bipartisanship when it ended and he points to two senators who did routinely work across the aisle. They wouldnt travel without members of the opposite party. Alan cranston of california and max mathias of maryland. We all hearken back to the days of the last great senate when things work and when congress was consequential. When did it go bad . It went bad someday in the late 1980s when were sitting in the well of the senate we realized the roll call taking place at 9 00 at night had one purpose and one purpose alone. That was because senator jesse helms of no stilettos putting out a direct mail piece and he was daring people to be the one in a 99 to one vote against some nonsense resolution. When fundraising began to get into the roll call him into the amendments offered in committee. This is before the internet, before president obama as a candidate waste billions on the internet. When fundraising start to get into the actual tabulation of votes on individual role calls, its started to sour. When did it get worse . It got worse in about 2008, 2009, 2010 when a very effective strategy on the part of one party to block everything, to try to shut the government down became fabulously successful at the polls and 2010. And now when you have senators to reach across the aisle running for reelection back home, they are in great peril, in peril to liberals in california in the open primary and to conservatives at the risk of getting tea party, lets call it what it is. Ask senator lugar. Ask senator cochran, asked some of the others who face that pressure. What do we do about it . How do we fix it . How do we change it . I would say there are people who are willing to buck that trend and we here in the purple state of virginia are very blessed to a legislature go out of the way to work across the aisle. Senator kaine of virginia who in a classroom told us he would never put in the bill without a republican sponsored. He says, i pray with him in the morning, type of basketball with them and i. Im going to work with him during the daytime. Its folks like i do see our future in the middle and or reported politically by the voters. That are my source of hope. Ill concede to you that they are still in the minority right now, but i take some hope from the millennials we read in a recent pew poll that the militias are not affiliate with either party. They are disgusted. They are indiana, paying attention and theyre not very enamored of our institutions with its wall street our congress. I do have hope they will reward the folks who go there to get stuff done as opposed to folks together to get reelected. In your memoir, utah how political idealism is tempered by your reality then pervades most of the washington at your expenses are you frustrated that the legislative process [inaudible] i want to on a fathers expected speakers a great question. A complicated question and ill restate it, am i cynical or is this what the Founding Fathers intended . I confess i always go back as most of us professors do on federalist intent. Madison for soft actions can he was horrified but he thought there Necessary Evil in part of the deal. I dont believe, and i love to debate friends of mine, left and right, i want to go back to the strict construction of the constitution because the Founding Fathers when a strict constructionist. They scrapped the articles of confederation in 10 years. They put 10 minutes on the bill of rights if they put the bill of rights into the constitution just as part of getting it ratified. I think it would be horrified by the idea that our legislators spend more time tailoring to special interes interests and rg money than they did working together in the national edges but i dont think of Founding Fathers would stand for it. Obloquobligor jefferson referen. Our beloved mr. Jefferson once wrote that expecting a grown man expecting a government to live, always, im paraphrasing, under its original rules would be as much of a fallen as expecting a grown man to wear the same suit of clothing that he wore as a child. Jefferson actually proposed at one point some study constitution every 20 years. Im not that radical but if you believe we should look at some of these things and i hold out exhibit a. From the news today it seems pretty clear to me we will have to have a constitutional amendment about Campaign Finance. Corporations are not people, and mr. Abelson or mr. Stier dropping 100 billion into our campaign i believe violates our equal protection rights and the voting rights. So thats what i think we will end up. Am i frustrated . Yes. I think well have a Constitutional Convention a more . No. But i think thats where we will end up. Will have to take some of the wisdom of the founders, take the guts and make some of these changes. I didnt mean to give a speech. You paint yourself as a political junkie and a cockeyed optimist. Guilty. Going back in the days where we had the berlin wall, summer to the beltway around washington. Ronald reagan said, mr. Robert schock tear down this wall mr. Gorbachev. What would be your thought on tearing down this wall . I wish you could sit in my class, charles, because i sit out there and i see these bright, eager faces of optimist who are ready to go next week, next month to go make an impact, to go make change. And that is one of the sources of what optimism. I also think we are very much akin to people that we can judge these things that our Founding Fathers would be disgusted by the state of affairs in washington right now and i think it both major parties to test equally. But i think democracy as its own renewal. I showed up i confess in 1975. I was a democrat the aggravating family that was not enamored with Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan to punish up there was an enormous opening to make change. And were major reforms. To the checking of the imperiall presidency, something we need to do now again. There was a restoration of government and sunshine to the written number of reform measures, the cbo put together so we wouldnt public into the situation were in now with deficits. I think he had these instrumen instruments, and its frankly one reason i am so respectful of the tea party and i think it plays such a constructive role in our National Politics because it empowers citizens. The idea is that citizens can get fed up like the guy in network and get so mad at not going to take any more. Thats the greatest of american traditions and thats what i think they put a very constructive role. We need to have young people do that not just in president ial election years and not just for one party but to demand that accountability starting as i suggest with Campaign Finance reform and i would add to that list gerrymandering. We must stop the business of allowing entrenched incumbents to pick their own voters. We all know its wrong. I met with my students today, not for my political party, who is determined to engage in this change and thats exactly what we need to do. We need to say enough of the incumbents picking their own voters, enough of the incumbents, and these are some of my friends in incumbents. They are addicted to the Campaign Cash and we need to change that if our voices are going to be heard. And then good things will happ happen. I was wondering if you could share maybe from some your time and washington [inaudible] think it is the question was about what are my biggest regrets. Olivet of a paraphrase from reporters who almost letter said, are right, tell us about your screw ups. But my regrets are interesting to i had opportunity to discuss this with the oppressor i brought down your frankly to get some ideological diversity in the classroom, and old and dear friend who is a chief who is a chief of staff of senator lugar when i worked for the democrats. I told him i think the thing i regretted most in 40 years in ad washington was the work i did on nominations. Let me explain why. During the reagan years we democrats have a job of scoring points against an administration that i quite frankly thought was wrongheaded on some of the security issues, at some of the defense issues, on mobile mx missiles rally around charlottesville on railcars, just some things i thought didnt make sense. How did we score points in the minority . One of the ways we score points with by beating up on administrations nominees. So you would have a fine lady or gentleman, like Harry Harding, a noted scholar, expert on middle east or maggie rae, brilliance on antarctic policy. They would come before the Foreign Relations committee for their confirmation. What we did to them was savage. It was my job. If you asked me if i regret it, i do to let me tell you why. We would sit o on also staff jue by Dinah Sanders and i removed a day when president bush, the father, my favorite, had sent us a very wellqualified dominate to be a foreign ambassador. The committee had in its possession documents which suggested that he had lied to us in order to cover up something the president had done. This have to do with irancontra and whether Vice President bush knew about it. We were irked. We just lost another election. President bush sent his close advisor to be confirmed by this committee. We did everything we could as energetic oh staffers to figure out how to nail him. And as he sat there in the chair, we could see his wife and his three daughters behind in with tears going down the eyes as we just took turns lining up and throwing mud balls at him. Do i understand why i did it . Yes. Do i understood what a member of the Democratic Party did that . Yes. We see the same thing happening today with president obamas nominees from the republicans. Youre going to norway but you never been the and you dont know what continent its on . Weve seen that in the last few weeks. Its not something i was proud of. Its something i regretted and when you cut the personal about a man or woman whose only crime was their willingness to serve the United States government, i felt lousy about it. And we want a lot of those fights. A lot of guys are human rights who didnt believe in it. We blocked geiser armscontrol he didnt know much about it. Let me take the flip side of the story quickly. The benefit of some of harry and i know well and respect. We were about to block that particular nominee, had all the democrats and we were back in the majority and his fellow was going catch he was deepsixed by the ascent. When my democratic members, i worked for the leadership so even though i was a young guy, they kind of respected me a little bit. He said i would like to see in my office. I dont usually get called to under the senators office, just me. He closes the door, its just the two of us and he says, gerry, i know how hard youve worked on this particular nomination. I know how strong the party is about and i wanted to type im going to vote to confirm it. I wanted to tell you to your face and i wanted you to understand why. The senator involved, he wont mind me mentioning status senator charles robb. A loo looked at me in the eye ae said, i have had my reputation savaged in my own life by something i didnt do and i thought it was terribly unfair. While we are not in a court of law, if theres a shadow of doubt this guy didnt do what you guys said he did, im going to vote to confirm him and let him to do his job for our country. I was frustrated, i was a hothead, political staffer. But i still respected him for telling me that to my face and, frankly, i respected his logic and i think you did the right thing to digital in question went on to serve the country very honorably. I dont think im on his Christmas Card list, but i do respect the process, as i say, i didnt live to regret that. Michael, you have a question of going to try, i know a couple of you have to teach at 6 00. I will try to wrap it up in about 10 minutes spent a lot of young people like my generation are disaffected with the process of the system. [inaudible] im just curious what your response to that would be, dedicating the other side of why you think the calls to traditional Public Servant is still a viable option to make a difference . The question is about what they call the Public Service and why im so darned optimistic about this stuff. Eyecatcher to our hat to frank batten, a guy who founded the Batten School had some wonderful conditions on a very generous gift to us and one of them was he wanted us to assume that people could lead from anywhere. It didnt used have to be a congressional staffer or an assistant secretary for something or other. His theory was that we need private sector did she. We need a pda and the chamber of commerce weighing in on issues but we need our friends and neighbors to engage in a town Hall Meetings that go back to the founding of the republic. And so what dean harding and others at the Batten School on our team are trying to do is we are assuming youre going to lead from a bunch of different places when you go out. Youre not just going to be a government official. You may be a wall street making a million bucks, god bless you, but you also get involved in civic affairs, in election. You be writing opeds. Youll be argued at the town hall about the bypass. You will be working on these issues and youll be a citizen in the sense that mr. Jefferson originally intended when he founded this Wonderful University that everybody has a stake in a. I know they were mostly white male land owners in those days but i know mr. Jefferson would have embraced a more inclusive design. So thats what were trying to do in our modest entrepreneurial startup of the school, and i think its the key to the future. Ngos, a wonderful place to lead. Ive talked to many during office hours about different engine as you go to and make a difference. The guy passed out business cards. He recruited right in my classroom. Come work for us. I hear Terry Jackson will be here next week recruiting as i want you to come work on our side. But there are a number of opportunities for you guys to get involved and make a difference to the of think i will say which is surprising and i say this with the tip of my hat to 03 Adult Children involved in political life, a lot of the folks in washington is broken, back to a day which just as it existed more, the professor knows how great it was when folks were to cross the aisle but it doesnt happen anymore. They punish folks who tried to do. A lot of those young people ongoing local. My daughter, bless her heart, is working on urban policy. She can see the results offer policy efforts every day which he walks to work on when she rides the trolley. I think that maybe a course a lot of you guys are going to go. U. S. A. , washington, not so much. But here in charlottesville or richmond or in lynchburg around the commonwealth or in your hometown, cities around courage, you going to want to get involved at the local level, you have a great education. Some of you will be fortunate enough to also get a Batten School degree. But i think you be equipped for the type of civic life that mr. Jefferson originally envisioned it towards the end, when it came down to do my job talk, i confess, i did write up something about facing the committee in this book to the whole bit of telling tale. When it came down to i said isnt it weird that mr. Jefferson founded a university about civic leadership and then spend 190 years, 190 is passed before he opens the Public Policy school. Whats the deal with that . That was my smart alec question. On a close vote that brought me in anyway. How about one last question . Im going to give it to dean harding. That was not a set a. This is a twopart question. Part of your book is political education, and there are two ways of getting educated. [inaudible] can you give us, what pops in mind as the best example in your life, your career of learning a hard lesson or the easily . Thats a great question. I can do learning the hard way really quickly. As bill and others will remember a whole bunch of the senders virtual half of my committee had some idea they could be president. Theyre pretty smart and they talked about important stuff. Half the Foreign Relations committee ran for president when you. Hagel and kerry and biden and obama all came from the committee. So three guys sitting in a row in the staff aisle suddenly became rivals in the president ial campaigns. And for some reason since i gone to school in new england i was made Deputy Campaign manager of Alan Cranston for president and sent off to New Hampshire to fill auditoriums full of this wonderfully eccentric liberal older california senator. I had a wonderful education from stanford but i knew nothing about president ial campaigns or filling auditoriums in New Hampshire. The lesson i learned the hard way after not getting the attendance i wanted at some political events there, they said look, cranston is going to come in second to mondale in iowa. You will get the big media to. We will come to New Hampshire and will have a packed auditorium at all the National Press and he will become the alternative to four more years of Carter Mondale and you in charge of building the crowd. Does nothing about this in john lewis seminars about china policy at stanford and theres nothing about it in our reading the Foreign Relations committee for years it i looked around for the course to take over but it was me. So what lesson that i learned . Im being a little flip but its fun to how will i fill an auditorium in portsmouth hampshire . George mcgovern got in the race to Alan Cranstons left. We did not come in second to