So, it was kind of a, you know, insurgent upstart approach to have the temerity to actually think that he could knock off the governor, which he, obviously, did for the nomination and won. Despite the similarities, allen has a clear preference. His book jacket notes, the reason you like sports more than politics is because sports makes sense and washington doesnt. Okay, now, are you ready for some football . Thank you so much for watching state of the union. Im Candy Crowley in washington. Head to cnn. Com sotu. Fareed zakaria is next for our viewers here in the United States. This is gps, the Global Public square. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. Im Fareed Zakaria. We have two famous and fascinating guests for you today. First, the worlds second wealthiest man, bill gates. Despite the weak economy, despite the strife in molly, syria, else where, despite massacres and messed up weather, gates says he is optimistic about the future. Hell tell us why. And Vice President turned businessman thinker filmmaker environmental activist, al gore on american politics, gun control, Climate Change and much more. Coming up. Also, did you have more money in your bank account this week than a major african nation . Probably. Ill explain. But, first, heres my take. The scenes of chaos and strife in egypt that youve been seeing during the second anniversary of the terrar square uprising. Arab spring and for the old order. But lets remember, that old order was doomed. Arab dictators like Hosni Mubarak could not have hold on to power without greater troubles. Look at syria. But events in the middle east the last two years do underscore something i have long believed that constitutions should take precedence over elections. Let me explain. Look at the difference between egypt and jordan. At the start of the arab spring, it appeared that egypt responded to the will of the people, made a clean break with its past and was ushering in a new birth of freedom. Jordan, by contrast, had a number of protests, but King Abdullah responded with only a few personnel changes and promised to study the situation and talk of reform. But then egypt started going down the wrong path and jordan made a set of wise choices. Put simply, egypt shows democ t democratizati democratization. Elections became the most important element of the new order. Electing a president and ratifying the constitution. As a result, the best organized force in egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood swept into power and was able to dominate the drafting of the constitution. The document has many defects. It failed to explicitly protect womens rights. It allowed for Media Censorship in the name of Media Security and morsi declared that his decrees were above judicial review. In jordan, by contrast, the king did not rush to hold elections and was widely criticized for his deliberate pace. Instead, as he explained on this program last week, he appointed a counsel to propose changes to the constitution. In september 2011, the council transferred some of the kings powers to parliament and established an independent commission to administer electio electi elections. Those elections held just ten days ago were boycotted by muslimhood on the ground that changes were too small and power resided with the king. But 70 of eligible voters registered and 56 turned out at the polls, the highest turn out in the region. Many critics of the king and government were elected. 12 of the winners, thanks to a quota that the commissioner had set 12 of the new Parliament Members are women. King abdullah ii obtains authority, but the new system is clearly a step in a transition to a constitutional monarchy. Morocco has taken a similar route as jordan in acting constitutional reforms in 2011, as well. On the other hand, the arab worlds two largest experiments in democracy, iraq and egypt, have unfortunately made poor choices in common. Both placed elections ahead of constitutions, popular participation ahead of individual rights. Both have had, as their first elected leaders, strong men with islamest backgrounds who have no real dedication to liberal democracy. The results have been the establishment of illiberal democracy in iraq and the danger of a similar system in egypt. The best role models for the region might well be two small monarchies, although much more reform is needed in both places. But, basically, jordan and morocco have chosen evolution over revolution. So far, it seems the better course. For more on this, go to cnn. Com fareed for a link to my Washington Post column. Lets get started. Bill gates is the richest man in america and the second richest man in the world. This, despite having already given away 28 billion. Gets has just released his annual letter detailing what the bill and Melinda Gates foundation has accomplished in the past 12 months but gives his surprising take on the world. Bill gates, welcome back. Good to be here. Everybody worries. You talk to people and they feel things are going badly. Politically, economically. You in your annual letter, you talk a lot about the good news. So, cheer us up. Tell us what is the stuff that you think is most heartening about the world today . Well, through innovation life is Getting Better at a really amazing rate. One of the statistics i think is kind of a report card for the world is how many children under the age of 5 die every year. And back in 1960, it was over 20 million. By 1990, came down to 12 million and now, were on track by 2015, to be half of that. Less than 6 million. Thats the greatest rate of decrease weve ever seen. Now its vaccines, its better nutrition. We are making progress against these very tough problems. And i think its partly because bad news happens kind of all of a sudden and good news is a little bit at a time. Even the empowerment of the internet, one little thing at a time. You could mess and almost think that people are saying that life was better beforehand, which is not even close to being true. What would you say to somebody, an american who says, yeah, this is great. But were going through this terrible economic crisis and things look pretty grim for the United States . Well, its not i dont want to understate the challenges that people have, but the kind of goods that people have in learning on the internet and how you get, things have improved a lot in the last 20 years. There are places where we dont have market mechanisms. In health care and education, as weve gotten rich, those are bigger parts of the economy and our ability to use normal, private sector things to work in those areas is very, very weak. 95 of teachers are never given any feedback. Never told, hey, you do this well, but you should work on this. Go over and see how some other teacher calms the classroom down or makes a complex subject interesting. And i think if we bring feedback systems, which means measuring and telling people how theyre doing, we bring that into areas like teaching, we can get more out of the education investments that we make. But you think that because of technology and that kind of thing, americans today have many more opportunities in some sense than they had before . Thats right. If you take Median Income and that means we havent had this big improvement. Which hasnt changed in the last 25 years. That really understates whats happened. I mean, would you rather be a gay man 20 years ago, 50 years ago . In africa and gdp didnt go up, but life spans almost doubled. Literacy went from 20 to 16 . We dont capture all the wonderful things. I can use wikipedia for free and i can sit there with my son and explore new things. And, so, innovation is being underestimated today more than any time in history. I mean, we had the internet bubble where it was actually briefly overestimated. That was kind of uncomfortable, i think, but its strange to be in such a funk because people look at political road block and some of the way that these measure things and theyre not getting a sense of progress in the rich world and in the developing world. But when you look at washington and you look at the political gridlock, you must get very depressed. Yes, im no expert on politics but i know that, you know, the countries face many challenges in the last several hundred years and somehow democracy has been selfcorrecting. That is, eventually, democracy has particularly in the u. S. Has always found its way there. Now, running a government with a twomonth budget, you know, try to run a business. Try to hire people and try to do Capital Spending and try to figure out how youre going to use innovation. Its no matter what you think about what the government wants it to be, doing it the way were doing it is absolutely insane. Every bad thing you can say about government gets worse when its on the short term, unknown future processes. On the big Public Policy issue of the day, we should involve Economic Policy and im asking you this because you found it and ran for many years the Largest Company in the world. The issue is, do we need to get the fiscal house in order with a longterm budget deal and would that trigger a kind of avalanche in business investment. Is that what is Holding Businesses back . Certainly the uncertainty that we havent reached compromises on these things, that cant be good. Its got to make business hold back. The fact that the investments in the future may be cut back, thats a little bit scary. Are people really saying that the medical Research Budget should be cut . Which is on track to be cut . Sequesteration is across the board kind of thing, should you plan for that or not plan for that . Say youre a graduate student right now, money for your lab, not money for your lab . Really awful to not, to not make decisions. Im not a macro economics person. Clearly theres this global almost evaluation where everybody is trying to get their currency to be worth less which has business standing on the sidelines a bit in terms of their Capital Spending and youd like to unlock that. One of the big pools of money thats out there. When we come back, bill gates tells us he thinks he knows what makes a great teacher. An answer to an ageold question, when we come back. 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Because only national lets you choose any car in the aisle. And go. You can even take a fullsize or above, and still pay the midsize price. Now this. Will work. [ male announcer ] just like you, business pro. Just like you. Go national. Go like a pro. Then youre going to love this. Right now theyre only 14. 95 wowa grt deal just got a whole lot better. Hurry. 14. 95 wont last. We are back with bill gates. Bill, you have spent a lot of time. Your foundation, you spent a lot of money on trying to alleviate poverty and deal with issue of disease and things like that. But then you also spend a lot of money on education. One of the, i remember in previous conversations weve had on the show, you said that you have determined that the most important thing in fixing an Education System is getting good teachers. That is more important than class size, curriculum, than anything. But that left the question, what is a good teacher . Can you figure it out . Can you replicate it . Well, its amazing that the difference between the very best teachers and the ones that are the worst, is incredible. Even from the best to the average is a dramatic difference. And, yet, we dont really look into why that good teacher is so good and try and capture it so that we can help the average teacher move up to, say, the top. If we did that, wed have the best Education System in the world. But our teachers get the least feedback. Over 95 are never told what theyre doing well, what theyre not doing well. And it just doesnt drive excellence to not know where you, what you need to work on. You know, in baseball were serious. We tell you all your statistics. In baseball, why should we measure that and be so much hard core rather than education. Which is the very basis of the economy. What is it that makes a good teacher. It turns out the way you engage the class is a critical difference. So, an average person, an average teacher comes in and only through research, we know this. They know what theyre going to present during that class. And looking at the students and seeing if theyre sort of fidgeting, moving their leg, a lack of energy in the room. Going in and asking them questions and getting them engaged and seeing if they can the best teacher is very interactive. Its more performance oriented. I think its fantastic that were finally getting to the bottom of why are those amazing people so good. Were not saying we can get everybody to the very top, but at least we can do a lot, a lot better and it only costs about 2 of the salary base to put these observers, surveys, statistics gathering together and that is a fantastic investment. Tell me about another trend that is sweeping education or has just begun. These massively online courses, where what im struck by is you have the ability now because stanford and mit are putting all their courses online and harvard putting all its courses online and everyone else will probably follow suit that you have the ability to now take courses in an interactive fashion because theyre designing them pretty well with Interactive Software and you could be taught physics by basically the best physics teacher in the world. That feels like it should have a massive elevating effect on education. Im very excited about this. The fact that the online can be personalized, the best lecturer and great interactive demoes. Absolutely. Were going to revolutionize education. But it may take a while for all the pieces to come together. Maybe five years. Our foundation is the biggest backer of these activities. Putting course videos online and mit open course and others almost nobody used that because they could get confused and they would get stuck so that was a problem with the course and they wouldnt get a degree. And today that degree is what the employer values. So, the number of people who take hard courses where theres not a degree benefit for them, thats pretty small. The elite students who have been the early consumers of these things even they have had pretty high dropout rates. So, but, enough people are using these things that were in a process where theyre just going to get better and better. So, i am, i am very enthused about whats in the years ahead. What about the institutional blockages that people talk about some of the education issues. The teacher unions and things. How big a problem is that . Do you think if you really could have vouchers and Charter Schools and all the stuff much more responsive to new trends and market demands that education would be transformed much more quickly . K through 12, almost everybody goes to a local school. Universities are a bit different because kids actually do pick a university. The bizarre thing is, though, the merit of a university is actually how good the students going in are. The s. A. T. Scores of the children going in. We have no measure going out. Exactly. The best university is one whose Bulletin Board should read we take kids with the lowest s. A. T. Scores and theyre making 1 00,000 a year. So were completely missing the right thing. So, what happens is kids dont want courses to be so hard. So the amount of time you spend in class or working on your studies has gone down over the last few decades. And universities have competed to have these very elite students, partly combepeted by nonrestaurants, and were in that pattern that you have that paradox that if you want in College Graduates, were below 4 and new job creation will favor College Graduates more in the future than in the past. So, youve got to get a higher percentage of the people through a strong fouryear degree. But the costs are going up and the amount of money, state money is going down because its going to health. Federal money, assume the best cases it gets plateaued and its going up a lot over the last decade and it wont be able to keep doing that. It does sound because of this ability to figure out, to measure teachers because of these new technologies, we may be at an Inflection Point in education. Youre just going to see a massive uptick in productivity. As soon as you can bring markettype things where you measure, give feedback and identify best practices, then innovation becomes, you know, very pervasive. In particular, when you have technology and theres so many ways you use technology, the measurement of the students and teachers. This is a very important time to get that right. And thats why i love the fact that students surveys that are so easy to do are very diagnostic. The students have a lot that their feedback can indicate to a teacher where they need to improve their practice. All right. Wonderful to hear some optimism. Im very optimistic. Great to see you. We will be back. [ watch ticking ] [ engine revs ] come in. Got the coff