Transcripts For CSPAN Washington Journal 20100218

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] fáhost: it is thursday, february 18. thank you for being with us. we willok spend a great deal of time talking about the mood of the nation. we have two guests -- david keene, chairman of the american conservative union. he will be with us from a hotel ballroom in washington as the 35th annual cpac, conservative political action conference, gets all the way. we will have cameras there the next couple of days. later on, thomas frank, columnist for "the wall street journal." he will be attending the conference. he writes a lot about the conservative movement in the united states and he doesn't from a liberal perspective. he is our guest later on as we discussed the mood of the country. that is our topic this morning. we will peg off from a column in "the new york times." is the country in the need of a pep talk or something more fundamental? call us and let us know -- good thursday morning to you. çthe column that caught our attention is written by robert schuller, a noted economist based at yale university and co- founder and chief economist at macro markets and co-author of the case schiller index -- case- shiller index. he writes that -- we want to hear if you agree with him. while we are waiting, jonathan weisman is on the phone with us. "the wall street journal" white house reporter to tell us about the president's decision to sign an executive order -- order to create a debt commission. there was debate whether this should be a statutory commission or one created by executive order. congress weighed in. the president is doing what today exactly? guest: congress weighed in on it because they voted it down. once again, a piece of legislation was filibustered in the senate. there was an executive order that would have created a commission that looked at the long-term and short-term issues of deficit and debt. it was to come back to congress at the end of the year with the recommendations that would have mandated an up or down vote with a super majority, 60 votes, to get something done. but it was filibustered -- it got 54 votes, a majority, but it fell to politics. seven republicans thatç had co- sponsored this legislation turned against it and voted no -- co-sponsored prayer including but minority leader mitch mcconnell -- in the minority leader mitch mcconnell. as part of the deal president obama struck with democratic leadership to get the united states debt limit, the statutory debt limit raised, he said if the commissionu! does not get çthroughç congress he will dot by executive order and that is what he is going to do. ñru!okhe will sign an executiver creating an 18-member panel to look at the deficit and the debt and come back of the end of the year with recommendations. it will be chaired by republican former senator alan simpson from wyoming and a democrat, erskin boweles, who was the white house chief of staff and the clinton years when the last balanced budget deal was struck with the republicans. host: you heard our questions from audience. i want to take a few calls from our viewers and talk about more about the construct of the commission and what the impact it will have. let us take our first call on the question of is america and the need of a pep talk, and manhattan is on the line. mack, a democrat. caller: thank you for c-span. we are in such a serious need of a pet talk but i don't know what kind of vague talk could possibly come about. i'm a democrat. i am going to switch to become an independent. trying to talk to republicans is like trying to negotiate with the iranians and the republicans k of no and i'm finding out the democrats are the party of maybe. the government -- politicians have got to step up and start to make some simple butu! profound decisions on behalf of the american people and the american taxpayer. i believe one the super great fix would be to sell the medicare, not to people 55 necessarily end up, but to people 25 and up for full premiums as if you were paying a full monthly premium, pay it to the government and let the government make a profit and let the government make money on already existing health care institutions like medicare. they've got to make decisions -- i think we need to have a vat tax like we have in europe. we are going to have to raise taxes. republicans don't want to hear about it. nobody wants to get along. host: let me jump in on that point. lorain, republican, the line from michigan. is the country in the need of a pep talk or something more fundamental question mike caller: -- more fundamental? caller: no, they need more jobs over here in america instead of shipping them overseas. and the reality, peptalks cannot pay your bills. i'm sorry about there. we are not the party of no, we are at the point of, show us the money. host: north carolina. grayson, independent line. caller: i think we are in the need of a pep talk. i tell you why. the article that mentioned the social security of the spending of the past -- social psychology of the past few years. whether it is spending, the country's debt sort of went haywire. i think now it is leavening out. i think a great indicator is the stock market. the stock market is doing great. it to me that is a sign. i think americans are real capable of jobs. our country is capable of re- establishing a stable economy, a stable job force. so, yes, i think it peptalk would be great right now. host: jonathan weisman from "the wall street journal" is back on the line. it is adjusting to have the comments from the public as a backdrop for the president's decision for a debt commission. i am wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about what the commission is in power to do and how it would work. guest: the existence is in some ways indicative of the need for a pep talk. i look back at fdr. franklin roosevelt came in during obviously an even worse economy, and unlike president obama, president roosevelt was able to keep the american people behind him and convince them he was on their side even though the economy did not recover immediately. it took years to recover. president obama has not been able to keep people by his side. a people -- people like the republican callers said, where are the jobs. people cannot have the patience, say, like in the 1930's. roosevelt had his fireside chats. he would sit down at the radio and people would listen and he would talk about these problems and he would try to coax americans through a very difficult time. this commission is trying to plant some of these -- decisions to the end of -- trying to punt some of these decisions to the end of the year. six of them appointed by the present and of those six, four would be democrats and two republican -- six of them appointed by the president. the republicans, so fearful that this commission would come to the conclusion that taxes would have to increase, the republican leadership is thinking about boycotting it. they feel like it is just a front to raise taxes. and it would be the ultimate irony if president obama signed an executive order to mandate bipartisanship and even that can't be navigated because the republican leadership said, no, we will not name our six members. host: what kind of teeth would it have? since it is not a statutory commission how would it get suggestions mandated? guest: this is the problem about the fact that the statutory commission was voted down. the president, according to the constitution, cannot mandate congress to do things. so, the president cannot mandate a vote on the commission's findings. what the president did was extract a promise from nancy pelosi, speaker of the house, and harry reid, senate majority leader, that at the end of the year, probably in a lame duck session, there will be a vote on these recommendations. i am extremely skeptical of the spirit if you think about an election in 2010 that is likely to cost democrats a fair number, if not a huge number of seats, and then a lame duck congress comes back and take some of the most significant votes that any congress could take? i just can't imagine that republicans could abide by that given they would be coming in with either a majority, perhaps, or a much bigger hand to play parrot host: jonathan weisman from "the wall street journal" where he covers the white house. thank you so much for setting the stage today. senator alan simpson, former senator from wyoming, republican, and erskin bowles, cochairs of a new debt commission. we are returning to your telephone calls. is american -- americans in need of a pep talk? robert shiller refers back to fdr. he says that -- leadership in a crisis cannot undo all of the damage of lack of leadership in the past. our question for you -- is america in need of a pep talk? lafayette, louisiana, jason on the democrats' line. caller: i have a comment and a suggestion. i called about 45 days ago and i was giving the president a pep talk. i give advice to all of the cabinet members. americans need a history lesson. they need to be reminded where we were a year ago when obama took office. they need to realize that tarp and recovery act are two different things. tarp was passed by president bush, yes, supported by president obama. the recovery act was to stabilize, keep jobs, will create jobs. we need to make americans realize the gains in iraq and in afghanistan, even catching the top leader. democrats need a pep talk. my suggestion for president obama, if these democrats are getting scared like evan bayh, a man who could have won his senate seat back but decided to opt out because he hates what is going on in congress, so when the tough get going, he has to go. allow these democrats who are not true to you, too to their constituents, allow them to fall. whether republicans take their seats or not. president clinton passed better policies and legislation when the republicans were in a majority, because what it is going to look like is, if the republicans take back control of congress and the senate, it is like a small dog fighting the big dog. people like the underdog. right now democrats are like the big dog and republicans are using it to their advantage. host: little river, south carolina. mark on the republican line. caller: like your last caller, these people do not have a queue. we are not asking for show, we want action. we don't need peptalk, what about action? you got a cheerleader on the white house who is on the tv every day for 30 months cheering people lawn, reading his teleprompter -- for 13 months. maybe he needs a new speech writers. you don't need a teleprompter for little kids added elementary school. if you cannot talk to little kids, something is wrong. the teleprompter has to go. what we need is a commander in chief. how about a president that does something? if you can't pass anything with the 60 votes in the senate and a majority in in congress, then something is wrong with your party. it is not the republicans. the republicans can't hold up anything. they could not hold up anything. but the president is out there every day -- we need more bipartisanship. the democrats won at this party, this large tent, a huge tent to include everybody. they want the republicans to have a large, a huge tent. see what happens when you get your large, huge tent. nobody can agree on anything. the republicans, we stand for our principles. that is why the problem is today -- the people want a side show. the democrats think there is some kind of utopia -- we can make everything wonderful. it does not happen, people. host: paul is next. independent. is america in need of a pep talk? columbia, south carolina. caller: we do not need a pep talk. i agree with most everything that just the past caller said. but the reason we don't need a pep talk, we have too many people talking already and that is all they are doing is talking. we need people and congress -- both democrats and republicans -- get rid of what we have if we can next november, both parties, and tried to start over again. and people will sit down and work the problems out. the commissions that they try, but we don't need more commissions. that is what we are paying these congressman for. host: the vice president talked about the national mood. here is what he had to say. >> people don't think you or a lot of other folks in washington gets it. does the obama administration get it? >> we get it. we understand why they are agreed. -- why they are angry. we are in good shape compared to the congress. nobody in washington is in good shape. what is it? 20 or 18? but that is no solace. it reflects the reality that washington is broken. i don't ever recall a time in my career where to get anything done you need a super majority, 60 out of 100 senators. we can block -- >> you said to me at lunch, you have never seen it is dysfunctional. >> i have never seen it this this function of. i'm trying to get the other team to cooperate, to get in the game a little bit. i understand the political motivation but i think, people say the message out of massachusetts was to the democrats. i think it was to everybody in public life. host: that was the vice president yesterday. let us go back to your calls. chicago, doris. caller: no pat talked in this country can combat the hate in the republican party -- pep t alk in this country. fdr had a real media. i would like everything to crash and burn. i have listened to the media, i have watched it and i have become so distrustful and disgusted with the media sense of the march to the iraq war and it has just become worse and worse. there is no truth. to the media, there are two sides to the truth. there cannot be two sides to the truth. what good is a peptalk going to be. i don't know what to say about it. " the new york times," "the washington post," the head of the ap bureau, he was asked to be mccain's media director and then you have npr trashing howard dean and cnn asking one year into obama's term whether he could be reelected. what kind of media is this? host: republican, south carolina. caller: i cannot agree what the last two callers any more as far as the pep talk. that's the last thing we need. what we need is jobs and to start with get rid of illegal so we can get back to work. we lost three job sites to other construction workers, and the job sites are going on. getting done now by mexicans. illegal in this country. it is wrong to the american people. and the politicians in this country need to stand up and do the right thing and start deporting them so we can go back to work. host: "the wall street journal" has an optimistic had lied. factories get set to hire. makers of shoes, electronics to add staff. next is a call from albuquerque, new mexico. john, independent line. caller: how are you? i appreciate this program and i love that yesterday's series about -- i love to yesterday's series about the recovery act. my frustration has been that i don't think america will go everywhere and so we stop killing people around the world. i just said -- i became a democrat originally in 1960 when i heard the keynote address to the democratic party. and since then i have become a green party member or independent. i think one of the problems in the united states is that the republicans are fine -- finally showing themselves to be the traders. the wealthy -- why don't the wealthy stand up and pay back the deficit that they took out of the economy? they are the ones that profited from this total collapse that we are about to face. here is my frustration with obama. i don't think he can get us out of the trouble. what he is doing is exactly right, except for murdering people around the world. he's keeping this war going on. that would be a trillion dollar savings right there because we are not talking about $1 trillion spent on the war, talking about $2 trillion more that we are going to have to be paying to get our soldiers back to par. host: next up is henry in miami. henry is on our democrats line. does america need a pep talk? caller: they desperately needed. host: who can deliver it and how would it work to change the psyche? caller: there could be no better person than current president obama along with a couple of moderate republicans liked -- like senator arlen specter who switched parties. i really have a lot of respect for senator dole when he stood beside president clinton, they had differences but they stood beside each other. senator dole is the most my mind as a republican after ronald reagan. host: of looking for a bipartisan peptalk? caller: absolutely. host: like a panel discussion? we have so much of that. how would stand out? caller: i'm from india. i migrated to this country in 1986. i'm in indian-american. i have been part of the proud fabric of america. as a community i have paid a lot of taxes, contributed a lot. but today the middle class in america is in the biggest limbo. the middle-class of this country drove the country where it was in the clinton administration and before that in the reagan administration. today the middle class is completely out of business. president bush helped the 10% rich people, president obama g-8 support from union but he figured out belfast it did not work so he -- president obama got support from the union but a figure out it did not work and now he is going to the center. the fact of the matter remains that republicans need to understand it is a live and let live policy, that is what condi said, live but let other people live. -- that is what gahndndhi. rich people -- if they can prove they did not -- when things are closing down at his villa set our country. host: lansing, michigan. republican line. caller: first of all, i think any peptalk is nonsense. we need to do the math. all of this foolishness of continually -- that is continually comporting -- i think they need to fully pay attention to the people first -- c-span, " washington journal" and the callers, the viewers, we need to take surveys and polls. we need to take these things the serious because i think the viewers and listeners and people like yourself and everybody just talking, they have more sense than anyone. we need to listen to the people and leave all of this demagoguery and politicking and take action because of this -- we are bankrupting america. they don't act now, i guarantee you, we will continuously be a çminus. what the market, 20 years from now we will still be talking about the same thing. let stand and that's had unity and our communities. let's do what the republicans of doing here in michigan. they have what is called eyes and ears to or and they are going state to state and listening to everyone -- they are listening to the college people, retirees, professionals, the homeless, the college students. listen to these individuals because they have more common sense. host: thank you. a couple more headlines as we talk about the national mood. in "the wall street journal" -- on the other side, grove has a hit payrolls a year and to the stimulus efforts. -- growth has not hit payrolls a year into the stimulus efforts. that is "the washington post" today. inside -- the administration's push to expand a foreclosure program. we learn the $75 billion program that is a year old now pays rent is to modify mortgages -- lenders to modify mortgages but so far fewer than 200,000 borrowers have received permanent changes to their loans. a small fraction of the 3 million to 4 million that initially they said the program could help. also -- state bows to seize pension funds. -- state bows to exceed pension funds. and this is more about the loan modification program. we will go back to call at that point. that is a look at headlines. next is a call from new york city. jane, independent not -- james, independent line. caller: i like that you let viewers express opinions. goldman sachs, under the assistance of timothy geithner, bankrupting the country and this will continue to go on until the power is taken away from the few eats that controlled the country. but the matter of the democrat is an office, does not matter if the republican is an office. until congress and all of these politicians, left, right, in the middle, in between, every which direction, have some balls and get these illegal -- eat people off the high horses and but the power back under -- these eat people off the high horses and put the power back to the people. these secret societies, the agenda is to bankrupt this country and usher in a one world order which is dangerous and they are taking away our constitutional rights and our bill of rights and they are not going to stop until national sovereignty is eliminated. we need to be worried. i agree with the last few callers. the last 10 or 20 years, if we are still here, are going to be detrimental if something is not done. host: about 30 minutes into this conversation but all pegging up of robert shiller's column in "the financial times." america is in need of a pep talk. you agree with that or is something more fundamental needed for the american psyche? this caught our attention in "the washington times." there was a lot of discussion about televised health care meetings. house gop seeks televised jobs meeting. hoyer insisted. -- interested. next, louisville, kentucky, richard, democrats line. caller: good morning. we don't need a pep talk. i get that from my wife every morning before she leaves will work. host: doesn't work? awards for you, not the country? caller: i am very lucky because she is a very forceful leader and that is what we don't have in this country, we don't have leadership. i can remember when bills were passed in the past, they were passed by people who said, this is what we were going to do. whether it was right or wrong, they got it done. barack obama wants to shake hands, that people on the back and have big hugs and mitch mcconnell does not like him. that is what doesn't realize. harry reid does not know how to keep his people together. they had a super majority, they had the house majority and the executive branch would barack obama and they got nothing done. now they are losing their edge and they will lose, this november. thanks. host: harrisburg, virginia, that is. on the republican line. good morning, welcome. caller: thank you for taking my call. first of all, i want to comment about the lady who called an earlier about the republicans are so filled with hate. i am a republican and i'm very proud of it. i am an american and i have a right to my say. the republicans are trying to better our nation. but let me make it clear -- if the democrat or an independent or anyone else ran, they can do a better job in my opinion than a republican, that is who i would vote for. i love my country. and what needs to happen in this country is very simple. we need to return to old values -- that is what is wrong. that is when we fullers. people can laugh and mock and make fun and persecute -- that is what we flourished. the book and laugh and malkin make fun and persecutes -- people can laugh and mock and make fun of that. our constitution is in trouble. they want to rewrite our constitution. they want to take gun rights. they want to shove homosexuality down our throats but i did not believe in being politically correct. i believe in saying what is right and true. these are not hate crimes that we have -- these are laws of god. homosexuality is wrong. it is wrong. there is no way to slice it, i said, or any other way. çit is wrong. and we may be persecuted and we may be driven but i will tell you on the day of resurrection when the democrats or republicans or the libertarians or whoever else stand before god, they will be punished before embracing and destroying our country, not just with that but with the many, many other things that are so politically correct that people are afraid to stand up and say -- this is wrong. host: nashua, new hampshire, bill of independent line. let me find the button for you. caller: i think the last thing this country needs at this point is a pep talk. what we need is a reality talk. we need to take peopleç back to personal responsibility, get them off of this idea that i am a republican or i'm a democrat and my party is right and the other party is full of hate. in this country over the last anywhere from 50 to 100 years, we have become entitled. everyone is entitled to be protected from the government -- if they sign a bad contract the government should step in and save them. if they own stock in the company and the company is going by what the government should step in and save them because that is their retirement. the list goes on and on, obviously. what we need is for someone to have the guts to stand up and say, i don't want to get elected, i just want to speak the truth and the truth is, we have become week, we have become entitled and we have become essentially stupid to the realities of the world -- we have become weak. host: spartanburg, south carolina. elijah, democrats line. caller: i wanted to start by saying, and this is a quote from abraham lincoln -- a house divided cannot stand. i felt we were living in the united states and republican or democrats, we are in a time when this country needs to be united just from the situation we are faced with. host:, get there? caller: like the last caller said, we need a reality check in understanding -- we are in a bad spot, but won't say -- ammunition and stuff to pull ourselves out of it. we are in a position where we got to come together because there is no otherç way. if you are in a sinking ship and no matter whether this guy wants the paddle or the other, you once -- you want to get out of the situation you are in. that is the long and short of it. it took us eight years to dig ourselves into this ditch and it will take us a while to get out. we as americans are so impatient -- we need to take a reality check and look at the mere ourselves and say, is there something we need to do in regards to ourselves? i remember george bush when the building got blown up, i was not a supporter of his but at that time i knew as americans we need to all stick together and i supported him 100%. host: but it also said it took eight years to get here. in your estimation do all the problems this nation faces emanates from the presidency of george bush? caller: when you look back in history -- i mean, if you came from one end of the spectrum where you were at a surplus and everything was going good and eight years later the country is in one, somewhere in that time period it had to have happened. i say, once again, it is still going to take us as the united states and not a divided country to come off with the prosperity this country will get to because other than that we are essentially split in half. no matter how much the president now tries to stay in the middle, if you have someone who does not want to work with you, sometimes you are going to have to put it in a leadership standpoint and say what needs to be said, whether it is politically correct or what ever and go ahead and do the hard thing. and that the hard thing basically -- and a hard thing is basically trying to blow everybody together. and all of these and great activists, etc., tended to distort the whole message and don't nobody wants to take the time out and see the big picture. host: thank you so much. we are running out of time did he referenced abraham lincoln. let me tie some threads together. the conservative political action conference getting underway. 35 years in the making. a number of columnsç in the par today and the political significance. one of them is gail collins, "the new york times" columnist. her title -- time to party like it is 1854. greenville, north carolina, betti, republican line. caller: when the tea party for started -- i agree with the gentleman before us, we needed unity. when they first part about i was happy to see people finally standing up to be heard but most people involved in the tea party is our decent americans citizens. but now it is time to focus. what makes this country sound is the constitution based on gottlieb principles. the so-called church has become a doormat involved in petty matters behind brick and mortar. there is a time to stand up for principles. unless the tea party can get a central focus and we know what the focus is and where it is leading us, we need to be wary of where we are being led whether it is democrats or republicans or independents or even tea party. our constitution is the mortar of our country. thank you. host: next is rice lake, wisconsin. richard, independent. caller: good morning. ok. the reason why i am an independent is because, nobody is telling the truth. that is the problem. nobody is telling the truth. we've got a situation right now where we have a president who is more intelligent than the bush, but bush is probably going to go down in history as one of the worst presidents if not the worst president we ever had in the history of this country. now, obama had a chance, but who did he bring into office? he has people that are working with him that our socialist, about the communists in the white house -- before christmas on a christmas tree they had mao tse-tung on an ornament. stop and think about that. people who went to war to fight communism. that is just one bank. now senator sessions, he was in the senate and he talked about the debt ceiling, where we would increase the debt ceiling. our interest on the debt right now is over $180 billion, plus, and our long-term debt right now is over $107 trillion. in 10 years, just 10 years from now, however long term debt will be approximately $1,700 trillion. in addition to that, or interest on the debt of around that time period will be approximately $800 billion. think about it, people. this country is headed for a world depression and i do not think we can get out of it. we need to cut everything right now, 10% across the board. i am one military disability -- host: thank you. we have three minutes left. washington, d.c., james, democrats line. caller: all these people talk about how good america has been pared america -- has been. american -- people talk about deficits. the only time the country was out of debt is one klan was there. i get tired of people talk about how good america was. the rich and the capitalists, but to the blacks and the poor and the lame this country has been terrible to us. and i don't understand how people don't think about what happened to us in the past. and they need to wake up and tell the truth about america. the truth about america, -- reverend wright, everybody talks about him. tea party people, they are the same that put us in this mess. host: christensen is this by twitter -- kristin send this twitter -- john, republican line. caller: absolutely not. that is ridiculous. we need action. i will quote thomas jefferson -- all tehrani needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. that is what is happening. it may sound scary. some people may call it conspiracy thinking. tyrranny is not just silencing people of good conscience but fully them with rhetoric. we are in a dark tunnel and we need to wake up and overhaul everybody that is in congress. be aware of globalism. god bless everybody. host: in "the washington post," george will writes about sarah palin. he will be a keynote speaker at xdthe conservative political action conference. sarah palin is not on the agenda. david keene is one of the top organizers of the sestak -- cpa c conference. i've been there for the 35 years? guest: i am old but not that old. host: how did you first get involved? guest: i was active in college -- young americans for freedom, an important group in the 1960's and 1970's, when to aco board and then mid-1980s became chairman. cpac started in the early 1970's. the first conference was in 1973. it drew 125 people and the speaker was a fellow named ronald reagan. this year we will have to doubt the people and while reagan is not what does this bill it is. host: tell us a bit about what people can expect. guest: we start this morning. our keynote speaker this year is marco rubio florida -- from florida. it ends on saturday with glenn beck as our wrapup speaker. in an interim, you mentioned george will will speak at a thursday banquet, j.c. watts will be the speaker on friday and in between you will have panels and speakers, just about anybody you might imagine on the right. it is a very diverse group. somebody said you have all of this going on -- we have two ballrooms going simultaneously all the time, a bunch of small panels and speakers and runs off to the side during the whole three-day period and i said, well, no one sits through all of it and goes through every session. but what it really is is not a sit-down dinner -- dinner. more like a chinese buffet. conservatives from all over the country come here to hear the people, talk about issues that interest them and more importantly, to get together. like most conferences, political or not, what goes on in the hallways and a conversation among the attendees is as important or in most cases more important than what goes on at the podium or on the stage. so this is an opportunity. it has become an annual event of some significant on the right, conservative activists from all over the country look forward to getting together for a few days to talk about what works and what doesn't work, to debate ideas and issues and hopefully go back home, reinvigorated, and with some ideas as to what they might be doing over the course of the next year. host: david keene will be kicking off the conference at 9:45 a.m. and we have live coverage throughout the day. he is with us for the next 45 minutes. we'll talk about the motive the nation and party politics with him as well as some current policy priorities and what he thinks about them. we open our phone line and you can join us by e-mail or twitter. david keene is seen and read regularly with his column that appears in "the hill." with that backdrop as a political commentator, and want to ask you to assess what you see as the mode of the nation right now. guest: somebody else made the other day, comparing this period to the 1993-1994 period which ended with the republican takeover of congress in november of 1994. superficially it looks similar but i think there is a difference. in 1993-1994, voters were angry. this year i think voters are scared. when you talk to people in this country, there is some fear about the future, fear about the direction in which the government is going. there is a sense that perhaps the nation that did pass on to their children and grandchildren is not going to be the nation they inherited. i think that is qualitatively different than the kind of motivation that took place in that period. in some ways it is more profound, it is deeper, and it is of greater concern and i think it is a fear that is well founded but on the plus side, when you go out into the country -- if you are in washington and part of the establishment, you say who are these tea party people, who are these people getting involved. they used to say of communists years ago that they love the working class, they didn't do not like workers so much. we have a lot of people love democracy but really get upset when actual people get involved in the process. what we've got now is a situation, even if motivated by fear, has brought millions of new people into the political process who are asking questions of elected officials and saying, you know, we want you to listen. that is what democracy is about. so in a sense, it is an exciting time. it is an exciting time because we are facing real challenges. and i think the american people are responding to these challenges by demanding more of their leadership than they have got in the past. host: you said that brought millions into the political process. there have been three or four major surveys that, in the past couple of weeks -- if you can't categorize them, essentially it sounds like a pax on both their houses. how do political parties either capitalize or respond to the mode as you describe it? guest: first of all, the attitude that people have toward the parties has been arnot by a lot of hard work by both of those parties -- has been earned. in politics, a little like the market. i very responded to what your customers, in this case, the voters, are seeking, or in real trouble. what the voters out there are saying is that these two parties are not meeting our needs, not listening to us, they are not representing us anyway they want -- we wanted them to represent us. they sit around and decide what it is they want. this happens with politicians after every in action. in the time i have been in washington, i don't think any president elected has ever walked up the morning after the votes were counted and said, you know, they elected me because they did not like what my presence -- predecessor did, or mad at the other party, or they elected me because the other party has been in power too long. the welt -- which up and say, they all love me, that is why they voted for me and they want me to do exactly what i want to do. and within a year or so they find out that most of them, really that is not what they got elected. at selected for other reasons and ought to listen to the people. one of the problems we have now is we had an administration so convinced that downbeat, regardless of what people say, they really do want done what the president wants done, you have an administration that is turning a blind eye and ear that does not work for the american people. and the constituents, the customers, and the voters are getting upset. they are upset with republicans because republicans said things that they like to year but did not act that way when they were in power. so now you have people all over the country saying, my god, we got rid of the republicans because we did not like the way they were performing, we brought the democrats in and it is worse. what do we do? you can understand saying -- people saying a pox on both your houses. the real question, as we approach 2010 and 2012, is whether either one of the parties is going to listen and be able to respond to the needs of their customers, if you will. i think the republicans have a far better chance of doing that because at least rhetorically and at least in terms of their believes, whether they live up to what or not, are far closer to the center of the american public than the democrats but at this point, the real question is whether people in this city are capable of hearing what is going on an outside. host: where do the tea party folks began? i want to show you a column that carl robach wrote in "the wall street journal" this morning on his advice -- karl rove. asian influence both parties -- guest: i think that is good advice. karl and i sometimes agree and disagree, but in this instance i think he is right. i don't think at this point there is great danger to the republicans and democrats keep hoping that tea party people will spin off and run a third- party candidate here and everywhere and help democrats. i do not think it is likely to happen, if the republicans are responsive to the concerns of the american people. it might happen in one or two places. the only place where there has been some thread of this is in nevada and there is some -- threat of this in -- is in nevada, and harry reid pocket people not only have an interest in it but maybe active in recruiting people to do it. one thing you have seen, you have a lot of people new to politics. but if you take a look at massachusetts and what these folks have been saying, they are sort of following what he says, and that is, they are not willing to associate themselves or be coopted by the republican party. i'd think that is a proper stance from their standpoint. but the other thing is, they are more sophisticated than their opponents like to think they are. all of you have to do is look at the massachusetts race for senator kennedy's sea. scott brown is not a right winger. he is not a conservative it in the sense i am or most of the people that you identify but the tea party movement are. but they rallied around all over the country, they supported his campaign and worked in his campaign and funded his campaign, and that shows a greater degree of sophistication than their opponents give them credit for. host: let us take the first telephone call, west palm, florida, john, republican line. caller: i'm a conservative but not their kind of conservative. how many blacks are going to be there? he says they want to get back to the old america. what is the old america? slavery and bigotry? that is the old america. we want a new constitution. i am going to study this now -- i am with the young people's progressives and we are going to vote obama backhand because when it comes to a vote it will be the young, minority and all of the individuals that don't believe in that hatred. conservative party, tea party -- he has an ex-alcoholic, glenn beck, who we really despise, speaking. that is what the tea party is about. republicans will not be back in office. host: john called on the republican line appeared guest: the only hatred i here comes from your caller. host: let us talk about what is behind his, -- reaching out to a diverse population. guest: i think it is working very well. republicans -- and let us talk about conservatives because these are not really synonymous terms. g'servatives, like the tea party people, whether following rove's advice and not commission not identify themselves only as consent -- republicans. conservatives see the republican party as the most effective vehicle for objectives. but conservatives are different from just republicans. they did not get into politics and have not gotten into politics is darkly simply to go after office and to seek power but to change policy. if you look at the appeal of the conservative philosophy, you've got more and more folks who are minority people and the like who are involved in the conservative movement. you will see a lot of black faces and a lot of hispanic and asian faces at this conference, not because they are hispanics, not because they are black, not because they are agents, because they are conservatives. they believe in free markets. they believe in individual freedom and traditional american values. i think if you're caller watches this year's conference on c- span, and you know historic note, brian lamb told me that cpac was the first out of steel and event c-span2. many years ago -- i think he is going to be surprised about the people he sees, the people who are honored, the people who speak and the people in the audience. host: twitter -- guest: that is a very good question because i always amazed, every few years some journalistic to look of the conservative movement and says how these people get along because you have different views, different kinds of conservatives. that has been true from the very beginning. in some ways, this conference is the living embodiment of a theory developed by frank meyer, who many of your viewers will remember or no, but he was the conscience of the early movement, but review editor of "the national review." in the early days we had three factions. we had what were then called anti-communist conservatives who today we would call national defense conservatives. we had free-market and limited government conservatives, the economic wing. and then what we call traditional conservatives, who were the family values, religious folks who were in the movement. and they were constantly arguing about some things because they had different priorities. his view, which came to dominate the movements are the growth is, look, you people all have a common interest -- this is a coalition of people who agree on most things and disagree on some things. it is interesting because over the years -- we get attention because we do a straw poll that talks about the favre ability of politicians -- but we ask a number of other questions designed to see how those groups are represented at this conference and the movement and the interesting thing is that those three groups -- social and religious conservatives, strong national defense, and limited government free-market conservatives have been of the same size, they have been together all these years, and they are together today. yes yesterday a group of conservative leaders signed what they called the mount vernon statement which was really an update of a statement written 50 years ago at the founding of conservative youth group, young americans for freedom, which embodies that. one of the things said in that statement is that economic conservatives should remember that a free society depends on a people with a moral values -- social and religious conservatives should realize that their goals can only be achieved in a free society, by free men and women, and national defence conservatives should remember the strongest defense we have is a free and prosperous america. . the tea party being used to divert some of the votes to 10 things out in the parties. -- to send things out in the parties. -- thin things out in the parties. i saw an article on february 6 the stated that during her time as governor in alaska, her husband was doing most of the work. people were told to go to him instead of her about important decisions in the state. toomey, sarah palin is a puppet that you guys are using -- to me, sarah palin is a puppet that you guys are using. i have seen so much stuff down here in georgia. we have a governor who purchased a bunch of land in florida and is working hard for water rights in georgia, florida, and alabama. there is a republican playground. host: let me jump in. what is the point you want him to respond to? caller: what you are saying is that this conference would eliminate what really needs to be done. is not actually a republican strategy? -- republican rally? guest: note it is not a republican rally. -- no, it is not a republican rally. there are people that are not conservatives here. they are libertarians or parts of groups that are non-partisan in any way. i do not think there is any question that if you look at the policy preferences of the parties, the republican party is closer to what conservatives want than the democratic party. it is far from perfect. it is a mistake for conservatives to sign onto the team and support republicans without question. that is one of the reasons we got into trouble during the bush years. we were not as critical of a republican president as we should have been until toward the end. i would like to go back to your remarks about former governor palin of alaska. she is one of the people who is a very popular spokesperson among conservatives and republicans in this country. whether she is going to run for president or be president if we only talk and listen to people who we thought were going to be president, we would not be listening to very many people. policy and attitudes in this country are shaped by a lot of people. there are a lot of people that have something to say about you. sarah palin's popularity is based on her life experience and where she comes from. she represents something that people who are concerned about people such as the senator in washington. she is an important spokesperson. she articulates values and is very popular. does that mean she will be president? not necessarily. she may run for president and she may not. that should not be the sole gauge of whether somebody listens to you. she was invited this year but was unable to do it because of schedule conflicts. we hope she will be here next year. host: the keynote speaker has a stronger view with a question regarding sarah palin. she is discussed as a possible candidate in 2012. we are talking with david keen about conservatives and their point of view in our political discussion as a conference gets underway. next up is long island on a republican line. caller: thanks for having cpac this weekend. thanks to c-span for viewing it. i am looking forward to watching it. these people that just called, the first caller and the other callers that were democrat, they do not get the point with the tea party. it is not about republican or democrat. the republicans and democrats ruined our country. they were not fiscally conservative with our country. that brought people like a governor in manhattan to start rallying against that person. we were scared to death of losing our country where we will not have any rights because we will not be strong anymore. that is the point of this tea party, bringing back our country. the only one that i saw cut into a budget was newt gingrich. he made president clinton a look good. no president since lyndon b. johnson has ever cut in spending. all we do is increase ever debt every year. host: let me stop you there and have david respond. guest: one of the interesting things to me and i think your caller is right is that people outside of washington saying, what are you people in congress and the white house doing about this problem that we see? most of you are in the nile trying to find some way to kick the can down the road said that you do not have to deal with it. >it is very difficult. some people argue that conservatives should stop talking about fiscal responsibility and limited government because it is easier to sell politics in which you provide things with more and more goodies to people that if you want to be successful to people who do this. we have a change in public attitude. for the first time in decades, when you ask the public with their primary concern is, spending is trumping even employment and the other economic questions. people are concerned about the direction the country is taking. there is a sense that america is a different as a country. if you talk to somebody in washington and they say in this country they did this and the result was disaster, they will say, this is the united states. it will not happen here. people are saying, if we do not get our act together, it could happen here. we could lose our freedom as a result of an economic disaster. we'd better start thinking about the future as well as the present. there was an article in the washington post last week by david ignatius saying europe needs a tea party movement. the politician of any party seems to have concern about the fact that the whole continent is going down the drain because of spending and no concern about that. the same is true in japan. they are saying to politicians, stop and look around. look at what is happening and what you're doing. they're providing a tremendous disservice, because if they speak loudly enough, politicians who are responsible at the end of the day to the political marketplace are going to have to listen. host: we have a lot of callers waiting for you. guest: there are a couple of things. every time we have a problem, we have a presence of either party that says, we cannot deal with this using the democratic system. why not insulate ourselves and kick the ball over to some commission and let them study in the side it. we have done that problem after problem. five years later, we have to have another commission. this will come up with the view that we have problems and we should raise taxes. it is a washington government commission. of what needs to happen is the elected officials should listen to the people back home. if a senator thinks taxes should be raised, he should say so. if he thinks spending should be cut, he should say so and be willing to vote for it. in washington, politicians are trying to avoid making decisions to limit themselves putting out press releases. they want to kick every problem into a commission. that is a route to a bigger problem down the road. >> david keene john s.. -- joining us. did michael still refuse a request for an invitation -- steele refuse a request for an invitation? >> he will eventually come. caller: you can sit there and say this convention is not for the republicans all you want to. i do not think the democrats have that right either. i am an independent. those ideas to not fly with reagan. the republican party is a wolf in sheep's clothing. thanks. >> i think your caller should go back and look at who was coming out of power. it was the republican party not the conservative party. you deal with the world. our complaints about george bush is be worse spending too much money and not doing anything about the size of the government. he was not acting as a conservative as president. these people came to town and became what they ran against. that is one of the reasons why people are upset that both parties at these tea parties. we got a look at barack obama and maybe he is more like a cow and coolidge. both -- and he is more like calvin coolidge. host: next call republican line from syracuse. caller: yes, i think between the senate and the congress -- they came up with a discretionary grant yesterday. there is really none of sustainable long-term jobs at all. i do not see any recovery in the recovery act. host: we are getting a lot of what your assessment of the stimulus package. what is yours? guest: obviously, it has not worked. we will come out of this mess but not because of government stimulus programs. it will be because of american small businesses that will come back and the strength of the private enterprise system. you can create a chevalier -- government job by taking money from one taxpayer in giving it to another. you cannot do it next year because that is not self sustaining. we in government policy should make it possible for the private sector to function as much as possible. we should not have political favors passed out. i do not think this has worked or is likely to work. >host: which you have supported the passage of the stimulus act or the tarp fund? guest: no. host: how do you see it playing out? guest: you only get to play the game once. you do not know what would have happened if they had done something different. the crisis was a psychological crisis and economic crisis off and on. there was a danger of gridlock and the economic system and banking system because people feared collapse. tarp was passed. the bush administration scared everybody on the hill saying if you do not pass this, it will collapse. most of the money was never used. most of it has been paid back except the money that went to aig and now the administration wants to tax the banks to make up for the money they lost giving it to chrysler and general motors. if these packages were so essential -- remember when bush asked for tarp. he said we have to do this today because we have to get this money into the system. it did not go into the system. it was passed and he said he would do it over the next few months. if you had a huge increase in borrowing -- we've borrowed this money from china and elsewhere. it did not have the economic impact that the sponsors and the president hoped it would have. you do not get to go back and see how it would have been done differently. we opposed it at that time. we opposed the stimulus package when obama proposed that. and we would do that again. guest: a question from e-mail. why do you like president reagan when he was a liberal spender? host: bill clinton did not give us a surplus. he took credit for it. he took credit for welfare reform that he vetoed several times before it was shoved down his throat. that is what presidents do. i have no objection to that. ronald reagan cut back -- this references back to the last question. we have a couple of examples of how one deals with this kind of economic crisis that we had in recent years. when ronald reagan took office, we had an economic crisis left over from the previous administration that is similar to the crisis that obama faces. unemployment was higher. there was great fear in the country. ronald reagan cut taxes, held the line, and that of a fit within a year or so. the obama administration has done exactly the opposite. it is not working very well. ronald reagan held the line on domestic spending. we spent money in those years. it was a pretty good investment on national defense. there was a collapse of the major enemy that we had in the world due to what was going on in the soviet union. the reagan administration deserves a great deal of credit. it is being looked as one of the great times in american history by historians. host: brien democrat, new orleans. caller: i am a democrat. we should not have democrat, republican or independent. it should be the people. not to the rich people but the poor people. obama is doing the best he can with what is going on right now. the economy from the bush and administration is what ruined this country. guest: president bush did not ruin this country, but he pursued policies that were unwise. if you go back -- this is a topic for many hours of discussion. the banking, housing bubble that signaled the collapse of the markets did not come about because bankers were irresponsible but because government policies that incentivize the bankers to do things that they would not have done five for 10 years before that. most of that was done in the name of spreading home ownership to people that did not have homes before and helping the poor. the result was we had mortgages that were not just with people that cannot afford them. we had paper that was not worth the things that it was printed on. now we have people in congress saying the problem with the banks now is that they are not going back in making these same kinds of loans. we cannot have it both ways. we are either responsible or not responsible. there are ways of solving problems and ways not of solving problems. i think it down in where you are calling from, we now see that in the aftermath of katrina, it was not the government and whether its did it well or not. now you have a situation where things are coming back because of private investment in private market. that is the way you rebuild a country. you do not rebuild it simply with a government program. i am not arguing that there should not be a government or there is not a proper role for government. you cannot rely on the government to solve all of its problems. if you do, they will not get solved. host: simi valley, calif., democrats. caller: i have been a republican all my life. this is the first time i ever voted democrat. i wanted a change. i am a small, independent business owner. there is a trickle-down effect in my business. it has been very difficult. i am in financial straits with my business. i am just trying to get by. it is overwhelming and devastating to have to go through what we have been through. i thought president reagan was an excellent president. my household was great back then. under bush, he saved us too late. some of the great things that happened to this country happened not because of the clinton administration. a big bubble popped. the bush administration -- he was an oil tycoon. he did nothing to bring down the price of oil. he could have done a lot of things to stimulate the economy. i have not seen anything with this new president. we built a bunch of banks. that was a big joke. we should be billing out the people who need money. i do not know what to do. the republican party keeps sending me brochures. i do not get any money to donate to the party anymore. the party did not do enough for me. i just want to know what are you going to do for me. host: you need people to have jobs to have discretionary income. what is it quantitate for people to have the jobs and the money to begin to hire you? caller: we have to stop focusing on the rich man but focus on the independent, small people. the people that go out and work hard every day. all of upper jobs cannot be shipped overseas. host: trade policy, monetary policy? >> each large business should be accountable for themselves. when they are not accountable for themselves, they need to be able to fail. if we had more independent business owners and smaller business people making decisions -- these businesses are still striving in this economy because they are working very hard to put food on the plate for themselves, their family, and people they work for and those that work for them. guest: people like him are the people that provide most of the jobs, most of the economic growth in this country. what he said in terms of his analysis of what is going on in the current situation is probably an analysis shared by millions of people, and yet he is absolutely right about the bush and the obama administration. when they think about business, they think about general motors and wall street. the engine of progress and economic growth and job creation in this country has not been in those companies. it has come from small businesses. policies that struggle small businesses and leaders that ignore the independent sector of the economy do not help in stimulating a recovery. they do with your caller suggested which is this idea of companies that are too big to fail the matter how bad they are run. companies that do not get it pay a price in the free market. they fail. that result in a stronger rather than weaker economy. if the government is going to come in and save everything, you are bolstering groups and companies that cannot compete. host: i will ask you to answer this last e-mail from fort lauderdale. what the conservatives want to conserve? guest: they believe in a strong america. they believe in a society that is free where men and women have access to making their own decisions not dictated by the government. a society that respects traditional values. that is what we stand for. host: thanks for joining us live. we will see you later on. guest: thanks. host: we will take a break and continue to discuss party politics. we have another guest coming up. we will get a news update from c-span radio. >> president obama signed an order this morning creating the national commission on fiscal responsibility and reform. the president will welcome the exiled spiritual leader the dalai lama. the president travels to colorado and las vegas for a democratic fund raiser. reports this morning of a bomb blast in northwest pakistan. government officials say the death toll has reached 29. the group as claimed responsibility. pakistani officials say nine al qaeda at militants have been arrested in raids. the officials say the u.s. communications intercepted an important information regarding suspects. the no. 2 leader has been apprehended. after four years of trying to work out a global warming agreement, one person will leave office july 1. he is stepping down. democrats in northeast ohio are watching to see if a former congressman who spent seven years in federal prison for corruption will try to make a political comeback. his spokesperson said he has petitions ready to file. the deadline is 4:00 today. those are some of the latest headlines on c-span radio. >> our cpac coverage gets under way right after washington journal about 10:00 a.m. eastern or a little earlier. there are several speakers. we will hear from others as well. live coverage here on c-span. our coverage tonight begins at 7:30 eastern. we have a former tennessee senator as well as other speakers. a columnist will be the keynote speaker tonight. that is 7:30 p.m. eastern live on c-span. attorney general eric holder is speaking at a national symposium on public defenders on c-span2. host: this gentleman on your screen is thomas frank. he has not been on this show since 2004. he writes a weekly column for the wall street journal. he had a book called "what's the matter with cancer?" and he launched a cultural -- " what's the matter with kansas?" he launched a call from magazine. -- a cultural magazine. [unintelligible] what does it mean to you to be a liberal? guest: i was having fun with you there. what would i say? i identify with the labor movement. franklin roosevelt, harry truman. i love the writing style of one person. that is what is most important to me -- putting together words and ideas. i write about domestic politics mainland. lately what has been fascinating has been the flowering of the conservative grass these days in the tea party movement. for a while, you go back to about a year ago and pretty much everybody i knew and the commentators thought we had turned a grand, historical corner and entered a new era of liberalism. now, it looks like that is not so. for a while there, i enjoyed several columns and offering this and various pieces of advice to president obama. i lived in chicago before i moved to this city. a state senator was barack obama. i would see him at house parties and things like that. i remember when he ran for congress and got beaten. we moved here and he was still a state senator at the time. now he is president. host: did you ever say, that man could be president some day when you saw him? guest: he has this charisma and electricity. when he enters the room, everybody knows it. he is amazingly eloquent. i went to a meeting where people were mad and yelling at each other. i thought i knew a lot about this subject. barack obama got the microphone. i did not know he knew anything about the subject. he spoke about it in a way that was so reasonable and was able to propose a half a point where the sides could come together. he did it in a beautiful style. very convincing. that guy could be president. it was amazing. host: you can send us an e-mail. our numbers are on the screen. one person says more murdock, oh, boy. how do you deal with owning a pot -- working for a publication owned by rupert murdoch? guest: it is a serious newspaper. i have read it for most of my adult life. it has been a very good experience writing for them. they do a very good job of editing my column. they have never come to me and said, you cannot write about something. host: what is the tea party all about in your opinion? guest: this movement -- in some ways, i am very hopeful about it. in other ways, it is an awful thing. i am from kansas. one of the moments that i look back to was the populist moments -- a third party movement that took over a lot of southern states. it is pretty far to the left by today's standards. it focused on language that the tea party the fed harkens back to in a lot of ways. -- t party movement harkens back to in a lot of ways. one man, sockless simpson, had a populist angle to the movement. i liked it. the originals wanted a certain currency, we now have paper currency that is suggested by the federal reserve. the tea party movement -- the populist wanted serious regulation of the financial industry and the railroad. that sort of thing. they wanted national ownership of their roads. the tea party is now all with the regulation. the populist wanted a personal income tax. the tea party movement is against it. the populist for very pro labor and not fond of organized labor. what did i write about recently on wednesday? it was about the d.c. leadership of the tea party movement. this is something that we do not often hear about. like all official movements, they have a d.c. contingent. they describe it with painstaking detail. it was describing the d.c. leadership of this latest right ring flowering. a bunch of names lead out of me from the story. a few years ago, i did a story on a disgraced super lobbyist. i got to know a huge amount about his career and what he did. he was sort of a grass-roots leader. all of these characters from this story are dissipating in that. that is to their leaders are. it is always the same bunch of guys. here they are, this great rising up against corruption in dc and it is the same damn people. it is a remarkable -- what would you call that? the same cast of characters that never go away. host: indiana, independent line. talking about american politics. caller: you talk about populist. i consider myself what'd you described. i hear unregulated grief. it seems like the right side wants to get rid of all of the regulation. that would protect investors, and jobs, the middle class. whenever it comes to jobs, whenever the government does not protect from our own corp., american corporations to take our jobs and give them to somebody else so they can have more money at the top -- i just do not understand. that disrespect for the majority of the country. host: thanks. i will jump in. guest: those are things i think about all of the time. that is the subject of my last book, my effort to understand this phenomenon. you have epic deregulation going on since the early 1980's. it is going back well into the 1970's. the crown jewel in the deregulatory fatah -- i am mixing metaphors. i hate doing that. in the bush and administration, and you had the fact of the regulatory push. you put people in charge of regulatory agencies that came out of the industry. you either do that or defund the agency. and as an unintentional aspect. these are people that should be minding wall street. they cannot afford to have a photo copiers in their office. the lawyers are going up against wall street lawyers. they had to do their voter copying at king goes or wherever. that is how bad the regulatory system got in this country. in america, we either get away with the laws when we overturned last stiegel -- a terrible mistake during the clinton years. or return to the agencies over to lobbyists or we defunded them so they were incapable of working anymore. it should be no surprise to us in government failed. we have been electing government politicians that made sure they failed. host: we get the jobless numbers on thursday. the filing for unemployment benefits unexpectedly searched last week. s urged. -- surged last week. . guest: it is going to take massive investment from the private sector to get jobs going again. this is a simple economics as when private investment disappears. you would think this would being incredibly controversial. this is something like communism. host: democrats line. caller: thank you for your brilliance writing. i think it should be mandatory reading in high schools. the last guest was on, and i thought it was ironic when he said that the response is a fear of the nation. that is not what it is. it is anchoreger. there has always been distain for the working class by one party. they think they can control them through ignorance and fear. every movement, every legislation that would ever proposed to help the working people like labor laws and working hours and safety, age restriction has been opposed by them. so security to give our elderly some amount of dignity was opposed by them. medicare was opposed by them. they serve their corporate masters. we are at a point where we might be able to turn this around. the supreme court findings and nell given freedom of speech rights in the way of buying our legislatures in a terrifying prospect. we need a constitutional amendment. host: thanks. i have to jump in. guest: i am glad to hear people like our riding. what you said about the working class and labor unions is a fascinating point. this is something you do not hear a lot about in washington, d.c. they do not have a lot of manufacturing or industry. by and large, there are lots of people in america that would like to join labor unions. we do polls on the subject of the time. just a couple of years ago it was 50%. if you take out the red flag word, labor union, and to say, would you like to be able to bargain with your boss over the terms of your employment, everybody will like to be able to do that. the problem is that that never happens. despite the obstacles that prevent workers from getting together and forming labor unions, we never really talk about those. all of those obstacles make it impossible to affect an employer. it is illegal for them to fire a person that is leading a unionization movement. the penalties against it are so slight. they doubt those penalties way down and the regulated that part of the economy during the reagan years. recall that freedom. we call that free enterprise. that is freedom. joining a labor union -- you do not have that right. that is off the table in america. you have it on paper. it is an interesting twist. >host: what about campaign finance? guest: it is a disaster. people who are so far to the right in the tea party movement, everybody recognizes this will unleash the power on the running of the party. everybody knows it. we will see the evidence of it this fall. on the other hand, i am not a lawyer. it is a disaster in terms of if you want to have a democracy. whether or not it is a misguided decision, i do not know. host:a tweet. it is not a very noble word. it is a way to communicate. here is what he writes. guest: is he referring to the auto industry? there are different things that failed the auto industry. one was the race by automakers to get their plants to mexico and other places and to the south where unions basically do not exist. you mentioned my magazine earlier. we have a really good story in the current issue about detroit and what has happened to them. in some ways, it is people like the person that tweeted, they think that detroit has gotten what is coming to them. if you look at it in a different way, but it was what was right with america years ago. they often had a couple of cars and went on vacation and took their children to college. they were working class people. that model was deliberately destroyed by management. they did not like that because you have to pay your workers that much which eats into profits. host: republican line. caller: thanks for c-span. it isn't the thing to give people an opportunity to put in their points of view. host: -- it is a good thing to give people an opportunity to put in their points of view. host: thanks for participating. caller: we do not need a third party. i think the main thing behind it is you get different view points where we can put out our point of view. with the democrats and republicans, it is so partisan that they cannot get anything done for the people they are working for. they are like a bunch of spoiled rotten kids that want to go for their own -- this is not a ball game. they all should be working for us. they have gotten so far away from that. these are people that need more of a say in what is going on. i heard a barack obama saying the recovery has saved or created 1.5 million jobs. it is on track to create another 1.5 million in the next year. i got on the internet and looked of what the census bureau says. there are four. -- if he keeps it up with that 1.5 million at the end of four years, we will have a deficit of 10 million jobs. host: thanks. guest: i assume there are all sorts of jobs being made around this economy. any additional ones are a positive thing. the third-party movements -- it is hard to disagree with it. look at the newspapers. it is a horrible thing that they cannot tackle the nation's problems. the one that drives me up the wall is the health-care system. every time the democrats get in, they talk about fixing this problem which is enormous. at some point in their life, everybody is going to run into this. they cannot seem to fix that. what you say about third-party movement is interesting. populism was the last great third-party movement. it put a terrible scare into political elites around the country. after it subsided, every state in america made the tactics that populism used against the law. you cannot have third parties in america. you can try it, but you will not get anywhere. one of the things thatñi would e really great is i would like to have third parties in this country. the first thing you have to do is overturned those laws that were passed earlier in the 20th- century. but the populist used to do is take the dominant party in a place like kansas. the populists would ganged up with the democrats. a candid it would be nominated by the populist and the democrats and beat the republicans. in the south where the democrats were the dominant party, they would fuse with the republicans. they would nominate the same guy as the populist. it was a successful strategy. now it is illegal. host: independent line. caller:ñi hello and thank you fr taking my call. i have been watching c-span for ñiñhrñrñiñiunlike what you are . i am glad that there is a newspaper and people that are out there keeping an eye on our politicians. i do not understand these guys are supposed to be working for us. we turn around and everything is for their next campaign, money, and power. did not release seem to care that everybody is struggling. we are all trying to do the best we can. we are patient people. i think politicians think that the american people are stupid and dumb. we see through your tricks and all the stupid things you guys do. i am glad that now we have places like c-span and in newspapers and writers like you to keep the fire under these guys to make them do what they are supposed to be doing. that is basically all i have to say. thank you again. i hope you have a great day. guest: this is a subject i have written about a great deal, the transformation of politics which is supposed to be public service and a process. he has had enough of this town. washington d.c. is the wealthiest city in america? three suburban counties are among the top five wealthiest counties in the nation. çóñ.'all of that is not because government workers, bureaucrats are paid huge sums. they are paid less than those in comparable work in the private sector. it is because of the massive outsourcing of governmentçó work ñiwe privatize all of these ñidifferent federal operations d turned them over to private contractors. d.c. these skyscrapers and defenseçó contractors -- they wl take contractors from any gp'ch of federal government. they make much more money on ñrthis then if we had bureaucras and workers do it themselves. we do that for ideological reasons. . . . host: we will just show it real briefly while we are -- guest: that is me, all right. host: we started with robert schuller, of the case-shiller index. you started out saying that you admired fdr. he does as well my question for you is, in an age of twitter, the white house is on twitter, on facebook, has all sorts of social networking -- is it possible to have the same sort of public attention that fdr could create with the radio? guest: yes, there is. this is where i go back to the sort of -- i love certain kinds of political rhetoric. there is something about obama, a great speaker, probably the best orchard -- orator of my generation. i love listening to him. but there's not a single sentence of his that i can really remember over the last couple of years, whereas i can remember franklin roosevelt, i can remember what harry truman said. obama doesn't come out swinging, you know? he is really -- this is, i think, at the end of the day -- he really believes the stuff about bipartisanship. it is not an act for him and he does not want to ruffle feathers and he does not want to make enemies. a president has to make enemies. roosevelt did it. roosevelt chose the perfect enemies. host: who were the perfect enemies? guest: wall street. come on, you saw that coming. host: taxes, you are on. caller: -- texas, you are on. guestcaller: in today's politicl climate, their rhetoric is divide and conquer. whether you are for or against it, health care, abortion, gay rights, it never seems to be inclusive. it always seems to divide and conquer pre and mr. frank was exactly right he does not want to ruffle feathers. he is the first black president, so therefore, he does not want to ruffle feathers. he wants to be inclusive. but you cannot do that. you have to take the bull by the horns and lead. that is where we are lagging right now, with the democratic party and members of the democratic party. in this climate that we have today, what i hear people talking about the tea party and good old-fashioned american values, let's go back, well, it was not good for minorities. it was good for white men in general. guest: that's for sure. look, there are all sorts of examples of what the caller was talking about. what i have been talking about recently is the problem of government failure. we have been spreading around and sometimes looking at directly. but we have been living in an era of epic government failure, with hurricane katrina, the rebuilding of iraq, lead in children's toys, toxic spanish, the toyota recall, where the biggest one -- toxic spinach, the toyota recall, or the biggest one, the financial crisis, where regulators completely dropped the ball. çif you ask somebody tat thew3a party, they will tell you almost for certain that it is because government cannot do anything right. that is not the case. government work all the time before the 1980's, before we started outsourcing it and putting lobbyists and a charge of regulatory agencies. government used to work president obama at, who is in a position to make this argument, to give us an alternative explanation of why government failed -- government failed basically because it was sabotaged for 30 years. he does not come out and say that. we need someone in a position of leadership like president about to make the case. i]çç-- like president obama te the case. i am doing violence to the argument is actually a lot more nuanced -- i am doing violence to the argument. it is actually a lot more new ones. but when someone says that government always fails, you have to come back with your own explanation. host: gainesville, georgia, republican. caller: [unintelligible] this health care package is that nothing they're talking about -- is another thing they are talking about. i'm on disability. this are wrecks a drug program -- this rx drug program -- when your body changes with the eldest at all = -- illness and all -- they should have to cover all those medicines or not cover them at all. host: he brings us back to the health-care debate. guest: he was a republican color. sounds like he was complaining about the high prices of pharmaceuticals. the market chose this prices. -- chose those prices. yes, i agree with the caller is an abomination and it annoys the heck out of me -- it is c-span, i have to say heck, right -- that obama and the democrats did not do anything about this problem. host: actually, we are people. you don't have to say -- we are cable. you don't have to say heck. this is the second george. caller: thank you for taking my call. seeing as i am on c-span, i will say heck, too, but i am actually a lot more angry than that. newt gingrich was on jon stewart the other day, and he asked him about the people who are being taken to court, the terrorists, and his explanation was that richard reid was an american, a bald faced lie. those guys can get away with it. they can get away with saying anything they wanted we have been witnessing it for the last eight years. actually, that is not the big point i wanted to make the big point i wanted to make, and you are probably aware of this -- in the last eight years, the congress and senate have been fighting over $40 billion for old people at $4 billion a year. it was $4 billion for 10 years. remember that one? it was too much money, this and that. my mother, the last few years, has been on medicare. she said she never had better coverage in your life, ok, until -- in her whole life, ok, until she got on medicare. the other thing, the biggest thing, actually -- when bush came into office, the defense spending was 300-something billion dollars a year. i pay attention to that stuff. now it is almost 600-something billion dollars a year. can anybody in this country say bankrupt? people better wake up, because the republicans do nothing but lie and they expect people to believe -- i am not a democrat, but i know a lie when i hear one. guest:w3ç interesting point. why do republicans do that? when i was a kid, we always thought of republicans as the kiddie of -- as the party of fiscal responsibility. remember the eisenhower days? they do it all and they do it cheaper. tho cut spending. instead, the reagan administration and then the bush administration -- they were the party that just let all hell broke loose. they cut taxes and increase spending at the same time. they expected the magical free- market waysok, the fairies of te free market would come out and fix everything, with pixie dust. i'm sorry, my kids like those fairies. but it did not fix everything, of course. they are suppose to be the party of fiscal responsibility. and there is an interesting explanation for this, and you remember david stockman? i bet you have had him on your program. host: we have. guest: he was the budget director for ronald reagan, and he wrote one of the best political memoirs out there. i forgot the title. but it was his recollections of the early days of the reagan administration he gave up on the theory of supply side early on. he decided it was not going to work. it was not going to solve itself. what they were going to do was create these enormous deficits. they came up with an alternate justification for it. this is a good thing, because it would have a permanent state of crisis and keep the liberals in congress from spending any more on their liberal agenda. it was not just him and said it is. milton friedman, a great team of conservative economists at the university of chicago -- the great dean of conservative economists at the university of chicago, wrote an editorial in the 1980's it saying that the deficits were good because it kept liberals from doing their liberal things, forced them into a state of crisis. that is why deficits have a weird of the war -- a weird allure for the right. it is counterintuitive. every time they get in, they run these huge deficits. it makes it impossible for government to do things like have a proper health care program. the disaster, of course, is when you have an economic crisis and the government asked to start spending money -- has to start spending money, but you see what i am getting at. great book, by the way.w3 çi]host: let us take another cl from -- let us take a call from woodbridge. i cannot believe it, it is another george. caller: this is wayne, not george. and i'm a first-time caller. so many times i hear people talk about the state of our situation here. the other caller said we are not dummies. i am watching c-span so i understand what is going on. the solution has to come with the average person. there are funny things going on to be bailed out the banks. if the bank's work regular human people, it would have a bad credit ratings. but now that we have bailed them out, the situation has been skewed. we are going to these guys to have poor credit ratings and allowing them to rate as -- who have poor credit ratings and allowing them to rate us. let me go and give you the answer to this -- we have to give back to the people -- remember when people could buy several houses and write off the interest rate on as many houses as they had? that would benefit the average man. we have to go back to that. we have to go back to a chapter 7 bankruptcy. they took that away. if i make a mistake and halfback ed, i can file a chapter 7 and watch that away and start -- if i make a mistake and have a bad credit, i can file a chapter 7 and wash that away and start over. who will be able to borrow? the credit is so messed up because the banking and financial institutions wreck the system. guest: totally right. remember when the bankruptcy -- was that 2005, 2006 -- one of the later acts of the bush administration was done, of course, on behalf of the credit- card industry lobbyists and bankruptcy -- and bank industry lobbyists. welcome to free-market bankers get off the hook and average guys go to the wall, and their credit ratings are ruined. host: will on the republican line. you are on with thomas frank. caller: good morning, c-span. so thankful for your program. çit is a window for looking at all three branches of government. people are getting upset and they have a right to. mr. frank has told us a valuable things about the economy and our government and the republican partyt(. but i will tell you what, there was a lot of corruption going on. i believe that in 2012, this will break under the pressure. but i would like to say is two things. number one, the american government -- i mean, president obama came on not long ago and said in a speech that accountability and transparency. well, here they go behind closed doors and start doing these special interest groups. that is part of the problem in america. there is so much going on behind closed doors that nobody knows what is going on. the american people basically know what is going on. the american people know that we need health reform so badly, but both houses have betrayed the american people. this is the problem here. monday at the health reform, people like bernie sanders used -- when they had health reform, people like bernie sanders told it like it was -- host: we really are overtime. you said you are a republican . your comments suggest otherwise. are you still involved with the republican party? caller: yes. this is the way it is. people right now are so fed up with both parties -- guest: i was republican ones as well. -- once as well. çhost: i wanted to use his comments to close here. we started out talking about the tea party and anchor. where did you see the electorate going right now? guest: this and, every single color we heard was angry, fed up -- listen, every single caller we heard was angry and fedç up. this is the advice i have been giving democrats, effortlessly, for years and years and years. democrats should be the natural party of discontented people calling in about health care disasters and wanted accountability in government, sick of the roadblocks and washington and the lobbyists running everything -- look, the party of the left should be the one that benefits, that profits from the public anger. but they're not blind to. it is going to beat republicans again. republicansçç to a much betteb speaking to the angry voices in the sense that is out there all over america, not just in kansas anymore. it is an annoying thing. why can't the democrats get out in front of it? why can't the natural party of the discontent speak to the discontented? they have this mealy mouthed way e can k forthrightly about the problems. -- they can never speak forthrightly about these problems. it is going to happen to them again this fall. my answer is the power of money. at the end of the day, politics runs on monday. -- on money. if they want to raise money from the people who have money in çamerica, wall street, big business, you cannot talk that way. people on the left cannot talk that way. they cannot talk like callers this morning. they have to talk in this nice, happy, bipartisan way. as a result, they lose. reed "the wall street journal," and i will lay out for you. host: please come back again. you can find thomas mike on-line and he has a number of books out in the marketplace -- thomas frank on-line and he has a number of books out in the marketplace. we will learn more about the obama administration's meeting with the dalai lama and what that says about china-u.s. relations. >> economic numbers this hour. labor department reports of newly laid-off workers filing for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose this week, this after having fallen the previous week. wholesale prices rose nearly 1.5% last month, more than economists expected. it is due mostlyç to higher energy costs.ç private economists had expected a less than 1% increase. update onç the fighting in pakistan. officials said at a suspected u.s. missile strike in the northwest part of the country has killed at least three pit intelligence officials say that they suspect a u.s. missile struck a house in waziristan near the border with afghanistan. strikes against the militants have escalated since september. those are some the latest headlines from the c-span radio. >> our live coverage of the annual conservative political action conference gets under way this morning, right after "washington journal." 10:00 a.m. eastern or a little earlier. speakers this morning include florida at senatorial candidate marco rubio and senator jim demint. later today, ms. cheney. -- also w3 -- liz cheney. the keynote speaker tonight is columnist george will. that is at 7:30 p.m. tonight on c-span. >> sometimes i think history is a series of accidents. it is like a pileup of cars in a snowstorm. >> how did the u.s. end up in vietnam? sunday, pulitzer prize-winning author ted morgan on the battle that ended french colonial rule in indochina. sunday at 8:00 p.m. on c-span. >> "washington journal" continues. host: bonnie glaser is a senior fellow at the center for strategic and international studies. today the president will meet with the dalai lama. guest: every president since george bush has met with the dalai lama. the dalai lama, like president obama, is no prize winner. -- is a nobel prize winner. he advocates nonviolence. he fled tibetç in 1959 and has been the head of the government in exile. áh him and talk about his hopes for a future for tibetans in china, standing up for american values, is very important to the united states. host: i am sure people hear so much about the dalai lama because he is in popular culture frequently. tibet -- where is it, how many people -- guest: it is an autonomous province and the people's republic of china, the western part of the country. there are millions -- i cannot giveç you the exact number of tibetans that live in china, but importantly, they are not just living in the autonomous region. the actually cover about five different provinces -- they actually cover about five different provinces. the concerns we have for tibetans, that they areçç ablo preserve their heritage and culture and language, have the freedom of speech and freedom to worship, is not just limited to the area of the autonomous region of tibet, but extendsi] o are tibetans live in the five provinces. 56 minorities in china, and tibet is just one of them, but it is one of the largest. i think the muslim group is perhaps the only one that is larger than the tibetans. host: what is the chinese government past attitude and policy about to get -- chinese government's attitude and policy about tibet? guest: they claim that is part of china, and the united states does not challenge that president obama, when he visited china in november of last year. -- when he visited china in november of last year, said publicly thatç he respects china's sovereignty as regards tibet, but that he would like to see better treatment for tibetans and arrange for the dalai lama said that he can return to his homeland. there has been dialogue with representatives of the b dalai lama for years that have not made progress. they view him as a separatist, pushing for independence for tibet. in fact, he represents a position that is called the middle way, which is advocating greater autonomy for the tibetan people, but within the confines of the constitution. the chinese very strongly object to foreign leaders meeting with the dalai lama. they do not want him to get any recognition or public attention abroad. sometimes they reactç quite harshly and punish governments that -- whose leaders meet with the dalai lama in fact, when the french president sarkozy met with the dalai lama, the chinese canceled the eveningi]ç summit, of which the french presidentw3ç held the president the time. çthey are certainly annoyed by this, but it is important for our president to meet with the dalaiçw3çç lama, as all press have in the past. -- all presidents have in the past since 1990. host:ç the phone lines are ope. bonnie glaser is talking about the president's meeting with the dalai lama and more broadly, the u.s.-china relations, which has many policy angles to it. w3i will let michael anthony asa question i was going to ask, a fiat twitter -- via twitter. ç guest: i think we should care about people around the world having the right to express themselves, and to worship as they please, and to write as they please. the tibetans conducted a protest in 2008. there were very, very violent incidents, where many, many people died. the han chinese, the ethnic tensions between them and the tibetans, have been very intense. i think, as an american, i care about these values and east principle -- these principles. i would like to have chinese, not just tibetans, have greater rights and free speech. i think this man in particular, the dalai lama, is a revered çindividualç, not only representing buddhists everywhere, but is a man of peace. he is widely respected. host: kensington, maryland, democrats' line. caller: good morning. thank you forç the program tod. for someone who does not know a lot about this subject, it is very informative. a few months ago, the dalai lama, i believe, was in the dc area and the president did not meet with him. can you tell me what has changed? he did meet with nancy pelosi and other congressional leaders. can you tell me the difference between what was happening then and what has changed from then and the reason that the president has decided to meet with him now? guest: that is a really terrific question. it is very important. the dalai lama came to washington, d.c., last october, and was the first time that an american president did not meet with his holiness when he was visiting washington, d.c. the reason why that happened is because the president was planning a trip to beijing. he did not want to poke a finger in the eye of the chinese. he really wanted to have a successful visit to china. he felt that by postponing the visit, and meeting with the dalai lama on a subsequent visit, that he would get more accomplished when he was in china. i think he also hoped that the chinese would reach out to to the dalai lama in the interim, and in fact, they have renewed negotiations with the dalai lama's representatives. but they have not made any progress. there was a firestorm of criticism because president obama did not meet with the dalai lama when he was here last october. and also, i can tell you a great deal of criticism of his visit to china, where the chinese prevented the president from speaking directly to the chinese people. they tried to control the questions that he asked in a town hall-style meeting in shanghai, and controlled the distribution of the interview he gave in a rather forward-leaning chinese newspaper. this was a decision that the president made, and it is a controversial 1. host: next call from baltimore, as we talk about the dalai lama 's visit to washington and his meet with the president and with hillary clinton. caller: before i get into my question, i would like to make three observations. just about c-span. i've been watching c-span for quite a while now. i will make three recommendations and i will get to my question, this should take about 30 seconds. i would really like to see spent what but the time of the -- like c-span2 put the time of the people calling in. i feel like you give some people more time than other people but it would be lnice to have one minute so people go on and on and you do not give them enough time. and if you could give time limits, so if people keep talking -- we don't just want them to go on for 10 minutes or 15 minutes. we're not really interested in their biographies. the second thing and want to mention is it is nice to have two people on opposite if they agree and disagree on some things. when someone is making an accusation -- it would be nice to have two people with opposing views on your program so that we can no somebody is telling the truth and fact check what they're talking about -- host: you know what -- gcaller: i agree with that -- host: if you are worried that there will not be enough questions asked, with two, there will be even fewer. caller: i think with the dalai lama thing, it is becoming political grid the relevance of the dalai lama -- many places all over the world where many things are going on. iraq would be a good example. the whole idea at the dalai lama, the spiritual leader, is coming in -- i don't know. i think it is political, don't see the significance of it anymore. guest: well, i respect the collar's views. there are a lot of issues to care about in the world. i think that more broadly, the peopleq that live in china and the right of these people to express their views and toç hae what we consider to be, i would say, and the president has referred to, universalç rights. they are notç just american values. to have greater freedom to be able to worship and live as they please, and to have more rights w3for economic development. that is what the most backwards -- that is one of the most backward areas in china. the chinese have given greater benefits to the han chinese who have migrated to tibet that they have given to the tibetans, whose homeland is in tibet. i know i drive around and it is amazing how many people have a "feree tibet", sticker on their corpora -- bumper sticker on their car. we care about human rights all around the world. host: here is robert gibbs from yesterday. >> is the president optimistic about opportunities here for a movement? >> the president would simply encourage the two parties to continue to talk. >> with the meeting with the dalai lama on thursday, what are his hopes -- >> again, i think the best thing to do is to read out what they talked about at the conclusion of the meeting rather than talk about what they might talk about. host: what should we take away from that? guest: the conversation between the president and the dalai lama is to a certain extent private. but i think he will help him understand unt(concerns and aspirations for tibet, and the president may share his discussions with chinese president hu jintao. i think these kinds of conversations can help make a difference. foreigners, not just the united states, but around the world, can talk to the chinese leadership of having a more sincere dialogue with the dalai lama and trying to create circumstances where he can return to tibet. we don't see him as a political leader, as a separatist. the dalai lamaok is getting on n years. we don't know how much longer he will live. i believe thatçm3çç the rolm is not carved outçç in tibet before he dies, then that exile movement in tibet could radicalize in every negative way, -- in that very negative way, and create more complicated conditions for the prospects for these exiles ç returning toç tibet in the future. host: republican line, you areq questi&$&2ujq pr guest. presidents, george bush, the father, up toç obama, met with the dalai lama. i disagree that the united states should even be meddling in china's business. to say that the african-çamerin community, we dislike what the united states is doing, and we get outside help from some foreign government, president, to prop u ands up -- prp us up and make us say that we don't like what the united states is doing it the united states should focus jobs inç america. guest: job creation in america should definitely be a priority. the president has many tasks and priorities, and should try to promote american interests around the world. i think it is important for americans to care about what is going on in other countries. there certainly is an isolationist trend in the country. recent polls of shown -- recent polls have shown that a large÷-t we should essentially bring all of our troops home and focus all ofw3 our attention on things at home. i personally believe that we have a broader responsibility, and that our country should be standing up for the rights of people around the world. if we are not involved in places like afghanistan, then perhaps threats of terrorism may increase to the united states. there is a lot of connections between what happens in the rest of the world and in the united states, including, i would say, job creation. our good relations with other countries in the world actually help create jobs at home. host: he mentioned that the president deferred a visit with the dalai lama during his last trip to the u.s. because of his impending visit to china. this visit falls right on the heels of a decision to have arms sales to taiwan. what do both of those decisions signal on the part of the obama administration to the chinese government? guest: the use the term core interests, regions where they don't want american interference. the chinese believe that u.s. arms sales to taiwan is meddling in their affairs. they strongly object to that. that, and other recent episodes in u.s.-china relations, have led to greater friction. the google example comes to mind, where google has now stood up and said that they don't want to be censored, and they don't want their system pact. they are concerned about in desperate -- they don't want their system hacked, and they are concerned about industrial espionage. all of these have caused friction in the relationship. nevertheless, president obama intended, from the day he came into office, to continue to sell arms to taiwan if the military threat continue, and also to meet with his holiness the dalai lama. the decision to postpone was in order to have a -- to put u.s.- china relations on a more solid footing, to achieve some concrete examples of cooperation with china, and to build a reservoir of goodwill. but our differences with china persist, and where we have differences, in areas like the dalai lama and taiwan, i think the president will continue to follow a policy that is in accordance with prior presidents. host: next caller. caller: yes. well, one thing to say, then i will bring out my question. first of all, i have been watching this show for a long time, probably about two or three years. i just find most of the callers inane and that it and ridiculously ignorant. that is number one. -- inane and vapid and ridiculously a grin. that is number 13 number two, -- that is number one. number two, for ms. glaser, when china originally invaded tibetç in the 1940's, do you think they did it as a land grant, or do you think it was because there were communists and they did not like the fact that tibet was a religious state, a buddhist state? i would like to hear your opinion of that, especially in light of the fact that china allows a certain amount of religion in the country. we know that things that happened recently with china, with the religious sector cannot -- cannot quite remember the name of it -- they were doing public hangings or public killing of members -- they allow search and religions -- allow certain religions. i was watching something on cable about how they allow search and buddhist temples to survive and others they don't. did they invade tibet as a land grant, or because it was or could be a great artist stay? -- a great buddhist state? guest: i think that your caller raises several valid points. the chinese sent forces into tibet for more than one reason. it is very strategically important. it borders india. obviously, connected to the rest of china. having a separate state in that region would be very, very dangerous for china. i think that for geostrategic regions, it was very important for china to occupy tibet. secondly, i do think that the chinese felt indisputably that tibet was part of the people's republic of china, and have long been part of china for years in chinese history. and as i said earlier, they feel strongly about this concept of territorial integrity. i think there was no question that it would not allow tibet to be a separate country. host: "new york times" has this story -- "china intensifies tug of war with india over nepal." guest: india has a special role to play it, because the eggs out government is in india, and the chinese have -- the exile government is in india, and the chinese have continued to have a border dispute,çw3 and that afs the relationship with tibet as well. it is a very complicated set of relationships. the chinese essentially want to keep both countries from playing any role or having any influence in tibet. caller: massachusetts, independent line. caller: in regards to geopolitical strategic advantage, would you agree that the reason for the occupation is for water rights, either at the glaciers, providing water to many people downstream? is that the case? guest: there are definitely issues relating to water, and not only affects tibet, but other parts of china as well. the chinese, i am sure -- one of their concerns would be that they want to have water that comes from tibet to be able to flow to the areas where they have priorities. these are issues that are true throughout china, though, not just inç tibet. the water shortage, with the challenges of climate change, is probably going to get worse in china. host: miami, robert, republican line. you will be the last one. caller: hi, how are you? host: good. do you have a question? caller: i am actually chinese, part of the han chinese majority. what china has a problem with is not really the tibetan nation, but the deeper relations, and the authority to handle major situations. the world would see it as it well handled situation, were arrested in china, stuff like -- whereas in china, stuff like tibetç, they have bad relation. china is seen as the big, bad wolf, always pouncing on tibet, but when you go to tibet, a lot of them are very hostile towards the han. these are protesting an uprising against the han, and the chinese government comes back with, i guess, too much force, too much pressure. second, one thing that americans should focus on is that it is not a bit -- it is not that chinese are just going to go into tibet and say, just listen to us. it is an uprising and the chinese are responding -- guest: those are very valid points. there are problems in china betweenç people, different ethc minorities that don't get along, particularly true in tibet, but also in other places. there is a problem with the relationship between the people on the government, often local governments, where there is a lot of tension asç well. tibetans there have a lot of pent-up resentment against the han, and i think they are inclined, some of them, to violence. if there were greater confidence in the local police forces, many -- maybe some of these things would not get so out of control, as they did in 2008, one of violence spilled over into the streets. but the origin of all of this come in my view, is the policies that the chinese government has pursued in tibet, which have not been in the interest of the tibetan people. what we need, i think, is a of the tension in tibet, and thehe development and implementation of a better set ofç policies tt would serve all the people in the tibetans, the other minorities there, and in other parts of china as well. host: i wanted to call attention to a big story, china and dancing -- china and announcing an envoy to the u.s. what do you think of that? guest: well, he has been at the united nations for several years. no, he is not a u.s. specialist, but he has worked in the foreign ministry for many years. he has been in charge of arms control and disarmament issues for some time. spçwhen i met him years ago, hes part of the ministry. he replaces a man to visit -- replaces a man who has devoted his life to understanding the united states. this is quite a departure, a different figure but he is widely respected. he comes at a time when there is friction in the relationship. but both washington and beijing understand that this is an important relationship and there are lots of areas where we have to cooperate, and we need to get along. on the areas where we have differences, we need to learn to manage those better. host: philadelphia, brenda. caller: youç know, barack hussn obama ii is the president and ceo of america. he is allowed to meet with anyone whenever he chooses to meet with them a bit for you to assume -- whenever he chooses to meet with them. for you to assume why he chooses to meet with them, that is just your assumption. since you wanted take sides here, why don't you meet with the dalai lama -- host: really over on time here. guest: just briefly, there are statements that were made publicly by the obama administrationç, by the white house, about why the president did not meet with the dalai lama. the dalai lama himself said he understood why the president had postponed the decision to meet with himç in october, and lookd forward to a laterç meeting. qiç think that is exactlyw3ç e president will have with the dalai lama today, a good meeting, a good discussion, and we all look forward to hearing about it. xdhost: thank you so much for setting the stage for our viewers. we will take you to the c pac 35th annual conference. host: ca[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> he worked in the nixon administration for vice- president spiro agnew. i]ççhe says every day, every i talk to him, whenever we have meetings about cpac, it is about young people. he knows what it is to beat a student, grass-roots organizer -- to be a student, a grass- roots organizer, living in a liberal in farming. he knows that we have to band together -- living in a liberal environment. he knows that we have to band together. he has been a leader every day in fighting for the principles that we believe in. he is a man of impeccable integrity. he is committed to our cause, our movement. he says it is not about political parties, not about any candidate. it is onç the principles on whh america was bill. -- built. i'd bring you the line of the conservative movement, david keene -- i bring you the life of the conservative movement, david keene. [applause] >> welcome to the conservative political action conference. welcome to our new venue, and welcome those beside you, because there are a lot of new folks today. we are expecting 10,000 people this weekend. [applause] compare that 101973, our first conservative political action conference, which was held in washington, attended by 125 people, and addressed by ronald reagan. [applause] he is not with us, but his spirit is alive in this room and in the modern conservative movement. [applause] our theme this year is saving freedom, because$arj what we have been about and always been about. it is not about electing each other to public officeç. we are not about our for the sake of power. we're about making this country a better country for ourselves and our children and grandchildren. i remember when i was a student, a dim memory of my past, but once ran forç office, when i ws 24 years old, and a paper in madison, wisconsin, after interviewing me, ran an editorial saying that i was the only 24-year-old within 80-year- old mine. i've been working on catching up with -- only 24-year-old with an 80-year-old mind. i have been working on catching up with that ever since. [laughter] çvñó)p/>:+ñ ç'n(íêb-w >there s is back to the future. when i was young, there was no washington conservative movement. the conservative movement began out in the country. it began with people like you, talking on college campuses and villages and cities, and it came from the bottom up. we did not have all of these institutions. more into a political movement, found its speakers and leaders -- it morphed into a political movement, found its speakers and leaders, and had a profound impact on the country in which we live. with that, the national institutions, the migrations, if you will, of conservatives from the villages and cities and countryside into washington. like the politicians and they elected, the ties to their strength began to weaken. what has happened in the last few years is that we have indeed gone back as a movement, because the strength of our movement now is not in this city. the strength of our movement is with you out in the country. [applause] more people today are getting involved in politics and in the political process, and are talking about ideas, and are talking about the things that concern us, than ever before in my memory. you go out in the country and people;ç say, "what can i do? what can we do?" we have a sense that something is slipping away, and unlessç e do something, the country that we inherited it may not beat the country we passed on to the next generation. -- may not be the country we pass on to the next generation. what can we do to avoid that? there is a lot we can do. we have an obligation to make certain that the nation we pass on is the what we inherited. i think we can do that. we have made some bows to modernity. we have the barack obama on every teleprompter with us today. -- honorary teleprompter with us today. [laughter] [applause] i am not much on this new technology, but we do recognize these things. i just want to watch a new to the cpac -- what to welcome you to the cpac. we will have some fantastic people. while a lot of politicians and elected officials of lost their way, not because they are republicans or democrats, but because they are human, and because the founding documents of this country dealt with the fact that power has an effect on human beings. that is what a lot of folks in the political establishment do not get, because they know one thing, that they know things better than we do. i am amazed in recent weeks as i have listened to this and the reaction of people around the country to what is going on in washington. in the old days, they used to say of the communists, that they love the working class, but it is the working people that they hate. we have a lot of people in washington talking about how important democracy is, but they get really upset when actual people get involved in the process, because what we're supposed to do is to applaud what they do, not to just what they ought to be doing. well,)pá is not the way this movement has ever worked. not everyone who comes to washington for gets why they came here. we have, for 30-some years, been grading the congress with the ratings which many of you are familiar with. in the last session of the united states senate, only one member of the senate scored a perfect 100. that i

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