But being active, unless you are actually speaking no one will hear what you have to say. In less than 60 seconds, last question. I am a student at the Honors College at miamidade, im aware the press secretary must be a credible source that during a press conference, the question is asked and there is no answer, how does the press secretary answer the question by keeping his credible source . That is an easy question you say i dont know and i will have to do research and get back to you. Any other answer if they are trying to make something up or make up something it is pointless to try to spin the press that way. Ive been asked this question a different way, what you do when you have to lie to the press . I have never in my life lied to the press and it never would. Your credibility is everything and the trust you develop is everything. Sometimes i know the answer. And you cannot tell them. I say that is not sitting i can share with you right now. Just be honest, straightforward and transparent. Not something we are prepared to discuss. That is the only way to do it. Great questions, great programs. [applause] thank you all. Next, a look at some of the 2016 democratic president ial candidates. After that, q and a with andrew keen. Here are a few of the comments we have recently received on the state of the Union Address. I heard a lot of great things talking about science and nasa. As a scientist myself i can appreciate the president ial position on expanding nasas role. It is exciting to see someone looking to the future. A couple of points i wanted to raise, i thought the rebuttal we gave the republicans was spectacular. I have not seen a state of the union speech improvised a long time. Im happy to see that after 50 years of doing something the wrong way we are getting our act together and opening up trade which has been important with our hemisphere. But the same thing could be linked to Foreign Policy, we have been doing the same thing in afghanistan and iraq and the middle east as a whole and have been getting the same results. Every 10 years we go into a country and there is some kind of blowback. He even mentioned about using drones responsibly and has killed hundreds if not thousands of people without congressional authority. I have seen a few things about the state of the Union Address and some of the stuff leading up to it, i have to argue the opposite because they said unemployment has gone down and the economy is improving, i dont think that is the case. With unemployment you can on the have your extension for so long and then you dont qualify. When those people get dropped there no longer counted as unemployed. That is not an indicator of the economy going up, that is people falling through the cracks. If you look at it from that perspective, the rate of unemployment is probably 10 point something higher than the figures. Continue to let us know about the programs you are watching. Here is a look at some of the 2016 possible democratic candidates. From the washington journal this is almost 40 minutes. We want to welcome back Steve Mcmahon, a democratic aarti strategist. I dont twitter much, i should do it more but i am busy in other ways. If you want to follow me that would be great and i will try to do better. Host lets talk about the hill democratic field. Lets talk about jim webb. How serious is his candidacy . Guest he is a serious candidate. How seriously it will be taken in iowa and New Hampshire remains to be seen. He is the antiestablishment, antieverything, antiidentity politics. He was a senator from virginia for six years as you know Ronald Reagans secretary of the navy andesis got this instinct to talk about the plight of the working white male which is a constitwains that he feels is overlooked and often ignored by politicians in both parties but especially in his party. And it will be interesting to see how that goes. He was a pretty good candidate in 2006. He beat george allen, the incumbent senator from virginia and nobody really expected him to do that. He left after one term. Some people said because he thought maybe he couldnt win rely. Others believed because he was tired of the gridlock up on the hill. He is going to run a campaign thats based upon the idea that maybe the two parties can work together. He has worked for republican president s. He served as a democratic senator. He argued gridlock is keeping america from moving forward. A lot of voters agree with that. We will see. George will this morning in his column writing about Bernie Sanders, independent, who is considering a democratic bid for the white house and making an an analogy to Gene Mccarthy a lengthy piece about his possible candidacy candidacy. He has been in iowa and New Hampshire and staff saying despite his aiming, 73, 74 years old, he serious. Guest i think he is serious. There is a restive, progressive wing in the party that wants a debate that the Elizabeth Warren and others bring forward. Many believe that debate is healthy for the party keeps the democratic nominee whoever it is, in this case i think its probably going to be senator former secretary clinton t keeps them honest moves, moves them to the left a little bit. It holds their feet to the fire with the base, and there are a lot of people who feel like its a productive part of the process. There are others who think that its divisive, creates problems and moves your candidate farther left than they want to be. You can argue it round or square but Bernie Sanders is somebody Hillary Clinton will have to deal with. Joy biden telling abc after the state of the union he would make a decision this summer. Joe biden is somebody that i just think the world of and hes been a loyal soldier. He has been a great Vice President. He has been the guy that the Administration Sends up to the hill when they have to get things done. He is is able to work with Republican Leaders and his old democratic colleagues and bring them together whether its, you know ending the shutdown of the government or putting together a budget deal. He is a legislators legislator. He would a Lyndon Johnson like president if he could get there but there is no question that hes been completely eclipsed in terms of the coverage and the conversation by secretary clinton. So, i think his shot on friday was a dont forget about me but i think a lot of people in this town and particularly inside the add miles per hourstration believe if secretary clinton does run and most people think she will Vice President biden probably will not run. But i think thats a decision that he wants to make, and he doesnt want that decision to be made or imposed upon him by any of the washington ones. Elizabeth warren of massachusetts . She is interesting in the same way that Bernie Sanders is although i think if Elizabeth Warren ran she would be she would eclipse Bernie Sanders in the same way that Hillary Clinton has eclipsed joe biden in many respects. She is something that the left is intrigued by. Progressives love. She continues to say, i am not running for president. Its present tense who gets everybody who likes to parse words interested in asking whether she really means it, whether she might change her mind, whether she might be running for president in the future, whether it might include 2016. I think she has been clear and unequivocal to this point she is not running for president currently. I think she has left the door open enough if Hillary Clinton doesnt run she would easily and quickly be able to become a credible candidate. I think thats by design and not by accident. This is the headline from politico at politico. Com Hillary Clintons fear of leaks. Avowing to avoid a repeat. How do you do that . You have been part of a lot of campaigns. Gecht guest yeah. I understand their concern about leaks. Leaks were clearly a problem last time. It sort of goes with the taken tory, though. If you are trying to avoid the mistakes of the last time the mistakes really werent the leaks. The mistakes were mistakes made on the tam pain trail technical mistakes. After iowa and New Hampshire and when it was clear this was going to be a proceed tacted nominating fight. The Clinton Campaign hadnt filed delegate slates in all of the slates that were holding caucuses and primaries later in the process. They discovered that the Obama Campaign had done that. Thats why relatively early on people who understood the process and how delegates are accumulated and, after all nominations are determined by delegates at conventions and not bottom primaries by primaries won. People knew obama was going to win long before the Clinton Campaign knew obama was going to win. Late host late february early march guest and they were wondering why the Clinton Campaign was ringnizing the inevitable. Those are the kind of mistakes that the Clinton Campaign needs to avoid. The leaking is going to happen, you know, president ial administrations try to stop leaks. They continue to happen. Campaigns try to stop leaks. They happen. I dont think that was the principle problem for the Hillary Campaign last time. Host our guest is Steve Mcmahon, a veteran of a number of democratic campaigns. Now, the founder, cofounder of Purple Strategies which is what . Guest a bipartisan Public Affairs firm that was cofounded by myself and a guy named alex capiansa and we work with challenged brands and in challenging circumstances. We all kind of do democrats and republicans working together which is kind of rare in this town and they all do their campaigns at night and work during the day at this Public Affairs firm, which is a pretty cool place. Host let me ask you about the now former governor of maryland Martin Omalley who had visible appearances last fall, stepped down as the governor of maryland. Its been protocol quiet guest he is the most interesting wild card in this race. He was very active early, traveled, last year, i think to 23 states a twoterm governor of maryland a very successful governor by most peoples assessment. He was, you know, he abolished the death penalty, raised the minimum wage in maryland one of the first to pass civil unions to marriage equality. So gay marriages were occurring in maryland before they were elsewhere. He was against the war. After the torture report came out, he was the only candidate to say or potential candidate to say there should be a special prosecute. Or. He positioned himself if he wanted to be the liberal art alternative to secretary clinton, but hes gone kind of quiet lately. His handpicked successor was unsuccessful in the governors race and i think that was a little surprising to him and to a lot of us who watched maryland politics. I think he said he is going to make a decision, i think by the ends of this month but certainly in the near term. Host let me ask you about money in politics. An editorial in the new york times. Yes pull it i will pull it up. This is on a growing shadow of political money. 63,000,000,000 was spent in the president ial election and concongressional races of 2012, 6. 3 billion. These candidates have got to raise a lot of money in 2016. Guest thats going to be ultimately the big advantage for a candidate like secretary clinton or somebody like mitt romney or jeb bush who has either done it before or has a Famous Family name like jeb bush has. The big advantage they have is the ability to raise massive amounts of money very very quickly. What you saw last time in 2012 were candidacies that were not very successful at raising money at the Grassroots Level or even at the large donor level. And they were sustained by wealthyy wealthy donors through independent expend temperature committees. Rick santorum never raised any money. He stayed in the race because he had wealthy wealthy backers running a darkmoney campaign to support him. Newt gingrich had the same thing going for him for a while. Mitt romney had to raise his money. He did. He raised a ton, almost a billion dollars. Thats what the president raised is almost a billion dollars. Thats what it takes today. Thats going to be the challenge in the democratic primary for any of these people we talked about besides Hillary Clinton. Jim web is interesting but if he cant raise more than a few hundred thousand dollars or a few million dollars, he wont last very long. The same is true of anybody else that we just talked about. Host this elder in the new york times, the growing shadow of political money, as much as 8,000,000,000 expected to be spent. Charles koch saying we are just getting started. This is a piece from politico. Com, a big gathering taking place in Southern California this weekend guest everyone is moving from the big tent of steve king to the big tent of the Koch Brothers out in california this weekend. I think thats what you are going to see is these candidates and particularly the fringeier candidates will chase big dollars because its people like the Koch Brothers or the Koch Brothers who can sustain a candidacy for a long time after the candidacy has run out of steam and it can no longer raise money. Rick santorum, and newt gingrich, i suspect you are going to see some of the folks who were at steve kings event yesterday getting money from some of the players who want to push this thing far to the right. Thats going to create a problem for the event nominee because ted cruz is not going to get nominated by the Republican Party but he can make sure that whoever does get nominated is not electable in the general election if this goes too far. Host lets go to foenldz. Lisa on democrats line from louisville kentucky. Caller thank you for cspan. Hello, mr. Mcmahon. I think you are a very smart democratic strategist bur i am not really a Hillary Clinton fan. I think she has had her time. And i think its over. I would like to know what you think about governor Steve Bashear of kentucky. He had a successful healthcare rollout, which is very hard for a democrat to get elected two terms in kentucky and be successful. He also brings a lot of newer business from overseas to kentucky. I think he would be a great candidate, and i also like Chris Van Hollen. I would like to hear your comments. Host host thank you. Guest thank you for the nice kind words. My mother will be very excited to hear about that. I think governor bashear would be a Great Potential candidate. When i was just a child, i worked on his unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign. He, of course, was successful later and is now governor of kentucky. The rollout, as of mentioned of knet or kinet was so successful that mitch mccogtried to run for ely to the senate saying we can have knet and not have obamacare even though knet was the implementation of obamacare. So, he has done a pretty spectacular job. Chris van hollen is one of the leading thinkers in the Democratic Party right now who just came out with an economic plan that would actually work harder for the middle class by taking away some of the tax breaks that wealthy individuals get. Either one of those people i think, would be a great candidate. Governor bashear is a little older. I think i dont know if he is interested. But Chris Van Hollen is somebody you should watch because he is a comer in this town. Host you told us on newsmakers he is looking at the possibility of running as governor of maryland. His speech available as with all of our programming including this interview on our website at cspan. Org. Tony from glouster Virginia Republican line. Caller good morning. How are you doing . Thank you for taking my call. Host thank you for phoning in. Caller thank you. I had more of a comment than anything. I am more concerned about where the country is heading at this point. We are the we cant be our allies dont trust us. We are the laughing stock of our enemies. I dont agree with raising taxes, capital gangs or any other. I think there should be a flat tax rate. I am a conservative basically, more of a reagan conservative. I would like to see if we need to get a republican president. Im sorry. But thats just how i feel. Host the president in the state of the Union Address saying you need to raise taxes on wealthier americans to pay for roads and bridges and infrastructure. Caller i dont think thats necessary. I mean they have plenty of taxes from gasoline and all of this what are they doing with the money thats there for infrastructure . Think about that. Hoecht. Host thanks for the call. Following the state of the Union Address, this tweet from former secretary of state Hillary Clinton saying that the state of the union pointed the way to an economy that works for all. Now, we need to step up and deliver for the middle class. Will tax be a center piece of the debate in 2016 . I think tax will be a center piece of the debate in 2016. I think the president laid out a tax proposal thats probably going to ha