I think bureaucrats today are really politicians with tender. Thats whats happened or they havent become civil servants. They become politicians of tenure. I dont know how were going to do it. The state to become less and less important. These 50 places of experimentation are being shut down. I think it has to start in washington first. I think washington is the key to unleashing these 50 places that can really produce innovation. I think washington is where it has to start and filter down. Final question or was that it . Thank you again. Thank you for joining in the big tent. [applause] copies of the book our personal. He can state an autographed impartially and even wander outside. We do thank you for your kind attention. Hope to see you again soon in the future. Thank you all. [inaudible conversations] on the go, afterwards is available via podcast. Visit booktv. Org and click podcast on the upper left side of the page. Select which podcast youd like to download and listen while you travel. Coming up next on booktv, gerald f. Warburg talks about his memoirs, trenton. He argues young people today should be optimistic about Government Service and learn from those who worked in congress when it was more productive. Professor warburg, it was instrument and crafting the Nuclear Nonproliferation act and antiapartheid sanctions act, discusses his service in congress and his post Congress Work as a lobbyist and attorney for the nixon family. This is just under one hour. Good afternoon, everybody. Thanks so much for coming. Im Harry Harding, the dean of the Batten School of Public Policy here in virginia. Its my pleasure to welcome all of you to the celebration of the publication of the new book called dispatches from the Eastern Front a political education from the nixon years to the age of obama. Gerald f. Warburg is the assistant dean for external affairs at the Batten School and is also a Senior Member of what we call our practitioner faculty. And, in fact, jerry is an exemplar of why professional schools, including professional schools of Public Policy meet practitioner faculty, practitioner to faculty with knowledge of the academy, just as they need first rate academic scholars who are deeply engaged in the profession that they are teaching. Gerry brings to this position very extensive experience in the world of how the policy. He has served as a staff member on capitol hill innocent for many years. He was also a very Senior Leader in one of the most prominent lobbying firms in washington. So he knows what he teaches to his students. In addition not only does he bring a rich experience in the world of washington but he also has rigorous academic training. A graduate degree in Political Science at stanford that enables him to not simply tell anecdotes and war stories as interesting and cluster the as they are bound to put these into a clear, rigorous Analytical Framework for his students. He is a very highly effective teacher. He has been named by the students in the Batten School as the Commencement Speaker a year or so back. Hes been nominated for a number of Teaching Awards at the university and his courses both the graduate and undergraduate courses on congress 101 for graduate students at a new course called policy challenges of the 21st century for undergraduates have gotten rave reviews from the students. But its not just his ability to lead a class or to give a great lecture. It is his deep willingness to engage regularly one on one as a mentor of students, very much in the tradition that Thomas Jefferson tried to create when he founded the university of virginia. In addition to his role as a very effective scholar and teacher, gerry is also a prolific writer. He has written in virtually every genre. Hes written a novel. He has written scholarly articles and chapters. He has written opeds, and now he is the proud author and we are proud with them, of a memoir on his life in washington. So as dean of the Batten School it is enormously gratifying for me to introduce an honored member of our faculty, a distinguished author and a very present observer of the washington scene, gerry warburg. Gerry . [applause] good afternoon and thanks for joining us. So what drove the creation of this very quirky book, and what insights might you gain by reading it . Who became the heroes and villains of the baby boomers and a career like mine in politics . Ill try to shed light on these questions in my opening comments, and i look forward to your questions at the conclusion. First of all of which is a special thanks to my friend Harry Harding, and my colleagues from the Batten School get the university of virginia. This school has grown under harrys personal leadership from just three faculty members in a temporary facility on Hospital Drive to over 250 students and one of the countrys best Public Policy schools to what i believe is one of the world rages public universities. Thank you for rescuing me from the toxic swamps of washington and bringing a recovering politician here to the university. This university is also blessed was some remarkable minds and generous colleagues who helped me improve the book. I want to thank a magical storyteller, a National Book award winner, john casey with us, and my good friend and reader ben congress. Thank you so much for at least saving me from it few embarrassments. As i said im grateful for my time here at the university of virginia. Its been a wonderful joy and i look forward to more years to come. I want to try to accomplish for things in my opening comments tonight. I want to try to shove the ideas about the craft of writing. We live in an age of instantaneous tweets and in permanent unedited blogs. So why the heck would somebody write a book and why do we read them . Why would a Public Policy professor with a Political Science degree write such a candid memoir . Ill try to answer. Second, i hope to entertain you a little bit, continue with the sunshine out on the lawn and family responsibility, but id like to read a few short passage from the book to get a little flavor of where im coming from and how i tried to tell the story. Ill try to share a bit of light on a very unusual approach i took in this book, ma blending a twentysomething heat of the moment letters home to family on the west coast to a more sober dispassionate analysis of the politics of our time from nixon to obama. Ill try to explain the methods of this madness can this very quirky architecture of the book. Third, i want to push back against some of the conventional wisdom that washington is hopelessly broken. You will hear a heartfelt plea to engage in civic affairs. Indeed invite any agenda tonight, it is this, to try once more to exult the nobility of Public Service. Enough of the shotgun attacks on every citizen who tries to serve their immunity. Enough of the cynical vilification of the men and women who we elect to represent us and enough of the whining from folks who dont follow the news and dont vote. As i said in a recent oped, a brief advertisement from this oped and a number of these scribblings are available on the Book Publishers actual website, www. Dispatchs memoir. Com. As i said in its recent oped, the government is not some distant alien other, particularly those of us of Northern Virginia no on its us but its our fellow citizens. Taxpayers and voters. Here at the Batten School weve had a very strong recitation of Legislature Come through, coming to the classroom to engage drug director with her students. Nearly a dozen over the last year. They are acceptable. To engage the government we can make it work better and be a positive force in our citizens lives. As i suggested this book is counterintuitive. He concedes our politics are broken, yet i argued theres no better time to get involved in politics. Its a book about politics and reform that calls people to Public Service and its written by, i confess, an incurable optimist. We baby boomers met a lot of the challenges. After four decades in politics i know in my gut the millennials can and will save us from the toxic group of problems as part of our baby boomer get to them. Fourth and finally, im eager today to answer your questions so we can talk both about politics and about the challenge of writing. This is my marco rubio moment where i need water. Now, a word on why this book, why would a Political Science professor write a personal memoir . The best book ive ever read about washington is about a staff guy, about his death guys life in politics. Written by Harry Mcpherson who came to washington to do good. He stayed and did well. He was a series young man from texas came to work for junior congressman named lyndon johns johnson. And his writing is so in during earnest, he tells the story of the remarkable rise and fall of Lyndon Johnson it seems from insight to this guy from texas from teachers college. With each chapter of his book as he progresses, you see in the boys that he is getting a little wiser, getting a little smarter, getting prepared for the twist of the night, for the high highs and the lolos of politics. It is in this comment is getting of the motion will intelligence, this perspective that i thought to replicate i confess in my own writing. I even tipped my hat to Harry Mcpherson in the title, this book was about a political education and its a nod to his outstanding writing that i worked out into a very wordy title. This book is a gem and i commend it to you. Reading Harry Mcpherson, i saw the washington fissures through the eyes of one staff member, i needed to know who won and who lost in the battles in the 40s, 50s and 60s. I saw some of those events through the eyes, the eyes of any man. It is his readers can his readers see what life look like to the small town public schoolboy who showed up in oz. I have the same feeling when i first appeared intent in 1975. Extreme excitement and my enthusiasm lasted for decades. Let me try to describe in a couple of passages the excitement i had and how much interacting with the people making these policies shaped my thinking. Page six for those who do keeping alone. It was the people who took me. It was the people in pursuit of power who fascinated me. Their passions, off the cover was principles and endless testing of character they experienced. The politicians who populate official washington i soon learned come from country and city, from Ivy League Schools and community colleges, from hick towns and boomtowns, they are the 4h club leaders, ambitious class of the taurus, but also the dissenters and the rebels, the idealistic critics of the status quo. They share a common sense of mission. All yearn to have some impact on our national affairs, all are eager to leave so mark and to from the common existential desire to be present. Although to leave evidence of their work. Their triumphs as was their failures are reassuringly human. They are drawn to washington as i was by the backing arena. Some come to do combat over policy, many want to save the world. Others stayed to make money, we getting their expertise to the highest bidder. Some a court issues and adopt causes only as a means to an end, holding power. Potomac fever they call it. Its a disease like drug addiction. They take just one hit and cannot escape and crave for more. Their story ends badly, always. The individuals and institutions they serve suffer. We see the capital as the National Movie screen where we projector greatest hopes for progress. We feel called to washington to engage. It is an invisible call to Public Service. One fuel in equal parts by altruism and ego. As my kids point out to me this is personal at times. But it inspires the universal perspective, tries to capture what it felt like to be there. It tries to repair the next generation for the challenges ahead in the policymaking arena. How do you build a coalition . How to scout the opposition . How stuff gets done. A word about memoirs, im a history club junkie and in my experience memoirs about politics are written for three reasons. One, kind of a secret but one is therapy. People have to get out of this is to pick the second is revenge. Payback, revisionist history. The third is to enlighten, to try to achieve and to share some thoughts. Youll be shocked to know that i believed that was, the latter was my motivation. To tell the truth and to let the chips fall where they may. Thats what motivated the voice in dispatches. It doesnt by focusing on a handful of characters, rea we dd will know and recognize, people i got to know sometimes are close up, particularly inside United States capital. By looking honestly at the people who shape our policies and asking over and over again, what drives them . The book had very unusual origins to it began i confess as a service of letters home to my family in california. I would sit for weeks on and on will staff chair in the senate floor between the majority leader and the floor manager and i could hear everything. My job was to count votes and invoke what the search strategy to i had a lot of time to kill. There were mind numbingly slow quorum calls and filibuster. I started making notes. About what was going on, but the characters and personalities. Notes i scrawled on sheets of lined yellow legal pads, notes that became letters that i bowled off in bulging with envelopes in the days before email with stamps attached to them. Years later my mom produced some of the summer library. These letters had been written with exuberance and idealism of youth. That chronicled the strange rituals of politicians backed beast as we californians called it. Some of the state address working in a address working in the file by might irrepressibly literary mama. It is these snail mail dispatches from the Eastern Front that reappear lightly edited in parts of the book. They help get the dispatches narrative some Chronological Order from 1975 when i first became, first began working in congress until 2010 when dean Harry Harding blessedly rescued me. In editing these papers, the great folks at bancroft prize worked to encourage me to leave some of that naive and enthusiastic impressionable boys in, and i didnt. So what you have here are some stories about washington, about moscow, about meeting with Andrei Sakharov and jimmy Carter Committee with brave Political Prisoners overseas, meeting with the nixon family, ted kennedy and with the young senator barack obama. They are stories about freshmen senators, guys like howard baker and john kerry and joe biden when they first showed up on the Foreign Relations committee in the sense where i was the leadership staffer working for the committee. There are stories of people but it came to know in different aspects, people like nancy pelosi and Julie Nixon Eisenhower who became one of my true heroes and so i greatly admire. So you got stories about president ial campaigns and intelligence and investigations of Nuclear Weapons proliferation. Stories that leaking stories to the Washington Post and the New York Times and trying not to get caught doing it. Most of them i confess i had never intended to publish and i blame it on you guys. I blame it on my students. When i stand up in class they tell basic tell us more war stories. Tell us what really happened. Dont give us the organizational chart. Tells how things really get done. So i sough i have sought to ince of these specific illustrations and avoid the generalities of some of the cautious case studies we use in the classroom. Ill let you readers judge for yourself whether i succeeded in that. A word about chronology. These accounts from 75 to present our and oddnumbered chapters and they flow in Chronological Order from nixon to obama but they are bracketed by short evennumbered chapters written in a much more mature voice i hope and these are sort of flashforwards, bookends. They tried to lend grayhaired wisdom and perspective. More than anything a try to answer the question that you guys asked and that my states asked most persistently, what do you wish you knew then that you know now . I have the great good fortune of teaching students in the weeks sometimes right before they go off to washington or new york or sierra leone to work with government, to work with ngos, to work with the private sector. Part of my classroom ritual is to make sure that we use Everything Possible as a teaching moment. We even have a special april fools day unit on policy failures and thankfully our government, our executive branch and once again today our Supreme Court give us plenty of raw material to consider. I can assure you that the work at hand is not merely the talks there before recovering political adviser. Yes some of the passages have a ton of baby boomer confessional. How much of this do how much of it is an ego tr