Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On The Negotiator 201

There are he has. Hello senator. Good evening. Im Bradley Graham the coowner of politics and prose along with my wife Lissa Muscatine and on behalf of the entire staff welcome. A few very quick administrative announcements. Now would be a good time to turn off cell phones or anything else that might go beep. When we get to the q a part of the session as you can see we have cspan tv with us this evening so if you have a question to be heard it would be great if you could make your way to the microphone right there. At the end before you come up to get your book signed our staff would be very grateful if you could fold up the chairs and leaned them against something that wont fall over. So by way of introducing this evenings guest let me just say there is a lot of talk these days about the American Dream not being what it once was and there may be some truth in that for younger generations. George mitchells life is certainly one example of someone in america that could rise from smalltown origins and modest means and become a person of considerable accomplishment and influence. A lawyer for maine, senator mitchell arrived in the u. S. Senate in 1980 and nine years later took over as majority leader a post he held for six years. In that time he was among the most respected members in the senate. Actually there was a Bipartisan Group of senior congressional aides who repeatedly voted him the most respected member. The story of George Mitchells career as an elected politician only gets you a little more than halfway through this new book, the negotiator. That is because he has shown that a guy with integrity and problem solving skills can continue to achieve much even after stepping down from one of the governments most important positions. Since retiring from congress two decades ago senator mitchell has taken a leading role in negotiations for peace in Northern Ireland and in the middle east. He has also served as chairman of the Walt Disney Company as well as several other entities. He headed an investigation into the bribery of International Olympic Committee Members and let another probe into the use of performanceenhancing drugs in u. S. Baseball. In fact a whole section of senator mitchells new book is entitled no time for retirement. And he has authored four previous books one done with his experiences in Northern Ireland and another with the irancontra investigation and he intends to devote a future book to his work in the middle east including his time as a special envoy under president obama. So this and other key parts of his life dont quite get the full treatment in the negotiator negotiator. As he says and known authors note this memoir isnt really meant to be a complete autobiography that mara collection of panic notes coupled with a series of lessons at the end about the art of negotiation. Those lessons along are very instructive reading. I wasnt quite sure talking just before we came out exactly how to refer to senator mitchell on second reference. Weather was senator mitchell. He has also been a chance when he has been an ambassador. So he has something to explain about that which he will in just a second. Ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming george mitchell. [applause] thank you very much bradley for that very generous introduction and thank all of you ladies and gentlemen for being here for your warm reception. The title. When i began the negotiations in Northern Ireland i was the chairman of the request of the british and irish government. It was quite vocal opposition to my serving in that position by several of the parties who walked out when i came in to take the chairmans seat. It was in the middle of the night and we had a very controversial and stormy beginning. I called a meeting for later that day and after the meeting finished i telephoned the leaders of the parties where i had walked out of the talks. I said look you up major point. All kinds of publicity yelling at me and so forth to the wider you guys come back now and they sort of thought about it and grumbled but they did come back. However they wanted to make it further point so they announced that although they were returning to the meetings they still do not want to recognize my legitimacy as chairman said they would refuse to call me chairman. I said well thats up to you. What you want to call me . And they said senator. Well why not . That is what ive been called for most of my life and actually i have been called a lot worse things than senator. So since then i told bradley people say to me how do you want to be introduced . Senator is as good as anything else i would say. I want to, just briefly on that very kind introduction by bradley. As you might expect i speak often. Im on tour this week so three or four times a day i get up and talk. After a while you get tired of hearing yourself so the highlight of the program for me was the introduction. [laughter] they always begin by saying i will be brief. I say you dont have to be. Theres a danger to it of course. That is if you hear this kind of stuff often enough you begin to believe it and its unhealthy for your mental state. So id like to begin with the story about introductions and how i was brought back down to earth. I served in Northern Ireland and i chaired three separate sets of discussion over period of five years. When when i returned to United States i wrote a book about my experience. I think that was the last time i was here when the book was published and in that book tour around the country i received a very large number of invitations from irish americans understandably but i learned in that process that in the United States there are more irishamerican organizations then there are irishamericans. [laughter] and i was deluged with these requests. I couldnt do them all but i picked out several. As i traveled around the country attending these events they developed among them an informal competition as to who could give the longest most extravagant sometimes rather fantastic introductions of me. The proper reaction of course was to show some humility, urge them to keep it short and to be repetitious. I have an improv reaction. I loved it. I encourage them. I schooled them when they left something out. One guy took 35 minutes reading a very long litany of everything ive done in my life which included several things which i had not previously been aware of. And when he finished i criticized him for leaving out the fact that in my junior year in high school i once the science award. By the time i got to the last stop on this tour it was the irishamerican society of stanford connecticut. I was very impressed with myself. My head was so swollen i could barely fit it in the door. When i walked in the first person i encountered was an elderly woman who rushed up to me very excited and nervous and vigorously shook i hand and then he praised on me saying what a great man i was and how she didnt live anywhere near stanford. She drove three and a half hours just to come there and to shake my hand and to tell me how much she admired me and asked me if i would sign her poster. She handed me a cardboard with a photograph on it and up and in i looked at it and i said ill be happy to sign her poster but before he do i think theres something i should tell you. She said what is it . Is i said im not Henry Kissinger. [laughter] there was a photograph of Henry Kissinger. She said you are not . Who are you anyway . [laughter] so when i told her she was obviously disappointed. She said thats just terrible. She said i drove three and half hours to meet a great man like Henry Kissinger and all i got was a nobody like you. [laughter] i said im sorry you feel so bad. I wish there was something i could do to make you feel better better. After brief pause she said well there is. I said what is it . She leaned forward and a conspiratorial manner and i leaned forward in our forfeits were retouching. She said nobody will ever know the difference. She said would you mind signing Henry Kissingers name to my post or . So i did. And its hanging today in eastern connecticut is a daily reminder to me not to take these introductions to seriously. Most of you have heard Henry Kissinger speak. So heres the best part of the story. About a year ago he and i appear jointly at a conference in manhattan and there was a moderator and two chairs and he asked us questions about world affairs. I thought it would be a good time to tell the story and i did and the crowd laughed and henry seemed to enjoy it. Then we went on the program. After the program we found ourselves in the elevator going down to the ground floor together and he said to me, i have heard you speak often. When you were Senate Majority leader and we appeared together several times but i have to tell you never have i heard you better than you were tonight. I said really . Was a my answer on china were the middle east . He said no it was the story told in the beginning. He said thats a great story. You should tell it all over america. So i do and i keep a list. Every time i see him i have a list in politics and prose was on the next list by handed him in washington d. C. Its great of you to be here. I have been here before so i know that this is a crowd that is full of questions so while having served in the senate for many years and majority leader and fully capable of speaking in depth and at length on any subject with no prior notice. Usually neither processing or conveying any knowledge but i can take up all the time possible. Im not going to do that tonight create i do enjoy the question and answer period. I will say just a couple of words about the book and then perhaps i would like to read from it. When i did my previous book tours i never read from the books but at an event in new york on monday night a great author and a good friend of mine colon the cam who is a wellknown irishamerican novelist said he came to the event and introduced me and he said what are you going to read . I said im not going to read anything. Im going to get up and give a talk and answer questions. As soon as they arrived, my mother being at the age of 18. My father was the son of irish immigrants, you never knew his parents and he was raised in an orphanage there. He was adopted by an elderly couple from the state of maine who happen to live next door to my mothers sister. My father left school after the fourth grade and began a live of long and hard work. It mostly as a laborer and a janitor. And my parents earned very little and they led a hard life. But they had a dream. Their dream was that each of their five children graduate from college to receive the education that they never had a chance to get. As is often the case they have a profound believe in the value of education and my parents are part of that group. The parents indicated that we would lead a life of luxury if we went to college. Although they died penniless, each of the children are graduating from college and each of them has lived a life that would be wholly unrecognizable to my parents because of that. Not only because of them, of course but we were very rich and that that they ended up in this country, the United States, which despite its many serious imperfections remains the most free, the most open and just society in all of human history. The closest that any society has ever come to a true meritocracy where everyone, in light of background or status, has a chance to go as high as talent and willingness to work and willing to be able to work, how far that will take them. And so i wrote this in the book so that others would feel that they also have a chance and in that respect our country is moving backward. That we are increasingly not want america but two or more and that what i call the little class or working class is disappearing. And one i was growing up in maine which now has a population of about 15,000 people, there were two textile mills one papermill in the town. Within one hour drive they were located 20 factories. And theres not one today. And i think that that is a microcosm of what has happened in communities all over america. The Technological Communications and information revolution to which not just weak but all societies are passing will in our judgment be seen by future historians as much a turning point in the industrial revolution. And each of us has a part of this in our daily lives. It is a society it is this place work for many and we have not figured out how to replace those jobs that are gone forever. And it seems to me that the higher levels of knowledge skill and education are necessary to offset that to enable us to have more mineworkers in the future. And that means that every american child literally every american child, should have the early care and intellection stimulation and good education that will enable each of them to go as high as their talents are going to take them. It is not just that we would be helping the individuals because it is individuals who comprise a society. As a society we will benefit from the talents of all of the members of society. One of the most revolutionary thing about the American Revolution is that it established what we now take so much for granted, that the only legitimate sources for government anywhere is the informed consent of the government and that was not the case for most of human history. But if that runcible was to be vindicated and if democracy, which is a demanding form of government particularly in water deeply troubled areas around the World Education and informed citizenry is crucial to the task. So its here at home and abroad that we have to do better, drawing on the talents of every member of our sins iv. And i hope that in a tiny way that one drop in an ocean that this book will contribute to that. And so i would like to just leave about a page and a half at the end of the book which i talk about. And the book is a is a collection of what i hope youll find humorous including what is at the very end. And i described my work in Northern Ireland and the difficulty of it and i have a chapter on the middle east is well and i would like to read about a page and a half of the book and it is pure coincidence that my fathers parents were born in ireland and my mother was born in lebanon. The tragically working in ireland in the middle east enabled me to learn about my parents heritage, to walk the land of my ancestors and meet the people among whom they live and to learn of their hopes and fears as well as their aspirations. But i didnt know that i existed or four i traveled to ireland and lebanon. All of this i came to regard as an extra benefit from serving my country. On the hundreds of flights to and from ireland in the middle east i try to imagine my mothers early life. What was it like for a young girl growing up in the hills of southern lebanon. What was her parents live like christian speaking in a muslim majority. And asked the same questions while daydreaming about my father who never knew about his parents and went from a catholic orphanage in the center of boston to the cold forests of northern maine. There is a boy that worked among them. And i wondered about his parents. Much has been written about irish immigrants who succeeded in this new land about the money that failed. And had that been the fate of my grandparents and their parents. And as the plane touched down in dublin, my mind was awake with thoughts and dreams and fantasies about those and i thought of this that it would always make me smile when it came to my mind. And i was at a reception in my honor just below the border between Northern Ireland and ireland. And the bridge had been restored and rebuilt, not to be called a peace bridge and named after me. The large unfriendly crowd of wellwishers peppered me with questions about my father and his family. And most reacted with surprise as well as disbelief when i answered that i really didnt know much about his family history. Because to them, history is a living part of the president. And a couple of them suggested that i retained it both in the business that specializes in genealogy, mostly for wealthy irishamericans and with a twinkle in his eye local officials said, senator if you pay them enough they will convince you to buy there. This was an ancient irish warrior king well known in irish history about like we know george washington. So we all laugh. And in other words it is all hocuspocus. On the other hand, maybe it is not. The other story is about my mother. And usually around the Kitchen Table we talk about it, often with missed in her eyes. Its so beautiful and the air is here. And after arriving in the United States at the age of 18 years old, she returned to lebanon only once late in her life after her father died he and a Sister Company of her and she returned to the village where she grew up with friends in the house in which she had been raised. And that is where my mother stood and caused and look at the great emotion and said they you should see america. [laughter] and its so beautiful. The air is pure in the air is pure the air is good oh, america my america. She had little formal education, she could not write english, she spoke with an accent and she worked in a textile mill that she was generous and loving and strong and wise and she understood clearly the meaning of america. And to me no one has ever said it better. Oh america my america, thank you very much for being here. [applause] i would be glad to take your questions and contrary to what you may have been told if anyone wants to make a speech be my guest. Thank you, senator. I only have 20 minutes. It was my honor to work for you at the Democratic Policy Committee for a couple of years and i enjoyed the sections where you describe your relationship with your boss and i guess that that is may be where you learned to treat staph like human beings. So i would love to acknowledge the existence of a staffer he would say moses leaned on his staff and died. And i leaned on my staff and i tried. And my friend who worked for Tommy Thompson