Investor. The highest calling of mankind, i often thought, was private equity. Then i started interfering. I have learned interviewing. I have learned how leaders make it to the top. And how they stay there. You do not feel inadequate now . Two of the best known individuals in american politics have been bill and hillary clinton. Bill served as president for 8 years. Hillary clinton was first lady but also u. S. Senator and secretary of state. I interviewed the both of them together. Their insights are interesting for current affairs, not only about what they have done before about what they are working on now. President clinton, lets talk current affairs. What do you think is the likely outcome of ukraine . Any resolution of that in the near term . And, secretary clinton, your views as well . Pres. Clinton i do not expect it to be resolved in the near term. Unless putin has a change of heart or the u. S. And others walk away from ukraine and they cannot get enough arms and ammunition to continue. They have been amazing. They fought and fought. They have not asked americans to fight with them. But i think we they have a chance to win. They will if we stay with them. David is there any facesaving way out of this . What is your view on how this might be resolved . Sec. Clinton first, it is imperative that we continue and i would argue increase our support for ukraine, because the russians are back to indiscriminate bombing in cities, aiming at apartment buildings, hospitals, other civilian sites. They have committed war crimes. They are in the midst of committing genocide, particularly with respect to how they are kidnapping children and forcing ukrainians into russia. The bottom line for me is the only potential possible end to the hostilities is either victory by ukraine, including them taking back the property of territory seized in 2014 or pushing russia out of what they have seized since february of last year. That could give us a breathing space to perhaps have some kind of opportunity to protect ukraines legitimate borders with the exception of what they did not get back from 2014 and to move them forward with reconstruction and rebuilding. David are you surprised the u. S. China relationship is as bad as it has been since Tiananmen Square . What could be done to improve it . Pres. Clinton it is difficult. I think it will get harder if we walk away from ukraine, because it will increase the willingness of china to attack taiwan. It is a big dilemma. I worked hard with china, trying to build a relationship. We desperately needed a cooperative relationship through things like covid, trade, north climate change, north korea. There is a lot of things we ought to be doing together, but they make it virtually impossible. Again, if you decide to stay for life, whether your name is putin or xi or smith, your number one priority has got to be crushing dissent, eliminating any source of alternative power, and keeping people lathered up by being angry at somebody somewhere else. I believe the best thing is to keep talking to them even while we disagree publicly. David secretary clinton, are you worried about an invasion of china by taiwan . Sec. Clinton when xi saw that putins invasion did not work as smoothly as putin apparently thought, and the world united to impose sanctions that are taking a toll on the russian economy not as fast as i would like, because i think that would make a difference but xi saw that. Before the russian invasion, there was a good chance he would have moved on taiwan within two to three years, but that timetable has been pushed back. David since you left washington, there has been an increase in the divisiveness of washington. What accounts for this . It is worse than it was when you were there . Now democrats and republicans do not even want to think about bipartisan legislation. What causes this . Any solution in the near term . Pres. Clinton if i say it, you will say i am being a partisan democrat, but it is because republicans have been rewarded for being divisive. It is great for them, because they are great branders, better at it than we are. They have convinced people that our most leftwing members, about 10 of our caucus represents 100 of us. They have caused swing voters to get scared that there most right wing members represent over 90 of them in the house and about 60 in the senate. I have a lot of republican friends who present it as not going on but who do not like it or support it. But you cannot blame people in politics who covet power for doing what works. It has been working for them. David president clinton, if you were to say we should change the way president s are elected, you were elected twice and are probably happy with the method, but do you think direct election, the popular vote, would be preferable to the Electoral College . Pres. Clinton i do. First of all, we adopted the Electoral College when we were 13 states. We had a couple of really big states. And some really small states that had distinct differences, but it also helped to load up the electoral votes of Southern States that had slaves. Now we know that the effect of the Electoral College is to give 36 extra votes to the most culturally conservative and farthest right american states. No objection to them voting. I want them all to vote. Unlike some of them, i would never make it harder for them to vote. I want every vote to count, but i do not think you can justify that today. If you did it, the first question youve got to ask yourself is, would we have more 340 or four Party National elections . If so, would we have a runoff . Should you at least require a president to have 40 or 45 of the vote . Lincoln got elected with 39 . A lot of countries have this. You have to get a majority or something over a minimum amount to be president. But you are not going to go to a parliamentary system, which has coalition governments. You have to have some sort of threshold. David i assume your prefer direct election as well . Sec. Clinton definitely. Davidm you trying to promote is first lady is what we have now. I do not know of people thank you for it. Do you think at the time that having a first lady involved in policy was upsetting to some members of congress . Was that part of the problem you had . Sec. Clinton i do think so. I would have been taught to think so when bill asked me to work at health care. I had come at his request, worked on reforming Public Education in arkansas. One thinks of arkansas at that time as being much more conservative than washington, d. C. , but maybe it was because i knew people in first name basis i had worked with them. He had been governor a long time. We had a respectful relationship with the legislature. It was somewhat of a shock to the system for a first lady to take a public role on a Major Initiative of her husbands. It is not that other first ladies had not been influential, but it was a bit of a shock to the system. That is one of those lessons learned. David there is a famos passage in your life where you are at Yale Law School library. You see bill clinton looking at you. You look at him. You go over to him and say, lets have a conversation. Or Something Like that. Had you not been in the same Yale Law School class, how do you think your life would be different . Do you think you would have been president sooner . Or would youve gone into Public Service . How would like be different if the two of you had not met . Sec. Clinton wow. I think it would have been more boring. David you told your parents were moving to arkansas. What did they say . Sec. Clinton my father when i was growing up, my father was a supporter of republicans. He loved eisenhower. He was a world war ii vet. He loved that. When i brought bill home the first time, it was not so much that he was from arkansas, it was that he was a democrat. Pres. Clinton hillary came from a town where goldwater beat johnson 8020. The other 20 thought goldwater was too liberal. But i loved her father. And her mother, who was a liberal democrat, more liberal than hillary and i. It was listening interesting how their marriage unfolded in terms of raising their children. He was a really good guy. Smart. He wound up working as a volunteer in my campaign for congress in 1974. David when you were president , three times, we had a budget surplus. A surplus is when you had more lending than you spend. At one point, it was thought maybe we would run out of having federal treasury bills because we would not have any debt. Any ideas about how we can get back to that situation . Pres. Clinton first, i had a big argument with alan greenspan. He was to my left. He said, we are not going to how did we set Interest Rates on federal securities if we have no debt . I said, that is a highclass problem. We will deal with that when we get there. Let me say that i also supported obamas stimulus program. And i supported the bill President Trump passed and the bill president obama passed. When you have zero to negative Interest Rates, you cannot run a balanced budget. You cannot cut spending without making the economy worse, but when you do have Interest Rates, you have to deal with your debt issue or otherwise you spend more and more money paying interest on the debt and you do not have anything left for education and health and science research. First, it is nuts to make a big issue of debt. Of this debt limit thing. That says it is a stupid rule in america that congress has to approve twice paying for something they have already voted to spend on. A lot of these people opposing raising the debt ceiling voted for most of the debt that is embedded there. Bottom line we should bring the deficit down as much as we can, but we ought to pay our debts. You cannot spend money, borrow it, and refused to pay the people who loan it to you not if you want to be a great country. David you ran for the nomination, barack obama became the nominee and offered the position of secretary of state. You turned that down initially. Why . Pres. Clinton you turned she turns everything down. She turned me down three times when i asked her to marry me. Her default answer is no. Sec. Clinton there is some truth to that. But eventually, i do say yes to charming men like bill clinton and barack obama. David there is a famous photo of you in the situation room looking at efforts to capture osama bin laden. Are we looking at . Were you afraid it was not going to work . When did you realize it actually did work . Sec. Clinton yeah. We were all afraid that something would go wrong. I was part of the small group that studied all of the intelligence that had been gathered to make recommendations to the president about whether to do something and, if so, what. It was the most intense public deliberation i have ever been part of. It was also secret. I could not tell bill or anybody because of how closely held at once, but we were in that small situation room off the big one. We were watching a screen because we had video from a drone above. We had video of what was happening as the helicopters came in to land. One of the helicopters, its tail clipped the wire on the wall surrounding an area where animals were kept. Once the helicopter tail hit, we knew it was disabled. That was the moment, i think, the picture was taken. We had flashbacks to what happened when president carter tried to rescue hostages in iran. It also meant we would have to send in another helicopter that was hiding to get in there quickly enough. We had to do this within 2030 minutes. People were waking up, helicopters were landing. There was noise. People lived around the compound. It was a hot night. People were sleeping on their roofs, waking up, wondering what was going on. When the helicopters landed and navy seals got out to go into the compound, we could not see that. There was no video of that. We were all holding our breath. We had to wait until we got news from inside the compound. There was a fire fight. The guards and one of bin ladens adult sons were shooting. Eventually, bin laden was shot. His body had to be taken out of the compound, loaded onto a helicopter. We had to be sure about identification to have credibility with the world. And we had to block the helicopter because it was an advanced helicopter with advanced electronics that we did not want the pakistanis to get. We thought they might give it to the russians or the chinese. All this was going on. We were all holding our breath for 20 minutes. It was so intense. Thankfully, president obama made the right decision. It worked. [applause] david when Something Like that is happening, you cannot say to your husband, i have a secret. I just cannot tell you. Pres. Clinton he called me as soon as it was over and said, bill, we got him. I said, who . He knew how hard i tried to get him when i was president and nearly did once. He said, bin laden. Hillary did not tell you . I said, mr. President , you told her not to tell anybody . He said sure, but. I said, she did not tell anybody. You asked about u. S. Polarization. I said it is rewarded but also the left too easily gives up on people. David secretary clinton your career, what are you most proud of having accomplished . Sec. Clinton i had been senator from new york for 8 months when 9 11 happened. It was the most devastating experience for our city and country. But it was also an absolute mandate to act, to help people directly affected, help victim families, help rebuild new york. And it was bipartisan. You started with a question about that. I want to tell a story. Chuck schumer and i literally were the only plane in the sky on september 12. We were flown to new york to meet with the governor and with mayor giuliani to survey what happened. It was overwhelming to have seen it firsthand. The television could not capture it. We spent the day in meetings talking about what we were one to do. That night, around 9 00, schumer and i were in a meeting. With everybody, state and local officials. We were each handed a note. The note said, the white house has just sent a budget request to deal with 9 11 for 20 billion. Not a penny for new york in it. I took the last train back to washington. That afternoon, we go to the white house. It is the two senators from virginia senator allen and senator warner and chuck and i with the president. I could see on his face this was devastating, a crisis that had to be dealt with. He says to us, i am with you. What do you need . I said, 20 billion. He said, you got it. His staff nearly fell off their chairs. So then we were going to the room next to the oval office. John warner, one of my favorite callings of all time, he said, hillary, have him make that commitment in public. I said, ok, john. We go in. The memberd of congress from new york, connecticut, new jersey, the president is talking about how we will protect the country, do this. He finishes talking. And i say, i just want to thank you, mr. President , for committing 20 billion to new york. By the time chuck and i got back to the senate, his staff was trying to undo that. And telling the republican leaders, do not put it in the appropriations bill. We kept calling the white house. Bush said, i gave my word. I will follow through. That was an amazing moment. [applause] david president clinton, you look back on your service to our country, what are you most proud of having achieved . Pres. Clinton can i add one thing to what hillary said . One thing i like about george w. Bush is that he started out more conservative than his father, we would do speeches together. They are funny now. We badmouth each other in a funny way. But he will listen. If he thinks you are right, he will switch. If he thinks you are wrong, he will argue. That is all you can ever ask. That is what you should remember. When you asked me in the beginning and i said the polarization was partly because it had been rewarded. Partly because its the right had been rewarded. It is also because the left too easily gives up on people. We should not talk down about people. The one thing i loved about Elijah Cummings is that he treated people respectfully. Elijah cummings and john lewis kept knocking on the door. There is other people out there where you can knock on the door. David no regrets about not having gone into the higher calling of private equity . Sec. Clinton [laughter] david neither of you regrets that . Pres. Clinton that is because you take care of all of the stuff that requires real money. He gives a lot of that money away. Thanks to avalara, we can calculate sales tax automatically. Avalarahhhhhh what if tax rates change . Ahhhhhh filing sales tax returns . Ahhhhhh business license guidance . Ahhhhhh crossborder sales . 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