A civic, civil unrest terrorism and terrorist groups active so its not a positive situation and so to the extent that we can continue to support the Afghan Military and again its the stomach for the longhaul and having an involvement that provides some sort of possibility for stability in the future. When we just decide well this is hopeless lets leave then you can get back to the situation that caused you to get there in the first place. Posted this book makes me assume youre running again because it lays out a view whether you agree or disagree. That suggests to me that you are reentering public life. Are you running again . Guest entering public life doesnt necessarily mean you are running but im out there in the public. I mean running for office again. I have been very clear that thats something im actively considering trying to gauge both the level of support thats out there but also trying to figure out being the father of seven kids for them still at home and having gone through this just finished up two years ago, it takes a toll so you have to measure all of those things both politically and personally. But i have concern about the future this country. I think i bring Something Different to the table and so we are going to actively consider whether this is something we should do and they will make a decision sometime next year. Host im like must be blue one for presidency of little kids at home. Guest yeah we have a little girl whos going to be six in may and so thats her youngest and then we have a 23 of those are all this. They are still relatively young and still need their dad around and thats my challenge and something that karen and i think about them pray about and try to discern the right thing to do for her family and her country. Host how hard is it for a family when he ran for president . Guest its absence. You are just not fair and for long periods of time. You can bring kids out of the campaign trail are two of the kids were traveling with us quite a bit and now some of the older kids probably daniel are the next in line to be in a position to do more of that but we still have younger kids. As you know our 6yearold you know has a disability and requires constant care. Those are the things and i know people look at politicians and say well its all political and the political calculation and they talk about the family as an excuse because the politics arent there. It may be the case in some but is not the case and mine. Host how physically grueling as a two run . Guest i love it. I was asked a question the other day in one of these forums i did at the university, are you a night owl or an early riser and my answer was both. I run pretty hard and i like the pace of the campaign and i love doing seven to nine campaigns in iowa and traveling the country and talking about things that i think are important. That energizes me so its not as much of a toll on me as it is the toll on the family and what comes with it. The physical grind him is not the big problem. The problem is that tax and the cruelty that comes from exposing yourself to the American Public at least an important small sub sector because of media has the ability to speak more loudly than what they should. Host i know potential candidates are resistant to critique other candidates but who are you impressed impressed by bike who might run for president . Anyone . Guest in 2012 we had a bunch of really good people. Host we did . Guest they were good folks. Running for president is hard, tucker. You look at folks and say this person didnt do well and that person didnt do well. Its hard. I say dont try this at home. You look at candidates who have dropped in. Rick perry dropped in and found out wow we are not in texas anymore. This is a tough environment. Day in and day out you have to be mentally and physically and emotionally prepared for it. I guarantee you two years from now when you are looking at the republican field he will say jay that was not as good of a field as we thought it might be. Its a hard thing to do and everybody has faults. Everybody has witnesses and they get shown very clearly in a president ial race. Host i am sure you will say this is untrue but my perception after reading this book is you have some measure of contempt for or certainly dont seem impressed by him. A couple of his aides were talking of the possibility of yet another run by him for president. What do you think of that . Guest i dont think i was unkind to in the book at all. I just thought he was the wrong candidate. I think he was miscast. I supported him in 2008. It was a different election but in the 2000 election it was not the right candidate. He was at the time of the 99 versus 1 we did not need to nominate a multimillionaire 1 or who unfortunately never was able to drop the primary never able to get comfortable with his wealth and how to explain that and his success. Either on top of that the whole issue of obamacare of the fact that we have a candidate who took the most important issue that helped us when the 2010 election and will probably help us when the 2014 election that they person who instituted obamacare we never talked about it. In my opinion this is the reason i was so passionate about running and got engaged in the campaign. We knew someone who is better on those two fronts and the thought maybe a guy who grew up in a steel town the son of an immigrant and wasnt for the wall street daylight bail daylight bailouts and put forth a lot of good freemarket private sector ideas on health care would be a better choice. Its. Host what do you think of jeb . Guest i dont know jeb that well. I look at his record as governor of florida and it seems that the pretty solid record. I think he is a good and decent man. I dont know that much more. Host now i should know from the one of the seven biggest states he won only one, texas and i i dont think that i dont things are there so we mathematically they can get to the required number of the electoral votes. There are a lot of people who watch are watching this who believe texas could easily go blue and become a Democratic State over the next 10 years. At that point would the Republican Party ceased to be a National Party . Guest i think thats why its important that we expand the base of the Republican Party. He will do what Ronald Reagan did in 1980 and 198084 planning all the states and you say thats not possible if not possible given the weather the way the roof of the party is positioned itself but its possible we have positioned ourselves in favor in identifying but the great Middle America who is looking for someone who has a plan to make life better. Its really the reason i wrote the book to speak from the people across america those of us who have this sense of value but also speak to the republican establishment. We have to stop our focus on i think extraneous issues, the idea that somehow or other we have to abandon the family and abandon life. The people im talking about happen to share our values on those and they are willing to vote for us if we can show them we actually care about them. I site this in the book that in the exit polls there were a thing 23 of the population on the exit polls said the number one issue for them was to see care about people like me to ask barack obama got 81 of those votes and they were by and large people in the lower middle income areas. Its not that his policies were helping him. In fact they were destroying a lot of the opportunities and the chance of the american dream. I think was Teddy Roosevelt who said people dont care what you know until you they know what that you care. We have to have policies that connect and i think we can reestablish an entirely new map that put states like pennsylvania and ohio and even illinois and wisconsin and michigan back in the electoral play again. Host a huge percentage of workingclass voters are receiving government aid in one form or another. Is it a tough sell for republicans with whom they might have a closer affinity on guns or abortion or marriage or whatever and say elect me and i will for example cut your disability payments. Guest elex mean i will create an opportunity for you to have better paying jobs and opportunity to take better care of her family and work one job instead of two and maybe your spouse not have to work a job so if she wants to be able to stay in a home or if you want want to stay in the home and have your wife works whatever it is but to give options to your families because the jobs you have for better paying jobs. You dont need those government benefits. Part of it is that you know there recent 47 of the people are receiving benefits thats an alltime high. Before the recession was 31 or 32 . Its if the economy is driving up these benefits and getting more people involved. So if we can grow the economy and say we need a progrowth proworker agenda and thats what we try to layout. Host at some point math suggests you will have to benefit cut benefits somewhere sometime. Even good people who like to work why would they want to give up benefits . Guest i talk about this in the book. There are certain things we can and must do with a lot of the programs that are in place that are fiscally unsustainable. They are not going to be able to continue. Social security and medicare and medicaid is on its way to bankruptcy. We have to begin to address those issues. If we can create a healthier economy and we can begin to create at about the competencies for people affected by these changes than i think its a pretty good tradeoff and hopefully we can make that argument. You say well they dont want to give them up. I will say i have a lot of faith in the American Public and if you make the case to america and give them the opportunity to do so as a leader and call upon america to step forward and do their part to make america a viable enterprise Going Forward i think youre confident that the American People can happen. Host for those 23 years you have had conservatives sending money to politicians in d. C. But also conservative nonprofits in the hope that they would help make america more conservative. Over that time at least from my perspective the country is become anything but. By giving measures you mentioned today the welfare rate of out of wedlock birthrate in a way that people vote. What happened to all those billions . Was a waste of . Guest republicans have focused on the wrong place. As you know tucker one of the things ive done since i left the political race for president is i became ceo of a movie production Distribution Company and one of the reasons you have seen a change in americas because the Popular Culture. Look at the attitudes and we talk about the attitudes towards marriage. That has been driven completely by the Popular Culture of Media Television and is pounding a buyin pounding away on this is the way youre supposed to think and if you dont think that way you are an intolerant bigot. That is a huge impact. You give money to a think tank. Thats great and its great for Public Policy and if you give money to the Republican National committee thats great but elections are downstream from Popular Culture these days. I think you are seeing this now. Conservatives need to engage in the culture. I have done so with this Movie Company acolyte. We have to start going out there battling for the hearts and souls of america and not just in a Popular Culture but particularly in the church. We have to energize the church to start fighting back in a way that is creative and positive. Look at pope francis. Im encouraged by what i see from him. He has captured the imagination of young people. Hes out there preaching a positive uplifting good news. If you look at the preachers that are doing well on television its positive and upbeat. We have to be warriors and we cant back away from what we believe in. Theres a way to present that in a way that is true good and beautiful that will change hearts and minds. Host in order to do that he won a clear assessment of your opponent and he said Popular Culture has worked for permanently to undermine the family. Why is that . Whats the motivation behind back . Guest its always daily. Go back to the days of William Wilberforce wilberforce. Coded in the elite culture, go back to the roman empire. The elites want to be a will to do what they want to do. They say every problem in the world comes down to a problem with the first commandment. You put a false god before god and the false god is you. You do things for you and you dont care about any other consequences. Just whatever makes me happy at the moment. That materialism and egoism is unfortunately rampant among elites in every culture and history of man. This is not something we should be surprised that. It happens everywhere. So we see that point of view being expressed by those elites and the closer they create. None of this should be shocking or surprising. Every civilization in the history of man has gone through this. William wilberforce one of my heroes back in england that was his fight to go after the elites and the problems that were occurring and example they were setting for society. If you look at the samples of the celebrity culture exhibits to society its not one that is all about living a good decent and moral lives. So people tend to imitate that particularly young people. Host senator Rick Santorum and the book is blue collar conservatives recommitting to an american that works. Thanks a lot for joining us. That was really interesting. Guest thank you tucker. Appreciate it. Now representative James Clyburn on his life growing up in the south and his political career that led him to being the third highestranking democrat in the house of representatives. This is an hour. In the late 1800s it was known as the manual institute. It was the first school developed for the children of newly freed slaves. Since that time it has been a school for several generations and we are cited about the opportunity to turn this once again into a learning center. Aiken has a rich and phenomenal history. A lot of times who are unaware of the history of the community that they live in. This facility will capture that history. I dont know if you know this or not but macon county was established by africanamericans during the time of reconstruction. We want to tell the story of that history. I am an africanamerican baptist pastor and when im really excited about is the birthplace of the africanamerican Baptist Church here in aiken county. That story and all of the rich stories of aiken will be told at this Cultural Center and we thank you for being here. At the end of everything if you would like to go in the to go on a tour we would love to show you what we are up to that the Cultural Center. At this time we want to invite dr. Jordan who is the chancellor of the university of South Carolina aiken and she will come and give us remarks. [applause] i am so honored to be invited to give a few remarks on this very important occasion. Luckily i was just in washington d. C. And had the opportunity to visit the office of congressman clyburn where i was received very warmly by the staff. They had a chance to be personally welcomed by the congressman and had a chance to chat. I was there to thank him for the work that he does, the Golf Tournament he sponsors that provides the ken seder scholarship scholarship. They can save her scholarship amount allows students who might not otherwise feel to go to college to have a chance at an education. It was your idea. You how to create the opportunity. We are so grateful for your dedication to education. While i was there i had the audacity to ask the congressman to sign a copy of his biography. What he may not know is that i had to run all over washington d. C. To get that book. [laughter] i am pretty sure i bought the last copy in all of washington. In fact it cost me 65 in a taxicab. [laughter] but i want to tell you that after i read the book what i did with the congressman. I got him to sign the book and i came home and i read it. And then i donated to the university library. Why would i give away a book that cost me extra money but i think its a book every student in South Carolina should read. Its a book that in its essence is about how one person can make a difference not only in our state that throughout our nation. Especially if thats an individual who is working for deepseated values and with great integrity. It is such a pleasure to be here. What you may not know is that one point in his career he too was a teacher of tenth grade . Thats right. It takes a special person to teach tenth grade. I know, thats why i teach college. I know there has been a long tradition valuing education. Thank you very much. [applause] at this time we would like to ask representative bill clyburn to come and introduce the congressman for me. Thank you reverend slaughter. Ladies and gentlemen is truly an honor and a pleasure today to introduce our congressman, our author and a Public Servant. We were for to him as jim and i think i have known him now for probably longer than anyone to tell you the truth. But the congressman was born and raised in sumpter South Carolina. He is the son of a fundamentalist baptist preacher. His mother was a beautician. He has two brothers, john and james. The congressman is married to the former now we referred to his wife as ms. Theres a reason for that. She is a really great and beautiful silver haired lady. The congressman is quick to tell me well you are not right but when hes talking he listens. The present of the United States says you know when congressman clyburn speaks the congress listens. Thats true too but when ms. Selma speaks for congress congressman listens. Hes been the former assemblyman of the legislative black caucus. c c for communications. c and she is here to be with her father. c i could give you so many things. Now he does not likec that. Baa i will take that liberty to tell you that not only in my view they didc to him but to tell you up couple of and alluding to thec c and then to be involved with so many young kids. c [applause] you see in this book how we met is one of those stories that people all over the country seemed to enjoy. I tell people though that we met in jail,. [laughter] that is an institution that sound sometimes work. For us it did. Because if she continues to conduct herself appropriately,. [laughter] in 17 days, we will celebrate our 53rd wedding anniversary. [applause] i am buried pleased that our firstborn is here with us today. Now she was just in aiken several weeks ago for an event. She is back today really because she had to come home to vote. [laughter] we were a few days trying to get her absentee ballot and finally it happened two days ago. She did not receive a ballot and i said to her i hate for you to go to this great expense but i would hate to lose this election by one vote. [laughter] so she flew home home and its his decided to stay for this event. I want to say just a couple of things about the book and then i will ask an egg egg answer any questions you may have. Several of you told me that you have written a book. I was supposed to go to another introduction but i see he and his lovely wife are walking to the door. My brother charles is walking in. [applause] and his wife linda. Thank you so much for being here as well. And now, when i started out to write this book, i started with a working title which was i too am a southerner. I guess i better explain why im sitting down and not standing up. As most of you know id rather stand up. I have been told by cspan who set this thing up for me to sit down so that is why i am sitting. When i started out to write this book it came from an experience i had when i was on the governors staff. One of my jobs as a staffer to governor john west was to attend meetings and to really take notes and sit down for governor and let him know exactly how his agenda was progressing through the legislature. One day in one of those meetings we were trying to get a piece of progressive legislation passed, the creation of a South CarolinaHuman Affairs commission, and one of the legislators who was not particularly enamored with that idea said some things in the meeting that i thought had crossed the line. After the meeting i went up to him and i told him what i thought. His explanation to me was, well clyburn you have to understand i am a southerner. Well i did not believe that being a southerner meant that you had license to be insulting and to say things that were unbecoming of a Public Servant in my opinion. And so later that day i said to my colleague i said you know when this experiences over im going to sit down and im going to write a book. Im going to entitle that book i too am a southerner. I said because not only am i a southerner, you are a southerner and phil phil just happen to have been white. I said to him you dont say things like that and i hope you dont think that we. I think that we need to really have a discussion of what it means to be a southerner. So thats the way i started. When i got halfway through the book i have a wall and i just couldnt get it done. I retreated to a little secluded spot in my home where i often go when i am challenged and cant seem to get things done great i call upon my studies of aristotle who once said a life without contemplation is not worth living. That is where i go to contemplate and give meaning to my efforts. And on that particular day, it suddenly occurred to me that my father who was a fundamentalist minister who would take his last meal of the week every friday around 6 00 and he would not eat a full meal again until after Church Services on sunday. And he would spend all day saturday reading, writing and preparing himself for his services on sunday. He would only drink water and be back bread. Thats the way he prepared. But when he would get up to walk throughout the house he would be humming his favorite hymn. I wondered what my dad get out of bed hemap . I went and got a copy of the hymn and i read it, and i saw in the first and third verses and especially in the refrain exactly what my dad got out of that song and it was like some kind of transition. I dont know exactly how to explain it but i got back to my typewriter, to my computer and i began to write. It all came to me and when i finished writing i submitted the book. I had reached 186,000 words. University of South Carolina press said to me look, look at our agreement. You dont publish books of this type beyond 150,000 words. You need to find a way to cut 36,000 words out of the book. Or it would change the charact character. It would devalue the book and probably drive down readership. So i spent the next almost two years rewriting the book so as to take 36,000 words out and resubmitted it and this is that product. Now, i am going to conclude by reading the last of the preface to give you a flavor of what this book is about. My story is one of National Leadership and local advocacy. Its a story of a black youngster who grew up in the jim crow south, five months of his adult life to lower barriers of discrimination and emerge at the National Level as a political pragmatist and a consensus builder. When i decided to write this memoir i sought the help of my longtime friend and confidant philip g. Gross junior. Phil was a speechwriter for governors robert e. Mcnair and john c. West. And he wrote books on both of them. Phils untimely death about twothirds of the way through my practice gave me great cause in more ways than one. We spent many hours discussing our mutual backgrounds, common heritage and different cultures. He was a tremendous help in style and perspective. But from the very beginning i reserved unto myself all the substance and context. I miss him dearly. I have always been frustrated by those who explain questionable actions towards me and those who look like me by proclaiming themselves to be southerners, but moderate or conservatives. Phil and i share a low tolerance for such behavior and for years i told him that if i ever wrote the memoir he always promised to help me with it would be entitled i too am a southerner. Long before it became a son of the south i was an offspring of two died in the wool proudly conservative southerners who treated me and my brothers and the people who look like us with great love and affection. My mother spent long hours in a beauty shop and was a generous contributor and supporter for the naacp as well as many other community causes and political activities. My dad always ate his last meal of the week around 6 00 p. M. On fridays to begin preparation for a sunday sermon and services. He always spent most of his saturdays fasting, reading and humming his favorite hymn blessed experience. One day while president obama and i were enjoying a round of golf he asked about my appearance as we discuss this project. When i told him the working title and why they had chosen it he broke into his algorithm imitation and started singing one of the hymns versus. I did not share with the president the little factoid that i feel certain my dad never knew. My dads mother and the composer of the music to that hamm shared the same not so common given name. In that hamms refrain all the words. This is my story, this is my song. Thank you. [applause] thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you. And with that i will answer any questions that you may have and we would like for you to raise your hand if you have a question. Someone with a mic will come with you so both the question and answer can be aired if cspan desires to hear this. Yes maam. Hello congressman clyburn. One of your stories he you told a little bit about the Bowling Alley and how that experience working in the Bowling Alley rallied around the community. I too am a product of my mother taking me to the Bowling Alley and having the same experiences and being able to open that up to the community. What advice could you share at this time from your book for a candidate who is looking for ways to rally his comanche to be a support to each and every one . Well i think my book is about blessed experiences. A lot of times in order to see the blessings in these experiences you have to look back. I say in part of the preface all of my experiences have not been blessed but i burst perceived all of them to be blessings. Now one of my professors that factors into the title of this book, my sophomore year at South Carolina state, said to me doi doing during a backandforth one day, young man you must understand that you will never be any more nor will you ever be any less and what you experience allows you to be. I think one of the things that we fall short on in our society is really learning to respect the background and the experiences of other people. You will find in this book a discussion of the differences between me and emily. Emily grew up on a 22acre farm in the suburb of mosque on a in the white spill area. She grew up walking to school, two miles in the morning, two miles back home in the afternoons. They were not allowed school buses until later. Now, i grew up in sumpter on a paved street. I was three blocks from my elementary school. I was six blocks from my middle school and as bill said i graduated from the academy what we called in those days a boarding school. My dormitory with 20 cents for my academic hall. So i never knew what it was to walk to school for miles and walk back home. And so when i expressed some disenchantment with the Court Decision in swan v. Cao limburg which was the case to integrate the schools in North Carolina and i said so publicly. Emily sat me down that evening and explain to me and vernacular what it was not to be able to ride the school bus and explain that i should not ever be a so i said when you are running for office it seems to me you would do well to understand that the people you are asking to vote for you. [applause] i think a lot of people get carried away with running for office and see it as tv commercials and that kind of stuff. That is not what being a public server servant is all about to me. It is about respecting peoples backgrounds, reconciling differences and doing what you can to move an agenda that everybody can buy into. So a lot of times it may require that you suppress your own feelings in order to really get an agenda done. I would say to everybody running for office, as i say in the epilogue to this book, the epilogue to this book is a letter to my children, my grandchildren and all other children similarly challenged. And it says to him how i feel they need to conduct themselves if you are going to have a business, get to know your customers. If you want to run for office, get to know the people that you are asking to vote for you. I think thats much more important than for them to get to know you. [applause] congressman. Yes maam. My favorite story in the book ends up anything drop the book and it is the story your father told you and your brothers when you are wrestling and competing with each other about the strength of the cord bound together but as i read your book it seems to me that is a parable or a metaphor for how we should Work Together and our communities and how we should Work Together in the nation. Could you speak to that parable please . Thank you very much dr. Jordan. This is interesting and in fact i never told that story. It happened when i was maybe 12 or 13 years old. My two brothers and i had gone with my dad to have our 1937 chevrolet work done. That 1937 chevrolet i always say was a good car. You could run into a telephone pole and there wouldnt be a dent in it but it seemed to know every time saturday came. It would just stop working. So on this particular saturday the three of us went to with dad to mr. Singletons automobile repair place with the china bare tree in his yard. Just as mr. Singleton up the pulley up to the front end of that car and started to raise the front and said he could get under it to get it running for another week, my brothers and i started playing in the other c car. Dad said to us look boys, i dont know how strong this chain is. May pop, the car may drop on one of you. Go across the field and play. So we went out across this field. We werent gone long before we got into a little physical discussion. Now for those of you who would observe that you might call it a fight but it was a physical discussion. We didnt know it but my dad was watching us and after he thought it had gone on long enough he called the three of us over to him and he lined us up in front of him. He had in his hands a piece of cord strain. He was sitting on one of those old wooden drink crates. He handed it first to charles and charles and i went to the he could not pop it. He took it back and gave it to cheonan said john you are two years older and stronger. You pop the string. John struggled and they could not pop it. He said james you are the oldest and you are the strongest. You pop the string. I struggled and i could not pop it. He put that string in the palms of his hands and began to rub his hands together. Of course the more he rubbed the more Friction Heat created and of course the more friction he created the more unraveled the cord strain became. In very short order the cord string was in three pieces. He gave one to charles, one to cheonan and one to me. It i said nagl sons, pop the string. With little effort all three of the path the string. He said boys i want this to be a lesson for you as long as you live. Dont you let the little disagreement that prop up, and you caused so much friction until they separate you because if you do the world will pop you apart and you may never know why. I never shared that story publicly and tell my dads funeral. And that was the first time. Theymade a remarkable impact on me. Still hasnt every time i see a disagreement cropping up among the three of us, that may threaten our future relationships, i stop. My brother john one time as we were arguing and i said stop the nervous energy. I said haight, stop. You are not going to change my mind and im not going to change your mind. Lets talk about something else. So that is the way we get along. That turned out to be one of the favorite stories of most of the people around the country. One of the things that i noticed in the book is where he spoke about following in your fathers footsteps and you are secondguessing that decision. I remember couple of years ago when the edgefield community have a Community Choir that formed a new came down and you were the guest speaker is John Thurmond high school. I remember the speech and the address being so dynamic and tell when youve finished i whisper to the lady sitting next to me i move that we accept congressman and we nominate him. [laughter]. That wasnt working. [laughter] but i decided i would go off in a different direction so i went off to tell my dad. I thought he would be disappointed and was but did not show which. He said to me on that day the world would much rather see a servant and here one. That is the last time we discussed it. So that gave me license so throughout my entire professional career ive looked back to that. I just realized that i wrote the preface pretty much after i finish the book. And i realized while writing this book and not secondguessing as to whether or not i had done the right thing but i did not feel and it is hard to make this commitment to not live my servants. I did not think i was ready to live. With the fundamentals i would be preaching. So then as we were about to get married and we got even. [laughter] [applause] i do a lot more drinking in the evenings and taking communion. So now it is extremely exciting to me to do your book signing here. So there are people in the audience i wish to talk about the value of education that kids dont seem to value as much as they should. Garett issa part in this book that deals