Further thought to what you want to do next . Mr. Ratcliffe i do not know if there is a next for me in politics. I hold onto this opportunity very loosely. I am grateful every day that people of the Fourth District have given me the opportunity to be the one voice on the floor of the house of representatives. God has a plan for all of us. As i said, i did not expect to be a member of congress. Once i made the decision to run because i felt a calling, alloys believed i would rehear. I always believed i would eat here. I feel like i can better serve the public. I will look into that. I am happy to be the congressman for the Fourth District of texas. Interviewer how important is your faith . Mr. Ratcliffe my faith is the guiding principle of everything i do. I go through those 300something votes that i take in a run through a series of questions and one of those is, how did the vote i am about to cast coincide with my faith . Just as i asked how does it coincide with the constitution, how does it coincide with the people in the force Fourth District . My faith is very important to me. I do think that god has a plan for all of us and i feel like i am doing what i am supposed to be doing right now. At this point in time. It has been and will continue to be at the forefront of all the decisions i make in my life, not just here in congress. Interviewer when john rock cliff has nothing on his schedule, a free day what do you like to do . Mr. Ratcliffe spend it with my wife and daughters. What we do is not important. Just spending quality time with family. Family is very worried to me. I think i have talked about the fact that i want my daughters to have the same opportunity that we have had and i realize that time is precious. We do not know what the future holds for any of us my daughters are growing up very quickly. I want to take advantage of the time i have with them now while they are still under the roof and i have to take some direction from my wife and i. That is what we do on our time together. Interviewer do they listen to you mark mr. Ratcliffe do they listen to you . Mr. Ratcliffe i was a terrorism prosecutor for george w. Bush, one of the things i have learned is on occasion you can successfully negotiate with terrorists. I wish my daughters listened to me a bit more. Interviewer we appreciate your time. Thank you. In our next profile interview we talk to congressman don iyer beyer. This is to five minutes. Interviewer congressman don buyer from virginias eighth congressional district. When and why did you get a career in politics . Mr. Beyer i was interested forever. I grew up here. Threeof of my four grandparents came here to work for roosevelt. They were new dealers. They were sucked into political life. I can remember very well there was a convention in 1960. All the parents and grandparents were around the radio listening to the convention. I remember John Kennedys race in 1962. It was the biggest thing in our family life. The fact that this catholic democrat who won the presidency. I had you grow up and find a career and find a way to get into Public Service. Interviewer your dad started a volvo dealership. Those who live in washington d. C. Are from there with familiar with don beyer volvo. Mr. Beyer by the end of the summer i had fallen in love with the business and gotten cold feet about med school and i asked if i could stand at the weeks and it turned into 41 years. Interviewer where did you go to college . Mr. Beyer a Small Liberal Arts College that dates from 1793. Iand at dartmouth, majoring in economics which was formative for me because i had one graduate program in development economics. How do you raise poor countries out of pollard poverty and that has been relevant for the u. S. And relevant for leadership. Interviewer what makes a successful car dealership . Mr. Beyer there is integrity. Just decide what the right thing to do is and do that. The strategy is to try to stay close to the customers. A good listeners, try to be attentive all the time. Over the years, many crowded rooms who can remember the salesman who sold you your last car . Our idea is take care of them. Month in and month out. Make sure it is a good experience. At the sale does not and when they drive away the first time. We have massive repeat business. We surveyed the customers. The repeats are sent in by friends. We spend all this money on advertisement for that 10 of our customers. Interviewer how did that experience help you in politics . Mr. Beyer a lot of people have asked how i made the transition. I have said it is a short step. A lot of the skills are the same. You try to find a way to be friendly and connect on something you have in common. A lot of it is sales. It is mostly about meeting peoples needs. We have sold 65,000 cars over the years. I remember i do not i do not remember pressuring a customer into buying a car. The idea is what are your needs, what are your priorities what works for your family, how can we meet that need . Politics is much the same thing. One of the crises in your life one of the things that do not function in our society, how do we move forward and try to listen carefully and were doing a telephone tall and townhall at 6 p. M. So we are trying to find out what the big concerns are. We can draw back and say what lets do something meaningful to make this different. Interviewer what has your dad taught you about business and politics . Mr. Beyer we worked side by side for 13 or 14 years. Six days a week. We have a wonderful relationship. Neither has ever raised our voice to the other. He would tease me all the time. I would come to work at 7 30 a. M. And he would say, good afternoon, young man. He is a far better mechanics and i am. Than i am. I read all the magazines on what was happening. What was in horton were the values. I mentioned integrity earlier. I never saw him do anything slightly dishonest or unethical. Never lied to a customer or an employee. He is a great role model in that sense. He is very optimistic. He never saw problem he did not think he could solve. I think he was really good to the people that work for us and the customers. I remember i was working so hard and all the employees loved him and treated him like he was god. I realized [inaudible] is the projection of character. I think that is what i want to be as a political leader also. We want to get legislation done and get cast the right votes but it is important that we let your life be your argument. Imo am living a life that draws people to the idea of Public Service. And the sounds too highfalutin but wanting to be a role model rather than the political leader that people look at with disappointment and despair. Interviewer one of six children . Mr. Beyer i lost a sister last summer to Breast Cancer which was a tragedy but also her funeral was a great celebration. My little brother joined the business in 1980. I remember resenting him ticking thinking this is dad and me get out of here. I did not say that. We have been partners all these years and mikes presents, presence gave me the latitude to run for congress, to do the Public Service things i wanted to do. He has led the company through thick and thin. Interviewer you served as the Lieutenant Governor of virginia. You ran for governor and lost area do what did you learn from defeat . Mr. Beyer that it is survivable. I loved that governor race. I spent years getting ready for it. We drove through every jurisdiction more times than once. Had friends everywhere and felt the line that used to come to me is you can wake me up at any time and i would know where i was. All the rest of it was important and fun and you get to talk about the things that you think will make a difference. And you lose but there is an old piece of wisdom that you cannot serve if you do not run. The next day the sun came up. All the things i have tried to accomplish in eight years did not go away because i lost. While i regretted not having a chance to be governor it is our obligation to brush ourselves off and go back to work. Interviewer still interested in being governor . Mr. Beyer not really. I love this job. As Lieutenant Governor, and was president of the senate. I got to vote if there was a tie. I did not get to participate in the debates. A lot of legislation was carried by members of the General Assembly and i tried to fill that with as much leadership is a could. It is a very wonderful job. You do not make much policy there. Now the greatest change agent role i have ever gotten. I do not have an ambition to be governor. If i can do this well, this will be the great last big chapter of my public life. Interviewer so many people talk about congress, the broken branch, dysfunctional, nothing gets done, no one works together. What has it been like for you . Mr. Beyer not like any of those things. I sensed no hostility or animosity at all. It is easy to be with the democrats. So they have been welcoming and i have a lot of great new friends. I found that the other freshmen republicans that we met we did the three days at harvard and in williamsburg. I serve on three different committees with these republicans. I am getting to know and be friends with a number of them. If i have a major goal, it is to make as many good friendships across the aisle as i can. In no one has been rude or evil or close minded. We vote along partisan lines but we can overcome that as we communicate better. When i look now we got the socalled doc fix on sgr done. Congress kicked in this one bill down the road and nancy pelosi and speaker bryner got together, bipartisan and got us a fix. They were all these memos about trade for the president. I think we will get that done. That is something where we have to cross party lines. I think there a lot more that we can get done area get done. I got [indiscernible] it is stimulating people to solve science problems we do not have answers for yet. We asked every member of the Science Committee to cosponsor the bill ask every member of the Science Committee to cosponsor the bill. There are a lot of people on both sides who want to get past this bipartisan divide. Post you mentioned your role as ambassadors to lichtenstein and switzerland. What was that like . Guest we were there almost two years. We took to teenage daughters with us. It was a great experience. Among the many things that i loved, all of a sudden, you are moving from the home and country you are comfortable with two new food, new environment, new landscape, new language, a lot of new friends, but i think what i liked best was the Public Service, Public Policy challenges were very different every day. We started off trying to resettle guantanamo detainees that this administration decided could be released, but no other country would take them. We were dealing with secrecy every day. Americans who had hidden their assets and switzerland. Trying to get the swiss to obey the sanctions against iran so iran would come to the negotiating table. Nancy pelosi was trying to get someone extra kitted back to california. Every day was challenging different, interesting. It was a very enriching x area. Experience. Host switzerland plays such a unique role in World History and in europe because of its location, its mountains its culture, its government. How did that pose challenges for you . Its independence. Guest they consider themselves the most americans of european country most american of european countries. They adopted our constitution in 1848. We took the idea of 13 states from their 13 cantons back at the time of the constitutional convention. They have the worlds oldest democracy, going back to the 1200s. They dont have a majoritarian system democrats versus republicans. They do everything by consensus. They are the only nation in the world that does everything by in the world that doesnt have a head of state. They do everything by parties. Its very different than ours. With 50,000 look 50,000 votes, they can take any law passed by congress and by parliament and put it up for a vote by the people. Host what he remember, for years and switzerland, i assume you traveled a fair amount . Guest we did. Once the younger one went off to school, we would go on weekends. Everyplace was an hour from zurich. I got to hike a lot and ski a lot. I love the mountains as a little kid. It was a Perfect Place to be. Host you were appointed by the president. You are not a Civil Service career diplomat. Explain the difference. Guest about 70 of ambassadors around the world are career, they have been in the Foreign Service all their lives. Only a few countries have that system. Our first ambassador was ben franklin. The second was thomas jefferson, then john adams. We have had political ambassadors for a long time. I like the system. If it were just political appointees, it would be problematic. There is a lot of diplomacy i didnt know. And i had a wonderful number two , the deputy chief of admission in finland who was a career Foreign Service officer, and we worked as a team. She knew how to work the bureaucracy of the state department, for example, which reports needed to be done when. I had to generations worth of leadership experience, projecting goals, organizing cultures. I have long thought that the most important job of the leader is to get the culture right. So it worked out well. I saw it that way in much of the rest of europe. It tends to be not one to one but the more important countries end up with political ambassadors who can afford it and have a lot of leadership experience to come in. One of the things federal government typically doesnt do well overall is train leaders. This is not a cut on federal employees. I love them. I have more in my district than any district in the country, but maximizing bureaucracy often means minimizing risk. You dont want to break things. You need a mix of inside and outside, i think. Post with the people you came across, european leaders, the people of europe in general, how do they view america and this president . Guest i think it has probably changed over the six and a half years. We do not have the fever pitch of euphoria about the obama presidency. After the bush presidency, there was a lot of dismay in europe. Two wars, guantanamo, abu ghraib, our environmental policies, the death penalty. A lot of them saw the election as america had changed. After all the years of racism, we hit actually elected an africanamerican president. The president would point out that he was much more popular in print in switzerland then he was in the united states. He had a 90 Approval Rating there. We spent a lot of our time trying to rebrand, pointing out that we were bringing health care to tens of millions more people that we had ended the wars, that no nation in the developed world had cut Carbon Emissions as much as we had after the obama election. It was a time of recovery in terms of the european understanding and imagination. We have had setbacks. All the confusion in syria and the rise of isis continues to confuse it. And now we are threatened by russia and crimea and eastern ukraine. Once again, things that looked like great ideas in 2009, we are trying to readjust on now. The recent is over. Host what have the first couple of years in congress been like for you . Guest i have really enjoyed it. Its easy to get up in the morning. The work is entertaining. You can turn on cspan and feel connected to everything they are talking about. I really enjoy it. The key for me is little by little to develop relationships and an understanding to have some impact on how decisions come out. I have been one of 28 House Democrats voting for trade Promotion Authority to give the president the tools he needs. Its a little lonely. But i also feel like hey, i am glad i am here, and this is going to have a different outcome because i won and i am showing up every day. Host on that issue and many other issues, you disagree with nancy pelosi. What is your relationship like with the leader . Guest its very good with nancy pelosi, steny hoyer, and others. That is the other thing, i am not seeing any of these desertions on policy become personal. I have not felt any impersonal problem. Even coming out of committee meetings, the Science Committee or the Natural Resources committee, i may have voted against a republican friends bill, and you come out into the hall together and realize these are classes in philosophy, but its not personal. Host when you ran for the house, you had a pretty contentious primary. How did you win . Guest campaigns our message and message delivery. The message that works the best for me was 40 years in business, Lieutenant Governor of the state, overseas ambassador. No one else had the resume and the experience to hit the ground running. We needed a congressman who would not be a newbie but someone who could be a factor right away, and that message work. I also spent every waking minute running. I didnt read any books or watch any television or do anything else for those months, and it worked. Guest you host you live near the district. You dont have to try too far drive to far. Guest i am very spoiled. Host what is your daily routine like . Guest i get up at 5 00 a. M. To get some exercise. I get to work about 8 00. There is a constant flow of constituents in the office every 15 minutes, on different issues, which is wonderful. And they do not just meet with me. I have a great staff doing meetings all day long. And then pretty much every night we will be out of here and back into the district to do something, a nonprofit, a town hall meeting, civic association, lots of things. My friends in the house from california texas and montana say the good news is youre close to home. The bad news is, you are always on. Guest any interest in moving up to the leadership . Host any interest in moving up to the leadership . Guest i am at a point in my life i do not need to have a title, but i very much want to be a part of helping to lead the house, lead the democratic caucus, but i dont have to win an election to do that. I think a lot of it is just showing up. If it is possible for me to go to a meeting, i go. If it is possible to make that call or make that ask, i do. It is a way to offer leadership without having to have the ego stroked. As a freshman, it would take me a long time to compete against people who have been here for 20 years or 30 years, which is fine. If i can help them, thats enough. Guest what is your wife think of your career in politics . Host i think she host what is your wife think of your career in politics . Guest i think she likes it. She is the one who encouraged me to do it when i was thinking of retiring. We have been together in politics since the very beginning. Host your two daughters, how old are they now . Guest i have three daughters 24, 23 and 20. They have all been in politics in one way or another. The youngest one is the one who pays the most attention to the policy issues day in and day out. So, we will see