political uprisings in the arab world. after that, comments from the second-in-command in afghanistan, lieutenant general david rodriguez. >> today marks the first time when our legislative branch in its entirety will appear on that medium of communication through which most americans get their information about what our government and our country does. several times today this has been referred to as an historic occasion. whether or not it will be an historic occasion is i think a subject for the judgment of history. >> this week are 25 years of televised coverage of the u.s. senate. on its first day in 1986 c-span2 is carried in a little more than 6.5 million homes. today it is available in over 89 million homes. watch that first day or any of the 21,000 hours of senate coverage on line at the c-span video library. it is all searchable, shareable and free. the peabody award-winning c-span video library. it is washington your way. >> former massachusetts governor mitt romney began his campaign today. mr. romney ran into thousand eight with senator john mccain. from a farm in southeast dam sure, this is a little less than a half-hour. >> there are many people out there that we know and love so we appreciate you coming here and sharing this moment with us because i believe it is a very special moment, very significant moment for the country and for the history of this country. i have known mitt a long time. we have known each other since we were kids. we started dating in high school and we have been married for 42 years. a lot of you know the story. [applause] we have five sons, five daughters-in-law and 16 grandchildren now. i have seen mitt in a lot of situations and some of the toughest moments of my life. as you all are aware with my diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. and i would not have made it and pull through without him. without his encouragement to keep me pushing and fighting. the same happened when i was diagnosed with breast cancer. he was there with me and ankara to me and gave me the strength to fight that disease as well. i have seen him in the untold situations in business and in the family, as a husband and in so many different situations and there is no one i would rather turn to when there is a crisis moment to please fix what is going on that is wrong. right now, america is broken. america needs a turnaround. it needs someone that knows how to do it that has the confidence and the experience to do that. that is why i have all the confidence in the world that this man sitting next to me will be the next nominee for the republican party. [applause] and will be the next president of the united states. [cheering] >> what a day and what a woman. she is my champion in life, i will tell you that. what an extraordinary person. [applause] and this really is what the hampshire is all about, a day like this on a farm like this. this is what america is about as well, don't you think? oh gosh. thank you so much for opening your farm. how do you open a farm? i see a lot of friends here. some of them have those are not the sources of america's greatness. the true source of our greatness is america's self rule, government that answers to a free and independent people. we live in the most powerful nation that has ever existed and it all goes back to a few men and women who had the courage to stand and even to die for their belief in liberty and the equality of all humankind. because of their vision, the united states of america is not ruled by a monarchy or even controlled by an aristocracy. i guess those people in washington might act otherwise. we don't have a house of courts. we don't have a ruling class that inherits their power. and by the way as the red sox like to remind the new york yankees there were where are no dynasties in america. [applause] who is it that rules this great nation? you do. every four years you decide who it is that is going to give the state state of the union address. who will set the course or the country? who will be the commander in chief? and what is true right here in new hampshire on this farm has always been true in america, though each of us comes from very different backgrounds, though each of us has chosen to walk a different path in life, we are united by one great overwhelming passion. we love america. we believe in america. [cheering] today we are united not only by our faith and belief in america, we are also united by our concern for america. this country we love is in peril and that my friends is one reason why we are here today. a few years ago americans did something that was quite american in its nature to sort of thing we like to do. we gave someone new a chance to leave the country, someone we hadn't known for very long, somebody who didn't have a long record but someone have promised to lead us to a better place. at the time we did know what kind of president he would make. it was a moment of crisis for our economy and when barack obama came to office we wished him well and hoped hope for the best. now in the third year of his four-year term, we have more than small bits of promises to judge him by. barack obama has failed america. [applause] when he took office, the economy was in recession and he made it worse and he made it last longer. three years later, over 60 million americans are out of work. they just quit looking for jobs. millions more are unemployed. three years later unemployment is still above 8% and that was the figure he said his stimulus would keep from happening. three years later, foreclosures are still at record levels. three years later, the prices of homes continue to fall. three years later, our national debt has grown nearly as much as our entire economy and families are buried under higher prices for food and higher prices for gasoline. it breaks my heart to see what is happening to this great country. these failing hopes they got president obama's own misery index. it is never been higher and what is his answer? he says this. i am just getting started. no, mr. president you had your chance. we the people on this farm and citizens across the country are the ones who are just getting started. [applause] i visited with her family, kathy and dave tyler who live in a suburb of las vegas nevada. hugh no fine -- families just like them. they are in the early 40s. is a couple who work hard, sacrificed to buy a home in a good neighborhood. the sort of place where they wanted their daughter ally to grow up in but now that neighborhood is being crushed by this obama economy. first their neighbors started losing their jobs and then they lost their homes and all around the tyler's there are abandoned homes and abandoned dreams. when the tyler's wake up in the morning and they get ally ready to go to school and then go to work and do everything they can to make it to the end of the month and hold their lives together, doesn't matter to them if they are republican or democrat, independent or libertarian. they are just americans and american family and across the richest and greatest country on earth, there are millions of american families just like the tyler's. folks who grew up believing that if they play by the rules, worked hard, they would have a chance to build a good life with steady work and always the possibility with a little harder work that they might be able to get ahead. in that america, you don't wonder if your children will have a better life. you know they will. hugh know it in the same way we know the sun is going to rise in the east on this great farm. the confidence in a better tomorrow defines us as american. when generations of immigrants looked up and saw the statue of liberty for the first time, they surely have a lot of questions about the life that was before them but one thing they knew beyond any doubt and that is they were coming to a place where anything was possible, that is americans their children would have a better life. i believe in that america. i believe that you believe in that america. it is an america of freedom and opportunity, a nation where innovation and hard work come tell the most powerful economy in the world, land that is secured by the greatest military the world has ever seen and by friends and allies across the world who linked arms with us. president obama sees a different america. and he is taken has taken us in a different direction. a few minutes into office he traveled around the globe to apologize for americans. at a time of historic change in great opportunity the arab world he is hesitant and uncertain. he hesitated to speak out for the dissidents in iran when his administration boasts his beating from behind in libya. he speaks with firmness and clarity however when it comes to a zero. he seems firmly and clearly determined to undermine our longtime friend and ally. he is treating israel the same way so many european countries have, with suspicion and distrust an assumption that israel somehow at fault. to his credit, the president ordered the raid that killed osama bin laden and in afghanistan this surge was right. but announcing a withdrawal date, that was wrong. the taliban may not have watches but they do have calendars. now here at home the president seems to take his inspiration not from the small towns abilities in new hampshire but from the capitals of europe with the economy in crisis and his answer was to borrow more money and throw it at washington bureaucrats and politicians just like europe. instead of encouraging entrepreneurs and innovators and employers, he raises their taxes, piles on mounds of record-breaking bureaucracy and gives more power to union bosses instead of recognizing the rightful authority to solve their own problems. he seizes power from them and brands through disastrous national health care plan. this president's first answer to every problem is to take power from you and from your local government and from your state so that his so-called experts in washington can make decisions for you. and with each of those decisions, we lose more of our freedom. you and i understand that. we look at our country and we know in our hearts that things aren't right and they are not getting better. president obama's european answers are not the solution to america's challenges and in the campaign to come, the american ideals of economic freedom and opportunity need a clear and unapologetic defense and i intend to make it because i have lived it. of fosco 27 years ago i left my job and went to join with friends in a small business. like many of you, it'd been a dream of mine to try and build a business from the ground up. we started in a little office a couple of hours from here and over the years we were able to grow from 10 employees 200th. my work led me to be deeply involved in helping other businesses from startups to large companies that were going through tough times. sometimes i was successful and we were able to help create jobs. other times i wasn't. i learned how america competes with other companies in other countries and what works in the real world and what doesn't. i left that business in 1999 and opened the salt lake city olympics back on track. when those games were over he came back to massachusetts to serve as governor. now i had never heard -- held public office before but i went at it like iran businesses and like i ran the olympics. asks tough questions and take on the toughest problems for us because they will get worse in the future if you don't. when i took off as we headed nearly 3-dollar budget gap. my legislature was over 85% democrat. the expectation was that we would have to raise taxes but i refuse. i ordered instead a complete review of all state spending, made tough choices and balance the budget without raising taxes. that sends a message that business as usual was over and then over the next four years we consolidated agencies, we cut romance, we sold state property and we cut taxes 19 times. [applause] i also found the state was giving over a billion dollars away and free health care. much of it to people who could have paid something you are just gaming the system. i took on this problem and hammered out a solution that took a bad situation and made it that are. it is not perfect but it was a state solution to our state's problem. [applause] at the end of the year, at the end of four years, it took over 800 vetoes but we balanced every budget, restored a 2 billion-dollar rainy day fund and kept her school's first among all 50 states and i am proud of that record. [applause] all those experiences starting and running businesses for 25 years, turning around the olympics, governing a state helped shape who i am and how it is i leave. of course if i ran through a list of all my mistakes this afternoon and -- ann would find it hilarious and we would be here all night but i can tell you i worked from the successes and from the failures. turning something around, turning around a crisis takes experience and bold action and for millions of americans, the economy is in crisis today unless we change course and will be in crisis for all of us tomorrow. [applause] did you know that government, federal state and local in the president obama has grown to consume almost 40% of our economy? we are only inches away from seeking to be a free economy. i will cap federal spending at 20% or less of the economy and finally, finally balance the budget. [cheering] my generation, your generation will pass the torch to the next generation, not a bill. i'm going to insist that washington learns how to respect the constitution including the 10th amendment. [applause] now we are going to return the authority to the states for dozens of government programs and that will begin with a complete repeal of obamacare. [cheering] from my first day in office, my number one job will be to see that america once again is number one in job creation. [applause] you know if you want to create jobs it helps to have actually had a job. [cheers and applause] modernize regulations of bureaucracy and finally promote america's trade interest. it is time for a president who cares more about america's workers than he does about america's union bosses. [cheers and applause] over the last 30 years or so i can tell you how many times i heard a situation is hopeless but i have never been good at listening to those people that abari's enjoyed proving them wrong. one of the lessons i learned from my dad. my father never graduated from college. he apprenticed as a lap and plaster carpenter and he was darned good at it. he learned how to take a whole handful of nails, put them in his mouth and then spit them out [laughter] on his honeymoon with my mom they drove across the country. he sold aluminum paint along the way to pay for gas and hotels. there were a lot of reasons that my father could have given up or set his sights lower but dad always believed in america and in that america the lapin plaster man could grow up and work his way to run a car company called american motors and he could end up as governor of the very state where he once sold aluminum paint. for my dad, america was the land of opportunity where the circumstances of birth are no barrier to achieving one's dreams. small business and offered their -- entrepreneurs were respected and a good worker could always find a good job. the spirit of enterprise communication, pioneering and can do upheld our economy passed that of any nation on earth. i refuse to believe that america is just another place on the map with a flag. we stand for freedom and opportunity and hope. these last two years haven't been the best of times. but while we have lost a couple of years, we have not lost our way. the principles that made this nation a great and powerful leader of the world have not lost their meaning. they never will. we know we can bring this country back. i am mitt romney. i believe in america and i'm running for president. [cheers and applause] [chanting] [cheers and applause] these are two of our grandsons. that is joseph and thomas and there is josh in the back there. hi josh. the families watching and cheering. you guys are the best. thank you so much. we love you. thank you. [applause] >> he was known in the day as -- although he regarded himself as this flattering and the. >> during his three terms as speaker of the house in the 1890s republican thomas reid change the power structure of the house. >> he was impugned as a tyrant because he overturned a long-standing custom in the house, the minority would be on equal parliamentary footing with the majority. >> sunday night james grant on his new biography of thomas reed. mr. speaker, on c-span's q&a. you can download this and other q&a podcast. one of her many signature interview programs on line at c-span.org. >> today marks the first time when our legislative branch in its entirety will appear on that medium of communication through which most americans get their information about what our government and our country does. >> several times a day this has been referred to as and historic occasion. whether or not it will be and historic occasion is i think a subject for the judgment of history. >> this week marks 25 years of televised coverage of the u.s. senate are going to first day in 1986 c-span2 was carrying a little more than 6.5 million homes. gudaitis available in over 89 million homes. >> now discussed on political uprisings in the arab world. including yemen and syria. the center for a new american security host this hour-long panel. >> i am karen. i'm on the board here and spent years in washington as a diplomatic correspondent for "the wall street journal," and then became a bureaucrat for "the wall street journal" in charge of, like many with some business responsibility and retired as publisher of the journal in 2006 and a now writing a book about saudi arabia. so i am looking forward to hearing the panel. i am going to make some brief introductions of the speakers and of the topics, and then lay the foundation on moderating some discussion. i know from audiences that you come to have the opportunity to ask questions of people like these and there is nothing worse than a moderator who doesn't know when to share and shut up. i am going to start by just mentioning the internet freedom study that nate mentioned because it does give a really good discussion of the issue of technology and the double-edged sword that it is and hopefully we will hear some more about that because one of the authors is on our panel. we have for truly i think genuine experts here this morning in different areas. on my immediate right, collin kahl the deputy and assistant secretary of defense for the middle east and prior to that was a fellow here at the center and a teacher at georgetown although he tells me now he has only one job at the pentagon. he can't have a side job the way he did here. is he is an expert on counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, the causes and consequences of violent civil and ethnic conflict, so well-positioned to talk about the topic here of the middle east. on my left is dr. hamid who just flew in last night from doha. he works for brookings there are. he is an expert on islamic political parties and democratic reform in the middle east, which he was studying long before the spring. on my far right is richard fontaine to as i mentioned is the author of the internet freedom study and has experience on the hill, five years as the is the foreign-policy adviser for senator mccain. .. has a degree in middle eastern studies from the american university all over specifically in egypt after the revolution. i fink all of us have watched the administration be somewhat conflicted about how to respond to the advance in the middle east and we are to support stability, autocratic regimes and face the support democracy for which america stands. i've discussed conflicted pr