John Edwards | Talks at Google

President Bush isn't listening to us. It's time to end the war. Congress passed a plan to end it.

And bring our troops home, but the president vetoed it.

We want Congress to know we are with you.

Don't back down to President Bush. Send him the same bill again and again.

We the people will stand with you.

Because stopping a president who believes he can do no wrong takes people with courage to do what's right. I'm John Edwards, and I approve this message. President Bush isn't listening to Iowans. He vetoed Congress plan to end the war in Iraq and bring our troops home. We the people want Congress to stand firm. Don't back down. Send him the same bill that you sent him before. Iowans support our troops, and we have.

A responsibility to bring them home.

Because stopping a president who believes he can do no wrong takes people with courage to do what's right. I'm John Edwards and I approve this message.

You go right here.

Okay, so they've changed it on me. Okay.

I've just been informed that the cameras really couldn't give a damn about seeing me. Okay. Hi, everybody. Thank you for coming. I'm Elliot Schrag, vice President of global communications and Public affairs here at Google. I'm welcoming you and our video audience to another Candidates at Google session. Today we have the privilege and honor to have Senator John Edwards, former senator, former vice presidential candidate, currently associated with the center for Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina. First, I'd like to say welcome to Google. And certainly on behalf of all of the people here at Google, I want you to know that our best wishes are with you and with your family. I did want to begin, actually, there is some. We actually can break some news today. Just before we began today, Senator Edwards and his campaign issued a press release announcing his support for an open auction and for spectrum, wireless spectrum that the FCC will be auctioning off to create a potential third form of broadband access to expand Internet access for people around the United States. I wanted to ask you just a little bit about that. What was the reason for that and what's the basis for your support?

Well, first of all, thank you very much for having me. It's good to be with all of you. I'll do everything in my power to keep these answers short so you get to ask more questions. The answer to that question is that the notion was that we want. What we don't want to have happen is what's happened in the past where the auction's conducted. It goes to the highest bidder, basically the big telecom companies, when they control it, there's limited access. We want none of those things to happen. We want it to be open, accessible. We want to require net neutrality for those who are participating in the process and try to create as much openness and democracy and competition as we possibly can. So that's the basic idea.

Is your interest in an open Internet related to your idea and your goal of your campaign for sort of one America? Do you think the Internet is something that actually brings people together, creates new opportunities, or does it divide?

You know, I didn't honestly think about it that way. I think that from my perspective, that what we've seen over the last few years is really troublesome for the democracy. The closed government decisions, big decisions about the government, which really belongs to you. Something just came on, didn't it? I could hear it. The idea that the way this democracy should work is from the ground up, not from the top down. And we want as much grassroots, open, many voices as can possibly be heard to occur. And I think what we've been seeing over the last few years is exactly the opposite. Closed government, no transparency. The notion that appears to be the notion in this administration, that the government belongs to a select few of people, doesn't belong to everybody. And I think the idea is that the Internet, including what all of you do here, plays a huge role in helping open things up. It does help level the playing field in terms of the one America that you spoke about. But I think even more important than that is sort of instrumental and crucial to our democracy working the way it's supposed to work, which is everybody's voice being heard and having an equality of intensity of that voice.

Well, so talk a little bit about your concept of one America then, because that, I think, is sort of one of the cornerstones of your campaign, that you see that the United States today, perhaps even more than when you were running last time, isn't a united America. But there are divisions along the lines of wealth and poverty as well as other distinctions. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Sure. I mean, what we've seen is America is becoming increasingly divided by income, by wealth. Last year, I think the top 300,000 income earners in the country earned more than the bottom 150 million. And that gap is not good. It's not healthy for the country. And so basically, most of the things that I want to do here at home, I have a very specific, truly universal health care plan that I'm proud of, a very aggressive global warming Plan, I think, I believe that I'm the only candidate with a plan to try to end poverty in America over the next 30 years and also just to reduce that gap that exists. But I think we ought to be. If I can just go a step further, I don't think it's just an issue for what happens within our borders because I don't think there is any separation today between domestic and international affairs. I think they are entirely integrated. And any kind of thoughtful vision about what needs to happen in America has to integrate what's happening in the rest of the world. Everything we do here because of our size and our leadership affects the rest of the world. Everything we do around the world affects us. And I want to see America exporting equality. And that's where all the other pieces that I hope we get a chance to talk about either from questions or from you aggressively addressing global poverty, genocide, the spread of hiv, aids, access to education, access to health, health care, including health care. I think all those things or part and parcel of a vision where America is an example here at home of a place where we really believe in equality and diversity and we export that in the rest of the world, where we try to create opportunity and equality for we really believe in it. We ought to believe in it for everybody, not just Americans.

What are the kinds of steps you think we should be taking as a country to promote, you know, to export these values and that we're not doing today?

Well, my basic view is that unless America is leading, there is no other country that can lead. At this point, certainly not this point in the world's history, we're the preeminent power on the planet. But what's happened is under the Bush administration, they've tried to prove that raw power will make you a leader. And they're just dead wrong about that. And I think it's been proven over and over and over. You do have to be strong. But I think that strength has to be married to the moral authority to lead. It takes both. And the moral authority to lead requires America to be a force for good. The world has to look at America and say they're not just strong, they're actually trying to do good things for the world. That means we're going to have to meet our responsibility to humanity, not our own selfish short term interest. So to answer your question, I think the things we can do are, and I'll be glad to go through details if you want, but America should be leading to stop this genocide in Darfur, Western Sudan and Darfur. I think let's take. Why don't we stop there?

We'll go into a little detail so that, you know, I think people, you know, we pride ourselves on being a data driven organization. We say that a lot. And I suppose in the political sphere, the data really is. What are the elements of the kinds of programs. I don't think anyone indeed, you know, for all the candidates we've had come here, no one is a. No one expresses anything other than outrage and disappointment or really outrage about what's going on in Darfur. But different people have different approaches about what we should do, how we exercise moral authority versus how we exercise raw might.

Can I frame it first? I'd literally take 30 seconds and then I'll come back and do the details of each. I think that for us to demonstrate that we're a force for good, we have to do a lot of things. We have to stop some of the bad. That's the ongoing war in Iraq, Guantanamo, torture, spying, illegal spying on Americans, all of which I think are occurring. And then we have to do some things that are good. And good means standing up against genocide. And I'll come back to that. It means leading the effort to stop the spread of hiv, aids. I think America should be making primary school education available to over 100 million children in the world who have no access to education. I think we should be leading on making clean drinking water and sanitation available, which is a huge source for spread of disease. And I think we ought to be leading on economic development, particularly micro lending and micro finance, which is a place where we can make a real difference. So those are the big areas. And let me do Darfur. You know, and I know probably everyone here has followed this pretty closely, but hundreds of thousands have already died. The Janjaweed militia has been systematically destroying villages, raping women, and have had support, including air support, from the Sudanese government. Sudanese government's engaged in genocide. And the one thing I always ask people to think about, if you want to think about America being a force for good, look at this through the world's eyes instead of through our eyes, which we're not very good at doing sometimes. And if you're the rest of the world, what you've seen is the most powerful nation on the planet has declared that a genocide is occurring years ago and then stepped back and watched it continue. And I guess the question for us is, if you're the rest of the world, and that's what you see, what would you think of us? America has to lead on this. Now, I would not put American troops on the ground in Darfur. I think it would do more harm than good for a multitude of reasons. But I think there are very specific things we can do. We ought to be enforcing a no fly zone over Sudan so that we at least don't have the Sudanese government bombing in western Sudan and we don't have them providing air support for the militias. Second, I think that we ought to be convening an emergency meeting of NATO. We ought to be doing it in the next 30 days so that we can work with our friends and our allies to maximize pressure on the Sudanese government. What we ultimately want is we want a security force, a UN security force on the ground in western Sudan. The African Union troops are about 7,000 of them there, poorly equipped, don't even really understand what their mission is, and poorly supported. They cannot provide security. That's clear. So we need a UN security force on the ground. The question is, how do we get that force on the ground? Sudanese government won't let them in right now. So what we have to do is maximize the heat on the Sudanese government and I think America and its allies. The president has actually done something in the last 24 hours that's good. You know, he's being tougher about sanctions, tougher about sanctioning companies who are controlled by the Sudanese government, tougher about sanctions against the government itself. Those are all good things. What he did wrong is he did it in his usual way, which was announced he was doing it. And then we said to our friends in Europe, now, wouldn't you like to join us in this instead of doing it the other way around? Which is what should have been done there. Iraq and virtually everyplace else. So I think that's the starting place. We want to ratchet up the sanctions. We want to be tough economically and diplomatically to maximize pressure on the government. And then a critical component of this is China. I mean, China actually has the economic leverage with the Sudanese government. And that means we're going to have to use every economic and diplomatic tool we have to put pressure on the Chinese to do the right thing. And they've actually moved some recently. And then if we can get a security force on the ground, America should be providing logistical support for that security force. I mean, it's all those things. And last but not least, America and all the donor nations should be providing humanitarian relief.

So you articulate a very sort of a very clear vision of marrying sort of a humanitarian interest with military support. I know a lot of people want to talk about. About Iraq, a situation where we went in, in part, so people say, you know, for the humanitarian purpose of overthrowing a dictator, as well as other reasons which have proven not to be. To be the case. What would be you've actually been on the record as having regretted the vote that you made at the time to authorize military action there. Given that we are there now, given that we have the situation that we have, There was just a vote in Congress about whether or not we should continue support or. And there was a debate about whether we should set a date certain for pulling troops out. Would you have supported that had it come to a vote?

Oh, I. Well, let me say a couple things. Let me say to not just you, but to everyone here, for those of you who haven't heard me talk about this, and my guess is not many of you have, I didn't know you were going to ask me about it. I voted for the war, and it was a huge mistake and it was wrong. I have the responsibility for that. Unfortunately, I'll have to live with that. But I think that the way the war in Iraq has been conducted has been a catastrophe for America. And I will say I do think it's important. This is for you to judge, not for me to judge, but I think it's so important for us to have the next president of the United States, not only to be open and to have a transparent government because the government belongs to you, but also to be honest. You know, every president we've ever had and every president we're ever going to have is going to make mistakes. And for me, it was really important to say that I had made a mistake and I was responsible for this. I think that where we are today. And this goes to the. I heard them showing the ad a few minutes ago when I was backstage. I think where we are today is the Congress has the power to stop this war. It's just that simple. They can stop it. The question is, do they have the backbone to stop it? And I know they're nervous about the political implications of using the funding power, their constitutional power to fund to stop the war. My view about this is this is life and death, literally. I mean, we have men and women who are dying in Iraq, and we have, I think, a moral responsibility to those men and women and to their families who are back here at home to bring this war to an end, to do it the right way, in at least what I think is a responsible way. But the Congress can stop it. All they have to do is continue to Submit to the President funding bills that supports the troops but has a real timetable for withdrawal. They did it once. They did the right thing. The will of the country was with them. And then the President vetoed it and now they backed down. Instead of submitting him another bill with a timetable for withdrawal, which is what they should have done. And eventually that would have required the President to start pulling troops out of Iraq, which is what needs to happen. So to answer your question is I would never vote for a bill that didn't have a timetable for withdrawal. This president has proven over and over again he doesn't think he'd do anything wrong and he's bullheaded. And the only way he's going to change course is for somebody to make him change course. He needs to be made to change course because what he's doing is wrong. And then finally, I'd just say I do think over the long term, outside the funding bill, that as we pull our combat troops out of Iraq, which is what needs to happen, we have lots of other responsibilities that are, that go with that. And that includes getting the fragmented Sunni leadership and the Shia leadership, which is weak, working together the best we can to try to reach some political reconciliation. We need to engage the Iranians and the Syrians very directly in helping stabilize Iraq.

Do we make that more likely or less likely if we announce that going to be leaving by date certain?

I think we make it much more likely because let's take the Iranians, let's look at it through their eyes. They cannot engage into helping stabilize Iraq, not in a serious way, unless it becomes clear that America is going to stop being an occupying force, that people don't want us there. The Iraqis aren't the only ones who don't want us there. They don't want us there. They think we're an intruder. They think we're trying to just spread American power. And, and as long as that is true, it is impossible for the Iranian and Syrian governments to engage in to help stabilize Iraq as we leave. If you're Iran, you're the Iranian people. The last thing you want is a million refugees coming across your western border. They're already economically unstable. And then on top of that, you are a Shia country in a Sunni dominated Muslim world. So 85, 90% of the Muslim world is Sunni, not Shia. So if this thing gets bad spreads outside the borders of Iraq, they're in a bad place. So they have a tremendous incentive to help stabilize Iraq if America is gone. But they have very little incentive to help Stabilize it as long as we're there.

Do you think the war has gone on as long as it has? In part because those who are participating in the military, we have an all volunteer military. And the people who are involved often come from backgrounds that are less, you know, less well off, have less opportunities.

The idea being that less that a smaller percentage of Americans are directly affected than otherwise would be. I've heard that argument and there might be some truth to it. I think, though, that most Americans, just by virtue of the media and by virtue of the fact that the Guard, the Reserve, are so engaged in what's happening in Iraq, I think most families and communities, friends, have been touched in some way directly by the war. And I think that's what's caused this shift. Because, you know, in the beginning, people supported what Bush was doing in Iraq. But people have observed they can no longer say, you know, George Bush landing on an aircraft carrier saying mission accomplished, you know, and Dick Cheney continuing to say, although I think it's an amazing thing, I think he can continues to say things are going well in Iraq. The best I can tell, it's hard for me to know what planet he lives on, but that seems to be the case. But I think America can see this war up close on the Internet, on television. They see it and then they have friends and family who are going there. So, no, I doubt that. I doubt that.

But the reason I ask is about one of the themes that a lot of people have come, a lot of the candidates who've come and spoken about is this concept of sacrifice. And the concept, not just in a military sense, in serving your country as a soldier overseas, but also in the concept of contributing to something bigger than yourself and what are the demands or what are the opportunities or what are the responsibilities that are related to sacrifice? As you talk to people, and again, this is an audience of, of. I'm an old person here at Google. As you talk to people here and at other audiences, what are the issues or the kinds of sacrifices you think people should be thinking about making on behalf of their country and to make the world a better place?

Well, can we first talk about basic concepts which are that you cannot bring about the bold transformational changes that are absolutely required in America and the world without you. The President of the United States cannot do it. And it is a fantasy to think that the President can do it. The idea that if you vote in the next election, or even if you participate in the campaign, if your candidate gets elected, all these big things that need to happen in America and the world are going to happen. They will never happen. Which without Americans, all our people, taking responsibility and taking action, that's the first thing, and I think that's the starting place, is a recognition that this is something that has to be done together. That's where the power in America is. The power is not just in the Oval Office. The power is across this country in rooms just like this and with people just like this. The great movements in American history, that's where they started. The civil rights movement, which I saw up close. The. The movement to stop the war in Vietnam, stop the regime in South Africa, there's war in Iraq. Right now it's happening. So that's the first place. Second place is I think there are some obvious things for Americans to do. Conserving is a perfect example of that. We have a crisis with climate change and I hope we get a chance to talk about it more. But it can't be fixed by just innovation and just investment. It's going to require all of us being willing to conserve. But I think there are multiple examples. You know, if we want to end poverty in this country, it can't be done just by spending money. It's going to require all of us to take, to take responsibility for what I think is a huge moral issue facing our country. So I think there are multiple ways for people to participate, which is why, by the way, I don't want to break my arm patting myself on the back. But about a year ago, we started a group called One Corps, O N E Core, which is a service organization. This is before there was any presidential campaign. And we've got, you know, thousands of chapters around the country. I don't know exactly what the number is now. Over a thousand, I know for sure. And this is a group of people who, they do some politics, but a lot of people don't, aren't interested in the politics. And what they do is we engage in service projects. We help in Poverty and Community Against Poverty and Community Action Centers. We've gone all, we've gone out into communities and help wrap pipes and change light bulbs, pretty simple things. But these are examples of what the kinds of things that if, you know, you take it and you multiply it by the number of people who live in this country, that's where the power is. There's no question where the power in America is. Do you think.

Let's follow up on one of the areas that you mentioned. Do you think sacrifice is needed in order to, to address some of our economic security issues? Our energy security issues, so much of our energy, our oil is imported. Is that an area where, not only because of energy security, but as you suggested, because of issues of climate change and global warming. Is that an area where sacrifice is required? And what are the kinds of plans or what's your vision for addressing those issues?

Energy and climate change? I think sacrifice is a huge component of it. I'll give you the basics of what I think need to be done. I think first of all, we ought to cap carbon emissions in America, greenhouse gas emissions. I think that cap should be ratcheted down every year. And I think that we should plan to reduce our greenhouse gases by 80% by the year 2050, which is aggressive. And I'll be the first to tell you it's more aggressive than most of the other presidential candidates are for. But I think it's doable that I think the scientific community believes it's doable. And what I would do is below the cap, I would actually auction off the right to emit any greenhouse gases. Most people believe that will generate around 30 plus billion dollars of revenue. And then that money should be used to invest in completely transforming the way we use energy in this country. And that means we're going to have to invest in wind and solar and cellulose based biofuels. I think we're going to have to put at least a billion dollars in the development of, development and implementation of carbon sequestration technology, carbon capture technology. I think a billion ought to go into both helping and pushing our car companies in America to developing more fuel efficient vehicles.

The sacrifice there. Sorry, the sacrifice there is that energy costs essentially would go up perhaps significantly for people.

That's only part of the sacrifice though because in addition to that, Americans are going to have to conserve. All of us. We're going to have to conserve in our homes, going to have to conserve in our, in our, in our places of work. We're going to have to drive more fuel efficient vehicles. We've got to raise the fuel efficiency standards significantly in this country. I think we ought to also decentralize the way we provide electricity in America. You know, what we have now is we have big, we have big centrality, we have big power companies who make more money the more power we use. What we want to do is spread and create more competition, decentralize these power grids, allow community groups, smaller communities, grassroots organizations to compete. They'll drive down prices. Solar cells. Huh?

Solar cells.

All of the above. And we ought to do all of those things. And also I Mean, I think if you look at all these things in combination, you know, whether it's capping carbon emissions, treating this as the crisis, it is getting everybody involved, a serious investment in solving and all of us taking responsibility. I think that whole issue, climate change, energy, energy transformation, is an example of the power of what we can do, do together. But I'd say one last sentence about this. I do not believe, whether it's Iraq, energy, health care, poverty, whatever the issue, I do not believe America can do what it has to do by being political and careful and cautious. Incremental steps don't work. We are not in that place in America anymore. We are now in a place where we have huge big changes. And it's going to require America to have both a president and a people who are willing to take some risks, who are willing to do some things that may feel a little dangerous and risky in the short term, but it's the only way, the only way that we can actually bring about the change that's going to be required for America to do what it's capable of doing.

So taking big risks in immigration, should we legalize people who are illegally. I think the 12 million people, there's been a lot of, lot of debate about that in Congress.

We should have a path to citizenship for them. Absolutely. And I think I'm not. I think they're. I personally think there are serious issues with the legislation that's in the Congress now. I think there are three things we need to do about immigration. They're really not that complicated. One is I do think our southern border is a mess. It's porous and we're doing a poor job of securing it. We need to do much better. Second, I think we have to be tougher on employers that are knowingly violating the law and in many cases abusing their workers. But then third, I think there has to be a path to citizenship for the millions of people who are here. We don't. It's a basic moral question. We don't believe it's okay to have millions of people living here and living as second class human beings. That's not right. And there needs to be a very clear, very direct, very simple path to citizenship for those people.

I know that there are a bunch of people who are going to want to ask questions. I'm just going to ask a couple more. If people want to get behind the microphones and line up for questions. Less of a policy and more politics question. You've been through this before, running for vice president and what are the lessons that you learned in that campaign and how are they playing out in this campaign?

The lessons.

We.

In this podcast. How much time do we have? You know, I think that we are. We are in a historic time in the country's history and an historic time in America's history with respect to the rest of the world. I think for a lot of reasons, there's a convergence occurring of factors, considerations that require a couple of things from the next president, you know, United States. One I mentioned briefly, but I didn't really talk about it at length, is there's some personal characteristics. If I weren't running for president and I were looking for a president, I would be looking for these two things. One is the personal characteristics that I think America needs at this particular time. And that means honesty, sincerity, openness, and for lack of a better, just a feeling that you have when you listen to them, that there's an air of decency about them, that they're really trying to do the right thing. They're not trying to sell you. They're not trying to tell you what you want to hear. They're not trying to. But a good human being trying to do the best they can. Because I think. And the reason for that is because I think the trust bond between America and its president has. Has been destroyed and it has to be reestablished. And I also think that it's true for the rest of the world. The rest of the world has to feel trust in the President of the United States. So for me, I wouldn't be looking for the next great politicians. I know there are great politicians on the Republican and the Democratic side running for president. I could care less. I mean, that's not what we need in a president right now. And then the second thing is somebody who's willing to push the envelope. I mean, somebody who's not saying, I got to be careful about this, because what are the political consequences? To me, maybe this won't work well, et cetera. And I think that you've got to have somebody who's willing to say this is bold, it's innovative, but it's what we ought to do. We got to take some risks, and I'm willing to live with the consequences of those risks. I just think that's where we are.

Okay, let's begin with some questions over here. Gosh, lots of people asking questions. We'll start over here on the left.

Hi, Mr. Edwards. Thank you for coming. I wanted to go back to Immigration. And before that, I like what you said earlier. There's A lot of good things you said, and particularly in terms of the things we do having consequences beyond our borders and how things are very international and we have to take that into account. And I wonder to ask about where you see that with immigration, because the three things you mentioned didn't seem to touch upon anything to do with the policies we have now that facilitate conditions in Mexico, for instance, that make it advantageous for these people to take these risks across the border and work as illegal immigrants here. You know, NAFTA in particular, I'm thinking of. And how do you change something like that when at the moment the changes, the power in my eyes still lies a lot with corporations and big companies who pay a lot of money for lobbying and whatnot. And changes like in NAFTA and other things and other policies we have. You're asking those corporations to bite their own hand because they're the ones that are going to be affected the most.

That's a very good question. I should have talked about it. I didn't. You're right. The underlying issue is how do we create a world. And you're asking specifically about Mexico, where there's not this incredible drive to leave their country and come to America because things are so bad there and because we have, and you're right about this too, multinational corporations who have an economic incentive, incentive to continue to promote policies that allow that to exist. How do we overcome that? And some of the things I talked about, but in a very generic way earlier. For example, my suggestion about education, that's something that has not as much effect in Latin America as it does in Africa and the Muslim world, but it could certainly have an effect there. Economic development, the same is true. Micro lending, micro finance, et cetera. But I really think at the end of the day, the way you have to do these things, I think we have. I think we have a dysfunctional health care system, which I've talked about a lot. But I also think we have a dysfunctional political system. The way we finance political campaigns in this country, it couldn't be more unhealthy. And this is coming. I don't want to listen. I'm not holier than thou about this. I've raised millions of dollars both in 2004 for and now to run for president. But that doesn't mean I think the system is good, because I don't. I think that there is only one solution to taking the power away. That what you're describing from those who have a very narrow interest that's contrary to the interest of America. And I think that solution is to really take money out of politics, which is to publicly finance all of these campaigns. I think we publicly finance these campaigns. You literally pull the life out of these big groups, people who have a huge presence in Washington, lobbying groups, lobbyists, et cetera. And I think we need a president of the United States who says they are committed to changing the way we finance political campaigns in this country, even though it's contrary to their own personal interest, because it is unhealthy and undemocratic the way we do it. Now, those are the things that I think.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Question over there.

Hi, Senator, thank you for dropping by. So I should preface this by saying that while I think it's important to know whether our decisions are right or wrong are important, they aren't nearly as important as how we arrive at those decisions. So I'm wondering if you could possibly shed some light on how you arrived at your decision to vote for the war.

Be glad to.

The process is fairly important to me.

How I arrived at that decision or how I arrived at decisions today when.

You were actually in the Senate.

Sure. Be glad to tell you. And hopefully we learn lessons from our mistakes. So there are some things that I would do differently now than I did then. When the vote was coming up, I did. There were two things going on inside me. One was as a member of the Senate, as a member of the Intelligence Committee, I did everything in my power to get factual information about what we knew about Iraq having weapons, biological, chemical, and at least at that point, the possibility of them trying to get nuclear weapons. So I received lots of factual information as a senator and as a member of the Intelligence Committee. Then I went to members of the Clinton high level members of the Clinton administration who had just left office pretty recently to see what they said about the same information. Did they verify it? Did they dispute it? Was there any contradiction? And I can tell you there was essentially no contradiction. It was all almost completely consistent. But I want to be really clear about something. So that was wrong. And I'm responsible for that because I made the judgment. But there was another piece, and that is I personally felt huge internal conflict about giving George Bush this authority. I didn't trust him. I thought he had an agenda. I was worried, and Lord knows that turned out to be true, that he would never do the things that needed to be done in dealing with these, what we thought were weapons in Iraq with the international community. And I made the decision at the end of the day because I did think the evidence was overwhelming about the weapons. That turned out to be wrong. And I decided to defer to the President of the United States. I should not have done that. I wouldn't do it again. And so I didn't. Unfortunately for me, I didn't make just one mistake. It's not just that I had bad information. It's also that I made the decision to give this president the authority when I personally had serious reservations about it and I shouldn't have done it. I mean, that's really now, in terms of how that informs my decision making today. I would be highly skeptical about any kind of intelligence information that I was provided as President of the United States States. I'd want to be certain that the information had been verified. Secondly, I would want, I want to surround myself both at the vice presidency and especially the most important cabinet level positions with people who are smart, who are strong and independent and who will challenge me and what I think. I'm not interested in being surrounded by a bunch of people who agree with me. I'm interested in having really tough people.

Want to suggest any of the names of people who you might consider to be secretary?

No.

Thank you.

One question, though. I did have, there's been, I think it's coming out in the Sunday Times Magazine, this whole question of how other candidates approach the vote. At the same time, there was this National Intelligence Estimate that was confidential that only knew that you had to have security, security clearance so members of the Senate could read. Did you have a chance to read that? And was that part of the.

I read it, I read it. But the idea that, you know, somehow we had so much more information, you know, having the information turned out to be bad, not good. I don't, you know, I know this is intelligence information, but I think it's a very unhealthy thing for the democracy to have with the notion that we've got people in Washington who are in the know and we should just trust them to do the right thing without us knowing. Why does America not know if we're making decisions about issues like going to war, is America not entitled to know what the basis for that decision is? Besides, trust me, you know, rely on me, trust me, this, this country and this government belongs to the American people, doesn't belong to an individual or to a person. President and I just think my basic view about this is transparency, openness, sunshine is the healthiest way we can do these things because then American people actually know how decisions are being made.

Next question.

Hi, Senator Edwards, thanks for joining Us here at the Googleplex. I was pleased to hear you mention clean water and good sanitation as international issues. Public health issues aren't super sexy and so it's great to hear a presidential candidate mention that. Can you expand a little bit on your plans for addressing worldwide global health issues?

Yeah, global public health issues, be glad to. You all may have followed. There's a guy named Jeff Sachs who wrote I think the best book that's been written on addressing global poverty and the whole, all of these issues help this issues, et cetera. And what I have proposed is basically a three piece plan to deal with this. And one thing I would say to all of you, I get a lot of pushback on this in big parts of America. You know, maybe less so here in California, maybe less so in New York. But you should just be aware that in a lot of the country people say, why are you talking about spending money to educate 100 million kids when we have trouble funding our own education system? Why are you talking about spending money for clean drinking water and sanitation? Well, I have to say I have to be honest with them. Some of this has become very personal for me because I've spent a lot of. Since the last election, I've spent most of my time either overseas or working on issues overseas, including with groups that I have enormous admiration for like the International Rescue Committee. And I've spent time, for example in the slums outside of Delhi, been all over central Africa. And this has become a very personal thing for me. When you, when you look into the eyes of a little girl who's the same age as your little girl, as I did in Lira in Uganda and her parents were slaughtered by the rebels and, and she has this look in her eyes. It's just pure blackness. I mean there's just, there's no life at all. And I compare that to my. My Emma is my daughter, my Emma. And I just think to myself, how can America stand quietly by and let this happen? We can't. That's not who we are. We're better than that. And I'm. Whatever, whatever the political ramifications, you know, and I'm sure they're not good. I confident of that. But I don't care. What matters is if my voice can be heard. And as president, if I can lead an effort to do something about this, what I. There are three pieces to what I want to do. They cost a total of about $5 billion a year. So the cost is a lot, but it's not prohibitive. I mentioned these earlier One is the education piece. Us. Not just us, but the international community making primary school available to the kids in the world who don't have it. The second, which is the piece you're asking about, is a combination of investment. It's between 1 and $2 billion a year into putting people on the ground and teaching and making clean drink on sanitation and making clean drinking water available. As you well know, clean, clean drinking water is very difficult to find in a lot of parts of Africa in the third world in general. And third is the development piece, but also creating a cabinet level position for somebody who would coordinate these humanitarian efforts. And I also want to create 10,000, what I call a civilian Marshal corps. Some of you may remember the Marshall Plan, civilian Marshall Corps, which is 10,000 experts in humanitarian aid whose job it will be to make sure that we're using the most creative, most aggressive, most innovative techniques to address these issues. I think they're central to what our country should be doing. And I don't think they're a little piece of something over here. I think they're literally right in the middle of how America should be meeting our responsibility to humanity, which I believe we have.

Thank you. I hope you can talk to Larry Brilliant while you're here with Google. Org.

Okay, thank you.

Next question over here.

Thank you, Senator, for being here. I think there's been a lot of attention on the impact of this presidency on the federal judiciary. I think people are less widely aware the politicization of the higher levels of the civil service and of the military. How do you undo that? It's unprecedented in American history. How do you or how does any president undo that aspect of the Bush legacy?

There are some things that are simple and direct and there are some that require some work. I can tell you the first day that I was sworn, I've sworn in as President of the United States in January of 2009. I will close Guantanamo. I will do it as fast as a president of the United States can do it. I think what's happened at Guantanamo is an embarrassment to America and should not be allowed to proceed. I will do what this president hasn't done. I'll try to undo the damage that he's done. For example, the civilian leadership in the Pentagon essentially insulated George, George Bush from the military leadership, the uniformed leadership. And what I want to do, I mentioned this earlier, but it goes to everything I want to do besides having a government that's run in the open. I want to have the uniformed military leaders talking to me directly about what Makes sense. And what doesn't make sense, what we need to be doing and what we don't need to be doing. It will ultimately be for me to decide whether what we should do, for example, about a weapons system. I think we have weapons systems that don't make any sense. Missile defense, space based, offensive weapons. I think there's serious questions about the F22 fighter jet system. But I think there are a group of things that. And I want to hear what the uniform leadership tells me about military leadership tells me about that. But I'll ultimately make the judgment. But I think across the waterfront, I think you're completely right. There has been a. They have made political. I always have trouble pronouncing that word. You did well, though. I think they've made everything political. And I think that has to be changed. We have to get good people, competent people, no matter what political party they're from, to run these agencies. No more Brownies, the guy at fema, no more of those kind of people. And I think. But I think the President has to have contact with what's happening at the highest level of the agencies of government so that the President knows what's actually going on and you don't have some buffer that doesn't allow you to see when there are problems occurring. I think that's the simple answer. What about the. Oh, the judiciary. Can I say a word about the judiciary too?

I'm sorry.

And I also think if you really want to know what's at stake in this election, all you have to do is read the Supreme Court's decision that came down yesterday limiting the right to bring discrimination actions, or the Supreme Court's decision limiting a woman's right to choose. I mean, there is so much at stake because whoever the next president is, is going to shape the United States Supreme Court, the judiciary as a whole, but certainly the United States Supreme Court, given the ages of some of the justices on the court. And that means women's rights, civil rights, civil liberties, our individual freedoms, the Constitution of the United States of America, all those things are at stake. I mean, things that literally go to the very fabric of who we're supposed to be as a nation. And that's why it's so crucial that we, that I'm speaking from my party now. I know you have people from both parties speaking from my party. It's so crucial that we have somebody who's strong and progressive and who can get elected President of the United States because we have to win.

Hi, Senator, I wanted to ask you a Question about Iraq.

Yes.

And I actually am going to disagree with you on your assessment that Americans are connected with this war because I think a lot of people don't have the same tie to it that they did in Vietnam. And I think one of the.

Do you think it's because of the draft?

I can't say. I think that it's because of the draft and it's because there's so few people in the army. And it's also because 50% of the people that are in Iraq right now, that's the estimate, are actually contractors. And what I'm wondering is if you have everyone pull out of Iraq, would you leave the contractors in? And, you know, how do you reconcile the fact that we have contractors and don't count them in the death tolls?

And I don't. I don't reconcile it. And I don't think it's okay. And the contractors, we need to stop contracting away these quasi military or military operations and the contractors need to be gone. To answer your question, I assume you're talking about the contractors that are engaged in military like operations. That has to stop. It shouldn't have been done to begin with, shouldn't be done now. And the President of the United States has a responsibility to stop it. To answer your question, would you support.

Would you support the creation of the reinstitution of the draft in order to make sure sacrifice?

I wouldn't. I think that. Could you hear his question? Yeah.

Would you support the draft?

I don't support the draft. I understand the argument for it. I mean, there is. I know Charlie Rangel and others have argued eloquently for it. I mean, their basic argument is the question you raised at the very beginning, that when a war like this doesn't touch a wider swath of America, that it's harder to build up the voice of America to stop it. And that is the best argument for it. But I don't believe a couple weeks ago I spent all day on a Sunday with about 30 or 40 retired generals and admirals who are good people and who absolutely disagree with Bush about Iraq and what needs to be done and agree with a lot of the things I've said about humanitarian aid, et cetera. But they are not in favor of the draft for multiple reasons, including that they think it will actually weaken the military and they are for expanding the military. But they want to do it by paying people better, giving them decent benefits, helping them transition into and out of the military with educational help, exp. Et cetera. All of Which I think is enormously important. But no, to answer your question, I'm not. I don't have enough of the draft.

Okay. Thank you.

You're welcome.

I'm informed that we have time for only a couple more questions, unless you can stay a little bit longer.

I can stay a little longer. Okay. See?

So let's keep going.

Hi, Senator, thank you for visiting Google. I like your new haircut.

I wondered if we could get through this without that.

I want you to know that Google is an equal opportunity explorer. We don't judge the job candidate by the haircut. So my question is about your position on Taiwan issues. So if China, mainland China, attacked Taiwan, would it be possible for the US to send armies to Taiwan?

Well, why don't you go right to the question? We have a. This is. I'm not going to answer your question. I'll tell you that in advance. It's a perfectly good and reasonable question not to be answered by me. As you well know, we, we have responsibilities and obligations to Taiwan. And I think that America has, should. The President of the United States should use all the tools available to us, including diplomatic tools, to try to make sure that we lessen tensions between mainland China and Taiwan. And I think that there are lots of things, things that we can do to deal with that. I do think, by the way, that what's happened over time in the Bush administration, this is related to your question, is there are a couple of challenges that are the most serious challenges facing America and the world. One of them is this issue of violent radical Islam which the Bush administration has been focused on. But the second is, you notice that change of words. The second is the rise of China, which creates huge challenges for America, including the rise of their economic prowess, the human rights abuses, the growing of their military, which has been done largely in an opaque way without us knowing what's happening. But. And I don't think that challenge has been dealt with at all. The best I can tell, and I think the president clearly needs to have. And we could spend the rest of the day on this. I have lots of ideas about it has. It needs to have a plan for addressing that challenge head on because I think it's a very serious one for America. It's a complicated relationship because we have some mutual interests and then we have some conflicting interests with the Chinese. But, but on the issue of Taiwan, I think it is really important for America and the secretary, for the President and the Secretary of State to be vigilant about dealing with both parties so that this thing does not escalate out of control. I think that's the single most important thing for America to do.

I have to follow up, given that this was a subject that was of great interest and concern to people here at Google. Should companies like Google do business in China?

That's a good question.

We thought so.

I don't think. I think at this moment it would for America, for Google. For companies like Google to just decide they're going to unilaterally not. I don't even know if you. Do you do business in China, I assume. Do we? I think that. I think that continuing to do business is the right thing to do now. But I think doing it with your eyes wide open, recognizing a lot of the problems that exist there and particularly with the focus on human rights abuses, I think is important. Next question.

I was very glad to hear you talking about global poverty and global health. I think this needs to get a lot more attention. I don't see how anyone could possibly complain about $5 billion a year for like the whole world, seeing as we spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to bring democracy to one country and it's not even working. One issue or a couple? I'd like to hear you elaborate on a bit that I think are tied to global poverty are AIDS and free trade.

You can add to that farm subsidies if you want to put them all in there. Yeah, the, you know, it's first of all, the spread of HIV aids. And by the way, I don't know if you saw this, but Bush is asking for some additional money on an AIDS initiative. You know, why it took this long, I'm a little hard to understand, but he is. But he is. Is asking for it. I think that America has a responsibility to. And it's a moral responsibility to be extremely aggressive in addressing the spread of HIV aids, which means a whole range of things. It means American investment. It means American engagement with our allies around the world to bring resources and people to the spread. To dealing with the spread of HIV aids. I mean, the idea that children in Africa are being born with AIDS today because their mother don't have $4 for a dose of medicine, it's just. It's not okay. It's not okay for America, the richest nation on the planet, to stand by and watch that continue. I think on the issue of trade that I think our trade policy over the last decade has not worked well for a variety of reasons. And trade, particularly trade. I'll talk about trade and farm subsidies together. You know, in China, hundreds asking about China Hundreds of millions of people in China have been lifted out of abject poverty over the last few years. And probably the single biggest component of that is trade. And trade has the capacity to help lift up, you know, there are 3 billion people on the planet, roughly, who make $2 or less a day. And trade has an equalizing effect. The concern is. My concern is that when we enter into trade agreements that have no meaningful standards and no way to enforce them, you know, no labor standards, no environmental standards, no enforcement mechanism, and then you marry that to an administration that doesn't want to enforce them to begin with, then the results are fairly catastrophic. So I think on the issue of trade, it's very important for America to trade. It's important for us to do it in a way that allows markets to be opened. I think it's important to us. I think it's important to the rest of the world. But I think it has to be done the right way. It has to be done smarter than we've been doing it over the last few years. And I think this farm subsidies question is. I was in London a couple years ago, speaking at the London School of Economics, and I was talking about poverty, global poverty, and a young man from Africa stood up who was a student there, and he said, I love what you're saying, but how can you talk about these things with a straight face when America continues to subsidize its farming operations the way it does? And I saw myself in northern Uganda, families that if we could ever achieve peace, there's work to do there. That Warner would want to go back to their home. Their homes, their farms and farm. But they can't compete with American farmers. I think it was cotton, if I remember right, because they can't because of the subsidies. They could compete, but the subsidies make it impossible. So I think they clearly have got to stop subsidizing big multinational corporate farming operations. And I don't think we should. I don't think we should be subsidizing. Subsidizing farmers who make a million dollars a year net profit. That doesn't make any sense at all. And I think the hard. The friction comes is at what level do you allow subsidies to continue? And 200, $250,000 feels about right to me. I think that's small enough that it is a family farming operation. But I think there is a tension between, you know, our farm subsidies, our trade policy, the spread of hivaids, and our desire to be. To meet our responsibility to the world.

I think we've gone Way long. Do you want to take one more question and we'll.

I can stay as long as you want.

Okay. So whoever's writing me the notes, you heard that? I think we really should just do a couple more questions. We'll do one here, one there, and then we'll let everybody go home.

So thanks a lot for coming. Once again, the United States has some of the greatest universities in the world, in particular in computer science. We've got some great programs in this country, and I was lucky enough to get my PhD from one of these schools, and I perhaps took too long. And so the US Government paid roughly half a million dollars to give me a wonderful education. And I'm really happy for this.

Except.

Myself and about half my class were foreigners. And so when we come into the country to get these educations, we have to promise to the US Government that we're going to leave as soon as we're done, because we wouldn't want to give back anything to the United States in taxes or anything. So then there are a whole bunch of hurdles we have to go through if we want to continue to stay here and work for. For companies here and stuff.

You know, I've done this long enough that I got a feeling where this is going. Go ahead.

Yeah. I was just wondering, what can we do to make it easier to attract top talents to the United States, to work here and live here and participate in the society and to build great companies in the area?

Well, we want. Here's what we want. And I don't know in my own mind exactly what the right balance is. I mean, what we want is when we attract smart, talented people here from other parts of the world and they get educated here, we want to be able to take advantage of those talents because it will make America better, stronger, more creative, more innovative. The friction comes with. We'd also love to expand the number of Americans who are engaged in these same areas, computer science, which is what you just asked about. So I think we have to figure out the balance between the two. And I think there is an appropriate balance between the two. But for those who come here and get educated here and who have something meaningful to offer that we don't have somebody, an American who's ready to do it, we need to be not only willing, but aggressive about wanting to take advantage of talented people like you.

Thank you.

Last question is yours.

Save the best for last.

Right.

So you mentioned the importance of basically the American people in achieving any sort of transformative change, say in this case, acting on climate change. That type of thing. What I might add to that is actually, you know, the importance of re engaging our allies and the rest of the world. I'm wondering what you would do specifically to help us regain our stature. I spent last couple years of my life living outside of the United States where it wasn't exactly the most popular thing on the planet to be an American. And I want you to address the question in two ways. One would be the kind of standard way, how do we, you know, talk to Germany and Europe again? And the other would be, and it pertains to a comment you mentioned earlier, that we don't do a good job as people at stepping outside ourselves. So how would you address that sort of domestically?

Well, I think that the President can do a number of things. One is to speak to America on a regular basis about the importance of understanding the perspective of the rest of the world, which. Which we've not heard at all over the last few years. So that we do as Americans, as a people, not just in the government, as a people, begin to understand the perspective that other people have on exactly what you're describing and what you saw and I've seen firsthand in other parts of the world. I think the second thing is what I would want to do as President is actually travel the world in the first six months in office and speak in a very open way to other people around the world, not to leaders behind closed doors. But some of you will remember John Kennedy gave this famous I am a Berliner speech and had a huge impact as a result. And I think the world needs to hear from the President of the United States. They need to hear directly from the President, President in their country, talking about diversity and equality and why it's important to America and what we represent and we want to export it. We want to export equality and diversity in our embrace of diversity. So I think that's another thing. I think beyond that, the more standard, and this is what you spoke about is I think the President of the United States needs to make it clear that we're open to what other people think, to different perspectives, to people who come from different places, different cultures, who have a different view of the world. And we will not only be open to it, but we'll listen and we'll listen respectfully and we'll treat people who have a different view of the world than us with dignity. You know, nobody made us God. I mean, there's nothing about growing up in America. I love this country. Don't misunderstand. And I think America has done extraordinary things and can continue to do extraordinary things. And I think our leadership is absolutely essential to the world. But it's important for the rest of the world to see America and its president listening, listening for perspective, listening for a different point of view. And we're going to do something important. Even these things that I've talked about, like leading on making primary education available, America shouldn't do that by itself. The first step in that is to go to other countries in the world and say, these are the things we want to do. First to those who we want to help us and second to those we want to help. I mean, we don't get to just impose this on people. This is something we want to make available. And I think a lot of it's just a tone and a respect and the way you do things. You can be strong and be respectful and treat others with dignity at the same time. Those things are not inconsistent with one another. Right now, the world thinks we're a bully and we're selfish. We don't care about the rest of the world and they will never follow us. Never. If that's the case, if they see us as a light, the country that America is about good things. They're important. They're about important things. They care about children in Central Africa who are dying. They care about those kids that I spent time with in the slums outside of Delhi. They care. I'm telling you, I absolutely believe it will make all the difference in the world. I do.

Senator Edwards, on behalf of everybody at Google, I want to thank you for coming. This has been tremendously interesting.

Thank you all. Thank you.