Running for President | Hillary Clinton | Talks at Google

One of many talents who's brought us many speakers here and is here today for us. Cheryl Sandberg.

See how we improvise. So it is the great pleasure of women at Google to welcome Senator Hillary Clinton to our stage, along with our CEO, Eric Schmidt.

Hello. Thank you.

So, Senator.

Senator Clinton was elected a United states senator in 2000, reelected in 2006, making her the first first lady to ever hold public office. She has sponsored and led many bipartisan efforts on things that are close to our heart. Computerized medical records, rural broadband access for rural communities, R and D, and nanotechnology. She's also led really important efforts for the country on public education, modernizing our schools, job creation, and importantly, universal health coverage. January of 2007. So just last year, on January 20th, she announced the creation of a presidential exploratory committee on the Internet. We love that. I think everyone knows we started the Women at Google series to bring women who have really made a difference in the world to Google. And by far, Senator Clinton has been our most requested speaker. So we are thrilled that she is here with us today. And as always, we thank Eric for his support of our program. Thank you all for being here.

People are pretty excited about having you here, Mrs. Clinton.

I'm excited about being here.

The people with the hats are new employees, so don't be disturbed. That's why they have their little new name tags on. They describe what they do and the weird things they did to get into the company.

I think you do that in Washington.

As some of you know, I worked some with President Bill Clinton and the Vice President Al Gore on some Internet work. And in the context of that, they had a fellow working for them named Iron Magaziner, who became a good friend and is a very, very sharp guy. And one day I was. And this was in 96 or 97, and I sat down with Ira, we were having a nice chat, and I was saying how incredibly intelligent the President was. And he said, she's smarter. And I thought, that's pretty amazing. So I filed that away. So the next year, I go to Davos and there's a dinner and Mrs. Clinton shows up. And then the next morning, I go to her speak her speech, and I'd not heard her speak before, and she talked for an hour about her view of the world, social change, business policy, international issues. And she did the speech, which is a brilliant speech without any notes, a feat that I have still not been able to replicate. I'm still thinking about this. So we are talking about an extraordinary national leader here. On stage at Google today. Welcome to Google.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Well, I am absolutely thrilled to be here to have a chance to come and see for myself and the best place to work in America, number one, And a place that is really helping to invent the future. You know, one of the great things about America is that we've always been more about the future than nearly any place ever in the history of the world. And probably I hope we will always be that. But part of what it means to envision the future and help to create it is figuring out how to work together to achieve some of those goals. And what you've done here at Google in just a very short period of time has revolutionized the way we live, we work, we think, information that's accessible to us. And so I'm delighted to not only be here to have this conversation with Eric, but, you know, to keep learning more about what you see in the future and how someone in my position who is currently in public leadership, obviously am running now for president, can be much more supportive in creating the circumstances that enable not only Google and people like those of you who work here, but so many millions of more around our own country and around the world make that better future. So this is exciting for me and I appreciate, you know, the opportunity to be here and look forward to the conversation with Eric.

So her first question was a Google Earth question. So we have a senator here who's paying attention. When I think about the political campaign that you're now embarking on, which I think is in many ways a physical marathon, having seen people do it before, what I don't like about the way it's covered is everybody focuses on the past. And my view is that what this really is, and it's an extended job interview between the citizenry hiring you to be their president. So I think a good starting question is, let's talk about the future as you see it. And critics would say, and I think with some validity, that Iraq is a mess, that our global positioning as a country is a mess, that we have deficits before us that are larger than we've ever foreseen, with no obvious solution in sight. And the criticisms go on and on. Take us through the future as you see it. Tell us why things will be better or different with your insights and your view and your ability to put people together.

That's a great, great question. And I want you all to imagine with me what our country will be like in 10 years, which will be the end of my second term. Or the alternative that we just keep going the way we are, which I think would be really so counter to who we should be as Americans. I mean, every time anybody runs for office, they say that this is the most important election. And I think every election is important, which is why I hope that each and every one of you will take that responsibility seriously now and in the future. But I really do think this is a defining moment election because we have so much unfinished business at home and abroad, and we have a choice to make. You know, no matter how successful you are as an individual or how successful you are as a company, there are certain things that we can only do together through the instrument of our government. So I hope that the future holds not just the promise, but the reality of universal health care coverage that provides high quality, affordable health care for every single American. And I think Google has a real role to play in helping us make that happen. So it's not just what I see, it's what I hope you see as well. I hope the future holds that we have an energy system that is no longer dependent upon fossil fuels imported from regimes around the world, but that instead we have figured out how best to incentivize the private sector to make investments that will lead to clean, green energy becoming dominant in our nation, which will be good for the economy, good for the environment, and good for our security. I hope the future holds that within 10 years, we will have made progress on global climate change. We're no longer denying it. We have, I hope, gotten over the bump of people saying we can't do it because it will wreck our economy. But instead we see what needs to happen will be good for the planet, but it also can be good for the economy. You know, when President Bush took us out of Kyoto, Prime Minister Blair took Great Britain in, and they created tens of thousands of new jobs in trying to figure out how to decrease greenhouse gas emissions and clean up, you know, the environment. I hope that the future will see an education system that starts with preschool opportunities for kids who need some extra help so they can enter school ready to learn, that we'll have many more qualified teachers, particularly in math and science and other shortage areas, and a culture starting with the family. But going beyond that really values education in America and creates a feeling among our citizenry that it's important. I was telling Eric and Larry and Sergey and others a story about how when I was in fifth grade and Sputnik was sent up, you'll need to. I don't have to tell you what Sputnik was sent.

You'll need to tell him what's up.

You'll make me feel very old. Very old.

Yeah, I'm sorry, Senator, you're going to have to tell him.

Oh, well, I can't. You'll have to look it up on Google. But when it went up and it was a direct threat to America's primacy in science and technology and space exploration from the Soviet Union, the whole country was galvanized. I remember conversations about it over the dinner table. And I remember my fifth grade teacher coming in and saying, children, the President wants you to study math and science. I personally thought the President, President eisenhower had called Mrs. Kraus and told her to tell us, but it had a feeling that we were all in this together. Out of that came darpa. Out of that came the space program. So much else that galvanized your parents or grandparents generation to be part of something bigger than themselves. It had enormous spin off for the creation of wealth and new jobs and increase in our gross domestic product because we set some goals partly in reaction to what others were doing, but also because it's part of the American spirit. So in all of these areas, what I see, if we make the right decisions, both through our government and in our private sector and on an individual level, because there's a role for each person to play in doing more to achieve this better future. And of course, I see a future where once again, the United States is respected around the world, that our moral authority and our leadership is helping to solve problems, and recognizes that we will do better if we work together, that we create alliances and relationships. So 10 years is a long time in individual life, but it's not a long time in the life of a country. If we start down this path to renew the promise of America at home and to restore respect for us abroad, then in 10 years, we will be more competitive, we will be better positioned, we will have begun to deal with a lot of the problems that, left untended, will undermine our standard of living, our quality of life, and make the world a more dangerous place. So we have two stay where we are. Refuse to deal with the problems that we have, refuse to find ways to bring people together, to create new incentives to set goals or do what we're best at doing. You know, put our minds to work, unleash our entrepreneurial energy, create the framework to address these problems and call our citizens again, you know, to make a contribution to putting us back on the right path to a better future.

When I think about what you have chosen to embark on the world is different now politically in terms of the way the primaries work and so forth. Can you take us a little bit through what it's going to take in these first two years? How will it play out? What expectations should we have? Where will you be? How will we see you?

Right. Well, this is a marathon, and it's starting a lot earlier than it ever has before. For those of you who have an interest or who have followed American political campaigns before, you'll probably recall that we didn't have this much intensity or energy this early in previous election cycles. In fact, when my husband first ran for president, he did not announce he would run until October of 1991. And then, you know, it was a sprint through the primaries and then obviously, the general election. So the way this is set up now is there are a couple of states that have early contests. You've got the caucuses in Iowa first, then caucuses in Nevada, as currently scheduled, then a primary election in New Hampshire, and then a primary election in South Carolina. Now, if that was all that was going on, it would be demanding but manageable. But a lot of the big states have decided that they don't want to be on the sidelines. They want to be in the mix, and that means that they're moving their dates up. So, for example, California now intends to move up to be, you know, within a week of South Carolina on February 5th. Florida wants to move up to the same day as South Carolina. And then you've got, you know, other states like New Jersey and Texas and maybe even New York. So in effect, Eric, we're going to be running one national campaign for the primary and then another national campaign for the general election. And, you know, I'm just going to be Is this vitamin water? I'm going to be drinking. I'm going to be drinking a lot of vitamin water. I'm going to try to, you know, run a campaign that keeps the focus on what I want to do on the issues that people talk to me about, because as I travel around the country, a lot of the issues I mentioned, in addition, of course, to Iraq and Iran and some of the others that are really on the front pages and deeply concerning to people are what everybody wants to talk about and what I would do as president. And I hope that we can get people more involved. I think one of the reasons the campaign has started so early this year is there are a lot of people, not just Democrats, but independents, Republicans, people who before were never politically affiliated, which I'm finding more and more coming to events for me who just don't want to think about the next two years. They want to leap over the fact that we have our current occupant in the White House and get to the 2008 election. So there's all this pent up energy to get out there and change the future.

Several Googlers sent in questions about abuse of executive power.

You're at Google.

I think they were referring to a different president. One of the things that you did that was very interesting was how you transitioned from first lady to senator. And notable because it was highly criticized and notable also because it was extraordinarily successful. And it's a very interesting story in my view of transformation of yourself and how you worked it. And I'm acutely aware of the fact that the burden, the burden on women in high places is even tougher in many ways. The standards seem to be higher. The criticisms are harsher in many ways for reasons I don't understand. And maybe you do, maybe you don't. You live this, you live this transition from first lady to senator. How did you do it? How did you become a senator in New York? How did you make things successful in New York, especially in the red parts as opposed to the red and the blue parts?

That's a great question. You know. Well, one thing, and I appreciate your saying that it is still challenging for women because I think that is the case. Although we've certainly made a tremendous amount of progress and much more to come. But I was lucky. When I was growing up, I had the same expectations for me and my brothers in my family, from my parents, you know, there was no difference. That wasn't the case with a lot of my girlfriends. It may seem like ancient history, but you know, there were scholarships I couldn't get, there were schools I couldn't go to. There were jobs that really were not open to women when I was a young girl. But my parents believed in education and gave me the opportunities to really develop self confidence and belief that I could do what I set my mind to doing. And I also worked a lot all during my growing up years. I had my first job when I was 13 at a little park where I supervised kids. And I just always had a lot of opportunities to get out into the world to sort of test myself and kind of see what the reaction was. And I played sports. Not well, but I did play sports in those days and I loved that. And it was competitive and you know, you played with boys and you had to play the game. And so I learned a Lot about, you know, how to present myself and how to compete. And obviously, when I graduated from college, I decided to go to law school, which was still somewhat unusual for women, and had a great experience, and then went to work and had a lot of different jobs all the way up until I quit working when Bill became president. So I had always worked. I worked and I was a working mother and I know the challenges of being a parent with family responsibilities. So when Bill became president, I transitioned into a full time volunteer, which was something new for me because I had never been a full time volunteer and I loved volunteering, but this became, you know, the role that I had. And it was a great eight years, but it was different from the rest of my life, particularly my working life. So in a funny way, running for and serving as senator was getting back more to having the kind of job that I always had had. And when I started to run for the Senate, it seemed like such a, you know, long shot and hard to believe that I could make the transition, but I was very comfortable doing it because I liked campaigning. I love policy. I think it really matters, you know, what decisions are made and how they affect people's lives. So as I traveled around the state of New York, I made it very clear that I wanted to represent the entire state. And as Eric says, you know, a lot of people look at California or look at New York and say, well, everybody's one kind of person. Well, how, you know, absurd that is. Everybody knows the diversity in California and the diversity in New York. So as I traveled, I visited a lot of places that didn't vote for Democrats. They had never elected a woman statewide to anything in our state. So I had a, you know, pretty significant hurdle to overcome to prove myself, to stand on my own feet, to make my own case. And I'm very grateful that the people of New York gave me the chance to serve. And, and when I got to the Senate, a lot of people didn't know what to expect. There were some kind of funny things said. One of the leaders on the other side of the aisle after I was elected said, well, maybe lightning will strike and she won't come after all. So I knew that I had a lot to prove, and I did what I've always done, which is just to work really hard, learn as much as I could, and find ways to reach across the party divide, which I think can be so destructive if it's not bridged. You know, we stand on the opposite sides and we've got all these problems, and instead of working to bring people together to solve them. You know, people just retreat and kind of talk to themselves. So I worked with a lot of people who were, you know, not exactly favorable to me during the time that Bill was in the White House. But. But, you know, I found common ground with them. And I find the job, you know, very rewarding because you get to really look for ways on a very individual level to help somebody as well as on the more macro level. You know, for me, you know, helping a child get health care whose insurance company has denied his parents the right to get the treatment that their doctors say he needs is incredibly important. And it kind of keeps me going because sometimes the bureaucracy and the political back and forth prevents positive things from happening. But if you can even help one person, it feels like it's worthwhile. And then I've been able to do some good legislation and work things through to try to make a difference. And obviously I'm very gratified that people reelected me in this last election with 67% of the vote and from a lot of people in a lot of areas of the state who don't usually vote for Democrats, don't think they ever would have voted for me. So I think it's just like anything else. I mean, you really set your goals, you work hard to achieve them, and you try to bring more people in to share credit and be part of moving forward together to get to those goals. That's what matters to me. Obviously, you know, sometimes you can't make it, but in general, it's a very rewarding way to, you know, to work. And I'm glad that I was able to make the transition. And obviously now I'm looking to make another transition based on everything I've done my entire life and all of the preparation and experience and qualifications that I bring, you know, to this presidential campaign.

So we had a meeting with a number of leaders in Silicon Valley of a few minutes ago, and a lot of the conversation was about your view of the energy and the environment. And in your comments today with us, you indicated that's a major area, along with education and a couple of others with this audience and people who are really people in this room really are going to do it, sketch out how you would like it to play out the role of private sector, the opportunity before us. You cited a very interesting statistic, for example, about California, that California's per capita energy use has not gone up. So again, looking at it from policies perspective, take us through why we are where we are as a nation, and then how would you change it or how would you see it changing?

Well, that's a really long conversation, but let me try to just abbreviate it, because I know many of you are interested in what we're going to do with energy and what we're going to do with the environment, and they really are one and the same. You can't separate out trying to deal with the environment, particularly climate change, without dealing with how we generate energy and how we use it. And as I look at where we are today, we've had a lot of missed opportunities going back, you know, more than 35 years. We had some effort that nationally made a little progress in the mid to late 70s in trying to get people to focus on raising gas mileage of our cars to looking for alternative fuel sources than the, you know, fossil fuels that we have relied on in incentivizing conservation and energy efficiency. But when President Reagan took office in 1981, he and the Republican Congress dismantled what was the beginnings of a kind of energy policy that would change how we thought about energy, incentivize different approaches. California, however, maintained its emphasis on conservation and efficiency. So where California is today is that despite an explosive growth in energy usage, particularly here in Silicon Valley, electricity usage has remained flat in terms of, you know, per capita usage here in California, whereas in the rest of the country it's gone up 50%. So when somebody in another state kind of buys into what is the Republican White House line about how we can't do anything about energy and certainly we can't do anything about climate change without wrecking our economy, I say, well, isn't that interesting? Look at what California has done. We would be further along if we had kept the conservation and efficiency measures that California kept, and now we've got to sort of reinvent them nationally. But California sets a good example. This has to be a public private partnership, and it has to be at all levels of public, federal, state, and local. At the federal level, we do need a much broader energy policy that shifts our subsidies and incentives away from, you know, gas and oil into alternatives that looks for cleaner ways to deliver coal, for example, that really provides a much greater support for biofuels and biodiesel that tries to get gas mileage up, that, you know, looks at how we can use production tax credits even more for, you know, wind and solar and geothermal and all the rest of the. But that has to be translated down so that at state and local levels, there's support for these changes. You know, when we were talking in the earlier conversation, Sergey and Larry were talking about how Google had decided to put more solar panels here. But there were so many obstacles at the local level about, you know, what you had to do to get that done and get them installed. So it's not just what happens at the federal level. We have to change the attitude of government up and down the scale to really be committed to this new energy future. And then the private sector, I think, can make a lot of money in new forms of energy. And there's a lot of investment that is now going on very much centered here in Silicon Valley. So if we have the right messages and incentives coming from Washington, if we have capital that is now ready to invest in new technologies, and let's bet on a bunch of them and not preordain what may or may not work, then the missing piece is the individual. You know, what will the individual do? I mean, will the individual, namely all of us, buy into this new energy future? You know, will we buy the car with the higher gas mileage? Will we buy the house with those funny blue solar panels on top? Will we want the wind turbine on the mountain that we look out at? Will we conserve and buy the energy efficient appliances? I'm betting we will. If we create this, this group will. And you are trendsetters. And I mean that seriously. I mean, we have to get this to be something everybody does. Because if we're not part of the solution, then truly we are part of the problem, as the old cliche goes. And at the end of the day, we have to have millions, hundreds of millions of decisions that are made every single day to choose clean green energy. And then we also have to create the conditions for clean green power generation. And we have to, both through carrots and sticks, bring that about. But you know, I think the time has come and I'm hoping that, you know, on Sunday night, Al Gore wins the Oscar for Inconvenient Truth and that will give us another boost in the right direction.

When I look at the Iraq situation, I see a mess, as I said in my personal view is that one, it's a civil war and two, adding or deleting troops. Neither scenario seems like a good scenario. Looking, looking forward, looking forward, not looking backward, looking forward. What should we do? Maybe President Bush will leave this issue to his successor, in which case it's probably the first thing on the desk when you get there, right?

Well, actually, he has said several times he's going to leave it to his successor, which I think is the height of irresponsibility. This is his war. He should extricate us from it before he leaves. But if he. Continues down the path he has chosen, it is likely to to be on the desk. That is exactly right. Well, what would we or should we do going forward? What if we could persuade the President to change course? Would we want him to do? Well, number one, no escalation. Stop the troop escalation. Do not send thousands of more combat troops and thousands more support troops to try to intervene in a multi sided sectarian civil war. It is hard to know who you're shooting at and who is shooting at you. I have legislation to the effect that we should cap the number of troops so that it would be illegal for the President to send additional troops. At the very least, we should make it illegal for the President to send any young American in uniform into combat without all of the equipment and training he or she needs to protect themselves and their fellow soldiers. We also need to make it clear to the Iraqi government that the days of the blank check are over. We are not going to continue to fund their security forces and their reconstruction unless they do what is necessary to begin to put in place a political solution. We know what the pieces of it are, as difficult as it might be. Number one, there has to be a decision made about how to allocate oil revenues in a fair and equitable manner. Something that I have pushed for since summer of 03 when I said do an oil trust and I had bipartisan support for it in the Senate. We couldn't get it, frankly, past the Vice President's office. We also need to get the Iraqis to reverse their de Ba', Athification, to amend their constitution, and to begin to try to figure out how to isolate the extremists on both sides of this sectarian civil war. We also should convene an international conference where the neighbors in the region are put on the spot about what they will do to help stabilize Iraq. We unfortunately are confronted with the President's approach, which is we don't talk to bad people. And I think that is the most absurd diplomatic position to take. You don't make peace with your friends. You don't even do business with your friends. A lot of the time you have to deal with people whose worldview is different, whose interests are sometimes antithetical to your own. During the Cold War, where the Soviet Union had thousands of missiles pointed at us and where their leaders repeatedly said they would bury us, our Republican and Democratic presidents always talk to them. And it was a very smart thing to do. We Actually could make some progress. We could get better intelligence. We could figure out how to leverage, you know, what we needed against them. And we could send a message behind the Iron Curtain that people in the United States cared about the future of people who were under totalitarian communist rule. We need to be talking to Iran. We need to be talking to Syria. We need to be talking to our adversaries. And failing to do so postpones any effort we can realistically have of trying to manage these difficult situations. So there is a lot we could start doing right now, Eric, but we're locked into, unfortunately, a situation where the President believes he's right. I argue it's against reality, but he believes it's right. And he seems impervious to evidence or argument or reason and is determined to pursue this policy. And the only way we can legally rein him in is if we get 60 votes in the Senate. Why is that? Because the House has different rules, and Nancy Pelosi is doing a great job as speaker, and she pushed through. A strong resolution of disapproval of the President's policy in the Senate. The rules are different. It's a kind of, you know, balance that our founders set up. The Senate is more difficult to get things through. You've got to, in effect, get 60 votes for anything controversial, because otherwise a minority can dig its heels in and prevent anything from happening. Well, last week, we got 56 votes, a strong bipartisan majority against the President's escalation policy. But we didn't get 60. So we have to keep the pressure on Republican senators to join with us to try to rein him in. I hope we can do that. That's what we're trying very hard to do. I'm not giving up on doing it. But if, at the end of this president's term, he has not extricated us from Iraq, I will, because I believe it's so important. It has to be the first item on the desk when you walk into the Oval Office.

Senator Clinton, you're late for your next appointment, but I have to ask you one unfair question. We have all of the people who make Google a success. You're a Google user. You have a vision of the world. What would you have us do? Well, what are the things that Google can help your vision to happen?

Oh, I have some very specific ideas.

You have some bug reports.

Well, keep Google Earth going. Maybe that will change some more minds. That's obviously important. You know, the problems and the opportunities that I started out talking about. I think all of you who work at Google and The company collectively can really help us address them. As Eric was showing me around, we stopped at one of the offices where the health team was working. We cannot get to universal health care coverage unless we have a much better information base that is very reliable, that people can turn to to make decisions on their own, to be empowered as consumers of healthcare. And that is something I know you're working on, and we really need you to be aggressively pursuing that. We also need more information technology.

Someone's decided to play the piano while you're speaking. I'm sorry, it is Google.

You know, we do need more information technology generally in health care. I don't know how many of you have been to the doctor recently, but if you've gone to a new doctor, they probably took a new history on paper. They probably don't have electronic medical records. If you go to visit families, say in New York, and you have an accident or you get sick, you need to go to the doctor. They'll have to do it all over again because they probably can't transfer what you have at your doctor here to where they are. The health sector, which uses over $0.16 out of every dollar we spend in America, is woefully deficient in information technology. Any way you can help us move our health sector into the 21st century will help us to get a base of information on which we can make better decisions to provide healthcare to everybody. When it comes to energy or the environment, there's a lot of entrepreneurial genius in this room. Anything that we can do to incentivize people to make better investments or to make better personal decisions by going to Google or getting new ways of communicating through Google or new ideas. Please do. And finally, with respect to education, I really wish we could figure out how to do much more online education more effectively in more places where kids are not being given a fair chance to get a first class education. Our schools are still stuck in a 20th century industrial model. They're open certain hours, which is not very family friendly for a lot of working parents. The technology that's available, I'm not talking about the best schools, which are terrific, but in general, the technology that's available is not really, you know, used to the utmost to further the educational experience of whoever the student is. And we need much more intensive opportunities across the online world so that if you're in a school where you don't have maybe the best math curriculum, but you have an aptitude for it, what can you do here at Google to help capture the imagination of that young boy or girl, so that they stay with math and science, so that they help contribute to what we need to do to transform our economy and be competitive globally. And I guess really the last thing I would say about what you can do is, you know, Google links the world and we need a lot more understanding and communication among all of us. And particularly we need to reassert America's willingness to actually listen to other people, that we want to be part of an ongoing conversation globally, that we want to send a message to people around the world that, you know, America is back, that we care about you, that we're interested in helping solve your problems. We're not self centered and, you know, finger pointing and line drawing the way we've appeared the last six years, because every challenge we face globally can only be addressed if we're interconnected and that we recognize our interdependence. And Google is a great metaphor for that. So the more we can do it, the better off we'll be. And I thank you for everything you are doing and will do for the future. Thank you.

I have only one request of the Senator which is I have hours of more interesting questions and I'm sure you have hours of more interesting answers. So we want you to come back. Okay. Okay. I'd be happy. Thank you for coming.

Thank you, thank you very much.