Announcer: Welcome. Our program will begin momentarily. Please turn off all your cell phones and other devices and refrain from any flash photography. Today's one hour conversation about our global future will inaugurate the Orfalea School of Global and International Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. [Applause]. The center was created to train future leaders who can work to solve some of our world's most pressing issues. Let's begin with a brief video presentation.

[Video presentation].

Announcer: Our Moderator today has great experience on the global front. Thomas Tighe was Chief of Staff and Chief Operating Officer of the Peace Corps and is now President and CEO of Santa Barbara's own Direct Relief International. Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome our moderator, Thomas Tighe. [Applause].

Talking with President Clinton today about global issues will be entrepreneur Paul Orfalea, best known for founding Kinko's. Paul is active in other business ventures, takes time to speak with organizations around the country, is involved with his family philanthropic foundation and pursues his great love of teaching. Please welcome Paul Orfalea. [Applause].

Announcer: And now, ladies and gentlemen, the 42nd President of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton. [Standing ovation].

Mr. Thomas Tighe: Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. We have a rare treat this afternoon, a special occasion here from two exceptional men who we hope will enlighten us on global issues, global leadership, and what's required, saving humanity and our planet, and if time permits, perhaps the meaning of life. And we do have one hour; so let's jump into it. Paul Orfalea, you started what became a wildly successful global business, a public company from one copy machine on a sidewalk in Isla Vista. [Applause]. As far as business careers go, you cannot have done any better. President Clinton, your chosen path in public service propelled you twice to the Presidency and among all the people who've ever pursued that path having the title, you know, “Leader of the Free World” for eight years, is about as high as one could go. Yet after these enormous accomplishments in business in Paul's case and President Clinton's in public service, you have now thrown yourself and your energies at these issues of philanthropy that are in part business and in part public policy. So, President Clinton, if I may, to ask you to lead off, since you initiated this global conversation on big issues and the challenges that confront our world, what have you seen, and can you share with us some of the examples of global leadership that are really working?

President Clinton: Well, first of all, this is the most important point I can make: politics is important. Who occupies the Presidency of the United States and the leadership of these other countries, how good the Secretary General of the U.N. is, whether countries work together; all that really matters. But there will always be a gap between where we are and where we ought to be that will have to be filled by something other than government policies and the ordinary operations of the market. Today, private citizens have more power to do public good than ever before, whether businesses expanding their mission in a way that both produces a profit and advances social causes or through Non-Governmental Organizations, which is what Paul and I do with our foundations.

So here's what I know about that: all around the world and all across this country, intelligence and ability are pretty evenly distributed, but investment opportunity and the ability to hook into the systems that work for people are not. One of the things that make Paul a genius entrepreneur is that, if you read his book, which I highly recommend to you, you realize that because he was dyslexic, he was forced to see the world in different ways all the time and to figure out how to hook into it in different ways. I see all over this world -- from my neighborhood in Harlem where my Foundation is to villages in Africa, Asia, Latin America, everywhere -- highly intelligent people for whom the predictable link between the effort you exert and the results you expect to get has been broken. So those of us who have the means to do it and the time to do it can have a huge impact, but people are smart, and it's best not to patronize poor people, wherever they are.

I remember once I read something you said, that an ordinary street vendor had more business sense than the guy in the $1,000 suit passing him by on the street. You asked for some examples, and I'll just give you one. Yesterday, the Nobel Prize Committee made me an exceedingly happy man by giving the Peace Prize to Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh, a man who has been my friend over 20 years. Hillary and I met him in the early '80s. He was the father of the whole microcredit movement all across the globe. The Grameen Bank he established in Bangladesh has made millions and millions of loans with a repayment rate of 95 percent. It would be much higher were it not for the monsoon season. They loan money to people who have no balance sheet, no collateral, no nothing, based on their reputation. He has empowered entrepreneurs, not only in his own country, but all across the world, through the power of microcredit, and it’s now reaching a critical mass not only in South Asia and India and Pakistan, but other places as well, everywhere. And that's the sort of person who's out there, and the sort of thing you can do. But the real stories are all of these millions of people you will never meet, but you won't have to worry about them trying to come to America and setting off a bomb or becoming a huge problem in the future because they're self-sustaining families, communities, because he gave them a chance to live their dreams. That's the business we ought to be in and what we can do. [Applause].

Mr. Thomas Tighe: You know, partnerships are big these days. People seem to like them, and public-private partnerships in particular seem to be en vogue. And someone told me that partnerships are great. Partnerships mean getting the other person to do what you want. Also, in light of partnerships, you know, the Golden Rule was rewritten in Washington. It’s not do unto others, but he who has the gold rules. So in this new era of partnerships with foundations putting up the money and engaging in public policy with foundations and governments, it seems important to calibrate what role each party should play. So, Paul Orfalea, why don't we begin here with you. If you put up the money for these things, should you call the shots as you get into as a funder in education or some of these other issues? Is that a role that you're comfortable playing in partnership with other groups?

Mr. Paul Orfalea: Well, in my life, I always have one consistent -- by the way, I'm here with my wife Natalie and our children. [Applause]. It seems like I'm always in trouble at home because I just don't take initiative. And the only thing that ever bothered me at work is when people didn't take initiative. It's kind of funny. As long as somebody's taking initiative, I'm happy with them, first of all. And second of all, they have to be accountable, and third, they have to be candid. What a lot of times happens with different organizations is, we lose candor. People tell people what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear. So as long as an organization, any organization, the head of it is candid and takes initiative, I think I'm very easy in the back seat.

Mr. Thomas Tighe: Mr. President?

President Clinton: Well, it works different in different ways. For example, Bill and Melinda Gates can call a lot of the shots in the Gates Foundation because that's what they've given their lives to. But if you've ever run anything, you know that the level of detail in which you can be involved is directly correlated to the amount of time you're spending and also what the mission is. So Warren Buffett decides to give his fortune to the Gates Foundation, which presumably will give him quarterly reports for that $30 billion he's giving them. He's a friend of mine. I called him and thanked him for doing it and he said, "Look, all these people gave me money for years because they thought I could make more money with their money than they could." And he said, "I'm giving my money to Bill Gates because he could spend my money better than I could." Because he knows. So I think it's different in different times.

But you know, I think Paul's got it right. If someone puts up the money, they're entitled to know. First, you have to be accountable to them. You have to be honest, and you have to not waste the money, and you have to understand what the parameters are. But the donors also have to have a certain tolerance for failure as long as you're trying to do what you're doing. That is, most of us who are in this foundation world are in there solving problems that someone would have solved in the ordinary course of events if they were easy. In other words, the whole reason we have a non-governmental sector is to try to deal with quite difficult, intractable challenges that have not been addressed by either the ordinary operations of the marketplace or by government policy. I was really pleased to hear Paul say what he did, because I think donors should not punish people for trying and failing, but they should expect strict accountability and strict candor. And I like that.

You don't want people coming in to you and just telling you what you want to hear. I used to tell everybody who worked for me in the White House, "No one in this White House will ever be fired, no one will ever be transferred, and no one will ever be shut out for giving me bad news." If all I wanted was good news, I wouldn't need anybody around. I would just run the place with computers. I think that's very important, but how much involvement you have over the decisions I think should be directly correlated to the donors' level of interest, commitment, and time. It's really foolish to try to run something that you have no intention of spending enough time on to know what you're doing.

Mr. Thomas Tighe: If I may follow up, it's interesting what Paul said about accountability. And if you're an elected official, it seems if you mess up, you're going to lose your next election. And if you're running a public company and your customers aren't buying it or Wall Street's not buying it, you have pretty immediate feedback about how you're doing, so in terms of the accountability of NGOs, because I think there is so much hope, to whom are they accountable and how do you calibrate that? It's important, as you said, but how do we make sure that the non-profit organizations are accountable as well, Mr. President, Paul?

President Clinton: I'll be very brief. I'll tell you what we do. We have a meeting once a year in the summertime for all of our major donors, and I give regular reports to all the governments that work with us. I don't touch government money, really. I work with governments to fights AIDS and other problems so, for example, the government of Ireland may be helping me in Mozambique, but I don't take their money. However, I do say the Mozambicans need this much money for this purpose in this year. We give them reports. And then to all of our smaller donors -- and we have way over 100,000 of them -- we send out quarterly reports just as if we were a business. But I have the good fortune that some NGOs don't, but it's also the bane, that people know what we're doing. So if we fail, or if we waste money, it will get out, and we won't get any more donors. There is a marketplace here. One of the things I'm proudest of is that my whole Foundation runs on an overhead of 2 percent. That's our overhead. We invest our money in people throughout the world. [Applause].

But I do believe that, actually, the more donors you have and the more visibility you have, the more you'll have the kind of accountability that businesses and elected officials have.

Mr. Thomas Tighe: Thank you. Paul, any comments? You raised the accountability issue. It's all yours.

Mr. Paul Orfalea: I went to the Kentucky Derby, and I got to know all the people behind the horses. These horses have veterinarians taking such good care of them, yet the folks working with the horses on a day-to-day basis had rotten teeth and no health care. And I always thought that charity really begins at home. And if you have a single mother working with you, and they don't have proper benefits, yet you're doing things outside of your environment, I don't know if that's fair. So I do think that you don't have to go too far to find needs just in your own environment. As far as giving externally, I think the good ratio is money spent to overhead and 2 percent is a great ratio. I know in my business -- and I was raised in a business family -- that every other word I heard was "It's deductible." And our coworkers used to think we were the greatest thing since sliced bread because we afforded them a $2 lunch. Now for me to write the check for $2.00, it costs me say $3.20. Now, if I saved $2 on my income tax, I end up with $1.20. I couldn't pass up the bargain, saying, "It's a buck-twenty for me or $3.20 for them. Why don't I do the right thing for the workers?" It's deductible. You have health insurance. You take care of their old age. I was very proud of the fact that our business -- we had a scholarship program for our workers' children. But I think it's most important for everybody in this room to maybe examine their own heart to see if they're doing right for the people that are right next to them and then go out and do the giving. [Applause].

Mr. Thomas Tighe: Each of you men, among other things, author, successful businessmen, President twice, among other things, is now an NGO leader running your own foundation. So let's talk about NGOs, and non-profits, and their role for a moment. Each of you is aiming your talents and money and time and energies at big public policy issues that have vexed government leaders and governments for decades. And there's a lot of excitement about what you're doing, President Clinton. The Global Initiative and Doctors Without Borders and the One Campaign and the excitement and energy is bringing a lot of attention. Locally, with the Orfalea Foundation, it's very similar, a lot of the talent and energy is being drawn into the non-governmental organization or NGO sphere. And the question is, can NGOs pull it off? Is it too much expectation? And what are you seeing? Because you're seeing more than anyone on the planet, I would think.

President Clinton: With all respect, I think that's not the way the question should be formulated.

Mr. Thomas Tighe: Oh.

President Clinton: Let me explain why. I can say that. He used to work with me. He probably thought I didn't pull it off sometimes too, when I was President. Let me explain what I mean by that. It's like asking if the automakers can pull it off if you mean going to an 80-mile-an-hour car. The answer is no, not alone, but they can do a lot better than they're doing. You can't put yourself in a position where you define the result in a way that guarantees failure, and you stop making the difference that you can. What I try to do to with the stuff my Foundation does, the Clinton Global Initiative basically provides a forum for people to discuss big issues: alleviating poverty, fighting climate change, dealing with health challenges of the world, and promoting religious and racial reconciliation. We provide a forum for people to come in and match donors and actors all over the world. We try to increase the aggregate amount of NGO activity and the aggregate investment being made, but people like Paul and Natalie have to make their own judgments about "Do I want to? Am I interested in this, that, or the other thing?" and will they have a good return?

But for my Foundation, when I go into something, I like to know what my realistic goals are, and then I need to know I can keep score. The hardest thing in any of this non-governmental work is knowing what's a realistic score card. So when I went into the AIDS business, it was obvious to me that the biggest problem at the time was that there wasn't enough money available to provide medicine for people who were going to die unless they got it, and the medicine was too expensive. Even the generic medicine was $500 per person a year, and we were paying $10,000 in America, and the Europeans and Canadians were paying $3,500 for what we were paying $10,000 for. So I negotiated a different business strategy with the generic drug companies. We said, “we want you to go from a high margin, low volume, uncertain payment business to a low margin, high volume, certain payment business.” We negotiated the price from $500 down to $139 a year. Then we did the same thing with testing. Then we did the same thing with the diagnostic test, and the same thing with the children's drugs, and three years later we had added 400,000 people to the ranks of those getting medicine through our contracts, which is about a third of all the people of the world added during that period.

Now, I thought I could keep score and tell my donors that I got them a good return for their investment on that. We can tell you how many people will live because of that. The only thing I have done that's harder to keep score on, and I only undertook this because I think the stakes are so high, was this childhood obesity initiative in America. But it's such a horrible problem. Emory University said in the '90s, 27 percent of our health cost increase was directly related to rising rates of obesity. Twenty percent of the Medicaid budget for poor people is related directly to diabetes and its consequences. We have adult onset diabetes, Type 2, showing up in kids for the first time. This is a huge health problem for America. It's going to shorten too many kid's lives. So when they asked us to undertake it with the Heart Association, I said I'd do it, but it’s dangerous. We have an agreement now with the soft drink companies and an agreement with the fast food companies. We are working with the schools, but it scares me every single day, because I know how many lives are at stake, and I'm still not sure how to keep score. It's hard for us to keep score. It's like turning the Titanic around before it hits the iceberg. That's the only thing I've agreed to do where I couldn't keep score and tell my donors this is what you're getting today based on the investments you made, but I thought the stakes were so high I would risk it. By and large, NGOs should be able to define their objectives so that they can always make it. They can always make it, and they can keep score along the way, so they know the money is getting a return.

Mr. Thomas Tighe: Thank you. [Applause]. Paul Orfalea, you're a brilliant businessman. To hear the President talk sounded kind of businesslike to me -- going from a high margin, low volume, to a low volume, high margin. Does that make sense what he's talking about there, Mr. Businessman?

Mr. Paul Orfalea: I think getting paid is an important issue; so that makes a lot of sense.

Mr. Thomas Tighe: What's interesting to many people is that the parallel track of business and public service is coming together, and you're each bringing your filters to issues in a new way. And I know the Orfalea Foundation, as the President talked about with childhood obesity, some of your issues in education and learning differences have been extraordinary, so I just say that for those of you who don't know the Orfalea Family Foundations. Would you like to mention any of that, Paul? Some of your interests?

Mr. Paul Orfalea: I think goal setting is a very tricky subject, and the more you have quantifiable goals up here, the less initiative you take from people in the field. And I know in my business, there is always the temptation that the rules can be -- the Board of Directors put a rule in place, and every time we had a rule, it would take initiative away from the folks in the field. I can tell you countless times we tried to measure things, and it was counterproductive. Let me give you an example: I know I shouldn't, but I will. I sold my business, and when I left -- do you remember we were open 24 hours a day?
[Applause].

I had taken a course, and the person owned these convenience markets, and he said, "You know, the strangest thing happened to us. We would do $3,000 a day in business, but we'd close from midnight to six in the morning. I never understood it, but our daytime business would drop 50 percent." So I wake up two days later, because I went to sleep, and I said, "What did the guy tell you?" If you're open 24 hours a day, your daytime business doubles, which was true. Now, I sell the business, and we get Mackenzie in there. What do they do to justify the million dollar payment? They said we could save you all this money by closing 24 hours a day. What happens? Lo and behold, the daytime business drops.

I could tell you, sometimes if you let the institution run itself, they do silly things. For an example, we would do passport photos, a cool business, costs us a dollar, sell it for $13. And we would have zero business. But the day the Yellow Pages broke, ads cost a dollar a customer. So what happens when you give it to what can they control, advertising. So lo and behold, we cut the Yellow Page ads and, like geniuses, the head office said passport photos would be a terrible business. So I'm always guarded in goal setting. I don't know the difference between quantifying a goal, and I could tell my stores when I walked in, I could see it in their eyes. So I don't know. I think it's very difficult to set goals but at the same time leave room for initiative and rule breaking. [Applause].

President Clinton: But there's a big difference between setting goals that might not make any sense and may foreclose what you're doing. For example, in none of these places did we have any goals other than those that the governments in the country, the health people in the country, the people on the ground wanted to achieve, but I did think that in order to continue to get investors, we ought to be able to scorekeep in those areas we could scorekeep, which I think is different than having artificial goals. For example, we sell these medicines in 58 countries, but we only work in 25, because I don't have the resources to do it right. We help 25 countries actually build their health systems. We also help them deal with malaria in the hot places, TB in the cold places, maternal and child health issues, all the other health issues. I think it's important to know what we're doing and to be able to say what we're doing. But I agree with you.

Usually, you wind up narrowing your vision in having too many rules. We try to have entrepreneurs on the ground. For example, in Rwanda, which lost its whole health system in the genocide in 1994, we just reopened a hospital in a rural area. The man who did it was Paul Farmer, who runs a program called "Partners in Health," that started in Haiti. Some of you may know who he is. [Applause]. My daughter, who loves public health, when I once asked her if she knew Paul Farmer, she said, "Dad, he's a saint. He's our generation's Albert Schweitzer. He should have already won the Nobel prize." Those were the first three sentences out of my daughter's mouth. And then when I got to know Paul Farmer, I agreed with her.

So, he's a 43 year-old guy who is a professor at Harvard Medical School. He's got a Haitian wife. He spends half the year in Haiti, and I encouraged him. I said that this is not acceptable for you to have done this thing you've done in Haiti and not put it in other places. But essentially, he's got the medical personnel that, on paper, by the experts, would be sufficient to treat 20,000 people. He serves an area with more than a million by training paramedical people, by basically creating rural entrepreneurs among poor Haitians who have no education. They've figured out a circular screening program. If somebody gets sick, they carry them to the outer circle, and they just keep going in if they are sicker, and they get in. But the point is he's managed to save Lord only knows how many lives and treat staggering numbers of people with medical personnel that you would swear, if you saw it, could not serve more than 25,000 people. That's the kind of thing I think we ought to be out here supporting. It's good that he can tell you what he did, but none of us who are funding him or supporting him are telling him how to do it. It's interesting to see what had to be done differently in Rwanda as opposed to Haiti. A lot of these people who do this work are phenomenal entrepreneurs, and you've got to find the right people and then give them their head, I think.

Mr. Paul Orfalea: Every layer of management screws things up 20 percent to justify their existence. [Laughter].

President Clinton: I agree with that.

Mr. Paul Orfalea: Right. I remember one guy I worked with. He said, "Just tell me what you want me to do." He's an executive. You hire executives to figure out the confusing things, right? But he'd always want a black-and-white world. So he left our company. And he went into the Navy, and this is what he did for a living. He went like this [gesturing] on the aircraft carrier. There's not a lot of ambiguity in doing this [gesturing]. I just remember so many times that the institution would defy common sense. Just the “more rules committee.” What I liked about you as President, you seemed to get out of the environment and go read the paper and get involved with the real issues. [Applause].

President Clinton: Let me say, this is the only semi-political comment I want to make today, but I want you all to think about it. American politics in the last few years has increasingly been dominated by ideological debates, and the problem with ideology as opposed to a philosophy -- I’m not saying this is true, but let's suppose Paul, who has a business background, is basically a philosophical conservative. Meaning, if the private sector can do it instead of the government, that's good. And if the government has to do it, it would be better to do it locally rather than nationally, that's good. And let's suppose I'm more a philosophical liberal, okay. But we're thinking. Right? And we're looking at the facts. So then we sit here, and we have a discussion. You give us problem X. And our number one goal is to figure out what to do about challenge X that actually works, that makes people's lives better. So we discuss it, and we figure out what we are going to do. If that doesn't work, then we do something else. We learn from each other, because we're different and we're thinking. This country has been well served by these philosophical differences. It's given us the necessary balance between political stability and dynamism. But if you substitute ideology for philosophy, it means the facts don't matter, and debate is unimportant. Everything is assertion and attack, and all evidence inconsistent with what you have already decided the answer is becomes irrelevant. That's never a good way, but in a time with all this ambiguity, to use Paul's words, it's spectacularly unsuited to solve problems and give you good solutions. So I ask you all to think about that. Whatever your politics are, stay with your philosophy, but don't become an ideologue, never become blind to evidence and argument. [Applause].

Mr. Paul Orfalea: Did you ever have the problem where you saw it work in one place and they say, "Oh no, it won't work over there?" We had this program. It was the best program. It was with grandparents being involved -- the elderly and children. It was a great program. It was in the Valley, called "One in a Generation." It just worked. You'd walk inside and see the student's eyes and the elderly's eyes, and you knew this thing worked. You go to the education community, and they have to research it unbelievably. It's like, I talk to the educators, and you'd say, "You know, I think motherhood is kind of cool," and they'd say, "Yes, I think the research has indicated motherhood has a good point." [Laughter]. And I used to find it in our business. You'd say, you know, it works here, why wouldn't it work over there, and they would argue and argue as if your eyes didn't believe what they see. They run their business from their ears. I bet you were very frustrated.

President Clinton: It's a huge problem in education. It's the number one problem. I was complimenting Natalie, your wife, just a few moments ago. She sent four kids from a Harlem high school to a summer program in Montana. I thanked her, because these kids are from a public school in Harlem called the Frederick Douglass Academy. It's a school choice school. In other words, you have to ask to be in it, but there's no grade requirement. There's nothing, you've just got to show you want to be there and that you'll follow the rules. Now, the Frederick Douglass Academy has more than half of its kids below the poverty line. It's almost 100 percent minority. Ninety-eight percent of the graduates go to a four-year college, and 91 percent graduate. [Applause].

New York has a Regents Exam that you have to pass to get a high school diploma. Their pass rate is higher than the state average -- in Harlem, in a public school. Now, if you can do that there, why don't they do that everywhere? Why don't we think that what works there will work everywhere? That's the real problem. I've spent my lifetime working on public education, trying to figure out how it works, but I promise you every problem has been solved by somebody somewhere, and there's this aversion to replication.

When I was Governor, I had this brilliant young teacher in a poor rural school district where there was a huge dropout rate. Nobody wanted to finish high school. He started making them write autobiographical essays, even people who couldn't spell a word right, people who couldn't punctuate a sentence. He had them writing essays. And they started in the ninth grade, and they had to write four a year, and they had to keep doing it. This is unbelievable. In one year, the dropout rate went to zero because, all of a sudden, education became relevant to these kids, because it was a way of being able to express themselves -- about how they felt about their lives and what they wanted. At the state level, I paid for any school district in my state to send somebody there to learn about it. Only 10 percent of the school districts did.

Then we had one school district where we lowered classes in the early grades, got rid of these Title I special ed designations in early grades, because you really can't tell then, and had six-year-olds mentoring one other. The test scores doubled. The test scores of the kids that would have been in special education tripled. The test scores of the kids that were held back for a second year quadrupled. I paid for it. Anybody anywhere in the state could go and look at it, but only 10 percent of the school districts sent people. It's a huge problem. And it's the one thing that the school voucher people have. I've never supported it, but you've got to figure out how to keep innovation and have people copy things that work in an environment if you have a monopoly on revenues and a monopoly on customers. I don't know what to do. It's very frustrating, because there are public schools in this country that are completely globally competitive with a student base that is poor. The parents are uneducated, they even don't have English as their first language, and they are soaring. The frustration is that it's not done everywhere.

Mr. Paul Orfalea: I think also school principals -- look at how much input they get. They could say, "Well, I'm not going to do anything, I've got the Federal Government over here giving me those rules. I've got the State of California over here. I've got the California Board of Education over here. I've got my school board over here." So you get a principal that really says, "You know, I'll take the path of least resistance here." They manage their career. They don't manage the school, possibly. And sometimes it's just so blatantly obvious. And I think one of the problems with education –

Mr. Thomas Tighe: Paul, can I jump in one time? A big thing at UCSB, a fine educational institution, let us not go on too far with that – [Applause].

You probably just answered this question in practice, but before we turn to a few questions from the students, the opening film showed so many tragedies that are going on around the world. And the news sometimes seems to think if we don't all kill each other, we are going to blow up the world. If we don't blow up the world, it's going to burn up from global warming, or maybe we'll just all die from some horrible disease. Yet you two men are known as wild, energetic optimists filled with hope, and you don't have to be doing what you are doing right now. So can you share with the students where this source of hope and optimism comes from, and what gets you up in the morning and charged up for that type of thing you were just talking about? Paul?

Mr. Paul Orfalea: Well, we're surrounded by success in this world. The most successful book ever written is the Yellow Pages. Every page is a success story. They wouldn't be there if they weren't doing a service in your community. We are surrounded by success. When you think of an egg, where does an egg get laid? I don't even know where, but it comes in my little container for, what is it, eight cents, and you go, that's an amazing process. If you look at the world with a sense of wonder, this thing works, and it works very well. When you look at it since childhood, polio is cured, we don't have the commie bastards running our country. [Laughter]. And you look at all of the so many good things around us that I think it's okay. I remember one time I was in Modern Science, because I was a bad student. It was the ninth grade, and I heard everything was so horrible about the planet earth, horrible, horrible, horrible. Then the Modern Science teacher said, "You know, Earth has 17 percent oxygen. That's really a tremendously good thing. Because if it was too much, it would all blow up. If it was too little, we wouldn't be able to do stuff." I thought to myself, "That's the first good thing I've ever heard about this planet." [Laughter].

President Clinton: I think he just answered the question. Every day when you get up, you have a choice about how you view whatever the facts are. Life is always imperfect, and there will always be problems. It's part of the human condition. So you have to choose, are you going to see the glass as half empty or half full? It may be that we're a little more optimistic, because we have lived a little longer. For example, he talked about the commie bastards. That was funny. I think it's highly unlikely with all the problems we've got, we're worried about North Korea and Iran. It is tragic that the peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians has not been restarted. It's a good time to do it, too, because all the Arab states now are worried more about Iran than Israel. There's lots of problems. We're worried about climate change, and we should be, because if we continue to stick our heads in the sand, sometime over the next 50 years, we'll have a pretty calamitous situation. But there is an economically viable way out of it, and one that would improve our national security. If I were running for president this year, I would almost run on nothing but energy. [Applause].

Here's what I want to say: We all feel more vulnerable because of 9/11, because it means we can be hit here. It used to be that was something that happened to somebody that we were supposed to go save. Now it could happen to us. And it could happen to us. But our country and the future of freedom and free enterprise and human aspiration looks brighter to me in the 21st Century than it did in the 20th. Don't forget, you had 9 million people killed in World War I, 12 million people killed in World War II, 20 million people killed in the Soviet Union in the purges between the war and immediately afterward, God only knows how many million people killed in the Chinese purge, 2 million people killed in Cambodia. You forget what happened in the 20th Century. How many people still live in slavery? And we know more about problems elsewhere than we used to know, because of the globalization of information technology, which means our conscience is now moved by Darfur, for example. But you should see it as a positive thing that you are interconnected with people all over the world, and that you can make some difference.

But the fact that the world has problems should not be a cause for cynicism or despondence or despair. That's what makes it fun, to go hit them. Think how much more boring life would be if there were no challenges. We would all just sit around blissed out all the time. I think this is a choice. He makes a choice. [Indicating Mr. Orfalea]. Don't you think it's interesting how he sees the world different from you? He said that Yellow Pages thing. I bet none of you ever thought that. So how could you not be optimistic if you've met enough people, if you've known enough things, and if you know enough about human potential? I think people ought to be asking this question of the wild-eyed cynics and the wild-eyed pessimists, not the wild-eyed optimists. I think human history is on our side. [Applause].

Mr. Thomas Tighe: As we expected and feared, time would get short, and we had asked the students at the Global Studies to prepare some questions for this day, and they had great ones, and we're going to be able to ask one. Erin Perez, it's yours. So Erin Perez had asked, "There seems to be a culture –

Mr. Paul Orfalea: I can --

President Clinton: Hey, we'll stay for the questions. We're not in a hurry.
[Applause]. That's the great thing when you get two old, semi-retired guys up on the stage. Nothing better to do today. Go ahead.

Mr. Thomas Tighe: Erin Perez asks, "There seems to be a culture war between religious and secular politics, both in America and in the world in general. How can we get beyond this?"

Mr. Paul Orfalea: I think we need an invasion from some Martians, or some outer space people. It would be great if somebody outside came along and said, "Hey, by the way, you're being silly here," and have a common threat. But I think this environment is going to be that common threat. When it gets a little hotter and we have all of these problems, I think people are going to pull together like they never have before. I remember in San Francisco, when they had the water shortage and people consumed 19 percent of the water they had prior. If there is a common reason, and I know my neighbor is sacrificing as well as I am, I think we'll all pull together.

President Clinton: Actually, you know that point he made, that's what the movie Independence Day was all about, right? Remember that? [Laughter]. What is the premise of it? You're laughing. This is a very serious point. What is the premise of it? That we need an outside threat to remind us of the self-evident truth that our common humanity is more important than our interesting differences. [Applause].

I completely agree that climate change is going to do that. Look it up, there was a full-page ad in the New York Times not very long ago signed by 18, or however many, leaders of Christian Evangelical organizations that had previously been identified as religious political activists in a way that was divisive, not united. "We do think Jesus wants us to save the world," is basically what the ad said, but it was a beautiful ad, really. It was a beautiful idea. So I think he's right.

But on a more mundane and practical level, here's the problem between religious politics and secular politics: no person of faith can possibly participate in any endeavor -- a family, parenthood, a business, politics -- without his or her actions being informed by their faith. That's good. And we should honor that. Minnesota is about to elect the first Muslim Congressman in American history. He looks like an impressive man to me. I think it's a good thing. Why has religion been so divisive in politics? Because of a religious heresy common to all faiths. No Christian, no Jew, no Muslim, no Hindu, no Buddhist can fail to acknowledge the existence of this religious heresy somewhere around the world. And what is that heresy? If you believe in any faith, you believe it represents the Truth, capital "T." Right? It's a long stretch from saying your faith represents the Truth to saying that you can be in full possession of the truth, and that you can turn it into a political program that's fully true, and anybody that rejects your program is less human than you are and deserves to die. That is the heresy.

That is what is wrong with the fundamentalist terrorists who are Muslims, but that is what is wrong in the fight in Sri Lanka between the Hindu Tamils and the Sinhalese Buddhists. That is what is wrong in the fight between the Hindus and the Muslims in Western India over what should happen to the beautiful old mosque that was torn down, and they want to build a Hindu temple where they believe the blue-skinned god Rama died over 1,500 years ago. That's what's wrong in all these fights. In America, when people are demonized when they don't agree with people who are part of the Christian right who say, "We do have possession of absolute truth, and you're not a good human being if you don't agree with us," it's a religious heresy. It's a heresy. Why?

The most important Christian writer, St. Paul, said -- everybody at these Christian weddings, they always read the provision, the verse from Paul's letter to the Corinthians, "Now abideth faith, hope, and love, these three; and the greatest of these is love," actually doesn't belong at a wedding because the love that he is talking about is love for humanity, not romantic love. Why in the world would a Christian writer say that love is greater than religious faith? Read this. Go home. All of you that are Christians, you go home and read this tonight. First Corinthians 13, two verses above it. It says "For now on this earth, I see through a glass darkly, but then," i.e., in life after death, face-to-face, "now I know in part, but then," in life after death, "I will know even as I am known." The reason love is more important than faith is because you see through a glass darkly and you know in part. All other faiths have some of the same things. The Torah says, "He who turns aside a stranger might as well turn aside from the most God." The Koran says that Allah put different people on the earth not that they might despise one another, but that they might come to know one another. The Dharmapada, the Buddha, says that "You're not fully human unless you feel the pain of another as an arrow stuck in your own body." And the human genome researchers found out that all human beings are 99.9 percent the same. So the problem is not that people in politics bring their religion. Not that there's an honest debate about abortion or gay marriage or whatever you want to do. The problem comes when someone says, "I have the absolute truth. I have turned it into an absolutely true political program, and if you don't like it you are less human than I am." That's the problem. [Applause].

Mr. Thomas Tighe: Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Erin Perez, for that question. Brett Linus would like to know, "What political changes need to be made to keep genocides like Darfur from occurring?"

President Clinton: Here's the problem right now. First of all, you all know of my disagreements with the Bush Administration, but I think President Bush has been very good on this at a rhetorical level. Everybody in his Administration have called it for what it is. They called it genocide from the get-go. They've been very strong. We don't have any soldiers to send there, because we've got them all tied up. Here's the problem. The United Nations in general will not send military forces into a country where the country's government opposes it, and if they do, you have to have the whole Security Council in favor of it. The Chinese in particular are reluctant to vote for a tough resolution in Darfur, because they want the oil in the Sudan. They want the oil in the Sudan to authorize the military mission. You've got other people reluctant to send their forces in, because they're afraid of the violence. We could send a NATO force in there and really do some serious good. Or the alternative is, we could actually bring in more Muslim forces, because this is a Muslim-on-Muslim violence situation, from Bangladesh or from other places. But 7,600 troops from the African Union, who don't even have interoperable communications, cannot protect those people, especially since they have an uncertain mandate. The major dispositions are from Rwanda and Nigeria. They both have quite competent militaries, but there are not enough of them, and they don't have enough authority.

So we have three options. You can give the Africans a whole lot more money and get them to send even more of their troops there, but in order to do it, they have to have one commander, good communications, and a much more robust mandate to bust the people that are trying to kill the innocents in Darfur. The alternative would be to have the U.N. authorize a force and have NATO coordinate it, but bring in as many Muslim forces from outside Africa to go with the African Union's as possible. The third thing, if they won't do it, is to have NATO go in and do it with as many willing countries as possible. I rather think that the military fallout would be less than people believe. That is, I don't believe that there would be a huge problem. Now, to go to the nut of your question, the fundamental problem is that peacekeeping for the United Nations is still on an ad hoc basis. That is, every time there's a problem, the poor Secretary General has to go hustle up the troops. Then he's got to go hustle up the money. And if you're hustling up troops and money, it's hard to hustle up the votes on the Security Council to deal with the politics.

Just think if we had -- I proposed this in 1993, by the way, and the American military had a coronary. They thought I had lost my mind. But I believe that every country with any substantial military should say to the United Nations, "This year we will allocate X many troops to internationally approved peace keeping, and we will have training exercises with other troops every summer. We'll talk about chain of command, and we'll arrange the funding. We're about to elect a new Secretary General from Korea. It would be a good thing if he knew that every year he had an allocation from all the countries all over the world, mixing geography, religion, culture, of 50,000 troops that he could call on to send to places like Darfur. Just think about it. If we were ready from the get-go to do that, think how much easier it would be to build up the political pressure to get the votes in the U.N., and how much support there would be, if there was one obstreperous country stopping it, for going ahead and taking the action anyway. So that's what I think should be done institutionally to get us off the dime here. [Applause].

Mr. Thomas Tighe: Well, reluctant as I am to contradict our semi-retired gentlemen on stage, I have been told that was the last question, and I was also told, President Clinton, that you would like to make a presentation.

Mr. Paul Orfalea: Could I ask you a question?

Mr. Thomas Tighe: And I tried.

Mr. Paul Orfalea: What do you look for when you interview people?

President Clinton: You guys can leave if you're bored. We're having a good time. What do I look for when I interview people? The light in their eyes. Truly I do. Usually when we hire somebody, we'll get down to a proposed candidate, and they'll bring a proposed candidate to me, so I don't do a lot of interviewing in the way I used to. The way I interview other people is informed by the way I think of elections. For example, I think an election is the world's most interesting job interview. You think about it. Think about a Presidential Election. What's the difference? You're hiring a person to do a job, a very important job, but the interesting thing about the job interview is that you require the person to define the job that you're hiring that person for. Think about it. It's not like you give them a job description and then somebody says, "Well, you've got to elect me, I made better grades in college." Right? "Or you've got to elect me because I did another job." Every election is a struggle to define what the job will be. And the people normally hire the person based on two things: one, how do I feel about this person's leadership potential, and do I trust this person? And number two: what about the job definition? How good did this person do in defining the job that I'm about to hire him or her to do? So that's what I do.

When I interview somebody, I look at them, and I don't ask so many questions about the job; maybe just one or two. I'm more interested in what kind of people they are, why they are here, why in the world they want to work for me. They could be making more money doing something else. What are their real interests? And I look at the light in their eyes. I like people with a lot of fire and get-up and go and initiative, and I also like people that are having fun. Life is too short. Most of human history, most people who have ever lived, never once in their life went to a meeting like this, never once in their life had much time except at night around the camp fire to have discussions like this. The whole idea of being as self-conscious as we are was alien. Those of you who will come through this great university here, you will be given a chance to do something that you like for work instead of working just to stay alive to keep body and soul together. And so I'm going to look for somebody that wants to have a good time and wants to believe in the mission and will give people a lot of zip. Life is too short to be miserable at work.

Mr. Paul Orfalea: What I really liked about you as President is when you went to Oklahoma City and you said, "I'll never call someone a bureaucrat again." That really resonated. You had beautiful comments at a lot of places, but that one really resonated well with me.

President Clinton: Do you remember what he's talking about? When Timothy McVeigh blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City and killed all those people, including a man who had been on my Secret Service detail and people who were related to friends of mine, it was immediately apparent that he had been part of and affiliated with some of these right wing militia government-hating groups. So a lot of people went right to that, and I did. I went after the Militia movement. I went to Michigan State and gave a commencement address. A lot of these Militia people were up in Michigan, and I banged them pretty hard. But I realize that, basically, criticizing the government and people who work there have become almost a right of citizenship in America, and it had become commonplace in political parlance. You know, government bureaucrats would mess up a two-car parade. If there's some way to screw it up, they will. They're wasting all of your tax dollars, and all of that. One of the years when I was President, the Social Security Administration won an award from one of the major business magazines for having the best customer service of any big organization in America, because we had good online service, and we had good around-the-clock telephone service. And I realize that every time in my life in an offhanded way, even if making a joke, I referred to a public servant as a bureaucrat -- it's actually quite an honored word in some cultures, but in our culture it has a little bit of a pejorative term -- that I may have incrementally contributed to that level of disdain which grew into a cancer in Timothy McVeigh's heart. And I just never wanted to do it again, and I thought maybe I could help my fellow citizens to walk away from it too, if I took some ownership for whatever mistakes I had made in contributing to that climate.

Mr. Thomas Tighe: Ladies and gentlemen we do have a brief presentation –

Mr. Paul Orfalea: One last question.

President Clinton: One last question.

Mr. Thomas Tighe: Okay, I tried again, everybody.

Mr. Paul Orfalea: Do you remember Deaver, when he went to the White House? You told me this. He said -- remember Deaver, the Republican.

President Clinton: Michael Deaver.

Mr. Paul Orfalea: He went to the White House, and he said why you'd be re-elected.

President Clinton: Oh yeah. This is an interesting story. I don't even remember if I wrote this in my book or not. After we got beat in the '94 election, the Democrats, we just got whacked, a result I hope to see reversed soon. Anyway, we got whacked. Michael Deaver, who had worked for President Reagan, was a friend of my Chief of Staff, Mack McLarty. So he called McLarty, and he asked him an interesting question, because all the political pundits said, "Clinton's through, he's been rendered totally irrelevant, he won't get enough votes to count next time, he may not even be the nominee of the Democratic Party next time. He's deader than a doornail.”

So Deaver calls McLarty in the middle of all this and he says, "I have one question for you." He said, "Does Bill Clinton like to work in the Oval Office?" He said, "Oh, my God, he loves it. I can hardly get him out of there. He works at night. He works on the weekend. He has all his meetings in there." He said, "Well then, he'll be re-elected. Don't worry about it." He said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Mack, look at the Oval Office. It's the most brilliantly lit office building on earth, practically. Half of it's glass. You've got light all the time, and there's four doors into it. You're not in total control. People can always kind of come and invade your space." He said only really secure, upbeat people liked to work in the Oval Office. He said Kennedy loved the Oval Office, Reagan loved the Oval Office. He said, you just go back and look. Roosevelt loved the Oval Office. He said people that love working there, as opposed to President Nixon, who had an office over in the Old Executive Office Building, a lot of other Presidents worked in that little room back behind the Oval Office. He said everybody that really prefers to be in the Oval Office and likes to be exposed to people and sort of is outgoing and sunny and optimistic are all re-elected. So he said, "Ignore the pundits. He's going to win because he likes to work in the Oval Office. “ Now we'll do it.

Mr. Thomas Tighe: Thanks.

President Clinton: Now, I want to explain what this is. I asked Paul and Natalie this year to join us at the second annual Clinton Global Initiative, where we raised $7.5 billion in two-and-a-half days for all of those things I just mentioned. They were actually the people I was looking for, in the sense that many people who come work with us all year long. We have a commitments team, because if you come and don't commit to do something, or you commit and don't do it, you can't come back next year. This is not a talkfest. We're interested in doers. So a lot of our people come already knowing what they are going to do. But the people I love are the people that come, listen, learn, and then decide what they're going to do. So this is the commitment that Paul and Natalie have decided to make as a result of their participation, and I want to read it to you. We commit, and we sign it. I get everybody to sign on the dotted line, not that I don't trust them. It's a nice little pledge card here. "We commit to stimulate change and generate impact in the areas of climate change and energy, global health, religious and ethnic conflict, and poverty alleviation." They are going to do something in each of our four areas, which I really appreciate. "Through committing $400,000 to one: promote safer and cleaner energy through the Fossil Free By '33 campaign in the Santa Barbara region; two: support World Bicycle Relief in providing transportation linking villages, accessing markets, schools, health clinics, and a variety of other services in developing countries; three: provide capacity building equipment for improved warehouse operations to Direct Relief International;” a great California NGO, and four, this will be popular here, "Create fellowships for grad students interested in working in the NGO sector." Thank you very much. [Applause].

Mr. Paul Orfalea: Thank you.

Audience Member: We love you, Bill!

Mr. Thomas Tighe: Ladies and gentlemen, this completes our program. We wanted to thank the Orfalea team for bringing us all together, Chancellor Yang and Mark Juergensmeyer of the UCSB team, and most of all, President Clinton, thank you for making this a special day. Thank you very much.