Broadcast of Minnesota meeting are made possible by the law firm of Oppenheimer wolf and Donnelly with offices in both Minneapolis. And st. Paul providing legal services to businesses in 40 countries around the world. Minnesota meeting is a public affairs Forum which brings National and international leaders to speak in Minnesota members of Minnesota meeting represent leaders from corporations government Academia, and the professions this year. Minnesota meeting is celebrating its 12th year in the marketplace of ideas.We are very pleased today to present today's Speaker John rollag and the former Chief Executive Officer of cray research who will discuss the five months. He spent in the Clinton Administration as the number two man at the Department of Commerce. John is a graduate of MIT and Engineering with an MBA from Harvard University until January of 93. He was chairman and chief executive officer of cray research. The leading supplier of super computers worldwide during his tenure first as president beginning in 1977. And then as chairman starting in 1981, he led cray research from a start-up operation with fewer than 100 people to a highly profitable and internationally respected Fortune 500 company with annual revenues in excess of 800 million dollars and more than 5,000 employees in 21 countries.Before joining cray research in 1975. Mr. Rogan held sales and marketing management positions with Control Data Corporation Monsanto corporation and International time-sharing Inc. In January of 93. President Clinton named John roll wagon as his nominee for deputy secretary of the Department of Commerce. In May after resigning his position at cray research and serving several months in Washington as deputy secretary designate John concluded that he could make a greater contribution from the private sector and withdrew his name from nomination before going to Washington. He took an active role in public policy issues and he was a member of the national computer systems policy project today. He serves as a director of several organizations, including Minnesota Public Radio following his presentation. There will be an opportunity to ask questions and represent as the Minnesota meeting will circulate in the audience to take your questions and with that brief introduction. I am now pleased to present John Rowan. Thank you. Larry for that very nice introduction. I appreciate it very much. Thank you all for being here. It's wonderful to see so many familiar faces of friends and colleagues from the last hate to think how many years in this community that I've that I've been around. I'm particularly pleased to see Harlan Cleveland here who's my public policy Mentor. I guess I would say and the founder of this organization from the Hubert Humphrey Institute days. If I get in trouble with the this topic, which is a new one to me, we'll just turn to Harlan and he can sort of fill you in I'm also particularly pleased to see representatives from three high schools here to of which I have some sort of connection with one is Washburn where two of my daughter's went to school. Very successfully very happily. Another is Como High School where I would have gone to school if my parents had moved to Highland when I was 12 years old and also Fridley and I understand a number of high school classes are listening to this on the radio as well. And I'm very very pleased to see that I'm especially appreciative of this opportunity to talk to you about this rather extraordinary experience that I had at the first part of this year. I think in many ways, I got to live certainly a dream of mine and it may even be a dream of many of yours to participate at a high level in a in a national Administration and see it from the from the inside out and like you I was pretty surprised when I came back here in May but delighted to do so and the lighted therefore to talk to a group of neighbors and friends about about what happened for me. This experience was something of a personal epiphany. I really saw things that I hadn't seen before not just about the four months in Washington, but about the last 30 years of my life. It was in a way like leaving the planet in many ways, like leaving the planet particularly the Minnesota planet and but I had an extraordinary opportunity to learn about that new planet or new to me at least and also even more importantly a chance to look back at this planet and see it from a different angle and perhaps understand a bit more about how we all work and how we all work particularly with the federal government at the simplest level. The basic realization that I came to is that we're at the wheel and it's about time we took charge of what's going on in this country. We may not realize it but we are in charge of the title of this talk poses that question about who's in charge here and let me put it to you immediately that we're in charge here just without any any question. And if we're concerned about the goings on in Washington, and I believe we should be concerned about the goings-on in Washington. The place to look for an answer is in the mirror. Now, let me try to explain that a little bit from from my point of view having served in Washington. I didn't always think the way I just described about Washington or about how our government works but things started to change on December 28th, December 28th, Beverly and our children and I went up to our Lake place in Wisconsin. We like to spend a week there after Christmas and play in the snow. So forth and a phone call came in the phone call actually was taken by our Nanny whom I want to point out is a US citizen and their representatives here from Piedmont a week as well. And they know that she is fully tax paid. So I passed that test that any rate. She took a phone call from a fellow named Peter night. She said Peter just called you and he said you're supposed to call back right away or the She put it she said somebody from Al Gore's office called and said you should call back right away. So I had some clue that something was going to happen. Well that call initiated a really tumultuous five months round trip from our home in st. Paul Minnesota to a suite at the Jefferson Hotel, which was home for a couple months to the inauguration to my resignation as chairman and CEO of cray research after more than 17 years to Camp David to my new job as deputy secretary of Commerce to a new home then in McLean Virginia and new schools for our kids and finally back to st. Paul with a number of stops at the White House along the way and what I saw and experienced during that Odyssey has changed forever how I look at our government and what we can expect from it when we did get that call Beverly and I really thought seriously, of course about this issue the call came through I asked Peter if I could have 24 hours to think about this. They didn't know the specifics. Job, they just knew it was at the deputy secretary level and they were looking for someone with technical experience business experience to help in the development of Technology policy particularly in the new Administration. We thought about it seriously for a couple reasons number one both Beverly and I believe that the and I think most of you would agree that the world is that it is at a critical turning point right now not only here in this country, but around the world and that that this is a very important time if you look out at the world and see how our institutions are being shaken right at their foundations, we see incredible changes in the political makeup around the world with the most exciting event probably being last week and the the beginning of a Reconciliation between the PLO and Israel, for example, but also very scary things happening at the same time with with major changes and the tragedy and the in the Balkans that sort of thing and the changes in this country particularly in the economy. It's Obviously a time of major change incidentally, it's not a time that's unprecedented. There was a Russian Economist named kondratyev that identified a cycle in economic and political events that seem to turn about every 50 years. And in fact, he would have predicted this about this time the last time we were in a situation like this was probably in the late 30s and early 40s where the old ways were breaking down and the future was terribly terribly uncertain and the situation is like that again today in some ways. I like to think of this situation in sailboat terms. I have a couple different sailboat analogies and this is like executing a jibe jibe for I'm not an expert sailor, but at least know about this a job for those of you that don't know about sailing occurs when you're sailing pretty much downwind and you have to round a buoy turning away from the wind and the the sale has a tendency to slam over from one side to the other and Sometimes the boat tips over to so it's a difficult maneuver to turn but typically you're turning on another downwind leg where you can have the sale at your back for a long hair the wind at your back for a long time and that kind of a turn was executed in the 30s and 40s. When in the aftermath of the of the second world war the United States picked a certain course, and for example, the Soviet Union picked another course and it shows the stark contrast and how you can come out. I think we're at a time where indeed if we execute this turn properly. We can have the wind in our backs for 25 years. But if we don't execute the turn properly we can be blown as far off course as the Soviet Union was after the second second world war. So when we looked at that opportunity to go out to Washington, we were excited about maybe making a contribution to to that turn to do it properly and at the very least having a front-row seat as we turned around. I was also reinforced in that by Al Gore. He's really the reason that I wound up in the administrator and Ministration I had met him the previous summer in his office. I'd met him long before that. But I was in his office the previous summer last June not last you a year ago last June and he had decided at that point to withdraw from the presidential race. And I told him that I was pleased he done that and he looked at me kind of puzzled. He said why is that I said two reasons. I said number one now, we can take your book. Seriously. It's not just a piece of Camp 8 dogma and number two. I said, I think the next president gets to be Herbert Hoover and the one after that gets to be Franklin Roosevelt. I just assumed you were Franklin Roosevelt. Well, he came he came by to visit cray research as it turned out the following August in that in the midst of the campaign is the vice presidential candidate. We talked about that conversation. He said of course, I remember that but and I questioned why he had decided to run for vice president. He made a very logical answer. He said, well, you don't exactly say no to your party's presidential candidate when he asks you and secondly he liked my book to is what he said. But then he said some words that really came back to me on that December evening when Beverly and I were thinking about that. He said John, you know what? I don't think this time we have four years to waste. We really have to get on with it. So when the call came and we heard that we said, yes, we're going to go and we're going to go with all engines burning and it says committed away as we possibly as we possibly can now I must say in answering life in Washington. It started with a bang. It was really spectacular on January 28th. One month after we got that call in December. I found myself on a plane to Washington Beverly and I checked into the Jefferson Hotel we both woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and thing what have we done but we were there the next morning. I was picked up by Ron Brown's driver who's my new boss. It was at that time the Secretary of Commerce and was driven out to Camp David where I had an opportunity to spend. A whole weekend in a planning session. I'm sure most of you have been in these kinds of sessions where you talk about the mission of your organization and what you're going to do to accomplish the goals of the organization only this time it was the with the president the vice-president their wives the whole cabinet and two or three other deputies that had been named at that time. I came away from that meeting. Absolutely Sky High because of the intelligence of the people involved because of their integrity their real commitment to accomplishing things their Covenant with the people meaning all of us and their Covenant with each other to work together in ways that perhaps hadn't existed in Washington for some time. Furthermore. I personally was welcomed with open arms from the president on down in terms of being really the only operating CEO and the administration somebody coming directly out of Industry particularly a high-tech industry somebody taking on a responsible administrative management job in the government. It couldn't have been nicer. In fact, I've described it to people as say It says if somebody set me down at a poker table had the dealer deal me a full house gave me a million dollars worth of chips and said have a pleasant evening, you know, it's pretty hard not to from that point. So you're probably sitting there saying well, hey what happened? I mean come on, that sounds pretty good actually and so let me try to express some of what happened and I must say at the beginning it is difficult. I met with some other people in the government and some that had been in the government before and we all agreed. This is just before I left and we all agreed that there's really no effective way to describe it without doing it seeing it from the inside is a totally different thing from looking at it on the outside and I certainly knew a lot about the government when I went I had dealt with the Commerce Department in particular for probably 15 years on a very close level been out there frequently and thought and was prepared to deal with the bureaucracy. Percy for example prepared to deal with the complexity of the operation prepared to deal I thought with the with the politics of the situation and when I got there I found out I was totally unprepared and really naive and how this all worked for one thing. I thought I could go and let Ron Brown do the politics and I could just you know, stay in the back and do the management. Well, the government doesn't work. That way. I was as much a politician as Ron Brown or even the president of the United States that was a political appointment and and had political requirements attached to it. I got the first clue of how things were going to work when I showed up at the office after that wonderful weekend at Camp David on Monday morning. I didn't find Ron Brown. He was at the White House working with the president on the economic plan where he was for the next two or three weeks. I hardly saw him during that period there's a fellow there named Rob Stein who is the chief of staff absolute brick. I mean in probably the most difficult working environment I've ever experienced. He was a Pillar of Strength, but he was supervising frantic activity on the part of a And team and this is point. Number one. The transition process is really extraordinary where we turn over control of this government from one group to another group. The transition team was a set of intelligent young people who were sitting in for the senior appointees who had not yet been appointed all of them were doing the best they could to kind of keep things together. But at the same time they were all very in a high anxiety mode because they all want a jobs finally in the Commerce department. They didn't know what jobs they were going to get. All they do is they were sitting in temporarily the basic impression. I got was of a lot of activity and not a lot of movement. It was just a lot of running around I got a taste to of what the protocols are like in Washington because I was shown to my temporary office which was sort of down the hall and around the corner and you could only enter it through somebody else's office and I had brought my assistant Susie tichenor who's a former naval officer and very senior executive at crazy search to work with me in this new environment. They put her in my office too. So she's sitting in my lap kind of and we're trying to get organized and I'm not exactly used to this kind of physical arrangement. And the reason I wasn't in my final office is because that would be offensive to the Senate see the Senate has to approve my appointment and that would be presumptuous of me to sit in my office. So I started getting a little flavor of how it is how it works. Then I started getting some briefings on various departments in in Commerce and you have to understand that that Commerce is quite an elaborate organization. It includes everything from the weather bureau to the patent office to the Census Bureau to the National Fisheries to the National Institute of Science and Technology standards and Technology. I know I'm missing lots of others huge potpourri of activities and then I found out about how it works with with Congress and this is this is the first lesson in the Nation of powers and the nobody's in charge philosophy of our of our government. You have to imagine being in charge as I was of an organization of three and a half billion dollars 35,000 employees with multiple departments and a board of directors of 535 people which itself is divided into and then between those two parts divides itself into literally hundreds of Committees of which we would deal with at least 50 and that's okay except each committee sets the budget for their favorite Department within the Commerce Department. In fact, there are two committees for every department. So it's like having two Committees of the board for the mailroom to Committees of the board for the accounting department to Committees of the board for this and that the other thing and that that each of those budgets is set by those committees for those departments in my job is to try to organize the whole thing come up with a comprehensive budget that's difficult enough, but the board of directors also has no difficulty whatsoever in voting. As a whole to reduce the overall budget by 10% but of course if you attack any one of those individual budgets of those committees, those all go up 10% So it's an impossible impossible task. It's very much of a nobody's in charge environment. But at the same time we run a government that appropriately so is non-exclusive. We don't exclude anybody from the conversation and we can't the government belongs to all of us and therefore we're very much in a mode where everybody is in charge where where it's impossible really to reach a common agreement that's very clear and pure because all of the people are at the table and can't and can't leave the table. Sometimes we talk about the government running more like a business in a more efficient way and certainly it can but at the very heart of it we have to understand I think as I came to understand the government is not a business it is Tushin Ali different from a business. It's not just a bureaucratic over bureaucratic business or over bureaucratic church or university. It is a constitutionally different different organism where it is really impossible to set these kinds of objectives and then divide up the work and and pursue those objectives, but it's also Complicated by the fact that in this environment. There are significant controls that are applied to the system particularly in human resource terms where really we have to operate as employees of the government on an assumption basically of distrust. I have to say as I excuse me. The there's thought I'm trying to get to the assumption that we make it seems and we do it from back here for government employees is that this is different even from being on welfare because at least being on welfare, we're taking money from the public trough in a straightforward manner is employees. We're pretending to work for the money when in fact when in fact, we're not and so we find that there are there are a number of controls on people to avoid taking advantage of those situations and and because of that that creates an environment where people sense that they are not being trusted and therefore they behave in not trustworthy and not trustworthy ways. Also it works in kind of a perverse reverse fashion in terms of control and I saw this in the appointment process, for example while I was there there was significant effort going into a pointing senior people. For for the administration but there was a great concern about how those people would be appointed and to be sure that they had loyal to the administration and could operate effectively within that political environment. The difficulty was that that slowed down the process and in slowing down the process. It really resulted in a lack of control. The result was at that time and still is to a large extent that a number of the senior positions weren't filled and as a result of that there was there's pending difficulty for the administration because of the career people know that they are not there to attend to the policy decisions. Those are the policy people they can keep the problems under control temporarily, but they cannot actually solve the problems until the political appointees are there and therefore there are all of these little fires out there waiting to become larger conflagrations. In this environment as well. I have to say that there are some interesting characteristics that develop for instance perceptions are very important. I was in part of a debate about the NAFTA agreement and in that debate, it was a question on the side agreements as to how we should handle the environmental issues. For example, and there were two choices in front of us you'll be interested in I think one is it turns out that the environmental rules in Mexico and Canada and the United States are all very similar but the enforcement in the United States and in Canada is much stronger than it is in Mexico. So the question was should we try to get the environmental rules in force greater or more effectively or should we tighten the environmental rules in all three countries to improve the environmental performance and there was a great deal of support for the latter choice on the basis that of course that looks better you can change the Rules and and claim great credit for having change the rules but the impact probably works the other way. In fact, I made a point in the discussion of saying if I were a polluter I would support you and that approach because I know that it would take a long time to get agreement on what those new rules should be I would make it as complicated as possible. In the meantime. I would continue my pollution on the other hand. If you really forced me to live up to the rules as they are now, that's more difficult. So there are these negative aspects obviously to the environment but I don't want to leave you just with that the fact is they're very positive things as well and some that are sort of in between. In fact, some of you who know me know that I have a Fascination for Eastern religions and particularly loud Sue and some Zen philosophies. The government is the closest thing I've ever seen to as an organization in this sense in the sense that there is no future there is no past there is only the present moment. And I observe that very much in in Washington and I think I understand a little bit about the mechanism and it comes from our political system. The fact is that the two politicians in Washington can look at each other and agree to whatever happens to be the subject can agree on a policy or a decision and and understand full well that when they separate five minutes later it can change and the reason is that the world changes either Bosnia happens or the president calls or there's some specific action in the world that caused it to change and politicians in my experience can accept that and operate with with that environment. Therefore. They know that whatever agreement is made is made for this specific moment in time and it's an accurate representation of where we are but it's not necessarily where we're going to be in about five minutes depending on how the world changes and if you can adapt to that that's a very positive environment. Really. It gives you great freedom. And that's where some of the misunderstanding comes between the private sector and the government because of that operation in the in the in the present moment. This also leads to a situation and this is perhaps at the Crux of it where I believe that our country's Constitution was originally set up to promote compromise that it's a system of creating compromise among all of us as Citizens and that we appoint or elect people to represent our points of view in Washington and that they are to sit down and compromise. It may have worked that way in the old days. It doesn't work that way now and that's partly because of the technology that we're sharing today for example, by being able to talk on the on the radio but in Washington, let me tell you that every movement is very much in the public and very much in the open and that creates a situation of balance rather than compromise. Let me explain the difference in compromise. It requires some privacy and some time a chance to sit down and compare notes and try to explore where we might find compromise and to do it in private so that we don't get committed before we're ready to be committed in Washington everything happens under the glare of the klieg lights and all of the constituents know what's happening as it's happening. Therefore often. What a politician may think of as compromise is in fact interpreted as selling out and the the real pressure is constantly to take a strong position in One Direction or another to represent ones constituents in the strongest way possible. This creates kind of a constantly moving equilibrium of different forces pulling this way and that and going towards the middle towards the compromise does not necessarily serve your purposes. I'll use another sailing analogy in Washington. It is like being on a broad reach and the wind is blowing hard. From the side and in order to keep the boat up, right you have to lean way into the wind and then you find your course now in the middle somewhere and walking towards the compromise moving towards the compromise at least too soon is like standing next to the Mast and the bolt goes over boom like that. So it is this constant balance that's going on and but it is a system that works because it does produce this this compromise position and I think I want to build on that to talk a little bit about how we can operate with this system. First I want to say is that it is the system. We do have a federal government the federal government cannot go bankrupt no matter how hard it tries. It cannot be put out of business. It cannot divorce itself from us and we cannot divorce itself from from it. Secondly the political system in Washington is literally tuned to listen to all of us all of the time and very effectively. I remember very well being in a meeting once and being lectured a little bit by one of the political people in the Clinton Administration saying look folks. It's time that we all graduate from college and what I mean is the Electoral College in the sense that we must be sensitive to what the people want. The special interests are important. They clearly are they often have the money and you can't get elected without money. But you also can't get elected without without votes and the votes come from us. The people in Washington desperately want to hear from us on what we think is the right thing to do and they want to have as clear a signal from us as they can possibly get the pace in Washington is such that thinking is almost impossible the pressures in Washington are such with this balance of power constantly going on that the tactics are the key thing. The zen-like nature of Washington is such that there is no future there is no past. It's it's of the moment. We're operating in the We have to be constantly responsive to what's happening in the moment. And in that environment, we can't expect the leadership that we all deserve from our government. So where does that leader leadership in a come from it's going to come from this room precisely in rooms like this all over the country. And that is the final in the final analysis is why I left Washington to come back here. I see Washington serving a very important purpose for us as a balance of all of our views coming in that direction to create a national policy where we must have National policies. And of course we must but I see back here as the place where the leadership can come from where the real thinking can take place where the real ideas are formed, but for that to work effectively we have to take responsibility for that function and I'm afraid over the last few years. We've given that up. We assume that they're in charge we voted for them. They're supposed to fix the problems. Look what we've done for Bill Clinton first we Shower him with adulation and then we get on his case because he hasn't delivered these promises that we all extracted from them in the in the election process. Well, the fact is we have to show him and all of his people in the administration how to do that and the place to start with that and let me close with these brief brief thoughts the place to start with that is in our own personal lives. It's sort of like charity good work begins at home. We all know what our purpose is here in this community and in our businesses and our profession and we have to do that work as best. We know how because if we don't somebody else surely will but secondly we have to recognize that we're on this Earth together. We're in this sailboat together and that it's a result. We back here have to create a personal vision for what the next five years will be or maybe the next 25 years will be and we need to share that Vision with each other so that we can sign on with each other as we go forward and then we have to take A step and I would do it this way ask yourself every day what specifically have I done today to work toward my vision of the future and it can be as simple as teaching my child to read a new word or as powerful as starting a new business. It can involve others including our elected representatives, especially or it can be a solitary Act of helping a homeless person along the way. But the fact is we have to do it and finally now is the time to do it. What do you think man on the street interviews in 1938 would have sounded like put yourself back there. It's a tough economy sure was in 1938. There aren't enough jobs. Scary things are happening in Europe. And in Asia the future for my kids doesn't look as clear or as good as it was for me. I think people in 1938 would have said that the basic institutions I've depended on don't seem as reliable as they did before everything's changing. That's the situation we're in and I don't know if you've noticed but especially in times like these if you look back a couple years or maybe five years and put yourself back in that position. You probably never would have dreamed that you'd be in the position you are today. You can't imagine anticipating the position you're in today and yet sitting here today. We can look back those years and see the path very clearly how we got here, right? Well that works for the future. To you can put yourself in a future that you choose and see the path back to the present. The important thing is taking a step down that path and I think it's the time to do it. I don't want to wait for Bill Clinton arras parole or anybody else to do it for us. Let's just do it for ourselves. Thank you very much. Thanks John. We have a first question here from someone who knows a little bit about politics why Spano the editor of politics in Minnesota? Vice president Gore's Reinventing government plan. Spoke a great deal about the trust of federal employees. Do you think Congress will ever accept the concept that the federal establishment can be managed? So that mistakes might be made I am optimistic in all things and so I'm optimistic in that but I think that the Congress will need some help in making that transition. It is the key transition unless we establish an environment of trust for our public servants for the people that are doing this work. And by the way, they're the people I met are extremely fine people the career people that I worked with and they want nothing more than to perform well in their functions for us all and it must be true because I frankly don't think they're treated very well and particularly on this issue of trust, but it has to start with us again. Think about how you think about public employees. Do you share some of that? Feeling I described as saying at the public trough and they're not their professional people that are trying to do an excellent job. They're worthy of our trust and the first step is for us to trust them and communicate that to our own representatives and say that that we do trust them and you should too. Thank you very much. Mister roll wagon. We're over on this side now with a question from Donald Roche with First Trust. What would you tell us about the discharge petition that's been proposed and how we can influence our representatives to get behind it and overcome the leadership of the Congress that doesn't want to be forced to discharge these acts. I didn't followed discharged. This has to do with the I wish I could remember the name of the congressman his name. I think it starts I in. Emma has asked he got the required signatures finally after considerable pressure against the proposal from the leadership, whereby they would be able to bring acts out of committee that have been bottled up. I set the people might very much be fully in favor of but our Representatives never get a chance to vote on them. Right? I was in Washington for four months and I have to say that in four months. I didn't learn everything there is about about Washington or the sort of the technicalities of the functioning of the government. So don't don't look at me as an expert on the nuances or the details of of how Washington works except to say that that it does seem to me that the the politicians are indeed very approachable and very accessible and we'll listen to Listen to our views. It does get very difficult for them because what we tell them Is often confusing and comes from all different directions and so they do create some kind of methods to to manage the madness if I can put it that way and and the process that you're talking about. Maybe their way of trying to have some kind of control over. What's what's happening, but I can't I can't comment on this specific. I'm sorry. Thank you John question you over here from Howard Dalton from st. Paul companies. Johnny it sounds like you've concluded that a person like yourself chief executive really can't succeed in Washington. And if you've have concluded that how do we solve the problem if only politicians can be get more politicians and more bureaucracy, right? That's a good question. I recognize that I have a stack of letters that I'm in now in the process of answering at least an inch and a half thick from other business people around the country and some from other parts of the world. They were all written to me at the time. I accepted this appointment and they were very happy that I was going there and expressed very high expectations for what I might accomplish. I didn't answer them right away be out of superstition, I guess because I thought I'd wait until I was confirmed and then I would answer the letters and thank them for their support. Now. I'm answering those letters in a different way, of course saying that I jumped in with both feet tried to make it work and it didn't work for me a couple comments about it number one. Does need our help and there are many ways for us in the private sector to work with Washington side-by-side if not exactly hand in hand and it's not necessary to do as I did to jump all the way into a political appointment to play a very productive role in working with Washington and there's an appetite on the part of this Administration. I think the past administration as well to do just that to take into account private sector issues and what they're doing because we impact each other so much and we have to recognize too that now our national security is so much tied to Economic Security and economics is the business of the private sector constitutionally just the way the government is the business of the government. So there are ways to work together. Secondly, I would also propose that there are ways for working directly in the government on the part of private sector people that don't exist today, but could be created which would allow think of it as sabbaticals or short term. Simon's 234 your assignments in the government for that to take place though. We have to revise our appointment process in the the tremendous examination and and financial burden that goes with going into the going into the public office. In other words. We should be able to allow people with some means or substance and some connections in the private sector to work in the government temporarily and trust them well enough to know that they're going to avoid the conflicts of interest because they're people of integrity and I believe that such such techniques could be could be developed to work in the government. I also think it would have been possible for me perhaps to have survived in this environment because I do admire politicians many my many politicians in their work and it's very important work but to go cold turkey at age 52 without having had any prior experience in public office was I found an impossible An impossible task some prior experience might have helped and some some better indoctrination perhaps on the government side, but I don't want to discount for you the difficulty of making that that transition it is a different planet. Thank you, John. Another question here from Sharron Erickson wolf from Prudential securities. One of the things that seems to be most awesome frightening or frustrating depending on who you're talking to about government at this time is its cost. Do you have any comments you'd be willing to share with us about that? Yes, I do the government particularly in Washington clearly has grown in my view Beyond where it should be. First of all as I said before the the government is not a business. It's not going to function like a business because it can't be as focused as a business and it cannot strip down to the essentials. I mean, we're all in the room. There are so many different things that must be taken into account. But as a result of that I think we should be very cautious about what we ask the government to do for us. First of all, I believe the federal government should deal only with issues that affect every single one of us in the country therefore special interests of any kind and I went there frankly with some special interest in technology. This and so forth. I think are better served at a more local at a more local level. I do not think it's appropriate for example in my view for the president to go to Oregon or Washington wherever he went to negotiate a deal between the loggers in the environmentalists in that area. That's that's not best done in Washington. So Washington is a lot larger than it than it needs to be furthermore course in terms of the cost of Washington. We often think of the of the deficit and that's a that's a matter of really fiscal policy and balancing our books to I think that we can balance our books and and must balance our books in Washington. And if we choose to spend money on certain things in Washington, then we have to pay for them. We have to exert ourselves in deciding what we're going to spend the money on and then we have to we have to be responsible enough to pay the bill as well. John thank you John for our radio audience, you're listening to John roll wagon, the former CEO and chairman of cray research and Bill Clinton's original choice to be the assistant Secretary of Commerce. We have a question now from George Pillsbury. John you had a good in lesson down there and I think it would be wonderful if everybody in this room had the opportunity that you had to be in Washington, but it appears that you found out and I'd like to have you talk about it is the importance of Congress that even though you represented the president the president wanted you down there. First of all, you couldn't take the job until the Congress approved of your appointment and secondly even after you took the job every department and the Department of Commerce would be beholden to a particular Committee in both the house and the Senate many of whom were chaired by people who got their long before you did and we'll be there long after you had left and becomes in a sense more important to your employees and your transitory stay there. So having said all that what is your thinking about term limitations? Well in my case, I think four months it's about right I think term limitations may be may be useful. But I also believe that many of the characteristics that I observed in the government and how it functions are structural are systemic. They aren't attributed to certain individuals. Now certain individuals attitudes toward the structure might make a difference certainly and if people are there for a temporary period they might be able to behave in a somewhat more responsible manner, but the fact is we set it up that way we set it up with a separation of powers. We set it up where politicians come to Washington with a constituency. Therefore, they're invulnerable. They are they are there to represent that set of constituents and they must take a strong view or strong position in doing so, so I think some of the gridlock that we observe some of the bureaucracy that we observe the bureaucracy which tries to counterbalance that that political power in a way comes from From the structure as it is and I must say I don't have a suggestion for changing the structure. I'm not here to say that because we deserve a government that does listen to all of us all the time at the national level. We have to have that and that means that we have to have people in Washington people that represent us that will in fact listen to us and perhaps even subvert their own not principles, but their own views in favor of their constituents views and we have to have a place where our opinions come together and form this kind of mirror so we can look in Washington and see ourselves as a whole rather than as just simply individual. So we need this dysfunction and it's not all bad but we need to recognize it for what it is for its inability to provide certain kinds of leadership, but for its ability to to integrate all that comes from us as a people and in that environment, I'll say again. It's up to us to take responsibility. Thank you, John. You mentioned that we have students here from a number of high schools. We have students here from Como Park High School who are the guests of st. Paul companies students from Fridley High School who are the guests of Medtronic and a group of students here from Washburn High School who are the guests of Cowles media and peer hegeman has a question for you Washburn High School student. You spoke of how in the future we need to well Captain our own ship and not rely on say President Clinton or vice president Gore to lead us into the future. What sort of can you tell us about what we need to do for the future as high school students to take care of our own future and work toward the future and to take that step along the path. I think all of you is high school students have an incredible opportunity. I would in a way change places with you in a minute because we are at a turning point in the world. We have an opportunity to create an environment in this country particularly economically where we can have the wind at our back for 25 years. It can be a wonderful exciting period furthermore this time around unlike in the 30s and 40s. We haven't at our disposal a technology that allows Those individuals like yourself to function within that environment quite independently to be able to access the knowledge of the world basically through information technology and can contribute to that growing knowledge base and the benefit from that and in the process. I think that therefore the first thing to do is a high school student is to pay attention to get the best grades. You can go to a great University learn about as much as you can of the world and then step out into it and start at start functioning in it. I think it's important to be aware though two of the political environment that were operating in because while you can operate independently in this new information age, there's a level of infrastructure that's required that only the government can provide or at least set up the rules to provide information infrastructure and economic infrastructure. And so your representatives will make key regulatory decisions about how the information superhighway will be put in. It's about how we manage our fiscal and monetary Affairs so that you can function in the government. So you need to understand how that interacts with what you do as a person but the same technology that allows you to operate effectively in this new kind of economy allows you to interact effectively as well. I believe with the political process and to play a role in how those decisions are are made. So in the final analysis, I wind up in fact being very very optimistic about our ability at least to create this new economic world. And I think you're sitting at just the right just the right spot to take advantage of that. You might be looking at the most exciting two or three decades that we've had in our history the same time. It's very dangerous. We have to do it right or it could be a could be a bad situation to thank you. Mr. Rogan. We now have a question from Yvonne more. My question is then who are the decision makers? Are they the staff of each particular Department? The this will sound crazy. I know but the decision makers are sitting in this room not the decision-makers about what we're going to do tomorrow, but we were sitting in a room trying to figure out for instance at this level whether to slap a special tariff on Japanese minivans or not. And when it all came push came to shove and we were going to make that decision about whether to do it or not. It depended as much on individual workers in Michigan who voted for the president United States as it did on anybody else and there was a reaching out to understand how that decision would play in Detroit and Ohio and elsewhere. So I would say that that certainly the physical decision-makers are both at the policy level in the administration and at the staff level in the Congress, but that that system is highly. Answers to what we tell it from back here. The mechanism is there to make the decisions, but we can actually run it from here. Thank you, John. There's a lot of hands up in the room, but I'm sorry we have time for just one more question Barbara Letourneau from Medica. You mentioned that one way that you thought industry could work with government was for individuals with expertise to take a sabbatical and go to Washington this spring that very thing happened with the healthcare task force and were a number of types of experts in various areas of healthcare went to Washington actually took sabbaticals. Could you comment on the effectiveness of that process in this situation and whether you would see that as typifying your idea of industry and government working together? Let me ask the question two ways. Number one. Yes. I do think that that was effective. I observe the healthcare task force and operation while I was there great deal of technical information and ideas came out of that out of that process, but don't mistake that for making the decisions that therefore as the basis for the president's recommendation, but it's clear that the president's recommendation will be changed dramatically before it's before it becomes law, but that process is very helpful and at least putting forth an idea or a set of ideas to consider within the Congress, but the Congress is going to impact that plan tremendously because they've been they've been in involved also it is possible and I saw this happen several times to convene groups task forces in the government and in the private sector that are independently brought together, but that meet occasionally together. So the kind of work side-by-side. I saw this happen in the Auto industry in the Aerospace industry in the electronics Industry and Of that can happen where two sides at least take each other into account. So there are ways that we can do it. Thank you all very much.