(upbeat music)
- You started as a community organizer
and rose to be president,
you understand the power
of moving people along, even
people who aren't necessarily
on your bus when you start.
Talk to us a little bit about
how you think of movements
around the world and
the power of those now
and what leaders can learn from them.
- Well, I'd make a couple of observations.
Number one is that
most big change, most
human progress is driven by
young people who don't know any better
and figure, why can't we
do something different?
Old people get comfortable or cranky
or protective of their
status or set in their ways,
there's a reason why if
you look at, for example,
here in the United States,
the Civil Rights Movement,
the leaders of those
movements were in their 20s,
Dr. King was 26 when he
started, 39 when he was killed.
And if you canvas the world, oftentimes,
that is the impetus, people asking,
in ways that I think are familiar to many,
not why not, or not why, but why not?
Why do things have to be the way they are?
So that's point number
one that young people,
I think, can make an enormous difference.
Number two is that because most of us now
either live in democracies or countries
that purport to be democracies,
because we have won
the battle of ideas that says governments
and our common efforts have to be rooted
in the legitimacy of people,
there is more power than ever
in people being able to band together
and collectively push for initiatives
that are gonna make change in their lives.
That's something that,
for most of human history,
was unimaginable, that is one
of the amazing transitions
that has taken place and you will notice
that even in autocracies today,
there is the
at least the pretense of democracy
because people believe that governments
that are rooted in people
are more legitimate
and that's a battle we won
and now have to make real
wherever we can, that's point number two.
Point number three is
simple math.
In most places, if you
wanna get something done,
whether it's a smarter
climate change policy
or healthcare for people
or more funding for girls' education,
you've gotta have a majority
of people supporting it,
you gotta have votes, you have to have
the allocation of resources
and that requires mobilization
and a game of addition
rather than subtraction.
And the fourth point I would make
would be the internet
now has turbo charged
the capacity for us to develop movements
in ways that we had not imagined before.
Now, the last thing I'll say
so that I don't sound like
I'm still in the US
Senate and filibustering.
(laughs)
Is I guess a smaller
point but a profound one
that I tried to reinforce
with my staff at every level
of my public work and
continue to do to this day,
I actually think organizing, mobilizing,
starting movements starts with a story.
And you can't create a story
that moves large numbers
of people unless you are
able to listen and hear
to the story of the person next to you.
The story of your neighbors,
the stories of your coworkers,
the stories of your
community, the story of people
who are not like you,
and so one of the things
that I think is important
is for us to learn
how to listen to each
other and learn how it is
that we came to be who we
are, think the way we do,
because that understanding
of other people's stories
is how you end up ultimately forging bonds
and creating the glue
that creates movements.
Every great movement, you
think about Gandhi in India.
It started with his
understanding of India's story
and his own story and seeing
Indians in South Africa
discriminated against and recognizing
that there were traditions
and myths and a power
in those stories that ended up
driving out the most
powerful empire on earth.
It wasn't guns.
And increasingly, that will be the case
and certainly, that will
be the case if we're able,
if we wanna move forward the
sustainable development goals
that we're talking about,
is we've gotta be able
to tell a story not only to
big donors or politicians,
but also to, for example,
people here in the United
States who may feel like,
look, I've got my own problems,
why should I be worrying about somebody
on the other side of the world?
- Yeah I have to say, when
we got into philanthropy
and particularly studied global health,
we were stunned at the
progress, we'd had no idea
and it's kind of amazing, if
you ask even very well-educated
people what's happened with vaccination,
what's happened with HIV,
they don't know the positive
story and a little bit, the
news is always gonna focus on
the setbacks, 'cause that's
what happened that day,
the gradual progress
doesn't fit that paradigm
and even people who raise
money for these causes,
I have to say, sometimes
even some of the material
we create is talking about
the peace that remains
as though it's never improved.
Do you have any thoughts on
how we get this more positive
sense of progress going and
how we would get that word out?
- Well, look, you're talking to somebody
who for seven years
tried to get the word out
that things were going pretty good.
(laughs)
And nobody, at least
about 40% of the country
didn't believe me until I
was gone and then suddenly
they believed it, they
said, things are great.
(laughs, applauding)
So with that caveat,
I'd make a couple observations.
One, you're right, Bill, there
is the nature of the media
and maybe just the human
brain, is to fasten on
what's wrong, not on what's right,
and I'm not sure we're gonna
be able to change that.
Visual displays of a fire
are much more interesting than
just a building sitting there
and so the fire's gonna make the news,
the building's sitting there nicely
and people are walking their
dogs in front of it and stuff,
that will not make the news.
So I don't think that we can
count on conventional media
necessarily to spread the word,
this is, though, where
the power of the internet
has not, I think been harnessed
the way it needs to be,
particularly when we
think about young people
and young audiences.
Malia and Sasha consume
information differently than I do
and I think that those of
us who've been involved
with policy work are still putting out
these reports with pie
charts and this and that
and that's not interesting to them.
But stories and visual
representations of progress
can go viral.
There's a hunger for it.
It's just that we don't
systematically think about it
and so I think when the
three of us were talking
awhile back, I mentioned
that one of the areas
that I'm deeply interested
in is how do we build
sort of a digital platform
whereby people can go
to find out what's happening
that is moving the progress
on issues and then active
them, because I heard somebody,
I think maybe Trevor,
saying an important point,
I'm very interested in
how online communities
can move offline, how this
incredible power to convene
through hashtags and tweets and
this and that and the other,
eventually leads to
people meeting each other
and talking to each other,
and I think that we have not
fully tapped that as a
way of spreading the word
about progress that has been made.
I also think it is
important for us to put some
friendly pressure on
leaders to tell good stories
and to make sure that we don't,
that we aren't so rigid in
our partisanship or ideologies
that we are not willing
to acknowledge and share
when somebody who might be
of a different political
persuasion has done something really good,
even if it runs contrary to
our short-term political interests.
I always used to say, as
big as the differences were
between me and my
predecessor, George W. Bush,
that what his administration
initiated with PEPFAR
was a singularly important achievement
that we needed to sustain and build on.
I didn't think that
somehow detracted from me
to say that somebody from
another political party
did something really smart and really good
and deserved credit for it,
and I feel as if these days,
within our political circles,
that's a hard thing for people
to bring themselves to do.
(audience applauding)
- One of the things that Bill
and I had the great privilege
of doing when you were in the White House
late in your presidency
was spending a little bit
of casual time on a Saturday night
and your daughters were
in and out of your home,
Malia and Sasha, and
you've been to our house
earlier this summer and
saw Rory and Phoebe,
two of our three in and out of our house,
our daughter Jen is here in the front row.
- Jen's like, thanks Mom.
- Yeah sorry, you weren't home that night.
But she's about the age of your daughters.
- That's our job, to embarrass
you, that's what we do.
- Exactly, I just did
it, job none right there.
But Jen's about the age of your girls,
a little bit older, but
how have you and Michelle
thought about talking to your children
about being leaders in the
world and taking up this mantle
of what needs to be done in the world?
- Well what we've tried to
communicate their entire lives
is that
each of us has responsibilities.
When they were small, the
responsibilities were small,
like say when you wanna go potty and then.
(laughs)
As you get older, your
responsibilities grow.
But part of what we I think
tried to communicate is that
being responsible is
an enormous privilege,
that's what marks you
as a fully grown human,
is that other people rely on you,
that you have influence,
that you can make your mark,
that if you do something
well, that that will improve
other people's lives,
that the kinds of values
that we've tried to instill, many of them,
your basic homespun values
like kindness and consideration
and empathy and hard
work, that those are tools
by which you can shape
the world around you
in a way that feels good.
And so what we've tried
to encourage is the sense
that it's not somebody
else's job, it's your job,
and I think that's an ethic
that they've embraced.
Now they will choose to
participate in different ways
because they have different temperaments,
different strengths, I
think one of the mistakes
that we sometimes make is
to think that there's just
one way of making a
difference or being involved.
If you are a brilliant engineer,
you don't have to make a speech,
you can create an app that
allows an amplification
or the scaling up of something
that is really powerful.
If you are somebody who
likes to care for people,
you don't have to go out
and lead the protest march,
you can mentor some kids
or work at a local health
clinic that is gonna
make a difference, so there
are a lot of different ways
in which to make a contribution
and we try to emphasize that
to them as well, and then
the third thing that we try
to encourage is what I
mentioned in my earlier remarks,
which is that you have to be persistent.
I always tell people that
my early work as a community
organizer in Chicago taught
me an incredible amount
but I didn't set the world on fire.
I got some public parks for
communities that needed them,
I started some after-school programs,
we helped set up a job training program
for people who had been laid off of work
but those communities
weren't suddenly transformed,
they still had huge problems.
But I took that experience
and then I was able
to build on it and I think
so often, we get impatient
because change does not look as if
sometimes it's not as
discernible or immediate
or impactful as we had
imagined in our minds.
And we get disappointed
and we get frustrated.
For me, by the way, that's advice in life
and not just in social
change, I assume occasionally
there was a bug in the software Bill did.
- Every now and then.
- Every once in awhile.
And oh, we gotta patch it again?
This is annoying.
(laughs)
- I heard it a little
differently than that.
- I wasn't known for my patience.
- I didn't hear, oh darn.
(laughs)
Bill, did you have one last question?
- So this week, part of the
reason we're all in New York
is the United Nations is meeting
and in some of these global institutions
that were created right
after World War II,
World Bank, World Health
Organization, UNICEF,
they've been key partners
for many of these causes
and yet there's definitely a cynicism
about their bureaucracy, their efficiency,
and their ability to change.
In fact, with very few
exceptions like Global Fund
and GOBI, we haven't had any new ones,
so over the next 10 or 20 years,
do you think these global
institutions in terms of reform
or creating new ones, for
pandemics and climate change,
can they step up to play the
role we need them to play?
- Well.
Let me first of all say
that the biggest problems
we confront, no one nation
is going to be able to solve
on its own, not even a nation as powerful
as the United States of America.
There are times during my
presidency where I was attacked
for not claiming that
we could go on our own,
as if that was an expression of weakness.
No, I believe that the
United States is in fact
an indispensable nation, and
that many of the initiatives
and much of the progress that we've made
could not have been done unless
we underwrote those efforts
and I'll use as an example
our handling of Ebola,
which in retrospect,
I think a lot of historians would argue
was one of the, if not the most effective
emergency public health
intervention in history.
We had to create the architecture
and the infrastructure
and send our military in to create runways
where the Chinese could then
land planes to deliver goods
and we had to provide
guarantees to the Europeans
so that if they sent health workers,
they could feel some
assurance that they could be
med-evaced out if they got infected.
So I take great pride in
what the United States can do
but if we're talking about climate change
or global migrations spurred
on by drought or famine
or ethnic conflicts,
we're not gonna be able to
solve those things by ourselves
and as you indicated, Bill,
if we get an airborne pandemic,
unlike a slow-moving, disease
that's difficult to transmit
like Ebola, if we haven't
built ahead of time
some structures to deal with this,
millions of people could
be adversely impacted.
So number one, you have
to start with the premise
and believe that multilateral institutions
and efforts are important,
and you don't have to cede
all your sovereignty or, it
doesn't make you less patriotic
to believe that, you just have to
have some sense and read.
(laughs)
So that's point number
one, point number two
is that in fact, there
are problems with existing
multilateral institutions,
not surprisingly,
they were designed post-World War II
for the most part and they
couldn't have anticipated
everything's that happened.
There is bureaucracy and
inertia and resistance to reform
so it is important for
every country, every leader,
to be honest about the need for reform
and not simply think narrowly about, well,
I wanna keep certain
numbers of slots or votes
or this or that, at least
on many of the issues
where there shouldn't be a
big ideological controversy.
Reforming the security council,
that's something that goes to
core geopolitical interests
and is a huge, difficult,
and perhaps unachievable goal
anytime soon.
On the other hand, making
sure that the WHO works well
and that we have a
sufficient security trigger
when a pandemic or something else happens,
that is achievable and it
shouldn't be controversial,
it's just a matter of digging
and getting the work done.
When it comes to girls' education,
there may be cultural
resistance in some places
to actually getting it done,
but generally speaking,
there aren't that many folks
who will explicitly say,
I'm sorry, we don't wanna
educate our girls and women.
As a practical matter,
they may, you may see that
in certain countries, but at
the level of our multilateral
institutions, there should
be a broad consensus
and so what I would hope for is that
we come up with concrete plans
in those areas,
oftentimes with respect to the
sustainable development goals
are areas where there is a
consensus on at least the aims,
if not always the means,
and think about how can we
improve delivery systems,
how can we improve
their operations on a day-to-day basis.
But ultimately, the
last point I would make,
that requires leaders
to feel as if it matters
and is important.
That in turn requires the
public think that it matters
and is important because unfortunately,
what you discover is that most politicians
and elected leaders are
followers and not leaders.
They're called leaders, but
most of the time, they follow.
They see what do their
constituencies care about,
and they respond.
And one of the biggest challenges
that we've had is that,
and I speak most intimately
about the United States,
the general public responds
with enormous generosity
when they see a specific
story of a child who's hungry
or somebody who's been
stricken by a flood.
But when it comes to just a
general knowledge or interest
in development funding, not
only do they not know much,
but they oftentimes
have a negative reaction
because their view is,
we've got a lot of needs
here at home, why are we
sending money overseas?
Sadly, it is one of the
only areas where Democrats
and Republicans agree
in the United States,
is on foreign aid, and repeatedly,
you've seen public opinion
surveys where people
wildly overestimate what
we spend on foreign aid,
they think 25% of the federal budget
is going to foreign aid and helping people
other than folks in their
towns and their communities.
So the need for public education
in the ways we talked about
that tell a good story,
that point out that this
is actually a bargain,
that connect what we do
with respect to development to security,
not in a perfect
correlation, but to say that,
look, if you've got failed states,
then generally, some of
that's gonna spill over on us.
If you have economies that are failing,
ironically, if you are
concerned about immigration
and mass migration, it's
really a good investment
to make countries work
so that people can eat,
'cause then, it's not like
they're dying to get on a dinghy
and float across an ocean if the place,
the country where they
were born and they loved
was functioning, so
thinking about ways in which
we describe this, both as
an economic imperative,
a environmental imperative,
a security imperative,
the more we can influence public opinion,
the more you'll see politicians respond.
That doesn't mean that there
is not an enormous role
to play for NGOs,
philanthropy, and so forth,
but, and I've said this
to both Bill and Melinda,
even with the incredible generosity
and enormous skill with
which they've deployed
their resources over the years,
the US budget's still bigger.
- Absolutely, a lot bigger.
- A lot.
- This notion that you
can, that I hear sometimes
from young people, that you
can work around government
and work around politics
because it's too messy
or it's corrupt or it's, I
just don't like those folks
or what have you, I'm sorry,
guys, that's not gonna work.
If you wanna get done
what you're talking about,
you will have to combine
effective philanthropy
and technical know-how and
smart policy engineering
with getting your hands
dirty trying to change
public opinion and trying
to ensure that the people
who are in charge of the
levers of power are responsive.
And that will require
work and I guarantee you
you will be disappointed at points,
but what a glorious thing
it is to responsible
for saving the world,
that's your responsibility.
And ours.
Thanks.
