By Peggy McInerny, Director of Communications

Former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta traced the unwillingness of U.S. legislators to sit down and work together to a lack of trust that, in his experience, is accumulated through sustained negotiations.

UCLA International Institute, April 1, 2015 — “Governing was good politics in my day,” said former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta* about his time in Congress (as both a staff member and congressman). Today, he said, “I’m not so sure that [Congress] believes governing is good politics.” Panetta was the featured speaker at the annual Daniel S. Pearl Memorial Lecture, part of the Luskin Lecture Series, held March 31 at Schoenberg Hall.

The event was moderated by journalist and Luskin Senior Fellow Jim Newton and sponsored by the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, together with the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, the Daniel Pearl Foundation and the Yitzhak Rabin Hillel Center for Jewish Life at UCLA. Judea Pearl, father of Daniel, president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, Turin Award winner (2011) and emeritus professor of computer science at UCLA, opened the evening with brief remarks, following an introduction by Luskin School Dean Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr.

Tribute to Daniel Pearl

“The test of life is whether or not someone makes a difference in the lives of others. Daniel Pearl made a difference,” said Panetta, noting that Pearl was remembered as a symbol of hope and a man who built bridges between cultures. A journalist for The Wall Street Journal for 12 years, Pearl was murdered by terrorists in Pakistan in 2002.

“Journalists,” said the speaker, “must have the courage and bravery to take risks essential to reporting the truth.” He noted that Pearl had risked everything for the truth and paid the ultimate price for it. Murdered four months after the attacks of 9/11, the speaker noted that he was now one of over 400 journalists killed since those events.

“His cause lives on,” said Panetta, “. . . in the Daniel Pearl Foundation, formed by Danny's family and friends to continue his mission and the principles that he believed in: uncompromised objectivity and integrity, insightful and non-committed perspective, tolerance and respect for all cultures and all beliefs, a dedication to the truth, and a love of music and good humor and friendship.”

Ruth Pearl and Professor Judea Pearl next to poster of their
son Daniel. (Photo: Todd Cheney/ UCLA.) 

A life in American politics

The speaker spoke about his political experience and the current state of American politics in a question-and-answer format led by Jim Newton, who helped Panetta write his memoir, Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace (Penguin, 2014).

“I think in many ways that I’ve lived the American Dream,” said Panetta, tracing his life from the days he worked as a child in his father’s restaurant and, later, walnut orchard, through his years in Congress and service to two U.S. presidents. His Italian immigrant parents encouraged him and his brother to give back to the country that had given them so much opportunity, something Panetta is now encouraging others to do.

Panetta said he wrote his memoir in part “to send a message that Washington does not have to be in gridlock, it does not have to be dysfunctional. It can work if people want it to work.” When he began working for the Republican whip of the Senate, Thomas Kuchel, “Republicans and Democrats were willing to work together. I learned a lot from that — I thought that that was governing,” he remarked.

When Kuchel lost his re-election bid in 1968, Panetta moved to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, where he helped implement the desegregation of the public school system in the South. His insistence on pushing forward with desegregation in the South under President Richard Nixon, who had promised Southern Republicans to pull back from active enforcement of civil rights legislation in return for their support, eventually cost Panetta his job. A Republican at the time, he then became a Democrat.

Panetta’s involvement in a series of budget summits that reduced the U.S. deficit by a total of US$ 1 trillion — US$ 500 billion each under President George H.W. Bush and President Bill Clinton — taught him that “governing is a kick-ass process. You have to fight for every vote. You cannot sit back and assume it’s going to happen. You have to roll up your sleeves, you’ve got to engage people,” he commented.

“It would be wonderful if logic alone worked in Washington. It doesn’t. You’ve got to carry a bat into the battle,” noted the speaker. “What you have to do in order to get the votes you need is what our democracy is all about. And that makes the difference between whether we succeed as a country or we fail as a country.”

Failure to govern harming to the country

Today, said Panetta, he was seeing his greatest fear: a dysfunctional Washington where the parties don’t want to work together. “They can’t agree on anything,” he said, “whether it is dealing with the budget or immigration reform or funding infrastructure or dealing with trade or even with coming together on war authority.”

“We are a country that is facing terrible issues that need to be dealt with,” he added.” This is a time when they ought to be governing, not simply blocking things from happening.”

“In 50 years, I’ve never seen Washington as bad as it is now,” said Panetta. Referring to a recent piece by New York Times columnist David Brooks, he continued, “There are no rules anymore. So you get 47 senators who decide to write an enemy [Iran]. . . that's unheard of. And frankly, you get a president who is negotiating an arms control agreement who has basically decided that he's not going to go to the Senate and try to get them to approve whatever he does. That's unheard of. You've got prime ministers who come here, don't even speak to the president and [address] Congress without any kind of coordination.”

Panetta was astonished by the sequestration agreement reached by Congress and President Obama which, barring a budget deal, will automatically cut US$ 1 trillion from the budget across the board over time. “They designed it to be so crazy so that they would do the right thing,” he remarked. Yet Congressional leaders and the president remained unwilling to negotiate a budget deal that would dispense with automatic sequestration, said the speaker, even though they all agreed that it was harmful for the country.

“I, for the life of me, don’t understand it,” remarked Panetta. “The leadership in my time would have never permitted that to happen. You don’t allow the American people and our security to be hurt deliberately by failing to act.

“In my day,” he continued, “even though you might have had different views, [when] you sat in a room and negotiated with somebody, you established a degree of trust; you could talk honestly with one another and even though you disagreed, the other person was not going to stab you in the back. There is no trust right now in terms of the process. Since they can't work together, they've given up.”

Panetta found fault with President Obama not for the goals that he has sought to achieve — such as his plans for the economy, budget reform, health care reform and energy independence — but for his unwillingness “to roll up his sleeves and engage in the process.” He commended the president for being a realist and pragmatist, qualities he said were sorely needed in Washington, but argued that passion and commitment were needed to convince people to do things.

“First you have to engage, to talk. And if you can’t get anything done, then you go to war,” he said, arguing that Obama had resorted to executive action before first trying to persuade the American people to support his agenda and then trying to actively engage his adversaries to achieve that agenda.

Turning to foreign policy, Panetta urged the administration to develop a comprehensive policy for the Middle East region, to work closely with the Arab countries on issues of shared concern (e.g., terrorism and preventing the destabilization of the region) and to repair the crucial U.S.-Israel relationship. “If we [established a comprehensive policy], it would send an important signal that the United States is not going to simply sit on the sidelines, that we are going to be part of providing leadership to heal the challenges in the Middle East,” he said. “If the United States doesn’t provide that leadership, nobody else will.”

Noting that much could happen before the 2016 presidential election, Panetta nevertheless predicted that Hilary Clinton would win the Democratic nomination and hoped that Jeb Bush would be nominated on the Republic side. Their candidacies, he said, would give the country a real choice to vote for, and not against, someone who seeks to make Washington work. “I care a hell of a lot more about the experience they both bring to the office,” he said, “than [I care about] somebody who has no experience. . . I’d rather have someone who understands what it means to make tough decisions in order to send this country in the right direction.”

* A native of California and a public servant for virtually his entire life, Leon Panetta earned a B.A. and a J.D. from Santa Clara University before serving in the U.S. Army for two years. He began his political career as a legislative assistant to Senator Thomas Kuchel (1966–68), going on to become director of the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW, 1969–70) and then executive assistant to Mayor of New York John Lindsay (1970–71). Panetta was elected to the House of Representatives from California in 1976 and served in Congress through 1993, when he became director of the Office of Management and Budget (1993–94), and later, Chief of Staff (1994–97) — both under President Bill Clinton.

The speaker served President Barack Obama in two cabinet-level positions: as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (2009–11) and as secretary of defense (2011–13). During his tenure at the CIA, the United States conducted the military action that killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. At present, Panetta is chairman of the Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy at California State University, Monterey Bay.

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Published: Wednesday, April 1, 2015