Because otherwise-

That was a particular change that led to some instability in Congress. I

would tell you this. You're not going to be able to solve the debt or capture big problems if we continue to look in a 10-year window. We score bills on what they cost, but we only look at a 10-year window. So what Einstein said, there's only one miracle in this world, the time value of money, the compound of interest. Well, the same thing happens in the compound of debt. So if you change a mechanism to some program, the first 10 years gives you a problem. But if you look, because you made this change of the 10 year, the 20, 40 years, you should stay in the program in a better place. So why aren't we looking in 50 year windows and scoring different items that we take up? Much better way to

capture the debt. Do you think that the constraints of politics would allow you to do that? Presumably that's a reference to sustainability of Social Security and Medicare. The

way I would deal with Social Security, look, Social Security hasn't been dealt with since Reagan and Tip O'Neill. And it was the sheer power of those two men to weigh. Now, in today's world, politics is different, right? You get your information faster by social media. There's nobody editing it, whether it's real or not. And you get rewarded in different ways, right? People raise more money because if they vote no and yell in the Republican Party, right? You fight your leadership, I get more attention. So people will behave that way to try to raise money or something else. Well, you can't have one party solve these problems. It's an American problem. So you've got to have the willpower... That both would sit down, but the minute you go into a committee and you start taking the bill up, influences from outside will come in, and then it'll put the pressure on a member in the break. collapses. We got Tiananmen Square and everything else. And we now find in America, we have a military structure designed to compete against the Soviet Union that's no longer there that we need to restructure it. But how do you go to elected official and say, you know what? It's probably not best if we keep that base in your district of overall America making it say, well, no one's going to make that vote because they're going to get in trouble, right? So we created something called BRAC, the Base Realignment and Closure. And what you do is you take the leaders from all parties, get to appoint to a commission, right? And the president does too. The only thing you do is you set a criteria it's not just 50% have to pass it out. You make whatever vote margin higher. If you come to a conclusion, you're guaranteed a vote on the floor, no amendment. Okay. So you can't nickel it around. You're just going to put it on the floor and you're going to vote it. And what happens in that case, nine times out of 10, it's very bipartisan. So how do we create a structure of a very difficult issue to try to take the politics out of it so we'll look further? But we're living, we live in different times, okay? So right now we're living in the Republican world and also in the Democratic world on the more liberal, a populism. Okay. And populism, what's the principle behind populism? Well, there's really not one. It's appeasing. It's making somebody happy. It's what I feel, right? if we're by the people, for the people, of the people, but are you going to let the people all pick all the time, even though they're not sitting in committee? Are you going to be the leader and explain it to them? So what you really do is you want to have leaders that look 50 years out instead of, I'm going to run for the Senate or I'm going to run for the president. So I'm going to forgive all your loans that you said you would pay back. Does that make you feel good? Could I get your vote today? But what does it do for tomorrow? So you're always going to have this problem. But right now we're walking through this populism, which I'm fearful

could create a real problem for America. I guess to your point about populism and sort of the inverse of elected officials being constrained by their voters, There is also clearly the effect of leaders leading their voters into particular positions. I could

have stayed in Congress for 30 years, voted against everything, never rose up in leadership, and would you think I was a more successful congressman or become speaker and stand up and maybe have to take the loss or maybe sit there 15 rounds to win something. I mean, it's going to take different people who, it's just like in business. You find entrepreneurs that put the whole business on the line and either hit it or they don't. But had they never put it on the line, they never would have made it. But what we need to start teaching Americans, and not just in Congress, that you respect the other person's opinion. You don't demonize them because they think differently. They may view success to be something else, but that's maybe what they grew up in. That's maybe what they understand. But you have to debate. And the problem we're having in this country today is we shift our opinion based upon what state we're in. We shift our opinion, whether we support a vaccine based upon who's president at the time. We shift our opinion based upon who delivers it. You know, I can sit here and I can walk out and I can say all these different opinions. But if I say it came from Trump, a Democrat will say they're opposed to it. If I say it came from Biden, Republicans say opposed're opposed to it. But it may be the exact same thing that Trump said. I think as a society, we've got a problem that we need to deal with ourselves and don't think that Congress is going to solve it for us. I'm

curious, because a lot of what we do at South Park Commons is to give people a space to really, I would say, navigate that period of uncertainty after their last big failure or success.

Your last learning experience. Your

last learning experience. I love that. So, you know, some of the things I think about is like, you know, talk me through what that first week looked like. You know, you go through intense experience in the house, you kind of, you know, go through your decision making process, you're like, hey, you know what, for a number of reasons, both for yourself and for the party, I'm actually going to, you know, go and pursue something else. Did that first week feel like completely unmoored? Did you have like, you know, completely loss of structure in terms of, I mean, I'm sure your days were incredibly structured, right? In terms of meetings and so on. So how do you navigate that? How do you navigate kind of the, both the emotional, but also kind of the psychological kind of ups and downs of just like, be having a completely new setup? Well,

everybody's wired differently, right? I mean, I watch people elected. The one thing I learned when you're elected, you're always going to go through the barrel, right? If you just want to be liked, don't run for office, right? I mean, kind of like in sports, tell me any other occupation on a given day, you get to know how many people like you and how many people dislike you down to the number, right? You're looking at an entire poll operation that exists to tell you that. Yeah, but on election day, you literally get to know the number. So it doesn't matter what the polls say. You say, oh, I got high favor building. Well, maybe I don't. And being elected, anytime someone gets in trouble, even if you're in the other party, even if I don't care for you in some manner, I want to be your first phone call. And I don't want to talk about what stumbled. I just want you to know things will be okay. I remember watching this one thing. I think Tom Hanks said it. He said he wished someone had told him when he was riding when he was down and out like failing someone told him this too shall pass this too shall pass because you know i learned that but i wish somebody told me that when i thought everything was going right this too shall pass right so you're going to have these moments in life and so I'm always the optimist. So I wasn't sad the week I left. Now my life was always booked. There's certain things I want to achieve. I'm just going to achieve them by doing in a different manner. And I never thought Congress defines my life. Just like you started in a different business before you started in others. Um, I think the real struggle would have been not when I left speaker after the first election, winning the majority and getting to be speaker, it was a lot more pressure sitting there 15 rounds when no one's done it before. Because the thing you don't think about is no one's done that in modern history with TV watching. And when you have an elected speaker, there are no rules. So then I have no power. I can't control coming on and off the floor. The world's watching. I remember after winning speaker, and I went over to Israel to speak at the 75th anniversary at the Knesset. And then I went to Jordan and I went to Egypt and then I went to Italy. But I remember going in to see President Assisi. You know, the first thing he said to me, I watched all 15 rounds. You know, what happens in America, people watch. But what I hoped people saw was I wasn't going to give up. It's

like if you're running a major company, it's like you're having all your board meetings be televised and all your employees kind of like chiming in about your performance, right? Like in real time, which is, yeah, it's crazy. You have to take

the personal feelings out of it. Yeah. And people can easily, it's better advice to give than to receive it, but you never learn how to do it until you go through it. I had to go through the barrel a couple times until I'm literally, I don't care what you say about me. I know who I am. Your comments don't matter. And remember this too. The victor writes the history. You know, think about Winston Churchill. How many times did he get thrown out? And then after he went, yeah, then after he serves and saves World War II, they throw him out then. It's a weird occupation. Well,

in his case, he also literally was writing history a lot of the time. So that helped. Maybe to bring it back to the minus one concept,

you know, there are going to be a number of, I would say, Congress members who kind of have a learning experience this coming election. Yeah. What is the one biggest piece of advice you'd give them as they kind of like, you know, go down the barrel, learn something, and then they kind of have to figure out like, you know, what's their minus one journey over the next, call it like 12, 24 months. Like you've had, you know, you've obviously told us a lot about your own journey. What is one piece of advice you'd give them? Well,

I've watched people run and not win. They're much more successful in the private sector than the person who won and went forward, right? And it's a certain attribute. And the very best person doesn't win all the time, right? That's not the attribute. It doesn't say who's the very best, automatic gets to win. Just the idea that you were willing to run, you gain skills from it, right? And I think you could apply those skills in other occupations. The first thing I would tell you is just because you didn't get elected to an elected position doesn't mean you can't be a part of helping the country. And if you go away and stay away, that's a bad example, right? I tell people before they run, this is the first question I always ask them. I don't, I never talk and I've been the recruiter for a long time. I never asked somebody to run or try to talk to you. I asked you this one question. Why do you want to run? You know, Simon Sinek has a good book. Did you ever read it? It starts with why? Yes, that's a good book. It's great. People don't buy, people don't buy what you do. They buy why do you do it. He has a great TED Talk. He does a Martin Luther King, the Wright Brothers, and Apple. It's only like 20 minutes. You should watch it. It's by why do you do something, right? It's a different concept. And there's a lot of great people on paper, but why do they not win? Why do they fizzle as a candidate? They never had the fire in the belly. And there's some people you think would be awful. And oh, my God, they do so well because they're genuine. They know they know where they're going, you know. And there's certain people in both parties that you can identify as that. And you may disagree with everything they stand for. Right. Bernie Sanders. He's he's a true socialist. I mean, he's registered as socialist. The thing that people respect about him is, you know his why. He doesn't deviate it to be elected or different. This is what he truly believes. I respect that. But there's other people who just flip all the time. And that's where a principle is better in the basis. Yeah,

I really like that speaker because I think that I feel as though a lot of another way of phrasing what something like South Park Commons helps people achieve is to, in some ways, recalibrate for like, what is your why? Because sometimes in the fog of war, you can kind of forget that. So like, you know, when you take a step back and you kind of go back to that question of what is my bigger why? Why am I doing this? What does actual success look like? What are my actual goals? And I think something like STC is really designed to be able to help answer those questions.

Let's give an answer. So a person runs and they tell you their why, because I wanted to achieve this. Well, they don't win and they don't get it. Well, does that mean you still can't achieve that? Martin Luther King was never elected to anything, but he had unbelievable ability and changed America. He knew his why. So lots of times people could know their why, but that may not be the right avenue to achieve what they're trying to achieve. So before you do anything in life, knowing your why or where you want to go is a much better place.