In November, 2017, the Dreier Roundtable held a series of public policy related luncheon talks at CMC’s Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum. California state legislative veteran Deborah Gonzalez ’85 of the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) discussed the connection between think tank research and the policy process. A panel conversation on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with former US Representative David Dreier ’75, Carlos Garcia de Alba, Mexican Consul in Los Angeles, and Prof. Roderic Camp of the CMC government department described the politics of trade policy and crafting international agreements. And nationally renowned think tank scholar Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute provided the DC perspective on American politics since Donald Trump’s election.
Monday, November 06, 2017
Deborah Gonzalez ’85 P’14
Think tanks play an important role in the U.S. policy process, attempting to improve lawmaking and governance by testing political assumptions through empirical research, and offering policy alternatives based on evidence. However, a think tank’s ability to influence policymaking rarely hinges on the strength of its claims or the quality of its findings. Deborah Gonzalez ’85, the director of government affairs at the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), discusses the divide between policy research and the policy process in California government, and ways in which the two can work better together to improve lawmaking.
Tuesday, November 07, 2017
Roderic Camp, David Dreier, and Carlos Garcia de Alba, panelistsBucking traditional Republican consensus favoring free trade and calling the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) the “worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere, but certainly ever signed in this country,” President Trump has made good on his campaign promise to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade pact, and is currently reconsidering America’s membership in NAFTA. Former U.S. Representative David Dreier, a leader in the 1993 creation of NAFTA, Ambassador Carlos Garcia de Alba, Mexico’s Consul General in Los Angeles, and Roderic Camp, professor of government at Claremont McKenna, discuss the origins of the trade agreement, its contributions to North American prosperity, and its imperiled future under President Trump.
Monday, November 13, 2017
Norman OrnsteinDonald Trump’s election and his actions so far in office have dramatically changed our political landscape and have brought us to uncharted territory in terms of our society and its governance. Norman Ornstein, a longtime observer and analyst of American politics and the US Congress, shares his perspective on this new political frontier and outline prospects for our country’s future, including ways that we can avoid some of our past mistakes, and offer a framework with which to understand the “new sense of citizenship” that is developing in the US.
