Former Congressman Bob Carr

Milton Robert "Bob" Carr came to speak to the interns in the Political Leadership program here at TWC today.  He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Michigan during the 80's and 90's.  He grew up in Janesville, and graduated from UW-Madison before doing post-graduate work at Michigan State.  His career outside of politics has been as a lawyer, and he currently works at Dow Lohnes here in D.C.  While he was attending UW-Madison there were protests going on about the Vietnam War, and I asked him about his memories of those after prefacing my question about where I come from.  He didn't share any exact specifics, but spoke about general police actions taken against the people around him.  He had interned with Gaylord Nelson, a former Senator from Wisconsin when he was in college.  He highlighted how our generation does more peer-to-peer work to solve problems, and government should look to crowdsourcing when available to more efficiently handle large programs; which is to outsource responsibilities to other groups of people (highlighting the handling of securities in the SEC).  It was nice to listen to him, and our group did a very nice job of asking follow-up questions.  I was able to shake his hand and speak with him afterwards about Wisconsin politics.  He is rooting for Tom Barrett in tomorrow's recall election, and classified him as a, "dear friend."  The political winds tell me that Walker is going to win re-election, but I didn't debate the matter with him.  Just thanked him for coming to speak, and moved on to other topics.  Rumor has it there is a place to go for free salsa dancing tonight...time to get my homework done so maybe I can learn some new moves!