Wyland, Mark. Interview, April 10, 2023

00:00:00WILLIS: Hello, this is Ryan Willis, and today I am interviewing former California Senator Mark Wyland for the California State University San Marcos Library Special Collections Oral History project. Today is Monday, April 10th, 2023. The time is 2:32 PM and this interview is taking place at the University Library. Mr. Wyland, thank you so much for interviewing with me today.

00:00:30WYLAND: You're very welcome, Ryan. Please call me Mark.

00:00:33WILLIS: You got it, Mark. Appreciate that (both laugh). So obviously you have a very rich and impressive resume when it comes to education and politics, so definitely going to get into all of that during this interview. But I want to start off by asking you about your upbringing and your family background. Because I definitely believe that's important to bring up. First off, when and where were you born?

00:00:55WYLAND: Well, I was actually born in San Diego at Mercy Hospital, which is still there. It's part of the Scripps Network now. And Escondido at the time, I'm not sure it really had a full-service hospital, but I grew up in Escondido. My maternal grandparents had moved there in 1925 and they had a business, a plumbing business. And after the war, meaning World War II, my maternal grandfather, Brian Sweet, who had been an Escondido city councilman and also a supervisor for North County, he started a business with my dad and my uncle, and it was a lumber and building material supply business, pine tree lumber. It still exists. It's not in our family, but based in Escondido. And so, I grew up there, went to Escondido High School. When here we are in San Marcos--San Marcos didn't have a high school (laughs).

00:02:11WILLIS: Right.

00:02:12WYLAND: They went to Escondido. And then I went to college in Pomona College, which is in Claremont, California, where they have a group of colleges, the Claremont Colleges. I got interested in--studied International Relations, which is foreign affairs. I spent a year after college on a grant in Germany. And then I was in graduate school in New York studying to be a professor of international affairs. But I'd gone straight through and I, you know, it was kind of a time as a young man where I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do. I'm not a city guy. I hated New York (laughs) because I grew up in rural Escondido, basically in an avocado grove. And so, I ended up--I got a lot out of that program--but I ended up working for the university.

And then I worked for the City of New York on school construction of all things. And I was very close to my grandfather, and he wanted me to come back and join the family business. I thought I would never do that. But he had had a stroke and I was very close to him, and I was sick of New York, and I thought, “Well, I'll just interrupt the program.” You know, I can always go back, and something that was important and played out later: I wrote a master's thesis on a topic that really interested me. Basically, it was how people see the world, their worldview. And so I came back, I thought it would be here a year, and I ended up staying. And this was a business I'd worked in summers as a kid, and I'd done every job, you know, manual labor, loading lumber, driving forklifts, driving trucks. I'd done all that. And I ended up doing that for, my gosh, almost twenty years. And that also had a big impact on learning how to solve problems. And my dad, who's extraordinary, I learned a great deal from him--unfortunately, passed away fairly young, but I always had this interest in what we might call “public policy.” And I always had this interest in schools. And I had tried early on in that job, they had an opening on the high school board, not an election-appointed one. I tried to get that. I didn't get that (laugh).

00:05:25WILLIS: Right.

00:05:26WYLAND: And so, it turned out there was another opening on the Escondido Union Board, which is K-8. And I applied for that and got it. And the rest is history. And we can talk about that. And I know we have questions. I would like a shout out though to a few Escondido teachers who really made a big difference. And first, my fourth-grade teacher. Believe it or not, I lived in old, it was in town then--Central School. Mrs. Stevens, who told stories about when she was living in Mexico City and married to her husband who's Mexican. Really interesting stories. And I thought, you know, that's a different culture, and that's pretty interesting. And then I had this wonderful eighth grade teacher for social studies, Mrs. Von Bergen. It didn't hurt that I had a crush on her (Willis laughs). Oh my gosh. And in eighth grade in California, you spend a lot of time on the Civil War. And again, she really piqued my curiosity because I remember learning that it wasn't just simple. It was more complicated between the North or the South. And we actually--that was the first time I had to write a term paper, which I found later, I still have. And it's, you know, it's not very well done, but it's eighth grade (Willis laughs). And I realized between what I was trying to write was--this is really interesting: the North was industrialized and the South was agricultural, and there are all these other cross currents.

And then when I was a sophomore in high school, the speech teacher, Clifford Summerall, he was invited to go into a class where students were giving oral reports, and I gave one. And I was pretty good at that. So, he asked me to join their debate team, and they had tournaments. And these are national. And all kinds of speaking; humorous speeches. I've forgotten the categories. And they had a national topic, which I don't think they do that anymore. They still have speech, but it tends to be more impromptu where you learn about a whole bunch of things and they say, what do you think about--whatever it might be? And that era was a national topic, and the topic that first--yeah, I was fifteen, a sophomore, right, was “Should we strengthen NATO?” Well, that was sixty years ago, (Willis laughs), and it's as current today as it was then. And what made it--why it had such a big impact was they gave you the materials and you had the same topic for the whole year. So, while my friends are--and I don't mean to diminish this, you have to do it, but it's, you know, they're reading chapter eight and answering the questions and the tests on Friday kind of thing--I'm learning about post-World War II and the Soviet Union and their march and to those eastern European states, all this really adult stuff.

And because at a tournament, they would assign you different sides--you're for or against--so you really had to learn about the issue. And what fascinated me was: it's not that simple. There are arguments for it and against it, and you don't know for sure how it's going to work out. A lot of the people doing debate, you could tell were going to be future lawyers. You know, I had my kind of sport coat and a tie, and I had to laugh in retrospect, some of them would, you know, their kids would come in like these dark, you know, suits, and they would try all these tricks. It was about winning. But for me it was like, “What's the answer?”

And then the next year, the question was, “Should we increase federal aid to education?” Again, it's as current today as it was then. And so you had to look at a lot of analyses and statistics. So Cliff Summerall gave me a gift. He's still alive, he's in his nineties. I met him on a plane from Sacramento by sitting down to him--I'd forgotten. And I thanked him in some detail. And according to his wife, he was very moved. He gave me a real gift. And then I had a couple of other iconic teachers, anyone of a certain age will remember John Georges. English teacher who had been a Marine in the South Pacific and World War II. And a German teacher, Bob Maywald, who was German and had as a teenager gotten here after the war. So those are local people that really made a difference. But--and I ended up majoring in International Relations because really of that interest.

00:12:11WILLIS: Right.

00:12:12WYLAND: And ended up spending the year in Germany, because I had a really good German teacher. So, when I got to college, that was pretty easy.

00:12:21WILLIS: Yeah.

00:12:22WYLAND: So, I can stop there. One of the thing I do want to add, when I ended up coming back here and being in the business; the building material supply, especially lumber and plywood, mostly for houses, it's a commodity. And it's very competitive, because, how do you say, “Well, our two by four is better than their two by four?” And so, it has to be not only the quality of the lumber, but the service and that sort of thing. And prices change really fast, and you really have to be on top of it, but you have to--it's not a business you can just let go by. And so, every day you have to know what you're selling, if there's a problem, if your competitor is undercutting you, and you have to get on it to solve the problem. Many of our competitors went under because you--and so I learned that you have to solve problems. You can't ignore them, and you better get after it.

00:13:43WILLIS: Right.

00:13:44WYLAND: So, I'll just stop there. I guess I had been doing that for, I don't know, twenty years, somewhere in that neighborhood. But I wanted to do something else. I was interested in education, and that's why I went for that school board appointment.

00:14:02WILLIS: Yeah, I was going to ask for the family business that anybody within your family tried to push you to stay in that line of work, or were they more open to you doing other things?

00:14:16WYLAND: My dad, had he lived, would've been very encouraging, I think.

00:14:20WILLIS: Yeah.

00:14:23WYLAND: And I learned that his dad, who had passed away before I was born, who I thought was just a quiet engineer type, turns out he was fascinated with international affairs.

00:14:35WILLIS: Oh.

00:14:36WYLAND: Would read newspapers. That was during the Roosevelt era. My--I was in the business with my cousin and I were running it, and his dad was still there, but my cousin and I were running that, and I think they thought I was crazy (both laugh). Which is what a lot of people think, you know, it's conflict and--

00:15:01WILLIS: Yeah.

00:15:02WYLAND: It's thankless, which it pretty much is.

00:15:06WILLIS: (laughs) Right, I was going to say, pretty much what it sounds like. So, but it really sounds like that business really helped shape who you became and it really helped you when it came to getting into politics.

00:15:17WYLAND: Yeah. What it did was, I always had this analytical bent and, you know, to go from college and think about a PhD and all that, you have to be very analytical. But what it added was: you better identify a problem and you better fix it, because if you wait it was very unforgiving. You know, there are businesses where, you know, it's just steady. And, and it wasn't like that. When I started out there were probably twenty lumber yards in San Diego County, and when we finally sold it in early 2000s there were basically two.

00:16:07WILLIS: Right.

00:16:08WYLAND: So. And so when I got into government, I wanted to solve problems, I wanted to analyze them and let's fix them.

00:16:18WILLIS: Right.

00:16:19WYLAND: That's kind of hard to do (laughs).

00:16:21WILLIS: Yeah. Right. Were you involved at all in that decision to sell the family business?

00:16:28WYLAND: Yeah, it was hard because, you know, the older generation who passed away, my cousin and I were running it, we--each of us had a sister who were not involved. And it's hard because he and I had grown up doing it. And our sisters, they weren't living locally, and they were all in favor of it. And this is very common in family businesses. You get different interests. So, but I was already in government, in the legislature, and he was frustrated and I had to say, “You're the guy there,” you know? So. But I actually think ultimately, actually, he regretted it. On the other hand, when it's a family business and you don't have people to hand it down to, and we had daughters and who--which is not a problem--but they weren't interested in it.

00:17:36WILLIS: Right.

00:17:37WYLAND: So.

00:17:38WILLIS: Right. Gotcha. So, going back, you said you spent a year in Germany. What was that experience like for you?

00:17:49WYLAND: Pomona had a semester abroad program. And in that program--which I think is the best way to do it, but it, these programs don't exist--you lived with a family for a month, and I happened to live with a family in southern Germany, a little town, Nördlingen, a little town in Bavaria. And I lived in a family that was the age of my grandparents and their daughter and their granddaughter, who was in her early twenties and was at the university. And it turns out that they had lived through World War I, he was in World War I, but never fought, but in the military; went through hyperinflation in Germany; the rise of Hitler, whom he strongly opposed. And he was working in the local government of this town, and they said, “Well, if you're working here, you have to sign up to join the Nazi party.” And it almost brings tears to my eyes. He wouldn't do it. And I thought so many times, you know, it's so easy for us in this country to say, “Well, they should do this or that.” And I've often wondered, would I have had the courage? All it was was signing a paper, they weren't making him do anything. Would I really have had the courage of my conviction? But he did. And it was during the war, and so they made him--Germany had taken over Czechoslovakia, so they made him move and go to Czechoslovakia. I mean, they kind of--that was his punishment. And he was there until the very end of the war. When they came back basically on a wagon, walking, he had lost so much weight, he said people he'd grown up with didn't recognize him.

00:20:07WILLIS: Wow.

00:20:08WYLAND: So, and I just really got along with them. And they had had a son who was drafted at the end of the war into the German military. He was only sixteen (years old). They were taking kids. And the last time they saw him, they argued about the war because they were against the war. They were against Hitler. And, whatever people may think, there were plenty who didn't like Hitler. And they argued and their son said, “Well, our lieutenant tells us that Führer has this new weapon and we're going to win.” He was a kid, right. Sixteen. And that was the last time they saw him. He was stationed near Berlin, and the Russians came in and, and so I think part of it was here was this young guy, I was only like nineteen or twenty (years old), and I think we got along and I think it was almost like here was their son that they lost. So we became really close. So that was my junior year. And then my senior year, my mentor--who later became famous--he had had a Fulbright, which was a scholarship, to Germany. And he said, “Mark, you should apply for this.” So I did. And lo and behold, I got it (laughs). So it was kind of a rough year. Because, again, I was graduated and I still didn't know what I wanted to do, but, so I spent the year in Germany studying German foreign policy. And that's one of the reasons I know so much about, a lot about Germany and the society and the culture and all that sort of thing.

00:22:15WILLIS: Right, right. That's fascinating. Thank you for sharing that. So, it sounds like, as far as what motivated you or pushed you in the direction of politics, a lot of it sounds like it was self-interest to begin with, but I know you also mentioned that the Vietnam War had a huge influence as well. Can you elaborate a little bit more on that?

00:22:34WYLAND: It did. I was of that era, which is only probably about five or six, seven years. And they, we had the draft which they ended, I think 1973 or something like that. And I was never in the service, but it affected the whole country, families, and it affected all the young men. And that's what I, what I ended up studying and writing about, and I'm still interested in the same thing, is: how people saw the world. How do you, in international affairs, the thing that's interesting to me is everyone wants peace, peace and prosperity, all over the world. That's what people want.

00:23:39WILLIS: Yep.

00:23:41WYLAND: And how did the decisions come about to say we need to engage militarily? And I have enormous respect for all those who fought there. And there are people from Escondido whose names are not along the wall in Washington, but in the park around the state capitol, there is a monument with the names of every Californian who was killed there. It's kind of emotional. Oscar Cruz, I'd grown up with Oscar Cruz; he's on that wall. And I've forgotten his first name. One of the Durbin boys, I didn't know him, but they were a well-known family in Escondido, the Durbins. And I think what happened was we had kind of a Cold War mentality, which was: if you--they remembered so clearly what happened, the lesson that all those people make in those policies. You had Lyndon Johnson, you had (David) Dean Rust, the Secretary of State, you had McNamara, Secretary of Defense, you had the National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy. All of them were of the era where they had grown up in the ‘20s and then the Depression, and went from the Depression into World War II. And they knew the cost and they had lost people. And so, the lesson was the lesson of--and, I can't recall the British politician's name who earned peace in our time in Munich--and the lesson was just like, from Hitler, you have to fight them. You can't let them gain. And it's really what's playing out right now, even though it's not our people there, but in Ukraine with Russia. And I didn't think that lesson applied very well to Vietnam. But what I wrote about was Dean Rusk, who was Secretary of State, and all the different elements of his worldview. And what I think happens to people in general is you get a kind of a take on something. And pretty soon, well, that's just the way it is.

You know, if I am, I could be a doctor--and, you know, there are these debates now about diets, for example, and you get--you know, these are smart, highly trained people, and they have, “Well, this is what you should eat or not eat,” or whatever it might be. And it's the same thing with solving all the problems that we have. And I worked a lot on education. “Well, this is what you do.” If you, if you want to teach, make sure English learners, and we have a lot of them in California who speak a different language at home. “If you want to make sure they learn English, this is the way you do.” And what I learned through those experiences is you can have some ideas, but take in new information and make sure that--and always be open. And in international affairs, you make decisions, but you don't know how they're going to turn out. And that's part of the interest and the tragedy of it. So, in the case of Vietnam--and I identified a dozen, maybe twenty different aspects of the worldview, how they saw things. And I don't think they really had thought it all through.

00:28:03WILLIS: Right. I know in the short amount of time in getting to know you, Mark, you are extremely passionate about education. And you were a member of the California State Assembly, and you served on the Board of Education of the Escondido Union School Board. You told me essentially that school board politics were just plain ugly. And that's putting it extremely lightly. What made school board politics just so ruthless?

00:28:38WYLAND: It was brutal. Brutal. Well, later on, when I represented half a million people in the (California State) Assembly and later on in the (State) Senate, a million people, which is more than a member of Congress, I dealt with many different school districts and cities. And what I learned about local government: they can vary greatly. You can have one city where everything is smooth. The city council, a school board, and you cross the line, and the city council and the school board are contentious. And at that point, on the Escondido Board, it was very contentious. And they had hired a new superintendent who was Hispanic. And then I think the district was probably two-thirds Hispanic. Now, it's probably at least three-quarters. And many, maybe most, came to school with either imperfect or no English.

And they had hired this guy, but there was a group that opposed him. And they were organized and included some of the administrators and some of the people opposed me because I was appointed. And they thought their person was robbed. And it was very organized. And they had--it was organized politically to get rid of him. And we would have these meetings, you know, the state legislature, few people know this, but if you want to show up on a bill and you show up in the committee on the day a bill is heard, almost always, I mean, rarely it's not, they will ask, “Is there anyone else who wants to testify on this bill?” You can go right up there and testify. You can lobby all the people, send them letters, meet with them. But almost no one does it. But when it's in local government, they do. And we had some board meetings that, well, they were quite raucous. And I'll never forget one (laughs) where this--she came up and she wasn't--she had made some good points, and she had, and there's no dias. It was just same level. We're just behind the table. And she said, “I've got--you all deserve pink slips.” And she had little pink pieces of paper. And that was what you gave someone--you used to get that if you're going to get fired or laid off. And she plunked down in front of us a pink piece of paper saying, “You're fired.” You know, I can laugh about it, but it was awfully serious. And ultimately for a variety of other reasons we decided to part with that superintendent. But there were people working for the district who unfairly, I thought, suffered. And because they were seen as, you know, on the wrong side.

00:32:04WILLIS: Right. Did that at least prepare you though, for the next step in your career? Which we're going to get to next as far as—

00:32:11WYLAND: No.

00:32:12WILLIS: Being elected into the Senate?

00:32:13WYLAND: No, because I couldn't believe it would be like that.

00:32:17WILLIS: Gotcha.

00:32:18WYLAND: I couldn't believe. But it was. And I'll tell you one funny story which illustrates it. I had a very contentious election. And this is important: we had two newspapers. This ties right into how we solve the problem of people feeling better about the government. We had The San Diego Union Tribune, and we had the North County Times, and they were robust, and they covered--The San Diego Union Tribune had, just on the editorial side, in addition to reporters, had a full-time editorial guy covering North County. And the North County Times did a great job. They covered school board meetings. They would editorialize about when we had these contentions about the school board. They had columnists who wrote about the school board. And people read the paper and they got a lot of information. And that's unfortunately no longer the case. So, what I--I had been very interested in this problem of Hispanic students learning English, because I knew their futures and the future of the state--you know, there are the immigration debates--but the fact is they were here. And I knew that their future and the future of the state depended upon them acculturating and being able to get good jobs, et cetera. So, I thought, “This can't be that hard.” And I thought--it's very naïve--I thought, “Escondido can be a model for the whole state.” Because it's small enough we can fix this. And that's kind of the business guy’s approach. Here's a problem, we need to jump in there and fix it. And it turns out in education, there are all these ideologies about how you teach reading and how you teach math. The business approach, which is, I think most people’s, is more pragmatic: I don't care. Let's just see what works. Well, it turned out, with all this contention, it was really hard. And I thought, and these mandatory tests were coming down from the state--which I thought were actually helpful--and I thought, “That's the place to fix this.” And that race was also brutal, that first race. But I don't need to, unless you want to, to get into it (laughs).

00:35:22WILLIS: (laughs) It's up to you.

00:35:24WYLAND: Well, I--you know, I ended up leaving graduate school with a master's and not going back for the PhD, but I think I got a PhD in practical politics. I was pretty naive. You know what, I'll tell you a little bit about that race, a little about that first year, and then maybe we can pause and figure out where you want to go next. I never--first of all, it was a primary. Primary of 2000 and the primary of 2000--and I was a Republican who had been a Democrat. And again, it was pragmatism. I just ended up agreeing with more of the Republican policies and fewer of the Democratic. But it was always pragmatic. What's the best answer to the problem? So, in that time--it's not the same now--but in that time, North County, and that's the district is, oh, 450--475,000 people. A congressional (district) then was around, I think 700,000 just to give--and a state senate (district) was just short of a million. And it was most of North County, big chunk of North County. And it was very conservative. So, whoever won the Republican primary was probably going to win the general election.

So, I ended up starting out with a--I got some help to do this. You have to get help, really. And through that--consultant is what they call them. I ended up hiring a campaign manager who turned out to be a crook, a straight up crook! But he hadn't vetted him enough. So (laughs), so then, we--and there were seven or eight people in the race, which actually makes it easier because all you need is a plurality, not a majority. So, I ended up--that consultant, we parted ways and I got a very capable consultant. Some states just have a campaign manager--I had a consultant and a manager--and they design the race. And a key part of it is communication by mail. When you see TV ads, that's really expensive, and only a few campaigns have the money to do that. Same thing with radio. And in that era radio was going strong. So, you had radio, TV, ads, and mail. And so we were going along with issues that we thought were helpful. One's kind of a profile where you introduced the person. I was still reasonably well known in Escondido. They were still old guard. My family had been there forever. And I was at that point, president of the school board. And then, the then-assemblyman who was termed out, he didn't want me. He liked control. And he had picked someone that he thought he could control. So he was against me, which is hard because he raised money from lobbyists to go against me. And he discovered that when I was a Democrat, I had given money to Democrats. I'd given money to Al Gore in 1988. Well, in a primary you get the most intense voters. So having given money to Al Gore, to a good loyal Republican would be like in a Democratic race, having given money to Trump or Bush when they want Obama, it's like (Willis laughs) this can't work!

00:40:12WILLIS: Yeah.

00:40:13WYLAND: And you can't explain in a short campaign, you can't--the explanation was at that point--and I still believe now, you need two strong parties, which are reasonable. Well, Al Gore in 1988, I thought was pretty reasonable. I was a Republican, but I also wanted a reasonable Democrat. And he was running as a moderate Southern Democrat (laughs). Well, you can't explain that to people because it's ten, twelve years later. And by then he had changed. So anyway, it cut down my margin and I managed to squeak out a victory. Only because they--if they'd had more money, and money does play, people hate it, but it's like marketing. It's like, if you represent Coca-Cola and I've got “New Great Coke,” and you have a million dollars of marketing and name ID, and everyone likes Coke, and I've got a little amount to say, “Hey, this new stuff is really good,” it doesn't matter. And so they didn't have enough, and I squeaked it out. I think I got less than twenty percent of the vote.

00:41:44WILLIS: Oh, wow.

00:41:45WYLAND: I barely made it. And there was another guy on that race who was the mayor of Encinitas, Jim Bond. And he was on the ballot as James Bond. And the James Bond movie had just come out like few months before.

00:42:02WILLIS: Oh man.

00:42:04WYLAND: (laughs) And I, so I just barely squeaked it out.

00:42:09WILLIS: Gotcha.

00:42:10WYLAND: And I was not prepared. It was intensely political, more than I expected, but I wasn't really prepared for it.

00:42:22WILLIS: That's fascinating. So as far as the Senate, you represented District 38 from 2006 to 2014. Is that correct? (Wyland nods) So what was that moment like when you got into the Senate? Do you remember how you felt?

00:42:40WYLAND: Well, yeah. Let me give you, let me go back a little bit.

00:42:44WILLIS: Yeah.

00:42:45WYLAND: Because I could talk about growing up in Escondido in that era for a long time, but we've got hundreds, if not thousands of my era, who can tell you that story. This is what's a little different. So, when I got to the Assembly, a friend of mine in the Assembly, but he had been there, I was new--later, a friend of mine in the Senate (Tony Strickland), now the Mayor of Huntington Beach, he came to meet me and we, he tells this story, which is true, and he said, “Well, Mark, what are your interests?” And I said, “Education.” And he kind of chuckled and said, “Well, what about education?” And I said, well, I say it was a five-point plan. He says, it was like a ten-point plan that I said, “I've got this plan.” And he started to laugh and he said, “You don't understand. Education is controlled by the Teacher's Union. And whatever they say goes.” And I did say “Yes, but they haven't seen the power of my ideas.” I used that phrase, “The power of my ideas.” Where upon Tony, Tony Strickland, he just started rolling on the floor laughing because he realized I had no idea how it worked.

And what I learned was, local government is very different. Once you get in state government, it's just like, organized like Congress. There's parties, there's caucuses, legislative committees, floor--it's set up like that. And I always thought, you know, I'd been a Democrat. Everyone wants the same thing. Good jobs. Well, it--there are party differences. Not everything. Maybe half of the bills pass, everyone votes, which people don't understand enough of. It's not people like that all the time. You have to work together in the same building. But I did find it was much more partisan than I had expected. You know, “Our interest group says this, so that's how we're voting. Our interest group says this, so that's how we're voting.” So much so. It's a two-year session in the Assembly. So I ran in 2000, served in 2001, came back for my second year in 2002.

And I'll never forget going into the basement of the building and then getting in the elevator to go up to my office. And my heart literally sank. It's a sensation I had never had. And I thought, “I hate this. I cannot keep doing this. I worked so hard to get this. I just hate this.” We aren't trying to solve problems. It's just the partisan--and some people in these bodies are very--there's a range of partisanship. Some are very partisan, some (unintelligible), but what happened that year is I happened to have a chief of staff who really understood politics and how politics works. And he also was, he'd probably deny it, but he was an amateur historian and they didn't have kids yet. And we would spend probably an hour, hour and a half, after work every night talking about history and Vietnam and all these things. And I learned about politics and got more engaged in politics, because I was ready to quit. So that's how that happened. And then in 2006, the Senator who had held that seat, Bill Morrow, he was retiring because of term limits. But before then, around 2005, there was a congressman here, Duke Cunningham, Randy “Duke” Cunningham, North County. And this is uncommon. I know a lot of people think it's common, it's uncommon: he was fraudulently selling his vote. He was on a relevant committee, appropriations for defense. And he had a contractor that basically, “If you give me this much money, I'll make sure you get this contract.” And I really want to emphasize as much as people think, “Oh, it's all about money, they're crooked.” No, they really aren't. And long and short of it is he was forced out. And a lot of people were saying, “Well, you need to run for that seat.” Which many people have told me, I would've pretty much walked into. But it was an identity crisis, a midlife crisis, because we'd sold our business. And I thought, “Well, if I don't win, what am I going to do?” And plus, my interest in education, that's really a state issue. They will talk about education at the federal level. The reality is the federal government has very little to do with education. It's primarily local and state. Long and short of that is I decided to stay with the state. And you know, sometimes gone back--think well, I should have done that. But I stayed with the state, and I walked into the seat because my potential opponents were running for the congressional seat. So, I walked in.

00:49:26WILLIS: Yeah.

00:49:28WYLAND: And the Senate is different from the Assembly, just like the United States Senate is different from Congress. But it took me a little adjustment because there's a new group of people. But there's only forty. So the United States Senate is a hundred, and you really get to know those people. So I continued, I worked on a lot of different things, but education was a key part. And then it's four years. So the reelect was 2010, and I almost quit then. I only told my family, I didn't tell anyone else because if you say you're leaving, it's--you're a lame duck. It's a mad rush. And I just thought, it's so hard to get--so hard to make this better. And I had, and we can talk about them, things I worked on. And it's, to me, they were so obvious. And it's not because of malice or anything, it's just change, even positive change, it's just hard to get people--especially if it's different than what they're accustomed to. But ultimately, I did run again and so I stayed there until 2014.

00:51:08WILLIS: Right. And then you hit, you had hit your term limit at 2014, correct?

00:51:13WYLAND: Right.

00:51:14WILLIS: If you had the ability to continue on, would you have or would you have gone now regardless?

00:51:20WYLAND: That's a really good question. I think I might've done one more term. I think, well, I'm idealistic and you read what the Senate leader said about me.

00:51:40WILLIS: Yes. I wanted to get to that.

00:51:41WYLAND: I keep thinking there's got to be a way, (both laugh) you know, there's just got to be a way. So, I might've done one more term. I think something that's very common with people of my age. So, I'm seventy-six now, and we think of retirement depending somewhere in the sixties. It can be early or young sixties or later. But from my friends, I would say a significant percentage want to keep working. Maybe they'd (work) not as much or as intensely, but there's kind of a desire to contribute. And I'm still on a--I'm emeritus now--but I ended up along that period of time being involved with Pomona, the alumni group, and then the Pomona Board. And I'm emeritus now, and they allow me to attend meetings and talk. So, I would like to have done more.

00:52:56WILLIS: Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I could tell you had that ambition, even when you thought about quitting, you were like, “No, there's more to be done. I know I can make a difference.”

00:53:04WYLAND: Yeah. And one of the things, I worked on a--I worked on a lot of things in education, but because of that time in Germany and Europe, I really--no system is perfect, but Americans don't know enough about how Europeans do things. And it's frustrating when people kind of knock Europe. They're our cousins (laughs).

00:53:33WILLIS: Yeah.

00:53:34WYLAND: We, you know, our society and culture and our government to some extent comes from that tradition. And I think it's important, not necessarily to copy, but well, how do they do this? Well, how do they do this? And in education it's not perfect, but they have one system that works really well, and that's apprenticeships. I worked on that. And there are misconceptions about that. And Americans, Americans will say things like, “Well, yeah, you know, plumbers make a lot of money.” And by the way, my grandfather was a plumber. That was his first business. So, I'm a--you know, I worked with those folks when I was in the lumber business and I did that work when I was--but apprenticeships are everything! Everything. Bankers are--start off as apprentices, realtors, insurance people, people managing resorts. Probably eighty, eighty-five percent of the jobs are various types of apprenticeships. And they give you training. And then if you have a facility and you're pretty good at, they give you more training. And the sky's the limit. And for a lot of reasons I thought we needed to develop more of that.

00:54:57WILLIS: Yeah, I completely agree. I know we discussed that in our pre-interview, how the United States is pretty much completely different than all the other countries out there. They have that focus of, “Hey, let's do an apprenticeship.” We have vocational schools. Of course we do have vocational schools here in the U.S. but we don't seem to put as much emphasis on them. Why do you think that is?

00:55:21WYLAND: Well, I'll tell you what the history is. First, Europe. Europe, starting in the Middle Ages developed guilds. Weavers, obviously technology moved beyond the people who wove, did weaving of cloth. And there was a great deal of respect. So, if someone was skilled at this; a goldsmith, a baker, whatever it was, there was appreciation for that skill. And once the university got started, and they had medieval, you know, first in the early Dark Ages, it was in the monasteries. But then when universities got started, they were very old. But the modern university came out of Germany. They didn't have science and engineering. That was not common. It's all, it all started in Germany. Even in things like theology and archeology and all those things. And the same thing with all these various other jobs. And they were accustomed to, if you have a certificate, you really--there's a lot of respect. I think what happened in America, I mean it's a longer story, but the short of it is we had those, and we had in California, all the high schools were known as comprehensive high schools. So you didn't have a separate vocational school. So every high school--it was same at Escondido, same for all the high schools--you had a whole range. You had courses for people who were for sure going to go to college, those who weren't sure, and a lot of vocational courses. But there was not, it was sort of like, well, college somehow is like the ideal. But those vocational courses were great because there were a lot of great boys, and boys in particular, who didn't want to sit there and listen to a teacher talk all--they wanted to do things. And we had many agricultural classes, we had--before computer aided design, you could take four years of drafting. You had machine shop, you had auto shop. Well, it's not like they became auto mechanics. They learned practical engineering.

00:58:12WILLIS: Yeah.

00:58:13WYLAND: I mean, in auto shop they learned how machinery works. They learned a lot of physics. They learned the chemistry of combined--they learned all those things. And so, they could sit through the boring class because they had their cool project they were working on.

00:58:29WILLIS: Yeah.

00:58:32WYLAND: I think it was unintentional but misguided that they dismantled that because it was driven by misguided administrators who thought, “Well we need to just, it needs to be all college.” College doesn't exist anywhere else in the world. They will use the word, they don't have it. It's an American invention. And they don't understand it. And even in some cases, like in Spanish, there's “colegio,” which it translated to college. It's not, it's more like a high school. And in Germany, if you use the word “high school,” which in German is “Schule” (technische Schule), we think high school, “Schule” is like a technical university. It's called a technical high school.

00:59:27WILLIS: I see.

00:59:28WYLAND: And so, there's all this misunderstanding. But what we did was, the message became for those young people who weren't academically inclined--but are very capable and smart--the message was, “Well, unless you want to do this college thing, you know, you're not really, yeah, it's not so great, you know, if you have to do that.” That's so completely misguided. And so you get right here at San Marcos High School down the road--I drove by today because of this traffic mess--I had a buddy who was the soccer coach there, and he told me one day, he said a bunch of his kids came to him and said, “Coach, they're closing the machine shop.” And the kids said, “We only come to school to play soccer and for machine shop.”

01:00:27WILLIS: Yeah.

01:00:28WYLAND: There's a lot of great healthy--it applies to girls and women too, but in a different way--healthy boys who--they, just, they're not the academically inclined. But to give you an illustration with machinery--and I've been in the factory in Switzerland where they make high-end machinery--you can start out as a machinist and end up as a mechanical engineer. And they train you and they train you. And so, I think the combination of this misguided notion that everyone has to go to college, we end up where we are.

01:01:17WILLIS: Right.

01:01:18WYLAND: And then we end up with a problem of how do you finance it? The biggest debt we have in this country outside of home mortgages, it's not auto loans, it's not credit card. It's student loans! It's over a trillion dollars. Yesterday the brother of my niece's husband, I may have been telling you, he's moved out here. He's a chiropractor. He has an outrageous student loans. That doesn't exist anywhere else in the world. They have this, the system is stripped down. But if he were in one of those other--let's just take the European countries--he might have a small loan, but it'd be very small. And it's not just higher taxes, it's because the system is different. So I did lots of work and lots of bills. You know, you have to take a slice of it. So, one of them, for example, was that every school district had to have a council that advises them and builds connections between various industries and the kids. So, that's my pitch. And if you survey Americans, they agree.

01:02:44WILLIS: Right.

01:02:47WYLAND: But it's really hard to make those changes in the school.

01:02:55WILLIS: We're forcing a lot of these kids to just have to figure it out on their own. Because a lot of them, when they're going through the K-12 system, they're like, “Well, this isn't for me. I already know this.” But especially once you get to high school, it's all about college prep, college prep.

01:03:09WYLAND: Right.

01:03:10WILLIS: Taking these tests.

01:03:12WYLAND: Right.

01:03:13WILLIS: And I know for me, when I was going through high school, that was demoralizing because I was never a good test taker to begin with. I was never good at math.

01:03:22WYLAND: Right.

01:03:23WILLIS: Never good at science.

01:03:24WYLAND: Right.

01:03:25WILLIS: And they put so much emphasis on these tests.

01:03:28WYLAND: Right.

01:03:29WILLIS: And if you don't do well on them, you feel like a failure.

01:03:31WYLAND: Exactly.

01:03:32WILLIS: And you’re not smart. And that’s not true.

01:03:34WYLAND: That's what I'm talking about. And you know, I don't want to leave the young women out. And women probably understand that better. And I'll give you an example though with young women, two of them. But I think with boys in particular, I'm going to start saying controversial stuff (Willis laughs). I think boys are wired to go out and do stuff. They're just like, solve a problem. you know, hunt, you know, (laughs) just, and I think I was lucky because I was--things came easily enough to me. A lot of school I didn't like. But it came easily enough that just like with German, it came easy, so it wasn't that hard. But, and so that's the problem. It's demoralizing. And they wonder why there's such a dropout rate. And they--why the use of drugs and all this stuff is a--particularly younger males. You need to be validated, like you're making a contribution. And in these other countries, they have that. Now, one of the things that a lot of Americans don't like, they think, well then you're at a young age, you don't know what you want to do. And you're plugged into something. It's not that simple.

I'll give you an example. Young woman who's trained and you start fifteen, sixteen, where you're going to school three days a week and then three afternoons a week and two full days as an example, you're in the business. So, she was trained in an auto dealership. First off, you're paid. So, you're sixteen. It's not a lot of money, but you're paid for that. And you learn all these skills. A lot of older people might say, “Wow, they don't even know how to answer the phone.” You learn all those skills. You learn how to write a business letter. You learn if the manufacturer sends a letter about a defect or something, you learn how to understand it, how to respond. You learn the economics of it. Well, our salesman paid a commission. How does that work? Inventory. How do we do that? By the time she's nineteen, she's ready to go. She understands that business backwards and forwards. But she doesn't have to say, “Well, my career, the rest of my life is doing that.” She's got all kinds of skill sets that you can go all sorts of places.

01:06:21WILLIS: Exactly.

01:06:22WYLAND: Nursing, I worked hard on nursing. We have so many--mostly young women, a few young men--who would be great in every aspect of healthcare. And what do we do? All we do is make it hard. All we do is make it hard. And we made it worse. It used to be in an earlier era, nursing schools were affiliated with hospitals. And it was a combination of hands-on and classroom. So, if you applied to nursing school, and they had dormitories, you know, it's after a high school and a combined, classroom and clinical. So, you know, after six months, if you couldn't stand the sight of blood, you learned that and you didn't have to continue. And you're working all the time in a clinical setting. Plus learning the science. Well then we decided we have to upgrade it--has to more time in the classroom. Well, here's what happens. Whether it's at Palomar (College), and CSUSM’s (California State University, San Marcos) doing a pretty good job, I will guarantee you the freshman class comes in and there will be many times more kids who want to go into that. Well, we don't have the slots. And in those other countries, you can get that slot and you can be the most sophisticated OR nurse and you've done this and you can do it. And then you, if you want to, you move up. If you don't want to, you go into something else.

01:08:01WILLIS: Right.

01:08:02WYLAND: So, the part of the reason I'm so passionate about it is it's horrible to see these young people discouraged or demoralized. We need them (laughs).

01:08:14WILLIS: Right. That's our future.

01:08:16WYLAND: And, and I totally understand why young women will come from training in another country. I totally get it. They get here, it's their lives go up. But what about our young women? And some of them are coming from difficult backgrounds and all they need is some assistance. A little more time. And they'll be great. And instead, you talk about spending money? Two friends of mine had wives who were nurses. Each of them went to the four-year undergraduate (school). Liberal arts. It's got its place. I'm a beneficiary of it. It's got its place. But then after that, and all the money, money society spent, money they spent, loans. Then they have all this intense nursing training, and then we don't have enough opportunities. So, and one of my doctors--you get to my age, you're in doctor's offices all the time and--meet this young man. He wants to be a PA, physician's assistant. Well, guess what? There are only a few programs, one's at UC Davis (University of California, Davis). I know that, because buddy of mine was a professor there. Why don't we have that? Every state school should have that! Because the people who are going to be treating people more and more are going to be physician's assistants and nurse practitioners. And let's talk about doctors. We're--there's now a shortage around here. Because there's a lot more of us in my baby boomer era. What's the limit? The limit is why--you tell me why the University of California, you can get a PhD. I don't mean to pick on them (Willis laughs). I love the UC, but why do we really want an administration that's practically as big as the student body? And I read the other day, Stanford's administration has more people than they do students.

01:10:31WILLIS: Oh, wow.

01:10:32WYLAND: And all the data show these administrations keep growing. And how come we don't have expanded medical schools? In 20--I think it was 2010 or 2012, we had a new senator from Riverside. And I was talking to him and I said, “What are you interested in?” He said, “My number one goal is to expand the medical school at UC Riverside (University of California, Riverside).” And it was kind of the reverse of what my friend Tony had done years before I chuckled and said, “That's not going to happen.” “Well, we need it.” I said, “You're right. And I will help you. And I'm on the budget subcommittee for education. I'm on the education committee, I will help you. But you just need to understand, when you come across that huge bureaucracy and you say, “Does every campus have to be able to grant a PhD in medieval French literature at every campus? Or should we expand the medical school?” And maybe we give them an incentive. If they agree to work in underserved communities for a few years, why don't we make it free? It should be free.

01:11:55WILLIS: Yes.

01:11:56WYLAND: Why shouldn't they be graduating and saying, you know, “I love family practice, but I'm going to make a lot more money doing this.” It's crazy.

01:12:07WILLIS: Yeah. No, I'm right there with you.

01:12:09WYLAND: I'm sorry, Ryan. I get wound up.

01:12:10WILLIS: No (laughs).

01:12:11WYLAND: It brings it all back.

01:12:12WILLIS: No, it's a great conversation. I feel like we could talk about it for hours, but I did want to go back to your time in the Senate, near the end, in particular, when you had to retire. I want to talk about something a little bit more positive. Senator Darrell Steinberg, who I know you have a lot of respect for, he was quoted in saying, “Senator Wyland, I see you as the Republican romantic. You are somebody who constantly strives to make the world what it should be instead of what it is. You are a special member of the Senate, partly because you are unique.” How does that quote make you feel, first off? And in your opinion, what made you unique?

01:12:58WYLAND: Well, first of all, some Republicans say, “What do you mean, he is a Democrat!” Look, I have a lot of respect for Darrell. And in some ways you get to know people better even than their friends and family do. Because he really knew me. He'd seen me, you're working together all the time. We'd gone on a trip to Switzerland and Germany to look at these programs. And so I think it's one of the nicest compliments. There were some others in those tributes I really appreciated because I think he did understand. And I plead guilty. He's right. I can't--I'm pragmatic, but I can't, just can't say, “Well, that's the way it is. We can't fix it.” I keep thinking, “You know, we got to--we can make this better (laughs).”

01:14:00WILLIS: Yeah.

01:14:01WYLAND: So, it made me--it first of all blew me away because every year when people retire, it's every election year, there's tributes. There's only few retiring, and there's a session where people speak about the member. And I was totally unprepared. From all the comments, I just, I was completely unprepared. So, it was a wonderful compliment. The downside of it is, and it's same thing in that column that Dan Walters wrote, well, that's great, but how do you make progress? (Both laugh) You know, it's--progress is tough and it's not--when I talk about these things, I'm optimistic. I do see the glass as half full. It's kind of a--I have a pretty high standard, and I think we just have to keep working at these things. And something that's really important. People are so cynical about politicians: it's not that easy. And at some point I would like to talk a little bit about my project because the biggest challenge is people know less. And so when they know less, it's harder to hold government accountable. And it's not their fault. I have friends who say, “Well, they're just lazy. They could find it on the internet.” It's really hard. It needs to be easy to understand how well you're being governed. But I'll tell you that and some of those other comments, especially from the other side, the other side, the other party, were--I really appreciate it.

01:16:09WILLIS: Yeah, I imagine. So that kind of is a great segue onto the next thing I wanted to address, which is something you mentioned to me is that the general public does not understand politics the way that they should. Can you elaborate on that?

01:16:26WYLAND: Yeah, Ryan, there's a lot of research that would illustrate this better. But my--here's my direct experience. When I first ran in 2000 and for several years after that, most people got a print newspaper. It wasn't that expensive. And most people when they established a household or got in their twenties or mid-twenties, got a paper. And the papers did a good job at reporting on what government was doing. And most of the reporting was fairly, I would say, fairly objective. They had different editorial policies. You know, one may be more conservative, one more liberal, but even then, that was within a group. And I say this as a guy started reading The New York Times when I lived in New York, so I'm kind of a newspaper addict. And the North County Times would publish probably--they'd have two pages full of letters. So, people felt they could weigh in and people would read the letters and respond. And for a whole bunch of reasons, the economics change, the advent of the internet and social media, less advertising, newspapers are dying. The North County Times (is) no more. So, the entire big chunk of North County is--there's some coverage and they try in The Coast News. And there's some--a little bit in the Solana Beach, maybe a little bit North, Encinitas-Del Mar area.

But if you're living in San Marcos or Escondido, it's a news desert. How do you know when it comes time to vote for a city council person or a school board person, or a Palomar College trustee? How do you know? And so, I think the way to change this and to change some of the anger that we have and the demonization where our side's good, the other side's evil--and you know, I'm a Republican, but I see this on both sides. And they'll take the most outrageous person on the other side. And all the outrageous things they say, well, look like if you take Congress, and we'd be the same thing if they cover the state. That's a lot of people. There's always going to be some people who (laughs) you know, who will say outrageous things, some of them purposely because of the coverage. So, I think the solution of my project, I call it civic knowledge, it could be civic information, it could be any name is--I want a way for someone, and it has to be partly on the internet to say, “How much are we spending in the state? I read there's a twenty-five-billion-dollar deficit. Where's the money going? Where'd it come from?” And it becomes so common as you as like googling. And there it is. Historically, easy. It's not that complicated with pie charts and color. Holy cow. I had no idea that half of the money we're spending on is education.

And by the way, are we measuring--are these kids learning to read? What skills do they have? How come thirty years ago we spent a huge amount on transportation and now we're not spending any? No wonder we have all these poorly maintained roads. I think it just--here's a national one. The whole issue of Social Security and Medicare, everyone who knows this, which is—knows, which is every member of Congress, all the staff, all the experts, the average people know that it has to be fixed because the--we're not generating enough money. We're paying out more in social security to me and my generation than we're taking in. Well, there's extra there, but it's diminishing as more and more people get older. There aren't enough people of your age who are chipping in. And by the way, they may send you something, but the money you send in is not going to Ryan Willis in his account. They keep track of it, because you will get it. The idea you will get it. But it's going to Mark Wyland and his buddies who are retired. So the reason, the underlying reason I think it doesn't get fixed is it's too tempting. If you and I are running and I say--you say, “Hey, we got to fix this. Look at my generation. I deserve it. I've been chipping in, my employer's chipping in, we got to fix this, got to reform it.” But the people don't understand we need to. My temptation, it's human: man, if I say, “Ryan wants to take away Medicare and take away Social Security and make you after retire at seventy-five (years old), I can win.” And so that's where we are. So no one touches it. And so, what my project is, everyone won't do this, but if enough people learn it (Social Security) has to be fixed, then instead of letting me get away with that and demonizing you, it's like, “Hey, Wyland, at least Ryan knows there's a problem. And he's talking about solutions. What's yours? Just rather than attacking him because you're pretending like there isn't one.” You see what I'm saying? What I'm trying to do is something I've wanted to do for forty years, which is change the nature of politics where enough people, it doesn't have to be everyone, just enough people, ten, fifteen percent, twenty, wonderful. Who know enough that pretty soon, instead of just these attacks, it's “Okay, here's the problem. What's your solution?”

01:23:42WILLIS: Yeah.

01:23:44WYLAND: You see what I'm saying?

01:23:46WILLIS: Right. I know you said that your mission really is obtaining better quality government.

01:23:51WYLAND: Yeah.

01:23:52WILLIS: And how do you do that? People need to be more informed.

01:23:55WYLAND: And it's the people that can hold them accountable. Because--look, I was a Republican. I am a Republican, but, and it's generally, and I have most of my oldest friends are Democrats, we need to get rid of this stuff (mashes fingers towards each other, indicating conflict). It's like, how do we solve this problem? And I'm more interested in, at the end of the day, not just, I may think, “Well, this is the best solution,” but I'm more interested in the gift I would like to give is let's have a discussion where we actually understand what the issues are. And you know what, I may say Social Security is better if you make--if people have to work another couple of years and you may say, “No, we should do this, or tax--the company has to pay more.” I don't care about that part as much as, “Hey, we're talking about how we solve it.”

01:24:57WILLIS: The discussion.

01:24:58WYLAND: And that's how you get better government. Sadly, the newspapers used to help us. They don't. TV's a joke. Boy, I'm starting to say things I might regret (Willis laughs). Look, I get local TV news, I understand it's a business. It gets worse and worse and worse. If you even have the first segment as real news, you're lucky. And all of them used to have reporters who knew government. Same thing with--I'll say this about the UT (The San Diego Union Tribune) and I know some of those people--they don't have enough reporters who actually understand government and as it declines and declines, and then they say, “Well, we're about this. We're about focusing on this group.”

01:25:46WILLIS: Yeah.

01:25:47WYLAND: I heard one of their key people there, I just could hardly believe it, say, “Well, we want to write stories about, you know, instead of old white men, we're going to focus on what this group or that group or my group.” And I'm thinking, tell me who doesn't want a good job, a good education for their family, a reasonably safe environment, who doesn't want to sit in traffic?” I mean, everyone has the same thing. Everyone wants healthcare. Some people have a bigger problem than others. We need to work on it. It's like (laughs)--and they don't know that. And they will write these endless stories about--that avoid--and because solving the problems is where it gets hard. That's where the hard work is. And that's where you realize, “Gosh, it's not as simple as I thought.”

01:26:51WILLIS: But with your project you feel like it can explain it to people and give them a platform.

01:26:58WYLAND: I can give you succinctly--we don't think twice about googling, right? And a friend of mine had this experience just recently-- I've been talking to, because I'm trying to get the fund(ing)--I actually have a nonprofit I set up years ago: the Institute for Civic Education. And you could do it as a nonprofit or you could even do it, you could sell it to libraries and things like that for research. It's not that hard. If you--people who are informed, educated, if you say, “Well, you know, there's these fights about defense and Social Security. Well, where do they spend the money?” They don't know.

01:27:49WILLIS: Yeah.

01:27:50WYLAND: I was talking to a friend of mine, highly educated guy, retired now, when I lived in New York, he was a pretty big-time business guy. And we're--but he's lifelong Democrat. But we, you know, we didn't used to have those divisions, you would joke, you'd kid, “Ah, you know, he is a right-wing, crazy, ah—" you like, it didn't matter (laughs). And I'm trying to get, we need to come together as a country. And I remember he said, “You know, I've lived in New York for forty years. I couldn't tell you,” I--he gets The New York Times every day. Maybe The Wall Street Journal. He said, “I couldn't tell you where the money is spent.” It's that simple. And they've got major problems. Look at the billions we're spending on the bullet train. I know trains, I knew more about that than anyone in that entire building, the legislature. Because I'd lived in New York and I'd taken it every day and I'd lived in Europe. And there's only a few places where they make sense here. In some places. So, because we no longer have the newspapers, I think if we get this information out there, you can market it, not necessarily for money, but--and pretty soon it's in social media, and instead of someone saying, “well google it” Hey, check out Civic Knowledge, check out Civic Information on that. We're debating this or that. Check it out. Who--and it has to be objective, it cannot be partisan. And it has to include solutions across the political spectrum in their own words. We were talking just before we started about an interview on 60 Minutes, which is what this would not be, where it was clear the intent was to do what I call “gotcha journalism.”

01:29:51WILLIS: Yeah.

01:29:52WYLAND: “I'm going to come up with a question that's going to make you sweat and everyone's going to see, you know, how horrible you are.” No. They need to, in their own words, they need to be exposed to the solution. I guarantee you what people will see is, it's harder than they thought. And it's a kind of a way of maturity when you become an adult and you realize--and people tend to be more pragmatic and let's see if we can move the ball forward.

01:30:34WILLIS: Yeah. No, definitely. So, along those lines, looking at politics today, I know you've expressed to me that one of the core issues, I mean, I know there's a lot, but one of the core issues with voters, and it's been problematic for decades, is not knowing who they're even really voting for.

01:30:53WYLAND: Right.

01:30:54WILLIS: Who are these people?

01:30:55WYLAND: Right.

01:30:56WILLIS: And many voters either don't do their due diligence or they don't really know where to start.

01:31:02WYLAND: Right.

01:31:03WILLIS: When it comes to researching these people and they really just go off of endorsements.

01:31:09WYLAND: Right.

01:31:10WILLIS: And relying on their own emotions essentially.

01:31:13WYLAND: Right. Exactly.

01:31:15WILLIS: I would love to hear more of your thoughts on that.

01:31:17WYLAND: Well, you nailed it, Ryan. And it's a change in a short period of time. That's what's so staggering. I mean, when I started in the early 2000s, you could get (laughs), I'm kind of an addict, but I was getting six or seven papers a day. I was getting four or five California papers. And journalists, they, and it's--their problem is it's a business. And their business went away once advertising moved to the internet and people no longer--it was no longer part of a rite of passage as you got older and formed a household, well, you get the paper--and maybe initially, and it's still true today--the guy, the first thing he's going to look at is the sports. And I know people still subscribing to the print version of the UT which is going down, who are disgusted with other parts, but they're reading the sports--

01:32:22WILLIS: Or the comics.

01:32:23WYLAND: Or the comics (laughs). I'm a fan of the comics.

01:32:25WILLIS: Same here.

01:32:26WYLAND: I read the comics every day.

01:32:27WILLIS: Yep (laughs).

01:32:28WYLAND: Certain ones I really like.

01:32:29WILLIS: Right.

01:32:30WYLAND: And there's a lot of wisdom in the comics (laughs). And so it's an art form. So, I think that's made it harder. And I have a friend who was a pretty big-time newspaper publisher in other parts of the country. And we talk about this a lot. And I'm trying to say this is the only solution I know because when I started here, both the North County Times and the UT interviewed virtually every candidate, every candidate, if running for city council in El Cajon or Escondido or San Marcos, they interviewed you. And when I first sat down with the UT Editorial Board, it was seven or eight people and they apologized that they weren't all there. They had a separate editorial specialist on national security issues, which made sense. Here we are in the Navy town for crying out loud, the Navy and the Marines. And so, the only way I know to help change that and bring people more together is to have a simple way of seeing this. And if it's fully fleshed out, you can have a simple summary and then you can add more detail. So, if you want to know, well, how come we don't have more doctors? It's not hard. You figure out, well, they have to have residencies, who controls the number of residencies? Medicare. Medicare controls that. So, you ask your congressman, “Why don't you expand residencies for medical schools here?” Okay. You see, you can ask the governor this, and every legislator, you can't tell me. And if you saw the numbers and how big that bureaucracy is, you wouldn't believe it. You're telling me that you don't have enough room for doctors. Give me a break. Come on. The CSUs and the community colleges; when Palomar has a three quarter a billion-dollar bond issue, and I said to them, “Aren't you going to expand your facilities for people who want to go into nursing?” “Well, you know.” Come on. I get why you're saying that, but this is something society needs.

01:35:10WILLIS: Yep.

01:35:11WYLAND: So, I said yesterday at Easter gathering, a family gathering, this came up and my sister's approach was, “Come on, people are lazy. They won't check it out.” Well, au contraire, (laughs) I think if people get accustomed to it, people check out their Google all the time. If they get used to it and it's objective, it can't be seen--so, if you portray someone's view on something: so-and-so introduced a bill to do this, if they call up and say, “Wait a minute, that you--you need to read it, that my intent is this.” I'm going to put exactly what they say. It has to be reliable. And I think it's one of the few ways out of this mess we’re in.

01:36:11WILLIS: Yeah. No, I agree. You mentioned it being objective. And I find that interesting because I know in one of the classes I have taken as a graduate student, one of the professors used to always ask, “Is it even possible to be objective?” What are your thoughts on that?

01:36:30WYLAND: You put your finger on a huge issue. And I want to think carefully before I go down this road. But I'm going to say it straight out anyway. I'm getting wound up. This ideology--and I'll say straight up, I can't stand ideology because I'm not talking about values or world views. Those are fine. But I define ideology as a rigid view. “It's only this way.” And new information bounces off. “It's this way.” And if I decide if there's some new issue, what my position is, what does my ideology say? I think it needs to be more pragmatic. And an ideology that has grown up in academia, which has had, I believe a really pernicious effect started in the 1970s in literature with postmodernism. And it used a couple of French philosophers, Jacque Derrida, and the other one escapes me. And ultimately developed--conservatives say it's Marxism and socialism. Not really. I think it took something that's real. Human beings have a history of--there are people who take advantage of others. And I think the promise of Western civilization--we need to go beyond the U.S.--is we confront things and try to fix them over time. Freedom of speech is part of it. Well, as that developed--this is my view--into all the iterations with all the terms. And it certainly happened in history. And it went from social history to, you know, critical theory and all the aspects of critical theory. And then to the deconstruction of text because--which applied to law. “Well, it doesn't really mean this because if you deconstruct it, it's yet one more example of those with power, especially white males, trying to oppress those without power.” And like with most insights, there's example--I mean, and most of this stuff that is anti-the West in anti-United States never looks at the sweep of history.

I actually did a bill on this. It never looks comparatively, it never looks what happened within, oh, there's a name for it, Aboriginal groups. And with modern, whether it's anywhere in Europe, encountering less-advanced societies, it's always there. And the promise of western civilization is that we've worked hard to overcome a lot of those things and to build in tolerance. So, the problem I have with it is, it doesn't give you solutions.

So I'll give one last example. Because I, you can see, I can go on. A professor I know has won many teaching awards and always liked to yank my chain. So, we're at a conference and he at a table, another professor and I am there and he comes up and says, “Well, you know, Mark, capitalism has hurt and damaged a lot more people than it's helped.” I knew what his goal is. He's read so many academic works, he's going to put me in my place because he knows this author and this author and that. But I don't rise to that bait. I said to him, his name is David. I said, “You know, David, all of us want people to do well. All of us.” There's no one who says, I want him to be poor, to struggle. But I said, “Here's the challenges.” And I just walked through the challenges, said, “What are you going to do if someone's got a good manufacturing job and China is subsidizing it so he can undercut the American company? He loses his job.” I just walked through all these challenges. Well, of course he has absolutely no idea. And he said, “Well, that's not my job. My job is to point out the problems, not the solutions.” Well, he was being so jerky about it, I said to him, I said, “Well, David, you know, that's okay for your students who become like you: an unaccountable academic. But for most people, what they do in their lives--work lives--is solve problems.” Well (laughs), he got all upset and stomped off. But my point was, that's how we can come together. That's how we can come together and respect each other more.

So--and the same thing's true with ideology on the right. I mean, that happens to be, there's ideology and ideological things I've seen which are ridiculous. And I remember when I was early on up in the legislature, one of these ideologues on the right was saying, “Well, you know, we just have to be like on the budget has to be this.” And I said, “Look, I tried to sell my lumber and plywood materials to contractors who said, “Yeah, but I got a cheaper price over there.” I couldn't pound the table and say, “Well, this is a fair price.” He'll walk away. I have to figure out a way. And that's what I'm trying to achieve. I think--this is part of your history. And I think history is, if I hadn't studied IR (International Relations), I would've been a history major. It's got so much. But the only caution I would use, I think it's an important trait. Humility. Yes, you can define, you can say, “Well, one person's objectivity is another person's subjectivity.” I understand that. But it doesn't mean you don't strive for objectivity. And part of the problem of this worldview, and it's illustrated--and I'll get you this in a very important report from the Cronkite School at Arizona State--from prominent journalists; former executive editor of the Washington Post, one of the key executives at CBS, and they quote many others, and they take it head on. They want to destroy objectivity. And they say objectivity is basically this white male point-of-view. I want to include all points of view. But you also have to have data and evidence. You can come up with the 1619 Project, which she says is a work of journalism. And you can cite evidence. And I'm not against that. But you also have to respect the evidence. Evidence is not always clear. And unlike a chemistry or a physics problem--and I thought a lot about this in the understanding politics--you can't say, “Well, the atomic weight of this molecule--" You can't do that. You have to--and so, so when I say “objective,” what I mean is I'm happy to have the standard that people of goodwill would say, this meets the standard, and that's where the solution part comes in. I don't care whether, I mean, it's not the crazy stuff, but I mean, you can go on the left with Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, less say, AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), because she doesn't know as much but her as well.

And you can go with whoever it is on, on the right. And you fully, you want their point of view out there and you want as much evidence as you can get. And if there's a disagreement about it, someone says, “Well, I think the number is this.” You put it out there. Because my goal is not, “I want this policy.” My goal is: you achieve--that's how you achieve objectivity and transparency. I would love to have the debate with any academic who says that. Now, is perfect--you know, the University of California changed a decade ago. It's--they have their own guide for research and they eliminated objectivity. The origins of this is an intellectual movement that came out of academia all those decades ago. I would never contend there is perfect objectivity. And one person can say, “My view's objective, so is the other one.” But you try to gather as much evidence, as much transparency. And the idea is you, all of us in the public who just want good governance, who doesn't want to sit in traffic because Caltrans (California Department of Transportation) can't get their act together, who work 24/7 and get that fixed. And most of us also want them to do enough maintenance and repair. So, they're prepared for a lot of water (laughs).

01:48:04WILLIS: Yeah. I know you mentioned that most people don't even know where to direct the blame when it comes to politics.

01:48:14WYLAND: Yeah.

01:48:15WILLIS: This is going to go into--I know you wanted me to ask you about some of the bills that you wrote personally, specifically an SDG&E bill (San Diego Gas & Electric).

01:48:25WYLAND: (laughs) I went after them. You know, there are a lot of them, and I'll just name two that don't have anything to do with education. My first year, and it's relevant today: (California Governor) Gray Davis in 2000, there were some blackouts, I mean straight up blackouts if we weren't, this wasn't like we've had where reduced power, straight up blackouts. People were incensed. So he panicked. And when people are upset, they tend to take it out on whoever's in the office. So, the first year we spent an enormous amount of time, special sessions, trying to understand what happened. And it had to do just like now with the price of natural gas. And the reality, most people don't know, and it's shameful right now that UT and the others don't seem to understand it: these utilities, and there's three major ones, are private companies regulated by government, which is the Public Utilities Commission. What SDG&E was committed, in our case, to paying for natural gas that shot up outrageously, had to be approved! They can't do that on their own. It had to be approved by the Public Utilities Commission. So what the heck are they doing? Well, the governor appoints the Public Utilities Commission. That's where you need to look at. What did they let SDG&E get away with that their cost of natural gas was so high that our bills skyrocket?

And I think, Ryan, you know this, there are people who were really it through threw budgets. It really destroyed a lot of people's budgets. And so, it wasn't as bad, but what I came up with is, well, rather than have all these entities, people don't understand, let's have--it's a MUD, a Municipal Utility District. There is one in Sacramento, it's been there for years. And a Municipal Utility District, it's a non-profit. And people elect the governing board. So like, if it were in San Diego County, say five people. And I'd like to see that today, where there's direct accountability. Ryan, you're on that board, my bill's going up, what the heck is going on? Well, you're elected and you're going to respond and you're probably going to respond ahead of time. Because you know it's coming. It's not like, “Well that's SDG&E,” which really doesn't care. Why do they care? Their business decided by the Public Utilities Commission. So, you know, UT said, “Go to the meeting, get angry.” What do they care? Go to the PUC (Public Utilities Commission). What do they care? Now, if they said “Governor (laughs)!” So, what happened was, I couldn't--the utilities really had outsized interest in the committees and the legislature. So, I got help from a former--a Democrat--a former State Senator from South County, Steve Peace. He helped me. I could never have gotten that done at every turn.

I managed to get it past the main first committee in Assembly. Well, the procedure is, it has to be transmitted physically. The bill has to be taken to the chamber to go to the next step. Well, they just didn't transmit it. They weren't going to. But Steve called them up and said, “Hey Mark. I had to tell them, get that bill out of there because they were just going to hold it,” which meant it would've died. And then it had to do with an interpretation of the law, which I thought I understood because I must have read it a hundred times better. And SDG&E said, “Well, our lawyers say we won't oppose this.” Besides, they didn't want to be the bad guy. Long story short, I got it pretty much overwhelmingly passed for Gray Davis to sign. And son of gun, he vetoed it.

And what his spokesperson said was--here's what happened. He got so panicked. He went out because of the blackouts. He went out and made long-term contracts for natural gas. All the experts, because we had them there talking to us, testifying, all the experts said, “Whatever you do, don't do that, because we know the cycle. It's high now it's going to come down.” He panicked. So, he said, “Well, we've made all these long-term contracts, it's like per million cubic feet or whatever at like ten dollars. And now it's only five dollars. If I sign this, if I sign Wyland’s bill, they're going to have a MUD and they're going to buy all the gas cheap. And I'm stuck with all this expensive gas.” (Willis laughs)

And I'll just say, give an example of one other bill, which I never had heard because it would never have passed, but it was introduced. And what it would've done is said, well, instead of considering the budget every year we're going to have a two-year budget. And the first year of every session, all we do is the budget. We don't do these hundreds--there's hundreds--there are sessions where there's 2,000 bills introduced. It becomes a bill factory and too many aren't really that important. All we'll do is the budget. And then it had the state auditor looking at every expenditure and developing a way to explain the history, the funding, the intended effect, and to devise a system to measure: is it effective? And then a recommendation. Is it really effective? We need to do more. Is it ineffective? We could get rid of it. And the idea was over time that the legislators would get really familiar. Really familiar. Because here's another little secret that shouldn't be, the single most important thing all government does is its spending, where does it get the money? How much do we pay in gas tax? Try to figure that one out and how it's changed and where does it go? Is where you get the money and where you spend it. And when you see these articles about this bill or that bill. Yeah, there are occasionally some bills that they feature. But you know, I'll bet you, I mean, my gosh, one year in education, a couple years we did over two hundred pieces of law. And I used to say, “Well, I voted on 2,000 new laws for education.” Do you think education is 2,000 laws better (both laugh).

01:55:59WILLIS: Right (laughs).

01:56:01WYLAND: So those are two things I worked on. I knew that wouldn't--you couldn't pass it because it's too big and it's too much of a change and it's too hard for people to get their arms around. To me it was no big deal because I've been used to being in business where we need to make this radical change because three months from now, we're going to be losing money big time if we don't do it. But in government, that's harder. So--

01:56:35WILLIS: Different way of thinking for sure.

01:56:40WYLAND: It's not, it's not malicious like people saying, “I'm going to make things harder or worse.” It's just people get set in their way and they get set in their beliefs. And I was just listening to some scientists talk about nutrition science and talk about how many recommendations are made without good evidence. And we think of, “Well, science is always simple, straightforward.” Well, there's debates there too.

01:57:23WILLIS: Yeah.

01:57:24WYLAND: And, but they have studies they can debate and this, that's what I was trying to achieve.

01:57:30WILLIS: I see. Since I am part of the oral history project here at CSUSM, it would be very remiss of me if I did not ask you about your efforts in promoting oral history. I understand you wrote three bills?

01:57:43WYLAND: Three.

01:57:44WILLIS: That emphasize and encourage the use of oral history in the classroom. Why did you and still do feel so passionately about oral history?

01:57:57WYLAND: I think we need a lot more of it. We need it in the classroom. Good oral history. Mine might be too boring. They might say after ten minutes, “Okay, teacher, come on, we’ve heard enough of this guy.” I think human beings are hardwired to like stories. It can be a TV, a movie, a song. And my grandfather was a great storyteller. And as a little kid, he would tell stories about growing up in Minnesota on the farm. He was a good storyteller. And he was just really good. He would even perform and all these things. And then when I spent that semester in Germany, I learned so much from the grandfather in that family of what he had experienced. And you can't read it. And then his--another relative who later married his daughter was a great storyteller. And when you hear the stories and what happened in Nazi Germany and you hear someone say, “I was in this professor--this Jewish professor's office, and we hear all this commotion in the street and we go over the window and we see the brown shirts marching in the street.” You can read about it, but it's just not as powerful. So I became a huge believer in it. And I also was concerned that we were losing a sense of patriotism, which does not mean our country's perfect. Everything is perfect. I wave--I've never worn a flag lapel or all these things. But it means I've studied a lot of history in many different countries and societies. And unless there's some residual belief in your society, belief that we may not do things right, but there's a reservoir of goodwill, something like that; it bodes--it doesn't bode well. And I knew you can't go out and get into these curriculum wars, you know, my book or my view, or we're going to teach the 1619 Project. We were racist in the beginning. We're--it's in our genes we always will be. Or this view that says, you know, the colonists were gods on earth, et cetera. I thought, “What about the stories?” And I thought about my parents' generation, World War II. So, I wrote a bill for to incorporate junior year taking American history, the stories of World War II veterans, and people on the home front because the country was really united. I even had a series of things I wanted them to cover. And everyone liked it. I couldn't mandate it. I couldn't say every history course has to have it. I did want it to be available. My idea was, it's available.

Teachers need help. I wanted it, I didn't get there where you're teaching American history in high school and here's an oral history unit, you can use it one day, one week. It's curated. Here's essay questions, test questions, (unintelligible) the whole thing. And here's an in-service where you can learn how to do it. To make it, you know, so teachers say, “Yeah, that'll get kids interested.” The one thing though that illustrated the change, and this has to do with objectivity, it's right there. The last sentence and that they're supposed to be asked was--because I didn't say, just tell the story. I wanted them to cover certain things--what did they think about our entry to the war? Did all these sorts of things. Their opinion of the end of the war in the Pacific and the use of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Well, I knew that every single vet is going to say, “Darn right we did that. We would've lost thousands plus thousands of Japanese. We needed to end that war.” And here my own dad was getting ready to get shipped overseas. He was ready to go when they dropped the bomb and the war ended. And I also knew that so-called revisionist, Cold War history. And I don't know if you read any of that stuff, but I'd read it in graduate school. And the professor said, “Once you read this, you'll think it's utter nonsense, but it's out there and I think it's important you'd be familiar with it.” And then we went through it. And the lack of evidence and selected use of evidence you're talking about--that was subjective. And I knew that some of it at the extremes was saying, we initiated the Cold War because we dropped those bombs purposely to challenge the Soviets, to show them “You better watch out.” That's an oversimplification. And by the way, it was also racist act, just like our internment. Well, we interned, I mean, no one can deny we did all those things. But the humility of trying to understand history and other people is try to look at it from their perspective. You know?

And, so it was intended to be an antidote because what I'd seen was, it's only this perspective. I tell friends of mine, I said, you ought to read because I have textbooks. I said, “you ought to read a current textbook when it covers World War II.” And because it's not that it didn't happen. We had riots in Mobile and up in Oakland at the shipyards. All those--no one denies any of that stuff, but there's more to it than that. And all the things that we knew, we knew every battle. We knew what a sacrifice, those poor marines. And we knew the debates: MacArthur convincing Roosevelt to waste all those men's lives and Filipino lives and Japanese lives invading the Philippines. The Navy clearly had the right--forget the Philippines, we can beat them with-- anyway, all those important things. And so, son of a gun, it (the bill) sails through. And I had a co-author in the Senate, great senator who could have gone on to be Mayor and Congress and all the rest of anything she wanted. And from San Diego. And we're ready to go. And it's on the Senate floor. And then it would've gone to the Governor and son of a gun in my office says, “You know, Mark, we got a call. There's a problem. You can't get it off the Senate floor.” Son of a gun. The Speaker, the then Speaker whom I liked, John Burton--he was old school, old school Democratic politician from Northern California whose brother was a member of Congress when they had that horrible thing in Central America with “Drink the Kool Aid.” Anyway, he had empowered, he didn't do it. He had a staffer who was younger and she read that thing. And the minute she read that line about dropping the bomb (waves arms as if referee), no goal. And she told my office, “You take that out and it's fine.” Now that is the reality because she was younger and she had an ideological view--in my view, in my opinion--an ideological subjective view that the use of those weapons was evidence. Total evidence. Not, “Well what's the other view? I've never actually talked to veterans, how they’d view this.” Total evidence. Because she had read--oh my gosh, one of the authors, Gabriel Coco, there were several, I used to know all of them--that that was reality. And I got it through.

And then the next year I did one for Korea and Vietnam. And it was before, I think it was before Iraq, but it covered what had happened in the Middle East. Same thing. And then I did one that took me about four years, on genocide. I finally got it through my last year. And I thought it was important to understand the historical phenomenon of genocide. Not just the Holocaust. And what I said to Jewish members up there, “We, you know, we do a tribute to the Holocaust, memory of the Holocaust every year, but it's not just the Holocaust. This is human beings do this.” And I started as with oral history. So I started with the Armenian (genocide). And we have a lot of people of Armenian backgrounds in California now, as examples. Not the only ones. Armenian, the Holocaust. I used Cambodia, Rwanda, I think Somalia, maybe Bosnia as examples. And you know, it's the dark side of human history. And very importantly, I included that when students consider this, they need to consider how we can avoid these in the future because the solution part is so important. And that's the hard stuff. And I even had in there for example, “Should we be willing to deploy UN troops or American troops?” Neither of which we would do. And I just wanted them to understand, you can get wound up and a lot of people are wound up and emotional about all sorts of things, but do the hard work about solving it. And once you get in the trenches, it's harder. And so that was the idea. And because interestingly enough, the only reason it took me so long, was there is a very powerful Turkish interest group that says the Armenian genocide never happened. It's a fiction. And finally I was able to get that passed. And if you've ever heard any of those documentaries, which I'm addicted to, and you can hear like for the Holocaust, some of those films. So, you're embarked on something really important. I think the oral history is really important. And when you become a professor of this, a teacher of this, I hope you incorporate it.

02:10:49WILLIS: Definitely. I love the concept of oral history. And I wasn't even introduced to it until recently.

02:10:56WYLAND: Yeah.

02:10:57WILLIS: This is something that I would've loved in high school.

02:11:01WYLAND: Yeah.

02:11:02WILLIS: Instead of a teacher just--talk, talk talk--“This is what happened in this war. This war is what, okay, let's take a test on it.”

02:11:09WYLAND: You know--

02:11:10WILLIS: Hearing these perspectives--

02:11:11WYLAND: Yeah.

02:11:12WILLIS: Would've been mind-blowing.

02:11:13WYLAND: Well see my, both of my grandparents, all four of my grandparents were raised on farms. That's how you learn. We were agricultural. And you hear their stories. And all of them left because the work was never ending and really hard because they're family farms. And my grandfather was the youngest in a big farm family. And he was a good storyteller. So, I learned about the nineteenth century from those stories. His name was Bryan Swede, who was the city councilman supervisor. Well, he was named after William Jennings Bryan. And that's my middle name. Because his father was a devotee of William Jennings Bryan the Prairie populist. And he had gone to rallies as a little kid for William Jennings Bryan, where they had songs, you know, I had music, they had these political songs and how would I know this? But he explained his father--this was in Minnesota, was--some sort of official state official who, and you would know the period better, but ended up going to Colorado during that period in the early twentieth century where they had all the mine riot--the mine strikes and all that stuff. And he saw how the miners were treated, and the strike breakers. And it radicalized him to use a modern term. And he came back and he joined--he was a Wobbly, International Workers of the World (Industrial Workers of the World). Now this is a guy with not a lot of education, but you really got, you really understand what it was like when you saw--you know, you can read about strike breakers--but he went and saw the way they were being treated. So, you know, it's powerful. And if I hadn't learned all those stories in Germany, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, I--you (laughs) when--and it's not only the family I lived with, but then the husband of the daughter who--and what it was like being a student with no money and eating--in Vienna when there were riots and the cops were all on horseback with sabers and all that stuff. It's like, wow. We're at the end of the war when he was an official, he was an economist he was on the train from Frankfurt to Berlin. The train is stopped--end the war. German soldiers are deserting. Stop. They go through, check everyone's ID, find Germans who they consider deserters and they spring them up right there. And you just--all these, that's--I don't--that should, that's too negative. (Willis laughs) But you really, yeah.

02:14:34WILLIS: It changes your perspective completely.

02:14:36WYLAND: Yeah.

02:14:37WILLIS: And this is going to be one of the last things for me, Mark, as we're wrapping it up here (Wyland laughs).

02:14:42WYLAND: I've done a whole--

02:14:44WILLIS: No, this has been great.

02:14:45WYLAND: This is a dump (both laugh).

02:14:48WILLIS: I've enjoyed every minute of it, I assure you. But one thing that's really, obviously as an historian, really important to me is just knowing the truth. Like, I love learning history, but I want to know the truth. Don't give me this, you know, romantic--

02:15:01WYLAND: Right.

02:15:02WILLIS: Romanticized version of it. And one thing I'm very passionate about is Native American history.

02:15:08WYLAND: Right.

02:15:09WILLIS: My wife is Native American.

02:15:10WYLAND: Right.

02:15:12WILLIS: We are taught as young children that, “Oh, you know, we, the Natives welcomed, you know, the white man with open arms.”

02:15:21WYLAND: Yeah.

02:15:22WILLIS: “We shared their land. We had Thanksgiving.”

02:15:24WYLAND: Right, right.

02:15:25WILLIS: We don't learn the truth about it until we're adults.

02:15:28WYLAND: Yeah.

02:15:29WILLIS: Which is incredible to me.

02:15:32WYLAND: Well, that's--you posed an interesting question. Because we know the truth. And I thought it had changed, but maybe it hadn't because when I was in high school, a long time ago, taking American history, maybe it wasn't in the textbook, but I remember the teachers saying, you know, we estimate there were this many--they didn't use Indigenous peoples--Native Americans. There are this many Native Americans. And then, you know, the--had collapsed, the Vale of Tears March (Trail of Tears). We learned that stuff. And, the history is the history, you know, the missions, we all know what happened. The missions subjugated the Mission Indians and all that stuff. So, certainly, we need to know that.

I think, my gosh, now this was in college, I took a course in Latin American history. And when the Spaniards first started coming into the Americas, there was a theological debate. And the theological debate was, “Are they human? Because if they're human, we need to save them,” which meant convert them to Christianity. And the only thing I would say about that is we've come a long way. We certainly need to know it. But I think to make it complete, we need to see the changes that have been wrought. And it needs to be comparative. If you were Indio in Mexico or Latin America, you know, they'll talk with pride. And I learned in Colombia, you know, we think of it all the same. They’re all different, right? The Colombianos do not particularly like the Mexicanos. And part of it is all the Americans think, you know, they're Mexicanos and they're not the Colombianos. And they would talk about “el orgullo de ser Mexicano,” which means “they’re arrogant” and they brag about, you know, their great history of the Aztecs and the Mayans. They don't get treated very well. And I'm not doing that to cast aspersions on them. What I'm saying is, look at the Europeans in Africa and Asia and the rest of it. There's something about human beings that tends to do that.

And the question is, okay, “What is the history since then? How are we solving the problems?” Now in California and other places, the advent of gaming has done a lot because all of a sudden there's a lot more money. But all the tribes--I know a ton about this, Ryan, because you can't be in the state legislature. And I was on the relevant committee. I've been--I haven't been invaluable, but I've been in almost every one of them. And they're all different. The, you know, the tribal leaders are all different, then they can change. And some are, you know--and when I went up to my sister’s, I go right by Valley View, go right by Rincon. And if I turn left, I'd--you know. But so. I think it's really important to learn the history. But not, not that there's just one lesson, but there's a lot of lessons because humans--the, however you want to think how it happens, either it's something in us, or if you're Jewish or Christian in Genesis, we're fallen, we sinned and we're driven out of Eden. We're--you're in trouble now, you know, East of Eden. And women will bear children in pain. And the next thing you know, Cain slew Abel, his brother. And it's sort of whether it's that's what happened, that's what I believe, or it's a parable, I think the challenge for all civilization is “How do we overcome these things in the right way?” Does that make sense?

02:21:04WILLIS: Yes.

02:21:05WYLAND: But you do have to learn the truth. When I was in elementary school, we learned about the sharing and all that sort of thing. But in high school, you know, we got, we got the real thing. And then what do you do? And that's why I did the thing (oral history bill) on genocide because I said, “Well, there's these groups, but you can add in lots more.” And how do you stop it? And how do you get people--see, I think that's Western, for all our sins. How do you get people--it's western civilization that is able to say, “We need to see people and accord them respect as they're like us. It's not that easy. And I also know a lot about immigration and immigration into Europe and all these other things. It gets complicated. So yeah (both laugh). Well, and you know--

02:22:22WILLIS: It's a heavy topic. I know.

02:22:23WYLAND: Well, it's an important one.

02:22:24WILLIS: It is.

02:22:25WYLAND: And, and, and, but here's the key. And I did have a bill, which I think I did as a resolution or something. Actually, I was looking through them, so I need to find some of it. It's important to learn it in that context. How many--I had thought that, well, when Cortez landed, you know, they rode in to--they rode into to, I think it was called Mexico. I've forgotten what the Capital was with the Aztecs and the chief Aztec said, “Oh my gosh, these are gods on horses.”

02:23:02WILLIS: Montezuma.

02:23:03WYLAND: Montezuma. I don't know, you may know this. I didn't. It took them years. And what they did was they built relationships with neighboring tribes that had been subjugated by the Aztecs.

02:23:18WILLIS: Right.

02:23:19WYLAND: Who had enslaved them and taken their kids for sacrifices.

02:23:23WILLIS: So they were more than willing--“Hey I’ll help you out.”

02:23:26WYLAND: So they were more than willing. And so how do you--in a world, when I was studying international relations, they call it IR for short. And it was the Cold War. And after 1962 and the Cuban Missile Crisis, it was very stable. But we thought it was dangerous. And it was, but not like now. So, what do you do in a world where the next biggest, some people would say bigger economy (China), is utterly totalitarian, where everyone has a social media score where they can take--same human thing. The Uyghurs aren't like us. Only ethnic Han Chinese get treated well while the Tibetans and all the rest, they are subjugated. How, and that's such a powerful country and getting more powerful. How do we maintain societies where rule of law isn't perfect, but people cared about the laws we passed?

You know what, again, this is not dumping on Mexico, but I'll tell you a story that illustrates the conundrum. This was a professor of mine while we were negotiating NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. And he had a conversation with--he was then Foreign Minister of Mexico. And I think he's a professor now, totally bicultural, American PhD. I'll think of his name. I can't think of it right now. Anyway, and they were still negotiating and the US was asking for more environmental guarantees. And he said to my friend, “You Americans don't get it. Because in America, law matters. Law doesn't matter in Mexico.” Give us all the guarantees you want. We'll sign them. It won't make any different. Now, that's not because Mexicans don't want--they don't want the cartels. They don't want--they want the same kind of democracy--which is imperfect--we have. But maybe you're the next generation and you're studying history. Maybe you can help us figure out how we can create more of this and at least maintain what we have.

02:26:38WILLIS: Yes, absolutely. I'm right there with you. Well, Mark, I can't thank you enough for your time and your candidness today. It has been extremely informative. It's been an honor to be able to speak with you. Before we close the interview, is there anything else you would like to add that we did not get to?

02:26:58WYLAND: Well, there may be, and I may have some stuff I can send you if you're interested. Because I started thinking through all of this and I appreciate it, Ryan, because not only are--number one, you're actually interested, which is great. Number two, you're going to teach, I hope, because I think you would be a good teacher. And it's been fun actually. And I didn't think I'd get so wound up (both laugh). But, you know, I'm trying to make it better. And gosh, the issue with Native Americans, I can't tell you that hours I have spent with all these issues in great depth. And they've had their, their challenges. And one of the interesting things about state government, once you take out national defense or a couple of things you're dealing with, actually there are many important issues that the federal government doesn't deal with. And in a state like California where it's a very activist legislature and government, you really deal with a huge number of things. So anyway. Well, I appreciate it and I appreciate you letting me talk about my plan to fix it all (laughs). I still see the world the way it could be.

02:28:46WILLIS: Right. No, and I admire that. We need more people like you honestly, that think in that way.

02:28:50WYLAND: Well--

02:28:51WILLIS: So, I know, I really appreciate it. So thank you for everything that you have done and continue to try to do. Because I think it's very admirable.

02:28:58WYLAND: Well, I really appreciate that and I appreciate--you can't do it without help and support because people want that. People deserve--I'm not one of those who says, “Well, they voted the wrong way. They deserve it.” No, people deserve feeling good about their government, being able to say, “Well, I didn't agree with everything, but you know, they're trying to do the right thing.” And right now we don't have that. And I think this is one way to restore it. And I couldn't do it, even think about it if I didn't think people think, yeah, let's do that.

02:29:42WILLIS: Yeah.

02:29:43WYLAND: So anyway, well—

02:29:45WILLIS: Really Concur.

02:29:46WYLAND: I enjoyed this (laughs).

02:29:48WILLIS: I did as well. I think anybody that's going to check this interview out's going to really enjoy it. I learned a lot. And that's, I think, really the ultimate goal. So Mark, thank you again so much for joining me today at the California State University San Marcos Library. And I will now stop the recording.

02:30:02WYLAND: Okay. NOTE TRANSCRIPTION END