attended one of these events here for children with my son and i remember eavesdropping when he was asked by someone at the store who is your favorite author. without hesitating if he replied, well, my dad would be but i am not old enough to read his books at sumaidaie right now is dr. seuss. [laughter] so i thought that was fair. my answer ask me the same question that karla just mentioned about so why the book about the kennedys? ..

finale. and, you know, it was nearly a year ago, may 16th, i believe, that ted kennedy was diagnosed with malignant myeloma. he made a triumphant return to the senate seven weeks after brain surgery to stop a threat to medicare, a program his brother, john, had originally proposed. he made a surprise speech at the democratic convention, a very stirring speech he teamed up with his son, patrick, last fall

to pass major legislation requiring insurance companies to put mental health coverage and regular health coverage on equal footing. and he called it one of the brightest moments of his career. he announced plans for construction of boston of a center for the study of the senate, which is going to be sort of his own presidential library without ever having been president. it's going to be situated right next to the jfk library. and he started the ball rolling once again on healthcare reform. he started it more than a year ago in fact. he's been knighted and he'd seen his hand-pick candidate being elected and he gave the president his new dog and not too long ago he even threw out the first pitch in fenway park even though the ball went 6 inches, the crowd gave him a standing ovation. why for such a claim for ted. it's a larger recognition that this 50-yearlong chapter in

american history is coming to close and americans are honoring ted as a way of honoring the whole family's history. why? because in so many ways, as carla indicated, the kennedy story is sort of the country's story. the family is like this vivid electric mirror that powerfully reflects our own best hopes and worst fears. so i wrote this book to add on a chapter to the kennedy story that i knew so far because i thought the previous tellings have the story has been incomplete and unfinished and everybody knows all that happened with john and bobby but few know about ted's contribution to the legacy and it's ted's contribution that gave the kennedy's legacy staying power. he gave flesh and bones to what john and bobby started. we can look back and take a real measure of what that legacy is. what has the family meant to the life of their family and what is

their lasting contribution and their ultimate impact? if you look at their stories the interrupted -- and finish the unfinished life of the brother before, it's an entirely different and entirely new story. so this book is the attempt to review those three notable brothers as parts of a larger whole. you know, i was thinking about the way i looked at this story is really a little bit like those monet paintings of the ruan cathedral and he painted it in different times of day and the different weather and the kennedy brothers are a lot like that. former senator harris colic is the same spirit in different forms so how they are same and carried on for each other. and then, of course, there's the

dark side of this epic family and this legacy. the assassinations of jack and bobby, but there's also this legacy of recklessness and substance abuse is inescapable. i think chap chappoqidc too. these larger than life figures were really all too human. there's a group of brothers who accomplished so much publicly while privately they were inperfect, sometimes contradictory people who often thought they were above the law. and thatw1 got them into a lot of trouble but it may have been crucial to their super-human belief that they could change the country. and there's one story in the that i think sort of indicates this sort of larger than life aspect of the kennedys that nothing they did was ever small. and how they felt they were above the law.

and one of kennedy's press secretaries told me a story about when ted kennedy -- it was five years after vietnam and ted kennedy was determined to unite some of the wives of vietnam vets, people they'd married in vietnam but were left behind because they couldn't emigrate. so he was determined to reunite them and he worked all the levers in the state department and he'd actually gotten a group of wives and their children to the united states. they'd gone through incredible bureaucratic red tape and they'd flown to several different places and they arrived in dulles and they were ready to reunite with their husbands and customs wouldn't let them in. ted kennedy went out to the airport to greet them as well and he had cameras out there and customs was determined that they weren't going to let them in because at the time the u.s. did not recognize and have relations with vietnam.

so ted just thought this was bureaucracy at its worst so he's pacing along this glass wall that separates these wives and their children from their husbands. and they could see each other, you know, but they can't reunite. and the customs is threatening to send them back so ted is on the phone and his aids are on the phone with the state department. you know, he's just berating some of the customs officials, you know, his veins in his head are just about to explode. he's just -- you know, he's just had enough and finally he says to this press secretary who told me this story -- he said, okay, that's it. he simply walks around the wall. grabs the first little girl there by the hand and says come with me and he walks by customs and tells all the women and children to come with him and he simply walks through and they're not going to touch a sitting senator so he reunited those families and, you know, finished that story.

and got them in. just by the force of his will.!z now, he wasn't supposed to do that. it was above the law but in that case being above the law actually the good. and i think, you know, it's sort da kennedys that both d)ives them and causes them troubles but my book -- i wanted to focus on the light side, what did they change, and how did it all start? you know, i thought tonight it would be interesting to take one thread of that story 'cause it's such a huge story and follow it through from the beginning of the kennedy's family incubation till now. and to show you quickly how much they influenced all our lives, in some ways we don't even realize. so i thought i'd focus a little bit on civil rights since we now have an african-american president. and you can say in many ways

that the kennedys were responsible for bringing obama into the presidency. one, ted kennedy's endorsement last january was key to him to bringing attention to him in the country. one of ted kennedy's first pieces of legislation overturned the quotas for national origins for immigration. they favored europeans at the time which was in the early '60s 80% of the immigrants were from europe. and john had felt that that was unfair. that anybody who wanted in the country should have an equal opportunity to get here. as anybody else. not europeans. and ted was the one who actually got that legislation passed and it changed the complexion of the country. now a third of the country's minority is expected to be majority/minority in 30 years. if it hadn't been for that law,

obama's father would not have been able to come to the united states. so, you know, in sort of a hidden way, he's helped obama get to where he is. civil rights where he's helped. so anyway, this commitment to civil rights really started in their childhoods and i'd like to read a little section to sort of give you an occasion of one of the origins of this commitment to civil rights. the kennedys championed the minorities because they thought they were a minority. irish catholics were treated with disdain in boston 50 and 60 years ago and they were not allowed in clubs that white protestant families were not. joe kennedy was turned down to a membership in a country club and after that he turned his house into this sort of training ground to outdo. i'd like to read you a little

bit how that got started. the house of kennedy was built at the dinner table. one of my most viv individual childhood memories was family gatherings around the dinner table ted kennedy recalls. conversation was lively and interesting and about events of the day with to impress our parents and it was hard to get a word in unless you had something interesting to say. the dining room was a classroom as much as a eating place. one classmate would remember a map on the wall where joe would make points to his children and joe and rose kennedy first engaged their children's minds in politics and current affairs with the nine siblings all struggled to carve out their unique roles within the family hierarchy. it was also where their competitive instincts were honed. their rivalries were worked out and the ties that bound them tightly were rewrapped nightly. it was a verbal bath for

visitors. charles spaulding a friend of john's who was invited to dinners with the family summed it up you watch these people go through their lives and just had a feeling they existed outside of the laws of nature and no individual group of engaged. endless talk and competition people drawing each other out and pushing each other to greater lengths. it was as simple as this. kennedys had a feeling of being heightened and it rubbed off with people coming in contact with them. they were a unit. i remember thinking to myself, there couldn't be quite another group like this one. the kennedy compound at hyannis port faces the sea rather than a village creating a private kennedy environment. hyannis port has no city center, no geography of community and the only pier blows exclusively to the kennedys. the cluster of clapboard houses is more than a out post than a town. a far-away kind of nearby place that shares the stunning

geography of cape cod but remains isolated from all the same. joe kennedy wanted it that way. he taught his children that the standards and measures of the kennedy family itself were the only ones that mattered. his fortress of solitude was a self-contained training ground, training compound for competition. he really saw that he had this us against them mentality. really felt himself a minority. there's also a keen sense of sympathy and compassion for people with mental illness because of rosemary, one of the daughters, one of joe's daughters. and she -- at the time they thought she had mental retardation and it could be that she did, but some psychologists and psychiatrists have speculated that she may have had severe depression or some other mental illness but she could do a lot and the kennedys were very

aware of how much she could do even though she had -- she was slower than the other kennedys. and eunice kennedy was the one who was closest to her and later on her lawn at her house she would have these games for rosemary and her friends and those games developed into, of course, the special olympics and that has developed into the largest sports program in the world now. and again, that was another sort of compassion for a minority of people that sort of needed a helping hand. there's also -- i went up to the jfk library and did a bunch of research for this book and i read -- they opened up some private letters from joe to his family for me. and i saw -- i read one letter that really struck me that i have in the book during -- well, just on the -- yeah, it is during world war ii and the battle of britain that joe wrote to ted.

and i think you see some of the inklings of the same spirit in that letter. i don't know whether you would have very much excitement during these raids, teddy. i'm sure, of course, you wouldn't be scared but if you heard all these guns firing every night and the bombs bursting, you might get a little fidgeting. i'm sure you would like to be me with me and see the fires the german bombers started in london. it's terrible to think about all those poor women and children and homeless people down in the east end of london all seeing their places destroyed. i hope when you grow up, you'll dedicate your life to trying to work out plans to make people happy instead of making them miserable as war does today. now, i would just -- i just think if you were an 8-year-old boy, that kind of letter would have an impact that would last your entire life and indeed he tried to live up to that and there's echoes of that same letter in some of his speeches which i'll show you later.

in the final days of john kennedy's campaign for president, they finally began to embrace the cause of civil rights. john was reluctant. he was slow to come to the cause. and it was bobby who really pushed him there. bobby was the moral center of the family and saw things in much more of a black and white way than john did. and i feel like it was bobby who saw how wrong some of the things that african-americans endured were. and right at the end of the campaign, you know, they made a call -- coretta scott king called the campaign and her husband had just been put in jail. and she was literally worried for his life. and she asked them if there was anything they could do. and bobby was really in charge of the campaign. and they were worried that bobby

would say no because they felt like if they embraced this cause, of black activism it might upend the campaign and so john and a couple others, harris lawford being one of them on the sly called up and reassured -- and john reassured coretta scott king that they would try to do something to get him out of jail, get martin luther king out of jail. they did it to help them win the campaign it seems like more than embracing the cause but bobby found out about it and went ballistic because he thought if it got out, it would just ruin their chances with sort of mainstream americans at the time. but then bobby sort of thought about it and thought about it and what made him angry was the judge that put martin luther king in jail more than what john had done, so what he did is he called the judge. bobby called the judge and said as a lawyer i just want to give you my thoughts about what you

did. chvks -- which is not irleg for an attorney to talk adjudge and lo and behold the judge let martin luther king out the next day. and coretta scott king was so thoughtful and martin luther king's father was thankful and they say we throw our votes behind john kennedy and that happened in the waning days of the campaign and eisenhower, of all people, thought it's what put john kennedy over the top. that those african-american votes that he gained with that one phone call were what made the difference. then they really began to embrace, of course, the civil rights legacy during john's presidency but again, john was reluctant to. it was bobby that pushed him to do it and as attorney general he's the one who sent 500 marshals to ensure that --

[inaudible] >> to ensure that meredith was allowed into the university of mississippi, james meredith. it was bobby who did that. bobby acted before john did. but some of the incidents became so horrific that john made a famous speech calling for a civil rights act. but it's interesting because during the march on washington, he didn't go down to the march and he forbade teddy from going down and teddy was enthusiastic by then. he was full of fire. he wanted to join the cause and he made him stay in his office and john made him listen from the speech from the truman balcony. then, of course, john's bill didn't get anywhere. he hadn't reached the skids in congress. he wasn't the politician that his brother ted was in terms of scratching people's backs so they scratch yours.

he was an inspirational leader but he was not a nuts and bolts politician like teddy was. so the bill didn't go anywhere. and then of course john was assassinated. and i'd like to read you a part about just after his assassination -- it kind of shows you how ted took that death and tried to act on it to accomplish what his brother could not accomplish. i would like to read you just another little passage. the night of the funeral the extended kennedy funeral gathered bravely in the white house for john-john's third birthday matter after cake and ice cream for the children and strong drinks for the adults, jackie suggested they all sing some of jack's favorite songs. teddy started belting out heart of my heart, the tune the three brothers had all sung together on the last night of jack's campaign for senate 11 years

earlier. we were rough-and-ready guys but, oh, oh, how we could harmonize. bobby could not find it in himself to sing. he spent the rest of his night in seclusion but ted was not one to be alone with his grief. instead, he invited friends and white house staffers over to his house after the birthday party for a irish wake. they all laughed and talked and cried and drank. at the end of the night, after everyone had gone, ted went back to arlington cemetery to visit his brother's grave. the two brothers continued to mourn in their own distinct ways in the coming months. bobby bruted questioning everything and drawing into depression. ted chose motion and velocity. bobby would sit staring out the window at hickory hill. he refused to say the words november 22nd or dallas. he questioned his faith and his own culpability in jack's death.

behind closed doors friends could hear him sob and ask why, god? he could bear no reminders of dallas or of the day turning pictures of jack against the wall in his house and in his relatives' houses and in his friends' houses. ted on the other hand, tried to emblazon and perpetuate jack's name and works everywhere, parks, boulevards, and airports. he attended every memorial and tribute he could schedule smothering his grief in activity. he helped unveil the letters jfk on the new renamed airport. he took a nine nation tour to raise money for the jfk library and museum. he tried to conquer his pain with endless talk and fellowship hoping to continue the happy/sad irish wake he'd begun the night of the funeral for as long as he humanly could. maybe the rest of his life. he also threw himself into his family devoting hours on end to his children and jack's children at hyannis port. bobby's way was solitary, teddy's collective.

ted found out his way of mourning by carrying forward his brother's agenda on the hill. he had stayed in the shadows while his brother was alive but jack's unfinished agenda was now his and taking a backseat to his fellow senators was no longer the best way for ted to serve the family, he decided. the tragedy emboldened the youngest brother. on april 4th, 1964, he rose from his brother's old desk in the last row and announced his plans to speak in favor of his brother's civil rights bill which had been filibustered to death 11 times. mr. president, it is with some hesitation that i rise to speak on the pending legislation before the senate, ted began. a freshman senator should be seen and not heard, should learn and not teach. i could not follow this debate for the last four weeks, however -- i could not see this issue envelop in the conscious of the nation without changing my mind. to limit myself to local issues in the face of this great

national question would be to demean the seat in which i sit. as he would time and again, for the next 50 years, he cited his own family's experience of prejudice to argue the case for civil rights. in 1780 a catholic in massachusetts was not allowed to vote or hold public office. in 1840 an irish man could not get a job above that of common laborer. and he paused and looked off to one side. as if looking for a reason not to go on. then he quoted lyndon johnson's words five days after the assassination. no memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquent honor president kennedy's memory than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought for so long. the 33-year-old senator's voice broke and the chamber fell quiet. he started again haltingly. my brother was the first president of the united states to state publicly that segregation was morally wrong.

his heart and soul are in this bill. he had to stop again. of his life and death both had a meaning, he said, his voice was so low it was beryl audible. -- barely audible. we should not create oppression that lead to violence but lead to peace which echo that letter he got from his dad. after one of the largest filibusters in history with lyndon johnson's pressure the bill finally passed more than 2 months after ted kennedy's speech the filibuster ended and the senate approved the bill and that was the beginning of the long civil rights legacy. it was a legacy that ted kennedy has nurtured for 47 years. he voted again and again and led efforts to keep the voting

rights act that the civil rights intact and passed the voting rights intact. he abolished the poll tax he fought robert bork's nomination you'll recall in the 1980s because he believed that robert bork might undo some of the civil rights legislation that he had been working on and his brothers had worked on. and there's the quotas abilities that he passed. and he also took a trip to south africa to walk in his brother's footprints 19 years after bobby kennedy went to south africa to argue for civil rights in south africa and end apartheid, ted did the same thing. and, you know, the south africa -- bobby's trip was where he gave probably his most famous speech, the ripples of hope speech. ted went and was planning to give a speech as well but decided not to because there were protests planned if he gave it. so instead he took tv crews with

him where bobby had made sort of a solo journey, he took tv crews. he took an award -- a robert kennedy humanitarian award to nelson mandela and dropped it off at his jail cell and he heard from talk around the prison that he had been there and it made all the difference in the world. and then -- and ted stayed with bishop desmond tutu. he was the first white man to stay in the black township that desmond tutu lived in. and then he went back and he launched a bill to organize sanctions against south africa. and that launched an international campaign for sanctions and three years after his trip, nelson mandela was freed and apartheid was ended. and bishop desmond tutu said if it hadn't been for ted kennedy's troop i'm not sure it would have

happened. so you see this commitment to civil rights continuing today. with obama's election, i think, is an expression of that. bobby kennedy after the civil rights act was passed in the late '60s this is progress but it will be 40 years before we see an african-american president and he was exactly right. now you see a new sort of civil rights issue emerging in the kennedy family. patrick kennedy, with his mental health parity bill, he called that a civil rights battle. to try to erase the stigma felt by people with mental illness and substance abuse problems. and you see the kennedy legacy continuing with a new generation. you know, at first came jack's

inspiration in and challenge and that was the key to sort of starting this legacy going. he was more than anything else a motivator, a morale-builder and a renewed spirit. he was more that than a historical politicians. and they were torn and how much he accomplished. it was really what he started more than what he accomplished. arthur schlesinger said the energy he released, the standards he set, the purposes he inspired, the goals he established would come for the lands for years to come and his brothers did all they could treating it like holy writ. bobby had deep compassion for the disenfranchised. that was really not what john was about. they are all idealists that the country could be better than it was.

and john was sort of the purist idealist trying to inspire people these challenges. bobby was the suffering idealist and it was ted really that was the pragmatic idealist and half my book is about ted because it was really ted, as i said earlier, who made a lot of these kennedy dreams a reality. there's a good quote in my book that i thought i'd share with you. his brothers' words were in large letters on the sides of buildings and hearts and memory of a nation. but the youngest brother is the fine print kennedy. his words are in the fine prints of the nation's laws. that was the biggest surprise in my research the things that ted kennedy has done in the senate that i didn't know about. i mean, i think we all know about, you know -- the troubles and travails of his private life, but i visited his office

and his staff is in the process of compiling a list of what he's accomplished and it's 50 pages long. and it doesn't include national healthcare which is probably his prime issue, his main cause. but he's cast more than 15,000 votes, written more than 2500 bills. he helped enact medicare after his brother john proposed it. he was key to passing the americans with disabilities act. he was -- he created meals on wheels for senior citizens and a sentencing forum which changed the way every criminal in this country or anybody who goes into the criminal justice system is sentenced. before ted kennedy did this sentencing reform, judges had discretion on how they sentenced around the country so one judge in mississippi could sentence somebody for the same charge completely differently than somebody in california.

and he made that uniformed and set up a set of guidelines that judges have to follow and a range of sentences so completely changed sentencing in the country. he and orrin hatch again got health insurance for 9 million children for 9 million uninsured children. ted kennedy got 18 years old the right to vote. with president bush he passed no child left behind law. in national service there's nobody more than who has done national service forums who's done more than ted. he helped create vista with sergeant schriever. he helped create americorps with bill clinton and just in the last few weeks, the ted kennedy serve america act passed which will ratchet public service programs to 240,000 volunteers around the country. which is, you know -- i think it's six times as much as previous programs. so he stayed committed to it,

nursed it, tendered it all the way through. he created portable health insurance sop they could take it with him when they left their jobs and he invented community health centers and if some healthcare legislation is passed in the next year it will be because of his commitment to it. and he started talks with the current healthcare plan more than a year and he held video conferences while he was sick and he has been nonstop on that issue as well. you know, i think him seeking redemption for some of his sins actually drove him harder to accomplish some of these goals and some of his brothers' goals. ted was different from his brothers in a key way. carla and i were just talking about this. he had an emotional acuity that his brothers didn't have that seems like an essential ingredient to getting things done in congress. he had this brand of emotionally

responsible politics that was ultimately his own creation. he was good at relationships. he was -- he was the people person in the family. he couldn't be the tough war hero like his older brother, joe. he couldn't be the hard-driving kind of movie star figure head for the family like jack was. and he would be -- he would turn out to be laughable as a moralist. that was bobby's role. he found his greatest success in his politics with his close personal relationships. he said congress is a chemical place and it's his perseverance in that chemistry through years and years of tragedy that really kept, i think, the kennedy legacy relevant and alive now for another generation, it looks like. and it looks like he's passed that torch directly to obama. and on the day ted kennedy endorsed obama, i think president obama summed up what the kennedy legacy in one sentence that day.

he said the kennedy family more than any other has always stood for what's best about the democratic party and about america. that each of us can make a difference and all of us ought to try. so that's all i wanted to say and i'd love to take some questions if we have time. [applause] >> we do. >> and thanks for coming out in the rain. i really appreciate it. yes, sir. >> i'd like to know your impressions -- in view of his physical health at the present time, do you think it might be byproduct in the success of passing national health legislation because there will be some sympathy that will arise in congress to give further support to the proposal? >> oh, i think there's no question, and i think there's a lot of people at work on that right now to do something while he's still alive. and i also think he's such a canny, savvy politician that he

himself is not above sort of using that sympathy and emotional, you know, connection to try to win, you know, what has been the cause of his life. so i absolutely think -- and it's a full court effort and he's right at the heart of it. >> yeah, some are wondering who's going to kind of take up where he has -- where he leaves off regarding mental health because that's a problem we haven't handled here in this country very well. you know we got rid of the state mental health facilities and then decided that the thing to do was to put at least the worst people with mental health problems in jail and that the jails don't seem to be the best place to handle mental health problems. >> exactly. >> so, you know, i'm wondering

who's going to take up this problem which seems like ted kennedy got that going on? >> you know, jack actually proposed a nationwide string of mental health centers around the country much like his community health centers to sort of help people, you know, get back into the community and not warehouse them but really treat mental health sort of in an outpatient way. and it never happened when he was killed. ted tried to pursue that for a long time. as i said earlier, this is now patrick kennedy's cause. his son's cause. if you recall, after his accident at the capitol in 2006 when patrick kennedy who was on prescription drugs at the time ran into a barrier at the capitol, disoriented and he wasn't arrested.

he didn't go to jail but he was charged with driving under the influence prescription drugs, after that, he began to talk frankly about his addiction problems, about his bipolar disorder, about all sorts of mental healthcare issues and he really tried to make it a civil rights issue. he really said there's this stigma and this, you know, frowning on people with mental illnesses that has held us back as a country in dealing with mental illness and dealing with substance abuse. and i'm no longer going to feel a shame about it. i'm going to -- it's my cause and i'm going to tell people all about it 'cause i feel like there is no shame. and we treated it too much like a moral failing rather than something that needs to be treated like any other disease. so he has really been a crusader on that. and it bore fruit with very much the help of his father last fall when they passed this mental

health parity act. he plans to pass healthcare with military personnel. that's one of his causes and he feels like va hospitals don't do anything about mental healthcare. in the "post" we had a huge series about the problems of treating mental health problems from iraq and he wants to tackle that. so i think he will stay with this for the rest of his career. whether other people will join him, you know, a lot of the people who helped him with this bill are now gone from congress. so i'm sure he'll try to recruit new members like jim ramstad was with him and paul wellstone, who was with him, dominici, but he's going to have to recruit new members but he really -- in the two years since his accident, became in his own words the face

of alcoholism and recovery. alcoholism, addiction and recovery. >> good evening, also speaking about the -- what comes next. >> yeah. >> of course, there's president obama, which is a clear passing of the torch as you mentioned and his son who's in congress. but he also seemed to have a great interest in his niece's recent interest in politics and also the stories abounded at the time whenever she chose to leave and his reaction to that. i was wondering what your thoughts are about her political future and ted kennedy's support or what his thoughts might be on that. >> you know, the people i talk to were about caroline were just shocked that she ever got into that because it's just not her. she's so reticent to step into the spotlight and limelight like that that they were -- they were surprised she ever got in it and weren't surprised when she got out of it.

some people who i interviewed told me it was hers for the taking and it was really her decision not to continue to try to get it. what i think that shows, though, there used to be quite an impressive kennedy machine that could win seats for just about anybody. ted is a perfect example -- i mean, his brother is the president. his other brother is the attorney general. and he's not even old enough to run for the senate and they told the seat open for him for two years with a family friend and then he wins when he's 30 with no experience. one year experience in a d.a.'s office. i mean, you know, the parallels with caroline are sort of stark and he was just -- the same kind of press reaction is this is nepotism run amuck. i think the "new york times" writer said, two kennedys is by far enough.

we don't need three. [laughter] >> so there isn't that machine anymore and i think joe kennedy was, you know, the guy who ran that machine, their father. and that's why, i think, john and ted and bobby made it as far as they did because they had joe working the machine. and, you know, caroline doesn't have a joe working the machine. and that machine is not in place anymore. and there's also, you know -- americans, don't like dynasties. they really don't. it turns out we do like democracy after all. we don't really like royalty. and i think, you know, there's some feeling -- and i saw a lot of press when caroline was up for that spot that, you know, there's a presumptiveness to it and there wasn't sort of the same kind of, you know, regard for the kennedy family in that allure, that kennedy mystique.

the bloom is off on a lot of the kennedy dynasty. when john was coming up, they sort of represented this aspirational view of america for immigrants. and people saw the kennedys as getting to the top of the heap and they thought, wow, if they can get there, i can get there. and it was a gold standard for a lot of people. the kennedys had these grand parties when they were -- when john was first running for office that were like royal events. they were black tie. women rented dresses in massachusetts to go to them. and they had a receiving line. joe and rose had a receiving line where they greeted everybody like a king and queen. i wouldn't be surprised if they practically had thrones. they really sort of embraced this role as america's royalty. but i think now it's -- we're very much beyond that sort of view of the kennedys. and the machine is not in place although i just heard -- i think

you'll always have kennedys pecking at public office. i think bobby schriever, eunice's son which would be interesting with arnold and maria and chris kennedy, one of bobby's sons, i hear is interested in the senate seat in illinois. he ran the merchandise mart. and then, you know -- when i was in denver, i met joe kennedy's twins, twin sons, matt and joe, jr. i'll tell you i was impressed -- you guys should keep an eye on them. they had a lot of charisma. they're only 27 years old but i bet you'll see them running for something soon. so i don't think -- i think you're going to see kennedys around for a long time. i'm not sure there'll ever be another one in the senate because i'm not sure people embrace that kind of entitlement

anymore. but they'll do public service in a lot of ways and i think there's more commitment to that than public office. and you see -- you see like kerry kennedy running a human rights campaign and she has an organization that gives awards to journalists, speak truth to power in dangerous countries where it's very difficult to be a journalist and you have bobby kennedy, jr. doing his environmental work and his sustainable energy work. and so i think there's still this -- these ripples of hope commitment to public service but not necessarily public office at the level that joe, ted and -- i mean, i mean, john, ted and bobby did. >> okay. this will be the last question. >> i better make it a good one then. i've always been curious as to the impact of joe kennedy, the brother, and how would you have -- i mean, if it played out

and he had lived and he was the heir apparent, how do you think the dynamics among the three brothers and their contributions would have played out? >> i think joe would have run for president. joe was the star. i mean, the other brothers were not considered even in the same league as joe, which is interesting. especially, john. his dad thought john was sort of a goof ball. you know, he liked his books and he was sort of snarky, you know, when he was growing up. he was very much sort of the younger brother to joe. joe was the older brother. joe, you know, was a fascinating character in that he was sort of -- he was such a big brother, such a good big brother that he often was this other parent and, you know, joe and rose were gone a lot and so joe, jr. really took on some of that parenting role. and, you know, i guess he was just the most handsome guy, you know, vivacious charismatic. if he had lived, you know, he

would have run for office and i don't think -- i'm not sure john would have been elected president but joe, sr. really thought and i've seen it time and time again. he thought all four sons would become president. he wanted to outdo the addams family. he set out -- i'm the cocoon and my sons are the butterflies. his life became his sons' and he was determined somewhat of an anger at fdr after his falling out with fdr during world war ii to outdo the roosevelts and the adams and outdo everybody so i think he would have pushed those sons to all be president if he could. thanks for coming. >> wonderful. it was a great talk. thank you so much. [applause] >> vincent bzdek is a features writer and news editor at the "washington post." he's the author of woman of the

house, the rise of nancy pelosi. for more information on vincent bzdek visit washingtonpost.com and search his name. ♪ >> this summer book tv is asking, what are you reading? >> hi i'm bob cusack the managing editor of the hill newspaper. the hill newspaper covers politics 24/7 so in the summer i like to get away from politics at least for a little bit. and one of the books i started to read -- i haven't finished yet -- is called caddy for life. this is written by john feinstein. he's one of the best sports writers of our time, i think. and it focuses on the life of bruce edwards who was the caddy

for golfing legend tom watson and edwards gets diagnosed with lou gehrigs disease. another book i'm going to be reading is a book written by one of mischaracterize friends called receive me falling by erika robuck. it's on amazon.com and it's gotten some good reviews and i'll be checking that out another book my wife just finished is called the shack. it's by william paul young, a lot of buzz around this book. it's a fictional book. i don't know too much about it. but i hear you can apply this book to your everyday life so i'll be checking that out as well. i've always been fascinated by the search for osama bin laden. and it's written by michael scheuer who was searching for bin laden. he wrote an op-ed in the

"washington post" that got a lot of attention. i haven't read a lot of his books but it reminded that i should take a look at one of his books and it's called marching toward hell: america and islam after iraq. and the last book that i'll be checking out is called the 15th club. i'm a big golfer. it's a how-to book that focuses on the mental game of golf. it's written by sports psychologist bob rotella. i started. it's taken a few strokes off my game and i can get all the help that i need. those are the books that i'll be checking out this summer. >> to see more summer reading lists and other program information, visit our website at booktv.org.

>> rick pearlstine, who lives in nixon land? >> well, in my book we all live in nixonland but with obama it's a open question. we have two mutually different groups of americans who hate each other, left and right, red and blue that one side barely considers the other side american at all. and a big part of barack obama's appeal or at least his attempted appeal was to transcend just that sort of thinking now whether that will work or not is really the open question of his administration. i mean, he did, you know, pass a stimulus bill with zero republican votes and he's still being called a socialist. so, you know, it's a way to think about our history going forward. are we still living in that radically bifurcated mutual mode of recrimination that we saw that evolved with richard nixon

in the 1960s. >> so did -- how did it evolve during richard nixon and was he partially responsible in your view? >> he was both -- he didn't create the wave but he surfed the wave. in the '60s social movements became patient and more violent, large swaths of white middle class america became very frightened that their normal expectations of law and order were being upended. and richard nixon kind of harvested that rage and he took political advantage of that rage but not only did he harvested it but he exacerbated it as a political strategy. >> how? >> well, for example, he argued privately, although, some of his aids said it publicly, that they wanted to achieve a strategy of

positive polarization. in other words, it's good to have a political discourse that divides the country in two because of their belief that the republicans would harvest the bigger side of the divide. so in other words, even though in much of his public rhetoric he would speak the words of unity that we expect our presidents to speak all the time but barely beneath the surface he encouraged the idea that one group of americans would lead -- believe one group of americans weren't american at all. one was a hippie to tear down everything that us hard-working americans had built. >> was some of that rage in your view justified? >> oh, absolutely. >> why? >> well, i mean, a lot of -- a lot of what went on the new left in the black power movement was, you know, churlish and juvenile and narcissistic.

you know, i tell a story in the book about abbie hoffman who was one of the most prominent antiwar activists, part of the yippy movement and i told him how john lindsey had made him sort of an ambassador between the city and the hippie community in the lower east side and part of that he couldn't be arrested. so abbie hoffman would take advantage of that and kind of bait the cops and in one story i tell he actually so baited a cop into arresting him that he smashed the display just because he could and we're talking about that level of childishness, that doesn't make it very easy for us to kind of body-force together as a commonwealth. it's when -- it's when the rage

became kind of undifferentiated and against senators who opposed the war like edmond muskie who nixon tried to tie to the radical movement that things got very irresponsible. >> as a politician, do you respect richard nixon? >> he was the best. he wasn't, you know, quite good enough to, you know, bluff his way to two full terms, but as far as his ability to find and discern the kind of subterranean moods broiling beneath the american life and speaking to those hopes and dreams, he was brilliant. he was brilliant at thinking about what kind of constituents he could build for his politics and one of the ways in which he was such a brilliant politician and one of the evidences of it was he was not a very charming man. it's a paradox.

you know, he was a guy that people had trouble getting along with and he didn't get along with and he was able to win the allegiance of the american audience. >> this is your second book. your first book was on barry goldwater and this is your second book on republicans and the right and you're working on a third. why so fascinated with the right? >> well, the thing that fascinates me -- you know i'm a liberal and i'm also a political activist although i'm very proud some people on the right have found my work useful and fair. i'm fascinated by the fact that we americans share our nation with each other even though we see the world in such different ways. and we speak the same language, english, you know, and we inhabit the same spaces. but we have just enough mutual incomprehension that we can kind of be voyeuristic on one another's worlds and i just find that endlessly fascinating. why do these people think this way? what do i have in common?

what don't i have in common. why do some people end up liberal or conservative? you know, i can sit in the library and close my eyes and think about that for hours and call it a good day. >> is america unique in that respect? >> i think america is unique in that its ideological direction seems more up for grabs than in a lot of places. i mean, america is this country where we never had an american aristocracy. what binds us together is not bonds of blood or even geography but a set of ideas. and we're always fighting over the ideas. you know, what does liberty mean? a social democrat in other words someone on the left, a new dealer argues liberty means, you know, having enough food in your stomach to be able to take care of your family. a conservative would say liberty means the government staying out

of the private economy no matter what. and we're still having the same arguments with each other in almost 250 years into the experiment. >> has there ever been a time in your understanding of history, rick pearlstine that america has been united? >> well, we're always united. we're always divided. i mean, i think those two -- those two realities are in tension with each other. i mean, we couldn't have defeated fascism in world war ii had we not achieved a remarkable degree of operational unity, but by the same token a lot of that involved kind of burying certain ways that we were disunited, say, around race, that quickly rose to the surface after world war ii and in the 1950s, you know, as african-americans came back to world war ii it said we fought for our freedom.

white settlers came back from world war saying we fought for our way of life and suddenly, you know, we're at loggerheads again. it's the american condition. >> what's the book you're working on and what's your trilogy called. >> the first book was from '58 64 and '1965 to '62 and i go back on a book that i'm calling the invisible bridge, which is going to be about the 1970s and the rise of ronald reagan. it's going to cover the years from 1973 to 1980. >> we're here at the organization of american historians' annual meeting and you just participated on a panel on the conservative state of conservatism in america. why as a liberal are you so fascinated with conservatism? >> well, a lot of historians are absolutely riveted by conservatism and one of the reasons is because they've had such a dominate role in