the is an enormous aunt of fraud in hiv aids transfusion programs. why should we raise our@@@@@a@ , repaid at taxes and the money. why should we require you to vit the undertaker and internal revenue seven the same week? most understand that is a bad attacks, a discriminatory tax and it is unfr to work all your life, save all your life and then have the government take away the money you want to give to your children and grandchildren. >> host: back to books and reading. greenville, south carolina wants

to know if you could recommend a book that would be inappropriate introduction to american history with particula focus on the founding of our country for this viewer to read to his young son. >> gue: how to just get any book by lynne cheney, she has written a wonderful series of the children's books and a lynn has done a fabulous job. if you go to amazon and pull a planet cheney you'll see the vice president's wife has done a marvelous job of introductions for young people into a whole range of american history. >> host: diane of of charlottesville is intrigued with how much you read. what you do in your personal time? do have any other hobbies besides reading? are you a sports fan, traler or collector? >> guest: let me say, first of all, which willrobably get in trouble, i don't watch much network television. i have never seen a complete american idol, i've never seen it dancing with the stars. i haven't seen a bachelor or the bachelorette. i've seen a brief clips but i spend my time reading.

i like football and am a big fan of the green bay packers. we'll be there on december 30 . the very word about a brat, hoping is okay. i have one share of stock and my son-in-law has stopped. he is from sheboygan and my wife is from wisconsin and so we have a family interest in the packers. we do like to watch football, i love movies, i like old movies and the american movie channel and turner movie classics. i will flip around in the evening when i am too tired to read. i'll watch almost anything. we love a golfing. my wife got me into golf of few years ago. i find getting out in the course and proving i am totally incompetent somehow refreshing. i can't explain it. as the white ball misses the cup i think somehow next time i'll get it. we do a lot of coughing. >> host: phoenix, you're on the air. >> caller: hello dr. greenberg. in the 24 hour news cycle i find that the media largely is trying

to create news instead of reported. an example of this on october 18th will put her on cnn said we are reporting that north korea has detonated a nuclear weapon. whether that is true or not that is our lead story. how does the average american separate the rhetoric from acal news? >> guest: that is a good question. i think there are three patterns. first of all, find it trust in sources. i look for people that i think are interesting and are reliable and i think have insights overtime and that are worth looking at. for exple, i read all of charles call hammer's articles because he is very smart. i read michael barone of because i think he has something truly insightful every time he writes. first look for trusted sources that fit your world view and that fit over time you can check and make sure these are people

you rely on. second, assume all is that the first report is wrong. that is actually a good rule out military behavior and a good rule in life and general. when you see the first headline let's wait and see with the second and third headline look like and whether lot the store has changed dramatically and recognize that is the nature of thmode world. third, on a really big tngs is repetition that matters. i think our leadership has to get back that if you want to have a dialogue with america with over 300 million americans you have to pick a handful of big ideas, talk about them and leslie and gradually over time you'll build an effect in a residence and the country it will learn and have a genuine dialogue. >> host: san diego, you are on thair, i like to talk about how the american enterprise institute that mr. gingrich is associated with is highlighted in the book frequently.

i would like to address some key aspects that have not been brought up. a first of all, mr. gingrich i it was at a presentation and was unable to ask a questiobecause of the democratic moderator there wouldn't call in may because i had a challenge richard perle the day before about agenda associated with that you. the project with a new american century which has been disbanded only in name only and you are a propagandist of these people. you can't look yourself up in that wall is a book about the power of low lobby called the israel lobby and u.s. foreign policy. there is a media blackout in america. 60 minutes and c is refusing to do a segment on it yet these the esteemed political science professors or wrote received in europe i the british parliament a joint session, a chatham house within foreign rations, the

defense policy think tank in britain, becse of that power of the pro-israel lobby which you did know if you're like yourself up in the index, i can look it up on page 153 and i would like a response from you for it becauseou have been nothing but a propagandist of these people. going back to when your precious the cia on the policy board. it is a pretext for warburg. >> host: you asked for time and we do to point so we will give mr. gingrich a chance to respond. >> guest: i am actually puzzled by his point. i think it is important morley for israel to survive. i think it would be a terrible disaster if there was a second holocat and a tel aviv were annihilated in a biological attack. i believe that because as a human being i don't think we ought to have genocide .. books in 2007 include

this historical novel "pearl harbor," a novel of december 8th. and also his latest "a contract with the earth" and we'll take a break and we'll be back with our third hour. we'll talk about politics and new technology.

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♪ live january 6th at noon eastern. >> host: here for days, as looking at emails is what we're doing during the break here. we got quite a stack of them, i must tell you. we'll give you the email address. it's booktv@c-span.org. newt gingrich said if you don't get it read over the next fadew days, a staff will get back to you. our phone lines are open. we have lots to talk about, the books we already put on table and politics and new technology. let me just get right into it. on friday night, i mentioned was the presidential libraries. we had an opportunity for a personal interview with president clinton.

he talked about the way the impeachment story is told in his library. here's a little of what he had to say for your response. >> it was a much bigger deal to the press than it was to the public at the time. i think as you saw in '98, when the congress is on the verge of impeaching me and the republicans outspent us $100 million on a congressional elections, the democrats picked up five seats in the house. and would have picked that many more if me of them had the courage to run against the prevailing press opinion that impeacent was at least something that ought to be done and all that or it was going to be done. we won five seats in the sixth year of my presidency. it was the first time since 1822 that that happened. mes monroe was president, 1822. and really we were effectively a one-party country back then. so in effect it had never happened in american history before. it happened because the american

people saw the whole impeachment thing for exactly what it was. it was -- exactly what newt gingrich admitted to my chief of staff it was. when erskin asked himuz÷ if he being hypocritical and he said of course. why are you doing it? because we can. we're doing it because we can. and because we know once we do it, we can rely on many people on t press to always say we did it without ever saying it was illegitimate. i mean, i like gingrich because i like a fellow that'll tell you the truth about what his motivations are and why they are doing it. he thought it was something where he could manipulate the press and the president and this historians in the future. and maybe spook the democrats into running me off. i think he knew me well enoh by then to know that he couldn't

spook me into running me off. so it was a fight for power. it was nothing but power. and almost 70% of the american people saw it for that. they knew exactly what was going on. and if you remember, there were hundreds and hundreds of constitutional scholars, ncluding you >> that is they were high crimes and misdemeanors of a political nature. and tip o'neill, the speaker of the house, refused to entertain any impeachment against impeachment against president reagan or anybody else.

he gets treated very differently in history because tip o'neill was a great citizen. gingrich always believed ruthless power play got better treatment today and tomorrow. and i was betting he was wrong. but even now you almost never and you didn't see it at the time, there's almost no prudence coverage of 1998 of the bact that the democrats had received something historic. all the coverage running up to the election they're going to lose 25 to 30 seats. it's going to be a calamity. instead, they hit the republicans between the eyes with a 2x4 and did something that had never about that happened. so the publi agreed with me and they were right. it was about power. it doesn't excuses the personal mistake i made, but it was not an impeachable offense. no one ever says today, it came at the end of a white water

inquiry which there was nothing to and in which hillary and i were completely exonerated by an exceedingly partisan prosecur who could never find anything that i did wrong and a civil lawsuit when i was exonerated by a political opponent of a judge. and they all said when they got right down to it we can't find anything they've done wrong. so that's what made this impeachment thing so wonderful for them. it like justified squandering $70 million of the taxpayers money, and the most horrendous string of behavior. and the american public know, sadly it was the great failures of the mainstream media of history. they never resulted the results of the '98. they never talked about how nothing was ever found. they just -- they never do it. they always talk about the impeachment. that's still a good story for them. so gingrich understood them better than i did. i thought they would have a much

better sense of fairness and balance. he was right there. >> host: lots to work there >> guest: i think he summarized that very quickly. president clinton went to iowa and said he'd always opposed the war in iraq. it wasn't true. it his wife voted for the war in iraq. he was for it at the time but he was the greatest ability to rewrite his own life of anybody i've ever seen. what i said was very narrow. did i know men who lied about affairs but not under oath in front of a federal judge committing perjury and that's the great mistake of the starr report. if it was a report that said perjury was committed, perjury was a felony. what the congress has to decide does personal popularity allow politicians to commit perjury? if they do, then, a, don't do anything about president clinton having committed perjury and, b,

understand you just set a standard by which popular politicians will routinely break the law. and you've started down the road towards venezuela and nigeria and countries where the law doesn't matter as long as you were powerful. that was a straightforward argument about the nature of the law. i'm an army brat. i grew up in an institution that believed in honor and duty. and i still think it was probably exactly thd right solution. he was impeached. he will always have been impeached. he should have been impeached for breaking the law. the senate did not convict him because while he broke the law, it was not of sufficient force to strip him of office. but nobody should take this lightly. scooter libby was sentenced to jail for breaking the law. barry bonds was just indicted for perjury. these are all the same case. if you're a corporate executive and you have a sexual harassment lawsuit and you're in a federal court and you lie, you can go to

jail for perjury. and presidents should not be above the law. that a very dangerous precedent. clinton is a wonderful storyteller. he's a very charming man. and he is fundamentally dishonest on a routine, regular basis. it's his personality. he tells you the version to tell you who he is to get through it just this week >> host: what about his analysis in the victory of congress? >> guest: first of all, they did win five sites and that's part of why i re-signesigned. we picked up 53 seats. bill clinton is the first democratic president in modern history to have six years of republican congress during his presidency. that wasn't true of fdr. it wasn't true of harry truman it wasn't true of lyndon john

son or carter or kennedy or wilson. see, you got to go back -- i don't think it was ever true before. so you can play games any way you want to. ey ran a brilliant tactical campai in 1998. we ran, i think, a relevantly dumb campaign. and it's part of what i write about in real change in january. once we signed the balanced budget of 1997, we could not get the republican leadership, particularly, in the senate to agree that ideas mattered. and there was this belief you could rely on lewinski which i thought was nuts. it's a totally false way to try to run the country. and i gave a speech at the cobb county chamber of commerce. er deskin and bowls, we had laid out a strategy for some very, very bold reforms in 1998 which had very good a chance to be in the state of the union. and i think we could have had a very interesting and very citi period and in that

sense, the scandal was a tragedy because it detoured for a dece any ability to get fundamental reform that we might have actually built on in '98 coming off the signing of the balanced budget act of 1997. >> host: it's almost 20 minutes past the hour. i want to get to calls. let's take our next one from ann arbor, michigan. you're on the air. >> caller: hello? >> host: yes, sir. >> caller: i want to say my fellow caller, please do not violate the 30-day rule. it ain't right. the guy who called in before me please keep to the 30-day rule. >> host: thanks. we do our best here so we can as many voices. how about a question for the speaker. >> caller: i just wanted to say that to the callers. to the speaker, it's the pot calling the kettle black. he had the -- gingrich had the atlanta general constitution banned from his office because of what they said how he -- his

wife is divorced and cancer and stuff. that's the problem with the republicans. you always overreach, god rest his soul, henry hyde, bob livingston, he almost became speaker. he had an affair. markókjátk and then what you did >> my story about my ex-wife and cancer is fundamentally false but it was repeated by the news media. the jim wright case was a very

specific case. it was a democratic chairman of the ethics committee who brought in the report who brought the report that led to the resignation. and i can't quite imagine if you actually read the report that you would think that we were wrongo insist that speakers of the house shouldn't break the law just as presidents shouldn't break the law. >> next question comes from lynchburg, virginia. >> caller: hello, mr. speaker and hello, america. the aclu and other like-minded organizations have been very successful in propagating the myth that it is constitutional for the government at any level ever to endorse a particur religious idea. now if that is the case, if it really is unconstitutional, how is it that three of the presidents had national three

days of prayer and fasting and how did christmas become a national holiday. >> the aclu is a key part of the effort to create a radically secular america that is different and historic matter. and i think we should change some laws and sadly the taxpayers subsidize the aclu by some totally misapplied civil rights laws which allow them if they win a case to collect taxpayeroney for having filed a lawsuit that involves freedom of religion and i think we should cut off that source of funding for the aclu and not encourage those kind of antireligious bigotry in our courts. >> you made some news this week. commenting on the primary process by suggesting -- or analyzing barack obama's chances in the early crazy. this week oprah winfrey becomes a very visible endorser, the oprah party wants you. there's a quote in it from a political scientist from

rutgers, obama is a post polarization candidate and oprah a post polarization celebrity. do americans ultimately like hard knuckled politics? do they like the clash of ideas or do you hear more and more people want more to get along and find consensus? >> i think people want to get beyond red versus blue. they would le a red, white a blue dialog at americansolutions.com and click research you'll see polling data the desire for people to try to find a way to have a conversation. i'm going to go to iowa on tuesday and release what we're calling the platform of the american people. we put together a series of planks that have a majority of democrats, a majority of republicans, a majority of independents all agree. for example, 85% favor english as the national language. majority of hispanics, and my challenge to both parties is why don't you adopt the platform of the american people as a

baseline for the first days of 2009 we can talk on what we agree on than what we disagree on. he's obama is a feel-good president and he creates an emotional balance. on the other hand, he's proposed a massive tax increase for social security. i thin when you get into policies he may become a very polarizing candidate. a lot of the polarization occurs because these policies make a real difference and they define a fundamentally different future for the country. >> you made your decision and announced that you would not ek the presidential bid. we have a viewer email in here and asks would you ever consider a vice presidential with one of the republican candidates? >> well, i used to say no but i ran across a quote from ronald reagan who said he was glad that president gerald ford didn't ask him to run in 1976 'cause he didn't see how a citizen could rn it down so i guess i would have to say depending on the circumstances, you know,'d be honored to be considered and

under some circumstances i'd probably feel compelled to say yes. >> next call, new york city, go ahead, please. >> good afternoon. it's an honor to speak to you. can you tell me who ended america's deportation system? i mean, hispanics, africans, latino aliens do not belong in the united states of america. can you tell me -- did jimmy carter appoint an illegal aen border -- ins chief? i have a second question. >> go ahead on your answer on immigration policy. >> i think they got bogged down in litigation and red tape and the way in which modern government is systemically incompetent. i don't think it was a deliberate design. i just think the system is totally broken. >> the caller is from brooklyn, new york. go ahead, please. >> what i want to ask mr. gingrich what is your

opinion is -- >> i'm sorry. i pushed the button but thawas the question about that whole controversy over the british teacher. >> i think it's a total outrage. we have this one-sided view if you are a muslim fanatic, you can behave in the most barbaric and grotesque ways. it's not just the sudan. there was a woman who was kidnapped and gang raped and she has been sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in prison for having ridden in a car with a male who wasn't her husband although she's the victim of the gang rape and the idea that the saudi system is this reactionary, this brutal and this viciously antifemale and we tolerate it and we're told we're supposed to be for freedom of religion if you're muslim but no christian or jew can go to mecca or medina. we accepted a one-sided version here when you have a barbaric mob in the street threatening to

kill an elementary teacher after naming her bear after a student in her class. this is a sick system and we're going to have to spend a fair amount of time fundamentally taking on and realizeing that -- as the world gets smaller you cannot tolerate this level of fanaticism in this planet. od in america, you make note in the fact in the supreme court there are images sculpted into the stone, one of which is an image of mohammed. how does that play into the current controversy overt÷s -- >> guest: it will be very interesting because technically you'll find a lot of muslims will tell you that you're not supposed to show his face that the supreme court is a desecration of islam. >> host: do you expect that to be controversial? >> guest: the morning somebody in the middle east needs an excuse to be angry at us, that'll be their latest excuse. >> host: next question comes from lexington, massachusetts. you're on for newt gingrich as our three-hour conversation continues. >> caller: hi, good afternoon.

i have two questions. the first question is, how)nñ cd you evaluate the -- how would you evaluate the current status of the politic and public intellectual in person public discourse and i always looked at you as a conservative public intellectual, someone trying to bridge the academy and bringing them forth to the american public and i was wondering how you see that affecting us in the future in terms of politics and technology. the second question is, what role do you think post modern philosophy has in our society and our policy formulations? i've known this is not an issue that likes to get, you know, talked about a lot, but one thing i've noticed in my travels in d.c., if you go to any, you know, publictes intellectual ory person who's involved in d.c. you'll see many intellectuals and does this affect you in your philosophy or washington and its philosophy? >> guest: i'll go backwards. since i don't read any post

modern philosophy, it doesn't affect me. and i actually don't fully understand it. it strikes me post modern is the latest buzzword of incoherence but that's a sign i'm not well enoughcated in that particular area. i find i have enough challenges without getting involved in that level of i find i have enough challenges without getting involved in that level of esoteric analysis. i think in terms of the role of the intellectual. it's a fascinating challenge. you have c-span which aows you to have long dialogs. a speech i did at the national press club this summer has been seen by an amazing number of people especially on c-span and at americansolutions.com. and i see it as a continuum. when you start over here with a sound bite and you gradually build it up with a book and a dvd, and i think in the continuum we're in that dramatic change where we uld potentially have an enormous dialog in the country.

i think you have something from second life we did it. this is an example of how i see this stuff as all going to evolve over the next five or ten years. >> the whole concept of an avatar will be a new one but let's watch and then we can explain how this works. >> okay. let them just say these are some of the teething pains of learning a new technology. but i regard second life as the beginning of a very different kind of system that lets exactly what you see happening in front of us, which is people from all over the world can come together and be together and can share ideas. and i think that it's very important to look at how this technology is going to evolve. many ways is the first successful manifestation of an idea known among futurist as a metavee. it's a virtual worldxuñ inhabit real people was pioneered in

9ñ and neil stevenson's 1992 snow craft. the first intellectual treatment of the metaverse came in the form of the 1992 book mirror worlds. as a teacher by trade, i'm delighted to teach a workshop here in second life but i'm act+ not the first to do so. harvard law school professor charles nessin taught a class last year inside second life about law in the court of public opinion and i think you're going to find more people engaged in study groups and in work groups and this kind of second life and other kind of metaverse environments because they are so effective. >> host: now, first of all, did you design your own avatar? >>uest: no. david krelic did. i obviously had to have white hair. a bunch of us white-haired guys are out here now. >> host: were all of the avatars who are listening --

>> guest: those are real people. second life for our viewers is a system which you can go to today. it's secondlife.com and you can enter it for me and then they have land which is actually sold. we paid, i think, $5,000 to rent the west front of the u.s. capitol 'causet was the same sight we used for the contract of america and we were doing this on the anniversary of the contract of the americas so it was kind of interesting. second life is a very interesting experimental world. it has 5 or 6 million people who have now visited p8zit. second life. they have five laboratories that operate in second life. you can access it from any laptop anywhere in the world. and it's a very important experimental in developing virtual ability to work together very, very inexpensively. we hope both at american solutions and at the center for health transformation to develop with ibm a series of alternative

systems like this to have, for example, a state legislative life or a hospital administrator's opportunity so that people can come together very efficiently without travel. can do so inside this alternative world and can have meetings. you can easily have meetings up to 400 people in a way that's much less expensive and much more convenient than doing video conferencing or web conferencing. >> host: you see an avatar congress? >> guest: you could for certain kinds of meetings. >> host: next question is from montrae, california. montrae, you're on the air. go ahead, caller. >> caller: mr. speaker? >> guest: yes. >> caller: you spoke about the u.s. continuing its economic success in the world scene. i was asking -- i was calling and asking your opinion about the oil bill that the u.s. is supporting with the iraqi parliament. with our military forces in iraq does this give the appearance of

improprietary? >> guest: we've does american troops sitting in germany for a long time. we've had american troops sitting in great britain and we have american troops in korea and in okinawa and in japan. the fact is we have been protecting the iraqi people from those who would re-establish a dictatorship. i don't think we should feel any bit of embarrassment about our commitment in trying toel the iraqis to become both free and prosperous. >> host: we have lots of questions that have to do with america's public education system so i might just throw that out to you as a topic without a specific question. here's a school -- american history teacher in a middle class public school wants to know what the largest obstacle to the american public education reaching its full potential is? >> guest: well, i think we have to fundamentally rethink the nature of american education. i think it has become a bureaucratic credentialed mess and it inhibits students from learning. and i also think we should try

some experiments. my daughter, jackie curbman in atlanta is working on a project right now. we're trying to raise some money for some foundations. the atlanta city schools have agreed to take their poorest neighborhood and actually pay children the equivalent of working at mcdonald's if they get a b or better in math and science. and so we're looking at a variety of experiments to maximize the rate at which young people learn a to give young people a chance to earn money so you can reengage them as learning a real thing and not just as this abstract thing they go through. >> caller: newt, i'm a lifelong republican but i've really been upset with the republicans on pork barrel spending. one reason i support romney is he said he would veto bills full of pork. on this last water bill the republicans -- bush vetoed it but it was full of pork and the republican congress would not sustained the veto so as a leader, can you get after the republicans and tell them to

please sustain the present veto with these terrible wastel projects? >> guest: i agree with you and in real change in january outlined steps we need to take. and part of it is to go back and insist on a balanced budget because a balanced budget creates a standard against which you have to measure spending and forces politicians to learn to say no again. you cannot have a successful system in which politicians are always saying, yes, because they just give away the money. >> host: a related question from a viewer named michael wilson. as a goldwater republican in the age of senility. i voted for reagan and thought i was voting for smaller government and it never happened. we had a chance and blew it? >> guest: i'm a big fan of reagan because he cut marginal tax rates and cut regulations and liberated the american economy which had 22% interest rate 13% inflation and the steepest recession since the

great depression and he turned that around and we now had 20 years of prosperity standing on his policies. but in addition, reagan followed a policy of defeating the soviet empire, which worked so decisively that 10 years after his inaugural the soviet empire disappeared. it's one of the greatest achievements in american history. i'm a big fan of reagan. he didn' have the votes. he always had a democratic highways and had a democratic senate after 1986. and i think he believed that it was better to have a deficit and keep spending down than it was to raise tas. and so he was prep@red to -- and this was something milton friedman the nobel prize winning economist had said. he worried about the size of government and the size of government. he would rather have a smaller government with a deficit than a bigger government with a tax increase and a balanced budget. and i think reagan in that sense was following the freedom in line. he did keep government. there were only two years since world war ii when domestic discretionary spending went

down. 1981 under reagan and 1995 in our first year in control of congress. >> host: we were showing you a photograph with you and reagan. do you recall when it was taken? >> guest: no, i don't know when it was taken. i have one on my wall at home which shows the two of us with our coats off and our arms folded laughing. it was taken on air force one. i was a backbench republican. i didn't get to hang out with the president all that much but it was a moment when he came back to tell jokes. he was a remarkable person. i would say he -- he and nelson mandela are the two most amazing people i ever personally met. >> host: the next phone call is from fairfax, california. good afternoon. >> caller: good afternoon. thank you very much for the show. and i really appreciate, newt, your open mindedness and your future thinking on so many subjects. this is a question about impeachment. when president clinton just

spoke, in response i think you avoided his major point which is that the american people did not want congress to proceed with his impeachment and yet you did proceed. now with george bush and richard cheney, the american people would favor impeachment, at least according to a pole by the american research group this past july. 46% favored impeachment for george bush. and 54% for richard cheney. and this is even without the democrats putting it on the table, without any media coverage of it. the american people would favor ity even greater percentages if the congress and if the media actually told the story of why presidt bush and vice-president cheney should be

impeached? >> guest: well, think the question back in 1998 was very simple. if you think it's okay for politicians to commit felonies and to commit perjury and to suffer no consequence, then we should have relaxed and letlñ le go on. but by the way i think that leads to a level of corruption and a level of undermining of the law that is very, very dangerous. so it's a judgment call. both presidents and the congress are sworn to uphold the constitution and each person has to do what they think is their moral responsibility in upholding the constitution, and we felt that committing perjury before a federal judge, which is a felony, was a very serious question. >> host: i would speculate that you are a student of the speakership and how one uses the office and with that theory in mind, what are your observations of the way that nancy pelosi has used the office, taken the approach to power in the congress? >> guest: well, i haven't followed it with very carefully

to be honest. to really understand the officeship, you have to follow it on a day-to-day basis. the democrats are running a very big risk of being way too far to the left. they just passed in the house a hawaiian racism bill that is bizarre but it fitshe interest of a very small number of people. and if the average american understood the beill they would be enraged. you would look at the rule they changed to give samoa the same vote in the committee as a whole, as a ebb some of a u.s. congressional district. i think people would think it was weird. they passed a bill back in the spring to strip american voters of the right to vote in a secret ballot election if they are going to be forced into a union. none of these things have

penetrated right now because the bush administration is t center of information. but if you saw lined up day by day what it was like to have a san francisco speaker who really brought tthe floor very left wing issues -- if that ever becomes pieced together, i think the 2008 election will be a dramatically differentelection. >> host: december will be a month of appropriation bills in the house and the congress with the president wielding his veto pen in a vay we haven't seen prior. it calls back to your showdown with the clinton administration. where's the contrasts and the comparisons? >> guest: we had a mandate from the country to balance the federal budget, and we followed that mandate. and a lot of people in the news media thought that we had suffered some big defeat because the government closed down for a couple days. but, in fact, the average american knew that all the essential institutions of government were working. and the news media made a big deal about the washington monument or the lincoln memorial

or what have you. i try to remind people we got reelected for the first time since 1928 because people saw us stick to our guns. they saw we were really serious and we were going to balance the federal budget and we ultimately did balance it for four years. i think what the president has got to think through, because he spent the first six years not vetoing anything is he's got to figure out a consistent story that will make sense to people that enables him >> that enables him to simply block the congress from passing certain spending limits and then he's got to be calm and pleasant and just keep vetoing the bills until they get it written correctly. presidents who work at it have enormous powers in these kind of fights and he should be able to get congress ultimately to pass a bill within the spending framework he's insisting on. >> we once again heard you criticize the news media and president clinton in that clip very strongly criticize the news media. what should one take away if people from opposite political points of view both criticize the news media? >> they are doing a really good

job or it's doing a really bad job. i think you have to decide for yourself. i think that most reporters don't understand the complexities of governing. they don't cover them very well and they don't study them enough. and i think as a result you tend to get what the washington press corps tells itself over lunch which is very different than what reality maybe. >> 15 minutes left with our conversation of newt gingrich. this i in depth and once a month we talk about authors of their books and the speaker of the house has authored 15 minutes. the next telephone call for him is from cleveland. go ahead, please. hello, cleveland. >> hi, how are you today? >> thanks for the call. >> i have two questions. one is about the strategy. i was trying to think how to prevent my question but i guess the best way is just to say it.

the gop created the southern strategy which crippled african-americans, politically. the right wing conservatives, they embraced the southern strategy for decades. i want to know what's so christian about that? i guess i'm -- >> that's all right. we'll work with that. thank you for the call. >> i arrived in ft. benning, georgia, in 1960 as an army brat. i was a junior in high school. i went to baker high school, columb columbus. georgia was legal segregated with the democrats. and the picture of the dogs attacking young civil rights workers was a democrat. and the senators who filibust

filibustered the -- i find it interesting that history is decisively written. i want individual freedom. the greatest damage down african-americans is being done by failing bureaucracies. by schools that don't teach very successfully, by prisons that don't rehabilitate. by cities and taxes and regulations kill jobs and so i think we need a new generation on dialog on how we can help young people learn, how we can create jobs in the inner city and how we can help people move beyond prison to be able to have a decent life and not be trapped in being a career criminal. those are the functions of the federal government and that system has to be fundamentally changed. >> here are two related ema questions. why hasn't the republican party aggressively court the black vote by pushing for choice? >> that's a maj mistake for president bush not to go to the naacp every year that he was president. i thought it was a mistake for map of the republican candidates not to go to tavis smiley's

african-american debate in maryland and i said so publicly. i think there are many issues where we can go to the african-american community and offer a better future. when you look at the level of violent crime in philadelphia, when you look at the level of aids infection in washington, d.c., when you look at the collapse of the education system in detroit, it should be possible and should it be a moral responsibility. moral responsibility for republicans to go into every neighborhood in america and offer better ideas for a better future. and i think that's a key component of what i'm writing about in rl change. it's a key reason i founded american solutions, and i think it's a key part of where we have to go as a country. and let me say, by the way, on health issues i work with dominique will kins trying to reach out of all young people of all backgrounds to help them not become diabetic and to have a full and healthy life. there's a you been in of these kind of initiatives that we need as a country. >> host: j.h. rhodes links the civil rights discussion with books. let me say that i find you an interesting and though

thought-provoking. i wonder if you read the taylor branch trilogy and how that movement's efforts fit with your idea with the role of god in america? >> guest: well, in fact, both in our dvd where we -- in rediscovering god in america where we show martin luther king and in the new book that's coming out where iite martin luther king, jr., i think his role in extending liberty to african-americans in changing america is decisive. i don't think you can tell the story of the 1950s and '60s without dr. king's role. but also it's important because in terms of the concept of god in america, this is a preacher. this is a man who is calling us to our better life to understand the angels of our soul rather than the demons, and if you look at his great i have a dream speech, this is a preach's speech. and i think that represents some of the best in american tradition. >> host: cincinnati for newt gingrich. go ahead. >> caller: i met you in 1997

when you flew in on a small airplane to hamilton airport and met with john boehner. i want to asked a question of you. why haven't youw"s chosen to ru for president even if nothing better than to simply put some depth and substance into the presidential debates we're having to sit through? >> guest: well, i looked at it very carefully and calista and i talked about it. we talked with our daughters, jackie and cathy about it. really tried to find a way to make sense out of the gingrich candidacy this year. and our conclusion was that the whole structure of the current process where i talked to one candidate who had done 58 fundraisers september. you look at the debate the other night, which i think was a travesty of what presidential dialog should be like. and you get, you know, really very short segments to answer whatever question the news media picks no matter how biased or how inaccurate. and i just don't think that's an effective way to communicate. itch prefer doing three hou

here with c-span than trying to do 30 seconds on some kind of stand-up program with 10 other people waiting patiently for their chance to occasionally say a few words. if i can figure out how to make sense out of a presidential campaign, i'll probably run in the future but i only want to run if it can be in the tradition that lincoln and douglas created of serious dialog and serious conversation and candidly we couldn't figure out how to make sense of that this year. >> host: as we're coming to the close, we have next have a call from moline, illinois. >> caller: i was calling to get your opinion on the security and prosperity partnership and also being from georgia, what your opinion was on the monument of the georgia guide stone, sir. thank u. >> guest: i apologize. i didn't understand the questi. >> host: okay. we'll mov on to pittsburg then. go ahead, please. >> caller: i'm a big fan of hayek. after seeing the soviet union fall and eastern europe fall and

it's primarily a function of the economy, the socialist economy doesn't work why we continue -- or why people continue to try to make socialism work. and in a mixed economy like in the united states, and in western europe, will they -- are we experiencing or are we seeing with different unions and different industries with their troubles -- are we seeing the fall of a mixed economy and this is how it works in a mixed economy versus an economy like -- that's totally communist in eastern europe and in the soviet union? thank you very much. i'm a big fan? >> guest: you raise a very important question. i think hayek was the very contributor. the words of surfdom is an important book. the work of hayek through prime minister thatcher and president reagan became so important in shaping the world. however, i'll tell you what, i think we all misunderstood in

the early '90s when communism collapsed in the soviet union. the desire to use government to take away your money and to take away your rights and to turn them over to a bureaucracy, it's a desire driven -- desire by some people to have power over your life. and they know that in a market economy, they don't have power because you get to choose. and so if you look, for example, what's happening in venezuela, what you see there is that chavez, following exactly the road of castro, is destroying the economy. there's a real danger that the new president of argentina is going to destroy the arrangenti. prosperous countries are a threat to them because they might lose power. but a destroyed economy is a good thing. the last stand of marxist thought is tenured faculty in america who has an unending ability to believe in fantasy

worlds because they live in bureaucratic lives with no responsibility and no danger of meeting competition. and i think it's amazing that they can avoid the lessons you just described, avoid the principles of the rket economy and continue to believe that bureaucracies can somehow work better than markets even though other evidence we show ups and others are better at getting things again. >> host: with the primary elections coming that what's your thoughts a moral conservative or why choose a more fiscal conservative? >> guest: i would choose a conservative who i trusted across-theoard fit closer ability to lead the country write thought it would go and the the ability to defeat the democrat. and i thin you got to balance national serity, sial issues and fiscal issues all into one person. you don't get to choose, you know, three different people. i think you got to decide which person fits those together. >> host: are you willing to a name to the label? >> guest: not at all.

>> host: next question, austin, texas. >> caller: hello, mr. gingrich. i hear that you thought bill clinton should be impeached because he lied under oath. it seems to me that both president bush and vice-president cheney and everyone that serves in congress and the senate take an oath of office under which they vow to uphold the laws of the constitution and the laws of the hundreds since that time mr. bush has engaged in illegal wiretapping, suspended the writ of habeas corpus. issued signing statements 700 times saying he's not going to faithfully execute the law, established the white house agency for religious programs, et cetera, et cetera.

does this not rise to the standards of lying under oath? >> guest: well, i think they are two different questions. one is in a federal judicial proceeding in front of aeder >> one is a federal judicial proceeding in front of a federal judge you commit perjury which is a very specific felony the other is your interpretation of the constitution. for example, you mentioned the office of religious activity. that's clearly a legal office and i don't think anybody has doubted that you could legally have -- i think it's actually called faith-based activities. i don't know anybody who thinks you can't have that. you can disagree with it as a matter of philosophy but it's not illegal. in terms of the commander in chief ability to set aside rules i would suggest you go back to president lincoln and president delano roosevelt. in wartime presidentsave had very wide authority to do what it takes for the country to survive. as one supreme court justice once said, the constitution is not a suicide pact. now, you can question the president's judgment but i doubt very much of any of the things

that he personally did could be construed illegal if they were done in his role as commander in chief. >> this viewer, jason saunders who's watching us in misdemeanor -- maryland, where do they have the right and wrong and how close are the ideals of the libertarianism to the intent of the founding fathers? >> i think libertarians have a good idea, a smaller government, less intrusion are good ideas. i think the founding fathers -- i know of no founding father is a true libertarian. all believed in the larger social contract and your rights came from god and i think they would be a little bit askance of libertarian but it's a healthy part of libertarian. >> next call, new york city, go ahead. >> yeah, given that there's a level of political corruption that rises to expulsion and

censorship, a lot of people cynically believe that all politicians are corrupt and that the basic political cultu of our country -- is corrup which is why the ratings for the congress are consistently very low. what can be done to solve -- you know, to raise the level of ethics, morality of our political leaders and culture? >> you know, president reagan had it right. i thinkou raised a very important point and president reagan had a good point, trust but verify. you got to be able to be prepared t police the institution. when i was a freshman in 1979 i filed the first motion to expel since 1917. it involved a congressman who was a chairman who had been

convicted on 29 counts of stealing $70,000 from his federal employees. and he was out on bail. on appeal, rather, and he was still voting. and i saidyou know, under the law, when you're convicted but you're appealing, you are presumed guilty unless the appeal succeeds. and i said it was wrongor a convicted felon to be voting to make law. and we actually forced the first vote on expulsion since 1917. i was very intense in a variety of cases that involved ethics violations when i was a member of congress precisely for the reason you said. once you start toleratg corruption, your political system can rapidly spin out of control. a free society has to have the ability to check and to punish those to whom it loans power if they violate that trust and break the law and that requires, frankly, a pretty aggressive,

pretty militant attitude towards enforcing the rules. >> we are out of time, i'm being told by our producers here. so we'll close with a look at the current books that newt gingrich has in the market. for 2007. you can find them but this is the latest, contract with the earth we talked about, which is available in this form and also in video form and there's a cd that one can listen to the audio track, which you do. >> callista, my wife does. >> and there's a series of books which are historical fiction. what's the next specific topic? >> the next one will be what happens after pearl harbor with the japanese fleet if they stay ound hawaii and they start hunting the american aircraft carriers? >> when will that come out. >> i think it'll come out in may of next year. >> this three-hour conversation is going to be archived on our