book into the search area in the upper left hand area of the page. select the watch link. now you can view the entire program. you might also explore the recently on booktv box, or the featured video box to find recent and future programs. history professor steven gillon details the hours following the kennedy assassination on november 22, 1963. and the transfer of the presidency to lyndon johnson. mr. gillon chooses new declassified archival sources to discover the first hours of the johnson administration. barnes and noble in new york city hosted the event. >> i think the question, when

you write a book like this, the first question that you have to answer is do we really need another book about the kennedy assassination, is there anything new? to be said about the assassination of president kennedy. are there new materials that have suddenly become available that have not been available for the past 46 years that allow us to see these events in a different light? on tuesday, my answer to that equation is yes, for very selfish purposes. most of the books, the vast majority, you could fill a small library, they focus on one question, and that is who shot jfk? where did the bullets come from? was there a shooter on the rasky noel? was oswald a patsy? was this part of the two, part of a military-industrial complex because of initiatives kennedy had taken? these issues are fascinating, and they have inspired and what

will remain a passionate debate among people on all different sides of this issue. that's not what this book is about. i am not writing a book about who shot jfk. i have no new theories to offer about where the bullets came from or who shot jfk. this is a very different book. what i'm interested in is not who shot jfk. i'm interested in the transfer of political power that takes place in the hours after the assassination. i want to move the focus away from the tragedy that unfolded in the presidential limousine, and move it back about 60 feet to the car carrying lyndon johnson. follow lyndon johnson over the course of the day as he goes to parkland hospital and into air force one, and then back to washington, d.c.. to give people a sense of the texture of the decisions he had to face and the choices confronted. when you think about it, the kennedy assassination represent the most dramatic and sudden

transfer of political power in american history. kennedy was the first chief executive deadeye instantly from his wounds that even abraham lincoln, who was shot at point-blank range in the ford's theatre survived and lived until the following morning when he died. what i'm interested in is the issues of crisis management and presidential leadership in the hours that followed the assassination. i focus on the first 24 hours there which is very different from other books that i have written in the books of other professional historians have written. what we are trying to do is connect the dots, to tell the story of change over a period of time. but what i try to do here instead is focus on a single 24 hour period to give you a sense of texture of the moment. my students over the years have always complained that no one, i talked to pass. and number two that history is portrait they say history is

poor because we know the conclusion that we know the end of the story so why do we need to learn about dates and names and times? what i find fascinating about history is being able to go back in a moment of time and understand that the pass has many different possible paths. there are lot of possibilities, choices that were not taken, to put people back in that moment at that time, to understand the range of choices. in this case, that lyndon johnson taste and to realize how contingency, and unintended consequences play in the historical process and produce a result which no one at the time could have anticipated. i focusing on 24 hours, i focusing on some of the details that oftentimes get airbrushed out of history, i think we able to transport people back. so you can not only now with the benefit of hindsight get a sense of, to reevaluate some of the decisions that lyndon johnson made, but you can also put itself back in that moment. you're at parkland hospital and someone comes to and to have the

same information in front of you that try to head in front of him. you find out the president has been shot. that this is possibly the first shot in what could potentially be a confrontation with the soviet union. what do you do in that moment, what choices do you make? i do what i would do, i would wd hyperventilate and pass a. that's what i am a professor and president. but to allow people to go back in that moment of time and experience in the same type of situations and choices that lyndon johnson confronted. not only is it the framework, but i also interpret the issue, there are new sources that are available. i am very grateful to the family of william manchester who gave me access to all of the research materials that mr. manchester used to write his very controversial at best selling book, the death of a president. it was published in 1967 that if you go back, these materials were opened a plaster for the first time. i was the first one to use them.

these materials, almost always with a few exceptions, are almost all did. manchester and get all the major players back in 1964 and 1965 when this material was still fresh. these people, like you can also comes alive are the human dimensions to the story, the dimensions that i think were left out of the warren commission which is illegal, very clinical, very precise. but also its focus on solving a crime and not focus on lyndon johnson or his actions after the assassination. i also found that people just volunteered and gave manchester material, material that was not able to the warren commission. there are documents in the manchester papers which he chose not to use, which i think provides a fresh light and new perspective on the events that took place that day. i sought out the manchester

papers and i found them. they were at wesleyan university and a special archive collection. i also came across a very viable and useful oral history that was conducted by the president, the jfk presidential library in 1970 with brigadier general godfrey dequeue. mccue was president kennedy's air force aid on november 22, 1963. this just falls into the category of sheer dumb luck. i happen to be working at the kennedy library on the date, 31 years after he conducted the interview that make use entity was declassified. so within hours of it being open to the public is able to get access to and use it in this book for the first time. i want to talk a little late on about some of the insights that his oral history provides a. but finally because i'm asking different questions of which are there's a lot of information that is open to the public for a long time. that other people looking into this issue have not focus on.

both the johnson lover and at the national archives in washington, d.c., there is a report conducted by the secret service will wear all the secret service agents involved in the presidential detail and the vice presidential detail a very detailed reports of what they're doing on that day, what they saw and when they saw them. the few people have used this report have been looking at primarily to glean information about the assassination. but if you look at it instead to try to get a sense of what lyndon johnson is doing, you get this great understanding of lyndon johnson and every step he is taking in who's in the room and who he is talking to. and it is really essential in trying to tell the story. so what do you end with and there's two questions they're asking using a different format and you have new source of. what is it i'm able to say about november 22, 1963, that noticed it before? the first part of story i think is important events that take place at parkland hospital, roughly 40 minutes that lyndon

johnson and parkland hospital from 12:40 until 1:30 until he leaves for air force one. the question that i tried -- the questions i ask ask of the material which has not been as evil is why does it take so long for lyndon johnson to find out that kennedy is dead. according to the warren commission, kennedy shot at 12:30. they arrive at parkland hospital at 12:40. lyndon johnson finds out that he is dead at 1:40. here's what happened that lyndon johnson just to set the stage for parkland hospital, lyndon johnson is two cars behind president kennedy in the motorcade. when the first shot rings out, johnson years and he doesn't think anything of it. he says he has been in motivates his whole life. that sounds like backfire from a motorcycle. he wasn't the least that alarm. rufus youngblood was sitting in a front seat of the car hears the same sad that he is also not

alarm. at what he sees does a lot of. he looks out and looking at the grassy knoll where the vice president car is making the turn and he sees people fall into the ground. that he looks ahead and he sees what he describes as unusual movement and the presidential car. so youngblood leads out of a job front seat of the carpet he jumped over the backseat and he grabs lyndon johnson and he throws into the throat untrimmed floor of the carpet as he is being thrown to the floor of the card you hear the second shot and a third shot, and if he doet see anything in the presidential motorcade. as soon as he is on the floor and rufus youngblood, all 180 pounds on top of him the car picks up speed. they begin this frantic race to parkland hospital. johnson doesn't know what's going on. he feels the car accelerate. his car is going 70 miles an hour. it is an open limousine.

air is blowing through. radio was at full blast. johnson wanted to hear how the local radio stations were covering the motorcade. so he had the radio on the whole topic they are racing to parkland hospital. he keeps looking over to make sure ladybirds locater he just chatter over the secret service channel but he doesn't know what is taking place in what is happening. rufus and blood at one point, there is so much he leans over and says we are going to the hospital. there is a possible as there is in the presidential motorcade. we will take you to a secure location. do you understand? johnson says yes, part of. realize that johnson are just a few seconds behind president kennedy's limousine. the kennedy limousine is parked a few yards away and the president is lying in the arms and the lap of the first lady. but johnson doesn't see any of this because as soon as they stop agents surround him and they rush into the parkland hospital. they close the blinds. they remove people. they put a guard at the gate and put him -- there you have lyndon

johnson, ladybird, rufus youngblood and a room with a sterile metal operating table. examination table, and two plastic chairs. at this point lyndon johnson does nothing. so the question then is why does it take so long for him to get information about what happened to the president. just about everybody else in the presidential motorcade as either saw the shots or they saw kennedy's body when they arrived at parkland hospital. they had an understanding of just how serious this was. so johnson wants information. he was to know what's going on. he doesn't know whether the conley has been shot, the president or the first lady or no one. he gets his first report from emery roberts who was the shift supervisor. as soon as the car pulled into parkland hospital, roberts jumped out of the back of car and goes to the presidential car. he opens a backdoor and he wants to get a sense of how serious the president with our. and he was not the first lady's

arm and looked at the president and he tells william manchester in the interview he did with manchester, that that moment he knew that kennedy was dead and that lyndon johnson was president of the united states. isn't my secret service manual tells me to protect the president of the united states, and that was lyndon johnson. he says you stay with kennedy. i'm going to johnson. so he goes in -- is the first person to give a report to lyndon johnson. roberts has made up his mind that kennedy is dead and johnson is president. when he sees johnson that's not what he says that his first report to johnson he says i have seen the president went and i don't think he can survive. johnson says i need more information i want to hear from kenny o'donnell who was out, his chief of staff for the kennedy white house. he wants to hear from kellerman who was president kennedy's secret service agent. the emery roberts leads the room, he runs into lemma roberts

who is another secret service agent. who had arrived at the hospital he ended the anything. he says have you seen -- what's the present condition? he says very matter-of-factly the president is dead. later, roberts called manchester and saint john's didn't know what i do, which is that kennedy was dead. inexpertly comes in its ellerman. he was in the limousine, the presidential limousine. he was one of the people who helped lift kennedy's lifeless body from the car onto a stretcher and to bring him into parkland hospital turkey walks into johnson said the president's condition is not good. anyone who has seen the president wound, that is an understatement at the president's condition is more than not good. the president condition is fatal. a few misleader kenny o'donnell comes back and said the president was in a badly. so what i'm struck by is that all these people, a o'donnell was riding in the car 15 feet behind kennedy when he sees the fatal third shot and he turns to day powers and says, so what i'm

struck by, the question i'm asking myself is why does anyone stay the obvious? why does anyone come to lyndon johnson and say mr. vice president, the president has suffered a major headwind. even if doctors, are able to keep his heart beating him he clearly can no longer function as president. you need as of this moment to assume the powers of the presidency. but they never say that. the question is why? why are they reluctant to say that? in the book i explore a different dimension of this. i think there's lots of different reasons, great confusion, chaos play a role in a. i think the issue that most, the kennedy people simply cannot accept the idea that lyndon johnson is now president of the united states that this is a man who they detested. it is hard enough for them to accept that their leader combest and who they love, john f. kennedy, was now dead. but it was just too much for

them to accept and you have to verbalize that lyndon johnson, the man who they ridiculed, they never wanted to be vice president in the first place was not going to occupy the chair that john f. kennedy was occupied if they're not able to tell him that. they gave him the right advice. they all tell him get on the plane and fly back to washington. they tell him what they should have told him, but they can't bring himself to tell him that kennedy is dead and that he needs now to assume the powers of the presidency. this is i think what of the issues that you have to do with that talk about parkland hospital. there's another dimension to it. while people like kenny o'donnell cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that kennedy is dead and two-tailed lyndon johnson is now president. they give him the right advice, but lyndon johnson own integers are being played out at parkland hospital.

john sigler has enough information. he knows from roberts that kennedy is in very serious condition and may likely to. so why doesn't johnson seapower? y. doesn't johnson assumed the powers of the presidency, having just a general understanding of what kennedy's condition is? and the problem is that lyndon johnson is so paranoid about robert f. kennedy and he is so afraid that if he appears to be overreaching that if he appears to be literally stepping over the body of a dead president in order to assume the powers of the presidency, that he will be perceived as being out of line and that the kennedys will use this against him. he said in a taped phone conversation later on that he was afraid those first couple of days that robert kennedy was going to do everything he possibly could to deny him the presidency. so johnson, you have this stalemate. you have this standoff, and the minute after the assassination on the one and a kennedy people will not tell lyndon johnson that he is president, and lyndon

johnson world refuses to assume the power. so what we have is a vacuum. into parkland hospital. you have an acceptable period of time, 40 minutes, where the united states was without a functioning commander-in-chief. this is a year after the cuban missile crisis. and anything, the impaired at that time should have been to maintain a chain of command. but for 40 minutes without a functioning commander-in-chief. i spent a lot of time in the book focusing on those 40 minutes at parkland hospital trying to explain this dynamic, and this dynamic is significant because it really sets the stage for the relationship between kennedy and johnson, the kennedy people and johnson. not only over the next 24 hours but over the course of lyndon johnson's presidency. to move the story had to another critical moment i think is new and interesting that we haven't seen before, and this comes courtesy of brigadier general godfrey mccue.

mccue was what the presidential party on novembe november 22. and to set the stage again, what happened to the hospital he leaves and goes air force one and he is waiting for the first lady to show up with the body of the president to fly back to washington at the kennedy people put the body in a casket and they are ready to leave the hospital, and a local official, justice of peace said it is a local crime covered by local law which means the autopsy has to be done in dallas. the kennedy people are not ready, not prepared to leave. they just watch their beloved president the assassin. they're not going to leave his body behind. mrs. kennedy basically just telling without the body of the president. so they essentially kidnap the body of the present of the united states. they forced their way past the local justice of the peace. they love the car onto mandolins. they bring it out to air force one.

they quickly carry this heavy casket up the steps, put in the back of the plane and strap in. as soon as they do that kenny o. donelson is to make you look at this point in your. o'donnell is afraid that the dallas police are coming behind him. he wants to get his plane in the air. so mchugh who is responsible for maintaining the air force -- the kennedy pleads guilty the front of the plane and he says to the captain gets his plane in the air. he says i can't because there's going to be a ceremony on board and were not really sure. eventually mchugh find out trantwo's on the plane that kennedy people don't know that. they think johnson has taken the other thing, the plane he flew in on which was then air force two and is on his way back to washington. the story mchugh tells in his oral history which was released, because like the first time last year which revealed in this book for the first time. this is what he says. is walking up and down the

plane. looking for lyndon johnson. he realizes the only place he has elected as the presidential bedroom. so he opens up the door and he looks in the presidential bedroom. no lyndon johnson. the only place on the plane he hasn't looked is the bathroom. a bathroom in the presidential bedroom on air force one. silky walks into the bedroom, by his own account, this is his account. he walked into the bedroom and he opens up the bathroom door. do you know what he finds what he finds lyndon johnson. he finds lyndon johnson, he says, crawled up in a ball on the floor of the bathroom. his hands covering his face, crying hysterical. is a conspiracy, it's a conspiracy but they're going to kill us all. they're going to kill us all. now that -- i wonder what he did next. excuse me? close door. what do you do after you have seen this?

this story of what mchugh claims to have seen on board air force one runs against every other view of lyndon johnson's action that they. everybody who witness, who saw lyndon johnson to observe lyndon johnson that day said he was cool, collected or even the secret service agents. a secret service agent normally write lyndon johnson. most people don't like lyndon johnson but there's no reason why there was anything nice about him but they altered he was subdued this day. so mchugh is a count runs counter to every other account we have of lyndon johnson that they. so the question i had to grapple with is is a true? you know, how 46 years later, can you determine that an encounter between two men, both of them are now dead, ever took place. so in the book i lay out the reasons why i think what mccue

says is true. and also the reasons why i am suspicious. and i leave it up to the reader to make up their own mind about how credible general mckinley counts of lyndon johnson's behavior and air force one is. i finally i think what this book, it is something that very few people do which is paint a fairly positive portrait of lyndon johnson. if you look at the circumstanc circumstances, he handled the crisis remarkably well. what johnson johnson understood, you have to realize you're dealing with a situation like this that there are no menus to repair there are no books to read about how to behave. johnson doesn't have advisers around him who are giving him choices or making recommendations. lyndon johnson is governing with his gut. is his instinct. this is leadership at its very

basics. lyndon johnson deciding on his own what's right and what's wrong making decisions based on fragmentary evidence. now than to understand and stupidly is that the single most important message he came to me on this day is continuity. he needs to send a message to the american public, to our allies and our potential enemies, that the government continues, that he is in charge. and he does that brilliantly. he doesn't most brilliantly i think and how he choreographs the picture of the swearing-in of board air force one. you have to realize the kiddie people did not want mrs. kennedy to participate in that picture. johnson understood without having mrs. kennedy in this photograph. he understood he needed to convey this image of continuity. so he asks mrs. kennedy to participate if he asks kenny o'donnell to go back and get mrs. kerry pick mrs. kennedy who is just a model of grace and dignity and strength says it's the least that i can do.

and that picture -- the plane takes off about three minutes after that plane is taken to the photographer, while johnson is making his way back to washington, that picture of the swearing-in is projected to the rest of the nation. so it sends exactly the image lyndon johnson needed to send him and it sends it as quickly as possibly could be done. johnson wanted to choreograph the exit from the plane at andrews air force base when they arrived in washington, but on that occasion the kennedy group refused to cooperate. and you're probably all seen these images of the small cargo truck coming down with the casket and mrs. king and robert kennedy in front of the plane walking to the any of the kennedy aides. what i found in the house select committee on assassinations, i found an interview with one of the kennedy aides which proves that would happen if someone

went through and handpicked all the people who were going to leave with the body. leaving behind some of the kennedy eight who were cooperate with johnson on the plane. so that scene of confusion of the kennedy people getting off and leaving is one against the carefully scripted image that lyndon johnson wanted to present that evening. but also you see johnson the next day, johnson leads untrimmed meets with the key members. secretary of state, secretary of defense, robert mcnamara in both cases they went to the executive office building expecting to have a one on one meeting with lyndon johnson. they walk in and there is lyndon johnson but there's a whole bank of reporters and photographers. lyndon johnson wanted to get them to sit down and tell him in front of the national media that they were going to remain and be a part of his administration. it's an important message for him to convey and what's striking to me, a man that is so brilliant and using the media in the 24 hours would later be so

clumsy. and in the way in his relationship with the media. not just johnson a tactician. that evening, november 22, 1963, johnson goes back to washington. later in evening he goes to his private residence called the elves in washington, d.c.. he finally goes to bed around 12:00 at night. he changed into his pajamas and he gets into his king-sized, supersized king bed, and he invited three of his aides. there, johnson sitting in the bed propped up with pillows with ladybird tossing and turning trying to sleep next to him. laid out his vision of the great society. the great society was born within hours of the kennedy assassination. you get a sense of lyndon johnson as a visionary leader, someone who had a clear sense of where he wanted to take the nation. and this passion for the poor, decide to push along the

kennedy, install the kennedy rights legislation to do things for senior citizens. so you see i think a visionary johnson, and also johnson who is a brilliant tactician. but you also see in these 24 hours the fatal flaw, what would become the fatal flaw of the johnson presidency. lyndon johnson was devious. manipulative. he was so concerned, so worried about the reaction of the kennedys that he made a member of the kennedy group somehow responsible for every major decision he made a net 24 hours. so he claimed that kenny o'donnell told him to take air force one, the plane that president kennedy had told him. but in reality the secret service had made that decision for him to take air force one. they did because they thought there was better communications on that plane. later in the whole issue about the taking of the oath, lyndon johnson wanted to take the oath

of office he wanted to take it and doubt because he was afraid if he didn't take it and you stuck in a plane with three hours that the kennedys would somehow find some way to deny him the presidency. but he manipulates robert kennedy and calls the attorney general, and he manipulates robert kennedy into a green that he should take the oath of office in dallas on air force one. did what everyone else from the kennedy group comes to the group he tells them it was roberts idea. so it's sobering times along the way he tells so many lies when he doesn't have to tell lies. i think it's that tension for deceit and dishonesty and insecurity that would become what would later be known as the credibility gap, that would erode the moral authority of lyndon johnson's presidency. what i'm struck by is in the end, there's this irony, that the assassination of president kennedy made the johnson presidency possible.

but it also doomed to failure. because it was kennedy's death and kennedy had not been assassinated, it was very likely that lyndon johnson would not have been elected. by 1968 if things have been going well, robert would have been the heir to the throne, not lyndon johnson. but the assassination also doomed him to visit because he created a myth that it created this myth of the heroic jfk. it was a myth that either lyndon johnson certainly not lyndon johnson, but really no other political figure in america could have lived up to. lyndon johnson spins out, spends the final days of his presidency and of his life living in the long shadow of the tragedy of november 22, 1963. let me stop there. what i would like to do, before we take questions and answers, if you have a question, we have a c-span microphone so we will ask that you wait until the

microphone arrives. but before we get to there, i'd want to make one announcement, and that is i obvious he wanted to read a book that it is very important that you read the book. i want to point out the history channel has done a wonderful two-hour documentary that's based on the book, which really captures a lot of the issues and personalities involved. the producer of that to our document is over here. anthony, stand up for a second. [applause] >> i keep telling anthony that he needs to change his first name. anthony wanted any. a fugitive. and i was anthony my first thing would be any a hundred emmy award winning producer. but he like any piece of the sticks with that. but i think that anthony did a brilliant job in this document and the captures -- for me it was fascinating to watch how he took the words on a page and

transformed them into this gripping visual representation on television. if you haven't seen the documentary, i would encourage you to watch and see it, check your local listings for or you can go to the history channel website at history.com and find the dvd. that is my one announcement. >> even though you started out by saying that your book clearly does not do with the conspiracy, as you pointed out on most peoples minds. so the question is what is your favorite -- there are so many, the mob did it, etc. etc. what is your favorite? >> i am in a distinct minority. the question is what is my favorite conspiracy theory and the answer is none of them. i am among one of those crazy people -- he like me until just

then. my personal feeling is that the warren commission, that lee harvey oswald assassinate president kennedy. for the purposes of this book, my own view is really irrelevant because i am really looking at what lyndon johnson do within the 12 hours after the assassination. and all lyndon johnson -- while lyndon johnson is flying back he hears the name of the harvey oswald for the first time the first time he hears it is in the connection with the shooting of officer headed. was passing about looking at this issue of who shot jfk in the first 12 hours, what i was struck by separate from all the theories about whether oswald did it or not is how worried lyndon johnson is. informatithe information about oswald coming out and lyndon johnson finds out this man was in the soviet union, that he was somehow connected with the cubans. so what johnson is so afraid of, speeding back to washington about to try to assemble a

government for the first time is that he is going to be pressured into a war with the soviet union. whether oswald acted alone or whether he acted as part of a conspiracy, lyndon johnson is afraid that there's going to be such a public backlash against the man who once lived in the soviet union, that he is going to be forced into a war. johnson had been around washington for a long time to remember the days of joseph mccarthy. and he worried, with his assassination, whether oswald was a part of the dispersion or not, his simple biography and the fact that his life could produce the same result, which is tremendous public outpouring and desire to go to war with cuba or with the soviet union. over here. >> as far as the continuity of the executive authority, was a traitor and a house of representatives on april 12,

1945 expense they also unprepared to death of a present and takeover of power during the second world war going on, and this is a tradition of american history. regarding that is, just put the worst that, sadly, for president had been assassinated. several others, other than the near death of president jimmy, can you compare or to the other executrix or? >> that's a great question. 's house at one of the questions i asked in my exams. there's a couple of different dimensions here. first of all that meat raise the first issue you raise which is about what happened when franklin roosevelt died. was interesting, when roosevelt dies, the people who are with roosevelt in warm springs contact the white house. and the first person they tell

is eleanor roosevelt. eleanor roosevelt is attending a concert when she gets a notice to come back to the white house immediately. she comes back to the white house, and all this is playing out outside of the public eye. and then harry truman come it is eleanor roosevelt who summoned harry truman to the white house. it is the former first lady who has no constitutional role or power who informs the vice president, harry truman, that roosevelt is dead and that harry truman is now president. and within a few hours, 7:00 that evening, within a few hours in the white house, harry truman takes the oath of office. what's so different about this is this takes place in the full glare of the media. and i think you cannot understand the assassination, and understand the impact it has had on an entire generation. i look around and i see people who are my age and some older. you remember where you were when kennedy was shot. and in large part because of the media. this was the first event in

human history that the entire nation experienced an entire nation experienced in real-time. with the roosevelt assassination, people played out on radio. the people watching this on television. kennedy used television to build a bond with public and in the public felt a loss when they saw him assassinated. within a few minutes of the shooting, walter cronkite was on cbs announcing that there had been shots fired at the presidential motorcade. a few minutes after that he was on the air and he said on air, and all the other networks -- only three back in. abc, nbc, before the history channel, but both nbc, cbs and abc were on air antistate on the air through the entire weekend. so there is -- this is playing out in public. what i was struck by, i was

writing this this section about the oath of office right around the same time that barack obama was taking the oath of office and john roberts forgot the constitution. and i was struck that the next day, roberts -- they administered the oath of office again in private. because on air force one, johnson rides back on air force one that he does do i have to take the oath? am i president of the united states are am i now president of the dynasty to delegate the oval office? no one really knew the answer to that. by the time, there's that press conference that nakasone at parkland hospital when he says, when he announces to the public that kennedy is dead. it's around 136 tieback or so. the first two questions he gets is where is lyndon johnson and has he taken the oath of office? so all this, it is all playing out in the full glare of the media. the other presidents who are assassinate all link to. when mckinley was shot in

buffalo in 1901, he lingered for days. actually there were reports that he was getting better and he took a dramatic turn after, i think even for about seven or eight days. when garfield died, he died -- using it for a time. so what was unique about the kennedy assassination was that he was the first president to die instantly and he died in full view of the public. i think that change the entire dynamic that it changed the relationship between the public and the presidency. and it also created an extraordinary expectations of lyndon johnson. when trying to get off the plane, gets off air force one at andrews air force base at 6:12 on the evening of november 22, most of the public is hearing his voice for the first time. candid camera, the tv show, the candid camera skit about a month or so before november 22, do you know what the joke was? do you know who lyndon johnson

is? something like 30 percent of the people did know who he was. lyndon johnson is in a matter of hours forced to not only assume the power of the presidency under the most horrible circumstances but to do so in the full glare of the media. he has to introduce himself and the words that he speaks at andrews air force base, for some americans heard a southern accent. from an american president. certainly since the days of woodrow wilson. this was new and shocking and it compounds the problem. is one of the reasons why i get johnson in a favorable light, because i think this was an unprecedented crisis that he faced despite his limitations and his penchant for deception. that on the big issues, he faced unprecedented crisis and she handled it remarkably well. that was a long winded answer to question. it was a very good question. lets go here and we have some in the back. >> that being said, what did try

to think that robert kennedy could do to stop the presidency? i mean, they may have not known, but there is a some clarity in the constitution to succession. >> it is pure paranoia. the constitution made lyndon johnson president of the united states, not the kennedys and not the attorney general. what i will point out is this which is an interesting wrinkle on this, is -- is before the 25th the 20 fifth amendment which laid out a procedure for filling out office that's vacant and the vice president takes over the case of the president being disabled. the first president and vice president to have a formal agreement about when this would happen, how they would proceed with the president worked to be disabled for eisenhower and nixon. the agreement that eisenhower and nixon wrote up said essentially that if for some reason the president became incapacitated and was unable,

wasn't aware he was incapacitated, the procedure they would use is the vice president would have to consult and get the support of half the cabinet in order to assume the powers of the presidency. lyndon johnson and john f. kennedy came to similar agreement, but there is one little claws that had to be running around in lyndon johnson's mind on november i can. kennedy said that he not only had to seek the support of half the cabinet, he had to consult with the attorney general of the united states. attorney general of the united states was the president's brother, robert f. kennedy. and lyndon johnson's archenemy in the white house. so you have to think, again, is this is speculative. we don't know what's going to people's mind. but lyndon johnson being the political creature that he is new every word in that document and every punctuation point. antinuke that, you know, what was he thinking? was he thinking this is going to be a woodrow wilson situation? in his paranoid mind if you

believe that somehow the kennedys were going to try to hide the fact that president kennedy was disabled? maybe if he -- where he is comfortable if he leaves the hospital and kennedy lives, will the public believe that he abandon the president and abandoned the first lady? if he leaves and he is isolated on a plane for three hours, what is the attorney general doing behind his back? are they going -- there's a separate military chain of command which goes through the secretary of defense, which is robert mcnamara, you have to think that johnson is going all the scenarios. when you boil them all down, they are called paranoid fantasies. the american public would accept lyndon johnson as president because the constitution makes him president, not the kennedy family that he didn't need the approval of the kennedy family, but he is so -- robert kennedy did it oppose john support into

the ticket that there's that famous scene at the biltmore hotel in 1960 when first president kennedy appeared to ask lyndon johnson to be on the ticket ended robert ghost and try to talk them out of it. there's this great story about when john f. kennedy was thinking about running for president, he said robert to lyndon johnson and said lyndon johnson is the big mover and shaker in washington where to go to lyndon johnson to see whether lyndon johnson is a going to oppose him, going to run against him, and if johnson is going to try to stop them by supporting humphrey. so he goes to the lbj ranch -- rfk is a slightly built man. and johnson takes him dear hunting and instead of getting him, and i do know much about rifles. instead of giving him a regular dear rifle he gives him a high powered shotgun. so robert kennedy pulls a trigger, and it knocks him down about like 3 feet and it catches

for had. and lyndon johnson make some comment about, you know, that's not the way a real man shoots a gun, or something along those lines. robert kennedy hate him from the very beginning. johnson was convinced the whole time his vice president is convinced that robert garrigus try to remove him from the ticket. johnson is convinced that robert is conniving. all the bad stories, every scandal that comes out in the media is somehow connected to johnson. johnson is convinced that it is robert kennedy. so you cannot sort of -- it's hard for us now to understand the hostility that existed between these two men. and i think that feeds johnson's paranoia. clearly, paranoia. no basis in reason or rationality, but sometimes people are irrational. [inaudible] >> right, but the point was this is about death, not about the president being incapacitated

that for the first 40 minutes of lyndon johnson doesn't know the. and after they are on air force one he doesn't know whether he officially becomes president until he takes the oath of office. one of the reason he wants to take itself as what he thinks that once he takes the oath there's nothing they can do. the question is what could they do if he didn't take the oath? nothing. but he needs that their key needs to know that he is president. yes, i think questions in the back there. as she prefaced this by telling her i only take easy questions and confidence that these tough questions. >> i want to ask about in the early part of your book you discuss the ways in which the kennedys and johnson tried to solicit writers to provide, you know, an account that day that would support their view when it happened. and you talk about william manchester's very influential narrative, the death of a president. could you comment on little more

on the way in which that influenced, the narrative that manchester provided influence the american public's view of johnson? because it was probably the most important book that was published on the subject. >> until today. [laughter] >> during the '60s and. >> he said during the 1960s. very good. thank you. you are right to remember, there was a great article actually and vanity fair recently about william manchester. the kennedy family hired manchester to tell the official version. mrs. kennedy discourage other people from writing about the assassination. in manchester is a brilliant storyteller. i actually admire his book. he gets most things right in that book and did a tremendous amount of research. when you go back and look through his research notes, it's very impressive the amount of work he did in such a short period of time. he gets most things i. he gets lyndon johnson almost completely wrong. doesn't correspond is where manchester said he didn't like

lyndon johnson that he never liked lyndon johnson. and when the book was finally ready for publication, it led to a lawsuit with the kennedy family, and mrs. kennedy was primarily concerned that manchester had violated her privacy and she sat down long, long interviews and shared with him her feeding any hours after the assassination. than a couple of liters she regretted doing that and she blocked manchester from using those notes. when you go to the wesleyan university archive, all the interviews are there except the ones with mrs. kennedy and robert kennedy. and some of the other kennedy people are there but a lot of things are blacked out. so that was part of the agreement that manchester made within. she want him to remove this material but she also was concerned she felt and robert kennedy believed that the portrait that was hitherto negative of a portrait of lyndon johnson. it was so bad, the portrait of

lyndon johnson even the kennedy people objected to. robert henke was afraid that people would see this as nothing more than a political attack by the kennedys against a sitting president at a time when robert kennedy is now on the senate. the kennedys really did not accept this you. no one accepted the deal, this very negative portrait that he paints of lyndon johnson. what manchester says for example, lyndon johnson was simply at the whim of the secret service agents when he is at lyndon johnson. he refuses to make decision on his new. the secret service were in his face. they are insisting that he leave parkland hospital right away and go back to air force one. psa no. so a clue is his own man at parkland hospital. there are so many other comments he makes about lyndon johnson i think which is unnecessary and inappropriate. is that book, that included influential book, has done more than any other to define our understanding of lyndon johnson.

manchester paints a portrait of his borscht president who is incentive to mrs. kennedy and the kennedy family who seemed overeager to assume the powers of the presidency and it is just clumsy, and you know, johnson has this tough role to play and his walking a fine line. on the one hand, he is trying to be sensitive to the grief, profound grief of the kennedy family. at the same time he needs to lead a nation. so when they arrive at andrews air force base, the kennedys wanted that to be a private -- they did want the entire world to see mrs. kennedy. they didn't want them to see the casket carrying the president's body, but johnson insisted that the national media stood he is walking a fine line. i think that looking at that, the kennedys, the family and the people around them, the slain president, it's hard to appreciate their grief and their sorrow and their sense of loss. but there is a sense of

entitlement that i found difficult to comprehend, and i think that overall lyndon johnson manages that pretty well. johnson of course is not -- johnson doesn't cooperate with manchester. he refuses to sit down with manchester but if you go to the johnson library which is a wonderful place to work, you see all these notes where manchester is constantly writing mainly jack valenti asking for access to the president. e. putting him off and put them off and putting them off. and then comes along jim bishop. jim bishop was a popular writer, and it was interesting for me when i write history books, i have a sense of historians, we need to be objective, fair-minded. jim bishop is sending these love letters to lyndon johnson about you are such a wonderful leader. i couldn't imagine writing a negative book about you. so johnson agrees to participate in a project that jim bishop is doing about a day in the life of lyndon johnson, which is this puff piece. but really what they're both

trying to do, lyndon johnson does with jim bishop is to tell his side of the story. said jim bishop comes out with a competing book a few years after manchester called the day kennedy died. but by 1968 people were sick of lyndon johnson. no one wanted to hear his side of the story. but oddly enough, i think bishop is close to the truth that manchester. how many people here have read magis book or know of manchester's book? how may people have heard of jim bishop's book is okay with a really smart crowd. [laughter] >> most people don't know who jim bush is. most people have not read the book. but i think bishop actually, although his account, if manchester is to google i think bishop ayres and the other side and he sees no fault with lyndon johnson and he blames the kennedys were all think that is wrong with america. what i try to do is find sort of a balance between the two. >> one mark whitaker i cannot take -- >> bishop wrote a book on the day link and i'd. >> that's right and the day

christ died. >> i'm not sure who to compare. but certainly lincoln. but when did that come out? >> and that was earlier. smack obvious he. >> what you are, i do know. >> he is using kennedy which he witnessed as an example of something, but reference to his success. the day that helped give bishop. >> we have time for one more question. yes over here. >> johnson was from texas, wasn't he? >> yes, he was. >> so he would know that place where kennedy was shot and he must, he must surely be paired. because what you said about vanity fair, you know. i read vanity fair. there was a warning, kennedy not to go there. >> what's interesting about the story is that johnson did not

want kennedy to go to texas to get it, texas was his turf. there was a debate going on between two factions in the democratic party which i won't get into here. johnson clearly sided with john, who was the governor of texas, and kennedy, kennedy was trying to find some common ground that johnson simply want kennedy to lead texas to him. they had done pretty well in texas politics. but kennedy insisted and actually kennedy at one point cut johnson out of the discussions about the trip to texas and he planted on his own. johnson one day has, find out that john, who's the governor is in town, in defiance of the connolly had a meeting with president kerry to talk about the trip. so johnson isn't even involved in the tribute is also always concerned about how sticky please he knows now is as a white ring hotspot. he is opposed to the idea of an open motorcade picky once kennedy to go to a couple locations, raise money and get

out of texas. johnson from the very beginning, johnson was not in favor of kennedy going to texas. he opposed the trip but kennedy wanted to raise money and he wanted to get a measure of what was going to take place in texas. texas was a key state. this is kennedy had already came out with a civil rights bill, and the whole issue of civil rights was turning the once solid democratic south. using the very beginnings of this and kennedy is trying to get a sense of how he's going to handle it. i am told that velasquez and we can take i want to thank all the really for coming out tonight. and thanks to c-span and barnes & noble. [applause] >> stephen gallant is the author of "the pact: bill clinton, newt gingrich, and the rivalry that defined a nation" and the rivalry that defined a generation. he is a history professor at the university of oklahoma and a resident historian at the history channel. for more information visit history.com and search his name.

>> environmental journalist amanda little presents a history of fossil for use in america. ms. fleming port that the era of cheap fossil fuel is nearing an end and focuses on alternative energy options. amanda little discusses her book at the mulberry street branch of the new york public library in new york city. >> and thank you all for coming and being here on this wild, wild ride. i think this is the wild ride that i have been kind of gearing up for for three years. but i think you all know that i have spent about a decade writing about energy and the environment. and a lot of that time i was criticizing the government's failures on policy matters to

which reason. you know, understandable thing given our politics in recent years. but i came to realize that i was as much to blame as everyone else. i was doing the right things. i was training in my suv for uproarious and shopping at whole foods and going to yoga and really felt like i had been sort of exonerated from any energy field. and then i had a pretty striking realization. one more and i will describe to you and my first little excerpt that led me to realize that my relationship with fossil fuels was far more intimate than the car i drive. and that is, it is coming up, but in the meantime, i wanted to

give you just a quick, you know, overview of the book, which is i want to step outside of politics and a look at energy, you know, up close and personal. and think about this issue, you know, outside of the political screeds and the complaints. and tell a story. which was a major step for me, and a very interesting kind of journalistic challenge. i went to the sea oil rigs and kansas corn farms. i went inside the electricity grid and into the pentagon. i went into high-priced plastic surgery operating rooms, and into the innovating, you know, laboratories of the future. and the stories of the target is the really sort of this journey. and i hope to give you a little glitz of that, but let's start with my, you know, striking

realization, which was very exciting. this one morning in my office i took an intimate tour of my own personal environment. since nearly all plastics, polymers, inks, paints, fertilizer and pesticides are made from agrochemicals and all parties are delivered to market by trucks, trains, ships in their place, there was virtually nothing in my office. my body included it wasn't there because of transfigured there i sat on a desk made of plastic when sweatshirt made of fleece, a polymer, over yoga pants made from lycra, ditto, sipping coffee shipped from a symbolic eating eggs and appletalk from washington surrounded by walls covered with oil derived paints jotting notes in petroleum derived inc., typing words on a petrochemical keyboard into a computer powered by coal plants. even a supposedly killed three

whole-grain cereal i had for breakfast and the veggie burger i ate for lunch came from crops treated with oil derived fertilizers. . . novocain, chemotherapy drugs and the glossy magazine racks in our

drugstores, it's the constantly humming behind the scenes network of ships, planes, trains and trucks that transport products to our store shelves it's even our own bodies which we drape in synthetic fabric and feed with crops that were fertilized by fossil fuels. what i hadn't grasped was the omni presence of fossil fuels in life. the plastic sutures that snitched up my split lip when i was 7 and the cat kansas that a evaluated my concussion after an accident when i was 27. once i connected the dots between so many seemingly disparate elements of my life, my carbs my clothes, my email, my makeup, my burger, even my health, i saw an energy landscape far more vast and complex than i'd ever imagined. i also realized that this thing i thought was a bad word, oil, was actually the source of so many creature comforts i use and

love and so many survival tools i need. it seems miraculous never had that i grasped it on a personal level and the economy at large. you get a sense from that passage that what i've written is kind of a love story. i like to joke that the book is eat, pray, love, meets guns, germs and steel. and some of you might be familiar with eat, pray, love it's kind of this woman's search for enlightenment. and, you know, guns, germs and steel is a serious nonfiction book. these were parallel stories in power trip to kind of search for my own understanding of this topic. and, you know, to search for its -- america's relationship to it. and its in our lives.

when you see the ubiquity of these fuels, these resources in our lives you have to ask the question, you know, how do we get here? why are we addicted? why does this make sense? and the book starts on an oil rig 200 miles off the coast of louisiana where i'm witnessing these drilling engineers burrowing a drill bit 33 feet into the seabed and they're going to great lengths. it's a very different scenario than, you know, 100 years ago when you could kind of pop a straw in the ground and release a gusher in this country. we were the saudi arabia of the world and that was an amazing revelation to me up until 1970 we were, you know, the single biggest producer of oil. it was incredibly cheap. it was easy to get. easy to transport around the country.

and it gave our country an amazing, you know, economic boost. and, you know, industrial versatility to have that resource so immediately available. we're still -- we're still living like we're the saudi arabia of the world, and that's a problem. that's where, you know, we get into these questions -- you know, this big debate about oil dependence. but i think that, you know, the lesson there -- the lesson that i learned there is that energy built us up. it built our cities and industries. it gave us freedom of movement. it gave us, you know, a tremendous, you know, economic advantage, a military advantage in the industrialized world. today, we use about 35% more oil than europeans, about nearly 50% more oil per day than the people of japan. those are, you know, industrial counterparts.

and still, you know, they're living very comfortable lives by using a lot less. i, you know, find that very scary, obviously, when we're looking at a future where oil is getting, you know, increasingly expensive. and fraught with, you know, environmental and political problems why are we so much more addicted? well, it makes sense, you know, it makes sense that we got here because it was easy for us to get here because we had, you know, this tremendous advantage of these resources in our lives. but before we examine the abuse of these fuels, we have to understand our use of them. you know, we have to understand why they matter, why they're useful and versatile in our lives. and i think it's going to make it a lot easier for us to move away from them when we have, you know, a certain respect and understanding of what makes them important.

so i dug into stories of the past to kind of figure this out beyond oil, beyond just, you know, our access to the resources but also our use of it. how it built our auto industry, how it built our military, how it built our plastics industry, how we began to build it for our agriculture. how we built supply chains with this cheap freedom of movement. oil is largely used for vehicles for movement. i think there's a misconception that, you know, electricity and vehicles are powered by oil. in fact, no oil is used for vehicles and, you know, flight and electricity is largely powered by -- well, i have a friend who's visiting me, a flight we have. this is a totally nonoil-powered flying machine right in front of us.

[laughter] >> and, you know, oil is a big part of it and so is coal and natural gas and i look at both of those things in this book -- or all three of they say things rather. but the important thing that i learned in looking through the past and looking at how we built the grid, how we built the cars, how we, you know, came -- became dependent on fertilizers and petrochemicals and our plastics and so forth was an examination of ingenuity. but, you know, largely the 21st century was just this golden era of innovation in the united states. and once you shift the perspective on this thing, we didn't get into this energy crisis by accident, you know, we planned very deliberately to get here. it wasn't great planning on many levels but we got here because

we put ourselves here and we got here because we were very, very innovative. and i got a lot of optimism from that. and i have a lot of optimism that we're going to find a way of innovating our way out of this mess. if we built this mess we can clean it up but it's going to be very complex engineering challenge. and the next excerpt i want to read for you is going to convey this in sort of very specific terms. this is a story of my dissent into a manhole not far from here on broadway. it was a very amusing adventure. and i'll only read a little snippet of it. let me start with this. i got a firsthand look at the challenges of our power industry when i climbed inside the new york city grid.

like everything in this city, the grid is a crazy marriage of new stuff and old stuff. here a solar powered green sky escaper and state-of-the-art super conductor and over there a massive snarl of ancient tubes and wires held together with duct tape. conaddison chief of grid had agreed to accompany down to what i was seeing. a jovial man with a 5:00 shadow seemed amused if a bit baffled over this brief trip. in spite of what i learned of the grid's fragility. a vast orderly chamber 50 feed underground containing thousands of gleaming wires all labeled and mapped according to the neighborhoods and buildings they fed, gauges glowing to indicate the volumes of current coursing on each line as clean and intricate as the inners of the world biggest imax.

instead my descent into a manhole lasted all of 7 feet and the shallow tunnel i crouched through opened into a chamber the size of an average walk-in covered. the floor was covered with a murky pond of street runoff, and garbage fragments and the air was clammy and foul the. walls revealed a gory cross-section of the grid and there was grimy wires pulsing with so much electric current that i could see them vibrate. like hoses with liquid gushing through them. the new york city grid encompasses more than 80,000 miles of cable enough to circle the globe four times. peel back the sidewalks of manhattan and you'll find a larger concentration of copper than anywhere else on the planet. more, in fact, than in the world's largest copper mine. many of the cables under our streets are over 50 years old as the wires age they degrade under a battery of stresses.

the combination of sweltering heat in the summer and freezing cold in the winter causes them to expand, contract and weaken. the constant vibration it is of the city and its underworld, feed pounding on payment, incessant traffic can wreak havoc over time. when water mains break they soak, and degrid. and snow on snowy street it eventually trips into the street cracks and manholes eating away at the cables. equally common as a nick in the cable from a construction workers jackhammer or jack hoe. but the biggest challenge facing new york is its outsized electricity demand which is growing at a rate of nearly 2% a year. that doesn't sound like much but it translaced an annual load of 200 megawatts, enough to power nearly a war million homes or a midsize city. it's like moving albany onto the new york city grid every year.

the president of con ed told me that. the grid is running out of room gesturing a wire it was like a friday afternoon traffic. there's no space to put more copper. the lines he added can only carry a finite ofment amount of electricity. you can't put 10 pounds of baloney in a 5 pound bag. so the rest of the book after i examine what the limitations and engineering challenges are, looks at what's going right. so the first -- the first, you know, part is kind of present and past. what's going wrong in how we get here and the next part of the book is, what's going right?

by the way, i realize that not only is the grid extremely limited and, you know, fraught with its prewar technology, you know, and about to burst literally with, you know, an overflow of electricity and nowhere to put new wires, but, you know, the same thing is going on with our buildings, with our cars. i mean, we're dealing with, you know, technology that was largely innovated in, you know, the early 1900 and we're still using it today. for transportation and building design and grid design for that matter. and there's very good reason to get concerned about this. and probably the most common question i get asked is, are you optimistic? you know, can we fix this if we're sort of teetering on the bring of disaster and so on an engineering level on so many of our industry and our economy,

how are we going to get out? and i'm just going to give a very brief kind of picture of that in these final minutes of my commentary and then, you know, i'd love to hear your own questions and elaborate on anything you want to hear about. this is an optimistic book. this is a journey that left me feeling, you know, much more hopeful than i had felt before i went on it. and, you know, that was because of the people i met. it's a book about people and it's a book about the people that sort of built the system of today and those who are building the system of tomorrow. i met the engineers who are building smart homes and smart cars and smart grids and smart power. and they're incredibly

energetic, very exciting people. but, you know, i just want to give you a little array of some of the different folks i met and to sort of play this out further and then turn it over to you. i met electrical engineers who are taking this grid, you know, lou raino and dennis romano's colleagues who are, you know, taking line by line these old cables, rusted old salted-over cables, pulling them out and sticking in these superconducting wires. you know, literally yanking them out with like a piece of rope and sticking in these new wires. and these wires are cable of handling much more load. i met software designers at google who are innovating a central brain for this new, smart, electricity grid that can actually talk with our homes and our cars and figure out more

efficient ways of conducting electricity and delivering it to our appliances and cars when we need them. and, of course, i just mentioned cars. i talked to detroit executives who actually put electric cars on the road and, you know, the '90s and earlier in the '70s and who scraped them. who took them off the road and now they're suddenly scrambling to get them out again. you know, they're realizing they made a mistake and they want to move forward. i met pentagon officials who are actually trying to put green technology on the battlefield and make barracks that are independent from fuels. and i met a cafeteria worker in the ninth ward of new orleans who lives in one of the most futuristic homes on the planet. it's part of a program where they're rebuilding the lower ninth ward with low-incomed green homes and it's an extraordinary place.

she took me through there and described the technology with more insight and more, you know, passion and enthusiasm than any, you know, high-level ph.d. engineer had ever explained it to me. and she's a 65-year-old cafeteria worker with five grandkids and she got it. she was transformed. i met college kids who are not only greening their campuses but greening their cities and their states working with their state legislatures who are lobbying and organizing mass rallies, you know, in washington. and who are using social media, twitter, facebook, et cetera, to connect with organizers and activists all over the world. and what's happening in my mind is not just a shift in our technologies. there's a shift in consciousness. that cafeteria worker that i was talking about when she was taking me through her home and describing these things she

mopped off, you know, her solar panels on the roof and sort of tapped on her windows and, you know, really talked to her house and talked to me about her house as if it were a dear friend. and she said i used to watch tv all day long 'cause i didn't have any windows because i had small windows now i like to sit here and i watch the dirt divers and the butterflies and the bees and i love to be in this space, it smells good and looks good and i love to be in here. it was a shift in consciousness. she was talking about, you know, a relationship to her space and her environment that went far beyond, you know, the energy benefits of living in a home, you know, in a low-incomed green home. and i walked outside of her house and there was this guy -- her neighbor walking along the street, and he had of a plastic bag in his hand. and he was picking up some, you know, snicker wrappers and

funyon wrappers on the street which are petrochemical products. and i said what are you doing. you know, i'm cleaning up my neighborhood. and he said, you know -- i talked to him well, this is great. you've got all these cool new green homes and what's it like? you know, i used to drop my litter on the ground. and now this ground is sacred, you know. it was a very powerful moment for me because it was that -- it was that shift in consciousness. it was the respect and a gratitude that he had these beautiful space that were part of his life. and it was -- it was again a benefit of this, you know, clean energy shift we're talking about that went far beyond, you know, solar panels and green jobs and, you know, stopping global warming and making ourselves independent from, you know, middle eastern oil producers.

this was about a shift in consciousness and a shift in, you know, a sense of gratitude and appreciation for, you know, a healthy, wonderful life to live. so that is where the book ends. it looks at, you know, what does this mean on a larger level? what kind of, you know, social societal cultural and personal benefits are coming out of this energy story that i was exploring for a year. and it was a very hopeful thing. so thank you for listening to me. and for your incredible stillness and quiet while i marched through all that material. and please, please ask some questions. and when you do, just take the microphone and talk into it so you can be on c-span2. [laughter] [applause] >> thank you.

>> and just a quick shoutout to brian sides who's here, who's a major part of my research team. in fact, he was my research team. [applause] >> he's here. so it's very exciting for me to see a power tripper in our presence. say hi to brian afterwards. [laughter] >> do you have a question, brian? >> i do but i'll ask the last real question. >> okay, who was the first question? here. >> we have a rather impressive new secretary of the department of energy.

i think his name is chu. >> chu, yeah, steven chu. >> do you think our department of energy is up the curve, behind the curve, ahead of the curve? is it a source of optimism? >> leave it to my stepfather to ask me some curve ball question that i was totally unprepared for. thanks a, coke. is our department of energy up for equal to the task of solving our energy crisis? well, that's a good question. steven chu has an amazing pedigree. he's very well equipped to do it. the problem is is the department of energy equipped to do it and the reality is the department of energy is actually not charged with, you know, the task of moving our industries away from fossil fuels. the department of energy is largely tasked with

decommissioning nuclear energy plants and making sure that they are not, you know, used for weaponry. i mean, literally they're more connected to the department of defense in reality than the department of energy. i think chu has an agenda and i think he wants to change that. but i think the real, you know, challenge is actually in the epa and in the white house and in the congress. where, you know, we're examining, you know, legislation on climate change. i think, you know, the challenge is putting a price on carbon emissions. once we do that, it levels the playing field for renewable energy and -- well, basically any alternatives to fossil fuels to compete. so the department of energy is not really in a position to put

a tax -- you could call it a tax or a fine on polluting fuels and that's the single most important thing we need right now. >> there had been a number of announcements in recent months about exxon, your big energy companies finding new oil reserves and, of course, there's probably been more investment in searching with oil with rising oil prices in recent years. there's a lot of debate about when we're going to hit peak oil. a cynic will say that things will never change until oil is so expensive that we're forced to look for alternatives. when do you think we'll hit peak oil and do you think that's what it's going to take to change the economy? >> great question. well, when are we going to hit peak oil? i think, you know, you're going to find people who say we

already hit it. that peak oil already happened in 2005. and, you know, very, very well-rewarded industry analysts will say that and you'll find people that oil may plateau, our oil supplies may plateau in 2020, 2030, 2040 but they're not going to dip, you know, thereafter. peak oil by the way is really -- is often really misunderstood as, you know, the moment in time when we run out of oil. it's not the moment in time when we run out of oil but when we can no longer increase our supplies of oil. and so it just becomes increasingly expensive in the years thereafter. so we've actually stayed pretty steady at -- i think it's 86 million barrels of oil a day. don't quote me on that. but anyway, the global production of oil has stayed fairly steady since 2005. it hasn't been increasing. and so that's why a lot of

experts are saying it's, you know, we've hit it. i think, you know -- i'm pretty confident that having met these chevron drillers who are going to the ends of the earth literally to get hollywood they will find a way to get it. you know to me i don't think it really matters whether we hit peak oil in 2005 or in 2050 or whenever. because i think the bigger problem are the environmental implications, the military implications and the costs related to burning the oil that make it, you know -- that make the oil system obsolete. i think that the peak oil discussion is kind of misleading because it's not really taking into account that, you know, the real challenge is not getting the oil. we're really good at innovating. and i think it's probably possible. a couple of weeks ago you probably saw there was a story about the fact that, oh, they found this great new find in the

ultra deep, you know, gulf of mexico and actually, you know, there's a big uptick of new discoveries. it distracts from the real question. and the real challenge, which is finding, you know, ways to use cleaner technologies which aren't going to have the hidden costs of, you know, environmental, political hidden costs. that said, i don't think -- i don't foresee even if we, you know, aggressively move away from oil and fossil fuels in the near future i don't see foresee a future where we don't use oil at all. i think we're going to go toward a future where we use oil much more prudently. and for it's highest and best use. and i'm going to, you know, borrow from a line that i said yesterday on morning joe, which was, you know, burning oil in gas tanks of cars is like, you

know, putting 14th century antiques to make smores. you don't value the resources to do something that's fairly useless. we can find better ways to power cars, you know, using electricity. or even, you know, alternative fuels but i think electricity makes more sense but the use of oil and natural gas for petrochemicals, for really sophisticated plastics, for medicines, you know, for chemotherapies for fertilizers is much more realistic and reasonable and valuable to our economy in our culture rather than burning it in cars. in the back. >> forgive me if you commented on this earlier in our talk. i actually missed the first three-quarters. my apologies. but you mentioned we need to put

a price on carbon and i obviously agree with you. i'm curious whether you made any comment or could you comment on the difference between a cap-and-trade program or a direct carbon tax? for lots of reasons i'm an advocate of a carbon tax it's more clean and effective. so i'd love you to comment on that. secondly, if you do, in fact, agreeing that carbon taxes are a better policy instrument is there any chance at all getting something like that passed through congress given the small momentum that's already started with the waxman-markey bill and the cap-and-trade push and obviously the influence of lobbyists down in washington. is there an appetite among the american people for a carbon tax? >> softball. that was a really good one. [laughter] >> i thought you guys were going to say, what was it like being on an oil rig. was it fun? were the guys interesting? and now everybody is getting -- this is this new york city audience. everybody is overeducated here.

[laughter] >> i think that -- i really like in principle the idea of a carbon tax. i think taxes are very effective. you know, economic mechanisms but i think that it's so terribly urgent, terribly, terribly urgent to hit these very real targets that scientists have established in, you know -- for carbon emissions over the next 20, 30, 50 years. i mean, unfortunately in recent months we've heard, you know, that the results and the evidence is getting more and more dire. that this problem is spinning further and further out of control. and, in fact, it's accelerating on itself.

there's these feedback systems are basically kind of making the problem spiral in intensifying ways we haven't expected. so even if we hit what's 350 is the big number, even if we hit 350 parts per million which is basically the density of pollution that we could have in the air by a certain year, even if we hit that target we're still facing a lot of very serious irreversible consequences, right? and so the numbers are so clear. and the implications of what happens even if we hit those numbers are so clear to such a vast body of scientists that i don't think we can, you know, meet this challenge with a somewhat ambiguous response. and i think saying it's -- basically, what tax is saying, it's really expensive if you pollute. you know, so i want you to pay more to pollute. i think we kind of have to say,

it's really expensive if you pollute and you have to pay more if you pollute and you can't go past this limit 'cause if you go past this limit we are, you know, facing climate catastrophe. so what a cap-and-trade system gives two signals. one is, yes, we have a flexible financial mechanism which is you may if you pollute. and then another thing is, we have a clear target and we can't move past that. so that answers your first question. i actually would opt for the cap-and-trade system because i think it gives a much clearer signal to industry and also to like the global public that -- i mean, the global, you know, community that a we realize that this is a very clear -- you know, there are clear scientific numbers and limits and we can't go beyond them. can we get it through congress? you know, i think that's a big and very concerning question and the signs don't look very good

right now. and that's part of why -- "power trip" was about telling a story and engaging the public in this conversation in a kind of nonthreatening way. i don't think congress is is going to be able to do anything on this until american people and the constituents of these representatives of these senators are saying, okay, we're ready. we're ready. we accept this. this is a unifying, serious issue. we're all going to get behind it and we're all ready to sacrifice. and, you know, a friend hillary who's somewhere -- hillary is a climate journalist and was saying, you know -- she's talking about, you know, a project that even on climate that even the new york publishing industry is saying, you know, i'm still not convinced that climate change is really happening. even in like the most educated

city in the united states, and i'm sure that's debatable, even in a very highly educated city, you know, there are people saying, is this a problem? i mean, in my community in nashville, you know, i have, you know, gmc, denalis and chevies all over the place. the question is to me, you know, in passing major serious climate legislation, the question actually has to back up three steps and say, does the american public care? are we engaging in them in this discussion in the right way? you know, can -- what was that? >> are we? >> no, i don't think so. i mean, i'm a liberal, you know, who basically thinks that liberals are not handling this issue very well. and i for that matter don't think the conservatives are handling this matter very well. i think the conversation is shrill. it's preachy.

it's polemical. it's very divisive. and it's very hard -- it's very intimidating for people to -- for, you know, most americans to engage in this conversation. so that's a problem. and i think that's a bigger problem than, you know, in many ways what's happening in congress right now. because congress isn't going to move until we move. . go ahead. [inaudible] >> do you talk about nuclear energy in the book? and how do you feel about it? >> the great question and it's a very hard question. it's actually the one i don't have a very clear answer to it but i'll try. the question was, how do i feel about nuclear energy and do i address it in the book? and the answer is, i address it in a total of about two paragraphs in the book. because it's a really, reallyic

and complicated issue. i personally don't think nuclear is going to fly. that's for two reasons. the cost of installing a nuclear plant and the time frame -- the complexity is actually getting a nuclear plant online are so dramatically high. i mean, the cost of actually the plant construction and the cost of the risk management for, you know, insurance and the potential, you know, public problems that could come from any kind of faulty -- any error -- any glitch in a nuclear plant are so high. and this is a problem that needs immediate nimble responses and i think, you know, the potential for, you know, much more immediate and dramatic impacts on our energy and use on clean energy use from geothermal, from solar thermal.

and i'd be happy to get into any of these details if you're interested. but there are some great, you know, base load energy solutions that are not nuclear that are emerging. and i know that's all a lot of like technical jargon right there. nuclear has two major problems we don't know how to store spent nuclear energy safely. and we don't have any place to dispose of it. everybody says, you know, france is 70% nuclear. japan is 50% nuclear. why don't we go nuclear because, you know, if they're doing it, we can do it. but they have first of all much smaller countries. much, much lower, you know, energies. and they have a very established disposal and storage system. and they do regional storage. so they don't put all their nuclear, you know, waste in one big place which is what we're trying to do in yucca mountain in this area in nevada. is basically put tons of

radioactive waste in this one space and there's a political analog jam on that. -- log jam on that. harry reid senator of nevada is not going to let that happen. they are not even going to green light an opportunity, you know, coming up a storage space for nuclear energy. so there's that. even if that was green lit, then you have to start actually getting all these nuclear plants online, which is going to take another, i don't know what, 10, 15, 20 years. by that point the global warming problem is going to be, you know, at a very -- far more advanced stage. so i don't think it makes sense for political reasons. i don't think it makes sense from a cost standpoint. and i also just personally feel very weird and uneasy about the idea of, you know, having radioactive waste underground, you know, that will essentially be toxic for, you know,

ealternate. -- eternity. it stays radioactive for we don't know how long. thousands and hundreds of thousands of years. so going -- you know, putting the united states as a huge population onto a very heavy, heavy nuclear, you know, energy system would produce such a mountain of very, very dangerous waste that to me it sounds like a bad idea. >> so i really want to know what it was like to be out on the oil rig? actually, i want to know technologically speaking what was the coolest place on your trip? >> what was the coolest places i went on my trip? man, couldn't you have asked me a policy question? okay. well, the rig was super duper cool.

and i started out in new orleans and it was my first -- it was the first set of adventure i'd taken on the power trip. and i hadn't been in a helicopter -- i actually had been in a helicopter but very briefly and this was a 2 1/2 hour helicopter ride out to, you know, the middle of absolute nowhere. where i'd be dropped off in a rig for eight hours and then carted back on another 2 1/2 hour helicopter ride so that was like in and of itself the single scariest thing that i had to face because i kind of thought like well, you know, what if i just decide halfway through i don't want to be stuck in this helicopter and i want to get out of the helicopter and the only place to land is on like this floating disk in the middle of nowhere and i'll have a panic attack? so that was kind of scary. and instead -- well, and we did fly straight into this massive

like churning scary pitch form lighting storm and all these guys were cool as a cucumber and they were calm. and i was shocked and amazed by this kind of storm experience that i somehow kind of felt so at ease when we flew through the storm that it was smooth sailing thereafter. the rig was awesome. the drills 250 foot in the air drill. the drill bits that they put together to, you know, actually insert this 5-inch drill bit 30,000 feet into the seabed are each about, i think, 60 meters long or something. and this robotic arm comes and it plucks each drill bit and screws it into the next one and so it's like this heaving bang

crash clasp, you know, screw joint and then insert it into the ground. it was this amazing thing to see this little guy at his red joystick with a button and, you know, erecting this 30,000, you know, 5-mile drill, you know, it was astonishingly impressive. and that's, you know, a bigger theme here. i fell in love with these people i had been criticizing for, you know, 10 years of my reporting experience. i was so dazzled by the sheer audacity that we would actually, you know, find ways to do this crazy thing in the middle of nowhere. the actual raft is not tethered to the sea floor. it's mobile. but, you know, there's these pushing and pulling currents against the raft and 15 minutes after i get there. i noticed that the ground is kind of vibrating and shaking. and i felt like is that me? am i like this nervous?

and the guy -- the executive -- chevron executive says oh, those are the thrusters and these are those huge engines of this square platform that basically push and pull the platform against the currents of the ocean to keep it exactly on station. it never moves from the gps system more than 6 inches away from like this central spot that it's got to be over to get the drill in there. and it's burning 40,000 gallons of fuel a day to be able to do this. it's a hugely energy intensive operation to go get more energy. but the final, you know, kind of technologically amazing thing was that at the end of it, you know, the chevron executive that was my host on this adventure said, oh, you made it out to the rig and i confess well, i was a little nervous about that helicopter ride and, you know,

okay, i'm glad i made it. you won't really be a true, you know, energy crusader, you know, investigating hero knowing -- that's what i was fancying myself to be unless you go to the crown, which is the top of this oil rig. which is 250 feet in the air on this rig 200 miles off the coast. and, you know, i said okay, well, try me. i'm feeling pretty confident. i got this far. and i said well, how aim going to get up there. there's this forklift literally -- this jerry-rigged forklift that goes up 250 feet and up in the air looked like a plastic coffin but vertical and on the front of this plastic

coffin were these accordan door where you find on the super 8 motel. so these accordion doors that don't have any latch they just kind of squeak close and so this guy, the hammer we called him the hammer because the foreman of the operation said are you going to go? i said, okay, yeah, i'm going. so we crawl into this vertical coffin and he's a barrel-chested guy but he's short and i realized if i was facing him in this coffin then we would be very intimately connected. and his head would be roughly here. [laughter] >> and so i thought well -- i guess i need to face that way 'cause that could get really uncomfortable for a while. so then i decided to go this way and what's there but my -- these

accordion motel 6 doors with a 2-inch gap right in front of my eyes and he closed the door and chink and the thing starts rising when it's really lurchy. it's going 3 inches a minute. i mean, it was just slowly crawling up the side of this thing. and i'm watching this bottom of the platform get further and further and further away and trying so hard not to talk. so, mr. hammer, what happens, you know, if we get stuck? is there like an emergency fire, you know, service that can come and come get us? can you hook me up to some lifeline here? and he's like, no, we can just crawl down the scaffolding. it's happened. it's happened. so suffice it to say, i

suppressed several panic attacks and i get to the top of crown, and i get to the crown and, you know, and i was at least hoping that our vertical coffin would have stayed there at the crown. and he pushes the down button to go and like bring up some other engineers and i see my escape hatch like slowly fall away and my heart is pounding and the next thing i know i, you know -- i just started hysterically laughing. i mean, hysterically. it was like in the witches of eastwick when -- i don't know if you guys remember. she falls in the water and she's like laugh and it moves them back up and so basically that's what happened. i broke through the panic and i looked below and saw this, you know, amazing sort of floating like microchip beneath me. and i thought, wow, if we can do this, you know, we can do anything. so that's the end of my story

but thank you all so much for being here. i'm going to go back and sign some books. and there's a party in like right around the corner at elizabeth restaurant on elizabeth street between, i think, prince and houston. so please have some drinks and some food and say hi and thanks again for coming. [applause] >> amanda little has reported on energy, technology and the environment for over a decade. she's the recipient of the jean bagley lehman award for excellence in environmental journalism. for more information visit harpercollins.com. >> in their book, "not invited

to the party" attorney teresa ama t-o and james bennett argue that the two-party system is an artificial creation designed to exclude any party other than democratic or republic from winning. the cato institute in washington, d.c. hosts the 90-minute event. >> welcome to the cato institute. i'd like to offer a special welcome also for our viewers on c-span who will be joining us now and later. my name is john samples. i'm director of the center for representative government. here at the cato institute. our forum today concerns a new book "not invited to the party: how the demopublicas have rigged the system and left the others out in the cold." let me give you a framework and give you an idea about the event. we will hear from the speakers first for about an hour or so.

and then that will be followed by criticize and answer period from the audience. around 1:30 or so we shall break for lunch when you will have an additional chance to talk with the authors and the speakers about the issues raised in today's forum. i'm admonished by our staff here that i should respectfully request that you turn off your cell phones. and that means turn them off so that we don't get that, quote, weird buzzing sound on the television. thank you very much. sort of to our event. the cato institute, as many of you may know, stands for individual liberty and limited government. competition offers a means to these ends. competition in markets expresses liberty and creates choices. electoral competition offers alternatives to voters and constrains government to the popular will. indeed as james madison himself well understood.

classical liberals will thus be skeptical of government efforts to suppress electoral competition by fostering or protecting any party or the two major parties in the united states today. we should also say that third parties in other countries are associated with systems of proportional representation. and that in those systems we can see, for example, the classical liberalism has what would one say is a purer form of representation. i'm thinking, for example, of the free democrats in germany who sometimes hold power in that country holds significant offices in that country and really bring a libertarian vision to meet with public policy and law in that nation. in the end, classical liberals are likely to say, i think, though we'll hear more today about this that more competition is better than less. and that government control over

electoral competition is unlikely to serve the cause of liberty in the long run. consequently, third parties in the american system, their access to the ballot, and to the electoral system are worth talking about and that's what we're going to do today. our first speaker will be our author, jim bennett. jim is an eminent scholar at george mason university and holds the william snavly chair of public policy in the department of economics and say director of the ollin institute for public practice and policy. he received his ph.d. in 1970 from case western reserve and has specialized in research related to public policy issues, the economics of government and bureaucracy, labor unions and health charities. he is founder and editor of the journal of labor research and has published more than 60 articles in professional journals such as the american economic review public choice and others.

he has written many books of which i shall mention one to you. he is the author of destroying democracy, how government funds partisan politics, published by the cato institute in 1986. i ask you please to welcome jim bennett, our author today. [applause] >> thanks much, john. and thanks to our host here at cato, dave bose, who is a little bit surprised when he learned ralph nader had written a forward to this book. my credentials suddenly crumbled. but that's already. i'm sandwich by the two extremes of the political spectrum. something has got to be seriously wrong, folks, when you've got ralph nader praising my work on the one hand and bill

redpath on the other. as john mentioned, i'm a professor of economics at george mason. and we pride ourselves on our specialty in the field of what's called public choice. this is the economics of politics. and i came to this issue because of the fact that i began to notice that candidates other than democrats and republicans despite the excitement that they started with soon faded in the political arena and were not really considered seriously by the time the elections arose. and i began to wonder what was going on. and as academic, of course, one of the first things you do is you say, well, what else has been done in this field and i found little else has been done by the political science fraternity or the political science academics. and apparently to political sciences, the domination of politics by the demopublicas --

you may recall that or at least i do, i'm old enough, and that's why i'm using notes, that george wallace in his campaign in 1968 pointed out there's not a dime's worth of democrats between the republicans and the democrats. and that's why i call them the demopublicans. to the political science community apparently having the demopublicans dominate the field is not how things are and how they should be. and i take take exception to that. and it seems many voters also have apparently come to the conclusion that voting for candidates outside the demopublicans is suspect or subversive. we need new approaches to problems. we need more issues put before the american voters.

we need to widen the range of political debate and that's what these third parties have done. third parties have traditionally challenged the status quo. and they have led to change and new ideas and so on. and throughout our nation's history, particularly the civil war we had dozens of civil parties. different names, the mug wumps, bull moose and the conservative party the libertarians, and the greens and so on and so forth will many of these parties had good ideas. the liberty party, for example, was abolitionists and opposed slavery. some of them have ideas that are not so good. for example we had the prohibition party and you can imagine what their agenda was. so early in the nation's history we had many parties. rough and tumble politics and by the way, a very high rate of turnout in elections. what happened?

to change all of this? elections and virtually all political discourse is now dominated by the democrats and the republicans. now, being a libertarian, one of the first things i do is go to that document that a lot of people don't put a lot of credence in today which is the constitution of the united states. and ask what does it say about political parties and the answer is nothing. however, in the debate about the constitution, federalist papers and our patriots such as james madison and benjamin franklin and so on, a great deal was said about the notion of faction. faction in today's terminology is special interest and political parties were considered to be special interest who wanted to use the power of the state to benefit themselves and their members.

even today surveys have shown throughout the world deep public distrust of political parties everywhere. in polling, political parties are ranked in public esteem lower than lawyers. yes, yes, lower than lawyers. that tells you something. nevertheless, we have political parties and by the end of the civil war, the dems and the republicans were entrenched as the two major political parties, a duopoly controlling politics. how did this occur? there's a number of reasons and i will talk about four. first, was the elimination of multimember districts. at-large elections were sharply restricted by the apportionment act of 1842 that required congressmen to be elected in

single-member districts so that candidates winning the most votes is the sole representative. a french sociologist said the single ballot system strongly favors two parties. this is a phenomenon known as diverger's law. voting for a long shot candidate who might prevail as third or a fourth choice in a multimember election is widely viewed today as throwing away one's vote. in a winner take all system so it discourages single-member districts discourages voting for third parties and independent candidates. and incidentally i might add the electoral college winner take all practices also encourages the two-party system. politically, however, single member districts make some sense in today's world. you can think, for example, the concern of people in upstate new york about being dominated by