lee loomis? when we "tuxedo park" was in this ans furstenberg for more information about the authors and books featured on encore booknotes, visit us on line at booktv.org and click on encore booknotes. .'entirety at 3:25 on c-span. "washington journal" continues. host: we are talking with anne kornblut, her book, "notes from the cracked ceiling." >> thank you for having me.

host: you say that this is a letdown and drove apart mothers and daughters and setback the equality in the political sphere of decades, why? perception before this election in the bill some kind of unified front among women at least within the democratic party. if there wasn't a bipartisan women's movement necessarily better least the democratic party was delighted and you go back and look what happened hillary clinton did win a lot of women as the democratic primary war she won older women but she split younger women and win sarah palin was on the republican ticket later she was not able to bring over democratic women or even very many independent women as the suspected they might be able to so rather than a groundswell of kind of a women's movement what

i look at in the book is the fact it splintered generational a across party lines and even among women elected officials, some of whom went for obama some of whom went for clinton. >> host: let me take the audience back to june, 2008 when then senator hillary clinton withdrew from the race and endorsed barack obama. this is from here in washington, d.c.. >> also we were not able to shatter that highest, hardest class ceiling this time, thanks to you it's got about 18 million cracks. the [cheering] and the light is shining through like never before. filling us all with the pope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time. >> host: anne speed kornblut, outside giving a tunnel for the book what did that mean for hillary clinton talking with her and others around the clinton campaign? >> it was the culmination of a

campaign, the final speech and by a lot of people's reckoning her best to read the first time in the campaign where she talked about gender in a specific weight and if you go back and think about all of 2007 and the half of 2008 when she was in the race she always would start questions about being a woman running for president by saying her answer we start with i'm not running because i woman. she would always say i am not running to be the first woman president. her campaign and some of the report ignited a crippled with this question whether they should get a gender speech and openly they conclude they shouldn't, but talked around, talked about it and when barack obama gave his landmark speech on race they said there's no way we can talk of a gender now. but that final speech was in many people's view her best. it was the first time she tapped into to talk about what would have meant if she had one and then then the first president espelyave been to help the former first lady the

president or clinton be president again. >> host: you write in the book the casual approach was stunning unlike the clinton campaign's epic internal deliberations over how the highest public would perceive a woman in high command. the mccain campaign and a calculation based on gut feelings and the key electoral math and of course leading to sarah palin as the nominee. >> guest: aver we did surprisingly little amount of research picking her. now you have to remember what was going on in the campaign at this point. obama looked as though he may be ahead after winning the nomination in 2008. mechanic durham the lands given said who can i pick. tim pawlenty was on the screen, mitt romney. he wanted to pick joe lieberman where there would have been obvious downside and he was born there might be a revolt if he did that. they looked around the political landscape and said he raised this hot and use the term meaning in every respect young female governor of alaska. we didn't have a chance we would have liked it might have been

wise to the detector nonetheless and what they didn't think about in hindsight are some of the pitfalls that women candidates across the country experience one of which, one of the main ones is they are scrutinized for their credentials and often challenged about whether they are experiencing a to run and that is what happened to sarah palin. >> host: leader sarah palin will be speaking at the first tea party convention. what does that tell you? >> guest: she is not going away necessarily and some people would like her to. is she going to run for president? i don't know. i don't think anyone knows to get shoup have a right given she was on the ticket last time and at this pointhe looks like it wouldn't be surprising if she said i've got as good a shot as anybody. >> host: in her book of course remains in "the new york times" best-seller list. she made media appearances including "the oprah winfrey show" where she was asked what would you ask in the book her interview with katie couric. >> i have a vast variety of sources where we get our news.

alaska isn't a foreign country where it is kind of suggested it seems like how could you keep in touch with the rest of washington, d.c. may be thinking when you look up there in alaska. believe me alaska is like a microcosm of america. >> obviously you've read books and magazines. why didn't you just name some books and magazines? >> and obviously i have of course all my life. i'm a lover of books and magazines and newspapers. but asked that question even early on in the interview i was already so in light and was unprofessional of me to wear that an alliance on my sleeve. >> you couldn't think of any in the moment. >> it was more of are you kidding are you asking me? to me it was in the context of do you read? how to use the informed? it seemed like she was discovering this nomadic tribe, a tribe from some the end of all caved in alaska asking me how do you stay in touch with the real world. that's how i took the question

so i kind of, well, i didn't roll my eyes and was annoyed with the question and got, you iow with the state of journalism today is no matter what i say to her it will probably be a twisted and perceived as a bit negative. >> host: anne kornblut, what was happening within the campaign during that moment? >> guest: even that early on she noted heart early in the campaign there were divisions within the mccain campaign it started almost immediately within a couple of weeks after she was picked. she said she was annoyed with the question. politicians have a million questions all the time things they don't think they should have to ask your answer and she was asked at that point with the same was true in some of her debate preparation in getting ready for some of her interviews, some other mccain aides who i interviewed after the campaign was over. she said she refused to prepare and build up resentment within the campaign and a lot of hostilities broke out but we

still see to this day. she went -- the per for the title of her book, going broke. that was her attempt to break away from what she felt was the mccain shell, the mccain bill and there since she had gone off completely off the reservation that she had all but picking her and she didn't understand what it take to run for the viceas ik i look very specifically at some of the gender aspects of that and she, too, field to understand why not preparing for these interviews in zenas that she might make to this winter have an added layer of criticism of questioning. she just was. she was young and a woman and these are new things and she was going to have to what she wanted to or not the answer would books and magazines she read and prove she was qualified even though she'd been a governor. that is self wasn't going to speak for itself and that wasn't something she or the name to become a kaine's appreciated until it hit them. >> host: we would get to calls, e-mail and twitter comments. it is twitter.com/c-spanwj.

she was spooked the position she was in a and conscious of the gaps in knowledge she had not known since innocence she began to start losing her bearings. >> guest: it's interesting she didn't have that many allies in the campaign by the time was over but i was able to find a few and their sense was that she came into this campaign incredibly confident and confident if not in her mastery of everything, knowledge lies or of the stability to perform and to the charismatic in overtime especially with the katie couric interview you played she started to really lose that national talent something about being in the national clear which she had never been before being inundated with criticism and ridicule by dfa and all of these strata to end up saving the most fundamental questions would unnerve her and we did see that as the campaign wore on. >> host: bald is running from granger indiana republican line with anne kornblut to the washington post.

good morning. >> caller: good morning. this is interesting. you start the program with the leftist journalist and you end with a leftist journalist and i can prove this and anything this woman would say about sarah palin is not credible at all. the msnbc hangouts, the first to people you talked about msnbc hangouts. >> host: i have to disagree. bill is a republican strategist -- >> caller: i don't care what you have to do. "the new york times," the review with this brzezinski gal the book review the book is back o'reilly had never been reviewed by the -- it took a bunch of leftist garbage. host could you have a question for anne kornblut? >> caller: she's not credible to even question. >> host: thank you for the

call. >> guest: i can vautrinot a leftist in fact i'm a partisan to the post with elizabeth on the democrats' line from print what tennessee. >> caller: happy new year and i hate to have to follow that call. but i do want to get a little bit of background, anne. i was and still am and will always be a very strong supporter of secretary of state hillary clinton. you can tell my voice i'm not a passionate. i'm also educated and durham also middle class and work experience in my wealth and i also do a much a supporter of civil rights. i was for many years the corporate recruiter and affirmative action recruiting.

i don't want anyone to think because i backed hillary clinton that i am a racist or of a class of person. that can't think for themselves. back after the iowa primary we went to new hampshire. at that time a woman of strong intelligence and skills. how could she do it all and work as hard as she was working to try to win and do all she was trying to do and she was caught off guard. hillary was caught off guard by the question and her eyes watered a little bit. >> host: we have that -- >> caller: the whole will start to see she was crying -- >> host: let me jump in because we have that moment so why don't we show that that you're talking about and get

anne kornblut's reaction. thank you for funding in. >> it's not easy to read and i couldn't do it if i just didn't passionately believe it was the right thing to do. i had so many opportunities from this country. i just don't want to see us fall backwards. [applause] this is very personal for me. it's not just political. it's not just public. i see what is happening and we have to reverse it and some people think elections are a game and it's like a who's up or who's down it's about our country and its futures and it's about all of us together. some of us put ourselves out this and do this against some pretty difficult odds but we do it each one of us because we care about our country.

>> guest: that was of course one of the most compelling moments of the campaign full of kump kunkel and components and to the point there were a lot people who rallied around her around the moment when she did show up, not cry, i'm glad you replayed it because some people refer to as the moment she cried. she didn't actually cry, she choked up. it's easy to forget just a day before that she was in a debate in new hampshire and barack obama said to her there's a question about her personality and her likability and president senator bayh obama said you are likable enough. he was joking of course and some of the women in new hampshire felt that was very decisive. in the choking lot moment occurred there was a lot of media criticism of her. there was a lot of saying she was finished. it's over. this is her ed muskie moment and there is a sense there was an uprising among the women of new hampshire and some of the people can draw out of state like the

caller to say we are not going to stand for this reader was one of the offers moments in the campaign she wasn't just hillary clinton former first lady running for president, she was a woman being dismissed and female voters are not going to stand for it. >> host: for anne kornblut for richmond independent good morning. >> caller: good morning. i just had a question for the guest. it seems to me during the campaign primaries the main difference between ferc president obama and hillary clinton was his vote on the war effort where he voted against and voted for it she thinks that played into her law in the primary. thank you. >> guest: it's a great question and i would say absolutely it played into it. she'd been thinking about running for president over many years arguably as far back as the iraq war vote and thinking about running for president

wanting to mount the first serious female campaign for president she and her advisers thought about how would she have to be on national security. that's not to say she didn't want to vote for the iraq war or believe in her vote and convictions that was necessary at the time but there was a constant awareness running for office as a democrat as a woman she was going to have to demonstrate her toughness and ultimately that didn't work in the democratic primary. it's hard to imagine how things could have been different if she voted against the war and had run in the primary perhaps it wouldn't the opening that he had to run. >> host: the book is called notes from a cracked ceiling. this comment saying hillary clinton's cry yen amid was derided as insincere which i doubt. she is just not good as a phony like most candidates. >> guest: i agree that it wasn't a fake moment, not because of her acting skills necessarily but because she's not someone who's ever enjoyed showing weakness and in fact i interviewed advisers around her who after the moment first of all they thought it was over

immediately. their blackberrys started going off at headquarters. they had lost the iowa caucuses. they were preparing their resignation papers. this was going to be it but some of them who spoke to her afterwards said i showed weakness. is it over. can i recovered and of course to the contrary to some people felt she was human in a way she hadn't been. this was a real emotion and she was under siege is so it worked to their advantage when they hadn't expected might. >> host: with regard to sarah palin deride if the palin candidacy thrust the question of sex is delete the sexes and back in the spotlight it was with a twist. her good looks or problematic in their own right drawing attention that could be superficial seen as positive but it was a liability in political terms. >> guest: so interesting. obviously her attractiveness was part of her appeal. it's what caught everybody's i yearly on. remember the buttons at the republican convention, a hot vp buttons everybody thought were funny and fun. very quickly the, the nickname

karabell farby started to take off and it was of course the nickname from alaska, she tried to play with and make fun of but it didn't really work for her and what i found in talking to a lot of strategists after the campaign was over was this is a well-known phenomenon in politics that women who are very attractive to of crossed a threshold of attractiveness to her levels of the beauty queen level can suffered in the minds of voters as not being up for the job. one example i give you is in michigan when jennifer granholm was running for governor her advisers focus group her ads, her television ads and found that voters especially female said she is too pretty to be governor. i don't believe she could be my governor. is she smart so they went back and shot the ads in black-and-white and still photos to prove she was or to get off the impression she was a more serious person. this is all a lesson the mccain campaign seemed to have learned or have heard of and at the end of the day the question

is about sarah palin's intelligence especially after the katie couric interview that he erred, combined with her looks and then of course leader in the campaign you add on top of that stories about her clothing and were broken her shopping during the campaign and altogether you wind up with a pretty all of stereotype of a bimbo out shopping rather than preparing to be vice president. >> host: when and why did you decide to write this book? >> guest: started thinking about it toward the end of the campaign when we started seeing a lot of stories about the year of the woman with an exclamation at the end, and i started thinking welcome this, there were two women who ran but ultimately they were losing. clinton lost their looked like the mccain campaign wasn't going to win and when they did was i thought you know, we should probably examine what happened here. this is the first time in u.s. history we have had to women from this level. how much had to do with gender? did they lose because they're women? i concluded know what there were a lot of other aspects of or gender related worth exploring in part so that if and when another woman runs on the road

we will be able to have an educated discussion about what part is gender and what is something else. >> host: what did you learn that surprised you the most, you can think about it and we will go to tony from boca raton florida with anne speed. good morning. >> caller: good morning. i was wondering if you can comment on this. most man in america did not vote for hillary clinton even if there were a democrat, republican or independent because she is on likable because she is perceived as hanging onto her husband who was an adulterer and just because she had her eyes on the presidency herself. now you get a woman like sarah palin who comes along and she is an honest person. she is right. she's attractive. i think you are dead wrong on this that her intractability detracted from her capability to

win. there are pretty women who are bright who are capable but more so you have a woman who was pro-life who thinks abortion is killing babies. you had a woman against homosexual marriage. you have a woman who was a born-again christian. these were the attributes i think anyone male or female in america and a majority of americans are looking for in a candidate it is more so that hillary clinton is pro-abortion, pro game marriage, in bed with the gays and lesbians just because she wants the white house so that and she knows they are a voting bloc but you have sarah palin who has morals, values, duty. >> host: how do you respond to that sentiment? >> guest: the caller makes too great points. one is that attractiveness can be an asset. certainly it doesn't have to be

in negative one for a candidate but it is usually among women. with the fund in focus groups with the strategists found in the focus groups is men are all for it but it's female voters who look and say how does she look so great and care for her children and do her job? i can do it so that is some of the reason why it's not necessarily sheer political terms being pretty makes her intelligent. i'm sitting in the contributors mind, the other good point you made is that party does often from a gender. without academics found, academics found is very rarely do people who disagree on social issues, issues like abortion crossover just because there's a woman on the ticket so it's never likely the mccain campaign is when to pull over the eckert equipment just because sarah palin was there and i think the same was true. people who were going to vote for sarah palin or not going to vote for clinton to read that just wasn't in the cards from the upside. >> host: our conversation as

with anne kornblut who writes for "the washington post" that can be seen all my as well on "washington post".com. before that "the new york times" and boston globe. her notes to the kaput is notes from the credit ceiling. robert from waldorf maryland, good morning on the democrats' line to get >> caller: good morning. >> guest: good morning. >> caller: yes, i agree with you and the gentleman who called earlier that hillary clinton's boat for the war in iraq probably destroyed her chance to the president and i think probably being influenced by her husband who wanted to be politically correct so i think that sort of cost her the presidency. and sarah palin i think that she would probably be a good candidate for the republican party. she has her values a republican party stands for and should be a good candidate for them. one thing i want to add here is that barack obama -- i think a lot of americans are fighting not al qaeda or the economy or

the jobless situation. they are fighting barack obama because of who he is, and they probably need somebody who looks like him and i think they would be happier who is a republican. thank you. >> host: let me go back to robert's earlier planned. do you think sarah palin will run in 2012? >> guest: how i'm not going to try to get inside her head because we've all made mistakes when we've done that in the past. i would say she has good reason and candidates often find irresistible when the basis support urging them to run. i think she certainly has the base so what does surprise me at all. >> host: oscar strine joxel tennessee. good morning independent line. >> caller: good morning. listening to a couple of the most recent calls -- a leedy that mentioned from brentwood that mentioned the fact she didn't want to be considered a racist being african-american who really supported to the primaries hillary clinton i

definitely would not see anything against her supporting hillary clinton. hillary clinton had a lot of african-american supporters, so i don't think that would be an issue. but the one thing i wanted to ask also was this whole phenomenon the last couple calls pointed out that the women can't win it doesn't look like as long as we have this notion that because of gender there is something wrong with their candidacy. there's going to be something wrong and it's just kind of heartening because we are losing a lot of talent, a lot of committed individuals who happen to be women. >> host: oscar, let me use your point and go back to what to include at the very conclusion of your book to the end of the book and hugh quote

secretary of state hillary clinton after she became part of the obama administration she appeared on the present said, quote, i am not going to pretend running for president as a woman is more daunting. it is daunting and it is probably a path that doesn't appeal to a lot of women in elective office because it is so difficult that there is a woman who will be able to achieve that. >> guest: she has been cautious, not just since becoming secretary of state but even before she was running and as she ran. when she got a question can a woman to win her answer was always we won't know until we try, which of course leaves you at the end of the campaign will to wonder is the answer now know because she tried and lost. i think the call makes a good point that there is something kind of disheartening before i cover both the clinton campaign and then a little bit of the sarah palin campaign. i really thought about the challenges for a woman running for office might be. it seemed a lot of women in conagra's obviously we have the female house speaker, when on the supreme court.

we men pretty much everywhere. but when i started doing the research and i looked at congress and what the numbers were i was surprised to find it's less than one-fifth of congress is when cost pressed to find out if you have run for governor or senator and some of the obstacles they face. i, too, was dispirited and the ways i never thought i would be. >> host: one of those moments came more than 25 years the only vice presidential debate between congresswoman geraldine ferraro from new york and then vice president george herbert walker bush and here is that moment. >> what we ought to with the difference, ms. ferraro, between iran and the embassy in of lebanon. iran we were held by a foreign government. in what dimond you had a terrorist action where the government opposed it. >> let me say first of i almost recent vice president bush you're patronizing attitude that you have to teach me about foreign policy. [applause] i've been a member of congress

for six years. i was there when the embassy was held hostage in iran, and i have been there and i have seen what is happened in the past several months, 17 months with your administration. secondly, please don't categorize my answers either. leave the interpretation of my answers to the american people watching this debate. >> host: anne kornblut? >> guest: that was an early example of what hillary clinton thought she had to convert as well when she was running for president which is a woman needing to prove that she understands foreign policy his credentials and can be tough. i had a really interesting interview with geraldine ferraro where she talked about her own daughter and what it meant for her to run and see hillary clinton and she was a big hillary clinton supporter it on super tuesday she spoke to her daughter who lived in massachusetts and asked her did you vote and the doctor said yes and she said who did you vote for in her own adult daughter had voted for barack obama and it represented she said she the good sense of humor by the time i interviewed her but she said she went crazy that her own

daughter and presented this generational split where some young women did vote for hillary clinton but just as many did not to oppose the thomas joining from illinois calling on the republican line. good morning to you. >> caller: good morning. i've been listening to dismiss is kornblut, and she has called sarah palin a bimbo and has given hillary clinton praise and says she is non-partisan, and i -- the reason i think you've got the eletes from the two coasts and in this center part of the nation and sarah palin represented most every day, and a person's. this is a person that was the mayor of a town and then got flatted into the governorship because of her own homework and her own -- what she had done,

and hillary clinton and barack obama had machines behind them. it was all theatrics, it was all theatrics and that is what most of the computer are any more is theatrics. >> host: do you think sarah palin will run or should run in 2012? >> caller: i think she will try. i think the press -- when she announced her vice presidency, the press and democratic party cent of 44 lawyers to try to dig up any little thing. it will be an insurmountable for her to overcome the press and the liberals on their attack on her. ..

old money behind her, and knew the nuances, a word from new york, that those people know the besñtricks of the game. host: good point. guest: i want to correct the caller, i am not calling sarah palin a bimbo. the point i was making is that people called her a people called her a bimbo in the campaign. i actually take a pretty sympathetic look at her in this book that i've just written. >> host: as far as being on the national stage for a relative obscurity, you go back in history and is it any different with her or other democrats or republicans? >> guest: what is interesting is that former president bush was sitting in the white house of course when the republican convention was going on and he like everybody else got the

news. esau at on a crawl on the tv screen, who had been pectin was just a surprise that everyone else who this person was but he said to dana perino, this is, she does not know what is about to hit. he was thinking of his own father's experience, his own experience that it is hard enough to being someone who knows politics the coming out of basically nowhere in being hit with the kinds of questions there was there's no one who could survive the obviously. it was going to be tough. >> host: he remarked was that, she was the governor of what? >> guest: he did not d host: thn the book. what one thing did you learn a surprise to the most in researching this book? >> guest: i learned a lot of things. the basic point has been hard for women to run a something that surprised me because i hadn't thought, i thought that was in the passo with the identity of politics is alive as it is then we see it with obama as much as with hillary clinton. in looking at the clinton campaign i was surprised that

she reacted as strongly as she did to one particular incident and there's an anecdote the retelling the book about her daughter. there was a tv commentator who made an offhanded remark that chelsea clinton because she was calling donors was being pumped out by the clinton campaign. at msnbc, yeah and the clinton campaign referred to some money things by then it was hard to imagine that they would care about one more but in fact when then senator clinton heard about the issue apparently got very upset on a conference call. one got steely and angry and it was one incident fairly late in the campaign that really got her emotions going in private and that was not something that would have expected. posed pujan is joining us on the democrats line from philadelphia. good morning. and. >> caller: hello. look, i need, give me one second to get some perspective.

i am a world war ii power trooper loy jumped in the normandy and throughout europe to the and so i know what war is like. hillary clinton was not present today because she-- the iraq war and she knew she was going to be running for president. now, she showed up exactly what we have and politicians today. all the care about is getting elected or reelected. she didn't care that she was advisors that ierringconnect 240

she's naturally hawkish on defense. we saw in this most recent afghanistan review policy, she % was an advo in this most recent review policy she was in advocate of sending more troops and others in the room were not so it may be that she was politically sensible in their view although it didn't work out and that is what she might believe. >> host: the response from your book. you write that hillary clinton in sarah palin, it wasn't just that they lost. it was that they lost in such a resounding devastating way. their candidacies and les fairland strains of sexism

across the country that many had thought were already eradicative. >> guest: absolutely. i mean, i had thought they didn't exist in growing up in the younger generation and certainly in the clinton come again then palin. i thought we were pretty much passed the kinds of dismissesness and ridicule and the rise of this that both of them and the lord. when i covered both of their campaigns i really didn't think that you could cover clinton and then palin then find there was anything in common with the two of them because they are such different people, obviously different ideologies. they share almost no voters but in fact the response to them, the level of response and the intensity of the response, the fact that there were so polarizing and i would add if you look to the three most senior women in american politics, elective politics today or at least visible women, pelosi, clinton and palin all three of them are extremely polarizing people and you have to wonder if that is a coincidence.

>>host: one comment from of the worst thing when the clintons were in charge the sold of this country to wall street. look what happened. i let that stand. bill clinton's legacy was a factor in hillary clinton's campaign. >> guest: no question. it cut both ways. he obviously was president for eight years. she was first lady for eight years. that gave her the stature and name recognition to run for senate for new york and when she was running in the primary this time she talked about clinton cleaning up after bush. is part of her fund-raising network, the fact that she and her husband had been a team for so long. of course the downside and by the way not just male voters like the caller earlier but i have heard from young female voters saying we were taught to get places on our own and we want a candidate who was a woman that out there on her own, who didn't see her rights as being part of her own attributes but was due to her husband and obviously as the campaign wore on ingressive husband maid increasingly inflammatory

remarks in a lead it and not of the democratic base he became a liability as well. >> host: maxes kerry from oklahoma. >> caller: good morning. it has been and while since i talked with you. after this morning, i would like to say a few things steve and i will be touching on women for sure. one is that as a young hyphenated american i grew up to see condoleezza run-- rice beer president birkland that to me she would be the only one qualified in the country to be president and i might add she is pretty stark scant too. >> host: let me stop you on that point because he referred to condi rice in your book. >> guest: i interviewed her for the book. we have long and interesting interview and one of the things she said, there are a lot of people like the caller who would like to see your run a lot of republicans in particular. i think she has seen up close and difficult that is. she also has never run for

elected officers also starting the presidency would be a pretty huge leap but the most interesting thing she told me was as she watched the democratic primary from a distance obviously she had no force in the race, she was not at all surprised to see obama coppolla head and ultimately win. she said she felt in this country we have crossed the bart on race sometime ago but on gender we still have a ways to go and it was clear to me and from interviewing other people that she felt often as a woman things are tougher for her then as an african-american but if i had a penny for every person who told me they wish condoleezza rice would run. >> host: head gary and continue please. >> caller: i wasn't one of those people from the bad work, waving a north vietnamese flag at me and what have you and the so-called greatest generation was mentally in the media by the aforementioned college kids. i want to say one thing before we get to hillary clinton and

i'm going to vote that we have come to walter conkrite, i think he has the blood of a lot of american kids on his hands. let's get to hillary clinton into why she-- i worked at the post office there in the early '80s and of course they had a big push then for affirmative action and these programs were supposed to be directed four male blacks to help keep the black families together. and a lot of these guys had been at the post office for years but because of different things they weren't allowed to get to the top to get into supervisors pitches since when reality here is what happened. we had a bunch of college girls start coming in and we had college girls with six months education but they were government designated minority. >> host: we only have a minute left so is there a quick question for anne kornblut?

>> caller: i just wanted to point out though that i really-- hello? i am here. i am sorry i lost it there but what happened was of these girls, females and that for getting these jobs and the blacks were not getting the jobs even though they had so much more experience. believe me when you bring in inexperienced people no matter how smart they are they don't know what the system, it doesn't matter where they are going to screw it up. >> host: thank you gary. >> guest: raise versus gender is almost done possible to han tang geppart katulis point identity politics would have been a big deal for many decades and i think continues to be. >> host: one of the continuing comments for my twitter page is, it's sarah palin still wants to be considered politically relevant shouldn't she still actually be in an elected position? >> guest: last time it was a question about her credentials

and her qualifications and this time it would be about her staying power and commitment. >> host: what will it take for a woman to win? >> guest: the conventional wisdom is it will take the right woman and i think there's something to that. i think it will probably take time. if it is not sarah palin in 2012 then obviously it will be 26 tina maybe even 2020. >> host: anne kornblut of "the washington post" and her book, "notes from the cracked ceiling" hillary clinton, sarah palin and what ti will take for a woman to win. thanks for joining us. come back again. >> anne kornblut is the white house reporter for "the washington post." she has been a political reporter in washington since 1998 and worked for the "boston globe" and "the new york times" before joining the post and the 2007. form reclamation visit anne kornblut.com. 

>> dominique lapierre author of "a rainbow in the night" talks about the heroic women in his many books including mother theresa helm he worked with ten rightabout and city of joy. the national museum of women and the arts in washington d.c. hosts this hour-long event. >> to begin with, i would really thank you for having mentioned my collaboration with larry collins. larry collins is unfortunately dead now for five years, an american journalist with, i spent 50 years of my life researching the world and writing books, and i think the two of us, we really were the most beautiful franco-american combination that you can think of. cleery was the son of a lawyer there. iowa's from paris.

eyes stand told do we met one day in a cafeteria of of the paris headquarters tornado. we immediately became friends and it is true that thanks to garlic snails and really odd french dishes i have attached leery to france also thanks to the cathedrals and some of our museums of course. and one day, he came into my office there in his headquarters and he was in tears. i said what is the matter with you larry? he said he disaster has just happened. i said, what is it? i have just been discharge. i said to him, and the french army when this happens to us we open champagne. [laughter] and i understand larry was so sad to leave france to go back to the united states that i was able the next day to give him a nice piece of news. i said to him, larry, as i am

taking it to the station where you are going to take your vote in germany back to the states that want to tell you that you now have a family in france, my wife has announced to me this morning that she was expecting a child. do you want to be the godfather? and strangely enough, this child named alexander 35 years later lectured in this very museum because she had written a wonderful book about a great painter. so larry knew that he was going to come back to france and he did. six months later as a reporter for "newsweek" and as dan told you i entered paris and here we were going to compete for the big events of the news, but as competitors. larry collins one day locked me in my bedroom in baghdad, so i

wouldn't send the photographs of the iraqi revolution, and long time ago, to paris match but i was able to avenge myself a few months later by giving him a wrong train schedule to a chain leaving to-- and i was the last journalist to be able to interview the-- of absentia. one day we were spending a few days of vacation on the golden sands of central bay and that is when we said to each other, why don't we try to write a story together that would have an appeal to french public and to an anglo-saxon public and that is when in fact we found out that hitler had given 14 times the instruction to his commander in paris to defend the city and

its last man and to destroy it. and yet paris had escaped from the most destructive conflict in the history of humanity. it was a miracle, and this miracle was that frank uroamerican miracle because paris, and i was in the city as a 13-year-old child, paris had been liberated by 20,000 american soldiers from the fourth infantry division and 20,000 french soldiers from the second armored division. it had been the greatest day publicly in the history of humanity. that day which said seen 4 million provisions a claim it's liberators, when 20,000 german soldiers were still in the city to defend it, to the death, to the last man. so we said that is the book we are going to right and we

started on a huge research of four years. of course i had personal memories of those times. i was there and i remember among other memories that i have been efforts in my family to plug an american soldier on the avenue at 3:00 in the afternoon that 25th of august, 1944. i had run to him. he had just come from ms. train and i realized of course running to him that i didn't realize what i was going to tell him because i didn't speak english. during the war they forced us to learn german but as i arrived in front of this dusty soldier, i remembered at least one word in the language of shakespeare. i shouted at him,--. [laughter] and his american soldier exploded in a laugh, went back who is tank and came out with a

box of corn beef. [laughter] and it was a royal gift at the end of the german occupation. for nine months we have not seen meat. there's even a joke running in the streets of paris tilling that the meat ration of the parisians had gotten to be so tiny that it could be a tiny wrapped up in a subway ticket provided that subway ticket had not been punished. [laughter] four years later, we published this and then we decided to liberate ourselves after having liberated paris, by going to spain for a few days of vacation. that is where one day we received a telegram from the reader's digest asking us to write a great story, a big story about a man who was the incarnation of the news-- news been coming out of the war.

he was a bullfighter. but what had happened to him, to his family, to the country with this terrible civil war, which had really broken the beautiful land during three years from 1936 to 1939 was really a beautiful new story in a book that we could tell, and we started to research. now we have made it a rule that we would be writers, so for instance we had a need to explain what you feel in front of a ball chasing new at 80 killam meters an hour like a locomotive so you can feel what fear is in the middle of the bull ring. of course we wanted one survivor to write the book. we decided that only one of us would do the experiment so we flip the coin, and the bad luck

fell on larry collins, and one day be able greater, one of our friends, gave us in his little portable rang able to see what it is to be charged by a bull. of course it was 600 kilos. it was more like a french poodle, but even a french poodle is charging a man with a little red cloth is so terrifying that that day i recall, i think he won the 100 meters race at the olympics coming out of the bullriding and we published our second book, which is called i will let tressa when the morning as merv griffin said one day on one of his shows. and then one day i lecture dental lateef, and i decided to go and visit, so i took a taxi

and and that's taxi suddenly i discovered on this side of the roads climbing to jerusalem it was a tiny boat at the time, at a cemetery of charge tracks and on each of those trucks there was a few words in hebrew. there were some flowers and i said to the driver, but why this calvary on the road to jerusalem and he said sorry you don't know what happened here. on the night of the 24th of march, 1948 the whole city of jerusalem was completely bcg by arab guerrillas, and the people there, 100,000, the most sacred of the jewish people were about to die of thirst and hunger, and david ben gurion you the time was the chief of the jewish community of palestine had decided to organize a huge

convoy of trucks to bring flour, water and sugar to the people of jerusalem, but this convoy had fallen in ambush. the drivers had all been killed. all they were transporting in the trucks had been looted. the tracks have been burned and going to jerusalem 24 years after those events i said to myself, the story of that convoy is going to be the story of my new book. then i arrived in jerusalem. the driver dropped me on the mount of olives. suddenly i saw the old city of jerusalem at my feet. it was a friday. i could see thousands of faithful coming out of the mosques after their friday prayers, and then the sun came down over the hills and it was the beginning of the shabbat. thousands and thousands of jewish from the new city of

jerusalem were running to the waiting war and then at about 6:00 i heard the bells of all the christian church rover over the rooftops of jerusalem, and i said to myself, i am in a place near god and i cannot only write the story of the convoys. we have to write in our next book the story of the last siege of the city of jerusalem when in 1948, the jewish portion living up there try to defend the city's expense of the arab armies coming from all over the orient. and this was the beginning of an adventure which was going to last four years and at the end of which we published a new book called old jerusalem. which as been considered by historians and the public at

large as one of the main historical impartial books on the birth of the state of israel in the beginning of the arab-israeli conflict. as i am supposed to talk tonight about some of the great women that i have met, about my wife of course and some others around me, i would like to tell you about one of the experiences of that research. one day in the city of jerusalem, in the new city of jerusalem late entered in a very small and simple home, where a woman was baking some bread, some-- she was the mama of israel. it was on the shabbat the. golda meir was the prime minister of israel at that time but there were no signs, almost

no policeman outside, and we had visited her to ask where about one of the episodes that we wanted to tell in our book, old jerusalem which was such a key episode in the story of the birth of israel. in november, 1947, in the secret headquarters of televisa, there had been a meeting. the meeting was of ben gurion with a few aides and cool the was one of those aides. and ben gurion had realized that unless the jewish community of palestine was able to buy the arms and ammunitions that they would need for the war which was sure was going to break out on

the 15th of may, 1948 when the state of israel would come to life, unless they were able to do that, they would be submerged by five arab armies that would immediately attacked jerusalem and the rest of palestine and the rest of the state of israel. so, ben gurion in that meeting said i have to go to the united states. we have to get some money to buy those arms and munitions. we need at least $30 million immediately. one of his aides was to become one of my greatest friends. he really was a founder of the state of israel. he was not really very well-known. he was going to go to buy those arms and ammunitions but where would the money come from?

ben gurion said i have to go to the united states and ask the jewish of america to give us the money. then a little voice came up bin said, david, there are so many things you can do here and there are so few things i can do. maybe i can go to the united states to ask for some money. golda had known the united states but she had not been there for several years, and one day in june, it was a freezing day she remembered. she arrived in new york and a summer dress that she had in tel aviv because she could not go back to our apartment in jerusalem because of the arabs cutting the roads. she arrived with a handbag and the customs officer at idyllwild it was called at that time, asked her, but how much money do