of, some of the broader issues are co-this is not an issue driven book via any means but we wanted to bring in the context of those issues, so in all of those ways we try to take a story everybody knew until it fresh. >> talk for a bit about the actual physical process of writing this book are co-i ran into in philadelphia at the last democratic presidential debates which i think was an april 2000008 and we had a brief conversation and what you were saying then was you have not the primaries would have been over for a long time and you would have had time in between the primaries and the general election to actually do a lot of the work on the book and i think a lot of people were surprised in the primaries had gone on as long. ..

work with haynes johnson? >> as you suggest, our sense was given the history of past campaigns, that would have a very active opening few months in early 2007. and then it would slow to a different pace. and that we would be able to do a certain amount of book report in that period. and even perhaps some writing. and then as we got into the fall of 2007, and from there until probably late february or mid-february, we would be an intensive period of action. and then after that, beginning in march or april, we would have some months until the summer to actually begin to write the sectio >> we would have a few months to write how wrong we were. but the story got better. somebody said of this complain that there was a marathon run at the pace of a sprint. and i think that is a great description of it.

because my first outing for this campaign was in late november 2006 for the announcement of the long forgetten campaign of tom vilsack then the outgoing governor of iowa and the secretary of agriculture. it did not let up until the complain was over. we did a little bit of writing in 2008 in the summer of 2008. but not nearly as much as we had hoped. we got some of what is now the opening section. in that sense, we were way behind our deadline. the collaboration was one where we derided up chapters. my roll was mr. inside to stay close to the campaigns. because that was what i was doing for my day job. hain's job was to say closer to the voters and some of the themes of where the voters were and what they were thinking. we deride divided up chapters.

with a book like this, you have to one voice. you can't have a book that's haynes voice, or dan's voice. every chapter if i was the lead writer on a chapter, it went to haynes. and haynes would rework it and insert and make suggestions and i would do some further polishing even before we sent it off to our editor. haynes chapter would come to me. one the campaign ending we had some reporting that still had to be done. including what turned out to be a really interesting interview with then president elect obama in 2008 in december of 2008. but we were on a very tight writing schedule. we had to turn the book in basically by early march. we were holed up in our respective homes grinding away every day and e-mailing stuff back and forth and sending it to our editor jim silverman, and wendy wolf, our editor, to try

to get it done. >> you described the marathon at the speed of a sprint. i'm sure a lot of people here and watching at home who would be just fascinating with what your life was like in the terms of presidential campaign. what was is your day-to-day experience, what is an average day when you are covering look like? >> there's no average day as you know from being in politics. every day is a different day. there is a rhythm to it. for me, because we were in the process of at the post creating some new elements of our coverage, particularly on the web, one the things i was doing every morning was 800 word analysis strictly for the web or almost always strictly for the web. my day started by what in the world am i going to write about this morning and try to get that

done by noon. didn't matter when i was on d. c. or on the road, that was how it would start. sometimes it would start with a political event. i would go off and do that. but the days are a lot of travel. particularly in the stage from i would say labor day '07 until let's say february of '08. heavy concentration in the early states, particularly iowa and new hampshire. you basically go live in those states for weeks at a time. and you can see a lot of candidates at once. you can see new hampshire because you can see five events in a day without breaking a sweat. iowa is more difficult. we always have a saying that in iowa the next event is always two hours from where you are, or

three hours if there's a snowstorm. but on some days i would write a daily story in addition to what i was doing for the web. very often, as y'all know, there were dozens of debates. anddy baits tend to be an organizizing principal, particularly complain coverage. so at almost all of the debates i would either write sort of the lead news story or analysis of that debate. i traveled with the can date some. but we are people on the staff who were assigned to travel with hillary clinton, barack obama, and john mccain in particular. once we got past the early states and the campaigns at that point had their own charters. i would travel with the

candidates a little bit, but not by any means every day or every week. i would try to go to states where the next events were. i would go to both of the conventions. in the fall, it is a different rhythm. you were driven by the debate cycle, in this case a economic collapse, and what i was always trying to do is figure out wherefores the right place to be on any given day or week in order to see the complain or able to deal with people at the headquarters. there's no template, constant travel and writing and with the book project. >> you mentioned the interview you had with president-elect obama in the transition. he himself being a writer himself and a good one, it seemed to me like i was trying

to frame your book for you. he said this election really is a novel. >> right. >> and i think this book reflects that. as of any novel or book, it's built on characters. we watch them grow and change as the complain goes aa long. we learn things about themselves that we learn about them in the book. let's talk about the three big characters that defined that book. the first of them is one that people here in the audience noel and have watched over the years that's senior senator john mccain. talk about john mccain's journey during the cycle. >> the wonder thing about this book, this whole complain was a novel. he said i don't think i'm the most interesting character in it. then he said, you know, there was the first women with the serious chance of being elected, first american with a serious chancing and then he said and an

aging -- he stopped and said striked aging. a war hero. [laughter] >> you know, this book is a serious of stories that add7 up to a big story. one the really fascinating stories somehow over shadowed by the long battle between barack obama and hillary clinton is the story of john mccain. the raise and fall and raise and ultimately fall of john mccain is one the richest stories in the history of presidential politics. he started out the election complain cycle adds no a prohibitive front runner for the nomination, but certainly the nominal. the republican party historically has had somebody in line to be the nominee, and that person generally has become the nominee. john mccain was that person. he filled that role at the early stage of the complain.

but this was at a point where iraq was deeply unpopular. and john mccain in our estimation had become once again as prison of war. not an actual prison of war in the way he is in vietnam, but a prison on where he was on the issue of iraq at a time when the country seemed to have decisively against the policy. and so he started the complain in a difficult position even though he had a lot of advances for the nomination. the second thing about the beginning of the complain for john mccain was that he had learned from bitter experience in 2000 that he could not run the same kind of complain as the first time. it's a visceral politic and he likes to run a lean complain.

what was built for him was a very big structure of a complain. that tends to be the kind of complain structure that you need to go the distance. you can be a gorilla bar your for a while but you need a structure. they build on the bush 2004 complain. he was never comfortable with that operation. the third thing was because they had bill built the big structure, they had a huge amount of money. they had assumptions that were so far beyond the realm of probability that they literally within the first weeks of the complain found themselves in the red and having to cut back. so the story of john mccain in the first six months of 2007 is the story of a candidate who goes from being the person that everybody thought was going to be the nominee to a person who by july of 2007 is given up for dead politically his complain

has imploded, his fund raising is behind, he's still trapped by iraq. so goes to new hampshire, and somebody says is there any circumstances under which you can think that you might not actually be a candidate by the time of the new hampshire primary? and he says in typical john mccain fashion, the only thing that i can think of would be contracting a fatal disease. the next time he came to new hampshire, he came with one aide, he carried his own bag, flu southwest airlines, he had disappeared from the scene politically. and they developed then a survival strategy. there were a number of his people who said, okay, the one thing we want to do is -- because they thought he was going to lose. everybody thought he was going to lose. the one thing we want to do is let him lose with his dignity in tact. so they thought how do we

preserve this candidacy long enough for that to happen? he went to charlie black who was is veteran political operator from -- in d.c., been through many campaigns. he said tell me is there a way that i can win this? charlie said, yes, there is. there is a way you can win it. it's very simple. become the last man standing. they knew that for john mccain, new hampshire was still a place where he had deep loyalty and strong support. so their goal from late august until the new hampshire primary was focus all your energy on nature. if you can win new hampshire, you back in the game. mitt romney, judy giuliani, fred thompson all had a moment where they might have taken control and they couldn't do.

you get and it's john mccain's moment, and he sealed a couple of weeks later, where he lost to george w. bush in one of the most bitter complains that anybody has recovered. john mccain is back. but he's back in a way he's not fully prepared for the general election. they have to take what had become a very small organization and over night, build it into something that is far more significant. and they had great difficulty doing that. and the fall complain was marked by two big moments, one was obviously the selection of sarah palin has his vice president. this was an event that shocked everybody. joe biden is on the airplane, they are leaveing denver after the democratic convention. one the staff coming up and says to barack obama and joe biden, well, he's picked sarah palin.

and joe biden says who is sarah palin? and barack obama says, i wonder why he did that. [laughter] >> two questions a lot of people were asking. >> well, -- [laughter] >> including a lot of people around mccain. that was a hail mary pass on john mccain's part. they felt they needed to shake up the complain. that if they picked a traditional tim who was on the short list, it would be greeted with some praise and wouldn't give them any lift. they felt they had to be something out of the box. and they decided that sarah palin was that choice. now if you take it from the mccain complain's point of view, the reason they did it, support, two, better among women.

they had the mistaken assumption that they might be able if they picked to attract women who had supported hillary clinton who were unhappy that she had lost. this was obviously bad thinking. which they learned soon after. but i think the most important reason is that sarah palin to john mccain was somebody who was like him. she was a maverick. she had run against a sitting governor in her own primary. she had defeated that governor, frank mer cow ski, she had defeated the general election. she had run as a reformer. it was mccain's view if he picked sarah palin, the two with of them could say we are real change. we will do tough things in washington and shake up washington in a way that barack obama and joe biden will never do. so that was, i think mccain's

thinking. there was no question there was a big risk. i don't think they understand how big of a risk it was or how it turned out how unprepared sarah palin was for some of the rigors of the complain. sarah palin is on her way up to sedona to meet in the morning she was asked to be his running meat. he was on the attorney in washington who headed the vice presidential election process with him. they had called before the night before to complete the process. john says give me the bottom line. she says john, high risk, high reward. and john mccain said you shouldn't have told me that. i've been taking risks all my life. and that was it. now, ultimately, the complain of john mccain was sealed by the economic collapse.

i think there would have been almost no way for him to have won it even at the economy had not done what it had done. but nonetheless, once that happened, there was no hope for him to win. >> the one person going into this race in 2006, 2007, that everybody had a opinion, was hillary clinton. in reading the book, it seems to me, she's the person that changed the most, or people perceptions changed as she went through the long process that challenged her in ways he probably never foresaw. >> you know, each of these three characters stories is fascinating. i think for hillary clinton, the story is that she performed best when it counted the least and worst when it counted the most. i'll expand on that.

she started out the complain far more than mccain has a prohibitive favorite to win her nomination. she obviously had the best brand in democratic politics. she had a network both financial and organizational all around the country with one important exemption which i will get to in a minute. she had a team of people who had been together and were experienced and part of some of whom had been involved in winning two presidential complain in the 1990s. the first time since roosevelt. she was smart, tough, she had gone through new york politics which is rigorous and hardball all of the time. she seemed to be the ideal candidate at the right moment. and for much of 2007 she

reformed that way. the early debates, she was good. she was stronger than a lot of people had anticipated, including some of the people around here. by the wall of 2007, she was 20 points ahead and way ahead in new hampshire. she was way ahead everywhere expect in iowa. iowa was the one state where there was always resistance to hillary clinton. there were reasons for that. bill clinton had never had to run in the democratic caucuses in iowa. because when he ran for president and the first time tom harkin was a candidate. so everybody else stayed out of the iowa caucus. in 1996, there weren't any. he never had a network in iowa. obviously she had a bill name. but people in iowa, even at the beginning of the complain were skeptical. they did not know what to make of her. they were not warm to her.

they did not feel she was a warm person. and she had a very difficult time in iowa. she never liked the quay cushion process. the quay suggestion -- caucus process is demanding. it is a process by which you have to go everywhere and meet everybody and develop individual relationships with people who were going to come to the caucuses. and it required time on the phone and time on the ground. and she resists some of it. it was hard for her. she didn't like parts of it. she thought too much money was being spent for too few voters. so she was struggling in iowa. in late october 2007, she has been cruising through this complain. there was a debate in philadelphia, the last day or next to the last day in october. and she gets through this, most

of this debate, though it is a debate at which everybody particularly, barack obama and john id wards is coming at her hard. she does good until the end of the complain asked about something going on in the new york state having to give driver's license to undocumented, illegal immigrants. she gives an equivocating answer that suggest that she would do the same thing. and somebody called her on it, chris dodd calls her on it. she said, no, i didn't say that. wait, a minute, you just said you did say that. he jumped on her, barack obama attacked, john edwards attacked her. it was as if everything that had been suppressed of what voters thought, which is to say people thinking she'll say anything to get elected within she's thought

authentic, what does she really believe? all of this has been put to the side through 2007. suddenly, it comes to the floor. almost over night, the complain changes. she is on the defensive in a way she hasn't been. she then loses the iowa caucuses. not just loses but coming in third. this was unimaginable to the clinton complain. they thought they might well iowa lose, they thought they'd lose it to john edwards, not barack obama. they never thought she would come in third. the complain is devastated. they have run her through that point as the inevitable candidate, the candidate of strength and experience in a year in which change is clearly the driving force. she picks herself up and wins new hampshire, puts herself back in the complain. but then for the next six weeks, the complain around her dissin grates. her staff is in turmoil.

her staff was a team of talented individuals who together were a dysfunctional family. it began to come apart after the iowa caucuses and despite the victory in new hampshire. bill clinton who in many ways was an enormous asset to his wife through this complain has a terrible couple of weeks around the time of the south carolina primary. nobody in the clinton wanted to compete in south carolina in the serious way, they thought barack obama was going to win it. bill insists they do. they thought they had a chance to do much better than anybody thought. he thought because of the historic relationship with the african-american, they could rally african-american voters and bring some more to her side. the flip side is exactly what happened. she got into that race, there was a sense on the part of some african-american leaders that he was injecting race into the complain in a destructive way,

in a way that was harmful to the candidacy of barack obama and to the democratic party. as a result, obama wins a big victory in south carolina. the next thing that happened is you do through super tuesday and the part of the rest of february of 2007. the mighty clinton complain the complain of all of the experienced team, the complain that had presumably been through all of this before, fundamental ly misunderstanding the roll of the caucus in the nomination process. they basically allow barack obama to run away with the caucuses. and because of the way the democratic rules go for allocating dell dell dell -- delegates, and he was able to have the states with small

delegates. primary state, new jersey, hillary clinton wins that. she beats obama pretty easily. she gets a net of 11 more delegates out of that 107 than barack obama. idaho, 18 total, obama competes hard, hillary doesn't. obama nets 12 more delegates than hillary. he built a loud primarily through the caucuses by the end of february. at this point, the complain, i think, is effectively over. there's almost no way she can come back. but, in fact, she then becomes a terrific candidate. she wins iowa ohio, she wins the texas, she wins pennsylvania. she goes on and as obama told us in that december interview, she came a terrific, terrific candidate. and she -- i think still she

could not have won it. but she found a voice as the candidate that she had not had in the early stables. she was no longer the inevitable candidate or the presumptive nominee. she was a tiger. and she made a connection particularly with working class voters in the big industrial states. nobody had ever won new york, california, ohio, pennsylvania, and lost the democratic nomination. but hillary clinton did. in that final stretch, she was a terrific candidate. i think that was one the things that resulted in her become withing secretary of state. >> i'm going to, despite my selfish desires, open it up to everybody as well. if people want to start lining up. as people do, i'll ask you about the last of these three people when we can't forget, that's barack obama who, i think we all

remember the barack obama at the end. the one with thousands and thousands of people. that wasn't how the things were starting out. tell us about his transformation and journey. >> yeah, you're right. it's easy to think of barack obama as a candidate who appeared on stage, gave that speak that electrified that convention and rode that straight to the white house. in one version of events, that's probably correct. but there are twist and turns. i will talk briefly about that early stable. he comes into the race in early 2007. obviously as a rock star. as a hot commodity in democratic politics. but as a presidential candidate, he struggled in the early stages. i remember particularly a forum in las vegas in spring of 2007.

there was a health care forum and all of the candidates was there. he gave a terrific speech about how to bring universal health care to the country and how he could pay for it. hillary clinton said i could talk about this for hours. and she could effectively. and gave a rosing presentation. barack obama was there. he did not have a plan. he did not have a strategy. he watched the other candidates, particularly hillary clinton, he came away saying he's complaining at this level. i'm down here. it i'm going to win, i have to figure out how to become a better candidate. he didn't now how to do that right away. he was deeply unhappy as a candidate until the february, march, april, may, june period. robert gibbs, now the white

house press secretary. everybody knows the candidate is not happy. it's gibbs designated duty to talk him through this. they fly out to iowa together. he said to senator obama, look, i know everything is not great. focus on something that you feel positive about and let everything else fall by the wayside. obama said to him, frankly, there is not i feel positive about this at this point. he did not like his own message, he resented the staff on how to run, he missed his family, he was exhausted. he said there's nothing i feel good about. sitting by the side as ron gee love who is his personal assistant, his body guy. reggie, you're probably seen him in photos. he's about 6'5", this was his first experience in politics. he looks up, he said i'm having

the time of my life, if it's any consolation. >> he leans in and says reggie, there's no consolation. well, it went that way for months. there was a meeting in the summer of 2007 at the home of valerie and obama said look, he said, we're at the point where, you know, if we keep going like this we're going to finish second in iowa. second is not good enough. we have to step up our game. it wasn't until the late fall of 2007, particularly, i think, the moment where the complain really turned around was jefferson/jackson dinner this iowa in early november of 2007 where obama gave another speech which lek if id an audience of 10,000 activist. david yupsen who was the most prominent wrote if barack obama wins the iowa caucus we will

look back on last night as the night he turned the complain around. we remember the moments of soring rhetoric and big crowds as you say. but there was a complain that went up and down and up and down. and even in the two weeks after the republican convention when the sarah palin pick, in fact, was working politically and the polls began to close, on the night before lehman brothers went bankruptcy, there was a meeting of the obama team and obama again said, we are not getting the job done at this point. we have all got to do what we're supposed to do much better than we're doing it. even then they recognized and he recognized that soring rhetoric alone wasn't going to get the job done. >> let's open it up to a questions and start on this side other here. >> dan, welcome to tucson. we're glad you and your wife are here. with your rich basked, can you

comment on the quality of candidates and technology over the past decades? >> yes. it's a really interesting question. every complain is different and every complain cycle builds on the cycle before. i think in this particular complain, as i said earlier, there was a cast of characters that was as strong as any with had seen. even what became known as the lesser candidates were substantial and credible characters. joe biden, the vice president, bill richardson was a governor, had been a cabinet officer, senior member of the house before he had gone into the clinton cabinet. chris dodd, a veteran senator, no slouch by any means. and even on the republican side, some of the people who turned

out not particularly to be good candidates looked good going in. rudy giuliani, very difficult for the position on abortion and run rights and gay rights to win the republican nomination. but nonetheless, no question that he had been a mayor who had changed new york. mitt romney, a very successful governor in the state of massachusetts and also a businessman with a very sterling record in what he had done with the olympics. there was a cast of characters. not always has been the case. brown, you remember the times when the groups of candidates were known as the six pack. little known candidates who left no footprints. so that was one the things that was different. i think this complain will also be remembered for what obama's operation was able to do with new media. there was the complain, i think the first, in which the internet

truly bloomed in presidential politics. howard deane had began to exploit it, even john mccain in 2000. but the obama complain carried it to much different levels. particularly in the area of social networking and what they were able to do on that front. create their own version of facebook to keep people within a sense of community and to be able to kind of keep control of it. i think one the things that's not as well known about what they did, they not only attracted thousands and thousands of volunteers all around the country. they empowered those volunteers no other complain ever did. most the time, complains used volunteer. volunteers are told what to do by staff. in this case, they had volunteered with the responsibility to organization other volunteers. and i think that ability in a sense to recentrallize

responsibility but still hold people accountable was something nobody had ever done. >> thank you. >> sir? >> i was really like a lot of people, inspired about singing about the message of hope for mr. obama. and i was inspired when he appointed van jones and until he fired him a few months later. then i was depressed when he appointed larry summers. i'm wondering if you had any -- did you have any include during the complain of hope after one year, there would be so little hopeful signs from him? >> well, i mean, it's the next(t what has happened in the year since he was elected. we sit here and, you know, the complain, it's like star wars. it's like a long time ago in the

galaxy far, far away. what was that about? i know as haynes and i have gone around to talk about the book, the question that you ask is one of the regular questions that we get. and were there includes to this? now, i would be lying if i said that i had any sense of where we would be a year after the election. you know, i don't think anybody foresaw what happened. and it's a reminder than there's nothing linear about american politics or politics in general. you can never draw a line from any moment and project out. people happen, events happen, people do things. if you look at the complain, i always thought going through the obama complain there was an inherent contradiction on the message. on the one hand, the message of

hope and change. there was the rhetoric of somebody who had the promotion, made the promise, and, in fact, seemed to embody some of that promise. being able to take american politics to a different place. that after the very de polarization that somebody would bring the country together. there was moments in the complain that he was doing that. look back in the january, february, march period, there were republicans drawn to him, not just democrats. but that was party of the message. the other part of the message was an agenda which clearly tilted to the left. a very big and bold agenda. ending the war in iraq.

universal health care. going after climate change in a way that would probably include the cap and trade provisions. all of this pushed him farther to the left than i think a lot of people saw him as a candidate. so you had a candidate who on the one hand seemed to be appeals to bring people to the center and another candidate who's agenda was going to push the country apart. when he got in, candidated complain in poetry and govern in prose. governing is totally different animal than complaining. you have to make choices in governorring that you never have to make as a candidate. you can talk about who you are and what you believe and what you represent but you don't have to make hard choices. the choices you have to make as a president from the staffing of

your administration are going to disappoint somebody. there is no way around it. i think that one of the surprises, certainly to the obama team, but i think to a lot of people. and that is that the country re polarized. there was a moment of potential for the country to come together. and, in fact, it pulled apart very, very quickly. you know, the obama team and the democrats have their view as to what that happened. i.e., the republicans decided to simply say no to everything and obstruct. republicans that you thought to, sincere republicans say obama

never made an attempt to reach out to us. people are going to disagree on the political point. the upshot is the country became deeply polarized very quickly in his administration. >> i'm just couldn't continue on this angle a bit. i have two questions and the first one is obama had less than four years of national experience in washington when he is elected and i don't recall any major pieces of legislation under his name in those four years. whereas his predecessor, lbj and clinton, deal making and working with people that totally disagreed with them on a whole lot of things. did anybody say, any of the political soothe sayers, not you, somebody with that kind of experience base was going to run into a lot of problems in

dealing with washington from the top? and the second question, about presidential complains in general. when i was in kid, '60s, the california primary in june, jfd being shot. you felt the primary complain was the last that mattered. whereas now, i feel that when the -- after new hampshire or south carolina, it's all over. what we do here in arizona doesn't amount to beans. is there a deliberate thing by the parties to make it that way? is there something that can be done about it? >> they deal with the first question. certainly the issue of experience was at the forefront of the questions that were thrown at barack obama as a candidate throughout 2007 and 2008. now you know they tried to answer this initially by pointing at the work he had done as a state legislator.

he was working across party lines and being able to pass legislation. he had not done that on the nation stable. he had very little time to be able to show that as a senator. he was only in two years before he started to run for president. so the question of would he be able to do that was always there. certainly somebody who has come out of the legislative branch, i think that's an even bigger question to ask of them than somebody who has been the governor. it's not a surprise that we have elected more often than not governor rather than electing people in the senate. governors are executives. they learn how to deal with coalitions, they learn how to work with the legislature. although if you look at the experience of george w. bush, he had a terrific record of working with democrats in the legislature and a pretty bad record in washington of trying to work with democrats in the congress.

to some extend, those questions get pushed to the side. but also the process of running for an nomination and a general election is one in which you have to prove yourself in a lot of different ways. the question of the president gets answered in the course of a complain. a person who can get through that crucible of complaining, people have the sense that they are prepared. but there is nothing like being president of the united states. and nobody's ever fully prepared to do it. it's very hard to do. the second question having to do with the process of how we nominate our candidates. over the years, there has been a desire on the part of the parties to end the nomination battle earlier and earlier. the reason being if it's going to be a nasty fight, let's clean

it up early and reunite as quickly as we can and give us plenty of time to get ready for the general election. this complain was an election to that rule because of what happened in the fight between obama and clinton. this went through every primary. and i think it made barack obama a better candidate, it certainly allowed the complain to organize in every state. but when we get into 2012, you may run into the same problem. both parties are looking at ways to stretch it out. i think it will start later, but also to stretch it out. with the feeling that you need to give voters, you know, a second look, the opportunity. it's also healthier if candidates have to not present themselves in a couple of early states, but all around the country. but the pressures to get it done

quickly are enormous. >> we're almost running out of time. we have two more questions. maybe both of the questioners can ask their questioners briefly. in sound byte questions and we'll get the questions quick. >> i will try. i want to add what you described, do you have any idea of what the next complain is going to be like. you went a little into it. i am worried, because it seemed like the last complain was -- complain was a campaign on torrid. -- on steroid. with the way the old media handles candidates. it seem that is nobody discussed the issues anymore. >> quick question from you as well. dan will wrap both of the questions into one answer. >> thank you again for coming and for your look as well. it was one of the enlightening ones out of the books on the

campaign. my question is scandal and race. it seems as if there were two or three main scandals in the 2008. bill clinton in south carolina which was fun for me, whether it was sarah palin talking to katie couric or all reporters generally. >> sorry. you were all thinking it. [laughter] >> and the last big one on reverend jeremiah wright and the speech obama had to give. did any of these moments change the numbers and the thinking of the campaigns that they dealt with? in particular the reverend wright one. david plouffe seems to -- it seems to have been a lot of time not on what wright was saying is there scaring people, voters that we need to come with us. we need to find a way to deal

with it. once we've dealt with it publicly, it's all sort of over. at that point in the book, it seems as if they have already won the election. i was kind of wondering if any of those scandals had any campaign of numbers? thanks. >> to the your question about the state of campaigns, nothing is going to change in the near term. our politics are what we all see. in a sense, i could throw it back on everybody here who's watching and say, part of that depends on all of us. i mean, in a sense, we get the kind of campaigns we ask for. that's not always literally true. but we're a polarized country, we are a media environment that everything slips in. often the worse or at least important becomes, you know, as

the saying goes, catnip for cable. [laughter] >> and, you know, we all obsess on it. doesn't matter we in the media or you who are consumers of it. not everybody, but a loft people. it is the nature of the beast right now. and it is not necessarily a very pretty one. but it's going to take -- it's going to take a lot to move us away from that kind of politics. and i think that given how polarizing the first 15 or 14 months of the obama administration have been, we're hitting into the 2010 cycle that's going to be very tough. as long as political control of house and senate are up for grabs, which they seem to be in every election now, politics will take precedent often over the ability to come together and cooperate and work together. that's kind of a gloomy answer. i'm sorry. it is what it is right now. it's going to take a lot of effort on the part of the people

and institutions and individuals for that to change. on the issue that you raise about the scandals0-' campaign or the difficult moments, let me just talking specifically and the jeremiah wright thing. you make a very good point. in the middle of a complain, what a campaign, what a candidate worried ab how is this hurting me, if it is, how do we get out of it? you know, larger more important questions about it. they can answer that later. but the first goal is this is killing us. we have to stop it right away. barack obama had the feeling when it happened that he had to deal with it himself. this was not something that david plouffe or david axelrod could deal with. the first day it broke, he said, i want to go on tv tonight. they said to him, that's not a good idea. and he said, yes, it is. he said the world sees jeremiah

wright today, they should see, they need to see me as well. beginning to answer it. he then said i want to give a speech about race. that speech was a very, very good speech. but it was a speech designed to deal with a political problem. now he was able to elevate out of the particulars of his relationship with reverend wright into the broader question of race in america. and as a result, that speech got a lot of praise and i think helped pull the -- pull him out of a tail spin. he told us after the election, had i not handled the jeremiah wright moment well, it could have killed my campaign. and it certainly could have even if he had won the nomination, it could have fatal in the general election. he had to do what he did. but barack obama never wanted to

be a racial or racially-based candidate. so much of his appeal was he was a postracial politicians. and so they had talked about talking about race, but there was never a time that he wanted to wade into the subject. he was drawn into it because of jeremiah wright. it was not something he wanted to dwell on or continue to make a part of the campaign. that was one. let me say at the end, this festival is terrific. i can't thank all of you enough, and the organizizing of this. this is a great weekend for books and book reading. i feel honored and privileged to be a part of it. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you to all of the organizizing. dan will be signing in the media area 10b.

please come by. thank you again for all of you coming out here today. [applause] [and you -- inaudible conversations] >> good evening. welcome to the world affairs council of northern california. i'd like to acknowledge books inc. which is cosponsoring. for those who maybe new, the world affairs council of northern california provides a forum where policymakers, heads of state, fill an fill fill an

therapies discuss. please adult our web site, it's your world.org for more information. when you cannot attend a program, you can stay inform by accessing the podcast and streaming audio and seed owe online. if you would like to listen again to the evening's remarks, i encourage you to make use of the collection. it can be here on the weekly radio show it's your world which airs on national public radio kqad, 88.5 p.m.. -- fm. i would like to thank our audio engineer, paul. the program is also being recorded for c-span's book tv and comcast channel 24. before we begin, please take a

moment to turn off your cell phone and any other noise-making devices. while you do that i'll take the opportunity to announce two programs. on monday 16th, the council welcomed middle east and former ambassador john limber to discuss how the united states should engage iran. then on monday december 7th, we're pleased to host middle bury college professor alison stanger. both of these events will be held here at the council auditorium at 6 p.m. finally, i would encourage you to make use of the blue questions cards on your seats. please hand them to council staff members and audience questions will be asked during the second half of our program. it is new my honor to introduce our distinguished guest. mark danker is -- danner is a

writer who has written international conflict, he has covered central america, haiti, the balkins, and iraq writing about american foreign policy during the late cold war and after. and about violations of human rights during that time. mr. danner is professor, and politics and the humanities in new york. a long-time staff writers at the new yorker, he's a frequent contribute to the new york review of books and has appeared widely on television and radio, most recently in an interview. among his honors are a international magazine award, three overseas press awards, an

emmy, and the mcarthur fellow award. his new book titled "stripping bear the body: politics, violence, war" is a moral history of the america's engagement with the world over the last generation. please join me in welcoming mark danner. [applause] >> thank you very much. thank you nancy for that warm introduction. it's good to be back in san francisco, my sometime home and back at the world affairs council. as nancy mentioned, i just published a book called "stripping bear of the body: politics, violence, war" this is a book of stories of violence from haiti and the violent after math of the fall of jean-claude

leading to the election in 1987. the balkin wars, the story of the genocide in the balkins, and the u.s. difficulty in trying to decide what to do to stop it. and finally, the war on terror, which includes, of course, the war in iraq, and the war or the state of exemption, i should say, that we are all still living under. by state of exemption, i mean a kind of soft martial law that was imposed after september 11, 2007 by the bush administration. that was not unlike other states of exemption in american history. beginning in 1798 with the expected war of france, a number of harsh lawed were passed then. 1960, the civil war when abraham

lincoln suspended habeas corpus and took other measures to deal with the rebellion. woodrow wilson took a number of measures to suppress speech and during world war two when 110 thousands japanese americans were imprisoned in california and arizona. part of my thesis is we are living under the kind of martial law, though it's never been declared, there's a number of different phrases we can use when discussing this. but each of these states of exemption in the american history have their own characteristics. some of them have to do with habeas corpus, other with expressions of speech. this particular