what you like it. the defense their text, welfare reform, nafta. these are all things that brought people from both sides of the aisle. jack kemp big power empower america, jack kemp and bill bennett our far right. for their support of nafta. we thought that's going to cause us trouble with our ranks. but one of the reasons he was successful was that he did take approach down the middle. one of the reasons that he took the approach down the middle was the elephant stampede in 1994. i don't know if that happens to barack obama in 2010. we will see, but obviously some people predict that is what will happen. now if you get 35 seats for the republicans in 2010, will policy be more down the middle, more bipartisan? i don't know.

>> host: but when it breaks effort plan, to some extent, is with the monica lewinsky and the impeachment thing. which i think historians will have some real trouble wrestling trying to figure out was that a great moral issue that the republicans took on tuesday, or was that some amazing piece of insanity were we all became polarized over something that was, should not have been our focus? >> guest: you probably know him my view. i wrote a book of on this. i that is very serious, very serious a morally and ethically, and legally. because there was testimony, there were depositions. i remind people my brother represented bill clinton in the paula jones business. and so we have some interesting family discussions and debates about discussions about this. but it was very serious. we were before a grand jury and you take it out, you take an oath for the american people. when you step out and say it i

did not have -- >> host: but it is for didn't generate into bipartisanship, not just serious moral? >> guest: you can't take politics out of politics. and it did. but in the book i wrote i try to remain high-minded about it. and right at the level of principle. i remember going out to the seatback meeting, the conservative political, just days after the story broke. and there was revelry in the air. we got clinton. he's going to have to resign. and as go the other to i said we take no pleasure in his. we take no pleasure. and presenting on the ropes like this. know, it's not are partisan, not her team but it is our president and this is our country. stopping join this. our country is suffering. i thought then as to a lot of people a number of people in the white house thought that he would resign and should resign. he didn't.

and that dragged thing on. were then people partisan? sure. particularly something like that, that kind of incident we're going to drive some people to the lowest be nominated. i was and leslie on tv debating this thing on larry king and other shows. and it was not a happy time. things were lost. and i think it is instructive in this that we talk about, then you had poseable. and some people, because of that he needed back into kosovo by saying it is wagging the dog pic is doing this as a diversion. it's always been my view that when the president asked foreign policy against american troops you are with intel the evidence comes in. is overwhelming. the decisions stop. so some people have to be pulled back from the brink on the. but sure, politics, you can take

politics out of politics. >> host: theirs is the center of administration because it is so this transition between the two bushes and everything else. is a period of peace, prosperity, huge economic growth. it is a period, as you say, a welfare reform and centrist policies, yet it is also the spirit of the scandal and great partisan outrage. how any and do you think historians are going to assess the clinton administration? a great presidency, we are presently? >> guest: i don't think a great presidency. may be a mid-level presidency. i think one could cite ill be regarded as you said as a presidency where people work together, on a number of things. i think also, and i say this in

the book, this is one of the very big ex-president sees in american history. whether this guy some psychologists, he issued what a good guy he is a very good done work whether it has been in overseas the east or far east, 80 now and he's really working to we can see he is really working. and so wasn't hamilton for that ex-president would be a pain and a nuisance? >> host: hamilton wanted to say president for life. >> guest: that's another problem. but i think the judgment probably if you think the moral divide people say it was lost in a missed opportunity. i am friends with a number of people that were in the clinton ministration. they think they just hadn't had that come if that hadn't happened we might have been able to copy some great things. to lost opportuniopportunities. >> host: during an opportunity you engage partly in the notion of social morality, rock lyrics.

i was at "time" magazine we did a couple of stories about our movies, music and others degrading our social fabric. tell us about the. >> guest: that was interesting. you were there. your tenure. we went after time life, time life in corporate, one of her. >> host: time warner. >> guest: highmore, sort. this was an odd coalition of myself, joe lieberman, morris tucker, the national congress black movement, we called herself kind of mod squad. and we reached a point where we just had the stuff is crazy. some of the lives of music, cop killers, other stuff. i'm a fan of rock 'n roll. i was in a band, you know, and we said i want to, i need you, i love you. it i'm going to slice you up and cut you and your going to be. that's crazy. we were not for federal regulation or legislation but

for self-regulation. so we went to time warner. the amazing thing about america is its self-correcting capacities. and the capacity for self renewal. i'm also convinced after the two jobs, walter, of secretary of education and drug czar, they they key is to make the institutions that are supposed to be the positive ones, positive. better families, better churches, better school. i were to be back 90% of pathology of the american life. that whole thing is interesting. it became very bipartisan. that was a good thing. a bunch of people joined us. and we had some success, but it was a very interesting point. you know, i told the audience on the real show, you know, i have a lot of people in despair about six months ago. the country's going to and people are sending stuff with

hammers and sickles. this is -- just wait. and it is already shifting, it is correcting. it is coming back the other way. and if you don't like the way things are going in america, stick around. >> host: einstein wrote about that at one point. that's the thing that amazed him most about america because he would get all worked up, whether would be before the war, world war ii, or whether would be against nazis or mccarthyism. and buggy rides again of his life, there's some strange gyroscope in this country because some our not just when it is about to go off a cliff it magically righted itself. ethic and yet it can boost the greatest works and at the same time i found astounding reading a book they can slice, take slices of your brain and go run the country.

it looks very much like other brains. >> host: i don't think it was the brain cells that did it. in writing this book, it was different from the first two volumes, or your tocci about american history. because when we talk about dolores tucker and joe lieberman and you doing the cultural things that you are in your book. how to do with the fact of being a playwright, if i may say so, a small player but a player in event. >> guest: i didn't want to be waldo, you know, where small to? but i felt i had to discos. talking about drug policy. i was the first drug czar. i asked the president to go to columbia, and she went. i tell some stories about those trips. i get nervous as the writer that i would be fair and objective. so i passed out traps of this to a lot of people, and love different perspectives to see whether i was being fair. but i thought maybe they would be some advance of this and that i could get some sense of what

was going on in that meeting at that time, what the reaction was. so i tried to do it carefully. unless there's some part in which some part of the drama which i put more than a small part but i am a bit player. >> host: your drop your jogging, that was to make. >> guest: certainly wasn't self-serving. >> host: no, no, no. it's well done any. as a talk radio host, you have watched a change from the days of walter cronkite giving much more fragmented and more ideological. is this generally a good thing or a bad thing? >> guest: it is generally a good thing. there are some nuts out there and there are people who just started people. and i can't stand it. i'm not a screamer. we don't you people. we talk a lot issues. have been on my shelf.

one of the reasons i'm trying to do that is to show some that there is the word thoughtful conservative is not an oxymoron. but yeah, you have to expect them, l. spectrum, a whole panel of opinion and style and approach. information and journalistic authority is now radically decentralized. and it makes it harder. makes it hard to sort out the truth. you have all these different things going on. we'll deal with a rumor or an urban legend every day. hey, did you hear so-and-so. they did this. this was during the campaign. usually not true. and you had to track it down. and so you have to do more homework now that i have a show at six in the morning. i get up at three and go online, read papers and stuff. we don't talk about unless we think we can confirm it.

but what confirmation becomes is very complicated as we tell the story in the book about dan rather and cbs, the bush national guard service. this is very much the world in which we live, and now the internet can take scalps. and stories that may not have made the news go all over the internet. and change it personal by. >> host: you mentioned the story in the book where it's pretty much not the mainstream you but the blogosphere that takes on his statements about raise in the south and et cetera. yet it also even starts before that with the drug report breaking that clinton scandal, when newsweek didn't. and to the obama city bombing, if i'm ever correctly, bill

clinton part of the problem is that we are stoking up paranoia these days. that there are people i think you name it right winged radio talk show host, has stoked people up so much that it is helping pilots. and you say he is overreaching. that's overstating things. and yet to some, henry kissinger would call it the own is known of the truth -- there is stoking up. and there are paranoid people. and i don't go for it. i scored a. i usually call it. there is a pretty famous talk show host who is also a tv host, who has spoken at cpac reason the. and i said i just thought it was a bad set of remarks. i tried to be an honest broker here. but i want to distinguish between people who may increase the temperature and people who commit acts of violence, and they're not the same people. so responsibly is

responsibility. but this happens on both sides. we need to remember that. there is a lot of stoking up on the left as well as the right. i don't think it helps much. it is a free country and it will go on. it makes the business of filtering from getting at the truth harder. but again i think overall, the decentralization of his journalistic authority is a good thing. and i think it makes, it is made for a much more even playing field. >> host: even mean the fact that you think that the media in the '60s, '70s and even 80s was generally left-leaning, and they don't think that is a problem? >> guest: not as much a problem. i know a lot of conservatives think it's silly. first of all you have on which is enormously interesting and consequential, and popular, widely popular cable channel. and you have national do any of all these online sites. so people have their outlet.

hatemongering is something that is pretty old in the american tradition. it can sway some. it rarely sways a great mass of american people. which is a great thing. one of the task force again, it's interesting the center of the book is clinton, i guess can't logically it is, but to me the center of the book, this was just, this event was so unbelievable. and that was not just one of the worst days in american history and a test of our resolve, a transformation of the bush presidency from what he got his going to be doing to what he ended up doing. but also a test of us and how we would react. and i think we fully passed brilliantly. as people. we have countermeasure. we have kept her calm, tolerance, love. kind of curious about some things, but as we should be.

but i think it has been a tribute to the country how we have reacted. >> host: the debate over detention policies, things like that, do you think that is healthy? >> guest: sure. i mean, i think -- i'm not proposing guantanamo. i think it is a perfect place for folks to be. i prefer military tribunals as the venue for these cases. but by all means have the debate. there's a business going on about the al qaeda seven or the al qaeda nine lawyers who defended al qaeda defendants who are now working for the justice department. well, maybe so. but this is what elections are about. i think people should be candid about it. but it shouldn't be surprised that i think it was john yoo, though lower -- >> host: the voter. >> guest: what's the big surprise here.

if you lack one that is right is in it will have lawyers right of center elections decide these things. but again i think the most part we have steered our way very well. but one interesting thing i think that has happened of your view on this, because you talked a lot is that in 20 years i think one institution has really continue to impress the american people and continue to win the respect. it has held in very high regard public a in polls. and we call on it it gets its job done. even people who may not like the military will say they do and it's not like the late '60s or early '70s, they say they support troops but maybe not the mission. but i think the extraordinary things we saw in the gulf war, petraeus's, the surge, what are

folks were able to do in afghanistan. and i noted the other day it's very hard to get into these officer training programs for young men at yale and harvard and princeton. because they are always subscribe. >> host: i think you're right which is the '60s and 70s had a strange period in which the military was a polarizing. and attacking the military was done. and then later we got into a problem which was what i would call to patriotism place where people would question each other's patriotism on both sides. we talked about how bad things are going more and more partisan, more and more ideological. this to me is a good swing which is we have gotten away from that. there's not quite as much questioning of the military, or patriotism, or whether joe biden is less patriotic than dick cheney even though they disagree fundamentally. >> guest: i am with you on the.

this notion, and i parted from some of my colleagues on the right on this, that people said you shouldn't ask questions about the iraq war and why we are there. if you are in the u.s. senate you are not there to talk about the wisdom of going to war or not. what the heck are you therefore? it's about to go back to the fatah to give your not to ask questions about those, what are you reduced to? absolutely. and if the white house can't defend itself on white it is in iraq will anywhere else, then it will take its lumps. absolutely. broad latitude for people to raise these kinds of questions without any issue of patriotism being raised. >> host: let's get to the subject of education because you mentioned that you and arne duncan spoken together in a few times, and both you were education secretary for reagan. and there's been a major reform movement going on in america that involves common standard so

that we all know how well our kids are doing, that involves a little more choice and charter schools and holding teachers accountable. and this seems to be the one area we have done this in new orleans a lot, where we transcend partisanship. >> guest: this is passing. talk about katrina. arne duncan was attacked a couple of weeks ago. i defended what he said. i don't want to repeat trouble for and. he said made one silver lining in the cloud, katrina, it gave us a chance to redo its education system. >> host: i'm from the orange, and let me say that michael used to have a definition gap in washington is when you actually tell the truth that let me say that arne duncan is 100% right. we been able in new orleans to rebuild the school system that is so much better than the one we had before the storm. and it is because we have got the chance to say let's see how you would do it now with charter

schools, public schools, various new reform way of doing this i think that criticism of arne duncan was outrageous. he was totally correct. >> guest: from what i am observing and hearing, i had a guest on the show today, fred has from the american enterprise institutinstitute was in the orange and looking at what's going on. pol who's the superintendent of schools, came from chicago and philadelphia. and this guy, paul pasternack -- >> host: is the hidden saint in this. he is not as say valuable as paul but he is a state so begin an education, appointed by kathleen, a democrat but very much retained by bobby jindal the current republican and he is the one driving vote in the state of louisiana. >> guest: talk about bipartisanship. this is what can happen. what i understand is there are a ton of charge, a ton of a countably. they are not standing for schools that have been operating for a long time where they are not getting educational results.

and they're experimenting with an awful lot and always with measurement, if i'd wish and and accountability. it sounds like a dream to me. and sales at what should happen everywhere. i think this is what part of the conference plan is, you were more politically -- you said, standards, not national standard. >> host: you have a famous by which i will allow you to repeat for those of us who believe there should be standard across this nation is what kids should learn that you once said -- >> guest: i said we won't have it because conservatives will be opposed to anything with the word national with and liberals will be opposed to anything with testing it. but we are to be up to come to some agreement. the math is insane. you can read or you can't read. and the problem without having national standards our company standards, and this was a problem with no child left behind, without getting too much of that, it's when you let each state set its goals and standards,. >> host: the race to the bottom

because they each defined things down. >> guest: since the and ackman of that legislation, the expenditure of a lot of federal money, 18 states have lowered their standards. that's not what this is about. >> host: unique common testing. >> guest: you do need, testing. i think that's perfectly fine. when i was secretary of education, i beefed up the so-called national assessment education progress. and some people react hard to the people i uploaded that i uploaded as chair and co-chair, hillary clinton, wife of the governor of alabama. and lamar alexander, governor of tennessee at the time that they turn out to be too great people for that job. this is one of the best assessments we have formation whether our kids are getting mad. now this issue is i think it's sputnik again. because we now know what it costs us. if we are focus on our fiscal

house and economic recovery, we know what it costs us not to have good sound educational. it costs us a a countably. >> host: what you think a president obama's reauthorization of the element and secondary education act, no child left behind law? >> guest: there are things here that i like. spending way too much money on the one hand. i think there strength of the d. hundred b.c. scholarship program. he was working for the kids. but again, if they are talking about real evaluation, and this is what has made the normal laws constituency angry at them, teachers and unions where they are saying when you evaluate teacher performance you have to look at student performance. are their kids learning? and that puts the burden and accountability i think what should be. so i am prepared at my risk to agree with president obama. >> host: we started the show by

talking about competitiveness in china and america in the rural. education and we are ending with education. let me let you some it up in a way by saying what worries you and what encourages you about the notion of america being competitive in the 21st century the way it was in the 20th? had to educate our kids and not fall behind the way we seem to be falling behind in our k-12 education? >> guest: what encourages me and what discourages me. i'll play what discourages me. you have seen a million assessments, you have seen the panels. i sat in on a few. here's what discourages me. we test our kids in the fourth grade in math and science who i the top third. eighth grade in the middle, just our kids and 11 for at the bottom. that is really discouraging but the longer you stay in a system the dumber you get, relative to kids in of the country. that's not in this economy. i talked to kids at harvard for

graduate with good gpas, losing jobs to get some of the country. talk about the flat, the world is flat. in some ways the world is flat. in terms of competitiveness, in terms of the value, the shoe dollar value of intellectual capital has never been more important it what encourages me is there is some common ground on education. what also encourages me is we know what works, we know what makes for good teaching now. there's a lot of research in the. apart from the family, home, the teacher is the single most important person in the educational process. it doesn't matter about class size, resources, quality of that you. now that we have a good state of the art and knowledge, maybe we can do the right thing. that's the part that encourages me. keep pushing. i've been pushing 30 years. i am involved with teach for america. and we will teachers into the process and holding them a

cannibal is the most important thing we can do to make it our 21st century the way the other two centuries you write about our. >> guest: look at the counted kids and teach for america in one in. >> host: the book is "a century turns." bill bennett, thank you very much. >> guest: thank you. >> wilthis weekend john dean isr guest on the tvs in death. the former white house counsel to president nixon and author of 10 books including an updated edition of blind ambition take your phone calls, e-mails and weeds today, live at noon eastern on c-span twos book tv. here's a look at some upcoming book fairs and festivals over the next few months.