>> host: in the book you compare barry goldwater to harry truman. how so? >> guest: he's one of those guys who over the years his positions have gotten forgotten, his specifics, and he's come to be viewed by partisans on both sides as somebody who was really a straight shooter, who told it the way it was, who had the respect of a wide spectrum, and i think as history has passed, he is in that category regardless of whether you agreed or disagreed with him at the time, you look at him now as

somebody who really had the best interests of the country in mind and spoke his mind. and that has a certain charm and certain well reception or good reception with the average voters. so i think there's a nice comparison. >> host: and as you write, admired for his principles. is there somebody on the national stage today that is a barry goldwater? >> guest: i'm looking for him. i'm not sure there is. there are, there are people who speak their mind, but he was, he became a, you know, a unique figure in american politics because of his outspokenness and his -- he took a very unpopular position at the time. conservativism was very young when he started a movement and made it very sensible, it was very common sense conservativism. we don't have somebody who's starting a movement like that today, at least hasn't surfaced on my radar. >> host: when did you first meet

barry goldwater? >> guest: when i was 13 years old. his son and i were roommates in prep school. we would travel up here to washington from stanton, virginia, when we were in school, we would visit with him. it was very impressive. here was this have tall, handsome figure who you'd walk down the senate corer thes with him, and he'd create a wake with the various, you know, police people and other people giving him way. he'd take us around the senate. he drove a 1957, at that time, thunderbird that was geared up like it was the cockpit of an airplane. it had more gadgets and stuff. so for teenage boys and being a teenager, he was a man's man and a great figure and a very charismatic person for a young guy. >> host: one of the other words that comes up a lot in "pure goldwater" is honesty. explain.

>> guest: "pure goldwater," to put it in context, is just that. i'd read the senator's autobuying graphical works where he had worked with co-authors, and i don't think they ever found this material. and years later in talking to him he told me he'd taken a lot of material that he had composed over the years and put it in the arizona historical foundation. when he and i were going to do another month project, i looked at that and realized at that time, i said, you know, there's really good stuff in here, and it is pure goldwater because it's not by a speech writer, it's not by a staff person, it's the senator, and it goes from everything from a personal diary he kept starting when his son died, or, excuse me, when his son was born up until his own death. and it's not regular, but it's enough of it that you really get a sense of the man through a lot of years. it's very personal. he hammered it out on a little

portable typewriter when he was first starting it. later when electronic dictation became available, he would dictate it, and it would be transcribed, and it wasn't well filed initially, but the ark vises got it in order. when i looked at it, i said to barry jr., i said, this tells more about your dad, i think, in many ways than the autobiographies he's done. and it is, you know, we get his sense of humor, we get his position on various figures in politics. the surprise to me was the depth of the material onyx son i found in the book -- on nixon i found which i was surprised, his diary got the most attention for. so it made an interesting work to put it together given the fact it was so original. >> host: i want to get to the nixon material in just a moment. barry goldwater elected back in

1952 he ran for the presidency so gave up his senate seat in 1964, came back in '68 and served for another 18 years. he ran knowing he was going to lose to lyndon johnson. why? >> guest: a matter of principle in many regards. he had been visiting the south, giving a lot of speeches in the south, realized there was a whole body of thought down there, and a number of people whose views weren't really getting expressed through the democratic party at that time. they liked him, he liked them, and he thought it was time for the republicans to make some serious inroads into the south. the part his diary is the weakest on is the material regarding the '64 campaign. that's the smallest bit of the material. in fact, we found some letters, we decided not to use the letters because they weren't quite the same as the diary entries. just a few of those where he was a little bitter at the end.

he thought the press treatment was pretty rough in '64. if you recall, there was a lawsuit that he was provoked after '64 because they, a group of psychiatrists got together and polled -- there was, one person polled all psychiatrists, and they said he was psychologically unfit to be president. he didn't much take to that, so he decided to file a defamation suit. and i've used a little bit of the deposition in that case in the book because, again, it was, it was pure goldwater coming out. so i think he ran in '64, to answer your question, to make some points, to lay a predicate for what would later become the conservative movement and would be followed up by ronald reagan, and without goldwater in '64, he wouldn't have had ronald reagan later. >> host: you compare the style of richard nixon after he lost in 19 of 2 when he ran for

governor of california to the statement of barry goldwater, and he said, quote, i'd never seen or heard in my life such unbiased attacks on one man as had been directed toward me. i've never seen such inflammatory language, i think these people for their, frankly, shoddy behavior should hang their head in shame because i think they've made the fourth estate a sorry, sad mess. >> guest: i think the only thing that would differ from what nixon said is you don't have barry goldwater to kick around anymore. he was very upset. in fact, he famously said, you know, if i had to vote for the goldwater who was portrayed in the media in '64, i wouldn't have voted for him. he said, that wasn't with me. i didn't recognize the character that the media portrayed. so he had a very tough time this '64 with the media, and at that -- he was provoked at that

post election press conference to lay it out for what it was. >> host: he loved his typewriter, didn't he? >> guest: he loved -- it was actually a portable typewriter. he would take it out on his camping trips with him. typed pretty well, but we had found a few errors we had to correct. it actually got much fuller when he was able to dictate. >> host: there are two entries i want to ask you to elaborate on, one is from january 27, 1971, and he's writing about richard nixon. this is in his diary, not a letter to the then-president. looking back over the past months i continue to be amazed at the ineptitude president nixon has shown in the operation of government.

>> guest: he shared with his diary his thoughts, many of which he had actually shared with the president in some of their conversations. he, he stayed with nixon, as we all know, right up until the end and then some after nixon went to san clemente, and he would go out and visit him in san clemente trying to see how his temperature was. and it's very late in the game that barry goldwater finally breaks rank with richard nixon because nixon is, is really trying to cause a hard time for jerry ford when ford was going to run for president, and goldwater got disgusted. he said, you know, this man's been lying to me for a long time, and i've had it. and they just broke, and after that there was never any relationship further. >> host: in a letter that he wrote to richard nixon june 20, 1973, still very much supportive of the president. he began by saying, dear mr.

president, frankly, i think i should start over by saying dear dick as i'm writing to myself. it was a letter that he penned on his typewriter talking about the people surrounding him in the white house and also said, you need to come to congress. people in congress need to know that their president is listening to them. he also mentions watergate in this letter. can you elaborate? >> guest: yeah. that was a private letter he typed out literally at his apartment and got it to the president. he did not get a response to it, so it was not a successful effort. at that point nixon had withdrawn pretty deeply into himself, and i'm sure summon like al hague looked at that letter and said, well, that's just going to upset the president worse, we better not get that in. >> host: and it's a long letter. >> guest: it is a long letter, and it lays out a lot of thoughts. he was, you know, goldwater at that point in trying to give the president his, his seasoned advice of how to, how to

proceed. but those of us on the other side and know that part of the story realize that nixon knew by then there was very little he could do to salvage the situation. >> host: in your book, "the rehnquist choice," you write that more than any other president since fdr, he -- richard nixon -- worked hard to mold the court to his liking. how did the rehnquist decision fit into that? >> guest: of course, the rehnquist book i hadn't reread it. i decided having done a book for brian lamb on this show, the harding book, and he caught me on a fact i couldn't remember, i should actually reread my books before i visit with you. i did, and i really enjoyed the rehnquist book because it's a book that disappeared. it came out the week before 9/11, and not having osama in the title like all books at that time just disappeared. maybe one of my best books

because it's based literally on the tapes that occurred in the oval office between nixon and people talking about the staff. i'm not in there, others are not in there, i was able to put together a remarkable story because the potential is very real we're going to put another justice or two on the court. in the fall of '71, nixon has two seats to fill, and the story i tell and call it "the rehnquist choice" a little bit for literary device because rehnquist doesn't come up until the very end of the book. he is selected in the last 24 hours of the process much to rehnquist's surprise who was doing at jus sis somewhat -- justice somewhat what i was doing at the white house. he was doing vetting, the white house was getting upset with the fact they were being sent candidates like haynesworth and carlswell who were rejekylled by

the senate -- rejected by the senator. so the white house and ehrlichman, my predecessor as white house counsel, had gotten into it. the president had gotten into it. but it was still pretty much mitchell and nixon. and barry goldwater, for example, called in at one point. he can't remember rehnquist's name, but he said there's this guy you've got working for you, mr. president, who's the president's lawyer who you should think about. nixon believes -- understands what he's talking about. so he's dropped him, but it's ignored. rehnquist is selected because i happen to have worked at the department of justice too. nixon was desperate to find a true conservative to put on the court, and they were scrambling. it shows the, you know, as refined as you might think that loss is, it's a lot of catch as catch can, it's a lot of who's available, who can we get confirmed at a given time, so this book sort of walks a reader

through how that process unfolded with a record the likes of which we'll never have because no one, no president's ever going to tape again. but anyway, rehnquist was my candidate because i knew bill, i knew bill -- i knew his conservativism, i knew why he believed the way he did. i was, frankly, later shocked to the degree of his conservativism, and i thought he would actually be a little bit more moderate on the court than he turned out to be. but that's another story. but there was a right time, and i suggested to several staff and i happened to mention another guy who just happened to walk into nixon's office, and he is, he is selected, and he's got in his mind howard baker and louis powell. louis powell would, of course, be nominated, but howard baker is dithering. he can't decide whether he wants to go on the court or not. howard baker, for listeners who

might have forgotten, was the minority leader of the senate, a fairly young minority leader at that, and somebody who nixon thought would make a good justice and probably would have. but we later learned that baker he had kids he had to put through college, he was worried about the finances of a job like that which doesn't, still doesn't pay well, it's a real sacrifice for a lot of men to go on the high court. so i had suggested rehnquist to dick moore. dick moore happens to go in and get into a conversation with nixon who at this point is holding this very close to the chest. and so rehnquist, the name gets thrown in, and while he's been thinking about it, it's not until richard moore mentioned something i'd mentioned to moore, that rehnquist had clerked as a law clerk for robert jackson. roobt jackson is a great justice by any partisan's definition whether you're republican or

democrat. nixon recognized that. that seemed to close the deal. suddenly, he's not very interested in baker, and then when he learns that rehnquist, they thought, was number two in this his -- again, moore had that wrong, he was number one in his class, and nixon had been beat up a little bit for some of the people he'd suggested along the way. so that's, that was a fascinating story to put together how rehnquist did get the nomination. the problem with the book and the last end of the book is rehnquist was never vetted for the job, and that created its own set of problems. >> host: and yet in one reference you or somebody else describes rehnquist as a clown based on his -- >> guest: that's nixon. that's a much earlier situation. after the pentagon phares were -- papers were released it brought to nixon's mind again the fact there's so much overclassification of documents in government. he wanted to create a pretty

high-level group that would address and tackle the problem declassifying papers. so what he did was he selected a small panel, put bill rehnquist in charge of that. he'd never met bill rehnquist, and we were having a conference in the outer office of his executive office building in their conference room. he comes in because he wants to charge the group up and tell him what he's got in mind, why he wants these papers declassified, and rehnquist does a little talk and so forth. on the way out, the president signals me to follow him, and he says to me -- [laughter] he said, john, who's the clown who's leading the meeting? and i said, well, i don't know what you mean. he said, well, he knows i'm a little baffled -- he's got these long -- at that point he had very long sideburns and he was wearing hush puppies. we hadn't seen a lot of hush

puppies in the corridors of the white house, and so, and bill wore some of the worst neckties i've ever seen. obviously, it helped him wearing robes a lot when he was a judge because they just seemed to be clashing choices. and so they, nixon reacted to that. and he also said, is he jewish? and i said, no, mr. president, i think he's scandinavian. and he shook his head, and he just kind of walked off into his office. he couldn't remember his name after that. he comes up later and he calls him wrenchq, uist or something like that, and one of his roommates at stanford corrected him. so he didn't know well the man he appointed, and probably i think when he left the presidency thought that might have been the greatest, one of his greatest decisions. >> host: in the book "conservatives without a conscious," is conservativism a movement, or is it an ideology? >> guest: it's both. it is least an ideology.

one of the things i tried to do in that book was to get a good definition, a good working definition of conservativism. and i talked to i can't tell you how many conservatives, i looked at the work of conservative intellectuals, and if the there's anything they seem to agree upon particularly the more intellectuals is that you can't define adequately conservativism. and so they don't try to do so. bill buckley has thrown out some rather obtuse definitions, other scholars have raised the problem of the liftty of defining it -- difficulty of defining it. parr ri goldwater, actually, is somebody who ranked out three columns a week for four years for the l.a. times, came up with a good certainly for a politician working definition that he thought was where it's drawing on the values of the past, the best of them, and applying them to the present. but he never really did come up

with a totally satisfactory definition. but it became a movement. there's no question. those aren't incompatible that you don't have a definition, but you develop a movement. because i think as much as anything it's an attitude. in the book, for example, i try to give a broad spread for people, particularly those who don't know anything about conservativism, and most conservatives i talk to, you know, agree with this, the difficulty in defining it. but there are -- i think it more of an attitude in many regards and an approach than a ideology. so i don't think it has the typical traits of an ideology. but the movement, obviously, is something that has gained steam since the '50s and is still evolving as we see it in its latest iteration and the tea party movement. >> host: our conversation three hours in depth here on c-span2's booktv which john dean who served as counsel to president

nixon. he's written ten books and will be with us to take your phone calls. for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones, 202-737-0002. our e-mail address is booktv@cspan.org. join the conversation online at twitter.com. let's talk about watergate. well, let's actually go back to the moment that you were asked to serve as counselor to the president. was it a job that you wanted? >> guest: i was totally surprised. bud croag who worked for john ehrlichman asked me to come over to the white house, and we ended up walking around by the ellipse, and he said, you know, ehrlichman has moved out of the counsel's chair, and there's a big discussion internally in the white house about who's going to become the counsel, and i've been asked to ask if you were interested in the job. i said, well, it's obviously a great job, bud, but i had a lot of friends -- including you -- at the white house, and you

guys, you know, you work around the clock, and you see very little satisfaction. i'm over at justice, i enjoy my job. i happened at that point to know about where i stood in the department of justice. they have something called -- we saw it in 9/11, actually, when there's a threat to the government, there's emergency government procedures, and you can all get whisked off into great caves if you're at the top of the department of justice. when i looked at the memo describing where i was in the ranking, i realized that if 12 persons in the office didn't make it, i would become attorney general, so i was ranked 13th at a fairly young age. but i -- and john mitchell had told me, you know, you're going to get, there are going to be higher options for you here at the justice department. when i mentioned the feeler to

both mitchell and klein, they both discouraged me from going for the white house for that very reason. they said, we'd like to keep you here at the department. we like your work, and we think you'll find yourself going up the ladder. >> host: what was the relationship like between john mitchell and richard nixon over the years? >> guest: at that point it was very close. mitchell had been, had been nixon's law partner in new york. they had been in two firms that had merged. they met, nixon liked mitchell, that's why he had become the campaign manager in the '68 race. he found that mitchell knew people, politicians, state, local all over the country as a result of going wall street bonds for state and municipal governments. he was a wonderful contact for that reason. he budget a particularly political animal in that sense like for a presidential race, but nixon always virtually ran his own campaigns.

so when he became attorney general, excuse me, when he became president, nixon had to convince mitchell to become attorney general. it wasn't a job he sought. i think he wanted to stay on wall street. he was making a very handsome living. i don't think john was sure how martha might adjust to, his wife would fare in -- she actually became a great personality, and she loved it. but it also would destroy their marriage. so it was a, it was a close relationship. when i -- i remember dick klein i was the associate deputy attorney general, and he said, you know, there's nobody that's going to have more influence with this president than john mitchell, and that was true. he was on a lot of the key committees at the white house, he was somebody who would go over and try to give the president straight advice. the closest i ever got to hearing how they interacted was when i listened to the tapes on

the selection of the two empty chairs on the supreme court. and by that time mitchell's relationship with nixon has become strained. one of the ways -- and i do this particularly when i did the new edition to "blind ambition," my first book, i added an addendum. i added a section because you can't understand watergate without understanding the personalities. anyone who thinks personalities don't get in the way, and there became a real conflict between john mitchell and john ehrlichman. ehrlichman, another lawyer, was trying to set domestic advice. the only department he had no influence over was justice because of mitchell's real impact with the president. and this bothered ehrlichman. didn't bother mitchell because he had control of it. but with time and after mistakes

were made, let's, again, stay with haynesworth and carswell. they were disastrous nominees for the court. i mean, haynesworth should have made it. carswell would have never been a very good justice in the best day. so, and then more bad recommendations came over. so this gave ehrlichman tremendous leverage as we'll get into in watergate. there were even more serious problems where the sort of the hard feeling between these two men that i gather -- and i wasn't in the campaign in '68 -- went back that far where they really were at odds on a number of issues, came to play and influenced the president's -- and i think hurt the presidency for the worst. >> host: we're talking with john dean, his latest book, "blind ambition," with the rest of the story that came out in 2009. jay is joining us from fort lauderdale, florida.

welcome to the program, jay. >> caller: thank you. mr. dean, i saw you down here a couple years ago when you were doing your last book signing, and i wondered if you're coming back again. but my primary question was -- oh, incidentally, i've gone to stanton military academy with you. >> guest: aha. >> caller: and my question was, you were, obviously, aware of the watergate break-in before it happened. did you forewarn the president that it would come to nobody's interest except possibly the democratic party's? >> guest: well, let me tell you about that. what had happened was that i was asked because jeb ma griewder, the head of the re-election committee, was not terribly familiar with mitchell asked me to come over and hear what gordon liddy's plans for political intelligence might be. two of the most amazing meetings i've ever attended in government. liddy was over there to make a

pitch. he had easels set up in the attorney general's office. the attorney general mitchell planning to come over to run the campaign. and i listened to this pitch, for example, he had it all in code names. he said, you know, mr. president, i have plans, for example, to deal with the anti-war demonstrators which was one of our real problems. he'd been told, you know, for example, my office got anti-war demonstration information because it was government classified information, we couldn't give it to the campaign, so they had to have their own capabilities. so i was curious to see what liddy had set up. and i listened to liddy, and he said, well, general mitchell, what we can do is we will kidnap the anti-war demonstrators, and we will drug them and take them below the mexican border. years later i was talking to one of the lawyers who represented the anti-war leaders, and he said to me, john, what liddy

didn't realize was a lot of these guys would have liked to have been drugged and taken below the mexican border. but he had other plans. for example, he was going to hire a chase plane that would intercept ground-to-air communications between the opponents' campaign plane. he was going to -- to me, the only part i sort of interjected myself was he told mitchell, you know, we also have a plan on how to get intelligence from the democrats on their miami convention. what we're going to do is we have leased a houseboat that has a two-way mirror, and we will make films of what's happening inside. and what we're going to do to get people inside is we have hired some prostitutes, and we're going to get them to go out and infiltrate the democrats at their watering spots down here at the miami convention in '7 72, lure them into the houseboat, and then we'll get them in some compromising and informative information. at that point i'm