nixon in "the rehnquist choice. "i really enjoyed rereading that because i saw nixon being strong, decisive, i saw him being comedic when he didn't know he was being funny, when he knew he was being funny, i saw him making good decisions, i saw him making bad decisions, it's just a microcosm of his presidency. but there are lots of issues that need to be tucked away, and there's some outstanding, large issues that aren't mysteries, but just large issues that need to be put to rest, and i'm in a unique position to do it, and my publisher knows that. so then i can put, hopefully, watergate on the shelf because i've, this has been my planned avocation for my retirement, i'm having a lot of fun with it. ..

and a tossup as to who i would put on the top of the list when i would most enjoyed reading about. >> host: john dean, thank you for spending three hours kuran book tv "in depth." >> guest: thank you for the delightful questions. >> host: this program will be aired at midnight for the viewers on the west coast and

rebroadcast on c-span2 next saturday morni a 9 a.m.. thanks for being with us and your phone calls and e-mails and twitter comments. enjoy the rest of your day. he will have another chance to see "in depth" with author and former white house counsel john dean in its entirety next saturday at 9 a.m. eastern here on booktv.

in his book, "wingnuts" how low lamented fringes hijacking america, the least senior political columnist john avlon argues they're feeding a climate of piper partisanship. this event is at the strand in new york city. >> thanks so much for a team here tonight. we appreciate it. we have a great discussion lined up. i read the book a couple of times in preparation for this, and even though i do -- we should point out wingnuts of the week so it could be called wingnuts of the west. >> there's room for growth. >> even the wife known john a long time and we talk every week about the various wingnuts in this country, the book is just a terrific read because it explains the emergence of the wingnuts, gives the historical perspective and tells where we are going as a country with the lunatic fringe on the left and right begins to hijack the

political process, and insists interest in the impact they make even though they represent a small percentage of the populations they have a very big megaphone. one thing i like to do, too, to keep the discussion flowing between us and between you his rhetoric and talk for a lot of time and then through the floor open to questions, we will talk for a little bit and then through the floor to a couple of this questions to keep things moving. if we can have the microphone ready and available for that, we will give you a heads up and will get as many people involved as we possibly can. john, welcome. >> appreciate it. >> the book is called "wingnuts" how the lunatic fringes hijacking america. the second book west independent nation. we should probably start out wingnut, a term that's been used from time to time the use or declined the political realm. to you what is a wingnut? >> what is a wingnut? i define wingnut as someone on the far right-wing or left-wing

of the political spectrum. provincial partisans, professional polarizers, unhinge activists, paranoid conspiracy theories, the people trying to decide rather than unite and one side of jay wingnut is they are always confusing partisanship with patriotism. they think by being a good part is and it makes them good patriot and they tend to lose the sense of perspective and forget the big picture, and right now the wingnuts have been hijacking politics and the dividing the country. >> you see in the book the far left and far-right are equally insane. you say there's no one who has a particular grasp on this on either side of the political fence. and at the same time both sides are eating their own, people who disagree. >> that's right. i do believe the far right and far left can be equally insane because neither party has a monopoly on virtue or vice and both parties have increasingly been catering to their outer limits. one of the things that's happened is the power of politics has moved from the

center to the extremes, the fringes. and that's created a destructive dynamics. one of the things that happens when parties get more polarized is we start to see this ideological absolutism, this hunt for heretics as i call it. in the republican party it's called rhino hunting, it's a republican name only and in the democratic party you've got still an amateur sport but it's growing in popularity, dino hunting and basically what this ase is a party purge. this is about the ideological purity and it's about driving anyone out of the party doesn't agree 100% of the time. it's the attempt to drive out folks both fiscally conservative and socially conservative but it creates a very destructive dynamic. the stamps on dissent and reverses a lot of things we hope to see in politics. we supposedly identify and elevate courage but with the wingnuts and extremes believe is

if you were a good party man and vote with your party 100% of the time that means your courageous. of course that's not courage, that's conformity that everything gets upside down in the topsy-turvy world of wingnuts. >> we were talking about this prior to us coming this idea of a group think is how you bring people into this. >> that's exactly right and it's a big problem. it is group polarization is one of the primary fights of the time. you can analyze not just american politics but current world politics as if struggle in the broad sense and one of the things you see is the way extremist groups recruit is the same, the same dynamic whether you are talking about a cold, terrorist cell or extreme political wing because what they do is bring like-minded people together. they try to pare people off from the rest of society and get them in a group of like-minded individuals and they try to incite and radicalize them by pushing out anyone who dares to

disagree. >> that is a serious comparison to see some of the right and left-wing political groups mirror the same dynamic as a terrorist group. >> i want to be clear there is no at all between the wingnuts and american politics and terrorism. many people in this city experience terrorism personally and take it personally. but the dynamic, the dynamic we are indulging his some of the same tricks and attempt to try to radicalize people and separate them from society and incite them to ever increasing feats of extremism and to separate them from the rest of society by saying they have special knowledge and it's the rest of society that's corrupt. that is the dynamic that is as old as the hills and it's usually destructive. we know the story doesn't end well and that is why it is worth come from to extremes. we need to confront extremes on both sides to stop the cycle

before results. >> on that point buried deep in the book you cite to the belief leaders of the extremist groups like to dumb down the rhetoric to the point where everybody else believes they are as smart. >> an old sign of the demagogue. the secret of the demagogue it's an old quote with the secret of the demagogue is to believe they are as clever as he while simultaneously lowering the bar. partly it is economic downturns are always boom time for demagogues and that is partly what we see a rising stream of politics whenever there's an economic downturn because people are looking for something to blame, and now look for their anger and anxiety and with a demagogue does is says i've got a great person to blame. it's the other. whenever someone comes preaching simple solutions to complex problems blaming the other, watch out. >> you see it is a perfect political storm for politicians. >> it is and we've seen these

folks before. that's important and in the 1930's during the great depression we have far father charles koppelman on the right and left and waves in the antecedents of today's wingnuts with varying degrees. in the early 1960's and 70's people forget a lot of the far right activist groups, one that we traced down in research for this book more than 1,000 cases. from the far left in one period of history and then of course we know recently that came out of the militia movement. >> do you think wingnuts are more dangerous today than decades back? >> i do because the increased prominence and credibility. there are three reasons why today's wingnuts are more dangerous than folks we've seen before. first of all, wingnuts are sometimes dismissed as the eccentric kallur on the fringes of the political landscape, sort of harmless and in some cases they are but three things have made them more dangerous than before, more powerful than ever

before. the polarization of the parties, the parties are more polarized. it's not just your imagination, folks. washington if you looked of voting patterns in congress was clustered in the center. now it is in the extremes. what that does is increase the influence of folks on the extremes. we've had redistricting which is moving power from the center to the margins. folks tried to get elected and supposedly safe seats where there is the general election in a closed partisan primary with 10% turnout which is unrealistic, 5% makes majority. the second thing is the partisanship. we are devolving back to the era where the newspaper ceased to be on the political parties except now it's radio stations, television stations as well as newspapers and finally the new thing on the sun is the internet. the internet has in some cases become the incubator for extremism. it's become the method by which people recruit and radicalize where people talk to each other all day long and incite each other to greater extremes and it's enabled something we are

self segregated into separate political realities and that can be very dangerous. >> talk more about the media and the internet and a few minutes ahead but let's try to identify and you and the two syndromes you talk about in the book. bush v. gore arrangements in durham obviously which was first formed during the bush and administration and obama the arrangements of this debate cousin durham. what are they and what gave rise to them and how are they manifested in today's political climate? >> it is a contagion virus. bush the arrangement centum and obama the frenchman syndrome i define as pathological hatred of the president posing as patriotism and it's important to understand the inner played between the extremes because neither side is immune and in the bush years we saw people, some protesters not a lot but definitely there and some very prominent ones comparing president bush to hitler.

and this wasn't placards and protests. one of the things lady to yell in the book there's a surprising line of nobel prize winners comparing bush to hitler and the bush administration to fascists. they didn't get a lot of condemnation. politics follows the line of action. one of the things severin interviews someone at a protest killing obama is hitler saw and invariably they say they started it. they called our by first and i didn't see anyone come planning so we are getting back. so the extremes do inside each of the but what we have seen with obama is something even more prevalent. it's metastasizing much quicker and the obama resistance was announced on literally day one on detail in my book. the web sites cannot calling for the obama resistance. we saw major uptick in death threats against the president right after election day through his first quarter it was a high level previously. and of course as we follow the

protests last year it was important to say the key party protests i do not consider wingnuts. you've got a political conservative bailouts and pressing deficits but then you've got the folks who suffer from serious cases of obama de range mant syndrome but over the course of the summer particularly as conservative activists ironically started brushing off the role of radicalism increasing street theater confrontation politics. obama de range and centcom became trouble and it degrades the discourse. >> so there was, and i'm not going to say it was across the political spectrum but they're seemed to be a moment of the e election the country became unified around the side of something different when president obama was elected. what happened? >> we were younger ones. >> is amazing to look back at the 2008 election and let's look at it dispassionately for a second of the numbers. it's important to remember president obama won only 90% of

locals but even 20% of conservatives, hard to believe. he won independence by an eight-point margin, 53% of the vote doesn't sound like much but was more than any candidate and more than any democrat except lbj and fdr so a pretty decisive message at least in the context of the recent politics and it was a clear rejection of president bush's politics. both mccain and obama won the nomination by campaigning against the polarizing party and then american people is sending what is the message people got hijacked very quickly by the extremes in both parties who are interested personally and professionally in politics. they wanted to procure made it. >> to suggest in the book that there may be some racial tone to all of it. the presence of the first african-american president is driving another anxiety the change from the traditionally white to minority led federal

the front. how much do you think race plays into this? >> i do not think the vast majority of the opposition of president obama is about simple races as president obama joked he was black before the election. he won his first victory in iowa, a state that's 96% white. we are a long way as a country from the simple stupid brutal racism. that said, i don't think you can seriously analyze american public's without taking reason to account. slavery is the a ritual. we've always wrestled with it. it's been a fault line in the politics forever. and as i interviewed folks in the field at protests, tried to figure out what it was and you started hearing a lot of numbers like dates accommodate 2042, 2015 came up. those are the dates the census estimates america will have been on a white majority, and i think rather than looking at simple racism which is a reflexive

strike by some before left which reduces credibility at times i think it is worth looking at it more complex. we are seeing and witnessing the birth of white minority politics. it is a politics of anxiety about change. if you look the way the protesters wrap themselves up in revolutionary war iconography the believe on the visceral level they were defending the heritage under threat from this president in the white house. you hear phrases like usurp. if it comes up surprising when you interview people comparing the president to hitler, mussolini, very often they say my country's been a share for this generation. they are big on saying how long their families been in this country and there is the sense that there is a simple america that is being complicated or outright usurped by this president and is a hangover from the 60's and association of the 60's when certain elements of

the movement became seen as anti-american but the arctic said jerry did, hysterical and i think it's a way to counter the rule of race without dismissing it as racism because i think our country is different than that. >> so far so good with the conversation. you're doing a terrific job. we want to throw the four open for questions because it is on c-span book tv. we want to make sure we get a microphone in front of you because rightfully c-span states did air. it the only thing we ask is that you've raised -- microphone, come on up with a microphone. the only thing we ask is form your question in the shape of a question. tell your name and where you're from. >> all i am from the upper west side of manhattan. i can accept your premise about wingnuts but i've always referred to them as light wingnuts because the truth of the matter is it the zelig's the crackpots represent a bigger

percentage of the republican party than they do of the left. you have sarah palin and now we have elizabeth geneina and the al qaeda seven. there's nobody in the democratic party who has that kind of leadership to win an election and is about bush. bush earned because the criminal tuck to the tactics he used. he's not a majority president. how can you pull the democratic party which is fairly centrist? there are no rockefeller republicans -- >> give me a chance to answer. that is a point that i get a lot. here is what i believe. we are not going to stop this cycle of tighter partisanship we are in which is getting increasingly extreme unless we stand up to the extremes on both

sides. if we focus efforts on identifying extremely on one side of the ogle will only perpetuate the problem. the really is there are extremes on both sides. going back calling the president a racist and keith olberman called him a per voter against women. every side has their extremes and by the way those are too politically mainstream folks, this is not about them%. they are powerful, influential broadcasters but we need to recognize if we are going to stop the cycle before it gets out of control the only way to do it and free center of the politics is to be the honest broker of politics and not caught in the hyper partisanship that means calling of extremes on both sides. >> spoken as a true independent. >> [inaudible] >> we are going to go. >> can you name one democrat who is a wingnut, there's a challenge. >> i want you to buy the book. [laughter] [applause] >> wait for the microphone.

>> mr. avlon, why would you call for members of the tea party movement wingnuts? >> no, he said the tea party was not a wingnut movement. >> some people are disappointed by my reluctance to not call them wingnuts. i think it's important and i try hard to humanize folks in the book. that is part of the way we break the cycle. you need to understand the view from inside. i believe that he party movement from where it started a year ago it began as a principled fiscal conservative protest against unprecedented of bailouts and in that that is a reasonable responsible tradition. it's hard to get people flying about issues they are importance to the extent folks deserve thanks. it's when they start indulging in a have a section in the book how obama became head clerk economist and the antichrist. it's a remarkable thing. it's a dangerous things when folks started bulging they need to be denounced. the problem i see is there's not

enough folks in the party standing up and denouncing the extremism and i keep waiting for it. >> let me dig deeper you said the tea party movement is not a wingnut movement but are there elements of wingnuts inside of the movement? >> i think along the principal conservative protest there is obama de range and syndrome which is baked in the cake. it is confused. that doesn't mean that characterizes all of it wingnuts assault the idea, the american ideas of what you might us is greater than what divides us and while that is important we punch back at the extremes because the disproportion of politics and they've hijacked the debate we also need to follow through and focus on what unites us and i think that's important especially when analyzing. >> we should say to be fair you can find elements in virtually every political group across the spectrum. let's talk about the internet

the internet has made it easy for the wing nuts to communicate and can't forget forming on my army is making them of the loudest lobbying bloc and creating leverage on party leadership. when you talk about their ability to reach people compared to the decades past when they didn't have the tool of the internet a much more powerful can the group of wingnuts began of 20 or 30 years ago? >> a lot more to read in the past folks would be isolated by the absurdity of their views in some cases and now you can find like-minded folks across the nation instantaneously. that is a totally different dynamic. geography is no longer a barrier so you have the ability for folks who might have been isolated in the past congregating across the state lines and for online armies and the problem is as the politics are pushed more to the extremes they have more leverage. we have a dynamic in this country now where all of a

sudden we have talk-radio hosts to the talking points to leaders rather than vice versa. that is a new thing. political leaders afraid to stand up to the extremes in their own party because they are afraid they're going to lose the partisan primary and the internet has been critical in all the sudden galvanizing the support increasing their influence and volume. it's the loudest lobbying bloc. we are talking about a small number of folks hijacking the political debate and part of the frustration is how come the vast majority of americans, independents are the largest and fastest-growing sector of the electorate and have been drowned out by people screaming on both sides. there is frustration in that because we've had politics that's been deerfield and is fundamentally on represented. estimate how much does it fractionalized and fractionalized mass media plea in this? >> it is a big part of it. and again we have the fragmentation of media so in

this dynamic the smart believe you want high readings is to appeal to the narrow intense segment right in this quest for ratings because let's not blow ourselves the political entertainers on the air and on the radio are not motivated by principal fear motivated by profit. the of the highest rating they can get so they will durham, whatever kind of incentives and incitement they can to stand up from the pack. the problem is once you get the ratings it is not good for the country. we've seen a massive decline in the credibility and trust of the media. journalists are seen as opinion anchors rather than even striving for the field of objective the. however no one is even trying to be ed murrow anymore like anyone in politics is trying to be a blank in any more. and this creates a problem because even c-span which is filming this even c-span has experienced a decline in the the ability according to recent polls. unedited coverage. people are not believing what they see with their own on is

because they are used to being spun to death by extremes. it has eight toll on all society and exacerbates. >> the man in the red jacket has a question. we will get a microphone. >> mike caswell from the union square area. where do you put the progressives who criticize bush but also now increasingly are criticizing the president as moving the senter if not to the fight and is it really fair to demonize progressives who called for the impeachment of bush on substantive ground without name calling? >> ig the question. to the viewers watching in the heartland of america we are in my home town of manhattan and i love it. [laughter] [applause] it's important to appreciate that the dynamic that you're describing which is far left liberals progressives which is a different terms are not going to use progressive but liberals who

believe it or criticizing president obama on the left while the far right is convinced president obama is a secret socialist the left things that he's a corporate seller. a little reality check for everybody to get your head in the house the current political debate in this country. there are folks on the left to believe that they paid to the president bush on principle and think obama is a sellout and among the netroots they are emboldened and the center is under attack even the democratic party this dynamic is going on, the same we see in the republican party. conservatives say we hated bush but now we really hit the communist. it's the same dynamic. benjamin franklin said we must build a little bit in our own inviolability and try to make it an effort to see perspective on politics. and what you're describing is i would believe the image of a lot of the folks on the conservative populace and tea party movement. >> how difficult is it to live in the middle these days?

>> it's a good place to be. a lot of company, we just don't know it. if you were in the senator used to liberals call when you conservative and conservatives, you liberal. we've been force fed a dumbed down version of politics in this country for the last decade. the vision that divides the country into red versus blue states and the far left forces the far right and the reality is that is a law. look at any map of the country in the elections show how people vote by proportionate. it reflects what we saw in scott crème's election in massachusetts which is the liberal state in massachusetts its 51 independent. it's one of ten state where independents outnumber democrats or republicans right now. as we've been artificially divided and sort of forced into this bitter partisanship. more people are rebelling against. that is why the republicans are the fastest-growing segment. we need to realize there is more

of dustin them. >> why don't we hear more from independence? >> i feel we've gotten lazy. it's analogous to what happened with margaret smith the first female century elected, republican from maine, and she was the first person in the republican party to stand up and denounce joe mccarthy republican in her own party and she did it alone in a declaration and said at the time the vast majority in the senate stand up to the violence of the extreme right and left and we street and pacific backbone and shed a were intimidated silence and to clear the conscience and those of us who want to put patriotism ahead of partisanship me to stand up and straighten this is the backbone and should intimidation because they have hijacked it. >> i don't mean to put you on the spot because there are statistics in the book but when people talk about how much power does the