bring this man down so that is how we got a little black book which is published in our book and lots of telling details. she gave copies to the fbi and copies to me. >> it includes his little black book which you can see in the right hand corner furnished by hyperion. the author. brian ross. >> up next, john dean poland's booktv for a 3 our in-depth interview. >> among europe ten books, in the book you compare barry goldwater to harry truman. house so? >> he is one of those guys whose positions have gotten forgotten, and he has become viewed by partisans on both sides as somebody who was really a

straight shooter, who told the way it was, who had the respect of a wide spectrum and as history has passed, regardless of whether you agree or disagree 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 well -- good reception with the average voter's. there's a nice comparison. >> admired for his principles. is there someone on the national stage today to the barry goldwater? >> i am looking for him. i am not sure there is. there are people who speak their mind but he became a unique figure in american politics because of his outspokenness and he took a very unpopular position at the time. conservatism was very young when

he started the movement and made it very sensible, common-sense the office of separatism. we don't have someone started a movement like that that i see today as it surfaced on ray -- my radar. >> wendy you first meet him? >> i was 13 years old. we were roommates in prep school. we would travel to washington from stand in, virginia. it was very impressive. here was of this very tall, handsome figure who you would walk down the senate's corridors with him and he would create a white with the various police people and other people giving way. he would take us around the senate and 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. for teenage boys, he was a great

figure and a charismatic person for young guy. >> one of the other words that comes a lot is honesty. explained. >> to put it in context, i read the senator's autobiographical 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 had taken a lot of material he had composed over the years and put it in the arizona historical foundation and when we did another project on was going to look at that and realize, really good stuff in here and it is pure barry goldwater because it is not by speechwriters or a staff person. it is the senator and it goes from a personal diary he kept starting when his son died or

when his son was born until his own death and it is not regular but it is enough that you get a sense of the man through a lot of years. it is very personal. he hammered it out on a portable typewriter when he was first starting it. when electronic dictation became available he would dictate it and be transcribed, it wasn't well filed initially but when they got it in order i said this tells more about our dad in autobiographies he has done and we get his sense of humor and his position and politics. the depth of the material on nixon i found in the book which i was surprised with, the subject that got the most

attention. it made an interesting work to put it together given the fact that it was so regional. >> barry goldwater, elected in 1952. he ran for the presidency and gave up his senate seat and came back in 1968 and was elected and served another 18 years. so he knew he would lose to lyndon johnson. >> he had been visiting the south, giving a lot of speeches realizing that was a whole body of thought down there whose views were not getting expressed at that time. and he thought it was time for the republicans to make some serious inroads into the south. depart of his diary that is the

weakest is the smallest bit of the material. they decided not to be the same as the diary entries. just a few of those where she was a little better at the end. he thought the press treatment was pretty rough. there was a lawsuit he was provoked after 64 because a group of psychiatrists got together, one person told all psychiatrists and said he was psychologically unfit to be president. he didn't take to that so he decided to file a of a defamation suit and a use the detie it was pure barry goldwater coming out. i think he ran to make some points, to lay a predicate that would later become the

conservative movement and followed up by ronald reagan. and he wouldn't have had ronald reagan later. >> you compare the style of richard nixon in 1962 to the statement of barry goldwater and he said i have never seen or heard such vitriolic unbiased attacks on one man as had been directed to me. i had never seen such inflammatory language used by some men know better. these people for their shoddy behavior should hang their head in shame because they may be forced the state a sorry, sad mess. >> the only thing that would differ from what nixon said is you don't have barry goldwater ticket around anymore. he was very upset. he famously said if i had to vote for the barry goldwater portrayed in the media i wouldn't have voted for him.

a didn't recognize the character that the media portrayed. he had a very tough time in 1964 with the media and he was provoked at that post election press conference to lay it out for what it was. >> he loved his typewriter. >> a little portable typewriter. he would take it on camping trips with him, we found a few errors. it was much cooler when he was able to dictate. >> one was from january 27, 1971, and writing about richard nixon, not a letter to the president. i continue to be amazed at the ineptitude president nixon has shown in the operation of government because if there is a politically astute animal in

american politics it is dick nixon. the trouble that he has allowed himself to be surrounded by people who are too smart in the field of politics so he does not know what is going on. >> he shared with his diary his thoughts many of which he shared with the president. he stayed with nixon as we all know until the end and then some after nixon, he would go out and visit him, it is very late in the game. nixon, when gerald ford was going to run for president, this man has been lying to me for a

long time, there was never any relationship further. >> they much supportive of the president. he began by saying i think i should start over by saying dear dick because i am writing to myself as you will quickly detect. it was a letter he penned on his typewriter to talk about the people surrounding him in the white house and also said you need to come to congress. people need to know their president is listening to them. >> >> he did not -- and -- >> it is a long letter.

and nixon knew. >> more than any other president and, how did the decision fits into that. >> i hadçç to read read it. i should actually read my books.

it is a book it was the result of i am not in there and others are not in there. i put together a remarkable story which is timely right now. and we put another justice or two on the court. nixon has two seats to fill and the story itel and call it the william rehnquist choice for a literary device because william rehnquist doesn't come up until the end of the book. he is selected in the last 24 hours of the process much to william rehnquist's surprise.

he was developing candidates and preliminary betting. white house is getting upset with defect that candidates like hanesworth and kearnswell were not vetted candidates, and my predecessor as white house council. and it is mitchell and nixon. barry goldwater can't remember william rehnquist, working for you. the president's lawyer, it is ignored. hi happen to work at the department of justice, they are

scrambling. it is a lot of who is available to get confirmed that a given time. box a reader through, and william rehnquist was my candidate. i was later shocked to the degree of his conservatism, more moderate than he turned out to be. and another guy who walks into

nixon's will office. howard baker, lewis powell, nominated and howard baker, and the minority leader. fairly young, nixon would make good justice and probably would. the kids put through college and the financees, it was on the high court. and put into a conversation with nixon close to the chest.

it is not until richard more mentioned he was a law clerk for robert jackson, robert jackson is a great justice bite any partisan's definition whether you are republican or democrat. nixon recognized that. that seemed to close the deal. he is not very interested in baker and when he learns that thought was number 2, had that wrong, he was number one. nixon had been beat up for some of the people he suggested a long way. that was a fascinating story to put together how he got the nomination. the problem with the book at the end of the book is william rehnquist never vetted for the job and that created its own set of problems. >> you or somebody else describe him as a clown based on -- >> that is nixon.

a much earlier situation. after the pentagon papers were released it brought to nixon's mind the fact that there is so much overclassification of documents and government. he created a high-level group that would address and tackle a problem so what he did was selected a small panel, put william rehnquist in charge of that. he never met william rehnquist and having a conference in the outer office of his executive office building in their conference room, he wants to charge the group up and tell them what he has in mind and he wants these papers declassified and william rehnquist does a little talk and on the way out the president signaled me to follow him and he says to me that who is the clown who is leading the meeting?

and i don't know, i am a little baffled. 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 he wore some of the worst neckties are have ever seen. he helped wearing robes a lot because they just seemed to be clashing choices and nixon reacted to that and he said is he jewish and i said no. he is scandinavian and he shook his head and walked off in his office. he couldn't remember his name after that. he comings back later and calls him something else. one of his classmates at stanford corrected him. he did note well a man he appointed and probably when he left the presidency might have

been one of the greatest decisions. >> conservatives without a conscience, a movement or an ideology. >> one of the things i try to do is get a good working definition of conservatism and i talked to i don't know how many conservatives. if there is anything they seem to agree upon particularly the more intellectuals, you can't define conservative so they don't try to do that. bill buckley has thrown out some other definitions and other scholars that raised the problem of the difficulty of defining it. barry goldwater cranked out three columns a week for three years for the l.a. times, came

up for a working definition that he thought was it is drawing on the values of the past, the best of them and applying them to the present. he came up with a totally satisfactory definition but it became a movement. they develop a movement and an attitude, tried to give a broad spread to people who don't know anything out conservatism. more of an attitude in many regards or an approach than an ideology. i don't think it has the typical traits of ideology but the movement has gained steam since

the 50s and developing as we see in its latest iteration and the tea party movement. >> john dean served as counselor to president nixon, 2023/770001. and for those in the mountain and specific time zones 0002. our e-mail address is booktv@c-span.org. join the conversation on line at twitter.com. let's talk about watergate. let's talk about the moment you were asked to serve as counsel and for the president. was it a job you wanted? >> i was totally surprised. bob crowe asked me to come to the white house and we walked around and he said ehrlichman has moved out of the council's share and there's a big

discussion in the white house about who is going to become the council and i have been asked to ask if you are interested in the job. it is obviously a great job but i have a lot of friends and so do you at the white house and you work around the clock and you see very little satisfaction. i enjoy my job. i happen to know where i stood in the department of justice. they had something -- we saw in 9/11 when there is a threat to the government, our emergency government procedures and you can all go into caves at the top of the department of justice and i looked at the memo describing where i was in the ranking and i realized 12 persons in the office didn't make it i would become attorney general. i was ranked no. 13 at a fairly

young age and john mitchell told me you are going to get higher options for you at the justice department. when i mentioned the feeler they both discouraged me from going to the white house for that very reason. we would like to keep you here at the department. week like your work and you will find yourself going up the ladder. >> what was the relationship like between john mitchell and richard nixon? >> it was very close. mitchell had been nixon's law partner in new york. the two firms have merged. nixon liked mitchell which is why he became the campaign manager in the 68 races. he found that mitchell new people, politicians, state and local all over the country as a result of doing law street bonds

for state and municipal governments. he was a wonderful contract for that reason. he was not a political animal in that sense for presidential race but nixon always ran his own campaigns. when he became attorney general -- when he became president, nixon had to convince mitchell to become attorney general. it wasn't a job he sought. 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 -- his wife might fare in washington. she became a great personality and she loved it but it also would destroy their marriage. it was a close relationship. i remember i worked in the deputy attorney general's office as associate deputy attorney general. no one will have more influence with this president than john

mitchell and that was true. he was on a lot of key committees that the white house and was somebody who would go over to give the president advice. the closest i ever got to hearing how they interacted was when i listened to the tapes on the selection of two empty chairs. by that time mitchell's relationship with nixon has become strained. i do this particularly when i did the new addition to blind ambition, my first book i added an addendum, you can't understand water gate without understanding personality. anyone who thinks personalities don't get in the way and it became a real conflict between john mitchell and john ehrlichman. another lawyer, he was trying to set domestic advice. the only department he had no

influence over was justice because his real impact with the president, this bothered ehrlichman. it didn't bother mitchell because he had control of it but with time after mistakes were made, they were disasters nominees for the court. carswell never would have been a very good justice in the best day. more bad recommendations came over. this gave ehrlichman tremendous leverage. as we will get into in watergate there were even more serious problems where the hard feelings between these two men, i wasn't in the campaign in 68, went back that far where they were at odds on a number of issues came to play and influenced presidents

and hurt the presidency for the worse. >> we are talking with john been on his latest book, blind ambition with the rest of the story in 2009. jay is joining us from fort lauderdale, florida. >> mr. dean, i saw you down here a couple years ago when you were doing your last book signing and wondering if you were coming back again but my primary question was incidentally, i went to the military academy with you. my question was you are obviously aware of the watergate break-in before it happened. did you forewarn the president that it would come to nobody's interest and possibly the democrat party? >> guest: i was asked because the head of the reelection committee was not terribly

familiar with michel, asked me to see what gordon liddy's plans for political intelligence might be. two of the most amazing meetings i ever it attended in government. he was there to make a pitch. he had easels set up in the attorney general's office planning to run the campaign and i listened to this pitch. it was all in code names. mr. president, i have plans to deal with the anti-war demonstrators which was one of our real problems. my office got anti-war demonstration information because it was classified information. we couldn't give to the campaign because they had their own capabilities. i listened to him and he said what we can do is we will

kidnapped the anti-war demonstrators and 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 what he didn't realize is a lot of these guys would like to have been drugged and taken below the mexican border but he has other plans. the opponent's campaign plane. toomey the only point i interjected was he told mitchell we have a plan on how to get intelligence from the democrats in the miami convention. we have the state house vote that has a two way mirror and we will make films of what is happening inside and what we are going to do to get people inside is we have hired some prostitutes and we are going to

get them to infiltrate the democrats at their watering spots at the miami convention to lure them into the house and we will get them and in some compromising information and at that point i am sitting in the attorney general's office and i turned to both liddy and mcgregor and said gordon, you have got to be kidding. liddy, who became quite annoyed with me snapped his he'll then turned to mitchell and said general, i can assure you these are the finest girls from baltimore and he was quite confident he had the talent to handle it. it was quite an amazing meeting. mitchell was going to reject it. he said this will cost a million dollars and he said this isn't what i have in mind. we are more interested in the anti-war problem, protecting the reelection committee. the surrogates we are going to send out.

why don't you go back to the drawing board. he knew he should have shown a man the window. i came to a second meeting and a rival late. today i know from looking at calendars that i visited with bob haldeman after the first and second meeting to tell him the craziness i was learning about. i went to the second meeting and heard them talking about a electronic surveillance and i said listen, i apologize for being late, i don't know what you talked about but i know this conversation isn't something that should be occurring in the office of the attorney-general. i threw cold water on it. i never thought it would throw -- go farther than that. afterwards he said i understand what you are saying. the attorney general needs deniability. that is the way i wanted.

hi went back and reported that to all women and he said you should have nothing to do with it. it wasn't until many months later, that i learned -- i am able to put together the pieces very quickly and mitchell has approved the plan in miami. it is down to a quarter of a million dollars and it is very clear. in writing of the addendum i was writing blind ambition after many years and unique situations and litigation. i obtained more information and was quite clear that nixon never ordered the watergate break-in. no one in the white house knew about the watergate break-in. it is very clear that nixon was asking for information. the only place you could get it

was inside watergate. they learned about a kickback scheme the demrats were planning at the miami convention where advertisers would come in various lobbies in locations and pay for the space and that would come back to the democratic party not as campaign money from contributions or corporations which were outlawed but a vehicle that would funnel some money into the democratic party. that is what we were looking for. we were talking about financial information and you find it in documents that i come across and on the tapes both before the watergate break-in was discovered and after and it is pre revealing. i am pretty sure there will be more tapes found overtime. these happen to the tapes i spent over the years and a couple decades and i said my goodness, including some conversations of my own where we didn't understand what the president was asking. >> host: the story you just

outlined from the girls of baltimore and the situation in miami beach characterized machine in the movie blind ambition. did he capture this? >> guest: pretty well. i worked with the screenwriter. he based it on the book and they had a pretty good sense of what was going on. [talking over each other] >> guest: we went out to visit during the filming. >> host: renoir says he is 60 years old man remembers being glued to the tv during the watergate hearings saying you and mr. butterfield stole the show. comment on whether the fiascos should teach us anything about where the line between transparency and secrecy should be drawn in governing the country. >> guest: it taught us a lot and it is a lesson we have

forgotten. we remembered it for a long time and one of the reasons i wrote a number of books about the bush administration is weak -- we were not only for gone we were trying to reverse the impact watergate had had on the presidency and transparency, way the three branches should operate, there is no question accountability is indispensable in a democracy and you can't do it between closed doors. two things helped foster watergate. having too much money in the campaign and secrecy. i will be the first to tell you no president can govern without privacy. the difference between privacy and secrecy, secrecy is the intent to i'd. privacy is the need to make decisions in a way that doesn't

interfere with your decisionmaking process. it was one of the lessons and it was in place for a long time. dick cheney had a very clear mission to try to reverse all of what he thought happened to the presidency as a result of watergate. it was strengthened and he didn't like the fact that the congress gained power of its own for oversight and things like this and has done its best to obliterate them. >> worse than watergate. >> guest: that gave me the title. >> host: the second point, in what major ways with the world look different today had nixon not behaved dishonorably? >> guest: fascinating historical

counterfactual and i'm not sure i could spend it all the way out. i don't think anybody in the nixon white house with one exception was particularly evil. they were all good men with good intentions trying to do the best they could to run the country. >> guest: who is the exception? >> guest: g. gordon liddy. he got the screws all confused in his brain. just never seemed -- he is totally misguided in trying to sell the half baked approaches he believed should be permissible and they are all beyond the law. the law is irrelevant and i don't think -- or the fact that you should remain silent after you make a mistake. i don't think the code of the mafia should be the norm for white house aides.

i could go through a whole litany of activities with signs of a very distorted if not evil personality. >> host: you filed a lawsuit against him. >> guest: that is another story. you wanted -- [talking over each other] >> guest: the biggest thing that got set aside was a rather major reorganization of the executive branch. he realized he could never get through congress because when you reorganize the executive branch you affect the congressional committees that have oversight over those administrative agencies. so he had divined a system in

the department of justice, a ehrlichman had worked on it many months and would have radically redesigned and modernize more into a functional area all of the departments and agencies that have grown up over the years and national security all over the lot. national security community which is one of the largest in the executive branch ranges from the intelligence agencies spread out to the department of defense and department of state and some of it is in homeland security, an agency that didn't exist before. you would have put a counselor to the president in charge of the policy of all of this. you had a series of counselors being created as white house aides who would then be able to control in a way that had never controlled the executive branch.

this terrified congress. i have long thought that one of the reasons the congress was so anxious to hold the hearings it held in watergate is it needed to block this rather dramatic policy that they knew was in the wings that nixon was developing and that is probably the most dramatic change. i don't think we would have been -- we would have seen some terribly abusive use of government. that was not in nixon's disposition. he was trying to make the government look better and in a way that is a little bit frightening for example things like the reagan years and the unitary executive theory that brings the regulatory agencies under the white house. not so sure that was helping. we have not gone that far in

this reorganization. it was to make the principal agencies, not the independent regulatory, subject to the president's policies. >> host: victor from pennsylvania with john dean. go ahead. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. you spoke at lehigh university on the subject of worse than watergate and broken government. i asked a question about terrorism. several years earlier you were recorded as saying this country was 25% fascist. >> guest: i just said authoritarian. >> caller: i have it on tape that you answer the question in which the word was used. >> guest: i will explain that. >> caller: and you explained you were talking about egalitarianism and i gave you a

silver dollar with the constitution on it so you may remember me but your book was excellent on that subject. could you distinguish between fascism or authoritarianism, not deism and militarism in the context of having known alexander haig's with the lieutenant colonel, chief of staff and the secretary of state. that is my question. >> guest: let me see if i can handle that. my whole study of authoritarianism is based on social science. in the aftermath of world war ii, a group of social scientists tried to get together to find out if what had happened in italy and germany could ever happen in the united states. could we follow mussolini or

hitler? would we tolerate things like a holocaust in this country? the sad answer was yes. there is some segment of the population that has an authoritarian personality. the study was rightly criticized when it first came out because it was based largely on freudian psychology which has its own problems. another group of social scientists, particularly one who landed in canada, decided to look at this question again and doing it by rather solid empirical studies, by that i mean he would question people about the nature of their personality, their dispositions and what have you and collect one of the largest databases that we would ever assembled on

this and clearly there is an authoritarian personality type. they are broken into several categories. there are authoritarian followers, authoritarian leaders, they call them nominators and people who have uniquely traits of both because they score so high on these tests. these became and some of the dominated is became my conservatives without conscience and when you understand this class of person and this type of personality you understand why this is true. they have no conscience whatsoever. i asked over the years, how many people fall in this category over all? not just the dominate ears or the followers but the whole collect -- as best he can figure 25% of the united states would

follow in this category. this isn't good or bad or pathology, just the nature of a certain element of the american population. it is a very real element and we are seeing it today very much in the tea party movement which is the next step beyond the material i had in my book. i have to tell you in writing that book which i originally planned to write with barry goldwater, his health became bad so we could not do it together it was one of the most informative books i had ever written. i learned more from it. i returned to it to understand things more than all those i have done because it was so i opening to understand. i looked at fascism to see if these were fascists. they clearly are not. this isn't even incipient fascism. it is the stuff from which

fascism obviously can arise. we have never in this country had authoritarian take charge. they are not large enough in their numbers and even some of them who test i or would test high, as soon as they realize their personality nature they back away from it. they're not comfortable with it themselves because it isn't the norm for our political activities. there is a chart in one of these books or a table that sets forward on page 68 or 69 that give you a catalog of these personality traits and it is not very pleasant. but it is very real and understanding these people helps us to deal with them. >> host: gerald ford's press secretary, one of our viewers

saying what did his resignation mean in terms of the protests to the nixon party. >> guest: a lot of people were stunned when gerald ford did this. he had hinted he was going to do it. i was one who was about to go off to be incarcerated. i never did go to prison but i was a witness protection program for a long time and was about to go off and make a safe house my regular residence where i would be brought into the city every day and so i wasn't happy about it. my wife was quite upset with it and most of those who were involved in watergate were really quite shocked that it wasn't even broader. it was not something ask for or wanted. in the long run, it was the right decision.

ford obviously suffered his ability to win the presidency on his own as a result of the pardon, just enough people who felt strongly about it would have made a difference in that election had that not been a key issue but it is pretty ugly to contemplate any form of president of the united states on trial for what happened during nixon's presidency. there is a real question as to whether richard nixon ever could have received a fair trial. if the well had not been so poisoned you would not find a juror who could give him an honest reading. he had some defenses. a lot of this material, lot of this activity was in his mind. national security activity. his motive, bud kroger went to

visit him after he had been pardoned and asked do you feel you are guilty of a crime and nixon said no, i don't. i really don't. that kind of attitude obviously made it difficult to understand why he needed a pardon and his lawyers advised him to take one. >> host: you never met with richard nixon after he left the white house. >> guest: it would have been very difficult. my last conversation with him was on easter in 1973. easter of 1973. he said john, i am calling to tell you you're still my council. i still know what you told me. i will not forget it. it was what we call a stroking call to try to keep me from doing what he knew i had to do

which was testify about what had happened. >> host: gary says as a young person should i be looking up to glen beck or barry goldwater to learn what it means to be a conservative? >> guest: i don't understand glen beck's conservatism at all and has nothing to do with the conservatism that has been a long tradition in this country. if you look at conservatism without conscience you will immediately understand why i didn't even include glen beck in the book. >> host: a call from new orleans. welcome to the program. >> caller: if you could say a little about why white racism is such an important component in american conservatism. you mentioned barry goldwater's 1964 campaign and his trips to

the south clearly with white some protests in his interactions -- wondering why this is. the american conservative movement has a lot white supremacy to be such an important component in their development and rise in america. >> guest: if there's anybody who was not a supremacist or a racist it is barry goldwater. he integrated the arizona national guard long before truman had done so with the armed services. he is somebody who for example there were black and white theaters in phoenix that he as a member of city council eliminated. he voted against the 64 civil-rights bill, much to his later chagrin on the advice of two lawyers who he was impressed

with. i asked this question. why in the world because i was in the gallery, i was in law school at that time, it was such a historic vote and i was curious how he was going to vote on it. i have another friend in law school whose father was in the senate and got some nice prime seats in the galleries and waited for that historic vote and years later i asked why did you vote against him? the advice of this young lawyer from phoenix who i respect by the name of william rehnquist and another one from a professor from yale who sent me a dynamite memo by the name of a book. do you know robert bork? i sure do. on those two constitutional analysis of the 64 bills he believe sincerely that it was an

unconstitutional action and would be thrown out by the courts as such and that was the basis of his vote. >> host: you and warren harding grew up in the same town in ohio and you wrote about a speech he gave on october 26, 1921, in birmingham, alabama. >> guest: in woodrow wilson park. >> host: a i would say to manat manateeis fit to vote he should be able to vote and to white man voting when he is unfit should be prohibited from voting and he said, quote, whether you like it or not unless our democracy is a lie you must stand for equality. this was 1921. >> guest: warren harding has been so maligned. he is considered one of the worst president's and i had grown up in his town and my next-door neighbor was the

editor who would follow warren harding some years later as his creation, had been the first editor of the paper. he gave me my first warren harding book with him becoming my first president. my library has everything that has been written about him. i realized a long time ago particularly picking up this information as a kid that he had not been very pear shaped as a president. when arthur schlesinger jr. started a series in which i wrote a book on all 42 past presidents i called arthur, had known him for years. he had written some ugly things about warren harding himself and i said i'd bet you don't know what to do with warren harding and don't have a clue what to do with him and he said are you interested? i said i am.

when i returned in my manuscript arthur called and he said you have given me an entirely different perspective on warren harding. he said i didn't realize some of the information you had. you are one of the few people who look at the papers that survived his presidency. it is an mistake we have done with warren harding. he asked me -- i was a little hard on some of his friends who are historians on some of the false material they put out on warren harding. i turned arthur 180 degrees which was a wonderful undertaking because he had these fixed views of warren harding. the speech you are referring to was a really brave act. he went into the south. the audience was segregated. there was a wire fence between the white and black and warren

harding spent most of that speech looking at the whites and telling them he just can't go forward in a democracy and call it a democracy and treat people on the other side of that fence the way you are doing so. it was a speech that was hated by the south but he still thought there were inroads even then law for the republicans in the south and the blacks were by and large thrilled with it. he had not done as much as they wanted but he had done a lot as president. blogger wilson, his predecessor, a serious racist had removed blacks from positions they had long been in in the federal government. as soon as he got them out of those positions and put a civil service in so they couldn't get back in, warren harding did what he could about hiring more blacks and getting them in but

was a true progressive on this. so much of warren harding's material while he is in many regards a classic conservative president is a highly progressive president particularly on social issues. >> host: the transition in 1920, florence harding meets with edith wilson describing her as haughty and condescending and in a tour of the white house conducted -- [talking over each other] >> guest: that was a rather nice description. >> host: in a tour of the white house conducted by the housekeeper florence harding will use this white house as the home of a very sick man. can you elaborate. >> guest: wilson had a stroke many months earlier when he had come back from europe in negotiating the league of nations had gone out on a tour to try to sell it to the american people and had a very

severe stroke, pretended he was all right when he was bedfast for all practical purposes. they had pulled the shade and the place had become a rather grim hospital for a very ill incapacitated president who was surviving unbeknownst to what he was capable of actually very little. warren harding made an interesting call during the campaign when his aides tried to get him to attack wilson and he said there is no way i will win the presidency over this sick man's problem. i refuse -- he attacked the wilson policies, not wilson himself, in his condition. when florence came in and looked around, everything from the odor to the atmosphere decided she was going to have a place

painted and open the windows and invite people into the white house where they haven't had a function in how long anyone could remember and did so and changed the whole atmosphere of the white house with people coming and going. >> host: david is on the phone. >> caller: as always, thank you and your whole staff. you do a great service for america and i want to pick up on what mr. dean said before i ask my question about woodrow wilson. if it were not for glen beck most, many americans who did not know before would not know what a miserable man woodrow wilson was, how he brought segregation in to the federal government, in washington d.c. specifically and throughout the civil