i have a 20-year-old, silas tyler, who's a junior at emerson college in boston, and my daughter. they both lived in cairo with us and went to high school in -- in beijing in china. and my daughter's coming with us to moscow and she's already in school right now -- they're waiting for me there -- in the anglo-american school, which is now inside the us embassy compound in moscow but is about to move to a new campus. c-span: what's your wife's profession? >> guest: linda wagner tyler has written children's books with susan davis, the local artist here -- the national artist here, the watercolorist, who does -- has done -- graced many new yorker covers and -- and done my -- many murals in this city -- susan davis and linda tyler. c-span: patrick tyler's book is called "a great wall: six presidents and china," and he is on his way to moscow to become the new york times bureau chief. and... >> guest: in two years. we go in succession there. i have several colleagues there. i come behind them. c-span: how long will you be there? >> guest: four years. c-span: thank you, mr. tyle >> guest: thank you.

sure was great. ..

[applause] >> this is such a treat for me because david and i are old friends. when we worked at "the washington post," we always knew when you wrote a particularly delicious piece of copy because david would send a little notes and i still remember that years later to read this book was so wonderful to dive into. most people in this room have fled much about barack obama and every chapter you learn new things about him but you also learn how much about this country. when i first talked to you about this it wasn't clear that you were writing a biography is why you to tell me a little bit as we begin about the process how

you came to write this particular book, was in the book he planned to write? >> i think it was a less ambitious book and maybe even more focused on the question of race and less biographical but it became clear in research the more it became a biography full-blown and i fully expect 20 years from now or however many years from now some new robert carroll will come along and write a six volume biography with all of the requisites and archives of the president. that goes without saying. but i saw you at the inauguration was primed for -- party for gwen ifill who had written the young breakthrough about african-american politicians not just obama but cory booker and arthur davis and all the rest. it was germinating in my mind. i read a book called the joshua generation for the new yorker trying to a handle on what

happened which was in an astonishingly friend just after the election and started going to chicago as often as i could which meant weekends and of little bits of time here and there and i never attempted renting a full-blown book while editing a magazine and it just became more and more interesting to read the more i spoke to these old acquaintances with the harvard law school, chicago, hawaii, all of the optus spots. >> you do much to fill in i don't want to say blanks but to fill in space is because he's told us his own story but you learn much more in researching this book. did you find was difficult to get people to open up and talk about this? it's one thing that acquaintances have been very guarded with the story. >> i didn't find it -- once you get into the political class into the area of people running

campaigns and have resentments or vendettas or reason to stay quiet it becomes a tricky transaction and the word on background and okayed the quotes and all that kind of washington new york stuff comes into place but going to chicago to community organizers particularly women who work with him in communities there was no hesitation at all. it was fun. that's the kind of reporting i like best is the transaction over off the record, on the record and with the gradations in between. as tedious and it also becomes tricky in terms of whether you are being told the truth being spun like a top. sprigg there are people we meet along the way to help us develop a picture and i want to begin in hawaii a friend of stanley you talk to extensively. >> the same as i did with the

mother, not a common name for a woman and the father wanted her name stanley because this is a grave disappointment that his daughter hadn't been otherwise and she and shirley went by anne. his name was, we for it, stanley. and she decided to be an anthropologist at a certain point particularly in the area in studies and craftsmen and the rest and she found an academic mentor of hawaii who happened to be the granddaughter of john dewey, her name is allison dewey. you asked about his autobiography and this book. they are radically different. i think that memoir and autobiography is a story. it's the story we tell our lives that can be deeply researched. i know that you've been working on one. i think obama did research but

it's a highly shaped thing, literally shaped. he doesn't do the work of a reporter or historian or al qaeda work. he's doing personal work, literary works of understanding and his book has no politics whatsoever. his book in this when politics begins. it's the book of a political man know they've had envisioned but to go back to hawaii the other big missing piece or one of the larger missing pieces of the autobiography is the mother. it's called dreams from my father and it's about in many ways somebody trying to battle with and learn about and reconcile with a ghost. an utterly missing father who leaves the household in infancy, reappears for ten days when obama is a kid, disappears again, and obama here's all kind

of stories we kids do but can't get his hands around it, and that's the big trauma of the book and there are three big sections. it's a highly structured young man and it's very good. but it's highly structured and each of the big sections which isn't somebody we knew to be in tears a lot, gm's weeping and one of the section ends with him weeping at his father's grave. when his mother comes up you may disagree with me in the campaign and from the journalism it is kind of flighty, certain kind of 60's carrier to beat character with a skirt and left-leaning politics of international development sort kind of pathetically trying to help african-americans on understand being african-american by giving him judge jackson records or certain kind of books. what could she do?

in mauney view and research talking to my obama's half-sister she is an immensely interesting figure. >> very complex. >> obama adores her and is confused by her absence during high school and suffers from them and he's been raised by his grandparents, not something everybody loves and i just on her to be an immensely rich character in life than she was in his autobiography. >> she was trying to help him deal with being an outsider yet when she brings him to indonesia they have to basically move out of the house. >> that is exactly right. when she started doing research in java they lived on the ground of palace because there was a

relation the second husband had royalty relations so they were allowed to live on the palace ground in jakarta. when obama would make his trip to jobwatch to join his mother on vacation the had to move all of the palace grounds because it's one thing to have an american and quite another to have an african-american. i mean, this is not a guy who suffers the slings and arrows and nightsticks of john lewis. but as ct 50 yen, one of the heroes of the civil rights movement said you are born into this country of any generation as an african-american and you don't the escape suffering at all. and so barack obama was an international figure. he comes in the summer of 2004 boston, he gets the speech and is a state senator. if you are in d.c. you don't have a state center.

raise your hand if you know who the state senator is six hands go up and five of them are lying. [laughter] even the state senator, and he's running for a senate seat he makes the speech that knocks everybody out. everybody knows who he is. he's on every national television show and radio shows and newspapers and magazines profiles here and there. he goes to the logan airport with his campaign manager white southerner and he's pulled aside for extra searching. now that didn't happen to jim crow. and he says barack, you know, what the hell, and obama says and i quote, dude, not to worry. i've got it. this has been happening to me all my life. so they are not the night sticks of the moses generation. nobody is suggesting for a second that he didn't have access to the elite institutions

occidental columbia harvard law school but he did peace get the experience either. i don't care if he grew up in hawaii even in hawaii which prides itself on the multiculturalism except for one thing. all the black people are on the military bases except a couple of kids here and there so it was a difficult struggle for him. >> how does that influence his personality with the allies are often describing living america as a black man to the experience to deep muscle tissue bruising, not the kind of thing you might be able to see the kind of thing you sort of feel and that makes itself present in a way you might feel arthritis in the rain. it's fair and services and lets you know that it's there from time to time. how has that informed --

>> welford dena falls, berkeley who has known obama for quite a while picking also chris headley said race and rocket science, much harder than rocket science. one of his friends at harvard law school was a woman named cassandra but has worked with obama and describes him as a translator because his unique interpreter. the when you have an interpreter when you go to a foreign country and that person becomes your lines and because obama grew up in a multiplicity of wiltz in a way that most of us do not he's able to do that in a political sense. he can go into an african-american church and claim credibility there and he had to go achieve that. he didn't just walk through the door has a child. but he can go to all kind of other communities and translate that community to them that

there for the metaphor of the bridge's mabey monreal found. it's not just a historical one that obama himself acted as a bridge. i don't want to dive to deep into the cycle history which is a dangerous and monday inconsequential please but there is no doubt people's backgrounds and their associations and the way they grew up and the way they were educated and the historical moment they are in effect is who they are and effect their presidency. i'm not suggesting for a second he's thinking about race when he's in a situation room talking about iran or afghanistan but has its effect but publicly, personally, intellectually. >> there was a meeting, several meetings actually in the lead up to his decision to run for president when he was surrounded by friends and advisers and in one particular meeting he talks about what it would mean to run

for black america and how the moment what feel like for young people to wake up the morning after the election and realized i wasn't dreaming of the night before the united states just elected a black man to the presidency. he thought about that and articulated that he talked about that. do you get the sense that he was also thinking about what that moment would mean to white america? particularly various segments of white america that might be resistant? >> i don't want to be glib but in a sense what is the difference? african american history is american history there's no american history free of african-americans. we will hear a lot earlier than my relatives who had been around for generations. there's no american culture without african-american culture whether it is musical literature etc. it is just who we are so it affects all of us.

and you are seeing the difficult side of it now. >> that's what i'm asking about though are you thinking about some of that element? >> this wasn't going to happen is mostly whether he got elected or not and that he party movement i am not suggesting for a second that everybody in the tea party move that is racist or the majority or even remotely the majority are real economic concerns the doubled and calls this through american history and these kind of movements have been. but at the far end of it, you've seen and heard some pretty ugly things and it can't be by coincidence the nature of these things are this combustion of economic uncertainty and anxiety and an african-american president and it creates a kind of surgeon vocabulary and a certain kind of outrage. we saw the message left on, john lewis of all people, phone message left on his machine. again, i don't want to suggest

for a second that one phone message can change an entire movement as a racist. it would be outrageous and wrong but there's clearly some small part of the country that uses terms like "we want our country back." what does that mean? that there is a kind of nostalgia for an imagined lost valhalla of a time when the president like barack obama is inconceivable in part. sprigg david, i want to reach the do little earlier because upon reading your book some of you just purchased the book for the first time so we don't want to give too much away -- >> you can purchase it for a second time. [laughter] >> and by one for yourself and family members. upon reading the book barack obama comes across as someone who is a deeply ambitious man

and a deeply ambitious young man and also was a deeply and vicious child and actually plot to beat could talk about the presidency much earlier than many -- >> yeah i think that was kid talk and there are parents in the room who should have told his or her kids you can grow up to be anything. >> when he was running for congress? >> he got beat so that he almost didn't go back into politics. he got really serious about himself in terms of ambition when he not only gets into the harvard law school but he becomes president of the harvard law review. that's when you begin to tell yourself and enlarged or engorged ego not only am i in this place the birthplace of the supreme court justices and senators and i'm now the best of

the best and the harvard law review they're writing about the times on the wire it's all over the media. so even when he is running for small potatoes offices there is an enlarged sense of where this could go. probably it's given many things you want to be the mayor it's yours. content with the fact there's no way he was going to be mayor because he would have waited to leave. he's still in office now. [laughter] and he ran and his acts of running were acts of piety. he ran for the senate in 96 things to a sex scandal that allowed alice palmer to run for congress. she lost that and ran and tried to get back in the race and

wanted obama to step aside. obama wouldn't do it and when they try to get the signatures to get on the ballot he got her thrown off the ballot. >> he cleared the field. >> he ran unopposed on the democratic side and chicago public republican side is just not going to go anywhere. he ran for congress, unbelievable act of piety, he ran against former black panther and very popular congressman maybe not the greatest congressman buddy popular one, bobby rush and he was defeated soundly not only because his son was killed in an act of violence on the streets after the race began and then his father died and the community was sympathetic but also because he didn't have the routes that bobby rush had and bobby rush's

campaign and another opponent what about on the street who is barack obama? those questions didn't begin with sarah palin and john mccain who is barack obama. they began much earlier. who is barack obama? he's not one of us. he is a white mother pete his of hawaii. he's backed by the university chicago highly controversial institution on the south side especially for black folks. and also, his money is coming from white people, jews, it got really ugly and he got beat so that the certainly michelle obama was not eager to repeat the experience and almost it was a little of this a little of that, writing, teaching, may be running a foundation. was that close. >> people who are successful often succeed because they fail. if they learn the proper lesson from this it back.

>> absolutely. >> what did he learn from that and was he able to move forward? >> que currency isn't bobby rush, he isn't a guy that is going to succeed by trying to out-bobby rush bobby rush. he goes to the counties, the suburbs around chicago, he starts giving south in the state with a kind of bold political hand from the state legislature named daniel showman and he's been visiting and he starts to see that white people in these southern counties who are culturally may be closer to the southern states but are a lot closer to them chicago aren't dismissing me. i'm getting a friendly reception here. when he decides to run for the senate it's not that he wins the southern part of the state but he does all right and he does

very well clearly in the liberal suburbs like at kingston. he sweeps the black voter and he gets a little lucky. he gets a little lucky, wait for it, to more sex scandals as you remember certainly the richest candidate not the most skilled goes down in flames when his divorce records are open up and they are not in edify and spectacle. [laughter] then he's going to run against a very strong republican, former goldman sachs partner who's gone off to find a really good school on the south side. he's done well and now he's going to do good and very handsome and his divorce records are now open and they involve a french sex club and we are on c-span so we don't want to go too far but they are not in edify and spectacle and barack obama in suppressing against alan keyes the most sacrificial of sacrificial. [laughter]

so i think the first time barack obama is in a really competitive race in his whole life besides the harvard law school is the iowa caucuses against hillary. >> he has -- we will get to the iowa caucus but i want to reach back before we get there because there's something interesting in his biography. you are lucky in life if you get one really good mentor who will put their hands on your shoulders and give you advice and tell you the kind of things you may not even want to hear. when the fairy godmother started passing on the mentorship he was abundantly blessed. judson miner, and kneal jones, i could go on and on. >> larry tribe, newton minow, it is a very long list. >> how did this happen? did they choose him or in some

way did he find his own? >> there are certain young people. i remember a piece written about elbe or a long time ago and she wrote that al gore is an older person's idea of a younger person. [laughter] and barack obama was more mature than the other students at harvard law. he was more pleased. he wasn't feverish in his condition. he was the most overused word in the world about obama, he was cool about it and all so smart and a laurence tribe was attracted to him and made him a research assistant. before that when he was ray -- and this may be the most important mentor, certainly somebody who's been unbelievable amount of time when he was a community organizer he was hired by a guy named jerry coleman, a jewish guy from new york who converted to catholicism who is

working with all of these catholic parishes and other churches through the south side and he desperately, desperately needed a black organizer and it's hard for him for the obvious reasons to march into the black churches and expect everybody to job before him and do what he wanted. he needed a black lawyer. and he felt this skinny kid who had applied after reading an ad in the new york public library in a little paper called community jobs, and jerry, in really was his coach, his teacher in the place where he finds, and he's not responsible for everything because jeremiah wright is also important, it is the place and the time he finds seriousness, a sense of idealism, community and a sense of home. jakarta and indonesia, that wasn't home, that was a soldier.

even hawaii to some extent. he wasn't going back there. there's nothing for him there. is he going to be the, from honolulu? that isn't going to happen. chicago, the south side of chicago, that was home. he also found a church there which is important in jeremiah wright is in the central figure in that early time frame. >> and he found michelle obama. >> and he told michelle when he did an internship at a law firm and there was michelle obama who preceded him at harvard law, about the same age but because he had been an organizer they were not together at harvard law and he was knocked out by her. she, not so fast. [laughter] >> she keeps him grounded when the world is going crazy and the

world seems to rise up and greet him wherever he goes she's always saying things like i hope at some point he does something to earn all of these accolades. but a day's as you describe part of the chemistry in the relationship. >> she is the observer and the one punctuating his not considerable self regarding certain times but in the and she seems to win most major battles in other words all along the way she is very reluctant about electoral politics. she came from a family where the view of electoral politics is the daily. greg triumph of the harold washington were excited by that everybody was in the community but very weary of electoral politics and the idea of running for the senate and by the way it

gets to this state senate and the black caucus can't stand him. the work is boring, he's bored, he finds it trivial, he has a low boredom threshold which also speaks to a certain ego as well as intellect and then he runs for congress and gets the great and says enough is enough. we can do well and good at the same time enough is enough and he just has to give it one more shot and he wins the seat. >> she is as committed as he is the. >> but in a different way. she's very committed to community service and please that held as a professional woman at the university chicago and the hospital and all the rest. but electoral politics i think was something she came to far less willing to lead and obama so far. sprick what explains his restlessness? >> welcome again, i want to be careful of the psychoanalytical

couch but i think there is a lot his character that is created and he said so himself there's no reason not to indulge it it's deliberately contradistinction to the father. but has yet to learn about his father's career? he reacts to it. his father thought he was going to be at the very pinnacle of the postcolonial politics. he was going to go on this airlift as a young man to the university of hawaii, get the education he could get in the united states. he then went to harvard and got a degree in economics and he thought he was going to be back in nairobi and the circle of kenya and all the rest and would have an extremely powerful voice. something on the left stature of the politics and all went south. the politics didn't work out as he fought. he was extremely erratic in his

personal life and terrible husband and not a very good father at all. at one point, even one of his children who now lives in china has said obama senior beat one of his wife's and became a terrible drinker and the life in this with him drinking and docking. this is the erratic life obama simply wouldn't stand for. so i think this kind of meticulousness, the research, the cheerfulness he describes -- this is meant me describing -- he describes at least in some part his erratic father. >> how do people misinterpret or underestimate him when he first began the presidential ron?

and let's consider the first primary in iowa. >> remember there were very few black people in iowa last time i was there. why did he win iowa? i think two big factors. lack of complexity as you run through the tiny caucus for ever to things were important. leave aside hillary clinton's own campaign problems and divisiveness in the campaign and all the calculations. barack the organization, barack and organization. a disciplined and innovation and barack is something to separate himself and capture a left-leaning democratic party faithful in iowa. a very different from the victory in south carolina which to me is an incredibly

interesting drama but once he went on the web people wake up. who is this guy? he beat hillary and suddenly they are on an almost equal to clean and everything is gangbusters after that. >> i wonder if one of the things people didn't realize the importance of community organizing and what he learned from the brief period of time he spent as a community organizer and how he applies that to his candidacy in the end and i guess how we might even apply that to how he now operates in the white house. >> i think that he's constantly using the land for a community organizing in the campaign, less so now, but in the campaign as a metaphor for how he imagined he would be a politician. when he ran for the state senate and started giving interviews to the chicago reader and the tribune he would talk about i imagine a politician that is a community organizer in office so on and so forth the truth is we learned a lot about the life of

seoul wilensky the last few years and not everybody knew it. obama wasn't a smolinski organizer. so wilensky was as a rough figure, self-styled rough figure you could imagine very much of his time and obama wasn't that although community organizing as such especially in chicago is complete the associated with the legacy of seóul berlinski. so i think community organizing give more to barack obama than barack obama could never get to the community organizing especially that short period of time. he had a modest accomplishment and victory that eventually came to pass. they said a big job recruiting center that collapsed under its own wheat after a while and it's not much. and i think part of what he learned is the frustration and the intention of the community organizing. that he looked around and he looked at washington's unfulfilled promise. here's somebody that spent his entire first term completely

embroiled in a battle with the city council. the second term is going to get better and he buys at his desk and leaves behind not the kind of political legacy organization that he could have or should have. obama as he's leaving the organizing printable school, he realizes or thinks to himself and says in these little roundtable discussions that he has a few can dig up if you're so inclined or you can find them in this book he says you know, i've discovered in order to make real change at any level, despite the corruption and hypocrisies and involvement of money you have to get elected so off he goes to harvard law school to get the tools to get elected. >> and his friend who later went to work for him realizes after he loses to bobby rush but

politics is in his blood. i think it spreads like an addiction. >> this is a guy named daniel showman who is a former journalist and worked for a meal jones kicking and screaming at his direction of kneal jones says he's the head of the state senate, very powerful state politician and a party regular type. this isn't an innovative joshua what generation. it is an old-style dealmaking and he says to his wife could you please show him around because he is a little lost. some of his colleagues -- you heard this before, professorial and distant and all those things he had a hard time with when he would first entered springfield

so he gets in this kind of illinois education. sprick to bring you into the conversation in a minute but just a few more questions, one of the things that is very interesting to look at the early writings or the early speeches and in this case barack obama left a particular gift with the columns he wrote in small newspaper and i want to ask you about one in particular which is a column that he wrote after 9/11 that is so revealing in his world view and his view of america and a confidence expressed at that time when many people sort of almost had an instinctive reached was patriotism. >> michele is referring to a comma, more or less steady column that obama would write for the local paper in hyde park

and most of the columns were here's why i'm for the health care program or work number racial profiling bill or whatever and they are fine and on the spectacular. it's not exactly menkin or anything at that level but they are okay. after 9/11 a lot of local politicians were asked to weigh in on their feelings about it and what it suggests for the country. most of them are utterly incommodes of words of constellation they are and remarkable and obama of rights much longer than anybody else. he prides himself on his writing and he's taking a kind of, you know, there's a horrible tragedy and we must punish the guilty and so on, but -- and these are words after to the car out of

other people small sastre 9/11 that got in trouble, susan montanan and others, that the expiration isn't but some of it, we would be very careful in our grief and anger not to go too far and we should be careful to adhere to the norms of american law in the pursuit of the guilty so in a way he was a more state senator than being called for by the strictures and customs of being a city center but after a while he came up to limit office and there was no way that he was going to stay there much longer. >> before we open to questions in the audience i want to ask about a decision that you made early on in the administration when the white house welcomed a group of young children to the building, michelle obama said something in an offhand manner talking to the kids she said you

know, this building was largely built by sleeves. and this was something the kids in the audience nodded their heads but much was made of that remark because it is a historical fact that it's not something for this talked about much. you actually went back and spend a lot of time looking at the history of slaves in the white house and slaves to the white house and i want to know why you decided to put that. >> what you are referring to is is close to the end of the book he's been elected and the narrative is going to take us to the inauguration and i stopped the narrative and in the section about precisely this that sleeves the white house and going to some granular detail about their names, how much they were paid well, they were not paid, the money went the masters obviously. much of the capitol is still by slaves, the dredging of the city

that we are and now was established by slaves. there were sold outside in lafayette park. there was leave options by a virginia company right there and they went to the lafayette park and they were soon put on the river boats and sent to the south. and i spent considerable time also recounting the story of african-americans in the white house, which until barack obama and modernity were black people in service. elizabeth ackley is one figure. she was mrs. lincoln's seamstress and wrote in memoir and was closer to the clintons in some ways than almost anybody in the white house. she was raised as a sleeve and became a free black and wrote in memoir and mrs. lincoln felt betrayed and ended her life in a

home with the indigent, covered indigent, i forget the name of of the institutions and also i recount in being at the same time between frederick douglass and lincoln. it's interesting henry louis gates became famous in the obama story a little later for reasons we all know in the presidency. i have a long description in the book and he said look the most radical thing about barack obama is that he's african-american. and then in a way e is a post-modern frederick douglass and what did skip gates mean by this? he meant he is somebody who is able to tell stories. we are talking about this before. frederick douglass had a unique capacity to tell his story back and forth across racial lines.

but he grew into a in and co political terms he's a figure that he's able to translate just as cassandra was describing obama. this is a remarkable history and figure. however you feel but his mistakes, his faults or politics, wherever you come down on that this book is no means a a geography that is happening, some of the african-american and by this name becoming president is to paraphrase joe biden a big deal. [laughter] [applause] >> let's invite the audience in. [applause] raise your hand. we can make our way to you with a microphone and start right down here with this gentleman in the gray. >> [inaudible]

>> we have 20 minutes for questions [inaudible] >> my name is [inaudible] i'm looking forward to your book. i've been fascinated by obama as a person and i read his book. i grew up in kenya and i met his father. >> where were you when i needed you? [laughter] >> what you say about the mother and father is very valid in the sense that the father was never present. so when you look at obama, the man, this is interesting, not a politician. what you see is quality from the father, a height, his voice in the office casey deep baritone, you know, and above all the supreme self-confidence which in the fall first case [inaudible]

and in his case it is much more subtle because he doesn't have to prove himself. the capacity for listening to somebody, the capacity to get into somebody else's had if you see the first book the discussion with his half-brother in china who is coming back to kenya. so what i'm trying to get that is to get the two sides of the person one genetic and the acute intelligence, the physique, the self-confidence which is always struck me about obama which enables him to dominate the group of people. he's a 99th senator in the state and able to do what he does so i just would be interested in -- >> i can't argue with that. my only caution -- my only caution to that is to be careful as with any of us we are not

absolute products of just the ingredients provided to us by either genetics or parental quality. but i can't argue with what you say completely accords with the of the people i've interviewed who described obama sr. as extraordinary and deep voice, his self-confidence that became leader as he became less successful and more frustrated far beyond cockiness into a kind of an attractive frustrated d.c. did and there's a lot of crying into his beer. not a happy sight. but your description is completely in accord with certainly what i think a lot of us here know and certainly my own research. >> thank you. >> question right here. i think your shirt is purple. maybe if you stood up -- yes. thank you. >> my name is kelly heineman. i retired from the u.s. foreign

service. and i just wanted to ask you briefly what do you mean by the joshua generation? >> in 2007 shortly after announcing for the presidency, barack obama accepted the invitation of john lewis and others to go to selma alabama for the annual re-enactment of the beginning of the march from selma to montgomery and the seminal moment that loosened the floodgates for johnson to put forward a voting rights act. selma alabama been the scene of the bloody sunday and just constant turmoil by design with the civil rights movement and every year they reenact and obama accept this invitation and quickly thereafter hillary clinton accepted an invitation to come and they both gave speeches both very resident the churches in selma.

obama and his case brown chapel where king spoke of the time. and the speech he gave, unlike the announcement speech where the metaphor was lincoln and associations were all about lincoln and general american's this is a speech directed towards almost exclusively the african-american voters and population because if he is going to get anywhere in his endeavor he has to win huge proportions of the black vote. and the terms he used, and this has been in black churches since forever, this metaphor of moses and meeting people out of the promised land and people used to call martin luther king when they were not calling him dimora they were calling him the moses figure. he was saying that the previous generation exemplified by joe lowry and john lewis was generation. they suffer for us and they have

brought this far but the journey is far from complete. we are the joshua generation. you can easily follow the biblical metaphor where it is going. and on the implicit in the speech and ahead of the joshua generation. it is an act of great rhetorical goal to say this and he did. again, not lacking self-confidence but he is after all running for president. and to get the democratic nomination it would be nice if he got some portion of the black vote. and the clintons, remember at that time they had an enormously deep relationship with many african american leaders and the population in general. some people not but certainly it is a diverse population. a whole range of political opinion. but obama couldn't assume the black vote so that is where that

vocabulary comes from. and the joshua generation of politicians as gwen iphone and others talk about includes michael nutter or in alabama artur davis or cory booker in newark. if there is a lot of them. these are all people in their 30's, 40's, medium of their early 50s who are too young to have experienced the civil rights movement except on television as children. >> thank you. >> [inaudible] >> he was subjected to racism and discrimination because of his skin color. he was not subjected to the legacy of slavery and the trends generational transmission of trauma that often involves some strong self-destructive aspect in one's life.

first issue. how important do you think this is? some people say he's not african-american, he is african and american because of his distinction. the second quick point. apart from the tea party movement, do you think that there's some -- that the opposition to him, which is typical but maybe more so during his administration derived from unconscious and conscious racial aspects? no black man should have this much privilege. he is uppity and we've got to get him. >> to answer the last question, to see that everybody who opposes barack obama has conscious or unconscious racialism is unfair. if barack obama were white, if he were john kerry pursuing or less the same politics or hillary clinton pursuing the same politics whether it is in foreign policy or metro policy

and face this kind of opposition in congress or on the street one immediately ascribe it to racism? i couldn't, or sexism in the case of hillary clinton. i did the people have real political disagreements and concerns and anxiety. there is such a thing as a panoply of opinion. but do i think that some of the opposition and some of the uglier voices directed at obama had something to do with racism? i think it is undeniable. i don't think you can deny that at all. and as for his racial identity, you know, in large measure this is something given to you but you also have something to say about it. and when he filled out his census report who am i to argue with that? especially me. i don't know what michelle would say that these are distinctions donner slightly different. yes, but he has an african legacy although he played a role mainly in memory.

but in his life he experienced life as an african-american. when he goes to get his car he has the key is thrown to him as if it were assumed he was great to go pick up the cart as the guy that gets the valet parking. when skip gates gets arrested in his home and handcuffed, i will guess this was not what happened to me. so these things happen. there is racism in this country. there are reasons for racial profiling laws. it's not the same as 1964 and 1964 isn't the same as 1865. there's been progress but to think that we live in some post racial utopia i don't know where this idea ever came from is just unbelievable folly. >> how about right here because i think i know her. >> i had a question in writing his autobiography i was very

interested in the part about his moment to the commitment from occidental to colombia and the period of columbia where she's withdrawn and seems to have been very reflective and i wondered in your research if you uncovered anything particular about that period in the people who influenced him and when you made at that time because it seems important. >> great question. the first two years at occidental which is a fine kawlija los angeles but not downtown. it's kind of closer to pasadena. and he wants a more urban school, he wanted bigger school, he wants to be closer to an african-american population center, and as you know, colombia is right in the home. when he gets to colombia by his own admission and a description to me in an interview but also some classmates of the life of this the hardest period to report out fully and there is a reason for it, he becomes not

just sirius itself serious, righteous, almost monastic. he reads a lot. he takes longer runs in the park and walks to the first she has a roommate named phil burner with whom he could correspondence for years thereafter but he's really -- he isn't a monk. he has a social life and academic life although not a spectacular one. he lives a fairly quiet but decides to get serious. the party inside his life receipts. he made no secret about this and when i first interviewed him in front of an audience like this on the book tour i asked him about the passage about drugs and i asked him if he inhaled, taha, and he said that was the idea. [laughter] a valid point. [laughter] but because the life that he led at columbia, i thought it was easier to report about

occidental, about chicago, hawaii, about a number of things. colombia was just a little bit more involuted. >> ibm lisa and i teach medieval history. i teach at george mason where obama recently came and spoke about health care, and the one planned he was saying that he really didn't know how health care would play out in his reputation as a president and i believe him when he says that. and i was wondering is that his modus operandi where he just does what he thinks is going to be the best thing and is he calculating -- >> [inaudible] -- he made no secret about the fact that he was for health care in fact probably a health care plan more far reaching than what we finally ended up with. and he was elected. so this notion that he is imposing something on the nation

by fiat as if this were a kind of comment you know, domestic situation is wrong. i think it is being a little bit still modest. it self-deprecating. i think that what he would like to happen is this seen as a domestic policy initiatives and success on the scale of social security or any of the big domestic policy initiatives that have taken place in this country by the nature of the politics right now. and because of the nature of the program itself because it is going to have to be worked on and improved as time goes by, some of it is up in the air and was also going to be interesting to see what effect it happens to have on the november election. the republican party is completely committed to the idea that the passage of health care will be an albatross around the neck of congressional democratic candidates.

obama is betting otherwise. >> we have time for two more questions. >> i have ? based on the political lesson both of his ability to win. was he the the genius behind the internet that no one else had done and the rest were kind of absolutely of in the air with what in the world was going on or did he just body in to these ideas and absorb them and then become reflected and go with them? in other words did he delegate or did this idea sort of come to him and work with them to do it? >> my former colleague at "the washington post" increase at two seats away from each other for a couple of years. thank you. no i don't think that he was an

internet which is in fact in the 2004 senate race in illinois he was deeply frustrated with the lack of internet presence and they put up a chat room or wherever. it was a pretty primitive use of the net in illinois. it was much more traditional television advertising and once they got a lot more money they were able to reach the markets they didn't think they were going to have. how did he win that race? his biggest opponent fell apart and obama himself kept proving himself to be a better and better candidate. that is the slate the democratic party raised and then the republican party raised as a joke. he was starting to give money to other campaigns to keep the -- >> [inaudible] >> is the presidential race in 2000 a lot of the credit for the internet initiative has to go to other people like david plus without a doubt. i don't think barack obama is -- >> [inaudible] >> jack, and i don't think there's a threat that when obama leaves office he will take steve jobs chair. [laughter]