why? because in order to have basic liberties you have to have the government with very little power. the more efficient the government is, the more liberties the individual has to give up to give to them. they cannot do their job efficiently unless they have the power to tell you what to do. ..

>> a remarkable talent, a gifted leader, a genius, and overgrown teenager, a liar, a liberal, a conservative, a liberal and conservative clothing, a conservative and liberals clothing. a decent man with flaws, a flawed man with no decency. will the real bill clinton please stand up? is there are real bill clinton to back either many pilgrims? who is bill clinton? and a complicated man the story

is told to the voice of one of its 69 people who know him. the idea was to create a book like conversation about this fascinating man, a conversation that the reader can ease drop on i hope it is the most intimate character portrait yet. i think it is the most varied. people included of the book are people who grew up with him, went to school, worked for him, worked with him, worked against him, investigated him, defended him, reported on him, love him, hit him. everyone from the cousin who took the 5-year-old bill clinton to the saturday westerns in arkansas to a former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. classmates and every stage of his education to nationally known journalists. cabinet members, political consultants, over two dozen current and former members of congress, to republicans like

bob dole and late henry hyde. there is even a cameo appearance by larry flint, the publisher of hustler magazine. i spent a solid year interviewing. my wife tells me i am a man of strong opinions, stubbornly held. she was struck that each evening as i would report for her on the dais interviews i would find merit in the views of whatever person i have spoken to that date pro or con. one day someone might say impeachment for line about sex was a travesty. how does that rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors as spelled out in the united states constitution? i think you can't argue with that. the next day someone would say lying under oath must not be condoned, especially when done by a president of the united states. i think, well, you have a point there.

the process was crystalized one day when i interviewed dick armey in the morning, the conservative republican, former house majority leader from texas. after lunch i met with the democratic fund-raiser extraordinaire and premier friend of bill. dick armey calls him the most successful adolescent i've ever known. terry loves bill clinton and kept saying what a guy. this guy gets out of bed every single day because he gives the average joe a shot at the average american dream. i walked out asking if report talking about the same person. the answer is yes, we were. they're both right. bill clinton is remarkably self indulgent. he does at times behave like a child and does things that one would think a middle-age person had left behind years ago. he can be deceitful. on the other hand there is something magnificent about bill

clinton, a delightful. really laudable. listen to what sam donaldson, the abc news reporter says pit he says, bill clinton is a man child in one body. the man side is so impressive. the best natural politician i have ever seen. the president who knew more detail about more issues that come to the presidency than anyone i've ever seen. you go down a whole list, so impressive. then you go to the child side and you want to gently shaken by the neck and say, get out of the sandbox. he can't play with in turns, keep to a schedule, keep with 2:00 a.m. phone calls just because you have insomnia. it is all the same person. recently bill clinton has been all over the place. on television talking about president obama, on tv talking about the tea party, the midterm elections, the clinton global

initiative, his new healthy diet. there he is talking about tony blair. tony blair talking about him. during the campaign he received invitations from politicians around the country who will not be caught dead standing next to our current president, barack obama. all of this just weeks after the celebrity media could not get enough of his daughter's wedding in a poll came out not long ago pronouncing him the most popular politician in america. bill clinton. really. one of two american presidents to be impeached. a man whose last name is linked with the word fatigued to describe the country's exhaustion with him. the man who made a fool of himself during his wife's campaign for the white house only two years ago. that bill clinton. what's calling on?

for one thing, the 90's with the last years in which the country could be said to have worked. unemployment was low. the stock market was high. osama bin laden was known to few outside our nation's security apparatus. if the government was effectively disabled from january 1998 when the name monica listee surfaced to january 2001 when they hobble president left office the one cared. bellies were full. houses were paul blind. the cold war had ended. foreign troops -- american troops were not dying. even the majestic goldman -- home run records of sammy sosa and mark require had not yet been cheapened by our knowledge of the chemicals propelling the balls over the fence. the years of bill clinton's presidency were a golden age compared to the years that followed filled with work part-time and fear. there is more to our enduring

section for our 42nd president. more is what he is all about. he is more of everything. there are smart people and the world, people with big jobs and expensive education. as jeanne ryan says in the book, there is smart, and then there is bill clinton. bill clinton can receive a detailed policy briefing at the same time that he is reading a book, read in newspaper, and doing a crossword puzzle. at the end of the briefings he will ask a question that shows not only that he heard every word, but understands the subject as well as the expert giving the briefing if not better. there are few of these people in the world. bill clinton knows more about people, lead loves being with p. somehow he finds the time to keep up with thousands upon thousands of friends, and he does. and it's amazing.

he remembers birthdays. he calls and their mothers are sick. he congratulates them on the achievements. one good friend of is from arkansas says he is a people prostitute. he has to have people around him. he needs that. nicky canter was chairman of the 1992 campaign. eighty he became the binet's states trade representative and then secretary of commerce. he recalls the night in new hampshire in 1992 after bill clinton had done his first televised town hall meeting. the campaign but time on local television station as a way of speaking directly to voters and by passing the national press, which wanted to talk to him only about his sex and draft history. a master of form. you remember it was the town hall debate with george bush and ross perot, bill clinton's performance that really won him the election. describing what happened with the cameras were turned off. this is what he says.

after it ended we went into the station and said that we wanted to buy another half-hour to marmite. then something else happened. he stood around for an hour after word starting to the people. every politician will stand and say to people, but he was engaged in real substantive conversation. he did not want to leave. then there are reckless people. well, bill clinton risked the most powerful office, an office he spent his entire life seeking to occupy for the sake of ten instances of you know what with an intern half his age. bill clinton's energy, a self indulgent, appetite for food, sex, attention, power, could tease ball outside. it is what separates him from the rest of us.

not in human combat more human, perhaps the most human and. we all know people who generally do what is right, but sometimes make big mistakes. we know people who overeat when they know they should not, people who get into sexual urges the know they should resist. we know these things about our friends and families that co-workers and ourselves. bill clinton's virtues and flaws are so exaggerated and public that we see ourselves and him. despite all the times we had been disappointed, and we have been time and time again i think we can't help loving and hating bill clinton and admiring and laughing at him and listening to him because there are few people so visibly extremely outrageously human he is who we are. we are fascinating to marched in? it is not only that we and

identify with him. he edifies with us. his famous and that the. in 1992 for the new york primary was speaking at a nightclub. he was hassled. he added that same phrase. he said i feel your pain. became an instant punch line. you know what, it's true. he does. he really does. people all over the world from gaza to gonad to northern ireland, from little rock to los angeles to right here in brooklyn know what. many make for the best reading, first because of the southern idiom that is essential to understanding and which as a northerner i find both enjoyable and extremely expressive. for example, one journalist speaking of some of the top aides during his first term as

governor, more than rendition. he says those people were about as congenial as a porcupine. also providing some of the best insight because they knew him just as bill. they knew him before he was invested with all the trappings of the presidency and the presidential campaign. they will see him jogging around little rock, driving his red mustang. wait on line at the video store. i don't know if you remember what a video store is. max bradley, now editor of the arkansas times, has been writing about politics for many years. he has a daughter about the aged chelsea, and they were on the same softball team. they would sit together at the softball games. this is what max bradley says about bill clinton's appeal and in the.

he says one of the things about charisma is an ability of people to connect. the ability of a person to connect with other people. bill clinton can do that. he does it quickly, seriously, and effectively. he gets close to you. he establishes a physical connection. an arm and shoulder, a handshake, looking you in your eye. makes you think that you are the only person in the room. he quickly finds common foundation. now is your cousin, somebody who went to the school he went to, your boss. then the other thing that he can do, which is the real trick is file it away and have a near total recall at some point way in the future. i've known politicians to can do some of these things, but they do it in a way which seems a parlor trick. bill clinton is really that interested in people. some is just to anyone. a deep and abiding empathy for human beings.

people can tell a phony. in terms of his interest in human beings he is not necessarily confident, but he is not a phony. at that moment he is definitely in love with you. here is another on the source of the clinton magic. the late ken rubin was an attorney in west memphis, arkansas who served for a time of the state legislature. i said, what is it about clinton? here's what he said. what is it about clinton? the answer is real simple. if you put him in war memorial stadium texas-arkansas camp after two minutes he would have everyone in the stadium swearing that he or she met with clinton for a full hour. clinton listened to what he or she had to say and that he convinced the folks that he learned something from them that would save the world and he had never thought. clinton is a hell of a listener. if you watch most politicians there talking about themselves

and their programs. clinton wants people to believe he listened to everything they had to say. that is one hell of a trade. bill clinton has been in the news because of the midterm election. people have been examining the parallels between this year's democratic losses and those of 1994 when the house and senate both went republican. the question is, ken barack obama to what bill clinton did which was to breeze through reelection in 19962 years after his political obituary had been read. in 1995 and 1996 it may have been his finest, most impressive our. the gop managed to convince large numbers of people in the country that the president was out of step. they focused on issues like gays in the military command-and-control, taxes, health care. let's not forget that there was that a very expensive haircut he

got on the tarmac on air force one on the tarmac of los angeles international airport that also added to this idea that he was an elitist, not so much demand of hope, but from hollywood. to recover is standing he had to change in terms of the national debate. he and his advisers set out to turn the tables of the republicans. starting right away the white house adopted a new vocabulary. here is what mike mccurry, former press secretary says over and over again, we use the words radical and extreme interchangeably to discuss the priorities of the new republican in congress. the republicans obliged by calling for huge cuts in federal programs with medicaid, education, the environment, and especially medicare. here than the white house would have you believe was a band of radical ideologue seeking to knock down the underpinnings of

middle-class american life and bill clinton was the only thing standing in their way. the campaign was successful due to a nuking rich. when the government shut down in the fall of 1995 the public blamed gingrich. in the bid for reelection they tied the unpopular speakers around the neck of bob dole and that was that. in 1995 as he sought to regain the public favor bill clinton drew on three strengths of his personality. first was as well-known flexibility. the standard narrative that we have been hearing is that after two years as a liberal bill clinton moved rightward and stayed there for the remainder of his time in office. true enough, but i would put it differently. i would say he lowered his ambition. gone was the transformational

leader who thought that bring fundamental change to the nation and in his place was a fierce defender of the status quo and wired not for things to bid for, but thinks it prevented others from doing. so as aggressive as the campaign was to demonize, it nonetheless represents a kind of retreat. although he faltered in politics he was masterful over the next two and that is what he earned his reputation. third and most important, was resilience. by 1994 he had already been pronounced the political dead man twice. 1980 when he failed in his first bid for reelection and in 1992 when no one thought he would survive the twin revelations of jennifer flowers and his draft history just before the new primary. he was written off three times. in 1998 when the mnemonic of the

wednesday surfaced much of washington thought he would not last week. people were already speculating on who al gore would name as his vice president. in 2001 he left office under a cloud when he pardoned marc rich. in 2008 he embarrassed himself, demean the presidency, and it is live now favors during her campaign for the presidency. yet here he is again, the most popular politician in america. his resilience and his skill and in the the were most traumatically on display, i think, during those two days in new hampshire in 1992. listen to how three people in the campaign some that his performance. here is what they say. james carville, the political consultant who was the campaign strategist. i have never seen a human being perform like he performed that

week in new hampshire. it was stunning. it was more like an athlete than a political candidate. event after event, every interview, every town hall meeting. even today it seems a little bit of magic. one reason was there is no harder work that you will find than bill clinton, particularly when his back is against the wall. he believes it can work his way through any problem. you and i know that is probably not true, but in many cases he has been able to do it. in new hampshire he is at a home for the elderly and they're talking about the price of pharmaceuticals. people are talking about how they did not have enough money. drugs are not covered by medicare at that point. the woman in the front of starts crying. he walks up and kneels down in front of the woman and texture. here is what be meyers says, the campaign press secretary and first party secretary in that one white house.

a certain shamelessness that comes from thinking he should be the most powerful person in the world. he won by connecting with people on the personal and important level. people voted for him because they believed that he got their problems and cared about them. when push came to shove he would act on their behalf. that is why his approval rating was 60-plus percent. people had to voice some discussed with his behavior. people thought he was for them. there was this remarkable to attract the people, and damp particularly thinking of reporters, were proceeding along. how could he be such a loss and compelling at the same time? bill clinton accomplished much in office. he tamed the deficit, presided over extended prosperity, put a stop to genocide prosecuted by

milosevic in the balkans. but i think perhaps his most concerned accomplishment and perhaps the shining achievement is the piece that he brought to northern ireland. two people involved in the process, former democratic congressman and republican congressman say in the book that while others can treated the lion's share of credit should go to bill clinton. he really was bringing about peace in northern ireland was to get the united states involved. to that point the united states has always respected the wishes of great britain, that it stay away. bill clinton saw that with the cold war over that special relationships between the u.s. and the u.k. was no longer sacrosanct, and he could take the risk of entering prime minister john major and the world would not and, and it didn't. second, he crushed an entirely new approaches.

up until that time the british tried to make peace by focusing on the middle and keeping out people like gerry adams, the president of the political arm of the irish army. people in a similar position. what clinton did was bring these people and from the cold. he said if you will seek your goals through ballots and not bullets i will put my presidency on the line and support you. it worked. it culminated in the good friday agreement. there were setbacks along the way to the agreement and afterward as the party's proceeded with the agreements of the implementation. basically the agreement itself. bill clinton stuck with it. it is his character. there was, of course, early on the character issue. well, the character of bill clinton made this agreement possible. here is what bruce morrison and

peter king say. the interesting thing about clinton in contrast to some lesser folks who have worked on this policy said he never took the reverse personally. as never, i did all this for them. it was always future oriented, keeping your eye on the ball and continuing to work a project and being on the phone and meeting with all of these two bit nothings from northern ireland on or around st. patrick's day, people who if you took the political equivalent in the u.s. would never get a meeting with the president of the nine states. we are talking about people who have one seat in 109 member assembly representing a country of one-half million people. it's like a minority member of the delaware legislature. there is a level of personal involvement that is unshakable. peter king says my father who was raised by irish immigrants died before bill clinton became president, but going back he said he but never have the

patients to put up with all these irish people. they can drive you crazy. well, maybe that is what appealed to bill clinton. they can find so many things to argue about and minute arguments that they can debate to death. he thrived on that. this would make somebody else throw them out of the office and say i'm fed up with it. he would go back and forth. a number of people in our office, political leaders talk about bill clinton's feelings of new ones and the detail, not just a factual issues, but the personalities and psychologists involved. who better to understand the most dysfunctional political system and the most dysfunctional fight in western europe than bill clinton? he seemed to thrive on that chaotic behavior. as we try to evaluate bill clinton's presidency there are three main obstacles. first, he served during that time of quiet.

after one more. the cold war ended. before another had begun. bill clinton himself spoke of his regret that he did not serve of time of great national crisis. his heroes, lincoln, fdr, would he have risen to such an occasion, i think he would have. april 1995, 4 days after oklahoma city bill clinton gave a magnificent speech at the oklahoma state fair arena. the speech comforted not just the families of the dead, but the nation as a whole. help the country makes sense of the tragedy and give it the resolve to fight the kind of terrorism. at a speech after the midterm losses in 1994, but he never did have to deal with a sustained time of crisis. we'll never really know what he would have done. the second obstacle is that you

just can't get around the sec's. i worked on this book for five years. while i was working on it the question, what you do. of course i would answer the question and tell them about the book. the follow-up question was always, what if you see monica lewinsky anyway? who is the sleeping with now? it was never, while, what a great job he did getting rid of the deficit or he stuck it to milosevich or he scored the middle-class on nafta or really blew it on health care. bill clinton for all his accomplishments, the image of a sex crazed dude who lost the party. cannot resist a sexual entanglement no matter how inappropriate or dangerous it might be, and he had to know when he responded to that climbs

that it would be dangerous. first, he could not really have expected a 23 year-old intern not to have told a single soul that she was having an affair with the president of the united states. even more he had to know what would happen if the affair were exposed. from the beginning of his time on the national stage the opposition of many in the press had been out for him, how to get him from jennifer flowers during the campaign and then to his time in office when it was the travel office firings, the suicide of vince foster, the whitewater land deal, the fbi files found with a should not be found. the campaign finance irregularities during the 1996 reelection campaign, all through this time his opponents and many in the press had been looking for a way to taken down, but

they had not drawn blood. with the lewinsky scandal he was saying to these people, sorry, i beg your pardon, it was as though all these people had been firing at him all this time with a wide variety of bullets, yet all of them have been blacks. it was the lewinsky scandal, sorry to have made you waste your time so far. here's a truckload of ammunition . doug brinkley, the historian said that when you ask people what you remember about john kennedy they will say it is that what your country did for you, but what you can do for your country. ronald reagan, mr. gorbachev, tear down that wall. bill clinton? i did not have sex with that women. or the remember, it depends on what the meaning of the word is is it is tragic.

during the last few months the pittsburgh steelers' quarterback ben roethlisberger was accused of sexual assault. no charges were brought, but there were public accusations. one member of his entourage, a bodyguard was quoted as saying that when this young woman was taken to the back room where mr. roethlisberger was waiting the quarterback was not interested in regular sex. i beg your pardon, he was not interested in regular sex, only in clinton sex. the man was the 42nd president of the united states. also been thinking of the scandal you must consider the 2000 election. for our courts to lose the 2000 election under a number of circumstances, without any one of them george bush would not have been -- would not have taken office after bill clinton. you had to have the multi paige

ballot in county florida, the butterfly ballot in palm beach, the candidacy of ralph nader, the awkwardness about four at the campaign as played vividly by the three different persona. we have to have the political establishment in the state of florida, and you had to have -- you had to have a supreme court willing to stop the counting in florida and give -- so that they could give the election to a candid they favored. but at the top of the list has to go the lewinsky scandal. generated by republicans in congress willing to seize an episode of private behavior to bring down a man despised, but made possible by that behavior in the first place. and so ken starr did not succeed in evicting him from the white house. they did evict -- it cost the

nation not only what might have been done january 1998 and 2001, but what might have been done and what was done instead over the eight years that followed. the budget once again awash in red ink. the tax structure skewed to the interest of the wealthy. the failure to deal with hurricane katrina, the war in a rock. if you are a republican you may find this pleasing. if you are a democrat and believe in those things that bill clinton believes and this has to distribute. none of it would have happened had the president of the united states been able to control himself when a rather young woman showed him her underwear. the final obstacle is that there really was no singular accomplishment to which you can point and say, here is what this man did as president of the united states to better the lives of his fellow citizens of

the nation and the world. it is not, certainly, to speak of a man who was governor of the state for 12 years, president of the united states for eight years as an underachiever. but with bill clinton at think inescapably he was so talented. he had such a phenomenal influence in such rare skills with ordinary people. shouldn't there be more to is legacy than the extinguishing of regional fires and is acting as the competent sort of the nation's business between two wars. he tried. there were too ambitious projects. health care at the beginning, which failed because it was the right plan at the wrong time or he did not have the political skills to get it through or because hillary clinton was the wrong person to put in charge of the operation. late in his term he tried and came close to solving the

conflict between israel and palestine. that dream in the days before he left the white house when yasser arafat said thanks but no thanks to the peace deal that bill clinton had sanctioned. we have to be left disappointed in the unfulfilled potential. this feeling about bill clinton interestingly close to dog was back to arkansas. often called the dean of the arkansas political press. all those years clinton was governor i was an editorial writer. all those years we always endorsed him warmly saying he still has promised. one more term, and he will do it right. goes on to list improvements and says he was good for arkansas, a better governor than the vast majority. yet he was so smart with so much talent and a rare political gifts. that was always it.

so much promise, and he did not deliver. he led us to expect miracles, and all we got was modest. i think that is true of him as president as well. part of the failures as president was because of whitewater. if the republicans had not taken over congress and whitewater had not be there we might have had a national health care system, and he might have done a great deal more. i still think he was a pretty good president, but that's it. maybe a little above fair, but that's all. you look back, and it seems like so much waste, so much unfulfilled promise. all american presidents must be if not all things to all people, many things to many people in order to lead this large and diverse country. but in bill clinton's case opinions in this live buried. just about every one of them, not the stuff about drug running and murders, but everything else

can be argued with solid evidence to back it up. the conflicting data are often found within the same issue. a friend of the port. betrayer of the port. look at the callous. courageous statesmen. the intervention in the face of the hostile congress to save lives and because of a. political coward. sending ground troops. he would have saved more lives. and looking at the presidency and a man without that momentous contribution, there is no satisfying way. principal battle for the common good, you bet. shameless opportunist, yes. authoritative commander in chief? ps. brilliant pragmatist. yes.

compromiser, willing to sought millions, right. a man of rare and that the. self interested snb. liberal. conservative, a centrist. one of the smartest people on the planet. an unbelievable dope. and so again, the question, a complicated man presents arguments over this complicated controversial, often confounding always compelling american president. thank you all. [inaudible conversations] [applauding] [applauding] >> we have some time for questions. please wait for the microphone to be passed your way. anyone?

>> i grew up, most of my childhood was spent in arkansas. my question, i have many questions about your opinion of how arkansas. my question is more toward what i thought was one of the most fascinating debate portion in which you allow several voices to bounce off one another quoting varying opinions. the question was whether or not clinton could be considered a supporter of the new deal legacy and the weather not he was, in fact, loyalists to that tradition or a betrayer of that tradition. the arguments were pretty effective. i wondered in the scope of your research if you felt that personally and with the research you get the weather and not you feel you can speak to that. to you feel like clinton up help the new deal legacy or whether or not he really encapsulate it

in a way that leaves it pretty ineffective. >> that is the question. did he modernize the new deal, liberalism. as he would argue, the democratic council, the organization where he honed his strategy. did he modernized the new deal this he effectively ended third? it is a great question, and one that is difficult to resolve. the welfare question is one that really puts it into relief. it is one that really puts the question on display. in 1994 he proposed an overhaul of the welfare system. of course he campaigned in 1992 on ending welfare as we know it. he proposed the bill in 1994 to reform welfare. it contains $9 billion of

additional spending for things like child care and job training well, that was 1994. his health care initiative had gone down in flames. his political capital was at a low ebb. after the republican congress took over in january of 1995 they started working on their own bill to reform welfare. this one featured not increased spending, but large cuts, originally over $60 billion of cuts. eventually he vetoed the bill twice. in the summer of 1996 s he was proceeding toward reelected he signed the bill that called for $55 billion in cuts. that is a $64 billion when. did he, by signing this bill, make the best of the situation? bring needed reform to the

system that clearly needed reform or was seen knuckling under to the republicans in order to take that issue off the table to provide what one person in the book, a man who resigned from the government over this welfare bill, what he calls election insurance that bill clinton was taking out by signing this bill. people with talk of it as an underhanded deal with the republican congress. i'll sign this bill, keep my job, and you keep your ears. you're getting things done. certainly sabotage to bob dole's campaign. this is, i think, a perfect example. was he a great pragmatist? making this needed change to a system that really needed this change or was he selling out poor people who had no where

else. it really depends. it is difficult to see that the new deal is much alive at this point. liberalism really has much left in it. certainly the problems that obama is manning, the recent election loss by the democrats. it all seems to it indicate that the country has moved on. what was bill clinton's part in that? again, it is very difficult to discern. nothing this certainly would have wanted someone else. interestingly, a former congressman from the detroit area. ties to labor unions being from detroit where the automobile industry. yes, we would have wanted to have somebody else and liked to have someone else, but there was no one else. anyone else to back.

>> i think bill clinton loves it. he gets up every day wanting to give the average joe a shot at the american dream. i know he gets up every day wanting to meet new people and learn new things. he is lucky. now he says that he has a certain freedom. he does not have the vast apparatus of power that he had in the white house. he does not command armies. he does not command a vast military establishment, but he has the freedom to concentrate on what he wants. he has developed a reputation as a global celebrity. it was called -- after he left

office he was on the cover of esquire magazine. the headline was the most influential person in the world. i don't know what he enjoyed more, but he is certainly loving what he is doing now. he has also done something that he was not able to do as president and governor. he has been lining his own pockets effectively. his post presidency, he has been traveling the globe doing work. he has especially been just wonderful in what he has done to bring down the cost of aids drugs so that they can be given to people in poor countries in places in africa and haiti. that is just that role and laudable at the same time. he has been doing things that don't smell right. giving speeches at phenomenal rates. given a helping friends of his to deal. he helped the deal in the

iranian mining business. that is bill clinton. anyone else? >> what intrigues you? >> what intrigues me to write the book, i have been a political junkie since i was 19 years old. it was really hard, especially during presidential years for me to get anything done. especially now when you can follow moment by moment on the internet what's happening. my last book was world history. this one just came up naturally. if you love politics you have to love the clintons. whether you love him or hate him, you have to love hearing about him and learning about him . lots of people enjoy hitting him. he has the largest personality of anyone from any artiga of the

oval office. as far as comments go, he did not meet with barbara first. i would have wanted to speak to him about post presidency. he is the presence that works throughout the whole book. he did not speak directly to me. i did meet with an aide of his who looked me over and really checked me out to see that i was not just some sort of sleaze merchants, i guess. he gave the okay because when you send out an interview before they say yes they call and say, can we speak to this guy. i did speak to friends of this. a copy of the book has been given to bill clinton. i have not heard from him. i hope i don't receive one of those 2:00 a.m. phone calls when

he's on the other line turning purple. i am prepared. anyone else? bobbly -- okay. well, thank you all very much for coming out. [applauding] >> michael takiff is the author of brave men, gentle heroes. to find out more visit the offers web site. >> every weekend book tv brings you 48 hours of history, biography, and public affairs. here is a portion of one of our programs. >> in addition to a questionnaire that cover a wide variety of background items the

members were asked to imagine the nation's history from 1966 until the end of the century. other words, the year 2000. so they were looking ahead for 34 years and imagining what they perceived or what they were viewing the is what would happen to our country for the remainder of the century. the graduate student who was doing the study was surprised by what he described as the belief by members that they continued drift to the welfare state and socialism and moral decay would be reversed in the near future by an awakening of the american people resulting in moving the train of events back to common sense. also served -- surveyed members

of students for a democratic society, which was that leading new left or leftist organization on campuses of the 60's. the young democrats and the college republicans. they reported on his results in an article that he co-road and was published in an academic journal. it is interesting to view some of the projections of these numbers in 1966. one member predicted a redirection of american society toward freedom and conservative principles. remember he is writing in 1966. here is what he said. the united states led by hypocritical and and principal leaders becomes very bureaucratic and increasingly socialistic. the united states generally loses the battles and foreign affairs because it does not

present its philosophy of free enterprise, libertarian beliefs as well as it should. it sounds almost familiar to the current day. finally as he predicted in the 1960's -- excuse me, in the 1980's or thereabout the american people realized that economic security is not necessarily freedom. they realized that freedoms are being abridged. they realized the economy is becoming too regimented, and the government to bureaucratic. the people will venture into the trend of events back to common-sense conservative principles of government. remember his prediction was 1980. if you recall from history 1980, as it turned out, was indeed the year in which the american people voted for a conservative president, ronald reagan who

did, indeed -- [inaudible conversations] who did, indeed, change the trend of events back to common-sense conservative principles of government. cited another as predicted the following events in the near future from 1966 until 2000. his predictions were as follows. 1968. republican victory. 1972, reagan elected president. 1976 : reagan reelected. 1978, the fall of soviet russia. 1985, and of welfare, social security, and medicare. the 2000, and of unions. now, as he got his co-author note and compared with counterparts he seemed to have a mountain of nike faith.

well, let's look back nearly 45 years later. we can see that this naive faith seems to have been rather accurate in its prediction of future events. change a few of the dates, modify a few of the conclusions, and these members who were then only high-school and college students have laid out the political history of the last third of the 20th century. consider nixon's victory in 1968 brought both a realignment of american politics as well as admittedly the disgrace of watergate, impeachment, and resignation. reagan's victory came eight years after the actor had predicted, but was, indeed, followed by a landslide reelection. it took nine more years for the berlin wall to fall, closely

followed by the demise of the soviet union. then in his 1993 state of the union message a new democratic president promised to end welfare as we know it. the reforms of our welfare system were enacted a short while later when republicans gained the majority in congress in 1994. two years after that the original state of the union message that same president declared the era of big government is over in the state of the union message. >> to watch this program in its entirety go to booktv.org. simply type the title or author's name at the top left of the screen and click search.

>> in your book one of the chapters is we have been here before. what does that mean? >> that means that we have gone through this location created by an expansion of information time and again throughout history. in fact, newspapers were born at such a time when the printing press came into the and distributed information to people who had never had it. you know, there were controlled by the institutions. it took decades for the public and the industry of information sharing to develop what we call newspapers, create the basis on which people could find information that they could trust. we have gone through this time after time with each new major

change in technology. we have gone through at time exactly like this. >> why the name blur? >> i think because information moves so fast now. there is so much of it. people feel confused. in information is in greater supply knowledge is actually harder to create because you have to sift through more things to make sense of it. there is a feeling that things are more of a blur, more confusing, even though we have more information at our fingertips. >> so how do we cut through that and find what we need? >> well, we hope that the way that consumers will do it, and consumers are more in charge now than they have ever been. we hope that what people will do is develop skills to know what is reliable and what is not.

that is what the book is about to read it is a trade craft that once resided in newsrooms shared with consumers. it is also true that when things are uncertain and confusing that a lot of people just gravitate to news that they agree with. part of what we are looking at is something of a war between people who want to be empirical and provide evidence and show how information is gathered and people who want to exert what they believe, offer opinions, and amass an audience. >> you are also the co-author of the element of journalism. what is your background? >> excuse me. my background is going on 60 years of print journalism. i began in the little town in tennessee and cover the civil

rights movement and the abolition poverty and work for the new york times for 20 years, eight years as chief of their washington bureau. then i was editor of the atlanta that journal constitution, spent the last ten years of my active life as curator of the foundation at harvard, the journalism program. i get tired of working off and on and running an organization that he and i created of the committee of concerned journalists. the journalism but we could all stress. >> your background. >> well, i was a newspaperman also. i spent 12 years at the l.a. times, ten of those as the press clinic for the paper. i worked briefly for newsweek. while i was there i was approached by the charity about creating a think tank which we

created in 1996. that is part of the pew research center here in washington. we have the largest analysis operation in the united states studying what the media actually produced on the theory that conventional press where you wag your finger at the press and say he should not do that really isn't effective anymore. if you offer an empirical look and say, this is what you're doing, you decide whether it's what you want to do. that has more leverage. >> isn't it an advantage that people can get any type of news that they want when they want to back. >> absolutely. it is a wonderful system. the only problem is people are now their own editors of what they will bring to