crash after the second world war. so one big white race is an idea based in politics. >> to watch this program in its entirety go to booktv.org. simply type the title or the author's name of the top left of the screen and click search. coming up, alison dagnes questions whether the american media system which she argues is driven largely by financial goals and a need to entertain consumers is good for our democracy. she spoke at barnes and noble booksellers in pennsylvania. the program is 40 minutes. >> i want to thank barnes and noble, especially the community relations manager and casey baker for setting this up. this is terrific. thank you for coming out tonight. i alison dagnes and i wrote a

book. this is the book. there are more copies here. i wrote a book that makes the argument that the media are inhospitable for american politics. this is a topic of her love for quite some time. as the book zigged and zagged the deflected and that i love it again. that is because it is a topic constantly in flux. it is a topic that everybody is always talking about and there are plenty of examples to help make the case that the media are in fact in hospitable. i am going to begin with a story from 2006 when the book begins. senator george allen of bridging year should have been an unbeatable candidate for reelection. he was an incumbent republican who served as governor for a term. his father was a legendary football coach and his hair was perfect but campaigning in the

summer before election day he blew his reelection after a single statement tour called student volunteering for his campaign. the 20-year-old was conducting opposition research by videotaping at an event in southwestern virginia for democratic candidate jim webb the senator pointed at the young volunteer and said this fellow over here with the yellow shirt, is with my opponent. he is following us everywhere and it is just great. let people welcome him. welcome to america and the real-world. with that his reelection bid came to a screeching halt. this was viewed as an offense to his indian heritage and wind interpretation that it was a racial slur. he spent the rest of his campaign trying to defend himself while webb came from behind to became a formidable challenger. lost the election by 7,000

votes. zero.3% of the ballots cast. he lost not just because he said something stupid. the crowd to which he was beaten left at the comment that the time and the senator probably never gave it another thought until the video of this moment hit the internet and the airwaves and spread by wildfire well beyond virginia's borders. it happened because of youtube which was about year-old. this helps illustrate how fast everything has become. a message can be shut out and spread around quicker than most politicians feel comfortable with. that was four years ago. one of the great things about this topic is these examples keep coming. almost time to update the book ended is only five month-old. what happened last summer, the part of the men agriculture employee was thrust into the

national spotlight. she had given a speech on racial tolerance in march and a conservative blotter took a clip of the speech that made it look as if she was racially in tolerance. he put upon his website and everybody reacted really quickly. he received comments and they all spread out from there. the secretary of agriculture condemned him before seeing the end of the speech. the naacp condemned him and she was asked for her resignation. she must have been baffled about what was happening and i don't blame her. but you can blame the media as horrible as that is to do. this book argues that the media don't work well in a productive american democracy.

this book is on political media which used to just be the news that now it includes the entertainment media because of the size and options and scope of all the media outlets and the development in the last 30 years has been astronomical. the technological changes like satellite and internet technology, broadband technologies, have not only set everything up but increase the number of opportunities to get your message across and increase the options for viewing and reading and surfing exponentially. they have also increased the opportunity to make money from this. so there are a lot of the effects from these changes. there's lots of time and space to fill. now you have 24-hour networks. twenty-four hours is a long time to put things on the air. there's a lot of time. there is an infinite number of internet sites and a lot of

space there. was followed this comes and consequences. there are some news networks and newspapers and they're still of this moment requiring journalists. sanding journalists out to get the facts and get news but they are also filling a lot of space with punditry which is more opinions than anything else. there's this mandate now for excitement and entertainment which means everything has to be sparkly and quick and funny and exciting which is not what we would normally call the american political process. there's also this financial imperative because there's so much to be made in all of the ad revenue in print, on the air and with all of this competition means there's more people fighting for our attention. the partisanship that has resulted in this is a different

kind of partisanship than we see in the american political system and i will get to that in a little bit but basically where we are right now we have two sides fighting with one another but don't understand what they're fighting about. they're just fighting because it is entertaining, and attracts a lot of attention. and can bring a lot of viewers. the book goes through a medium by medium and historically. i was told by my sister make sure this is interesting so i won't go into history. sorry, historians. i am sorry. but it begins with the print medium and this includes newspapers and magazines and books and we are all painfully aware of the fed from we hit the bookstores that fewer people are buying books, fewer people are reading newspapers, your people are reading magazines. these are moving on line. that is a very successful shift

and sometimes it doesn't work. newspapers in particular are facing a terrible crisis because newspapers have historically been where the news is actually gathered and were facts and information are dug up. what they're having a hard time doing our is making money so their shifting on line in an effort to try to get everybody to pay attention to them. but they still have to make money on line. the issue they are facing is how do they charge for their content? there are so many options available, people don't want to pay for content anymore. problem facing the newspapers is so widespread and widely discussed not only among people who follow journalism but there were just interested in the news that there is this great and be a program called on the media. it is a wonderful program.

the problem facing newspapers is so often talked about that they have come up with a jingle to play every time somebody addresses the problem. so someone will said and that is the difficulty with the newspaper industry and they will say a stop, use the jingle and so they play the model for monetizing the news industry but you know if a problem has a seems on, something has gone horribly our raw. magazines face the same problem and books as well. from there ago to radio. satellite radio. that allows more options available, a.m. radio which tends to be more talk radio. there is a place for that. i was just interviewing over the summer conservative satirist who said talk radio was the greatest place for conservatives because of a place they could go and

feel at home. they could hear their opinions being discussed and that is so wonderful and i kind of fodder ok, i haven't thought of like that. what i see it as more entertainment than news because rush limbaugh, sean hannity, michael savage, they're not going line by line through the health care bill. they're trying to entertain their audience and there the first weather at this. this is not a slur on what they do and they do it quite well and probably which is why they keep doing it. my wonderful husband would be very upset if i didn't mention streaming radio on computer because that is where he is moving to get all of his radio. that opens up. you can now hear radio stations broadcasting out of milwaukee or florida if you want to. a haven't tried to find a jakarta station but there must be one that is available.

it goes on to television. the difference pulling protesting cable. i'm not that old. some students are thinking saying yes you are. but i am not. when i was a kid my dad could attest to the effect that there were three television channels we got and to get the new head to climb on to the roof and stick and antenna up there which was her wing because it was wonderful but not that coordinated. i'm just kidding. so that is where we got tv but then everything changed with satellite technology and suddenly we went from three channels to 16. remember thinking that is so much television. 16 channels! that went to 64. huckabee have 64 channels and nothing good is on. now we have 300 and is remarkable. it will keep on increasing and

getting bigger but the effect of all this is so much television down there that you can select exactly the television channels that are going to speak exactly to your interests and you can't show and everything else. so if you just want to watch sports and avoid the news you can do it really effectively. if you want to watch the news now you can go to c-span and brought some serious programming or you could say i want to watch conservative news. or liberal news. you can select the type of news that best suits your own interest and as a result. we are moving away from having a common news experience on tv. the internet destroyed everything and a good way sometimes. the internet is so fast that it

is hard to gauge it serious effect because it is so enormous. politicians and news sites have varying ways of using the internet for their own purposes. politicians have their own web sites and their supporters will set up opposing websites for people they don't like. there are blotters who have a lot of opinions and videos that gets around and facebook. today i spoke to the institute for retired persons. by the definition of the group's name their older. and how many of you are on facebook and the third raise their hands and us that it is incredible. i ask my students seminar facebook. and they raced two. that is how much they're on facebook. you have social media and established news sources and everyone has a web page. the difficulty figuring out which web pages are most useful and which ones are going to

provide fact and opinion, the truth of the matter is these days it is a combination of all these media outlets. does not just one. you can't just go on line and say you're going to get on line is because chances are you'll get it from a newspaper site or cable news channel sight. it is a cute combination of all these different medias where books are discussed on the radio and people tweet and other tweets that run on cable crawls and radio and tv of the internet so it is the huge system. and this huge system has some consequences to it. i am going to hit the effects of this and get to the negative consequences and end on a happy note so we don't caulfield doomed. although i think we are. the mandate for entertainment of all this media is political fighting. it is more interesting to watch

people yelling at each other if and have a substantive debate. another affects is politicians now have to shout to be heard over everybody else and that shouting can mean a lot of really uncivil language. it can mean a lot of accusations hurled across the aisle and what happened in american democracy is if you really this of your political opponent there is nothing to say they have to work with you again. if they stop working with you because you called them a nazi we have gridlock. that invest a major problem. there are coordinated efforts politicians use to spread from one medium to another. politicians will write a book to go on tv and get on the radio and advertise themselves. it is in the publishing house's best interest to do this because publishing houses are owned by the corporation that owns the

cable television channel and radio station. so there's a big coordinated effort going on and politicians are trying to comport themselves into media roles that demand entertainment and politics. but really more entertainment than anything else. i interviewed for this book a writer from saturday night live. i was talking to him about why did the politicians go on saturday night live and he said because -- i don't know that they're trying to get big laughs. it is a way of angling for that credit. none of the politicians who came to the should pull down the laughs. when a politician does comedy because it is odd and unexpected. like seeing a dog wearing a sweater. not like a dog looks great in the sweater. just that dog is wearing a sweater.

i wanted to call the book a dog and a sweater and the editors said no. i said can you imagine the cover, a dog and a sweater. we would lower in all the people who subscribe to blogger magazine because they wouldn't know. there would think it is a guide to creating dog sweaters. bet that is exactly what it is. people are looking at politicians going on the craziest tv shows in order to be heard. barack obama has been everywhere and i love that about him. that is great. i was doing a youtube search for him, barack obama on the view, monday night football, dog fancy, barack obama everywhere. the reason they're doing that. this gets into the negative consequences is that they're trying to construct an image that is universally appealing. they are trying to appeal to

specific groups through specific means of communication. and that is not the best use of their time but i will leave that up to them. they are smarter than i am. another negative consequence of this huge 24-hour media system is too much opinion out there and we're losing sight of the facts. we are far less educated now in terms of information than we were before which is crazy because there are so many more sources of information that you would think we would have this huge wealth of knowledge but in fact news costs a lot of money to produce an opinion doesn't. so as a result is just a lot easier to go with the opinion which is entertaining than to drum up a lot of facts which are less appealing sometimes. this widening knowledge gap has been measured.

it has been documented so let me scare you with this. the ku center in 1989 did a study where they showed that 74% of the american public could name of the vice-president. and in 2007 the number dropped to 69%. it is only a 5% drop in 20 years but in 20 years all of the media blew up. suddenly we have cable, satellite radio and the internet which we didn't have in 1989. al gore hadn't invented it yet. the other thing that is judd dropping is in 2007 by that time vice-president of the united states was dick cheney who had shot a man in the face. not only did receive all that news attention. it was all the tumor and entertainment attention piled on top of it and still 31% of the american public could name of the vice president.

that is horrifying. there is a knowledge gap. one of the reasons for the knowledge gap is it is too easy to never watch any information. too easy to escape from it and it is incumbent upon us to change that. another negative consequence is that put me is breeding cynicism. won a polarization in the media reaches the public, politicians are so ferociously marked not only by media figures but mocking each of you get this sense that they're all dumb and they're not. the removal of politicians. they are really hard working people who wake up very early in the morning and really think they're doing the best thing they can for their constituents. it takes a lot to run for office. i'm a fan of politicians and this media system is such that it makes you think they are all hitting on prostitutes in the minneapolis men's room or hiring

hookers and taking them to their state for the weekend and they are not. but that is the interesting story and the entertainment factor and we hear about. the media also breeds instability. when it is okay and national television to call someone a fascist or a nazi or a socialist and not know what that means it is okay to do it in real life too. that is a very big problem because we're not saving big words for the times that really matters. so this instability in our everyday life was also seen last year when president obama gave his health-care speech and congressman joe wilson felt that it was ok to interrupt the president of the united states and yell you law. it is not. it is okay to dislike barack obama. he is not here right -- he might

be here -- he is everywhere else -- it is okay to dislike him. is not ok to disrespect the president of the united states. when george bush was president of a did not agree with him about one single thing. if he said good morning as it would allow the morning but if he walked into the room, you are not doing anything else there only not interrupting the president of the united states because that is something we as head democracy should hold sacrosanct. he is the leader of everyone. we have lost that. the media is at least partially to blame for that and our expectations are out of whack with what we expect politicians to be. we want politicians to be funny and smart and controlled but not too controlled or they do not hear authentic. they have to be short and succinct but they have to be self-deprecating and eloquent, emotional and stoic. they have to be very good looking which is horrible because some of the smartest

people i know are really unattractive. they have to be sober and witty and completely normal. that is unrealistic to expect in a human being. when we expect these people to reach the standards what are we going to get when we get them? i promised i would end on a happy note because -- i have to give a shout out to jake from the young turks and a writer named andy cobb. they were so positive about the media system. they had so many great things to say that are left los angeles thinking there's hope for democracy but it is really just thanks to those two people. so thank you. we have developed a free market of truth. this impact is going to be seen long-term. right now we are fighting about

whether president obama is actually from kenya. the truth is out there. we just have to get to it. but in the long run we really are developing the free market of truth where there are so many documents available and this is a boon for us. we can access so much more material to find the truth and help uncover things that are interesting and write. so it is there and that is also happy thing number 2 because there are plenty of places to go. you don't just have to go to one news site. you can pick from a whole bunch and if you don't like the ones in this country you can pick the ones in great britain. my friend mark the guardian, every day. that is really terrific and we wouldn't have that if it were not for the media system. there are plenty of opinions in here and i think opinion is overvalue in the media system is still good. it is good to hear what your opponent has to say and sharpen

your own fault accordingly. finally, we are connecting with more people and that is wonderful. dr. sandy bailey brought in 20 international scholars last summer and a couple of us had the opportunity to talk to them and it was wonderful because not only did i tell them about the american media system but they got to tell me about their different countries such an ally will get an e-mail from a professor from pakistan or iraq who will say have you thought about this? this is the way it is going here. that is phenomenal. that is a gift that keeps on giving. those are really good things. the problem is we are not taking advantage of them. it is incumbent upon us to use the media that is available to us to better ourselves and to be smarter and healthier.

i heard on npr, technology to boot and they said there are technology choices that are really healthy technology choices that makes you stronger and faster and better and there are technology choices that are like twinkies and they destroy the system. the same can be said for the media. there are wise choices to be made and it is incumbent upon us to find them. if you want to dabble in to the twinkie isle of news about sandra bullock's adopted baby that is great but it will crash our system. that is why i wrote the book and a want to thank you very much for coming tonight. i will take questions if anybody has any. [applause] >> thank you.

anybody have any questions? >> i was struck by the phrase there is a free market for truth. i wonder if this points to something that could be a problem. there's a difference between saying there's a free market for truth and a free-market for ideas. a free market for ideas is good. everything will be reasonable. also occurs that there are certain truths that are unreasonable to they 9. you say barack obama was born in kenya or george w. bush initiated the 9/11 attacks. neither of those things are true but we seem to be at a point where there's a pathology of the media where the media is scared to say that there are truths. to deny the reality that obama was born in kenya means the media is in the camp for obama weather is no way. cause 9/11 that means it is for

bush. if there is a free market for truth doesn't that open up the possibility for the acceptability of nonsense which contributes to the instability that you accurately identify as a problem? >> when you talk about the free market for truth, we don't rely an media sources to tell us what the truth is. to look at president obama's birth certificate on line at his birth announcement the day after he was born from the hawaiian newspaper that says he was born yesterday and say that is the truth. even if someone on fox news says we are not 100% sure of this or someone on cnn like lou dobbs, we can now say i know the truth and just because they said it on tv doesn't make it true. just because i read it on somebody's blog doesn't make it true. that is the free market of

truth. there's also a free market of ideas too. >> i like your analysis about food and technology so i am going to use it. if americans are expected to choose media outlets that are good for them and for the system, like they're supposed to choose food that is good for them, i remind you about what most americans would like to. i want you to offer some assurance we will make better choices in the media outlets. >> that is a lot of pressure on me. i don't know how to do that except we have to be more demanding. let's continue with the food

analysis. when our pets get too tight, a gigantic bag of doritos to be put down and go for a walk. if we are not getting the truth is time to turn off speed which is great but turn it off and go to something else that is more substantial. i am not sure how to do it. with the first amendment the government can tax soda which is wildly unpopular but they can do that. they can't tax britney spears also maybe they should. they would make a lot of money that way. it would pull us out of the recession. it is a good question but it is incumbent on all of us to try to do that. [inaudible] >> you do need to have a balanced diet. i love the oreos and twinkies. i don't want e-mails from people

who say i hate to read as and twinkies. [inaudible] >> it is so interesting to look back. people will say the big three networks. they talk about the year of cronkite as being this hallowed time. i have been talking to these conservative writers who said i don't know if they were so hallowed. those guys were pretty biased. everything depends on where you sit. but there was a time when journalists were more aggressive. there was the attack dog journalist who was out there really trying to capture if not the truth at least real news.

hard news as opposed to soft news. the kind of blending of news and entertainment. there was a time when that happened. right now we are moving away from that. that is a problem. now there are these great web sites that focused specifically in a non biased way on politics. and on capitol hill. so they are still out there. they are filled with integrity. they really are. [inaudible] >> muckraking is -- is 100 years old. but muckraking occurred because it sold newspapers. muckraking dug up all these sleazy stories about politicians that sold newspapers like potato chips.

it is not new but had a profit potential to it. you can't change the media. you can't change the profit potential in a capitalist economy and politicians won't change because they have confine they have to fit into. it really is up to us. >> right now is a conflict will time. what do you attribute the rise -- rush limbaugh is the most popular talk show host there is. fox news is the most watched network there is. ms nbc is lagging in the ratings and air america went off the air. what does this have to do with rising conservative media? it rose during the clinton years and continued through the bush years and into the obama years. >> that is a great question. conservatives for the last 30 years have argued that there has

been a perceptible liberal bias in the media. that is something they feel very strongly about. if you talk to someone conservative what about fox or talk-radio, fables say first of all too little too late and secondly there's not that much of it. how can fox news counterbalance and they will rattle off cbs, nbc, abc, cnbc, everything else and they will say there is still -- it is still out of balance. those on the left will say that is hogwash for the reasons you mention the. fox is the most watched news network, rush limbaugh is tremendously powerful and important and what i worry about most is not who has the most power but that we are all self selecting media outlets that reaffirm what it is we believe.

we are not looking across any ideological or political aisle in order to gauge what other people are thinking. what my husband calls the drinking bird phenomenon is going like that. if you only listen and watch and read people who agree with you you will never get smarter. you are only going to parrot what other people are saying. that is something i am very concerned by definitely. >> i am a former journalist and it is fair to say 20 years ago no one in the profession of journalism could have predicted what things look like today and i am wondering in the research you did for this book, if anyone spoke to you about what they think things will look like 20 years ago and also looking at people, look back and did anyone say to use this time is like a

time many years in the past when people had a sudden revelation about how information could be presented. i wonder if you could look back and also look forward. >> that is a good question. people said that in the jacksonian era a partisan press. that resonates. people did go out and sell selected but at that time the party system themselves were so phenomenally strong. we don't have that strong party system to go with the press now. in terms of that it does mirror that position in the past. technological innovation is also something i am sure older americans can say the birth and growth of television is something that caused fear with people, fat this is going to change everything and it did. but we didn't know how much or what form it would take.

looking back, first part of your question, those are some areas where there are parallels. moving forward, it is interesting. i will always ask freshly graduated journalists and folks on capitol hill, what is the next thing? tell me about the next thing. one time someone said it is twitter. i said what is that and they told me and i brought the packet home to my husband and said this look ridiculous. why would anybody -- it is bigger than anything now. i am trying to figure of what will happen next. as far as i can tell, what is on the future is more of this particular citizen journalism where people will take it upon themselves to either start blobs

or contribute to bloggers and opined a tremendous amount. what is missing are the journalists, the people who go out and sit at a town hall meeting and right down what happens so everyone can have an opinion about it. that is something that people mentioned in my research for the book quite often. that is something they're very concerned by. there is going to be a lot more opinion coming because there are always outlets for it but who is gathering the news? 13 major newspapers folded around the country. that is a lot of journalists who are out of a job. where are they going to go? who is going to pay them to get the news and the answer is not that many entities can. if they are not getting the news what are they doing instead? do i see another hand? last question.

i can talk about c-span for next two hours. c-span has been described as a national treasure. since i used to work there i can tell you actually is. c-span's mission is different. it is not a news network. it is different from cnn. what c-span is funded by the cable industry, there is no profit motive. so that frees up c-span to take a camera and tape and author speaking or a congressional hearing or a lecture at a university and all of this together creates the outlying programming. c-span's primary mission is to show the house gavel to gavel on c-span and on the news, c-span2 the senate gavel to gavel and when they are not operating you get the other programming

available. there is c-span3 and in some places there is c-span 4 and 5 which is awesome. that is great. there are no commercials so it doesn't have that financial imperative that the other news networks have. so they are able to just show everything as it is. there is no editing and no opinion on the part of the network. they will bring on for call in shows and analysis people that this is the left or right side and what they started doing a bunch of years ago for the calling shows was dividing up the telephone lines so if you are liberal you call this number and if you're conservative you call that number and independent you call that number. that way they bring in all the opinions you can get but isn't the sexiest network in the world which is why it is considered a national treasure and a public

service as opposed to cnn which makes -- trying to make more money. it is a different breed. any other questions? thank you very much for being here. i really appreciate it. [applause] >> thank you very much. >> for more on alison dagnes, associate prof. of political science, visit ship.edu and search her name. >> ronald reagan would have been 100 years old in february of 2011 and one of the many books coming out on his legacy is written by his son, reagan and called "the new reagan revolution: how ronald reagan's principles can restore america's greatness". what is the thesis of your book? >> guest: it is taken from his

1976 speech in kansas city. first time i ever saw my father lose and he steps down to the podium and really gives one of the great speeches of his career not written off the top of his head. he talks about the rights that we have today. are we going to make the right decisions today for those people who live in the 300 years of this great country. will they have the same rights? is determined by the way we vote today. that is the thesis of the book. >> host: from that 1976 speech what can we learn about a new revolution? >> guest: you learn a lot from that 1976 speech. he talked about a call to arms. we need to go forward. hy have spoken across the country quite a bit in the last few years.

i talk about this in the book. the new -- "the new reagan revolution: how ronald reagan's principles can restore america's greatness," he would be nominated today in this country we live in because of all the different factions that find reasons not to agree with someone. he put together factions or a coalition of pope john paul and margaret thatcher and gorbachev, let the little stuff get in the way of the big picture. america so often we let the little stuff get into way of the big picture and we end up accomplishing nothing where ronald reagan accomplished everything. >> host: what is your advice to today's politicians? >> guest: gained the trust.

ronald reagan trusted. i spoke in the book about an actor. 30 rock. who everybody knows. i remember going up to him one day and saying to him i am michael reagan, shea lyman is my mother. i said that because i wanted -- if i told you ronald reagan was my father you might deck me and he chuckled. and i said i really enjoy your acting even though i don't enjoy your politics that he said let me tell you something. i wish we had your father back. i said you wish we had your father back? how can you say that? you were against everything he stood for. he said i didn't realize that what i realize today. your father had a good soul and what this world is missing is that good sold and how we need that sold back. even though a disagree with him politically i trust him and the

fact that he had a good soul. you talk to people on the streets and they are wondering about the soul of america not only outside the beltway but certainly inside the beltway. >> host: the forward of this book was written by newt gingrich. does he share your father's soul or integrity? >> guest: there are a lot of people who really knew ronald reagan and shared parts and pieces of ronald reagan and one of the mistakes we make is when looking for the next ronald reagan we may walk right by the next great leader of the conservative movement. a great leader in this country. i say that when i go out and speak. there are a lot of great leaders out there. we need to find them because we are looking for ronald reagan. feel lucky we had ronald reagan who was president of the united states. feel good about that but when

you start looking at everybody and in relationship to ronald reagan nobody will let up. we didn't vote for ronald reagan because liberal looking for abraham lincoln or george washington. we elected ronald reagan because we were elected a leader, someone we trusted. that is what we are looking for today. if we don't find that person we will keep going in a spiral down hill mode we are in and we need to find that person who will stand up and be honest with us. and they have to be honest with themselves. >> host: would your father govern differently today? >> guest: not at all. ronald reagan was who he was. he was comfortable in his own skin. he never forgot who he was or where he came from. if you visit his home in illinois and go out to the ranch

in santa barbara and go to the interior of the home you really don't see a difference. you see the humility and humbled us of the man. he wasn't caught up in himself. he was caught up integrate this of the united states of america and what she was to the rest of the world. >> host: your brother ron reagan is coming out with a book, my father at 100. have you have a chance to read that? >> guest: i have not and i am looking forward to what ron has to say about our father and i don't know if his is as political as mine. i was with my dad in the 1960s when he ran for governor of california. i have great stories in there because i was there through it all. through the 60s as governor or the presidency in 1976 running against an incumbent president in 1980s. it is filled with stories that

relate to those times. what i try to do is say here is what ronald reagan would do and why he would do it this way, because i was with him when he had to make that decision himself and to make the decision the same way today. >> host: you tell two stories from the 1976 republican convention i want you to expand on. your sister, lake maureen reagan talking about wanting to be head of the california delegation. >> guest: here we are in kansas city. she worked for our data and i was working for him also. she was more political than i was through all of her life. she went to my dad and we were there together and wanted to be appointed a delegate. my father had one left in his

pocket that he could give so she could be -- make the big announcement on the floor of the delegation. my brother is kind of old and may not be here for another one of these conventions. it was funny. three years older than my father except men and, his brother ended ended getting that delicate spot on tour of the convention and had to wait four years in 1980 but she finally got her chance. in 76 we didn't know there was going to be in 1980. >> guest: the drunk who came to the skybox. what was that about? >> guest: if you ever look at the film you will see what i mean. we were in the skybox.

we opened the door and said i am looking for michael beamer. we turned around's on mike deaver and we were all in there and says it a drunken slaughter the president of the united states is going to speak tonight and points down to the podium and where the seats are and said i will be sitting right here. the president will address pan-asian and when it is all over, he is going to look at the box and say come down and say a few words and bring your wife nancy. okay. he will never do that. we closed the door and forgot about it because he was so drunk, just couldn't keep two words together. we just didn't buy it. you will see the glass is almost empty. we got back to the hotel before

the russian to the convention hall. so my sister and myself and my wife are sitting in the bar across the streets having a glass of wine watching the end of the president's speech. he got to the end, stopped and said run, come down and bring your lovely wife nancy. we said you have got to be kidding me! i was telling the truth! so we were having a glass of wine with that phenomenal speech that the book is based on at the 1976 convention. >> host: you say ronald reagan whispered to nancy reagan. >> guest: he didn't know what to say. he had nothing written. he had no idea. no one told him he would be called to speak. nobody said anything to him because it was so out of line.

so he said i don't know what to say. one of the great speeches of his life. opening that podium at the convention. >> host: did you ever discover who the person at the door was? >> guest: ever discovered who that was. he had a few too many. it was one of those moments with in that convention and it was a great story to tell because that is how it got together. how does that happen? that is our happened. >> host: that is one of the story with michael reagan and his co-author tell in "the new reagan revolution: how ronald reagan's principles can restore america's greatness". the book publishedes on january 18th. >> visit booktv.org to watch any of the programs you see here on

line. type the author or book title in the upper left side of the page and click search. you can also share any thing you see on booktv.org easily by clicking share on the upper right hand side of the page and selecting the format. booktv streams live on-line for 48 hours every weekend with top nonfiction books and authors. booktv.org. >> richard rhodes, winner of the pulitzer prize in his new book the twilight of the bomb:recent dangers, new challenges and the prospect of a world without nuclear weapons. realistically speaking is there a prospect for no nuclear weapons on the planet? >> i think so. really lost utility since the cold war at the cost of $50 billion a year. president obama announced the official u.s. policy that we move towards zero. it is a matter of working out security relationships that are standing in the way.

>> with regard to working out those relationships will be come to agreement with countries like north korea and iran do seem to be on the path to making their own nuclear weapons? >> they do because that is the only way they can defend themselves against major nuclear power like the united states. each of them has security needs. if we can find a way to satisfy those, north korea would like to be an ally of the united states. they have been saying that for 40 years. they would like us to build a nuclear power plant to replace the electricity we destroyed with bombing during the korean war. >> you talk about iraq's secret bomb program under saddam hussein. how does this story grow and even if they didn't have bombs or we haven't found any bombs so far. >> we went into the first gulf war arguing they had a bomb program which we did not know at

the time but afterwards when inspectors from the united nations and the international atomic energy agency wind in a found a huge effort to enrich uranium to make material for a bomb. they cleaned all that out and they were tired of having our people walking around our country that they blew up all their stuff. they didn't keep records. when the second. came along with an interest in dissolving that an unsettling that, there wasn't any proof they have been reconstituted their program but the fact is it was fully cleaned up by 1998. >> you also talk about the scramble for what was left over of the soviet nuclear arsenal. talk to about that. >> it wasn't so much the arsenal. las alamos's director said to me they have serial numbers just as our bombs do and it was the material you use to make the

bomb, uranium and plutonium that was scattered all over russia, there was no way to get stuff out. window walls came down they were like as. we went in and spend a lot of money with real effort on our part to help them begin to put materials under lock and key. the former senator estimates 60% think that the repeals are carefully guarded. the job remains to be finished. >> earlier today you have a presentation at the national book festival. tell us about that and during the question and answer period what was most on the minds of the people? >> the twilight of the bomb, talked about a serious issue. and inspecting iraqo cf1 o

and inspecting iraq after -- ultimately is it something to get nuclear weapons? the usual question is iran. it is as much a threat to the world as a major power like the united states. maybe 5,000 bombs still in our arsenal. we think we are the good guys and that makes it ok but it is a basic imbalance in the wohe that we maintain a large nuclear arsenal and other countries canned. that is the issue i discussed in talking about how we get to zero. >> the book the twilight of the bomb:recent challenges, dangers and prospects for world without nuclear weapons. its author, richard rhodes. >> every weekend booktv brings you 48 hours of history, biography and public affairs. here's a portion of one of our

programs. >> who do you think would be the best choice for our next repud pican candidate for president who has a real chance to win? even though john mccain is a good american would make the best candidate. >> i have this thing on my show called the deck of the day and by producers are rolling on c-span and will get me with the duck of the day. po don't know who the best persn is. i am not worried about that yet. po know everyone wants the next reagan to walk in our room. the next figure who will lead us out of the darkness. i am not worried about it. how have been in 15 cities in a weevery and half. i am thrilled about what i am

seeing from the ground. pot is gest cng to happen away s supposed to happen. po have great faith. po have this cross on that everyone knows i where. po have great faith that we are not an accident, this country. this whole thing didn't happen because of a series of coincidencess, these brilliant men who came together at the constitutional convention and did this magic. pos not magic. we have a destiny to fulfill and i believe the citizens are engaged, it means more than going to speeches. i am glad you came. pot would have been embarrassin if it were just raymond and randy andy few other people. i am excited that you are here. would you do when you leave it matters. pot is happening. people are organizing in ways they haven't.