both to putting it into a public conversation. >> what about his writing impresses you? >> caller: well, probably his wisdom, wit, joyful exuberance and mostly his ability to stand solidly on the idea that there are absolute truths and truths are knowable and that we can defend them in very civilized ways. >> thank you. >>:

>> host: j.w.s., self-identified moderate from wisconsin, e-mails in to you: ronald reagan has been called the great communicator, but is bill clinton more deserving of that moniker, and would it be more accurate to refer to reagan as the great american? >> guest: the what? >> host: the great american rather than the great communicator. >> guest: well, i like the great american. [laughter] i guess you want -- let me talk a little about bill clinton. somewhere in my books, in my last two books i talk about the chronic campaigner, and that would be bill clinton. that would be hillary clinton. that would be john francois kerry, that would be newt

gingrich. it's the 1960s generation that developed this, was the most political of generations. and as i say, it's been a disaster for the country. luckily, in the 1990s there was no reason to -- we didn't have to be on guard all the time, and we could put up with a amiable huckster like the clintons. but the chronic campaigner campaigns all the time, is campaigning in office and here he is out of office, he's still campaigning. he campaigns all the time, but what he doesn't want is, he doesn't want to be president when anything serious is going on. and, for for that matter, he tos off the serious decision making that goes on in the

administration and some administration, he's glad to fob them off to the courts or to regulatory commissions or things like that. and that's the kind of thing bill clinton did. he, he lights up a room and all of that. i don't think george washington ever lit up a room. i don't think abe -- i'm sure that abe lincoln didn't light up a room. but those people made difficult decisions when they had to be made. the chronic campaigner doesn't make those difficult decisions. he's all show. he's a peacock. bill clinton was a peacock. when he lost his temper with me in the jockey club in '96, '95, in 1995, he started -- he was exorcised about a piece we did in the american spectator.

came over, wanted me to talk and schmooze. he turned the whole conversation to my daughter because he thought he could kind of chat her up and get past this difficult moment. and i asked him instead what'd you think about the mean airport piece? he went off like a rocket, and he immediately called out of the card catalog of his mind, he called back l.d. brown. l.d. brown was an arkansas state trooper involved in the maine airport, and he went through the whole litany of criticisms he had of l.d. brown. and i was astonished at how the president of the united states could bring back this crisis of ten years before and bring back the talking points that he had on that. [laughter] on that particular crisis. but, and also i was astonished that the president of the united states was screaming at me in public, and yet i wasn't the

least bit alarmed. i don't think gorbachev would have been alarmed or, god knows, stalin would have been alarmed. it was kind of like tinkerbell in a snit. and i finally had to say, mr. president, please, go over there and sit down. you're going to spoil your meal. and he went over, he actually went over and sat down. now, i want to tell you i, knowing nixon, i knew ronald reagan, i've known both bushes, and i can't imagine jimmy carter being told to sit down by a private citizen, that he went over and sat down and i didn't see him for another ten years until i saw him in toronto at his 60th birthday. and as i said earlier, by then he was kind of a shrunken man. >> host: who is richard mellon scaife, and what's your relationship with them?

>> guest: dick scaife has been a supporter of the american spectator for years, he's not now. he's one of the very important philanthropists of the conservative movement. he's an extremely nice man. he's a philanthropist to the white house and to various -- his philanthropy is vast. and in the day was it january 21st, 1997, '98? the day that hillary got on the morning talk shows and talked -- whatever it was -- and talked about the vast right-wing conspiracy, she then went back to the white house, and that night had to have a reception for a philanthropist who had paid for the redecoration of the white house. and who is there at her, in front of her but the handsome,

patrician, silver-haired richard mellon scaife. and he was perfectly happy to say hello to her. but as he told me later, he said, you know, bill was as red as a furnace at the time. and it took, they had their picture taken together at the white house, and generally you get your picture, the picture's returned to you in a month. it took him, took dick scaife numerous phone calls to get the picture. but he finally did get the picture back. and to dick scaife's credit, i'll tell you that scaife has since taken an interest the president's initiative in africa, i think. and he is, the philanthropist that he is, dick scaife has

given money to the clinton charity or whatever it's called. so he's, he's helpful in that regard. but i don't think he's helpful with any politics, political procedures that the ongoing president has. i think, i understand, you know, in the clinton crack-up i talk about how back in, once back up he was deciding what to do, and clinton floated the idea of becoming mayor of new york. and, no, that wouldn't, that wouldn't work. and so why not, he floated the idea become a u.n. secretary-general. and he made some kind of effort at being u.n. secretary-general which only reminds me of my earlier remark which is that the chronic campaigner is forever campaigning, and even in retirement clinton's interested

in high office. >> host: why did you write "the clinton crack-up" in '07, seven years after the end of his presidency? >> guest: well, because i wanted to, first of all, it took a while to by -- to write it. i had a team of researchers following clinton, and, you know, he amazed, he raised millions and millions of dollars for himself and for his foundation. it's all in the book. so i wanted to see what he was going to do in private life. and i also wanted to see what hillary was going to do. and in that book i prophesized that hillary is going to have a terrible time in '07 and '08 getting the presidential nomination. and because i thought her day had passed. and i was with proven right. -- i was proven right. also there's another thing in

that book, i talk about hillary's reliance on private investigators, and i knew about ivan douda and terry lensner. and i talk about them in that book and what they did for the clintons, and the clintons used extra governmental agents throughout their careers to, to do dirty tricks and to gather information. and carl bernstein had a book coming out the same time, and i happened to know that carl bernstein knew the identity of the private security people that hillary used. and he never would reveal in his book the names, these people's names. i find it very curious. i don't know why you would keep

that from your readers, but i let my readers know about it. >> host: and in your 2004 book, "madame hillary," you write: the resiliency of the clintons is without precedent in american history or, for that matter, any history that i'm aware of. the clinton supporters and journalists always forgive and forget, mainly forget. a little less than an hour left with a. emmett tyrrell. -- r. emmett tyrrell. this e-mail, what is your opinion of michael savage and his banning from britain? [laughter] >> guest: well, i don't know anything about it. i don't have any particular opinion of michael savage and his banning from britain. um, i don't know anything about it. but, frankly, i don't think he should try to get in. >> host: this is from larry, you were as impactful as ronald reagan to our family in the 1980s, we loved the american spectator. if i could ask, why was ron burr

pushed out? >> guest: um, well, he wasn't pushed out, he was given severance pay for a year or year and a half, two years. and we all moved on. >> host: next call comes from spencer, west virginia. go ahead, jeffment. >> caller: uh, yes. mr. tyrrell, first of all, i wanted to say that two of your favorite authors are two of mine, fitzgerald and hemingway. great novelists, and every american should read them. i consider myself a middle-of-the-line independent. i take a little bit from both parties with what i agree with, and that's how i vote. so with that said, my main question to you is i'd like to address world war ii. up until world war ii, america, we were not nearly as large as

what we've become. in be -- in your opinion, do you think world war ii propelled us as the dominant country in the world? >> guest: uh, well, it left us the dominant country in the world. and we've never been the same. and we've been -- in writing this introductory piece to the, to the death of liberalism in "the wall street journal" a few weeks back i pointed out that america had sort of settled down. we were leading the world in the cold war against the soviet

union. but we'd sort of settled down putting out brush fires all around the world under eisenhower. and under john kennedy there's that great speech that he gave in if which he said we'll pay any price and bear any burden and all that kind of poetry. on behalf of liberty. and the defense of liberty. and that speech excited, roused the soviet union. and it roused communist fires all over the world, i suspect. and i suspect that iraq and afghanistan are the most recent nations to be visited by the armies of the united states. and all of this was set in

motion by john kennedy. and is it escapable? i don't know. it certainly is a, certainly, yeah, we have borne every burden, and we have paid a high price. and, um, the rest of the world now is sort of, um, facing up to the fact that maybe, maybe the russians ought to pay some of the price and western europe ought to pay some of the price, and maybe china ought to try to stabilize the world and not leave it to us and make us out to be the world's bad guy. as a matter of fact, we weave bn since -- we've been since the arrival of roosevelt and internationalism in washington, we've been the international good guy, and we have been borne

a price -- we have borne a price to defend the world. and we don't get credit for it. we don't take credit for it. but without us an awful lot of people in the world wouldn't be free. they wouldn't even be alive. >> host: whiteford, idaho. john, you're on with r. emmett tyrrell. please, go ahead. >> caller: thank you. i would appreciate your comments on the following ideas. i'm quite concerned that an increasingly smaller percentage of our society is bearing the burden of our combat. the rapidly diminishing middle class, lower end and the upper part of the lower income people. i find it difficult supporting politicians who never served or politicians who will send others' sons and daughters to battle, but their own are too good to go. i think it was reagan that said something like when an empire is rising, the sons of our best step forward to defend her, but when an empire is declining,

they sacrifice their ncos, noncommissioned officers. a particular example for me, it would be mitt romney. i very much like him as a potential chief executive, but i'm very bothered by his comment that his sons serve their country by working in daddy's campaign. could you comment on that? i'll hang up and listen to your answer. thank you, sir. >> guest: um, you know, you remind me that on this centennial of ronald reagan every time i ever disagreed with ronald reagan, he was right and i was wrong. and i thought that the volunteer army was a mistake. and i opposed it. and he was right, and be it turned out to be good for the country. we have the most effective fighting force in the world, i dare say, or darn near the most effective fighting force in the world. but i, i share your sense that

those brave men and women don't get the recognition they deserve. and more so i think, if i sense your, the undercurrent of your observations, you feel that people who don't serve the military ought to serve in some other capacity for a period of time. and i share that notion. but how we get to there, i don't know. but you raise a legitimate point. on the other hand, i wouldn't be -- if i might follow up on my own remark -- i wouldn't be bitter about this situation. mr. romney's probably very sorry

he made that i'd yachtic statement. idiotic statement. i wouldn't be bitter about it because those men and women who have served, they must have a great sense of fulfillment. and i hope we as a nation can give them even more of aceps of fulfillment. >> host: chuck in tucson, arizona. good afternoon to you. >> caller: well, good afternoon to you, and this is a real pleasure to be able to come on your show. i mentioned to the one who spoke to me that i am a conservative, and i would like to hear mr. tyrrell's comments about entitlements and how to control them, and i'd like to throw out just one idea which it seems to me has not been tossed out quite enough, and that is the question of changing entitlements into a mean test approach. so that only the people who actually need medicare or actually need social security

would get it. i think that's in line with ronald reagan's idea of government should provide a safety net, and i'd like to hear your comments. >> guest: well, in the, after the hangover: the conservatives' road to recovery, i have a blueprint, i have an agenda of things that i think should be done. and one of the things that i think we should follow is we should take on entitlements. we must take on entitlements. we're going to take on entitlements. i think that in in the case of medicare and social security, i think you said social security but i don't know that you mean that, we can have a means test. but we've got to get a policy in place right now. i think in the book i say people 55 and older we can keep the policies in place for them as they are.

but people younger who are in danger of not getting their entitlement 50 years from now, 30 years from now when it comes due have got to start thinking about health savings accounts, personal savings accounts in the case of social security. and we've got to think about -- and i think we have -- a way to keep the medical care from growing at the rapid rate it is. it's growing at something like 5% a year. and i think that the argument i lay out in the book, that kind of spectacular growth can end. so there are things that we can do. it's not, we're not at a dead end by any means. in fact, we're at the beginning of a new day in which we can have, we can do something about

entitlements. and i think that it's very promising. i think inasmuch as just between you and me, i ladies and pagerrm anyone, i plagiarize from paul ryan's road map to america in this section of my book. and i think his road map for america is a good starting point for a basket of policies that can get us over this terrible, terrible entitlement crunch. >> host: zoo bug 64 tweets in to you -- >> guest: what? >> host: that's his online moniker. >> guest: oh. >> host: matt. matt harris. pandering pols like hillary often claim the american people are smart or that the voters aren't stupid. do you share that notion? >> guest: do i share -- she tells us that the american people are -- >> host: are smart and that the voters aren't stupid. >> guest: she's talking about

people in new york that voted for her. [laughter] now that she's not -- now she's secretary of state, and i don't think she's planning to run for anything, she probably thinks they're pretty stupid because they elected her husband twice. >> host: in 1997 you came out with "the impeachment of william jefferson clinton: a political dock you drama, you call it. what gave you the idea to write about an impeachment in 1997 prior to it actually happening? >> guest: well, you know, that's an interesting book. i wrote it with anonymous, and you will never know who with anonymous is. and the dialogue is terrific. it sounds just like clinton, it sounds just like hillary, it sounds just like pat moynihan. and we really, we really got the scenario down right. and it came down to pat moynihan

deciding if, to vote for impeachment when they all went up the hill -- went down to the white house and told them impeachment was a done deal. it came down to pat moynihan. and i talked to -- and i talked to pat shortly after he mentioned impeachment. in real life. and he talked about, he said, well, if bill clinton has lied about an affair with monica lewinsky -- i think i have this right -- that's impeachable. and i talked to him and i said, pat, that took a lot of courage to say that. he said, tell that to my wife. [laughter] but he's a guy that turned around and voted against impeachment months later. and by his own admission it was

an impeachable offense, and he should have been impeached. you don't lie under oath about a thing as negligible as an affair with a, with a white house intern and get away with it. you shouldn't, and, of course, he didn't. he was impeached. >> host: dave in allegheny county, maryland, you're on with bob tyrrell. please, go ahead. >> caller: yes, good afternoon. interesting conversation. let me give you a history lesson in modern politics. what is true the republican party will make you look to appear false. what is false the republican party will look to make to appear true. george wallace, i think, ran for president in '68 or '72. that today is known as the tea party, the same counties, the same states, same areas. that is the tea party. that's a lesson in modern politics. okay?

now, what you have you have to do is write about that, and then you'll find yourself writing about something quite interesting. thank you, bye-bye. >> host: thank you. >> guest: people are often trying to tell me what i should write about, but rarely do they tell me i should write about something that preposterous. but the truth of the matter is i take it he's trying to say that the tea party is somehow racist. i don't see any racism in the tea party. i see racism in the ku klux klan and the black panthers and people like that. who actually are, come out and say they're racists. but i don't see it in the tea party. i think the tea party is a very promising wave of civic action in this country, and i applaud them.

and i hope that their interest in the constitution will get us all to be reintroduce ourselves to the constitution. again, my friend, seth lipski who's written a wonderful book about the constitution, a reader's guide or what is it again? "a reader's guide to the constitution," something like that. "a citizen's guide to the constitution." and i urge people to get that book because it's challenging even if it's wrong, it challenges your sense of government's limits of the enumerated bill of rights, the enumerated powers of the constitution, and these are things that i think we're going to be discussing in the years ahead. and i think seth's book is a good place to start. >> host: we have an e-mail, do you know any neoconservatives, and if so, what is your opinion about them? [laughter] >> guest: i know a lot of neoconservatives.

and my opinion is that they're a force for good in the world. >> host: you started writing about neoconservatives in 1984, "the liberal crack-up." >> guest: yeah. and i suspect they were in "the american spectator" as early as '76. my god, they were there in the early '70s, irving and norman and all of them. there's a fit with conservativism, and it's almost a seamless fit. this iraq war, the seams were pulled apart a little bit because some traditional conservatives opposed the iraq war. but i think they're all back together again now. >> host: and then the second part of this e-mail is have you read the just-published book "neoconservativism: an obituary for an idea," by professor

bradley thompson? >> guest: yeah, i do, i have it on my desk and it's nonsense. [laughter] but at any rate, i think it's nonsense. >> host: robert e-mails in: have the right-wing think tanks like the hudson institute been promoting a new mem for the new 30 years that promotes public, enemy number one? >> guest: not that i know of. [laughter] >> host: next call for our guest, r. emmett tyrrell, comes from warric, new york. go ahead, dell. >> caller: hello, mr. tyrrell. i'm so thrilled to be able to speak to you. i've never read your magazine, and i never read any of your books, but you've made me very curious. i find your opinions and your ideas ignorant and despicable.

>> host: why, caller? >> caller: you should be ashamed of the things you say. are you for real? >> >> host: caller, can you give a specific example? >> caller: talk about the liberals the way he does. and not the president and clinton, but what about bush's presidency? eight years of disaster. what is his opinion about that? >> host: mr. tyrrell. >> guest: i don't think it was eight years of disaster. i do think towards the end, and i tried to tell the president this myself, that he was spending too much money. and i do think as don rumsfeld's written in his new book there was a different way that war should have been executed. and the immediate aftermath of the war, i think, was bungled. but as for the lovely complement

from from that woman, i take the complement and the flattery and thank her very much for it. >> host: r.j. e-mails in to you about the conservative crack-up book. ultimately, this book is frustrated because it does not maintain a level of seriousness about what is behind the name calling on the right, an inability so far to reach agreement on what conservatives should stand for and fight for in the new world. should the right try heroically to return to the fight for smaller, less expensionive government, or should it aim at increasing revenues that would allow us to get the books right and fund what pat buchanan has called jack kemp's big rock candy mountain? mr. tyrrell does not address this and other questions with depth. >> guest: i'm sorry. i'll try to do better in the next book. >> host: well, when it comes to the conservative crack-up, are

there remedies in that book? be i think that's -- >> guest: well, that book pointed out that there are fissures in the conservative movement, without doubt. because conservativism is brought -- has brought in the neo-cons, it's brought in the christian right, it's brought in now the tea party movement, it brought in the reagan -- so there will be fissures. but i said, interestingly, that when it comes time to vote, all these fissures are as nothing when placed against the menace of liberalism. and generally, the conservatives have hung together. when they did not -- and i never quite understood this -- when they opposed george h.w. bush who i knew him and was in the white house with him, i tried to tell him that tax increases were

the wrong way to go, but he did it anyway. when that's the one time that the conservatives stayed home or supported ross perot. and they gave bill clinton was, i think, 41% of the vote the white house. and we had eight years of, well, appalling hijinks, in my opinion. it made the name of "the american spectator" for a long time to come, but it was, it wasn't really very good for the country. and i think that george h.w. bush would have done a far better job over the next four years than bill clinton did. >> host: conservative crack-up written and published, or published in 1992. here is a quote from it. what caused the conservative crack-up was not an overactive political gland, but the conservatives' deep disrelish

for politics. by the late 1980s, many conservatives simply ditched politics and went hope. -- home. >> guest: yeah, that's what happened. i mean, and i, frankly, i think that they should have tried to prevail on george bush to keep taxes down. or they should have in the next administration prevailed on him to, to change his tax policy. but i don't think that, i don't think that bill clinton was good for the country. i think it was, indeed, a holiday from history. >> host: if people go back and read "the liberal crack-up" written in 1984 and "the conservative crack-up" in 1992, are they going to get something out of it still? >> guest: it's wonderfully instructive, i think. i think i hit on something years

and years ago. i hit on the absurdity of modern america, of the 1960s generation. i mean, i have been a critic of my generation from day one, and i've been right. it's been an appalling generation. and i look for younger generations to, to revoke the 1960s generation's so-called charter. and we'll see in "the liberal crack-up" and in "the conservative -- in "the liberal crack-up" you'll see the fissures that destroyed american liberalism. sean wilentz in a recent book on ronald reagan talks about the destructive drive amongst liberals for identity politics

and for the things that have broken down the liberal commonality. i pointed out in many "the liberal crack-up" years before, so i think that's very much worth reading, and i think that "the conservative crack-up" is a little different. but i think i talk about the fissures there, and i talk about how the fissures in the end don't really matter. and then, of course, i think actually all those books that you've cited, they are a kind of ongoing work. and the ongoing work is following the growth of american liberalism, the growth of american conservativism for 40 years and the decline of american liberalism. in the -- "after the hangover:

the conservatives' road to recovery," much of it is in there. but, you see, the thing about history is at any one given point, any one given point in a historic epic things have changed. tax cuts which were, our tax policy under ronald reagan was supply-side economics. that's different. the tax policy of ronald reagan in 1980s, 1980s was different than the tax policy of robert a. taft in the 1950 and the '40s. he was, supposedly, a conservative, and he was a conservative. but conservativism changed. his policy, he would be for a balanced budget. but the idea of ronald reagan's

supply-side would have been appalling to him. so i think one of the problems you have in talking about a historic figure, what would fdr do today, what would ronald reagan do tomorrow, it's hard to say because in every period things change. but it's worth thinking and talking about, but it's a little difficult to say exactly. >> host: our next call comes from oklahoma city, i believe. please, go ahead. >> caller: i mean, my mouth, i mean, i'm just sitting here, and i can't believe what this guy is saying. [laughter] i mean, where do i start? >> host: can you give an example? >> caller: i mean, it's just, let me take it from my point of view. as far as him saying the tea baggers aren't racist, i mean, all you have to do -- when you have the sign that's calling the president a monkey, a monkey boy, i think you are a racist,

okay? second thing is, now, do you think we should cut our money from israel? i mean, we don't want to supply egypt with any more money, so do you think we should cut the money from israel? and of course you'll say, no. >> guest: could i ask a question? >> host: sure, go ahead. >> guest: what does tea bagger mean? tell me what that means? >> caller: what's a tea bagger? >> guest: yeah. >> caller: when george bush was basically bleeding america, the tea baggers did not have anything to say. >> guest: now, wait a second, that's not what that means. >> caller: until a black man became president, now you tea baggers, they want to come and form a group to go up against this black president. the reason why we are in this deficit is because of what george bush did. now, if -- and this is the thing. if president obama said he wants to get out of both wars, then these tea baggers would sit up

here and say -- >> host: all right. tell you what, we've got your side, now let's hear from our guest, r. emmett tyrrell. >> guest: well, first of all, tea bagger's a dirty word of disparagement. if you don't know that, that's what it is. secondly, the best thing i can say about obama is that he's black, and that's a good thing. it's good to have a plaque man president of the -- black man president of the united states. we can put racism behind us. and mainstream america has put racism behind it. and that is a good thing. and so that's where i stand, and as far as this ongoing rant of yours about racism, i'd say that the first person that raises the question of racism in a conversation is often the person who's a racist. >> host: long meadow, massachusetts. frank, you're on with our "in

depth" guest on tv as we talk about books and ideas. please go ahead. >> caller: my issue is the debt. for the last 35 years we've collectively spent -- regardless of who was in power -- we have collectively spent $15 trillion and promised our full faith and credit to pay back that bill. my question then is, if we could implement a 2% tax on each seller and a 2% tax on each buyer of any credit product, for example, our last walmart purchase in south africa would have given south africa 2% and would have given the united states 2% from the buyer and, in effect, would have solved the whole world's debt. why don't we simply tax? taxed enough already is not adequate because it is not

honorable. >> guest: all right. the answer to your question, if it was a question, is a tax that impedes growth will create even larger budget overhang. what we have to have is a mix of taxes, of tax cuts that enhance growth and a budgetary cuts that enhance -- cut back the deficit. so you don't want to impede growth, you want growth to be enhanced. and you don't want this budget, budgetary excess to continue, so you want some kind of budgetary cuts. as, again, i put my money on paul ryan. and these questions are highly technical, and i'm not

particularly capable of answering them. but i don't think you are either when you come up with some simple thing that -- we just raise taxes, and taxes will retire the debt and on we are to a happier, happier, glad and happy morn. i don't think we're on to a glad and happy morn. i think we get in a even more of a budgetary mess with growth being impeded. >> host: jay e-mails in to you, mr. tyrrell: is it possible that the showmen on the conservative side -- rush limbaugh, hannity and o'reilly -- present an image which offsets to a large degree the arguments and positions of thoughtful, intelligent observers like krauthammer and tyrrell? >> guest: i think we all talk to different audiences.

and to some degree i've seen the conservative movement grow from a movement of a handful of intellectuals to a movement of a whole armful of intellectuals to a popular movement now. and a popular movement we shouldn't be surprised that a popular movement will have popular spokesmen. and i think that's perfectly normal. so i'm glad that we have rush and sean and mark levin and bill o'reilly, and i think they serve a great purpose. but i won't have them editing "the american spectator." >> host: red forest tweets in, could you, please, get mr. tyrrell's view on the revolt in tunisia and egypt?

>> guest: well, i don't, i mean, anything that imperils peace in the middle east is a very dangerous situation. of course, the greatest danger to the middle east right now is mubarak and egypt. and i would like to think that they're, over the short run, solving that situation. i don't think we should run i out on mubarak the way we ran out on the shah. and i don't know that we are. but i would like to think that that situation's going to work itself out over the short run. of over the long run, i'm very concerned about the muslim brotherhood. >> host: just a few minutes left with our "in depth" guest this month. chesapeake, virginia. hi, ronald.

>> caller: good afternoon, gentlemen. mr. tyrrell, of course, i complement you on being an iu graduate. i, myself, being a displaced hoosier. [laughter] but i want to comment on what you said about to be a good writer you must be a good reader. and i recall as a young student back in indiana a low grade school by the name of cieger and frankfurt that i had a fifth grade teacher. because i was a poor kid, and i was the one left in the parking lot when our classes went on school trips. but she said if you learn how to read and write, you'll never be poor. and i recall i took that to heart, and i became an avid reader. the library was my earliest university. and when i started my college career, i began by taking a

battery of clep tests at our university, and then one afternoon left with 23 college credits. all because i read. and as a college professor later on in life, i used to teach my students books are paper professors. the words are, the printed word is what they're saying to you, the white space are the questions you're asking them. so just don't be a listener to a lecturer, be a learner and read. can you make a comment on that, please? thank you. >> guest: well, only that i celebrate you and i celebrate the sentiment you've expressed. i remember my, one of my great professors at indiana university was robert h.er ferrell, and he was a fanatic for reading.

i once pulled up in a parking lot in a very fancy car. i was a student at the time. ander ferrell looked at me and said, hi, robert, how are ya? i said, i'm fibro. he looked -- fine. he looked at my car, and he said, what a shame. do you know how many books you could have bought with the money you spent on that car? is. [laughter] i've now, i've now purchased a lot of books. i sold the car and bought books. >> host: to you write every day? -- do you write every day? >> guest: i write practically every day. i write every week. but a couple days, three days or so a week i have to administer the magazine. >> host: morning, evening do you write? >> guest: i generally, i write all day. when i have a project at work, i write all day. >> host: your last book, "after the hangover," was published by

thomas nelson. other books of mr. tyrrell's have been published by regularrer in -- regnery basic. next wall washington, d.c., go ahead, emily. >> caller: hello. i just agree with what y'all just said about reading. it's absolutely the best thing in the world to be able to learn is to read all you can. but i've never read any of mr. tyrrell's books because it seems to be more opinion than fact. and just now he was talking about the impeachment of clinton, and i think he got -- i know he got the impeachment wrong. but i'd like to hard him speak about what happened to president nixon. should he have been impeached? he was caught -- he did high crimes and misdemeanors. clinton did not. so i'd like to hear that. >> host: before we get that

answer, emily, can you tell me what book you're reading right now? >> guest: the big sword. >> host: by michael lewis? >> caller: yes. >> host: should nixon have been impeached? >> guest: i remember looking into his behavior after he left office. i don't recall much about it during the presidency. and i was appalled at the intelligence-gathering operation that he had set up. they weren't roughing people up or anything like that. clinton's people did stuff like that. my people were threatened down in little rock. i don't know that the president put 'em up to it, i don't suppose that he did, but they were roughed up probably by

little rock police officers off duty. but president nixon did things that i think were wrong. i think he probably did step above, beyond the law. in the last, in this new book i'm preparing i point out that there are, there's formal and informal politics. and in informal politics you don't break the law. of in informal politics some things are done that aren't quite proper, but they're minor things. in the case of a loose cannon on your staff, you say take care of it, get that guy out of here, something like that. i assume that's what nixon did

with watergate. he didn't know about the break-in, but i think he probably -- i think he knew about a lot of this stuff that was going on. and i think that when we decided to jump nixon, probably we should have jumped nixon. and should this kind of breaking of the law should ended there, and this informal politics should have ended there. but i think they're two different creatures, two different activities. interestingly enough, you know with, you're a true believer or you aren't, but clinton's lifelong brushes with the law began back in his campaign for, first campaign for the house of representatives against hammer

schmidt in '76, i think it was? at any rate, and he, his longstanding run-ins with the laws, they were all the same. they were bank fraud, shaky finances, shaky loans, shaking donees to -- shaky loans to his campaigns. they were whitewater. i mean, look, there were so many documents destroyed in whitewater, starr's lucky if he got half of the documents involved there. and needless to say monica lewinsky was, i think, a serious transgression. so i think it was a different kind of breach of the law with clinton, and i think it was a very serious breach of the law. >> host: florida, go ahead, carol. >> caller: hello? >> host: please, go ahead. >> caller: can you hear me now?

>> host: we're listening. >> caller: okay. i wanted to say, to comment on what mr. tyrrell had to say about "the wall street journal" at the beginning of your program. because i just discovered "the wall street journal" for this kind of information about books. and that's what i like to do is read. i find that you get a wide variety of different types of books from their reviews. >> host: and, carol, what are you currently reading? >> guest: well, i just picked up a book that i've read for a long time -- a long time ago. it's by an english woman called molly hughes, and it's about her life growing up at the end of the 19th century in london, and i just finished going through that again. >> host: all right. well, thank you for calling in today. we appreciate it. we'll move on to bob in kokomo, indiana. hi, bob. >> caller: hi, how are you doing today? >> host: good. >> caller: hey, i've got a question for your guest there. i think we can agree, possibly, that facebook is a pretty

powerful tool as far as getting access to people, but something i found very interesting the other day, i went to the moveon.org page on facebook, and i posted something that said very relevant to the subject. i can see that moveon.org is claiming to have more than five million members nationwide but still has only 111,000 members on facebook. how is this possible? the numbers don't seem to jibe. and then immediately i was, basically, ejected or banned from that page, and comment was removed. what do you think, what is your opinion on some kind of behavior like that? that's pretty much the only question i've got. >> host: all right. thanks for calling in. mr. tyrrell. >> guest: well, they're certainly not in favor of transparency, are they? and i think this kind of goes on quite often. in ideological politics you've got to go pretty far out on the

right to get to thuggery. in ideological politics you don't have to get too far off on the left to find thugs. and i think you found them, and i think you did it in a very clever way. >> host: has your writing changed over the years? >> guest: well, i suspect, you know, i've changed some views. but maybe i've changed them from, because of the occasion. i was, originally i was a, um, supply-side economics i would have opposed. but i supply-side economics convinced me that balanced budgets weren't necessarily good. i was in favor of capital

punishment, and i thought about it over 40 years, and i've come to oppose capital punishment. i suspect, as i said, of franklin roosevelt i've come to see him as i don't know who else would have taken up the cause against -- [inaudible] as well as he did -- the nazis as well as he did, and i think he's to be respected for that. so my views have changed a bit, and my way of writing has changed a bit. i remember in "public nuisances" i was extremely critical of theodore white, teddy white, and i wrote a thunderous denunciation of him. and i've come to find that i think teddy white? teddy white in later years was a

force of good for the world, and i apologize for what i've said. >> host: and you also list arthur schlessinger as one of your favorite authors. >> guest: yeah, you know, if you want the standard liberal view of america, you can do no better than read arthur schlesinger. arthur schlesinger was a wonderful, wonderful writer, and i kind of miss his passing and the passing of that whole generation that was made up of very thoughtful liberals. i'm not sure that they, that their heirs are living up to the great tradition that they established. >> host: you lived here in washington for a long time, we have about 30 seconds left. who would, who would we be surprised to find out is a friend of yours? >> guest: well, i don't, i don't know, but i'll put in a good

word for chris hitchens. i, he's struggling with cancer now. i hope he wins. i've said that i'm a man of faith, and he is not a man of faith. i wouldn't want to embarrass him, but i'm, i pray for him every sunday and hope that he'll live on, and i'll never embarrass him by bringing up god in his presence. >> host: our guest for the past three hours on "in depth" this month has been r. emmett tyrrell, author of nine books, very quickly here are the nine books: