[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> kai bird is the author of several books, he's a coauthor and for more information visit his website, kaibird.com. ..

[applause] >> is this thing on? pleased to be here to this very unlikely event actually i have to say, not that they don't do readings and things as they call them all the time at politics & prose. in the unlikely part of this because i never really intended to do anything like as. i'm 52 years old. i got throughout the century without ever considering i would do something like this.

but a little less than a year ago, it was a 36 last year, i was talking to my mother on the occasion of my father's 99th birthday when of course the 100 are taking a. can you believe daddy's going to be 100 she says to me? she calls him daddy of course to a kid still. and i'm singing to her job, boys, isn't that something? fascist incredible. inside i'm thinking police on another aircraft carrier. please don't make me go to the dedication of a bridge or something like that. but then i got to thinking about that 100 years. 100 years is a long time. that hundred years is a particularly long time and momentous time. it was a different world that he came from, my father, which may explain some of his

peculiarities that we had the family noticed often. nothing grim, nothing creepy really. not at all creepy and sad. he was an odd duck, my father. he never gossiped about anybody. never pass up, not once. like most men on occasion he would come home. but he never raised his voice. he did once almost knock makes dieter over with a set of keys by fighting them into his chest. i don't know what he was upset about, but he never yielded us anything like that. is this outspoken kind of guy. if he wanted to make you feel bad because he had done something wrong, his tone would acquire this gravitas and he would start speaking slower and slower and softer and softer until finally you were whining,

just as they say in the book, sounded like gerbils squeaking after a while. but i was conscious of the fact that my father has this sort is scarcely reachable core. the 90% that all this talk is president of the united states, which you see is what you get. same guy at the dinner table as the v. delivering the state of the union address. that's 92 was absolutely trustworthy, count on it all day long. there was this 10% of them, metaphorically speaking, to be held very close. everybody and his family, those of us who knew him very well where aware of this 10%, were aware it was a part of him, even my mother commented she couldn't always reach a very, very

private part. and now is the part of him that i determined to go looking for because that was the part that was the most inaccessible. that was the mysterious part of him, the enigma. not the 90%. that was right up there. but the 10%, where did that come from? what was that all about? so i was looking in nature term and got married to the 100 years was telling me something. the 10% had to be forming itself in his early years, way back in tampa co. and dixon in galesburg and monmouth and all these other towns where i went searching. now i have to say that if you're going to write a story about your own father, it certainly helps if you have a pulitzer prize-winning biographer tailing him around for 14 years taking notes. a lot of your research is 30 times. so i relied on many of the books

that has already been written on him for facts and dates and figures and things like that. but of course those people, accomplished as they may be, edward morris retired him for 14 years, but they didn't grow up with them. they were looking on from the out side. looking at them from the inside. there many people who know much more about his policies and politics than i do. i did make a study of him. i didn't cover him while he was in the white house. but i grew up with him. i knew him since i was this big. people remember him as president and for the challenger disaster may be poor state of the union address, assassination attempt on the things like that. i remember him way back when i would pick him he would pick me up over his head and make a propeller sound that he would do under the doorways and into the bed and finally he would sing me a little song and sing me to

sleep there. that's my memory of him. but still, he was mysterious. still he was something of an enigma. so off i go looking. i didn't stop at just his childhood. i was somewhat interested in the family as well. so i went on the back to ireland, although a factual, so reagan who came down from the cold. nobody's quite sure. there was both when he talked about him and married a girl named margaret murphy. they lived in a huddle called duelists, which may be time to ireland you've heard of if you followed my father. the list was where they lived. there is no duelists anymore because duelists is a collection of waddling tub at, like mud and sticks to you and me. good may come out of mud and sticks. they melt back into the turf after a while. these were peasants really.

they owned nothing. they were landless laborers. they would work other people skills and the irish potato famine came, but the great calamities of the 19th century. the population of ireland today has not recovered fully from the potato famine of the late 1840s. there still aren't as many people living in ireland today as they were in 1845 let's say. so right in the middle of this comment or poorer, literally dirt poor is the ranking -- the weekend family and a point. thomas and margaret die, michael reagan is the only child in the family. my great ,-com,-com ma great grandfather is that right? grandfather -- he learned to read somehow. he was the only one that wasn't a literate and became a soap maker and then moved the family took him win. and here's one of the only pieces of original research i can claim to be very proud of. i got a little e-mail from

ancestry.com. ancestry.com is the genealogical website that i signed up four years ago. the 1851 british census/1851? admits in 1841 to britain first. maybe they are inoffensive. maybe michael reagan and his bride are inoffensive. i thought man, they are irish peasants living in a slum. they were very efficient in britain in 1851 if it turns out and of course they did count those kinds of people. there is michael a weekend. now the oath of office he crushed the piracy to britain. he is now a soap maker, living with a bunch of other poor irish youths from southwest of ireland and done that lee street in south london. i know he's going to marry a k.

he while he is fair and i wonder, is she in the census? to go looking for her and sure enough there is catherine mulcahey living kitty corner across the street on bentley from michael reagan. i must admit ratepayer. she's a gardener, living with a poor young irish people from the south west of ireland, including one woman who was identified as a heather picker. you don't see too many heather picker's these days. so this is the sort of family that he came from. michael o'regan comes to america. he has an children, one of which is john michael reagan now for the first time, reagan, who begets jack reagan, john edwards reagan that everybody kojak and that is my father's father. so, what did i find when i actually started looking up my father? getting pats on the family history and of? we think of him i think i do is the sort of big strapping

confident kind of guy, you know, not afraid of anyone. what was kerry him. but when he was a little boy, it turns out -- he was a little boy. he was undersized as a youth. his family moved around a lot. he was the new kid in school, perennially. who is picked on by bullies, chosen last four games on the playground. and he spent a lot of his time alone. he spent a lot of his time in places like the attic of a rental house in galesburg, where they lived, where the previous owner had left strange artifacts as he saw it up in the attic. so you would spend his time in the dusty sunbeams in the attic, going through all these stuffed birds and things, strange plants, many of which had seemed to come from the west. they think they're you begin to form this impression of the west as a wide-open landscape.

and instead of roaming the landscape as an undersized kid would be picked on by bullies, he saw himself is growing into a hero in that landscape. he could do heroic things he thought. in his mother encouraged him in this. when he was born she called him perfectly wonderful and she never changed her opinion of him. he was always her perfectly wonderful ronald. to his father, when he saw him being born so that they make a of a lot of noise for a fat little bit of a dutchman. that's how he became dutch to everybody but his mother. his mother called him ronald, but everybody else called him dutch when he was young. so dutch is this little kid, and treating these streams of this life ahead, where he will be a hero and he will roam this wide-open land gave been the guy who writes in the third wheel and saves the day. the compassionate yet removed hero because he is satisfied to a certain extent alone, being

solitary. by the time he is 15, he has found perhaps the perfect job for him. he called it the best job he ever had. he was the life guard on the rocks river, lowell park, just north of dixon, illinois, where the family had moved at that time. he had taken some lifeguarding classes at the local ymca, distinguished himself as a phenomenally talented swimmer. and he studied artificial restoration. went out to lowell park and his dad driven down. and they took a look at this skinny kid, 15 years old, just completed his sophomore year in high school. and he wants to be the lifeguard at this big beach, where lots of people calm. hundreds of people in the summer would there. they looked at him and said, you know, i don't know. he may of taken classes at the wide, but he is going have to dive in there and save people.

jack said give the boy a chance. he can do it. and indeed he did. seven years, 77 people pulled out of that river. if i did the math correctly, that would come to about 11 and a summer, which would work out to about one person say one life saved every 10 days or so on that river. imagine the 15-year-old or 17 or 20 year old for that matter. what you do for your summer job? well, every 10 days or so i'll save somebody's life. that some people say you know, sure, he goes into the river and he pulled some person now, you know, that can't be too impressive. well, i visited the river for the first time when i went there. it flows into the mississippi, a feeder to the mississippi. it is a major river. it is a powerful river. you get caught in the middle of that current and you don't know how to swim come you're in trouble.

you are heading down stream in a hurry. somebody's going have to get you out of trouble. well, guess who that was for seven years. he learned -- i said i think it was the perfect job for him because he was at the same time the focus of attention, the man of the hour when things went wrong, he was the one everybody turned to end at the same time he could remain solitary. you have to be removed as lifeguard. you can't be option is that the concession stand or hanging out with your buddies. you've got to be watching. you got to be paying attention. given his nearsighted, he's really got to pay attention. he is tearing through his glasses the whole time at this river in trying to figure out who is going to get in trouble anyway or the whole time. he was, i think, keeping the planets aligned. he was keeping the universe in

order, by pulling those people out of the river. drowning people were chaos. and my father couldn't stand chaos. he liked his world orderly. he liked his world orderly so he would be free to dream and streams in peaceful tranquility. and so, he would dive into these rivers and pull people out. now, almost nobody ever thinks them for doing this. he learned a lot about human nature, too. no man but then came for being rescued. used to do a little imitation of him because after he would do a rescue, his father jack told him, because he complained, nobody ever thinks me. i tell you what, get a log, stomp, carve a notch for every person you rescue. and 77 notches on a trip weblog eventually. but he used to imitate people coming up to him. he pulled out of their affair, well, you know, i wasn't really

in trouble out there at all, really. and he would keep carbon monoxide in the log. okay, carve, carve, cars. the only man who ever thanked him -- this is a giant of a man who arrived at the river one day with somebody leading him because he was totally blind. he was six-foot five, 350 -- i mean, he was huge to hear my father tell it. how am i going to get him out of the river if he gives out of the river? he told me when he was little there were some techniques they didn't teach you at the ymca for rescuing people, some of which involved hitting them with a right cross to the jaw in order to subdue them so you can safely get them back to shore. a drowning man, a drowning anybody will kill their rescuer.

i mean, you are frantic out there. again, a 15-year-old boy has to rescue grown men who are now desperately terrified, klein at anything trying to stay on top of the water. and now he's confronted with the guy who is, you know, five times his size. what is he going to do quite sure enough someone gets into the water and start paddling out and get into the middle of the current and downstream he goes and does what drowning people do, vertically instructing that the water but that begs arms and hands. and into the water goes my father, thinking all the time this may be the last time i to this, you know, this guy is going to take me to the bottom and will be rolling on the river bottom down to sterling downstream. but he said as soon as he reached the man and put his hand on him, the man instantly relaxed and let him do whatever he wanted because he was blind

and he had been led around all his life. as soon as he felt a human touch, he thought i'm safe. he simply relaxed. and that was the only man who ever thanked him. he did get some notoriety for doing this. the first time he got his name in the paper was a rescue. he had closed at the park at about 9:30. he used to do this by the way on hot summer nights. people linger forever in the water and he had been there since 10:00 in the morning. he wanted to go home, but people wanted to stay because it was hot. so he would start taking pebbles and flicking them into the water. and sure enough, people go what was that? but with? just the old. they come out this time of night. so this night, the rats had done their job. he was hoping that a great

vocals that they are although said in comment three people, two young women and the young man come screaming out of the darkness. help, help, their friend. they had snuck down the river unbeknownst to anyone and one of the friends who wasn't as strong of a summer is the thought went under. now it's 9:30, 10:00 at night. it's dark. and there's a man out there in the river who is drowning. so off my father goes at full gallop towards the river, listening now because he can't see the man. remember he is nearsighted and he's got to get rid of his classes. so he is listening for the sound of the man struggling out there. you know, where do i need to go here to find him? plunges in the darkness, swim so. next day's headlines, james raeder snatched from the jaws of death you lifeguard ronald dutch reagan had engaged in quite a struggle they reported before he

was able to subdue him and bring him to shore, pulling one arm against the current with them, drag him up onto the log performed artificial respiration to revive him after which time it was determined he was okay and sent him home. but he had his name in the paper. i think he was probably pretty happy about that. other than that, in the lateness of the hour, the rescue probably would've seemed rather routine to him. just another day on the rock river. my father was a storyteller. his great opus west and south. he created a narrative, a template for his life. not that he was making a story for himself that he would pretend to live out. he was creating a template in his mind and trying to live up to it. he wanted to be a hero, but not to be seen as a hero.

he wanted to be a hero. when you are a storyteller, sometimes editing is required. i discovered and some of my father's early stories that i discovered as an early child, there was editing done to focus the narrative a little more, usually focusing on hand. the iconic story from his youth is one winter night, in 1922, he comes home from hawaii or maybe the library. he also spent a lot of time reading their period and is coming up in a pen avenue towards his home in dixon any notices towards the front door there is a dark shape on the doorstep, which he comes closer he discovers his own father passed out cruciform comment that drunk, belching up corn whiskey. now he's been dimly aware that his father was given some drinking. i think that's been exaggerated but he did drink and if parents

would eyebrows about this because nelle, his mother, was quite pious and didn't approve of all of this with the speakeasy and such. he'd always heard the fights before, but pulled the covers and try to ignore it. but now, in this iconic moment, he is having his coming-of-age experience. and so he says while he was tempted to step over his father and simply go inside and fix and sell something to eat and go to bed, he knew he couldn't leave him in the snow. and so in his telling, and he grabs father's coat collar and drag them over the threshold and then somehow must open up the steep narrow, angled stairway and put them into bed and breathes not a word to his mother when she gets home as if she wouldn't know of course. well, i went back and looked at the threshold and the staircase and i thought about little dutch who probably couldn't have weighed 100 pounds at that

point. i thought of a rather burly jack wade about 180 or so. i thought to myself, he didn't drag anybody anywhere. he certainly didn't drag him up those stairs. i've no doubt he found him passed out drunk on the doorstep and i have no doubt that he grabbed his coat and probably gave him a shake, but what happened i suspect was that jack woke up in jack staggered to his feet and jack being jack probably had a few pithy things to say at that point, profaned probably as well. but that gets edited out of the story because that would be as destruction. the focus of the story is a young man who's having his coming-of-age moment, giving jack too many lines would just not work. jack has to hit the cutting room floor there. and he would do things like this. he had a tendency. i'm skipping through a lot of

stuff here, but he had a tendency to engage in a certain amount of denial. he was very talented at denial when he needed to be, sometimes to rather humorous effect. my wife and i went in washington while he was president work on beating him to some of them. i get remember what it was but we're in the presidential motorcade and the big armored limo coming back from whenever this is the people lining the streets to get a glimpse of him leaving in all that. at this point in his life he decided what america really needed was the revival of a thumbs-up gesture. but he'd been traveling around the country thumbsucking people, no gesture ever suited a man so well i have to say. as we were driving back, he was thumbsucking people out the window of the car. we reach a certain point in some youngish man, maybe in his 30s or so somehow got under the sawhorses of the police tape or broke through the secret service. i don't know how he got so close to the cars, but there he was

maybe a body length or two from the presidential limousine on my fathers side of the car. he was promoting a different hand gesture. last night and he had an entirely different digit wasted in my father's direction. he couldn't hear him through the bulletproof glass, but i think a word beginning and mother and ending and some other er. my father takes this all in and without missing a beat turned to essences you see, i think it's catching on. [laughter] that was my dad. now, i suppose i should say because you've probably heard about some of this. i should say at least a word about the present controversy, which has apparently arrested with the publication of this book. my brother took it upon himself to help me sell copies of the book and so i omi thank you note i guess. and he did it without even

reading the book, too. that's how good of a brother he is. now, this centers around the question of alzheimer's. my father died of alzheimer's of course. he was diagnosed several years after he left office. i say two things in the book that relate to this in any way. one, i admit that midway through his term as president, you know, 83, 84, i would occasionally be noticing things that seemed like just a hitch in the giddyup is what i've characterized it as, nothing you can really cared or is in any specific way. and not anything of somebody who didn't grow up in a house with him would have noticed. when you are that attuned to somebody, any change in there with them or body language, the way they would tell the story, anything will tip you off that they are under the weather or having a bad day or something.

so i mentioned i did have concern. i don't put a name to them. i don't diagnosed with alzheimer's at the time. i simply mention these concerns. i have to say he was in his mid-70s that the time. he was losing his hearing and he hated to wear a hearing aid, so that kind of makes you a little, you know -- and he had been shot and nearly killed at that time, which will take a little wind out of your sails. so i had all sorts of things to worry about and this is background worry they are. i do say later in the one chapter in which we deal with any of this is there is one sentence that specifically links presidency and alzheimer's and it is a deduction based on when he was diagnosed and what we now know about alzheimer's disease, which is that it is a process that extends for years, even decades before identifiable, observable symptoms are present.

i mean, if i'm going to get alzheimer's in my 70s, you could look in my brain right now and tell. they would be changes going on right now. so it seems to me the question as to whether the disease is present in him during his presidency seems to be academic. it would almost have to be. that is not to say however that he suffered from dementia while he was in office. alzheimer's is a disease. dementia is a symptom of that disease, which usually only shows up in the latter stages. i saw no signs of dementia in and while he was president of the united states and i allude that in the book. i've heard all sorts of things on on the ledge to ever attain. i'm answering questions for the last week and a half of people saying yes, but you say -- i say no i didn't. show me where i said it. they can't because they didn't read the book and they are making this stuff.

so i pretty much explained to exactly what my side of the controversy is. i don't know if he had alzheimer's for sure when he was in office. i think there's a likelihood the disease was present. i did not see signs of dementia, nor did i say that they did. that's about it as far as that goes. at heart, this is not a political book by the way. had no interest. it is a book by merely about his formative years, an attempt to buy a son to find his father, to go looking in these distant -- the distant past is over for his father's brother allusive cared for. in the last chapter he bring you up to -- somewhat up to date in the white house and into the end end of his life. i just determined that was the way to end the book, to jump ahead then. and so that's what i did.

i mentioned, had to do it forthrightly and it's honestly a good. so just yacht, i guess that's a microphone if you want to or you could shout out from where you are. [applause] >> thank you. one of the things you mention is this incredible weights, which i had an occasion to witness and has been so photogenic. there was an occasion in the white house where he had to go through stacks of photographs vips to identify them. it was amazing. [inaudible]

>> that's not my question. it has to do with religion. i haven't read your whole book. i've read a few of the first chapters. you mentioned the catholic/protestant mother, father. >> jack was an on-again off-again catholic and millie was a disciple of christ as they called it. >> my curiosity is around that. as a son, did he emulate what his parents didn't send a letting him decide later on in life vis-à-vis you and the children. and what about religion. he wasn't a carter with his religion on a safe, but wasn't a george washington who never talked about it in public. i'd be interested to get your whole overview on that issue. >> is general feeling about his religion was it was a quiet kind of thing. he wasn't ashamed. he was quite open and would court the religious right when he needed to win an election. but he did not -- he did not go

around the house like some holy roller or some pain. we weren't having bible readings or anything like that. he was a regular church goer when he was governor of california and before that when he got to d.c. here. he felt awkward going to church because he knew it would disrupt things and could even potentially be a threat to other people. we see bad things happen sometimes to politicians. he did, i would say, follow after his parents and not nelle, as a disciple of christ is that you do not try to indoctrinate young people into their religion because they are not would not appreciate. they can make the decisions for themselves. he took the attitude with me even though i don't think he was entirely happy about it. a mouse when i was 12 years old as they relate to the the book that i was not going to church anymore. i have the same ring tone by the

way. last night. he came in to get me to go to church. come on, pictures are done. i'm not going. i do believe this and i'm not going. and he was pretty upset about it, but her tomorrow. i could see he was very worried, but he wasn't going to wrestle me into church. i wasn't going to work -- put me in half nelson, take me to the altar for any kind of exorcism. but i knew he wasn't going to give up. he wasn't just going to roll over. so one day i came home to find a pastor of our church in our living room, waiting their to have a talk with me. john yuma was his name. he later became not the pastor or church when it turns out he was tending to his flock on occasion with his pants around his ankles. but you know he was a all-american and so he's a big

imposing guy and he was going to convince me to come back to church. within a few minutes i realized i can have this argument with him. i was a little worried at first because he is a professional. i thought i can hold my own here. after a few more minutes he gave up and we ended up talking about football. i could tell my father was disappointed that when he left i was still an atheist. >> what he didn't feel the need to commune with god like some recent presidents did before making decisions. certainly not in any exhibitionistic type away. >> i think he would pray quietly at times for guidance. i know after he was shot, he believed that god -- his god had spared him, but he didn't see that as a kind of a mandate, like because you're so special. this is a responsibility he sought to do good from there on out, which is much as i disagree

with him about things, he really meant well and always thought he was doing the best he could for the country. i can vouch for that. >> if your mother has read your book, how has she reacted? >> she has read the book and when all this kerfuffle came up i thought willie better ask her what she wants me to say about this. so i called her up and they said they're going to ask me. would you want me to tell them? people have been scribing sentiments to you and i don't want to do that to myself. she said you tell them i read it, i loved it, it made me cry and i'm very proud of you. [applause] such a mom thing to say, you know. yes, ma'am. >> hi, i particularly loved hearing you, voice of reasoning on air america the last two years. >> you haven't been around the dinner table. last night

[laughter] >> is anything brewing? any chance we can hear you nationally on radio? >> it is possible, although there has been talk already with my publisher about maybe doing another book, which i think i would very much like to do. i rather like the whole process is supposed to be granted the three-hour. temperamentally i have to say i'm not as well-suited to radio as they would be to something like this, it seems to me. i'm not a yeller and there's a lot of that going around. you do these book tours and they do these radio satellite tour is where you said found and they keep throwing josé e. from this town in that town. so we got to tampa, florida, the ted and jack show. you might want to avoid the ted and jack show, or at least tab.

i'm going to use language that might offend. within one minute of getting me on the air, ted had called me a ass, threatened to kick my ass. he hadn't bought my book and wasn't going to buy it unless he needed something extra to wipe his ass. i thought, can i speak to jack? is very grown up in that. there? this went on. this is all he said to me is you asshole. i said you're a small, pathetic man and it turned out he was -- why won't say -- he is just what i would expect later. >> is why we need you. fema pays to to work for bill foster and we had tampico and dixon in our district. if you can imagine for a

democrat it was -- but we had a picture of your dad. he was a scientist and said not that he didn't like your dad, if we had to pay homage to your dad, that was the proper form to do it. but my question to you with that as a backdrop his i.d. when when my republican party invokes your dad and they constantly do, i think to emulate his success and his personality more than anyone else. when they broke it down for policy positions or things you think you know him and you just think he wouldn't say that or he wouldn't do that, does it make you mad or do you started this mess? how do you react to that? it can be annoying at times. i'll admit that. but it comes with the territory. i understand why they are doing it. who else do they have? are not going to go to nixon. harding? hoover? they are pretty much done with ronald reagan, which is not so

bad. i do know many of those people not only didn't know him, but hadn't met him and yet they are speaking for him. i am very rethought and to speak for my father in any political sense. i don't know what he would feel about today's issues. you know, he left the scene a long time ago and presumably his thinking would've evolved along with the times. so i don't get into well, he would want taxes to be even lower grade want to repeal the health care plan or anything like that. i do feel confident in saying he would be expressed by the level of a true we hear these days. he was a simple man and a gentleman. think of the feedlot of the south, particularly the birth are nonsense, he would find them beneath the dignity of our country. well, very comfortable couple of things he would be distressed to

stall the s.t.a.r.t. treaty because that was such a big thing with him on jon kyl in some of those people who are trying to hold it up. i think he would paint somebody's head off and you know what down their neck probably. he would find that awful. the only other issue which i was tempted to put in the book, but my editor convinced me he can't have any politics because that would be the entire focus and i would be the torture issue. my father call it a point and he meant that. that kind of cowardice and moral turpitude wasn't part of his character. he was nauseated by the defense. that's my personal opinion. >> yes, sir. >> can you explain his political evolution. >> u.s. and in the 14th district is a republic can come his family were real outliers. jack and ellie were democrats

and republican county and they were reared in all sorts of ways actually. not weirdly disturbing weird, but just different they are. they were very theatrical people in a rather stoic, tightlipped farm country. they love to put on plays and they were quite flamboyant about the whole thing. they had no -- and dixon was reluctant to admit this when i was a child, but dixon was the count went apparently black people were not allowed to spend the night, were not welcome to spend the night in a hotel during the 1920s and 1930s. but that wasn't the case in the reagan home. you know, one day the story and i related in the book where he and the football team went on their way back from playing a game somewhere, they pulled into a hotel and there were two black players on the team. and the hotel manager said the outcome we've got room for your team, except for two black players. in the coach, mack mckenzie was

his name, a tough, flinty scotsman that will go to another hotel. the hotel in town is going to take those two black players. find says matt comeau will sleep on the bus. my father at that point intervenes because you know, i'll tell you what. so everybody doesn't have to sleep on the bus, why don't you put me in a cab to mostly for my folks house. she said what are folks going to take it you shall put two black players? nothing. jack didn't care. jack didn't let the families the birth of a nation when it opened. damned if i will let anybody in my family say that because it's about the claim against the blacks he says. and i'm not going to forget it, we're not going to do. so they were different. >> what is time to geb trench 10?

>> the transition. yeah, not so much -- >> 64 for goldwater? >> before that. he'd become a conservative by the early 50s. >> he voted for truman first, but then he voted for ike later. they think it was the meetings he had with some writers during the -- when he was president of the screen actors guild for one of the writers, i don't also sultan trumbo, but could've been somebody else informed him if given a choice between the american constitution and the soviet constitution that he would choose the soviet. and this so shocked my father that he thought we've got a real menace here and i've got to enlist in the fight against this. sebastian is the sort of brief overview. i don't get into that part of a career in his book because i'm going back further. yes, ma'am.

>> thank you so much. obviously, you have inherited her father's gift for humor and speechifying, if that's a word. and you may not know the answer to this, but after the recent tragedies in tucson, i have heard conversations about how they're been a movement for some time after an attempt on her father's life to do something to change the gun -- >> we did have the brady bill. >> rate. there is just conversation i'd had your dad perhaps been a bit more involved to do something to correct the gun laws or had the administration -- it just wondered had there been any talk in your family adjust the necessity for the importance of

that? >> not too much. i grew up with guns. when i was six years old my father presented me with a 22 caliber rifle which i kept in my room. but he explained to me, this is not a toy. you never play with this. when friends come over, don't play with this like it's a toy. you leave it up there. you have toy guns. play with them. never point a real gun at anybody. forget if it's loaded or not. whatever, you never point a gun at somebody. assume it is loaded. the guns retool for him. he didn't fetishize them away some people do now. my god, all these people can think of when i talk about the constitution of the united states can i get to carry my gun. my gun, mica, my gun. it's like come on. if you had a penis, you wouldn't

need the gun so badly. [applause] , on, get a grip on your whatever. so i don't know exactly what would've happened. he was obviously sympathetic to the second amendment. he was a gun owner and inflict, but he didn't seem to fetishize it the way so many people do now. i hope that answers that someone at least. >> her father grew up in a time when divorce was an issue. he's the first divorced president. can you talk about how the divorce affected things? >> went to jane wyman and went to my mother, which lasted 53 years until he died. the period of time in the late 40s and again this is that what is covered in the book. the period of time in the late artist when he was divorced jane wyman in his career, post-world war ii was beginning to go down. this was a rough, rough time for

him. film career on the way, divorce. team in a softball game, shatters his femur in a slate on crutches and in a cat and hanging at his mother's house for a long period of time. he recovers in time to go to to patricia neal who steals the movie from him. so meanwhile, jane wyman is about to collect an academy award, so he is feeling kind of beat up and nothing is going right around 1949 or so. so that was that. i don't think he ever would've filed for divorce themselves. he just wouldn't have, however desperately unhappy he would've been a marriage and i don't know how unhappy he was, but he never would've asked for a divorce. she did. she was moving on with his career saw him as a liability

even at that point. hollywood is like that. you know, i do want to hang out with somebody who is lower on the totem pole, even if i have to be married to them and have children, i don't want to be a period so i think that was coming in now, anyway, that's pretty much all i had to say about that marriage. anybody else? >> we have time for one or two more. >> obviously your mother let your dad dearly. >> yes. you are on now. >> obviously, your mother loved your dad dearly. and so, she was portrayed always has been, what of a very strong person. what influence did your mom have on your dad? would she, as far as his decisions on things happening politically -- >> she was not a political person in that she was sort of

pulling the strings behind the scenes. no, it didn't happen. she encouraged closely towards rapprochement towards the soviet union and gorbachev. she and i talked to him about the aids crisis when it was apparent that the administration was dragging its feet, they were doing enough. so we teamed up with him on that. but mostly she had a great antenna for other people's agendas for my conflict within. i'm talking about people who might've worked with him. personnel issues where were she would make her feelings known more than politics or policy or anything like that. don regan, for instance, famously hung up on her twice and that was the end of time. >> would these be private things or things discussed in the family quarters?

>> both. again, she and i talked to her about the aids crisis together. but mostly that would be pillow talk basically. >> we will finish with the last question. >> yes, ma'am. >> i'm so happy to me finally. i have a short story that was i was very much against her father's presidency and not a fan at all. those working in an army navy club at the time when he was president. even during that time i kind of slowly saw the part being turned into basically a homeless shelter, something which myself and others connected with some of his policies. but there was one made by was -- they close off high street and i was on my lunch break and i was the only person on i street and no cars. i am standing. the garage door opens and her

father and i were only about four feet away at one point and he turned on i street going the wrong way. he looked at me and i love to attend. such an excitement. that wonderful charm. it's really difficult not to like. >> you couldn't spend five minutes with him and many people tried. people who disagree policy guys would come to a meeting or in a group and thinking, i'm not going to like him. and you know, they would be 15 minute later, he's a great guy, you know. i still don't agree, but he's a good guy. and i felt the same way. you know, we argued about the vietnam war of course when i was young. we used to argue about if they mention environmental issues sometimes. but you know, we've stayed friends and sometimes he wouldn't bother to argue with

him. one story and we can go do a book signing. i am riding horses with them at camp david. i father had a 19th century view of nature. he loved being in nature and outdoors, but he kind of thought that men have dominion over nature and it was mansour's possibilities to manage the whole enterprise basically. and so riding on horseback and there's some deadlines and stuff scattered on the ground as he walked by. he turns to me and the final and does you know, that may be nature to some people, but i think we can do better. [laughter] and i just thought, what the. >> i can see how they continue -- >> again who else. >> we all admire your courage, to. >> thank you, all.

[applause] [inaudible conversations] >> at this event was hosted by politics & prose bookstore in washington d.c. for more information visit politics grows.com >> here's a portion of one of our programs. >> hi, who do you think would be the best choice for her next republican candidate for president? [laughter] with a real chance to win, even though i think john mccain is a good american would make the best candidate. >> i really -- you know, i have this thing on my show called the death of the day and i know my

producers are rolling on c-span and they are going to get me with a dock of the day. i don't know who the best person is. i'm not worried about that yet. i know everybody wants the next reagan to walk in the room, the next figure who is going to lead us out of the dark as. i am not worried about it. i truly believe -- i've been in how many cities? fit teen cities now and a little over a week and a half. i am thrilled about what i'm seeing from the ground. it's going to happen the way it is supposed to happen. i have great faith. i had this croissant but everybody knows eyewear. [applause] i have great faith that we are not an accident, this country. this whole thing didn't happen because of some series of coincidences, that we have these brilliant men who came together in a constitutional convention and did his magic.

it's not magic. we have a destiny to fulfill. and i believe again if the citizens are engaged -- and the means for the going to speeches. i mean, i'm all you glad you all came. it would've been embarrassing if a randy and raymond and a few other people, but i'm excited you are here. but what she do when you leave here is what matters. what i am saying is it's happening. people are organizing. let me say, mr. president, i am high-fiving you on the community organizing things because we are doing it now. [cheers and applause] >> to watch the program in its entirety, go to look tv.org. type the title or the author's name at the top left of the screen and click search. >> david lynch, when did the luck of the irish ran out? >> he ran out about two years

ago in the midst of the global financial crisis, which really exposed some feeling that some irish, economic and social models that have brought great change to ireland over a quarter century. my story starts in 1984, when ireland was poor, stagnant, traveled in the country over the next 10 or 15 years for us to be the richard in europe, had a cultural vibrancy it never had before and was at peace for the first time in generations. as any fatalistic irishman would expect, things would hardly off the rails. the country ended up in housing and credit bubble that was even larger than the one we've had here in the united states and now faces some difficult choices. >> how did ireland rise in the 80s and 90s? >> in the late 80s they followed a multipart strategy. they got their public finances straightened out. that allowed interest rates to

come down. they attracted investment from the u.s. companies like intel, gateway, said adel allport into the country. the negotiated agreements between the government, labor and business community, to make investment predictable, devalued the currency and 86 and again in 92. and it all ended up with a miracle that was dubbed the celtic tiger after years of really no growth at all, ireland was a real backwater, almost a third world country in the 1980s. in the mid-90s, the economy tipped over at 8%, 9%, 10%, year after year, to the point whereby the year 2000, for the first time in modern history, the irish on a per capita basis for richer than they are master. >> where does your book and? >> my bookends about four or five months ago.

it comes full circle from the battle days to the best times ireland has ever had into this disaster, this crisis of the past few years and it brings the story right up to date. it ends primarily with the nationalization of this rogue bank, anglo irish bank that was responsible for much of the bill at the irish taxpayers are not getting stuck with. and it ends though on a fairly hopeful note that the irish have been demonstrated a fair bit of resilient the over the centuries will -- >> author david lynch. >> next, from the book to the archives in 2004 complicit prize-winning author, joseph ellis recounts the life of washington.