>> constitutional law and history also a course on education and law and policy. >> host: how long have you been doing that? >> at the university of virginia, five years. before teaching at teaching at washington university for two years. >> host: what is your education? editor of the law review? >> yale law journal i was an editor so i attended yale law school and i also sought to a ph.d. in history from duke university and prior to that i sought the undergraduate degree in history. >> host: bereday you grow up? >> a small town in south carolina. greenwood.

my parents, my father was once a sharecropper. later worked in a factory. both of my parents attended segregated schools. my mom later when i was in law school went to college and became a teacher rich's something she does now. >> host: we have been talking with the author of this book, courage to dissent. atlanta and a long history of the civil-rights movement. . .

>> host: there is a story that is told about the late american playwright. he was visiting a friend, who had bought and historic house somewhere in virginia if memory serves correctly. you know the story, right? and the house was beautiful but the estate was not that impressive, and so the friend had spent some considerable amount of money fixing it up, planting hundreds of trees and bushes and shrubs.

so the friend was showing him around the state and said to him, so what do you think? and he said, it is very nice. it is just what god would have done if he had the money. i was thinking about that, in reading your book, because in a sense, this is you know, what god would have done in terms of restructuring history if he had chosen to do that. extraordinarily interesting moments in history that could have gone one way and went another, and you have been proceeded from there to create a sort of mindbending piece of history. i read the book, enjoyed it i must say although i must say this kind of clunky title. "then everything changed." was that the publisher? >> guest: my editor. >> host: your editor. it was good to have an editor.

we could've done better than "then everything changed" but the book itself is sprightly. you even have done a fair amount of research on this book, and i must say in reading it and i was trying to think of a way of explaining to an audience that is not has not yet had the chance, and i thought it is what theodore white might have done in writing one of his making of the presidency volumes. >> guest: that is a pretty good analysis. >> host: if he had been smoking a little bit of dope at the time. >> guest: this is the kind of conversation you have in college after a few riches hits of organic material. >> host: you read this book and you do a good enough job, i mean truly a good enough job of creating a new reality. what made you think of this? >> guest: the what-ifs genre which is very popular.

there are four volumes of essays by historians, philip roth where charles lindbergh is the president. the science-fiction writer has a book called a man of the high castle where the nazis of world war ii because roosevelt is assassinated in miami so there is always been kind of anything i have enjoyed. i wrote a novel 15 years ago which didn't. to be a full history. i just made it up about okay the guy just elected president is killed at a photo opportunity. with it? this is in my blood, i guess. this but this one had a particular point of origin. i worked as you know as a young aide to robert kennedy, and i have been asked for the last 40 years -- i don't know how many times what would have happened to my answer is always been as i think most of his associates, friends, who knows?

so i was at this conference and somebody asked the question, just read hersman courts book on bobby kennedy's campaign, in which is pretty clear according to him that mayor richard daley of chicago was prepared to endorse robert kennedy. he thought the war was a disaster and was worried about the black vote in chicago. so i started to be associated to discretion and i said if mayor daley backed rubber kennedy and the whole demonstration stuff in chicago radically change. i think we need to back up just a little bit. with each of these instances jeff and remind people of what really happened. first of all it was 1968. 68. johnson has announced he is not going to run. the vietnam war is killing him quite literally, and hubert humphrey is running and eugene mccarthy runs and mccarthy does better than anyone expected and then bobby announces.

>> guest: causing a lot of ill will, which he had earned in one sense, and bobby has won all the oregon primaries and then it is the california primaries. but my point is in reality all he said was imagine if robert kennedy had lived in -- so mayor daley who was the symbol of the old guard, the old politics, if he was back in the peace candidate, you don't have all those demonstrators. you only have the radicals in their marginalize. that was the extent of my answer. then i went home and couldn't sleep. because of all these other things that occurred to me, specifically if you looked at the members in 1968, humphrey had the support of the old guard and in those days, unlike now a lot of the states there were no primaries. the bosses, leaders had the delegates. so the general calculation was it was going to be very tough for robert kennedy to win even after winning the primaries. but if he had survived an assassination attempt, which is the plot in here, and you think

about what happened with ronald reagan after he survived john hinckley and you think of the relief and the goodwill and the good grace and humor with which reagan dealt with that -- that turned out to be enormously important. if you picture robert kennedy responding the same way, the dynamic of the 1960 campaign now takes on a whole different meaning. it is thrown into a whole new calculus. and that i decided okay i'm going to do this. i then remember because i have the kind of memory that i can remember 50-year-old things i have read but not where my keys are. >> host: absolutely. it is a sign of old age. >> guest: oki except that. i remembered reading in arthur schlesinger's books is one sentence reference that there was a suicide romer stocking john kennedy in 1950 and when i finally, thanks to lord google, found the facts it turns out this guy was parked outside john kennedy's palm beach home and a car loaded with 70 sticks of

dynamite -- make you visit deranged anti-catholic winner take -- the secret service took no notice of it because it was 1960. the only reason he didn't know of john kennedy was that jackie came to the door with caroline to see them off to church. >> host: what you have to explain here jeff, because it relates important and one of the things i want to talk to you about is that this happened during the reagan period. after he was elected to the presidency before he was inaugurated, before the electoral college he had a chance to vote. which is important because? >> guest: well, because it has the potential first total constitutional chaos. now let me just copy to this. i'd written a novel about the electoral college. i couldn't do it again but what i didn't realize was under those circumstances he would have to have had the party leaders of both parties agree that with the

trauma facing the country, they would have to engineer an end run around this constitutional problem so -- >> host: just explain what the constitutional problem is. >> guest: the problem is the electors, the people actually vote for the president, depending on what state you are in ab beb they are free agents, maybe they have to vote for the person but there is virtually nothing said about what an electors buzz to do with the candidate he or she has pledged to be dead. >> host: interestingly enough the only person who has been on most equivalent number of electoral votes to the president who has just been shot and killed is his opponent. not his vice president. >> guest: that is right because the electors are pledged to kennedy for president and johnson for vice president. so, they are sitting there and never lived through this since 1876 or something in the first thing that happens is the eisenhower administration, he is

still president, and the congressional leaders and the sitting vice president who happens to be richard nixon, are sitting there. you kind of have the sense to nixon who thought the election was stolen anyway may be thinking maybe this is my way in and whereupon realized eisenhower's -- i am sure you realize that president eisenhower at this horrible time in the country doesn't want any part of this trouble. >> host: you were not doing yourself just as here because the way you build it up in the book you have ed dirksen who was then the minority leader in the senate sort of indicating you know that maybe it would be fair >> guest: he thought the election was stolen. >> host: he thought the election was stolen to whether we give this to nixon. then you have eisenhower stepping in. >> guest: you are much better at this. >> host: i've read it more carefully than you have. >> guest: the reason i'm short-circuiting this is it is a

regular -- that is only the first wrinkle. >> host: yes, lyndon johnson, yes of course. i'm pretty sure that is who it is. before we go into the other scenario, and one of the things that is a little bit mindbending about all of this is, in the first scenario you had checked kennedy killed before he comes comes -- becomes president. in the second scenario you have bobby kennedy not killed in california. however, his brother has been killed back in 1963 in dallas. >> guest: to prevent your mind from being events too much, at the end of each chapter i have something called reality presents, because this is not like phillip ross word is one continual story. so after the first scenario with a lyndon johnson's presidency

and the cuban missile crisis i said okay jackie did come to the door, jack wasn't it blown up. he he was assassinated. johnson took us through civil rights in a war. 68 campaign and now we pick up at the ambassador hotel. when that section is over i say this didn't happen. robert kennedy was assassinated and now we pick up. >> host: okay, i get it. there are people a lot younger than you and i who don't remember these events from personal experience. there are people who are not the political nuts that you and i are, particularly you who have lived this all of his life. >> guest: this is through. >> host: is it perhaps a little bit too confusing for someone who doesn't have the background for it? do you need to have a playbook? >> guest: no. what you need to do is have some memory of these events. >> host: that leaves out a lot of 30-year-old 10 under.

>> guest: can i shut you about something? i will tell you this analogy. once when robert kennedy was campaigning, he was being heckled mercilessly. this was in omaha. the minute he got up, robert kennedy turned to his wife and said ethel, the feeling the vote in nebraska is not going to be unanimous. have no illusion, although when my stephen caldera parents emerges, who knows? but i think it is true, a book like this, you have to have some knowledge of american politics. if you are not at all interested in politics, you have no sense of this, probably not. fortunately for me, or potential audiences, tens of millions of people who have enough knowledge knowledge and just in talking about the book this first week, for people who care about american contemporary and american politics the reaction has been gratifying. they get this. >> host: it is in delightful

book. i will say that. i will also say jeff i have been friends with you for 28 years. before you leave the first scenario, has it been fixed, the the issue with the electoral college or could this in fact still happen? >> guest: it could have been easily. nothing has been fixed. we almost saw in 2000, will we did see in 2000 that kind of chaos, but if two of george of of -- two of george bush's electors had decided not to vote for him even though the state law, the law said they have to, then george bush lacks an electoral majority and so does al gore and the election is turned over to the house of representatives. the chaos that is possible in an electoral college mess it is almost immeasurable because as i say, the scenario where the winning candidate dies, we are

completely at sea because as i say if state law can compel you to vote for the person on the ballot, although nobody quite knows how to enforce that, if you are in your state capitol where the electors leading you fill out the ballot in right in ted koppel instead of iraq obama i mean, so? that it goes to the congress and the congress has to decide. i mean it is a time bomb. >> host: you resolve it, i must say you resolve a couple of issues here with a questionable questionable -- will you bring in this particular instance. dwight eisenhower, who still has the grandeur, the cloud, the capacity to be able to save his aid or in person, listen fellas. >> guest: you have to go back

and imagine it is december of 1960. the president, what we call call the president-elect has been blown to bits at a time when violence against public figures was far less common that it became. and the notion of the elected leaders of the party, the parties in the elected officials had far more credibility than they do now, bart knows, saying we have got to find some way to resolve this quickly before we descend into chaos. i respectfully would say that is not the assessment. that is as plausible and if that is what has happened. >> host: only in that time. which statesmen which appointed a day or stateswoman that matter who has the kind of credit to be able to do that sort of thing, where you could say well the president is going to step in and the president of the opposing party -- i mean a i find it hard to believe that anyone today would have the kind of class.

>> guest: this was said in 1960. back then you could not only imagine it, it is entirely probable that is precisely what would have happened. it was a much more common field. >> host: but let's just put the issue to bed. has anyone raised that? has anyone tried to pass legislation? we have this extraordinary. after all come november december and most of january. >> guest: it remains a potential disaster. one high-profile electoral college novel as it to my editor whose title he don't like, i want to call the book a time bomb and parchment. he said you know i've been at this a while and that is the worst title for a novel i've ever heard. >> host: we will see. we will see. is it worse than "then everything changed"? >> guest: i like the title. >> host: i like the subtitle. >> guest: you know what? i raise that with my editor who is a very smart and.

he is the editor-in-chief of the major publishing house. now far be it for me from me to suggest his instincts about this this -- >> host: are better than mine? >> guest: yes. >> host: we will see. >> guest: so i'm good with this. >> host: very good. let's go to the second scenario. >> guest: may i just underline something the first? it is important to recognize that i take the first one to the cuban missile crisis where there is no jack kennedy, no robert kennedy or johnson whose instincts and beliefs i rather extensively researched, is now in the room making a decision, do we take those missiles out? paul nitze and not having the chops to question the skeptical as. >> host: and listening to curtis lemay at that point to. >> guest: curtis lemay is saying what he did say in the cuban missile crisis. let's get it on.

>> host: well, and he actually did believe that sooner or later the united united states in thet union would have a war, and better to do it now while we still have advantage. >> guest: exactly so i just want to make that point that it ends not with this but fascinating electra college but he is in the presidency in the face of any -- the biggest crisis of any president thinks the go quite the way they did -- not. >> host: used to have a former colleague john scalley who played a major role in the playthings, or played a role in the way things would go. i should just point out john scalley was diplomatic correspondent abc news at the time and was called then to act as a sort of intermediary who carried messages back and forth from bobby kennedy to the then soviet ambassador. are redone with -- you can still run their own interview here. we are now depart to?

>> guest: we are into part two cop. >> host: in part two cop, in which bobby kennedy is not assassinated because his brother-in-law, stephen smith, is walking ahead of him. >> guest: but this is part of the research of this book that staggered me, because what i found out that the john kennedy library was the oral history of stephen smith, the brother-in-law of the kennedys. and i was reading it just to try to get some sense of where their heads were at about the campaign. and smith, i'm reading this and steve smith says that he blames himself in part. he says and i'm quoting from the oral history, if i didn't leave senator kennedy he might not have been shot. curiously enough for reasons i can't explain, during the course of the campaign whenever i was with the senator i needed it.to place myself in front of him and sort of move and clear the way. i think it helped expedite him

getting from one place to another. i probably would have been walking in front of the senator so sirhan would have would have had to come by -- robert kennedy would have been ahead of everybody. the security was trying to catch up on sirhan shot and. when i read the oral history, the hairs on the back of my head kind of went whoa. i didn't know what to make up to say to robert kennedy's wife. and then i found that. >> host: as it is i should point out, and you have a very droll sense of humor of your own, which i've enjoyed for many years. that you manage to do a pretty good replica of the kennedyish sort of sense of humor. you had bobby at one point, steve smith takes a bullet in the shoulder for his brother-in-law and so bobby is saved and you have him then sang my first act as president is going to be to pass a law outlawing jokes against brothers in law. brother-in-law jokes.

i can see bobby saying something like that. >> guest: ers joked about steve smith being ruthless. and yes, he had a very puckered sense of humor and what i think it's obvious. a to create the same kind of good humor that reagan displayed when he said to the doctors i hope you are all republicans after he had been shot in 1981. but yeah, one of the things were generally about robert kennedy was he was a very intense man. he had a really great sense of humor. and it developed. i didn't know him when he was younger and perhaps less loose, but he had one of the joys of a campaign ended tragically as it did -- >> host: you were working for him? >> guest: in those days pre-watergate basically he the run a campaign you were just like everybody on the public payroll on vacation time which was -- but he would do things

like, he was in fresno. i use this in a sunday morning piece i did about him. and he says, people asked me why i ran for president. and i tell them because i would vote in california. and that i would go to see the fresno mall because he said after all, when it it's in the pyramids and the taj mahal, what else is there but the fresno mall? he was actually waking as his audience saying you know and i know that a lot of what we tell you -- >> host: this is what is so disoriented about him because you have that story. you have him saying that in the book. so you take stuff that you have made up and he makes you mix it all together. having said that jeff, to get serious for a moment about bobby kennedy and what a kennedy presidency might have meant, what is a little bit surprising, and i'm afraid i'm going to mix two of your scenarios together

here, in the last scenario got to not to give too much away, it gary hart becomes much more of a force. >> guest: and earlier. >> host: much more of a political force and than he was in reality. and what strikes me about both gary hart and bobby kennedy in their campaign is that you have them speaking back then as though they were tea party members today. >> guest: except i don't have them speaking. those were real words. >> host: precisely. that is in fact my point and that is, here are these two men who are icons of liberal histor, you could take some of those speeches, you could take some of those lines and if you put them out there today to would say well, that is rand paul. right? >> guest: this actually came

up during robert kennedy's life, because -- what attracted me to him is before ever met the man, was that the high watermark of post-war liberalism when he first got to be senator he was challenging orthodox liberalism. he was saying the welfare system was in fact the meaning. he had a great line in a speech, these men might address for jobs. we have given them a check and save there is nothing useful for them to do. the first day of sun a senate staff hearing about the federal education bill which liberals say we have federal education and kennedy, bobby was hammering the bureaucrats saying, what is happening with the money? will the school is changing. and he said, when i go into the ghetto the two things people most it is the public for system and the public education system. someone of the things -- i'm really glad you are hitting this point because it was part of robert kennedy's legacy that was misunderstood i think. he was, if you remember that

time in the 60s, a lot of people on the left were challenging liberalism. it was too bureaucratic. it was too big. and they were at alienating people. so in fact as a senator he tried to create a bedford restoration project for the control was at the local level. it didn't mean he felt the government should do nothing, far from it. but in fact, one of the things i have in the book is that there are people like a young graduate student named newt gingrich who found robert kennedy very attractive. >> host: and would today. i think if you were to take some of the actual words that you put in their mouths, for which but which they said at the time, and without a tradition put them on a sheet of paper and handed them to any number of conservative republicans today and say how do you feel about that? >> guest: i absolutely agree. >> host: not only with avi

kennedy so too with gary hart. on defense issues. the. >> guest: on defense issues, he was complicated. the conventional -- a they want more money or less money. and gary hart who formed the military reform caucus the senate, and was very close to the navy liaison on the armed services committee, a former -- john mccain, was saying, you know or is not the question and less is not the question. >> host: is it suitable to the test? is it better? >> guest: yeah come as a better? one of the reasons gary hart when he did win the first time, he didn't get a lot of support from conventional liberals. when he first got to the senate he said we are not a bunch of little hubert humphrey's around here. which if you are hubert humphrey or people who admired him it didn't sound so good. in fact in both cases you are right, the politics of the

times, both those men were challenging orthodoxy, and in fact in this scenario, robert kennedy as president runs into serious trouble with big-city mayors and interest groups along with the democratic hardy because he is trying to change stuff. you know the teachers unions, when robert kennedy -- he actually did propose, suggested that young men and i think you meant women, was a different time, be allowed to leave school and work or several hours a day so they could provide money for their families and have experience of a job which they have never seen in their communities. >> host: the unions hated that. george meany hated it. >> guest: child labor. this is what we thought for? child labor. >> host: but what i find so striking about this jeff, is what does it say about how the country has changed? it is almost as though liberalism was here. conservatism was there. but we have moved so far in this direction, so far in that

direction i guess. we have become more liberal. today's liberals would have a very hard time. >> guest: i'm sorry, you think we have become more liberal? >> host: in many respects. >> guest: socially. not economically. >> host: in terms of what our expectations are common terms of what it demands of government are, in terms of what our sense of entitlement is. i think the sense of entitlement today is infinitely greater. it may be in the process of subtly changing today but the expectation of the younger generation today of what is owed them of what they have a right to expect -- >> guest: yes but i don't think that is liberalism. i think that is something else. >> host: but it is perceived as a check from the government government -- >> guest: okay and that is the point. one of the things that i still find so compelling about robert kennedy is that 45 years ago he

was saying this is not a goode idea. what we need to do is put power and responsibility in the hands of individuals and that we need to figure out a way -- you would say, talk about alienating democratic interest groups, he would say the speech we do not need more guidance counselors. we do not need more bureaucrats. we need is to find a way to have people per store the power in themselves, and to me, i did a piece for a show he may have heard of called nightline. my first year there i went -- ben stein the key to understanding robert kennedy as he of the notion of an act of compassion a government, a liberal notion and personal responsibility autonomy was essentially politically the conservative notion. he was groping toward a way to put the two together, and in that sense, i think the great loss of robert kennedy, you

know, could he be president? it is a speculative notion but the fact that this 42-year-old powerful political figure was trying to rethink the tradition of progressivism and not linking it to sending checks and entitlement was a great loss. i think it hurt the democratic hardy badly. i think bill clinton tried in some way to kind of get out to that a little, but the kind of stuff where he is saying you know, george meany didn't like robert kennedy. george meany was a plumber, head of a craft union that was notorious for remaining segregated, and you know, robert kennedy was just not much of a fan of that. so the interesting thing for me, and this was to try to say in the kennedy presidency that he would run into trouble. when he tried to say let's get the power back to the neighborhoods in richard daley who backed them in the scenario said wait a minute. you are going to send me these little ones?

you want to blackstone rangers in chicago to have some power? >> host: you touch on this jeff in this particular segment. you don't make much of it though, but avi kennedy as a young man was after all, an aide to mccarthy. >> yes, for six months. than electing came back as an aide to the democrats. but you are right. >> host: but in those days he was a very right-wing fellow. >> guest: here is what it was. he had really primitive notions about communism. there's a story about him traveling with justice douglas. i think it may been mongolia, me maven rush and he got sick and he said i don't want to be treated by economist dr.. i don't know how young he is. and the right and wrong, the kind of very strict black-and-white way he often looked at the world particularly as a younger man. a think he got a neal slater on.

he also had one of his sisters dated mccarthy. joe kennedy gave money to mccarthy. joe senior. and i believe bobby went to his funeral. that is part of that kind of almost existential sense of the guys finish, he is dead, so somebody has to go say nice things about him. but it is right that he had as a very young man a real black-and-white feeling of the world and the amazing thing if he read are there of these of robert kennedy, evan thomas is probably the most clear-eyed. the number of people who on first meeting him really thought, this is some spoiled, arrogant, mean so-and-so. and a few years later, decided that he would be the person i most want to see as president. rusco of course that evolution never occurred between lyndon johnson and bobby kennedy, not in reality, not in your book.

guest: there is a book about the relationship tween it to buy a man named jeff sessions called mitchell contended that probably summarizes it perfectly. they disliked each other from the first time they met. they disliked each other the first time -- obey was a counsel to the racket committee and johnson was minority leader. it was cheese and chopped. it was chemical. people have described it that way. somebody once said did you ever see two dogs walking into a room or maybe to scouts. i'm not much on animals. the minute they see -- yeah. that is why in the second scenario when robert kennedy lives, lyndon johnson is not about to sit back and let that happen. >> host: why did you read the third scenario? and i will let you describe it. >> guest: the third scenario, we ratchet back to reality.

is 1976, the second debate. jerry ford having almost lost the primary and the nomination of ronald reagan is way behind jimmy carter but he is catching up. because after all carter is a peanut farmer and we are not sure what he really thinks and if he knows anything about foreign policy. in the debate, comes up the issue of whether or not the united states is united states is ceding to the soviet union dominion over eastern europe. and ford goes to a very well rehearsed answer about this and then he says, there is no soviet domination in europe and there never will be a forded administration. max frankel of "the new york times" who spend a lot of time there stops the debate and if you see the tape, it looks like somebody just hit them on the head with a hammer. he can barely get out the question. he says mr. president, did you really mean to suggest that the soviet union doesn't exercise the sphere a sphere of influence in eastern europe? and ford against to say accurately, while i don't think

the yugoslavians consider themselves dominated. that was tito. i don't think the romanians consider themselves dominated. i don't think the polls consider themselves dominated, and that is when -- >> host: chicago, right. >> guest: so, if ford had simply said, as max, i'm the commander-in-chief. i know there were soviet divisions and easter pin your. think they are there? the polls and hungarians and the czechs never yield. now,. >> host: now in your version ford recovers. ford remains president. >> guest: he gets just enough votes to change ohio and wisconsin and he is present. >> host: but you almost make him wish he hadn't done it. i mean it is the most undistinguished president. >> guest: certainly the republican party wishes he didn't because first of all second terms never go particularly well but i fear he

is that -- i interviewed brent scowcroft and i said what you think? carter had vietnam angst. he felt we had to pay a price for our arrogance. for didn't have that problem meaning he would not have let the show off all that way so i construct a more, this is relevant to you. i construct a scenario -- >> host: built on an inaccuracy. >> guest: well, let's find out this is good so the ayatollah meets and untimely end in a tunnel under the sand. when the hostages are seized by the militant wing, the followers of the imam, they are cleaned out in five days. now man named koppel is hosting a show called america held hostage. >> host: frank once was hosting it. >> guest: okay, so they still cancel the show. [laughter] >> host: they canceled the show but i don't get a show on cnn.

>> guest: just so the viewers understand, they canceled the show so koppel goes to cnn and abc hires jerry springer to do late night programming. you buy that? the reason i did that was two reasons. when i didn't want want to life-and-death matters involving the kennedys and also, because if this notion the underlying notion that the butterfly effect, change this much in everything -- is a good title and everything changes. so this economic calamity which i believe -- >> host: i must tell you was one the one part of the book, and you leave it mercifully quick weight. this sort of princess diana and that you get to the ayatollah khomeini, where he is sort of killed under mysterious circumstances. maybe the flash of a flashbulb blinds his driver as he is speeding through the streets of paris. a little bit too convenient. i mean, but the other thing is,

think you had a wonderful thing going. >> guest: i think what this was was william james called it a moral holiday. every once in a while and needed to play so for instance if i may, the fact there is no john kennedy means there is no james bond phenomenon because it was interviewed in "life" magazine. the back that bobby kennedy settles the vietnam war early means when madge came out america was sick of war. so in that one, i mean every once in while i thought look i'm writing a fission -- fiction. now whether not the combined intelligence services of the united states and perhaps other players would have conspired to this, i'm perfectly prepared to say it doesn't make the same plausibility test as the rest of the book. do you know what? i can live with that. >> host: in the rest of us can can -- i'm not even sure what category, obviously not the category is, fiction. >> guest: it is nonfiction. >> host: is it being billed as

nonfiction? how do they justify that? >> guest: there is speculation about real people. look, i think you should call my editor because you are not crazy about the title and not crazy about the category. >> host: if it is only only question up where they put it in the book, that is one thing but to suggest that this is not fiction. there is a lot -- there is a lot of fact and it. there is, it and that i mean -- >> guest: i don't know how publishers can -- >> host: sometimes fiction is capable of conveying greater truths. >> guest: maybe you should be self-help. >> host: where you are clearly clearly -- is the area you have devoted most of your life to that is the mystic politics. >> guest: you notice i didn't revisit pearl harbor or refight the battle of the bulge. >> host: as a matter of fact there was one little clip that you had in there that i hope doesn't escape too much notice. you actually have dick cheney at

one point drawing an analogy between someone's incompetence and making the point that you wouldn't take someone who doesn't know how to fire a shotgun on a hunting trip. you have some fun with it. there is no question about that. but let's talk again about where the third segment goes, because a lot of it is about the third kennedy brother. a lot of it is about teddy, who doesn't come off very well. >> guest: well, that is right and first of all if you are looking at american history, the political history from 1960 to 1980 the kennedys, one kennedy or another is the dominant figure. but the notion i have here, and i quite deliberately looked at analogy is ted kennedy is the overwhelming figure in 1980. carter lost in 1986 and he is

not going to run again because amy told them it was a bad idea. >> host: where did you get that? >> guest: where did i get that amy told them it was a bad idea? you may remember that jimmy carter said i was talking to my daughter amy about what i should say and she said the most important issue was nuclear proliferation. i looked at that instead of carnot. he had been specifically, specifically told by his aide, don't use that. it sounds dumb. >> host: wright did you extrapolate from that. >> guest: i f1c november johnson is going to go on television is asking how long he should speak and they say 60 minutes is perfect. but what i was going for here was a right of ted kennedy was the dominant democratic figure 1980 how could he possibly lose? the answer is let's see what happened in 2008? we have a dominant democratic party figure, relative of the

former president, up against the first-term senator and early on in the handicapping everybody assumed it was not possible for hillary clinton to lose that campaign and she was the odds-on favorite. the other thing, the only reason where ted kennedy doesn't come off well as where he didn't come off well in 1980. >> host: chappaquiddick. >> guest: not just chappaquiddick that i used word for word -- >> host: the interview with roger mudd. again, this is where you almostf had to be 35 to read this book or 40 even to read this book. how love it or be talking? >> guest: one of the guys they used to work for me and television who is about 28 that is one of these -- i don't know the right word. >> host: intelligent. >> guest: he knows more about american politics than we do combined, so yes, you have to have -- you have to have an appreciation for the political history.

>> host: there needs to be background. usa, you don't need that in every book. i mean -- in this one it is almost essential. >> guest: yeah, i think sure you have to have an affection for, a taste for an appreciation of politics but you know, the reason i don't make -- architectural digest is you have to have an appreciation for architecture to read architectural digest. so here is my deal. if everybody in america who has a sense of history and likes politics will buy the book, i am in good shape. >> host: you will be in good shape. talk or a moment, because i must confess having spoken at length to warren beatty once, i must confess to me, the most surprising revelation in this look was that warren beatty appears to have been a very smart political force, and that he actually played, and again

i'm not sure how much of this is real and how much of it is memorex, he actually played a major role in the gary hart campaign. >> guest: yeah and there a number places where he drew this from. you know, richard kramer's monument to book, what it takes, a 1200 page history of the 88 campaign. for that you really have to like teletext but it is so spectacular a book. and reading a biography of warren beatty. he got to meet gary hart went hart was running for the mcgovern campaign and didn't want to be celebrity. he helped raise money for him by organizing concerts and stuff but he was -- he was an adviser and he had some chops. in real life, and 84, hart was listening to beaty and as we all know the 88 campaign never happened because of rice. so yeah, i mean, i may be wrong

about some of the stuff. i'm perfectly prepared to believe this. yeah, i really am but nothing in this book that i'm asserting is without some#0 foundation, that mcgovern in fact and warren beatty was a very helpful adviser. not just a star. >> host: in terms of what? in terms of messaging? >> guest: messaging, yeah. >> host: give a sense of where that really happened. >> guest: in detail? i just know that beaty was in the room when they were talking about things like the nature of mcgovern's message, what he should say in his speeches and i can't be more specific than that. >> host: in terms of how it related to the gary hart campaign. i mean, the initial. >> guest: and 84 campaign? in the 84 campaign hart wasn't

asterisk, and my memory here is that warren beatty was one of those people who is trying to hone the new ideas message, that the only way you could win this thing is if mondale back then was the overwhelming favorite, and hart had a good ear for what would resonate and what wouldn't. let wooden. >> host: you clearly decided for reasons that i will ask you about now, but gary hart deserved another chance. is not in reality, then certainly in your fiction. >> guest: without giving us this away you upgrade to have read to the end of the book? guest. >> host: i have. >> guest: here's what really struck me. interviewed a lot of gary hart's a demo pods who covered him. is an extraordinary public hated figure. his mind was as supple as anybody in politics, and in real

life apart from the obvious donald rice thing, not destroyed him but what really hurt him was he couldn't get into the music of politics. he wanted people to vote for him only for his ideas, and so in real life when he ran and began to run in 87 as the favorite, his advisers kept saying spend 10 minutes with this person in iowa and organize seven counties. he said i won't do it. i want this person to vote for me because of what i think. i hate the stuff about politics. post this picture with this guy and he will raise $50,000 for you. i won't do it. so what i had to do in the book was to soften him and the where did that was to bring in the guy who was his best friend of the senate, and arkin saw senator named dale bumpers it was nothing -- you was brilliant but he'd loved the music of politics. >> host: i love the story which i know it's a is a real story because i read dale umber's -- about the lawyer.

>> guest: the title of his autobiography, who is the best overlawyering town? dale bumpers. the best drunk where in town, dale bumpers. this part is so imagine. he said some of hart and says you are not running for prime minister. you are running for president, and the president has to be more than a collection of wolesi choices. he has to be somebody who in some sense embodies an american character that people will like. now, i will tell you where i got that from was an experience that gary hart in 84, about eight of us this journal sitting and i think a chinese restaurant. don't know why you remember that. because i don't know where my car keys are. and we we are talking to him. he is still the darkest of dark horses and he says, somebody says to him how are you going to encapsulate all of these ideas in one overriding message? hart looks at him with something close to barely disguised contempt and he says oh, he says

the main what is my bumper sticker? the other story i will tell you, what when i was covering hart for the show whose -- named -- >> host: we tend to forget. >> guest: he is going to college that i think drake. he is just starting to get notes in these kids are yelling for him. he comes up on the stage with the speech. will never forget this. slams the pulpit on the podium and he says as we approach the end of the 20 century -- not hello. how about your football team? nice to be here. it was the most -- it was the coldest beginning of a political speech i have ever -- maybe stalin used to do it that way. >> host: stalin could afford to. >> guest: exactly. does anybody here from violent russia? so that is what i'm getting at here, is that this part of hard tack personality would never have worked in a presidential campaign whether he was monogamous or not.

so i had to find a device that i was reasonably comfortable to explain how he could be more of as they say in colorado, a mesh. >> host: let's spend a few of the minutes we have left talking about what has happened to american politics, because in ò sense, as you read this vote, and it kind of takes you#0 from the 1960s through the 1980s, or at least into the 1980s, you get the sense that this was a very different country, that major major changes have happened. i mean, you speak for example it at one point about the role that the three networks played back in the day when there were only three networks, when there was no cable, when there was no internet and when there were no logs. and it made it a different place in which to live and in which to

operate in which to govern. just ruminate on that little bit >> guest: it is not my perception and i'm not sure whose it is that somebody was thinking back to watergate, a very intense political time, and when the evening news went off in those days it was on at 7:00 in the east and it ended at 7:30. the next thing you learned was when your morning paper hit. no prime-time, no hardball, no whatever, no hannity. so that was the first thing. it was much more measured pace of information, which also meant that the players had some time to react, that they weren't looking over their shoulder or they weren't every six minutes same way, look what but we just came out. that alone is a huge huge difference. second, because the networks run a position where they were the only game in town, right?

at 7:00 and we do want to network newscast you could find channel 58 if you had a safecracker with a uh us or you read a book, which meant that in a sense the ratings in the shares of the network news organizations were so high that then. so it meant that if you did news, you could kind of say i don't have to force these people to stay with me every 10 seconds. i can have more leisurely time and i can have longer sound bites. there is a famous study from a harvard law student -- >> host: marvin kalb. >> guest: in the gone from 48 seconds to eight and if you look at a newscast that the 1960s or 70s campaigned -- >> host: 1968 i was the abc correspondent covering nixon. routinely, i would have three, four and sometimes even fight minute pieces. these days, if you get one minute and 45 is absolutely the

top. >> guest: you spoiled me, you guys at nightline because we would say -- >> host: how much time do you need? >> guest: six minutes, maybe seven minutes. then he goes to the evening news and says one minute and 45 and you go can i have 10 more seconds? so i used to joke that if i had been covering fdr's and not grow on the network news, the only thing we have to fear -- so that is one part. and we haven't even got into the notion of what has now passed for coverage which is essentially people in the around talking to each other. and i never liked the pastoral, the notion that it was better in the old days. some of that we have now that we didn't have been, the capacity of the citizen to sit at a computer and if that citizen cares, to find far more real information than they used to be able to in front of the tv. that is not bad.

>> host: or not. i mean, i just learned last night -- i mean we had just seen the elimination of two of npr's top executives. the most recent because the director of development, the fund-raiser, went out to lunch with a bunch of people who claim to represent a muslim organization that wanted to get mpr $5 million. in the question i raised was some people who knew was, why didn't they do due diligence? why didn't he at least google? well, he did apparently. they have set up a phony google site, which actually had two or three levels to run. so we lived in far more incendiary times i guess then we did back then, but -- go ahead. >> guest: could i just issue a mild dissent?

posts mac -- >> host: of course. >> guest: somehow, southern white politicians were able to run for office by basically saying, if these people want to vote the know-how to stop them. that is a quayle from the united states. the best way to stop the man and i'm not even sure he's a man from voting is the night before. before all of this incendiary politics we did have a guide named joseph mccarthy who is able to poison the political atmosphere. so i mean by that is that i think we have to be careful in assuming or concluding, because you don't assume, you have evidence that this new stuff produces problems and not also produces some potential solutions. i think it is often been said that if this were the gutenberg era we would be in about 1510. we don't know whether we are going to be able to figure out

ways to use this stuff to increase political literacy. i mean i have great questions about this, as you do, but i guess part of me is aware that every new medium of device is seen as are there a salvation or the death of democracy, and i'm talking about from movies to radio to television. so, i grant you that i liked it better when a correspondent the correspondence such as yourselves in could do a five-minute piece. that maybe the person who used to read the five-minute, watch the five-minute pieces on one of the better web sites, reading in-depth coverage. >> host: look, not quite as much of a lead byte as you think i am but i tend to have more faith in the message that i do in the media and i often like to point out to college grads at the most enduring message of all time was delivered on what was arguably the worst medium of all

times. a couple of stone tablets. not particularly portable, not easily moved around, and yet the tag commandments. >> guest: you know the story, well before cable and stuff, walter cronkite or somebody says they limited to the evening news. he said if moses came down from the mountain, if moses came down from the mountain, the 10 commandments the tomb most important of which are. so there is i spend this kind of of -- and it is always healthy i think, worry about how we deliver the messages. >> host: we are down to her last couple of minutes, jeff. >> guest: used to say that every night. >> host: in the context of what we have been talking about these last few minutes, "then everything changed" maybe one of the last of these that you see. these may be going out of style. at least in this form. >> guest: you know so you will read