as i said, a lot of things will become clearer at the status meeting on april 25th. >> host: we look forward to talking to you after that status meeting. finally, sarah, do you see congress playing a role? >> guest: that's a very, very good question, peter. certainly judge chin hopes congress will play a role. i'm not entirely certain that they will play a role sense from a priority standpoint looking at in the greater context of budget cuts and health care and various military activities going on whether the issue of these works or having a digital library is going to even register on the current congress. ..

>> coming up next, booktv presents "after words," an hor-long program where we invite guest hosts to interview authors. this week emmy award winning journalist jeff greenfield creates a picture of an alternate history in his new book "then everything changed." the senior political correspondent for cbs news how politics might differed if there was a kennedy administration that never was and the re-election of gerald ford. he talked with night line's former host ted koppel. ♪

>> host: there is a story that's told about the late american playwright moss hart. he was visiting a friend who had bought a historic house, somewhere in virginia, if my memory serves me correctly. you know this story. 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 and so the friend was showing moss hart around the estate and said to him, so what do you think? moss says it's very nice. it's just god would have done if he had the money. i was thinking about that, jeff, in reading your book because in

a sense this is what god would have done in terms of restructuring history if he had chosen to do that. you picked three extraordinarily interesting moments in history that could have gone one way and went another. and you have then proceeded from there to create a sort of mind-bending piece of history. i read the book, enjoyed it, i must say. it's kind of a clunky title "then everything changed" was that -- >> guest: my editor. >> host: your editor. it's good to have an editor. we could have done better than "then everything changed." the book itself is spritely. you even have done a fair amount of research on this book and i must say in reading it, i was trying to think of a way of explaining toian audience that has not yet had the chance. and i thought it is -- it is

what theodore white might have done in writing one of his making of the presidency volumes. >> guest: that's a pretty good analogy. >> host: if he had been smoking a little bit dope. >> guest: somebody this is the kind of conversation you had at college after a few righteous hits of organic material. >> host: it's very disorienting, i must tell you. 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 in the first place? >> guest: the what if genre which is very popular, historians, there are four volumes what if essays by historians, philip roth with the plot against america, the science fiction write has a book with the men in high castle and roosevelt was killed.

i wrote a novel 15 years ago that didn't purport to be a faux history. i made it up about, okay, the guy we just elected president was killed in a photo opportunity and this is in my blood, i guess. but this one had a particular point of origin. i worked as you know a young aide to robert kennedy. and i've been asked for the last 40 years -- i don't know how many times, what would have happened and my answer is most of his associates, friends, who knows? so i was at this conference and somebody asked the question, i just read the book on bobby kennedy's campaign and it's clear 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 preassociating to this

question, you know, if robert daley backed robert kennedy then the whole thing -- >> host: i think we need to back up a little bit. with each of these instances, jeff, remind people of what really happened. first of all, it's 1968. >> guest: '68. >> host: johnson has announced that he's not going to run. >> guest: right. >> host: the vietnam war is killing him, quite literally. and hubert humphrey is running and eugene mccarthy ones and mccarthy does better than expected and then bobby announces. >> guest: right causing a lot of ill-will that he had earned in once sense. and bobby has won all but the oregon primary and then it's the california primary. in the reality world, all i said imagine if robert kennedy had lived so mayor daley who was the symbol of the old guard, of the old politics. if he was backing the peace

candidate you don't have all those demonstrators and you don't have all those radicals and they are marginalized and that was my answer and i couldn't sleep. because all these other things occurred to me, specifically, if you looked at the numbers in 1968, humphrey had the support of the old guard and in those days, unlike now, a lot of the states do the primaries. the bosses, leaders had the delegate. so the general calculation it was going to be very difficult for 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 hinkley and you think of the relief and the good will and the good grace and humor with which reagan dealt with that, i turned out to be enormously important to him. well, if you picture robert kennedy responding the same way, the dynamic of the 1968 campaign now takes on a whole different meaning. it's thrown into a whole new

calculus. and then i just 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 but not where my keys are. >> host: absolutely, yeah. it's a function of old age. >> guest: okay, i accept that. and i remembered reading in arthur schlesinger, just one sense referenced in the fact there was a suicide bomber who was stalking john kennedy in 1960. and when i finally, thanks to the lord google found the facts, it turns out this guy was at john kennedy's palm beach's home with a carloaded with diunanimous and he was a lunatic. the secret service took no notice of him because it was 1960 and a more innocent time and the only reason he didn't blow up john kennedy was jackie --. >> host: with the kids. >> guest: with carolyn to see him off to church. >> host: and when you have a to explain here, jeff, is really is

important and it's one of the things i want to talk to you about is that this happened during the interregnun period. >> after he was inaugurated and before the electoral college had a chance to vote, which is important because -- >> guest: because it has the potential for total constitutional chaos. let me just cop to this. i had written a novel about the electoral college, while i couldn't do it again. what i did realize that under those circumstances you would have to have the party leaders of both parties agree with the trauma facing the country they would have to engineer an end run-around this constitutional problem so that --. >> host: just explain what the constitutional problem is. >> guest: well, the problem is -- if the electors the people who actually vote for president -- depending on what state you're in maybe they are free agents and maybe they have to vote for the person they said he did but there's virtually nothing about what an election is supposed to do if the

candidate he or she has pledged to is dead. >> host: and interestingly thing enough the only person who has an almost equivalent number of electoral votes to the president who has just been shot and killed is his opponent, not his vice president. >> guest: that's right. because electors -- the electors are pledged to kennedy for president and johnson for vice president. >> host: right. >> guest: so they're sitting there. we've never lived this, i think, since 1876 or something. and the first thing that happens is that the eisenhower administration, he's still president, and the congressional leaders and the city vice president who happens to be richard nixon are sitting there and kind of -- you kind of have the sense that nixon who thought the election had been stolen anyway, you know, maybe kind of thinking maybe this is my way and whereupon a real life guy, eisenhower's top aide says, i'm sure you realize that president

eisenhower at this horrible time in the country doesn't want any partisan trouble, right? >> host: you're not doing yourself justice here because the way you build it up in the book, you've got ed dirksen who was then the minority leader in the senate sort of indicating that, you know, maybe it would be fair that the election was stolen. >> guest: he thought the election was stolen so why don't we give this to nixon and then you have eisenhower stepping in. >> guest: right. you're much better than this i am, ted. >> host: i've read it much carefully than you. >> guest: the reason i'm short circuiting it's a relatively quick selection so i can get lyndon johnson sworn in office on january 20th. >> host: not lyndon johnson, yes, lyndon johnson. >> guest: i don't want to push this. >> host: before we go into the other scenarios and one of the things that's kind of mind

bending about all of this in the first you have jack kennedy killed, right, before he becomes president. >> guest: right. >> host: in the second scenario you have bobby kennedy not killed. >> guest: right. >> host: in california. >> guest: right. >> host: however, his brother has been killed back in 1963 in dallas. >> guest: yeah. >> host: right? >> guest: it's imprudent to prevent your mind being bent too much, at the end of each chapter i have something called reality reset because this is not like philip ross' one continual story. so after the first scenario with lyndon johnson as president ends at the cuban missile crisis, i say, okay, jackie did come to the door, jack wasn't blown up. he got to be president. he was assassinated, johnson took us, you know, through civil rights and a war. it was the '68 and now we pick up at the ambassador hotel. >> host: right. >> guest: and when that section is over, i say this didn't happen, robert kennedy was assassinated now we pick up. >> host: okay. i get it. the larger question, though, is

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 -- you know, the political nuts that you and i are, particularly you who has lived this all of his life. >> guest: this is true. >> host: is it perhaps a little bit too confusing for someone who has -- 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: sure, but that leaves out a lot of 30 years old and under. >> guest: can i shock you about something? >> host: please. >> guest: i once -- when robert kennedy was campaigning, he was being heckled mercilessly, this was in omaha. the minute he got up the guy started yelling and robert kennedy turned to his wife, and he said ethel, i have a feeling the vote in nebraska is not going to be unanimous. i have no illusion when my

steven colbert appearance emerges, who knows. but i think it's true that a book like this, you have to have some knowledge of american politics. you know, if you're not at all interested in politics, you have no sense of this, probably not. fortunately, for me there are potential audience of tens of millions of people who have enough knowledge and just in talking about the book this first week, for people who care about american contemporary american history in politics, the reaction has been gratifying. they get this. >> host: it's a delightful book. i will say that. i will also say we have been friends for 28 years for the sake of one lousy book i'm not going to throw the friendship. has that been fixed the issue with the electoral college or could this, in fact, still happen? >> guest: it could happen

easily. >> host: it hasn't -- >> guest: nothing has been fixed. we almost saw in 2000 -- we did see in 2000 kind of a chaos if two of george bush's electors had decided not to vote for him, even though the state laws -- the law in their state said they have to, then george bush lacks an electoral majority and so does al gore and the elections turn to the house of representatives. the chaos that is possible in an electoral college mess is -- it's almost i measurable because as i say the scenario where the leading -- where the winning candidate dies were completely at sea. because as i say, the state law can compel to you vote on the person on the ballot although nobody can force you. if you write a ballot ted koppel instead of barack obama, i mean,

so? then it goes to the congress and the congress has to decide if that's a valid vote. i mean, it's a time bomb. >> host: you resolve it as i must say you resolve a couple of issues here with -- a questionable -- well, you bring someone in, and in this particular instance is dwight eisenhower who still has the grandeur, the clout, the capacity to be able to say whether he did it through his aide bryce harlow or in person, listen, fellows -- >> guest: you have to go back and imagine it's december of 1960. the president -- what we call the president elect has been blown to bits at a time when violence against public figures was far less common than it became. >> host: right. >> guest: and the notion of the elected leaders of the party, of the party, and the elected officials who had far more credibility than they do now,

lord knows, saying we have got to come to find some way to resolve this quickly before we descend into chaos, i respectfully would say that's not it. that's as plausible as event as would happen. >> host: which statesman would you point to today or states woman for that matter who has the kind of cred be able to do this where you can say well, the president is going to step in and the president of the opposing party is going to -- i mean, a, i find it hard to believe that anyone today would have -- >> guest: fortunately, for me this is set in 1960. and back then you could not imagine it it's entirely probable that's precisely what would 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? >> guest: no. >> host: we had this

extraordinary period after all, november, december, most of january. >> guest: no. it remains a potential disaster. when i wrote my electoral college novel, i said to my editor whose title you don't like, i want to call the book a time bomb parchment. and he said that's the worst title for a novel i've ever heard. >> host: we'll see. is it worse than "then everything changed." >> guest: it's working for me. >> host: a couple paragraphs down and -- >> guest: you know what, i raised that with my editor who's a very smart man. >> host: right. >> guest: he's the editor and chief of a major publishing house. far be from me that his instincts --. >> host: are better than mine? >> guest: we'll see. it's very close to me to suggest it, yeah. so i'm good with this. >> host: let's go to the second scenario. >> guest: may i underline one

thing about the first. >> host: please. >> guest: it's important to recognize that i take the first one to the cuban missile crisis where there's no jack kennedy, no robert kennedy. johnson, who's instincts, and beliefs i researched is now in a room making a decision do we take those missiles out? listening to dean atchison and paul nitzi and not having the chops to question them conceptually so i want --. >> host: and listening to -- >> guest: curtis lame and what he did say in the cuban nuclear crisis, nuclear war is inevitable and let's get it on. >> host: and he actually did believe that sooner or later the united states and the soviet union would have a war. better to do it now than if we still have -- >> guest: exactly. i just want to make the point that ends not with this fascinating electoral college but he's into the presidency of two years and faces the biggest crisis as a president and things

don't quite go the way they did --. >> host: you squeezed out our former colleague john skally who played a major role in the way things -- or at least played a role in the way things are -- >> guest: you got to be ruthless. >> host: yes you are. john skally was diplomatic correspondent at abc news at the time and was called in to act as sort of an intermediary who carried messages back and forth from bobby kennedy to the then-soviet ambassador. are we done with part one -- >> guest: we are done. >> host: you have the means to run your own interview. we're now into part 2. >> guest: we're into part 2. >> host: in part 2, in which bobby kennedy is not assassinated because his brother-in-law, steven smith. >> guest: right. >> host: and he's walking ahead of him. >> guest: but this is part of the research in this book that staggered me because what i

found up at the john kennedy library was the oral history of steven smith, the brother-in-law of the kennedys. and i didn't -- 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 believes himself in part. and i'm quoting from the oral history. if i was in that ballroom kennedy might not have been shot during the course whenever i was with the senator i made it a point to place myself in front of him and sort of move as if i were clearing the way i think it expedited him from getting one place to the other. had i been part of that group, it came down a little late, i probably would have been walking in front of the center so sir haan would have had to come by me to do it. bobby kennedy in the kitchen above everybody and security was trying to catch up with him when sir haan shot him. the back of my hairs went whoa.

i didn't know what to make up to save rotten kennedy life and then i found that. >> host: as it is, i should point out -- and you have a very -- i mean, you have a very droll sense of humor of your own which i've enjoyed for many years. but you managed to do a pretty good replica of a kennedyish sort of sense of humor handcuff 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 saying my first act of president is going to be to pass a law outlawing jokes against brother-in-laws, brother-in-law jokes. i can see bobby saying something -- >> guest: well, he used to joke about steve smith being ruthless. he used to take that wrap. he had a very pucker sense of humor. and what i think is pretty obvious is i was trying to create the same good humor when

reagan displayed when reagan said to the doctors i hope you're all republicans. he had a really great sense of humor. it developed. i didn't know when he was younger and perhaps less loose. but he had -- one of the osof that campaign ended tragically as it did --. >> host: you were working for him at the time. >> guest: i was in a senate staff and in those days pre-watergate basically if you ran a campaign you put everybody on the public payroll and claim they were on their vacation time which is what we were all supposed to be. but he would do things like -- he would -- he was in fresno. i used this in a sunday morning piece about him and he says people asked me why i ran for president and i'd tell them because i would go to california. and then i would go to see the fresno mall because he said, after all, when you've seen the pyramids and the taj mahal, what else is there but the fresno

mall? he was actually winking at his audience and say, you know and i know that a lot of what we tell you is just --. >> host: this is what's so disorienting about it. you have that story and you have him saying that. >> guest: yeah. >> host: in the book. so you take real stuff. >> guest: yeah. >> host: you take stuff that you made up and you mix it all together. >> guest: yeah. >> host: having said that, jeff and get serious about bobby kennedy and what a kennedy presidency might have meant, in the last scenario, not too give too much away, gary hart becomes much more of a force. i won't give it all away. >> guest: and earlier. >> host: and earlier. much more a political force than he was in reality. >> guest: uh-huh. >> host: 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. >> host: they are speaking. >> guest: those were real words. >> host: precisely. that is, in fact, my point. >> guest: yeah. >> host: and that is here are these two men who are icons of liberal history and when they speak, you could take some of those speeches, and you could put those lines and you put them out, oh, that's rand paul. >> guest: right. this actually came up during robert kennedy's life because --. >> host: i was going to say -- >> guest: what attracted to me to him before i ever met the man is at the high watermark of post-liberalism when he first got to the senate he was challenging orthodox liberalism. he said the welfare system was, in fact, demeaning. he had a great early speech, we

might have asked for jobs. we have given them a check and say there's nothing useful for them to do. the first day i was on a senate staff at a hearing about the federal aid education bill, and liberals we have federal aid education and bobby was honoring a bureaucrat and saying what's happened to the money and is the schools changing? and he said when i go in the ghetto the two things people most hate are the public welfare system and the public education system. so one of the things -- i'm really glad you're hitting this point because it was a part of robert kennedy's legacy that was misunderstood, i think. he was if you remember in that time in the '60s i don't have people on the left were challenging liberalism. it was too bureaucratic. it was too big. and it alienated people. so, in fact, as a senator he tried to create a restoration project where the control was at the local level. it didn't mean he thought the government should, you know, do

nothing. far from it. but, in fact, one of the things i have in the book is that, you know, there are people like a young graduate student like newt gingrich found robert kennedy very attractive and would today. >> host: i think if you were to take some of the actual words that you put in their mouths but which they said at the time and without attribution put them on a sheet of paper and hand them to any number of conservative republicans today and say, how do you feel about that? >> guest: i absolutely agree. absolutely agree. >> host: but not only would bobby kennedy, so too with gary hart. >> guest: gary hart --. >> host: on defense issues. >> guest: well, defense issues he was complicated. that is, you know, the conventional fatuous i want more money or less money. and gary hart who formed the caucus in the senate and was

very close to a navy liaison on the arms services committee a former john mccain. >> host: yeah. >> guest: was saying, you know, more is not the question and less is not the question. >> host: is it considerable to the task. is it better? >> guest: yeah, is it better. one of the reasons why gary hart when he did run the first time and didn't get a lot of support from conventional liberals -- when he first got to the senate, he said we're not a bunch of little hubert humphreys around here. which if you are hubert humphrey or people who admired him didn't sound very good. in fact, in both cases you're right. the politics of the time, both those men were challenging orthodoxy. and, in fact, in the scenario robert kennedy as president runs into serious trouble with big city mayors and interest groups along with the democratic party 'cause he's trying to change, you know, the teachers unions. when robert kennedy -- he did propose and he suggest the young

men and i think he meant women it was a different time be able to leave school and work for several hours a day so they could provide money to their families and have a job. >> host: the unions hated that. george meany hated it. >> guest: child labor. is this what we fought for? child labor? >> host: but what i find so striking, jeff, is what does it say about how the country has changed. it was almost like liberalism was here and conservatism is there but we have moved so far in this direction and so far in that direction i guess -- >> guest: yes, i think --. >> host: we've become so liberal that today's liberals would have a very -- >> guest: you think we've become more liberal? >> host: in many respects -- >> guest: socially, not economically. >> host: well, in terms of what our expectations are, in terms of what our 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, of what they have a right to expect. >> guest: yes, but i don't think that's liberalism. i think that's something else. but it is --. >> host: it is perceived as -- a check from the government. >> guest: okay. that's the point. one of the things i find on compelling about robert kennedy is that 45 years ago he was saying this is not a good 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 -- he would say, talk about alienating democratic interest groups. he would say in a speech we do not need more guys counselors

and bureaucrats. we need people to restore the power in themselves. and to me -- i did a piece -- for a show called nightline. >> host: it's vague. >> guest: i went to bed and the key to understanding robert kennedy he had an active compassionate government, a liberal notion and personal responsibility autonomy which is essentially politically a 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 have been president, could he not? it's 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 party badly.

i think bill clinton tried together back to that a little, but the kind of stuff where he's saying -- you know, george meany really didn't like robert kennedy because in other things because george meany was a plumber ahead of a craft union that was notorious for saying segregated. and robert kennedy was just not much of a fan of that. so the interesting thing is for me and this was to try to see in the kennedy presidency that he would run into trouble when he tried to say, let's get the power back to the neighborhoods and a richard daley who backed him in this scenario, wait a minute, you're going to send me these hood lottery numbers? >> host: right. >> guest: you want the blacksville rangers in chicago to have power. >> host: you touch on this but you don't make much of it. robert kennedy as a young man was an aide to mccarthy. >> guest: yes, for six months.

>> >> host: for six months. >> guest: you're right. >> host: in those days he was a very right winged fellow. >> guest: here's what it was. he had really primitive notion business communism. there's a story about him traveling with justice douglas -- i think it may have been mongolia, it may have been russia and he got sick and he said i don't want to be treated by a communist doctor. now, that's -- he's like, i don't know, how long. the right and wrong, the kind of very strict black and white he looked at the world particularly as a young man and i think he would annealed when he got older. one of his sisters dated mccarthy. joe kennedy gave money to mccarthy. joe, sr., yeah, and i believe bobby went to his funeral. part of that is almost well,

he's dead and somebody has to say nice things about him. but he's right he had as a very young man add black and white view of the world. and the amazing thing if you read biographies of robert kennedy evan thomas is a clear eyed. it's not an ago. iography are the number of people on first meeting him really thought this was some spoiled, arrogant, mean so-and-so. and a few years later, decided that he would be the person they most want to see president. >> host: of course, that evolution never occurred between lyndon johnson and bobby kennedy, not in reality and not in your book. >> guest: there's a book about the relationship between the two by a man named jeff shell and called "mutual contempt" and that probably summed it up perfectly. they disliked each other from the first time they met. they disliked each other the first time -- i don't know, bobby was a counsel to the

racket committee. it was cheese and chalk. it's the reverse of pheromones are. and people have described it that way. somebody once said have you ever seen two dogs walk into a room and maybe it's cats and i'm not much on animals and the minute they see each other, that was them. and so that's 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 write the third scenario? i'll let you describe what the -- >> guest: the third scenario we ratchet back to reality. now, it's 1976. it's the second debate. gerry ford almost losing the nomination of ronald reagan and way behind jimmy carter but he's catching up because after all carter is a peanut farmer. we're not what he really thinks and does he really know anything about foreign policy and in the debate comes up the issue of whether or not the united states is ceding to the soviet union

dominion over eastern europe and ford goes through a very well rehearsed answer about this and then he says there is no soviet domination in eastern europe and there will never be in a ford demonstration and max frankel of the "new york times" and spent a lot of time in moscow stops the debate and if you see the tape, it looks like somebody just hit him on the head with a hammer. he can't -- he can barely get out the question. he said, mr. president, did you really mean to suggest that the soviet union doesn't exercise a sphere of influence in eastern europe? and ford begins to say accurately well, i don't think the using slavians consider themselves dominated. and the romanians or the poles dominated and that's when -- that's when the gong goes off. >> host: that's right. >> guest: so if ford had simply

said, as he does in my max, as the commander in chief i know there's soviet divisions in eastern europe. why do you think in here because the poles, the hungarians and the czechs will never yield. >> host: so in your version, ford recovers. >> guest: recovers. >> host: and ford remains president. >> guest: he gets just enough votes to change ohio and wisconsin and he's president. >> host: but you make him -- you almost make him like he hasn't done it. he's an undistinguished party. >> guest: it's the republican party wished he didn't. my theory is while he -- i interviewed brent scowcroft and i said, what do you think? well, you know, carter had vietnam angst. he felt we had to pay a price for our arrogance. ford didn't have that problem meaning he would not let the shah fall that way. so i construct a more -- this is relevant to you as you know.

i construct a scenario --. >> host: built on an inaccuracy. >> guest: let's find out. this is good. so the ayatollah meets an untimely end under a tunnel and a more moderate leader takes to your and when the hostages are taken out by an imam and a man koppel held a show called "american held hostage." . >> host: frank reynolds was -- >> guest: so they still cancelled the show. >> host: but i don't get a show on cnn. >> guest: just so the viewers understand my theory is they cancel the show. >> host: all right. >> guest: and so koppel goes to cnn and becomes a show and cnn hires jerry springer. >> host: they are almost there. >> guest: and the reason i did that is one, i didn't want to life and death matter involved invite kennedys and also the notion, the underlined notion the butterfly effect and you

change this much and everything changes so there's economic calamity at the end of the '70s which i believe --. >> host: look, i must tell you it was the one part of the book and you leave it mercifully quickly. the sort of princess diana end that you give to the ayatollah khomeini where he's killed -- >> guest: under mysterious circumstances. >> host: under the mysterious circumstances as light bulbs i blind his view under the streets of paris. a little too convenient. with the other things, i think you had, you know -- you had a wonderful -- >> guest: i think what william james called a mole holiday. every once in a while i needed to play so, for instance, if i may. >> host: yeah>> guest: the fact that there's no john kennedy means there's no james bond phenomenon because it was his interview in "life" magazine. the fact that bobby kennedy settles the vietnam war means when mash comes out people were so heartily sick of the war,

there's no mash. so in that one i mean, everyone once in a while i thought, look, i'm writing a fictional history. now, whether or 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 meet the same plausibility test as the rest of the book. you know what? i can live with it. >> host: and the rest of us -- i'm not even sure what category -- obviously the category is fiction. it's -- >> guest: it's sold as nonfiction. >> host: is it being sold as nonfiction? >> guest: i don't understand that. >> host: how did they justify that? >> guest: you know, it's speculation about real people. i think you should call my editor you're not crazy about the title and you're not crazy about the category. you ought to have a conversation. >> host: if it's only a question where they put it in the bookstore that's one thing but to suggest this is not fiction.

there's a lot of -- there's a lot of fact in it. there is. but i mean -- >> guest: i don't know how publishers --. >> host: sometimes fiction is capable of conveying greater truths. let's talk a little bit -- >> guest: maybe it should be self-help. [laughter] >> host: where are you clearly your strength is domestic politics. >> guest: you noticed i didn't revisit pearl harbor in this one or refight, you know, the battle of the bulge. >> host: as a matter of fact, there's one little quip that you have in there that i hope doesn't escape too much notice. you had 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, right? you have some fun with it. >> guest: sure. >> host: there's no question about that. >> guest: yeah. >> host: but let's talk again about where that third segment

goes. >> guest: right. >> host: because a lot of it is about the third kennedy brother. a lot of is it about teddy who doesn't come off very well. >> guest: well, that's right. and first of all, if you look in the american history -- political history from 1960 to 1980, the kennedys -- one kennedy or another is a dominant figure. >> host: that's correct. >> guest: but the notion that i have here both of and i quite deliberately want to acknowledge, carter is not going to win because amy told him it was a bad idea. >> host: where did you get that? >> guest: where did i get that amy told him it was a bad idea? >> host: yeah. >> guest: in the actual 1980 debate you may remember 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. >> host: i do remember that part. >> guest: and i looked at that oh, no you think he had been

specifically told by his aides don't use that. it sounds dumb. >> host: right. but you extrapolate from that. >> guest: sure. there's a lot of that. by the way, i have one scene very early on where johnson is going to go on television how long would you speak and be done and he said 60 minutes is perfect. >> host: bada boom. >> guest: okay. but what i was going for here was, all right, if ted kennedy was the dominant party figure in 1980, how could he possibly lose? and the answer is, well, let's see what happened in 2008. we had a dominant democratic party figure, relative of a former president, up against a first-term senator and early on in the00 everybody assumed it was not possible for hillary clinton to lose that campaign. and she was the odds-on favorite. >> host: right. >> guest: the only reason where ted kennedy doesn't come off where he didn't come off well was --. >> host: chappaquiddick. >> guest: not just chappaquiddick but i use

word-for-word the --. >> host: the issue with roger mudd again, you almost have to be 35 to read this book or 40 even to read this book. how long ago are we talking about? >> guest: one of the guys who used to work for me in television who was about 28 but is one of these -- you know, i don't know the right word. >> host: intelligent, a guy who's read a lot? >> 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: that needs to be background. i mean, you say yeah. you don't need that on every book. i mean, it's -- >> guest: i don't need -- >> host: in this one it's almost essential? >> guest: sure. you have to have an affection for, a taste for and an appreciation of politics. but you know -- i mean, the reason i don't read architectural digest -- you have

to have an appreciation for architecture to read architecture digest. so here's my deal if everybody in america who has a sense of history and likes politics will buy the book, i'm in good shape. >> host: you will be in good shape. >> guest: i will be. >> host: talk for a because i must confess having -- having spoken at length to warren beatty to once i must confess that the most surprisingly revolution 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 this is memorex. he actually played a major role in the gary hart campaign? >> guest: yeah. and if you read there were a number of places where i drew this from. you know, from -- richard contemporary's monumental book "what it takes." that 1200-page -- for that you

really have to like politics but it's so a spectacular book. and reading a biography of warren beatty, he got to meet gary hart when hart was running the mcgovern campaign and didn't want to be a celebrity. i mean, he helped raise money for him by organizing concerts and stuff. he had -- you know, he was an advisor and he had some chops. and in '84, hart was listening to beatty and as we know the '88 campaign didn't happen because of donna rice, so, yeah. nothing i mean, i may be wrong about some of this stuff. i'm perfectly prepared to believe this but, yeah, but nothing where i'm concerting where there's no foundation and mcgovern said warren beatty was a very helpful advisor, not just a star who got a crowd.

>> host: in terms of what? in terms of p.r., messaging? >> guest: messaging? yeah. >> host: give us a sense where that really happened. >> guest: in detail. i just know that beatty was in the room when they were talking about things like the nature of mcgovern's message, what he should say in speeches. i can't -- i can't be more specific than that. >> host: but i mean, in terms of how it related to the gary hart campaign, i mean, the initial -- >> guest: well, you mean in the '84 campaign? in the '84 campaign, hart was an asterisk. and my memory here is that warren beatty was one of those people who was trying to hone the new ideas message. that the only way you can win this thing -- you know, 'cause mondale back then was the overwhelming favorite. and hart had a good ear for what would resonate and what wouldn't.

>> host: you clearly decided for reasons that i'm going to ask you about now that gary hart deserved another -- another chance. if not in reality but certainly in fact fiction. >> guest: without giving this away you have read to the end of the book? >> host: i have. >> guest: all right. here's what struck me. i interviewed a lot of gary hart's aides and people who covered him. he was an extraordinary complicated figure. his mind was as supple as anybody in politics. and in real life apart from the obvious donna rice destroyed -- not destroyed him but in '84 really hurt him, 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 -- when he ran and began to run in '87 as the favorite, his advisors kept saying, look, spend 10 minutes with this

person in iowa and they'll organize seven counties for you and he said i won't do it. i want this person to be for me of what i think. i hate this stuff in politics, like the glad hating and pose for this picture and he'll raise $50,000 for and i won't do it. and what i had to do in the book was to soften him and the way i did that was to bring the guy who was his best friend in the senate named dale bumpers who was nothing but -- he was brilliant but he loved the music of politics. he was a great storyteller. >> host: i love the story which i know is a real story because i've heard dale bumpers tell it -- >> guest: about the give-away. >> host: about the lawyer, i'm the best lawyer. >> guest: it's the title of his book "who's the best sober lawyer in town, dale bumper." . you're not running for prime minister. you're running for president and the president has to know more than a collection of policy

choices. he has to be somebody who in some sense embodies an american character that people will like. now, i'll tell you where i got that from was an experience with gary hart in '84, about eight of us journalists sitting, i think, in a chinese restaurant, why i remember that because i don't know where that car keys are, and we're talking to him, and he's still the darkest of dark horses. and he says -- somebody says to him, how are you going to encapsulate all these ideas in one overriding message and hart looks at him with something close to barely disguised contempt. he says, oh, he says you mean what's my bumper sticker? the other story i'll tell you, when i was covering hart for this show that was named --. >> host: we tend to forget. >> guest: it's in iowa. and hart is going before a college students. i think it's drake. he comes up on stage with a speech in a folder, i will never

forget this. he slams the folder down on the podium, and he says, as we approach the end of the 20th century there's 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 -- maybe stalin used to do it that way. >> host: stalin could afford to. >> guest: yes, exactly. anybody here from russia? [laughter] >> guest: and so -- what i'm getting at here is that this part of hart's 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 with so explain how he could be more as they say in colorado, a mensch. >> host: let's spend a few of the minutes we have left talking about what's happened to american politics. because in a sense, as you read this book, and it kind of takes you from 1960 through the -- 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, at one point about the role that the three networks played. back in the day when there were only three networks. whether there was no cable. when there was no internet and there were no -- you know, there were no blogs. >> guest: right. >> host: and it made it a different place in which to live, in which to operate, in which to govern. >> guest: absolutely. >> host: just ruminate on that a little bit. >> guest: well, here's -- it's not my perception and i'm not sure who's it is. but somebody was looking -- just 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 the

doorstep. >> host: right. >> guest: no prime time thing, no hardball, no whatever. no hannity, no one. so that was the first thing. it was a 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 months -- wait, look what just came up. >> host: uh-huh. >> guest: that alone is of huge difference. second, because the networks were in the position where they were the only game in town, right, at 7:00, if you didn't want to watch a network newscast, you could find channel 58 if you had the fingers of a safe cracker with a uhs set or you read a book. and that's why the ratings were so high back then. there was nothing else. well, 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 -- i can have longer sound bites. there's a famous study of a harvard --. >> host: our friend marvin kalb -- >> guest: i think kiki supervised it. it had gone from 48 seconds to 8 seconds. if you look at a newscast --. >> host: 1968 i was the abc correspondent covering nixon. routinely, i would have three, four and sometimes even five-minute pieces on the air. these days, if you get minute in our 5 is absolutely the top. >> guest: and, you know, you spoiled me. you guys at nightline because we would say, what --. >> host: how much time do you need? >> guest: 6 minutes, maybe 7 minutes. and then you go to the evening news and minute 45. and you go could i have 10 more seconds, no, we're heavy. so i used to joke that if i'd

been covering fdr's inaugural on network news i could clip, the only thing we have to fear -- so that's one part. >> host: look -- >> guest: and we haven't even gotten into the notion what has now passed for coverage which is essentially people in a room talking to each other. look, i never liked the pastoral the ocean was better in the old days and i think some of what we have now that we didn't have then -- the capacity of a 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 a tv, that's not bad. >> host: or not. i mean, i just -- i just learned last night -- i mean, we have just seen the elimination of npr's two executives, the most recent because of the director of development, the fundraiser went out to lunch with a bunch of people who claimed to

represent a muslim organization that wanted to get npr $5 million. and the question i raised with some people who knew was why didn't this guy didn't do any due diligence. why didn't he at least google, well, he did apparently. they had set up a phony google site, which actually had two or three levels to it. so we live in far more incendiary times, i guess, than we did back then. go ahead. >> guest: can i just issue a mild dissent. >> host: of course, it couldn't be you if you didn't. >> guest: it was back in the 19 '40s and '50s before any of thee nefarious devices. four or five politicians were able to run for office so say if these colored people who want to vote we know how to stop it. the best way to stop colored men from voting is the night before. and before all this, you know,

this incendiary politics we did have a guy named joseph mccarthy he was able to poison the political atmosphere. >> host: no question about it. >> guest: all i mean by that is i think -- i think we have to be careful in assuming or concluding you don't assume you have evidence that this new stuff produces problems and not also maybe produces some potential solutions. i think -- it's often been said it's a cliche now if this was the guttenberg era we would be 1460 or 1510. we don't know whether we're going to be able to figure out ways to use this stuff to increase political literacy. i have grave questions about this as you do. but i'm just -- i guess part of me is aware that every new medium of device has been seen as either as salvation or a death of democracy. i'm talking about from movies,

to radio, to television. so i grant you that i liked it better when a correspondent such as yourself could do a 5-minute piece. but maybe the person who used to watch the 5-minute piece is on one of the better websites reading in-depth coverage of --. >> host: look, i'm not quite as much of a luddite as you think i am but i also -- i tend to have more faith in the message than i do in the medium. and i often like to point out to, you know, to college crowds, that the most enduring message of all time was delivered on what was arguably the worst medium of all time. a couple of stone tablets, right? not particularly portable, not easily moved around. and yet the ten commandants -- >> guest: and you know the story way back before cable and walter cronkite used to say --. >> host: he would put >> guest: he said if moses came down from the mountain the report would be moses came down to the mountain with 10

commandants and the two most important are. so there's always been this kind of -- and it's always healthy, i think, worry about how we're delivering the messages. >> host: we're down to our last couple of minutes, jeff. >> guest: i love you say that because you used to say that in nightline. >> host: in the context of what we have been talking about, these last few minutes, this and 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: but you know so you'll read it on this, you'll read it on a kindle, you'll read it on your ipad, you'll read it on your toaster, but you just said you think the message is more important than the medium. >> host: absolutely. >> guest: so --. >> host: so i kind of -- i kind of like the heaviest of ft of i- >> guest: you know somebody said i miss the parchment and scrolls. >> host: i still mise