video that is the best one clearly not all of them are. even when we look at patrick henry it is very interesting not only is there no written transcript but literally is somebody else's recollection of being at to the speech. that is rarely get the phrase give me liberty or give me death. i know a couple of them is pretty long and not that exciting just look for the parts that interesting. there always about 700 to 1,000 words but the good news is you can pick up this book read one lowered to and read the last -- the rest later. >> how do go about picking

the 25 documents? >> a great question. the original goal was 21. i failed. we have 25. you have to have the declaration of independence and the constitution there are some that you know, you have to have. that was the first 15 then off of that what else? we tried to do to make sure we cover our history like patrick henry so we have coverage of what has happened and some things may be the alamos speech that is not as well known so we try to do a little bit of everything to make it interesting. . .

of gerald ford. he talks with nightline former host ted koppel. >> host: there is a story that is told about the elite american

play rate of visiting a friend who had bought historic house somewhere in virginia, you know the story, and the house was beautiful but the estate was not that impressive and 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 and none of the estate and said what do you think? and he said it's very nice. it's what god would have done if he had the money. i was thinking about that in reading your book, because in essence, this is what god would have done in terms of restructuring history if he had chosen to do that. you'd pick three interesting moments in history that could have gone one way and went to

another and you then proceeded from that to create a sort of mind bending a piece of history. i read the book and i must say it's kind of a clunky title that then everything changed. was that the focus? it's good to have an editor. we could have done better than if anything changed the book itself is even have done a fair amount of research on this book and in reading it i was trying to think of a way of explaining to an audience that isn't yet had the chance, and i think it is what theodore white might have done in writing one of his making of the presidency volumes. if he had been smoking a little

bit of a dope -- >> guest: somebody said this is the kind of conversation you had in college after a few righteous hits of organic material. >> host: it's very disorienting. you read this book and then you do a good enough job, and truly a good enough job of creating a new reality. what made you think of this in the first place? >> guest: the genre that is popular, historians, the four volumes of essays by historians, philip roth to the plot against america where charles, philip, the science-fiction writer has a book called the man of high test where the nazis in world war ii because roosevelt is assassinated in miami so there's always been a kind of thing i've enjoyed. i read an awful 15 years ago, didn't purport to be history i just made up about okay just killed in a foe opportunity, the college hasn't met with them so

this is an odd leges. my bluff guess. but i've worked as you know as a young aide to robert kennedy and i've been asked the last 40 years i don't know how many times what would happen and my answer has always been what i think most of his associates and friends who knows so i was at this conference and somebody asked and i just read the book on bobby kennedy's campaign which is pretty clear according to him mayor richard daley's chicago was prepared to endorse robert kennedy, he thought the world was a disaster and worried the black vote in chicago. as we started this questionnaire and said if mayor daley back robert kennedy then the whole demonstration stop in chicago radically changed. >> host: i think we need to back up just a little bit. with each of these instances

remind people of what really happened. first of all its 1968. johnson -- 68, right? johnson has announced he's not going to run. the imam war is killing and hubert humphrey and eugene mccarthy runs and mccarthy does better than anyone expected and body announces. >> guest: causing a lot of ill will hear and and all the has won all but the word in primaries and then it's the california primary. imagine if robert kennedy had lived and so mayor daley who was the symbol of the old guard, the old politics if he was backing the peace candidate you don't have all those demonstrators you only have the radicals and they are marginalized then i went home and i couldn't sleep because of all these other things that occurred to me

specifically. if you look at the numbers of 1968 humphrey had the support of the old guard and in those days on like now a lot of the states during the primaries, so the general population was it's going to be tough for robert kennedy even after winning the primaries but if he had survived the assassination attempt which is the plot in here and think about what happened with ronald reagan after he survived john hinckley and you think of the good will and the good grace and humor with which he dealt with that that turned out to be enormously important to him. well if you picture robert kennedy responding in the same way, the dynamic of the 1968 campaign takes on a whole different meaning. it's thrown into a whole new calculus. and then i just decide okay i'm going to do this. i can remember because i have the kind of memory i can remember 50-years-old things but not where my keys are.

>> host: absolutely. it's old age. >> guest: i accept that. and i remembered reading arthur schlesinger's book this one sentence that there was a suicide bomber stalking john kennedy in 1960 and when finally thinks to google found the facts it turns out this guy was outside the home and the sticks of dynamite he was a deranged and how catholic lunatic. the secret service took no notice of him because it was 1960 and the reason he didn't blow up john kennedy was they said -- with care when, yes, he went to church. >> host: it's important and one of the things i want to talk about is that this happened during the period after he was elected to the presidency before he was inaugurated, before the

electoral college that had a chance to vote which is important because it has -- >> guest: the potential for chaos i had written a novel about the electoral college couldn't do it again but i didn't realize is under those circumstances you have to have the party leaders of both parties agree that with the trauma facing the country we have to engineer around this constitutional problem. the people that vote for president depending what state you're in maybe they are free agents, maybe they have to vote for the person they said they did but there's virtually nothing said about an electorate is supposed to do with the candidate he or she is pledged to ringsted. >> host: the only person who has almost an 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 the electors pledged to kennedy for president and johnson for vice president said they are sitting there and would never live through this until i think 1876 or something. what happened is 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 kind if you have this sense that nixon who fought the election had been stolen anyway was thinking maybe this is my way and we are upon a real guy a system and so i'm sure you realize president eisenhower at this time in the country doesn't want any part is in trouble, right? >> host: for not doing yourself justice because we've built in the book you've got dirksen was then the minority leader in the senate sort of

indicating maybe it would be fair. he thought the election was over so why don't we give this to nixon. then you have eisenhower stepping in. >> guest: door much better at this than i am, ted. >> host: i've heard it more carefully. [laughter] >> guest: the reason i'm short circuit in this is because it is relatively quick solution in the book i can get lyndon johnson's one into office january 20 that's only the first trinkle. >> host: before we go into the other scenario one of the things that's a little bit mind bending about all this is in the first scenario you have jack kennedy killed before he becomes president. the second you have bobby kennedy not killed in california

however, his brother has been killed by 1963 in dallas. >> guest: at the end of each chapter i have some regality reset because this isn't like philip roth but one continual store so after the first summary with lyndon johnson to the cuban missile crisis fisa a-okay jackie did come through the door, jack wasn't blown up, he got to be president, he was assassinated, johnson took us through the civil rights and a war and was a 68 and now we pick up at the ambassador hotel. i see this didn't happen, robert kennedy was assassinated and now we take out -- >> host: a larger question though is there are people a lot younger than you and i who don't remember b.c. vince from a personal experience. there are people who aren't the

political knocks you and i are, particularly who have lived this all of his life. >> guest: this is true. >> host: is it perhaps a little bit too confusing for someone who doesn't have the background. do you need to have a plea bargain? >> guest: no. -- that leaves out a lot of doherty roles -- >> guest: khanna shocker with something, when robert kennedy was campaigning he was being heckled mercilessly in omaha, robert kennedy turned to his wife and said i have a feeling the vote in nebraska is not going to be unanimous. i have no illusion although when steven colbert appearance emergence who knows, but i think it is true book like this you have to have some knowledge of american politics, if you're not

at all interested in politics you have no sense of it probably not. fortunately there are tens of millions of people who have enough knowledge and just in talking about this this first week for people who care about american contemporary politics the intention has been gratifying they get this. >> host: it's a delightful book. i will say that jeff and i have been friends for 28 years for the sake of one lousy book and the friendship into the -- before you leave the first scenario has that been fixed, the issue of the electoral college or could this in fact still have been? >> guest: could have been easily. nothing has been fixed. what we did see in 2000 as a kind of chaos but it to george bush's the lectors decided not to vote for him, even though the

state laws said they have to, then george bush lacks the intellectual majorities as our core and thrown into the house of representatives the chaos that is possible in an electoral college mass is almost in measurable because as i say the scenario where the winning candidate the dies are completely at sea because of the can compel you to vote for the person on the ballot although nobody quite knows how to enforce that if you and the state capital filled it out and write ted koppel instead of barack obama, so come and then it goes to the contras and the have to decide if it is a valid vote. >> host: you resolve it as a couple of issues with any

questionable -- in this particular instance is dwight eisenhower who still has the grand juror, the clout, the capacity to be able to say whether he did it through the aid or in person to listen to those. >> guest: you have to go back and imagine it's december of 1960. what we call the president-elect has been blown to bits at a time violence against public figures was far less common than it became. and the notion of the elected leaders of the party and officials had more credibility than they do now saying we have to find a way to resolve this quickly before we descend into chaos. i respectfully would say that is in that the assessment that is as possible of and even that's

what happened. >> host: only in that kind to the ku time. which states and would you point to today or stateswoman for that matter who has the kind of credence to be able to do that sort of thing where you can say the president is going to step in and the president of the opposing party a i found it hard to believe anyone today would have become. >> guest: the reason it's not is back then you couldn't only imagine it's entirely probable, it was a much more common field -- >> host: let's put the issue to bed. has anyone raised that? has anyone tried to pass legislation? >> guest:. >> host: have an extraordinary program after all, november, december, most of january. >> guest: it remains a potential disaster. i said to my editor whose title

you don't like the one to call the book a time bomb in parchment. he survived that this a while. that's the worst title firm of white ever heard. >> host: we will see. [laughter] is it worse than then everything changed? >> guest: i like the title. >> host: especially the subtitle it just keeps getting better and better. a couple of paragraphs down -- >> guest: i raised that with my editor who is a very smart man who has been at this, the editor-in-chief of a major publishing house. far be it to suggest -- >> host: better than mine? we will see. >> guest: not that far for me to suggest that. it's close for me to suggest that. [laughter] so in good with this. >> host: very good. let's go to the second scenario. >> guest: may i underline month about the first? >> host: please. >> guest: it's important to recognize and take the first one to the cuban missile crisis where there is no jack kennedy, no robert kennedy, the johnson

whose instincts and believes a rather extensive research is now making the decisions we take dean acheson and not having the chops to question the skeptics. >> host: and listening at that point. >> guest: saying what he actually did say in the missile crisis, well, let's get it on. >> host: and he actually did believe in the united states and the soviet union would have -- and better to do it now while we still have the damage. >> guest: i just want to make the point that not with a fascinating new atoka which stuff but facing the biggest crisis of any president and things don't go quite the way they did. >> host: we squeezed out of our former colleague who played a major role in the way things were of least played a role.

i should point out john was a diplomatic correspondent at abc news of the time and was called in to act as an intermediary who carried messages back-and-forth from bobby kennedy and the then soviet ambassador. are we done with part one to render an interview here. we are now willing to part two. part to and 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 in this book that staggered me because what i found at 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 in the campaign,

and smith -- i'm reading this and steve smith says he believes himself in part, and i am quoting from the oral history in the bottom of the ambassador he might not have been shot. curiously enough for reasons i can't explain during the course of the campaign whenever i was with a senator i made it a point to place himself in front of him and sort of move clearing the way it helped expedite getting from one place to another. i've been part of that group i probably would have been walking in front of the senator so he would have had to come by me. robert kennedy, the head of a treaty. the security was trying to catch up. when i read the oral history, the hair on the back of my head kind of went. i didn't know what to make of robert kennedy's life and then i found that.

you have a sense of your own i enjoyed for many years but he managed to do a pretty good replica of the kennedy sort of sense of humor. you have body at one point, stephen smith takes the lead in the shoulder for his mother-in-law and somebody is saved and you have him than saying my first as president is granted to pass a law outlawing jokes against brother and loss. i can see body saying something -- >> guest: he was ruthless. he used to take that and, yes, he had a very good sense of humor and it's obvious i was trying to create the same kind of good humor that rall reagan displayed when he sali pure all republicans after he had been shot in 1981. but yes, one of the things more generally about robert kennedy because he was a very intense man is he had a really great sense of humor.

i didn't know him when he was young girl and perhaps less loose, but he had one of the delays of the campaign ended tragically as it did -- i was at the staff and in those days pre-watergate. if you ran the campaign just like a brigety on the payroll claimed they were on vacation time which is what we all were supposed to be. but he would do things like -- he was in fresno in the sunday morning peace and says people ask why i ran for president and i tell them because they would go to california and then i would go to see the fresno mall because after all when you seen the pyramids and the towers, what else is there but the fresno small? he was actually winking at his audience you know and i know a lot of what we tell you is -- >> host: this is part of what is disoriented because we have

that story in the book so you'd stuff that you've made up and fix it altogether. having said that to get serious for a moment about bobby kennedy and with the kennedy presidency might have met with is a little bit surprising the next two of your scenarios together the last scenario not to give too much away, gary hart is become much more of a force. much more of a political force than he was coming and what strikes me about both gary hart and bobby kennedy in their campaigns is that you have them speaking back then as though they were teen party members today.

>> guest: except i don't have them speaking, they are speaking and that is in fact my point. >> host: here are these two men who are icons of liberal history, and when they speak you could take some of those speeches, some of those lines and if you put down there today you would say rand paul. >> guest: this cannot during robert kennedy's life -- >> host: i was going to see -- >> guest: what attracted me before i ever met the man is the market liberalism when he first got to the senate he was challenging or the box liberalism saying the system was in fact the meeting. he had a great run under the speech these men might have asked for jobs and we had given the check and said there's nothing useful for them to do. the first day i was on the step at a hearing about the federal dictation bill and kennedy

hammering a bureaucrat or the school was changing we aren't going to get there. the two things people here are the public welfare system and public education system. so one of the things i'm really glad you are hitting this because it was a part of robert kennedy's legacy the was misunderstood i think he was if you remember in that time of the 60's people on the left or challenging liberalism, it was too bureaucratic and too big and alienated people furious when there is a senator he tried to create a bid for the restoration project where the control was of the local level. then he felt the government should do nothing for from a but in fact one of the things i have on the biggest people like a young graduate named new gingrich who found him very attractive.

if you're to take some of the actual words to put in their mouths by which they said at that time put them on a sheet of paper and handed them to any number of conservative republicans today how do you feel about that? >> guest: i absolutely agree. >> host: not only would bobby kennedy's go too with gary hart on defense issues. >> guest: he was complicated. the conventional way more money or less money, and gary hart would form the military reform caucus and the senate and was very close to the navy liaison on the armed services committee a former -- john mccain would say more is not the question.

>> host: is it better. >> guest: yeah, so one of the reasons gary hart when he did run the first time didn't get a lot of support from the conventional liberals when he first got to the senate he said we are not all a bunch of hubert humphrey's around here, which if he were to board country or people admired him didn't sound so good. in fact in both cases you're right, the politics of the time, both of those men were challenging orthodoxies and in fact even the scenario robert kennedy as president runs into serious trouble with big city mayors and interest groups along with of the democratic party because he is trying to change it. the teachers' unions when robert kennedy and it is he actually did propose suggests to young men and i think that he meant it was a different time be allowed to leave school and work for several hours a day so they could provide the experience of a job which they never seen in their communities.

>> host: the union's hated that. >> guest: child labor. is this what we fought for? child labor. >> host: what i find so striking about this 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 because we have become more liberal that today's liberals would have a very hard time -- test i'm sorry to you think we've become a liberal? >> host: in many respects -- of >> guest: not economically. her skull in terms of what our expectations are and what our demand 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 such a change in today but the expectation of the

younger generation today of what is owed to them of what the of the right to expand -- >> guest: but i don't think that is liberalism that is something else. a check from the government -- >> guest: and that's the point, one of the things i still find so compelling about robert kennedy is that 45 years ago he was saying this is not a good idea. what we need to this power and responsibility into the hands of individuals, and we need to figure out a way he would say if you talk about a leaping interest groups he would say we do not need more guidance counselors, we do not need more bureaucrats, what we need is to find a way to have people come and to me i did a piece for nightline -- my first year there

the key to understanding he had the notion of the act of compassion a government and the response of the autonomy was essentially politically the conservative notion he was trying to put the two together, and in that sense, i think the great loss of robert kennedy is a speculative notion but this 42-year-old powerful political figure was trying to rethink was to rethink the progressivism and checks of entitlement was a great loss. you heard the democratic party badly. i think bill clinton tried in some way to kind of get back to that a little but the kind of stuff where he's saying george didn't like robert kennedy and other things, he was a plumber, head of the craft union that was

notorious remaining segregated and robert kennedy wasn't much of a fan of that so the interesting thing for me was to try to say in the kennedy presidency he would run into trouble when he tried to say let's get the power back to the neighborhood and richard daley who backed him said we've imminent you're going to send me these hoodlums? you want the blackstone rangers and chicago to have some power? >> host: to touch on this in this particular so you don't make much of it though but bobby kennedy as a young man was after all the aid to mccarthy for six months. >> guest: then he left as an aid for the democrats. >> host: in those days he was a very right-wing fellow. >> guest: he sort of was. he had really primitive notions

about communism. there's a story about him traveling with justice douglas i think it may have been mongolia, may have been russia he got sick and said i don't want to be treated by a communist dr.. he's like i don't know how young but the right and wrong, the kind of strict black-and-white way that he often looked at the world particularly as a young man made him that. he also had his -- one of his sisters dated mccarthy. joe kennedy gave money to mccarthy, joe sr., and i believe body went to his funeral. part of that is the kind of almost existential role, he's finished, he's dead, so somebody has to go say nice things about him, but that he is right that he had as a very young man a real black and white view of the world and the amazing thing if you read biographies of robert kennedy edward thomas is the

most are the number of people who in first meeting him felt this was some spoiled arrogant mean so and so and few years later decided he would be the person they want to see president. >> host: that never occurred between johnson and kennedy, not in reality and not in your book. >> guest: there's a book about the relationship between the two called mutual contempt and that probably summarizes it perfectly. they dislike each other from the first time they met a dislike each other the first time i don't know, bobby was a counsel to the kennedy, johnson was a majority leader, it was chemical, but for the weavers of pheromones war and people have described it that way. somebody said have you ever seen to dogs walk into a room or maybe it's cats, i'm not much an

animal man -- yes. so that's why in a 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 -- >> guest: the third scenario we've ragin back to reality now it's 1976. it's the second debate. gerald ford having almost lost the primary and the inauguration of we behind jimmy carter but he's catching up because after all carter we don't hear what he really thinks and if he really knows anything about foreign policy and in, it comes up the issue of whether or not the united states is seceding to the soviet union over eastern europe and he goes through a well rehearsed answer about this and then he says there is no soviet domination and there never will be in the ford administration.

and that is "the new york times" spent a lot of time stops the debate and if you see the tape and looks like somebody hit him on the head with a hammer. he can barely get out the questions. mr. president, did you mean to suggest the soviet union doesn't exercise influence in eastern europe? and ford begins to save accurately i don't think the yugoslavian see themselves dominated, i don't think the romanians consider themselves dominated, i don't think the poles consider themselves dominated, and that's when -- [inaudible] so, if ford had simply said as the commander in chief i know the soviet division of eastern europe. why do you think they, are there? because in europe the polls and

the chezs will never yield. he gets just enough votes in 2002 change ohio and wisconsin. >> host: but you are almost making him wish he had been done it. it's the most undistinguished president. >> guest: was certainly the republican party wishes he didn't because second terms never go particularly well by my furious while -- i interviewed for brent scowcroft and said what do you think he was willing to play? he said he had the imam inkstand felt we had to pay a price for our arrogance. he didn't have that power meaning he wouldn't let mashaal fall the way so i construct this is more relevant to you as you know, i constructed a scenario -- >> host: build on and accuracy? >> guest: we will find out. so the ayatollah meets an untimely end in the tunnel of dissent. a more moderate iranian leader

takes powers when the hostages received by the followers of the imam, they are cleaned out in five days. the man who was hosting the show called america held hostage. >> host: you may franklin was hosting -- >> guest: they still cancel the show. [laughter] >> host: they cancel the show but i don't get a show on cnn. [laughter] >> guest: my theory is they canceled the show and so he goes to the show and the higher jerry springer to relate my program. >> host: -- >> guest: the reason i did it is two reasons, i didn't want the life-and-death matters involving the kennedys and also because it is this notion, the underlining notion that the butterfly effect, you change this much and -- see, it's a good title, and everything changes. it is economic calamity at the end which i believe -- >> host: i must tell you was the one part of the book and you leave it mercifully quickly.

the sort of princess diana and the you get to the ayatollah khamenei is killed under mysterious circumstances may be the flash of a flash bulb drives through the streets of paris. a little bit too convenient. with the other things i think he had a wonderful -- >> guest: even william james, every once in awhile i needed to plan, for instance, if i may, the fact that there's no john kennedy means there's no james bond, because i was his interview, the fact bobby kennedy said of the vietnam war means when match comes out people are so sick of the war of there with the iraqi. so in that one every once in awhile i thought i right in the fiction history, now whether or not the combined intelligence

services of the united states and other players would have conspired to this i'm perfectly prepared to say it doesn't meet the same plausibility as the rest of the book. i can live with it. >> host: i'm not even sure what category is fiction. is it being sold as nonfiction? [laughter] how did they justify that? >> guest: speculation of a real people. [laughter] i think you should call my editor because you're not crazy about the title or the category. you ought to have a conversation -- >> host: if it's only a question of where -- whether they put it in the bookstore, that's one thing but to suggest this is and fiction, there's a lot of fact said. sometimes fiction is capable of conveying the greater truth.

where you are clearly of your strongest is the area you've devoted most of your time in politics. >> guest: i didn't revisit pearl harbor or the battle of the bulge. >> host: as a matter of fact, there's one little clip that you have in there that i hope doesn't ease k2 much notice. you actually have cheney at one point, drawing an analogy between someone's incompetence and making the point you wouldn't take someone who knows how to fight your shotgun. on a hunting trip, right? you have some fun. there's 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: that's right. first of all, if you look at american history from 1960 to 1980, the kennedys are -- one kennedy or another is a dominant figure. but the notion i have here, and quite deliberately an analogy, is ted kennedy is the overwhelming favorite in 1980, carter lost in 1976. he's not going to run again because amy told him it was a bad idea. >> host: we do get that? >> guest: that eni told him there was a bad idea? well, in the debate you may remember jimmy carter said i was talking to my daughter amy about what i should say and she said nuclear proliferation. >> host: i do remember -- >> guest: he looked at that and said oh no. don't use that. it sounds dumb. >> host: but you extrapolate from that. >> guest: by the way i have one scene early on johnson is

going to go on television asking how long he should speak and don said 60 minutes is perfect. >> host: well i was going for is if ted kennedy were the dominant figure how could he possibly lose? the answer is let's see what happened in 2008. we had a dominant democratic party figure, former president of against a first term senator, and early on everybody assumed wasn't possible for hillary clinton to lose that campaign, and she was the favorite. the other thing, the only reason ted kennedy really doesn't come off well is where he didn't come off well in 1980, and not just jeff but i use word for word -- >> host: again, this is where you almost have to be 35 to read this book, or 40 evin to read

this book. how long are we talking about? >> guest: one of the guys that used to work for me in television who was about 28 but is one of these, i don't know the right word -- 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 makarov. >> guest: yeah. >> host: you don't need that on every book. in this one it's almost essentials. >> guest: i think, sure, you have to have an affection for and taste for and appreciation for politics, but the reason i don't read architectural digest is a kind of have to have an appreciation for architecture to read architectural digest. so here's my deal, would buy the book, and in good shape.

>> host: you would be in good shape. host could talk for a moment -- i must confess, having spoken at length to war in the once, you must confess, to me, the most surprising revelation in the book is that warren batey seems to be a 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 mimicked, he played a major role in the gary hart campaign. >> guest: in the numerous places i drew this from, you know, from richard kramer warren batey monumental book "what it takes," the '88 campaign which is -- for that you have to really like politics but it's a spectacular book -- and reading a biography of warren batey, he got to me to gary hart when he was running the mcgovern

campaign and didn't want to be a celebrity. he helped raise money for him by organizing concerts and stuff, but he had -- he was an advisor and he had some shops. and in real life and 84, gary hart was listening to warren batey, and as we all know, the eda campaign never happened because of donald rice. so yeah, nothing -- i may be wrong about some of this stuff.< but nothing in this book that i$ am asserting is without some foundation, and mcgovern in fact said warren batey was a very helpful at pfizer, not just a star who got his route. >> host: in terms of what? messaging? give a sense of where that really happened. >> guest: in detail, i just

know that warren batey was in the room when they were talking about things like the nature of mcgovern warren batey feature. i can't be more specific. >> host: in terms of how i related to the gary hart campaign, the initial -- >> guest: the 84 campaign? in the '84 campaign, gary hart was an asterisk. and my memory here is that warren beatty was trying to hone the new message that the only way that you could win because mondale back then was the old favorite, and gary hart had a good either for what would resonate. >> host: do clearly decided for reasons i'm going to ask about now. gary hart deserved another chance, if not in reality, then

certainly in your fact fiction. >> guest: without giving this way, you have read to the end of the book? >> host: i have. >> guest: here's what struck me, i interviewed a lot of gary hart warren beatty aides and people who covered him. he was an extraordinarily complicated figure. his mind was as simple as anybody in politics. and in real life apart from the obvious donald rice thing not destroyed him but it really hurt him is he couldn't get into the music of politics. he wanted people to vote for him only for his ideas. so he realized when he ran and began to run in 87 as the favorite, his advisers kept saying look, spent ten minutes with this person in iowa and the organized seven counties. he said i will do it. i want this person to make this what i think. i hate the stuff about politics.

pos for this picture with this guy and he will bring $50,000 for you. i won't do it. so what i had to do in the book is to soften him. and the way that i did that is to bring the guy that was his best friend in the senate from arkansas, who was nothing but -- he was brilliant, but he loved the music of politics. he was a great storyteller. >> host: i love the story that i know is a real story because i've heard him tell it about -- >> guest: about the giveaway? >> host: about a lawyer. >> guest: the title is who is the best lawyer in town, dale bumpers to read this part is all imagined. he says you're not running for prime minister, you're running for president. and the president has to be more than a collection of policy choices. he has to be somebody who in some sense embodies an american character the people will like. i will tell you where i got that from was an experience with gary hart and 84.

eight journalists sitting and i think a chinese restaurant -- i know why i remember that because i didn't know where my car keys were. laughter coastal 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 and hart looks at him and during contempt he says you mean what's my bumper sticker? the other story that i will tell you when i was covering hart for this show that was -- >> host: we tend to forget. >> guest: it's an audio and he's going before a college and he is just starting to get noticed and these kids are really for him. he comes up on stage with a speech in a folder. i will never forget this. he slaps the folder down on the podium and says as we approach the end of the 20th century -- hello? how about your football team,

nice to be here -- it was the coldest beginning of a political speech that i've ever -- mabey stalin used to do it that way. >> host: stalin could afford to. >> guest: mabey. stalin would have said is anybody here from russia? [laughter] so that's 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 the device that i was reasonably comfortable with to find out how he could be more of, as they say in colorado, eighth minch. >> host: let's spend the minutes we have left talking about what's happened to american politics because in this sense, as you read this book, and a kind of takes you from 1960 sort of through the 1980's or at least into the 1980's, you get this sense that this was a very different

country, the major, major changes have happened. i mean, you speak for example at one point about the role the three networks played back in the day when there were only three networks, when there was no cable and there was no internet and there were no, you know, there were no blogs. and it made it different in which to live and operate and govern. >> guest: absolutely. >> host: to elaborate on that a little bit. >> guest: it's not my perception, and i'm not sure who is it is, but somebody was thinking back to watergate, a very intense political time, and when the evening news went off in those days it was at 7:00 in the east, ended at 7:30, the next thing you learn as the morning paper. no prime time thing, no hard ball, no one ever, sean hannity. so there was the first thing. there was a much more measured pace of information, which also

meant the players had some time to react. they were not looking over their shoulder or they were not every six minutes -- wheat, look would just came up. that alone is a huge, huge difference. second, because the networks were in a position they were the only game in town, at 7:00 if you didn't want to watch a network newscast if you had -- you read a book which meant in a sense the sort of shares of the network organizations were so high back then there's nothing else. if you did news you could kind of say i don't have to force these people to stay with me every ten seconds. i can have more leisurely time because i have sound bites. is a famous study from a student about a bank of sound bites -- >> host: our friend marvin

kalb -- >> guest: he was to graduate student who did it. 48 seconds to -- if you look in newscast of the 1960's or 70's campaign -- >> host: i was the abc correspondent covering this and routinely i would have three, for coming and sometimes even five minute pieces. these days if you get one minute and 45 seconds is absolutely top. >> guest: and use boiled me at nightline because we would say -- >> host: how much time do you need? >> guest: six minutes, maybe seven minutes. and in the evening news and say one minute 45, could i have two more seconds? so i used to joke that if i had been covering fdr's inaugural on the network news the only thing we have to fear is. we haven't even gotten into the notion of what is now passed for

coverage, which is essentially people in a room talking to each other. and look, i never like the pastoral, it's better in the old days, and i think some of what we have now we didn't have them, the capacity of the citizen to sit at a computer command of the citizen cares to find far more real information than they could use to be able to in front of tv, that's not bad. >> host: i just learned last night -- i mean, we had just seen the elimination of two of the npr, executives. the most recent because the director of the fund raiser went out to lunch with a bunch of people who claim to represent the muslim organization and npr and the question i raised was with some people who knew was why didn't they do due

diligence? welcome he did apparently. they had set up a phony google site, which actually had two or three levels to meet. so we live in a far more incendiary times i guess than we did back then. go ahead. >> guest: goodbye issued a mild dissent? >> host: of course. >> guest: that the 1940's and 50's before any of these nefarious devices somehow seven politicians were able to run to office buy basically saying if these colored people want to vote we know how to stop them. that's a quote from the united states senate. the best way to stop the culbert man from voting is the night before. and before all of this incendiary politics, we did have a guy named joseph mccarthy to poison the political atmosphere. >> host: no question about it. >> guest: all i mean by that is i think we have to be careful

in assuming were concluding, because you don't assume of evidence, that this new stuff produces problems and also may be some potential solutions. i think it's often been said as a cliche if this were gutenberg we would be about 1460 or 1510. we don't know whether we are going to be what figure out if we use this stuff to increase political literacy. i might have questions about this, as you do, but i'm just -- i guess part of me is aware that every new meeting device is seen as either a salvation or the death of democracy. and i'm talking about from movies to radio to television. so, i grant you i liked it better when the correspondent such as yourself could do a five minute piece. but maybe the person who used to

read or watch the fight minute piece on one of the better web sites reading in debt coverage. >> host: look, i'm not quite as much as you think i am, but i tend to have more faith in the message and i do in the media. and i like to point out the college crowds the most enduring message of all time was delivered on what was arguably the worst medium of all time, a couple of stone tablets. not particularly portable, not easily moved around, and yet ten commandments -- >> guest: and you know the story will back before cable walter cronkite and the or somebody used to see the limits of the evening news -- >> host: put on the front page -- >> guest: know, if moses came down from the mountain today with ten commandments the two most important of which are. so there's always been this kind of -- and it's always healthy i think to worry about how we deliver the messages. >> host: we arwn