exception of mitt romney who was not in office right now is on the payroll of "fox news". i think media matters added up what it would have caused them to buy that time on the air and it was something like $68 million of free airtime but it is not really free airtime for them because they are working in the service of a cause of "fox news." .. makes everything in

measurable. as we spend a lot of time arguing whether or not barack obama was proposing that panels for old people and 24% -- 24% of republicans believe and in even higher percentage believe he might not be but he's working for the united states islamic republic. >> i'd love to know what that's like, 7% of people who think that he's a modern muslim. >> we have a smaller percentage of people who believe that global warming is man-made. a phenomenon even though during this period the evidence for that increased because fox is so financially successful. i think fox news alone made

$500 million whereas msnbc makes a little bit of profit and cnn loses money on its operations in the united states. and so, cnn, and to some degree of the larger networks hates fox news and so you get cnn was sponsoring the debate with the tea party. you have the broadcasting look at this woman, michele bachman. she gave a speech to weeks ago where she applauded the u.s. constitution for ending slavery i'm not making this up. i'm not making this up. remember the glenn beck rally on the mall the hired helicopters to get the crowd estimate, the estimate was 87,000 people.

the was the honest estimate to figure so somewhere between 80 to 100. michele bachman gets up on the stage and she says don't let anybody tell you that there's under a million people here. the tea party sentence don't let anybody tell you -- it's like clenching your years and screaming while somebody tries to say reality is over here and that is who 50 party picks to represent them and respond to the president of the united states and that's who cnn shows the broadcast without interference, without any sense of obligation to correct the lives and the liver the misstatements that she made and that are made all the time so when you think about it from the perspective of the president of the united states, who has a very complicated agenda it's hard to pass health care in this country because you have to write a bill that is hundreds and hundreds of pages and it's easy to manipulate and

miss portray and it's really hard to pass a bill that deals with the problems of global warming because there are so many economic trade-offs and so many uncertainties. and again, financial regulation is incredible. we all agree it has to be done but how you deal with it is difficult because the financial system is so complicated. and if you've got to do it through this prism of deliberate obfuscation and extortion and manipulation, when the slightest little thing can be blown up by the operation, operating in concert the irresponsible movement and the political party that is dedicated only to undermining the president it becomes damn near impossible to pull this thing off and it's not just fox news or cnn.com it is a

classic standard throughout the entire media that comes from both the declaration on the ground be arriving from the financial underpinning but also the success of fox news. i will stop because of, and plenty of time here the specifics of 2009, nothing got new gingrich for a second. he was the leader of the failed republican party. he was having a heart attack about clinton getting a blow job and yet he was having an affair the same time. it was neither fair. his wife had to go on welfare and get money from her church because he was a deadbeat dad and then he went crazy after that. so, he said things like he

endorsed the notion that barack obama is leading the country on the basis of i don't know, who is it, some leaders say and colonialist ideology. it's the craziest nonsense imaginable that anybody who says these things they should be handing out nine pieces of paper on the streets from the messages they get. they should be on television. well, new gingrich was the single most frequently booked guest on meet the press in 2009. he had no official position of any kind. now, he used to be the speaker of the house, okay? the speaker of the house, nancy pelosi, was not on meet the press in 2009. and if you add up all of the ex

speakers of the house, besides newt gingrich invited on meet the press it doesn't increase the number of appearances at all. the only speaker of the house ever to be invited on meet the press is new gingrich, the single most invited guest on meet the press in 2009 and he's crazy. he says things about our president that are -- that note leader should believe and yet it is in this atmosphere that what this president has to pass the complicated and difficult and in many respects very demanding legislation so all four of these problems are very serious and they can't be solved by the president himself even if he had a better communications job. even if he had done a few things

more smartly than he did. they require your and engaged citizenry and the required when the political movement that's better organized and smarter and more disciplined than the one we had. we deserve kind of a break after we elected barack obama and start electing that man president particularly after the horror that we've lived under bush and cheney but it turns out not to have been enough, it turns out to have been the beginning and not the end, and i take some comfort. it's a little bit hokey and overoptimistic i take some comfort in the fact that roosevelt was elected as a very conservative democrat in 1932 and then became probably the most progressive president perhaps ever by 1936 and was in part a response to the economic circumstances and response to

the social movement that we are pushing roosevelt and a learning process. so i'd like to think that it's possible for the second obama administration to take on the direction of the second roosevelt at ministration but things aren't moving that way right now and they aren't going to unless everybody buys and read my book. [laughter] thank you very much. [applause] >> if you have a question you can step up to this microphone and i would like to remind friday that his book the kabuki democracy is available at the bookstore the other end, purchase it there. bring it back to this room for the signing after the q&a period. we have about 15 minutes for q&a so i would ask you keep your comments and questions brief and to we go.

>> thank you for a great talk. but roosevelt, as you know, was aided by the dominant media, most of them any way and two-thirds of the nation's newspapers landed in 1936 and the father and the popular demagogue who was against him at that point and yet he still triumphed. i wonder in some ways the media is in the problem maybe this is at least an economic issues, issues of, quote, big government, the conservative country and perhaps you're putting too much emphasis on the media. >> i appreciate your question but you came late. [laughter] you came late to class and there was most discussion of the related points before i got to the media. but i will grant the point that the progressives have an additional problem i discuss in the book that didn't get a

chance to mention which is that the american ideology is anti-government. it is -- there is a libertarian streak that runs through both of the left and the right and that some of the most inspiring statements for the libertarians are for people like thomas paine and emmerson and so forth, the government that governs that i believe d'aspin. it's correct in the book. and so the president needs to find an alternate mythology as the successful progress of president has done, and it leaves me again to my most significant criticism of this president which is he had forgone the bully pulpit this

week for those of you that what c-span or hbo have had the chance to see john kennedy inaugural address as well as a member of the press conferences i wrote a book about kennedy. there were a lot of significant problems but one of the wonderful things about john kennedy was the rhetoric he brought to the country. the inspiration he brought to people to move them through to put their lives in the dark in the direction of the art of justice. barack obama did a wonderful job of that during the campaign and then just stomped on day one of the presidency and got involved in the legislative debates over which rule was the and to be included and which drafted which bill and that is a terrible mistake. ronald reagan did both and there is no reason obama couldn't have done both as well and beginning in tucson, in tucson he started

batman returns, the one that brought tears to our eyes, and i think would be a terrible mistake for him to return to the style. >> can you talk about your thinking of the title of the book, and the second one, are you saying they shouldn't have shown michele bachman at all on cnn or they should have had analysis or framed it in some way because i think i might be curious and i have one more. >> i don't have any problem with them reporting on michele bachman's crazy speech and say look what she said come here is the truth. that is with the irresponsible media would do or questioned her and say the constitution thing anyone ever mentioned the memorial but just to show it as if they were the equivalent of

an act of state deserving of respect without context or criticism that would teach the response. the book is called kabuki democracy because -- and i might be wrong about this. a couple of people have told me i'm being unfair with this title. but to me, it implies that the theatrical and that of the democracy, so look back from afar and people are going through the motion of having the democracy and the actual democracy has been hollowed out by the things i described in this book, primarily money, but the other factor as well. >> for my most important comment i'm interested in psychological manipulation and public mystification and the mystification and language and one of the things i will say is i went to the cleantech rally and listened to newt gingrich

and if probably hired consultants in framing the way -- and the anticolonial and he hasn't said he's anti, he says what is he, like ask a question. i mean, very sophisticated in the progressives are not so good of that and the one efrain i want to throughout that i think there is a problem with using the term global warming and you can bet after the snowstorm that tomorrow they're going to see al gore was wrong because it snowed and a better term and more accurate would be climate khios because the chaotic patterns we should use the term climate chaos. >> thank you. for talk reminds me of some of the books triumph of conservatism is one book which

takes a look at the kind of iraq herbert crowley and lewis can out of struggling to create regulatory. i think that kirkland's book was a somewhat revisionist thinking of regulation as a reestablishment of the status quo. do you think that's why we have so much problem with so much antiintellectualism it's so easy to take advantage of the symbol media -- sample media with the complexity we have here? i'm going to go back and read kirkland's book again i think after listening -- and the committee for the industrial relations. some of the interlocking directorships that is in the, enter's bouck of the documents of american history. >> that's a good point but i said one reason i wrote this book and i have to say that i'm

kind of proud to only have a couple hundred pages is that it's not any one thing. we have a whole set of problems that create a system that is sporadic and any number of ways. the antiintellectualism of our discourse is a significant problem particularly when it is easily manipulated by sarah palin on twitter or mashaal bachmann or just the dumbness of cable news but it's not a problem and if we solve the problem list of the problem of money in the system and we still have the problem of the democratic sponsored senate so we need to take a more holistic view of our systemic problems some time ago here in virginia the individual mandate of the health care bill was ruled unconstitutional in part and then in florida the rule the entire thing unconstitutional and now we that the debate has been framed and going to guess

the supreme court the legal system will probably -- the week of the issue is framed will determine what is decided and i was wondering if he could speak about what to think of the legal institutions in this country have to deal with the way that laws are passed and enforced. >> i'm going to answer in such a way that i love what i'm talking about rather than answer your question where i wouldn't know when i was talking about but it's also you giving me the opportunity to see something important i didn't get to say. i have to see what's at the root, the most important single problem we have is the power of money in our political system. and that is a legal problem because the supreme court insists on defining money of speech and corporations as people and they don't really have injury good basis particularly with regard to corporations as people. it's very murky as to why that should be the case.

there is i think and i site somewhere 100 years ago where it was mentioned, and then build on. there was never any absolute decision by any court that ruled on that. and as long as the corporations have money and speech we can't really regulate our politics. they can get away with just about anything and that is a long-term battle we have to fight. in the meantime, we need to do something to try to equalize the power versus the power of money and i would strongly urge every progressive person and every progressive group to take a look at the power of money in their particular issue and i do think it's possible to make the case that we could say taxpayers are fortunate in this country if we publicly finance our election

and we wouldn't have to pay for all these giveaways for the people paying for the election. every other democracy does it. there's no other democracy that allows money to exercise the kind of power that it does in our country and we pay a fortune for it but because it is one step removed and it doesn't get covered much by the media it is ignored. the power of the issue of money and politics that they don't cover its power. it's not covered when the decisions are being made. they are treated like it is a battle between nancy pelosi and john boehner and the insurance industry but the pharmaceutical the industry are not in the room at time and those are the ones writing the legislation so fundamentally if there's one thing that can be taken away from what i'm saying is you can't talk about any issue of progressive politics without understanding the media context

but could become a c and d understanding the role of money and what needs to be addressed. >> my question has a lot to do with what you mentioned. understanding the power of money and politics goes a long way into understanding the difference or the discrepancy between obama, the campaigner who was outstanding and the president who is a bit disappointing. and i guess my question about that would be do you have any idea why they didn't use campaign finance reform as some kind of an agenda that he would try to implement in the first term? bye understanding of what happened in 2008 is that somehow thinks to his skills as an outstanding campaigner he was able to circumvent the issue of power for the money and politics because he was able to reach out to people who would chip in ten, 20, 50 bucks. >> understandably that part is mistaken.

that is what they portray themselves as doing when in fact they were relying on the big donors and the lion's share of the money came from big donors and the new edited out raise mccain two or three to one and they were unwilling to give away that advantage and the president cannot raise a challenger in a case like that so from the standpoint of obama's personal interest, he has no interest in supporting a campaign finance reform for presidential elections because he's going to out raise with the republicans put up in the presidential race but the rest of the system continues to be a wash of money because in fact we have had campaign finance reform with the president in the past and we did have a reasonable system in place which hasn't fallen apart because obama wanted out but it was getting weaker and weaker and less and less up-to-date. sallai dewitt obama would say to

the broad issue of why he didn't make good on his promise to clean up the system and drive the lobbyists from the temple is the fact that when he got they're the system was in crisis and we were losing 80,000 jobs a month and the guy was down 5,000 points and the confidence was clashing and as we didn't have the luxury of remaking the system would be like rearranging the shares of the titanic he needs to make the system work and get it going again before he could address it, but once he did that the opportunity to reform it was lost because everyone became ensconced in their place. usually the other thing i hate about the obama administration is the way they make fun of liberals for saying we are disappointed in you. he should be saying okay i did

my best i'm going to keep fighting. instead he said you whiny little twerps why don't you shut up and appreciate all was done for you, you make me sick. that is just plain stupid even if you think it's true. but in the case of the system he's got a pretty good argument he hasn't owned up and so can now i'm going to go back and fight for the things i believe in. he won't admit. it's possible for the people in power to admit there can be better ways to do things than the way they chose to do them and so i'm afraid in that respect that opportunity has been lost in part for good reasons but in part for the fact that we just can't do everything at once. do we have time for one more? >> i want to follow on what you just said, you had a personal

interaction with obama and were very impressed with his ideas and how they fit into the progressive agenda, and then those of us that believes in the progress of agenda's been the last two years been disappointed and then we also want to present these ideas he was again very much fighting in the coming up against the whole system that we know is in place that's going to very much discouraged this agenda and the way the we want to present it and the way that many people in this country feel and believe and needs to be acknowledged. and my hope is that he understands all of the things you understand and the progressives understand in terms of how the system works and how the system is going to be dealt with and somehow he has a plan in terms of dealing with the obstruction he's going to come up with in terms of delivering

what it is from his campaign when he was going to be about to deliver and whether or not there should be some hope i guess is what i'm looking for that ultimately if he gets another term he will be able to deliver on those. >> good question. well said. you can rest assured he understands the things i anderson and and more. i feel confident about that. there is a quote in my book i borrowed from david remnant's book from one of obama's mentors in chicago who taught obama when you can't get the whole hog you have to be happy with a ham sandwich and he's very much a ham sandwich man to the and these are the rather systems

today. will there be a tastier sandwich with better portions of the pig in the future? i had this theory i thought it was a great theory and i wrote it three or four times obama ran this great campaign seeing he was going to unite us and we have to work together and lower the tone of things and he was going to work with the politics and people wanted that and that was great and it was a good way for a black man to become president of the united states particularly with the middle name hussain and a last name that rhymes with osama, it was very comforting. and then he would try to do it but of course it would be impossible because republicans had no interest in cooperating. so then he could have said hey i tried to be nice, i tried to be a good guy, they won't play along. now i have to wash the floor with their face. we never got to that point. he's still saying he's calling to try harder and harder to be

nice to them and the media are demanding that he speaks out further and further, give them his untie your shoulder not just the double down cut off. and he seems to not be picking up the second part of the strategy that i had planned for him that i thought was such a good idea. so i was genuinely confused. i thought what i thought he was doing made a lot of sense, and i told bicol it's all part of the plan. maybe it is an eight year plan and not a four year plan. supposed to end these things on hopeful notes so that's my hopeful note maybe it is an eight year plan but it's going to require a lot of work on both kind of people that push like president roosevelt as well and that there were job. o.k. i guess it's not the end. we have one more question. >> has to be hopeful question or we are not taking it. >> i have a suggestion to help you really relief your

confusion. as a black person who has noticed a long time now, i was an >> -- i wasn't disappointed or in any way confused who obama was because i didn't vote for him, i voted for the real black candidate in the election, and it's kind of disappointing that from a lot of black people's perspectives that they didn't expect a whole lot from obama because of who he put in office and the bus he rode on, that kind of thing, and reverend wright and everybody under the bus, so it was kind of clear for anybody there was black and understood american policy the way he was going and what he was about command to that end, i would suggest you read or kind of book marked black agenda

report and black commentator into your bookmark because everything you said was like talked about way back when and it is no surprise who obama is and how he acts, because either he's smart or he isn't smart. either he's a constitutional law professor and understands the constitution or he isn't. so either torture is torture, indefinite detention is an indefinite detention, either of these things are what they are or they are not what they are. >> okay. i would just point out that there were two groups in the 2010 election where barack obama did roughly as well in 2008, democrats did roughly as well in 2010 as they did in 2008 where obama received over 90% of the vote and where he received over 70% of the vote. so you may say that louis farrakhan and reverend wright

are not but i would disagree. i think barack obama is a plaque that blacks can be proud of and that the fact that he doesn't happen to agree with you and mckinney and reverend wright and louis farrakhan is the reason that he is seen by all kind of americans, white, black, brown, yellow, red, has a leader and wouldn't be seen as such if he held those views. so we have to fundamentally disagree that is the problem. thank you, everybody for staying, and thanks for coming. [applause]

attorney general eric holder told justice department employees today he is coming to continue prosecuting terrorist suspects. his remarks are about 25 minutes. [applause] >> good morning, everyone. welcome. thank you for being here today. i am of the justice management division, and it is a pleasure to welcome so many friends and colleagues from across the department here this morning, and to welcome the attorney general. almost 35 years ago the attorney general began his career here at the department in the public integrity section. the job that led him to leave

your take on other roles in justice including appointments as the united states attorney's here in washington and as the deputy attorney general. i was very pleased to welcome him back to the department to years ago. eric holder's career at the justice has given him an inside view of the department and its capabilities shared by few other attorneys general. we are working today in an environment that has great challenges and that has great uncertainty. but what i have been privileged to see first hand is that there is no uncertainty and this attorney general's vision for what the department of justice and its employees can accomplish for the nation and for its citizens. ladies and gentlemen, please help me welcome the 82nd attorney general of the united states, eric holder. [applause]

>> thank you. everybody got and you will leave for this i suppose? [laughter] you didn't have to take annual leave, that's what i meant to say. good morning. thank you all for being here and for turning in from the department of justice office across the country. it's a pleasure to join all of you and to join lee in welcoming so many colleagues and critically important partners to today. i also like to thank lee and our sec attorneys general and all of our component heads for their outstanding leadership of the department and for their invaluable guidance that over the last two years they have provided to me. and although he can't be here

with us today i also want to thank our deputy attorney general or his dedicated partnership and his friendship, not only over the last few months, but over the last few decades since the two of us fresh out of law school began our career in this great department. as he indicated, nearly 55 years ago i arrived here to this building to begin the ninth dream job as a line attorney in the criminal division's public integrity section. the day before starting work and moved down to new york city assuring my friends and family that i would only be in washington for a couple of years. that was 1976. now, what i did not know then but i soon discovered is that i had been given a once in a lifetime opportunity. the chance to be part of the highly skilled and mcfate team -- an extraordinary group of men and women who in common cause and through individual action were reaffirming our nation's founding principles of liberty,

equality and security, helping to shape america's future, and taking innovative and collaborative steps to protect our fellow citizens. now, contributing to this work, our work, quickly became and continues to be the most thrilling and rewarding experience of my professional life. in the years i've been privileged to serve this department, and i've worked alongside and learned from some of the walz most talented and dedicated lawyers, officials and public servants. every day you and your colleague, a team that is more than 115,000 members from carrying out important jobs would be the simple but the central goal of protecting and improving the lives and pursuing justice in every case, every circumstance and every community. you demonstrate how long can be a power woeful force for good, a protector of those that we serve and a driver of change and

progress, tolerance and inclusion, peace and of prosperity. and we've proven that in the work of ensuring justice for all, opportunity for all and security for all, one person can make a difference. now, like you, i love this department, and like you, i am proud not only to serve it but also to champion its work. just over two years ago to together we launched a new chapter in the department extraordinary history and i was honored that on that february day so many of you welcomed me home. that day as i stood before you and swore the oath of office the last job i would ever hold here in this great apartment on a leadoff three priority is the will of god our work. first and most importantly, i promised that the department's top priority and our chief responsibility would be protecting the security rights and interests of the american

people. i also pledged to reinvigorate the department's traditional missions and to breathe new light in two important areas that had been overlooked in the recent years. finally i promised to heal the department by rebuilding morale and restoring credibility. as a young lawyer i of seen my first boss and one of my personal heroes, attorney general edward levy do just that in the week of the watergate scandal at a time of deep national division and widespread cynicism and mistrust of government he provided the leadership and the vision necessary to bring the department together to raise standards and remind the american people why this institution and its work to protect the nation is essential and how it positively affects every city, every community, every neighborhood and home, every life in this country. two years later i am proud to say that we've kept our word because of you coming your hard

work, your commitment, your willingness to sacrifice and eagerness to improve the lives of others we have made a meaningful measurable progress in fulfilling the pledges that we've made to the american people. of course it hasn't always been easy. the department of justice employees face the most challenging circumstances and complex issues in government and your work has never been more difficult. together we've witnessed the nation's most severe in their mental catastrophes and respond to the historic financial crisis that left the economy severely crippled. we faced increasingly sophisticated criminal enterprises and work to keep pace with the cutting edge technologies that have brought new opportunities for criminals to commit theft and fraud. we have responded to the growing demands and leverage the limited resources and you have risen to the occasion when asked to accomplish more with less. and while confronting and

overcoming a broad range of challenges, we have sustained an ongoing battle against a determined and a constantly evolving enemy. together we mourn the loss of innocent lives. we struggled to understand and prevent unspeakable acts of violence and paid tribute and last respects to the law enforcement heroes when in the line of duty and in the service of the country have made the ultimate sacrifice. but despite these and other challenges we've taken critical steps forward in meeting the goals and fulfilling the responsibilities that i laid out two years ago. we have thwarted a serious and potentially devastating terrorist plots. we have adopted our operations to identify and disrupt national security threats and we've prosecuted more terrorists than any other to your period in this nation's history.

in addition to advancing our national security efforts, we have reformed and have strengthened the way this department works. we find innovative ways to foster transparency, accountability and professionalism across every component. we have established the authority of the career officials to make hiring decisions. we launched land or art initiatives to foster diversity across the department ranks and to insure all americans, no matter where they live or how much money they make can access our justice system. we've developed trading programs and tools to ensure the highest standards of conduct among prosecutors and we've signaled that once again the civil rights division is open for business and it is true through its founding principles. across the department in the united states attorney's office is we have raised both standards and spirits and restore public

faith in our critical work. we've also shown if mistakes are made along the way we will admit them and act immediately to correct them and move forward with the central goal of protecting and achieving justice for the american people. we've also made a strategic investments to revitalize the department's traditional missions. investments that are already paying dividends. we have reinvigorated our working collaboration with state and local law enforcement and making our communities safer and provided targeted evidence based assistance to communities under the recovery act and through our critical grant programs. over the past two years we found a record number of civil rights criminal cases and secured an all-time high for taxpayers and victims. we have led government-wide efforts to respond to the largest oil spill in the

nation's history and certain of the tax payers didn't fit the bill for the cleanup and just last week we secure the conviction against the former chairman of a private mortgage lending company for his role in the $3 billion fraud scheme and for the prosecution of this generation. in addition we strengthen the rule of law across the country and beyond our borders and established the international partnership necessary to combat global threats and 21st century crimes and we have helped advance important changes in policy legislation and the crack powder cocaine sentencing disparity the passage of landmark pete crimes legislation and the implementation of reforms to ensure the evidence is used to convict the guilty and exonerate the innocence. door work matters and your success is no hollow

achievement. you're constant vigilance and ongoing commitment to the collaboration, the sleepy sacrificed and time of your family that you cut short, the hours in the courthouses and the backrooms of investigation sites and in the front lines of community safety efforts that work has made a difference. has allowed our fellow americans to know peace and security while maintaining faith in the nation's system of justice. you deserve and you have earned my deepest gratitude. you are patriots in every sense of the word. the last two years he made the nation not only safer but stronger. i am proud and each of you should be proud of what we have accomplished. without question the results we have achieved have been historic, but i'm not yet satisfied and i don't want you to be either.

as we consider where we must go from here, i am reminded again of the attorney general assuring that years ago as he said and i quote, the agenda of the department is inevitably and finished and is also always dauntless and of quote. the balanced the opportunities now as we look towards the future we would take action in four key areas to fulfill one core mission and that mission is protecting the american people. these priorities will allow us to build on the record of success that we have established and guide our future efforts. first, and foremost, we will protect americans from terrorism and other threats to national security both at home and abroad using every available resource inappropriate tool we will continue to disrupt terrorist plots, potential attacks and

vigorously prosecute those who seek to harm the nation and our people. we will aggressively pursue emerging threats around the world and at home and enhance our ability to gather and analyze actionable intelligence. we will engage in outreach efforts to all communities in order to prevent terrorism before it occurs. we will be vigilant not only against our international terrorist organizations but also domestic extremist group, militia and other homegrown threats. let me be very clear about this. we will continue to rely on our most powerful and most proven tools and bringing the terrorists to justice, our federal court system. these national security efforts are among the most important work that we do as we have learned in the most painful of ways our nation is at war with an enemy whose seeks to strike the american interest than to

harm our people both here and abroad. what we can defeat the enemy and we will do so without compromising the value that has made the nation great. indeed it is only by upholding our most cherished and sacred principles that we would ultimately be successful in this fight. second, we will protect americans from the violent crimes that have ravaged to many communities that have devastated to many families and stolen to many promising futures, one of the kiwis we will strengthen our violent crime prevention is by increasing the support for the law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line each day to keep our communities safe. although we can be entered into violent crime rates are down nationwide, it is clear more work remains to be done. in recent months we have seen an alarming spiking officer fatalities and the number of

line of duty law enforcement deaths. this is appalling. this is unacceptable. and it is why we will continue making investments to provide life-saving equipment, training and information sharing capabilities to the courageous men and women in the fields. we will also invest in scientific research to make certain that this department is both tough and smart on crime and that our decisions are economically sound. this means working closely with state, local and tribal partners. it also means broadening our support for effective crime-prevention, intervention and enforcement and reentry strategies. by better understand the cycle of the violence and by finding targeted solutions it every state of it we can stop and disrupt violent patterns. this work couldn't be more urgent. today, one in every 100 american adults is incarcerated and

two-thirds of those that transition out of the jail and prison eventually are rearrested this is simply not acceptable. helping our young people avoid violence and crime and providing support to those who have served their time and struggling to rejoin and contribute to their communities is not just a proven public safety approach. it is an economic imperative, but it is also our moral obligation effectively combating the crime demands that with the help and leadership of our u.s. attorney's offices as well as the fbi, the dea and the marshal service, we continue to crack down on the gang, gun and drug fueled violence that menaces the streets and threatens our communities. through intelligence driven threat based prosecutions, we will focus on dismantling criminal organizations and putting them out of business for

good. and in so doing we will fight to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and out of the hands of those who are not lawful we allowed to possess them. third, we will protect americans from the financial fraud the devastates consumers, steichen's tax payers' dollars, weakens the markets and impedes our ongoing economic recovery. as we have seen the impact of the financial crime doesn't confine to wall street. many times the victims of fraud have worked hard and play the list of push investment rules only to see the retirement and life savings vanish at the hands of the white collar criminals. over the last two years through the reinforced interagency partnerships rejoined initiatives and the financial fraud investment tax lawyers and the health care fraud prevention enforcement action team we have transformed the way we deal with fraud crimes. not only have we secured the

record recovery totaling billions of dollars, we have raised awareness about the crimes and approved the of poletti of consumers and victims' to report suspected fraud schemes. in the coming months we must take all of these efforts to the next level. we will vigorously investigate financial crime and ensure those who commit them are made to pay the price by serving long sentences and by making a restitutions to the taxpayers as well as victims. to identify the most effective way to prevent and combat financial fraud, a senior department leaders will continue to meet with victims, medical providers, business leaders and key government and law enforcement partners around the country who will also work to bring the tax forces to the new problem areas and to expand other successful programs that would allow us to maximize both our efficiency and impact. fourth and finally, we will

protect those most in the need for our help. our children, the elderly, victims of hate crimes, human trafficking and exploitation and of those who cannot speak out or stand up for themselves. we will ensure our children have a healthy environment and safe places to live to learn and to play. we will protect seniors from abuse and young people from experiencing and witnessing violence and enforce our civil rights law to guarantee that in our workplaces and military bases, and our housing and lending markets and voting booths and border areas and board rooms and schools and places of worship all americans are protected. in the critical days ahead, these four essential priorities, protecting americans from the national security threats, protecting americans from violent crimes, protecting

americans from financial fraud and protecting the most vulnerable members of our society would guide our work and shape the legacy. as we advance each of them we will continue to act as responsible stewards of -- precious taxpayers' dollars and look for the new ways to align operations, maximize resources and implied the work by building and strengthening partnerships. nearly half a century ago and actually on this very day, april 25th 1963 attorney general robert kennedy discussed the justice department's most critical fundamental responsibility to build, quote, and a better and safer world. a world in which people will be free to realize their own talent and fulfill their own destiny. this is what each of us must do as the attorney general kennedy said when our time comes.

this is our time. this is our moment, this is our chance to strengthen the great traditions of this department, to build on its most notable achievements, to honor the contributions of those who have served before us and to create a world that reflects our aspirations for the future generations and examining the long history of the part that it is clear that if we commit ourselves to the change is possible. one of the most advanced in the possible and even the largest and most persistent obstacles can be overcome. what endures and what matters most is the work before us. the work we do for the people we serve, the work that is the great privilege, urgent and colleague, our once in a

lifetime opportunity. so let us recommit ourselves to this work. let us make the most of the opportunities now before us and let us distinguish this era of the department's history as another great feige of accomplishment and progress. think you all for your contributions to what we have and what we will accomplish. i am grateful to each of you and i am proud to each and every one of you and like our fellow americans i am counting on each and every one of you as well. let us leave the great hall today committed every day to making the nation a place that is both more secure and just. our judges are significant and our tasks are numerous, but our capacity to do great things is evident. we can do these things. we can do these things if we make this moment and this future

our own. so let us begin. thank you. [applause] [applause] [inaudible conversations]

..

>> now, south dakota senator, john thunu with relations in

israel. he spoke in las vegas for an hour and 15 minutes. >> thank you, dan, thank you for your gracious hospitality and for the opportunity to speak here today. dan, i appreciate that opportunity. dan has become a great leer in the south dakota legislature, and he's also begun the formation of a republican jewish coalition organization in south dakota which is great because i want to grow that group, you know? i said for some time when i have questions about what's happening, things i need to know about, our relationship with israel, i get in contact with my jewish community in south dakota. [laughter] what we lack in quantity, we make up for in quality, but he is quickly growing that organization, and, in fact, they've had a couple times now, a pheasant hunt fundraiser in

disaks. south dakota. i attended the first one which was a year ago. matt came out for the fundraiser, and i tried to get matt to come out to south dakota and hunt fez cants for some time. it's something many across the country take part in. sam fox is a regular in the state during the year, and i invited matt to come out, and what was interesting about this, i was worried about matt shooting somebody because he didn't have a lot of experience hunting, but as it turned out, matt ended up getting shot. [laughter] now, i don't -- as sam fox will tell you when you hunt pheasants, you want to keep your guns up and have blue sky underneath. matt happened to be up on a reg blocking a corn field as the guys with the guns were coming at him, and a little bird got up and somebody fired and shot

matt. now, obviously, not fatally because he's still here. [laughter] but it did draw blood, and so for the rest of my life i now have to deal with what happened to matt when he came to south dakota. [laughter] so my apologies, i want you to also know that's not how we treat you normally when you come to south dakota. [laughter] let me, if i might, also introduce my wife kimberly who are here and my two daughters britney and larissa. [applause] the guys in the room will appreciate this. the man who isn't afraid of his wife will lie about other things, it's important we get those introductions taken care of. [laughter] i do want to congratulate and complement the jewish coalition for the great job you do in advocating on behalf of smaller government, on behalf of

freedom, and in being in the arena, being in the fight, the issues that are so important in our country today. i'm grateful for your work because now more than ever we need people promoting policies to ensure prosperity and security for future generations of americans. you know, my roots run deep in this country and particularly in the midwest. back in 1906, two brothers named nicholi and matthew boarded a boat in norway in search of the american dream. when they landed on the shore of america, the only word they knew was apple pie and coffee, which evidently they had a lot of on the way over. they got to the ellis island and the immigration officials thought their name would be too difficult to spell and pronounce for people in the country, so they asked them to change it. they pickedded the name of the farm where they worked which was

the thune farm. they set out to build a new life, worked on the railroad across south dakota, learned the english language, saved enough money to start a small merchandising company that later became a hardware store and started to experience and know the american dream. my grandfather had three sons, raised them through the great depression, the middle one, my father, went on to become a decorated world war ii fighter pilot and a basketball star at the university of mips, but my grandfather instilled in them midwestern value that my parents passed on to me and my four siblings and taught us the importance of living within your means even if it means going without. they taught us the importance of serving our neighbor and helping in the community and working hard and pulling your own weight, and they taught us the

importance of appreciating the freedoms that we have in this country which are a gift, a gift that coming from living in the greatest country on the face of the earth. because of that upbringing, i believe in basic core principles and values like limited government, fiscal responsibility, and personal accountability. now where i come from, that's not a radical agenda, that's just common sense, but for those of us who value liberty and freedom, washington, d.c. has become a pretty lonely place the last couple of years, but thanks to a lot of the people in this room who helped mightily, we have new friends who came to congress this past november. we now have 242 -- [applause] we now have 242 seats in the house of representatives and the speakers gavel, and we got some pretty tough people leading our charge there like our good friend eric cantor. we don't have the majority yet

in the senate, but we have the motivated minority to make a big difference. in november you send republican leaders to washington, d.c. and the president and his allies in congress a very important message, and that is that the liberal party they have on the taxpayers' dime is over. [applause] now, despite the president's rhetoric in budget cuts and his new-found interest in cutting red tape, president obama, i don't think, has gotten the message. he's still talking a lot about how much he wants to spend, although he now calls it investment. apparently he figured out we wouldn't notice that as much. his administration talking about making investments, and we all know what kind of return we can expect. [laughter] more government, more debt, fewer jobs, and less freedom. it's not surprising, but it is

disappointing. after all, these are the folks who jammed through a $2.5 trillion new entitlement program that we didn't want and can't afford. they pushed through a trillion dollar stimulus program we borrowed from our children and grandchildren that didn't create jobs or keep employment below 8% like what they had promised, and when members of their own party won't support their agenda on capitol hill, they go around the people's elected representatives and do it without them through executive power grants. you have seen the cap-and-trade proposal which they tried to get through the congress and failed, the epa is trying to get that through. you have the national labor board doing away with secret elections and the fcc now trying to regulate the internet, and if you can believe this, this one goes in the category that you canted make this up, the epa has an active proposal in prompt of them to regulate "fugitive

dust". they have not decided to act on the proposal yet, but those of you from the midwest and appreciate agriculture, you'll understand that it is inheritly dusty activity. when you combine corn for example and the wind blows, the dust scatters around a little. their proposal says that dust has to stay within the confines of your property. [laughter] you can't make that up. we have seen the biggest expansion of government in the last two years than we've seen in the last 50 years literally. massive new government programs, massive new spending, and, of course, massive new debt. in the last two years, the federal debt grew by $3.5 trillion. it took 43 presidents, 232 years to wrack up our first $6 trillion in publicly held debt. we are going to double that in five years and triple it in ten under the president's budget. that's how fast this debt is

going. now, so much so the chairman of the joint chief of staff, admiral mic mullen said the greatest threat to america is our national debt. that's the highest ranked military official in the country. you think of the grave and great threats abroad, potentially nuclear iran, islamic extremism, instability in the middle east and china with growing military capability and a dangerous north korea with nuclear weapons. the only thing more alarming to the threats is president obama's weak response. we can't win with reset buttons, apologies, and deep cuts. we can't win the peace if we don't tell it like it is. an act of terrorism is just that. you can call it a man-made disaster, but it doesn't change the gravity of the threat. it only makes us question the

administration's will to defeat it. we face serious challenges and require serious solutions, and if we live in any other country in the world, i would be extremely concerned. whether or not we are up to the job, but the american way is to turn adversity into opportunity. those who came before us, men and women like my grandparents and my parents survived two world wars, weathered a great depression, brought down the evil empire and brought light to the darkest corner of the world and turned this country into the greatest country in the world, not by reinventing themselves, but by holding fast to the values and principles. we don't need to transform america, but stay true toe who we are. now, in contrast, if you look at the current administration, the current president, i draw on my grave hero in politics which is roomed reagan. he said there's no easy answers, but there are simple answers. he understood that when you

govern according this a clear set of principles and values, you get good outcomes and results. he believed in a limited role for the federal government. he was a profound believer that america is an exceptional nation. he believed in economic freedom, free markets and free enterprise. he believed in fiscal responsibility. he believed in personal freedom coupled with individual speedometer, and he believed that you achieved piece through strength. just a core set of values and principles by which you can goarch -- govern a great nation. we need to take that advice and change how washington, d.c. does business and stop backroom deals that are the hallmarks of this administration. [applause] nose elected to serve in congress should respect the

people as money by spending less and saving more. american families are having to make tough decisions and live within their means. the federal government should show fiscal discipline and balance its books as well. when i was a freshman congressman back in 1997, we were all in support of a balanced budget amendment, and the united states senate voted on it first. it takes 67 votes in the house and in the senate and 38 states to ratify an amendment to the constitution. they started in the senate, and the threshold was 67 votes. they got 66 votes. one vote short of passing a constitutional amendment to balance the budget through the united states senate. if it was in the house of representatives, we would have passed it. i can't help but think what a different world it would be today if we passed that 15 years ago. it's never too late to do the right thing. when it comes to our tax policy, it is important that we put in place growth, progrowth policies

to grow the economy and create jobs. we need to lower the corporate tax rate. we have the highest in the industrialized world next to japan who is in the process of lowering theirs. we need to go to a territorial business tax system consistent with other countries around the world. we have to become a mag innocent to attract capital to the united states, and now we are losing that battle because of the policies we have in place. in our small businesses, investors need economic certainty. we need to make permanent the capital gains rate, dividends rate, estate tax rate, so people with make investments not just for today, but the future. we can't continue to do this on it -- [applause] we can't do this on a year-by-year basis. we need economic certainty. the budget of $3.8 trillion, that's what washington, d.c. is going to spend, and we only take

in $2 p.m. 2 trillion -- 2.2 trillion means we'll have a deficit and the federal government of every dollar they spend borrows 40 cents. this is not a revenue problem. there's plenty of revenue in washington, d.c.. washington, d.c. has a spending problem, and we need to get that spending problem under control. [applause] now, it comes to the issue of energy, and this is part of a progrowth strategy for the future of the country because we spend a billion dollars every single day buying foreign oil, and there's no reason for that. we need to end the problem in the gulf of mexico, open up the shelf, open up the federal lands where there's abundant energy resources right here in america. [applause] we are going to encourage all forms of american energy. oi come from a part of the

country where there's by yo fuels, wind, things like that, but need to get to where we don't continue this practice that we have maintained for the past decade of spending a billion dollars of american money every single day enriching countries in the middle east which in many cases end upturning around funding the terrorist organizations that attack america and our allies. we have got to stop that. when it comes to the issue of national security -- [applause] it's important that we not only win the wars of today, but prepare for the threats of tomorrow, and the first step is to remember where america's core interests lie and who our allies are. now, let's say unequivocally america's ally is and always will be the state of israel. [applause] i think the obama administration sometimes forgets that basic fundmental fact, and it seems that they forgotten no matter

what we're never going to have a peace agreement in the middle east until the other countries in that region recognize israel's right to exist. [applause] if we're going to have any confidence in the good faith of the palestinians in the peace process, they must find some way to bring about the immediate release of israeli soldier who was kidnapped five years ago. one of my main concerns is the disconnect between the obama administration and the people of israel concerning the primary threat in the region. i think it's pretty clear that the primary threat is not the lack of a comprehensive middle east peace process. it is the iranian nuclear program. now, the administration when they entered office, devoted significant time, political, and capital to negotiating that kind

of middle east peace, and what's worse, when it first began that effort, you would think from the rhetoric used that israeli settlements were the primary setment of that peace process rather than rocket attacks or the support of palestinian terrorist groups. [applause] let's agree that the iranian nuclear program is the primary security threat to israel. in fact, something you don't hear talked about much publicly is how many other countries throughout the reason is incredibly concerned about iran's aggressive behavior. it was also a concern to congress because we passed the comprehensive iran sanctions accountability devestment act of 2010. this act was meant to improve the president's sanctions authority against iran. president obama seemed to get it when he signed the bill. he promised at the time and i

quote, "we are going to make sure these sanctions are vigorously enforced." maybe one of the reasons iran's nuclear program continues and aggressive support for terrorism continues is that the sanctions are not being vigorously enforced at all. the administration sanctioned exactly two companies under the energy prong of that act, and that's despite knowing that there are companies today who are engaged in sanctionable activities. it is completely unacceptable. last enforcement of sanctions provides no disincentives for businesses to not do business with iran or iran to change its behavior. there's events taking place in the middle east and north africa today that are truly amazing. i don't want to take too much time other than to briefly highlight some developments in egypt, libya, and syria. first of all, libya.

we know the obama administration has taken military action to enforce a no-fly zone and support rebel troops there. what the president failed to do so far is provide adequate answers to very important questions. first, what is the benchmark for success for this use of force? second, is it acceptable for gadhafi to remain in power after the conflict concludes? president obama said earlier this week he embraced the goal of gadhafi being out of power, but he rejected using mill taser power to -- military power to accomplish that goal so how exactly will gadhafi be removed from power? we should not be risking the lives of u.s. service members without answers to such critical questions helping us understand the purpose behind the use of military power. syria is a tricky situation at

the moment, but there are steps that the united states should and can take. one is we need to speak with moral

>> any government in egypt resulting from the democracy movement there must respect the peace treaty with israel or it should not be a government with which the united states does business. [applause] ladies and gentlemen, we are at a critical time in the life and nation of our history. as we try and find the right path forward on so many issues, it's absolutely vital that we look to the past for guidance. i remember meeting with all of you about three years ago, three or four years ago, we were here and they were gracious to host

and you were nice to ask me to make remarks. i remember as i closed remarks a gentleman who i didn't recognize immediately, but when i finished speaking, i sat down and he was introduced. i remember thinking to myself at the time, wow, this is pretty amazing and a guy, a historical figure like this, but it impacted my youngest daughter because she has in the public life had the opportunity to meet political figures and leaders and even some celebrities and probably could not be less impressed with some of those folks, but when she got the opportunity to meet ellie, she was shaking when she saw him. he gave her a kiss on the cheek because she read the book "night" and she was so moved by that. to this day, that's one of the most memorable events in her

young life, and as i was thinking about that, i thought we have to learn the lessons from the past and help young people today understand the mistakes that have been made in the past and how important it is that we avoid those mistakes in the future and that our future is shaped by the democratic ideals and beliefs in the fundmental freedom that we all in this great country subscribe to and hold dear and i thought of something ronald reagan said. he said freedom at any given time is only one generation removed from extinction. it can't be passed on in the bloodstream. it has to be fought for and protected and handed down for our children to do the same or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children's children what it was once like to live in the united states of america where men were free. the world's a dangerous place

and nowhere more dangerous than in the middle east. we need to make sure we always keep in mind the lessons the past teaches us, and we have to make sure the next generation learns those lessons as well. america's national security, our independence from foreign oil and debt are all urgent challenges and have a tough road ahead to get america back on track. we face some hard choices, and we need to make the right decisions. republicans have outlined what we believe are the best answers. ours is a message not just of austerity, but pros posterity. i know that kind of political fight doesn't scare anyone in this room, and the struggle between more government and more freedom, we're fighting for freedom, and the struggle between liberty and dependent sigh, we're fighting for liberty. we have come a long way, but still have a lot to do.

we need to get this country back to the values that made my grandfather and so many like him risk it all to reach our shores. we need to protect the principles that men like my father fought for on battlefields in far away places. their legacy is our call to action. we need to stand up for the values, ideals, and principles that made this the greatest country on earth to expand liberty, freedom, and stop the reck less expansion of government. if we do that, together we ensure that the great american experiment does not end on our watch. david and matt, thank you what you do to make that possible. thank you for what you do. god bless, and may he continue to bless the united states of america. thank you. [applause] [applause] [applause]

>> coming up next, booktv presents after wards an hour long program where we interview authors with guest hosts. this week, bill kristol talks about his book and he wrote about american politics, culture, and religion for more than 60 years.

bill kristol describes his book with david brooks. >> host: welcome to "after words". i'm david brooks, and we're here to talk about neoconservative" and the book was written by or consisted of writers by irving kristol, and we are joined by his son, bill. bill grew up in new york: you used to be my boss, went to harvard university, worked in the education department and now edits the weekly standard. >> guest: very well done. >> host: thank you, thank you. i thought we'd start by talking about your dad's life because i think neoconservatism and a lot of american conservatism dploas

from his life. i want to ask you about his upbringing, the social class, and i guess what your grandfather did and because i think those roots informed a lot of his writing later on. >> guest: he grew up poor. i think he said he didn't realize he was poor, you know. he thought everybody was poor. poor working class, his father, my grandfather, was a jobber and a tailor and fairly regularly employed. in the depression he lost his job and started over once or twice, but i think my father -- his mother died when he was a teenager, but apart from that, i think he had a happy childhood and very much of a sense that there was none of the later, class resentments that marxists wanted them to have and none of the alienation that

socialologists thought being a jewish kid in america would cause. he had a well-adjusted childhood and went to college in new york. >> host: poor people think this and poor people think that. wait, we were poor and didn't think of any of that stuff. we went to city college, and i talk to students nowadays and the faculty was sort of impressive. there was a famous philosopher there, but the lunch time conversations were more impressive and famously young students sat in alcoves. >> guest: well, the alcoves were little parts of the dining room i guess, and they were called alcove one and two, but they were associated there at the lunches and would sit with their fellow ideological group. i think there were social democrats and many varieties of

marxists and antimarxists. much has been made of this afterwords. he had fond memories of it and thought he learned a lot arguing with stalinists and socialists and having a system of thought that made you, you know, be very serious about the world and make distinctions and have complicated arguments why the soviet union was in the spirit of lennon, and he learned the limits of the systems and became skeptical of them. >> host: who else went on to have great careers? >> guest: a great socialologist who is alive and well at harvard, and martin dammed who died -- diamond who died in the late 70s.

he would be happy today to see the constitution posted everywhere. it was a lone enterprise when he did it. there's a piece in the book in 1987 celebrating the constitution and that was 23 years ahead of its time. there's many famous people intellectuals. >> host: matt was there? >> guest: yes, a student at the same time and another famous sociologist, and it was a good education. i think it's true today of college, most of the education came from fellow students, not from the courses or from the faculty, but he went through that and meanwhile met my mother who was a student in college and they met at a meeting, and that was one good effect that put my parents together. i have a personal stake in thinking that's a good thing. it was a very happy marriage. exactly, right, he was killed and murdered by stalin.

>> host: one of the stories the stalin -- at one point they decided they were losing too many battles said we will no long irving talk to them and such party discipline and they didn't do it and all lived in the same neighborhoods. i think college students today look at that period like, wow, they were serious about ideas. i assume because they thought the whole world will be marxist someday and the distinctions now will have big effects later on. >> guest: the agree of the depression and then the 30s in general, the combination of the dprtion and fascism and socialism and hitler in 1936 and 1938 with czechs and if you were a college student in 1939, they thought the world had fallen apart and either was going to continue to fall apart and then of course the horrible world

wear and would go back into chaos or maybe there was a system to get us out, but the degree to which all the views people had in 1928, the con vengal views, strong capitalist, democrat, republican, those were all discredited and people felt that more than we appreciate if you were a smart kid going to college in 1935 or 1936. >> host: he goes to the army. >> guest: right, chicago, mom's in grad school, drafted to the army, goes to europe a little behind d-day. his group lands in europe later in or his part lands in europe late 1944. he's in the army a couple of years and most is the war ending and peacetime and occupying germany and he learned french and read literature. he had a certain amount of spare time and could read, you know,

and learn french. >> host: somewhere he said he believed in socialism and then got to the army and other people decided it would be a racket. >> guest: that's in the book which his meme roar and easy to think about the working class and what happens if the social structures disappeared until you get with 19-year-old kids and you see the utility have having rules and limits to what people can do. he didn't talk about the war much. i think he was really -- i think that struck him a degree to which if you have the military force that absent strong rules, a lot of bad behavior including bad behavior to german civilians. he was a jewish, but he saw sympathy for civilians whose country crumbled around them and

maybe he hadn't had much to do with it, and they were at the mother -- mercy of the german troops, but i think it removed what was already disappearing if you read his early as sighs and the working class and about the public and skepticism about direct democracy. >> host: he was very interested in religion early in his career and one of the fascinating thing in the book is the early essays. we are familiar with "wall street journal" and public interests, but wrote essays early on and remarkable essays for such a young man. he mentioned in here he was one the few people in his circle really interested in religion. there's one essay here from 1947 on judaism. do you know if he had contact with the holocaust or whether -- i mean, he was a jew in germany

in the war. >> guest: one of the interesting things -- back up one second about the book. with the exception of the autobiography essays, these were essays during his lifetime, previously uncollected essays so it doesn't overlap the three or four books published in his lifetime. the interesting thing is the early essay and one when he was 23 years old published in a radical magazine he cofounded, and then the interesting essays, and in 1947 his dpirs essay commentary on judaism and reflecting on the holocaust in that essay. he grew up religiously knowledge l, but not in an observant home. after his mother died when he was 15, he did go to synagogue every day, certainly every week, but maybe every day to think

about his mother, but after that he went for 11 months, and then he was not observant after that or sure there was such a just god if his mother died of cancer at age 40 or something like that, but, yeah, i mean, he certainly knew about the holocaust and that was a part of the self-understanding as young jews in this case who had been in germany and then france and watched the state of israel be founded. it was on his mind, but it is striking how much a commentary magazine, which, of course, is sort of a jewish magazine published at that time and he was the only person on the staff and commented that it was really interested in religion, but he read a lot and i think there's an early sign of his -- his willingness to accept a very conventional progressive liberalism that gets into the past and not moving into an

enliabilitiened future. he's interested in christian authors like cs lewis and educating himself on jewish matters. he had a reading group even. >> host: before we get to the life, there is a crucial point -- did he have a ph.d.? >> guest: no, no, he went to grad school for a few months on the gi bill that was free when he got back. he loved dante. he thought he might study that in grad school and a little exposure to the issues that he found fascinating put him off edge and was not his niche and got a job at commentary. he read the great books, but not in order to get a ph.d. and not with a ph.d.. >> host: that's the way to do it.

>> guest: i deviated from the family tradition. my mother got a ph.d.. i followed her in that respect. >> host: your grandfather was struggling in the depression, my great grandfather was a butcher in the lower east side getting rich and your father was at city college studying, mine was a basketball player and star. >> guest: that skipped a generation. your kids are good athletes. >> host: that's true. a few names that are instrumental in the formation. in the book there's essays about each of these two people and the first is trilling. >> guest: he's one the great literary critics in the century and taught at columbia for decades and they were good friends of my families, but a generation older i guess you would say. one of the favorite essays on

lionel trillings, and i think he was a liberal critic, a critic of the kind of progressive liberalism, had a tragic view of life i would say, a more complex view of the world. in that essay, he praises trill's moral realism which is a phrase that i think he used many, many times throughout the decade, it was used about him, written after his death, i mean, it's a hard headed cold eyed realism of the world, but it didn't lead to an a-realism but we yows be realistic. he was a great reader, and i think that influenced my father so that you can get the subtleties in the novels, and it's at the time of strong marxism and people read the

books and found that this character is okay, but doesn't have fully class character and trilling rejected that and this i think that helped my father early on breakthrough the categories and appreciate literature and read books to learn from the books opposed to cast judgments from where we sit today on the authors of the past. >> host: there was an essay liberal imagination on the emotional or psychological simplicity of liberalism tracing everything to manager technique, and trilling wanted to talk about deeper things. the second figure that he writes in the essay in the book, and i forget the exact phrase, but hit him with the force of a thuppedder clap which has become more famous. what was strauss and what does

that mean to him? >> guest: he died in 73, immigrated from german, a german jew or a jew who grew up in germany as he called himself who taught at the new school in new york and then at the university of chicago, a great, great student of the political philosophy. my father wrote a review when he published a difficult book called "persecution in the art of writing" the year before the review in 1952. strauss said to understand them, you had to read them carefully more than in the past and you had to think through the questions that people thought were confusing or considered the tension between certain things said in the books, and my father did write a really interesting review. i studied myself as a student of

strauss and i read my father's review which i didn't know about until i was in grad school or after about the book, and it's really impressive that he saw the depth of his achievement and the depth of his challenge in con vensal ways of reading the authors and really reopened the past, reopened the question of, you know, reading the greeks, the ancients, taking seriously the thinkers and others, and he said he was most influenced by trilling and strauss not because a particular teaching, and neither had simple teachings, but because they really -- they were both critics of a simple minded liberal progressivism which we forget how dominant that was at the time nor were they romantic action who loved 14th century writings or

monarchy or the church. they were very clear-eyed about the limitations of the different regimes of the past so there were friends of liberalism who were critics of modern liberalism, who read texts that maybe were deeper than some of the current liberal texts, and that had a big influence on my father. >> host: he went off to encounter the magazine. >> guest: right, beginning of 1953. i was born in 52 and spent most of 1953 in london. he worked on the magazine with the well-known poet, steven, and he enjoyed that. i think getting to know the british intellectual and political class at that time was very interesting for him, i mean, it's an impressive group, and why would it not be interesting? he had a lot of friendships and experiences with people who have now become quite famous and much

more famous and interesting. >> host: there's an essay in the book he was editing when a great foster of the 20th century submitted an essay that he thought was fascinating which is collected in the book on rationalism, but he rejected it because he didn't like it or agree with it. i don't know if that's the right editorial. >> guest: i was struck by how you said that, maybe a little playful. i think he uses that to ill los straight, and i think it's interesting he went to london as many americans have in the 20th century, gone to europe, and he very much liked living there, and my mother was a british historian. it made since to be there. i don't my my parents thought of staying there and described in a little memoirs near the end that he really wanted to come back to america because he thought america, he's american of

course, but also because he thought america was the center of the not just political action, but really the intellectual struggles of our time, and if there was going to be a kind of thinking through of liberalism and constitutionalism and beyond that of sort of relation of all this later in discussion, he had the since back in 1959 and 60 that was less likely to happen in europe. in europe the sense was on the way down. >> host: he would have been early to think that. >> guest: yes. >> host: in those days issue europe was the center of intellect. >> guest: right. he thought yorks -- he that, you know, the interesting thinkers peaked in the 40s and 50s, and later on, gee, we learned that much, and he thought america was where the debates would be had and where he wanted to participate in them, and so they came back to

new york in i think 1959. >> host: he spent 40 years founding and editing the public interests and believer in small magazines. yours is probably too big for his taste. >> guest: he said that to me. we had 70,000 subscribers, and now 100,000, and he was like why do you want that? he had 10,000 at the most. >> host: to me the quick trajectory of the public interest was a overseer of the great society using social science data to see what the great society was doing right and wrong, and then gradually evolved in a more, i don't know if id logical is the word, but neoconservative direction. >> guest: yeah, started in 1965. he was always skeptical of the grand claims and worried about the unintended consequences of social policy and a little

dubious about the grave competence that we underestimate today in the early 1960s of the technocratic thought and getting all the levers in the right area, and a lot of social science study saying well, here's what the program was supposed to do and here's the effects it had. after the late 60s and crisis of the 60s, my father got more interested and more contributors were interested and published more on the moral and social side of the problems that modern liberalism and not just the critique of this housing or urban policy. >> host: at the public interest you had college people like daniel bell and moynihan also. >> guest: jim wilson wrote the

entire 40 years. my father has a couple memoirs in the book and the last essay he wrote in 2005 and then a little talk he wrote and didn't deliver, but a conference about the conference, and maybe you were there in houston in 2006, and that's in the book, and no, there's -- it's all available free online an the website of national affairs which is a magazine, as you know, that editor which was started in 2009 as a kind of successor of the public interest. he thought they had kind of done their job and was time to let others take over and adam wilson has done a fantastic job editing the last 10 years, and then got a job elsewhere, decided they had a good one. always move them one more, so why not in the case of magazines like in the case of rock stars or something, but actually i

think it's absence was missed more than he expected and various people got together to have the foundation, robbie george from princeton and i thought maybe there should be a successor started. we thought about bringing the public interest back to life, but that's too much of a burden for a new magazine to live up to. the new magazine has been terrific, and when my father got the first issue of national affairs, labor day of 2009, two weeks before he died. he was still in good shape meantly, physically failing some, but he was very touched by the try butte wrote in the -- tribute wrote for him, and it couldn't aspire to the high standard, but wanted to carry on the tradition of the magazine, and my father was touched by that and wrote him a note, and

it was a good note to go out on and public affairs was going strong. you cited it in your columns. it's good and high quality and like the public interest in being most of the articles are pretty hard-headed, here's how you can deal with the budget crisis, here's a successful way to think about the state pension reform, but also there's articles about people likely on ralph learner on broader for philosophical topics. >> host: it has all the issues online. >> guest: yes, all the public interest issues are online at national affairs, the website of national affairs which is nice, and a lot of it stands up. >> host: i have the 25th anniversary issue with an article of gym wilson, and i recommend people on that. let's get to the title of the book. this has the word neoconservatism on book is an

act of provocation. it's become twisted and changed, but public interests became a neoconservative journal. your father was maybe the one and only person on earth who embraced that, that was invented by critics, and what is it really? >> guest: in the democratic socialist is a criticism of the liberals who claim to be defending liberalism in 1971 and 1972 and neoconservatives, new conservatives. at that time in intellectual circles or media circles just saying the word conservative or a variant of it, you're out, you're expelled from serious intellectual or political life. this, of course, a few years after cold water and the only national review, and it was underrate the at the time to say the least. my father after a couple of

years of people saying we're liberals and still hope for a hard-headed centralist cold war, and just, you know what, if you want to call me a neoconservative fine. there's an essay in the book from 1976 on neoconservatism and the autobiography essay how he already concluded privately he was not a liberal anymore, but you defend liberalism in a broad sense and limited government and the like, but the liberalism had gone so off the rails, my father thought by the early 70s one might as well forget it. he says the ce became more and more conservative really. he thought the conservative truths were perhaps more important. he was more open to them than

95% of new york intellectual types, but he was more convinced the importance of certain conservative truths even a neoconservatism version of the truths in the 70s and 80s and the 1990s. the most interesting in the book is the reflections on american conservatism and the relation of neoconservatism to a more pure con servegtism which my -- conservatism which my father thought was not practicable or desirable for a modern great country and power. >> host: some people say you can define different conservatisms by what year you want to go back to. some people go back preknew deal. your father was fine with the new deal, but there's a provocative essay in the book about welfare states, one state is an opportunity state giving you the tools to move up in one which is an environment state which tries to create an

environment based on compassion and so one was in tune with the sort of virtues and one was not. >> guest: yeah, i think that's right. i think the new deal had a number of good things, and he also thought there were mistakes, but i don't know if you want to go back to that year. a lot of conservatives talk about the ills of the era and some talk about the precivil rights movement and pre-other things, but also isolationism and the like, and secondly i think he also thought it would be desirable, and in case it's utterly impossible. i do think that you're right, it's the shorthand, what you can go back to. my father and the famous quote that neoconservative is a liberal mugged by reality and the reality is the late 60s, and it wasn't easy to have a war on poverty and succeed like lyndon

johnson thought or civil engineering as others thought. what's striking to me is right away my father, and this is true of neoconservatism too, go i don't the programs and saw, as he said in the essay the financial crisis of the welfare state we see now in europe and california and new york and in the u.s. government, and he discusses that quite a lot i would say. he wrote an essay in scene of this 1996 that says this is a huge financial crisis here, but also more of a spiritual and philosophical crisis. he went beyond the kind of gee, what happened in the last 30 years, and had led him to rethink all kinds of issues of 200 years ago and to reread people and think about the founders, and then really go back even to political my lossty and -- philosophy and religious thought. in that respect he had such a

good joke at the time and some considered it a crime at the time and neoconservatism was mugged by reality. but i thought it wassen justice to his thought and the thought of others. it was more than getting mugged by reality, but at least that was the first thing, but they really rethought issues in a much more comprehensive way. >> host: yeah, i guess three deeper issues i deticket. one is just respect for the values, second, and this he writes about quite a bit in the book is the american creed and the my philosophy of the american founding, and third, the virtuous virtues. we have not talked much about your mother who was a great historian of victorian thought, and certainly her influences, maybe talk about what her

influences would have been. >> guest: one was preventing my father occasionally from writing having for prerogative when he really wanted to shock people and liberal liberals and she restrapped him a tad, but i think her own work on the various british thinkers, and not just british thinkers, but on others helped him early on. she did -- helped him on early to see that again the sort of simple view where everything is just progressing and you read the new thinkers and my mother wrote her p ph.d. thesis on on a great liberal and power tends to corrupt absolutely and after the power corrupts absolutely. i think most thinkers until my

mother -- most commentary unless until my mom wrote her book, why is he catholic? that's crazy. i think a lot of people saw the unity of thought and the example, well, gee, maybe you can be serious about ancient religion and still be a strong defender of limited government and of other liberal options. and of other liberal options. ..

and i can tell you at "the new york times" he might send a letter or to being critical, but was that a tension in the way they approached public discourse? >> guest: i think of was slightly greater. >> host: the book was shocking in the 50's anything my father wrote but it was more scholarly. my father-in-law was intellectual, he read a very widely and i was utterly amazed how much he assimilated very early in the mid to late 40's pretty amazing in his 20s and the of a certain confidence proclaiming about these thinkers and respectfully about the mets what we learn from greek religious thinkers and i think

is more scholarly and careful let's go through the structure and the argument in detail. he was willing to be fairly shocking in the essay that is in this book. i was amazed editing this and selecting the on collected essays but i was amazed upon this one in the earlier works the commentary on mccarthy and the liberals which is critical. my father has news for him but then the critique of liberals and willing to be forthright and communist the time caused a uproar when it appeared in the commentary. the first of that kind of in the twenties at of partisan pretty

serious and then about the great italian novelist then you see this pretty young. he became so good at that kind of "the wall street journal" and the commentary and the public interest and elsewhere so the combination was pretty unusual. one of the few people could pull that off the first person conversation and then quite serious discussion of books, the issues, questions usually one has one or the other earnestly or a light hearted people lighthearted conversationalist but he was able to put this together in the present rate. >> host: let's talk about neoconservatism because i want to draw the distinction you may not want to draw which is between the neo conservatism and the other conservatism, the mainstream of was conservative mainstream and still lives he was somewhat schematic describing your the tendencies

of the neoconservatism and at one point he mentions the heroes for the neoconservatism in the 20th century travon and think it was teddy roosevelt and then he says at one point we pass politely over barry goldwater and to me that is the distinction between more libertarian style of conservatism and the neo conservatism and that distinction has been lost in the iraq war but i think it's worth preserving. >> degrees neoconservatives go away and practically speaking ended up working with other conservatives being in the institutions with other conservatives and magazines that publish conservatives and 1985i had my own views but practically speaking in terms of which

wanted the department to do or not to do and didn't make that much difference so i remember in the 90's people wrote essays and neoconservatives and the distinctive way of thinking it did its job and interesting 20 years. it is this kind of subterranean scheme that reappears at different times and in funny ways and goes away for so a few years if you're fighting against obamacare who cares if you have it in some respects and the new conservative critique we could feed them and distinguished in the national affairs at the cato institute putting up but they are there in some ways but some of the differences reappear a lot this year actually when the republicans and the house to talk about how should we cut the

budget, what are the priorities, how bold and dramatic. are we trying to get rid of social security? their think video conservative versus libertarian conservative or more traditional conservative issues. there are many strains of the neoconservatism at my father moved somewhat over the years and to meet critical judgments, too. if 90% of the budget and the gdp is going to the government and with the size of the welfare state which is concerned about the programs counter-productive and others increasing the size of the government and more libertarian way keeping this and checked so once it becomes more slickly libertarian and libertarian because my father was a critique of hayek in 1970, very interesting which is fairly

tough i would say on the libertarianism. i would say in the later years a little bit towards a more greater respect for the kind of practical utility of the point of view even though he was and philosophically hayak. he wanted to make clear its persuasion it's a way of thinking about the world. it has many variants, there's no doctrine, no ideology, you can see it more tab libertarian and more liberal and less and for a practical question of the warranties and practical questions of who should be elected president in its persuasion of a doctrine. >> host: i would say my favorite essay in the book which i think is new conservative and maybe not as much what we think of as republican as some right now is the essay on the

republican virtue and i cannot remember exactly when he read, it's on page 64 but the essential, one of the arguments in that essay is that there's a difference between the democratic virtues and republican virtues and that the democratic mentality means the people are essentially right in their innocence or just and one should be responsive to people as they believe the people were able to be corrupted in the institutions and leaders that will and prove them and that is the conservative viewpoint. >> it appeared in 1974 and was a pretty bold at the time it's so strong in saying look no question about that he's not proposing repealing the vote and again he's not reactionary in that sense to litigate issues settled the space age, space

government but let's remember why there's a phrase republican virtue mawson space virtue. something about republicanism that applies self-government's and the morrill government of the community governing itself with certain moral standards and understanding that not just anyone, any community can govern itself. you have to have certain characteristics and respect certain virtues and he leaves that out quickly and eloquently in the essay and it is a striking nsa. >> host: you can picture the secretaries crime rate is just secretaries crime rate is just skyrocketing he's writing an essay on george washington. he makes the point when you say someone is publicly spirited we think of ralph nader, the active, but in earlier centuries

to have a decent society. >> guest: that nsa is a little bit elitist and worried about the egalitarianism and the democratization. later on the kind of conservative populism if he says the eletes themselves are always a decadent and destructive of the country and if the public turns out to be healthy and rises up in revolt politics is a fluid business and sometimes you will be think the public should constrain as awful but at other times since the minister be a revolution here against the elites of this or that and it just means in the real world politics and the political theory the politics is kind of silly to be dogmatically pro

people or pri elite. >> host: that's why it's not the conservative ideologies it is the persuasion of the context matters. there are references in the book and some discussions of another episode in this life which was the supply side of the evolution which was in the late 70's he got more involved in the economics. there was an economic crisis and he had this sense it wasn't just the economy isn't doing well, but there was a bit of a crisis as he says in several essays and as he says in several essays and those are very contemporaneously 25 years later another crisis of a different kind in the financial crisis it's funny to read him talking about challenging the orthodox of the time when people in 2011 -- i think he's educated about economics but he had a certain skepticism about the science of

economics and the willingness to entertain the ideas in the economics department about entrepreneurship and supply-side ideas and he was close to barkley of "the wall street journal" and together i think they did a lot to break through the logjam of the liberal government cantinas and conservative don't spend so much, you know, balanced budget orthodox republican economics and my father was close to jack kemp and did a fair amount to try to not just publicized supply-side economics but think it through this to the economics but in the spirit of it that is more important to think about the society in which people have the ability to -- its more important to focus on economic growth than the perfectly balancing. >> host: he talks about in contrast to the green eye shade conservatives be more tolerant than they may have been and now we've gotten a lot of control.

as he starts talking about the supply side economics in the 70's and 80's and gets that column to the column in the journal and then famously moves from new york to washington. and so this is the difference between his life and maybe your life look closeness if you are in this line of work to get the actual politicians and he got closer maybe not as close as you have. >> guest: he never worked in the government and i remember growing up we didn't know anyone. we can to washington once or twice like most kids do if they can and to look at the monuments. we didn't know anyone to speak of but pat moynihan was his first friend who had a moderately poignant job in the kennedy johnson administration but was only much later he became much more political to say less of a new york intellectual, more interested in

public policy questions and public-interest and he came more to the attention of people in washington very excited and 72 or 73 - tiffin home from college and he got a call early in the morning from a cabinet secretary. i can't remember who it was in the cabinet that read a credible piece my father had written about something the administration was doing and that is what happens to you when you write a column in the times or what happens to me in the standard and you're used to getting the call from the politicians that are friendly or not so friendly. that's something that never happened, you know, they're written essays on could -- i guess they were literary and set retribution.

politics got more interesting in a certain sense. in the late 60's the cultural social philosophical issues intervened what had been for 20 years after world war to the classic american political system but that changed of course in the 60's. and so in that respect he got interested in politics because they got interested in the rest of us and the move to washington in the mid 80's and very much enjoy moving more personally my kids and my sister was nearby and liked living in washington but also why think washington got more intellectual with david brooks writing columns as a different washington that he remembers, as a young man and was a clerical bargaining. >> host: and he played poker.

there's a good essay on the book in las vegas that may be unexpected for some people but i don't even know if we can say in don't even know if we can say in that poker game. >> guest: [inaudible] complied with all applicable to ensure he has a funny as a on lost a guess and he personally like to gambling and he had a poker game in new york watching the adults among certain apartments powys oppose of once every six months or so his friends would show up if and other sites by guess the low stakes poker game my father was

working at the publishing house it seems high-stakes to get people to take it seriously. i think my father is a good poker player but what we would 200 bucks or something at the end of the evening but he also felt 73 is the one thing about gambling available to people as the occasional recreation we have everywhere and third is what is objecting to the states sponsoring it and subsidizing at and it's a memorable one. it's crazy about the state telling you the minimum wage law we but here's the lottery what don't you take your hard-earned money and that on some very bad debt in the hopes of striking it rich and here's the advertisers see. what does that foster and the

citizenry and lessons does that teach about the thrift and savings? >> guest: host could then get back to the republican virtue as opposed to just money and making a higher. we have two minutes left but i want to get to other subjects on as foreign policy people are very familiar with the position you've taken. you said you and he were like a similar line on the foreign policy? >> guest: the neoconservatives and bush administration we thought were right of course and improvise the sort of democracy promotion side of the strong american foreign policy a little more than he did but he says the great powers to remain a great power and it's partly a great power standing up for your principals not just your interest and we have an interest in democracy being stronger around the world so i don't think there is as much difference as some try to say. it is a judgment obviously

people differ on this or that but he was a reliever and he said this in the essay of american greatness and people that thought americans were going to -- a great essay in the 70's where in the vietnam some people think it's for the end of american intervention around the world and if you are a great power to committed to principals and alliances you can't care about what happens around the world and we will be intervening again after vietnam. >> host: he has a famous essay on nato and it describes the view on a multilateral institutions. >> guest: he is a skeptic. he thought they might be useful but we shouldn't kid ourselves. and we tend to forget after a year of the entrenchment to change people by the rhetoric and of the world was full of

nations who would pursue their interest and of course this is in the cold war and he is worried we are putting too much weight on nato as a kind of alliance about what we had to do to stop the soviet union. >> host: one of the things that struck me and i remember being very struck a the time he announced a remember how many years but a few he seemed generally at least to me at peace with his life and he wasn't ambitious, early on maybe he was early on but -- >> guest: indigenous in a serious way to think through certain issues and he enjoyed the sense that he had an effect on what people personally threw his riding but he wasn't one who felt his life was worth living if he didn't express his latest thoughts somewhere and he was happy to read books and talk

about my mother and many of their friends including you and talk about them and suggest things to other people and let them write them and dealing with them write them and dealing with at 86 he had to keep on turning of columns and there's essays in the book as elitist 2006 but more vocational and i think he thought one of the good things about this book as it pulls together most of the essays in the last ten years, the last 15 years which were not in the book that assembled the final one he assembled which was 1994 and some are interesting as you said including the talk that he gave that jerusalem and the jews and politics and judaism and stuff like that. >> host: he got more interested. finally 1i want to talk to you about because we learn a lot about that but then in the end he wrote a lot about it and i recall him being more active in

the jewish education and things like that and the famous rabbit is he wasn't attending. so what does it mean to him? the interest was genuine. >> guest: the loyalty to the jewish people he famously rights he's only been to israel a couple of times may be studied for times and they didn't particularly like it there it wasn't his style and noisy and all this moving from new york you think he would be used to that. >> host: but he certainly was the strong supporter and has a very moving essay that appears in the journal if i remember reading it in grad school in october during the october war in which she ponders about what to buy care what's happening in this war and why am i getting up

and turning on the radio at five or 6 a.m. and get to leave this update on whether they've succeeded in the attached and so he's always i think very interested in theological theology thoughts about religion it was in the focus of his writing as you say and came back with more of the and i think partly became tyson with his interest in america and politics and one of the things that happened in america is this unanticipated rise of religion and of religious conservatism and its impact on politics much tv to the and is still and my father was sympathetic to them but he thought it was unavoidable that there was a religious reaction to the hedonistic materialistic society and the character was interesting pulse of important politically and sociologically.

>> host: it struck me there is judaism through his writing especially the emphasis in the latest in the book on judaism and how concrete religion is, how it is about moral rhythms and it's not about abstract or what you do in the specific circumstance and pay for more than they do at the inner status. >> guest: i think that he always liked the profit extreme though most these days and conservative rabbis, too what it has to tell the world of justice and more impressed by the practical achievements in journalism shaping people's character and creating this impressive mobile edifice but there was a hard-headed realist decline that didn't tell people to turn their back on the world or turn the other cheek. it was interpreted that we would certainly wouldn't have been the better way to interpret it and the term deily sa's both on the

politics of jews but also on judaism are interesting and as they appear in the book and to reach a good journalists one wouldn't normally have a handan. >> host: would you say he had print ships? the friends i know or just social buddies in the years when her when is an economist and he tells him the same. it did he have contact with the evangelical movement, did he have friends? >> guest: i would say -- i'm trying to think, friends who were serious christians certainly in the catholics, but not routine contact with pat robinson once or twice and jerry falwell but no, that wasn't his world. >> was he a signer of petitions? >> guest: he signed one

endorsing action for election and 72 among the professors he was teaching time at the nyu business school and that caused >> i remember being there is a graduate and people were outraged as the first 18-year-old daughter to come that was michael first election and i probably voted for richard for reelection. i think that -- its 91% for mcgovern and for all dress cleaver and that forward-looking 3%. okay, we are up with the hour. we've spent our time talking about the new conservative persuasion selected essays 1942 to 2,009 by irving kristol and we've been talki >> guest: thank you.

from the philadelphia free library, this is about an hour. [applause] >> thank you very much. it's wonderful to be here. i love this and you, get lots of good questions which we will to save time for the end. it's an interesting occasion this is the first time i've been up in front of an audience talking about andrew johnson and forgive me if i see jefferson occasionally. i had to write that when i was riding i did a spell check to i didn't have to jefferson when i should have ha johnson because the temptationay was quite great. if someone told me my life that i would've written a book about andrew johnson, i would've told them they were crazy. it's not that i don't inc. is an interesting person. he is interesting. it's not that i didn't know

anything about him, but for most of my career as an historian, i try to put the period of reconstruction. and it sounds strange for someone who rates about slavery, which is a difficult topic to write about, but i find it easier to deal with 17th century in 18th century and attitudes about race and slavery than i do dealing with reconstruction. there's something about it that is just maddening to me. i think what it is is that it was a moment of opportunity. when i think of the people in the 17th and 18th century with primitive ideas about many, many things in the world and you know there's lots of things they don't know, i cannot totally forgive them, but it's not as irritating to me, exasperating demands a period of time when you have trains, things that are part of the modern era and you feel closer to those people, the people of that time.

see more like us than someone in the 18th century when i'm writing about development of slavery in virginia or jefferson's monticello event. so when i read about reconstruction in this moment of hope, it makes me angry. i'm able to be detached. the further back you go, it makes me angry when i think about what could've happened and what did not have been and how close we were, how close the country west of a period of time and you really could have been sent to to begin the process of racial healing, the process of making america really one for everyone. so johnson would not have been my topic of choice. i read about that era because they have to, but he would be something i never thought i would actually study and very much about it. i got a phone call one morning from our thirst licensure junior telling me i was going to be

getting a letter from him and talking just in general. i do get this letter in which he asked me to write the biography of andrew johnson for the american presidents series, which is a very nice series, a short, concise book about american presidents and they get people -- sometimes people who actually said. someone like joyce appleby, she is a great jefferson scholar. george mcgovern did lincoln and so there's guardedly make vmax of historians and non-historians looking at these presidencies, telling the basic stories, but also giving your own sort of individual spin on it. and he asked me to do this to the johnson boat. i guess he figured i would put my individual spin on it. i agreed to do it because arthur asked me to do it and i have great respect for him. i knew him from the papers of thomas jefferson were both on the advisory committee for that

and also because paul pollock was the editor, who is also the general series editor for the series was an editor for the book i did for burning jordan. it's two friends. two friends asked me to do this and i said sure. i put aside my misgivings. i knew there was so much material, very, very rich, but i wondered if i would be able to curb my natural feelings of antipathy about looking at this particular. in american history and i agreed to do it. that was many, many years ago. this book is long overdue. in between sanity that i wrote "the hemingses of monticello," which took a lot of time and energy and then i came back and finished it and i'm very, very glad that they did. so the first thing i had to do was think about, how do i approach this?

now, andrew johnson is not known by lots of people. not lots is known about him. pointing people do know it is in almost every survey, ranking for the american presidents, he is at the bottom. he is in the bottom five. since 1997, i participated in the survey's and sometimes i look at the results. sometimes they don't. but he's usually in the bottom five. buchanan is usually the worst, but he is in the bottom five. this year come in the past year when i didn't participate in the survey for the first time, i typically fill them out, but it didn't this time because i was too busy. he made it to the last. just in time for the book i could say and some surveys the worst president. and to get down to that point, it's really splitting hairs to think about what the real story is at that. that's a difficult issue because

that i'd used it to write a book about somebody who's judged the worst of anything? file, just because someone is the worst or near the worst, doesn't mean they are not important. and that's the first realization i had. this man was president at one of the most pivotal. in american history and there was a moment when the country could have gone one way or the other way and he had a central role to play in that. and it came to me and started hit me that it's very important to focus on the life of andrew johnson because i really do believe some of the decisions he made during that time. affect us even today and the choices he made in the choices he did not make, his attitude, leadership style, all of those things help to make us who we are. for those reasons you have to pay attention. i say in the book that history is not just about the people you like, you know, all the people

you thought i would love to have dinner with and spend time with and whatever. it's about people who did things that are importuned that'll put us on the path to where you are now. and he is definitely a person who had that kind of -- that road. so once i made my mind to do this and understood how to approach it, it was relatively easy to set and get to work and try to tell his story in a way that would sort of the many flights american life is like and what it was like during the time andrew johnson lives. now, johnson is different from jefferson and many come in many ways. but the first thing, the first problem is john and didn't learn to write until he was in his late teens. his wife -- he married early. his wife taught him out to right. in those days, reading and writing were different -- separate. there were many many people who are tied to read said they could

read the bible appeared but writing was not something people can't necessarily what together. and so his parents were illiterate. neither of his parents could read or write. we know they couldn't write because we have marks, no record of them writing and people said they were illiterate. so he didn't become literate until he was a young man. and that poses a problem because even though he learned to write, he was never very comfortable doing it and at one point later on he mentioned that he had -- you sort of hurt his arm and he sort of explain it is the reason he didn't write. most people think it's because he was eerie, very self-conscious about it and most of his life he was self-conscious about it. so if you look at the papers of andrew johnson, their are many, many more letters to andrew johnson did enter chancing to other people. so that poses a problem for a biographer ratepayer.

we don't have this inner voice. whichever city of 18,000 letters he wrote over the period of his life and other kinds of documents and other things. even though he remains an innate lead to lots of people, there is still enough there to sort of some sense of what he's thinking, what he's feeling in who he was. john finn was at a disadvantage because we don't have that to the same extent and the letters we have the show when a show lots of missed telling, lots of phonetic spelling for things and it's difficult to wrap your mind -- it was for me, difficult to wrap my mind about who he really was because we just don't have the kind of record you would typically have, not someone i jefferson, but other people who are present, so that's a big problem. because we don't have lots of letters and there's not a huge repository of him explaining

what he's doing, we don't have lots of stories about him. there's another biography. the principal biographer of andrew johnson is a man named hans stritch who, who unfortunately died. i was hoping to finish the second show at him because he's the one who win out went out and read the 500 page book about johnson. to discover that the territory. my job is to cover some of the same territory or concisely, but also to put my view of johnson onto the picture. but what users have found, people tend to repeat when they are doing sort of smaller general biographies of major johnson and there is not that more. there has to be another approach to him and that's why my expertise for study of race relations comes in handy. it's interesting to think about

the beginning of america and come to a point where you're focusing on on the time in american falls apart and has to be put back together again. so let's start out with this material that is not as voluminous as i'm typically used to, but a person who i said is very, very interesting, considering where he came from. how does somebody like this go from being a litter it, a person whose parents were very, very poor to being someone who is at the highest office in the land. so it's born in north carolina to parents through as they said were illiterate. his father died when he was three. his mother was a seamstress and she also worked as a wash woman and other people's homes. this is the thing that caused a lot of talk. people suggested later on that baby andrew johnson was not the son of his father, you know, that he was illegitimate.

i've gotten some criticism from mentioning this in the book, even though harvester foods mentioned that as well, but instead of just mentioning it, i wanted to talk about the context that to say something about how class affected the way people viewed from the very very beginning. because his mother worked as a maid, people felt free to say things like that about the family. i really doubt if she had been a married woman quote unquote respect to the middle-class women, if those kinds of rumors would be openly spoken about it. so from the beery beginning it's not that he was just poor. it's that his family was seen as really, really marginal. there's a difference between what people call the deserving poor, the people who were seen

as really marginal. she married again, his mother remarried a man who is as poor a sheet, does improve circumstances very much and it gets so bad that she has to apprenticed her two children. so andrew johnson was was apprenticed with taylor when he was 10 years old. he was supposed to be in the apprenticeship until he was 21. why would take that long it didn't take enough on to become very, very good. so is 10 years old. he's an apprentice to a tailor and he actually runs away. the language that i reproduce in the book, basically a runaway servant that the thing you would expect to see people more familiar with was runaway slave. we were everything, capture him and will give you your reward.

this is a future president of the united states. this is what happens to them. he runs away. he doesn't come back. he goes off and actually gets a job as a tailor and becomes very, very good at his job. as an older man when he's a politician, he makes suits for people. again, it's kind of cool. he does the gender thing. it doesn't matter kavita taylor. that can be a max deal in thing to do, but that was his way of giving gifts to people, a very private gold will forward experience that he had. so we start out very, very low. one of the things i talk about is comparing him to lincoln who unfortunately. lincoln was a tough act to follow. i mean, on the same surveys that

he talked about commies almost always mentioned as the best. go from number one in one, terrible moment. you go from lincoln to enter john finn. so he suffers by comparison. so that part is not just he had failures, which we'll talk about, but he came after someone who was amazing to people in good ways and bad, but a very towering figure to andrew johnson. so we have these humble origins that seemed to make him in some ways -- well, it strengthened again. i need, hardship sometimes can strengthen people in a particular way, strengthen them and empathy, vision and so forth, but i think my take on junk than the fed is hard life

could have been looked down upon by people, being thought of as trash, made him hard in lots of ways. someone asked me, you would think that kind of upbringing would make him sympathetic to black people. now, the other side that i can do is make you look for somebody to look down on. there's got to be somebody below you. i think he took comfort perhaps in saying like many poor southern whites, you know, i may live in a shotgun shack. it may not have very much, but i'm white and not better than these people over there. if you want to maintain that come you have to make sure there's always somebody over there or under there who you can look down upon. i think that seems to be the tack he took in life into the dutch are meant in his own personal demon really ended up affect game the course of history of the united states of

america. always in a tailor shop, he's a very smart kid, smart person. he listened to men who had come to the tailor shop to read to the taylor's and think about civic engagement. you know there's people in the shop who can't read and a man would come and read a book of speeches. and johnson loved speeches. he kept the book. the guy gave him the book he thought it so much. over the years, anytime he needed inspiration, he would go back and read this book is speeches. at some point he realizes because he gets into a debate with the person in the shop they do the equivalent of taking it outside, but verbally. they decide to invite people to watch them argue and it becomes clear he has the talent. his talent is public speaking. then also marks into lincoln because lincoln was a good speaker as well. he could be very, very -- well,

he was sarcastic and aggressive and people hadn't seen anything like it. so his fame grew. people suggested he might stand for office, which he did and he was very ambitious. good businessman, even though he started up working at the right kind of investment in the actually bettered himself financially. any women to politics and climb the ladder for mayor, every single one of the latter he was on it up to the president. so it's an interesting comment on american life that someone could start out as blue as he did and go to where he went. so even though i'm somewhat hard on him and the book there's no question he was an extraordinary person. i think my editor and he's done all of these.

he's edited all of the ones that have been done so far. all of these people are extraordinary to make it to the presidency. it's not like someone is sitting around one day and says okay, going to the white house. there is something there. other people see something and other people see something and says i should go for that position. i should be at the top. and he was like that himself. so the book describes his sense and how he fashioned himself, try to fashion himself after his hero, andrew jackson county comes of age during the age of jackson, he is a unionist. he is for the common man. he campaigned for the homestead act. there's lots of things that seem very, very progressive, very popular in the way. as you know, populism has the

double-edged sword there. lots of time populists are in favor of measures do you think would be progressive. he was for the homestead act, giving poor people and. he wanted public education. he was always the champion of public education, thinking back on its own life and how deprived he was. he wanted a better shot for people. people who were privileged. the catch was the only one of that for whites. he was for the homestead act as i said. when reconstruction came and there was a time to give land reform, republicans in congress wanted land reform to give the former enslaved people to give them land, to give them independence that johnson and others understood was seated. that's what land men. you work for people, gravure and

food come you can subsist on your ipod and you're not beholden to anyone. he wanted that for whites, but didn't want that for blacks. populous part was the racist part inhibited his thoughts about how this might be expanded to include everybody in america. so he mixes political run at thinking himself as a champion of the common man. he is for the union. he has no trust whatsoever for secessionists any sort of alienated many of them even before the work on the alienated people at jefferson davis because of support for the homestead act. the southern planters did not like the idea of giving poor white people and. they wouldn't have used the term, but they thought, this is like welfare. i mean, why are you giving these people and below market rate?

why don't they go out and work for it? why do they deserve this? he was all for it. from the beginning there recalcitrance about this further, his antipathy towards southern planters. so he came out making enemies all along the way. link in hits on the ticket because lincoln decides that he wants to signal to the south but there's a future, the north and south had a future together, so as a symbolic gesture of unity to pick from the border state. but then he's from tennessee. he's moved to tennessee as a young man, to put them together and say look, even though the south of the participating in elections, they say look, i'm willing to have a southerner on the ticket and one of these days we can get back together again. so he ends up on the ticket. lincoln replaces hannibal hamlin

from maine who didn't give them any political clout here to there he is as a vice president, this person who started out alliterate up until man had is the vice president of the united states and people hated that. there were many, many people that said he is not the kind of man we should be in this office. you've read this kind of been a begin to feel sorry for him to figure people ragging on him. but then at the inauguration he's drunk. he comes to the inauguration. i had a lot of fun doing this. he had been so and in those days, i think they thought w-whiskey was a cure for everything. maybe people think that now. and he drank too much whiskey and so there was this tactical. it would've been amazing if something were to happen like that today. you can imagine on youtube, cable tv, everything.

a lot of these things. people said see, we told you those kinds of people in those kinds of positions, this is what they're going to do. lincoln nevertheless stood by him. people said you should dump it. i get that now comment and the soundtrack. he'll be fine. and of course lincoln was killed not long after that and he ascends to the presidency. and people are of course, mortified doesn't cover it. people in the south may have been happy about it, but they were not celebrating about it because they've just been defeated in war and they were in no position to really closed about something, even if someone were inclined to do it. it is a germanic muncher manic time. and there is johnson who has to rise to the occasion. in those days after lincoln's death he actually does rise to

the occasion, other things that people said the performance as vice president has gone away. he knows what to do symbolically. he really rises to the occasion. and there is a honeymoon for him for a time. until they get into reconstruction. and this is the part of the story when i said i tried to avoid all of this, when they begin to realize that he is not going to have any -- any support whatsoever for the notion of black right, any kind of right for the freed men after the civil war. he only grudgingly accepted abolition. he was a slaveholder himself. he was on a large-scale slaveowner. he didn't have a plantation, beatty did have slaves. as a supporter of slavery, adamant about like inferiority.

he said everybody has to admit why people are superior to blacks. we should try to raise them up. if you raise them up, we should raise ourselves even further so that the distance would always be the same. that was his plan. he said this is a white man's government and will remain a white man's government. when someone says that out loud and said adamantly over and over again and you have a policy from the republicans in congress saying black vote, land reforms, some sort of political life are but people come you realize they were loggerheads and that's what it was all about. his vision in the south -- bringing the south back into the union did not encompass anything about changing black people santos began taking them out of coleco slavery. that's where the battle was joined between him and republicans and that's what eventually led to his

impeachment. a person -- one person who is a biographer of johnson started the book out lamenting the fact that when people write about johnson, all they seem to care about her reconstruction and impeachment, but mainly reconstruction. in any sense, there's not much else. syria has this grand plans to talk about the other aspects of andrew johnson's presidency, but his reconstruction. we buy alaska during this time. there's a problem in mexico that we have to do. those things were handled by secretary of state. most of the time is spent on reconstruction and try to thwart the efforts of republicans of congress who wanted to transform. he believed that the south really had not succeeded. his view was that secession was illegal and because it was illegal, they never left.

jefferson davis was not really a president. there was no confederate states of america. that did not exist. because it did not exist, as like rewinding the tape except slavery part and take the slavery out of it, but the south goes back to exactly what it was before fort sumter, before there was any conflict at all. that's a tough position to think of, 4 million people who had been freed at this point. there were people who realized that called for something but he says no, the constitution does not allow what you're attempting to do. he was very much he's had a proponent of the constitution. he saw himself as the guardian of the constitution, but he had what i call it a cafeteria style

approach to the constitution. if you liked were constitutional. things he didn't like were unconstitutional. the constitution clearly says that congress has the right to set rules and everything having to do with the district of columbia. so when congress gives black people the right to vote he vetoes it and says it's unconstitutional. this is not even like some interpretation of it. so you get a sense of a constitutional as to him. i like it, it's constitutional. if they don't, it's not. so he thought he was in the write protect in the constitution. republicans thought wait a minute, with something has to change you. if you transfer the south you can't have people wandering around. sir, i don't know what he thought they wanted other than they were supposed to be on the nomination of ways. and he does something that really surprises people.

remember he said he hated the southern grandes plantation owners and wanted to punish them. he wanted to leave the south into war. he had a strange notion that southern planters, large-scale planters enslaved were in a conspiracy against poor white people. and so he blamed them for the war, that the blacks -- they've people and their masters was trying to keep poor whites down. at first he talked about punishing these people, but then he realized by greater enemy is not the southern people come in the southern planter aristocrats. my enemies are the people in the north, the republicans who want to change the south. what he opted to do instead of punishing was to put them back in power. and so not only does he thwart does trade deport radical republicans, so-called radical republicans, he puts on the

people and how to put back into power all the people who had been in power before the word. the very people he called traitors and wanted to punish them. he brought them back on terms that didn't require the oath that people had to swear to. he dispensed with those scum of the oath they had never -- the loyalty oath he dispensed with a lot of those. ..

he would have been out anyway. the second thing was that the person who is taking over from him was considered to be a wild-eyed radical. he believed in things like women voting. [laughter] which of course made him like a martian, and so what came after, what would have come after him and the fact that he didn't have very long to go on his term and some other things. he actually made terms with people about this. they voted -- he escaped conviction by one vote. he is nevertheless sort of a round president after that. he keeps vetoing bills that he is overwritten. he had hopes of making a comeback but his real plan was to unite conservatives in the north and the south and create another political party to try to bring, to take the country back. that was the sort of idea that it gotten away from him and he