he and his wife. back before 9/11 go around to see various neighborhoods. the king and queen. when they saw them. some madison certainly have the heart. it was an ideologue event. he was a captive to his own theory about how the world should work. he had great authority on not having written the constitution. jefferson found a way to make it look like he was being loyal to his own. and even ronald reagan, broke with the most idiotic a president we ever had was capable. attacking for going gaga. even reagan could talk.

go to china. i can talk to gorbachev. >> what is your job here? >> well, i teach several courses. one is presidential rhetoric. a very important part. persuade people and change minds. speak for 300 million people with one voice and be respected. some of them rose to great heights and others did not. we think of lincoln. should be given in english as well as politics. during these cores, and just so you one story about that. i start by saying, okay. what happened in 19451865.

the end of slavery. what happened in 1763. nothing. no reaction the end of world war. the british get the fringe of north america. the crisis. it all blows up and that's it. still waiting for a peace dividend yes. not so easy. each of those men in their own way try to deal with these issues. >> how long have you been teaching? >> on and off for about 30 years. in and out of government. my last government job, i worked

during the bush to ministration. briefly in the second president bush's a ministration. i worked in the house side on the hill for five years. assistant secretary of state of new jersey. so in between those i have been teaching, and i find it exceptionally rewarding. the students here are exceptionally able and motivated >> how many books have you written? >> let's see. three and another one are to. >> what was your experience like on the 9/11 commission? >> going to some of the events. there are still some unfinished recommendations.

this might be a time to look at how well that's going. a should say the one that has not been enacted, congress is to be more of a player. the specialization. this is the problem. the sense that there is no incentive structure. if you're the head of the agriculture committee, you're doing something for farmers by doing something. but if you're protecting gasol, the free rider problem. everybody benefits. people sort of see intelligence committees as jury duty. so we have to go into a few. it was an extraordinary time. the height of all of these in

washington. bush and the democratic congress. we had ten commissioners, five republicans and five democrats. and they wrote a report that got unanimous consent without splitting too many differences. they get the attention of both congress and the president and his opponent. unheard of. everyone but we were going to fail. deadlock. again, an even number. well, they had mccain and hamilton. both turned out to be moderates. both put in the country first, ahead of any other.

they set a tone, and the others chimed in. let's look at the facts. the streets of new york. what are the facts? and when we learn what the facts were we told the narrative. it became evident where were the dots connected. then it kind of forced the recommendations. it was an extraordinary experience both commissions ignore. people think bump weather report. hundreds of commissioners and staff. i pray for the country. >> we have been talking with

george washington university professor alvin felzenberg. his most recent book, "the leaders we deserved (and a few we didn't)." >> book tv has over 100,000 twitter followers. be a part of the excitement. paula book tv on twitter to be publishing is to misters lay, other information, and it information. >> up next, an interview from torture washington university. >> book tv is on location at george rushed to university here in washington d.c. for our college series, a chance to talk with some professors who have also written books and to introduce you to those books. next up we will be talking with the author of this book, the myth of digital democracy.

first of all, what is democracy? >> well, the book is really about the claim that a lot of people have had about how the internet is changing politics. everything from how campaigns are run to how we get our news to how we process and interact. >> and what is the myth of digital democracy? >> when we talk about the internet from very early on, even the early 90's, all of the claims are not so much about how we ever going to change business or our world, but of the internet would change politics. particularly there are a very robust and durable claims about how the internet is supposed to empower ordinary citizens. so the hope was that the internet would allow campaigns to be run differently, less elite focused and driven. allows citizens to in some cases even create their own news. the real hope was that ordinary

people would have a greater voice in the political system. some parts of that have come true and many others have not pressed success stories. >> i argue in the book that in the 2004-two dozen date campaign cycle we really did see a campaign where big money was imperatively less important than it had been in previous cycles. we saw more of the money that ran presidential campaigns coming from people of middle income. so that -- >> donate online or access online. >> and so we certainly saw with dean and then carry and, of course caught 2008 with obama with some much larger portions of the monies that make politick worker, or less ordinary citizens and not from the top tenth of a percent of the income distribution. >> in your book you have a

chapter, the lessons of howard dean. >> the argument in that chapter is pretty easy to understand why howard dean failed. so much of the literature on presidential primaries focuses. once you stumble and have something bad happen it is difficult to recover. the real trouble is how he ever got to be the front runner in the first place. there would argue that the answer has to be the internet. in practice in 2000 for the internet was essentially a primary, digital primary. a primary a lung a very liberal constituency. more less won that primary. he walked away with it. at the same time essentially does not help you when you have to go up against voters in iowa. >> you have a chart in your

book. total web traffic. >> one of the things that the book tart about is that if we are thinking of how the internet is going to change politics we have to start with the facts. politically relevant traffic is a tiny, tiny portion of what people do online. if elected the categories of where people go, more than 10% is pornographic content. web mail, search engines. news and media assets including everything from entertainment to sports, only about 304%. the types of political science, like blocks or interest groups, campaign sites, the new types of political information that was supposed to change everything are about one-tenth of 1 percent of all web traffic. >> how many people were hits

does that represent? >> larger than you would think. part of the issue is that people visit lots and lots of sites. according to some members, an average visitor may hit 80 or 90 pages in the day, which is a lot. at the same time the portion of traffic that is going to political places is quite small. >> barack obama, 2008 and the internet. >> i think that it is pretty clear that he would not have been the democratic nominee without the internet. a very close race. the internet was very important in his success. some of this is pretty well known. some parts of the story are less well-known. for example, very difficult to imagine him winning the democratic race with of iowa.

and in places like iowa tools like facebook proved very important. the ability for an organizer to roll into a small town and already have half a dozen, a dozen volunteers makes a huge difference to them on the ground organization. many operators will tell you that it is much harder to get the first dozen volunteers then it is to get the next hundred. so in that sense we see big evidence. i would go further. john mccain would most likely not have been the republican nominee but for the internet. in the summer of 2007 when things were looking pretty bleak for the mccain candidacy in everyone is expecting three guliani to square off against hillary clinton, mccain went to ground, cut almost all his campaign staff except for a few senior folks and the web team.

that is what sustained him all the way up to iowa and in hampshire and made him -- and kept him alive as a viable. the possibility the the early part of the campaign. >> conservative and liberal viewpoint websites. >> there is a big gap between conservatives and liberals online. in fact, the traffic numbers hugely favor of liberals. in terms -- you are holding up a chart, a graph of web traffic. liberal sites. the white sites are conservative leaning. we see a couple of things. in terms of total traffic, much more to the left. second of all, traffic is more concentrated on the right. you see what traffic there is, the few sites