so i name my book "black and tired" on purpose. one, because i am black, if you can tell. and so i want to remain connected to the history of my own family, the story of rising to success, in spite of incredibly dramatic and wounding and painful experiences in this country. because the hopes and dreams and aspirations versus institutions, values, principle that created the conditions that put me here today are being sabotaged and eroded by those who have good intentions but often did not think through the consequences of public policy decisions because they have different views on the human person and human dignity, then those who actually structured our government in the first place.

>> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. .. >> host: clifton, it's so fun to be a ridiculously spent a lot of time talking the past like your grandfather and my

great-grandfather's relationship and you just written this new boat as a bass drop a miniature midlife has their teen hundred letters that your grandfather, harry truman wrote to bess. response they only had 184 letters that bess returned to harry. what's the story quiet >> guest: my grandmother was a very private person. grandpa was an open book. you asked a question and answer. he saved everything. scraps of paper, gas receipts, anything he thought -- he was a natural packrat anyway, but he was very mindful of the fact that the american people should be able to learn from the mind of their president. so he saved mostly all this important papers. he didn't mind that people would read these things and know what he was thinking and what he had said. my grandmother and the other hand had not been president and figured that her business has their own business and nobody else's.

he came home in 1955 around christmas and found her in front of the fire tossing and stacks of letters she had to end. he stopped her and said "dear harry, love bess," what are you doing? think of history. he said i have a cat tossing. if she wrote as often as he did, which is likely, she burned more than 1200 letters, more than 1100 or 1200 letters. the one she met scott machinist missed and what greg s. so was enacted or housekeeping. they were talking books, stuffed in the back of drawers. >> there is 184 she has done around. what did you come to find them? >> guest: my mother in the early 1980s, a year or so before my grandmother type, my mother asked for an inventory of everything in the house and archivist just on the letters.

into seventh reason to and into a box and took them to the truman library. >> host: and in the letters, can you tell us about the timeframe from the letters? what part of their life does the letterwriting span? >> guest: and it is odd that it actually does stand. there's one from 1919 come in the of world war i. the rest are from 192-32-1943, which is essentially grampus tenures as county judge, count it in a straighter in jackson county missouri and the tenures he was u.s. senator. deserted his political apprenticeship for the president be. but this 20 years leading up to. and they actually hold together pretty well. they're pretty linear considering she stuffed the mentors. close to one of the things i noticed is it's true. she probably did earn 100

letters because in the times you have the letter she threatens, its almost every day or within a couple three days at aerating back and forth. so they really did have it least it seems to me to be pretty committed relationship. and i wonder if you could speak to what you've learned or if you could care to raise their relationship that you learned about by reading the letters. >> guest: i always knew they were close, but i did not realize how close. there's no way to know that the letters of my grandmother that we have from a certain year, from a two-week period -- from 23233, they were written very often when grandpa went off to national guard training camp for two weeks every summer. so you have a two-week period in july or august. but we have no way of knowing whether we have also letters in 1923 or 1925, said there may be

some missing from that. they are missing from the two-week period. so they wrote each other twice a day very often. and grampus back -- again we have -- i think we have all of his. so you have from one to read. you have 35 letters going back and forth. >> host: one of the things i love about these letters is for anybody who has nostalgia about the lost art of letterwriting and how this is the primary way that people kept in touch in the early 20th century. so you get a sense of day-to-day life. actually at a rate twice a day to each other. there was one example of a letter and maybe you can tell the viewers about it, where she decided she really missed terry because i want to give it to you. she found something in your bed at night.

>> host: that was the first one i read because i was used to the 80-year-old bess truman. no nonsense, don't mess with your grandmother. behave yourself, nice lady unless you cross her. and that's the kind of the walls or put marbles on the grade. thousand 8-year-old woman a new who is very sure of herself, very sure of how she ran her household to the first letter i read when i got to know what she was complaining there was a black bug in the bed that night and she had to kill it yourself. you run off and go play soldier and i have to kill the bug. so i thought that was interesting in a 39-year-old grandmother didn't like bugs. >> host: you talk actually a bit about how your grandmother as a sort of stern woman because she was your grandmother and she was six years old or so and realize you were a defendant of the u.s. president. he said you got to know her as a

woman and i said when you read her letter. i wonder if you could share any other stories are letters you read along this line. >> host: it really is -- it's a wonderful thing for a family member, for a grandchild to meet to go back in time and get a chance to meet your grandmother when she is essentially younger than i am now. so meaning faster than that are denied, 42, 44. and just getting a window on her life, finding out what she was like, at least in my grandmother had a sense of humor, but all through the letter she's teasing my grandfather. i think one of the second letter i read was she asked him, wouldn't you like your slippers? an army camp? and i went back and found this letter and says why she offering? because he had to walk to the shower every morning. he would get out on the road or whatever they had laid down the

boardwalk in go down to the communal shower and she's teasing him. wouldn't you like your slippers? so she asked him questions. also, she worried about him. they treated these national guard encampment as a vacation, they break. grandpa was working within a very corrupt, very difficult county government. he was the only honest guy in it. to give them headaches, heart palpitations. he lost sleep. so going off into the woods at camp ripley or fort leavenworth and shooting cannons and riding horses around was a really nice break -- war as a break for politics. but she was always asking, what do they camped out to say? how is your heart? are you getting enough food? are you sleeping? she was always worried about his

health. and teasing him and admonishing him at the same time. >> host: he had a clean bill of health. she said that they didn't look at your counsel. >> guest: didn't believe it. didn't even look at it. >> host: one of the things i loved about the book is how it really painted a picture of what it hiller bass was for harry throughout their relationship. i wonder, could you pull for many letters or characterize how they relied on each other and what kind of support she provided him? >> guest: it's interesting. he often said and he said in a letter they are indeed late 20s or early 30s -- i think early 30s, he had come back from national guard early because there was some problem with the court that he had to deal with. but the wait seemed to have been presented in the letters are not your were kind of sketchy. we only have one or two so that

actual chat or has one of her letters in three of his. so you figure out what happened by goading her frilly around what she is said and what she had done. apparently grandpa came home and she was expecting to see him. they missed each other and she was really expecting him to spend time with him and my mother. he came home and went to the courthouse and stayed and stayed in when he finally got home, she apparently let them have it. the letter he wrote afterwards afterwards -- it's the only time they really saw some friction between the two of them. she was very angry with him and he was angry back on the same you know, i can't do this job unless i have you back emea. i can't deal with these people. i can't go through the stress. i can't do it unless i know you're okay and everything on this happy happy and are holding

down the fort in she apparently had not done that. so he said that was just the last straw for me. and they patched it up afterwards and i think she felt badly about it. that was the only time i have heard -- any amount of serious friction. they got into it over her haircut in 1925. >> host: the golden curls. >> guest: grandpa first on my grandmother when he was six when she was five and a school in here member for the rest of his sights a little girl with the golden curls and the blue eyes and a fellow moderate love right then and there. there is absolutely no evidence either the as anybody else. he fell in love right then and there and kind for her for the next 20 years while she worked him completely. >> host: because they got married in life quietly. >> guest: they were both in their mid-30s when they got married.

but their courtship -- he was born in 1884. he was in 1885. although they went all the way to school together. grade school and high school, graduated together. she had not really looked at him in that capacity. >> host: one of these letters admonished her for wanting to cut her hair. >> guest: this is 1925. other women cut their hair short pre-she apparently started this argument at home. they must have because the letter jay starts right in and says why would she let them get a haircut? and the only woman under 60 who still has long hair. the schoolteachers have it cut. your cousins, they look great. why won't you let me do it? in his next letter, nothing. right in the horses, shooting their guns, not a word. >> host: no word about whether she cut his hair.

>> guest: maybe they cost in the mail, but he's kind of like under skin to keep my mouth shut and seal it had. the next letter from her is come on. she actually said he used the word. if it looks that, it'll grow back out. let me do it. finally comes back in the float, go ahead and do it if you want to. i mean, i want you to be happy. i want you to do what she wants to do. and then he says he usually do anyway. i wasn't sure you were pulling my leg on this one. just go ahead and do it. then she writes and says thank you. that's wonderful. but apparently doesn't believe that because a few days later the letters start again. so it's okay to get the haircut? pathetic but at barber? he thought he'd finished it. apparently not. >> host: he said in the 1930s.

there were fewer letters do not tell us that the decade were your mother was born. and this is also, as you notice in the letters, first it's between them and it's very clear they have a solid edge. but then margaret emerges, your mother, margaret truman and she starts writing in the letters. she appears as a character. and they have a very close relationship, the three of them. i wonder if you could -- >> host: >> guest: they were the trio. the very tight family group. i think that's the way they work, but also my grandmother had had two miscarriages before my mother was born. so she was very precious to them and they were in the habit of markets, so that was that. she was the only one they're going to have. their relationship is different. grandpa doted on her. she could do no wrong. my grandmother felt she uttered not like to bake for her

britches. she was born february 1924 and her first contributions to the letters -- and i couldn't show it in the book, but they are squiggles. she said mark wrote something for you. but she sent that along that night. eventually she started adding postscripts. i think when she was six or seven yourself with your dad, hope you have fun shooting of the canons, love margaret. so she does become a kerry shirt. and my grandmother's reporting always includes my mother. pianola sons, dresses, whatever she was doing, later on dates, movies, think she was interested in an grandpa was having a rates are my grandmother, saying get her to you. it's an icy tone of this stuff, but why isn't she picking up a pen, to? another's tatami, a trophy match he always made me write. and typical church is a what am

i going to say? that he was very serious, they both were about keeping in touch. >> host: one of the things the american public has this image of the 1944 convention and it is scary and margaret smiling to the cameras and waving and bess is a bit more removed. i think she often had the impression that the american people that she was the navigation of political life of her husband, but that is a very different story than the letters tell, especially throughout the course of his political career. so did she like politics? >> guest: she loved it. and the series of photos -- she is glowering. i mean, my mother and grandfather's land and everybody in my grandmother's site is because she knows she's afraid of what's happening. he's about to be nominated for the vice president and if he gets the office and then roosevelt is very -- she sits

there thinking where's this going? and sure enough she was right. but she was engaged. she loved -- i almost want to say she loved to live vicariously through grandpa. she had her own family, friends, love, the things she wanted to do. she didn't want to be in politics but she loved hearing from him and was very opinionated. early on when he was a judge, all the roads are dirt. and you have to oil them, spread oil to keep the dust down because otherwise the oils in people's living rooms and buried the furniture. apparently they had been oiled in a while and one after another, some ladies in the area work on my grandmother and said we need a road oiled. finally she reports easter grandpa says they must have a leak out here. people who need their road soiled. so she would go between. there's also later later on in name team 27, 1929 someone

called and asked if grandpa was very fund-raising dinner for an attorney -- a kansas city attorney who is running for senate in one adjudge trumans backing. and my grandmother thought no, i don't know about that. so she called tom pendergast to win the democratic she and jackson county and said, should he be doing this? and pendergast came back and said no. tell him to stay out of all sites now. so my grandmother then reports mr. grandpa. she goes to the guy who asked about the dinner and my stamina and adjust says i'm sorry. judge truman will be back for another week. he couldn't possibly do it. so she's playing the game a little bit along with it. and later letters in the 30s and 40s, very opinionated about president roosevelt and the people around him. grandpa would report something would happen in congress and

she'd say of course they do that kind of thing. she was very, very in boston you can tell that from the letters. >> host: she also had newspaper clippings. >> guest: any story, anything that would interest him or anything he would miss by being away at national guard camp in the 20th and on senate investigative committee from the 30s. >> host: did her attitude changed my timeshift local politics in missouri to when he went to the senate and was involved in washington? >> guest: no, you can see in a letter she more astute. she understands politics on the national scene, the national stage. she's very good at it. she became very opinionated. and she was a founding lawyer. he could come home at the end of a hard day or even in the mail he reports what he is doing and how difficult it is. he can come home and say you would believe, like anybody

would. >> host: and now, "dear harry, love bess" with sometimes criticized how the plea for not being in washington with her husband. there is an event early in her life, which may have formed how she embraced the public. i wonder if you could talk about that. >> guest: it goes back to the photo to 44 convention that she looks like she's glowering and didn't like the whole thing. when she was 18 years old, her father, david willig wallace committed suicide in the family home. david wallace had been one of the nicest men in independent spirit is a sweet man, would give you the shirt off his back. he was great with his kids. my grandmother loved him. he aspired to a political career and it had not gone well at her. he is a minor quotes, but he

didn't have the career you wanted. he was not making the money that he wanted and needed. he thought he needed to keep match case flawless to the life in which she had become accustomed. george porterfield caves. and david was constantly borrowing money, especially from his father-in-law, which was calling because his father-in-law had that up front that he didn't think david had much of a future. all of this, david has never tempered man, that he drank more and more heavily and it finally cut to him and he killed himself. my grandmother i think she was crashed and she was furious that he abandoned her, abandoned the family. one of the friends commend mary paxton said she went to the house to see what she could do and she found my grandmother walking back and forth in the backyard with her face all the better sides, just walking had

down. not talking. mary didn't say anything to her. she just walked and kept her company for a while. after that, my great-grandmother , david's widow retreated in the family even went to denver, colorado. the stigma of suicide in 1934 was a lot different than today and they were treated to colorado and came home, went to live in a cave mansion with my grandmother's grandfather that she called the home for the rest of her life. she became the head of the family. match retreated, didn't go out much. and my grandmother ran the household. so two things. she was weary of public life because she didn't want an economy now. should some of the stigma again at her father's suicide coming out. and she let grandpa and the white house because there is a lot of poll from her mother to come home and then the family. should my grandfather wanted and

the white house sanus places lonely. there goes in here. come back and keep me company. and her mother is like when are you coming home? i need your help. so she got caught in a tug-of-war. >> host: you think that contributed to her reservations about embracing the public. there is one he wrote she said her favorite form of interview with favorite q&a. >> guest: w hen she got into office, let grandpa got into office, mrs. roosevelt had weekly conferences. in another canceled those in shortly after stop taking spoken questions. she requested all questions be in writing and her comment nine times out of 10 was no comment. this should get these like no comment, none of your business. she said early on that the role of a political wife was to sit next her husband come to be quiet and make sure her hat was found straight.

the little regressive. >> host: with that, we'll go to break and we'll be back in just a moment. >> host: we are back with clifton truman daniel, talking about his book, "dear harry, love bess," bess' letters from 1990 to 1943. and you're just about to tell me another set of things he learned about your grandmother that she didn't know before you read these letters and got to know her as an adult. just do we talk about the various references to nightgowns. and that's another thing about getting to know your grand

parents when they were younger if they don't talk about that sort of thing to their children. there's nothing overtly -- >> host: there's like a whole nightgowns section in the letters. maybe you can tell us. >> guest: they keep cropping up. >> host: i remember he did read something about a racy negotiate. >> guest: she reported that likely. it was a tossup sentence. went shopping today. bought a new nightgown for me. nice to report that appeared that better though with a nightgown story, almost everyone of those letters, his and hers family. the letters with his so you have an talking back and forth to each other. on either side of almost every letter starts with and really had you got your letter or letters today.

or i'm not so happy. i didn't get a letter. what are you doing? and they would make up -- sometimes they would be elaborate excuses. if the letter had not shown up. they were too confident the. when she gives as it is like a run-on sentence. i couldn't get fridays ago the post office and the post office was not in any way. and then the car broke down. in any part another car that broke down. she goes on and on about how she couldn't get to the post office. so they're either really complicated a really interesting. the interesting what you may wishes that i'm sorry i didn't get a letter to you but it was so hot last night i couldn't keep on enough clothes to have a way to read right. the sort of thing that grandchildren grow -- don't want to know that, thank you very much. but that kind of stuff has come up before. in this country we don't talk

much about presidential relations. david mccullough and his book, his 93 broke trueman told a great story about migrant parents. almost the entirety of his second term he lived in the blair house because the white house was rotten and falling apart. grandpa would be in the state dining room downstairs, hosting a stag dinner. he knew it was just my grandmother upstairs in the chandelier was quivering a shoebox back and forth. finally a piano leg punched through the floor of my mother sitting room. they eventually cleared everybody out, gutted the white house and rebuilt it from the inside out. early on by the way and one of those, they ran to hold the fluoride. they stabilized steel rods they ran from the ceiling to the floor so my grandparents and mother could stay there for a few days and get all the furniture out and get things set.

and grandpa loved the history of the white house would like to share it took a group of reporters on a tour at the upstairs and showed them, and there is the whole of the floor. this is how bad this is. and he stopped outside of his bathroom upstairs and one of the steel rods had been run down through the floor and said he know this thing scares me. i'm going to be sitting in here some night and i'm going to flash and wind up in the state dining room. last night at either the bid will play hail to the chief if i come through. anyway, so they are at blair house in a kind of like warehouse. it was smaller, intimate. my grandmother liked it because you couldn't for the big state dinners. it is more family it was a beautiful home. so they are over there and they've been on one of the separation, months apart. my grandmothers had to go back to the independence to take care of her family and they've been apart and is hard for them to be a part as we can see from all

these letters. and when she arrived, the atmosphere was the lack chert. the staff remembered and david wrote about this. he said the staff -- everybody was in a good mood because they were so happy to see each other. there was so much love in the air. the next morning my grandmother came downstairs and approached the head usher inside there's a little -- we have a problem on the second floor. and i room -- one of the flats on the bed is broken. [laughter] so apparently there's just these wonderful little hint about it, that they had >> host: a strong and healthy marriage in many ways. >> guest: that is one of the things that really draws you into the book that it's a love story. >> guest: they had a great romance like i said earlier. she ignored him.

>> host: early in their courtship he had proposed to her in one of the letters. >> guest: he almost blew it. he proposed in after about six months of letter writing and visiting he said what would you think about wearing a solitaire? nothing. no response. i think it went on for a week or 10 days. nothing. and he wrote again and again and said i'm sorry if i jump the gun. finally -- i don't know whether she did it in writing or whether she spoke to him, but she turned him down and apparently she did it so nicely that he said that was so gentle, so nice that i almost don't feel bad. and we'll go right back to being friends. if it is a crayon right again and come see you, but don't worry about any pressure. he lied. over the next couple of years, there's a little pressure that begins to creep in any back south again. he can't help himself.

finally, when he thought he had no chance at all, she actually tells him, if i marry anybody in this life, it will be you. it apparently left him speechless. for the guy who poured his heart out on paper and person, did nothing to say. he apparently sat there with his mouth hanging open. finally prompted my grandmother to see harry truman come you are an enigma. the courtship lasted from 1910 to 1919 when he came back from world war i. >> host: speaking of which, the cutter of bess on the hook, the photo here is a special photo that resembles that courtship. >> host: >> guest: that's the one he kept in his tunic pocket all through the war. she had agreed to marry him before the war and he had told her no. he said and i think his words were, i will not have you tied

to a cripple or a sentiment should he come back wounded -- severely wounded or be killed. so he wasn't going to make her a widow. he said when i come back in one piece people get married. he stopped in new york at tiffany about the rain, the wedding band and the time and he gave her. he had months and months of back pay so he could afford it. >> host: not your mother major grant others letters public in the mid-1980s. >> guest: correct. but she did not do the same with your grandmother's letters. >> guest: no. >> host: why? >> guest: i think -- and i remember asking her in the mid-80s after she -- bob ferrell did the book, dear bess. he is half of my grandfather's letters and collected them in a boat. i asked another. she told me about these letters inside are you going to do something with those?

she vaguely i don't know. i remember asking her even that and when i was in my 20s. and then even the next decade and is in my 30s and i began to write about my grand parents, asked again if you're not going to do anything, can i do something? again, maybe. and she sort of put me off. i think honestly she was respected my grandmother's wish for privacy. she did make 10 or 15 of them public. there are a limited display at the truman library in 1998 for a month. >> host: 1998 was the first that anybody in the united states ever had this kind of access. but it was only 15 letters. and there's 184 here. so how do you think that your grandmother would feel knowing that you, her grandson with the long hair had published two letters? >> guest: and no, i don't

know. i think she had a deal with my mother. she and my grandfather both had a deal with my mother. my mother wrote best-selling books on each of them in 1973 about the grandfather in 1983 or 84 about the grandmother. and the deal was you don't write about it until after work on. so i'm not making these letters public until well after she's gone. so i don't think -- and again, they were really nice portraits. they were a lot of fun. i really enjoyed bess truman as a younger woman, as a mother, as repairing the furniture, shopping, ironing, getting involved in politics, taking potshots at her friend, teasing my grandfather. she was a lot of fun to be around. >> host: is your -- are there

some other people that were discussed in the letters? casco well it runs the gamut. roosevelt -- >> host: roosevelts for example. give us an example. >> guest: both of them were angry at the president for -- grandpa had won a senate seat in 1934 and was getting ready to run again in 1940 and it turned out to be a very hard-fought race was a lot of sort of a prelude to the 1938 presidential race seat at the same thing. he didn't do a whistle stop him and that he got in his cart and drove over misery giving these speeches. so as a template for 1948. it worked in 1950. he had opposition from lloyd stark. stark had come to an early on and said don't worry. i won't run against you. this is after grandpa helped me to governor.

don't worry. i'm not after your senate seat. he lied. he did talk to the senate seat and originally fdr saying he was going to back and. weaseled is reason to fdr's good graces and fluttering in pushing in that direction and fdr looked like he was buying it. ultimately he did not. after a few months of this, fdr figured out stark was not the guy that he wanted and spun back to grandpa. but the top of that in the boat. my grandmother set up on point that they think they can get along without it for 1940, they've got another thing coming. >> host: she also taught about tom pendergast, who is the democratic boss in missouri. what was bess' view of pendergast was >> guest: like my grandpa, she doesn't say much about him except that she pays him that respect that when grandpa was

being asked to do certain things she goes to tom and does do i need to do this? i think she held the same view that my grandfather did that nevermind pendergast politics or his way of doing things. he supported my grandfather. he was a friend and grandpa was loyal to the rest of his life. even with two funerals vice president when pendergast had been disgraced. he had been imprisoned and people are saying to my grandfather coming of the vice president state. do not go to that funeral. and grandpa said i never forget a friend. i'm going to the funeral. my grandmother held views. they were very, very loyal to my friends and kept that and did things for people they befriended. they were always helping out in little ways, making sure everyone was all right. she talks about their extended

family. her brothers and children unaltered. she's always supported not to have been touching a's with what is going on. so she really kept the friendships going back home when he was working. >> host: through the letters reports that back to them. >> guest: right. that falls into a pattern. would be that camp this is what i'm doing and this is what i'm doing at home. they were all up and put the two together and you've got their entire marriage. >> host: what do these letters at the historical record in terms of the truman as president he and understanding not? >> guest: i just want to say humanity. you don't often get to hear presidential -- a president and first lady speaks together like this, just the normal that some of their lives, to understand. i understand a lot better who

they were and what they were like, what they meant to each other and to their friends. and through that, with their lives were like, what the support of them. you begin to get some idea of how that shaped him as the president also he was pretty much the same kind of shape early on. grandpa became harry truman early on in his life in pretty much stayed true to himself. her too. they were both very strong-willed, very opinionated. >> host: do you think there's anything criticism that transfer was more in love with harry truman than harry truman was split bess. >> guest: now, grandpa would tell you if you ask them, do you love bess truman? if you asked my grandmother, she was able yes, of course i love them. what business is it of yours? i don't talk about it. she kept her emotions in check.

much more reserved until she was. and all the responsibility she had. although, you catch her in the unguarded moment when she reports that she got up at 5:00 in the morning. just so she can see them in their underwear. i wouldn't miss seeing mrs. smith in underwear for a hundred dollars. >> host: what was the funniest letter that you had? >> guest: there's some in almost every letter. he's often investigating waste and fraud in the military that the robbery of the united states railroad and people are losing millions and billions of dollars on the railroads are fouling

apart. and while you're at it, wanted to investigate the goods they put on envelopes could i can't get that stick. they take a nice big complex issue and trivialize it. going against the team she wasn't political at all. in 1942 she writes about a radio speech he'd given the night before and says your radio technique has improved and they were just as the speech teacher had told her you. so she had some speech coaching to teach more properly on the radio. she says maybe would be a good idea to take a few speechlessness also appeared but if you do it again i cracked my. so those contradict yourself, thinking maybe i shouldn't sleep and too much. he did really well.

>> host: it also goes to show she was involved in the political correct route even though the american public had this notion she was and at have really aged. >> guest: the story from key west with the take the president and the economy immediately improves. >> host: what was in key west? >> guest: got ahead of 1946, couldn't shake it. his doctors said go someplace where. they said we've got a submarine base in key west and you can get anything further south than i believe it's nice and warm. >> host: had risible than it previously? >> guest: grandpa moved in, lots of stock and barrel and spend 170 days of his presidency, 11 working vacations in qs. one of the early ones had my mother was make her concert

debut he was going to leave because he wanted to be in washington to hear her and john said, you know, if i get it typed in here, which he staid cleaves? grandpa said yes, but he was going to hear that concert one way or the other. scourge on how to death because grandpa had to help him change licenses because john had nbc station broadcasting cbs of these which licenses for a day. john sat with grandpa and watch the whole thing grandpa that are you enjoying yourself? and he said no. he said why not? i'm a nervous wreck. something can a break down. i'm sitting here with the president of the united states and abroad. grandma says relax. you'll be okay. >> host: i think one of the best endorsements anyone could have a book is the one that pico bash on tv on the book and said more and more we learn about how best truman, who she was with her emotional support and wife's private counsel was to the world

changing history of her husband as a seed. even now she remains somewhat of a mysterious first lady and how the support and vote, she writes dear has been is a vivid portrait of their marriage. we came fresh understanding of how crucial to strong-minded passwords to hairy enough ultimately to the american people. >> host: she was strongly in. what are some other examples of her maybe strong headedness? it does also appear throughout the letters. >> guest: very opinionated, very strong-minded about herself, politics, their friend, who should be doing what. she was the opposite. after attacking a earlier earlier, kind of a dead peered he talked earlier about my long hair. >> host: this is something she

referred to when you're 15. >> guest: she was very positive. grandpa hated long hair. he couldn't stand us. this was in 1971. could barely bring himself to speak to us. two years after he died, she was visiting us in new york -- i'm in washington d.c. in my hair at that point was where i could tuck in my front pocket. at that time breakfast and my mother was across the kitchen making bacon and eggs in my grandmother centinela voice, my goodness you have beautiful hair. another dropped a spatula and stepmother for god sake, don't tell them something like that. he'll never get it cut. sure enough the next time a mother said you'd look a little better if he just -- i said no, best truman likes my hair. the truman library your seat or give me a letter from a grandmother to a friend that said the metal, it's too bad

she's having all that trouble with those hippies. it's time something with them about it. >> host: referred to her son? >> guest: no, we don't know. it seems time something has gone about this hippies. when i saw my grand things with those. she is going to overlook underlayment mother. >> host: so any last morsel you can give the viewers in terms of a letter or surprise, something you might not have known about s. truman or harry truman? >> guest: i think he said it. it shows -- it is a picture of who she was. i get this a lot when i give speeches. people bring that up. your grandmother deserted your

grandmother in the white house. she didn't love him. her mother did my crisis on a mob. if you read this book that it's not one-sided at all. she says in one early letter, please keep on loving just as hard as ever. you know, she really needed. and he needed her. they were very, very close. they've known each other since they were five and six years old. all through school together, long courtship. >> host: how many years were they married? >> guest: great. i could not. 1919 to 1872, so 53 years. >> host: well, it's an incredible contribution. it's a wonderful book really there wasn't a lot about that before that for now we have hurt her own hands after the lens of her critics that who got to know

not just in person, but also as an adult. who may have some reckoning to do. >> guest: yeah, someday. >> host: thank you very much, clifton for sharing the letters from your grandmother. >> guest: thanks, margaret. >> when the president and the congress were debating after the 2010 elections whether the bush tax cuts would be extended because of the recession and whether it be a bad idea to raise anybody's taxes than this down economy, one of the things the republicans said his tax cuts are as wonderful in a down economy, but spending cuts don't hurt at all.

which is self-evidently crazy. for instance, there's really no difference microeconomic point of view as their friends in the u.k. are finding now when they look for an austerity response for the current circumstance. one of the things they wanted to get rid of was 16 to three tax credit. they said it was a spending program. this is the kind of argument that ought to be held in the seminary over some obscure provision of scripture. in my opinion. could you be the judge. republicans say we ought to get rid of 1603. it's a spending program, not a tax code. and it is, but it is sent. on the congress did things like loan guarantees for new energy companies, like the infamous lender loan guarantee, it's actually adopted during the bush

administration, sent by president bush and supported at the time they almost all the republicans on the energy committee. and it's hard sometimes to pick winners and losers. that is not what 1603 does. 16 of three recognizes the light of a built in solar and wind are start up companies. so if you give them a 30% tax credit would ordinarily give someone for building this fear factory, it will be worthless because they've met with come to claim the credit begins. so what 1603 does is basically give them cash equivalent tax credit if their startups. if you just don't like solar and wind energy and you want to keep any other tax credits for traditional energy, you can make that argument. but a very significant number

they have used 1603. so my argument is that ought to be extended because we've cut out and the more facilities in solar and wind power, which are becoming more economical every time. the price drops about 30% for solar and wind every time the double capacity. solar in particular has had significant technological advances in the last three years. it's ironically one of the recent cylinder went down down because the type elegy -- other type ologies get cheaper or faster than figured and took them out of a competitive mix. so i like 1603 and i think it should be continued because we should be supporting startups as well as existing companies in a very significant percentage for the last 20 years to come not just small businesses, but from

small businesses that were five years old or younger. so this is the kind of thing. my argument is we should build shared prosperity be competitive and backup commands they command say how do we get there? what is the private sector supposed to do? if you do that instead of saying government or no government from you see 1603 is a heckuva good deal a deal to keep doing it. beatnik since you mention the end of 2010 i wanted to give you an opportunity to repeat something he said to me earlier, which is the one part of your book where you feel you give the president a bum rap was around the debt ceiling debate. since that's been covered shallot -- >> i was really upset and i didn't know whether it was the white house or congress that resisted raising the debt ceiling in 2010 after we lost the election.

>> when we still had the majority. >> quickly so that the majority. i knew if we wait until january the republicans would drive it very hard work in. and so, i said in a very kind of muted way for reasons still unclear to me this didn't happen. and gene sperling actually sent me an e-mail and said, who worked for me as a scrupulously honest person said we tried. you know, we did make a big deal out of it because the main subject was where the bush era tax cuts going to be extended, but dishes you -- i'm trying to force myself to say once a day, either i don't know or i was wrong. because they think it would be therapeutic if everyone in washington did that. and so, here's something i i was wrong about. since raising the debt, simply

ratified a decision congress has already made to spend money. and since the budget the only thing the senate votes on, that it's not subject to a filibuster. i thought that the debt ceiling boat was not subject to filibuster and i was wrong. the gene sperling sent me a message. he said that under mcconnell said he was going to filibuster unless we agree great until their budget. so it turns out he couldn't raise the debt ceiling and i was wrong. it didn't hurt too bad. last night and that's one would get less ideological policy because people find errors they make. >> moving a bit out of washington, one of the things that you do frequently in the book is cite examples of kind of

where you think this sort of appropriate partnership and shared responsibility between government and the private or is working at the state level. maybe you can talk a bit about your theory of data and share examples particularly time as governor of arkansas what worked then and also let us continue to work in a quick subsequently in arkansas. >> host: >> well, first i think we americans are used to people at the state and local level hustling business, trying to save business and expand business and locate businesses there. and it is largely a bipartisan activity undertaken perhaps it very models of the sumerian buyer collect that officials. but one reason i was able to stay governor for a dozen years but never got bored with the job and want to does the whole

economic development aspect. and the interesting thing is in most every state in the country, although it's got more partisan mouth 2010, but i think that will settle down. it's largely a night duty. and so i tried to cite some areas in the book. for example, to give you one practical it and pull, there is a long section in the book about what i would like to see done to clear the mortgage debt more quickly. and i guess i should back up and say, these kinds of financial crashes take historically five to 10 years to get over. if you have a mortgage component pushes it toward 10 years. we should try and beat that caught. we cannot do it in my opinion even if i'm for the jobs president plan. so give us 1.5, 2 million jobs

according to the economic analyses. if you want to return to full employment economy, what i think we average 227,000 or eight years, if you want that you have to flush the debt and had been claiming going again. and so dennis rogoff at harvard recommends this and some people say well, if we lower the mortgage rate, if we bring the mortgage down the value of the house, and the people who hold the mortgages will lose money. who's going to compensate them and what's it going to be? broke off suggested that the banks are the people who hold the mortgages and instead of writing them down just cut them in half a taking an ownership position in the house so when the house is ultimately sold,

the people who issued the mortgage were on the mortgage will share in the profit and you get the same practical result. you no longer have a bad debt on the books. the homeowner has a mortgage she can no longer pay. when i was governor in the late 70s and early 80s and affirm it got in trouble, we have been hundreds of small state-chartered tanks who did not want to foreclose on the farmers. they knew they were just having a couple of bad years and they couldn't pay their fair month of and they didn't want to take possession, so we allowed the banks. we change the love of the banks take an ownership position in the fire and gave the farmer in absolute buyback rate in the full title once they could pay off the farm loan. >> watch this and other programs online at the