there's a cleaning woman featured in the book from ohio who writes because she is just been diagnosed with leukemia and she doesn't have health insurance. he then comes to her own town and gives a speech. they stay in touch them right back many times. he sort of make sure the icon for his health care reform. most of the stores are like that. they are people he writes back and forth with many times. >> eli saslow's new book, "ten letters: the stories americans tell their president." ..

link is absolutely everything. you start how many words, how many letters. you have to compress the length. there are a couple things you can't do with that land. hard to tell narrative story. takes time to set up. hard to do in-depth reporting which by the time he set a scene you have 600 of your 800 words. a calm compared to that is one idea and you hammer that idea. i tried to use michael's more negatively. try to tell a story. it is really compressed. with a book you can spend a couple years on something. you develop a more in-depth knowledge and can do it in a more narrative form with more natural thinking and you can do a bill better capturing the climate of something with a column that is pretty much who

is doing what and very specific. we are influenced by culture more than personality or individuals so you concur try to capture more culture. >> host: we'd want to focus on your columns later but let's begin with your books and whether the vote you have written or read, what makes it a good read? what are you looking for? >> guest: at the grandest you want it to change your life in a serious way. you want it to log in your head. i'm a big believer in books. book on the most important thing any writer does. if you spend time with a book you will spend a significant amount of time with it and you are going to remember it if it is a decent book. you go through a thousand tweets, of thousand blog posts and most flitch through your brain but a book you engage with and you become at best emotionally involved even in a nonfiction book and because that emotional involvement transfers from short-term memory to short-term -- long-term memory

it gets burned in your brain. you move along with the characters and you learn to move the way they do and you learn to see the world they do and certain things lodge in your memory forever. my day-to-day life i cover politics and i watched president obama react to the press and i read about dwight eisenhower for example and on his last day in office eisenhower says do you think the press corps has been fair to you in your time in office? and he said i guess there's nothing a reporter can do that can hurt me. here is a guy who had been through d-day and all this stuff and you get the whole complexity of his personality and that anecdote to illustrate this certain style of living and being president and a lesson of that episode which our current politicians could learn from because they spend too much time reacting to criticism when they should say i am doing what i am

doing, sort of death of security that eisenhower had. >> guest: >> host: looking at who you write about, there are a lot of things. one is the book is spirit of america by henry van dyke. why do you use him as such a strong preference point? >> guest: van dyke as crucial insight which is america's energy. there are many scenes throughout american history but i would say energy is the one thing that sets us apart. another writer accumulated in the 50s and 60s and 70s a whole bunch of data that makes it acceptable. he didn't say better but he said different and he said this exceptional is amid the two edged sword. so he said for example americans move more than other people, switch jobs more, we marry and divorce more and murder each other more so there is good and bad but that energy and mobility

that vandyke served and put that the core. i try to get the spirit of who we are a lot of the riding and that in sight -- >> let's build into the human energy we have in this country. do we still have it today in 2011? >> guest: one point i make is -- observed a certain style of life that we call the american style of life. a lot of us had no ancestors here in the 1830s. yet we still view that style of life and have that mobility. you asked the energy. where does the energy come from? the story itel is a moral materialism. europeans came to this continent hundreds of years ago. they saw vast forests and flocks of geese. it took 45 minutes to take off. they saw land stretching to infinity and had two thoughts.

the first was god's plan for humanity could be completed here and the second is they get rich in the process. that was right from the get go. a moral materialism. amoral drive but also a material drive and the confluence and attention between those two drives the more it material has been propelling us. the puritans had this concept -- we have a calling to be wholly and a calling to succeed and prosper on earth. i would say that exists until the current moment. ben and jerry's ice-cream the persian afford -- whole foods supermarket are joking one of the books that wholefoods are a progressive groups is to look like a cashiers are on loan from amnesty international. that stretches back hundreds of years. >> host: in the book you say we might not all be chasing the same thing but we are chasing

something. what defines us as a people are the pursuit and movement and tendency to head out. today's movement to ever more distant suburbs is really is the current iteration of the core american trade. >> in the nineteenth century there would be writers who go to ohio and at that point left early in the nineteenth century the western frontier. they noticed people would find an alley and keep going west even though that valley was pretty good because they assume something better across the next 0. this has positive and negative consequences. the positive consequence is doing things that are pretty innovative. for all the talk of american decline that culture of adventuress this and innovation is still there. the negative consequences are in evidence. i talk about it in the book. much more obvious -- if people of moving to places like henderson, nevada, douglas

county, to experience a new -- is clear lot of those people are moving into homes they couldn't afford stretching themselves too far, taking big risks and a lot of bankers and mortgage lenders also taking big risks and underestimating the difficulties they would encounter if this bubble popped. a lot of those places i wrote about in that book in particular in fast-growing suburbs especially in rocky mountain areas of the town, florida, all went pop. that is to the downside of the venture is this. we move out and find ourselves on occasion in a world of pain. >> host: so-called mcmansions. not only the size of the home but the size of the drink you buy at 711. >> guest: everything got magnified. in those days especially four five years ago there were hummers driving down the road, it was like you put everything on steroids. people had this obsession -- normally your apartments and

homes have a nine foot ceiling and suddenly 15 or 20 foot ceilings, you could fly kites, i was writing about that at the peak of that moment when everything was just exploding. and so i said this is not something new in american history and i tried to draw on that book history and cultural history of our country which led people out of the mcmansion. it has a good side and the bad side and the good side is even though we go through these bubbles we come back and look for another bubble in the future but we seem to progress from bubble to bubble. >> host: what is and guber mom? >> guest: highly successful career woman taking time off to make sure the kids can get to harvard. they actually weigh less than their own children. exercise at the moment of conception and trying to leave their kids into perfect lives. their the ones who are taking them to soccer practice.

the early tiger moms before there was a tiger mom. in that i am making fun of the superachievement of those we have thrown in front of our kids especially upper-middle-class kids wear from the moment of conception they pop out of the womb in the delivery room and they're flashing little mandarin flashcards and getting them to stanford so i am making fun of that sort of super-achieving life which is another part of the media. in my most recent book i write about a woman who is a sociologist who looks at how we raise our kids and she says we don't raise our kids continually in america. there are two different styles. there is the cougarmoms style which is then your driving from week to please -- space to place which is what i do and my wife and i do but there's a more working class style based on the supposition that life is hard. let them relax.

in many ways this style is more healthy because they can explore the neighborhood. they can hang out with friends. it prepares them a less well on balance for the rigors of college and the admission committees and the job market. this vanik style has its downside. makes more narrow, less adventurous people but has some upside to criteria based on s.a.t. scores and grades and prepares for that. >> host: how many children do you have? >> caller: >> guest: three kids. >> host: what other personalities like? >> guest: quick difference as parents know. my oldest son is at indiana university. very social, somewhat job fish, very popular. daughter who is 17, applying to colleges and a high school senior and ice hockey player,

very tough and brave and the 12-year-old who is deeply into wrap these days. spend a lot of time analyzing, the west and reading about their lives and trying to understand america through that prison. they have the same upbringing, same genes from my wife and i and yet have pretty distinct possibilities. >> host: from pop culture and politics to the works of author david brooks who is our guest for the next three hours on booktv's index. we want to hear from you. 737-0001 for the eastern and central time zones. for those in the mountain and pacific time the loans, 77-0002. joy in the conversation on line on our twitter page or send us an e-mail at booktv@cc and.org. one other point. you spend a lot of time in

heritage talking about college campuss. i want to read one quote. you talk about the decline of scorcher that the absence of the romantic ideal. what is happening today? >> we have gone for a period work kiddies to go out. a pair up and they would go out on formal dates. in the 50s -- it was sort of like preparation for marriage. it was very monogamous and there were certain rituals about asking somebody out. going on dates. that has washed away. narratives more collective. there is much more a group going out. more of a hook up culture. the phrase hookup is incredibly vague. so some kids think hook up is some commitment and may be their partner thinks there is no commitment. very ambiguous concept. all the court should rules in the 50s and 60s and 70s have eroded away. i was teaching about the time are wrote that a young woman

from northern mississippi. the more conservative part of the country. seeking to the northeast and described the pattern at her high school where friday night was the eighth night. would pair up and see a movie and get a meal and described her friends at school and they had never done anything like that. i got a letter saying something interesting which was in the nineteenth century novel they were reading, at the end of the novel the hero and the apps would get married and go away from their family and friends and their students couldn't understand that because their relationship with their friends was much more important than their relation to put their sexual partner. the friendship group was more important than the tough group. that is a significant thing. earlier generations grew up with the sting tools of courtship and

those rules are very washed away. as a result it takes people a lot longer to get married which has again ups and downs. i did a series of columns to describe their lives and one of the lessons you get is beware early marriages. people get married at 19 or 20 and some are wonderful. they last 50 years but a lot of people wrote to me got married before they knew themselves and they regretted it. spend 10 or 15 years in bad marriages. it is tough these days to live in a world where there are no social norms guiding you toward marriage. >> host: i want to ask about your first book, "bobos in paradise". you said it is a description of the ideology of the commanders and morals of the elite. start with the superficial things and work my way to the more profound. what have you learned? >> guest: we had a vision of to

the elite were in the 50s and 60s. they came over on the mayflower, they really dominated schools and banking. in 1950 if you applied to harvard your getting where 90% because your father was in harvard so you went to harvard and they passed down. by the 1960s that have all changed so it didn't matter what family you came from. it mattered what i q. you had. with a safety support you got or what grade you got. we had a different sort of elite based more on money and -- based on the facility of ideas. we have a group of people who were really good with creativity and ideas in the 1990s and today making lots of money. so they combine two value sets, middle-class benjamin forests

the r us and hippie values. had people like steve jobs who was half new age lsd taking 1960s hippy and half computer geek and corporate types so he is the ceo of a company walking around in bluejeans and a black t-shirt. that book about the replacement of the john d. rockefeller style of believe with the steve jobs style of elite and the lifestyle weather good things bigger arrester ration hardware, and bad things which is more self satisfied religious life. >> host: what is bobo? newseum >> guest: you combine bohemian and bourgeois you get bobo. you get ben and jerry's and people who buy -- one of the rules is it is football out that as vulgar to buy lobster when you spend any amount of money --

they have these lavish kitchens with subzero refrigerators. it wouldn't be cold enough. to describe their consumer but also the religious lives. i ran into a rabbi in montana and i said what kind of rabbi are you? conservative, orthodox or reform? he said i am flaxdocks. he did a few things orthodox and a few things that were flexible. he didn't want to tie it down so the bobo style, you want for satisfaction of orthodoxy so it is trying to emerge from 2 things. bill clinton was a perfect example because he grew up in the 60s with the radical marching in the 50s but he became a pretty big success story in american life trying to beat a political player.

he combines personal ambition with the bohemian life. >> host: two points about the book. you describe the n.y. times wedding page as the merger and acquisitions page. >> guest: going to the 50s and 60s they describe what family you came from and when your family came over on the mayflower. by the time you get to the 1990s it is your career that matters so goldman sachs matters. morgan stanley. 5 beta kappa would never marry summa cum laude because tensions would be too great. so it is really about one supreme court marion another and that sort of thing is the new belief. >> host: wayne, pennsylvania, public came out liberal six copies. why is that metaphor? >> guest: where we went to high school, my parents -- it is on

the main line. i keep making a contrast with the old establishment and the new establishment -- if anyone has seen the philadelphia story, it is a great movie. that is set on the main line of philadelphia. the old main line story of life. very upper crust. a lot of emotionally repressed and that was the old style. we went to high school. graduated from high school in 1979. that was still around. but now if you go back it is filled with restaurants and coffee bars and then that time this coffee shop has not gone out of business but there with a coffee shop which celebrated the parisian cafe where artists and intellectuals would gather which is the classic bohemian coffee shop. and it was a transition between a stalin fashion where i grew up where people would wear the

striped pretty pants and the thais and the projects and that was the protestant style and then moved over to a store near anthropology which was a chain upscale chain store where people are wearing fabrics from peruvian peasants so the transition from one style of elite to another style. >> host: viewers and listeners read your work. give them a brief biography. where you grew up, brothers and sisters. little where you went to college? >> guest: born in toronto. my father was a jewish store owner, grew up in a housing project on fourteenth street in new york city and went to a school called frazier school which is in lower manhattan. my father was teaching and why you and we moved to philadelphia. was not very good student in high school but i managed to get into the university of chicago and when there for four years.

did have the greatest time but got a great education. worked as a bartender for a year after college and got rejected from every magazine and america but started working as a police reporter and worked there for a while and coverage chicago politics for a while and had my big break. these are the things you can't plan. they just happen. when i was at college i wrote a humor column and i wrote a column making fun of william f. buckley for b.a. name dropping blowhard. he came to campus and gave a speech and he said david brooks, i want to give you a job. that was the big break. i called him up years later and he said is the offer still open and he said sure. i went to work there for 18 months. he served as a mentor to me teaching me how to write and introducing me to the world. taking me yachting and to concerts and things i have never done.

that i got a job at the washington times as a critic and another lesson that is a good listen especially early in your career, say yes to everything. i said yes. someone asked me to be on a radio show and i did that. they asked me to write about economics. our road about supply side economics and the wall street journal and hired me as a book review editor. i went there when i was 25 and reviewed books for three years and overseas to brussels, covered the decline of the soviet union. came back after four years and went to art editor, said no to a lot of people and a bunch of which is going strong with andy ferguson and chris called well. conservative magazine about the time newt gingrich was doing the republican revolution. did that for nine years and went to work at the times. i have done that. >> host: chris is on the phone from birmingham, michigan with

author and columnist david brooks. good morning. >> caller: i just wanted to ask what your thoughts were about the role and use of technology and education. clearly we have seen an explosion of this. use of art hads and computers in schools. i wanted to know your thoughts about that as well as what kind of parameters did you search within your own home as far as the use of technology? >> guest: excellent question. i looked into this little. i am a bit of a technology skeptic in the classroom. what ultimately matters is the individual relationship between the teacher and parent and student. people learn from people they love. if you don't have that relationship you really don't have anything. so there is no amount of technology that can replace that. there was a time a decade ago,

get a lot of laptops in the classroom than that will improve education and that has worked out. a lot of experiments that have been done have shown that access to the internet and technology doesn't automatically do anything. there was one study our read at duke where they measured the spread of high-speed wireless the christian two different neighborhoods and how the students did academically and it did not go up. academic performance went down a little as i recall. it is not a panacea. technology can be used intelligently. it can give teachers a more accurate grasp of which students are learning of what rate and what students are having what kind of problems. there is a feedback mechanism. it can be effective. we need to be pretty skeptical of it. as for my own home i face the same struggles and quandaries a lot of parents do which is how

much to limit and how good is it? my kids spend a lot of time online. you have to try to reserve some book reading. as i say the key thing is taking stuff that is in short-term memory and logic in long-term memory. how do you do that? you do it when you engage in the oceans and i think the blogs and tweets don't do that. you need to have it in book form and do it when there is difficulty in processing. there's a fund that is very easier mind and large over it. if there is something that is really hard it takes some effort and struggle. your much more likely to remember it so i lean a loni technoskeptical side. >> host: related note from your book "the social animal" wisdom does not come from specific facts or knowledge of a field but consists of knowing how to treat knowledge, being confident

but not too confidently does the adventures but grounded. a willingness to confront counterevidence and have a feel for the vast spaces beyond what is known. >> guest: that summarizes a lot of research in how to think. wants to we need is what they call matt accommodation which is thinking about our own thinking. being aware of what we don't know. we'll have a tendency toward overconfidence. 96% of college professors think they have a bunch of average teaching skills. we have a tendency to look for evidence that confirms our own biases ability to step back and say i don't really know that. i'm getting a little overconfident here is a skill that is tremendously important. look at warren buffet. he said i only had ten good ideas in my life. i knew which ideas were my bad ideas. the ability to do that is tremendously important. the ability to just -- adjust the strength of your conclusions

or your evidence is very important. that ability to restrain your natural tendency to want to believe what you already believe and have that reconfirmed is a tremendously important trade. some ways to think about. >> host: boise. a lot a whole, go ahead. >> caller: freely enjoy reading your book. you seem to be able to find the bright side in american stupidity but do you ever concern yourself with semi justified -- economic term would be moral hazard, morse to the 80, more access. >> guest: i tried to lean a bit on the optimistic side.

if you look at social science in the past and look at these books there's a tendency on a part of writers and intellectuals to the too negative. assuming that due is a brown the quarter and doom never comes. in the service of fairness and accuracy try to lean on the optimistic side. people will want -- look more intelligent when they're critical. it is easy to look critical. makes you look smarter than whoever you are writing for but i try to write from an attitude of admiration more than anything else because there are a lot of impressive people. i tried to write about them and record their research. one thing i would say is my latest book "the social animal" is really about our failures and the strengths and weaknesses of our unconscious thinking. most of what we think goes on unconsciously. some of the things the unconscious does are very intelligent. if you are stuck on a computer problem or term paper and some

leave the answer pops into your head how to solve this problem that is your unconscious and it is very impressive. it is good at pattern recognition skills but has some very bad flaws as well. unconscious emotional thinking is that at risk assessment. has to consciously be aware of your own limitations. especially in the later book i try to balance the pros and cons. nonetheless on the overall i am appreciative of the energy we have even if it goes to excess. if you have energy you have the power to fix your problem. if you have a lethargic culture without great history or great institutions you don't have the power to fix what is a round. >> host: do you consider yourself an intellectual? >> guest: i am a writer. a real intellectual would be somebody who writes very dense books for 400 people.

i am certainly not that sort. i consider myself upper middle ground. these are categories which have almost vanished from american life. for example highbrow would be supernobel prize-winning economist who has done very detailed work. middlebrow is working on a larger audience on a much more -- less arcane and less academic level. i try to be a little above that. if you want to know who my heroes are in the 1950s and 60s there were people like david reeseman, jane jacobs, daniel bell. social scientists who wrote for a broad audience. a little higher than journalism, lower than academia. i tried to replicate what they

did in log format replicate in books and newspaper articles. i call myself an upper middlebrow. >> host: kerri in sacramento liberal california. welcome to booktv's "in-depth". >> whenever i disagree with one of your positions i blame toronto. you gave a talk on c-span a few months ago talking about how modest and humble the american people were after winning world war ii and in contrast to that was a quarterback in a football game making the two yard tackle and doing a celebration. i wanted to ask, not talking about the people who are relatives of the 9/11 victims but on the night bin laden was killed were there a lot of two yard quarterbacks dancing in the streets? there were a lot of people who didn't really do anything. >> guest: i agree with that. lot of people got out and danced

and had a party in front of the white house and i wasn't comfortable with that. was the death of a human being. soldiers and i love when they were all about. those who are have not served in war, have taken much more sober view of the unpleasant act of killing. so i thought i was made extremely uncomfortable by those dances. the world war ii generation had seen a lot. they had seen what war was really like and what struck me from the radio or listening to a recording on the radio on the day the japanese announced they would surrender was the tone of sobriety. we got through it. let's try to be at peace. i think that was part of a broad culture that was really suspicious of pride, of getting above yourself. i think we have changed. we have gone to a culture that values self esteem and self love

and self expansion and self expression. there has been a decline because of that. that is the subject of my next book. >> host: you have a title? >> guest: i saved the title of about humility. one of the things legal many people i admire most are people who combined extreme personal humility with extreme drive to do something to make the country or make the world better and so my book is about how those people are able to combine these two things which are the opposite. some people think humility is low self-esteem. it is not. it is low self preoccupation. it is the ability to forget yourself in service of something larger. there's a book about how those people are that way and which ones and courage that. >> host: rick is on the phone from fairfax, virginia with david brooks. >> good afternoon. effective tax rate for the top

2%. the federal is 28% according to cbo and for the state and local tax foundation there is no progressive breakdown. they had at ninth for eight% for universal so it must be at least 12% for the top two. so 40% actually total and then let's see. if one really wants to be truly complete one would add in the indirect costs for the tax system, the regulatory and excessive legal system costs and those are about 22% according to the cost of government data. but those are progressively incurred as well because you're dealing with the court system etc. more so so you really have a twenty-seventh% cost on that. we add to for you have a 67% government related cost at

personal income. >> host: what is your question? >> caller: does it make any sense to -- i am not in that bracket but does it make sense to raise their cost from 67 to let's say 70 when the real problem is cost? >> guest: i would say a couple things. we do have rising medicare costs. somehow we have to pay for them. i supported premium support which is something mitt romney has endorsed as a way to reduce those costs. nonetheless we probably in order to close the deficit we need to cut spending but also have to raise taxes. taxes on the rich, you are right. they are progressive and the tax code is more progressive than it was 20 years ago and i do think there is economic cost to raising taxes on even the top 1%. a lot of people don't pay attention to tax rates all that much but those people have hired people who do and i think they

are very sensitive to changes in the tax code and they change their behavior accordingly. i read a study recently saying if you raise taxes on the top 1% there would be a deadweight costs. it would cost the economy something. the question is how much and what competing goals do we have. it would cost something economically to raise taxes on the rich. i also think we need to close the deficit and that is a bigger problem than taxing the rich, given the way the income structure is means we probably have to tax them more than anybody else. the second thing is i wouldn't put in the quality of the top of my priority list because i think inequality is a problem and we should take some measures to ameliorate it. on balance even acknowledging economic costs i would raise taxes on the rich. i would reverse the bush tax cuts probably on everybody. you are right that it adds up.

you quickly get close to high marginal tax rates but in the clinton years we had higher marginal tax rate and the economy seemed to grow as well. so i don't think the cost would be so high that it would be ruinous. we need to do it to reduce our debt as an overall package to cut spending. >> host: you would not sign the grover norquist pledge. >> guest: i am opposed to that because i think for the good of the country the tax increase has to be part of the eventual deal. second i think there has to be a deal. there are republicans and democrats in this country. if you are a republican more conservative like me you don't like tax increases but you have to make a deal. if they're going to give the three or $4 in spending cuts for $1 in tax increases to me that is a good deal and we should take that deal and john boehner should have taken that deal to the extent it was offered by barack obama.

finally this is a way of restricting government. it is a way to take everything, practical question and making it religious test. there are cases where raising taxes is the right thing to do even if you hate taxes. if you make it one of the ten commandments that you are taking discretion out of government and you are doing yourself harm. >> host: in addition you can send us the tweet and send an e-mail to booktv@c-span.org. one of our viewers has this. the inflammatory approach of entertainment style pundits like glen beck and and coulter heard the conservative cause? >> guest: i am not a fan of them. you can put these on the other side, i do a show, two shows on a regular basis. i do the news hour with jim lehrer and meet the press and there we have very good discussions that i am proud to be part of. i feel really good when i leave

the sets of those shows and we get pretty good ratings. better than a lot of those cable shows. i don't understand why more people don't do what c-span does. has very high level discussions. so i think the kind of stuff we do is good for the country and the kind of stuff glen beck and and coulter do is a form of entertainment which is bad for the country. it leads to a style of misinformation. i spoke of a confirmation bias where you just want to hear things that tell you how right you are all the time and the lot of what those shows whether it is insults or an colder that is what it is and they are not looking at problems which are real which is the real problems in the world are complicated and if you turned it into a morality play your doing harm to the country. >> host: what about rush limbaugh? >> guest: i am not a huge fan of him that he is not a huge fan of me. i do think he is witty. he is at least a good entertainer. i listened to have a fair bit. some of what he says to his audience is interesting.

if you look at his audience they are very well informed about politics. who is the chancellor of germany? they can answer that question. they have a lot of misinformation. if you ask other things that go against what rushed tells them they don't know the full range of the facts. i think he is not in glen beck's league. he is a more responsible figure. the thing to be said about all these people including rush with such a large audience. people like to listen. a lot of people like me listen but don't go with russia when it comes to voting. for example rush limbaugh campaigned for three or four years against john mccain and john mccain still managed to win the republican primary in new hampshire and south carolina and florida. so lot of people listen to the rush limbaughs and ann coulters of the world does that does not mean they influence the vote. a friend of mine says rush

limbaugh can't deliver a pizza. he can't deliver votes. it is important to distinguish between those or listened to for entertainment and how people actually think. >> host: jeff is on the phone. go ahead. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. i like to reference an article you wrote previous to the 2008 presidential election called class war before sarah palin in which you made a very astute observation that in john mccain's choosing sarah palin as his running mate it was an implicit endorsement of trends in the republican party, specifically in conservatism to basically alienate the intellectual class as the intellectual class and embrace a governing from the gut rather than governing from the mind's approach to politics which i personally find problematic. i would like you to update that

article that you wrote given the current presidential -- republican presidential contenders. specifically the rise of newt gingrich who is an intellectual of sorts and who basically speaks to that issue. thank you very much. >> guest: i mentioned that one of my mentors was william f. buckley. and buckley didn't like -- disagreed with intellectuals but didn't have a problem with intellectuals. he was a real intellectual. if you went to his home for dinner he would have writers and literary critics and much more likely to talk about religion or ideas or novels that something out of the congressional budget office. he genuinely was an intellectual. he famously said he would rather be governed by the first two thousand names in the phone

books which was perfectly legitimate thing to say but that doesn't mean he detested professors and academics. i thought what sarah palin did and other people have done is to take a disdain or disagreement with liberal intellectuals and translate it into a disdain for intellectuals as all hole. that was a corrosive trend in conservatism. and gingrich is not disdainful of ideas and writers. he loves ideas and writers. and so i think -- i have doubts about his constancy. whether he costanza for one thing consistently. whether he can manage an office. i have some doubts about him as a potential president. one thing that is nice about a republican party especially in the last six months and during this campaign, the story that is unfold has veered away from that and gone to a strain that is a

gingrich strain which is very in love with ideas and conservatism gathered strength because of think tanks and philosophers. it had magazines. i think republicans were in danger of throwing all that way and now you have to say that is not true. look at mitt romney or newt gingrich, both of them have tremendous faith in the power of ideas. this is a disaster temporarily averted. >> host: what was it like to be around william f. buckley? >> guest: you have to remember what a huge celebrity he was. he had this park avenue apartment. i was covering crime in chicago and flew to new york and was seated at his table and they put these bowls of water down. it looked like a finger bowls to dip your fingers in before the meal so it was a very alien culture. so glamorous and exciting for me but i would say the two things

that are worth saying aside from that sort of elevated life style was that his tremendous capacity for friendship. calero more about it than anyone alive. don't know if it is true but it is plausible. he had tremendous capacity for building and developing friendships. you didn't just work for him. you really passed your opinion about things, he tried to cultivate and teach you things and the other thing you got to be when you were around him what you got to be a member of the movement of tradition. by the time i got there, whitaker chambers was a conservative anti-communist. he was dead but there were people who were alive who were predominant in the only days of conservatism like james burnham. you got to be part of a conservative intellectual tradition. richard john neuhaus and milton friedman and so you saw this tradition of ideas. i got there in the early 1980s

when reagan was in power and you got to see how ideas led to the political movement and you got to see the primacy of ideas and so he really lived in a world full of ideas and filled with debate and world full of tremendous energy and inability to sit still. when you watch him write a column he would bash them out in 20 minutes and if he took 20 hours a would be no better. his mind was working at warp speed and was just churning out ideas, complete inability to sit still. >> host: lee is joining us from california. what is on your mind? >> caller: you have covered a lot of what i had in my mind during my -- it seems like there is a very noisy crowd of conservatives today who are just not so smart. in fact maybe because you are

smart they call your republican in name only. you have real grit from paris agree. how long are they going to hand in with the conservative side? some of them are working class and so they may end up deciding that republican party is the party of special interests of the rich folks. >> host: his specifically are you referring to? >> caller: who specifically? be noisy people, the limbaugh types, the listeners to him. they just seem like they are not -- they are not coherent, frankly, in a lot of cases. >> guest: i would say that is out there. there is no question but i would say as there were when i first

started being conservative there are a lot of good writers and magazines out there which are having a decent influence and when you look at who shapes the policy agenda a would go on line and look for a magazine called national affairs which is a new conservative magazine but outstanding one. you look at the weekly standard and national review for web pages. i look at a harvard economist, very fantastic blog called marginal revolution on the -- there are serious intelligent people. in the health-care debate, there was james scarpa at the dixon public policy center. these were very informed, very intelligent points of view. so while maybe the rush limbaughs and ann coulters get a lot of attention the intellectual backbone is still there and the american enterprise institute is doing

extremely well. you look at what mitt romney is proposing and newt gingrich is proposing and they draw from a lot of those ideas and that would be the good side. i would say to the credit of the republican party, they have got a pretty decent job of grappling with one of the really tough problems in the country which is how to fix medicare and how to fix entitlements. this is partly due a paul ryan. you might not like paul ryan and disagree with his plans that he has taken ideas pretty seriously. if you can ignore all the loud stuff there is still something to be hopeful about. >> host: from our twitter page, how would eisenhower govern us today and why has the republican party becomes so dogmatic over your lifetime? >> guest: the older i get the more i like eisenhower. he was a very fine president. i highly recommend going on line

and reading his farewell address. it is famous for warning of the military-industrial complex which was part of the address but really the style of government. the style is best described by the word stewardship which is to say eisenhower really wanted to take a country that was fundamentally a good and healthy country and take care of what was good and healthy about it and build slowly without taking stupid risks. so he built the highway system. he used government to do certain things but he was very careful not to run up the deficits. he was very careful not to get into masses. he was urged to get to vietnam. he stayed out. he didn't want to get into land wars abroad. will he famously was able to resolve the korean crisis. his strengths and weaknesses were built around a conservative virtues of caution and modesty.

he did getting too big a messes in vietnam. he took care of the fiscal situation. he govern quite well. his weaknesses were in some cases he was too cautious. most serious weakness was in the civil rights movement. when the civil-rights movement was really burbling. he hung back when mccarthyism was threatening the country. so he had strength and weaknesses being cautious but that conscious style of presidency is one that looks better and better. >> host: do you tweet? >> guest: i fall a lot of others but i never tweeted. >> host: e-mail. reason for recent book of this is from david child in new york city whose that has your exposure to psychology and sociology had an impact on your political views? >> yes. it made me must more conscious of the power of community and the power of social relationships. we tend to grow up whether we are liberals or conservatives

pretend to grow up thinking individually what this is, this individual wants to do but we are more determined by the quality of the relationships we are embedded in so i think much less about individuals and more about groups and for a government one of the important things they can do is build healthy collectives and help the neighborhood and help the city and healthy country where all the bonds are reinforcing and to take a little more concrete example i think the most powerful social tool we have in front of us to improve a lot of problems is early childhood education. it is about teaching kids at young ages to know how to build relationships by being around preschool teachers who talked to them and give them a model how to build relationships and if you can get those people very young people from -- get this compound interest effect and make tremendous changes that will show up when their college

age or adulthood and that is about building relationships so kids can grow orchids social networks. i am much less individualistic and more humanitarian that i was. >> host: this subtitle is how we live now aren't always have in the future tense. >> guest: how we see time is hard to talk about but is very important. in these life reports i mentioned over 70 to describe their lives, some people see time as a constant flow they can step aside from but some people step back and divide their lives into chunks and they say this three year period that was a chapter in my life. now i am starting a new chapter and will make a decision. this chapter will be different. these divisions are artificial but very useful if you want to control your life and divide your life into chapters. the other attitude is are you someone who looks to the past or

looks to the future? are you driven -- this is true in societies where there is long and eddie and views, islamic extremists are like this. something that happened 800 years ago is fresh in their mind as if it happened today. >> host: some families have it. >> guest: absolutely. they are concerned how badly they've retreated as kids or things like that or hatfields and mccoys. more common thing in this country is to see the future and look at the present from the vantage point of the future. there is a story to be delayed awful called titans of the earth. not sure. a midwestern story about farmers in the upper midwest. a guy is taking a visitor around his farm and he says here is the barn. here is the giants's house. here are the fields. the visitor says i don't see any barn or house. and the farmers as i haven't billed them yet.

that is where they are going to be. in his mind they are already real. his plan for the future are already reeling in the mind. that is a very common thing in the united states. we see the future and we are very full by the future. by our hope for the future. >> host: 3 points, you write the wear of rumination and the other is you cannot control other people. take two of those points. what are your lessons? >> guest: this is things people told me. a lot of people -- one guy set i have been married 55 years. for the first twenty years i tried to change my wife and maker into the person i wanted her to be and after that period i realize she is who she is. the have to respect to she is and can't be trying to mold her. it took two decades but it was worth learning and some people never learn that. learned the same about his kids

and co-workers. knowing how little we control the people around us and respect to they are, that was the one lesson about modesty. >> guest: >> host: beware of rumination. >> guest: that is something a lot of people need to learn. we think the self examined life is worth living. that of course is true but there has been a fair bit of research that the people who sit there and think about their hurts and think about their problems and brazil they reinforce the networks in the mind so they actually beaten them. fall into cycles of despair and depression just sitting there rehearsing and rehearsing and strengthening the negative feelings. whereas a lot of people who seem to leave the best live are the ones who in some ways were not as honest. when something terrible would happen they would either not focus on it or they would be grateful for it because it taught them something so they saw it as a positive.

there's a great book which i recommend called strangers to ourselves by university of virginia psychologist and teddy wilson and he points out if you want to change your behavior don't change your mind for a standard and change your behavior. change your behavior first and that will change your mind or as the folks i call it fate until you make it. so he says if you ruminate you will just deepen the negative things that if you change your behavior that you will be reinforcing a different set of your own networks or habits and that is a better way that behavioral change proceeds mental change. >> guest: you are relatively young. you have how many people over the age of 70 to respond to these life reports and report response did you get? >> guest: it started because i was traveling in massachusetts on my way to new hampshire and i stopped by a used book store and came across the yale class of

42, 50 year reunion book. a lot of members of the class of 1942 -- stories of what they had done. graduated 50 years before. some of the stories were fascinating as people would go through amazing thing they have done. a couple were -- the guy took a job with a law firm or something and stay debt that law from his whole life and said this is kind of boring but too late to change it now. i became fascinated by these people looking back. i wrote a column about this book and asked my readers if you are over 70 years yourself some grades. how badly did you do? what can we learned? we got several thousand room. some were 25 pages. they make for addictive reading. if you go to my blog on the new york times i put a number of them online so you can read and yourself. reading them was addictive.

some people -- my web page now neal gave himself an f. i have not led the life i should have and wish i knew how to do it now. i wish i knew it then. that is useful because you see the mistakes he made a you can fix them. another one i put out was regina. .. regina -- >> host: regina titus, we have that online. >> guest: this was a woman woman who grew up sheltered and shy, and she work to work as a secretary by people who didn't treat her well, but she just kept growing and learning. and finally at age 56 she got a degree from manhattan college, and she now learns about opera, she's a docent in the local museum, takes courses, and you see her growing throughout life starting out maybe somewhat modest, but growing and expanding herself. and it's sort of an inspiring story to see someone just expanding all the way through.

.. in the mid '90s when people are feeling better about the country, the country was very tight. we had a long series of close elections, about four or five of them really tied even going down to the state and local level. over the last couple elections because we are on the wrong track we're looking around for a solution. people swing over to the democrats in 2008. people swing over to the republicans in 2010.problems i one of the problem is they only

mave two choices. we have two parties that are kind of rigid. and neither of them are solvingn problems, especially working together.og soet one of the problems is in politics you don't have anf infinity of choices.y i thin hk that's one of thee reasons people are searching around for whichever party theye hate least at that moment.t moma that's one of the reasons people are depressed.t o it's not our government and our political process. so i think they're looking for a solution. the obama had a shot at changing shot at changing and he tried his best but the two parties are not working together and and i'm just curious to see if anything dramatic will change one way or the other. one of the things that intrigues me is a guy named peter ackerman who has a project and he will get on the ballot on at least 50 states and he doesn't have a nominee yet and they have a website and you can go online and they're going to have a

process of online voting and they're going to nominate people and then there will be a process of elimination and voting. and you'll be able to electricity somebody who will be the third-party candidate on all 50 states. and maybe that person will be, you know, colin powell. maybe it will be ron paul or i don't know who it will be. but it will be interesting to see if that person who will be on the ballot can generate a lot of support because it is true that more and more people are dissatisfied with the two parties. >> host: i'm going to come back to that part and talk about presidential politics. we have a tweet from ramone what race has race made in the cultural transformation in america. >> guest: in some ways and some ways not a huge role. i talked about the energy and the mobility of people and people who come here -- averages, latinos, russians, chinese -- i think, you know, we're not as good at assimilating as we used to be but people still share the

american mentality. and so my family is basically a russian ukrainian family and i was actually touring the metropolitan museum of art with my friend and my friend has ancestry going back hundreds of years in just country and he's actually related in a distant way to george washington. and we looked at a portrait of washington and he asked me a related question. how do you relate to washington and you're not related to him. my family was here. and i thought not occurred to me. i feel a historical and cultural relationship to washington that i feel i'm part of that. so in some ways i think we do still get assimilated in the american style. the thing i'd say is different is the -- one of the of the other things that makes a country great is that there are very few countries which are as accepting of outsiders as ours is. and now we have a history of

racism. we have racism today. we have all sorts of barriers between peoples. but i still think better than average we're the sort of place where people can come with different racial backgrounds and different ethnic backgrounds and go to a company and work together. and in china, china has many advantages over us but they don't do as well as we do. they don't create social networks across race and across nationalities as well as we do and this is a great creative force when you have two different people, three, four, seven different people with different cultural and racial backgrounds coming together that just creates a burst of creativity. now i know i'm highlighting a positive and there's a whole negative side, but i do think -- as we feel so depressed of ourselves in the country and we think we're in decline, that -- >> host: we're about an hour in our three-hour conversation with columnist and author david

brooks. david is joining us from san francisco. go ahead, please. >> caller: good morning and thank you for letting me participate. a couple of what i call quasi personal questions. one is, i'm a big van of william f. buckley. and i watched david on the charlie rose memorial show that took place right after mr. buckley died. and on that show they played excerpts from his last appearance on charlie rose. and it -- during which mr. buckley said he was ready to go to his reward. he had pretty much wanted to wind things up. and david was visibly shocked at that. and i'm wondering -- of course, he was only 46 or 47 years old but i'm wondering if he thought at all about that and secondly, could he expand on his remarks on barney frank's cruelty to

young reporters that he spoke of friday on the newshour? thank you, i'll take my answer off-line. >> guest: thank you, david. i remember vividly the comment he made to charlie rose. buckley was a good 30, 40 -- i don't know how many years older than i was. he was born in 1925, i think. the most zestful person who you could possibly imagine who always wanted to be off doing the next thing, whether it's playing the harpsichord or yachting, driving hither and yon having debates, the most life embracing person you can imagine so seeing him say i'm done, i've had enough, it's like watching someone who you know for one trait suddenly renouncing the key trait you think about them. but, you know, he was getting old. he had -- i think he had emphyse

emphysema, he had run down. and so i think -- i haven't experienced that fortunately but, you know, in many ways he was a man of strong religious faith. and so he knew what was coming. he didn't approach death i think with any religious terror and he felt fatigue. and so i guess in retrospect, intellectually understand and it's a shock he said that but i haven't experienced that sensation saying i'm ready to go and i guess that's not a bad way to be in your final days, to be accepting of death and to think the gods are going to call you if. as for barney frank, you know, i don't have people admire what he does and he's very smart and i've confessed i've never had a lot of intimate dealings so i'm not passing a comprehensive view on his character but i'll just

say a couple of experiences i saw over the years a few times is that one of the things the way we cover the house and the senate -- but the house in particular is reporters gather at certain spots in the capitol and then they come off the floor and there's a spot just off the house floor where reporters are allowed to gather in the lobby area and they come out and then a bunch of reporters surround them, sometimes with cameras, sometimes just print people. and ask them questions about what's happening, about what's happening behind closed doors. and as i said on the newshour, some of those people are like me and we've been doing it for a little while and we sort of know how to do it. a lot of people are young, they're 22, 23 and they're just starting out. they're a little nervous. they don't know is quite how to ask questions or exactly the lay of the land, the things you get when you've been doing it a little while and so they're a little vulnerable and to me it's up to somebody who's a chairman of a committee or a senator or a house member to be especially understanding of the situation they're in. and not exploit it with rudeness

and cruelty. and on a couple occasions i've seen barney frank doing that. he would be needlessly rude to someone who was struggling. and if they've been rude to somebody like me who's been around but rude to vulnerable in that way and i thought that was unattractive and i tried to expressed that and many people have seen this similar thing but there's been a whole series of commentaries and i think david milbank and others have written about this capacity for rudeness. i guess i just have trouble -- you can be -- you can say i care for the man and the downtrodden in the abstract but if you're not willing to live that in your day-to-day life, i have trouble thinking how real that is. and so i criticize frank for being that way. it's a serious flaw to me. >> host: has he ever responded to that? >> guest: no. so many people have made this point and i just made this comment on the air on friday on the newshour. and i haven't heard from him. maybe he'll scream at me, but that's fine. but it's a point that many

people have made about him. maybe he's someone who understands this flaw in his makeup but, you know, there's ways to fix these things. >> host: an email is talking about your appearance with mark shields on the newshour. he said i read your column in the "new york times." i watch you on pbs. you and mark are my favorite tv odd couple. does jim lehrer whom i greatly admire or other moderators tell you in advance the questions they will be posing? and also you are a very young man, of very mature wisdom. if you had to choose a career other than journalism, what would it be? >> guest: well, first on lehrer we know the topics so we will get -- you know, we know before we go on. we don't know the questions. but we know, say we went on this week and we -- you know, we know we were going to be talking barney frank or talking about the payroll tax issue. we knew we were going to talk about the republican race. and so if you're not flying blind -- though, sometimes things will come up out of the blue. there will be an issue that will come up or jim will sense -- or one of the other hosts will

sense that mark and i have an interesting disagreement about something and then we'll go wildly off-track so they'll give us four topics that we'll cover. but then we'll go off and cover none of them because something interesting happened. and so there's -- there's nothing like a script, but we do have general topics. as for an alternate career, all i do is write. if i had to do -- start over, i would seriously consider writing about science. if you're, say, a young journalist thinking about going to journalism one of the important things is have something that you know something about. have a field in which you can bring to the table that will separate you from all the other people. so if you're going to start in journalism, know something about economics. so you can say i have this body of knowledge. here's how i can help your publication. or i know a lot about science. i know a lot about genetics and there's always going to be a market for people that know something. and so if i had to start over in journalism, i may try to learn

more as an undergrad about science. the other thing which i enjoy tremendously is teaching. i probably would have become a high school or college teacher if this hadn't worked out. >> host: any desire to be in public office? >> guest: not particularly. as i say, i like writing. i'm not as good with people as politicians are. they'll be around people for 20 hours a day. i don't have that incredible social antenna. i do -- there are two things i do that intrigue me about government. one is the genuine sense of public service of getting things done. that's really inspiring. we don't get to do that. we try to contribute to the debate. but people in power -- often i'll ask them, what's it like being in the white house? and they'll say each individual day has its problems. it's no fun, but the overall experience is so rewarding, you really can make a tremendous difference. i was traveling in africa. and you look at the american

antiaids programs and there are just millions of people alive now that wouldn't have been alive because of things people do in government. and so i think government service is a very noble thing and i sort of wish that. and i guess the only other thing is -- since i'm someone who's part of a centrist political tradition that i don't think is represented by either of our two parties, i wish there were people i agreed with who were more dominant in one of the two parties. i wish we had that ability or leaders who could choose from column a and column b who would take republican ideas and democratic ideas and try to blend them together. we don't have that tradition. we don't have leaders who are good at that or have party structures that would encourage that and i feel that void is a very serious one for the country. >> host: when your book came out about a decade ago michael kinsley had this to see.

in america than elsewhere? michael kinsley from may of 2004. >> hmmm, well, that doesn't mean we don't fight. i would never say that. one of the burdens of being a very future-oriented people is that we fight ferocious precisely because we think we've been given this great gift and we're in the danger of spoiling it. so there's a book by a guy whom i quote if the book a lot called american jeremiahed.

they thought we hurt american by our sinfulness and that ability to future orientation because we think we've been handed paradise and we're screwing it up. i never certainly meant to indicate that we don't have serious fights and serious moral federal reserver, one of the -- one of the outgrowths of the moral materialism is not only are we so deeply materialistic and want big mcmansions but we're one of the country's least -- in the developed world that has huge fights over abortion policy, on gay marriage policy. that has big social conservatives, which is a very rare thing in the developed world. where we have this precisely because we have this moral materialism and so i'm glad michael think i'm genial but i don't think i ever said we're a country of brawling and fighting. >> host: and we'll share some of the books david brooks reads and refers to as among his favorites. chris is joining us from brooklyn, new york.

go ahead, chris. >> caller: oh, hi, thank you. thank you very much for c-span and thank you, mr. brooks, for taking phone calls today. you're very generous of your time. >> guest: thank you. >> caller: you're aware of tom brokaw's book, "greatest generation"? >> guest: yes. >> caller: i'm going to argue the greatest generation gave birth to the baby boomers who are really the most selfish generation. these are the uber consumers, the people who demand immediacy and perfection. and have grown into those mcmansions and one of the things that i would take small issue with when you use the word "we" paying for social security and medicaid. why can't we blow the caps off on our aid contributions and blow the caps on medical saving accounts contributions to 10,000, $20,000 and encourage a savings economy so that people don't have to be dependent on government. not everyone. not everyone. there will be a percentage that will need that. but we shouldn't lump everybody

into that. and could you just off the top -- i'll take your answer off the air, could you just address a little bit about the central bankers activities now in controlling interest rates 2% for the next couple years? and also the money shifting going on in europe and how that's going to lead to yet another bubble that's insurmountable. thank you. >> host: thanks for the call. how much time do you have? >> guest: yeah, let's start with the monetary policy which i don't write about monetary policy. i have no expertise on it. so, you know, my own perspective is that we have a lot more to fear from deflation than inflation. in my views on monetary policy are not really taking seriously but i just don't know the subject particularly well. on say things like medicare and savings, i sort of do agree with that. one of the things we need to do is create a system where people are more responsible for their own pension systems and for their own health care spending.

and one of the ways to do that -- we're always going to have people who haven't -- for whatever reason have the income to do that. but by means-testing, by allowing people to save more and maybe also by getting rid of the tax exemption for medicare -- for health care insurance policies or at least capping that exemption. we can impose more costs on people who can save for it. we'll have to balance the budget we're going to have to go to a system where people take more responsibility from some of these senior issues. and, you know, i guess i'd be -- i'd agree with the caller on that. as for the greatest generation, the boomers, i do think there was a shift -- i mean, i'm not sure how much of it was ideas and how much was just circumstances. people who grew up in part of the greatest generation, they grew up at a time of depression and hardship. and so they learned a hard work ethic during that time. and then they came to maturity in a time of prosperity and growth. and these life reports -- one of

the things that really struck me was that people would move across the country, they'd go to, you know, santa fe, new mexico or whatever and they would say we're going to move here and they would assume there would be a job there because the '50s and the '60s the economy is growing and there were jobs and so they had a great sense of economic security. people who grew up in the greatest generation -- in the boomer generation, they grew up with that affluence and they didn't face that hardship. they had a more, hey, it's all for me and maybe that would incur self-indulgence and there was a cultural shift from a culture -- if you grew up in the 20s and '30s that said don't get too proud, don't get ahead of yourself in the culture to the '80s, '90s today who said you got to love yourself first. it's all that self-esteem and the self-love and the culture says feel good about you and that's the most important thing and i think that has some serious down sides which we're now grappling with. >> host: the first of three books by our guest. author and columnist david

brooks. he's working on his fourth. john feeney has this as a columnist as your day job he wants to know please ask mr. brooks his views on the future of newspapers? >> guest: i'm feeling a little better these days. if you asked me two years ago it's in the whaling industry and we're dying off. but i would say a couple things. one thing we have more readers than ever before. second, i think there's been a flight to equality. when the blogs first started coming out, everybody was flocking to the blogs and i do too. i spend a lot of time reading blogs but after a while they want people sort of who have done the work so that they know what they're talking about. i spent a lot of time interviewing politicians. and it's not 'cause they tell me stuff particularly. i don't get breaking new insights on a secret world and i know it's not true and i'll read an intelligent blogger who's writing about what so-and-so is writing and i interviewed so-and-so and i know what they're thinking.

and it's not that. this is a plausible theory but it doesn't have to be real. and so when i'm writing something based on interviews, i think i have a more accurate view of what people are actually thinking because i've actually taken the time to drive over to where their office is and sat down with them. and so i think it's not only me. it's people who work for newspapers. it's what we do. and so my sense is there's been a flight back to quality. a flight to the "new york times." and also a sense that people are willing to pay for it. we've conducted this experiment where we've asked people to pay for the articles. and there was an old experiment where called time select where they asked you to pay a columnist and it turns out they wouldn't do that. but now people are paying. we're getting a couple hundred thousand dollars people who are online subscribers and so i'm feeling better about the newspaper industry because i think it will we're beginning to make a go of it. the readers are always there. it's how do we turn that into

revenue. there's still struggles. the big national papers like the "times" and the "wall street journal" i think are achieving stability. the local papers are doing well, a lot of the papers in, you know, pennsylvania or, you know, a small town in, you know, lawrence, kansas, skokie, illinois, are getting that local news really covering a community. i think those people are doing well. there's still a real need for that. the people that have been struggling are sort of the "boston globe," "l.a. times," sort of the second big city daily. and whether they can make a go of it, i'm not sure. but i will say they're hanging in there a lot better than one might have imagined a couple of years ago. so i'm feeling a little better about the whole newspaper industry. >> host: you may not tweet but you sparked quite a robust conversation on our twitter page and this is a yes or no question or maybe it's a maybe. since you are speaking of your former boss william f. buckley would david brooks be host a debate, a firing line type of discussion show? >> guest: well, i'd be willing.

i mean, you do it. if you do it, maybe i can do it. i don't know. but buckley had this amazing ability -- he had these mannerisms. if you saw him on tv, he was like unlike anybody else you would seen. he was always leaning and he used these incredibly long words. if you look at the people who are really successful like charlie rose is really good about it. there's something distinctively will their personality that you want to be around them and it's distinct i'm not i have that type of personality that buckley did to pull it off. i enjoy talking to people. >> host: and he did kind of get in your face and move in to try to lure something from you. >> yeah, his personality -- there was nolo keyness about it. he was in your face and they called it firing line for a reason but it was not like crossfire. it was real argument. i remember -- this is online. i saw it on youtube or something. it was a debate he had probably -- i want say late

'60s, early '70s with noam chomsky who's a great linguist but also a very, very left wing political philosopher, writer. and they made no conception -- no concessions to the audience. so they were debating each other on a very high level using words that most of us don't know, arguing over concepts most of us don't know what they are. and you watch this and there's no debate on tv that it's at that high of level and you got the sense maybe five people know what they're talking about. but it's still gripping to see them volleying back and forth. and so, you know, he had this amazing skill. and it's a lesson that if you -- if you try to pander down to an audience, you just won't make a big difference. but if you are up here and the audience can get there. people are smart. and the audience can be there with you. and buckley was up there and the audience stayed with him because they respected him and he brought out the best in people. >> host: do you have a loyal reader, someone who checks in

with you from time to time? >> guest: i have -- i can't think of one person. i have imagined readers. sort of your basic -- person who's interested in ideas. a lot of things i do is i cover the world of ideas and academics the way people cover politics. if there's a new study or a new book that's important, i cover that as a news event. i think those things are really important. >> host: i know you're going to ask a question and we do have. his name is joe mccouplin. he lives in georgia. he's a frequent viewer and listener and he is on the phone today. joe, good afternoon. >> caller: steve, you're the greatest. david, i wanted to ask you a question. i'm really fired up about mitt romney. and i think he'll be elected and be the greatest president ever. my question for you, david, do you think you'll receive the nomination and then do you think he can beat president obama? and i hope you'll answer yes. [laughter]

>> host: and joe, stay on the line if you want to follow up. >> joe, i like your enthusiasm. i do think he will get the nomination. one of the things that strikes me about him, how much better a candidate he is this time than last time. he was okay last time but this time he's really taking a hard look what he did and he's really improved as a candidate, both in terms of presentation. i think in terms of substance. >> host: is he authentic, though? >> guest: i think he's an authentic businessman and manager. is he authentically conservative, i don't know. on the social issues, what he believes, i don't know. an interesting question, can he beat president obama and my guess is he's got -- and this is just a guess, it's like a 52 or 53% chance of winning. that he'd be a slight favorite. and i say that because the white working class is still the largest single group in the electorate. and they very sharply turned away from president obama.

and that group is in very prominent pennsylvania and ohio and some of those upper midwestern states. and so it's going to be hard for president obama to win those states which are very crucial. you can construct an electoral map around those states, but you have to include florida. and say mitt romney runs with marco rubio the republican senator from florida, that would help him very much in florida. and i think it would be easy to see romney winning that race. and then the final thing to be said -- and this is mostly about obama because i think election races, no matter what the president's campaign says it's a referendum on the incumbent, his approval rating is what matters. nobody wins when your approval rating is 45. you have to get your approval rating up around 50. and his approval rating is hovering 40, 45. he never goes below 40. has a hard time getting it above 45. and so he's not way behind. he's got some good skills and some good support. but so far i'd have to rate him as a slight underdog.

so i think romney has been a pretty impressive candidate to having trouble in the public primaries right now but if he ran against president obama, i'd rate him a slight slight favorite. >> host: a slight follow-up from joe mccutchen. >> caller: i think you're the finest reporter in america and i want to say -- i'm really fired up about what david said about mitt. i'm 24/7 and we're fired up and we're going to work till he gets elected. thank you, david. >> that's what he needs. supporters like you. >> host: you have been there? >> guest: i was in atlanta last week but i don't know whether that's north, south, west, east. >> host: ladonna is on the phone. go ahead, please. >> caller: hi. let me bring you to another level, if i may. >> sure. >> caller: obviously, if i'm watching this program, i am more engaged than some people may be.

you mentioned the "new york times." you seem to disregard the lesser media news prints. who would you engage to bring your message to another lower level of your message? >> host: well, you need to be specific. we had received a tweet about the future of newspapers which is why you were talking about the "new york times" and the "wall street journal." do you have a specific publication that you have in mind or -- >> caller: no, i was just listening to david talking about the "new york times" and some of the other lesser publications. what i want to know is, you are wonderfully bright, intelligent man. and i'm the alto in the back of the choir that you're talking to. who would you engage to get your message at another level so that

you could incorporate someone who could speak for you outside of booktv? >> host: donna, thank you. >> guest: okay. well, i guess -- i think -- i think all the world of the "times" but i wouldn't say higher, lower, lesser publications. you know, i think if you -- i talked about bigger cities. we're a big national paper, some papers are smaller. but i certainly would not consider people who work at smaller papers lesser adjourn justs or smaller papers in small communities, lesser publications. i'm reminded when bill buckley -- one of the things i talked to him about was his days as a college newspaper editor. and he said that he never felt as is on fulfilled in life when he was the editor

a lot of small publications for that reason because those publications are providing in many ways a much more intimate and valuable service than those of us who do the national stuff. i was trying to make the big papers by circulation and once with less circulation among mid city dailies. either a qualitative or moral or any kind of high or low status position. >> host: looking at your favorite books and those with the greatest influence on you and i want to ask about two individuals. hubert humphrey and milton friedman.

>> guest: i grew up a democrat and had a poster on my wall as a high school student which is my yearbook photo which is a picture of hubert humphrey and it says some cause change and others brought it. i want to be talking change. so humphrey was a big figure in my life. i really admired the way he conducted himself in public life. and i will say even if you look at people who supported him those humphrey democrats are now republicans in the working class. >> host: would he have a good president? >> guest: i think so. he was a great leader in minnesota. brave leader of the mafia. was right on civil-rights. very brave on those issues and i think he would have been quite a good president. he had a real feel for people and a real feel for what america is all about. i think i would have preferred him in retrospect johnson.

i think he was a genuinely good man. >> host: milton friedman? >> guest: milton friedman was another mentor to me. i was in chicago and milton friedman was doing a tv show where he talks to the young. he had done a show called free issues versus for free success. sequel called syria of the status quo and sat with young people and had a discussion with them about economics and i was then a democratic socialist and i was supposed to argue with him and i would memorize something i've read in a book or something and i would repeat the argument that he would destroy it in six words and the camera would linger on my face when one of was over and try and discuss -- think of something to say. after the show went on for a week he took us out to dinner and he would take these dinners to teach us about his view of the world and why he thought the way he did and how to approach

economic and i never became a libertarian or as free market as friedman was but he expanded my mind of what was economically right and just in that week. kissel i had feelings later in life, those people with additional they want contract to open your mind to the possibilities. >> first sunday of each month on booktv on c-span2 we sit down with a leading author and today our guest is david brooks. he has written a number of books including its "bobos in paradise," "on paradise drive" and "the social animal". we talk more about his book and columns and more of your phone calls if you send us a tweet or an e-mail and the second half of the program three our conversation. we are at the midway point and want to look at the favorites of david brooks. his favorite books and leading influences in his life. ♪

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columnist david brooks. let me go back to the books you are currently reading including habits of the heart. one of your favorite is king lear by william shakespeare. how much time be spent reading? >> spend a lot of time reading. that is my job. some people ask how do you read so many books? they have to to do their jobs. that is what i do. i spend a lot of time reading. i watch some political shows and support shows but i don't watch too much in the realm of series. i used to be a movie critic. i don't go to too many movies anymore. i spend a lot of time reading. i was reading king lear for one of the pleasures of doing this. you get to meet people you would otherwise meet so i got to do a panel discussion in association with a presentation of king lear a public theater in new york hosted by an hathaway the great

star and actress and miller one who is a great actor famous for being a clown. and so they asked me to be on a panel talking about king lear stalin went back and reread it. depressing and great and got to meet and hathaway and people like that. >> host: there is one general fema will go through. why are there no conservative columnists at the new york times? another one says are you a centrist? another e-mail from a viewer st. how to the conservative you are a supporter of president obama. define your ideology. >> guest: i was not a major supporter of president obama. i admire him personally but i also admirer john mccain. by ideology is very clear. doesn't fit in with either of the two current parties but starts with edmund burke who was the founder of modern conservatism. wrote a book called reflection of the revolution in france.

major influence on my life. the core message that he had was we have to be careful of -- we should be too proud of our own intelligence or our own knowledge. one of the things that make up for our own weakness is to defer to institutions that survived the test of time. and so to not give too much faith in the idea that people in washington planning complex systems and these are very conservative notions. one core pillar of my political philosophy and another is alexander hamilton who believed not in using government -- he believes in getting government out of the way. he believe in using government to enhance capitalism to give people the tools to compete in a capitalist system. these are my two killers.

if you want to put it on a theological scaling may seem more moderate republican these days and puts me to the left of a lot of the more libertarian anti-government people and to the right a lot of the barack obama more technocratic egalitarian liberals. in this third tradition. i think it is a tradition that is proud of american history. starting with alexander hamilton. went to abraham lincoln and teddy roosevelt and died but waiting for a rebirth. >> host: why in 2011 are we still reading william shakespeare? what is about him and his work? >> guest: times change but we don't change particularly. we don't make too much more progress. we make some. some of the problems are still eat turtle problems about pride, greed of the digital avarice,

love. one famous scene in king lear is a grandfather the king, father the below knows he is about to die and giving away his kingdom and the winds his daughters to praise him to his face and say you are the greatest legal all my love is for you and have no devotion to anybody but you but what of his daughters says i owe you what i owe you. you are my father but i won't make up floury words and say i know you all my love because when i get married i will also have love for my husband and she refuses to compromise her integrity just to pay homage to a guy whose ego is out-of-control. and he cut her off and is rude to her. that was written hundreds of years ago but lessons about honesty and different san diego are germane today. we haven't moved on from where shakespeare was. >> host: abdul joining us from salem, oregon. your topic is health-care. go ahead.

>> caller: mr. brooks, thank you for c-span and for "in-depth," taking my call. i am a proud american, naturalized citizen. i am and american by choice and proud of it. actually, i had a comment. my comment is related to mr brooks's previous -- he mentioned about the booming economy of president clinton and a good economy in good times, the united states and a rest of the world enjoyed. i admire president clinton and of course i admire speaker gingrich, both great american's, great server of this country

with ideas and philosophy which is good for america and proud of it. but if you look up the program, for reason for the booming economy was superficial, superficially the cause was arranged. one of the first reasons it was building with the dot.com bubble that burst within a few years. and the second reason for the booming economy during the time we see that right now, the billing stays in housing which artificially created -- and therefore if you look at the reality, as i mentioned, i admire president clinton but

during that era, difficulty in united states and the rest of the world is suffering is from those kind of artificial not best policies that the sea. >> host: thanks for the call. >> guest: i agree with that. there was a tech bubble and if you look at the surpluses we were running that was the effect of the tech bubble. that is absolutely true that we were spending too much on housing and a lot of resources were going to things that made our lives a little better but not what you would call investments in the future. that is true. nonetheless if you take a pretty good economy, that would explain the fraud especially at the end of the clinton years which produced artificial surpluses but if you take the strong economy, 20 or 30 years from

reagan and clinton, president bush, you would have to say the fraud was there what so was underlying strength and we really did have decent rates. we had some real growth. we had innovation and industries came up and that was not all fraud. at that time tax rates were higher than our and our would not want to go back in the context of tax cuts. i would not want to go back to the rates reagan had. going up from a tax rate 36-39, i don't think that would do much economic damage. i wouldn't be opposed to moderate tax increases as long as that money was dedicated paying down the debt. i would not want to throw that money away with more spending. i would accept it as part of the deal but i take the point that a lot of growth was froths. >> host: a couple personal question the. is there a family member or to

children that read your works and react to it one way or the other? >> guest: my youngest son read the most. we are aware of it but i don't bring it home particularly. we don't talk about politics at home. we don't talk about what i happen to be doing. if i had the cha to meet the los angeles dodgers pitcher at home but if i need a senator talking about that stuff at home. they are sort of aware of it. they have views and my youngest son aside from the eighth and of john boehner. did not in normal combination but he is the most enthusiastic interest in politics. it is not something that dominates home life. >> host: what your favorite non political websites you visit on a regular basis?

>> guest: one is more intellectual and the browser. i had to recommend those websites. there is another call blownform.org. these are websites that are really about essays about literature, ideas and things like that. interesting articles. there is a great one that i read about joe namath and what would like to be in the late 60s. as for the totally non-political a check amazing avenue which is a blog for fanatical fan of the new york mets which i happen to be one. very good web site. i look at espn and follow college basketball. i read a lot of those websites. than the usual movie. >> host: you remember the miracle of 69. >> guest: i was in new york, the transform of moment in my life. it taught me that things look dark but miracles happen and

things turn out well in the end. i was a huge mets fan. i can remember the 1969 mets. i was married in 1986 and in winter i'd decided to propose to my wife on the day the mets won 30 games. they got off to a very fast start the year they won the world series. large parts of my life for organized around that. >> host: bad games in the afternoon and you had to wait for 9:00 at night. >> guest: that is true. that is true. i won the tragedy of my life clippers the one of the people who worked in my father's building at and why you got me a piece of dirt from shea stadium after the championship in 1969 and are brought it to school as part of show and tell and one of the people who cleaned up said why is there dirt on the table here and they threw it out. i am still recovering from that trauma of losing shea stadium dirt. >> host: we go to kim in san

francisco. three hours in the first sunday of the month, "in-depth" on c-span2. >> caller: i love c-span. that is the most important thing. >> host: thank you for watching. >> caller: you stated that you admire people with new ideas. you admire intellectuals and especially you like the new idea thinkers. i would like to tell you about a little story from a different standpoint. more of a working-class standpoint. i worked in car rental years ago and we had a famous ceo. he had a lot of ideas one of which was to have this huge mission statement framed and mounted at every location where we rented these cars. it was a beautiful thing. four by five feet. it was always behind us and before we began the rental, we were supposed to go over it and introduce it to them and the

whole idea that we were very dedicated to customer satisfaction. simultaneously this ceo had another idea. he needed to increase the efficiency of the car fleets so he reduced the number in the fleet making each car more productive. clever idea. however, after he was then reducing the fleet our customers would land at the airport. they would come to us to read the car. we would introduce them to the mission statement which was about their complete customer satisfaction and because the cars had been made more efficient the fleet had been made more efficient. we had to tell them they would have a 45 minute wait because of the efficiencies that was brought forth. so you have this disconnect between the working class, kind of a disconnect between ceos was wonderful really great ideas but

the practicality sometimes, david! not good! >> guest: i talk on this theme a lot. agree with that story and it illustrates something i talk about a lot which is how little we know and can no. if you are running a complexes like a rental car companies and health care system, you better be aware how little you know and you better be aware how the world is more complicated than any thing you can think of. abstract planning arm or enough from the local reality. one of his score seems you can't plan from the top and one of the problems of the at on is we had robert mcnamara and other people in the defense department planning bombing raids in vietnam, no intimate familiarity with. you have to design systems where the learning comes from people who are actually on the ground.

one of the best ways you can tell a good aid program in africa from a bad aid program is a good aid programs, somebody washington says here's how they should do it. the good ones somebody is sitting on the ground, looks at local reality and says here is how they figured out how to do it. let's try to build on that. it is information flowing from the bottom up. that is a theme by tried to get and that fits the car rental example perfectly. one of the people who looked at companies quite a lot is jim collins who has written many prominent books. and one of the things he observes in successful ceos is they combine extreme personal humility with extreme will power so they know how little they know. they can't plan are complicated systems from ceo headquarters but driven to learn and get better so designing learning company's for people on the

ground can tell you what is going on. that is the challenge in making a mission statement some abstraction. that won't get it done. >> host: here is the challenge from one of our viewers. mr. brooks, please talk about how you overcame the mets being a great influence on his life and still becoming a successful author. >> guest: the mets have -- for the first twenty years of my life they taught me it was good news because you had this miracle, these great pitchers and in the 80s in particular you had the emergence of light goodman and this was like god-given talent. it was a reminder of wonders nests. the last few years it has come to feel like being a chicago cubs or boston red sox fan in the old days you live with suffering. the thing about being a sports

fan is you can't choose. you don't get to choose who you like once you format attachment to a team you stay with that team weather -- i will become a national fan. i live in washington. they have good players but you don't have a choice over that. at least i am not the yankees fan. >> host: there's always next season. >> guest: it is going to be a little while. >> host: robert is next from california. >> caller: i would like to ask what does mr. brooks think about the libertarian movement in the republican party? and why isn't there any in the democratic party? >> guest: interesting question. i disagree with libertarian done some things. there has to be an importer role for government and a lot of things. i like government investment in basic research. nonetheless the libertarians provide a very valuable counter to some of the planning

tendencies that arise in washington. people in washington, this goes back to the car rental question. one of the trick questions i ask politicians is what is the growth industry of the future? to me the correct answer is how should i know? i have a politician, not a venture capitalist. yet most politicians tell me, the growth industries are the wind business for solar power. they think they know. they don't know. libertarians are very good at telling politicians your not as smart as you think you are and if you have all this green technology subsidies it may be a worthwhile cause but government is not going to invest the right technology because nobody knows enough. we wind up with solyndra which is the wrong technology. not only solyndra but a whole history of this. fusion power and ethanol, things that have more to do with political spoils and promising

technologies. i appreciate that and a great thinker, hy at --hyatt who based his philosophy on the aware of how little we know. i value that but i am not a libertarian. i think the anti-government mantra is too simple for the problems we face. if you want to build a human capital and give people a better education there has to be a more affirmative government model. >> host: "bobos in paradise," you say the central disagreement today is not the 60s vs the 80s which you talked about earlier. it is between those who have used the 60s and 80s on one side and those who reject the fusion on the other. you go on to write about the republican party, moderates and moderate conservatives to battle with conservatives who want to refund the 1960s and other democratic side democrats doing battle with those who have not come to terms with the reagan reforms of the 1980s.

>> guest: i would phrase that a little differently because there are no -- in the 60s and 80s we think of them for many years as opposites. if you like the 60s your liberal and if you like reagan 80s you're a conservative. now i think we see them as two sides of the same coin and that was individualism. the 60s liberated the individual personally to live a lifestyle however they chose and the 80s liberated the individual economically to have more economic freedom. they were both about individual freedom and i think if you combine these two movements what you get is a period of extreme individualism but a loss of community and community bonds and so now i think you can have people in church groups and other associations who really value community and people on the left whether it is the

unions who value creating community and building social bonds. to be the 60s and 80s look more like one thing. rebuild a community. seems to be an important thing. >> host: "on paradise drive," you say even if you win the race there is no rest. there is no position that you can be awarded that will guarantee your status and respect regardless of your behavior. there is no title you can pass to your children even if your own future is secure. they are your feet children's future and grandchildren's futures living. the mentality of a set skill has you in its grip. the universe is still pursuing its adventure and you must work to keep your place. >> guest: we live in a meritocracy. i go back to the old days of the 20th century or other countries where you are born into a noble family and your status is

attached to your family or so and so and you don't -- your status is there. in a meritocracy you have to climb and achieve some status and get the people who do that never reach a moment where they say i have done everything i plan to do and can now relax. they want to get better and learn more and contribute more. i mentioned buckley a few times and went to ask him you had a greater impact on american life than you could ever have imagined when you were starting out. do you feel totally relaxed and content and a sense of peace? helped at me like he couldn't understand the question. i have never felt a great man or a great woman had that. they always want to do more and contribute more. our position in the world very often is based on our conduct and that is appropriate. it means you can never really relax. the future is living of rest. there is a good part. want to keep growing and learning and hand things down to

the children and grandchildren and so the thought--that is what makes us so hyperactive and overworked because we are always trying to keep pushing away. >> host: a review of your book "the social animal" from thomas nagle earlier this year, quote, david brooks emphasizes the way in which empirical methods improve our prediction and control of what people will do but when we discover an influence on our conduct which are critical response be about this question, nothing to say. >> host: not sure that is true. >> guest: we are all shaped by cultural influence was one of the experiments. i tell in the book about somebody -- a good idea watching people -- with another person in different cities around the world and they watched how often the person leaned over and touched the other person as part

of a normal conversation. touch on the wrist for emphasis. i will get the numbers wrong but in rio it was 180 touches an hour. in paris it was 120 an hour. in london if i remember correctly with zero. they never touched. that is different cultures and some cultures are more warm and embracing and more stiff and formal. if you are british then you have probably grown up in a stiff and formal culture. maybe you like it and maybe you don't. by being made aware of that you have the ability to change it. napoli consciously but you have the ability to change how you see other people so you are naturally more embracing and more warm. the way you do that is by changing your circumstances. changing your habits. you can sit down and say i will be a warm and embracing person but if you do little things like giving people a hug or touching them were getting involved in a group where you learn to hug each other, change your behavior

that you will change your perception. you will change your unconscious way you see the world and one of the lessons of all this research is we are influenced by a million different things most of which are unconscious and we will never understand. we are not captains of our own ship. we don't create our own selves but we have some control over ourselves. we deal with free won't. we say no. we have to change the circumstances of our lives. if you decide to join the marine corps or a church or a college group you will be doing things be enacting habits and rituals that will change to you are. you have the power to change yourself emotionally and unconsciously. you don't just have to lay back and say i am who i am. >> host: our guest is david brooks. anthony joins us from massachusetts. what is on your mind today? >> caller: i want to say i read david brooks's book for a couple years now and i love his

columns. don't always agree but i love to read them. my question was basically -- i know he writes a lot about human behavior in politics and sometimes about the intersection. i was wondering what he thinks about the rise of organizations like occupy wall street, the tea party movement and things like that that are not vertically hierarchical. they are more -- structures more horizontal with each individual. i was just wondering, if he thinks that this is something that he thinks is just a tambour very thing that people are reacting to through their disappointment of how government works and depending on representatives and people they placed trust and or whether he thinks it will be a continuing trend that will take power from traditional political parties and traditional institutions and

part of the reason is the internet, in the ease of communication that we have. >> host: thank you. >> guest: good question. i would say i understand the impulse behind both the tea party and the occupy movement but i think it is self-defeating to have a movement with no institution and no leaders. if you really want to focus an agenda. the you really want westing power you have to build structures and institutions that will last longer than a protest at a rally. you have to have leaders to define what you are about. say we will do this or not do that that will do the way martin luther king did with the civil-rights movement. take a broad movement but they had organizations that -- the naacp and other things and focus and gave structure and permanence and people like martin luther king the fis in what we stand for. he could have a very subtle policy. we are for this but not for

that. my problem with having a movement for snow leaders and no structures you also get defined by your worst people. for the occupy movement is a strong minority doing violence and some of the more destructive things but that generates the headline. if you don't have a leader condemning that then your worst people define who you are. i understand the impulse that we're easy and flexible and take advantage of twitter and texting and have no hierarchy but that -- every institution that lasts has a hierarchy. with any great movement can achieve can be done in a year. has to be done in 10 or 20 years or a lifetime or couple lifetimes. you need structures so i would advise both of those movements to build organization. you need organization. you need structure. >> host: was somebody else in your life that influenced you? a teacher or mentor? >> guest: i had many great

teachers in high school. a history teacher named john dale who sort of gave me a sense that i could succeed at this sort of thing. i was not a great student in high school. did graduated the top third or even the top half but i remember he had confidence in liability. that sort of thing has an effect. i will also -- went off to the university of chicago. in those days it was easy to get in and today it is not. i took a course, series of courses lead to still great works of philosophy. dead white males now. plato and edmund burke. those really did shake me. i read contemporary things. i have forgotten all that stuff but i read this book, reflection of the revolution of france when i was a freshman and hated it. by reacted so strongly because it was telling me things i now think are true but didn't want to hear its ally violent reaction against that book was

an important moment in life. >> host: a couple quick e-mails. from d. carney who live in california wondering with regard to shakespeare do you think he wrote the plays? >> guest: i do. a lot of people don't. there was a movie out based on the supposition that he didn't write it. i am not an expert but it for to those scholars who think he did. by the way, shakespeare theatre is in washington d.c.. i had a chance to tour the archives and they let me see shakespeare's deed to his house and when they did, they couldn't xerox so you and your landlord would sign a paper and they would rip it in a very uneven way and you each got half of it and they could tell was authentic because the two pieces fit together. i got to see a piece of paper shakespeare signed. sort of a thrill to see that. i don't see why he couldn't have

written his plays. >> host: does david regret his 2008 comment with regard to sarah palin as a cancer on a republican party? >> guest: i do. that was over the top. i am not a fan of sarah palin but it was a lunch of air for some magazine and i was just mouthing off. i am not a fan of hers but that is a little strong. >> host: from frank in new hampshire he wonders do you read many comments on your columns with the new york times and how do you take criticism? he also says what specific things do you think the president could have done if anything to win over republicans? >> guest: a lot of the comments are generic he is an idiot and i don't know what to make of those. they hurt your feelings. you don't want to wade through them every day. i don't mind criticism of substance. god knows my job is to start debates and i read twice a week certainly a lot of what i write

turned out to be wrong. that is bound to happen. so i try to be provocative and start in debate and very happy to be corrected when i don't have it right. i don't mind that kind of criticism. doesn't hurt my feelings at all. i take it as part of the growing process. people are really good at dealing you on personal things you are sensitive about. that is hard to get through. i get used to it. as for what the president can do ice a three key moments. the first is the stimulus package. i think it was a mistake to hand things over to congress and letting nancy pelosi run and define what was in the stimulus package. if he had the big payroll tax which he has done since, a lot of republicans could have said we are for the payroll tax cut. something we can work together on. obama is someone we can work on. second, after the first stimulus

was passed if he continued on jobs and the economy rather event pivoting to health care he could have built on a bipartisan agenda how to create growth. finally in the last year if he jumped on the simpson bowles report for debt reduction he could have begun a potential for bipartisan big agenda. >> host: why didn't he? these are his people. he appointed them. he has not embraced as of yet. >> guest: he has gone a little far in my proposal with john boehner. we offered a similar sort of deal. but i think there are two reasons. the official version is they didn't fix the defense cuts involved in simpson bowles which are responsible but that is a poor argument. you can say ok, i don't like all of this but as a country we are going to march down this road together. the country really -- the real reason is it would have been politically hard. it would involve tax increase and some entitlement cuts and that is politically hard and

would have been risky and he thought was part of the paul ryan to have a budget proposal and he could pivot off of that and that was short-term smarter and long-term stupid. over the long term people said paul ryan has a plan. i don't like him but he has a plan. the president has no plan and no vision. over the long term i think it is not only substantively but in error for him not to have done that but politically in error because people doubt his ability to be bold and visionary. >> host: moving topic to topic this is from jodie abrams who's says she is enjoying your conversation. 1969 it was a transformative year for me. i learned that no matter how optimistic things look they can end in disaster. she cites a cubs fan. >> guest: one of the crucial moments in the big league divisional lead, at shea stadium, a black cat emerged

from the stands and walked in front of the cubs' dugout. the collapse came. it was all bad luck. being a cubs fan that and still a certain sort of virtue. even if you haven't won, there is always a lovely thing to watch. by the way, in celebration of a member of the cubs won the not recommend people do is go on the web on line and they google ryan sandberg who is a chicago cubs second baseman. a great player and hall of fame pitcher and he gave a speech when inducted into the baseball hall of fame and said i try to play the game away the people who came before me played so when i hit a double i tried to run it out. i laid down the bond. didn't celebrate what i had a home run. i tried to hit to the stands with great players before me. it is great example of how to think with an institution.

the institution of baseball or work at a company or in science or motherhood or truck driver or soldier. there are certain habits the best people in your business, great speech about how to live up to those habits and how to recommend ryan sandburg. >> host: a t-shirt that you can buy at wrigley field. anyone can have a bad century. david joins a from stanford, connecticut with david brooks. >> caller: good afternoon. thanks for taking my call. i enjoy and truly appreciate your articles every tuesday and friday. question -- i have a suggestion. going away present from barney frank. perhaps you could give him a framed copy of edmund burke's rating on manners. are you familiar with that one? manners are more important than law. laws touches here and there but manners -- corp. for pure fire.

by constant steady uniform, sensible operation like the air we breathe. thank you very much and keep writing those great columns. >> guest: of beautiful quote by burke who was capable of a lot of great writing. it is a real lesson for life that burke's wisdom that he got because you can't sit here and say i will be courageous or brave or honest. what you can do is do the small things right. you can hold the door for people, set the table properly. by doing the small things right you slowly build up habits of virtue and that is what burke would have said. i hadn't really thought it through but maybe that -- was rudeness is so offensive. not just little things that can be tossed away. if you are personally rude there are problems with big things. if you are personally well mannered you get the big things right. >> host: talk about one of your

columns and get to the politics we were discussing. you're right about the two moves, quote, both parties have established minority mentalities. republicans feel oppressed by the cultural establishment and democrats feel oppressed by the corporate establishment. they embrace the mental habit they have always adopted by those who feel themselves resisting the onslaught of the dominant culture. you go on to say they fear they will lose their identity and cohesion if their members compromise with the larger world. the democratic and republican parties to promote field coalition builders. now the american parties have come to resemble ideological coherence european ones. >> guest: there was a theory that the sun party andaman party. the son party is the majority party and it dominates and the minority party. in the 30s the democrats were the sun party. the dominant majority party and the republicans after reagan were the sun party. but now neither party is stalin

is. if you look at -- the democratic party doesn't go up and it doesn't go like this anymore. they both go down to go. we have two minority parties at once which is unusual and a lot of people are disaffected from both parties. the problem with being the minority party is you hunker down. you want to create a wall around yourself to keep yourself pure and you punish people who dc-8. i think the democratic party punished people -- might be democrats but are a little more moderate. they said you are now one of as you are off the team and the republicans sometimes punish people who are off the team. they build fanss around themselves so more and more people find themselves outside the fences. it is our problem for both parties and a problem for the country because people are disaffected with both parties. some people call me a republican in name only. i think the rhinos are proud and

strong animal. >> host: said that e-mail at booktv@c-span.org enjoy the conversation at booktv. paul is on the phone in decatur, illinois. >> caller: hello. a quick comment to let you know how i have been watching you for years. you hear about being a biggest and but i am your biggest fan. you are the best thing on meet the press. just want to know. i told my 5-year-old nephew the other day thrown at kemper tantrum when i told him about conquering his own soul and conquered the city so he has been behaving himself so thank you for that. a quick note. i respect your intellect and your humility. most of all your humanity. what are called you are so human when you talk. i am one of those average guys

about vacuuming your floor. didn't finish college because of family obligations but we are out there. we are paying attention. i wonder. a guy like you to be below what really makes you stand out is you have such integrity. i am so impressed with you. guys like jack abrams of. i see these guys making money like they do on the side. i watch these debates and think -- i have respect for obama doesn't know this is going on? didn't he sees around him? boss tweed says i don't care as long as i'm doing the nominating. what is going on the special interests bought and paid for all of them but a guy like you, you are the only one i see out there with the hook the to take the blame because like myself we're both for the genesis of things. the amygdala and things that happen when you're 5 or 6-year-old.

the same with politics. i haven't voted in years because i don't trust any of them. i have lost my faith. i think it is all done for and finding your floor. >> host: will have david respond to your point but thomas about you. with your background? you never finished college? what is your job and tell us about your family. >> caller: not as exciting as it sounds. are you want to change professions. i strike parking lots and things like that. is something i do in the summer of six most to work and just stop and read. i have my library card. i read comte as well. between in flexible classes between going to school. it was 142 before went back in the army thing but again my question is what can a guy do? some one respect. >> host: thank you for the call and sharing your thoughts. >> guest: one of the great thing about c-span is you get people

who are just interested in ideas coming on calling in to the show and i really appreciate that. i really appreciate that call. a couple things to be said. first story about repressing your own a year and a story and mentioned on charlie rose that are will repeat quickly. very instructive story for 5-year-olds and older. it is about dwight eisenhower. the young kid 3 or 4-year-olds and he went trick or treating on halloween but his mom won't let him that he has a huge temper tantrum and punches a tree in the front yard and cuts the skin off his knuckles and his mom sense into the room and he cries for an hour and he goes up and she goes up and finds his land and give some band-aids and whatever and says to him, quote the passage that he who can carter his own soul is greater than he coup can conquer the city. is all about being aware of the

temper and danger and weakness we have in ourselves and the need to get that under control. 76 years later eisenhower says this was an important moment in my life because i realized i had to control my weakness and be aware of the problems i have, struggle against them. that is a great lesson for people. has for the integrity of the people in washington. it is easy for me to write a column but for the people in government they have to organize a coalition. they need to build severe limits on what they can do, one of the hard things is they don't get to choose to their partners are all the time. trying to get a coalition of 50% plus 1. they have to deal with the reality they feel around them and i find them often quite good people who are stuck in a rotten system. i hear what you are saying about not voting and yet i think the people are good.

if we could arrange the system better, we would have a much better government. i urge you to vote. very sensible and wise person. i urge voting because the people are good and it is possible to fix the system if we get people who are willing to actually work on the system itself rather than be sucked into a system which encourages so much money flying around so special interests are flying around but if we had a series of leaders from both parties who say we cut out these special breaks in the tax code we will cut out the corporate welfare. the system would be better as we could be governed. >> host: let me ask about a liter you wrote about. mitt romney. in the marx brothers movie the republican presidential race, mitt romney is supposed. you go on to say he is running in an atmosphere which is extremely difficult to remain serious and substantive yet he is doing it. democrats should not underestimate him.

>> guest: there were five marx brothers the four in some of the movies. the funny ones, groucho, chico, arco had their sticks and zip code was bored and usually ended up getting the girl. thanks to newt gingrich and herman cain, mitt romney is a bit of a low-key personality and yet he is getting the job done. and his medicare plan is a pretty good plan. economic reform plan is pretty good. other people have good plans. it is that slow steady manager. is my view of where i am but where other people are is i don't necessarily want to fall in love with a candidate. i just want someone who would be a good manager for the country. if bob gates, secretary of defense under bush and obama would run for office he would be

my ideal candidate. really good president. he is not in iran and sick of washington and done a lot of public service. but there's a hunger for that sort of person. i was hoping mitch daniels would run. the governor of indiana. he is that sort of person. he gets the job done. and frankly as i look around the country, i see lot of mayors and governors who are just like that. they are not big ideological people. they like to get the job done. rahm emanuel in chicago does a good job. los angeles, there is a whole series of local law officials who really do good government. mostly at the big washington level we have a problem. >> host: how is the president doing? >> guest: i am disappointed he didn't do simpson bowls. i was disappointed the way the debt was run up. i don't blame him for running up the debt in a recession but we needed an exit strategy to get

out of it. i think he could have done more to promote growth. given all the bad things that have built up in the financial system it was going to be tough no matter who was president no matter who did anything. it was going to be tough to promote. so i don't particularly blame him for that. he has conducted himself pretty much in an honest way with very little corruption. i have great personal admiration for him. i am politically more to his right but no worse than the be-. he has made some mistakes but wouldn't say he has been a bad precedent. >> host: first came the across the and then the vanity. let's all feel superior. all fears superior. >> guest: that was the reaction to the penn state situation. the jerry sandusky situation. everyone suffice stumbled into that locker room or someone had come to me with a story the way someone came to joe paterno i would have done something.

i would have raised and ended this. the reality is we have history with it. history of the holocaust and atrocities and genocides and a whole bunch of social scientific experiments and it turns out people don't interact. in the genevieve case not quite a clean case but she was the woman in queens that in the 50s was killed and the original story was 39 people saw it and nobody called the cops. .. but, in fact, this does happen all the time where people see something, and nobody calls the cops, nobody intervenes. a study i saw recently, i think it was done at penn state. they asked people suppose somebody made a sexist comment in your presence, would you raise a ruckus? and a big majority said, yes, i would say something immediately. and then the experimenters a couple hours or weeks later arranged for somebody to make a sexist comment in their presence, and they didn't say anything. so we all flatter ourselves and

think, yes, we would have leapt in, but the reality is most people and most of us wouldn't have leapt in, so we can't say i myself would have leapt in confidently. we don't know what we would have done unless l we'd been in that circumstance. so i was just trying to put a damper down to all the people who said, yeah, i would have done it. >> host: a tweet from one of our viewers, you are fortunate to be a hamiltonian in somebody stood up in the middle of this breakfast meeting and said never apologize for quoting

lincoln. so if lincoln can be quoted, i think hamilton can in all parts of the country. >> host: above those in paradise and the social animal. how do those three, d have a favorite? >> guest: this office to a question. the ottoman of different times, all on different subjects. so i am fine. i look back with both on this and regret for each of them. >> host: did you ever think you'd be writing books? >> guest: i wanted to be awantea writer. by second grade want to be a writer of some sort. tell the story in high-school. there was a young woman wantednd today. she won the day somebody else. i remember thinking, what does she see in that guy? their the people choose their partners the of the base of wedding but other t things. a a london be a playerplayht, but representative. that but that didn't really work out. it.to joualism, i'm led did.

you ge the reserve and be around. i read all day every day. deutsche summer, but my idealisi time is in the morning. my perfect shadow time is betwee between seven and 9:00 tonight,f but if you are a father thats time is not available. and so i read in the morning in a ride in my basement home mostlyi i found as i get older i am veri easily distracted. this happens to other people. ir when you are yang in your 20's you can be in a crowded room and just typing away, but now i or really need quiet.n a of time on anir airplane a plana new age -- place soundtracks tor movie soundtracks which have noc words.'ll p i will play that. i e.isast shut out all noise. i get very easily distracted. i i have to be down in my basement base cut off from everybody.

that's why do most of my.our neb >> host: when is your next book coming out? >> guest: i have a few years, i at least three or four years. >>or host: ray is joining us. go ahead please. >> i just wanted you to knows. that my time is mccammon one trust media. i was read in the still is, although i have been done many but years, but i wanted to five there is a deep concern that i have had no for two or three ove years over ther fact that we mt a lot of great leaders in ourerr country. want they do not want take it involved in the political arenal today with the brutal attacksonb that are made and individuals. they don't have to be the truths all they have to do is just attack somebody. les they will spend the rest of their lives trying to defend their families and all of thisd.

difficulty. an and i just feel like we are th missing some brave leaders thath 'tll step out because they don'n want to -- they don't want this distraction. caller: tnk you thank you so much.agre >> guest: i completely agree bea with that. i have been doing a little work for my next book, reading a lotn about a a woman and frances perkins who was the first womany in the cabinet, secretary ofer labor under franklin roosevelt.. >> host: the building is right down the street. >> guest: that's right. she wa she was an intensely private evn person. thos you know, peeople, even in thosh days,e said we want to know wht it's like to be a woman in government. she , was a very personal intens reticent burden because it is as germane.band also her husband suffered mentad illness. she had a complicated daughter, relationship with her daughter, and she never wanted to go in tho there. th as ae result even in those daysr she was unpopular with the pr press.toda today she would never want to g into the to the arena. she normalrmal sense of privacy.

and now if you go into and now government,if not only if you're right for president, but even if you're prominent you sacrifice a lot of the privacy.hat i think that the scare away a lot ofa people.and then jt and then just the readers of the campaign, the campaign that ishs mostly about really spending two years on the road if you're t running for president, two yearr of doing when media thing aftero another, most people don't want to go through that.ry >> host: there used to be therut invisible primary.t canada is to run and a plethora of media attention, jimmy carter has talked about it on this network saying that he wasmy cer really under the radar. saying today your candid it's too the announce and immediately debatey 11 or 12, several more schedulee next month. schedu is there could bad for thele bae press? >> guest: i think it's bad, and i have seen it in my ownve t career whe inn i got to iowa and new hamp gshireo. hpshire, ma three or four elections ago, ifc you went out in the summer or fe

the fall of the year before thee primary you would be sitting in a van with the candidate, justde you and the canada because there was no big press crash.even t and even the big candidates.t b and then that began to change. he began to have more pressthe coverage and then the cameras an along.was just and so first it was just a few s tv cameras that would set up occasionally. other with cameras of iraq. lite everything is on video. everytns and so there is no down time, no off the record. and some the most alarming this time is that there is no -- there is much less one candid i a room with 20 people. he used to be the norm in iowa and new hadmpshire. nor you go there, going to to pocahontas iowa, you get to atlt little diner and the candlewood to meet and greet, given in a speech, and 45 minutes answerin0 questions. sitt twenty people sitting around tho diner.tle and they stofill do a little of that, but much less.nowles o much of the post had a good piece mentioning that the number of days spent in -- just out cag

doing that i sort of campaigning is significantly down, even forn four years ago.rs the amount of money raised is is also down interestingly, but so i have been out in iowa, new hampshire, and usually you lookb on the web page and find out where they all work and you w, would drive from event to event. ticket three or four events in a w you day. in the st nowat many you're lucky if there is one candidate because the are restaurant during fund-raisers are preparing for debate.ing for so it's very hard to cover a isy campaign the way it used to bera covered, and as a result theypas have very less direct contest to voters in the use to. lss >> host: from chicago, thisost:t question gun butts you're realln a point of a child visitation. what can the private sector do to improve attention to early childhood education for those are disadvantaged? >> well, that is an easy answer. >> not sure we are supposed to greo endorse, but they're is a great organization. they do early childhood chic education in chicago, and they t have early -- they have programs

, lobbying, and they doand research. and so they've really do an outstanding work in getting a lot of the students who are from disorganized backgrounds, givina them into the center ande so visiting one center on the sonst of chicago, the preven otiounn.e and the teachers there, therevey are great places, very brightvee and lively, and it teaches a just talking, they just talk all they.hingshat ha one of thepp things that happens to kids from disorganized backgrounds is there is less talk. in suggesting that this change going, just tremendously the valuable. os, they are not the only ones, buto that is a great an outfit. the national reach.ost: fralive >> franken brooklyn new yorks saying that you become somethino of theme zeitgeist. can you come across any good hav ideas for getting money out ofao politics? of >> you know, as i mentioned, ane a weird way, in one way it is really going out. if so, for example, if you to the

republican candidates this time four years ago they have theses. numbers.st: ye otentially less. >> guest: they raised 300 some odd mil odd million together four yearsa ago and now they have raised a combined 80 million.mney had four years ago mitt romney had raised more than all the candids it's combined.is now, the question is why? becaue is it because people are poor, the recession going on, theandie dollar candid it's been or is ss it, as i suspect, and this is not good news, the big money tht person, it's hard to call to sa give your friends and see wheret it's eve 25 rid dollars jackets easy to read a $20,000 check $20 yourself to some super pak that is outside the system.de the sym and so on afraid the money isey going away from the candid it's in toward the super packs. and so that is not money going out of politics, it's justnd. shifting around.obably i suspect that is probably what is happening. su. >> host: martin is joining usoig from dayton ohio. go ahead and.

>> caller: it's a great honor.r. book tv is a huge favorite of is mine, second only to charlief rose, i think. that guy is probably the bestrot person on the planet for a show. but i read a lot of pro wide rang range of topics, but i do want to bring up a quick a while ago, guns terms of steel because i le think inherently we are lucky td be born into this country, and n think people, especially in lke times are rough like rear goinge through, we overlook this. i am a long-term optimist for this country, but i think the a thing you're getting a little as while ago as far as it is ahat'w meritocracy, that is what has people werfel's right now and really having a hard time. the two-party, of wms, you knowo they don't think -- people don'e think that they are the causal agent. it want to be the causal agent

in their life.y're not and hink that they're not any more. and then you hear things like cf the stock act, and you just thik think that it is not a marx meritocracy.s well recently as well. and she was talking about the hw timeline o,f capitalism and howr you know, it works and it has worked both good and bad for aey while, mostly good, but then itd gets to appoint committee use the word on vacation. endo was just wondering whatptan your paths are about capitalism. i do think that it needs to be steered.i'm not a i am not a libertarian. if anything people would label me as a liberal. i supported obama.symbf mostly as the symbol obama. i was wise enough to know that there could not be great changeh but just one person. and i think he should have driven home the bowles simpson,n which are already talked about,k

but uptick the answer of the take t air. it's a great hheonor to talk tot you.to >> thank you for the call. uest: >> thank you. thesare ex an excellent point. an excellent calles., i agre i agree with you about people ey're caus not having a sense for cause .egend at, i one thing, if you look to people from other countries, one of the ways we're different is that ifo you ask people, do you control e your own destiny americans are much more likely to think, yes,l i control my own destiny.'s not, lifewealth, not fate. i have the ability this to my own life.t i thinle are i think that's the precious ands relief. the people of beginning to doubt that. as you see special interests or frolling the economic system from washington or from wall street then they have lessl o control over their cells. they see people who don't work are getting ahead then that is basically a stirring of thefor e system for everybody.riter there is a writer lazar number of books and a president, and he and he has this concept of our success,

tthat the whole system is basedm on the idea that efforts shouldo lead to reward the reader shoule be work crew will work. and now we have people getting rkead without the work, people working in mecca in the reward.. and that the occupy folks in tha tea party folks are boatust different protests against the weakenin weakening of that link between effort and reward. d the and the quickest thing that welo can do is to clear up some of the special interest ande simplify the tax cut, some by ce the corporate welfare, so that s these people have a sense thatey the game is not complete theagat rate. >> on the right to turn this into aut question. it's a a broad point, but i want toto w narrow it. i is there too much of an emphasi. on living a life with no blemishes today?iving a life is it all right to sell them something in the stronger forfat it? anbe fill the two marriages, obviously left the speaker of the house, so to this yoursouse. point and to the speaker's life in general, your thoughts. >> i myself and incredibly unterested

uninteresting or for giving a rm personal failures. usually a fairly like a politician and they ushave affas and things like that i find andp never stop liking them.and mo thst people who object to affairs, it's only ae politician of the of the party rejected.th. and so i may be personally onaly disturbed, but if they can do i kejob i'm fine with that. i keep mentioning alexander alea hamilton is one of my heroes. well, he had an affair. ton't think it made in any lessi of a secretary treasury. ything l so i esam someone who has alwayf tolerated a lot of scandal. in chicago, a lot of scandals, but he also did some good thingo for the city of chicago. of chim and so i am willing to tolerate or newt the case for newt gingrich, soms of the things, personal life ary credible and messy.wife gav his wife gave an interview to gq magazine which was very, very unflattering. i would be willing to toleratene toleratecould be assured that it gingrich has what i think some u

of the qualities of public, which is being organized insameg being the same, been consistentr over time.d ginich and the old gingrich was not. he would jump from one issue to0 another. degrees his views today mighfrt berow. 180 degrees from his use go tomorrow. very hard to run the governmento or administration if you're going to be all over the place. and i don't think he was arganid particularly well organized the curve for that reason.'s some people say he has butrgivee forgiveness personally in chased publicly. pcly. in the thick you can run a biggn campaign of with the next severl several months then maybe i wasl given credence. >> the social animal, this point, one thing that struck me point. about the social animal is unpredictable realize. -- >> yes, well, we all have veryl, distinct lines, but there are certain things that we do that you can predict that we do fall into certain patterns.ain patte. i'm not sure i mention it in the book, but researchers, recently. if you need a loan need this

much. the feet with one of the person you on average 35% more, and ifo you with three or more other if people you eat on average 78% ople, yo more. on we are not aware of these patterns, but we are shared by o them. om our we tend to marry people who are similar to ourselves. unconsciously there are all no these patterns. nonetheless there are so many io patterns, and we still havecont control of our own actions thatd we should be aware a of the patterns a cavernous. but that doesn't mean that we mn are necessarily determined by we them. >> our next call is taken, omve, from oka. >> yes. orom one baseball fan to t another, i was lucky to analyzee the obama presidency in terms ou his performance metrics. on the one hand you gave him a b minus.d then and then before that you cited three strategic mistakes.ctual and you looked at the actual performance of the e tconomy

essentially 15 percentyment, unemployment, high gas prices, inflation, $15 trillion debt.ond record bankruptcies. him howdy you give them a b minusoes immodesty of a 40 percent approval rating? i just can't figure those. he was a baseball player. 150 navy. >> thank you. >> that's a good question.: i i guess i would say a don'tpress think the president controls thr economy. a you know, the economy is a verys complex system that goes on itsr own. i don't think a president can snap his fingers. government can do that. this is one area i fault thehatu president on. he thought that if he did some stimulus package you could produce a lot of jobs. the dollar spent on stimulusuld would create $2 economic growth. i don't think that's true.nough i don't think we are smartign a enough to design a package that can doca that. don't think you have these huge multiplier effects. what government can do is do thl

fundamental things right, get ae basic structure right, and theng over the long term you have some positive effect, create a really good school system, and increase economic growth, not today, that is down the ecroad and have a b. effect. if we had a very good tax codei' it would not change thisle tomorrow. regula if we had regulation, it would-m not produce a short-termng benefit. so i don't think the president is to be blended there is a recession on his watch or ofi there is tremendous growth. i don't think the president has control, so i don't really blame him for the highte. unemployment rate. this i think he inherited this mess., i do blame him for not giving us out of the debt that was going to go up anyway on the front. i blame i blame him on some otherther things, but i give him credit on some things.on edution p education policy, is doing pretty good.y i think he was right to surge into afghtoanistan.hink on some other things, i think he is done a deancent job. a d or and so i have trouble giving him a d for those.n a yea from

>> we don't know what would happen year from now, but if the election were held today wouldwl he bed reelected? reelted? >> i think he would probably lose right now. now. many people think the country is on the wrong track.e lowpproval he as this low approval rating.t the economy is still toght now scuffling along. so right now i suspect he wouldk lose. >> back to your book which cannot win? with the year 2000. el you write that this is the oppoe that has been raised by an opposite elites.affluent they're fluent yet opposed to materialism and spend theirtheye livesir selling that worry abou. selling out. by they are by instinct anti-establishment, yet somehowe they have become a new establishment.members of the members of this class are divided against themselves. and one is struck by how much of thk time is spent are as we wrestling with the conflict between the rneeality and their ideals.r realityand th >> you know, he take a guy like. steve jobs or the people who the work at facebook or the people, ben anrkd jerry's, they have all je become, you know, they might h

have a heavy dose, the condensec for millionaiores. so they don't like to think of themselves as the rich with they elites.'re they think there are rebels, yoo outsiders, you know, who areso e wirt hof the is the 1960's and this been a lot of time to wrestling with that and have to spend money on themselvesy and l.a. even though the oppose mate materialism, at least in theory. and so that is true if you gof around to some of the rich parts of the country, palo alto, california, santa monica california. the north shore of chicago. not you find people who say anothera ridge sellout. i am a creator, liberator, i am -- a la jimmy hendrix. list yet people listen to jimi hendr hendrix now, in many cases whers the riches. so they're not really revels inh >>ost: t >> two points from the book the social animal.my this caught my e eye.y words are you say the words of the fuel. one >> says. one evolutionary psychologistsyt said, you know, it's really jusn

above 1500 words, most of ourr conversations, really just a few words, maybe less. we are capable of speaking, manf of us have vocabulary's like 30,000 words, the 2000. why do we have so many words? it is because we want to imprest our mates with our ability to communicate with each other. ona and so when you hire on a date you're the one below the these going on, but say,eet the people need for a first date, the breathing becausea t regulatedted, s it began breeding of the same time.regula they're also regulating theirsoe vocabulary's. people with and the yankees inr, a brochure rack 90, a cute. rt alys we don't think about this,t as we are talking to somebody we begin to regulate our vocabulare level to match the other persont we want to connect with them. p

and so this is part of the way l we blend together. all these things a going out unconsciously, we use the wordso to try to create a very intimate emotional connections which ther produce love and then @booktvisi the reason wet do this is it takes four years to raise a babs and to raise a child so that is se even so some less self-sufficient. if you're going to produce a pao child to one apartment to sticko around of is for four years.e th the theory is if you have spenta -- if you're of a courtship over 18 months yet exchange towords. million words. bonded you your words have bonded you one t to another, and you're likely t tick around with each other for those four years.is joini us >> kayten is joining us from summer's new york. p go ahead.>> caller:i, dav >> david, i am a reluctant[lauge host:r. >> why use a reluctant? were selected because i am a an liberal. david, one of our few that one republicans that one could

respects was senator margaretard chase smith.rty was she feared that the party was te harming not only the electoral process that the country itself. so she delivered a declaration of conscience that stated that she did not want the party toy n write the political victory on the four horsemen. igrance, fear, and ignorance, bigotry, has been. she did not think that the eopublican party would do that p because the american people she hoped would not support a party that puts political exploitatioe of interest of the nation. how would you respond to that to back to the republicans still react that way? thin >> you know, i think some do, you but i think a lot don't. i'm not a fan of some of what is

re said in arabic and the rates.tia i dorln'ty think it is particuln serious are realistic. su herman cain recently suspended his campaign for the presidencyh i don't think he had done the pr necessaryes work.u hired a the preparation you would want,o you would want to know plumbing if you hired a surgeon. ery. i don't think he studied enough to prepare enough. i -- and i so i think some of the peopleopo have not hav prepared enough tos enter this talk show mentalityme where they can just arrau's some passion and hatred they think that's enough. it's not sufficient. nonetheless know whether you agree and not or whether you not agree with a lot of thelot of t republicans are not, i think lem they have a legitimate point oft view, a point of view that says america is slowing down because we are burdened by a government that is taking too much wealth, that interferes too much in thee economy, and in some areas iem,m agree in some areas i disagree. i think it is illegitimate much of you, and i d oon't think -- k think there are parts that are

very simple-minded, but at the h best the party represents this the general point of view that we is, you know, that we have always been a country with a wi very small government, very light hand, and we should stick with that, and that is what theo constitution says. by a daunting the party is by its n nature illegitimate are based on joan ir hatred. >> three or four mess left. go ahead please.ry >> to t morning. so i'm very thrilled to talk to ersity o someone.nghere i was living there. i grew up in my 20's and-65. m now i am now a moderate iowa republican, and i want to know c you think that the aspect has contributed to a rise of candidates to be pretty much cai represents the ideas of either party or even the absence of pay ideas. and pretty much prejudice. n be d and what can be done to give atte teater attention tont those ott willing to represent the whole of clause by struggling with the ideas and working with host: wla compromise? rin ts

>> to you have a canada in this? race? ngrich terr actually watched the other night. i am terribly impressed with hi, intelligence and the answer isn. no. >> thank you. >> interesting. wow, be you know, the -- i think the base crowd is intellectual. conv a lot of conservatives are veryh comfortable because conservatives a bill think tankn and heritage foundation's and the american enterprise theve state. they have ideas.e thei t they haveh agendas. acamics, a the takes an active as clams. they have ideas and agendas. dof people like me don't feel quitee at home, the problem as the centrist, moderate or hambletonian's that have not billed ideas, but the agendas. there are nothing tincture institutions.so to me for the biggest problem lack of intellectual work that has to bb done to build a political movement.. the drought. if you are a moderate democrat, republican what are you growing out of?

o's out th propose a policy and is out there to support you?the lossf is the loss of institutions that is our problem. >> we talked about this earlier, but fascinated by your liveyou e report. you pehave people over the age e 70 assess their lives. what did you learn?, some of >> well, some of them as -- soml of it is really good because ons of the things you learn is as oy people get older they get betted living, they see the world differently. when you're in your 30's and 40's your word about a lot ofout things as an unusual. but when you get to be in your 70'su to focus more on the positive ad and become grateful, and thathat sense of latitude and uses a loi ofn things.things. another thing i learned is that, -- and this is not original, but it was confirmed all of the thel reports, a lot of peoplet a lot regretted the risks it did not take.take. very few regretted the rest that did take. risksyou k that messed -- if your lawyer to cut your lean toward risk to bea gnother thing is that the most'n import this is it going to make in your life is to marry. if the letters personally was

married for 50 years, the le letters aren't used by the people who had been 234. so we don't train people and getting a just to think about t the position. deci but t that was the most our decision a you make. those of you the lessons of lift up. au >> the author of three books fourth. coluist for "t columnist for the new york times.nd his columns appear tuesdays andt fridays. have you ever not missed ane? deadline? >> if i mess up a column i havea nothing. but it's my job. i have to get it done.. >> three errors here on c-span2 book tv. prram. appreciate your time. and >> a great pleasure and appreciate. >> thank you. >> visit booktv.org to watch any of the programs you see here on line. type the author or book title and the search bar in the upper left side of the