things he didn't like to be called. he was a lobbyist, he wasn't a fixer, he wasn't a peddler, but i suspect that he would agree in probably take great pleasure in being identified to might as one of the truly great and iconic figures of american politics during the last chunk of the 20th century. ..

how much our political life in our political discourse has changed. and i think some of us who have gone to that era and are living through it now shake her head and say you know isn't there something missing these days? and maybe a lot, so i really am delighted to welcome a first-time author, kathryn mcgarr. she will tell us a story of how this biography came to be in a lot more about her famous great novel. please join me in welcoming her. [inaudible]

how do you write a book about your famous great uncle and remain in the family and also write an accurate look? the way i tried to get around that was doing a lot of research, especially at the presidential library and in the national archives because the uncle bob as we call them in the family, that i knew growing up was very different from the man in the book and people ask me all the time what surprised you most? what did you learn that was so surprising? i kept trying to think of some great smart answer and i really never came up with one. i think the thing that surprised me most was how much power he had. he was such a powerful player in washington and when i was a child, during his heyday, i never really got to see that. and when he is with his family he is a different family. when he's with his grown

children it's about his grandchildren. one of his grandchildren told me that they didn't even know that he won the presidential medal of freedom until they saw it sitting on his shelf and asked him what it was. said he was a little more modest with his own family. i did spend my seventh birthday in the ambassador's residence in moscow. this was when george h. w. bush appointed bob, ambassador to the soviet union at a critical time when it was crumbling. bob landed there in the middle of the coup when yeltsin was rallying people and he went over there and he came back around christmastime. he was ambassador to russia. he said i think i'm the only fellow who has been ambassador to the 12 country. so i did not know that uncle bob had flown into a coup. i just know he got me a pink cake for my seventh birthday. so i began writing this book at

the columbia journalism school. i took a class with sam freedman and i think that where bob wielded the most power and where he made one of the biggest marks in history was in keeping the democratic party together from 1972 to 1976 and that was when the party really was torn apart starting in 1968 after the debacle at the 1958 convention and the assassinations of rfk and martin luther king, the party was splintering over vietnam and the number of issues. he came in and really help the party together, first as treasurer of the democratic national committee and then as chairman of the democratic national committee. and the democratic party then looked a little bit like the republican party today in that it was very fractured and there was extreme wing, the --

mcgovernite wing starting in 72 of the democrats and now the republicans have the tea party but what the republicans don't have is the bob strauss here. they are still fractured. so, bob really came in at a key time so i started researching his time at the dnc first. it was the first chapter that i wrote. i started in the middle with his election to the chairmanship and the national archives has all of the transcripts from the dnc meetings, executive committee meetings, and these are pretty dull reading material. but not when bob was chairman. bob was really known around town and around the country because he did become a household name after he was chairman like reince priebus, the current chairman. i was laughing at the national

archives and they frown upon anything at the national archives. was really hilarious and so he went about his job keeping the party together with a sense of humor and it was a very controversial election when he became chairman. this was after mcgovern lost in 72. nixon won every single state except massachusetts and the district of columbia, so you can imagine. i mean, how bad of a candidate mcgovern turned out to be through no fault of his own. and this is what bob was up against. i found this at the nixon library. it had recordings of the phonecalls that nixon was making with his staff and one of his aides, chuck colson, pretty familiar name, was calling the president. they were really tracking this dnc chairmanship election very

closely, surprisingly closely and they were talking about george mitchell, who became the senator from maine, very powerful senator from maine at the time he was in his 30s and he would compete with bob. chuck colson said about mitchell, he is from maine, he is smart but he is not a strauss kind of a guy who is a powerful strong brilliant individual and when i heard colson saying that i was like what did bob pay him to say that? [laughter] and then that was sort of how he was viewed and then he said strauss would normally be the most effective guy they could get that i think it would probably blow up on them and we are going to win either way. obviously, the nixon folks did not win either way because the water skate -- watergate scandal broke apart and he ended up out of office. also there was no purge of mcgovernite. even though he was coming from a more conservative place, he had

p.m. and lbj and john connelly democrat from texas. if he didn't embrace the mcgovernite exactly, he definitely try to appease the mcgovernite. he made sure they had what they needed and he made sure that labor had what they needed and the lack caucus in the women's caucus who are trying at that time to grow, trying to expand so he really was not just a compromiser but a very skilled negotiator, making sure that everyone had a little bit of what they needed. and that was because he always said that his goal for 1976 was to be able to deliver a party to a candidate. he said i'm not going to deliver a candidate to this party. i'm delivering a party to the candidate and that is something that is not going on today in the republican party. they are trying to deliver a candidate to a very divided party. so he didn't know who the nominee would be in 1976. he certainly did not think it

was going to be jimmy carter. no one thought it was going to be jimmy carter. he thoughts jackson or maybe humphrey or muskie, pretty much anyone over carter but he looked past as chairman of the dnc and he really saw it as his mission to keep his electric together. he didn't care who the nominee was and they didn't care what they stood for. there was criticism leveled at him throughout his career that he was not an ideologue but all he cared about was getting a democrat in the white house and he really did not care who it was. it turned out to be jimmy carter and they went on to be great friends. jimmy carter who i don't think is necessarily known for his sense of humor really loved bob, grew to love bob and i interviewed him. he said they grew as close as two brothers. and bob could make him laugh. bob would always insult him when he introduced him because that is how bob loved you. he would make fun of him for --

and there were a lot of ways the bob made front of jimmy carter. and then carter appointed him special trade representative. as t.r. at the time and currently that is the office of the united states trade representatives. they change the title and ron kirk is ustr. bob came in at a very weak cabinet position as a cabinet post, but he really used his underdog status to his advantage and he became known as someone who really reached across the aisle and he was friends with republicans and democrats. for someone who started his career in washington as chairman of the national committee that would seem surprising but i think what helps him them was that the democratic party, he was almost working across and i'll already. any party that has george

wallace who you know ran for president many times and barbara jordan, the blackcomb were summoned, and the same party and he was very friendly with both of them. anyone who can do that can work across the aisle in congress for republicans and democrats and carter saw what he had done as chairman of the dnc. and so he also thought he could do that abroad. the tokyo round of the multinational trade negotiations had been stalled for some time. they started in 1973. and there were over 100 countries involved, so it seemed like a very daunting task for someone to take on. that bob was willing to do it. he didn't have a large prayer christie to work with. up with mike the department of commerce where he had a lot of people under him. we had a very small staff and he thought that was a very good thing. he really accumulated powers through his friendships in congress with democrats and with

republicans. i think especially pertinent now with the recent passage of the three bills last night, the trade bills with colombia and panama and south korea. everyone is making such a big deal about you know, how they got this through so quickly and how bipartisan they were and it's true, but this bill was also divisive and it wasn't just the three countries bob was negotiating with. it was 102. one of the really large -- of trade and so i wanted to read a little bit about half how bob negotiated through congress. the bill ended up passing 395-211 in the house and 90-4 in the senate and after the houseboat came in, bob said to

eizenstadt who is the domestic policy adviser, who voted against my bill? so he suspected a victory and he got one and this was a controversial bill. this was a very divisive bill and he still got his 395-7 bill and 90-4 vote. so in this point of the book he is negotiating the tokyo round and trying to sell it in congress. this was the point at which the kennedy round, the kennedy round was unsuccessful because the congress didn't end up passing the legislation needed to and acted. so, there would not be a trade agreement until april and strauss thought it would be foolish to wait until the final product to begin selling it. one so it has presented a bill to congress it would the special fast-track legislative path. introduced by the trade act of 1974 words dictated that wants the bill was written to congress no changes could be made. no deal to be cut, knowing them

as could be added no filibusters would be permitted. strauss for' team included congressional staff coming up with legislation. he wanted there to be no surprises. i'm not a fool strauss had said in a congressional hearing before the house ways & means committee in july 1978. i think i know balance when i see it and i'm no political reality. i will not drop a baby on the doorstep and take care but we have given birth to it. i hope you might be a midwife and we will be working with this committee closely. and unorthodox mood -- movie invited senior congressional staff into highly sensitive for negotiations. he wanted them to have as much at risk in the outcome that he did. he worked the hill like crazy eyed -- eisenstadt said. people looked them up there and bob had a wonderful credibility with the hill. he had been a successful chairman of the party. strauss and his reputation for being a man who could work across the aisle. strauss was elected at a 1979

congressional hearing when representative charles dana commented on how they had so far achieved bipartisan cooperation in the trade legislation. we truly have strauss said. what is impressed me is that i have come from a partisan position as chairman of the democratic party. don't tell me you were going to move the to the other side. no but i will tell you this is mighty comforting snuggling up to my republican friends over here. i'm glad while i was highly partisan i was not accused of taking cheap shots along the way. i think that is one of the main differences from politics than in politics today were the cheap shots along the way. with congress straus found that with the other fellow had to have, a joking.. as he told journalist elizabeth drew before the passage of the bill the things you learn on the hill are not free. joran and. the respect and get these things come up there is an because my personality. is because i worry about their business. ers now they will carry you only

so far. you have delivered. if you can show the average person in congress how he can vote right, no way in winnable than average -- member of house and senate can know what the issue is all the time. although he made it easy for legislators to go along with him strauss and countered criticism both from protectionist who thought he had swindled congress into supporting him and from free traders who thought he had made too many side deals to protect american industries. such 20 factors -- sacrifice bourbon to protect tobacco partly so his friend would not lose his senate seat in kentucky, i stayed to produce both. journalist and trade consultant william geld protectionists appointive skewering carter and strauss for giving away the store wrote in his 1990 book trade wars against america, seldom has the congress been mesmerized by as many empty promises as ambassador strauss fired at it in spring of that year. decade later it is possible to look back on the carnage wrought by the 1979 trade act and wonder

how it congress could've been so gullible. he called the trade act quote like all its predecessors since the roosevelt sponsored locke 1934, a fraud. strauss' promises were not entirely empty which meant free traders could -- too. the farmers, the steel people had cut separate deals with them and made side deals, which i have to say i didn't learn about until later eizenstadt said albeit with evidence for strauss. after he elected fdr used to joke that every week one of the group to whom he had promised something would call and ask the commitment that bob gave them. although free trade advocates and free-trade critics air their gripes about the tokyo rounds for years to calm the congress was obviously satisfied with his job. because of the way strauss vanessa bill the trade agreements act of 1979 passed almost unanimously. on july 11, 1979 the house passed the trade bill 395-7 and

on july 23, 1979 the senate passed 90-4. carter noted in his diary on july 231979 that he was disappointed with the coverage of the passage of the trade bill which he considered to be a great achievement of his administration. he wrote "washington post" editor ben bradlee the following note. other than a non-headline notice and on capitol hill column for posted not even mention the passage of the trade act. it does differ in 1952. strauss and the commerce deserve recognition and assigned a reader jimmy carter. in 1986, bradley, friend of strauss' with him he joked easily or what its trust and know from carter, writing, it was over to my bank all this money putting in another million dollars of washington bostock and i found these things cluttering it up. what did you pay him to write me this? all kidding aside strauss was disappointed too and he said, when i got up the next morning i

could not wait to read the marvelous story about what a wonderful fdr we had an robert s. strauss. he said i could have cared less about the stephanie said this with -- he said there was not a line and there. animal's had a stroke. but for his work on the tokyo round on january 16, 1981, and this was after he had run carter's failed re-election bid, so carter always joke that he had two ambitions in life. one was to be president one was to -- and bob helped him achieve both. so anyway january 16, 1981 after carter lost, and he presented strauss with the presidential medal of freedom which is the highest civilian honor reading at the time the following citation. for americans politics is the art of the possible. through intelligence, ability and the many friendships earned during the service i believe the

party in the nation, robert s. strauss has refined the art into a science with diligence, persistence and with. is successfully concluded the multilateral trade negotiation at a time when many believed they were doomed for failure. for stripping the system of trade which like the nations of our increasingly interdependent world he has earned our gratitude and respect. so, that was the end of law than trade and he knew nothing about trade going into it. he always liked to joke that he know he didn't have much substance to him but when he was sdr he would get up at the crack of dawn and he had his staff make him flashcards with all the acronyms on them. he was a quick study and he always joke, i'm a quick study but not very deep. he obviously got equally into the issues and from there he went on to negotiating helping to negotiate, helping not negotiate peace in the middle

east. and get another job where he really had no background and then again under the republican administration as i mentioned george h. w. bush and pointed him to be ambassador to russia. he said at the time in quoting "the washington post" i am no worse expert but i never knew anything about any job i have had until i got there. that is something else he can't say today and still have your point may go through. [laughter] it was a different time in the press and also in the congress. there was a lot less vitriolic and it's funny to read the congressional hearings or his nomination. at some point on my computer i would do a control f to find the word laughter because whoever was typing it out was writing klafter and you would see the jokes bop was make enduring his examination hearing. so he had congress in his pocket. and that doesn't happen anymore.

probably for the best. and i would be happy to take questions now. [applause] >> if you have a question if he could come up to the microphone so it can be part of the recording. if nobody does, have a lot of questions. >> where is he now? >> he is going to be 93 next week, and he still lives at the watergate where he has been living since the 70s. he still goes in and has lunch at the front page which is the restaurant in the and the robert f. strauss building which is where the law firm he founded is located. >> i want to thank you for -- it's nice to see young people so engaged actually. my name is larry and i do really appreciate always giving us this platform.

it's a wonderful opportunity. not so much a question but, really glad you said before was really true. there are very few people who can cross the lines of the aisle anymore and i guess as an american citizen, i have gotten very depressed because i'm tired of being governed by people who lack more common sense than i do. and i set the bar pretty low. [laughter] so i would like you know to know what kind of relationship, i was hoping you would talk a little bit about that, what kind of relationship you have with bob and how do they grow? he is a great uncle. he is not even your first uncle and how much were you able to spend with him? how much did he -- this book? does he like the book? thank you or ghostly thank you, thank you for coming out in the rain. he is my great uncle. my mother, janie strauss

mcgarr is his first niece and she is sitting in the audience. so, i grew up very close to my grandfather. i grow up in dallas and my grandfather listened dallas and that is bob's brother. we saw bob most think it's giddings and christmases and passover's. and during the summers we would see him in del mar. he is still chairman of the board of the del mar racetrack since 93. he and aunt helen, his wife helen, love their life. i thought that was the only place we could get eskimo pies because they we never got them otherwise. that was all he knew of him then and then when i started on this book project, i lived in washington for a few months until i found -- and we have had a lot of discussions, but it is

not what it used to be. he was worried about that and he was worried about giving me that information. so he gave me access to over 70 interviews that he had done with a ghostwriter that he hired back in the '90s when he was trying to write his memoirs. and for the most part, they got written, but it was an unsuccessful project for many reasons, and one is that it's very hard to capture bob's voice. i would never try to undertake an autobiography or try to have ghostwritten his memoirs because he is very funny and it's difficult to capture that if you're not him. also, he had such a positive attitude all throughout his life. that is what helped him remain so successful. even when he was trade representative and constantly being criticized he said that he would wake up in the morning and he would his wounds in the shower and get on with his day.

but that meant that he didn't remember a lot of the failures in his life, a lot of difficulty in his life or the tension in his life. so, i did need to go beyond and go into the archives. i really had the best time, especially, there is a chapter in the book that looks at love as carter's ambassador to the middle east peace process and so carter sent him them over there to sort of hold sadat and bacon. he thought carter and the secretary of state cy vance were spending too much time there after the camp david accords that he wanted to send a personal representative that he could trust over there sort of to help see through the process. this was a very tough time in bob's life. he did not get along very well with burzynski who was national

security adviser or was cy vance the secretary of state because fans wanted him to be under him in the state department bob wanted to report directly to the president. bob a few years later said that fans was writing he was wrong. so a lot of what i have learned about was not from him. i learned a lot about his warmth and personality and good sense of humor but as far as what he was doing on a day-to-day basis and the dialogue from the situation room, that was actually dialogue from the situation room that has been released and is that the carter library. so a lot of what i have in here did not come from the emily. it came from archives. >> can you talk about what you said about your editorial? >> oh yes. i was not given editorial

control over the book and that is probably because i had just come out of journalism school. i was all wide-eyed and they said no you cannot read the manuscript or reprint it. and he didn't. he and his longtime assistant 40 years did read an early copy, mostly for major errors but i also fact checked the book on the phone with fira, so that was sort of the way i made sure that i didn't have any mage or problems in here. but he didn't have editorial control. and i am still invited. [laughter] >> did he feel a was an honest portrayal of him? >> i think so. i think so. i mean i called him right after he had read it. i was a little nervous, and he said i don't just like you, i

love it. this was the kind of thing he would say. and i am sure there are are parts that he doesn't love. he was very sensitive about being called a -- and i addressed that in the book. he was sensitive about it for a good reason, because he did do a lot of kind of work that a lobbyist might do but there were different standards at the time. he never did anything that i know of it illegal that would require him to register as a lobbyist but i don't think that would have been in the book. >> over the earliest strauss' to get into politics, particularly him? did he get into state politics first? i suppose do so but what is its relationship with johnson and do you remember an exchange as he had with johnson about the vietnam war?

>> yes. he was the first strauss to get into politics, and he mainly got in through john connolly who would become governor of texas. john connolly in 1959 ran into bob on the street in dallas. connolly was a lawyer in fort worth at the time and strauss was a lawyer in dallas at the time. connolly said i am getting a group of fellows together to go to washington to talk about johnson's residential nomination. do you want to come a long? that was the beginning of the end. he went along and he helped support the johnson nomination africa in 1960. kennedy won that year, but after that, because connolly was johnson's protége, strauss became one step closer to the white house when johnson became vice president.

on the day in dallas when kennedy was assassinated, he was one of the hosts of that luncheon downtown. he was very involved and not bad, and one thing, and they wrote it in the book, it's right for people to doubt my objectivity. i would definitely doubt my objectivity but i tried to be more skeptical. when baba tells me stories about eating in the hospital, comforting nellie connelly after her husband was shot, john connolly was shot also and i was a little skeptical and i nodded and went along. the reason it is in the book is because at the johnson library they have a john connolly collection and they have a record of everyone who visited him in the hospital. bob really was there on the day, the day of the shooting and so he was extremely close to connolly and threw connolly became close to johnson. johnson did give him some

advice, which is not to be treasurer of the democratic hardy because he said just dealing with all that money will get you in trouble and you shouldn't do that. and bob did it anyway and then he called them again on the ranch when he was running for chairman of the party and he advised them not to run for chairman of the party. so, they were friendly but the relationship of course was through john connolly. [inaudible] >> oh yes. so he supported the president. first and foremost and he always thought that partnership ends at the water's edge. but he supported johnson on vietnam, and he later said that he regretted that, that it was that when johnson had asked him about vietnam he told them what he thought about the war and that he was against the war. but publicly, bob was doing his

best at the 68 convention to get all the votes that humphrey needed to support the vietnam link and so he was always behind his candidate first and foremost and he really put his own political, zoned public wolesi ideals second. and johnson intimidated him. he always used to say that he would never let, after he didn't tell johnson the truth about vietnam, he decided he would always tell the president the truth of p. was ever asked. and it turns out that almost every president after johnson did ask them for it by said one or another. and including reagan. even though he had been in the carter administration and even though he had ron carter's campaign against reagan, nancy reagan arranged for strauss and the former secretary of state,

republican bill rogers, to sneak into the white house one evening. they went into the treasury building and they went through the underground tunnel. bobbitt never been through this underground tunnel before and it sort of looked like a fallout shelter and there were beds lining the walls and he couldn't believe he was there. he went out to the residence of the white house and it buys the president on what to do about the iran-contra scandal. and he advised him to get rid of chief of staff don reagan and he said you need to bring in someone like howard baker, someone who could really, who had a lot of credibility in congress on both sides of the aisle, had a lot of relationships with the press and nancy reagan took this hard. at the time strauss didn't think of the president had really been listening to him because the president disagreed with him and said i would never do that. i'm not going to fire reagan and that is what he said to helen

that night. he got a call from nancy reagan the same night. she said i don't suppose there is any way you would want to come and help us over here at the white house, would you? and he declined. he goes that would not be a good idea for anyone involved. but several weeks later, don reagan was fired and howard baker was brought in as chief of staff. in his memoir, reagan said why bob strauss who had everything to gain from denote reagan falling out of grace. why bob strauss i will never know and it's true that bob was a democrat but anyone in washington who knew bob knew that he was a straight shooter and he was going to tell reagan to choose and give reagan the best advice that he could. he loved being called to serve by his president. he said he would never turn down a president and that is how we ended up at over 70 years of age

in a communist country in moscow. he had turned down bush for that ambassadorship. he decided he can't turn down a president. so we always try to do his best for republicans and democrats. [inaudible] >> there is a joke in the 80's. he said i don't know who the next president's going to be that i can tell you who his best friend is going to be, bob strauss. [laughter] and bob had a reputation for getting close to the president whoever he was. one of my favorite stories, and i got it just as i was finishing the book and i was so excited. i went and interviewed tom brokaw and he told me a story about when they were in ohio for the presidential debate, this long anticipated 1980 debate between carter and reagan. and bob was being excluded from the debate prep. the georgia mafia had taken over again and they were prepping

carter so broke i knew that stress would be free for lunch so he invited him for lunch. they would each just have one martini apiece. okay, one martini apiece and then they said they would just split one more martini so they split one more martini. so later in the afternoon, they are still drinking, and he said stress you know your fellow is going to lose and you know that they are going to bring in new people and you're going to be out of power. he said brokaw, you watch. he knew this fellow was not going to win and he knew that he was going to stay in power no matter who is was in the white house. speech he had his way really around the president. >> yes. bob did get his way. [inaudible] >> so he was ambassador to the

middle east peace the gauche asians for a very short time, several months in 1979 and because of all the attention that he was creating within the department of state and with brzezinski they decided to bring them back him back and run the campaign. and they thought that he would be better served as chairman of the campaign. >> what do you think now when you see what is going on now and in the political arena? what are his feelings? has he told you? >> i can't speak for bob and i don't know how he feels but i know he wishes that they were more like it was 30 years ago when people were partisan politics ended at cocktail hour and the republicans and democrats had drinks together and then when partisan politics ended at the waters edge and a public face for the rest of the

world, america came together. >> can you talk a little bit about bob strauss' relationship to george mcgovern and the 1972 convention? >> yes. talking about george mcgovern in the 72 convention and i heard you were a mcgovernite. you were a mcgovernite. so strauss did not have anything personally against mcgovern and vice versa. and they both thought the other one was perfectly nice fellow. but bob really thought that mcgovern could not win the nomination. and most democrats outside of the mcgovernite camp did not think mcgovern could win the nomination. and he did not, after the 1972 convention, which bob went into as treasurer of the party, and he went into that convention paying for that convention. and he came out of that jobless. mcgovern provided all of his people, so you know flying back

home, he said to helen, wow i'm going to start working out and getting my hands back on the party machinery. but he didn't, he didn't do anything to hurt mcgovern campaign and i was surprised to learn, given who strauss is then given who mcgovern is i really didn't think bob would be that involve the mcgovern campaign but as i was reading through the transcripts of the dnc meeting, jayne westwood who was mcgovern's chairwoman, bob actually did help them. he helped them raise money and get emergency computers. he was not going to stand by and let that democratic nominee go without funds. but he really focused his efforts on fundraising for congress and even though that was a sweep for nixon democrats did very well and 72 in congress. and bob was very committed to that. and i interviewed governed by phone, and he said that you

know, he thought that bob was probably a little upset after the convention and he had every right to be because he had been passed over. mcgovern had made commitments to especially women's groups and jayne westwood who is relatively unknown and not really tested for lead at -- politically. she was dnc representative to utah and he promised it to her so the old guard so when strauss became chairman and the governor nights left before they were asked. >> was he accused of being a racist? is it true? i heard a rumor. >> the question is about whether mcgovern was racist which seems very not true. >> i wonder. >> i never heard that.

the survey says no. [laughter] >> did he have political ambitions of his own? >> bob would have been like to have been handed the presidency i think that he did not want to run for office. he really preferred being behind the scenes and he said, if he ran for the house, he said he would have to go around and -- with everybody in america and kissed everybody. he said i like it when they are kissing my -- so he wanted to be handing out the checks and not be on the receiving end of the checks. [inaudible] >> there was talk though, i mean i was surprised but "the new york times" was running a -- is

bob strauss going to be our first jewish president he would always say that he was foolish enough to love the rumors but smart enough to not pay any attention to them. >> i think that he was the first jewish president of the methodist youth fellowship. [laughter] >> almost, almost. the baptist young people's union. are you from texas? cim. [laughter] >> so growing up in stanford texas which is a small town, three or 4000 people in west texas, he was born in 1919 and there were only two jewish families in this town. that is because his cousins were also living there. the one jewish family in town and that means they were totally socially integrated than they belong to the club. they were very respected people and when i got his fbi file

because bob was fbi agent during world war ii, turns out that no one ever forgot they were jewish. when they were interviewing the townspeople they would say they were fine jewish folk so it was relevant but it wasn't relative to bob. he didn't see any anti-semitism and as i said in the book, he -- so that is where he was. he wanted to get elected president of the union but his minister -- [inaudible] and he always says that he would have been elected president. sometimes he tells the story and he says he was elected president and then they have to take it back because they claim he was jewish so i think among his peers, it wasn't that a given issue that he was jewish. when he got to the university of texas, the student body population was larger than the whole town he had grown up in.

it to become an issue. he was only invited to pledge jewish fraternities and it was kind of a rude awakening for him. he did not know that would be the case because he had always enjoyed a certain popularity. and so, he managed to be the one in a fraternity to represent the fraternity with the other other fraternities. he got out of what could have become a bubble for him at the university of texas and really was you know popular across campus and he became a member of the cowboys which if you are from texas and you know anything about ut is a prestigious and popular, the texas cowboys. so it was pretty popular. >> i have one question. we were talking, catherine and i were talking about this earlier. who out there even comes close

today to being a bob strauss? on that question we decided no one. [laughter] >> a lot has changed since bob's time. there is a lot more money and politics which means people are going home on the weekends to campaign. there's not the same relationships in congress. also, the press can't protect politicians the way the press protected lob strauss. and you know he could say the most outrageous things and it didn't really affect his career so having that kind of a larger than life personality doesn't work in this climate but then also being someone who really doesn't buy into ideology and really just is practical and wants to negotiate and find a compromise is not popular today. people are having to listen to their districts a lot more, and

i probably know less about this than everyone else in the room but it would be very hard to have another bob strauss for many reasons, climate and also he was a one-of-a-kind character. >> thank you so much audrey. [applause] >> if you all could hold up -- fold up your chairs it would be greatly appreciated and the book is often the front. kathryn will be having to sign copies for anyone. and. >> so the idea of this book actually was born out of frustration and the idea crystallized for me that the first and only time i flew on air force one. i taken this job with "the

washington post" i have been working for a while where it was my assignment to write sort of more personal intimate stories about the presidency and what the president's life is like. it only took me like maybe a week of doing that job to realize that the president doesn't really have her small intimate moments, certainly none that i was going to get access to. everything about his life was outsourced in this really crazy way. he had 94 -- six calligraphers to write anything he wants written, 78 people making a schedule every day. is this huge army that helps them operate in his day-to-day way. the schedule is subdivided into these 15 minute chunks and there is a secretary who sits outside the oval office which actually has a reverse of people so she can look into the door to him and make sure that things are running on schedule. you know he calls it the bubble

and sometimes it really drives him crazy. in a few weeks that i've been doing this job at if you been driving mike -- me crazy. i was not writing as many stories as they were hoping i was going to write in not getting to those personal moments in obama's life. so finally, after doing this for probably a few months at this point, my turn came up to fly on air force one and the way flying on air force one works, pretty much everybody who covers a president, your name is put into this huge database and every time the president goes on a trip, you know, they move through this database and eight more people get their turn to fly on air force one. my name came up and i finally thought alright, this is the moment where i'm going to see something and be up close and i will have a chance to experience what this is like a little bit for him. so, i got dressed up. obama flies out of a private air force base in virginia and you

know got dressed up. actually rented a car to drive over there because rachel and i, are part the time was like a battered pontiac grand am that we managed to keep functional byte jerry-rigging the hood down with parachute route. didn't feel appropriate to go onto the air toward next -- tarmac next to air force one. i rented a car, and sure they gave me a volkswagen bug. i waited with eight other reporters and as we waited for our turn to board the plane. we waited for maybe i don't know an hour and then they led us up. there were two interests is on is one. it is back by the far rear of the airplane. we walked up the stairs and sat down and said okay, wait here. we are waiting for the president to arrive at the airport. we waited for half an hour and we heard, okay the president is arriving at the airport and you have never seen reporters moved this past. there was a mask ramble.

to watch the presidents motorcade arrived and then we saw him walk six steps up a separate entrance from the plane to the end of the plane. so those sick steps were very illuminating. we saw what he was wearing and what he was doing. and we were all frantically taking -- we got back on the plane. we flew to new hampshire. we scrambled off the plane as fast as we could to watch the president walked those sick steps again back into his motorcade. we followed behind separately in a different car to the event. this was actually, there was not enough time or space for the press to go into the event with him so we were offside in a satellite location where we watched the speech on a closed-circuit tv and we were taking notes of the event that way. is sitting there feeling honestly just really frustrated with trying to write about the president and kind of a meaningful way. i was listening to his speech and i heard him say something and i heard them talk about it

before. it just sort of clicked. he talked about these 10 letters that he reads every night, which are a sampling of the 20,000 letters that come into the white house every day. he talked about how these letters were what he felt like, where his only direct connection left of people in the country and the people that he governed. he said that the letters were the thing that sometimes kept him sane when he felt like he was barricaded from so many other things. i realize pretty quickly then that was something that was personal and real and genuine and that was something i want to wanted to try to write about. so that is what i did. i started with a story for the post. i would longer piece about the process of getting these 10 letters to the desk and then the paper was generous enough to give me a leave for a year, where i did go out to montana and i think they totally eliminated the distinguished from that professor title now. i went out there and roads and at the end of this year, finally

did get time on the president's schedule where the secretary was looking at us while we talked about the letters. and i will read a brief part of the book now that is sort of from that half hour i had with him about what this meant. the presence of the hardest letter for them to read were the ones of me can feel remote and even powerless. people tended to write the present circumstances felt dire. what resulted each day inside of obama's purple folder was an intimate view of hardship and personal struggles, we have of desperation capable of over owning census. so many writers needed urgent help obama said and at the act of governing was so slow that it sometimes took years before legislation could actually improve peoples lives. a few times during his presidency, obama had been so moved by a letter that he had written a personal check or made a phonecall on the writer's

behalf, believing this was a only way to ensure a fast result. was not something i should advertise but it has happened he said. many other times, he forwarded letters to government agencies or cabinet secretaries after attaching a standard handwritten note that read, can you please take care of this? these letters can be heartbreaking, just heartbreaking he said. some say gosh i really want to help this person but i may not have the tools to help them right now and then you start thinking about the fact that for every one person who wrote describing their story there might be another 100,000 going to the same thing. so there are times when i'm reading the letters and i feel pain that i can't do more faster to make a difference in their lives. he said his nightly reading in in the white house sometimes made him a community organizer back in 1980 when he was making $10,000 a year am working on the southside of chicago. he had just graduated from college and he purchased a used car for $2000 spend his days driving around the city's

housing projects to speak with residents about their lives. he became familiar with the issues that -- chronic unemployment and struggling people. obama's organizers and chicago considered him a hands-on granule problem solver. some of the elder women in the housing projects made a habit of inviting him into their homes in cooking for him. he looked around their apartment, keeping a lot of maintenance issues and delivering to us to the landlord. he helped arrange meetings with city housing officials to talk about his problems and establish the attendance rights organization and job training program and the veteran group that prepared students for college. when he left for harvard law school after three years in chicago obama heads said his future. they want to become a politician a job that would allow them to listen to peoples problems and enjoy the simple satisfaction of solving them.

now he was the most powerful politician of all and yet fixing problems seemed more difficult and satisfaction more elusive. the people were right in front of me and i could say let's go to the officer that may be an advocate in some fashion obama said. and here just because of the nature of the office and the scope of the issue you are removed in ways that are frustrating. sometimes whenth phone and say,d let me see if i can be your social worker, beer advocate, be beer mortgage adviser, your employment counselor so what i have to reconcile my mind is that i've a specific role to play in his office and i have to make a bunch of good decisions that you hope i have a positive effect over this many lives. but you can't always be certain. that was one of the reasons obama had taken to responding by hand to a few letters each night. he still like the satisfaction of providing at least one thing

immediate and concrete. >> you can watch this and other programs on line at booktv.org.

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providing the university of miami community the opportunity to host insightful and provocative leaders from all walks of life. [applause] >> i also want the students to thank them for very generously donating 300 of secretary rise's very big book, which were given to the first 300 students that attended this year's event. [applause] >> now, the university takes no credit for doing this. i want to thank our very good friend, mitch kepland of books and books,