is doing what he can to advance the interests of all americans. >> host: and that'll have to be the last word. our guest has been harvard professor and author randall kennedy. "race, crime and the law," "the n-word," "interracial intimacies," "sellout" and "the persistence of the color line" is his thinkest book. and another new book coming out on affirmative action in early 2013. professor kennedy, thank you for being on "in depth." booktv continues on c-span2. ..

>> good morning. thank you. thank you for -- the screening last night. 969 this morning. the motion picture association of america partnering with politico. and maggie abramson and i will be taking questions from you. also on twitter please join the conversation. "game change" the best selling

books into the a movie. let's get started. mark halperin has a couple of guests. >> [applause] >> peter, you can introduce your guest. >> average of new york. >> we are going to start with cliff heilemann. >> did you ask about national-security? foreign policy or domestic policy? what did you ask her? >> they conflicted with her and she was prepared for her life to

change. there were no policy questions. >> you guys didn't grill her because he wanted him to win. >> the real steve schmidt here. did that happen? >> we had a lot of discussions. i wasn't happy with the product. in the movie obviously you have a process that is ten weeks long that distilled down in 2 two hours. out of necessity, the time lines are rearranged but the true story of what happened. the question of the vetting, we got to the end of the process and senator mccain hadn't determined he wanted to pick. we have the realization we can't win with any of the candidates as displayed in the movie and

extraordinarily difficult set of elections circumstances. we will be out stamped by $200 that president bush's approval rating was in the 30s. barack obama was speaking to crowds of hundreds of thousands there was a fur for for his candidacy on the part of the crowd and trying to figure out how to win. i am the person who said we should take a look at sarah palin from alaska. >> are you proud of that moment? >> that moment freezes and slows down in my brain. it has been a couple days at the jersey shore. i remember every aspect of the moment. the smell of long beach island, the salt air, the cars in front of the house.

i pick up the phone and called rick davis and said we should take a look at sarah palin. the vetting that was done, rick was in charge of the vetting process. completely vetted like all of the other candidates and how do we deal with 10 or 20 lawyers in a couple days when we fought with three lawyers over a couple weeks for the other candidates? there were four parts to that. the first part and you could do a documentary on this alone. >> i will bring in jay roach. >> i want to make the point about what we are talking about. the first part was the medical records and all that stuff. it was clear. the second part was depicted in the movie where we had a

discussion, operationally that the campaign is going to run and this is how your life is going to change. the third part was the questionnaire which was really the office -- conducted in the fourth part of the interview with john mccain himself. what john mccain and sarah palin said to each other, it was known to them. the questionnaire was the results of it we didn't have the insight on lack of preparedness. >> we have the gold standard of political drama. we have jay roach and danny strong. very tough audience. a lot of people played on screen, a lot of people who were extras and the lot of people who were there afterwards and many people told me it was realistic enough but gave them the creeps. people had good memory of the

mccain campaign. depressing was what many people -- how did you decide to take this slice of this amazing book that don heilemann and "game change: obama and the clintons, mccain and palin, and the race of a lifetime" 11 wrote? -- the greatest primary of our lifetime? how did you decide? >> part of it was the practical reality that we only had two hours to make a movie and we learned from recounts that if you have a story where a specific group of people in a clear hunk of time and clear beginning, middle and end that can make a good political movie -- we did look at the rest of the book but such a sweeping book it does need the sort of ken burns' many part multi part miniseries. i just thought the clinton/obama which would be a one we consider doing was a bit unwieldy.

it was episodic. took place over the primary and lasted a couple years. might be a two partner in a way. there was something about this story and the specific kind of structure of it was from the place where it starts with being that far behind obama. obama gives that great speech and the next day she is introduced and everything explodes. i thought the power of those people stuck in that situation lead together. you wrote this from scratch as a piece of fiction you would struggle to find forces perfectly designed to clash in the conflict they passed later. >> authors said you were true to the book. most of the people said you were true to history. you went beyond the book and doug in deeper with some of your

own reporting. >> i interviewed 25 people, wanted to get their stories and it was important to me to interview people that were -- that really loved sarah palin and were very loyal to sarah palin as well as people who were not. then i went beyond those interviews to any other source material people the most helpful secondary sources with sarah palin's own book going rogue which was an account of her feelings about the event. really strong scenes from the film like the call that comes from her book. >> she is in a war zone. >> much of that dialogue is almost verbatim as she recounts it in her book and there were several. the huge bulk of the movie is game change, "game change" is a

book. 90% of the movie is "game change" and when you combine the interviews and other books, the magazine and newspaper articles that makes up for another 10% or so. >> i want to talk to mark and john and get your perspective on the movie and you feel it was true to the slice of "game change" that was about sarah palin except there was a lot else in the book. what do you feel this was representative of the work you did? >> very representative. not totally a unique collaboration but a collaboration from the beginning. the prospect of working with us before we wrote the book. from the beginning, the reason we approach was there were born out. make something that was compelling but true to history. people say it is true to the book. that matters a lot but it is true to history as the book was. john and i worked with danny and

the a -- j.. we would have been unhappy had a deviated from that guiding principle but they never did. the truth is borne out in the film. is true to the book. as steve mentioned that the top is depressing. you will have to do mechanical things. the discussion was what shows fidelity to history, the characters as they were, the motivation, and the fact -- the germain fact that it is well represented and as people see it. some people have great questions and don't see it is true to history. >> i cosine all of that. these guys learned an important lesson as we talked about it. >> an important lesson when they did recount which is they care

about history but there's a value in truthful -- in this environment we live in where people are always looking from one side or the other ideologically for ways to polls in these things. there is controversy about this movie from interested parties that these guys, part of the reason it has not reached a higher level or had any real effect on the way people are seeing the movie is ultimately the recourse we have is to say this is what happened. there are were stories about authors working with hollywood and people of santa was mangled and stuff. we did not feel as maple but at every step they kept saying we really want to do right by you and do right by history and there's a good example of making sure the importance -- people ask things are changed or what do you mean? a really good example i give

people is where steve schmidt is talking to john mccain about the depths of sarah palin struggling with her debate prep. i am not sure -- it does matter. what matters is the phone call -- >> i was in my office. >> i have been in your office. it looks not unlike -- [talking over each other] >> danny, you did hbo recount of the george bush/gore election. another example of programming that hbo does, cutting edge programming that others might not do. winning an academy award. what did you learn from that? >> everything. it was an amazing process. the first time i ever

interviewed real life participants and turn their story -- read cal was books on the recount. >> what did you do when you got a conflict between the book and what the president and you did? >> resolve the conflict. a lot of that resolution can from talking to mark and john and interviews themselves. an example i have used is sarah palin said she was never in a funk during the campaign and in her book going rogue she never describe any type of emotional decent. in the book lays it out beat by beach. so you have a conflict. how is that conflict resolved. talk to the actual people who were there. overwhelming number of people said yes. the portrayal is accurate. a kind of very simple ask people and see what the consensus is. sometimes it is not a consensus. sometimes forces are not

accurate and you have to figured out. >> there was incredible how consistent the accounts -- that is a great example. are also a joy and danny to confirmed. was a very humanizing part of the story for her and i knew it would actually get people's attention because it was revealing a weak moment and a desperate moment, traumatic moment. we taught multiple people -- not only describe it early but acted it out. had to get julia and more to go for an accurate portrayal, potentially controversial part of the story. it was incredibly consistent across a number of people who described what happened. >> account for not just from people who are publicly identified as not favorable to sarah palin and people during the campaign remain fans of her today. >> can i say something about that?

is an impression they stalin the comments and articles i saw today that there is not careful research within the sarah palin camp. that is not true. these guys and we spoke to people to get a technical adviser on set frequently chris edwards who was absolutely part of that world. we spoke to people who worked very close to her and we all spoke to the people making decisions. the story was about the senior guys and john mccain who had this incredible dilemma and we learned from recount was this is a tense. so many factors that play. the public doesn't see all of them. the way you telling story of and make the ending suspenseful is put people in the shoes of people who face horrible dilemma with incredibly dire consequences which ever way they

went. >> we will take a look at clipped 1. >> we are going to win without our base. even if it is the right thing to do but the wrong way to win. charlie crist, bloomberg. >> none of them. obama just changed the entire dynamic. it is a change we desperately need a game changing peck. none of these middle-aged white guys are game changers. >> talk a little bit more. you said before that was a mess. talk more about in what way it was a mess and if you could talk not related but talk about you have done a lot of campaigns. what goes into the decision on your part to participate in the project, the book and the movie and why was a necessary representation. >> all through the campaign we

looked at the campaign -- the worst environment that had a run for the presidency and our job was to try to figure out how to win. i was in the bush campaign in 2004 which was in a 50/50 raise. this was a race where we had to have a recession, we needed an event to take place and take risks. to me as i watch the movie it is at some level power ambition for victory fuels' risk and i look back at this from the perspective of a couple years and the level of risk we took or were willing to take, supposed to stand up to the test of time. when i am on television and ask questions about to the 2012 pick should be it is never -- is that person prepared to be president

of the united states? will this latina republican from the swing state help? i have no idea if they can pick out iraq or afghanistan on a map. and so we were very much all through the campaign looking, what is the moment that we can get ahead in this race? it came down to the convention. we thought that john would do all right in the debates but we never thought the press would say john mccain won debate against obama. there are huge moment in the campaign. we knew obama was going to give a good speech at the convention and john would do his best but not the operator at the level obama was. trying to figure out how to come out of the republican convention in a situation where we are not down 20 points to keep the race competitive. we decided to take a risk. the risk was through the prism of a political risk. he may make mistakes.

she may say things that are in error that may have to be cleaned up. we looked closely at the rollout of dan quayle and the mistakes that were made there and tried to prevent them. but it was a decision trying to win the campaign. >> my decision to participate in the book. i laughed when he reached up and people say it is our story. they talk to many people. we have been transparent that we were too out of the -- two out of the many. won a presidential campaign ends you immediately go to the university of pennsylvania. winning and losing side. go to harvard university. there are all manner of books that are written and is part of history and i talked to the authors of people who have written all the books from dan

balls to market john and participated in the event. mark and john, there are things that happen in the campaign i will never talk about and will never be public. [talking over each other] >> that is true in the texture and that is true from experiences for me with arnold schwarzenegger and dick cheney and president bush and supreme court justices. when i did that 60 minutes interview after the book came out sarah palin wrote a book in my view that book was a dishonest account of what happened in the campaign. but once she wrote a book, in my view i was released from any statute of limitations about what went on in the campaign. >> one of your gift as a filmmaker is to convey the

pressure people are under? cote moment that captured this for me is when nicole wallace was trying to prepare sarah palin for -- [talking over each other] >> jatropha focusing on her blackberry that kept buzzing. what did it to me is focusing on nicole and the questions and she plugged in her charger. [talking over each other] [laughter] >> so funny you say that. i love that moment. something we planned carefully. not just one of the two. was keyed psychologically to other support networks. family or people or whoever else

because she stopped trusting people around her. it gave me a clue into psychological reality and a lot of what i didn't know was it made me relate with her more and the one to the audience to relate because we can all relate to i am surrounded by people who don't have my interests in mind. who can i talk to? i just thought that was -- we heard again it was very much based on the research. we heard she was always on her blackberry. was just the thing. around her family and everybody she was constantly -- and also -- ridiculously too much. i am an iphone person. >> john mccain comes up as a solid figure but not a particularly -- can you talk a

little bit about why you decided to portray him away you did and why he is not a major person? >> criticism is he gets a total pass. >> on the criticism? >> he gets a pass. it is pretty clear he made this decision. people advising him but it was his choice. it is pretty clear at a very key moment he could have made a very big adjustment. one of my favorite scenes in the film is when woody harrelson asks goes to mccain and says i need your help. this has gotten to a very destructive place and i need you to step in. you are the only one who can. he is not going to do it. just not going to do it. the show hints of fear about what the consequences would be.

and a moment of weakness and not seizing the days indicative of the way the campaign was run. he was reluctant from time to time to display real leadership and i think that was an incredible moment and i don't think it is superstrong for him but for much of his career i have admired a lot about john mccain and cast one of my favorite actors who i knew would play him with incredible depth. he is an american hero and serve their country for longtime and whatever issues i have with what he believes or certain things he did in his campaign i thought we owed him that respect to play him that well. i knew ed harris would take away and he really did. >> john mccain is very much portrayed as a passive. as a spectator in his own campaign taking the

responsibility. >> what you are saying to me says it is not a free pass. a lot of things portrayed in the film, because that is what i was told. time after time, that he was not actively involved. he had very few interactions with sarah palin. what happened is the centerpiece of the film. that is what happened that determined the amount he is in the film. then i heard time and time again how he was detached from the campaign and constantly wet off message and wasn't involved in the day-to-day operations and because of that the campaign was dysfunctional and things were constantly going wrong because the guy at the top was erratic and was hard to -- not a manager of the way many people from the george bush campaign felt george w. bush was this wonderful manager of his campaign.

the exact opposite. >> address that a minute. was that your sense of john mccain? his relation to his campaign? >> yes. there is an earlier scene that deals with john mccain, the republican nomination. we talk about as he is beginning to plan his campaign after the 2006 midterm, the impression that all of his senior advisers have of him us, talk about this is what is going to happen and how we will get geared up and run the front runner's campaign and john mccain seems totally distracted and the way it was described is this attitude was his ideas of a campaign is you had to have strategists and media people but somewhere in his heart get me a few appearances with the press and a bunch of plane tickets and i have good.

that is how -- there with an analogy people would use. to approach political combat like a fighter pilot. you got up and had the machine and the cockpit and a bunch of blue sky and you fly into the future. you could run that kind of campaign really well. after the campaign collapsed in 2007 that was how he came back. running that kind of campaign. when you get to the general election and think about the contrast with the obama campaign, $500 million operation. like fortune 500 companies. that is one of general election campaigns should be. john mccain not that kind of guy. not a c e o. not an active kind of manager. that came across every source we talked to. people who ran the campaign in 2000 and in the general election.

>> outside the museum showing liberal sarah palin was giving out a bill that looks like a playbill logo here saying it is a false narrative. sarah palin did an incredible service to you by calling so much attention to the film. why hate it so much? >> why do they hate it so much? i don't think any candidate enjoys -- all aspects of what goes on even in the most private parts of the campaign reveal. it is such -- i wouldn't want anyone to know what it is like to make a movie in the private rooms when i talk to actors, writers. and i wouldn't want them to see my weak moments. i think it is partly a kind of

protection of the brand. there were dysfunctional moment for multiple people in the story. some were shocking. i also -- [talking over each other] >> there is a certain amount of denial that goes on with sarah palin and that team in which she had the katie couric interview with the setup that she was set up as opposed to taking responsibility that she gave a bad interview. there are things in this movie that perhaps she genuinely thinks are untrue like she gave a bad interview with katie couric. so you have something like this that instead of refuting the film on its merits, it is dismissed as a blanket work of fiction. i don't get to see any specifics about what actually is a work of fiction. >> we will bring you into the

conversation. questions here and twitter for "game change". maggie haberman is the ringmaster for questions. you are at her mercy so we're going to go into that and look at a clip people point to to say sarah palin should not be as unhappy about this, imbalanced portrait of her. we will take a look at a clip, moment in the movie that sarah palin supporters come by. >> mr. chairman, delegates and fellow citizens, i will be honored to accept your nomination for vice president of the united states. [cheers and applause] >> thank you.

our nominee is a man who wore the uniform of his country for 22 years and refused to break state with troops in iraq and in our have brought victory within sight. >> she is really good. >> we were so blessed in april. we brought our littlest one into the world. a perfectly beautiful baby boy. inspire a very special love. the families of special needs children all across this country, i have a message for you. i pledge to you that if we are elected you have a friend and advocate in the white house. >> incredible. >> before i became governor of

the greater state of alaska are was mayor of my home town. a small time mayor is sort of like a community organizer. you have actual responsibility. >> now i know why they call her sarah barracuda. >> the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull, lipstick. >> she just came up with it. >> the health of america elect a great man as the next president of the united states. thank you. and god bless america.

>> before we get to audience questions i ask one quick question. that scene encapsulates that there is a sense throughout this movie political grouping the arms of my chair because i felt i was on a roller coaster and par was from covering the campaign. part is what the harrelson conveyed the sense in never knew what was going to come out of her mouth. can you talk about that experience? >> more so the campaign went forward. it got to the point later in the campaign that honest to god, on any given night when i finally went to bed for a couple of hours, particularly post financial crisis, didn't know if the plane was going to take off and give it was going to go where it was supposed to go and whether she would appear on stage with the people she was supposed to be on stage with.

it was enormously stressful because it was a giant travelling circus with hundreds of people you have to move with multiple airplanes every day. giant logistical operation before you get to the strategy of the tv commercials and all of that stuff. on that speech it was a moment where woody harrelson says we can win and i remember the first time in this race, this worked. this person is talented at a level above and beyond and one of the great convention speeches anyone in any party has ever given and she is -- one of the things the movie showed is how extraordinarily talented she is and the ability to connect with people that is singular and american politics. i was talking to a colleague who had seen it in new york and was

on the campaign and she said it makes me remember why we liked her so much. at the beginning. >> is it true or heard teleprompter broke? >> it did. and it rolled over a couple of lines. i had the experience of working with arnold schwarzenegger and he was meticulous in his preparation for a speech and he would go through 100 run throughs and he couldn't see the teleprompter in his 2004 convention speech. was blocked out by all of the signs and during the prep for her speech i said at the beginning we are going to practice this speech. not 10 times or 20 times. but 100 times. i was amazed at the capacity of performance under pressure. to have memorized it and add living lines and in the movie

which is absolutely true when john mccain is informed of that he has the great line about what would happen to him tomorrow if the teleprompter broke. for those who haven't seen it i won't be a spoiler but that is exactly what happened. >> we have microphones on either side here for anyone who has a question. >> gentleman over here. wait just one second. >> thank you very much. my name is sean dillon and this question is for mark and john. i want to take your work from the book and see how it is translating now. when loyalty is so important to a political campaign, now there is this megaphone from which everyone involved in the mid -- around the campaign can now try to frame their story. are you seeing in the work you

are doing now that maybe it is harder to get that authenticity about what is going on day to day because people see the game change too? their way to make sure their story gets out so that they stick it to whoever is really frustrating them in their campaign or the administration? >> what we did in the last book and will do in the next is tell the history of what happened. almost as an oral history. we did approach the last one with an agenda and we won't approach this one with an agenda. presidential elections matter and history matters. talk about this a little bit and people feel a responsibility to the the country know what happened in each presidential election. that is the fundamental goal we have and principles we have and people desire to be part of that. >> reinvent the wheel, never had a presidential campaign that did

not produce multiple books. this one got more attention. not all of them have movie made of them. there's always these books are around and for the reasons mark said. they want to tell their stories and thick it is important for history to do so. i don't think that will change. we have changed anything in that regard. >> another question? over here? >> thank you. thanks to our panelists and politico, hbo for having this this morning. my question is about the long-term impact of the 2008 election. we went from 2008 to 2010 when we had a reduction in the number of women in congress and in 2012 the single viable woman candidate for president was weeded out fairly early on. my question is twofold. from the political perspective what is the long-term impact of

the 2008 election and how does having a book and a movie contribute to and create the long-term legacy of any impact from the campaign? having a republican woman on the national ticket? >> i think 2008 -- we are in the middle of a media transformation of consolidation, mergers where different television networks are appealing to ideological audiences as a business model, rise of social media and all of this began to play out in 2008. was the first election in a new age. much in the same way the 1960 election was the first television election. so 2012 will continue that trend. it is bigger. twitter didn't have the same -- much bigger impact.

into thousand twelve, in 2008 was still youtube and facebook was much less procured than it is now. it was a historical election. the first african-american president was elected. was an election that occurs in which there was a generational change. matt every election is a generational change election. one of the things the movie does is gives a real window into the process of what an actual political campaign is like and i think it raises some questions that real people all across the country who watch this. if you think honestly about the dimensions of the country's problems and challengess we have a political process that is appropriate for the challenges the country faces. i have some opinions on that

having done this for a long time and participated in it and looking at it from that perspective and i think people will render an opinion on that when they see the movie. >> questions? >> the biggest legacy is something we saw. you referenced michele bachman. there was almost a problem terry of a glass ceiling about michele bachman be a woman running for president. secretary clinton and sarah palin changed the game on that and it is still a challenge for a woman to build organization and raise the money and have political experience to get elected but really changed again for women candidates going forward and a great way for the country just as mitt romney running as a person who is a mormon this time around made that a lot easier for himself. that is a great legacy and important barrier to have -- not eliminated the that least

reduced. >> one of the things the movie makes clear is governor sarah palin has a future beyond this campaign and she clearly has. she had that future largely because of the rise of a portion of the republican coalition that was not as important in 2008 and in 2000 and the populist grass-roots part of the party people refer to as the tea party became an important part of the electorate in 2010 and it is playing out again in 2012 and the republican primary. the republican coalition flipped between the old school or traditional mainstream establishment wing and the more populist -- she speaks to those people and the future of the republican party that tension began to what kind of republican party we get in 2012 and what we get in 2014-16 is a big huge story and sarah palin will always be emblematic of that

change in party. we don't know where it will end but clearly an important thing historically and she galvanized that as visibly and viscerally as anybody. >> question for jay roach and danny. what ends up on the cutting room floor? >> besides my line? >> is that true? [talking over each other] >> there was one scene i wish we had time for. it was always a somewhat arbitrary thing because you have arbitrary limit of two hours and you tell as much story as you can and i personally love the pauses in the film. the moments that i didn't want to cut the film so quickly that i could get everything in but have it not have suspenseful moments that you are thinking what is going on and what do we do now? we had to cut a few things and one of the scenes