book tv is live from the tucson festival books. next here on c-span2 from the delegates theater and the university of arizona campus a panel on politics. you can also visit booktv.org and once live coverage from the henry kofu building, a panel on and terminal sustainability begins melamine. here's the panel on politics from the delegates theater. >> all right. everybody welcome to the fourth annual tucson festival books. [applause] i'm jim and so, the senior writer for the tucson weekly and a host of k you http political roundtable which you can watch every friday night. it is my great honor to be here today with three of america's best political writers. through the use of television

magic we are also here with c-span on book tv. hello from tucson arizona. [applause] it would like to thank the university medical center for sponsoring and a big thanks to everyone who helps make the festival, together. we will be talking for about an hour, including some questions and answers. save your questions and will get to them at the end. and we give wrapped up the authors will be heading over to the man media signing area number one, which i believe is located south and west of the student union, so you can meet the miniature books signed. if you could all turn off your cell phones that will be great. so let's get our introduction started here. rick pearlstine has written nixon land. before the storm. writes a weekly column for rolling stone magazine. a friend, political consultant to says the secret conservative

history of america and should just touch it is gop playbook was written. chris mooney, the author of -- town, next one down. i'm sorry, the author of "a safeway in arizona" which exploits with the shooting of congress from a gabrielle giffords in 18 of the people here in tucson last year and tell us about the state of today's politics in arizona. and then finally, chris mooney is the author of -- "the republican brain" . how democrats and republicans are literally wired differently. that is why we have such differences between them. so here we are. why don't we get started. i want to start with you. a point you really make at the start of your book, "nixonland," about how the really came a time in america. richard nixon was particularly gifted in developing the strategy that republicans demonized their democratic

opponents as the enemies of america. we see that still in use in politics today. talk a little bit about how they got started and how you see that playing out in today's politics. >> well, i think an important part of the establishment context was the timeframe in which a steady in k-9. 1965, and every pond and every kind of educated wise observer is presuming america to be a center-left country. the liberal consensus, and it is permanent. it is the way the world works. and the evidence for this is lyndon johnson's resounding landslide in 1964 election is the self-declared conservative barry goldwater. he gets 66 percent of the vote. he gets 44 states. all the pundits are declaring that unless the republican party purges the conservatives from their ranks not only will the

republican party be threatened by extinction, but the entire two-party system will be threatened by extinction. why would someone want to vote or join the party that was interested in taking american backward? so -- [laughter] this is a rush check test. i mean, of course conservatives believe that they are taking america forward. conservative liberal. but the important political context for this is that liberals have always been blindsided by the endurance of the appeal of right wing ideology in american life and especially in this timeframe. and of course that sense of so we sit political cultural entitlement does create a

certain arrogance. it makes people giggle at the thought of conservatives being backward. as we just saw. and that is sort of a root cause of this division. the idea that liberals are arrogance, looking down their noses you ordinary american members of the senate majority, a person it just works hard and plays by the rules. richard nixon said he was speaking for the silent majority. those who don't protest, and the power that an appeal draws on for richard nixon is the idea that somehow as an ordinary middle-class american you're being dispossessed by the forces of change, but the forces of reform. and it has this powerful demagogic appeal.

richard nixon does not invent, but he does exploit. he creates the language for a. he creates sort of the playbook. although to say that he created it is a bit of a misnomer because the first person to take a advantage of this backlash against liberalism was, of course, ronald reagan who ran for president in 1966. very easy to imagine richard nixon running for president in 1968 the same way he did in 1960 as kind of this wise statement, this disinterest, and of course in policy terms you was quite centrist. but his rhetoric is the same kind of thing we are hearing from newt gingrich who once said that liberals are the enemy of ordinary americans, rick santorum who said that barack obama is this not for suggesting that all americans should go to college. that is what jim is referring to when he points to this sort of

political rhetoric as a seedbed for republicans do things today. >> tom, you actually worked on congressman gabrielle giffords campaign of the last few years. i covered them as well, and i suddenly noticed a shift in her opponents and the way they talk about the same kind of issues. what you talk about that a little bit because you talk about the book. >> certainly. rick talked about demonization. those of us who were here in this room who were living in tucson in 2010, i think, will never forget what that election fell like. the atmosphere in town. there was something in there that i certainly did not recognize. i think that these -- this is -- speaks to sociological forces that kind of go beyond conventional right and left-wing politics. this is speaking to something

that goes on in arizona where we are a city that -- a state that is founded on the air-conditioning, lifestyle choices. we are an economy that tent -- depends on a constant stream of newcomers to come to the state with the sense of history. where we have been and where we're going. we saw this particular meltdown of the economy into a dozen date people got scared. and those who were perceived to be in the establishment which at that time included gabrielle giffords, held up to be the cause of all of tucson's troubles. and so she is a friend of mine, a friend of mine for ten years. and so to see her face sort of cast in this sinister colors, peering out from billboards the way that she was portrayed like

the eyes of tjx a bird in the great gatsby looking out sort of this has rick said, the kind of believe looking down in as a people, she was vilified. and it was extremely uncomfortable. and so it is my belief that what happened on january 8 that sickening, sickening events was more than just about one young man's mental illness. it had to do with a constellation of forces there were coming together. some of it was this kind of paranoia which rick writes about so eloquently. >> and part of that was just the way gabriel's opponent in 2010 really approach campaigning. seemed to be a lot of pier resentment coming out of that campaign as you would go and make speeches.

very little of it seemed based on what one would think of his policy prescriptions for america >> right. i mean, this was not the tucson elections of my youth. and i don't think he was solely responsible. he was acting on sort of a feeling within the body of politics. ims a number of my to some friends about january 8. could you ever fathom somebody bring a gun to a political event could anyone fathom this happening to jim kolbe? the answer is of course not. however, things were different. this was five immobile. she herself were read out loud that someone was going to bring a gun to one of her events. in fact, it happened in douglas, arizona. a gun fell out of a guy's pants. there was a demonstration there that was sort of impromptu. she insisted on meeting with

everyone of them. a gun fell out onto the asphalt. why is again being brought to an event such as this? the fact that such things are conceivable was troubling, very troubling. >> chris, the division in the hybrid partisanship that we're seeing today really has to do with how the difference process information and view the world. >> in part it does. so i think there are multiple kinds of explanations for where we are. historical explanations are important and valid, sociological explanations are important and valid. what i tried to do in the new book is look at a different kind of explanation. it turns out in politics as in everything there is nature and nurture and also we focus just on nurture. but let me take you to the political physiology laboratory at the university of nebraska lincoln with liberals and conservatives are literally strapped in.

things are measured like the skin conductance, which is sympathetic nervous system. they're wearing hijackers. images are flashed in front of their faces. they respond differently in this context, and particularly their respond different with threatening images, scary things. the conservatives show a greater response. they're getting ready, fighter flight. liberals are getting ready, but it's a strong response in conservatives on these kinds of measures. so i think when you think about us versus them rhetoric and, by the way, the people and nebraska have now extended this to have the they react to emerge as a blood to a liberal politicians. unfortunately it seems parallel. some if you demonize the other side and make them seem threatening u.s. bells the world you have literally come to see the other side is the enemy in the threat to your well-being,

and they do this differently. that is what the research says. >> out of the do differently? >> one is having strong responses. one is -- both are having responses to threat, and you can make liberals act like conservatives. for example, september 11th produce a liberal hawks come out and want to fight. why? because our country was attacked so the populists can move. general conservative show these reactions more strongly, and we've seen that in a lot of experiments now. >> and politicians are proles smart enough to start to tailor their -- >> i don't think the politicians were aware that we would be a will to measure these kinds of things, but they're is a longstanding knowledge that this kind of appeal works. so what i'm saying is to understand something like the conservative revolution in the united states you need to both know their history but also you need to know something about the psychology and even the

physiology. it's a great accounts in a new book. i don't know if you know this. the authoritarianism and polarization of american politics. you talk about the southern strategy were conservatives picked off the reagan democrats. they talk about the psychology of that were essentially people who are authoritarian tend to see the world more black-and-white terms. now we think of them as conservatives, but there were a lot of them in the democratic party in the south, but those were the people who became conservatives, as another republican party has most of the authoritarian command so now the black-and-white could gasbag as appeal is working for one party. >> you had that -- >> yes. i am fascinated by this. i can't wait to read the book. one question i have is for you, chris. what is kind of considerably conservative is not set in stone. it changes over time, and a liberal today in 2012 is much

more likely to be associated with let's say cosmopolitan skimmer civil liberties, multiculturalism, questions of nurturance, the environment. liberalism or maybe the left wing of the democratic party during the new deal era was much more associated with the kind of economic populism, this kind of black-and-white us against the boss, could this debt, the boss. and a lot of people in the democratic coalition before the democratic party kind of moved away from that kind of economic populism became more a party have educated elites there were a lot of people who were what are being called liberals that had more authoritarian tendencies, maybe guys on the south shore of chicago working in steel mills and maybe wack the kids every once in awhile.

so i am wondering. >> well, let's go further. let's go to the soviet union. stalin where authoritarian on the left clearly. there are supporting the regime. resistant to change, but they are actually economic gleefully left-wing. psychology is context -- is content neutral actually pretty just as psychological needs, and people make certain political operations that either appeal or don't appeal to the needs. in a different country in different era those are going to sort themselves out differently, interaction with culture, but we do see a left and right pop up again and again why is that? there is a good argument that it is because there is part of human nature that is exploratory and likes to searching for new things. change and uncertainty, and those of the left usually.

and then the right, people like stability, don't like change. more sensitive to threats. >> yes. one of those guys voting for roosevelt because is protecting his pension and his union. voting because he was craving know the. >> you have put some of the blame on the media for the 60's and structured that allow people on the right to take issues with people on the left and reopen these. you know, we've seen recently with the fight over contraception as you brought up. >> yes. extremely important to understand that over the last generation a very profound structural shift has occurred in the canons of what is considered ideal professional behavior among the mainstream media, among the gatekeeper's his

response ability it is to present reality to us and interpret for us. and it used to be dead a judge of objectivity had to do with evaluating the with people in a decline. so if i write what or loeffler said something that was factually incorrect david brinkley or walter cronkite was much more likely to say this person says something that was factually incorrect. and that required a certain kind of moral confidence that i think the longest and age in which you had these kind of stentorian white men who had these enormous institutional forces behind them it is a kind of top down almost paternalistic model of media. now it's very different. one objective means giving both sides equal way and giving equal attention to both sides of an issue. by the way, both sides, you

know, never three sides, never five sides. the republican side and democratic side. and the way that structures are politicalized so profoundly now is that someone who is kind of places to speak for the republicans can make claim x and someone who is licensed to speak for the democrats can make claim why. claim white can be quite nuanced , and claim x can be barack obama wants to put it drama before death penalty. the way that is structurally reported is as paul krugman very famously put it about hypothetical debate, opinions differed. so the side that is going to be more extreme can still flee and slowly with strategic intent move the center further and further and further to the right. placing a very interesting, someone like barack obama who

has conciliation between left and right as the sole of political civility and a very difficult spot because he is negotiating with someone whose opening gambit is much further than it was the year before. so we see something like the birth control issue, the debate over whether catholic hospitals should have to -- catholic employers should have to pay for birth control in their health insurance. and on the tactical level it is widely judged. the republican party was harmed because 99 percent of women report having used birth control sometime alive. suddenly it's on the table that the republicans have these positions, and the sixth position, and to woman position. makes them very vulnerable. lo and behold the day before yesterday there was no debate about whether birth control was a good thing and not.

suddenly that has been legitimized as a debate. and it lets the other side have a flag to plant. we support the right of women to use birth control and if you want to get federal funds you have to support that right. it becomes, well, maybe the public is in with us on this one. so as george bush put it, a distinction between left and right, he would negotiate. >> i believe you're right about the withering of the traditional but what role does independent nonpartisan fact checkers like a month for example, the "washington post" has a very good sort of lie detection test for some of these operas have been put out there in the discourse. >> we actually have data on that. [laughter]

pull the fact is a great organization, and they try to be in the middle as best they can. somebody actually crashed the data on to get the most. it's false. it was three-quarters republican and so probably not true anymore when somebody did that study. i bet you. >> that's right. >> steven cole baer said the reality has a well-known liberal bias. [laughter] and the data. now like last year, and arguably troop can't -- claim by democrats which is there way of saying, well, the democrats do it to. they don't really do it the same way. >> what was that claim? >> it was something about medicare. >> remind me. >> it was that the democrats have been claiming that the ryan blankenship paul rice plan, the

paul ryan wanted to do with medicare. and since he called his plan was structurally undermines the very foundation of every possible understanding of the medicare program, still called medicare, you know, i mean you can but turkey inside and sandwiching call with a ham sandwich, he wasn't trying to undo medicare. people though side-by-side. which was more true? >> they listed possible lines of a genevese. by remember i think the republican pestle of repeated the claim that they created the jobs, which is a complete falsehood. i mean, you could slap democrats on the wrist and maybe give them to pinocchio's. there will still be something called medicare. to say that it is completely, okay, maybe going a little bit far. in the medicare as we know it is accurate, but to make this line of the year.

>> and the other factor that we have, the power of the internet and the power of tens of thousands of citizens journalists to go and pick apart those fax one that mainstream journalists panetta been willing to do as recently as ten years ago. >> well, i mean, i'm very interested in the argument that it makes it easier. facts ticker's. makes it harder to tell a big lie, but after all, the internet was in full effect in 2003 when the federal government out of the vice president's office and elsewhere engaged in a conspiracy to claim that saddam hussein and weapons of mass destruction and it was reported on the front page of the new york times. it was the accepted as gospel by many, many liberal democratic legislators who voted for the rock or. so what is even more interesting, the way we get information and the internet,

which, of course, is great and allows for lots of books back is the fact that more and more reporters who are losing their jobs because of the shifts in the news industry and becoming public-relations professionals. one book by mcchesney and john nichols, they used census data to show that the number of public relations professionals as a proportion to journalists has exploded. so we have a lot more people whose job is to manipulate our opinion. >> and as you pointed out, the referee is no longer have the respect are actually playing on one side or another, the referees in the news media. also the question of whether facts matter, is there? a mean, you talk about how you can give people facts ended may just reinforce there own biases and make it more likely that they will argue against what scientific fact about global

warming or any number of those stem cell research. and those are complex issues for people to sort through to begin with, the average person to understand. >> facts often make it worse. one of the differences between liberals and conservatives as liberals will want to believe the people listen to facts, and that's one of the delusions'. >> if only we could explain. was anomalous stated that didn't agree with what i as a liberal wanted to think was true which was the evidence which is quite consistent that if you are conservative than the higher your level of education and the less likely you are to except scientific reality which is the global warming is caused by human beings. it shows up again and again and again in all the social science studies. and then i found out that the same thing is true of the

panel's command the same thing is true of the belief that president obama is a muslim. what is going on? it was that that eventually drove me to try to figure out what it is about the conservatives that make them different people in terms of personality, psychology and why they may be doubling down more on things. and if they know more, if they have more education, or an education might be a proxy for being interested in politics and consuming media. it's fox news you know what's happening. but they are learning arguments. they are learning facts. they're learning evidence, they're learning to above levels they have plenty of claims and counterclaims, and the more you make them, especially if you make them in the emotional heat of political argument the more they get tied to your identity. so you actually become less persuade a blended makes perfect sense. >> also a very important kind of cultural structure within right-wing culture which is this very histrionic allowed

confident assertion that if you are conservative your smart can if you are liberal or those liberals are not smart, they're dumb. so you have figures, conservatism like william f. buckley, famous for using ten syllable words and writing, he wrote a language column. ten syllable words and talked about how all those liberals think they are so smart, but there really dumb. rush limbaugh talks all the time about how smart he and his listeners are, how dumb levels are. there is this whole kind of symbolic politics around the question of the questions. i would the of the liberal side. a self identified liberal. you have people holding up signs saying i see smart people.

so in a culture, society in which the only way we really have to measure potential or achievement in a society in which we manufacturing base is destroyed and you can't just play by the rules, cognitive attainment becomes of very powerful symbolic battle ground. it's not just -- intelligence is up front topic. but one thing that is clear is that in terms of higher education, advanced degrees liberals overwhelmingly have more of them. ..

>> you send little johnny off to college, and he'll come back a liberal. it's not like that at all. [laughter] liberals are the people who like to explore and find new things, so college is a place where they love to stay. [laughter] and so they end up running the place. [laughter] so it's a self-selection. >> they don't have to work that way. [laughter] >> rick, you also touched upon the whole idea that younger people just don't want to be attached to political parties, that there's this sort of pox on both your houses coming from a younger generation, and that's problems for both parties, but particularly for the democrats and these demographic changes as the republican party becomes older and whiter and as we're seeing in the more recent, certainly this election year and

who's coming out to vote and that sort of thing and who they're alienating on the other hand. but it doesn't necessarily mean that the democrats are going to seize a future destiny here. >> yeah. the, um, the decline in party identification, of course, has been a constant over the last few decades. and it's been especially accelerated among young people. i mean, they say it's a millennial generation, whatever, they don't like to stick a flag. i became fascinated by this when i tarted interviewing -- i started interviewing people for an article i was writing about the liberal activist van jones, and i talked to a young person who helped him form his organization rebuild the dream. and my every measure he was a progressive liberal. and he said, well, the reason he liked barack obama was because he talked about how there was no red america, and there's no blue america. and that was clearly a huge part of the appeal that barack obama held for young people.

so i did an article for my column on rolling stone online in which i saw -- sought some of these kids out and said why if you, you know, this guy i interviewed said he can't even imagine -- i don't think, i think he might have said he never voted for a republican, he said he can't barely imagine voting for a republican certainly unless they, you know, change their opinions on x, y and d and x, y and z were core parts of republican identity, and i said unless you call yourself a democrat because party identity's such a powerful predicter of voting behavior, um, you're weakening the issues that you care about. and he wasn't accepting the argument. and um, what's fascinating about the way this plays out in the larger political context is there are a lot of democrats --

including the folks who are running the obama campaign -- who presume that young people, demographic shifts are going to be delivering a democratic hegemony in the future. think, also, more hispanic voters and things like that who are, by the way, a little ambivalent about barack obama too. but there seems to be another asymmetry which is that democrat, democratic-leaning young people are more likely to not identify with the democratic party whereas republican-leaning young people seem to have no such compunctions. and, um, why is that? i mean, my pet theory -- [laughter] we'll hear the data, but my pet theory is that the democratic party have sort of made it very hard to identify with because precisely the direction the party has taken ever since jimmy carter is not to plant a strong

flag and to meet the republicans halfway. >> chris, you have some data on this? >> sure. [laughter] well, you know, one of the traits, psychological traits of liberals is being open to experience. open to new be experience. that both predicts liberalism, and it predicts being an independent, right? predicts nonaffiliation because you want to be different. you want to be i'm not one of those, i'm me. i'm this delicate flower. >> democrat's someone who can't take their own side in an argument. >> exactly. it's the whole herding cats thing. i don't know, i think it's kind of going to all exist. >> yeah. i don't belong to an organized political party, i'm a democrat. [laughter] >> it seems to me that's part of what we're seeing in terms of the gridlock in washington because you have republicans who recognize that it's not helpful to their political future to compromise because that's not going to be good for the voters that support them to continue to support them, and so they're

staking out this position, and democrats don't want to really just join their side and go with what they want. so you have the gridlock, and a lot of people get just turned off by the entire thing (yeah. but let's not, you know, make this too neutral. it's the long-term strategy on the part of the republican party, the party that hates government, to rap the mailman and blame him for not delivering the mail. [laughter] they're trying to discredit government. and gridlock does that. >> and, tom, you write about just the general alienation that you find particular to arizona in terms of the community and the community involvement and following a lot of these issues, certainly if not at the federal level and at the state level, and say that's one of the reasons why we have the problems with state government that we have. >> yeah. i don't think arizona is entirely an outlier here. i think we sort of represent in starkest relief some of these sort of metadivisions that are

being discussed here. and i think this many ways this is a, perhaps a bellwether for 21st century american discourse. and we see it here because of our economy, because of our sort of real estate-focused economy and because of the highly mobile nature of arizona where for every three people who are moving in, two are moving out. if you're a stranger here, you're not alone. and it, therefore, becomes very easy in this state to come on in with a good idea or a bad idea and attract, attract some loose capital, attract some followers and sort of, sort of push your agenda. gabrielle's opponent in 2010 had not a lot of history this arizona and came within a cat's whisker of unseating her just based on in this idea and this passion. >> and, chris, to some degree a

lot of these issues are just complicated. i mean, if you try to understand the health care reform bill as an ordinary citizen, you're probably in over your head. and that, and the stuff that you write about in particular the science stuff, the embryonic stem cell research people aren't going to really understand, the layman is not going to really understand the nuances of stem cell research which makes it difficult for the average voter probably to make really good decisions, and that might be one of the reasons they check out in the first place, because they realize that the amount of time they're going to have to spend to understand this stuff is not going to equal out to the fact that they have one vote at the ballot box. >> right. and so -- although, i mean, some people will drill down, and it's amazing the kind of dedication you get sometimes. but, sure, the stuff is complicated, and the political consultants know this. the mass public's going on cues, it's going on frames, it's going on ideas planted in their head. and those ideas are crafted to

create emotional reactions, not intellectual reactions. so when you hear something like death panels, all right? it's less about, you know, going through the bill and trying to find out where are those death panels. >> right. [laughter] >> and more about, oh, my gosh -- >> you want to think -- >> not as colbert says, because it has more nerve endings than your brain. >> i don't know if that's true. >> well, true for colbert. [laughter] >> that's why we have political parties, that's why they exist. they're approximate key says -- proxies. you're likely to trust them, and so as we get a more independent electorate, more and more people are forced to kind of throw their hands up in the air and become alienated from politics which is ironic because the problem is seen to be partisanship. >> right. and be you have this situation where perhaps older voters still identify with the parties, but the younger people do not. and to inspire the older people,

you have to plant that flag and make that decision. but perhaps there are other people on the left who say, well, i don't like the partisanship. i like the idea of more compromise and working things out to get things done. >> well, i'm saying, you know, a partisanship is always seen as a wicked thing in contemporary politics. and it's not. it, um, helps heal that kind of alienation that comes with being a citizen alone facing a complicated world. and it allows for leadership, and it allows for bonds of trust, and often, um, when people who, um, say that they prefer, they wish there was less partisanship, they wish there was less debates. you know, it's a lot easier to not have to think about an issue if, quote-unquote, both sides

agree on it. >> and that's one of the reasons some bills are, i think, demonized as much as they are, because the amount of debate over them even though perhaps the end result is not really as controversial as one might think, the health care bill's a pretty good example in that it's essentially a republican plan. but the democrats and the obama administration embrace it in order to get it passed, and yet there was so much controversy over it that it's seen -- >> yeah, they did that to avoid controversy. >> right, right. [laughter] and they ended up with something finish. >> this just shows that politics is not rational. i mean, tribal affiliation, tribal affiliation is much more powerful than policy details -- >> but isn't it rational on some level? >> you'd have to tell me how. >> i mean, being a part of a team, you know? >> okay, yeah. in the sense that -- yeah, it's destructive as well. >> they say that moderation never draws a crowd, and maybe there's just something in us that sort of thirsts for that

kind of fight, you know? lacks sort of the gun powder of politics. >> and, chris, is that -- i mean, for some people there is, and for some people there isn't, i would take it, would be -- >> tribalism? >> well, the desire for the fight. i think you would say some folks like the idea of no principles stand for what you believe in, and other people more let's, let's reach some kind of consensus and move forward. >> sure. i think that the research would say that in terms of taking, taking a firm stand, not backing down, being decisive, being uncompromising, these are traits that would appeal to conservative in a leader, okay? whereas liberals would like more of a leader who stops and thinks and realizes that the issue is complicated and wants the compromise. in general, i think that's absolutely true. >> i guess my question would be why did franklin roosevelt win four terms then? >> well, he, i guess you'd have to go back through history.

it's never a complete explanation. >> yeah. >> was roosevelt never -- there are also situations in which, i mean, why was churchill a good wartime leader? because he was at conservative at a time when you needed a conservative. >> yeah. i mean, i think that one of the structural changes in the democratic party is, um, since they've kind of moved away from a kind of new deal sort of economic pop listic politics is the appeal that they have is a lot more complex. and it used to be that the best, um, way to fight the conservative populism of the right was the economic populism of the left, and that's basically delivering the goods. i mean, republicans who are agonizingly frustrated that people kept on voting for the democrats because they're the ones that gave them social security and medicare had a saying, no one shoots santa claus, right? and, um, when barack obama comes out of the box and says his political dream is to create a grand bargain that will let us, you know, reform social security

and medicare, um, and that comes after bush tax cut which creates a deficit that creates, supposedly, the conditions that require us to have a grand bargain to cut social security and medicare, i'm saying that the democrats, um, have and can again have a pretty strong, straightforward appeal. maybe this is just, um, a complication of terminology that liberal and democrat don't map very conveniently onto republican and democrat even in this day and age. >> they're a pretty good match. >> well, you were talking about but the problem with the younger people trying to, trying to make them -- does there need to be a reinvention of the political party on both sides in order for the, to reach the younger generation, or will they eventually split themselves into these two tribes as well?

>> um, well, i mean, the interesting thing about young people, um, i think, you know, again, i was fascinated to meet these young people who just didn't identify. the democrats -- isle listic young people, people who are working for social change as a career. one of the reasons they don't identify with the democratic party is because they grew up in the '90s with bill clinton, they grew up in the 2000s, and it's hard for them to even know of something that they read about in books the democratic party being associated with idealistic reform movements, and that's a consequence of, you know, the move to the center in the democratic party. so, um, you know, if i tell this kid who i interviewed, well, don't you think that the democrats are the party who cast their lot with, you know, martin luther king and cesar chavez, doesn't that count for something?

i'm talking about ancient history. when's the last time you can point to a democrat doing that? >> okay. we've got about 15 minutes left, so i thought we might open it up for questions. so i guess we can line up at these microphones if we have questions from the audience. do we have questions from the audience? because we can keep going here if -- >> i bet there'll be finish. >> okay. >> you guys do the microphones so you can be recorded by the tv. >> yes. you're going to be famous here. [inaudible conversations] wait until you're up by the mic here. >> yeah, and i noticed the common political character of the tea party attitude and an occupy attitude is a distrust of leadership and how in a two-party political culture can those dissatisfactions with the system ever be fully manifest. >> yeah. i mean, one problem with, um, the way occupy has taken shape

is they're very wedded to this idea of not being attached to any institutions. and those institutions include the institutions of electoral politics. and people have pointed out correctly that, um, occupy has changed the way a lot of politicians talk. people don't talk as much about the problem of balancing the budget. they talk about jobs, they talk about the 99%, they talk about the crimes of banks. the problem is the reason politicians are talking that way is when they see a lot of bodies in the street, they think voters, you know? and once they figure out that the kids in occupy are not interested in voting or getting involved in electoral politics, i think they're going to tune out pretty quick. >> i mean, this is a classic left-right asymmetry right here. the tea party makes the republican party stronger. >> uh-huh. >> right? occupy doesn't throw in its lot for democrats because they want to be different, and why -- >> and democrats don't throw

their lots with occupiers because they don't want to be seen as liberal. [laughter] >> so you lose the strength of the grassroots -- >> but boehner said there's no daylight between me and the tea party. >> no. and so this is the story of the last four years, basically. and you can, you can actually go back to the experiments, and you can see a version of this, you know? the conservatives responding to the liberal politicians as if, you know, it's a threat. um, the liberals are, like, they're more interested in liberal politicians too. they find it interesting, exploratory, this is kind of cool. but then they might move on to something else, and we'll taste this politician, and we'll try this one, and we'll try nader, you know? and we'll lose. [laughter] >> over here. >> historically politics in this country have shifted over time to the left, to the liberal side becoming more progressive. is that still true today, or where is the center moving to? >> i think the center's been moving pretty strongly to the

right during the period i studied, the '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s and this decade. and, yeah, before that point, you know, through the progressive era and the new deal era and, um, the '0s and '50s even though that was a comfortably conservative time, yeah, the center had moved to the left. >> you said it was a lot of the exploiting of the concerns of the unrest? >> yeah. in a way there's something, a wave about that. i mean, basically, you know, as the left became hegemonic and social change became kind of institutionalized, it was very alienating for a lot of people because it involved uprooting and dispossessing their sense of where they drew security from, for example, their neighborhoods and their homes where suddenly they were being, quote-unquote, forced by new open housing laws to rent and sell to people they might not want to ordinarily rent and sell to. >> over here. >> so i've done a fair bit of

reading on the civil war, and increasingly recently i've been becoming more and more troubled by what i see as some parallels between the pre-civil war era and what's going on today, the deep division and alienation, disaffection between various groups in the country. there also has a geographical in some ways delineation to it. the apocalyptic language that's being used on, particularly on one side. and i have a sense that in civil war we almost got to the point when they finally fired on fort sumter in april '61, people said thank god, thousand we can go -- now we can go get those s.o.b.s, and that kind of language occurred on both sides. and i'm starting to become worried that we're starting to reach that same kind of situation in this country where both sides are so alienated and so deeply disaffected and angry with each other that any kind of

rational and civil discourse is almost impossible. >> if i could bring that home here to arizona, the comparison's been made to kansas territory in the 1850s when the civil war was, the great issues of the civil war were being fought over violently ten years before the firing on of fort sumter. and the comparison's been made with are we seeing some of these sort of ideological clashes playing out here in the grand canyon state prior to the time that they hit the rest of the country with great force, this idea of changing ethnicities in the u.s. we're, we're going through a great wrestling with this question here in our local school district. the nature of the economy and information economy detached there a manufacturing base dependent on this idea of a forever-ascending home value. we learned in a very tough way

that we can't count on that. and so is arizona representative of sort of a kansas kind of a metaphor here? >> and the home of the for-profit education bubble, too, in the form of the university of phoenix. >> and you've said that there's already a civil war going on. >> well, i would say a cultural civil war. but, look, i mean, let's not downplay the civil war. 600,000 americans slaughtering each other -- >> or the cold war. >> that's not going to happen. but, um, one of the thicks when i wrote my book, "nixonland," the last line was, you know, it's easy to imagine americans wanting to murder one another in cold blood, and that's why we're still living in nixonland. and the critic from "the

washington post" said ha's absurd, that's way over the top. and lo and behold, the early obama administration's lots of blood spilled on the part of people who didn't consider a democrat a legitimate president. and that's worrying and something we need to watch. >> this is definitely part of civil discourse, having problems this both being civil and being truthful. and it seems to me that there's this huge gap in journalistic reporting and media for someone a la walter cronkite, someone who can tell i us the truth, someone who stays in the middle, someone who checks all the facts -- >> that's not me, by the way. [laughter] >> but it just seems like a huge gap that no one is stepping up to fill today. >> well, you can't fill it anymore. you can't fill it in the same way because there'll always be an alternative source of facts. we're in a fragmented media.

we'll never go back to the media where you had abc, cbs -- >> and let's not forget if you were at a tea party rally and someone mentioned the idea of walter cronkite as an honest broke, you would get booed out of the room because he was the guy who said we are losing the vietnam war after he went to vietnam and according to right-wing dogma, caused us to lose the vietnam war. so he was not seen as an honest broker, and, you know, that's nixonland, that's the beginning of the sort of division, these two realities, these two truths. >> there are seven studies -- i'm sorry. [laughter] seven studies now, all right? showing that fox news viewers are more misinformed than viewers of other stations. [applause] okay? on global warming, there's two. on the iraq war, there's one. on health care, there's two. there's one on, um, the ground zero mosque, and then there's one on just all the issues in the 2010 election which includes, you know, belief that

the president was not born in the united states. it includes the belief that the economic stimulus bill did not create any jobs, and it just goes on and on and on. so you could make a great truth broker, and liberals would love their show. but -- [laughter] you know, it wouldn't matter because there would still be fox, and conservatives love fox. and they choose it over anything else by a huge margin. so what are you going to do about that? >> walter cronkite's america too was not necessarily a media paradise, you know? there were so many stories that went uncovered or undercovered or just utterly ignored by the media hegemony. >> over here. >> um, sometime after january 8th last year i read an article, i can't remember if it was the star or the republic, they had talked to, they had interviewed doctors, psychiatrists who said that if you are schizophrenic, you're pretty much, you're not

paying much attention to what's happening in the culture around you, that you're pretty much living inside your own head, and i wondered if tom zeller and, of course, the other offers if they wish -- authors if they wish would comment on the sphere of the shooting in that respect. >> absolutely. i spend a lot of time about pair pair -- paranoid schizophrenia. the media tendency quickly emerged that he was live anything a parallel reality that this came from only inside his own head, and it had nothing to do with anything else around him. and numerous studies have shown that although paranoid schizophrenics do suffer delusions and hallucinations, they are tremendously informed and in dialogue with the culture that surrounds them. and so the culture that surrounded jared loughner in 2010 was a uniquely angry atmosphere. and so can it ever be proved by

the scientific method that, you know, the sort of partisan anger that gripped our city back then was responsible for january 8th? no. that'll never be proved. however, the evidence for me was convincing that certainly no man is an island and that this did not come out of nowhere. >> yes. and that also points to a moral responsibility of broadcasters. not that some ordinary citizen is going to listen to what they're saying about, a, george tiller -- say, george tiller, the abortion doctor this kansas and go out and kill him, but that already unstable person may, um, kind of hook onto that rhetoric. so it behooves them not to talk about people in dehumanizing ways as bill o'reilly did when he called george tiller the baby killer over and over again. he bears a moral responsibility.

>> as an independent, i sort of see elements of truth in both parties' policies, yet neither party even remits what i would -- represents what i would consider a majority of my opinions. and as the sort of attempt to be part of the reality-based decision maker i wonder if there isn't something symbiotic about friday locke. is gridlock good for fund raising, and maybe could -- if one party had all the right answers, you wouldn't need to get a lot of campaign contributions and fight it out. so might it be in the parties' interest to be a little bit dysfunctional because that makes for a better fight and better fundraising and helps your party succeed in a way that maybe good government wouldn't? >> well, there's an assumption of intentionality there that i'm not sure i buy.

i'm sure that people do raise more money as partisans on both sides get enflamed. no doubt about that. and i'm sure that the partisans on both sides are enflamed right now, but i don't know that anyone sets out to make it that way, you know? >> this voter is a rarity. most people who call themselves independents lean democrat or lean republican and don't want to call themselves part of the party because they think their party isn't ideological enough, or maybe they don't want to be part of a club that would have them as a member. [laughter] the way they're talked about is, oh, my god, a ton of them, but as far as voting behavior, true independents are very rare. >> okay. we've got about two minutes left. do you have a really quick question for the panel? >> i do. we know that republicans have difficulty accepting legitimacy of clinton and also of obama. if obama's re-electioned president, what do you foresee

in the next four years? [laughter] >> yeah, you're going to have a really quick answer. >> no, this is a quick answer because grover norquist has said they're going to try and impeach him. doesn't have a crime, they're going to try and impeach him. it's a political act. >> i agree. they are so anti-obama, they view him in such stark terms as an enemy that the fight will be very, very bitter. >> tom, any -- want to weigh in on this? >> only that the president has adopted a strategy of sanctions against iran and has rejected sort of this loose talk of war as he's called it, and my hope is that that continues to be our foreign policy footing towards this question. >> okay. [applause] i want to, i want to thank our authors, rick perlstein, chris mooney, tom zeller. thanks for -- zoellner, thanks for attending the session. thanks to university medical center for the stage, and a big

thanks to everyone who helps the festival come together. the authors will be autographing in the madden media signing area one and right after our session here, last but not least, if you're enjoying the festival and are interested in becoming a friend of the festival, go to the information booth on the mall or online at the web site. thanks again for all your support. [applause] .. >> harvard professor randall

kennedy, in your best-selling book the in-word, the strange career of a troublesome word.oo you write about violence by atrs speech read what he means?rie >> the book is about the word do nighter, and it is itself a worb that has triggered lots ofggerd violence and to some this is a violent ward and of itself.o what i wanted to do in the book was to give the history of thish word that has been covered withe blood literally and sometimes figuratively. wanted to show the way in which this word has wrought havoc in american culture. of course that is not all itcuu. does. one of the reasons why it was but for the is because it is as complicated word.lic it is a terrible history, a history of insult, a history ofy terrorism, a history of intimidation. but, of course, it is been put to other uses.

it has been put to anti racist o uses. it has been made an ironic term. it has been made a term of endearment.end so the word c-span.org is a complicated word with violentcad aspects but others as well. >> to was big mama and how did she use the word?el. >> big mama was really a wonderful lady who probably did not get more than a sixth grade education, born in south carolina, lived her entire life in south carolina. she was a seamstress. she was a domestic. she was a strong will lady who raised a slew of kids, spent most of -- said most of them through college and absolutely great person.

i knew her for a good portion of my life. she used a lot of different words. bck she referred to black people sometimes as colored people, but she also sometimes would use of the infamous in-word. she has been a person who example and whose wisdom hasal m been with me all my life. >> is it illegal to use the n-word? >> generally speaking no.e although -- and take that back. if you use the n-word in an employment setting, for instance, if you are somebody's supervisor and you refer to youa worker has a nigger or you refer

to black people, you may be in b violation of the law by creating a hostile workplace and therebyy making yourself subject to a liability under state law ornew under the civil rights law of 1964. so under certain circumstances you can do things which would make yourself -- which would subject yourself to legal, or liability or another way, if yot could -- commit violence and in the commission of a violent act refer to people using the n-wort you might be subject to a lotaw were legislation and thereby not only be prosecuted for assaulte or wherever a violent act to, have committed, but you might

subject yourself to an enhancedy penalty by running afoul of state aid laws. ah ofder certain circumstances, yes you would be in violation of the law.caus generally speaking because of the strong shielding power of o the first amendment people, for instance, comedians or writers u can use the n-word and not have, to fear the law, the you might o have to fear of public opinioner which it so can be a very powerful source. >> is that the argument you were making earlier? >> well, in the law of homicidet there are all sorts of different levels of homicides. one big divide is betweenee manslaughter and second-degree

murder. so for manslaughter the law gives to -- if you kill someone but you can make the argument you killed somebody if you're in the depression p you come home r you find your girlfriend or you find your wife in the arms ofso another and kill someone, you te committed a violent act but the law will give you a little bit of a break if his you're in the girl with passion. we give you something of a six -- excuse.have mad there are some people to make the argument that there were ind the grip of passion becausehe somebody called in the infamous and word. p this card test tracking kill thh person. the argument becomes, can you or your lawyer make the the argument to a a jury that you were in the grip

passion because this personou called you this particular word? in some jurisdictions like, li washington d.c. you cannot evenn make that argument. the jurisdiction that has thejut just words document. w the law says no matter what thei word the matter was somebodys called you that is no excuse fo. using violence.et y the other jurisdiction, will let you make that argument to a jury . >> you right there is nothing necessarily wrong with a white t person saying the inward whatt i should matter is the context in which the words spoken. effts the speakers' names of tax alternatives. it's simply to make a fetish.

>> the best example toxale illustrate that point is mark twain's great novel huckleberryt finn.anhi nigger appears in huckleberry finn over 200 times. now, i'd think huckleberry finn is a wonderful novel. its impulse is anti racist, it's impulses' antislavery to him. on obviously many people who have e wanted to ban or raise the worda you have a white author, but he is using the term that a clue the rent @booktv into racist. a pliny bruce was a great social satirist. he had a number of skits. s not to insult black people, but rather to turn the tables on

racist.eopl people who were anti-black he used the word to laugh at them. in racism in order to combat c racism. racism. adore used the word anythinger in some of her short stories. she wasn't using it to be a racist. rather, she was ung rather she was using it as an artist artist to de-legitimate race simple. that's what i meant. obviously there are black people, too who have used the term nigger in ways that in my view, are completely unobjectionable. dick gregory titled his first

autobiography, "nigger "an autobiography." and richard pryor with two great albums, "that nigger is crazy" and bicentennial nigger." >> host: when you wrote the book, it was published in 2002. what reaction did you get? >> host: when i do. >> guest: when i wrote the book i got a lot of reaction, some positive and some negative. and continue to get some positive reactions and negative reactions. some people took real offense at the title. if there was one aspect of the book that probably got me the most negative reaction was people who complained about the title, and who thought that i was being sensationalist, i was

exploiting this term by putting it right there in the title, right there on the cover of a book that would appear in your book stores all across america. and what i said to people was -- and i still say -- and i say this unapologetically -- if you write a book you want people to read your book. there are thousands of books in any book store. there are hundreds of thousands of books in any big library, and you got a lot of competition. the first thing you want to do, if you're an author, is to at least have somebody pick up the book. and so when i was thinking of a title issue thousand what i can title this book that would get somebody to take a peek, read the first paragraph. and i thought, well, nigger. nigger is a strange career of a

trouble self-word. and i thought that would -- just think hard about words, think hard about examples, get the readers attention. that's what i was trying to do with the title. and it certainly succeeded in getting people's attention. >> host: in 2008, you published "sellout. the politics of racial betrayal." what's a sellout? >> guest: a sellout is a person who is viewed as being a traitor to his group. and every group creates boundaries. every group has a notion of who is inside the group and who is outside the group. and so every group has sellouts. in the united states of america, as a law of treason, and if you do certain things which are deemed to give comfort, give

aide to an enemy of the united states, you make yourself subject to being called a traitor, being called a sellout if you're taking money for it particularly. every group has this, and i wrote this book to focus on this phenomenon in the context of black america. just like -- every group has this notion of insiders and outsiders. therefore, every group has a motion that if you are an insider, and you do certain things against the perceived interests of the group, what do we call these people? we call these people sellouts and that's what wanted to write about. >> host: with the pop exception of athletes, you write, blacks to attain success in a multiracial setting will always sooner or later encounter whispered insinuations or shouted allegations that their achievement is attributable, at least in part to selling out.

>> guest: yes. sure, that's true. so, for instance, there are some people -- fortunately not many but some african-americans, for instance -- who would call the first black.a sellout. there are black americans who will say that if you're black and you're the head of a fortune 500 company, you're necessarily a sellout. there's a real anxiety within -- substantial part of black america when confronting black americans who are successful in the wider society, because there's this anxiety that, to be successful, especially if you're in a predominantly white setting, to get the backing of white people. get the trust of white people. what do you have to do to get that backing? what did you have to do to get

that trust to get that recognition? there's this fear that one of the things you had to do was to betray, in some form, your community, and that's what i talk about. >> host: good afternoon, welcome to become tv on c-span2. thisser is our monthly in depth program where we have one author on to talk about his or her body of work. this month it's harvard law professor randall kennedy, who has written five books. here are his books in 1997 he came out with: race, crime, and the law. 2002, the n-word, that strange career of a troublesome word. interracial intimas sunday came out in three. sellout in 2008. and 'his most recent book, the persistence of the color line. professor, when did you start teaching at harvard? >> guest: i started teaching at harvard in 198 4. summer of 1984. >> host: what do you teach?

>> guest: i teach contracts. i teach courses on race relations law. i have taught coreses -- courses on the first amendment and criminal law. but nowdays it's really two courses. contracts, and my race relations law courses. >> host: if you want to participate, here's the numbers. 202-624-11 -- wasn't sure what numbers we're use. if you want to send an e-mail you can. twitter slash become. i got all that mixed up. >> host: in your most recent book, the persistence of the

color line, racial politics and the obama administration, you write, at opposition to antiblack race simple generates protectiveness. even blacks who vehemently disagree with obama on important matters subordinate their misgivings out of the onotion that -- >> guest: yes. there are people who are critical of the president with respect to various issues. who have to make a calculation over and over and over again whether they want to publicize their criticism. on one hand they have a real dispute with the president and want to relay their disappointment or their disagreement to him, and to others. on the other hand, they recognize that the president of the united states, barack obama, is going to be facing opposition

not so much based in an authentic disagreement with this or that policy, but, rather, an opposition that is fueled by antiblack racism, and people, even if they're critical of president obama, don't want to do anything that will help the cause of those who are against the president, at least in part because he is black. >> what is a race man? >> guest: a race man. a race man is a term that refers to black americans who have a sense of camaraderie, have a sense of solidarity, have a sense they should use their gift, their talents, their resources, not only to further themselves but to uplift the

race with themselves. it's an honorrivic term to be a race man or race woman is to be a person who has a sense of group responsibility. >> host: in sellout, the politicked of racial betrayal, you write, as a justice, clarence thomas is very much a race man, by which i mean a black person who seeks self-consciously to advance by his own rights the interests of african-americans. >> guest: yes. now, you know, when you write a book, one thing about writing books is that you do the best you can at a particular point, but sometimes you want to revise things. and, frankly, this is -- what you just read is a sentence i would probably not write again. if i were redoing that book i would revise that sentence. what i meant to say when i wrote

that, was that clarence thomas is a person whose politics are at variance with most black americans. strongly at variance with most black americans. he is conservative. most black americans are not. but he does in his own view see himself as pushing a political agenda that will, in his view, advance the fortunes of black americans. and that's what i meant by, in his own mind, he sees himself as a race man. i think in certain ways i would still -- i think that's an accurate portrayal of the justice. i think i get -- when i wrote that, i was being rather

generous, though. i think that if i were revisiting that territory, i would be more critical of the justice, because, frankly, in the way in which he has not only taken positions but also voiced the positions he has taken, i think that there is -- i have now more questions than i had then of the degree to which he sees himself as someone who has obligations to advance the fortunes of black americans. >> host: where did you grow up and go to school? >> guest: i was born in columbia south carolina in 195 4. september 10, 1954. i spent me first few years of life in columbia south carolina. but in -- at a young age, my parents left south carolina. they were refugees from the jim crow south, and they moved to

washington, dc in search for more opportunity. i grew up here in washington, dc. i went to public schools for a good long while. i went to tacoma elementary school, and then i went to paul junior high school, and then i went to st. albin's school for boys. it's on the grounds of the national cathedral. st. albins was a formative influence for me. st. albin's cool was probably the most influence sal school -- influencal school i attended. >> host: why? sunny learned the rudiments of expository writing, and so anytime i write an article, anytime i write a book, i, quite

literally, say, thank you to my teachers at st. albins. i think of ferdinand rda who taught class of on writing. i think of mr. willis, i think most importantly of my high school history teacher, john f. mccune, who introduced me to history, introduced me to the study of history, the study of historical writing, historiography, very important figure in my intellectual development. >> host: how much african-americans attended that school when you were there? >> guest: not many. in my graduating class of 70, there were probably seven black

american students. when i began there were fewer, but more came over time. so there were not that many -- there are more now, but when i was there, there were not many black students. it was an extraordinary intellectual environment. absolutely extraordinary. the st. albans inculcated a motivation of public -- mindedness. we debated all of the public issues of the day. there was a wide range of ideological positions that peek took. we were encouraged to speak out. we were encouraged to write down our views, and to this day i

have very fond feelings toward st. albans, and again, very fond feelings towards my teachers. >> host: princeton? >> guest: i went to princeton university in 1973 and 1977. again, a wonderful experience. i think, again, just a host of teachers. several of whom have become very close friends of mine. one of my teachers at princeton was man by the name of stanford levinson. >> host: university of texas. >> guest: a very distinguished, very interesting intellectual in general, the legal academic, i had him for politics. in fact i had him for a course on constitutional interpretation at princeton. he gave me my lowest grade at princeton. we had been life-long friends

ever since. he reads -- he has read all of my books in manuscript form. always gives me wonderful feedback. at princeton, james mcpherson, the great historian of the civil war, was my thesis adviser. one of my teachers at princeton was a visiting professor, eric phoner, the great american historian. >> host: columbia now. >> guest: at columbia. my senior thesis was a biography of richard hover stater. he has been eric phoner's dissertation adviser. eric fopperies now the dewitt clinton professor at columbia. and i've known eric for decades now. he, too is a person who reads

all my work, gives me feedback. so princeton is a school -- i'm an the board of trustees princeton. i have very fond feelings toward princeton it, too very influential in my life. >> host: ten years after you were there michelle obama attended princeton. didn't seem her experience was the same as yours. >> guest: my sense is, from what i read in the paper, she did not have as positive an experience as me. i'm sorry about that.