liberations on arms control. this is about 40 minutes. >> greetings and welcome to indianapolis. my name is brian howie and i published how politics indiana. in this capacity i had the honor and privilege of not only traveling with senator richard g lugar to europe all the way to siberia to a dataset to albania, but i also had the opportunity to travel with the author who is going to be speaking tonight and that is john shaw who has covered congress since 1991 for market news and has written his third vote featuring senator lugar. i have to tell you a story that isn't in the book here. john and i followed the senator from ma out to siberia to the

chemical weapons destruction facility. we ended up and the renowned town ekaterinburg, russia mns senator lugar and sam nunn went out to the nyack facility where the nunn lugar act has stored a lot of the highly enriched uranium of this comes from soviet nuclear warheads, john and i ended up with officials who briefed us on what the senators were going to see. then we boarded the plane and headed to odessa. on the flight to odessa waited reefing that senator lugar and sam nunn participated in. we landed in a data and board met at the airport with the motorcade. so the course through odessa with sirens blaring and ended up at the london sky hotels.

after a brief time there, we traveled through an area of my dataset, very pretty part of the city through the long area down to the blacks see, where the senator was shown monitoring equipment that was placed on ships that would pull alongside ships coming into the harbor. monitoring, looking for highly enriched uranium. and then that night we went back to the london sky hotels, had dinner with the senator in which we talked about everything from what he'd seen in my earlier earlier in the day to the united methodist conference at the united methodist church in indiana. it was a wide-ranging discussion and that night, john and i ended up in the london sky bar. and i wasn't quite some tenet of "star wars," but i think the

motorcade amount of fire and that brought us into town peaked the interest of the intelligence community that is centered in odessa. ukraine is only one of seven or eight nations that borders the black sea. and as we sat in the buyer, every time i looked up at the smoky figure on the other side of the bar, you seem to be looking at me. and then there was a group of people at the table and they started asking us questions like where you guys from? who are you with and where you're going? if they were going to london. the guy said there's no flights are here to london. i remember john saying well, we're going to go to albania for. and then it became apparent that he beat these folks were looking for information that maybe we shouldn't be dispensing so much. but that was one of the finer moments that i shared with john shaw as he researched this book.

i'm going to turn the show over to him now so he can ask lane a third book that he has written. this woman senator lugar. so john. >> ryan, thank you for that kind introduction and a little trip down memory lane. the one part of the story brain didn't mention this when i boarded out of going to albania brain kicked me ferociously under the table and i guess i've been recognized it wasn't the smartest thing to be saying to strangers. so thank you so much for cohosting this event might also like to thank kathleen angelo from book one of the bookstore here in town who is cohosting. i very much appreciate that. i'd also like to thank marche data center here at vienna landmarks for allowing us to use this incredible facility. it's really beautiful. and i'd like to think rebecca: and maybe clark and her colleagues from iu press come

indiana university press been wonderful to work with in the project. it's been a pleasure to work with them. but i'm here to talk about tonight is this book, which brian mentioned called "richard g. lugar, statesman of the senate." i have to mention when i talk to people in on the first thing they ask me is how did you time this so well? the book is coming out just weeks before one of the most eagerly anticipated primaries in indiana and many, many decades. and the truth is i could pretend this is great timing, but it was almost a total accident. i've been working on the book for a number of years and i work full-time covering congress for market "market news international." uncovering a senator with a full career this has taken a long time to write. it is coming out now at an interesting time of course here the senator is involved in a very contentious, difficult primary. i got a sense of just how

charged the atmosphere here is this morning. i went to a coffee shop and the guy was waiting on me and we started talking about indiana politics and i mentioned that this book on senator lugar and the first thing he said is that pro-worker or anti-lugar? and my response was i hope it is fair to lugar because that is what i was trying to do is present the book about an important senator in describing how he goes about his work. i began the book in 2006. i just finished another book which brian reference called the ambassador tonight and speeds ambassador to the united states. jan was sort of the rockstar of the diplomatic corps in washington. he was this incredible diplomat who found a way to get tiny little speaking on the map in washington. as i was finishing the book i wanted to find someone else who could give me a little insight into how did washing diplomacy and foreign policy were. so i thought of of course

senator lugar and i grew up in illinois and at the midwest or followed his career over the years. i've been covering washington since 1991 and covered in as well. so my thought was to not write not a biography, formal biography, but just a case study about how a senator can she policy. my idea was to interview him extensively, get a sense of how he approached the job, travel and within an indiana as brian mentioned and interview some of his colleagues to get a sense of what they thought of senator lugar. as far as those interviews go, i had some incredible interviews with vice president biden, senator mcconnell, governor daniels, farmer said there by, former congressman lee hamilton to ask about the senator. one thing really striking as i talk to them in to tell me about it kluger. almost everyone used the word

statesmen. and that was interesting because the frequency by which people use that term, but also given how rarely it is used now in american politics. in interviews or try to probe and get a sense of what they actually meant by the term and a lot of them didn't have the precise definitions. but as i thought about their comments on my own, i sort of developed a working definition of what a state minute and asked for five elements they want to just kind of briefly present and this may be providing a bit of context to talk about the senator's career. the first one is the sense of working in the national interest, the long-term national interest, and interest because the on the next election. i think it also requires a willingness to take political. as we all know, not a lot of people are eager to do that. a third element is a willingness to work with the other party. perhaps that is even rarer now in american politics.

another element is a willingness to break from your own party, to disagree with your own party when you feel like they ran the wrong side of an issue. and yet another component is a willingness to work on issues that do not have a short-term political payoff, to work on programs and policies, to do good work when no one is really watching in effect and again that is sort of a rare thing in american politics. and a final thing is an ability to deliver and get things done. you can have a lobbyist intentions in the world but in the end you need to be will to deliver and produce anything that is also a critical element to state and should. now in this book i don't argue that lugar is the perfect statesman. there are parts of the book that are positive, parts that are negative. i'm sure there's a nice book he disagrees with pretty strongly. what i want to do in structuring the book is start out with the biographical chapter he just put his life and career in some

context. the first part of that was just described his eight years as mayor of indianapolis. a very consequential time. spent some time trying to understand the new one is of unit, a major experiment in urban government that he undertook in the late 60s. so i tried to give it back drop of just where he comes from politically. then i traced his senate career. he was selected as you may know in 1976 for the first time in his early career was sort of dogged disciplined, no really major breakthroughs. the career. in 1984 to be influential in senate, there's two tracks you can take. the first is the leadership track to try to become a republican leader. but a second track is to develop policy expertise and become the chairman or high ranking member of the committee.

interestingly, lugar began trying to pursue the leadership track. he ran in 1984 howard baker is stepping down as republican leader and merits of vipers scramble to succeed him. senator lugar did not make that, but due to some twists and turns became the chairman of the foreign relations committee starting in 1985. and that is kind of a strange way redirected his entire career and he became and has become one of the leading both men on american foreign policy. he's also one of the agriculture committee and works hard in a culture issues, but i think his real love is foreign policy. the book is how focuses on areas that the senator has worked on. and i didn't go -- i describe some of the things he did in the early career, but the focus on the book is the projects he was working on when i was interviewing him, which is 2006 until 2011. in the books i describe his work

on energy issues, global food issues, arms control, efforts to overhaul the american polish the apparatus. a very technical, complicated nuclear agreement with india and an international treaty. i won't go through all of those of course, but i think the take away is that in almost all of these areas, the senator has worked in a pretty practical discipline.good way to get results. he's a conservative republican, but he has not been particularly partisan. and he has tried to work with people from both parties to actually solve problems. probably the signature issue of luker's political career, which brian alluded to is the non-lugar act created in 1991 the soviet union was including end to secure and dismantle dismantle weapons of mass distraction and the farmers of the union.

the offense has been brought in to include dialogical and chemical weapons and also has expanded to other parts of the world. just a year or so ago the senator went to africa and beat how the nun lugar program is working in a couple countries they are. the program is like one of these government programs which probably has over performed. people sometime referred to it as a mini marshall plan in terms of a program with good in terms of a program with good in terms of a program with good, well-managed accomplishing things. we only spend about a billion dollars a year on the nunn-lugar program and a lot of people inc. we should be spending more for it. and the senator has been nominated a couple of them for the nobel peace prize. so i think that will be remembered as one of the cores of his legacy. one of the senator's great accomplishments, his involvement in the debate in iraq and afghan and would be remembered in a

more complicated way. my own view is that the senator has had some theory intelligent, even forward-looking things they about the iraq war, but i don't think he had a lot of influence. and i think there's two reasons for that. they think first the bush administration is not particularly interested in congressional and tied into iraq. if you read them of the memoir is coming up now for the bush administration, it is very clear the congressional reaction to the impending war was not a particularly great concern to the administration. but i think the second factor is the senator up to two voices can earn in reservations in private, quiet way rather than to force the public, rotation. and this gets to one of the sword or the dilemmas of the lawmaker because recent history

played with examples of lawmakers trying to struggle to find the best way to shape administration's view on a controversial issue. in the mid-60s, william fulbright story chairman of the committee disagreed with the johnson ministrations combat and try to persuade the administration to change the course privately. didn't work. he held public hearings in 1966, which really galvanize the public debate on vietnam. ..

the best interviews i had in the book project was with chuck hegel, former senator from nebraska who was a huge fan but believes the senator made a huge and important mistake by not forcing the issue. he said it is very clear the administration was not going to respond to private entreaties and the only way to get action was to go public. lugar disagreed. one should note that several years from june 2007 he went to the senate floor and gave a

memorable speech in which he basically said the administration's policy in iraq is not working. we need to change gears. many to that speech as a tacit admission that the strategy to try to work within ministrations probably had failed. if the experience in iraq will be remembered as the the the the the edge some disappointing chapter in the senator's for one of the good chapters will be his work on the arms control treaty with russia. the new start treaty that was approved in 2010. this was classic lugar. complex difficult treaty. he viewed it as part of the arms control agreement the reagan administration had initiated. he did the dive. this the nuances of the issue and decided he was going to work with the obama administration because it was in the american national interest to do so. candidly he was not treated well by the senate republican

leadership. senator mitch mcconnell said lugar was the lead person but also brought in john kyle, is deputy and so you had a very ungainly arrangement in which both lugar and jon kyl were involved. it seemed the republicans were turning to jon kyl on this even though lugar by most people's admission had a much greater understanding of the treaty, much more balanced approach to the treaty but it was classic lugar that he worked hard on it, he was completely a gentleman. didn't react in any adverse way. worked very hard on the issue. he put together a number of dear colleague letters on this treaty and they almost served as a kind of model of what a senator could do. a remarkable series of letters which just way out what the treaty was. what proponents believe, what

critics believed and his view and it was extremely fair minded. the sort of work we sort of hope our lawmakers will provide that happens too rarely. i would like to end my remarks by talking a little about the current campaign because obviously it is a campaign that has grabbed both the national attention and international as well as indiana where it is something that is being viewed with great interest. something i had to wrestle with because there is always finishing the vote in 2011, the big question i had to ask myself and try to answer was how could it be a successful senator, very popular at home, respected throughout the world is fighting for his political life? i won't presume to tell people in indiana what is going on here but it seems to me that the

senator has faced some head winds that are easy to understand and recognize. first is the sense that congress as we all know is deeply unpopular. by opinion polls and congressional approval and high single digits. there is a sort of guilt by association that a lot of incumbents have to work through. secondly the senator's brand of republicanism which i define as fiscally conservative but international foreign policy, that brand is no longer in ascendancy. it is being at least temporarily pushed to the side for a different type of conservativ s conservativeism that is more focused on social issues. these the the issue is the senator hasn't talked about a lot over his career. the third factor that is weighing the senator down or

causing his reelection some difficulty is that his whole town is that of a moderate, civil, gentle person and it is a town that works wonderfully in washington. it is the way you solve problems but in some sense it is out of sync with more of the confrontational angry demands of the republican base. his whole temperament is out of step and also the simple fact that senators cast votes that put him in the mainstream of congress and republicans in congress but have been identified by some in the republican party has not sufficiently partisan. the arms control treaty i just spoke of a few minutes ago is one. some of his vote on supreme court nominations, lugar's view is these people in the judicial

mainstream. the president should have the prerogative of putting supreme court nominations before the senate. unless there are disqualifying elements, should confirm them. that to me is the backdrop and it is interesting because i think the senator has known -- we were talking about this just briefly. he has known since 2010 that he was going to face a tough reelection this year and he has done a lot of the things you would expect him to do. he has raised a lot of money. c-span a lot of time in indiana under all circumstances but even more time here and he has shifted if not his policies at least his rhetoric. he has become far more partisan, far more confrontational. rarely a week passes where i don't get a number of females in which he is slamming the president on health care or keystone or something so i think

he is taking -- he has moved to the right to be more in step with the tea party move. i am a little surprise the senator has not run more aggressively on his record. i think he is one of the more significant senators in the last quarter century. sadly in foreign policy and he has this considerable impressive history. and in the background, the people of indiana have been proud and rather than embracing this record and explaining it passionately and unabashedly he has been pulling back. seems like the campaign has become more tactical the personal more negative. i would like to recommend people really wonderful essay that bryan wrote last week about the campaign in which he basically

said it was time for both candidates to of their game and dispense with the tactical skirmishing and bickering over residence issues and faxes and murdoch's attendance at meetings and just lay out their agenda for the future and things like fiscal policy, foreign policy, healthcare. it will be interesting to see if in the final weeks of the campaign the senator does really run for lee and aggressively as statesmen of the senate. let me stop there and i would be glad to take any questions you might have or comments too. so thank you very much. go up t

hakim june 20th. sir this project? >> he was running unopposed. the republican president. one of the challenges of this book one of the real challenges is even though you have senator lugar who had a pretty steady career, the political landscape around him has been shifting constantly. it has been moved like hitting a moving target. his career has been pretty steady.

political circumstances surrounding him have changed considerably. >> it probably doesn't fit in with your statement approach but you mentioned briefly the agriculture committee and back in the 80s i know he did a job on jesse helms sir he could get the foreign relations. he has been very active there and has the freedom to farm act. corn and beans went down and other senators got skittish and repealed it. that is another significant contribution. >> i mentioned lugar worked on the agriculture committee. the focus of the book is foreign policy. i spent some time writing about the senator's relationship with jesse helms which has been a

difficult one. lugar was chairman of the foreign relations committee 85-87. when the republicans won control, helms used his seniority to take control of the chairmanship and forced lugar into the second ranking position and it was at that point he went back to agriculture. the battle between lugar and helms is an interesting one and something that has shaped lugar's career in a profound way. >> talk a little bit about the political vulnerability of foreign relations chairman. he mentioned the other than jesse helms in number of them have gone down. go into some detail on that. >> a committee that has been politically difficult to be on. senator lugar when i first interviewed him, no one has a

full draft of the political vulnerabilities of the senate foreign relations committee than dick lugar. he knows the history. from william fullbright and frank church there has been a whole slew of people on the foreign relations committee. charles mercy who lost his position. something the senator has been very aware of and one of the chapters in the book is called tending to the home front in which i try to describe how the senator has tried to keep his political strength at home to allow him to work on foreign policy issues and he does a lot of things to try to connect the world of foreign policy to the life of indiana, specifically speaks a lot and works a lot on trade issues which is the way he believes you connect foreign-policy and the needs of people in indiana. he is well aware of that history. he has been able to survive it

but we will see what happens come march 8th in the primary here. >> i want to begin by saying what an excellent speaker you are. that is evident that you know you're subject really well to be able -- my question is -- maybe just touch on that. how does a farm boy from indiana and get so passionate about foreign policy? >> wonderful question and two simple answers that will point to that. as the senator would say, his time as rhodes scholar was an eye opening experience where he traveled extensively to the u.k. and elsewhere and release of the world through the eyes of others. he cites his work as a rhodes scholar as being hugely important. he also speaks a lot about as a

young naval officer working for a gentleman by the name of burke who was a great brand strategist in foreign policy. as a young naval officer shaped by him and he told me once that his mother -- that small tangible avocation of a different place and different world captivated him and brought the world outside the united states alive for him. >> another answered to that question might be those of us who are old enough to remember world war ii, when you look at foreign policy news from 1939-1945, it becomes a daily habit. >> it is not an abstraction. becomes a real because that war was so all encompassing in american life. that is an important comment as

well. >> one other point i might mention briefly. one of the things i struggled with in writing the book. and it has come a little bit in this campaign is the senator's relationship with president obama. it has become a source of some contention and controversy. my own feeling -- i talked to the senator about this. he first heard of barack obama in 2004 when he was a young state senator running for the u.s. senate in illinois and was struck by the fact that it was someone running for office who was interested in foreign policy, talked about it. he referred to lugar positively. when he jumped in to the stratosphere after his bosses each in 2004 i think senator lugar kept a closer eye on him and when he was elected barack obama in 2004 lugar wrote a

letter to the chairman of the foreign relations committee and said you would be a good asset for this committee and lugar liked the fact that he was interested in foreign policy. broad energy and star quality to the committee. so obama joined the committee in 2005. they took a trip together and during the 2008 campaign senator lugar and doris john mccain as you might expect but he also was careful not to disparage obama. weeks before the 2008 presidential election he gave a very interesting foreign-policy speech in which he talked about the obama and mccain approaches to foreign policy and it was a very even minded speech in which he was praising both for certain things and critical of both. the sort of thing you sort of hope your public officials do. you look at something and call it straight.

but even then there was criticism from republicans who felt he was not sufficiently critical of obama. sins barack obama was elected and came to office in 2009 lugar has tried to work with the president when he could. despite the campaign rhetoric that we hear in indiana, i think senator lugar is neither barack obama's best friend or his worst critic. he is a conservative republican and disagrees with him most of the time but has been willing to work with him when he fought within the national interests. i know that has become a subject of some discussion whether he is barack obama's best friend in the senate but my own view is the relationship is a complicated one and i also will make this point. i don't think -- i have been surprised the obama administration has not drawn on lugar more often for in sight and counsel and i am really

surprised that abortion ministrations -- bush administration did not consult him. a loyal republican, has seen all there is to see about the world. joe biden likes to say lugar has forgotten foreign-policy than most u.s. senators ever learned. so the bush administration had this incredible resource. why did they not draw on him more frequently and more often is astonishing. senator hagan is passion and on that subject. you have lugar who was dying to help the president but no one called very often and it was frustrating i think. >> can you talk about the lugar/biden relationship and how that has progressed sins senator biden became vice president?

>> they were colleagues together for 45 years on the foreign relations committee. they get along well. they have opposite temperaments as you probably know. senator lugar is quiet and soft-spoken and doesn't like to draw a lot of attention to himself. vice president biden is more flamboyant and they respect one another. they decide what issues they agree on and focus on those. they knew when there were things they did not agree on they wouldn't harp on it. one of the most interesting moments in that connection occurred during the nomination for john bolton to be a un ambassador. there was a certain moment when the foreign relations committee was considering this nomination and late in the game there was a republican defection so it was

clear that was about to go down. i am not sure senator lugar, was going on. biden was saying you don't want to call the roll call. you are going to lose. short-term thing would have been for joe biden to let it pass and have the bolton nomination collapsed but biden had a sense they were colleagues for the long-term and felt was important not to help the senator out on an issue that could have been embarrassing to him. >> thank you very much for being here. it has been a real pleasure to chat with you and it will be very interesting for everyone to see how the next couple weeks turnout and what the world looks like after the may 8th primary here in indiana. thank you very much.

appreciate it. [applause] >> is there a nonfiction offer or book he would like to see featured on booktv? send an e-mail at booktv@c-span.org or two us at twitter.com/booktv. >> a silver 0. cars that everyone in iraq drives and no one in america knows about. but again the suspicion was raised when i realize the back of a car was a little lower to the ground than the front. given the rules of engagement you can't just shoot someone because they look suspicious. why did you shoot him? i got scared. you've got scared? so you killed a man? >> yes, sir. i have a gun. you can't do that. given the rules of engagement you can't just shoot someone

unless they have a weapon and you know they are aiming or you know they have killed some one. for they are in the action. given the rules of engagement i couldn't just shoot someone that looks suspicious. i knew the best thing to do was to yell at him to get out of his car. i did and i was looking over my left shoulder facing him and the lead striker vehicle had metal up to my name and all around me. i was inside the striker standing up. i still have my m frames on and looking cool and had my cutler on doing everything i was supposed to do. looked at him and said get out of your vehicle and i knew he heard me because he looked over his shoulder straight at me and raised his hand off of the steering wheel and put them back down. nothing happened. okay. maybe he understood or maybe he

is saying i don't know where i am, i am lost. i didn't know so i yelled at him again. he raised his hands again off of the steering wheel and shook his head know and let his foot off of the break. i had to make a decision so i shot two rounds in front of his vehicle. my world went black. i woke up a week or so later at walter reed army medical center. my life forever changed. my world went black not only physically being blind to rest of my life. the shrapnel had cut my left eye in half, ended the frontal lobe of the left side of my brain and mental went into the right eye went for my cornea back to my red net and took my optic nerve. i saw nothing but blackness. i was told by the ophthalmologists that you would never be able to see again. so my life when physically black

that they but also when spiritually black. i know longer believe in god. everything i had done and everything i believe in no longer meant anything to me. one of my best friends, edward, came into the room and said why don't you say a prayer. i said no. i don't know how to pray. i don't know god. the room went dead silent. are there cockroaches in the room, you would have heard them. i had been married to an awesome man and still am and i would be fine being married to a blind guy that being married to someone who didn't believe in what he believed in before meant something different. so she began to fray. friends began to pray all around

the world. . for me it was a choice i had to make. a personal choice i had to make. i knew i had support. friends came into my room singing christian songs. doctors fought our room was creepy because. would come out. i thought the room was a huge. of like a little matchbox car. but it was that support but it still came back to me. i was the one that had to make the choice. i had to choose to make a difference. my company commander called me every day to see how i was doing. we were awesome friends. my brigade commander now the commanding general for danny whig call me every week to see how i was doing. something that doesn't normally happen. have the top leadership call you to see how you're doing? this support was amazing. people like toby keith, gary sinise, generals would come in and try to see me and i would say i don't want to see them and

one day my wife said andrew wants to see you. she didn't say who it was something hit me. it was andrew harris. the boy i taught sunday school with three years earlier had driven down from west point with his dad to come and see me. i don't know if i knew that they were in the days to come that the impact i made on that young child had done a 180 and now this child was positively impact in me and an amazing way. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> welcome to los angeles and the campus of u.s. c, home of the los angeles times festival of books. started in 1996 this is the seventeenth annual l.a. times,

over the next two days 140,000 people are expected at the campus to hear over 500 authors as they present 100 panels on stage is an exhibit is from the publishing industry, authors and leaders all across the campus over the next few days. booktv will be here for rowdy saturday and sunday time frame to bring live coverage of panel sessions and in between our phone lines will be open to introduce you to a number of the top nonfiction authors with new books out and to take your calls for them. let's take a look at the rundown for this afternoon. next avia and lot history flee the war and remembrance and among the authors will be andrea course he whose hitler book is elected. the first call in of the day with hipolito actosa about the deadly crime cartels. the next panel session from the u.s. c campus is a panel on

biography:the american century. among those featured is that what the 11 l 8 times book price for biography john farrell for his book on clarence darrow. in two hours a call in program with tracymac millen. the book is the american way of eating undercover at wal-mart, farm ville and the dinner table. three hours as the los angeles times festival of books coverage continues. a panel on nonfiction, narrating disaster. a hole at the bottom of the sea. in four hours and interview and call in program with benjamin bush. his book is just to dust:a memoir. 4 hours from now a panel on nonfiction, visions of the west and in five hours are final call in program for the saturday. steven ross is our guest. the book is hollywood left and right:how movie stars shake american politics. now we take you to newman hall on the usc campus for the first panel session