beneath of neither of them are telling the truth. it's upon the reader to figure how how they are lying and are they lying to themselves. as i describe it, it is a super performance. i want to stand up and cheer when i read to the ending. the ending is great it's so right. >> for more information on this and other summer reading lists, visit booktv.org. eel elle nor clift and matthew "selecting a president" next on book tv. it's part of a civic series. the authors argue campaigns have modernizing the system has remained relatively unchanged since the 18th century. it's about 45 minutes. >> so good evening. we are here to celebrate the public indication of elle nor

clift's "selecting a president." she appeared for politics and pros for the previous books. some written with her late husband tom. you were a friend of independent bookstores and the specially politics and pros. many of us were riff ited by your two weeks of life, and fee gnat call politics. your -- stay with those of us who read you to this day. nearly 22 years ago, she and her husband joined me and twenty ohs on her first political and politics and prose trip. it was a literary political trip to what were some of the former

communist company. we met with a bunch of communists. we went through different areas. we ate decently, had fun, and enjoyed each other's company. what she and her coauthor have established in "selecting a president" is to make the election system understandable by breaking it into manageable parts giving us history and wonderful stories, some of them iconic, and taking away any excuses for not being informed. we learn what happeneds if no candidate receives a majority of the elector college. even in the two-person race, there can be a tie, where someone may not receive a majority as crazy as that is. here's a book for the high school or college graduate or near graduate. and having read the book, i can tell you there's plenty for a

family to discuss. eel nor, i loved your dedication to those who educate us on civics and the respect for those who run for office. we know she is a journalist, as a tv political common they or it, and as a person who has been futured in movies. tonight we welcome you as an author. let's welcome her to politics and prose. thank you i remember the trip. we traveled by train. the cold war ended. every time you crossed a border somebody would come into the cabin and shine lights into your eyes. tom and i shared bunks david and karla. karla wanted us to experience life at the level of average

human beings, and we did. [laughter] and it was grand, it was wonderful. so politics and prose brings back so many them roars. neighborhood bookstore for you here. we love it. thank you, david. this book is a little are different for me. because it doesn't express opinions, will is what i get paid to do on television and also in print. and it is a straightforward account of how our political system works. the publisher came to me and saw a gap in our education system, they do not teach kiffics anymore. i'm sure young people out there are wondering where the 527s and the super pacs came from. who invented them? did they come from the founding fathers? how does the system work?

the primaries this year certainly entertained us. what did it have to do with how we select a president? i believe if this is successful it will be in the first in the series. if i'm not giving away too much, i think former senate leader tom daschle will be working with some wonderful researcher and writer to put together a similar book on how the senate work. and david o'bee who stepped down from the house is being contracted to, i believe, right about how the -- write about how the house works. we hope to fill what the schools no longer do. for me, this this was a doing the research and working on the man script, it is a refresher course for political junk yeses. nobody selects a president like we do in this country. and the republican primary season and the debates is

certainly a case in point. although in egypt, they staged a president issue debate and showed clips from some of the debates in this country to educate the populace. which -- length of time [laughter] i shudder to think we're exporting some of this. again, the way we do it, it's got the drawbacks, it's better than anything else that's been tried. the crowded stage early this year on the republican side, i think only had really two plausible perspectives and that was romney who is the obvious nominee and briefly john huntsman. everybody was in it for various reasons, and maybe partly their own delusions, but that's the wonderful thing about running for president. it doesn't you don't actually have to think you can win. there are lots of other reasons to run. among them is to influence the

party platform and shape what the event l nominee will run on. so political primaries, the primaries the prolife rigs of primaries that we saw now is really a relatively recent phenomenon. 1968 human hubert humphrey won without competing in primary. it's unimaginable. power was in the hands of establishment. and they dismissed the voter preferences expressed for mccarthy in new hampshire and bobby kennedy in the california primary. sadly assassinated the night he was to win the california primary. then humphrey's loss to richard nixon in 1968, triggered calls for reform. we got them a governed fraser commission. george mcgovern south dakota

senator and minnesota governor. they worked to come up with a set of reforms and rules where women, young voters and minorities would be represented in proportion to the population. in the 1972 four years later, 40% of the delegates in miami at the convention was women. it was my first convention. i was a tell x operator for "newsweek." i worked in the suite in the fountain blue hotel. it was starry eyed. it was wonderful to watch the politicians. they were to me, stars and clebs, in a way they still are. in 1968, 13 percent of the delegates were women. it gives you an idea of how much reform occurred in the four years. george mcgovern, i lived in a little vacuum myself. i thought everybody i knew

supported george mcgovern and i was rather shocked when he didn't win. he got the nomination based on the rules, he had devised and written a little bit like dick chaney getting the president issue nod after leading the search committee. he lost in the rather major way. he only carried massachusetts and the district of columbia. so what came out of that? 1976 jimmy carter saw what george mcgovern did. he saw the opening in iowa. he spent the better part of the year, probably, sleeping on couches and peoples' bedrooms and getting known by the people of iowa. joy i did powell's memorial service a couple of years ago president caterer told the story of how difficult it was to get any press in iowa, as the former

governor from georgia and he said finally joe i did scored a television spot early in the morning. they're drive together tv studio and she says, by the way, jimmy. do you have any favorite recipes? well they get there. it's a cooking show. and the host is wearing an apron and the chief cap. i believe carter came up with a recipe. he was prepared to do virtually anything to reach his goal, which was to win the nomination and the presidency. carter, of course, one-term president, although i think his legacy will be seen in a much more favorable light than it has been. i have a piece that's going to appear on "the daily beast" website over this weekend which is about jerry rafshun to

commission a play called "camp david" which is about what happened when one devout jew and a devout muslim and a deoutchristian go behind the gates of camp david and how it becomes a peace treaty. i think carter is going to look better in the history books, and he has retaliated against some of mitt romney's characterizes of carter as a weak president. he did lose big, real business to ronald reagan. it triggered another new set of reform. he loses in '80. 1982, the democratic party establishment says we're not going let another outside like jimmy infiltrate our circles again. so they moved a lot of the power away from the delegate process

and back into the hands of the party elites. so that 20% now of the delegateds are in the hands of what we call the superdelegates, remember them, that appear the in 2008, or we read about them a lot in 2008. they've been there since the '82 reform. and the hillary clinton thought they were would rescue her candidacy, but the notion of the party now elites overturning of the will of the people is unthinkable. so i learned in researching this, a number of little, you know, factoids that get me through the day. we've had four presidents elected with fewer votes than their opponent. and i bet you probably all could name them. george w. bush is an easy one to remember one. john quincy adams. 1824, rather b. heys. benjamin harris. it's not enough win to poplar

vote. you have to win the electorial college. it's explained in there. i'm not going to go through it here. the truman beats due we election has some similarity that are relevant to today. truman famously against the do-nothing congress and president obama is doing the same thing. tom dewey was the former governor of new york and a progressive. much like mitt romney once was former governor of massachusetts and some think mitt romney still is. in any event, dewey was nots as conservative as the republican controlled of congress. and truman successfully tied him to the do-nothing congress. and that gets me to today's politics, because mitt romney is broadly acceptable to the american people. in a way that his party isn't.

and so his challenge is to establish himself as a really a centrist conservative, and to keep some distance from his party particularly the house republicans. the obama campaign's challenge is to morph the republican party and its agenda with romney and to paint romney as an extremist. and to make him own everyone of the positions he took on his way to securing the nomination. he vowed to get rid of planned parenthood funding for planned parenthood. he's taken some some pretty far right positions on immigration in order to get to the right of appraiser rick perry. that is the tension going open. you can see it playing out day to day-to-day. president obama has demographics

on his side. big gender gap. 90 plus support from the african-american community, strong support from the hispanics, and two to one edge with young people. the wild card is how many will get out and vote. the economy, as if the next six months are like the last two months, weak, obama is facing a big challenge. one thing i learned researching this book is that george w. bush was the first president to be reelected with an approval rating under 60% under harry trueman. polls that came out today have the president at 48%. he hasn't cracked 50 and staid there for any eleventh of time in quite awhile. he wins on line ability over romney and that matters. i think if you want to boil down

the election, it's decided on two things. the unemployment number. as faulty as it is, if it's going up or down. you know which candidate it benefits and the debates and they announced the debates three of them in october. october 3, 16, and 22. romney's got plenty of experience with debates. i think he did twenty of them in -- and that's going to stand him in good stead. he's good at it. i can't -- there were a few moments he probably liked to take back, you know, the offering of $10,000 bet and so forth. but for the most part, he handled himself quite well. peter hart, who probably everyone in this room is familiar with, democratic poster said in a memo to his clients week or so go at the six month out dead lynn that the president has no better than a 50-50

chance with one caveat and that's that supreme court ruling, it's going to come down in june. and these are peter hart's words, not mine, it could be the moment that rallies minorities, young people, and the poor to vote. that could be wishful thinking. but i can come up with a scenario where obama wins re-election 53% because the demographic changes in the country which have been striking. but i think it's more likely we'll see a squeaker that could go either way. in this book, there are some iconic speeches of former presidents eisenhower's speech when he declares he will go to

korea, which basically turned around that election because after all, he won world war ii going to korea would solve a war. hubert humphrey is a favorite throughout the book. beginning in 1948 when he was mayor of minneapolis and he went to the 48 democratic convention and basically told the democratic party they had get on the right side of civil rights and come out from the shadow of the southern backwards thinking. it took a long while for that to happen, but he deserved credit for getting that underway. and then, barry goldwater and his extremism and defensive liberty is no vice. his speech is certainly worth revisiting. and president obama's nominating speech of john kerry in 2004, which foreshadows all the themes that would then get the president reelected. and the themes he's still trying

to artic late today. so it's a lot riding on this election. i think the shape of the deficit reduction package, they will forge after the votes in november to the supreme court and in many ways, elections come and go, and the supreme court is forever. and they're likely to be one, two, three, maybe vacant city over the next four years. whoever is in the white house will get to shape a lot of our public policy through who he or she -- it will be a he, through he appointed. and then, it's the historic nature of president obama's election in the first praise. -- place. recently i went and hearder have nonjordon speak. he spoken here as well and lives in the neighborhood.

former head of the urban league and the portrait now hangs in the portrait gallery. he made the statement that he thought president obama's re-election is more important than his election. he said that america is reof a formation. and he talked about the personal experience as the only african-american in the class in indiana aggress castle, indiana and veer nonwould mine giving me his age he's 77 in august. you can place the time. he said his parents drove him to green castle, where the university is located, and he said his mother slipped $50 in his pocket and his father said you can't come home. he said what do you mean? his father said, people here have much better education than you've had. they're going to be in the sixth chapter and you're going to be

struggling through the prefacer. you have to read, but you can't come home. four years later, he graduates a big man on campus. his mother slipped him $100, and his father said, you can come home. [laughter] so i think i know what he means. and for me, i think a lot of americans are wondering, you know, if obama loses, do we just say, it's the election? it's the election stupid and he was given a hand, that probably nobody could have dealt with anymore more successfully? or we cok do what wanda psychs the african-american comedian says. we'll blame it on the half white guy. [laughter] so that's where, you know, a little bit of humor in politics always helps. and with that. i'd like to take your questions

and i see a very politically engaged audience here. we can take it wherever you want to go. [applause] >> don't be shy. here's the microphone. >> hi. thank you very much for your interesting presentation. i'm curious about what's going on with regard to civics in the schools. how is it changed 0 over the years? i get the impression that that's one of the reasons you're writing this. how has it changed and why, and if you can go ahead and answer another question, is how will you be marketing your book? will it be through schools? >> well, how it's changed. i don't know that it's changed. it's been taken away. i mean everybody is looking for ways to cut budgets, and people are schools teach the test and i guess civics you can tuck into

another course so basic civics education doesn't exist and sandra day 0'connor the former supreme court justice. he turned that into the life's work talking about the lack of civics education and it's become a crusade for her. and i leave it up to the publishing having to market it. they would love to get into schools, i mean it's, most at l literal taxbook. it's more readable than that. if it's readable, they think maybe it doesn't count in the schools. i think it's trying to bridge that gap and do in a readable away so that people might actually get something out of it. but, you know, i do feel that it's -- we do a disservice to young people when we don't explain why things work. congress right now is an f it

has gone beyond the point. we got a certain system. it needs to be explained. and so, i think there really is room in the marketplace for this book, i hope. >> i have a multipart question, which is do you talk many about third party candidates cities, and in ha light, there was the experiment of year with the public nominating somebody. and they couldn't get -- what was it 100,000 votes for anybody? >> well, you're talking about meshes elect. and actually, it was a process in search of candidate, they had money backing them, they had some interesting people working with them, i went -- they have offices down here right "newsweek" is. i spent a morning listening to them. i was dubious of it. i could never see who the person was. they weren't going to get mayor

bloomberg. i don't think john huntsman, because john huntsman probably harbors ambition for the future if he walks away and does an independent run that he is likely to win, he poisons the party. bloomberg would look tat think i would be a spoiler. i could win. i would spoil it for the democrat. who knows who, it's a crap shoot. buddy former governor of louisiana who tried in the republican campaign and didn't succeed, so that was about the best they could do. i think he needed to get maybe it was 100,000 signatures to even be credible for them. and then their idea was whoever won their kind of lottery, they would pick somebody from the opposite party or an independent so that would bypass politics.

again, it's nice to think that way. but we tried that with jesse the former fighter. venn in minnesota. and the thing is, you have no party base. and it's nice in theory but it doesn't work. i think they were doomed from the beginning. but man, they raised a lot of money. and then they announced they want to give back the big donations to the big contributors. but no the little contributors? and if anybody had managed to get through the process, they would had to raise the money afterwards. you look at the sum that the obama and romney campaigns are raising for the campaigns and all the little subsidiary organizations how could anybody else succeed in the climate in you have another organization no labels, they're not there to field the candidate. they're trying to find ways to

actually make the congress work. they would like to see fill filibuster reform. i think they're a positive organization. they bring people together from the right, the left, and the middle. third parties, if we're going to talk about 1948 election. there were two parties there. one on each side. that's when thur month walked out. and you had henry wallace, as liberal also draining votes response that would have been a great time i was alive. [laughter] now that i think about it -- [laughter] but i don't remember paying a lot of attention except i think my parents, who were german immigrants, i believe they supported dewey and i remember asking my mother why, he said because he was younger. [laughter] so i don't even know if he was.

[laughter] he wasn't going to tell me much. >> hi. i'm a little bit younger than veerer have nonjordon. i have been through a lot of politics. worked in the congress a number of years ago for ten years. i don't recall a time when a political party ie, the republicans declared us the number one goal to get the president out of office, and to essentially block just everything he wanted to do to promote that. do you know of any -- i know there have been bad elections. do you know of any . >> i don't know of any parallel. when you think back to 2008. obama was a phenomenon. and i think the researches were flom oxed. they thought we're going to be in the wilderness forever.

how are we going to deal with it? they came up quickly in, in part, if the reporting is correct, that frank won the pollster who has been around for some time advising republican candidates that on, i think the day of the inauguration he was counseling republicans to oppose what obama did. they did that and the sun came up the next day, and the base cheered and it paid off. and it paid off rather handsomely in 2010. they took back the house. and so, i think, the strategy has worked short term for them. i don't know where it takes them, and i think if mitt romney does win, if will be very interesting to see was he would probably then also have a republican house and a republican senate. and romney will then have to

walk the walk. he will not be able to stand up to his party, and that's where every so often -- even jimmy c.a.tar said he comfortable in the white house. listen carefully, you find a number of democrats say he was a good massachusetts. i have a son there, he said he was fine as governor. they're not worried about him. but he would have that party just testing him every step along the away. now he's having trouble move back to the center. every time he takes a half of and. he has somebody on the right complaining about it. it's tricky. it's very tricky for him. , and in the business of giving romney advice, necessarily but as a political observer, it's traditionally the republicans run to the right and the

primaries and scurry back and the democrats run to the left and scurry back. it's just a lot harder for romney because of the i dynamics of his party and the it's. you can't say anything anymore that somebody isn't documenting. so i think it really makes it very hard for politicians in general. i do in the dedication, admire politicians. it's a tough life to get out there and fail so publicly sometimes when you succeed it's wonderful. but that's not guaranteed. and, you know, they put their life on the line. of course, romney has been running almost nonstop for at least seven years. and i heard myself saying the other night, that's why he can fit into the skinny genes. jeans. he is very intergettic. in the lame duck session of

congress which happen or might not happen, i believe it will happen. >> yeah. >> after the november elections we're going to be having a battle royal with the debt ceiling and the bush era tax cuts and probably at least one or two other items. do you have any predictses about what you might happen? >> they're calling tax armageddon. the force sequesters and everything comes together. it's also a great opportunity because, you know, the wolf been at the front walk, the wolf will be at the door. they have to decide. here's where if romney does get elected, i think he will have a much harder time because he will have to make -- he can't continue to believe there will be no taxes. taxes are going have to be part of the deal. and obama, you know, love him or hate him, has not pinned himself down nearly so much. he can make a lot more

compromise. he has a lot more room than romney. i think if you're thinking for the better of the country, which of these men would be better positioned frankly to make the comprises and maybe sell out some of their base? i think the president is in a much better position to do that than romney. i must say, i kind of like a front row to watch how romney would square all of his campaign promises which would be so immediate with the demands of his party. that would be a real confrontation. i do -- i don't think they can wiggle out of the decisions they're going to have to make. >> unfortunately many of us in the democratic party especially on the liberal side have felt that mr. obama has given away so much over the past couple of years i'm wondering how much more he can give. >> right. i think your point is well taken.

and but it will have to be give because of his personality and the fact that he hasn't pinned himself down as much as romney, obama is better positioned. i agree with you, when the president first came in, remember he ran on, i can go to washington and we can all get along. hillary ran on, i can go to washington, they have thrown everything at me and i'm still standing. i know, how to fight the republicans. and the country understandably liked the idea of everybody getting along. and i believe it's sincere with the president. it's in his dna, and i had reached out -- he reached out to congress and they took it as a sign of weakness. i think he's been battling that ever since. and it took him a long time to realize that, you know, playing nice wasn't going get him anymore. >> jimmy carter may think it's

okay have a romney presidency. i don't. and i don't think that young people in america today understand if romney gets elect, what impact it will have on their lives for generations to come because he may -- he would appoint at least three supreme court justice and that would be a disationer for it country. i also don't understand why obama is advisers don't get him to go to wisconsin to support their recall vote. i mean, just him coming there would mean so much. all the votes that are going to count getting people out to vote will be important for obama whoever comes out in the plus column. i don't understand why he doesn't take a relationship israel and slide fie a good portion of the jewish american vote to come behind you.

these are things saying he would get the votes they are important now for him. >> to take them one at the time. wisconsin, i'm sure the strategies are looking at that. i read today there are 37 undecided. that's not 37%. that's 37 people. it is so polarized and there is 1% separating scott walker from the democratic challenger. everybody is are energize m if obama went out there republicans could be crawling out from everywhere. he would totally energize the other side. i think everybody is worked up to the max. indian why they're not doing that. secondly, the extreme court, a democratic friend of mine said she would not surprised to see campaign ads that feature the justices in red and blue robes instead of the custom area black roads. you need to get across what's at

stake. supreme court is a voting issue in the room. it isn't for most people. most people don't understand there's only nine in the lifetime all of that. it's never been successful as voting issue. but you're exactly right about how much is at stake. right now, i would say it's probably four and a half red justices. and you can see all of the issues that are lining up, you can do affirmative action. you have personhood stuff is lining up out there. the conservatives really understand -- they see the court as an arm of their movement, i think in a much more visceral way than liberals do and the court in a way, reflects that. it reflects who has been president. there will be at least one vacant city and possibly two or three. and then, israel, i don't know if he'll go to israel before the

election. i don't know they may get a deal on the iran nukes, and that will avert potential attack. and he should get some diplomatic creds for that. if that answers the questions? >> do you have any -- to what's in hilary's future? >> i think she probably wants to sleep for awhile. [laughter] and probably hoping for a grand child. and but -- i don't know whether she'll run or not in 2016, i think it's possible. and if you listen to bill clinton, i think it's pretty clear what he would like. he's a man a practically had to shoe horn him out of the oval office. he loves it. i've never seen a politician who draws so much energy from the

process. even on a bad day, i think he does. hillary has done a remarkable job putting up a good face on america in the four years. and i think, you know, she's energetic enough and, i think 60 and 70 are not what they used to be. pretty soon we'll saying 100 isn't what it used to be. but i don't think the age thing is an impediment. i think if she wants to run, she can run. i don't think sche can expect that the democrats would clear the field for her. i think democrats are constitutionally unable to do that. you have new york governor cuomo out there not known to be shy. senator mark, maryland governor

o mally. there are probably more. joe biden, spending a lot of time in new hampshire. and as they say, the only cure for wanting to be president is in -- embalming fluid. [laughter] if you get tired of 2012, you start fantasizing about 2016. thank you. >> i want to get your opinion on emmanuel. he was touting a be an insider and everything. i feel he didn't do a good job at all. it seems like the republicans took the initiative and what obama went into the congress. he had the huge majority in the house, and seemed like they just fell through. >> yeah. i think there's mixed reviews of rob bonn manual some people think he did a good job. he did restore the house to the

democrats by going out and recruiting people who matched their district. and there were not a lot of loyalist in the people that he recruited. and they were easy to knock off. in the white house, it's as though he played, he was too cautious. in the book, we talk about you know what is a mandate. who has it and what is it? lyndon johnson had a mandate when he won with 61% of the vote. and he used it. george w. bush didn't win the poplar vote in 2000 and he acted like he the mandate. president obama was shy about using the power. i know, there's one instance when he snapped at one of the republicans, we won, or i won at john mccain everybody took that as a big sign of arrogance. i don't think he was are gaunted enough. i don't know how far of that

reflects on emmanuel's advice or whether that was how the president reacted naturally. we'll have to wait for him to write the memoirs. the experience as chicago mayor may dominate the book. that's where he's starring. >> before we close, i want to pose a couple of questions. and those of us of a certain age remember the era when was there a moderate republican and a liberal republican who often up the ante on civil rights like senator javis and others. and one of the things that happened on january 20th, 2009, as pointed out in robert's book which was discussed here recently, was the famous dinner that . >> that's right. >> written about put together

with eric cantor and other people but not john boehner in which the group really came together on to be the disloyal opposition and make sure that nothing happened constructive in the obama administration, particularly domesticically. if president obama is reelected, and the house remains republican, and the senate stays democratic, what are the chances of creating majorities to get something done domesticically? >> limited. which is in part by presidents in the second term often turn to foreign policy. i think this president has been remarkably successful at foreign policy in the first term.

bill at brookings said every day the romney talks about foreign policy the president has turned attitudes about around that. i believe you have to wait and see what the results of the election are. even if the maintain maintain the hold on the house. it will be by a smaller majority by a handful of seats. i think a lot of those tea party types who seek comprise as dirty word may not be coming back. and if there is a leadership turn over in the house i don't know that's a good thing. boehner comes closer to resembling a moderate republican than anybody who might replace him. i think if the white house and the obama and anxious l rod and those guys are to be believed they seem to think there is a chance for rhi