let us work together so the values that shaped both our nations may also shape a world that is more peaceful, more prosperous and more just. thank you all very much. [applause] ..

>> the collapse of washington mutual. part of our booktv weekend on c-span2. >> james mann talks about president obama's foreign policy decisions and profiles the people who advise him now on booktv. this is about an hour. [applause] >> thanks to brad and lissa and everyone at politics & prose. this is, actually, the sixth book i've talked about at politics & prose, six out of six, going back to a book called -- my first book, "beijing jeep," in 1989 when politics & prose had just opened, and i had brown hair, and newspapers were thriving, and barack obama was a second-year law student. so, i mean, really people ask me how do you write a book, and i say -- and this is all true -- i mean, you spend a couple years on research, you stay up at night figuring out how to do the

research, you spend a couple years writing, and then you spend some time thinking about what you're going to say about it at politics & prose. [laughter] as brad mentioned, this book grew naturally out of my previous book, "rise of the vulcans," about george w. bush's foreign policy team. and lots of people think now, um understandably but not quite accurately, that theville -- vulcans book was about neoconservatives or hawks like cheney and rumsfeld. it's not exactly true. it was about all of the people in the george w. bush association, cha cheney, rumsfeld, rivals colin powell, richard armitage who had risen with them inside the party. and despite all the differences among these members of the previous administration, they

shared some common traits and beliefs. all of them had backgrounds in the military or in the pentagon, and this was as true of the secretary of state who had been chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, richard armitage, as it was of cheney and rumsfeld. it's rare to have an administration with two former secretaries of defense. and they also shared some common beliefs. um, america was unquestionably a force for good in the world, military power was of supreme importance, and, in fact, the disagreements among them were how and when force should be used by the united states, should it be saved for big wars or used as it was in iraq. so immediately after obama's election in 2008 i decided i wanted to take a look at the democrats over the same time period. really many of my books have

covered the same time period from the '60s through, um, the present day. and i'd kind of come across democratic policy in passing, and i wanted to, um, unify it and look at the obama administration. and since the 1970s the democratic party's had a strong grassroots base growing out of the anti-war movement of the vietnam era. um, as far -- it had far fewer people, particularly in the obama administration, with a pentagon or defense background. recall that bill clinton's last secretary, last defense secretary was a republican, and sure enough, when obama took office, he appointed as his defense secretary robert gates. it was bush's final defense secretary. and then a couple of the other leading jobs in the obama administration went to career

military people; general jones who was national security adviser, dennis blair who was in charge of the intelligence community. top jobs in his administration. so you have a democratic president, but without the same kind of cohort of people that the republicans represented. um, and the democrats over the years since vietnam have been struggling with issues precisely the ones that the republicans took for granted. um, is america a force for good in the world, when is it, and -- or is everything that the united states does overseas in the some way doomed or maligned? and certainly at the grassroots of the party you get debates about whether the use of force is ever justified. so i tend to think of the obama administration when it took

office in 2009 as confronting what i call the legacy of the two georges, and the first george, of course, is george w. bush. obama needed to figure out what he was going to do in the wake of the bush presidency. the other george, less obvious, would be george mcgovern. the republicans ever since the george mcgovern campaign of 1972 there's been kind of a republican trope that republicans can fall back on at election time, even when it's not necessarily true that the democrats are weak on defense. and the fact that this is not true shows up over and over again, um, at the time of the persian gulf war, the shock and awe of american high-tech weaponry that we saw at the

beginning of that war actually was, um, developed in the late 1970s, um, in the pentagon of jimmy carter under a guy with a high-tech background named william perry. democrats and republicans have both been familiar with issues of the use of force, and it's not a black and white democrats weak on defense issue. and so the other -- the problem in writing this book was the vulcans had all worked alongside one another in one administration after another. when i began talking to the obama foreign policy thing, team, one of the most surprising things i found was the underlying generational tensions. to be specific, the obamians thought of themselves as a new

generation. and when i stepped back, i realized that in this obama administration there are really three different generations of democrats, um, each with its own formative experiences, each with its own background and with different generational perspectives. so let me look for a moment at these three generations. the first, um, is the postvietnam generation of officials and political leaders who came of age in the '70s and '80s, even the '60s in the case of the late richard holbrooke. but it's people like holbrooke, joe biden, the secretary of defense, george mitchell who was the middle east peace envoy, greg craig, i would call john kerry who is not in the administration but chairman of the senate foreign relations committee and certainly the administration's strongest supporters in congress,

certainly a charter member of this vietnam generation. this does not mean, um, that all of the members of this administration are anti-war democrats. holbrooke in particular had repeatedly at each juncture where there was an anti-war candidate, he tended to be with the centrist and to denounce the anti-war candidate. that was true of mcgovern, it was true of obama. and so on. but more than any other generation these members of this it first generation have seen firsthand how the use of force can go disastrously wrong, and it's something they keep in find regularly. and this is a dominant, um, issue for the democrats right through til the persian gulf war of 1991.

um, when the democrats predict -- inaccurately as it turns out -- that there are going to be tens oftous of casualties. that wasn't some, some flippant thing by some minor politician. i mean, the senate majority leader, george mitchell, presented president george h.w. bush with a petition by members of, leading members of congress saying, um, we're -- you know, don't go to war because there could be tens of thousands of casualties. um, and soon, um, bill clinton takes office, and you get what amounts to a second generation of democrats. um, the clinton generation, i've called them the trout fishers because there were, um, during -- after clinton left office, um, some of these officials began, um, spending

time with each other, like they liked to go trout fishing together. these are officials like tom donilon, now the national security adviser, jim steinberg who was the deputy secretary of state, kurt campbell who is the state department's and hillary clinton's point man for asia and a whole wave of other officials. um, and they have different perspectives. i mean, they came of age after the fall of the wall, after the collapse of the soviet union. the united states was the unchallenged power in the world, and it was, um, particularly in the late clinton years increasingly prosperous. and the only, the main kinds of problems they faced with internal disagreements were, um, when the united states, um, should intervene for humanitarian purposes. that would be in bosnia, kosovo

and rwanda would be the prime examples. and this, the members of this administration serve for eight years, and when they leave, um, the democrats think in 2001 really that they know where they are on american foreign policy. the spokesman for the democrats in the first year or so or first six months of the bush administration -- democrats are out of office, and it's the same people who served at the top of the clinton administration; sandy berger, madeleine albright,stone talbot. and then we run into the iraq war. and this time the democrats try to correct the mistakes of the, that they made politically at

the time of the gulf war vote to authorize the use of force in iraq. and those, that, um, experience of 2002-2003 gives rise to the obamians, democrats who really didn't, didn't get involved -- weren't working in the executive branch of foreign policy, um, until 2009. um, they really rose to prominence in opposition to bush. they had the experience of the disaster of the iraq war, they also had the experience of the financial crisis of 2008. um, they have a different perspective than i think the, um, classic clinton democrats, um, and who are these people? well, people like dennis mcdone nowg who is now the deputy national security adviser

who really has been over the last three years, um, the guy who sees throughout the administration that what obama wants, obama gets. ben rhodes, speak writer, wordsmith for the administration whose job is to put, to figure out obama's message. samantha power who jokingly, um, calls herself conscious mascot. she's in charge, has been the main person for human rights, multilateralism. and then i would include, um, someone who did, in fact, serve in the clinton administration, um, but was younger than most others, susan rice, the ambassador to the united nations. um, and she was, although she served under clinton, she was for obama all the way all through the bitter primaries of '07-'08. and just as an example of kind of the generational tensions

from day-to-day, i'm going to read a couple passages for you. but, um, we have the director of -- this is, um, in 2009 within a couple months after obama takes office, and he's decided he wants to give a major speech to the muslim world in cairo. and it falls to ben rhodes to draft that speech. the director of national intelligence, dennis blair, visited rhodes seeking to offer his thoughts on what obama might say in the cairo speech. blair had been an admiral, the commander of all u.s. forces in the pacific. he'd been a rhodes scholar and a white house fellow, and at various times a senior military aide for the national security council, the joint chiefs of staff and the intelligence community. he was the military's version of a renaissance man, but for obama's aides, dennis blair was more a figure from ancient history. he graduated from the naval

academy and went off for his first assignment on a guided missile destroyer in 1968, before dennis mcdonough was ever born. and blair goes on to tell the speech writers they needed to think about the strategy for the speech, what message would the speech be sending to the leaders of governments with which the united states worked most closely such as egypt, saudi arabia and jordan. um, what would obama's speech convey to israeli and palestinian leaders? rhodes suggested that blair didn't understand the larger purpose. the speech wasn't aimed at middle east rulers, it was aimed to communicate with ordinary people in the middle east. blair left and found himself cut out of the drafting process. that's the kind of generational disputes and tensions that underlay this administration since the beginning.

and at the top of the, the ultimate obamian is, of course, obamalf. um, and what can we say about him? first, we need to -- i need to spell the idea -- dispel the idea that he was in some way fundamentally different from other presidents. and and so i'll give you a couple paragraphs from the book. over the years far too much has been made of how obama's race and upbringing supposedly affected his thinking about the world. political opponents, diplomats and journalists have sometimes speculated about the impact on obama of his father's roots in kenya or of his childhood years in indonesia. some have theorized that obama had been imbued with an anti-colonial perspective and was hostile to british and european traditions. there's little, if any, evidence to support this theory, and it

represents an extremely selective interpretation of obama's youth. his post-primary education included a private college prep school in hawaii, private colleges in los angeles and new york city and law school at harvard. his secondary and higher education, in other words, was not radically different from that of, say, john f. kennedy -- prep school and harvard, columbia law school -- bill clinton, georgetown and yale law school or george w. bush, prep school, yale and harvard business school. if obama's world view was influenced by his upbringing -- and even this is an open question -- then surely these long years of elite american schooling must have counted for far more than the father he barely knew or his four year in elementary school overseas. so that's point one about obama. and the second point, um, is that he's not a dove, and in some ways was never a dove, at

least not in the 1970s sense. so i've noticed as i've been writing this book i've had similar conversations for over the last three years, dinner table conversations that go like this, um, at least among, um, the many people in washington who are liberal. the subject is afghanistan, and you get obama really doesn't believe what he's doing. he's compelled to do what he's doing which was usually to increase the troops in afghanistan because he's scared of republican attacks, or he's scared of the military. and so on. and, you know, again, this is understandable but not quite right. i mean, i think people are not paying attention to his whole career and his campaign in 2007 and '8. this is a guy who came to prominence on the national scene

as a state senator who appeared in an anti-war rally in 2002 and said i'm not opposed to all wars, i'm opposed to dumb wars. it's a guy who campaigned in 2007 and '8 by saying iraq was the wrong war and that the bush administration should have been focusing on afghanistan. and it's a guy who within a year after taking office is awarded the nobel peace prize and chooses the occasion to say, look, i am personally different from martin luther king or gandhi. i'm the president of the united states, and i have to protect american security. so i think that the people who think that obama on this count somehow betrayed the people who voted for him really didn't pay close enough attention to what he was saying. there were certainly no guarantees on that score. there are other issues in which

obama has gone, taking positions -- taken positions contrary to his campaign position. for example, he specifically promised, um, to follow the procedures of the war powers act, and in the case of libya he did nothing of the kind. there are several other examples like that. but the general charge, um, that he's a hawk and he didn't say that, i think, doesn't bear out. um, and having said all that, obama's a guy who also changes his opinions and his positions from time to time. and as a matter of fact, he and his team are pretty skilled at being able to do that. they do have, um, they're swift of foot when it comes to political issues. and the best way to see that is to look back now at the 2007 debate with hillary clinton and joe biden and others.

if you, some of you may recall there's a youtube question, will you meet with the leaders of countries like iran and north korea in the first year of your presidency? and it goes to obama, and he says, yes. and he is then -- then hillary clinton and a couple of the other candidates say, no, that's wrong, that they would not do that. and obama afterwards skillfully takes that to say, i think he called everyone else members of a, yeah, it was a washington salon foreign policy. and then what did the obama people do? they quickly revised that by leaving out the leaders so in the -- you know, after that they would say, um, we want to talk with, you know, we said we're going to talk to iran and north korea, and we're volunteering to

do that. or -- and, or they backtracked the diplomacy. they'd leave out the word "meetings." but specifically in that case it's an important case where, um, obama said he would do something. obviously, he hasn't met with these leaders in three years. i'm not saying he should. in fact, i think probably clinton was right on that debate. but one way or another, he hasn't done it. um, so he got away with a mistake. so how many times has clinton, excuse me, how many times has obama subtly changed course over the past three years? well, he's changed his military strategy. in his first year he, um, was essentially, um, adopted the policy of counterinsurgency, um, and then discovered belatedly what a reading of history would have told him which is counterinsurgency takes a huge amount of time, troops and

money. and they shifted to what vice president biden recommended in the first place which was counterterrorism they shifted in 2011. they shifted on the issue of whether the united states should espouse the cause of democracy overseas. they took -- i have a chapter in the book i call the scowcroft democrats because, in fact, brent scowcroft who represented two administrations that the democrats had campaigned against, campaigned against policies of realism both in the mid '70s and in '91-'92. um, he was their open -- this is no secret -- he was the model of what they wanted to be which was, and, you know, brent scowcroft is the first to say this, his belief is what happens inside a country's borders is none of our business. it's a coherent school of

thought, but it's not one that the democrats always embrace. first year, um, obama essentially embraced those beliefs and really kept his hands off completely, um, as there are hundreds of thousands of people in the streets of tehran. and then a couple years later you get the arab spring, and obama sees the value of promoting democratic change, and oddly enough, two years later is all but encouraging people to take the streets of tehran as, you know, as they had in egypt. and then he's changed his policies from his first days in office on counterterrorism. i mean, he was going to close guantanamo, he didn't. the changes on counterterrorism interrogation policies are nowhere near as great as voters expected, and as he suggested. um, and again, they spent a good

part of the campaign denouncing the idea of a global war on terror, and they have since, um, called it a war, acknowledged it's global. in fact, they've widened its scope. and they have, um, to their credit refined the definition of terrorism so it's specifically al-qaeda. but there's been less difference than people thought, and i do have a chapter in the book about the way the central intelligence agency or some of it officials sought to undermine the desire to change during the transition as obama took office. it's something that is called in the book because cia officials acknowledged it was called the aw shit campaign.

[laughter] the idea was new officials would come to office and see the underlying realities and go, oh, you know, we thought we could do this, but we couldn't. in the short run, it failed. in the two weeks of 2009, i would submit to you that in the long run that campaign succeeded. so a couple of other, just a couple of other passages, and i want to move to questions. um, first, why is it that democratic presidential candidates hold out the prospect of a new american foreign policy and yet often wind up with ones that are not fundamentally different from the republicans? it's worth keeping in mind that during presidential campaigns both democrats and republicans always have an interest in emphasizing the differences between the two parties. both with parties seek to frame foreign policy issues in simplistic ways that will arouse their own supporters.

if this sounds like a commentary on a 2012 campaign, so be it. um, the candidates tend to talk less about the policies of their opponents. they will continue. moreover, people tend to remember parts of a candidate's message that they like and ignore the parts they don't. um, and the personnel don't always change from administration to administration as much as it is thought, and the viewpoints of the officials that do change aren't necessarily -- don't necessarily reflect a dramatic difference. so i point out that bush's outgoing national security adviser and secretary of state, stephen hadley and condoleezza rice, and their successors, james jones and hillary clinton, that it would be hard to say that there was a profound difference in views of the world among them. hadley and clinton had known each other for years, they'd gone to law school together and

so on. in short, the people obama appointed and the assumptions that they carried with them into office were far less conducive to far-reaching change than the rhetoric of the obama presidential campaign had led people to anticipate. nevertheless, on some issues -- particularly multilateralism -- there is a change since the bush years, and we do find, for example, that one reason that the obama administration is able to get support for economic sanctions against iran now is that, um, he has managed to restore relations with allies, um, from where they were certainly in 2004, but also in 2008. so it's not, it's not to say that the obama administration is completely the same as the bush administration. i don't buy that at all. um, finally there's the question so is this just a swing of the pendulum.

i mean, when at the end of the book on the republicans which was written in '04, i asked whether they represented the outer limits of american expansion of power, and i answered that question yes. so the question is, is this just a swing back, um, is in the other end of the pendulum? and i don't think so. the vulcans of the bush era reflected a belief in overwhelming american power, one that was linked to the years immediately after the end of the cold war. the obamians could not revive that belief even if they wanted to do so, and either will obama's successors. rather, obama's time in office has marked the beginning of a new era in america's relations with the world, an era when american primacy is no longer taken for granted. thanks very much. happy to take your questions. [applause]

>> and the fact that obama has stepped them up? tom friedman talked about the same policy, the policy of assassination in's reelover hamas -- israel of hamas and hezbollah. >> [inaudible] >> yeah, there is. there we go. okay, yeah. can you hear me now? >> uh-huh. >> okay. um, there's a theory that when you assassinate terrorists, other terrorists come in, and you've also antagonized the family. and in this case, we're antagonizing pakistan which is far more important than afghanistan. it has nuclear missiles, it's a

much bigger country, it's very strategically located. and, apparently, the state department has objected, hillary's objected, the ambassador to pakistan, for a while the american ambassador didn't think this was a very good idea. um, and yet there's -- obama seems to go ahead with it. i mean, there was the story about the kill list. >> um, so really as i see it there are two, two actually separate questions there, and i will separate them out. one, the substance of one i don't actually agree with, and the substance of the other i do. the first you're touching on, there has a longstanding debate over the last decade about what to do about terrorism, and what you're referring to, um, is one approach that's called drain the swamp. so terrorism is a swamp, and we have to address all the economic conditions and so on. and the other is, no, if we go after the leaders of an

organization. ultimately, the problem will -- >> you can kill them all. >> and, in fact, we are, you know, we have seen, it seems to be, it seems to be -- i'll get to pakistan in a second, but it seems to be reasonably effective. and i think people miss this. they see the drones as the alternative to counterinsurgency , and, um, you know, it's terrible to think of killings as, in a cost benefit terms. but that is, i think they see it as far less expensive and less draining on the u.s. military. um, and, therefore -- but, you know, they haven't changed the goal of war against al-qaeda.

so this is the way they've chosen. there is, and so when we get to the democrats, the democrats have tended to favor high-tech kind of solutions. it's not something we think of, um, to military issues. so clinton, we now forget, but clinton there was a wonderful critique of the clinton administration that was called diplomacy by cruise missile, and that was his approach. let me turn to -- i want to get to other questions, but pakistan, i actually agree with the substance of what you're saying. um, there is a, my chapter on bin laden in the book, and i realize other people have written about it, i have a different slant to the account which is i go -- and it's more than obama allowing it. these stories are correct. he was leading, um -- >> right. >> -- the administration's thinking on this. no one's really focused on exactly how many choices obama made to say we don't care about

pakistan. it's more than one. people think, oh, well, he could either tell the pakistanis that this operation in advance or even if he told them 30 minutes in advance, the fear was they'd be tipped off. >> right. >> and so in this sense he's more hawkish than bush. he's going to go ahead, bush's policy was to always work with pakistan. but it's more than that. because in the planning in which he was, obama was, you know, leading this planning, to take one example, um, one of the questions was what happens -- counterfactual now -- what happens if the seal team gets surrounded? what happens if someone learns about this and, um, you know, all the military -- there are only a handful of people, right? so sooner or later despite whatever weaponry. and the original, one of the first solutions was called talk

your way out. shorthand. talk your way out meant so they're there, the pakistanis have them, they're imprisoned or whatever, and, um, either obama or hillary clinton presumably will get on the phone, and they will talk to zardari or they'll talk to probably isi and the military and get their release. and clinton, excuse me, obama rejected that in favor of fight your way out. fight your way out was call in the reinforcements no matter how many units it takes. not says this was wrong, but if you go through all of the steps, um, it's more, was more of an affront to pakistan than e -- i think people realize. certainly reflects their view, and it's not that they didn't have cause to be upset, but if in 50 years it turns

autopakistan -- out pakistan ends up using nuclear weapons and the osama raid, obama's decision was part of that, we may think differently. >> thank you. >> is in the only mic? oh. um, i'm a congressional journalist, and i've been covering the foreign policy committee, and i was curious if you got any insight in doing this book why obama was given a place on the foreign relations committee. he had no experience, he seemed very very uninterested in it. when i covered the committee, he never attended except for questions. he was even given a subcommittee, nato, and he never called a meeting. i was just curious if you had any insight into that. and let me ask a second question real quick which has been coming up this week on one reason the supreme court, the argument for

the supreme court is that arizona shouldn't deal with immigration is because it's, it deals with foreign policy. and yet i notice you don't include immigration in your book. i don't think anyone really in the, among the obamians have immigration experience. so do you consider immigration a part of the foreign policy, you know, agenda, or is that just -- >> well, first, on the committee, um, certainly within a year after obama comes to washington he's running for president. and so he's not -- he never really takes hold as, um, someone who's interested in spending a lodge time in the senate -- a long time in the senate. >> but why was he appointed, that's what i was curious. >> well, i think i don't think specifically. i think he wanted one of the foreign policy committees. he would have been just as happy with armed services but, you know, it's harder to get.

[laughter] and then on immigration, i think the fault on that is mine. i mean, there are only so many issues that i can cover. i didn't cover immigration in the book. um, you know, they pay -- to be fair to them, they pay more attention to mexico policy, for example, in the administration than i have in this book. i can't do everything. >> right. okay, thank you. >> hello. >> hi. >> um, it's sort of a two-part question. could you envion a circumstance under which the obama administration would use force against iran and whether or not you think they would -- oh, yes. whether the administration would use force against iran under any circumstance. and then the second is, are there big differences among these three factions on iran policy? >> um, fist, yeah -- first, yeah, i take obama at his word which is that, um, you know, in the end if diplomacy doesn't

work, um, that there's military force at the end of this and that i think that for all kinds of reasons, um, they would rather that it be a, you know, a united states operation than an israeli operation, that they don't want it and, in fact, a lot of what you see now, um, just sort of in the inside pages, all the current diplomacy with iran is for real, but i think has as a subtext we want to be sure that we've done everything we can to avoid the use of force. but if iran does nothing to turn around on its weapons program, um, i actually think, yeah. and the only political i doubt for both policy reasons and political reasons that this will happen before november. i hope it doesn't happen at all. but i think that if iran really is going to call the bluff, um,

i think something might happen, yes, i do envision -- what was the second? i forget. >> oh. among the three factions, do they have differences on iran policy that are significant? >> i think they did in that first year, for sure. i think that both, that the incoming and younger obamians were more eager to go ahead with, um, with diplomacy, with overtures to iran. they didn't know they were going to work, but they kind of hoped they would, and it was -- this was not just going through the motions. i mean, dennis ross whose, you know, experience in the middle east specifically and quickly brought from the state department where he was first appointed to the white house to take charge of seeing if there's some diplomacy that can get going with iran on its nuclear program. they certainly, um, hold back on, um, on support for the iranian opposition in 2009

because that's their point of view, and i think really the second generation of democrats, the clinton people were certainly more instinctively favored support for democratic movements than the obamians did in that first year. >> thanks. >> um, i'm a retired cia analyst who published a book on henry kissinger's intellectual journeys, and so i appreciate your study of the factions within the foreign policy elite because i think it's a game of musical chairs when you go from one administration to another. i just want to make a couple observations. um, joe new york was not given -- joe nye was not given a job in the obama administration,

and he sort of personifies a paradigm that took hold in the democratic party in particular in the '60s and '70s against realism which was economic interdependence, globalization. >> uh-huh. >> and there was an element of that in the carter years and, of course, clinton had ron brown running around signing all kind of trade agreements. that seems to be pretty much absent here. i think maybe the financial crisis we've gone through, and you don't have that economic interdependence as a big downside. so -- >> i think you're pointing to something that is in the book that i haven't mentioned today. >> okay. >> um, which is the differences, the tension over economic policy between the clinton era democrats and the obamians. and it shows up particularly, um, on china policy. because it was the, the clinton

democrats they had, they'd already done nafta. the world, they'd set up the world trade organization. all this was on their watch, and they really, really wanted to and suck succeeded -- succeeded in getting china. they'd put a lot of thought and effort into it. but they also made a lot of compromises. they didn't get all of the kind of enforcement mechanisms that they wanted. so i find that obama as he's trying to deal with the chinese economy as it becomes increasingly mercantilist and protectionist on its own, he turns to the clinton democrats and says -- and there are four or five who are, you know, working with him -- and kind of says, did we screw this up? how come you didn't leave me with a lot of leverage in dealing with china? and i think the best one-liner about obama's frame of mind, one

of the people dealing with him was to say, you know, let's just say he's no adam smith. [laughter] >> my second observation -- >> yeah. >> -- pertains to a tradition that was very strong on the left in the '40s, '50s, up to vietnam which was rhine -- [inaudible] i think we can include george cannon, and i think that tradition withered within democratic culture, democratic party culture. you still have les gelb, maybe a michael mandelbaum. but i believe i read somewhere that obama, maybe because of the chicago connection nieber was there, that he's read nieber's writings. and you mentioned him in passing where he was given some writings of nieber for that west point -- >> no, this was for the speech

on the nobel peace prize. >> oh, the nobel peace prize. >> yeah. >> but do you know more about whether you could call obama sometimes in a liberal, realist mode and then he moves away from it depending on circumstances? >> i think that's fair. um, i think, you know, he's fundamentally day in and day out a liberal realist, but when faced with issues, um, like the arab spring, he begins to moderate himself. i need -- thanks. >> hi. um, my question is sort of on the much-talked-about pivot to asia which could also be sort of -- sort of agreed the pivot to asia is a pivot away from the middle east some people have commented. i know there's arguments to or for that, but my question is more of a personnel question about handling the middle east and specifically handling the

israeli/palestinian question which i think in the last year he's really backed away from to a large degree. it seems at least from the outside that there has never really been sort of bam yang-specific personnel owning the israel issue. you still sort of had clinton era people like dennis ross and originally george mitchell kicking around. and forgive me if this is in the book, and i will read it, but i'm sort of wondering if that's true, that there haven't really been sort of obama-specific advisers that have come around to own or present a different different vision on the middle east. and if that's true, if no one has arisen, sort of what factors play into that, and is that an area he's sort of deferred to an older generation? >> i think he's deferred to an older generation. i mean, he went through, um, a first year or year and a half of efforts on the middle east, and it didn't, you know, didn't

work. and so in talking to and interviewing people after two or three years the only, you know, error they will confess to is, um, they admit that they didn't do right in the middle east. you know, they pushed an initiative without seeing that it was going to work. and one of the questions -- in part because they're focusing on other parts of the region -- >> right. >> but one of the questions in my mind if trillions -- if there is a second term, i would be interested in those first few months either he's going to -- the middle east is, israel and palestinians are hugely time consuming, take a lot of effort. is he going to make this one of his priorities or not? and i could -- i'm not sure he will. i mean, i think he may just, um, you know, leave it on -- i wouldn't call it the back burner, but -- >> but should we still expect the same figures if there is a second term, or is there

pressure to rise up for someone else to -- >> first of all, that's a good question. personnel in the second term, hillary clinton is definitely stepping down, and i don't know that panetta -- i doubt that he's going to stay on as defense secretary for four years. and other people will come up. and as secretary of state you've got susan rice who's now the u.n. ambassador, done lin may want to do that himself and you've got john kerry. again, generational issues there. quite a few. >> kind of a softball question, i guess. do you feel -- >> i take those too. >> okay, good. [laughter] do you feel foreign affairs is getting sufficient attention or will get sufficient attention in this campaign, and if not, um, kind of who's to blame, and are you concerned about it, if not?

>> um, i have to be a realist on this. i mean, it does not surprise me that the economy is the main issue in the campaign, obviously. you know, i've written a book about foreign policy, but i have to, you know, have to say i think this campaign will not focus on foreign policy unless there is a major development which could be terrorist incident, something in iran. with those exceptions, i think it'll focus on the economy. my concern, what i'm concerned about is the level of sloganeering in the campaign. i mean, so far it may be because the republicans kind of don't know from which direction to attack obama. i mean, take terrorism, for example. sometimes, you know, he's weak on terrorism, and sometimes he's failing to acknowledge that he's doing the same things that george bush did. it's sort of which is it.

and, you know, they have trouble delivering a consistent message that isn't the slogan of either, you know, the old fallback weak on defense or american american exceptionalism and the whole apology tour. without going through the whole thing, one, when you check the facts, there is no i in apologize, and second of all, if we're going to use apology in a looser way, then george bush apologized -- give you, you know, the date for abu ghraib to the king of jordan. he apologized for slavery while he was in africa. he apologized to the chinese. so, you know, this is not unusual for american presidents to express regret for something that didn't go well. okay, yeah.

>> thanks for coming. this has been great. you just alluded to the question i was going to ask about what a second term administration would look like for obama. >> yes. >> what would a second term look like? how do the deputies become the secretaries, where does rice go, where does the deputy national security adviser go? what happens to them? >> well, i think i touched on the personnel, and i really don't know, you know, details beyond that, but then the interesting question is what are they going to do in the second term. um, and, you know, there are parts of the policy that you would have thought they already acted on. to take one example, obama promised in the spring of 2009 that he was going to, um, move quickly to get approval of a comprehensive test ban treaty, and, um, you know, a different treaty, the new s.t.a.r.t. treaty took so much effort that they kind of gave up and just abandoned the promise they'd

made overseas. um, i would expect, and people have been saying this every four years, i would expect some action on cuba policy to take one, you know, small and specific area. china policy i think is probably kind of a trying to maintain the status quo. but they are, there is this pivot towards asia, something they've -- they began talking about it in the first year or two of the administration. and they didn't announce until really they could say the united states was withdrawing troops from iraq and afghanistan, and now we are going to concentrate on asia. but that will, that will be a major priority of a second term. >> thanks. >> hi. >> last question. >> i'm sure this is embedded in your book, but in terms of your interviews and your forays

around washington what do you think barack obama cogitated and anguished over in terms of his own priorities? in colombia he wrote about nuclear disarmament. that was an interest of his as a young man. we haven't talked at all about latin america, about africa, about development. from what you've gleaned, what did he deeply care about? he set in motion advisers, he has all the federal agencies that all have foreign policy agendas, they all have to be integrated. but what did he personally seize on as things he deeply cared about and wanted to have happen? >> you know, he, um, if you look in those terms, the results were not great. he did care about, um, antinuclear issues. he did care at the beginning about the middle east, meaning israel and palestinians, but didn't do it right. um, and he came to care, i think, about terrorism issues.

and finally, he did want to sort of phase out american military involvements in iraq which was kind of a gimme. i mean, you know, bush himself had already committed to withdraw from iraq. there were remaining issues, but that was one thing. and finally, um, afghanistan, you know, afghanistan where he increased forces, but i think we'll see in the second term that if the military says, you know, we need to leave more forces there than we said, i think they're not going to get very far. um, and, you know, people say he mentioned development issues that he will -- people say they're going to get to development issues in the second term. it's always true that, um, people say that. and you're not sure what's really going to happen. and then, you know, we're going to see the unknown. i mean, who would have thought

that in 2004 that reagan would turn towards diplomacy with gorbachev. i think they would like to think that they're going to get into a process with iran, but we'll find out pretty soon on it. >> thanks. >> thanks. [applause] >> you're watching booktv on c-span2, 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend. >> as you can see, there are large crowds here at the annual book publishers' convention in new york city at the javits center, and booktv on c-span2 is on location trying to learn some of the new, upcoming titles, and we're joined by will weisser who is the associate publisher of sentinel imprint which is part of the penguin group, correct?

>> that's right. we are the conservative political imprint of penguin group and have some very exciting stuff coming up starting with senator march cow rubio -- marco rubio of florida. it's a memoir called "an american son," and i think everybody certainly knows he's one of the most interesting and talked-about politicians in america right now. a lot of speculation about his future, but what's really amazing is his family story. he's the son of two immigrants from cuba who came here very working-class family, and for them to have produced a senator who's only 41 and kind of the talk of the whole country, it's a pretty amazing story of how he got to that point. >> well, by the time this airs, that book will just be coming out. >> sure. >> was this an embargoed book? >> it is. you know, when you have prominent politicians, you often want to keep a book under wraps because the media's so hungry to look for details they can use to write about somebody so, yes, you have to keep the book under wraps. >> and larry schweikert has a

new book coming out, what is it? >> yes. it's called "a patriot's history of the modern world" from the spanish american world through the end of world war ii, and his take, he's a historian in ohio, and his take is to give a conservative perspective on history. he feels that most act academics which you may not agree with, but a lot of people think most professors have a certain liberal bias in their account of american history and world history and things like use of the atomic bomb and those kinds of controversies, so he feels there's room and need for a conservative perspective on the history of america and a history of the world. and his previous book was a big bestseller called "a patriot's history of the united states," so we're thrilled to have his next one. >> and what is your background in publishing? >> i was a history major. i never planned to go into publishing. it was an accident of circumstance when i got out of college, but it's been endlessly fascinating for more than 20 years because you're forever

meeting interesting authors and learning new things, like an ongoing education. >> now, being at sentinel are you personally conservative? >> um, i think there's a diversity of political opinion within sentinel, i think some of us are very conservative, some of us are moderate. i think our commitment is really to finding and bringing out authors who have interesting points of view that are not quite as well represented as maybe in other parts of the publishing industry. so that's our unifying concern. >> well, one more book we wanted to ask you about, former governor huckabee. >> yes, we love governor huckabee, this, i think, will be our fourth book with him. it's really his thoughts on wisdom and family and faith and life in general and all the things he wallets his grandchildren to know -- he wants his grandchildren to know for the future. sometimes the politicians do the best with books that have nothing to do with politicses, that are about life and wisdom and family, so we're really excited to have governor huckabee. >> will weisser at