>> guest: observing our politicians stumble. i woke up in the middle of night incident that took some sort sort of a grabber on the title. and so i tried all different words. it's observing our politicians stumble. >> host: why did you write a book about stumbles? >> guest: i looked over recent campaigns and said what we remember? we remember those rare candidates made a mistake. i wanted to look at the question of how many were fatal, how do some candidates overcome them is date, what kind of a mistake to remember? what do we member? a manhunt that dominate the campaign coverage as opposed to issues or performance of candidates coming the other things we think are doing in a campaign. postcode well, let's start with campaign coverage. let's are at the media. mitt romney 47% and barack obama, cling to guns and religion. what was the media coverage like on those two events?

>> guest: this morning i just ran the 47% and asked two questions. one is, how much depth as they get? how many media outlets cover the story and was the shelflife? still asked a day, week or month? the guns was relatively sure. maybe a three week. romney 47% we still haven't seen it and obviously, but it's been about a month now. now the stories drop off, but they get dragged back in either by opponents or dragged in by events. i'm sure that as they come to the presidential debate, someone will say i wonder if he's going to respond to that. i wonder if obama will a him a question about that. because the issue is in my mind which of these gaffes are ones we had to pay attention to. do they represent a true character flaw? to be represented in capacity to act the way would like to have them not clark's religious normal things and we'll make

mistakes. so a candidate hanging out in the public and now with the internet and youtube and places like that, but not only distributed more broadly and more quickly, there also is an archival capability. so we go back and i know what barack obama said in 1988, or what mitt romney said in may. by the way, there was not one bit of coverage of 47% in may. it is a public event. nobody told the story to the media back in may. it wasn't until the video popped up that it comes back into the process in mid-august, early september. >> host: but mistakes are politicians made in the past that you document in "o.o.p.s." that are fatal? >> guest: fatal, okay. let me work from the current backwards a little bit. when rick perry stands up for months to be the republican nominee and said i'm going to cover in these ways, he just

says he's not ready for prime time. when that kind of effect does hear back a ways with elizabeth dole. elizabeth lowell came here to speak, was not well break by her staff. first of all, she didn't realize was a conference where civilian students are whole speech was aimed who were there appeared to shoot an of talked over the heads of the people who are asking the questions from the floor. and then she misinterpreted the question. she'd been very good, by the way, when she spoke at the republican convention. she was seen as a person who could wander around the audience and had the media in her hand. she's a very stiff kind of beach. someone asked her a question about whether she would send her son to bosnia. she was going to bosnia a few weeks later to look a what was going on in their foreign policy position. but she took it as a personal question. you can almost see interface the

regrets that she and bob dole have never had a child. she said we've never had children. i really can't answer that. it was really an abstract question. the next day the media said she's not ready for the campaign trail because she's not talking like a candidate. she's talking in this personal way. and all of a sudden in three weeks it just kind of folded. i think michael dukakis problem in terms of presidential debates when he was asked about what he would do if his wife is and he gave a lawyerly kind of answer, a defense of his opposition to capital punishment. on the sudden, does this guy have a human tide at all? so it's those things that we kind of see in the capabilities or the character of the individual. i think al gore was irked over the years, not because of one event, but because of his being pointed out as a serial exaggerator. any one of those stories coming you could explain away he'd

never invented the internet. he said he helped create the internet. we have the perception of him being a laboratory, sitting on the computer. i mean, he was very important in terms of creating the arpanet, which became the internet from legislation. but he had that story than a story about he and his wife were the models for the book love story. the office said no, that not quite true. so he can appoint all these together in cities kind of a serial exaggerator. and i think that hurt him in the long run. >> host: then, why did the gaffes or mistake that president bill clinton, president george w. bush from a drunken driving, why are those not fatal mistakes? >> guest: i think there's two things going on. one, is what else is going on in the world? john mccain made a comment -- they asked a question about what she do an agreement among said should rescind an air mail message, a bomb obviously.

he went on saying bomb, bomb, bomb iran. it was a three-day wonder. very few people remember that coverage. it got crowded out and no one kind of carried it on. i compare that, for example, to hillary clinton's statement about being under fire in bosnia. she was repeated time after time after time until the media started to say, welcome is this this really true? all of a sudden he pulled at the picture of her being greeted by a little girl with a bunch of flowers in the general the grounds that there any fire. and then the obama people started to feed the media and say come you might want to look at her credibility on these things. and that was so dramatic that we don't like people to lie to us. this is about as close as a presidential candidate obama, looking to let democrats come to say she lied to us. i think that undermines what is going on. who else is pushing it is important. if you have a candidate who is

in sioux falls, south dakota and they've been on the campaign trail all day, they're exhausted. they've made 12 different stops and to be here in oklahoma city, we kind of pass that off and say doesn't make a great deal of difference who they are or what they think they are at the appointed time. >> host: gary hart. >> guest: okay, gary hart created the original set of challenging people in the media. i think most people in the media knew that he ran around a bit, but rather than just letting it go, we have to remember we are out of time with the media to look into that so carefully. there is a backstage area. one of the problems we have today's politicians have no backstage area. whatever they do, wherever it is as real as that. ballot to be covered. that wasn't the case in that time. he said you go out and prove this is. a reporter from florida news

paper had out in the bushes and southwest washington and saw his girlfriend come in late at night in the early the next morning. it wasn't too hard for him to guess he was not probably cleaning the floors or cooking an all-night dinner. so you don't challenge the media and try to pretend something you are. >> host: political science professor stephen frantzich's most recent look is "o.o.p.s.." again, observing our politicians stumble. i had to juggle check that. dr. frantzich, how many books have you written? what are the topics? >> guest: this is 17 original books. you start counting and allies the statistics. i start out, all academics have to do their kind in the trenches of doing academic books. the last five or six books i've done have been more fun kinds of books.

the one prior to this i did one called honored guest come away profiles all the people the president had mentioned in their state of the union message. today we're used to that. that was not done until ronald reagan did it for the first time and every president since then has used these people as an example of their political goals and their philosophy. so i find that one. close to home i did a biography of brian lamb. i've got a lot of work with educators and c-span people kept saying, what is the real brian lamb lake? and he did not want a biography done. and i pumped him and and i pumped him i finally got a contract to do one. i came in and i said well, what do you think? and he said well, i guess that lets you do one. i can't say no. the station is committed to open access to information. how can a close things down? and he didn't interfere, kind of

open doors for me, give me a list of high school friends and buddies, so that was kind of fun to do. prior to that i did a book that looked at individuals who change national policy. so it's called citizen democracy and is a bunch of profiles of an elect, unappointed individuals who went out and created things like major legislation because of their action. >> host: i teach political science. they almost have been one of the number one major people. i don't assume they added a technical school. or a value added major because they get their technical education. they get the social science foundation. i get media and then of course in the congress, campaigns and elections. i keep my finger in the american government course. we have a required government course. the congress with sunset was going on at the naval academy when ollie north doesn't

understand control of the military. and so in the budget hearing, they required us to create a required current government court. but i was psyched about 75% anyway, pinelli teach 100%. i like each not of course because it's not only traditional command we teach the ethics of public service, the 80 when you get check, when you're in the military, there's an extra responsibility on you that normal individual doesn't have. >> host: one more project are involved in. you are in a book giveaway. what is this project? >> guest: it started out as a one-time, one shot at the rotary club and a part of pivotal send a load of books to an exchange student at the appointed time in africa and the collective bunch of books. we found other countries pay $93 a truckload to dump them in a landfill. so we had to me for one, looks

to another and another pair took on a life of its own. we just passed or 5.7 million book and kind of dropped out. look at a football field, tell us what tractor-trailers, in zones inside those is about 300 tractor-trailers feared we ship out about. we sent troops to iraq and afghanistan, volunteers. a nice arrangement with c-span, so some of the book reviews you have weekend. we get books from schools, libraries. and we believe, no one has no one has ceausescu was the largest volunteer-based distribution book of the world, which means we can ship very inexpensively. we ship for about $4000 a container. there's a wonderful other organizations doing the sort of stuff. they see walk in the door, they started $16,000 because they're using paid individuals. so we are a bulk shipper.

bring them in, sort them out, put them in a container and send them off. >> host: you some insights to american troops and americans abroad to other countries to start libraries. just within about 40 countries. most of them are english-speaking. but we sent a lot to use pakistan into chic a standard posix and and some american countries. of course the philippines, places like that, british or american colonies. everybody wants to learn english, so we sent a lot of stuff for basic english. we just sent a whole bunch of very basic kids reading books to cambodia because the u.s. military is teaching cambodians how to speak english and they're going to be reading see spot run, or the updated versions of the sorts of things. so we are finding all over the world people want to learn english. >> host: so if people want to donate to your project, wooster website?

>> guest: www..e. a g -- mid-bucks.org. >> host: we've been talking with stephen frantzich, this is his most recent book, someday. we are at the naval academy. this is booktv on c-span. >> in an interview at the u.s. naval academy in annapolis, aaron o'connell talked about the history of the u.s. marine corps. it's about 15 minutes. >> host: welcome as part of the tvs university series and would like to visit campuses across the country and talk with professors who are also authors. this week, we are at the u.s. naval academy in annapolis, maryland. joining us is professor aaron o'connell, who is also the author of this book, "underdogs: the making of the modern marine