journalists. a politician once said we politicians have thin skins but you journalists have no skin. which i try to keep in mind. it is an act of graciousness and bravery that susan page has finally agreed to join us today. susan is the bureau chief of usa today where she writes about the white house and national policy and won a slew of awards for distinguished reporting on the presidency, but brandon smith memorial award for deadline reporting on the presidency and coverage of the presidency and a lot of other awards. use a regular guest hosts of the diane beam show on pbs and cnn and many other broadcast outlets. a native of wichita, kan. she received a bachelor's degree from northwest and journalism from columbia where she was a pulitzer fellow. she will be followed by vicki edwards to is electorate at princeton university's woodrow

wilson school of public policy international affairs. .. great pleasure to be here with the four people for whom i have so much admiration and the wife quoted so much time and so many stories.

i have i think a little bit of news which is i found out the title of the next book that is coming out between tom so you can figure out the 1992 book by renewing congress. it sounds pretty positive. 2000, the permanent campaign. okay maybe not entirely positive, but at least pretty neutral. six years later the broken branch. okay sounds a little careless. now it's even worse than it looks. the new book is run for your life. [laughter] after that they are going to be marching up and down holding up signs. [laughter] they take on many institutions in washington and elsewhere and let me talk for a minute about some of the things they say about the news media which is

appropriate to criticize there is a lot to criticize about how we do our jobs and how we ought to do them better and they talk about fact czech institutions, that's something that journalism is doing more things like truth telling on tv ads and a lot of organizations including my own is trying to do this year. i think there's been some move in the last few years to do what you just talk about which is someone says something is black and someone says it's white and you can tell it's white you shouldn't just say he says it's white and he says it's black. the two things i think the specific story lines that have pushed journalism to be more willing to call someone as saying the truth or not is the whole movement because we found early on in the obama campaign for years ago that it wasn't enough to say this voter i interviewed said that he was born in kenya and obama denies

being born in kenya. that didn't tell the readers enough what the truth was, so i think you'll see the mainstream media when this comes up and has come up a lot of times i have to say. however, he wasn't born in kenya he was born in hawaii and you go on and say as fact what you believe to be true. the other thing that pushed journalism in the direction that you want them to go is climate change so there was a time the news outlets would report climate change septics with kind of equal force. the overwhelming predominance of the opinion is in favor of the climate change or be leaving in climate change.

what might get underestimated in this book is the degree to which this is a conscious choice by a whole group of voters. you know, if you look at the criticism but richard lugar made its the same thing. lugar said he doesn't want to legislate. lugar said he would make the compromises necessary. he said that's exactly what i want to do putative ev let me i'm going to throw it in the gears of government and prevent things from getting done. i don't agree on the consensus that's been in washington for so long. i have a different path. voters who voted for the tea party candidates were not strict into the tactics that supporters of the tea party movement were going to follow as they got to

washington. they said they were taking the government to the edge of the cliff on something and over the cliff because they said that was the only way here if they could achieve the political and they wanted to see so in the end it seems to me the fundamental problem or a fundamental problem is dealing with any lack of faith in government and such a disconnection from the federal government and such a suspicion about the role of the federal government that's led a significant portion of americans to want to elect candidates who do exactly what they said they were going to do which is stop things from happening in washington regardless of the consequences. >> thank you so much. i want to collect one thing. i realize a long other things we are joined and we appreciate the ambassador from norway --

[laughter] it's already in minnesota. i want to say it is a great pleasure to be here with tom and norm. there are no to political scholars that are more respected that have more credibility with the american people and tom and norm so i'm delighted to have a chance to be here. i work with susan and e.j. for a

long time so i am very pleased to be able to be here and be part of this. what can i add? first of all, i agree when we talk about it's even worse than it looks i completely agree. if you really examine what is happening on the hill in every conceivable way how the decisions are made about who gets to sit on what committees of jurisdiction, how the decisions are made every day in terms of whether or not to allow opposition groups to offer amendments to the process. if you actually saw this in detail. there's a couple things that i would add. they were certainly right in what tom said at the beginning and norm had said that the problem is not equal between the

two political parties. some of you know i wrote a book four years ago called reclaiming conservatism basically saying that the people that call themselves conservatives today had no idea what real conservatism is, and they are preaching some kind of weird idea that they don't even understand what the constitution is. so i'm not going to take the role of defending the republican party at all. i would say that it may be that this book could do a better job of arguing that there is also called on the other side, and cahal nancy pelosi is a good friend of mine and has been for a long time, but when barack obama wanted to reach out and work with republicans, nancy said as you remember we won the elections, when the democrats

were controlling the house dated with republicans had done before and what republicans had done since which is to use closed rules to prevent amendments were being offered and to shut down the debate and consideration of alternatives. i agree that the party has become more locked in against compromise which is the essential ingredient of the nation of 320 million people. as the republican party has done it is a terrible problem, but let's not let the democrats off the hook. because they have also been partners in this and there's just a couple u.s. house members that lost in their primaries as the purification process.

that's the reason we have the subtitle in the book which is written not by me but by the others in the atlantic magazine having turned republicans and democrats and to americans is because they're focused on party tom and north have come, too. when you look what happened to yesterday in indiana, lugar losing and i think there was a terrible thing that he lost but when he lost he lost in the republican primary when robert bennett lost in utah. when mike castle lost in delaware and the republican primary i don't know what would have happened of lugar would

have been able to run among all of the voters in indiana but we have created a system here in which the parties themselves can prevent the voters to be able to choose among other options you have the parties that are dominated by the people that have the most partisan, the most ideological and that is what moves the process forward. they do that in the congressional redistricting and in how the parties choose. i think tom is a great guy. he's very smart. he probably knows a lot about economics. if he were a member of my party and wanted to be on the ways and means committee and i would put you on the ways and means committee on the advance so i guess what i'm saying is to make this book is a superb book it

would have to be three times as long it's not only in the people that are elected and how they behave to become our decision makers in washington, so we've been having to throw that in their. this is a really good book i agree with what norm said, given their reputations which sterling. it took a lot of courage to write a book like this, and i admire them both for doing. >> and such a country and i feel like turning on my friends now. but i want to remind people that especially when they can send their thoughts using the hash tag even worse and when she has

some comments let me start with a question to you, norman and susan because the question to you is the of the doubt in a sense the question you probably lots of people want to answer which is you have really singled out the republicans you say they are the insurgent out fliers and mickey sort of said what the democrats have done a lot of things wrong, too. can you sort of explain why and if you want to come in on this but norm expressed an interest in answering this question before, the republicans really are different. and to susan i will give you some time to think about it. i am sympathetic i write an opinionated column so it's easy for me but i am sympathetic for the critique and here is what really hit me this morning when i was looking at the coverage which is during this primary,

lugar was regularly described as a moderate, and i looked him up from the american conservative union, the american conservative riding is 77%. now if that's moderate that is a spectrum pretty skewed to the right because he is already more than three-quarters of the way over to the right, and that struck me that the very language of the reporters in zepa being a concession to radically change the situation that it doesn't even acknowledge it, so i would just like you to sort of think about that, but norm? >> thanks, cj. i didn't want to say good things of the panelists before they spoke. they are the role models for us, and i could add to that pentagon of heroes. from the time he was serving in congress when he was a country and because he stood up for the constitution, and for article 1 at a time when his colleagues

were trashing it for their own political purposes. so he really is a true conservative and the kind who we used to have who solved problems, and susan is the kind of journalist we used to have a lot more of. so having said that, a lot of what was said is true. there are no angels here and democrats have manipulated the process, dispense with the regular order when they felt like it was in their interest and debt for a year period they were in the majority and especially near the end of it became arrogant and condescending and towards the minority and misuse the rules would use a proxy power in committees for every minority amendment even the good ones just because they could come as a you know, it's not as if we are looking at angel's versus devils but there is a difference in one way to express that is

george w. bush get elected the most controversial election in at least 100 years, 36 days to decide and the supreme court decision put them in no coattails of all, and in a very weakened position lost the popular vote to remind people and would have been easy for democrats to stomp all over him right from the beginning and basically damage the weakened presidency. the first thing bush pushed to initiatives when he got there. no child left behind and no tax cuts, no child left behind moves through in a model bipartisan fashion with the impetus coming from george miller and ted kennedy liberal democrats. now you can say they like that policy, but the fact is in doing

so they gave legitimacy to bush and made his presidency stronger. democratic votes enable those tax cuts to go through whether you like them or don't like them. then we had 9/11, and rallying by both parties behind a range of legislation, some of which was quite controversy all, but almost unanimous support. and then you move on to the program and it was democrats who saved the bacon. malae compare that to two things. first is what happened with the president that came in under not the same circumstances that some treatment of our mandate and that was bill clinton in 1993 and the first thing that happened is every republican votes against his economic plan in both houses acting like a parliamentary minority and then a whole series of programs including the health care plan where there was a conscious effort to make sure that he

couldn't get what he wanted. it's also true that he couldn't keep his own democrats together and they have some culpability, but a significant difference and you move toward to the cut to 2,009. we have a president elected in a landslide with enormous coat tails, a clear sign of what the public wanted and in the worst economy since the great depression. three and half weeks into his presidency he has his economic stimulus plan. you can argue that was the plan largely patched and democratic but also had more than other almost 30% of tax cuts and the single largest tax cut was the extension of the alternative minimum tax which came from chuck grassley who ultimately voted against the plan. three and half weeks in of a single republican in the house

spoke for it, and three of them in the senate not including those that have most of their amendments added and then we move on from there to not a single one voting for any significant initiative. that represents a difference in. it represents a willingness to try to figure out how you can solve some problems even if there are other places you want to stop and they did that with bush and other times but a real contrast between where the two parties are now. so there are no angels here, but we do have one party that is not that far from the midfield. although it has moved and the other party that is behind its post. >> i think the republicans are. i don't like the post freeman

who decides where the middle of the field is and so a lot of republicans would probably say yes and now our failure to go there doesn't mean that we have changed but i think the problem that really on the republican side of the issue after issue i can tell you right now i don't know whether the next nominee for supreme court will be nominated by barack obama or by mitt romney i don't know who will get the chance to make that nomination but i will tell you now and nobody in the room knows who it will be, but every democrat if it is obama that nominates that person, every democrat will vote for him or her and every republican will vote against him or her because that is the situation that we've

got is it all comes down to my club against your club. both parties are playing for the next election, they are playing to their own base and they are not worried about solving problems, but i do agree they have been worse at this and less willing to engage with issues and with what richard murdock was saying he is fairly typical at least for the republicans to take part in the primaries. >> susan, can you address the question that was asked and that struck me where it seems to me the press is allowing one party to redefine where the middle is without acknowledging that this is a new metal from the middle everybody was accustomed to. >> words matter so don't think

it's inconsequential weather in the reports the indianapolis star for instance a moderate or conservative especially in the climate where that was a weapon that was used against him in the republican primary. maybe we need to retire from being used in washington because we've got nobody in the middle. as the book points out in the national journal there is no republican with a more liberal voting record in the most conservative democrat so now we have literally zero overlap between the two parties maybe it's not the word we should be using. i think that you make a very clear point. he has a conservative voting record and history of half a century in the government has a mayor and then in the senate, so he is a conservative, but you know i think the reason that reporters have called him a moderate is not because of his voting record is because of his manner, and in this climate he

has a moderate manner and that he is willing to talk to democrats. he is willing to work with sam and engage with president obama on issues and they would also be moderately manner so maybe that is the language that we should be more careful to use. >> can i just follow up on that? i think susan is right. it's about more than ideology. it really is coming and would be a mistake to say this is nothing but the ideological polarization of the party. it also has to do with the sort of process of politics and the believe in the legitimacy for the other side and the willingness to engage in real give-and-take. barney frank got along pretty well with his ranking republicans spencer bachus but

once they finished in committee even though many of his ideas were included i can't possibly support you on the floor because my party has a strategy. it is a political strategy that i can't do anything about but if mckee is right, there is a role dynamic at work here that affects both parties they are just no question about it, and we may not play that up enough in the book. we certainly believe that that there is so much now strategic partisan behavior. it's happening because the parties are operating at a level of parity so that each election there is a chance of a change of party control of the white house and the majority control of the house and the senate, so there's a kind of relentlessness to

think in those strategic terms and both engage in that and so in that sense, i am with mickey completely. but right now there is a sort of fundamental difference between democrats and republicans. republicans partly because of the public and their constituencies believe the government has certainly gotten out of hand. it's too big and too expensive, taxes are too high associated with government accept for the defense department democrats for their part who once were in surgeons themselves and they are now a more diverse party and a party of protective government

to some extent a specially the major elements of the inherited regime going back to teddy roosevelt and woodrow wilson continuing through franklin roosevelt for richard nixon who is responsible for a good part of the domestic policy apparatus of the country. they are not wild liberals wanting, you know, wanting to socialize activities. it's a joke. they understand that the demographic forces at work and health care cost increases will make programs they and most americans think absolutely essential unstable and weekend

overtime, so they are fully willing to engage in those negotiations. whenever i see a press report, while the republicans say no new to my duty to taxes and the democrats don't say don't touch our entitlement programs, and i say which democrats? who counts? the president isn't saying it, the leadership of the parties are not saying it. they are perfectly prepared to negotiate. but since everyone understands, you know, if you are serious about deficits and debt, you don't begin your program as paul ryan has with major new tax cuts and then imagine how you are going to sort of put that together in the end, and so i think that is a sort of fundamental difference. democrats are protective, therefore they have political

incentives to play the same hardball, permanent campaign hardball but they are not prepared to put at risk the full faith and credit of the united states. they are not prepared really to shut down the government. they just won't do that because they believe the government plays an important role, and i think that conservatives, real conservatives want the government that they have and not a bit more in that they need but third, they are not wild and crazy about just dumping on that, and i think we -- it is almost a radical perspective, not a conservative perspective against one that's much more protective of government and i think the difference is real. >> i just want to throw out a theory that you can give in the back of your head and i want to go after to the hash tag even worse caucus.

one theory is all bill clinton's fault. and i would explain that by saying that starting in the 1990's, moderate republicans began leaving the party in large numbers in places like the counties are not a philadelphia. so the john heinz republicans are not republicans any more, and you have created an entirely different republican primary electorate with is what happened in delaware and i will leave that there and somebody can comment. christine, thank you. >> first of all the twitter loves the pink socks. [laughter] one this from robert was a student at the american university and he says there's a systemic problem of what changes the system to the panelists feel are most appropriate and second, michael who is also in washington and is a self-described policy analyst

barney frank by the way once told an angry crowd look, you are no today at the beach either. great statement. do you want to take either or both of those? >> first there are systemic problems. half the of of this book is what to do and what not to do but we have to start with an acknowledgment that this isn't something that is going to be solved by tinkering with the institutions or even an institutional set up. in some degree it is a cultural problem now and that is the tribal politics and it is also built into a broad media system. you know, we can talk about a primary electorate, but the fact is that people like grover norquist and rush limbaugh and

cable television networks and talk radio have an enormous impact. they helped shape the zeitgeist and create conditions for politicians who might otherwise be willing to look for solutions can't, because if they do, they are dead. when you watch the degree to which political figures give hope to these individuals even when they go wild, and rush limbaugh has said some things that are beyond outrageous, you get no pushback because whenever you have had a political figure who just tries a little bit to say that was too much, they get their legs cut off. now what do you do when the new world of media basically tells us that the business model that works is the fox news model that somehow a network with an audience at any given time of 2.5 million people can make more net profits than all three of the news divisions' combined with an audience of 30 million people come and is that true?

700 million in the profits for fox news last year of billy and looks like this year, more than the three network news divisions come white and cnn and msnbc. it's enormously successful and if we abandon the business model, if fox news tomorrow size all right, here's the new message from roger, can't we all just get along? we may not like what this president wants to do, but he's a good man and we can probably find ways to work with him. i guarantee you that within a week there would be a best news channel that would take the old message, and the 2.5 million people at any given time which is 20 million people through the course of the day with all gravitate over there and that's where the moneymaking would be. it's very hard to change this stuff. how do you create a public square where you can share a common set of facts and then debate over solutions? that is the challenge, and we discussed that a little bit. at the same time, getting to what was said, we have to find

ways to broaden the electorate. we are both big fans come all three of us having spent time in australia. we are big fans of the australian system of mandatory attendance in the polls. i won't go into the details, but a small fine if you don't show up, you don't have to vote you can vote for none of the above has lead over many decades to 95% less turnout in australia. high turnout is not an end in and of itself the former soviet union had 95% turnover and it doesn't reflect the political system. chicago can get to 110%. but what australian politicians will tell you is if you know that it's great, their base is going to be there, all of them, you don't focus on energizing and exciting and schering of the crap out of your base or suppressing the other side. you have to focus on the voters in the middle and it changes the

issues you talk about. they don't talk a lot of their campaign about guns or days. they talk about the economy, jobs, the climate, education and things that matter. and they don't use the kind of language that we use in our campaign because you will scare or turn off the voters of the metal. absent that, since we don't like mandatory anything, on a now come to be a champion of a mega million lottery where your ticket is your vote stub and if you look at the last mega millions people camped out three days in advance to get a ticket where of course let's face it the chance of winning was less than being struck by lightning twice in the day, you know, put a few hundred million dollars into this and we will up the turnout significantly. open primaries i think our an easier way to move in that direction. a lot of things that can be done and we have to do some changes inside of the system including the filibuster.

>> can i add a word? i think the two questions really go together. it's how to make it better and isn't it the public's after all i think those fit very well together if you have a mismatch, if you have on the logical polarized parties operating in the separation of power systems you can try to alter the party's over time and that is what norm has been talking about is ways of moderating parties coming of the best way to do it is to expand the electorate as much as possible because those that do not participate or ones that are absolutely committed and polarized views and reinforcement for australia and the dozens of other democracies that have some form of mandatory

attendance at the polls. the other thing is you say okay we've got these parties. let's have a political system in which they can get something done. that means fundamental reform in the senate. i believe i united states senate is today the most dysfunctional legislative body in the space world. the very process that in the past -- and by looking out at the senator here in the past would lead people to come together across party lines to try to work out some agreement and now do just the opposite of a reinforced absolute partisan divide between the parties and individuals senators have come to abuse the individual holds that frankly the partisanship

and the culture is such that the senate cannot function under its current rules and that is a big change that's needed. one final thing to thinking of change and the public sure it is the public's fault. they got frustrated and angry because the economy didn't improve and they changed the team in power after two years in 2010 and created a divided party government and the republican majority the believed it had a public mandate to do what they said they would do and they worked hard to do that and the public heeded it. so in a sense, they got what they asked for if not consciously, unconsciously. but in a sense that is asking too much of the public. it would be nice if every member

of the public was registered to vote and kind of had the knowledge of a typical attendees at a new england style town meeting. pachauri brookings seminar. [laughter] >> it's not going to happen. people are busy. he's keeping trading at the times of "the wall street journal" every day, but it does mean we've got to figure out a way. to make the choice is more clear to hold individuals accountable, divided party government has become the dean of american democracy and worked under under conditions that doesn't work well. >> i want to bring him back and but i want to sort of turn to the audience do we have some microphones to circulate? this gentleman right up front,

and then right behind you. >> when you look for an explanation of behavior and the more rigid leading republican party, you said it was the voter at some level but in particular the fox news profitability and the inevitability of money following the extremist ideas in the media and elsewhere so the question to me is to what extent can that link of the money to the media be linked to the rigidity of the republican party whether it is in campaign finance or elsewhere is the public insinuation into the process is one that is facilitated by the media guide it and influenced by pity logically imbalanced money that's going to have a greater reflection or has it had a

greater reflection of the current condition on the democratic party? >> thank you. that is a great highly relevant question. by the way, i think the take away from this is what will the onion do with the idea of wolf news? >> acknowledging that there's a conservative wing of the gop that has gained influence is it fair to say that they represent the party's whole that is part one of my question, and number two, is it possible that these folks play a valuable role in making it easier for both parties including the president to make a tough decision about things like entitlements. speed there's an optimistic view. thank you. right behind you? >> i noticed that mr. borkenstein's pantheon of heroes none of them are still in congress today where mr. lugar will be in a few months. it seems to me that once they

are on their way out the door and alan simpson is a great example they say all the right things when they are in or continuing to run olympia snowe is another great example what would you suggest that we do as a public or others do to encourage politicians who are in office to do the right thing because it is the right thing to do? >> i'm curious because you have done so much work on that question and then what ever you want to say before. and i guess we are supposed to -- are we close or past the time? good. >> we have lots of time. we have many fascinating questions pending that haven't been answered. let me try to run through a couple of them. eliza, the conservative wing is now the party. it's been embraced by the party. its agenda has been embraced by

the leadership. the chairman of the budget committee paul ryan is the architect of that agenda which would make every tea party very happy so that it's an distinguishable, and they know why way provide coverage for all the moderates who want to do the right thing. i don't think these said people exist in the republican party. listen, the answer is disarrayed grover norquist no new tax pledge. that alone would free the republican party to engage in good faith substantive negotiations. everybody knows it. our taxes are now at a historic low in the contemporary area and they are going to go up sort of

naturally, and it's with the aging of the population i guarantee it will be somewhere around 23% of gdp. wouldn't it be nice if we could acknowledge that and say what is the most sensible efficient way to structure a tax system probably a progressive consumption tax directed in ways to accomplish a whole host of objectives but as long as you have that pledge to which members on and come it's hopeless. the party cannot be a player in any constructive resolution of the problems confronting the country. there is no political space for a third party to occupy. it's based on the presumption that we have the extreme parties and there is this great center to mobilize and i am deeply is spectacle but there is room for such a party and what really

play a constructive role. is it great to get worse than it is now instead of just looking worse? and we have the status of greece not at all. the simple truth is we are almost close to a position where the status quo would solve our problems. that is to say that expiration of the tax cuts pretty much take care of our media and intermediate deficit problems and implementation of the cost-saving measures strengthen the hca would deal with our long-term health care problems so we are not that far away, and we have other tremendous strengths in our country that would allow us the investments to transform the economy to deal

with the reality of stagnant wages and a sense of diminished opportunities. we can do it. we need the public to rein in behavior that's destructive and we need political leaders to act forcefully. we have given enough bipartisan commissions and searched enough bipartisan consensus. it's time for sensible hardball politics along these lines. >> i would like you to take the money question. the party polarization in congress was directly correlated with the concentrations of wealth with partisan polarization. i am really concerned about a

post citizens united system of the federal election commission that is completely out of control and with other agencies unable to do anything about it, and a lot of money coming in in ways that intimidate political actors and tilt the partisan process in a very bad way and in a way that will only enhance inequality and if you look at this one example from north carolina where you had a group of agricultural influence the state legislature on the bill and they prepared a bunch of small oil commercials that would destroy the members of the legislature come up with them on the ipad and have nothing to do with agriculture. they basically defined them as a child molesting aliens out to destroy the fabric of america and showed them the commercials and said you know, if we don't get what we want, millions of dollars can be spent on commercials just like this and they got what they wanted and didn't have to spend any money.

that is what this has done and this isn't corrupting they were on a different planet in the different universe than the real world of what we face. so there is all of that to deal with and we are getting them all legislation being written by the outside interest the gets plugged right in. it is the gilded age brought up to the 21st century, and nothing that we want. i want to take a little -- i always like to find places i can take issue with tom so i want to address the question. i actually don't believe that the right wing of -- without representing the republican party represents the republican party we have survey after survey that shows on a range of issues of identified republicans do not take the same positions. the tea party consists of a lot of older voters that have no clue what the budget would do on entitlement programs. but they don't want to touch for themselves, just for others. so, it is not clear to me that all of this would play out necessarily the way that they

want. and i believe that there are problem solvers salon.com chris. they are completely intimidated from being able to play that role. but you still have a few that have taken out to do so. mike crapo, saxby chambliss and saxby coburn, and not to mention victor in all the other side actually stepped out on a limb and it will tell you where we are on the tribal politics that when barack obama praised the gang of 6 feet to the senior republican in the senate immediately send an e-mail to politico saying that kills the plan if he is for it we are against it. it's less about ideology than it is about tribalism so that is a challenge that we have come and it's not encouraging moderate or providing space. it is intimidating them. every candidate -- getting to the question every time we get people that leave congress we get these republicans that leave and it's like you've been inside a tent where you are breathing a gas and suddenly you were outside and say how could i have

done that, how could i have acted that way? one of our ideas is to create a shadow congress that consists of former members who stand on the spectrum but start with a common set of facts and a debate not as a way that the congress used to because they were never a great deal dating society but a genuine debates and discussions that are not going to have huge audiences by you can provide a model for how the voters that you your to have discussions of the options are you can start with a notion that there is something to climate change and have a debate over whether you do anything, whether you do a lot or whether you dewitt with a carbon tax or with a cap-and-trade program or through some other mechanism that could actually give people a sense of what the choices are instead of having people who say maybe scientists have something and then they're from out unceremoniously. small steps that may provide us with opportunities to change the dialogue.

>> we had a gallup poll that came back on monday. a third of republicans, not leaders but they describe themselves as the republican party we asked the ideology called moderate or liberal a third of the party, and in this particular poll for the first time they lost their enthusiasm in the race and the reason they did is because declining enthusiasm among the moderate and liberal republicans come so there are no republicans in washington who would describe themselves as moderate or liberal but a third of republicans on the country to. >> and then they lose primaries. >> well, there's that. >> rahm and manuel likes to say the party is deeply divided between the government willing and i do think there are acres within that. i want the key to come back and

and and a couple of closing comments the part of this but that hasn't gotten much attention, and susan mentioned it, i went to the we should ignore chapter which i will read you the american political system will collect itself, no, third party, they say no, constitutional balanced budget amendment, they say no, and the public financing of elections they say no but then they have a whole bunch of things. they would have the shuttle congress or then we could see who wins. let me invite devotee to the closing comments and let's start with mckee. >> just going down a couple of these, does this represent the republican party as a whole and as susan just said, no but it does represent those that vote in primaries and so, it is a matter of you can't be on the ballot.

every state has a sore loser law that means if you lost your primary you can't appear on the ballot in november. those need to go, so it's the primary voters that are represented in the party. second come in terms of what can we do about it, i don't know how many of you or how many of your friends show up at a town meeting, show up where you are a member of the house or senate is present, participate in the elections and called into the radio and tv show and in other words we need to get the citizens engaged. the citizens are not crazy. 42% of the american people are registered as independent. they are fleeing from the party but the need to be at those meetings. they need to confront. they need to be confrontational with their representatives and senators and say we are not coming to vote for you if you behave this way. the final thing about canada become more repressive?

i got to testify on behalf of the american bar association to a committee in the house when the president of a previous president announced through his various signing statements that he would decide for himself whether or not he had to obey the law and every republican saw nothing wrong with that. the -- the democracy isn't about policy. it's not about policy outcomes. they focus on doing whatever we need to do to get the puck was the outcome we want. to hell with process and the constitution. you know, there is a more repressive how do you define repressive? how about wiretapping without a warrant, is that repressive? so, i do think we are more on a slippery slope and some people would want to admit.

>> susan? >> just briefly say what it is to write a policy book about washington that gets pulled out of amazon commesso congratulations. >> i want to thank you my colleagues mckee and -- mickey and susan. it is a very negative sounding title but there are things we can do building up small things that can help produce a larger and more informed electorate, changes we could make that would allow the public to hold officials accountable in a way that is very difficult to do now that in the end clear signals from the public and responsible institutional changes especially within the senate and sort of

political leaders are willing to lay out and not just say we all have to come together, but listen this is how we must begin and there is a bright future for the country. i'm pretty optimistic. >> i would say finally please, by the book. please, by the book and please, susan, write a book. [laughter] [applause] >> thank you.

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

again polls closing at 7 p.m. eastern virginia. our election night coverage gets underway at 8:00 on c-span. with voters casting their ballots are none of the country today, we ask they are watching for tonight as the polls close. here's a look at what a few of them had to say. >> i watch for the turnout. i think it will be sky high. the big races for senate and president and i'm going to be interested to see with the interplay is between the races or whether they are just cooky cutter images and the nationalize these elections and become whether or not they get what outcomes in the race is. whether we get an election that is much more like 2,000 to 2,004 in wisconsin at top of the ticket which is decided by less than half a percentage point in both cases or whether wisconsin in up performing in a little bit better for democrats than the national numbers, which has also happened on occasion comes a wisconsin swings back and forth between the two patterns come and those are some of the things

i will be interested in and logging on election night. >> we have a couple of counties as every state has. the have these bellwethers with in coming and the nice part is one of these bellwethers is the county that is just east of the lake. they turn their results in first and they are pretty close. they've often predicted that the president i'm going to look there and going to look in central ohio. there is stark county where the football hall of fame is and they are usually a nice bellwether. obviously they are great to see the totals across the state immediately to the those are sent in and processed and recorded so it is literally push of the button and 7:31 we will get a little sense of where things are immediately and i think that will probably

wherever that is leading it will largely hold as an indicator. i think the race will come down less than two percentage points in ohio. >> i look for turnout in philadelphia and the vote totals in montgomery and delaware counties. the vote totals in northampton and their big counties, but there is the county that we look to that give us some sense about how the state might go. that obviously you want to know the turnout differentials by county to see if there is something markedly different. ..

typically report in pennsylvania, steve, comes earliest in urban areas and in the southeastern part of the state. at times when elections are close, were actually waiting for the boat that was to come and pick it off and make a difference as to which candidate wins or loses.

>> well, a lot of things as is the state capital in america where they have the largest historic district in the state. it was a candidate as the tatsumi grew to about 20,000 during the day. we are the center of commerce in the area. we are fortunate here and we are somewhat insulated from a lot of the trend that occurred naturally. our economy is pretty stable because we have relied on state as the primary source of job.

we are three large insurance companies headquartered they here. we relatively protected from the ebbs and flows of the national economy. unfortunately having seen and our downtown buildings are the strength of our downtown and the attraction of presents for people. but we have a very vibrant business community, but it's mostly all independent. montpelier really does value the independent nature. our bookstores or three independent bookstores. we had a convincing title and were the only state capital in the country that doesn't have mcdonald's and that was a choice. it is a testament to the community and citizens here banded together and made it clear that was not the visit we

wanted and that was the outcome. so there's a real sense of independence and a value among the people who live here to shop locally. the way people behave. >> this is a community that values books, values reading. we have a lot of writers. >> when i first moved here, someone once told me to be careful driving around in the back rows because you might hit a novelist. they are all over the roads like dear.

>> we are the new estate archive. we did not legislation to create the state archives officially until 2003. in 2003 were granted permission for state archives out we did not have records to schedule the state archives. we created the vermont date archived records administration to combine public records coaches underneath a different entity than the state archives and combined estate archive divisions editions of the secretary of states office into one. this is the state record center. because vermont is one of the last states to have officially estate archive from the records go back to 1760. one of the collections we want to talk about today is the eugenic survey of vermont records. the survey was in i.t. that came

out of a professor from the university of vermont. professor perkins was concerned about problems from out with stacy. one of them after world war ii was apparently a number of vermonters are rejected by the draft based on what they considered to be the facts. one question is why this for months stand so high with so many physical and mental defects? that came from something that came out of the draft. it turned out to be false overtime. but vermonters didn't have quality on that draft. so we organized a project and receive funding to do a survey and professor perkins is very interested in the eugenic movement, which is popular at the time. i was looking at different ways of the concept whereto steadier genealogy and folks considered wellborn would have wellborn children and those considered to have defects would only have defects children. for the nature versus nurture

can't have. he wanted to organize a survey starting was lucky not schools, irvine, aspects of the state. we wanted basically a survey of people. you can see where he didn't -- how proposals, which is what most people use the eugenics are very per mile for. it's basically a sterilization bill that looked at sterilizing individuals who are classified as spam missiles, able minded, criminals and other defective eugenic purposes. and so he proposed it cannot pass initially. but as the survey went on, we did pass a voluntary sterilization bill. they did a detailed study of every person in the city of burlington. and in this case, you'll see here where it says

french-canadian, jewish, irish, italian this is a survey of ethnic groups within the city of burlington. they asked their name and birthplace. that's about where they went to church, what they did what school their children went to. what they did here as it gives you a snapshot of people's perception of the time and that's why. if you consider the contribution and they had illicit contributions of french canadians were. here it says not given, irish. yankees, he thinks they're nice people as well. didn't seem to have good perception of jewish,

moneymakers. sherman said he didn't know any. it can give you a good snapshot. these are about five pages long for each individual. to what extent. they do play, but not mary. children of other nationalities and of different religions, protestants, she wished not to play. here it says, would you be interested in encouraging more ways by which the young people of other nationalities i get together. and why he would want them together. we have a number to come and to understand different perceptions. these records if you're a family member are of interest to know she relatives or ancestors thought. it's really interesting to know what folks in burlington and

then maybe it's a good cross-section of the state of vermont on different topics. the other surveys done were very specific to families. you can see the different pedigree charts done. and so it could really help a lot. it cannot people down on their luck. the state of vermont along with the number of charities and so forth, the social information network. the idea there was they could exchange information about people who have needs and tried to assist them and also figure out what is best to apply the resources. the eugenic survey of vermont decided to look at those people listed on the information exchange. so he refinanced their backpack created for a family. it was only wellborn people would have wellborn children. effect this, defective people

only have defective children. the idea was they were reading. so what you'll see here is the particular individual, but they found to be the defects. they would get public records for these, interview people in the town. folks who regularly came up. the towns had to pay their poor houses, they were not really in very good conditions, particularly women and children. so they would look for someone using town resources, so that would be considered a defect which are basically on public assistance. in missouri it was a defect. if you're a criminal, and a severe case case of having illegitimate children or being accused of adultery. dishonest, illegitimate child. if you interacted with the state and cause the state to

potentially have the charges with you. the idea behind the movement was that they wanted to keep certain people from reproducing. so in some way they felt like they were helping folks, but the economy was not very good now. for transitioning to a different economy. so when you look at economics, they were really focusing on people who are costing the state money, what they thought was unnecessary necessary money and was her petulant in a problem by these people still having children or the state of vermont has open vital records, so people can do research on births and deaths. it's interesting research for folks that have been labeled as able minded and see once they got out of this survey study they actually lead productive lives. so really the archives is preserved in public records in the state of vermont to ensure they are for the public.

they better understand where we're going. so a lot of records we have here are getting people access to records that allow them to have their rights, vital records in land records, documentation and state policies and decisions on the outcomes of those. to be there repeat them work many cases if they didn't go so well, not repeat them. >> we hear from howard coffin, author of "something abides: discovering the civil war in today's vermont" mr. coughlin talks about today's vermont in the civil war we talk we talk about civil war historical sites highlighted in his new book. >> iem howard coffin. and a seventh generation vermonter and i have at least six ancestors who fought with the vermont regiments in the

civil war. i've written three books on vermont and the civil war and the fourth one will be coming out in the spring called "something abides." it comes from a famous speech by a great hero of the civil war, joshua chamberlain, a hero of gettysburg, dedicating a monument. he said that a great battlefields, something abides, something remains. you can feel a presence there. and i know that vermont, as we preserve our rural landscape is the best place to see the america of the civil war era. and so i thought, i am going to go to every one of our 251 towns and see what is surviving civil war sites i can find. and i turn drilled fields and soldier homes, hospitals, underground railroad sites, halls were abolitionists. i even found a field or a quaker

minister heard a voice from the having to predict that the american civil war. these places are everywhere. it took me six years. the book is finally done and will be out in the spring. my new book is identified about 3500 civil war sites in vermont. if i had to pick one against all the others, it would be the vermont state house. when the civil war began in april of 1861, a week later the government of vermont called the legislature into an extra session, a special session. he had received a telegram from abraham lincoln inquiry and what vermont may be expected to do and fairbanks come any a good vermont sentence replied, vermont will do his full duty. governor fairbanks address the

legislature when they arrived here. he asked them to appropriate the astonishing sum of half a million dollars from this little state. the legislature deliberated for about a day and appropriated a full million dollars. that even made news in europe. well, and pain behind his personal opinion by a man named julian scott, who had been a charmer boy in the civil war and at age 16 at the battle of the smell had dropped his strom and waded into a creek to rescue wounded vermonters. and for that, he won a medal of honor. so when the legislature after the war decided it needed a memorial at the statehouse, a memorial painting, it naturally went to julian scott and he studied it and it's absolutely accurate. i've been there 50 times and produced this wonderful painting

that not only accurately predicts the battle amateur rain, but he painted about 40 portraits of vermont soldiers who were in the battle. the military role of vermont in the civil war is an absolutely convinced of that based on a relatively small population of 310,000 people, vermont's performance was extraordinary. we may have saved grants army in the wilderness. and the battle of cedar creek, i'm not sure that the union would have been the goriest at cedar creek without the vermonters. they stopped a great surprise attack on october 9th team, 1864 and then they are key to the countertop that won the battle, making control of the shenandoah valley for the rest of the civil war and made

certain that abraham lincoln with the reelected. there are many incidents in the war were vermont is key. on april 2nd, 1865, after nine months from ulysses grant trying to break the confederate lines of petersburg. the morning of april 2nd, the vermont brigade leaks the attack that finally smashes and robert e. lee surrenders a week later at appomattox courthouse. i came away with a deeper realization that neither that the civil war effected everybody in this state. we sent 34,238 men off to battle. that is a tremendous number. on the ninth of all of our citizens. but back here at home, the burdens that fell upon the women come and the old men, children to run the factories and then at

night or on the weekends gather to make things for the soldiers, to cook things to put in boxes and sent by train to the front, they never stopped working back here. and then of course in the soldiers came home wounded and sick, the burdens for caring for them: the same people. the home front performance was extraordinary and i never needed to follow the. if the civil war really began here for vermont in this building, a mile away up on top of the hill, the results first hand became very obvious to vermonters because out there with a 600 bed hospital, where civil war sick and wounded came home to be treated. we are on a hilltop in the city of montpelier on the campus of vermont college.

this was the montpelier phil graham. when the civil war began, the six vermont regiment formed here, almost a thousand men and they would drill for about three weeks before they marched down the hill to the river is stationed the statehouse and went off to war. it's pertinent in the book because of the trail field, but more importantly in 1862, then governor of vermont, frederick holbrooke went to the federal government and said, we think we can cure our sick and wounded soldiers better if you'll send them to us in vermont, where loved ones in the clear air will shield them in after a long bureaucratic fight he opened for hospitals and vermont. one of them stood right here. dissenters in the middle of the field and these long wings

extended from the center. they could treat about 600 soldiers here at once. brought here to run the hospital with a man named henry james for nearby waterbury who had been the town doctor in waterbury, but enlisted for the civil war and was in a great position as to the rank of major. after the battle of gettysburg, the war department sent into gettysburg and put them in charge of all the 25,000 wounded at gettysburg. he did a magnificent job. when that was finished, he came here to run this hospital. before he left gettysburg, he was afforded a great honor for his performance. he was glad to send the speaker's platform today that linking gave the gettysburg address. here in this hospital during the worst days of the civil war, the

overland campaign of 1864, trains are coming to vermont, filled with sick and wounded. this hospital was running at full capacity. but the cure rates were astonishingly good. holbrooke was right. the home cooking and treatments works and many, many vermonters lived on because this hospital was here and did a wonderful job. it is only one building that still stands in its original position. but after the war, the long wings were chopped up into short sections and folders houses. all around the neighborhood are houses that would just about identical and you can identify them as parts of the old hospital. there's about 3500 civil war sites. almost all of them have no historic marker to identify

that. so you're going to need something to find these places. when you get there, you may be amazed. we're in the hills of her land to vermont, which is the town just south of montpelier at a cellar hole of a farmhouse that long since fell down. but back here in the 1820s and 30s, two gunmen grip, two brothers who served in the civil war. richard crandall, the older brother went from here to dartmouth college and then enlisted in the six vermont regiment and became a combat officer. his younger brother, john crandall became a dock where and he enlists in the 16th vermont regiment and that is one of the

regiment that cites gettysburg and after the battle he takes care of the rock when it on the battlefield. after the war coming as a man of the venture. enjoins george armstrong, custer's seventh calvary. chris wonderful letters about planes and bison, that gets out well before little big horn. his brother in the civil war, richard is in the major fighting in the east. he survives, he comes home in 1864. a friend of his from dartmouth goes to the top of one of our high mountains, discussing overnight and they talk about the war. crandall remarks that to have seen the advance of the six core at the of fredericksburg was a lifetime's experience. he goes back to war the vermont

brigade is in the overland campaign. he describes the great battle and then at cold harbor he survives the biggest hack. but on the seventh day of june, 1864, a sharpshooter from long-distance kills him dead and his body is brought back here. we are here because this is a civil war site. this is where two young men grew up who went off to war and played important roles in the war. we are here because i was able to identify the cellar hall has been their home, auto is a difficult search because the family did not own the home kit they were renters or farmers. it is very difficult to find

land records. finally census records for me to this place. i want people to know where these men came from these remote places in vermont to go off to these places is suddenly became the most famous of all the world, gettysburg, cold harbor, going from these littletown, down these little rows, forming this mighty stream of vermont soldiers that had such an important impact on the outcome of the civil war. next, we are going to the church, where major crandall's funeral was held and talk about a poem he wrote just before the fighting began in 1864, a poem that seems to have predicted his death. the crandall family went to church here. when richard went back to the army for the last time, he was in the overland can paint and

ss, who survived a spotsylvania, only to fall at cold harbor. one of the last entries in his diary was written in the trenches. skirmishing all day, and evening is rainy. the first since we crossed the river. a band this plane departed days. the memories that awakens. and on the seventh of june he fell to a's bullet. his body came home and montpelier and a long hill to this church for their funeral. civil war is a complex story. there's still much left to be discovered. it is out there if he will go in search of it. and with this book, you can find the history of the state that did not size it is civil war and

the story is set in a beautiful landscape that is most like the civil war landscape of any state, i think, that was involved in the war. >> the book titled "freedom & unity: a history of vermont." the authors are meat, michael sherman and jeans fashion and steve jeffrey pier we worked on it together. we thought of it as a

comprehensive history of vermont if we could make it without making a go into more than one volume and it starts with the formation of the mountains and it goes -- we were making additions right before republishing 2004. excerpt got a lot of information about people, politics, social movements, intellectual movements, some literature, the art. we try to catch on as many of the topics vermonters wanted to know about and people might want to know. there has not been a single history of vermont written since the 1920s when a big four volume history came out. there have been a few other coming in now, shorter pieces, but no single volume, which is a comprehensive history. as i was leaving the vermont historical society, the opportunity came up to pick up

what had been abandoned because of his 15, 20 years old and nothing had happened. the trustees asked me if i would work on a new history of vermont and i agreed to do it with the cooperation of my two colleagues because it seemed like it was too big a project for one person to take on. and i worked on it for eight years. each of them for four years we produce this monster of a 700 page book, which i think surprised everybody. vermont, 700 pages? you've got to be kidding. what is fair to say about vermont? a couple of the reviews actually said that. why fidgeted. why fidgeted but if you set the but if you set the first response aside, it's been a very

successful book, very satisfying. when we brought it out, and we were surprised by the size of a. this outcome of this will be a door stop or people use it for exercises in the morning here but in fact, people have read it. not necessarily start to finish. they dip into it and places where they have a particular interest and you know, we hear from people. people write letters to authors saying i just got this book and i really like it. that's always nice to hear. when we decided to start at the beginning, eventually we started way back at the beginning, and billions of years ago because the mountains are so important as a part of not just the geography and topography of the place, which is obvious, but also the effect of the mountains on the history of the state from the very beginning.

so we ended up doing the geology and started with the formation of the mountains, how they got here and then discontinued working on. we've pretty much decided on some chronological breaking points and was not being strict about it, to say okay, we'll take the mountains up to the time the french arrived and from the french through the statehood and figured out what were the big, important breaking points or chronological bumps they could work on this became our chapters. the state motto presented for asset puzzle. first is freedom and unity name? what did it mean to the people who adopted the motto in 1778? what does it mean in 2012? who really try to address the question about individual freedom and the importance of individual freedom and our state and it's always been a part, but also the obligations and

responsibilities and the benefit of association with the state government and with the nation. so we are one state in the nation. vermonters came here not as part of a colonial settlement. match. i mean, the first permanent white settlers came after the french and indian war. the french had been here before, but they last over chased out. but from 1763 into the early part of the 19th century and 1810, 1812, there is an enormous influx of people from other parts of new england into vermont. vermont was a state that was created out of new york and new hampshire and they fought over it. and after the state making part of vermont at its reflection in our u.s. constitution, that the

article and clause for talks that have states will be made in the constitution was really a result of the conflict to your cache if have shared and vermont about who is going to own it and how was vermont going to be a separate state. said we had that influence on even the constitution making of our country. so the cover images for detail of the marble works circa 1875 by frank childs. they recently put it on the cover, if you look at the holodeck on the seats got everything about vermont that we need to know. scott mountains, she'll, cows, a railroad. it's got an industry going there. it's got little houses, church. in the sense that they macrocosmic view of what the state is about an attention of

the mountain through the mountains have not only been a geographic figure, but marble comes out of it. they been an economic resource. we have had industry from early on, not as big as elsewhere, but everything going on in the state is somehow captured in the painting connoisseur became a perfect image for what we're trying to accomplish in the book are showing the variety. vermont is not just one thing. it's not just cows or sheep as it used to see. people don't think we've had an industrial history, but we can't industrial history. here is the railroad which connected us to the east, to the west and played an important part of and develop them. so all those things but in a way characterize that might surprise people about vermont are captured in this one marvelous

painting. >> "slow democracy" takes from the slow food movement which began in rome and has really evolved into a whole idea of the local war movement which is very strong and vermont. local people say this is crazy. the way of his system is set up, why are we bringing in tomatoes from 3000 miles away? to get them here and they taste a cardboard you do doesn't make any sense. we have capacity in our community to foster farms and develop relationships between farmers and eaters, which is all of us can have a very vital, lately food system. and so we took that idea about

wow, what are the insights we can take an applied to a democratic structures because right now, washington is like a faraway farm that is generating these laws and that tomatoes that taste like cardboard is like a lot of mandates. so what can we do that's really vital in iran softcover and is locally? and vermont with so many examples of how individuals and towns and counties have been able to do really exciting work on the local level. site.local, business layer, where the action was an incredibly important. what i learned over the course of writing for the book is the importance of dialogue and deliberation and that did not come easily for me. i'm someone who likes action that i don't like meetings are sitting. i think, when can i get home?

paisanos commenced it is so important for all of us to get together and have conversation and share ziti casserole and things like that, but working with suzanne and see the example, talking about examples of communities in action really convinced me, particularly portsmouth, new hampshire. they would build a better, better school redistricting fight and their community and there is a rich elementary school busting out of the scenes into poor ones losing students. the obvious answer was to move the students from one to the two other ones. but they went through this whole process, where they were able to create study circles as a people from both communities could come together and talk to each other and realize how close they had in common. at the end of the day, they came out with a very specific plan that involves moving a small number of students from the school to the smaller one.

school politics of some of the to contract. people but has been so for them to be what to do the anti-tape possibilities that weren't there in the national conversation. the national conversation is either for or against. portsmouth is able to do was develop some proactive underground solution that would have been possible if they were in fact sitting together and talking about these issues. what we do in this book to suggest three basic vegetables for any slow democratic process. despite a part of candidates are participatory budgeting. but these processes need to be inclusive. they need to bring everyone to the table. they need to be delivered as so it's not just voting for an up or down type of situation. it has to be people discussing

how to get problem-solving. dirt about what had had to be empowered because you cannot conversation, but at the end of the day, you're not allowed to impact your own government. so those are the elements we've identified. there are many, many different forms that can fulfill all three elements. one of my favorite examples is the cannot chicago community policing and they wouldn't necessarily think of themselves as a democracy, but if they were developing processes without that framework. in the early 90s, chicago had terrible relationships between the police department and citizens. and so they said how can we prove this? they began holding monthly meetings in each of the police districts in inviting police officers community members and they would sit there and say okay, what are the challenges in this particular district? what do the police has challenges and what do resident

pete? these are people who had really been facing off before. in one particular community as a park called gil park is really overgrown, you bought a shrubbery and was a big drug dealing center. they would go when and under a drive-by shootings of course associated with that. they came in and said we can't live with this. what are we going to do quite together using the police know-how, they were able to identify, here are the conditions allowing the drug dealers to be here. they have this cover and there's no biting and no walk through police. so they went and every landscape the park. police committed to doing walk-throughs of that part and residents who lived in nearby housing projects committed to calling in when they saw suspicious that davidian the park. so as a result, the crab in the park dropped pretty much

instantly. so that's a great example of something that would never happen if you didn't involve the community and police officers talking together. my co-author, susan clark is a dialect of the liberation expert. she knows all about different kinds of democratic processes. she is the town moderator for a town meeting in middlesex, so she was able to draw on her network of other different exciting things happening in dialogue and deliberation. she was able to put out all kinds of connections they are to get really exciting examples of what's happening in local democracy. so what i was able to do a show how the public process has really stood out over the past two centuries. he saw lively towns and everybody engaged the democratic process and they're all waiting in.

and gradually over the course of the 20th century and up till now, we have this process are democratic involvement involves walking into a ballot this and casting a ballot or pressing a button. that's not democracy. so once we understand that what we think of as democracy is not what the founders were envisioning are what people had been easy for much of the history of this country, that force us to look about we mean by democracy and how we can get it back. wisla democracy does is it offers a way of rethinking and a set of principles so people can find their own processes that work for themselves and their community. and from out of town meetings and they work incredibly well here. and california is other traditions people can build on. but if they can look inside in order to be a valuable process chemists and he needs to be inclusive, deliberative and

needs to be empowered. that provides enough of a firmer are people too sad, you know, here's how we can do it in our area. but enough to to have town meetings and apples. we cannot larges and some other process in california piece of people can take the installation and use it wherever they are to the democratic possibility that rises up locally and hopefully in some ways that can have an impact on the national conversation. >> here we go. i am a librarian for the vermont historical society. we are in the fault of vermont history center. we have a photo album created by a vermonter who went down to view and take pictures of vermont troops during the civil

war. he presented the supplements u.s. in 1863 after he had returned from his third trip to virginia, taking pictures mostly of vermonters in camp, but also some other scenes that he saw. one of the scenes that often reproduced is this one of a family of slaves at dean's house. right below it is a photograph of some of the vermont -- vermont officers. and some of the other pictures in here shows some of the batteries they were using that were involved in this. and there are photos here showing the aftermath of the burial grounds of the soldiers. those photos get used a lot. there's air battery crossing again down there.

leaves nils, which is one of the battles that took place. and there's a wonderful photo. people will potentially recognize because he used it on the cover of this book for the civil war. this picture should assess them all lined up in their glory, waiting to basically take on the south and defeated. >> with the american flag fluttering about and comment adds to the atmosphere as well. here is another image that shows the camp life with lake. that one is actually actuals. the one below it, camp of the 13 shows how they had to cut down trees to create their camps. >> yeah, we have one great letter were one of the soldiers sustained the camp to make cloverfield. and this is not the only clever we can find is three of them

growing in the corner of my tent. they reduce this whole field into mad. >> these are original print for the caps. these were the prints at houghton created in his darkroom in brattleboro. so it is a nearly one-of-a-kind items here the second reason is the vermont photographer. for the vermont historical society. i think it is the only who went down to the civil war and recorded in its way. and third, i guess because it shows that vermonters were doing. vermont is very proud of his civil war heritage in this document, a portion of that. in most vicious camp life, but it shows the names we are now familiar with a significant vermonters who participated in the bloody conflict. >> it is also affiliated.

i mean, this is the same school of photography going on. it was a very good school. they've never done this before, taking pictures on site totally new. cannot act until this time they're mostly taking photographs of the studio. there are lots of studio portraits of civil war soldiers. those are floating around all the time, but photographs taken in the field are much more unusual. speaking of the early periods, we have a book via a revolutionary war hero, ethan allen. this volume is called reason, the only artful of man. it is his deist tract. ethan allen was in addition to serve as a frontier hunter and

blacksmith, revolutionary. he also envisioned himself as an enlightened philosopher, although he didn't have any formal schooling. and this book he published in 1784, which at that point was one of the largest towns in the state of vermont. it lays out his religious philosophy that the deity can be ascertained through nature and one does not need establish religion. he was very much an antiestablishment type of person, both in politics and in religion. this is a very rare volume. i'm not sure how many there are. >> supposedly there was 34.

what happens is when you publish it it in the senate warehouse in the warehouse was struck at lightning and burned and of course everyone been fat okay, that was because god was fighting him, so i think 34 copies are supposed to have survived. i don't know how many survived or how many are in another library. i mean, there are some around, but it is a rare book to get in this particular. >> in this book, with concerned. what do you set it and claim the pages. you can see it's in very good condition. of course we did not touch the marks of the previous ownership. you can see the female provost, probably the name of the previous owner. we put it in a modest binding. not at ms fancy binding at all. would've been modest in his first published, maybe not bound at all.

>> is an iconic figure to us. we tend to think of ethan allen and greenock voice in their struggle for independence really from new york. or were just talking about how we tend to forget that a lot of other people working with him. but he has become sort of the icon for vermont independence movement. >> well, he's a very boisterous figure, mythological and stature. he of course led the green mountain boys at the taking up for it any surprise the british. he was able to do it without firing a shot. he was rambunctious. >> so he has all these traits that make them stand out from all the other revolutionary here is, who are also doing great things. he definitely stands head and shoulders above the others in the popular imagination and in

history. >> is probably one of the best-known vermonters really i think, even nationally. people associate him very much. >> kit carson reverberates in. >> however mythological some of the studies are. >> with your bare, marjorie? >> adages picked up the blind african slave. this is an interesting little book is kind of forgotten until recent scholar picked up on it. she was having a difficult time even getting a hold of it. the title page of our copies have been lacking. but she discovered this. >> she being kerry winters did a recent reprint of this book. >> exactly. she discovered this book and in our collection, was classified as fiction.

she and our cities realize this is a very early and significant slave narrative. >> it was told to agenda when is listed here in the title page as the author is was writing insane all been, which is on lake champlain in august of 1810. he evidently befriended the slaves who had several names. the easiest one, which is jeffrey break. he was also known as were ray road bridge. >> is very interesting because he was a slave in connecticut and people do forget that new england had slavery as well. one of his fellow who wasn't afraid, he was an indentured servant to somebody and it was not the lions became a

well-known figure nationally. and then he went off to kentucky. they represented two different states in the u.s. senate. in fact, there may be only a couple have done that. but anyway, getting back to jeffrey brace. >> actually top of the french indian war and in the revolutionary war. during the revolutionary war he was promised his freedom, so he actually began moving north because vermont at that point in its constitution had eliminated slavery. you have to be careful about that point. vermont had eliminated that. default is a safe place to do with his family. he moved into southern vermont, ran into difficulty because there is no slavery here, people still were fairly prejudice and felt that blacks are unable to

raise their children correctly. he spent a lot of time trying to take children away. he got to georgia, vermont, which is close to saint alban and that's where he settles and became a friend of his lawyer. so this is the story of the cicada of his life. >> here's a representative example. he writes, the next spring i said if he pulled down a fence and destroyed the crops that year, i should be tempted to burn his arms. if i was arrested and tried by two justices, who unfair for dissemination of the matter, honorably acquitted me. so he had that links swore he would wait me and when i went up to him in order to take it, you'd run away from me and thereby save me. two why not this unit difficulty, we had each of us

that nsa suppose he died of the words. >> soviets and struggles with his neighbors. it's interesting because he -- one of the most significant things about this book is when he was captured during the slave trade, he was actually older than many children. he was a teenager, so he renders africa and in his book amis describes his life in africa and his life here in america. that is actually a fairly unusual story not told very often and that's why scholars are so interested in this particular book. the fun part is he and his wife and children remain here and they are still there today. >> many of them didn't know their family history.

>> until terry winters decided to dig into the interesting story. many of them had married and so were not visibly african-american in origin. >> let's get the album by grace coolidge that documented the family during their white house years and before. part of the coolidge family papers. we have one box that is just photographs and several boxes of other documents. photographs are heavy and the album should be in the back of the box here. here it is. unfortunately, is on black civic paper. there's not much we can do about that because we don't want to change the artifact nature of the alphabet tells. it's starting to crack. some of these pages are

separating. this is a photograph of calvin coolidge the day before he became president. he was in plymouth, vermont, visiting his father, doing some chores. this is a press photographs. he did have the press along with them. you can be the tip one photograph of him here with his suit jacket on and then another one of him without the suit jacket on. coolidge was really pretty well-versed at using the press to his advantage. the fact that he was from vermont with the help and his political life. he used it, visit under several times that as governor of massachusetts and later vice president and president. anyway, this is when he was doing tours in plymouth. the next day he would be president of the united states.

warren g harding died unexpectedly. coolidge was sworn in in his father's living room by his father. they later were administered the oath of office when he thrived back in washington. i like this album because it has in addition to photographs by price people, and also had some family snapshot then it promised a more informal pictures. this is a picture of one of the coolidge sons. john coolidge when he was doing military training at a camp in massachusetts. and then there is one here of his brother. there we go, calvin spent the summer harvesting tobacco leaves in massachusetts.

this is 1923. calvin would later tragically died in the white house. he got an infection after playing tennis. we didn't have the antibiotics we have today and he passed away in the white house. it was a tragic event for the coolidge family as you might expect. some say it's everything,, coolidge should for reelection. in 1928 he declared i choose not to run for the president be a dropped out of political life at that point. there's a picture here of happier days. coolidge as a young family lived in north hampton, massachusetts. they rented a house. half of the house, a duplex. coolidge never owned his own house until after he was president. there is young calvin at the

threats to of north hampton, massachusetts. you can see is not a particularly well organized album. the photographs are put in here as grace coolidge decided she wanted to have them shown. here is the photograph i was looking for comedy and formal photographs. this is the coolidge family or part of it at the white house. you can see someone has said something funny. president coolidge is laughing at whatever is going on there, sharing a nice family moment together. ..

>> to give people the idea of our history. >> there is so much more material. it has actually been difficult to choose. still you are right. we enjoy chilliness to you and everyone. >> we now talk with frank bryan and his book, all those in favor, he explains new england culture of town meetings. this interview was conducted at the vermont historical society. >> the town meeting -- you time

and pretty soon you get bored and go home. the key is there is a decision. lots of decisions. in which policy changes. it has nothing to do with recommendation we're listening to people, it is to govern and decide who. vermont can send a message to the rest of the united states that you can govern locally. naturally it is almost a given now that we can. but before we can really do that. i publish this with susan clark. a book about the town hall

meetings and it is called "all those in favor." it was susan's idea and she was the force behind it. but we both agree that the town meeting tradition of suffering. and that we needed to write a popular book. a readable book. this town meeting is really a cultural phenomenon. people watch their parents go out of town meetings when they are children, among other citizens, talk about other issues -- and by the time you are in high school from you know exactly what a town hall meeting it. new england is generally pretty good at deliberation. they know about the rules.

when newcomers, and come in and take them to a town meeting, there are two emotions. the first is often boredom. they say, is this all there is? the others are always impressed by the rules. even scholars and democracy don't realize the extent to which this is not shouting and yelling and screaming -- it's very much in order. the best way to think of vermont is a legislative body. they come to town meetings at least once a year. it is not representative of democracy at all. no one represents you. 1500 voters is 1500 legislators.

like the sessions of congress in the house and house and senate, not everybody comes to every session. we all come to a town hall meeting in to check them out the door and it is really kind of fun. they will say frank bryan, and i will say yes, and they checked me off. it's quite informal at that point. saddam. there is an agenda. we can affect the citizens and the legislator legislature we want to. they carry out the laws of the town. it is conducted under strict rules of order. it is not we see on television. there is no yelling out, there

is no interrupting. people get called to account very quickly indeed. that is a ruled and structured legislative session featuring common, ordinary citizens like you and me. it takes a new way of looking at politics that really brings the left and the right together. the right fears the government and the left fears big business. that is a commonality. susan and i feel that if americans had that experience of seeing how small the democracy is, it would change everything. but of course, in order to keep it going and in order to save you have to empower citizens, if all american citizens went to town meetings and lived in small towns and went to meetings regularly, the presidential elections of this year would be phenomenally better. we would not be sick of them

all. none of the unpleasantness. i think the fundamental challenge in the last almost 100 years, certainly the last 50 years, is that vermont is like all americans but on the centralization model. but it just seems to be that we needed to centralize power, whether it is in washington or wherever. so we did take away from the towns. a lot of them have the ability to make decisions. that is one of the great dangers. because people don't go to town meetings to see their neighbors and chat. they want to govern themselves and make a decision they hold a

town meeting, in fact, that's what they're going to do, they are going to hold this meeting where they will say what they are going to do. they are calling it a town meeting because the tone of the conversation, it is all going to be very nice. it's like that in new england. the other is just a general reference to public hearings. governmental public hearings of the town meeting. when we call these meetings which are not town meetings?

why do we insist on do not? because the link is there to this tradition. it's a dream that we all have. common, ordinary citizens, collectively can deliberate decisions together. the decisions become a matter on very important issues that affect their lives. it doesn't work well in places like vermont, and it can easily be transferable to other places in the united states as well people have the wisdom and the will to do it. >> montpelier, vermont, is the smallest capital city with a population of 8000. it was named the capital of vermont in 1805 for its central location in the state. booktv recently visited the city with the help of our local

cable partner, comcast, to explore the areas history and culture. >> we are at the historic vermont college of fine arts on a college campus. i am tom greene, and i have always loved to read. i went back to school and i took a creative writing class. there is nothing more satisfying than working on a novel, particularly when you have the ability to go to college. although the literary work is an important part of what i do, in some ways, i am no different than someone building model airplanes. i am just doing a 280 page novel

that people hopefully read and enjoyed. the building behind us was actually erected in 1868. for years, this was a women's undergraduate college. in 2006, the campus was in danger of closing. there were established programs here, so i've led an effort with the faculty and staff to form this into a fine arts college, which it is today. in 2008, we became the first new independent college in vermont in a generation. what has happened since then has grown into a much larger vision of creating a national center for the arts right here on the montpelier campus. we are known for our writing programs. they are considered among the top in the country. a lot of viewers may know one of our alum, wally lamb.

students come every six months and we had a great gathering of writers. two or 300 of writers coming out at a time. they live in montpelier. they are in workshops together. when they are not here, they are working one-on-one with a faculty advisor on a novel, a book of poetry, and they are required to finish a book in order to graduate. the lakers, visual artists, it is about the idea that there are people all around us who are working individually in their fields, and they bring us together in the community. they are here together, they work together, they probably partied too much together, they are together all day long. at the end of this, being a writer and an artist is a combination of intense solitude.

the community is also important, and that is what happens right here in montpelier. we have a super close knit community. when i first moved here, someone said we have to be careful driving around on the backroads here. you might run into anomalous. they are all over the roads here. numbers of writers are all around. at one point there was a literary map to montpelier that showed you where the authors lived. the quintessential vermont novelist. we have a lot of important writers. howard frank mosher is a wonderful novelist in many ways. i think that there is a real court anger. it is one of those literary

cultures where people in the northeast part of the country, you probably have to go to brooklyn, new york, to get as close to this culture. people draw inspiration from the magnificent landscape that we have around us. particularly for writers, unlike a lot of places we are a web of small towns and a network of small towns. you rely on your neighbors and you learn how to work together to depend on each other. from that comes the heart of what makes this story. there are not many communities in america like that anymore, sadly. in the big sense of community that we are all in this together. we are an independent college, i

have a central daughter. this college is the hub of their lives. we grow readers from the time that they are little kids. we have all of the cultural things that you can have in a big city in a the town they really only have 8000 people. that is extraordinary. very unique. people matter, stories matter. institutions matter. i mean, the only reason to start a college is because you can do things that takes a group of people to do do that you can do by yourself. what we are doing on this campus is entirely unique. you have to go back to the 1930s or 1940s to find a place -- a small place on a hillside that has such a penchant for the arts. we are bringing the top writers and musicians and designers and filmmakers and we branch out

into dance and other areas. this is an essential gateway, if you will, for the larger culture. it is very exciting. it is what gets me up every day and makes me want to come to the school building. >> america ranks 29th in the speed of its internet. bolivia and ukraine are a bit ahead of us. if you buy one of these triple play packages, and i have one in my house committee paid on average $160. in france committee paid $38 american money and you get worldwide calling to 70 countries and you get worldwide television, that's just not domestic, and you get 10 times faster downloading speed.

and you are paying less than 25 cents on the dollar. all of these countries understand the fundamental principle in the 19th century canals and railroads. now, it is the information superhighway. author david cay johnston with his book "the fine print: how big companies use plain english to rob you blind." coming up on "after words" this weekend on c-span2's booktv. >> next, a portion from a recent symposium examining the historic role of invention and technology and electoral politics. focus has turned to the

machinery. the campaign advertisements, voting machines, and automated opinion polls. this was hosted for the study of invention in washington dc. it runs an hour and a half. [inaudible conversations] >> good evening, everybody. okay. thank you very much for joining us. it was touch and go for a while, but i'm really thankful it is happening and you were able to make it tonight. this is a kickoff tonight for our 2012 symposium. for innovation and technology of elections. since 1995, almost 20 years, we have dedicated the study the

role of invention and innovation play in the american experience and an american might. we do this in a variety of ways through exhibitions and for archival activities, documentation, publication, and public programs like this one. it is a culminating event of the year. our new perspectives on inventions and innovations symposium, exports the history of invention and innovation. some of you may have attended subjects as diverse as space travel, food, sustainable architecture, inventing for the environment, color, and electricity, not last or least. just a few days from election day, we are shifting focus away from the candidates. you have heard a lot about so

far, to view elections through the lens of technology and invention. examining technological developments from tv advertising in the 1950s to youtube and george gallup's door-to-door pollsters and 1930s, i remember reading about the ripples. anyway, george gallup stored in the door-to-door pollsters in the 1930s. we will talk more about that. machine opinion polls, they play a critical role in our democracy. when they do well, they make great progress. when they fail, they constitute key moments in american history.

just to let you know, tonight program is being recorded. i would like to congratulate and thank tonight's speaker, david schwartz, who went to heroic efforts to make it down from new york city. we are happy to have him here. [applause] >> it would have been as much fun without david. as well as many other scholars and practitioners who have come to share their expertise.

last but not least, i would like to thank the audience, you, the audience, for bringing your interest and insights to these activities. thank you again for coming this evening. i really urge you to come tomorrow as well for sessions on campaigning, polling, and voting. it cannot be more timely. as well as a chance to see some political artifacts from the museum's archives. our moderator will tell you more about tonight's program. joyce? [applause] >> i want to thank david for braving the northeast coast so we can be together tonight. we are in for a treat tonight. we are going to focus on the role of television in political campaigns and elections.

no doubt that inventions and mass communication technologies from newspaper and radio and television and the internet have had an important impact on the course of political campaigning. but because of their ubiquity popping up during our favorite television programs, tv has offered candidates a way to more people more often. television advertisements and occurrences have given candidates blasting taglines rethink of george bush and his thousand points of light or more in everyone's memory, read my lips. and president obama's change we can believe in. from that, there are actually great pieces of filmmaking. our speaker, david schwartz, probably knows more about the subject than anyone else. he is the chief curator at the museum in new york city where he

has worked since 1985. he has over seen the museum's pinewood dialogues, an ongoing series of conversations with creative characters in film and television. he is also the curator of the museum's website, "the living room candidate", that features more than 300 television commercials from every presidential election since 1952. having an expert like david schwartz guided through the techniques, the messages, and the effects of political television advertising will not only be fascinating, but it may also make us more critical viewers and voters. please help me welcome david. [applause] >> thank you so much. when i was first invited speaker, i was really excited

and honored to be invited to speak at the smithsonian. as it turned out today, i was mainly excited to go to my hotel room and turn on the lights and take a shower. [laughter] but it is great to be here. i am glad that all of you have chosen to be here. most people are running away from the political commercials, but you'll be seeing a lot of them. i would like to give you a flavor of what it's like if you happen to be living in ohio right now. we don't have a lot of time and i'm going to show you just a bit of a compressed video that is from a 30 minute newscast. this will show you what it's like if you happen to turn on the news these days in ohio. >> [inaudible]

>> [inaudible] >> [video being fast-forwarded] >> okay, so you get the idea. these are the parties and groups

spending about a billion dollars each. what we are going to do tonight is look at the history of how political advertising on television became so important. but there was a time when candidates did not campaign on television. i will just give you a taste of what it was like in 1948 when there was only television interview hundred thousand households in the country. if we could bring the sound down a little bit, i can talk a little bit louder over this. okay. so a few weeks before the 1948 election, the theaters around the country ran a film called dooley story. it was a biographical commercial made for thomas dewey. this ran in thousands of theaters around the country. this is a time when the attendance of movies every week was about 40 million people. that was the way to reach voters in 1948. the truman campaign complained about this film being shown.

so they got equal time and put together a commercial. about a nine minute film called the truman story. you can look at the film online, but it's a very effective biographical advertisement. beautifully done, much better than the dooley story. scholars who feel it was this film playing in the movie theaters in 1948 what might have played a important role in determining the outcome. the outcome of that election. i will not play the whole thing, but this was the last year or television became the mass media of choice in this country. in 1952 there were about 20 million households in the united states that had television. so what it was a way to reach a lot of people. ..

on tuesday nights at 10:30, turn on the tv and stevens have a jury speech. usually the right numbers for 30 minutes and then he would still be talking as a tv screen faded to black and nobody was watching. the ads are pretty catchy, so i'll give you a flavor for the

stevens azhar. is a threat the home. this is an archive of campaign ads that we add to add to a regular basis these days as we are in the midst of an election year. there's 300 to 400 commercials right again he starting in 1952. so we'll just see what it was like and 52. wow, this will give you a little flavor. this is that not actually done by the walt disney studio. i'll try a different one. the jersey to elegy. -- the joys of technology. okay, this work very well this

afternoon. so let's see what's going on. this is how my week has gone pretty much. okay, so i do have ads on a computer. if this is not going to work it will have to switch to a laptop, which will take a few minutes. but about there's a technical whiz who can figure this out. let me just try something else. okay. [inaudible] >> okay, we'll try that.

[inaudible] >> okay. okay, sorry about that. we'll do one more time. i have a bunch of gods. >> it should run direct from the one that you saved.

let's try one thing. [inaudible conversations] >> so will figure out what to do. i have about 20, 30 pic and show u.s. video files, which will do in a minute. i'll just talk a little bit about the site. the history of the site. we actually made to 92 at the museum -- my background is in film and i basically a film

curator, some programmer. an advertising person came to us with the idea of doing an exhibition of commercials. what we realized right away was what the commercials are our short films, the candidates basically is all the techniques of filmmaking. everything from costume describe to music to editing, making the same choices they filmic for users to convey a message. and it's really the one area in the campaign for a candidate cannot control of the message and decide that the messages. and that's why these ads are so important. you know, we see with the storm this week and things that happen in the world are sort of outside the control of the candidates. you don't know what's going to happen in the debate necessarily commit even though they are very station theatrical and predictable and of your control. it is a place for you concentrate your message into a very short elm in 30 seconds or

60 seconds. the early ads from the eisenhower campaign are 20 seconds long, said the eisenhower campaign spent about a million dollars in tv commercials that year. those considered a lot of money. but after the success of the eisenhower campaign, adlai stevenson decided he should do commercials, too. said the 196 election was a rematch of stevenson versus eisenhower and stephen and that's another sense that, every candidate has done tv ads. the importance of having a television personality became very important. so stevenson was kind of awkward on television. he didn't seem to enjoy being in front of the camera as opposed to john kennedy, who asserted bill for television. kennedy actually hired film

crews. he was so confident about its image in the way he projected himself that he hired a documentary film crew, even in the primaries. i'm one of the first way behind the is called primary. it follows kennedy and hubert humphrey during one of the primaries in the 1960 election. of course it's legendary about how good kennedy looked on television during the debates. so this whole idea of being comfortable in front of a camera became very, very important to the rest of television advertising. so at any rate, we decided to start collecting tv commercials. in 1992, we did an exhibit in the gallery. this is before the internet actually. would a tv monitor for every election year and a sofa and a laser disk player. and then it was actually eight years later in 2000 that we

decided this would be ideal for the internet. it was one of the first exhibitions online that is a lot of video. i was going to talk about how crude the broadband connection was. those are the days of dial-up. so in 2000 we started the site, people were on mainly dial up connections and would have trouble getting video to play. nowadays the blazing speed of broadband come you never run into problems. [laughter] there we go. okay, good segue. so let's bring the sound of. keep our fingers crossed and bring the sound up and play a little bit of this. ♪ on turn to

>> on turn ♪ ♪ ♪ >> now is the time for all good americans to come to the aid of their country. vote for eisenhower. >> so this is one of such common motifs that she start to see in ads. get the outsider who will come in and clean up washington. we see this repeatedly over and over again. candidate selling themselves without writers in the obama campaign in 2008. they talk about the root in

kansas. he came from the midwest. cu is also an an outsider and body changed someone who is an outsider, even though he was a young senator at the time is still present himself as an outsider. other campaign for jimmy carter coming to clean up washington. the peanut farmer from georgia. four years later you had ronald reagan who is going to clean up washington from jimmy carter and reagan was the outsider. citysearch a look at the different tiers, you realize what happens is the style changes. and as time capsules to really capture the flavor of the time. she start to see the same messages over and over again you thought you to give an equal time and show even though he didn't appear in commercials that year, he did have one attempt at a catchy jingle cycle. so if a piece of that.

you remember the obama girl from 2008. this is the original example. ♪ i'd rather have a man who knows what to do when he gets to be the prize. ♪ i love the governor of illinois. she is the guy that brings the job of peace and joy. ♪ the gop doublecross. he is the one who told all the perks, get lost. what she did for your own great day, you're going to do for the rest of the 48.

i have to keep things moving to make a first time now, but you can see all these have been around if you have a good connection. but we kind of laugh at these musical ads. at the beginning of the election, there were dueling musical ads as well. so i'll just show you. so first this was the ad that came out early campaign. [cheers and applause] ♪ >> i'm so in love with you. [cheers and applause] >> so to retaliate for that, the

obama campaign decided they need to do their music at companies in the other candidates singing. >> i'm barack obama and i approved this message. >> a beautiful, for spacious skies, for purple mountain majesty, above the fruit and playing. america, america, god shed his grace on the. and crown thy good with brotherhood -- >> that's pretty good actually. but i want to show you the kind of ad from the eisenhower campaign. one of the fun things about this site is the duty to jump around because there's so many times that has come out this year that remind me of some deny how to an

earlier election. but let's go back to 52. there is a series about scott eisenhower as america. there were 40 commercials found. cities are very very important commercials. >> eisenhower answers america. general, the democrats tell me never had it so good. >> cannot be true when prices have doubled and break our backs and we are still fighting in korea? it's tragic and it's time for a change. >> the time for a change is of course another line we keep hearing. the latest from the ads keep saying it's the time for that kind of change as opposed to four years ago. but the eisenhower ad were very simple. they are based on an terms of the content of the ads, there were 40 that focused on three things. it was get out of korea, clean

up washington, which was involved in all these scandals and corruption. and then lower the cost of living. the ads just hammered on these three ideas and it's an early example of the use of a sound bite. but that is what is happening in the substance of the commercial. but stylistically, these ads are selling as personality. he's the heroic figure. so the way he's filmed, the camera is looking up at him. it's a lower angle, looking up at him. the people he's talking to private cameras looking down at them. but the way the ads are edited together, looks like it's having a conversation. the way they film days is they took eisenhower to a studio in manhattan and he was reading off the scum you can probably tell he was reading off these big cue cards and he read all of the

answers first. they filmed both in one day. at some point later that night, after filming about 30 of these companies that it's kind of sad that it all generals come to this, stooping to this. he's kind of tired of the whole process. the next day the film crew and went out with kind of represent average people. they filmed the questions. the questions and answers are edited together to make it look like the candidate was talking directly to the voter. but the idea of selling eisenhower, selling his first analogy with the key break through in these commercials. so as i said, four years later, stevenson realized that he would have to come down from his perch and appear in tv commercials. but you can tell from the

beginning, i'll play 30 seconds or 40 seconds of it, did he really does enjoy the idea. >> the democratic national committee presents another visit with the man from libertyville. here are my farm about four miles from libertyville, as adlai stevenson of illinois. this is governor stevenson's living room cluttered up right now. a film crew has a right to take pictures for television. >> take one, track 43. >> now here's the governor. >> at least you can see what else is in this room beside the counter, lights over here, cables all over the floor. but you now, it's amazing how many things there are in television that you don't see. i confess i rather like it. it's wonderful. i'm sitting right here in my home library thanks to television. i contacted millions of people

and i couldn't reach any other way. but i'm not going to let this boil me. i'm not going to stop traveling in this campaign. i can't listen to you. i can't listen to problems about your hopes and your affairs. to do that, i've got to see you in person. and that's what i've been doing. for the past several years and i've traveled all of this country, hundreds of thousands of miles. i've been in every state, many more than once. i've met thousands of you and millions of you have seen me. not only in the great northwest, out here in oregon and washington and idaho, and montana and all the beautiful, wonderful, western region. >> ross perot in this chart to rats.

but anyway, he's given in to television, but clearly does not enjoy it. so jump to 1960, when stephenson talks about connecting with voters and we have the eisenhower answers america commercials come here and is john f. kennedy and a living room, and a real living room talking to them and he again had a documentary film crew following them around. figures just a little piece. >> recently, john f. kennedy visited the phils. >> is one of the great problems all american families are now facing and that is the great increase in the cost of living. >> our food, our cleaning of our clothing, buying at the closing, gas and electric and telephone bills have gone up. either your mac >> well, i'm very concerned with the future. we would like both of them to go

to college. >> one of the things that is increase the cost and this administration's reliance on high interest rate policy. and judgment is we have to try to do a better job in this field. >> yes, we can do better. but to do so, we must elect the man who cares about america's problems. we must elect john f. kennedy president. >> the nixon ads had a very different style. >> gentlemen, vice president of the united states, richard m. nixon. i want to talk to you for a moment about civil rights, equal rights for all her citizens. why must we vigorously defend them? first because it is right and just. and second, because we cannot compete successfully with communism if we fail to utilize completely the mines and energies of all of our citizens.

and third, the whole world is watching us. when we fail to grant equality to all comment that makes news, bad news for america over the world. now the record shows there's been more progress in civil rights in the past eight years and in the preceding 80 years because this administration has listed on making progress and i want to continue and speed up the progress. i want to help elevate better america for all americans. >> of course he looks a bit stiff in this setting, but this is part of the message of the campaign. the slogan for the kennedy lodge ticket was they and, said the idea was this was the experienced candidate would you want in a dangerous time. you don't want this young, brash senator from massachusetts. for the kennedy as all can conveyed the usefulness of energy in the nixon ads convey

the formality of. but clearly, kennedy is a more telegenic candidate. but all the commercials we've seen so far of 52, 56 campaign are straightforward. the cities to be called a hard sell. if a candidate talking right to the camera, selling themselves, saying that they had to say. it's her directive temple. the voter started to get bored with that technique. this is the around the time they start to be skepticism about the medium of television. newton and no, head of the fcc had his famous during the kennedy administration. there was an idea that television had to be more sophisticated. he had an ad agency called toil day and burn back, which actually became the model for the tv series not bad that so many people love. so this agency was a

cutting-edge agency. they get the votes likened campaign. they did a very modern sort of conceptual style advertising. we saw a really big change in the 64 campaign to a new style of advertising. so i'm going to just jump right into it and show you what really remains to be the greatest campaign commercial. a lot of you have seen it. it's done as a dizzy girl out called peace, little girl. this is a nod that may be the campaign commercial ever. it ran one time during the campaign as a paid ad. >> one, two, three, four, five, seven, six, eight, nine, nine --

>> 10, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, zero. these are the stakes, to make a world in which all of god's children can live her to go into the dark. we must either love each other or we must die. >> vote for president on november the her. the stakes are too high for you to stay home. >> kind of the ultimate attack at. if you vote for the other guy come what's great about the commercial businesses created by tony schwartz, a famous creator of advertising. he worked on a number of campaigns wrote a book called the responsive chord, which is all about how you need to tap into the imagination and emotions of a viewer and above

the viewer. it's really great about the ad if it doesn't never name barry goldwater by name. u.s. the voter assume this ad is about goldwater and goldwater can make statements during the campaign that he might support the use of nuclear weapons, tactical nuclear weapons in vietnam. of course in the convention at his famous speech reset extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. so goldwater had a reputation of somebody who could be even proudly a bit extreme. so this ad, which came out just a few months after the movie dr. strangelove. but roger little bit of that film, tapped into the fear that people had about nuclear war starting. this is all so just about a year away from the cuban missile crisis. so this tapped into what people were afraid of that either and is just a brilliant filmmaking.

examples of great filmmaking. here's just a simple juxtaposition of an innocent girl and a nuclear countdown, two different types of counting. actually, this is the first political ad that uses children and that's an important thing. i think one of the lessons we learn from looking at a lot of ads as the ones that really work are the ones that tap into an emotional response. when you use a child, you can invoke different emotions. you can evoke hope, fear, hope for the future. and so this ad evokes a very strong response. the had worked, and then should it only aired one time. the switchboard split up at the network when displayed. a lot of parents were calling in because their children were watching were scared. the goldwater campaign complained about this ad and then it became a news story the next night on the nightly news

under three different networks, all the networks replay this commercial come as a kind of giving free airtime to the johnson campaign. this was a campaign -- you know, these attack ads were part of the strategy of the johnson campaign this year. this is after the civil rights act was signed in to law. this was in the democrats really started to lose the south, when there was a lot of protest at a lot of people were against what johnson was doing. and so the campaign led by bill moyers is when of the important advisers on the campaign. he came up with a strategy of doing up with a strong, negative campaign against goldwater. they felt they needed to do that to win the election because otherwise it is not going to be an easy election for johnson. but this ad, as i said, i don't think it's ever been matched. it's what every campaign aspires to come up with, and abbott is

this effective. hillary clinton had an effective that in the last cycle, the 3:00 a.m. ad was a little grossly been a bad and it reminded me that it's a sad because because it evoked or fewer for this little girl about the horrible things in the world going on in his going to protect this little girl. the obama campaign ran their own version of that ad, of the 3:00 a.m. ad. we actually have in this website different types of ads. here's a whole series of bad to use children. you can look at this on your own. i'll just show you one, which is one of my favorite ads. it is an ad from the clinton reelection campaign in 1996 and it uses some of the techniques that are most affect it in ads. one of those techniques is using children as we just saw an example of. another one is a technique the recall backfire, where what you

do is you take a piece of footage of a candidate and use it again and to make them look bad. and we're seeing a lot of that this year. there's so many ads this year, the romney and obama ads take a snippet of footage in replay to try to predict who the opponent. but this ad does both things sinister effect is. >> an orthopedic surgeon. >> president clinton, creating opportunity for children. $10,000 of college tuition tax-deductible, making most community college is free. gingrich tried to cut scholarships. >> will dominate the department of education. >> president clinton, building a bridge to the 21st century. >> another good example. this is a decent film editing. these children that evoke all of our hopes and dreams and then cut the department of education,