of affordable jewish education in this country. i think this is the heart, if there is a future in the jewish community. i don't expect israel to send shekels to fund jewish-american schools but for instance if we would have some sort of jewish peace corps that is going around and sending our youngsters to help with the jewish schools or jewish summer camps and a million ideas. my fear is of internal jewish isolations. i don't want your community to turn its back on israel and they don't want israel to turn its back on you. i want you to do whatever. do your thing. whatever part of israel you have a right to work with but i want israel to work with you. i think the problem there is that we have to do as much deeper. i see it is my role and is my

hope this book is to launch a new, -- conversation about israel but when i go back there it's my duty to try to launch a new diaspora of discussion within israel. this is the last question and i would end with the following. i prescribe what i so much believe in which is the energy of a retaliated society in every respect that our role in their mission is to take a vitality and move it to the political sphere so we will have a much more effective government, much more effective policy. it's not enough that there is great individuals and a great society and great startup companies. we have to take that vitality, transform our system and our state and reach out to you people so we can have a meaningful dialogue because we really need it and it can actually be a real celebration. thank you. [applause] >> scott anderson and ari thank

you very much. >> we do have books available for sale outside and authors will be available across the hall to sign them for you. thank you. [inaudible conversations] this program was part of the book fair international. to find out more visit miamibookfair.com. we. to introduce do you john who is the coauthor of the book "the gamble." why the gamble? >> well, there are three aspect. the first was the democrats gamble on an incumbent who is running in conditions that weren't exactly a slam deng for the democratic party. there was an even bigger gamble that republicans took to look

for romney and trying to do something. it's rarely done comp is to unseat an incumbent president. and take new gamble in the sense there is a lot of satisfaction with the direction of the country and they were taking a gamble on which president can make it better. >> could the president -- could the republicans have improved their gamble with a different candidate? >> not among the candidates that ran in 2012. i think in many respects, romney was the most delightful of that the group. the republican party the challenge it sometimes faces from the conservative wing of the party. they tend to nominate a relative moderate and people, i think, are ultimately among the most electable candidates. >> is there a republican perhaps could have got anyone to the race in 2012 and done better than romney? absolutely. that's possible.

that's a pretty different reality than the one we had. i wouldn't want to make any definitive speculations about who it would have been. >> you use the word "chance" in your subtitle. why? >> a lot of presidential are outside the candidate's control. and in some sense are decided by chance. whether the economy grew and how much it grew is not something barack obama or romney could have controlled. it was something with important implications for who was going win. >> what is your day job? >> i'm a political scientist at george washington university. >> so if people pick up "the gamble ." what will they find that is different than yours? >> we think of our approach a little bit like the money ball approach in baseball. it's the one that says you're going learn a lot using hard data to measure what the candidates did, what the voters love, and what ended up

mattering at the end of the day. one of the things we like to say you can read some excellent books by journalists about the campaign. they will tell you why the campaigns did what they did. then you can read our book and find out whether those decisions made any difference at the end of the day. >> well, professor, we're talking to you in 2013 at the end of 2013. is it can too early to be focused on 2016? >> absolutely not. one of the most important things that happened well before an election year even began as the candidates are out there trying to build support within the party. trying to figure out can they corral donors, can they corral endorsement? can they build up that once the primary starts they're almost, you know, preordained to win. when the candidates make the trips to iowa, you know, this is just -- it's not for show. it's real w