window. >> host: one of the things i love about this is you have a dramatic moment it's about an ostensibly sort of dry subject of money that's coming up at the moment when the program was interrupted. >> guest: the key moment in any historical narrative there will be the moment people sit back and think my god this is what is happening. it was august 15 i think on a sunday it was one of those moments richard nixon appeared on national television and bonanza which is a great cowboy show, not really my type but maybe the viewers will remember and he interrupted to say we are not going to allow the dollar to be converted into gold and in many ways this is one of the most significant events and things to have happened in the history of money into was a very decisive moment where essentially he shot the gold window. that is what the term was where

people simply couldn't come into force knocks metaphorically and say here's a hundred dollars i want to get the gold value and that was as a consequence of the big bad problems the american federal government got into with its debt in the vietnam war and also pay for the great society and it just didn't work out. there was a deficit from a trade deficit and people were coming to change the dollars into gold associate decided to stop that is interesting enough, the training and the federal reserve was very skeptical about that and was an old-school balanced-budget kind of guy stopping the decoupling in that way. >> host: another moment later george in the house of commons. >> guest: the great thing

about the british public finance for the hundred years before the first world war essentially they ran a balanced-budget. it's difficult to imagine that amount but the whole of the victorian era -- >> host: stable interest rates. >> guest: stable interest rates and fiscal policy and what happened in the first world war all of that went to pieces. to defeat germany the parliament had to go through massive spending and he stands up and says this is an extraordinary thing we've done. we've given up billions where it had been hundreds of millions in the budget up to that point but so they borrowed huge amounts and the debt went up ten times if you can imagine more than ten times so 700 million to over 11 billion the house of commons went through because they would do whatever it took to defeat

germany. >> host: and the title is the sort of push and pull a fact and yukon template order and chaos. >> guest: order i think is represented by the gold standard or the commodity standard where you can see this is how much my dollar or pound is worth and it is linked to an external value. chaos and one of the arguments i put forward is when you don't have anything for the commodities or paper money and essentially you are at the mercy of the press to keep printing money and those are the opinions in the country more than any other that says that was a mistake we should get back to the gold standard and it's associated with people like ron paul but this is a problematic.

i'm not trying to write a good narrative to explain how we got to where we are but there is a force in the argument that we need something more structured than just the ability of the government to print money. >> host: from one pole and 81 the experiment that is an argument that is very resonant here in 2008 and 2012 and his son is probably going to run in 2016. do you think we should return -- >> guest: it's different in terms of how we can talk about that initially. the only way we can get back and i mention in the book is for the chinese essentially to decide how badly. they could institute the gold standard tomorrow and say it is going to equal x. amount of gold and they have enough reserves to back that. the only problem for them is they run the export model.

it would become a strong currency which would be the reverse of the export and the policy where they want to keep the value low said the exports are cheap and when we come by and essentially. that would be a complete reversal but in terms of introducing the gold standard they can do it because they have the reserves and one of the points i make about the gold standard is if you look at britain they largely guaranteed it and britain was running great exports and was the manufacturer of the world in the british goods were flooding is enjoy the global markets in america and the reserves that britain acquired meant that they could keep the gold standard. the british themselves never had that much gold but everyone sort of relied on the stability and the strength and for much of the 20th century the united states

ran surpluses. it's unbelievable to think that that until 1970 the u.s. was exporting more than it was importing. it was building up reserves and gold and other reserves and they guarantee that the gold standard after the war and the whole settlement was based on this value of the dollar. and that lasted from 44 to 1971 as we were talking about earlier. >> host: so you don't anticipate the chinese doing this because it wouldn't be in their interest. >> guest: given where they've come from the last 25 years they deliberately forced the currency to be lower and if you look at the 1980 i think that it was one and a half to the dollar and ten

over 20 years it went down as well as eight and a half and now it is six and a half but they had little value currency so they could drive exports so you are right to suggest that would be a complete reversal of how they've been building their economy through this export. >> host: so the return would be impractical. >> guest: i think it's impractical but what i'm saying is the current system is very vulnerable and explains what happened in 2008 and i talked about that. i mention the fact that many economists predicted this would happen when you have a system where you just have the currency backed essentially just pushing enter and renting money you will get a vulnerable system and that's something we have to

consider. >> host: what about an 2008 because years earlier your argument is that it wasn't just about 9/11 and more spending. >> guest: it wasn't that complicated that i was on the trading floor in 2001 jpmorgan. i was a banker and the first thing that happened was the index was down 10% and dow jones the same amount. the response was to lower interest rates. if they had been coming down all that year. they went down to 1% and this is really cheap money. my argument was that if you followed what happened as a consequence to such a low degree but happened is that people wanted t the search for a yield.

you are getting the treasury had 2% and a banker in the midwest you are thinking i need to get more than 2%. >> guest: that is absolutely right. it pushes 2%. i've got to get some interest rates. that's the phrase that was used commonly at the time and that drove a lot of the subprime lending to poor credit decisions in terms of expanding credit and giving people loans they could never afford to pay and that was what caused this instead of the and that's where the view is interesting because i found at the same thinthesame thing happd in the 1820s. there was south american so what happened is after the napoleonic wars 1815 and the defeat --

after that he went bac we went d and as a consequence of that government spending down what it was a low-interest rate environment and then again there was this search for the yield if we buy the uk government debt we are only going to get small interest rate so let's look for something that is going to give us more interest rates there was a search for the yield which ended up buying the government bonds paying 10% speculative stocks, all that kind of thing. >> host: how do we stabilize it and stop another? >> guest: the main thing that is missing from this and this is what people in the markets feel and generally feel there should be more leadership and international coordination. if you look at printing modes

that lasted for three weeks. there was preparation before that but essentially you have delegates from about 50 countries that came as a result in new hampshire and they decided wha with the internatiol architecture would be and that was a very responsible and effective that lasted from 44 to 71. in the current crisis we have sent enabled to reach that level of international cooperation that has been a lack of leadership or hacks. people are feeling less confident and there is less of an idea of what can be done and i think that that has come about in the last four or five years and one of the things about that is in a way that crisis can at the time global leadership in the u.s. the u.s. itself is running huge deficits which we can talk about later and the

u.s. has been burned by the overextension of the affairs for commitments. so the capacity of the u.s. to provide that kind of global leadership is much lower now than in the past case in 44 in the postwar. >> guest: i'm always a robust defender of the system. if you look at my hometown of london it was the center of international finance for 300 years arguably today. it's still in terms of the international banks and the time zone and the idea that the british politicians should -- bankers and close down the city of london. that's been a great strength of the british economy and that's what i would argue and i think it is borne out by the

historical record. >> host: in terms of the debt you have a fascinating chapter understanding the trail that what went after the window as the balanced budgets and it became almost maybe a fetish and in and of themselves and the getting to a lesser extent they talk up the talk of the fiscal responsibility but in the end of -- >> guest: he was a great figure. he had unparalleled communication so they could boil things down very simply so people could relate to them and of course his idea, he was very much a great metaphor about the government spending was that he related it to alcoholism and his father had been an alcoholic. if you look at the speech he keeps talking about how we have been on this massive binge and we have a terrible hangover me to sort ourselves out was the

metaphor that he used. when you look at the record throughout the 80s then yes, you are right because of the defense spending in the cold war there was this deficit and that was the time that people on the conservative side of the argument it here in america and focus on the tax cuts regardless of expenditure and my argument is that right through to the 60s the u.s. conservatives were balanced-budget people so what they did if you look at the korean war they were not reluctant to raise expenditure to cover or raise taxes to cover expenditure. so i think in the korean war the president went to congress and they paid for that because they wanted to balance the budget. and that was very much the old-school conservative approach in both eisenhower and truman

stuck with that and it was only in the 60s he started getting those deficits and in a way my argument is that the conservative movement in america wanted endless tax cuts because they would increase revenue but they didn't really focus on the expeditious side and i think if you're going to reduce taxes you have to try to reduce expenditures. it's a good reducing taxes hoping you get more money from that while keeping the expenditure rising. and this argument, this sort of supply-side argument and people like jack kemp in the late 70s and obviously very famously they focused on tax cuts. but in order to balance the budget coming you have to address the expenditure. you can't just balance the budget on the tax cuts alone. and even though i'm in an ideal world i would reduce the taxes and expenditure, the two have got to get together. >> host: george w. bush you describe him --

>> guest: he was present in a way because he was attacked from the left and the right because of his fiscal. if you look at the period from 2001 the u.s. started running deficits quite aggressively. and those deficits were compounded by the foreign affairs committee bush government went into and i think people on the left and the right, certainly on the right were saying what happened to this. you know, we are supposed to be the balanced budget and on the public expenditure. we want to reduce the federal government and its impact in the spending. but the spending is out of control. and it wasn't me. it was a lot of those from the think tanks, the heritage foundation and that sort of thing. they were criticizing bush for spending too much money. >> host: and that is one of the things that led to the tea

party movement. >> guest: it was a legitimate process in the cycle of the deficit expenditure and federal debt was going through the roof. the deficit was going through the roof. and you forget -- people forget in america the budget was balanced. certainly in my country the budget was balanced in the late 1990s. i remember when i started work in the late 19 '90s they were saying that it would be abolished because the government wasn't affirming any more money. so in 50 years we've gone through the complete reversal of the position. and i think in my book i argue that the bush administration had a part to play in that. >> host: during the clinton era -- >> guest: 2016. who knows about that. but if you just look at the numbers -- if you just look at where the budget was was quite a

responsible time in the sense that public expenditure rose a little bit but not as fast as it would subsequently because of the booming economy were increasing and the budget was largely balanced. a lot of the opponents would say that a lot of the problems with deep seeded in terms of entitlement and social security and that sort of thing. but the budget was balanced, and when he came to congress in 2001 if you read what he was saying it was extraordinary. we are going to abolish the national debt. but that was the environment in 2001. it growing at three to 4% of the public expenditure. >> host: that was based on

estimates that were not shared -- >> guest: they were not shared by everyone at the time but they speak as you mentioned of the glide path to busy road in 2001 as extraordinary given where we are now it is extraordinary that 15 years ago people actually thought that they would have abolished the natural and -- national and federal debt by 2016. >> host: what is your view of alan greenspan? >> guest: i look at what people do in their possibiliti possibilities. and one of the interesting things is they would suggest he took this approach managing the economy. it was a very improvised, and i

quote the people that worked with him. he responded very quickly to what the markets were doing. and the most important thing in the career very early on as the chairman of th the federal resee is essentially in his own mind saved the western world because of the crash of 87, the wall street crash -- >> guest: that's right. that was tricky at the time. very cheap money. lower interest rates and huge amounts of the quiddity into the system and he diverted the 29th style disaster. so once you do that early on in your career, if you are successful doing one policy very early on, the temptation is to keep repeating it is essentially what he did and now i would

argue by 2002 and 2003 and is stored in the problems as we talked about in the low interest rates and the search for the yield and the people sort of investing in the very high risk products to give ideals. and that is what created the instability. >> host: he comes across as a successive interventionist. >> guest: i think that he set up in 1987 and one thing you have to remember and the one lesson they learned from 1929 is an 29 the federal reserve of the authorities if you would like to didn't do enough and they contracted the money supply and all the rest of it. so within this liquidity, pumping liquidity into the system is very much that

responds from what they learned. >> host: was at the right response? >> guest: i think to do it as well enough he as they did was perhaps slightly risky. i think that they perhaps what some of the lessons in 29 made it worse by shrinking the money supply. they didn't need it to do that. and also in middle america. that is what people reall reallt cost about and we are still seeing the ramifications of th

that. it's kind of covert perhaps in the balanced budget, but now we have this sort of system where you have the currency of the approach managing it and these huge as you say you have to google to begin to comprehend. and i guess the average american -. >> guest:. the argument is in doubt whether we balanced the budget but how

quickly we get to balance. there's more of a consensus about that than people might realize. how you balance the budget and over what time frame these are political discussions all of that is very important, but i think that certainly if we are going to get back to stability over ten or 20 years i think a balanced budget approach is something that people are beginning to focus on even though the rhetoric might suggest otherwise which i follow in the budget and the rest of it. i don't think anyone is suggesting that. can you just imagine the book by paul ryan or anybody -- it's

going to bring back this idea of the balanced budget straight into the political mainstream. and i'm trying to show the balanced budget an and what made britain and america a very powerful country over the time of which they held the power in global affairs so i think it is very timely and important i tend attempt to be more hawkish on the public spending then perhaps some of my other colleagues but this is something that is definitely being talked about. >> host: and so broadly speaking in terms of simplistic terms of the public debate i mean is that a useful way of looking -- >> guest: that is a crazy way of looking at it. for the argument about growth which was first a very new argument in the context of the 500 years. and then in the 60s poster saying it was lyndon johnson,

jfk towards the end of his brief tragic tenure of the presidency they started saying we shouldn't worry about balancing the budget because if we run the deficit we will get more growth and therefore we will be able to balance the budget. so what do i do, i have a deficit. deficit. let me run the deficit more so i can get more money into pay off the deficit and the debt. and it is a secular argument and you didn't really hear it until the early 60s and that is the point i make in the book. about himself he realized the deficit spending was an exceptional thing. when there was a slump he said you could spend more money. he never dreamt of people running deficits year in and year out. and that really only came in the 60s and they adopted the secular argument saying we wouldn't deal with this because

we didn't have growth. so we need to run the deficit to get growth. it is a slightly crazy argument and you hear its not a lot of people like people on the left are very enamored of this argument but it's not a keynesian argument. but himself he grew up in the victorian era. the analogy is if you have kids, the victorian approach would be you can't watch television aft after. his view was okay you can watch two hours when you need to and now it's on overtime. so to invoke these deficits i

think is wrong because you've got to understand him and his historical context they balance the books and they balance the budget and that is what is in the case on china government and it is agreed by both sides the liberals as it was and the conservatives. >> host: you talk about china earlier. where is china and i was interested in the section you talk about some of the rhetoric from the republican politicians come and if romney in 2012, talking about naming and shaming china as a currency manipulator on the number one. and you talk about the economic nationalism. >> guest: the economic nationalism has always been a theme in america. people like pat buchanan who talk about this have been on the

fringes of the debate but if you look at the country that is a fact we can argue about whether it was the right thing or the wrong thing the fact is as someone described it to me the american industrial basis was built on the high tariff war. that is just what happens. and so they put the argument on the right that very much has been about the economic nationalism. and it's not just about economic nationalism but it is about having a level playing field. so if i'm exporting the cars into china i will have a 15% to get my goods into china whereas if i am a chinese exporter and you get a 15% subsidy. so, the trade argument is about equalizing that playing field.

>> guest: again these things are always more complicated. ronald reagan is the trade but i think it was a 30% share of. remember the japanese motorbikes are flooding america and harley-davidson was going bust and he just slapped a tariff on the japanese motorbikes and served the domestic industry. >> host: if china had been named and shamed in that way would that have just been basically the domestic populism? escalated it would have been into the problem is that there is a massive demand for these chinese goods and you cannot legislate against them. the naming and shaming, you could. this is the greenspan argument. if we propose that harris, the own china and malaysia and the southeast asia industrial base if you like what provided the goods anyway and wouldn't help

u.s. manufacturers. that was his argument but if you look where china started from and we mentioned this earlier in 1980 it was $1.5. over 20 years that went up to eight and a half. this was not just something that happened. it was an act of deliberate policy. the strength of the chinese compared it to ourselves in the west and britain and america if you like have a very long-term view. so american politicians were accused to veto accusing in the early 1990s bush won and said you are manipulating the currency you are driving the currency down to flood the markets. and of course it was the new president and a new cycle. they kept doing the same thing. >> guest: that is wha is why tro

outline the book with regards to their own currency which it is easy to forget this. but as late as the 880s and 85 or 86 or later than that, china was running a trade deficit if you could imagine that. they were importing more than they were exporting and i refer to those results in period that is saying they have a trade deficit. and you could argue that because the way that aed valued at the e trade deficit became a trade surplus which is renamed. >> host: you have got a sophisticated knowledge and experience of the united states is topically but you also spent a year at harvard -- >> guest: i spent a year in boston and cambridge massachusetts. in 96 and 97. so i kind of lived through a lot of the period as an interesting time to cause a lot of my

classmates, people that were my age were going through on very big salaries. this was just before the.com boom. they would go through all sorts of things and consumption, high end up living, all that kind of thing. so there is a kind of wild west period of the finance and of course that all came to a grinding halt certainly after 9/11 and it was a very long market. when the model burst and people forget that was a difficult time in the market. >> host: what strikes the big difference in the economic and political debate on either side of the idle? >> guest: i think people are much more conscious of the public spending idea. and i was amazed. i used to cover the debate and

look at the newspapers in britain at the time. >> host:. they were in the congressional debate in $300 million it sounds like a lot of money but it was up 1.6 trillion or 1.3 trillion this was very focused and very passionate and i think that level of the budget scrutiny doesn't quite exist perhaps in western europe. and the whole language and culture about the earmarks and those sort of terms these are terms that are used in europe. i think that we could have a more hawkish -- you could argue that the defenses -- it was a relevant because people talk about all this stuff but they

continue spending the money so you could argue that all of that was a scrutiny that didn't really amount to much, but i think that having the conscious. it comes from the people's work spent by the government and in europe it is more of an acceptance of the government spending. somehow the government spending its money. they didn't really make the connection. >> host: this is sort of our money. >> guest: absolutely right. so it is we the people on one side and the government that is extracting people through the taxation and then putting it away. that is a part of the kind of tea party view of life whereas in europe i think the europeans

and britiseuropeanand british pa slightly more benign view of government cost of that view means the role of the government spending money for us and there is that sense of this is my money. >> there is a much more -- that is a deep seated reason for that. if you look at the origins of the united states it was a revolt against the government into the taxation representati representation. so that is very much deep-seated in the american consciousness than it is in europe. >> host: in the big sort of political story in britain. what were the three or four party system in britain that we didn't have before? >> guest: it's interesting

that you raised tha raise that e have the european elections last week in which the fourth party f he liked the poll and that is the first time since 1986 in which neither conservative or labour, the two main parties have one of the nationwide election. a very significant. and we don't actually know where this will end up. the main reason is to try to get britain away from europe. but it is a much more wide cultural revolt as they feel out of touch and that it is elitist and doesn't connect ordinary people and lives in its own bubble and is very much drawn from the same type of person.

they were -- we are in washington now and westminster is much smaller than washington that they have the same sort of resonance. these are people that go to fancy restaurants. they wear fancy suits, they speak a language that we don't understand. they are completely cut off from their constituents, and essentially regardless of who is antiwar democrat oin power demo, the spending goes up and there is no responsibility or accountability in what you call me straight and it is a sort of popular insurgent aspect. he could drink a pint of beer in a way a politician with a journey more bear to do. and so it is very much the view

that these people are out of touch and that it is time for the direct action. and he calls his army the people's army, his troops, his party and that is very much on the hill saying they had enough. >> host: will it be about bringing them in -- >> guest: this is the question. i think and this is my own private view that they need to have some sort of accommodation at some point because it is very difficult given the parliamentary system how a conservative party can get an overall majority without a lot of those voters coming back because they generally are in the conservative disposition. i know that people argue about this but if you look at the

counselors into the activists, a lot of them have come from the conservative part. >> host: what we are seeing at the moment in the primary is that there is a lot of tea party challenges losing but the tea party idea is being brought -- the narrative has been about the establishment of the tea party but in a way a lot of the primaries in the republican party are fusion candidates. >> guest: they are not part of the conservative party. the tea party generally in the u.s. as far as i can see is within the republican party. they are fighting primaries within the republican party starting with the republican party whereas building other candidates in a separate party. the tea party could end up being i suppose they challenge her and

if that were the case that would be a serious problem because essentially in the contest in primaries and deciding on one candidate, you would have the democrats, the republicans and the kind of tea party representatives. you had that i think with ross perot. that was a similar situation in the third-party i think and that is very much the danger. >> host: we talked about the political class. >> guest: i'm a writer and historian. and i think it is quite unhealthy to have professional politicians. i can see why they called, the i think you need to have politicians with a wide perspective and that was always a great strength in the house of commons. the house of commons withdrew

people in backgrounds in many ways and so you have the workers in the mid-20 century, you have people that winston churchill, quite eccentric characters and people from different walks of life and different professions. and i think that added to the sort of diversity and a variety. you didn't just hear the same voices. people are more specialized and there is a huge culture of being a special adviser in the american case working on the hill and i think that has sort of brand its own kind of got its own momentum. >> host: the three party leaders in britain are always undulate especially politicians -- >> guest: if you look at them this is the fact. they were all born within three years of each other between 1966 and 1969. exactly the same age. they went to oxford or cambridge and they all were driven out of the universities and worked in

politics. and that is a fact. if he went to a private school but he didn't go to the university and he doesn't have a degree. so he can see what i'm not like these guys. i work as a commodity trader and i've done this. that may be false. he's been a politician as long as i can remember. but he has a sort of grain of truth and people who are angry are not looking for a friend that sort of truth. they are not looking to analyze all of the seconds. they just want a story and his story is quite convincing. >> host: i'm very struck that the sort of obsession in a way in britain with class and schooling and you your self --

>> guest: my parents were immigrants of part of the old british empire so my first book was about the entire. so i have an unusual relationship with the british insofar as my parents are immigrants that came to britain in the 60s. i was brought up in london but then i went through these elite institutions at cambridge university. and so, i kind of got both sid sides. my parents were very much from the old colonial empire. it's a very common name in britain and so i could see sort of both sides if you like. but i think with that double hat i would say there was a problem i think. there is potentially a problem in the more marginal backgrounds

in as a political class we open ourselves up for active in politics and not just in britain but in america it should be more open and a much easier way to the representatives of themselves. but the nature of the media and the nature of the modern communications and modern life if you like you have to decide that a relatively young age and that creates this. >> host: is it three books that you have written? >> guest: code written. >> host: even so how do you manage to write something as wide ranging?

>> guest: the smartest thing anybody said was sexually winston churchill. it's like building a house. you have to work out how many flaws and workout with the external structure of the house is and how many rooms and bedrooms before you worry about -- >> host: and churchill actually build houses. >> guest: you have to work out the structure before you work out your, how your sofa is going to appear or with a patio. you have to look at the structure and once you have a structure withi, then the secong about writing the book is if you want to eat an elephant you have to chop it up into little pieces. so once you've got the house then you have to take a granular approach. in a book like that people think you rustle it out of the air. when i was thinking about it even before -- >> host: with your phd was an economic --

>> guest: at cambridge university i've done quite a bit here and when i spent my year away abroad in boston bees have been evil thing for quite a while. in the african continent by home country was the gulf coast so there was always a sort of interest. and looking at politics in terms of the finance and the bank for eight or nine years and all of that came together very gradually it took a very gradual approach in writing the book because when the book appeared happy to do that it must have taken you three months but actually it takes a much larger time. >> host: have you received a certain number of hours at a? >> guest: there are certain moments in the week. monday mornings are quite good. saturday afternoons are good. and then in the recess i try to allocate a bit of time. and then you just do steady as you go.

and then if you have an idea of what sort of book you want to write you can actually get there. the danger is you need to keep to the structure and you need a plan otherwise it is impossible given the pressures and the constraints that you have to itt the time you spend in the constituency. my name is quite -- in the international archives because we are interested in the family history and, you know, it is a hobby. people have hobbies. it's not something that i see as work. although extremely relevant. >> host: it's something a lot of politicians like. >> guest: it is absolutely the key to understanding the modern politics. iyou would be condemned to make

the same mistakes. and i think that is true. >> host: i said at the beginning this isn't a politician's book. it's not a permanent -- you are not judgmental. >> guest: history and understanding history is more of a medium to long-term thing than trying to get appointments week by week. but i think in the long run you have to set out what your beliefs are and where you are coming from in your kind of intellectual land if you like. and i think that has got to help a career in the end. and certainly in britain it's been quite a big connection between understanding history and politics. we've had a long tradition in politics and politicians

throughout history. he wrote a lot of history throughout his career. and if he were on the show he wrote the history of the first. other people like jenkins was a writer and a foreign secretary that ithat has written excellent biographies of british politicians. it's something that is quite connected in britain, the link between history and politics. and i think that is quite healthy actually. >> host: there is a great quote in there that says politicians do not have the lecture he of expressing doubt. but you used the word nuance. are there other things that surprise you that you studied that changed your view?

>> guest: if you look at this ideal of government spending i was amazed that we were living in the completely uncharted territory. there was a gold standard in the 60s that people kind of challenge to britain and america and challenged this idea that we have to balance the budget every year. for this idea that we are running the continued deficits or we have a paper record and see if money is quite new. this wasn't something that happened before 91. and certainly after 1971, you know, the extent to which we were spending more money wasn't as pronounced as it is today. the bailouts. >> host: but it doesn't have to be that way. more than ten years ago i think i first heard it in 2012 that phrase and then it became a kind of received sort of phrase that

you would think that existed but it didn't. it was new and the extent to which today how today's circumstances are relatively new was something that struck me. >> host: [inaudible] you are being floated. >> guest: britain is touted as the british which given it isn't something that one would necessarily aspire to be that we have to get through the election. i'm not going to hold my seat which i hope to do. the majorities can come and go and i think you keep saying that something that i have to keep an eye on. but see where we are after 2015. the whole political sort of

career debate in terms of where people are doing is dependent on the party's success. and i'm hoping that the conservative party will win resoundingly and then my career will go in a different direction. if we are out, who knows what will happen. >> host: you have another book -- >> guest: i am trying a few things. margaret thatcher is a key figure in the book. ..

>> at. >> i liked her style of politics. of the fact that she's stuck to her guns and then i and

not a consensus politician. if you5fg want the compromise then vote for someone else. there is something very attractive about that. and to trim their sails to whatever whim is passing? made the principal and clear convictions the danger is people may not like that. >> but there areç certain ways and i mention reagan and that was very attractive at that time and. >>. >> something about of leadership style but i am

looking forward to that's. >> they give for being on after words.

>> onto the reason why you are all here. plea is what the empty night to discuss her new biography of a saudi writer e.r. public -- a player with the that they know her better than ever. and that should entail the us telluride story is clearly benefits from her access to sally ride's a family and friends of cooperation and research and denies anecdotes' it to share. and of course, as a longtime journalist with abc news were she covered a variety of topics so we are glad

that she is here with us tonight we'll start off with the quick video but please first to agree to welcome her to politics & prose. [applause] >> for all of my abc friends this was sent by the publisher. i am pleased the way it turns out. it is just five minutes long. ♪ this is a lynn sherr that this is history in five vital to you five things about sally ride, america's first woman in space" on july 20th, 19609 neil armstrong became the first man to put his foot print

into lunar soil. a teenager back on earth was among the billions watching closely that night but had no idea that she too would also make cosmic history. ♪ sally was a baby boomer born 1951 and the valley girl and a ranked junior tennis player after his offer year in college to realize she did not have what it took is she joked what kept her from turning professional was her forehead. she was fascinated by scientists and specifically astrophysics of astronomy. she was blessed with parents and teachersóqq who encouraged her scientific --

♪ issue was blessed with parents did teachers said the high school that anchors a scientific passion and confided in her best friend she wanted to be famous by winning the nobel prize. she never considered a career as a nasa because she's in think women wed ever be eligible but only in 1977 when nasa spread a wide net that sally was interested. >> so that means of a bite to be the first woman up but i don't have any great desire to be the first woman. sally was not the firstç woman in space in 1963 and

another in 1980 to. but 1978 she was one of the first six women chosen to train as a nasa astronaut. >> data outlined people asking me if i do any of the of cooking on orbit six she is on this crew because she is well qualified to be here. civic she and her colleagues trayvon exactly the same as the men to parasail, a practicing parachute landings issue was hawked on flying. >> nothing of a rather be do we right now. i want to fly as many times as they will let me fly. >> she spent four years of trading nasa selected her to read the first american woman to fly. >> i do feel there is some

pressure, not to mess"?ñ up. the hoopla surrounding the flyer made her an instant celebrity. >> if there is of a glitch or whenever how did you respond? what to do -- to do you do? >> why doesn't anybody asked rick? [laughter] ten, nine, eight, seven, six , five, four, three, stemming she was 321983 when she lifted off the challenger. liftoff and america's first and when astronauts. >> sally felt the immense power of the rockets pushing

of her off the earth and half of the people lined to chant ride sally ride. ♪ç it then she floated its route theñiñi]- cabin when they reach orbit. during the seven day flight she took in the view from the of window. >> to put on the pressures you to step outside and have the universe out in front of you. >> the issue was especially riveted by the blue line of earth's atmosphere. she was later say that is all there was it is clear how fragile our existence is. that is all there was. ♪ >> sally ride was my friend over 30 years by all they learned about her by writing his biography. issue was the fiercely

private individual who avoided public appearances when she couldn't always preferred the company of one or two people to a crowd. she was a compartmentalized of who controlled the narrative of rural life. in the era when homosexuality was not widely accepted she kept her sexual orientation private brad now says she was married to a fellow astronauts that lasted five years theníct she entered a relationship with another woman in for more than a quarter-century. she would never talk about her life with them or kimmel publicly but wholly supported kim's decision to reveal their partnership from her death of pancreatic cancer in 2012. who was sally ride? a space traveler who saw herself as an educator, a middle school girl to feel the excitement she had felt

in no challenge matched the thrill to watch renner on fire in the young girl's braid when she learned about science. she was especially intrigued of the possibilities of the planet mars and told children they would set foot there. it might be one of you and that would be cool. very cool. >> i was very honored that nasa chose me to be the first woman and people realize that women in this country can do any job that they want to do. ♪ >> i hope you all are aware that this past week the 31st to anniversary of sally's plight.

so we are celebrating an anniversary which is veryç exciting and thank you all for being here and all my abc friends. my goodness so many people are here. thank you for coming in and allowed me to tell you more about this terrific woman with somebody who was my friend. that is of little bit about sally. i will tell you that her name is now attached to important things and several schools around the country come impact crater on the moon, and out of space and a research vessel and for the things that saudi would see up in the sky. posthumously was awarded the presidential medal of freedom by president of what -- obama event played

yourself in the episode touched by the japan throughout the first pitch at a world series game. she was routinely big to run for any office and asked to be the nasa administrator and turned them all down and she was too private to take such a public job. plus schaede grew up and lived most of her life in southern california in the perfect climate and when one of her nasa colleagues said to her during the change of administration would it get you to take the job of nasa administrator? she said if they moved it to california. she was funny and mischievous and my friend. real real name was sally ride. how does that happen? but she was not not the inspiration of the song and

she actually said she ran from the song her entire life. but were any of you at the launch or there at the time or covering it with me? the songs that you heard was right to sell a ride my favorite sign was from this trip in cocoa beach that had a huge marquee that said ride sally ride and you guys can tag along to. [laughter] >> much more to her liking was to be acknowledged in billy joel where he said we didn't start the fire. where he picks historic figures were moments to celebrate his own birthday she came between "wheel of fortune" and heavy-metal suicide. the song shot to the top is she heard on the radio for

the first time and a near they drove off the cliff. billy jean king was a good friend of hers told me thati÷ billie jean also hurting for the first time on the radio endeavor time she heard the radio she still turns up the volume so she can catch sally's name. i do to. so why the tribute and a love fuss about this woman? i want to start with a cartoon when she died two years ago at the age of 61 from pancreatic cancer there were many of political cartoons paying tribute to her aunt most will show a consolation in the sky of her initials or the woman's simple but this is the one that i really like to. it is a teenage girl's bedroom and on the wall are pictures of rocket ships and the space shuttle and on the shelves are six and astrophysics textbooks it is

surprisingly neat and she sits there with her ponytail looking at the tv monitor and on the tv computer monitor excuse me is the salary right obituary. and standing right behind her is her mom in the genes and the girl says wait. are you saying there was a time when there weren't any women astronauts? yes indeed. this is what her story is about. this is what she is about she did not grow with faster not dreams she wanted to be a scientist says she thought she would be a tennis player then right back to science totally committed to being a scientist for about one day

she went to stanford and cover undergraduate her master's and ph.d. at stanford in astrophysics. january 1977 she finishes her last year of her phdç thesis to go),j to class and sits down to pick up the copy of the stanford daily and they're is an article with the big headline that says nasa to recruit women. sally reed's the article and sees the requirements for a mission specialist and says i could do that. she puts down the paper paper, goes into the next room and fines paper, a pen and an envelope and a stamp and a sense of to nasa for an application immediately.

she was dead set on being an academic. should total they knew what she would do for the rest of her life. said it turns on the diamond changes are live. 25,000 people also sent in for that application. a little over 8,000 applied and 1600 were women and sally was chosen one year later with 34 others, the first-class chosen just for this space shuttle program. what was so unusual is for the first time nasa was not only willing to allow women and priorities into the program but they actually reached out for them. in the beginning of the space program was about mid coming into white men who were very smart and did

miraculous things but for the most part they have military backgrounds. mostly because president eisenhower said in response to sputnik if we're going to do a space program we want to fast track in it and get individuals who already have training and know-how to fly jets and you understand danger in there already vetted for security reasons. there is noç reason women could not have flown in theç early flights but they co[ to doi1m it the other ways of for the first quarter century that is what it was. after the last man left the moon we had skylab, the program with the soviets but

not intel the space shuttle with a different type of spacecraft to reach out for more individuals the reason was like a plane only much better john glenn used to joke he would not get into this space capsule you would plates and on. [laughter] now we have the space plane to handle cruz so they're looking for more individuals and also women and minorities because they want to add scientist in this is where sally gets her chance. now she is chosen to be an astronaut. this is quite amazing. shrewish very private and an introvert than on the psychology scale on -- she

was one and to present on the introvert side and did not react much to anything and was cool under pressure but when she got the call 1978 that she made it she jumped up and down screaming and was so excited called her best friend and said want to win the nobel prize she says hi there. this is your friendly local astronauts calling. [laughter] her parents share the glory. her father who taught political science and a community college being an astronaut just of my dad's problems. when i said i would be an astrophysicist he had no clue to explain what you hear is -- what i did to his

friends now as an astronaut he knows. another thought with her sister setting for the/jn ministry and sally going into space will one of them will get to heaven. [laughter] but before she got there that's been elevated to the astronaut corps meant facing a press corps with very little imagination. januaryç 1978 to russian women had flown now there are six women being named to the astronaut corps. she is an academic out at stanford goes to her breasts like gesture first press conference. and are you afraid to be in orbit with all those men? to expect to run into any ufos? she calmly answered no and assure them that her

academic career had made her very comfortable around males. the first met her 1981 when abc asked me to join the team covering the space shuttle program and those of you remember we had an anchor man and the sciences and correspondent it but they wanted someone else and i described my edition and i was the color guy in the of baseball boost to do the stories from the sidelines i ended up tinkering everything and tell the challenger explosion in debt was a great to seidman but my first assignment to the johnson space center was to

do a story on the new breed of astronauts. but then we headed off instantly. i'd like to her manner, a sense of humor, and the fact she spoke english and not techno talk the issue30y would not be there if not for the women's movement and did not do this alone. and she was proud of that. i also asked her why you want to go into space? i was expecting a cocky response but she said i don't know. i've discovered half the people was the love to go into space there is no need to explain the tea other half could not understand but if someone does not know

why cannot explain provide that that was refreshing amount the fraternity of white butter pie the jocks. we spent time together and bonded over cold shrimp around the johnson space center including one that always promised mud wrestling that we managed to avoid. when she married she got her big chance five years later after she got to nasa and i think she was the right choice any one of the six women would have done us proud. i adducing she was the right choice for a variety of reasons daring, optimist, a

trained endlessly. did it did culminate in this single dumbest question ever asked any where. i have been to a lot it was asked by a fellow from "time" magazine that the final preflight press conference said what happens when there is a problem? to do you weep? there was i gasped there was a lot of five ball rolling. but what is extraordinary is how she responded. she did not go for his size she laughed and smiled and it turns to rick who was the pilot of the crew and said

why doesn't anybody ever asked rick these things? i assure nasa was high finding themselves in the back.)m in the you ever wish you were a boy? she gritted her teeth. i saw the video and said i have never thought about it. end when she was chosen she had to make decision is like what kinds of things would go in the personal toiletries kit. she was smart enough to immediately bringç to say we're doing this as a group that any decision and schaede would go to the next person said they managed to get the old spice after shave lotion and the sterling deodorants replaced

also to add what only nasa could refer to as here restraints but we call them robert vance. with the original launch date was moved back to accommodate the schedule change johnny carson joked that the space shuttle had been delayed so sally ride could get papers to match her shoes bryce screened all of the jokes over that period and only got worse. weber off all but i am happy to tell you the audience over time ignored him and then started to boo him. the idea to go from a punch line to national pride and the entire nation was riding with her when she lifted off

june 83. i got my one-on-one interview and i asked to do you feel under any special pressure because you are the first american woman? she said yes right feel the pressure not to mess up. shipments for her crew any mission is a group effort a team event and wanted to do well. she wanted to do -- to do mission, the united states for the future of human spaceflight but over all she wanted to do well for women because she understood she messed up that it would be said noblemen could ever fly again in sheikh understood there she did well that would open the door.çç

listeningw3çóñ$u)rj comment from the leader generation who not only flew but also commanded the space shuttle. she says it was not until after i became master not i discover the most important gift sally gave me that she was tremendously competent. the reputation of everyone who comes after you depends on how well you do. she open those doors because she was very good at what she did. but that is the secret why this mission was so important and why the choice was so critical. she was also not only could but playful. the night before the launch her picture was on every magazine cover the most famous person on the planet, every reporter at kennedy space center wanted

to see her and interview are put in quarantine for a couple of days before they fly so we don't give them any straight terms everybody wanted to know that there was a lead on the whole thing. i am sitting in the workspace which was the trailer working on my script and the phone rings. i pick up the phone and a voice says hi there. would be doing in five minutes? i said i don't know sally she said to turn left and go down the gravel path. there she was in cutoffs of a t-shirt and flip-flops' and waving at me.g4t she was pushing the envelope

because the rules were no contact with the press and she understood she could do things her way without breaking the rules and also wanted me to see she was smiling and happy to give me something to report that she was doing very well thank you very much. this is how i remember her best. they had a absolutely perfect flight and one of my stand up closes that i said to ecologically schaede asset pushes to the 21st century but in human terms it has finally entered the 20th. i did have a littleç trouble to get that through. [laughter] i also took my mother to is a one-two was pushing 80 years old and lived in

afterwards she said it was perfect case of the horse and buggy and the airplane and now this. i felt really good. and it landed in california president reagan telephoned his congratulations and said sometimes the best man for a job is a woman bayou were the best one better because you were the best but some of they translated their own journey into success and if she can to is that i can do anything. whether getting into medical school or whatever, but this will print the door for a lot of women. sally had a wonderful time and worked very hard but when things got a little

slow she would drift over to the window to look back at earth and that image was the earth's atmosphere changed her life. it was as if somebody took a royal blue crayon5÷ and had drawn a line around the earth. sometimes she would say that line is as thin as the fuzz on a tennis ball or the purse space to. the only thing that protects us from the harsh reality of the outer space without that none of us would be here. we could not survive and that is when she began to understand the fragility of the planet that we live on in directed a huge amount of her life towards getting science and the government and children interested to do something about protecting the earth. that was the beginning of her contributions to the

planet and a nasa after the challenger explosion she served on the rogers commission that investigated that and became the source source, i did not know this this, in early source of the critical revelations about the overriding and the contribution to use the accident and the flawed management decisions made. nasa is essentially shut down to reconfigure the program sally moved to washington where she undertook a major study to you to german the future of the space agency where she recommended first mission to planet earth to treat terrorists as an exotic planet the way below cat mars and venus and expanding some of the vast energy and wisdom to fix what is going on here but at the same time

going other places. for the years she served another commissions and also on the investigative commission when the columbia disintegrated on its reentry to earth into thousand three. view of the shuttle astronauts to serve on both commissions and made a huge contribution to that one also. she was the face and then became the conscience and really cared about the agency and wanted to fix it and later aftera6 she left an asset she worked with them on many projects. she got them to put a camera in space on the shuttle and then the space station and hooked it did with the kids' classrooms so youngsters could sit in the classroom to take pictures of parts of the earth they wanted to study. then when somebody was

sending of satellites sally put a camera on those satellites to you get kids in school to take pictures of the noone. she was always getting back with the kids. that is what she was building up to. being first was fine but she wanted to awaken the young female mind to the wonder of science that captivated her. she wanted to inspire the next generation of astra's sanded to deers and mathematicians to teach them if you are a curlicue can do anything. a and she wanted them to see beyond the stereotypes with a for-profit company pitches that would be the way to attract the most talent and said over and over we need to make science cool again so they started a company called sally ride a science

with the sole purpose to get middle schoolç girls interested in math and science and technology to get them committed. that is the woman that i knew she would stay with the a new york can slay dragons during said day and at night she would be on the couch watching television. a superb compartmentalize they're able to focus like a laser that she could focus through whistling mr. paige also told reporters she would go home at night in mark - - jan flip the switch called oblivious.j says things that i did not

know about her but she was very private. capped zero lot of things i did not know she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and only had 17 months to live and die did not know she was living with p.m. and this was a woman who really did perfervid to be a by herself or with one friend and made tens of thousands of speeches and had to cite her self up but she understood it was a government agency and public relations is part of the giveback and she just did it. and in the course of this with colleagues and friends i learnt i learned things but i found the same extraordinary woman i had

known. she was of california girl. to pull into public service and academic to explain raindrops in weightlessness to little girls. she was lucky with her parentsç herç father was a purqémóñçóñi heart in world wari as an eisenhower republican her mother was a lefty and blood into her vote canceled out her husband's every single time. [laughter] both believe in education in. when sputnik went up she benefited from that. i was in high school.

and then to see this go around that started the space race to turn on the radio ppp. schaede benefit it -- not plan her life far in nutrients and when opportunity knocked she was ready to open the door. i told her what she did in stand for that day when she read the article that she could change her career plans like that and that was a great lesson. the it sally took a different moral of the of messages read your college newspaper. [laughter] she did it with a smile when she returned from the first flight, she flew twice after all the work she said the

thing i will remember most is that it was fun in fact, the most fun i will ever have in my life. she was 32. but years later she elaborated facing an auditorium filled with 1,000 youngsters and say imagine this in space you could do 35 somersaults in a row. my favorite thing about space was being weightless not even a close second in every face wed be huge in their little sign up. she was 5-foot 5 inches but could intimidate the best as one colleague put it after you left your presence you realize she was rarely short but the ability to be bigger than you are. a child of the eisenhower years inspired from kennedy and marched under nixon

always capturing and challenging the mood of our times to change our world. flying in space was not her childhood cool or commit but aftmr twice she cherished the adventure. i actually called i have learned to because she taught me how to fly high without leaving your ears. her life reminds us would ever our own personal limits there is always something of their grander than we can measure or imagination just waiting to be, she proved you don't need the right plumbing to have the right stuff and in any field or in any endeavor. and after smashing through the ultimate glass ceiling without messing up, her term, she brought back yeltsin the lesson, asked over and over what did you see? incidentally her an

undergraduate degree she had a double major in english jay was a shakespearean. so when asked she translated that dazzling reality she sought out there. what did she see? i will repeat the words, the stars still look bigger but they do look brighter. exactly the message you want to hear from the first american woman in space as an optimist, a son a person who can make us all believe that this is a wonderful way to live our lives. think you very much. [applause] >> we do have time left for questions. please come to the audience

microphone. >> i apologize for almost a changing the subject but i am curious about the soviet women that we kind of lost track nobody has written anything? >> a the question is about the two women at the cosmonauts. we don't know a huge amount to about them one in particular, her flight was really knew nothing about it and said she did not do a very good job. but that has been proven in

to be false but this was not the soviet union suddenly making a stand on behalfç of women because it nine other food again for almost 20 years. we know more about the other and there is a wonderful story i tell in the book that after sally's flight is on the post flight publicity to work and to they go to budapest for international aeronautics federation meeting. remember the korean air lines jet shot down by the russians in 1983? this was right after that and the state department said no fraternizing with the enemy. the cold war enemy was behaving very badly