criminals. they are fundamental in terms of giving voters more voices and choices. that means lower ballot access barriers. we have the highest ballot access barriers the world. it means more choice and more voice for voters and if we give ballot, we are irrevocably giving voters more rights to have the choices of both agendad and candidates. now, those are pretty important areas. and there are more areas of convergence between left and right. this book is for serious people who read, think, and are very serious about our country's future, and its place in the world.

and some wii satirist might say you can get all those people in one room. i disagree. i think basically the left-right convergence operates at various stages from inception to victory, depending ton the issues. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> charles johnson is up next on book of the. he spoke about his book, why coolidge matters, leadership lessons from america's most underrated president at the eagle forum leadership summit here in washington, dc. this is half an hour. >> charles johnson and his new book is called "why coolidge matters: leadership lessons from america's most underrated president." charles is an investigative

journalist and author, and a former contributor to the daily caller. he has just launched, got news.com last week and he spent a lot of time talking about that mississippi race. he hays written for "the wall street journal," the "new york post," american spectator, and national review online and the weekly standard. charles john on's work composing corruption and fraud in elections, government, and federal policy has placed him on several national shows and networks as well as numerous talk radio programs, including a -- just listening to a news conference this morning that he was pretty exciting. so, please welcome charles johnson. [applause] >> thank you so much for having me. i know that there's a lot of questions on mississippi. we can get to those. i know a lot of people 0 who potentially don't like me because of things i've twiced and we -- tweeted and we can get into that.

there's establishment people and nonestablishment people. but for the moment, because i've been asked to speak about this and because it's awesome, i'm talking bit my book "why coolidge matters." you might ask, which a lot of people why, i would would somebody in to 20's write a book about the last red-headed president and why around somebody who was around in the 20s. there's this other coolidge book, where the certain perspective on coolidge. i have a different one which is that calvin coolidge -- by the way, this book is one of three endorsed by ted cruz i hope might be another president in the near future. the basic argument of this book is that history matters and they're so much about our history that we -- those on the right know that this is sew, as reagan put it, and ought to know that don't because the left controls our curriculums and

controls our minds. now, why is coolidge interesting? coolidge lives in a time in which there were riots, there were all these questions about immigration, fights with public sector unions -- didn't call them public sector unions then -- fights about the very night tour of government. fights over education, how should colleges look. what should they be teaching? he won on every one of these issues. he actually transformed the nature of government and used this very shy kind of dry wit of majors using the technology of the time, radio to go and get his message out to the whole country. he was the first president to appear on radio, and -- excuse me -- to appear on television, on film, they didn't have televisionity -- the first president -- the last president to write his own speeches, and we know that a young man, somewhere in the mid-west, was listening to him on the ready and decides to go into radio

from what he heard from kalin:-in-law, and that man was ronald reagan direction took cool-in-law's portrait and hung it in the oval office. he was cob demmed because coolidge was a do-nothing president. that's what we were taught in our comey classes. woodrow wilson is awesome, world war i, expansion of government, cool. and then they go into, like, oh, that -- those terrible republicans who used the market and basically made mom and pop starve to death. the whole great depression. the republicans gave us the great depression. let me contend that's entirely garbage and we can go exactly why it's garbage. guy into it at length in any book. coolidge is the last president to pay china debt, the last president to actually -- to massively -- during the 1920s, one of the most expansionist times in human flourishing. we have literacy rates are increasing.

women are actually involved in the work place. coolidge is at the same time that fdr is insisting that photos of himself with blacks be destroyed, coolidge is partying at the negro leagues baseball games. he sign laws that makes nailtive americans citizens and not just makes them citizens but he joins native american describes because he argues if they can join our tribe, i should be able to join their tribe. it's my contention that american history runs essentially from the founders, through lincoln, lincoln to coolidge -- we can debate lincoln ad nauseam. i am of the claremont school which many of you dish recommend you read their review of books. and what essentially happens is lincoln, then coolidge, then reagan, then the tea party movement and then potentially cruz or rand or whatever -- pick your poison.

and that's my kind of contention on history. i'm a believing christian. coolidge was a believer as well. one of our most religious presidents. he colored a lot of his speeches with religious illusions and he made this argument which is essential for conservatives to grasp, which is that man has a spiritual nature and if you touch the spiritual nature you can actually transform government, and i know that there are a lot of public scoffing of libertarian friend are who reading ayn rapid and eightists, but this is -- this is why coolidge was able to give supremes in different u.s.a. audiences and win size able majorities ago ethnic groups to that never voted republican again and leave not voted republican since coolidge. i think this kind of approach to politics -- coolidge says you shall know the truth and it shall set you tree. this approach is essential for

people who are of limited government mindsets. might surprised you one of our most religious presidents was the last president to actually trim government and actually cut government, and he gave a lot of arguments why this is the case. this messes with our idea that compassionate conservatives are at war with one another. not quite the case. now, i'm happy to go into coolidge. also happy to go into mississippi senate race, but let me say a few things. i've actually been to mississippi. how many people have been to miss is in? right. good. so you're not all about stuck in to beltway. this is good. what i would say is that i was -- you -- herd hey racist rateow ads. heard the robocall, saw the fliers, these are alling toos i found when i was in mississippi. i was invite down there by at the tea party express. drank a bunch of mint july lips and had a good time but i notice

what was going on in mississippi and it --dy disgusted me. you're probably reading about my tactics are are unorthodox. who encourages people to give him money, some which he uses to bribe reverend to tell them about allegations of voter fraud. weird thing to do. let me submit to you that there's a lot of stuff that the conservative movement, for a long time, has played -- they played by certain rules and have been losing and fight after fight, issue after issue, we have been losing and the country reflects our losing, and state after state, county after county, place after place, we lose. and so what we had to do is start thinking strategically. i was a competitive chess player in high school. played poker, helped may my way through college playing poker. we need to be strategyache and

have fun. and there's a certain sense that those who are young in the room, we can actually change things in this country, and after all it's going to fall to us. a lot of the folks who are out there now, they're too invested in the system the way it is and it's going to fall to those of us who have came a phone -- camera phones, the dearly departed andrew bright barts've to whorled who think outside the box to solve these problems. i happened the fbi on a number of projects. i intend to continue because i believe journalists should be after truth and after justice, and so i'll continue to help law enforcement as necessary. and i have been gotten in contact with the fcc and my friend in the back, were in front of the national media today doing a press conference, showing how the nrsc and how a number of other establishment conservative organizations were violating fec rules with what they were doing in mississippi.

and all of this coming out, i commend you coming to got news.com. 'll pay you unlike other places you could work for. i believe in freedom and money and if you do the work, you should probably be paid a just wage. this is a novel concept for interns. i promise you it gets better. but with that i'll take questions. anything, hit me. any rumors you heard, let's go. anyone? yes. if you would say your name so we can be facebook friends. we can keep this going later. >> kevin baird from pennsylvania. on coolidge -- al known as the -- conservatives like that on his domestic policy but foreign policy, for right or wrong, he is remembered for the --out lawed war and isolationist. so talk about maybe foreign policy. >> great question. thank you for asking it. there's which chap -- chapter

dedicated to this topic. let me just say, on the foreign policy question, this is great question. an altitude that a lot of our neoconservative friends have that the 1920s they cut the government defense department and that gave us world war ii, it's historically wrong in this sense there was this kellogg pact that did pretend to outlaw war but coolidge was clear you can't outlaw war anymore you can legislate peace. he nevertheless thought that what needed to happen after world war i was military reduction. and he encouraged the japanese, the british, he encouraged the french, al to follow international arbitration agreements to reduce -- he doesn't have world war 12 yet so doesn't -- this hasn't yet happen. so everything is reducing naval armaments and then people are

realizing looks like the japanese and the british are cheating. what is the final act in march 29? to sign a bill authorizing the first aircraft carrier, the first cruisers, and he was not -- he was of the view, when it comes to military intervention, that, as john quincy adams put its we're the friend of liberty everywhere but cuttan only of our own. our neoconservative friends have this idea that we need be militarily involved in countries where we do not know the culture or the way of life in order to have our foreign policy advanced. i don't hold that view. i'm of the angelo school, if you head his stuff, i'm of the view that rebel makes no trouble-that a strong united states is not necessarily a united states that intervenes interdaily in every country. coolidge is of that view as well. so he would get involved and did get involved in a number of skirmishes in mexico, in the

caribbean, and so he was not kind of a do-nothing kind of military type. he was very loved and respected by the military. and so he had a record that was quite successful on this front. now, as for what came afterwards, arguably you might -- my grandfather, you can google it, it's true -- was a rear admiral. navy cross winner. a number of people who in the 30s took the position that there's this view that disarmament is -- occurred because basically we didn't have -- there weren't big enough armies in europe. this is a common idea. turn out bruce thornton and other thinkers have written, totally not true. the german army what much smaller than never army. disarmament was more a mental thing than a strategic thing. so what worries me about the

united states right now we can militarily have a much more efficient military. i talk to eric prince of blackwater and he said i can build you a helicopter resupply mission that takes out 76 people and do it with four people. i can build you a leaner, meaner military if you so choose. he did it with blackwater. he did the fedex solution to the military, and so they let you believe in a military. we have to understand the purpose of the military is to secure the constitution of the free people. not to go into savage lands and throw lots of money at defense contract ares and waste money, get people killed and start blood wars...

what they don't tell you in real life that guy for two years was selecting all of the drone parking so he was telling us to assassinate people who are against his tribe's interest. we were the garbage disposal service for one tribe against another. so it bothered me the most about that is our intelligence was so lacking. what i would say is for those of us who do believe in strong defense we believe that information is our most powerful weapon in the new age and i think coolidge understood that warfare was changing radically. he was one of the first people to understand the future of war would be fought from the air so

he was friendly to people like mitchell and others who understood as technology changes battlefields change as well and i think that's something that we in the right need to be very aware of in the future. frankly we can't afford 900-dollar hammers anymore. it's not the right thing to do. it's immoral and a waste of our taxpayers resources. next question. >> hi darren jordan henry for missouri and they know you are exactly right. in my public high school ap assist request the general consensus on coolidge by her teacher was okay he didn't do too much so let's blame the republicans on the great depression so we can get to world war ii. what was it that first got you interested in studying so in depth this forgotten president? >> first of all there were only 34 bucks on coolidge. i'm just going to read all those and what did it for me which was the big thing that did it for me

as opposed to lincoln. this is not well trodden ground. there's a reason that this you know in what was weird to me is that he was a ridiculously popular president. people minted coins out of him and they wanted him to run again in 1928. why is it that all these people believed one thing about coolidge all the people who were alive including the 100-year-old lady that i met who voted for him why was it that they were so pro-coolidge? i was trying to figure this out or what actually happened with the depression, and it's my contention that the depression is a function of many different things. one thing it's a function of his big government republicans. there were severe that the republican party shocker shocker were split into two factions. once established was -- one faction was an establishment faction. we need a businessman to lead an executive to lead our party. that's the herbert hoover faction and then there was another faction which was we

need a constitutional conservative a guy who believes in the declaration of independence which was central to coolidge's thinking. he believe this idea actually is christian view was that as we all have a common father, god the father therefore we are all brothers sony form of government which i try to enslave you or you try to enslave me be at kaiser in this form of world war i be it slavery, the it indentured servitude all of that is against god's wish for all of us. i go into some length on why that was so important to what he was trying to do. what happened with the republican party is it was split ideologically. he realized he could not defeat the woodrow wilson faction on popular though it was for an unpopular war until they combined factions. coolidge was very much a part of combining a function. nevertheless he recognized that while herbert hoover was his commerce secretary herbert hoover also was not necessarily

about the kind of politically small conservative declaration of independence approach to things. on the contrary. he dismissively referred to him as his wonder boy. he said for six years the man has been giving me unsolicited advice all that bad and refused to endorse them until the last possible moment which was never done at the time. to the last possible moment he refused to endorse him. why? because herbert hoover was a mighty executive and he believed in a progressive mindset that businessmen can run things better as if you are all cogs in the machine rather than free men and women who want to live a certain way. coolidge was very much opposed to that. the commerce secretary, how am i doing on time? the commerce secretary, have a lot to say. the commerce secretary at the time herbert hoover expanded the

government massively in his own department. many of the things that he did in the 1930s when he was president, from 28 until 32 was fdr like. there was no distinction between what fdr wanted to do and what herbert hoover wanted to do. it was just more of that kind of like with bush and obama it comes to things like tar. there was no philosophical distinction. and so what ended up happening was obviously the great crash happened which by the way the crèche in 1920 was larger than the crash in 1929. this is like an actual observable fact on the stock market. and so there were a lot of people who thought we could just bounce back from it. after all the recession from 1920 was pretty bad but we just cut the taxes and government after the war. the economy came back in the "roaring 20's."

there were a number of big government policies that he implemented that made the impression bigger -- the depression bicker. the grade in great depression as a function of fdr's insane policies and interest rate when it comes to government spending and the climate of uncertainty he created and the demonization of business. if that sounds familiar i encourage you to open up a newspaper such as we have newspapers not now today. any other questions? no mississippi question? >> yeah. >> what is your name? >> my name is lincoln from mississippi and i was going to ask you real quickly. what kind of poker is in texas? texus hold 'em, right. >> is that how you are going to fund a college education? >> i don't recommend that by the

way. it's a lot of fun and i discovered at one point it's wrong. i've since saleh poker because i think it's wrong to take people's money in that capacity. it's much more fun to do research on rhino sent to hunt them for sport. that is what i would say on that score. >> i pass the i.d. onto my mom and she wasn't happy about it. if you could tell us for those of us who may be unfamiliar with your work summarize what you have done and tell us what exactly is going on for those of us who are maybe less well informed on the issue. >> we know there's a controversial election that took place for the republican runoff. i'm going to start there and we will expand. basically what ended up happening is that cochran who is 76 years old and you may have seen this story the other day about him going to the democrat launch. there were a lot of questions about his mental health and capacity. he's running against chris

mcdaniel for the republican nomination representing the united states senate. what happened was there was a conservative effort on the part of the haley barbour political machine. haley barbour is the former rnc chair one of the most successful lobbyists in the united states represented a number of dictatorships as a lobbyist. i've i've published all this on twitter. i'm not trying to sell you anything. you can see the documents for yourselves. he's the former governor of mississippi. as ned rollins another political consultant put it on charlie rose this week haley barbour owns mississippi and he used the own statement. this offends me as a human being and an american that one man can own the state. that seems wrong so i decided to do as i decided to see what was going on mississippi. i like to bus corruption and if you are the most corrupt state in the union like the journalist who likes to bust corruption

should go to the most corrupt state. i got this invitation by the tea party expressed to go and talk about my book on coolidge. i had never met chris mcdaniel before. someone identified me as an mcdaniel supporter. i'm not a big fan of his. i'm not against them but i'm not for him either. i'm not registered to vote because frankly i live in california. it seems like a lot of work. maybe that will change but i'm not registered to vote. what really interests me is busting busting corruption so i go to mississippi and i start seeing all these flyers everywhere hearing about these flyers in the black community which essentially said chris mcdaniel is a klansman and he is going to calm and he is going to take away your government benefits. he's going to shut down historical black colleges and named the most absurd racist democrat things have said about

you they are now saying about the republicans. i thought if there is targeted towards him there must be something there that they are afraid of and what is it? they are not talking about the issues. they tried to get a whole number of african-american voters and they ran a whole bunch of racist radio ads and robo-calls and you have probably seen those around. people thought i made them up. rick back their tracks down all the different call stations and found out who the people were. first of all all these ads were produced by all-white firms. you have this black reverend kaman and talk in the jazzy voice in the background. by the way we have not released all of them and to fund all of them but we do right -- know right now the national republican senatorial committee which fund-raisers often defeat harry reid are using money to

defeat these ads to target black voters to scare them. but they are not telling them is that if you float is a democrat in the primary on june 3 and then vote as a republican in the runoff that's an illegal vote. they are scaring all these poor black people and many of them poor in the delta and elsewhere. the air the poorest fellow citizens and scaring them with accusations that chris mcdaniel has come for them and he is literally a klansman and bring back the battle base and he's going to bring back jim crow. that's the kind of campaign that i thought was disgusting. why are they doing that? after all there are lots of senate races. why are they focused on that? let me suggest that thad cochran should the republicans take the senate that congress is going to be the head of appropriations.

if you are the chief lobbyist who owns the state the most corrupt state in the country it helps to be the head appropriator in your corner. that is kind of a pro bono why do this kind of thing? what happened? i posted all the documentation and i have all the mississippi housewives. i will say hey get this document for me and someone will drive for in a half hours and get it for me. people are so angry at what happened and what happened as a whole number of democrats crossed over and voted. you are probably going to say this is politics and politics is an business. this is terrible but you know how likely is that? there are an awful lot of people who have come out with allegations that are substandard and have documentation supporting these statements. there is a lot more that will come out. true the vote, what was going on

essentially in county after county is all the little counties are controlled by the barbour machine and in each one of these counties they were ignoring the laws in some cases so they were allowing people to voted republican runoff. they were destroying the documents that showed people voted previously which is a big felony and they were running around with absentee ballot forms and they were lying to people and registering as many people as possible. right now the separation is 6900 votes. that's a separation between the two counties. overwhelmingly the republicans voted for mcdaniel in a republican primary. so this is going to continue to be contested and litigated. there's a lot more stuff is going to come out.

i tend to post all of it on god news.com. come work for me and change the country and change the world. my basic attitude about this is this corruption needs to be called out because if we don't stop it here and draw a line in the sand and by the way lots of people are drawing this line. ted cruz found it appalling which you had better believe ted cruz people are going to use this as a differentiation point running against rand paul and 2016. we had a margin of the missouri gop that chair there say it's repugnant and there should be a full investigation. many people lost their call for many vendors. rick and i've gotten into the menasha about the embassy violations of having senatorial work and there's a lot more stuff coming out. basically i'm deluge so if you want to help like if you sell. we have one more question.

>> hi. hayley stevens from michigan. you just said you are not registered to vote that you are so deeply involved in politics. why do you not exercise your right to float. in other countries people would love to go. >> i totally agree with you. my wife is an immigrant and she loves to vote. i will work as a precinct voter when i lived in fresno. it's a very serious question. i would put it this way. i love my country. i'm involved in the political process. i have had a number of death threats against me saying people would literally cut my head off like literally you know. and i was told by law enforcement contact that i was -- it do as much as possible. i have gutted every room in my house and my wife has a different maiden name.

they said do as much is possible to avoid detection. that is one reason i don't vote. i have voted in the past and i did vote in the last election. i did vote for the democrat who is running just because it was funny but generally speaking i'm supportive of the right to vote but i don't think we live in a country where people steal elections and they're such corruption how choices are formed that they'll have comparative advantage is we have to make. i intend to go after corrupt republicans as they have with thad cochran. i'm not interested in being part of a political tribe. my christian views are such that you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. i am not interested in being, i believe in principles over parties and over people. i think registering to vote in being part of the republican machine is fun for a lot of

people and i understand people get psychic rewards for it. i don't even leave the house to get food. i'm working all the time from 6:00 a.m. until 9:00 p.m.. my wife literally has to pull me away so we can go on a day. this is the cause of my life and i'm happy to work as long as necessary. i don't want to sully the aggressive go after the truth message that i am bringing by being a part of any campaign. that might change. if certain people were to run for president who endorsed my book i would certainly consider getting involved with their campaign. i might even do research for their super pac. that might be interesting in the future. as for the rest of it i've been involved in politics and i have helped numerous people get elected. i helped a lot of people lose very successfully. i do agree with you the importance of voting is extremely important but i would also say that your right as a

citizen you have more rights than just the ballot box. you have the right to first amendment expression and the right to petition their government. you have all these different rights than they see the voting component is a small piece of it. if i'm successful which i believe i will be i will have flipped a senate seat at age 25. how wild is that? so why not? i take your point is a serious point and my wife talks about this all the time. i am worried about my safety and eye of reason to be worried about my safety. i'm hoping to get more people involved so i can collect a check like matt drudge. i'm trying to give you an honest answer is i can. lots of people do suffer for elections in thank you for having me. [applause]