orphans, i have done some work with orphans, and possibly her company and that the early stage i knew without a been happy in america. i well remember my own unhappiness when i left kenya for america. i recall the time when my grandmother visited and wanted to bring one of our kenyan domestic back to america. to help around the house. country, i can give her good side and place to stick it all should needed his help around the house. how much i want some help around the house, sweeping the leaves from the path everyone. what a chore. our domestic help, parker family, under this proposal was a bit static. sunday it would be great to go to america, but my mother took leave tossed grandma out of the i.t. she wouldn't be happier. she would be away from her people and it would be a huge shock to her. you should consider these

things. maybe you are right. that was back. i love her initiate strong ties to family and to china. i didn't expect are coming to welcoming with open arms, but it still shocked to hear her mother's reaction a first hearing about me. she was horrified to learn her daughter was dating a foreigner. you will leave me and go away with him, she cried. my grandchildren will not be in china to live with me. i will lose my daughter. she was distraught after that phone call. her eyes red and face flush. i did not know what t to say but i'd enough trouble dealing with obama, let alone her to for now we have each other. at the time particularly at night -- wakefulness and sleep and strange thoughts. the pictures in my mind encompass the image of my youth in kenya and my present life in china. i felt i was in the space the

mine to mold and whatever i please with an obligation to my mother, my father, friend or even that long divided but ever present candidates. no, my grandmother. i could imagine have a dialogue. i found this terrific girl, grandma, and i get myself with no matchmaker. don't tell me the unlock with some schmucker doesn't value you. young girls these days let themselves be treated like toilets. and incomes or does this thing and then forgets to clean up. drama, how can you say that? if so, it is the guy's fault but it would be my fault, we did? of course not. it's always the woman's fault. we use been at the look of the consequences. here, i have some leftover borscht. want some? i have some fish. if you don't like i ca connected the shop down the road and get a koen de kort pastrami sandwich. grandma, i think i'm going to marry this girl. in my dream she would come up to me, gently put aside her bowl

and look at me so closely. i could smell the baby powder on her cheeks. well, if you love her, that's the important thing. if she has a little just bought and cooks good food, that's something. is she blonde? know, her hair is black. she's chinese. doesn't matter. grandma would get along side, all the world is going to be brown one day. just love her and all will be well. here, have some matzoh balls. oh, i forgot, you don't like them either. and her kind and wispy strands and kind face with a back into the night as one with my dreams and the salt from the china sea. [applause] >> you are watching booktv,

television for serious readers. you can watch any program you see here online at booktv.org. >> coming up next, jonathan darman examines the political careers of lyndon baines johnson and ronald reagan and the respective election victories in the 1960. he speaks with santana, former editor of the new york times book review. this is just over one hour. hre >> okay. well, i'm quite honored and ple pleased to be moderating this session with two distinguishedau authors on american politics from different perspectives the. onathan darman was a journalist before, maybe still is, before becoming a book author. for newsweek and covered, among other things, national presidential campaigns in

2004 and in 2008. he most recently has turned his attention to another political campaign in the 1960's. his new book is a "landslide." so jonathan row be talking about that and anything else we can talk him into speaking of. on my left is chase untermeyer, who has been a practitioner of politics. he served in the presidential administration of ronald reagan, george h. kelly bush, and george w. bush. his book "when things went right" is drawn from his diary of the first years of the reagan administration. so please help me give an answer to our to authors, and we will get started. [applause] jonathan, since your book

chronologically comes before chases i will ask you a twofold question. number one is, how did you find covering the campaign of 1964 in historical time after you have covered in real time the campaign of 2004 and 2008. that is part one. part two is, how do you perceive that politics changed in that 40 year time frame? >> thank you. i am happy to be here. the weather is not quite this nice in most places that have been talking about the book this fall, and i have not had need of the charlie crist fan, which i wish we had today under the table. [laughter] that aside, i am happy to be here. it is a great question. i would say that stepping back from present-day political reporting to look

at the 1964 campaign has on the boast -- has on the most basic level made me see politicians a lot more charitably, people who are willing to step forward and run for office. when you cover a presidential campaign, we are hard on them and talk about all of these forces that they should be paying attention to in the country and, you know, how hard it is, what they need to be doing to connect with the country. stepping back and looking 50 years back in time, what you really see is in a lot of ways it is impossible to know what the country is actually dealing with in a moment. for me that really gets illustrated when you think about the 1964 presidential campaign. if you go back 50 years ago this weekend you can see the next 50 years in american politics being laid out

before you. you have lyndon johnson's who has been president for less than a year looking forward to the next week, his landslide election to win the presidency in his own way. he gets really carried away in the rhetoric. on that day he goes to pets bergen says, a time of peace on earth and good will among men. the time is here -- the place is now. when we talk about managing expectations, pretty high. and meanwhile, that same day, that same night as the national broadcast of an underemployed, underappreciated former actor, ronald reagan, who is

at that point still a working actor making the case for barry goldwater and as speech that is sort of universally viewed as reagan's launch as a national politician and the beginning of the storied political career. so to look back at that split screen and say, there you have it, the voice between the two parties over the next 50 years, this johnsonian set of promises for all the government can do to deliver and really solve all of the problems of humankind and the reagan alternative of government not being a solution to the problem but is the problem itself. but that is a pretty impossible standard told lyndon johnson to and the moment to beat this guy, ronald reagan, all the possible threat is in a lot of ways going to be the one that has the largest effect on his legacy.

so i would say that looking at history, i hope that in my current political reporting how will be a little more charitable toward politicians in the expectation of what they should understand about the country. remind me of the second half of your question. >> how has politics itself change in that 50 years between the 64 election and that 2004 election? >> it has changed in a lot of ways. you know, my book deals with the thousand days after the kennedy assassination, which if you want to look at a moment in time where politicians actually got stuff done as opposed to what i think we all feel like today with a can get anything done, is a fantastic moment. with the presidency of lyndon johnson you have transformative legislation of civil-rights and voting

rights. you have the passage of medicare, important legislation on poverty, education, and there really is this sense in both parties that you can work together and pass programs that would transform people's lives. hubbell -- we don't have that at all today. one of the seven themes in the book is that passage from politics being about that johnsonian specialty of managing the congress, and the country and the congress being one in the same, very important for president's going beyond particularly about the country as a whole and beyond just the parochial political machine. and the person who really understands that best is ron reagan. when he first started running for governor of california, is seen as a

joke that this sector could be the best candidate the republicans can muster for our the governorship that year. how bad the republican party , the state of the republican party. what people don't realize is that reagan being able to communicate and since the shift in mood in the country, which she has learned from his hollywood career, are really going to be the most important assets for politicians in decades to come. thank you. >> chase, you observe politics more less from the inside. jonathan and i look at it from the outside. so when did you first vent the shift that gives rise to the title of your book, "when things went right". when did you -- and i assume you mean is an double sense, things get more conservative and i gather you approve.

so how did you did drawn into politics and when did you sense the shift occurring? as early as the 60's with the emergence of reagan, or was it close to the time he joined the reagan administration? >> my actual origins were not with reagan but is vice president, george h. w. bush. i was always interested in politics, going back to junior high school. the opportunity to get involved required working in campaigns which in those days was a generally hopeless cause for republicans. therefore, it was a delight to find this young oil man named george bush running for congress on the west side of houston, which drew my time as a campaign volunteer. so i did address envelopes and campaign research. and it was a great throw

when he invited me to be an intern on his staff. that led me to go to washington with him. at that time was working as a member of the texas house representatives when the vice president-elect asked me to join his staff in the west wing of the white house. i realized at wa the e i realize that was the end of the active grid in texas politics, so i tortured over the decision for about two-tenths of a second before accepting, resigning my seat, going off to washington. when i arrived i had, frankly, the doubts of my boss and the many people in america that the reagan program would actually work, that it wasn't near hocus pocus of some sort. and and you question -- >> or voodoo economics? >> yes. that phrase, voodoo economics was used by the candidate bush against reagan in the pennsylvania republican primary

of 1980. it was something that was deadly in the mouse and fingertips of the opposition, and it got to be so sensitive for vice president bush. at one point actually told a national audience that he never said it. he didn't say that as a conscious lie. i think at that point he had himself become a reaganite and was in effect embarrassed by the recent memory of their very difficult, very long and bitter primary campaign in 1979-1980. .. way that elder bush has a way of looking toward the future rather than the past, to him of voodoo economics was just some press frays. it was not anything he himself had said. of course, it was all on tape and he had to apologize when that was shown to a national audience. i think what that illustrated was that it was during the course of 1981,

the first year of the reagan administration, as the legislative program began to work its way through congress and as the country began to have a greater sense of itself, a greater sense of confidence that they changed in the mind of the vice-president of the united states as much as the rest of us. >> i will ask a question of both of you because jonathan has posited that the mid-1960s was a time that the political system worked, when a president with a legislative agenda to get stuff done. and chase untermeyer has pointed to another time when the reagan revolution was taking hold and things did happen. i did not ask you how you weigh in on how you assess the situation today, by jonathan has suggested that today it does not work very well, if at all. i suppose we could have a show of hands that could see how many of you think the political system is working well today, but i wondered

-- [laughter] i wonder how much of this is a matter of changing times and how much of it is either the existence then are the comparative lack now of a visionary presidential leader. lyndon johnson had a vision for what america can be. ronald reagan had the vision , and they were both, i think, very successful in communicating that vision. is that what is lacking, or have there been structural changes in the american political system to make that much more difficult? >> a lot of it comes down to a question of emphasis. i am sure that chase gets asked a lot that question of could reagan get elected in today's republican party, which people talk about a lot as sort of this idea that there are so many purists in today's republican party that even ronald reagan is an ideologically -- is not ideologically pure enough. my own feeling on that, and

this is something i try and describe, is reagan is incredibly good at figuring out exactly where east to be as a conservative to get elected. the difference -- and this is what made reagan an effective political leader starting in the 60's is at the same time as he is focused on what he has to do to win the support of his fellow conservatives, he is always asking himself how we sell this to a broader and broader audience. it starts really growing his political career. involved in the 1964 goldwater campaign against johnson, co-chair in the california campaign, and california was, of course, an important state in the 1964 presidential primaries where there was this sort of final, definitive showdown between goldwater and nelson rockefeller to be the republican nominee.

and it is a bloody fight. and after they finish that campaign their is a victory party for goldwater. reagan stands of and says, now let's go make love to democrats. we don't want to win a convention. we want to win an election. he gets booed in the room for saying that, but it was always where his focus is, how do we sell this message to has brought a group as possible. i think today in a fractionalized universe, that set of questions is one that politicians do not really have to ask themselves. and in thinking that through, how do we bring in as many people on board with these ideas as possible. that will force you to come to the more important questions of how to create a broader governing coalition. how will we make things happen today? >> one way is for my fellow republicans to stop saying

they are admirers of ron reagan and start acting like ronald reagan. what i mean by that is any number of practicing politicians today will tell you with sincerity that ronald reagan is there idol, absolute model in terms of politics. except insofar as what they do and say is not the least bit like ronald reagan. let me identify just some of those qualities that i am talking about. one, ronald reagan did have a positive vision for the future. it was positive, for creating prosperity through a reduced government footprint in the lives and businesses of people. there was not recrimination against the enemy. far too many of today's politicians are highly

negative. is sufficient just to be against barack obama and his policies. i believe that might help of republicans were in the midterm elections this year, but the republican party had better start having a very positive agenda, like ronald reagan, or it will find itself with not much to say as people recognize that perhaps obama is going to be out the door in january january 2017. another thing that reagan did so beautifully was to work across the aisle. his famous whiskey drinks with chip o'neal in the after-hours are the best but not the only example of his belief that you have to work with the opposition, as he had to do as governor of california. today just being seen in the proximity of the opposition is thought by either party to be and worse would be reagan's belief in compromise.

he had his firm set of principles, but to have a principle was what you build upon. what you build up live from there was a matter of give-and-take, working with the opposition, which he did in those sessions with jim o'neill and others. today the notion is that if you deviate at all from what some people consider to be the principal, the bedrock, the governing idea, then you are a trader to the cause. people who believe that say that they are like ronald reagan, then they imagine a round reagan never was. the final thing i might add is the difference between reagan and those who are today his professed airs is that ronald reagan had an immense and effective sense of humor which she used as a very effective tool against the opposition. today's issues are gramm and serious and dreadful. they were not so cheery back in the 1970's either, but reagan was able to use humor

in a way that today is somehow dismissed as trivializing serious things. >> if i could follow up on that last point, one of the striking things to me about reagan is the fact that he did conservatism, friendly face. barry goldwater did not have an observable sense of humor . it strikes me -- i don't know if a default setting for conservatives may be just in the nature of conservatives in the united states that they tend to do righteous indignation better than they do other martian. -- than they do with emotion . there was an undercurrent or explicit overcurrent of anger, but reagan took that

away. so is reagan may be simply the anomaly among conservatives? and so is barry goldwater more like the conservative mind and maybe we are returning to that win, as jonathan suggested, there was blood on the floor at the convention of 64 among the republicans. are we going to be conservative enough. so is it too much to ask republicans or conservatives to come up with another reagan? is that personality type just really rare? you can see hubert humphrey who does find among liberals, but reagan is almost the if hubert humphrey of conservatives. >> the question is an interesting one. and a lot of ways why haven't we seen conservatives over the last 50 years in spite of the

fact that republicans have this long streak of winning the presidency, why have not been able to put forward what everyone thinks of as the positive governing agenda under a conservative vision? republicans are good at winning election in a year where they're is a strong incumbent -- anti-incumbent sentiment in the country. you know, 2010, it might be this year. but what they have not been able to do is continue on that path of broadening the gain from there because there is no pressure in a way that we talk about politics to present that positive governing agenda. i think the roots of that is in this time, the mid-1950s, where you see politics starting to be about a

contest between one side presenting government as the solution to all problems and the other side which sees government as the problem, as opposed to what had come before, the sense that government should set out to solve the biggest problems and the argument is about the best way to do it. that does not exist in the same way today because they found it very occasionally potent tool of saying we will run against government. >> are conservatives looking in vain for another run reagan? >> i don't have tear tell a great historian, those people, along very rarely. this is a large country. summer is such a leader but he may be leading a corporation today or even being a university professor

the sad thing is the current atmosphere does tend to diminish the interest of younger people to get involved in government, elected government in particular just because it is seen as so unpleasant, so unavailing in terms of being able to actually do something. we live in a time when young people are very much motivated toward public service but it tends to be private nonprofit service or jobs such as in health care or teaching that has maybe less reward but a great deal more satisfaction. so i am an optimist and believe that in this country there is someone out there ready to lead and you can, if not copy of ronald reagan, at least have some of those positive virtues of the leaders that we have all grown up with who can begin to capture the imagination of people such as with

theodore roosevelt and abraham lincoln or franklin roosevelt. >> one of the great things about the texas book festival is audience participation, and i am going to guess that a lot of you were drawn here because of your interest in politics and the sort of things authors have been discussing if any of you have any questions, here is your chance to come up to the microphone and give your best shot at our authors. and please speak into the microphone so everyone here and the c-span audience can hear us. >> can you hear me okay? >> yes. >> i am sitting here listening about conservatives. can i speak about liberal's four minutes? i just read a fantastic book by bill bradley. three-time all-american from princeton, ten years in the nba and also a three term senator from new jersey. i just read his book. it is awesome.

okay? now, my question is, can we reach out, like what bill bradley did, and across the aisle and get republicans and democrats to work together? i mean, this book was phenomenal. you get a little cynical on what it takes to put up big bills through congress today >> let me put the question to our authors. chase, you work in washington when bradley was there. >> when i think about how today's politics, particularly legislative politics resembles the trench warfare of the first world war in which there was a great deal of artillery and a great deal of death but not much for movement, i think of that rather trite green card comment, let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.

and when somebody from one side of the trench or the other begins to come out of some form of courage reach out and begin to work across the aisle then that might just come on. it will particularly catch on when people realize that they can do that and survive a primary, be read elected and perhaps get things done. i am confident enough that the majority of the american public, the vast majority want their elected officials to get the job done, whatever that job is. they want them on the job making a difference rather than just making speeches. >> it is possible to be too hard on our current leaders. having spent a lot of time thinking about lyndon johnson you often come across people who say particularly talking about

the current president if only he could be more like lyndon johnson, someone who was just relentless in his reaching out to legislators in both parties and around the clock overwhelming personality be would not have any of the problems that we have today in terms of getting something done. i cannot think that is true. when you talk about the mid 1960's and that phenomenal legislative record, yes, lyndon johnson and his formidable personality and legislative presence as an important piece, but the most important piece is the progressive majority that lyndon johnson had in congress. and when that progress a majority starts to crack, aftermath of the civil rights legislation, he loses a lot of the power that he had. if you look at the comparable moment in the johnson presidency which in a lot of ways is a midterm election of 1966, people were talking about lyndon johnson as this guy who was detached and all of the

energy has drained out of his presidency. you know, concentrating on a foreign conflict and not giving, you know, adequate resources to vietnam. all of these things that people say about president obama today. so it is as much about the political moment in understanding where the country is. >> next question. [inaudible question] >> simply delayed the reagan revolution or permanently derailed it an entirely reshape the way the republican party move forward through the 80's? >> my sense is that it would have delayed in that you recall crawl reagan in the republican primaries in convention came very close. and it was clear that the

functional majority of that convention wanted ronald reagan and would have him, as, indeed, they did. i tend to think that it would have been a delay given the cycles of american politics if reagan had been elected in his own right and would have come up against all of the economic and foreign-policy problems that hit jimmy carter during the late 70's and, perhaps, that would have helped power a democratic victory in 1980. it is a game anyone could play, but i can see that happening as much as the eventual election of ronald reagan in the 1980's. >> i will mention something that might shed a little bit of light on this. james baker who work for george bush and ronald reagan and george bush again said that it was his thought -- and he said mr. reagan when reagan was in the white house. he said that if reagan had not challenged ford in '76, then ford might well have won the 76 election, and if he had, and reagan never

would have been president. because if a republican had one in 76, let's say ford, he would not have been challenged by another republican. so reagan would have had to wait until 1984, by which time he would clearly have been too old to run for president. so that is james baker's take on that subject. next question. [inaudible question] >> about 30 years. [laughter] my question is this. you have not addressed the changes in the media over the years. the other question is, you know the bushes, is jeb bush going to run? [laughter] >> i tell you what, i was put that into two parts. i will let jonathan deal with the media question, and i will let chase weigh in on whether jeb bush is going to run. >> we talked a lot about how the media is so much tougher

on president today than the media was back in the days, often private lives and sex scandals and that sort of stuff. and that is true, but if you spend a lot of time looking at the way that the press wrote about lyndon johnson in the 1960's, they were not exactly easy on him. johnson felt and with good reason that is eastern ivy league in funds press corps looked down on him as a crass texan. there were really quite unfair to him. they constantly would bring in these sort of completely overused cliches to describe him as this sort of larger than life figure in a 10-gallon hat. he was a texan, but a creature of washington first

and foremost. you know, you think about that. we just this week have been mourning the passing of ben bradley who, of course, was the legendary editor of the "washington post" during the watergate era who died this week at the age of 93. and the famous story about bradley and johnson comes from bradley got a tip that lyndon johnson was going to replace j. edgar hoover as the director of the fbi, which was an amazing story, if true, because no president had dared to go up against j. edgar hoover at that point in over 30 years. bradley reported it out and found out that it was, in fact, the case. he published it. johnson found out, and just like ben bradlee and the idea that his administration was leaking to the east and influence press corps so much that he holds an

impromptu press conference and announcing -- announces that he is appointing j. edgar hoover director for life. and as he is stepping down peace says, tell bradley i said forget you, except he did not use the words forget. [laughter] so it was always a little tough. >> what is the future of republican politics? >> i was a practicing journalist working for the houston chronicle. so i am going to jump in to this answer to say that, of course, the 24 hour news cycle, instantaneous communication affect our politics to a degree unknown in past times if only because the expectation of that news cycle is that public officials are immediately, instantaneously weiss with regard to what is

happening at all and what to do about it. no human being is capable of doing that. in past times when communication was much slower public officials did have the luxury of thinking were discussing these matters before they spoke and acted. that is a luxury not allowed today, and it is an egg that cannot be unscrambled. and that, i can say with some certainty. i cannot speak with certainty about what jeb bush will do. this is his last best opportunity to run. i hope he does. that should not surprise anybody. he is a man of great capability who has knowledge and a sense of that this country needs, but what strikes me is that very few people whose names are being mentioned to have executive experience, and this is another trait of ronald

reagan that we cannot forget he came to the presidency having been governor of the big state and having to deal with budgets and personnel and judicial appointments and dealing with the legislature, and that did prepare him in a way that, frankly, very few of our current crop of candidates have in their arsenal. >> another question. [inaudible question] >> talks about but lbj and reagan. it didn't lbj and reagan both make a mess of the united states budget? and here is why i suggest that. lbj, his last year, our real problem with the vietnam war he basically took away the income he had from social security. social security, the problem is that social security.

he took that away and all of a sudden his deficits were going in to what they called surpluses in 1968. now, reagan was also running into a problem where deficits in the 80's -- and i forget what year it was, but he looked for more social security that could be taken at of the budget. -- >> secretary my question. >> i will let you take on as much as you want. it's an interesting point. it is back to this idea of we should not over mothball not -- the causes of these presidents. pfft -- >> because it's not true. and i think what you see in

both the johnson presidency in the 60's and the reagan presidency in the 80's is that certain trepidation about, if you give the public too much reality they will extract a political price. and that has famously happened in the johnson presidency in the 1950's. their is a sense that johnson cannot level with the public about the sacrifices that are necessary to fight this war in vietnam. he worries that all of his political support on the left will disappear and he will be vulnerable from the right to people who are saying he is tough on communism, but what i think uc particularly in the earliest moments of the johnson presidency is that the public is capable of a lot more sophistication and understanding than politicians ever give them credit for. in the first hours of lyndon johnson's presidency when he is faced with this

monumental task of moving the country forward after the death of john f. kennedy and really this sort of awkward moment of how we honor this fallen president while still getting back to life, and johnson is able to say to the country, look, to honor kennedy would need to pass the kennedy program and do all of these important things he set out to do, and the country rises to the challenge and get behind this idea of moving on and do big things. if we had more politicians do that today, the idea that the public can take a certain amount of complexity and will forgive you if your honest with them. we would have better results. we do not need a mythical political force to emerge. >> do you agree that the public can handle more complexity than politicians give them credit for? >> i certainly do, and that is why i the analogy i used to go, a critical mass of

people in the congress are willing to break away from the president and work together on common issues, they will find a majority. let me speak with regard to the deficits of the reagan administration. this is much more nuanced on both the left and right. ronald reagan was always for reducing the budget and ideally getting rid of budget deficits, but he recognized in the context of his administration that it was worthwhile incurring a deficit, if it meant the buildup of the defense forces at the time and the toppling of the soviet union or more specifically convincing the soviet union that it could not possibly keep up with an american and was willing to make those expenses. this was misinterpreted, i think, in later times by certain republicans who felt that, as the phrase was, ronald reagan proved deficits to not matter. that was not the case, but

he was willing to enter the deficit temporarily. during his administration he was most happy to sign legislation which began to put caps on spending when coupled with the tax increases that his successor was courageous enough to implement did lead to eventual budget surpluses in the 1990's when, unfortunately, it fell to the credit of bill clinton. but all of that began with the reagan administration. >> another question. [inaudible question] >> jonathan. >> i think that if you were going to pick a president to

figure out, lyndon johnson would be your guide. i mean, he is really just perceptive. their is a famous story that larry o'brien, a kennedy aide and became johnson's chief legislative strategist told about one night when they were -- there were up on capitol hill trying to pass a bill. he was trying to bring it home for the white house, and he came up short. he felt that and procrastinated, spent a couple of hours before reporting back to the white house in the early hours of the morning and finally he goes in and tells president johnson that he has come up short. in johnson's first question is, when did this happen? and he tells him. what did you wake me? and johnson said, when you are bleeding up on that hill, i want to be bleeding with you. at