you know? they're up by 20 points. you know, at the same time we're complaining about big money from republicans, we're raising money, we're spending all of our time raising money. we're spending our time appealing to folks that are not what we should be as democrats. you know, coastal used to be more of the democratic party than the working class man, and that has changed because of money in politics in the last 0 years. and we have -- 20 years. and we have to start thinking about what do we want out of our democracy. if you're a democrat, if you're progressive, you know, we want governing. and you can't campaign and govern at the same time. and we've let that happen a over the last 20 years because we associated winning with money. >> host: do you expect that president obama during his final two years, he's not running for re-election, doesn't have to worry about that anymore, do you think that he is going to go back in a way to the roots of his campaign in 2007 and 2008 and make this an issue on his

personal agenda? >> guest: well, if he did -- i'm not sure what his agenda's going to be in the next two years. we'll have to see what happens after this election and which direction you're going, you know? leadership is needed on this issue, and for some reason really never having to raise money again, barack obama -- except maybe for his library -- this is an opportunity for him to do it. i hope he does step up and say, look, we're raising a lot of money as democrats too. we're spending all of our time raising money. let's also look at it and say can we come together and compromise? i don't have a lot of hope. mitch mcconnell is a martin frost-like, you know, these are people that love raising money. but let's at least have the conversation. and you need leadership to have that, you know, to bring the debate back up in a real way which is not blaming the other side, which is, unfortunately, where we are right now. >> host: there's been a super

pac that's existed since the beginning of 2013 that exists to strictly support hillary clinton in what may or may not be her run for the presidency of the united states. if she runs, i know you're out of the game, it's been a while, but what do you think her fundraising operation is going to look like in reality when she says, yeah, i'm in? >> guest: it's going to be explosive. there's going to be a lot of money flowing to not just that one super pac. i bet there'll be 20 hillary super pacs, you know? you can't control it right now. they wish they could control it all if you're the clinton for president operation. it's going to be all over the place. it's, you know, i think we're going to look at a $7, $8 billion election in 2016. almost doubling what we did this year. it's going to be that out of control. and the difference between super pacs and doing this through coordinated efforts is you don't know what's going to happen.

somebody could be spending money in places you don't want to spend money and money coming in from people that you don't want to be associated with that are going to be associated with you because of the super pacs. so it's going to be a lot of money. i would like to separate presidential from congressional. i think there's a big difference, and because the money so big in a presidential campaign, the ability to say no to one donor is okay. and that makes a presidential campaign a little cleaner than a congressional campaign where you can't say no anymore. >> host: and very quickly on the republican side in 2012 you had sort of the circular firing squad where the various republican potential candidates, all the folks who wanted to be nominees each had their own super pac, they were spending millions of dollars against each other. mitt romney had his candidacy during the primary season extended out probably several more months than he would have if newt gingrich and rick santorum weren't around. do you expect in 2016 on the

republican side that that's going to play out in a different way? >> guest: i don't think it will. i don't know how that could happen. you know, they've embraced the system. there are hundreds of super pacs out there. if you're a candidate that has a bad few days but you're, you have the ability to raise $10 million through a super pac, you're going to do it. so as much as they'd like to have a short, you know, this is our candidate primary season, it's not going to happen for them. they're going to end up being in may or june, you know, still fighting it over the last few delegates. and that is because of the money involved. so poor them, but it's our democracy now. >> host: the book is "political mercenaries," it's a fascinating read, and thanks a lot. >> guest: thanks for having me. >> host: appreciate it. >> guest: thank you. >> that was "after words,"

booktv's signature program in which authors of the latest nonfiction books are interviewed by journalists, public policymakers and others familiar with their material. "after words" airs every weekend on booktv at 10 p.m. on saturday, 12 and 9 p.m. on sunday and 12 a.m. on monday. and you can also watch "after words" online. go to booktv.org and click on "after words" in the booktv series and topics list on the upper right side of the page. >> professor tim groseclose of ucla, when you hear the term "liberal media," what does that mean to you? >> guest: well, in my book, it's a very precise notion. i actually come up with a number that says how liberal or conservative the media outlet is. and it is based on a number of roll call vote studies that political scientists have used for a long time. i call them political quotients, but there's lots of other

measures that political scientists use. on the scale that i use, a 0's very conservative, a 1 to 00 -- 100 is a nancy pelosi, and a 50 is the average american voter, and it turns out like a blue dog democrat, rino republican, something like a an arlen specter. so what i do in this week is compare the con -- in this book is compare the content of the media and compare it to speeches of politicianings. and then i try to say things like does this sound more liberal or more conservative than, say, arlen specter. and then i have a statistical method that gives a number to the content that says say it's a 75, which is what i find "the new york times" is, for instance. turns out what that means is that "the new york times" sounds about like a joe lieberman speech, by my statistical med. method. joe lieberman, although lots of people call him a moderate, but these vote scores, he's left of

center, he's about a 75 on these scales, he's about midway between an arlen specter and a nancy pelosi. so my method says that "the new york times" sounds about like a joe lieberman speech, so i would give it a number. i would give it it's a 75 on the scale. so there's various outlets that i compute numbers for, and i report them all. >> host: give us one example of how you got joe lieberman to 75 and how the new york times gets to 75. >> guest: okay. so this is maybe a recent example, but -- well, let me tell you in my book the main way that i judge how liberal or conservative the speech is or how liberal or conservative the media content is i look at think tank citations. so i have a list of 200 think tanks ranging from the heritage foundation to the epi, the economic policy institute, i think, and center for budget and policy priorities, those would be on the left side.

so i just kind of count the ratio of those. you know, is "the new york times," are they citing the heritage foundation more, or are they citing the center on budget priorities more? they would have something like a 4 to 1 ratio, because i'm sure they cite the center on budget priorities metropolitan the heritage townation. and by that med, it turns -- by that method, it turns out job lieberman is also citing the center on budget and policy priorities more. if they're about the same ratio, i would say the new york times' content sounds about like a joe lieberman speech. >> host: should news media content be at 50 according to your political quotient? >> guest: well, in some ways. i actually don't say that in the book. in some ways i say to be called "unbiased" by my method, i'll put it that way, by my definition unbiased means about 50.

so i must say i think something like a c-span would be almost about 50 partly because a lot of your content is just speeches by members of congress, and representative speeches get a balance of speeches which, you know, i think c-span does. c-span would be exactly 50 or very near 50. so i would say, yes, if you want to be called unbiased by my measure, you'd want to be 50, but i think it's healthy to have a range of outlets, and so i think it's healthy to have a washington times which is about a 30 on this all the way up to new york times. cbs evening news, when i did this, dan rather was -- data's a little old in that book, but it was close to 80 on that scale. but msnbc, although i didn't measure their content for this book, but i'm sure they would be even high or than 80 if i were to do it today. >> host: where would fox news be on your scale? >> guest: well, i did only one show on fox, and that was "special report," and that was

when brit hume was still the anchor. it was something like 39. it was definitely right of center but not far right of center. the average republican speech would be something like a 15 on the scale. so the brit hume show would be not quite centrist, but right leaning but definitely not as far right as the average republican. he would, his show would be about like a susan collins speech, the maine senator who some conservatives called her a rino, say she's not really conservative. i would call her a right-leaning moderate. >> host: what's the methodology or the math that you use to develop your scale? >> >> guest: oh, okay. well, that's kind of involved, and if i can pat myself on the back, it took a lot of work. it took -- i was, basically, a statistics major as an undergrad. that technically is called mathematical and computational sciences. but then that training alone would not have been enough to do the method i did. there were some courses that i

took in graduate school, and i used those courses. it was called maximum likelihood estimation. so it's a technical term. but it's something you learn in the second or third year in a economics department, maybe the first or second year if you're in a statistics ph.d. program. so i was proud to say i actually used some of the things i learned as a ph.d. student. >> host: well, is this written for ph.d. students or for the lay -- >> guest: no, no. you know, i had my mom in mind, and she was an interior decorating major at oklahoma state university. so i was thinking of her when i wrote -- now, it started with an academic article published in the quarterly journal of economics, and that was fairly technical. but i tried to take the math out of it. one of my good friends is steve leavitt, the writer of "freakonomics". i met him when i was a grad

student. in fact, if i can brag, i'm the first person to predict he'll win a nobel prize. i'm sure i'm going to be right. it was kind of my inspiration, if he can do it, i can do it. write something that is based on technical stuff, but you try to present it in a way that lay people can understand. so i try to make it, so my goal was to make it be -- [inaudible] my wife says it's not, but that was my goal. >> host: is this a blast at the media, the news media? >> guest: somewhat. so i tried to be, you know, objective. at the end maybe the epilogue, i did say one thing in there that was kind of a blast. i said, i spent the first ten years of my career studying politicians as a congressional scholar. i found that the more i studied politicians, the more i respected them. i said i've studied journalists for the last i can't remember if

i said eight or ten years. i said the more i've studied journalists, the less i respect them. so there was a bit of a dig to journalists. and i spend that chapter, that end dog just say -- epilogue just saying how journalists could be a little more like politicians, i'd respect them more. one is to be a little more transparent about their own ideology. and the other is if you look at surveys of journalists, they vote something like 92-8 for the democrat. so i'm sure in the average newsroom it's like academia. it's just filled with liberals, and they probably interact very little with conservatives. i said, meanwhile the liberal politicians must interact with conservative politicians. you know, they're stuck together in the house and senate. if they want to get anything done, they have to interact with the other side. so i suggest that they should do that. maybe a couple minor digs at the media. >> host: in what way does a journalist's personal bias effect his writing, and how

would that effect the reporting? >> guest: okay, yeah. the key thing, i call it a distortion method of bias that i call -- what i mean is that i don't think that the journalists are lying to us. i don't think they're telling untruths on either side, neither fox news, nor msnbc. by and large, almost everything they say is true. what the bias comes from is what they don't report. it's crimes of omission. that often happens when thinking is the story interesting or not. for instance, a media research center just reported, they looked at two stories, this recent benghazi memo that came -- where the white house basically admitted they were put in the talking points for susan rice that it was this youtube video, and so this was bombshell news. at the same time, we have this los angeles clippers' owner, sterling i think his name was. and both are equally true

stories. sterling was a racist, the white house looks like they were playing poll the ticks, trying to -- politics, trying to make themselves look good for the election. both are true, but if you're a conservative, you'll say, oh, that white house memo story was much more important. that's the one we should be reporting more. and i think if you're a liberal you'll say, no, no, no, the sterling story, that's one we should be reporting more. so in your selection of stories, i think liberals will select one set of stories while conservatives will select a different set. and that's one part of how the bias comes in. another, as i said, the think tanks that you cite. so i suppose that a lot of new york times journalists will say, oh, those hacks at the heritage foundation, meanwhile, there's probably lot of people at fox news saying those hacks at the center of budget and policy priorities. so think tanks, their ideology and their own heart, that will affect which they choose, net

causes and have different biases. >> host: professor tim groseclose is the author of "left turn." where does your -- are you a conservative personally? >> guest: i am. i reported my political quotient's 13 in chapter phi. i discuss all of -- five. i discuss all of my views, which i think journalists should do. so i hold myself to the same standards that i suggest journalists should be held to. >> host: is it a problem, though, that we have bias in the media? people, for the most part, know what they're getting, don't they? >> guest: i should say this, even though i think probably the average journalist is probably something like an 80, 90 or 100 on my scale, their political quo shenlt, that's what they feel in their heart, their reporting is much more had rate. -- moderate. the mainstream media is like 75, 65, maybe high 50s even though i think in their heart they would like to report something in the 80 or 90s.

so journalists, i think, are moderating themselves. both sides. i think the same is probably true with fox news. is there a problem with the bias? no, i actually think it's good to have a variety. i do think there is a problem that among journalists it is overwhelmingly on the liberal side. if you look at surveys, they vote something like 92-8 for democrats. and i think in a hell hawaii democracy -- healthy democracy, it'd be something like 75-25. maybe even 50-50 would be optimal. >> host: chapter eight, an alien, conservative injected into a liberal newsroom and the topics she might cover. >> guest: this was, i found this great story about a woman named katherine, a reporter in min minneapolis, got a job at the "minneapolis star tribune." it turned out the job came about as an experiment. one of her editors said, you know, maybe we should have a

conservative in the newsroom, and so they hired this woman. she was a former member of a think tank, devout conservative. and, in fact, this article i read said something about when the cell phone rings "joy to the world, the lord has come," everyone knows whose cell phone is ringing. and this article talked about what it would be like for her. and i called her up, and she was very pleasant, gave me an interview. while i was interviewing her, she told me about this story that, basically, she gave the scoop for. it was this case of the six imams flying on a plane. may not be as exciting a story now, but it was a case where she broke the story about this. and i asked her if her conservative values led her to learn about that story. and she went on and on and said, oh, yes, of course. this is definitely -- if i had liberal values, i wouldn't have had my antenna up to be

suspicious, i wouldn't have done the extra legwork to pursue this. it's mainly just a lot of anecdotes about her and what it was like being in the newsroom and how her conservative views actually influenced her reporting. i think the same is true on the other side. if you have liberal views, it would lynch a reporter in a mirror-shaped manner. >> host: you've said that 92-8 or so have supported the democratic nominee for president when it comes to journalists. why so many journalists, why so many liberal journalists? >> guest: lots of people ask me that. you know, it's not in the book, but i've come to think i think there's just something in the dna of liberals that makes them want to go into center jobs or there's something in the dna of conservatives that makes them want to go into other jobs. things like army officer, liberals just don't want to pursue that. lots of -- you know, owning small-time laundromat. small businesses are something that conservatives want to do.

meanwhile, anything that's, a job that seems to have very little structure, very little rules, it seems that liberals want to go into that field. academia, the arts. and one is journalism. so i think that -- so i don't think it's any sort of conspiracy that's keeping conservatives out of the newsroom. i think it's mainly just self-selection, and it's something for some reason liberals want to go into journalism whereas conservatives don't as much. >> host: tim gross close, what do you teach here at ucla? >> guest: i'm in the economics department. i kind of teach them economic methods for political scientists to use, also statistical methods that political scientists can use and also a congress course. >> host: does your bias come through in the classroom? >> guest: i try not to. for my congress course, i would ask all my students to compute what we call their a, dirks -- ada