other look at farm subsidies and in the the porkbarrel medicare and corporate taxes and fannie mae. all five those areas the benefits are clearly outweighed by the cost. and i think that the waste -- i sort of -- it was sort of a spitball because you can't get precise estimates. i sort of rank the chapter so that the father in the book you go the more wasteful and pernicious the effects of the policy are. ..

boomers retire end this inefficient system that privileges waste and playoffs is going to become more expensive. >> i often said if you start from the premise of thinking financial regulation is about stability or safety and soundness. one of the things that struck me, a commonality and insurance, it was all kind of hidden, it works on issues a lot. really out rage you about what is on budget, it seems to be

contingent liabilities, what let me ask you, it is it the corruption is worse when there's an element of budgetary secrecy? >> i would say so. i would say there is and the extent to which they are hidden is extraordinary. >> it seems like i remember when everybody kept telling me things like money failed, but these are going to be great profit but i am sure it is true. >> in the case of fannie and freddie one of the problems was they weren't keeping on his books. >> tom cox is the new senator from arkansas. the vote, he was the only member of the arkansas delegation, a

very in the cycle guy, a reuter column criticizing and for doing that, and trumping arkansas values and chuck todd hill again very plugged in and very connected and smart guy made the same point. and i took to the electronic pages of the weekly standard and excoriated them for it, in good humor but you have to be kidding me. the percentage of arkansans who draw benefit from this farm bill is vanishingly small and the entire kansas delegation voted against the farm bill, tom will be okay. but the point is people who draw a living and who do a good job of understanding politics, i don't want to single flows out, they are smart sharp analysts by mentions that to point out the extent of the obscurity the

reality of the farm bill the farm bill has been around for 80 years, not like it is a new policy. >> chris mentioned culture and i think this is incredibly important. i can say from my time on the hill, charlie cook reflected this washington mentality but the way you get reelected is bringing goodies home to your constituents rather than standing for something and that viewpoint is members have internalized that. >> interesting aspect with respect to transparencies. republican congress, freedom to farm bill, made a lot of the most of the federal subsidies a lot more transparent and that is why there was a decade or more of embarrassing stories how folks like ted turner were massive collective farm subsidies. on the recent farm bill

congress says the farm brokers realize this is a big problem. a lot negative publicity they ended direct from subsidy programs and switched to insurance subsidies has intends of billions of dollars to the farmers through insurance, through private insurance companies so it is essentials laundered money and that has made the recipients of the farm work more invisible so congress doesn't like transparency and they work against it. >> interesting point about special interests, sometimes it almost -- i don't see how we could have avoided in american history. the federal government accumulated, and big chunks of

land given to it. and the general policy is to get rid of it, and promising to build landlines, a lot of corruption associated with that. i don't know how we could have gotten around that, i don't think the federal government got rid of the land, don't want the big federal government with a big land so got rid of it. another example you won't go into detail with indian treaties, but the relationship between the federal government and indian tribes is generally awful right up until the 1970s. during the nineteenth century the federal government wrote treaty after tree with indian tribes, and again and again from one perspective special interests, white settlers were moving at lobbying their representatives to break treaties, which was bad when you

look at it but i don't see how we could have avoided that. millions of settlers pushing out over the appalachians, squatting on indian land. i don't know how we could have avoided it. with corporate income tax i differ with you some what, how and why the corporate income tax is so complicated and corrupt as it is. the basic structure, complex thing called income saids the government up for failure and corruption. the corporate income tax, fundamental structure is so complicated that it is easy for corporations to go to washington, allowed me to say this tax is unfair because of this and this and this, trying to tax, this thing called corporate income. an because of that there is no

good sound sort of neutral basis for it and so it is an opening to corruption. >> that gets back to your initial response to the book and this is a good opportunity for me to respond to that. the question of something like farm subsidies, is this just a fundamentally misguided policy that will always produce skirmishes perverse effects that would accurately be labeled corruption. i'm not an economist. for what it is worth i think the answer to that question is yes. i didn't deal with that in this book the merits of the policies as policies. what i wanted to do was because i think what happens is malfunctioning policies always seem to malfunction they always

seem to malfunction in the same way which is one of the reasons i wanted to do this book as a history. i see commonality between the problems with the tariff regime of the nineteenth century, the problems with the corporate tax regime today. i have read arguments i found persuasive but by the end of the nineteenth century we did need heavy protective tariffs and this was a misguided policy. the same to your point about corporate taxes, my book is what i want to emphasize, putting aside the merits of the policies themselves, not to say that i don't have opinions on them or to say that i am neutral on them. i write for the weekly standard. does not hide that where i come down on these policies but when they malfunction and don't work there seems to be commonalities to it. i think like i said, as i noted in my remarks it gets back to the structure of the government.

>> a good point. you could look at it as i felt like it points -- too easy but i do think it is the balance -- discussion of the merits of various programs that are listed and raises the discussion of the function of them. let me raise what i think to me is an interesting issue in some of the case is particularly with the u.s. bank. en freddie. i want to go back to an economic story in the university of maryland, john joseph wallace has written a lot on corruption predicate only at the state level in the 1800s. you talk about this in the book. and of course especially in this era of greed default and we remember in the 1820s 30s and 40s of the state level default

so one of the things professor wallace identifies in his work is entry barriers. to me whatever you think about fannie and freddie, there are lots of arguments about the financial crisis, one of the merits of that chapter is this is not about city versus fannie it is about here are specific institutions that got privileges no one else got just like the united states but what professor wallace argues in his work is you have all these state-chartered institutions where legislators were handing out charters in what he saw as the really big change above the 1840s and 50s, the creation of general corp. laws so anyone who wanted to start a bank or corporation didn't have to broad politicians, you just went and filed the paperwork and he argues this is a really big change in terms of reducing corruption in government and

there is some truth to that so the question to you is how much of this is driven by exclusive special charters and privileges at least in the financial sector? >> the story of fannie and freddie, i think that's they were given basically a ranch and it was enormously valuable. in 2001 cbos for around $10 billion was the value of that and then there was a real bombshell that said only two said the that got returned to homeowners, the rest, federal reserve stories said even less so this is a problem with charters and privileges this is sort of why fannie and freddie are at the end and the banks are at the beginning, the region's special privileges, they were private institutions and what they were able to do was take a portion of the bounty and plow

it back into the political system to protect their rent. it is not as widely known as it should be a because it was in a letter that madison wrote madison and jefferson were infuriated by the behavior of the first bank. jefferson had it on reasonably good authority was members of congress, madison he was in new york early on in the bank's days and was appalled by the scramble for federal paper and he knew for farmers in the southwest were not on the inside of it. he worried that the stockholders, he worries the would be the pretoria banned of government. once they were brought by the largesss and overwhelmed with claimers was his quotation and it is a perfect description of

fannie and freddie. >> my favorite tidbits about the bank of the united states was during the congressional base one of the biggest offenders and senator daniel webster, actually pay general counsel while a senator. >> that is an example of where i got a bit of grim humor writing this book because daniel webster has been remembered, not wrongly as the great defender of the union, but if he could put his hand into a pocket, that is what he did. >> may be the last quick question, what about solutions? i don't know how we could never fully solve problems like logrolling but are there institutional changes like a balanced budget amendment, term limits that you would favor to try to do this? >> i would favor both of those in terms of institutional

changes i would favor a host of them. the problem is the amendment process has to go through congress and effectively asking congress to reform itself. i have a piece coming out in the weekly standard. the national affairs talking about next steps. i try to frame it, it comes off as a little small ball. we can talk about bigger reforms but i wanted to frame it as what could we actually get done. things like locking the revolving door for instance and regulating campaign finance unregulated speech, regulating to members can accept pac money from. if you are the chairman of the committee that oversees agricultural interests, how are you taking contributions? if you are a judge and did that before your court you would be kicked off the bench. those i the suggestions, i

wanted to write something i didn't feel was pie in the sky. >> that was excellent. i am sure you agree with me. of this thinking my friends at home on c-span might hear the conversation and think sounds like a really interesting book but i wonder what it is. a big government and rise of american political corruption. your other is j costs. and what i would add the usual way people raised their hand and wait for the microphone. someone brings a microphone so everyone can hear your question. please identify yourself. in this case you can. let's start in the front.

i will point rudely at you. i don't know your name. >> unless you specify otherwise -- >> you can -- >> my question is for j. but i would like to hear everybody's opinion. >> my name is steve hank and and i am a cato group the. the word for republic, this is a word i have been looking at for three years trying to get a handle on what the definition is of republic. there are all these common definitions. it is not marquee. all these things go all the way to say no it requires constitution. you have to have individual rights. i am shocked by the range of the positions that i found that i am also shocked by the fact that

nobody seems to ever when they talk about a republican effort define it. i don't know if your book does but my experience has been that people use the word republic all the time and don't define it. my question to you is how would you define what a republic is. >> really good question. one of the challenges is that a republic is not -- republic is almost -- the product of government. almost as if -- democracy, marquee, whatever that is the process. republic of mustard flowers to the end results. the british system was the most perfect republic and every

invented by human artifice. it is close to the british system. meanwhile, madison's first choice was not as close to a monarchy on the spectrum, the final product of a constitutional convention was very far off. the range of opinions, diversity of opinion in the constitutional convention those who sign the document on the most market poolside with the hamilton and those who rejected the document to refuse to sign it, i would not say they were all in with the republican spectrum because it is not about the process. it is about the end results. my understanding and the way i define it is a republic is a system of government whatever the design might be. that governs for the sake of the people as a whole. rather than individual interests. madison specifies that a little bit and has a condition called

the republican principle which was widely accepted, the ultimately a majority rule has to play and essentials role in the republic somehow. but again there were vast differences what role it should play. hamilton saw most institutions of government completely and permanently separated from majority rule and i would still say he was a republican with a small are. >> what i think jay is getting at in layman's terms is the intention is the republic is the government that is aimed at trying to broadly serve the general interests rather than the reflection of a mark. to me what i think the book is trying to reflect is the reason we have a republic no more is the erosion of the general interest for fractional or special interests. let's go to another question. >> the gentleman in the aisle. >> jim snyder. my question picks up on one of

the themes corruption, things get done. my question is maybe there are some areas where corruption is especially beneficial. let's say in infrastructure. picking up an example with railroads. between 1865 and 1950 in america, built 5,000 miles of trails year. we led the world in rails, transportation, since we regulated that and eliminated corruption from the system americans, it has become the laughingstock of the world's. china built 10,000 miles in the last decade. far superior to anything we have ever built in our history so the question is maybe there really are some positive elements. i will give you one vivid example that is a contemporary

issue. the future of the tv spectrum. we decided to give broadcasters close to $100 billion in give aways because that is the only way we know how to transition to getting them to provide cellular services. no other solution other than just give it to them. there are a lot of issues like that with infrastructure where it is unfortunate but that is lower only way we can progress, a pretty significant dose of corruption in that area. >> i am not going to disagree with that in principle. like i said, the book is, you could read it as a criticism of hamilton in some respects, but i am profoundly aware of his genius and at times found myself overwhelmed by it. that is not -- your point is not a point that i take lightly. i just want to make a comment

the challenge with the argument is talking about the railroads in the nineteenth century. was this the best way things could have been done? the railroads have of vice grip on the american farmer in the west to the point that where these traditional republican voters embraced populism, the populist party and the populist movement which was a far left wing movements come as late as 1907 william jennings bryan says it is time for the state to control the railroads. that is antithetical to the foundation of the system yet william jennings bryan in 1986 came shockingly close to becoming president of the united states. if it was not for the uptick in wheat prices he very well could have won. why did the system almost produced probably the most radical president that it could have produced? it was because of the atrocious condition of the american

farmer. generally i think american farmers treatment at the hands of the railroads was a general condition whereby the nation's political economy, the political/economic industrialization was grossly unfair to the american farmer. by the way, about 1880, constituted a majority of the work force, a majority were farmers. that sort of speaks to the dangers and even -- i mention this because we can look at retrospect and say this is a good thing or this is a good thing it was a good thing in the long run. if you were a farmer in western kansas in 1887 was an awful thing. >> i give a quick thumbnail of railroads in the nineteenth century. most railroads were not built with government subsidies. most of them were private

enterprise. i am talking railroads in the east, thousands of miles built in east with government subsidy, government subsidizing railroads, union pacific and that is when you started getting corruption. a talk about the mobile air scandalize example of corruption. my take is america would have been railroaded with out any government subsidy. there is the famous case of the great northern railroad built by an entrepreneur that went up on the northern route near the canadian border completely unsubsidized, very successful. the railroads would have gotten built without any government subsidy, but because of the subsidy, as i said there was -- i don't think it was necessarily a bad policy because the federal government had a massive amount of land, had to get rid of it. give it to individual businesses like railroads and that may be not a bad results.

i would rather that result in the federal government had retained all the land. >> on a related issue we often talk about things that are second best and do with the distortions. there are lots of things where for instance there are constraints like certainly lots of places around the world defeat as a check point to one country to another you have to a rise. it would be nice if you didn't have to pay the bride. that would be the first best but if the choice is you don't have that check point or the border or you pay the bride that bribe facilitates transportation. may be more directly in the united states it is difficult to build almost anything in many places in the united states. lots of councilmembers are bribes one way or another so that shopping center or apartment building can go up. first there are construction and things get done and you don't bribe people but we don't live in that world war where government official controls the

decision, that decision leads for sale and better than a world where the decision is not going to allow it to happen at all. i certainly see in some instances, this is not a generality but brides are going to be the grease that gets something done offsets all sorts of other imperfections. kato talk about all the imperfections. >> one final point, i am sensitive to the degree in the book. the patronage system in the 1830s was corruption but in my judgment it doesn't come in nearly as harsh a criticism after the patronage regime. their distances in degree. as a way to hold political coalitions together, but involved the point where it became the purpose of politics itself by the time the regime collapsed with the assassination of james garfield. i try to get to that with five

substantive chapters on domestic policies. here we have corruption that overwhelms whatever noble spirited purposes exist behind the originating legislation. >> three up and two over. >> carl donovan. according to plunder, how the law can be misused, we have arrived at universal perfected plunder in our system and it is all based on ways to measure a monetary unit. i want to ask about andrew jackson. the wonderful words of his farewell address from 1837. he articulated so clearly that the constitution's system of gold and silver:many protect the wealth of the labour class from being inflated way by the largest corporations and politicians and financial

interests which together would barter away control over air the most precious aspects of life like today health care. did you explore andrew jackson's for one addressing your book? >> i did not. i have a lengthy section on andrew jackson who comes in in general for fairly harsh treatments. deservedly so in my estimation. when -- this is the second book i have written and i find i have opinions about certain historical characters when i go into a book. what i come out is into interesting to see how they changed. my opinion of jackson plummeted as low as any opinion can plummet. notwithstanding his views on currency. the currency is an issue that i elected not strategic and looking at picking the issue is not to say currency doesn't fit hypothesis but i have limited space and wanted to be strategic

in i selections and they are grounded on -- i reviewed five especially in the latter half, five substantive chapters on farm subsidies on the pork barrel medicare financial regulations and corporate taxes to find consensus views of the facts. regulation of the currency is something where there is such deep division between people that there wasn't common ground from which i could make an argument. >> a feature is there are many issues that give you a taste of the issue and again the bank war is one of those and i find it one of the most fascinating episodes of american history so i also encourage to meet jackson's the to message one of the powerful arguments against privilege but again i see jackson as very mixed, the trail

of tears and his rejection of the supreme court's decision and one of the worst episodes in american history so he is quite a mixed bag. i will say there are some discussions in the book, not a lot, to me i think the economics are able of but that is a topic you will pursue and encourage, and that area in mineral. >> on the aisle near the barrier. >> i am meredith mcgee with the campaign legal center. and we disagree on many areas but this notion of corruption in special interests in washington not withstanding mitch mcconnell's claim that there's no such thing as special interests in washington. the roles that you think money

and politics plays in this cronyism. in the corruption in the corporate welfare. however you want to characterize it. some of us not only influences the outcome of elections but along with lobbying exactly what happens. i would like you to speak about that. >> i would be happy to. at the end of the boat, a call for bipartisan cross ideological coalition. where there are areas of agreement. i find myself agreeing a lot especially the last chapter with ralph nader. i see the problems of fannie mae and freddie mac her leon and recognize the problem and put him next to peter wallace in. people probably disagree on more things done that when they do agree and i don't think it is deniable that special-interest money is a problem in politics.

i think that because of the minute haitians inherent, it has to be the small end of wedge. it is a better metaphor to say it is the foundation of pervasive transactional relationships. you have campaign contributions, public support, lobbying and providing partial and fractious information, to face policy and political uncertainty in dealing with the questions they have to deal with and on top of that the revolving door which is a way to subsidize legislators who make relatively eat little money. your average american makes $200,000 a year. if you compare them in turns of social status they're grossly unfair paid. market based, 435 of them should

be able to negotiate a better wage but what happened is they take that salary but then they know when they leave office they have but nice signature coming to them. it is interesting to me because it happened as a product of the progress of reforms during the first half of the 20th century did away with the old corrupt style of doing business which was the party machine. i get a lot of conservatives complaining to me about the seventeenth amendment and often times depending on what kind of mood diane and i will humors them or i will say you don't understand how bad it was before the seventeenth amendment was passed because it was a disaster. if you look at the cover of the book the person at the top is nelson aldridge to was called the head of it all. the head of this vast alliance

between corporate interests and the political barons that controlled the senate and to in turn controls state governments. it is one reason we never got any sensible tariff reform until woodrow wilson became president for better or worse on that but on that front for better, but this was undone and this current regime came up in its place. the current regime is relatively new. about 50 or 60 years old but it is not as grubby as the old regime. the old regime was very grubby. these letters were expos. william randolph hearst's found these letters in 1909 but kept them in his pocket until 1912. these letters, executive from standard oil and these politicians and the politicians would write i need money and the executive would write back no problem and give you get a chance please kill the commission percolating in the states. it was very salacious and varied grabby. nowadays we don't have any of

that. it is of couch in legalistic veneer plausible deniability. i remember my counsel here i don't recall them but the result is the same. campaign finance system is it exists, the foundation of it. >> we spent a decade since the congressman responded with reasonable cash. >> baldrige is one of the fathers of the federal reserve system. i don't thing by coincidence. one of the things i struggle with, at the end part of the suggestion is i characterize it as a marriage between progressives and libertarians that break from separate parties. and cleveland, able to do it that. no president has been perfect. >> exactly.

someone who tries to build these collisions on a regular basis, where does the actual source of corruption is, is this covenant basically creating ways to export and redistribution or it is the business corrupt in other ways meaning government? is probably a little bit of both but i think purposely skip around that issue in the books so i am going to ask you, which do you see as the predominant source of this? or does it matter? >> i am not sure it matters for the sake of an alliance. to you treat the underlying symptoms? we get a little relief from treating the symptoms. i think it matters in the sense, to me if we believe the problem is government essentially curates monopolies have restricted market and entry, then the answer is let's

regulate it more let's not handout special privileges, but that seems to be the solution at the state level of the 1800s. >> i wrote the book the book was meant as a diagnosis rather than of a cure. the final concluding section is a suggestion pointing toward a cure. the piece that i have in the standard is stuff that i think is more salesable. i say that to say i don't disagree with anything you said but as a practical, i wanted to be practical. >> excuse me. i can't help, on the question of money and politics, the name of another book about campaign finance reform which takes a slightly different view of these matters. i would also mention that we should keep in mind that the

people engage in the practices documented in this book are the ones who also writes federal campaign finance regulation. with that, on the aisle, please. whig for the microphone. >> i am convinced to buy the book. >> thank you. >> to public/private partnerships for build an infrastructure produce factions that fran local governments? >>threaten local governments? >> the answer is yes. i mentioned in previous questions how grubby the nineteenth century was. i have to admit i often found its grubbiness charming in a way and these devious sort of characters, i found some sort of refreshing for their frankness.

one of the more -- also for their over the top quality as well. there is something to them that i have this point in the preface where i talk about match play who was born near where i live born in beaver. he is held before a committee during a debate on the sugar tariffs. i you investing, are you speculating? yes i am and i am going to continue to do so and there's nothing you can do about it thank you very much. classic archetypes' platonic ideals of that character was simon cameron the originator of the pennsylvania political machine that dominated from the civil war to the great depression and this guy was such a snake but was so good at politics that lincoln had hired him as secretary of defense and shortly had to fire him from moment of the corruption, it did not stop him.

a decade later he was in control of the state. how did simon cameron, was so wealthy, and he was a newspaperman in the 1830s. in newspapers in the 1830s were partisan. and when they started handing out charters for this and that simon cameron transitioned seamlessly from a newspaper man to a businessman. and various corporations he was in charge of. cameron is a perfect illustration that yes, franchise granting is a pathway to corruption and it was how what man has obviously cook as simon

cameron could nevertheless not only will pennsylvania politics does create a political machine that was brought down by the great depression. >> charters or franchises? >> infrastructure, and i will frame it. and infrastructure, purely private. in britain they were private. old-fashioned contract think and development over the last couple decades to move to the middle road to building highways so the capital beltway in washington, was wide and of the product. the $2 billion product and private company picked in. and va kicked in. and in virginia old-fashioned contract and the government

would dish out $2 billion and you could do what ppp, privatisation, private sector kicks in some, you can get corruption in both of those ways. before ppps arose it was old-fashioned government contract and often corruption, it is a new way of doing government contract think worth some of the risks, handed to the private sector. there can be lots of problems, lots of problems in old-fashioned government as well. they are interesting. lot of folks on the left are against them but a number of conservative groups against him too. i don't think it is a pure black-and-white answer. in the capital beltway and virginia, a partner, the private

partnership took a lot of risk. if the revenues from the traffic they projected over the decade doesn't come through they take a hit. they get more profit if they can maximize the flow on highway and keep the operating and maintenance costs down. >> our book today has been "a republic no more: big government and the rise of american political corruption" and i think it's author jay cost for coming here today and i thank my colleagues, chris edwards, it is a good thing to have good colleagues. i would like to thank you all for coming. now we will go to lunch which is held on the second level, the staircase in the conference center. restrooms are on the second-floor on the way to lunch, look for the yellow wall. and thank you very much.

[applause] [inaudible conversations] >> this is booktv on c-span2, a television for serious readers. prime-time lineup tonight at 7:00 eastern. princeton university professor robert george talks about his book conscience and its enemies. at 7:45 karen pageant reports on the c i a's secret involvement in the u.s. national student association during the 1960s. at 9:00 david phillips comments on the relationship with the kurds and the current situation in syria. on afterward at 10:00 p.m. eastern chill was a prize-winning historian eric voter talks about securing freedom for fugitive slaves during the mid-19th century. we wrap up the prime time lineup with the national book critics circle awards.

it all happens tonight on c-span2's booktv. >> next from politics and prose bookstore in washington d.c. reggie love recalls his experiences as special assistant and personal aide to senator, then president obama from 2007-2011. [inaudible conversations] >> hi, everyone. thank you for being here. before we get started, a few housekeeping points. if you did turn off or silence your cellphones, we for them to beat or buzz and there will be

some time for audience questions. please take time to come to our microphone. so we can hear the question and get it recorded. all that good stuff. please do as a favor, something solid, more room for the book signing. i am sure everyone is excited as a nice gesture to our staff. welcome to politics and prose. on behalf of our owners and staff on want to welcome you. i m abby fennewald and die when the store here. if you are not at the store of and i invite you to take a minute to pick up a copy of the february event calendar. a bunch of stuff happening this month should be great. we do events almost every night as well as other programs said take a minute to check out. twitter and instagram and all that stuff. any way on to tonight's main event. we have with us reggie love to

discuss his new book "power forward: my presidential education". the book traces his unique trajectory to where he is today and shows all the lessons he learned along the way. he is not walk on at duke and went all the way to being its captain and the book talks about a great mentor and when he got to washington and went from being a staff assistant to barack obama to being his personal aide and body man on the campaign trail. and the great man fors on him and how he got to where he is today. we are excited to hear about it. please join me in welcoming reggie love. [applause] >> this is really nice. thank you for the introduction. i am surprised to see these

friendly faces out here, such a rainy cold night in d.c. but thank you for braving the weather and coming out. thanks for the warm introduction and thanks to politics and prose for having me here today. you didn't say this but i know there are a couple people in the audience that are members here. if you are here, you should join and be a member as well. they would appreciate that. you remember how. i won't speak, you should speak for 30 minutes but i could speak for 30 minutes but i don't want people to fall asleep if it is fleet. a lot of people have had the question in terms of why i like to write this book and mainly for me i was torn by the decision to do it. the job of having to work for

the president, a level of respect and trust and privacy that he would want to have an edge there are a lot of great lesson that i learned from the coach that i want to make sure came across properly in the book but when i was growing up, i grew up in north carolina in the south. when i was 18, 19, 20 years old light have -- there were no books out there like this that said this is what it is like to be a college basketball player or part of the political process. i think people see it like really far off in the distance and some things that often seems unattainable or something that is not for them and sometimes it seems all little bit sexier or more enjoyable than it is. part of it is, and i hope, that

people sort of take away from it through persistence and passion and toughness that even when you are in these really dark places that don't seem like they are the right place, if you stay through its long enough, sometimes you find yourself on the right bus. for me i have been lucky to have had some good mentors like my father and coach k and the president. i have been lucky enough to end on airbus's. my journey has been a continuation of all the impressive thing those guys have done. when you look at a president who has led us through almost the toughest economic recession that we have seen in the last hundred years, you see coach k eclipsed all time wins in division i

basketball. my father who steadily working for retirement, it is my way to show my appreciation to them. hopefully will add value to you guys, your children, your nephews, cousins and friends. there was a reading. i was going to beat a couple paragraphs. my favorite story is you can't teach -- can i use this one? funny because you are so tall. and don't really understand -- i really do. so it is a great middle -- i have never done this before. i apologize in advance and when i screw this up.

so okay. really funny. when i was in seventh grade and still in public school, basketball and popularity were synonymous. i had been cut from my junior high team, two seventh graders made the squad and i wasn't one of them. miley option was to play in the recreationally during the winter season. all my friends got to represent their school teams. i complained to my father that it wasn't fair. and he listened for a while but set up and flat restated the troupe, you are not that good. he asked the question, do you want to play basketball or not? i insisted i did and he said play your best on the team you and play on. i didn't know then, the recommendation would carry me

through decades of decisionmaking. having something to prove made me work harder. i made the school team for the following season my eighth grade year. i kept excelling becoming the leading scorer. by the end of high school imus named male athlete of the year by charlotte observer. it was such a gratifying feeling, to pull myself up run by wrong. my father used to tell me all the time reggie, you got to do the work. sports or school, doesn't matter. the work won't do its of and if you choose not to do the work you should never be surprised about the outcome because it leaves it up to chance. all of that was true of course but there was something else that struck an even deeper chord. after a heat cut in seventh grade i practiced more than any kid in my neighborhood. my friends made fun of me for having to play on the make league team which only made me want to play and practice all the more. i improved i grew, getting

taller and stronger but not enough. my squad didn't qualify for the national tournament, the teams that did qualify picked players from the teams that hadn't to fill out the roster. beam my team's leading rebounder and score, and i was confident my name would be called but it wasn't. i was passed over for 13-year-old kid who is 6 ft. 5. i was stunned. i said but i was the best player i said to my father. he listened and nodded slowly. reggie, you know it is tough. when you think you are better than the other kid that you can't teach height. i didn't get it at the time but eventually i saw that my dad was in parting to me for the life is unfair and when you perform at your peak it may not be enough on any given day. i have since seen my father's

added play in any arenas the you can substitute height for race gender income, geography, legacy, class. just because you work harder doesn't mean everything will happen according to plan. [applause] >> that is my favorite one. kind of with that, this is casual. i will take my jacket off. i am happy to take as many questions as are out there. maybe cnn is reporting this for cnn books or whatever it is. you guys may take it easy on me. >> if you have questions please come to the microphone here. >> you are not that nervous. >> professor callan from american university, one of our

graduates. can you tell us a couple fumbles, mistakes, errors in college on or off the court and also in the white house? there are a couple stories, second chance of what you learned from those mistakes? >> how much time you got? >> we will stay. >> what is your name? >> scott. >> i can give you a couple mistakes. i was pretty good at finding them. i will say that my mom used to joke with me, she said you managed to get into trouble lot but i admire the fact that you never seem to get in trouble for the same thing. in college i had tons of mistakes in college. on the court, my freshman and sophomore year i played on the team for football.

we didn't win the game. you can go back and look all this laps. i remember the first touchdown i scored in college as a freshman having a really crappy year and played it off and finally the guy who started in front of me was my roommate jeremy. can't find his mouthpiece so my coach looks to me and says reggie won the game. first start ever for to football and i play the whole game, i have two catches, i ask for, one of the only 3 to receiving touchdowns for the whole season we lose 40 points. it is a big deal. so i get interviewed by duke tv after the game. what happened on the play? i say i lined up and looked over the quarterback, and i would do

the signal. i didn't think about it. the next day at practice my coach comes down and goes to is the idiot that gave up power symbols for our audibles on the pre-game show? and i had this redeeming moments for the season, i score and alternately get chewed out about giving up our signals. i was 18. in basketball i've made tons of mistakes, and the always think back to one of the funnier stories in my fifth year, i and 20, 22 years old, and the captain of the team. college basketball i played a big man's position even though i am undersize. this is a supply and demand

malfunction where more guys went to the nba than recruited and so there was a shortage of guys and i happen to be there. .. and so -- now off the court, i definitely made a bunch of errors and i write about them in the book.

i think probably for me, when i was 18 or 19 and 20 years old, i kind of had the sense there wasn't anything i couldn't do. i'm at duke i'm playing football and basketball and i could burn it on both ends. definitely had some excessive moments of hanging out. no one will ever say i didn't enjoy college. in terms of the campaign and the white house there were some -- the one thing i don't write about in the book that was just like really a bad -- like a bad day, before the whole -- which i write about, the bag that gets left. there was a day in which i almost got left. and i did get left once but it wasn't my fault. the day i almost got left, we're in chicago and i'm kind of new to chicago never been to chicago, and we were flying out

of one of these free base operators, kind of off one of these terminals off from the main terminal at chicago midway and there's the worst traffic there's ever been in chicago, and it's pre-motorcade days. we're still stopping at red-lights. [laughter] >> and so i think look, all right, the candidate is going to stop at home and going to the airport after he did this event at rainbow push with reverend jesse jackson, and it was o'hare and we were flying out of midway and i'm headed to the airport, and i think i have plenty of time. almost an hour. you can get to another city in an hour. somehow i have the oldest inept cab driver i could have possibly

found. this is pre-ipads. so he doesn't really know where he is going and i don't know where i'm going, either. and finally robert gibbs and marvin are on the plane and they're like, look can man if you're not there within a couple of minutes we're going leave you. i said you may want to leave me because i don't know where i am and i don't think i'm getting much closer. i see many runways but i have no idea where you guys are at. and ultimately i get there evegetablely and they're still there, and i was like, why didn't you leave me? they were like, well, you're the only guy that has a copy of the speech. [laughter] and i think from that day forward, i think people had realized there was a printer in the terminal. so that was my last excuse for -- they were like we

approximately print the speech ourselves next time. so that was kind of during the campaign. that was definitely a pretty big mistake, and he kind of said to me you should never be 30 minutes behind me. in the white house, i don't know. i definitely -- i don't know. mistakes i made that i can talk about. i write about in the -- i think i write about it in the book. an event, in vegas, doing an event. and sometimes there are teleprompters and sometimes not and it just depends on the event. this event there are no teleprompters. so what is really important is that you have actual remarks on the podium. and so i go out, i do my typical check, i see the pages there,

and i go off. they announce him to the stage, he gets his remarks. sounds like a great event everyone is cheering and standing. he comes off the stage looks at me like, annoyed. so where was the rest of my speech? and i said, wait. there's no speech? he was like, well the first six pages were there but the last 12 weren't. i was like, well, i couldn't tell the difference. [laughter] i was like, you did a really great job. [laughter] i mean i think the funny part about it is that -- i will say that he would always say early 2007 we're kind of building the plane while the plane is taking off down the runway so there

were lot of errors, a comedy of errors made, but i think the team did a very good job of doing a good job of what my mom always said is not making the same mistake twice, which means you're learning. so that was a good question. i appreciate that. anybody else? >> did you ever save barack obama from making a mistake? >> look, that's a good question. i think there are definitely some days where his tie wasn't straight or he had something like hanging off his suit. he was pretty good. there weren't a lot of mistakes. i was pretty good at reminding him of what city he was in.

i think there were also some times where i'm -- there are also some times in which i know there were things that were not my fault and which he clearly blamed on me. so maybe some of those. but he is pretty good about it. i wouldn't call him mistake-free but pretty close. >> i guess if there's no -- your dad sounds terrific and your mom sounds pretty great, too. just the things they've said to you, if you want to elaborate a little more about them. >> i will. i go into some pretty good detail about my parents. i always would say that -- my brother is over here, too richard love jr. i would always say, i kind of

won the like parent lottery because, growing up amongst the group of folks i grew up with, both my parents they stayed together they're still together today, they would kind of like people that would take the shirt off their back and give it to you if they thought you needed it. and there was never -- we were never really wealthy, like very middle class. but never went without, even when there were times which i know that it was definitely a struggle. kind of the hardest thing about my parents is that it really puts a lot of pressure on me to try to be as good of a parent to my children when i have them. i think in terms of the thing that they taught me, i think my mom was really big on just --

she used to say this all the time. you really need to understand where you come from. and from an early age she would say to me like the moment you turn 18, you make sure you go vote because all the things that her parents and her relatives had to do in order for them to have that right, and she said she wouldn't -- i can hear her say it today because she probably continues to say it. one of those things that even though i didn't have to experience the hardship to have the right, it's something that should never go unappreciated because it did not come easy. and that is probably one of the more powerful things that she would consistently say to me. that really sort of gave me some perspective in terms of when you

start dealing with and looking at race relations as a whole i think it -- one signifies the importance of the struggle but also sort of signifies how far we have come in such a short amount of time and gives me a lot of hope for where we'll end up as a country, another 40 years from now. >> you have some remarkable mentors and your parents certainly sound like really wonderful role models. i'm wondering what your plans are, your ambitions? you have been around people who have had high ambitions. i'm wondering what your goals are for yourself in the next -- even the next five years or beyond that. >> that's a good question. i think one, i had these great opportunities and experiences.

if you would have told men -- if you said at any manipulate in time that i could predict the first 32 years of my life i would -- i would probably have been off by 85%. i don't know that i have specific -- i don't have a five-year, ten-year 15-year plan what want to do. like i said before, i do -- i want to be as good to my family and my kids and nieces and -- [inaudible] -- i don't have any. but it's not hard to get married. it happens all the time. i see it on tv. my friend is getting married on saturday on valentine's day, also the nba all-star weekend, which is weird. and so i don't think i would

probably be able to predict the next 32 years. i do think that whatever i do, i want to have impact i want to enjoy what i'm doing and the people i'm doing it with and i want to be able to put the same amount of effort and the same amount of passion into it as i have been able to do in all the other things i have done to date. good question. >> i'm paul freedman with the national childded a advocacy movement and we are chilled what what the president said about kidded. why dad you choose to work with senator obama? were there issues you wanted to address? and now having seen politics from a vantage point few people get, would you encourage other kids to participate in politics and run for office and my big question, would you ever run for

office? >> those are all good questions. you said paul freedman. >> yes. >> cool. i think on the first note my big issue when i grew up was definitely education. so in the book i write about providence day -- in high school i didn't get it. i don't want to be here. i don't look like ever older sound like everyone else, our car is not like everyone else's. but just on education in the sense that because there's such a big discrepancy in the quality of education that is out there for people based off of either what you can afford to pay where you live what the property taxes are in the neighborhood that supports your surrounding school i think ultimately i realize that that sort of gave people -- i have benefited from this.

right? but i don't know that i did anything special to be able to have that benefit more than the guys that lived next door to me or the guys on my aau team. that was a big issue for me. the big policy issue for me as to what brought me to d.c. the other big issue for me that brought me to d.c. in 2006 was i think general -- just the general diversity of it. at that point in time african-americans represented about 17% of the united states and only represent one percent of the u.s. senate. so i thought why not come and be part of that process? and i thought there was an importance to serving. if there are not people there that understand your struggles and understand where you have been, it's going to be hard for them to serve your interests. on whether or not people should be engaged that like the

purpose of the book. it's like you should be engaged and not only should you be engaged but you should expect your engagement not to have immediate impact and even though there isn't always going to be immediate impact, you still have the ability to make a difference eventually. and so me personally, even though i don't work in politics today per se, but i think i definitely stay engaged. i volunteer. i help try to raise money. i try to stay as close to the political process as i can because i know that -- i've seen -- i've seen the impact that being engaged has. so, it's not even just young people. everyone in the room we should all be engaged. and i don't think that something that we should ever take for granted or feel like -- or feel

too jaded or distant from the process. in terms of i would if run for something. i think that it's not something that is on my bucket list of things to do. it's not like visit the great wall. i definitely -- definitely a lot of things on my lust i want to do in terms of fun vacationy type things but i don't know that is on the list. but that being said i think -- there's such good democrats out there, and there are lot of really good people out there who are doing good stuff, and i think there's tons of talent. if you told me there was none one else out there and i was the

last man on the island week do it? of course but i don't have a burning desire. i've seen the process and it's a lot of work, and it's a big commitment and i definitely want to be part of it. i don't know that i have the risk portfolio to bear the entire load of it but i appreciate the question, paul. >> thank you. >> no problem. >> my name is freddy. >> i like the hat man. >> thank you. i really was into the campaign when candidate obama was running first, and a lot of white house are former athletes, we're really fascinated by the ritual of always playing before you got into the next city or the next state for -- i forget what they call them -- >> primaries. >> exactly. and so if you can elaborate on,

number one, if it actually was a ritual or just to let off a lot of steam and pressure on the campaign trail you're feelings about going up against hillary clinton and the things they were saying about you guys and how he was telling you to respond nicely, not disrespect senator clinton, and -- i can't recall my last question. but i -- >> i can start on those two. basketball is a whole -- it had sort of different meanings throughout the campaign and the white house and definitely is -- but it's been really, really important. and i try to sort of elaborate on two elements of it. there's look the physical playing of it and then there's

also sort of the bond or the chatter and the talk you have about the game itself. and sometimes it's not about nba games. sometimes there's -- it's about the games we actually played and who made well and who didn't play well. [laughter] so i remember -- so we played basketball on the day of the iowa caucus, and i was really nervous that day. i had never experienced a caucus before. there's no early exit numbers. it just comes out like you won or you didn't. and so we played that day because there was just really nothing else to do. you couldn't show up and go to a precinct where they were caucusing, so he invited a bunch

of friends who were in town who were there for the event they war going to have after the announcement of who won the caucus. so some little dinky little gym in downtown iowa, frank and alexis rounded up some guys and we played, and it wasn't that great of a game because it was really cold. the gym wasn't that big. i it was like an undersized court, like a little sport court. and we played. and it was like an average game. we won. we go to new hampshire, there's -- get this huge lead ten points. people were like ten-point lead, we thick we're going to win. we say do you want to play signal i don't really want to play. and we lost. and literally from that day on, we played basketball every primary day. [laughter] >> and i remember -- even every

left the white house and for re-election he e-mailed me and said we're definitely going to get a game in for 2012. i was like sure, dom chicago and we'll play. now, there were other times when we played, i kind of wrote about it in a little bit where the first time we played we had sort of -- one of the guys from the new hampshire had a greatwood idea the way to build relationships andern support was playing a game of pickup basketball. so i think there are a lot of people who we played with that really liked to my who like to play but really couldn't play there are guys like marvin in the back, who could play but never wanted to play.

and so one day we're playing with some firefighters and we're kind of having a -- we're having like pretty good morning. we're beating them pretty good. and i'm like 23, and i'm in my defensive stance playing the passing lane, and the ball comes my way. i kind of run down the court i dunk the ball feel really good about myself. coach k would be proud. and then kind of towards the end of the game he looks over at me and is like, we want to win, but we also want to win their support. [laughter] >> and a lot of people were like well, you guys are like point -- it was more a matter of respect. when you're up 30 and there's two minutes on the clock, you

don't shoot the 3-pointer. you kind of like pull the ball out and end the game respectfully. and then to your other question -- you have to remind me your other question. >> about hillary and her campaign. >> it was a tough primary. i was -- ironically i spoke earlier this week -- last week to homa and she said she had a copy of the book and read it. she said it's funny because i read the part where you were saying how hard it was to raise money in new york. we were on the other side saying man it's so hard to rates money in new york. everyone loves this own guy. we don't know who he is. i think in any fair tough competition, things are said and you do things that are part of the battle and then when the

whistle blows and you walk off the court, you shake hands and you take your shoes off and you go and have a meal and laugh about the game. there's no -- it's all really good stuff. a lot of the folks from there, close personal friends now, and i think they're going to -- a lot of them will probably participate in the 2016 election and i think -- i'm sure they'll do really interesting, good things. >> it's interesting because how does it feel to be on the outside now? you're in it, then you are out of it then you're -- but watching the news and everything, you see it but it's like i was really there and now i'm not really there. how does that work? >> that's actually a good question. i'm torn between it because i'm like, i no longer gate -- get a briefing back. my information is not that give.

have to read the newspaper, everything myself. there's no synopsis no bullet points, which i do kind of -- it's kind of a drag having to do that but i -- and i do miss the people. i moved -- i was 22 and i like grew up with guys like robert gibbs and marvin nicholson and the president, and dan pfeiffer. when i got here i didn't know much about anything. not that i know anything now but i know significantly more than i knew when i got here. so i do miss the camaraderie. they're kind of -- which is not like -- it's not the proximity in the sense that man, i really want to be on air force one. i like air force one over like delta and usairways obviously, but --

[laughter] -- but more importantly, i miss sort of that group, and i remember -- i didn't get it at the time but i remember when coach k used to say at the end of every season this group will never be back again, and for that for -- for him that was kind of a sad thing. and i didn't really understand it until i was a senior because i was like actually leaving. and it was really very similar feeling when i ended up leaving the white house at the end of 2011. it was kind of the end of a team for me, and i do miss it. but i think people are still nice to me. i don't get the cold shoulder at vacations. it's not -- it's like not bad. >> the followup, would you be

allowed to go back in? now that you're out is the door closed? is that the end of the era? >> as a guy that took my job is really good. i don't know that i would ever be able to take his job. but who knows. you never know. [laughter] >> you never know how these things turn out. i have no idea. good question. >> my name is graham and i just wonder you came up here and started as a staff assistant, and then senator obama's office. did you know he planned to run for president, and then sort of when did you sort of figure out that he was planning and then did you think that it was good idea? did you think he would win during the primary and sort of talk about that journey. >> that's actually a really good question. when i moved here it was january of '06. i would have told you there was

like a zero percent chance he would run for president in 2008. very -- no chance. by -- that was a mid-term election year. so by september of 2006 he was like -- i think he raised more money for the dscc than any other person. it was like he really -- almost like something out of a movie and at that point in time you still thought that he was young, he is not even done a whole term. you think it's a possibility but you don't really know. and then by the time he decides he's going to run you still think, man, this is a very crowded field. secretary clinton -- senator

clinton at the time very formidable. but for me i kind of thought, look if a guy named a barack hussein obama runs for request and is thought and maybe thought of for vp, that was a win. that would show so many people out there that anything is really possible in this country. and that was really enough in my mind to even make it seem like it made any sense at all. going through that entire process. and so i don't think that it was ever like really really apparent that he was going to win and be the president until john mccain said the fundamentals of the economy are strong and then the stock market dropped ten thousand

points in a day. so, you were kind of just on journey to see what happens. >> my name is don i'm from a an institution in western new york state you. said you were 22 and didn't know anything about anything i think is your term. let me tell you, doesn't get any better. i'm 78 and i know less about anything than i used to know. my question is, you worked and played for two very extraordinary men coach k and the president of the united states. do you have any comparison about these two men? where they're similar and different and what was it like to be associated with these two people? >> there's a lot of stuff i can talk about. one, the first thing that i

definitely learned from coach k was sort of the value of representing your brain. when i was growing up i always kind of thought reggie reggie ridge. >> reggie, reggie reggie, and then more reggie. and so when i got to duke, that was really the first place in which i realized i was like a part of something that was just more than me. and actually more than that team. right? by being there, we represented every guy that had came before us, that had put the jersey on all the hard work and preparation and people that put into to build the program. and that is very similar in terms of what it felt like when i got here to -- when the

president was sworn in 2009. i was like lucky to be there and really excited to be there, but felt sort of this sort of overwhelming sense of this is like so much bigger than i could ever be and i'm just lucky to be part of it. and because of that, because of being lucky to be part of it i needed to really value the experience and value being there. then in terms of comparativeness, they're both like the hardest working guys, stay up until 2:00 in the morning reading briefings watching tape, preparing, going through notes, they're both the hardest working people in their organizations. there's nothing that those guys won't do in order to be prepared to have a chance for success.

i think the difference is that coach k it's like kind of a dictatorship, right? he can do whatever he wants whenever he wants to do it, and people do it. i think the president has a little bit his triangle of people is much more complicated group of individuals to work with. but i think nonetheless he handled it well given that's his deal. i think the things they're a little bit different on is that -- i always laugh about this. i didn't write about this. was coach k -- coach k really really knows basketball. the president has to know everything. he has to know world leaders.

he even knows some basketball. [laughter] but i still laugh to this day. i got -- i must have gotten 100 e-mails in which -- march madness, can't wait here foes the president is not going to pick duke again, and then the first year he comes in and doesn't pick duke, he picks us to lose to like villanova which we did that year. and i guess someone asked coach k, so the president didn't pick you guys to beat villanova and reggie works for him. he said, let the worry about basketball and let the president worry about in the economy. >> how are you doing? my name is chris. congratulations on everything, map. >> thank you. >> do you texas that president obama is going to have his library in chicago or hawai'i?

>> i'll let the next person who is going to ask a question answer that question. i think it will be the chicago but i have no idea. >> hi, reggie. my name is marvin. i'm a big fan. i really enjoyed your book, and i apologize, i got here a little late. i was wondering if you could discuss briefly what it was like on the campaign compared to in the white house, and what was the good parts of both or the bad parts of both if you could. and my other question would be, was there a point during the primary where you thought that maybe we're going to win and then again in the general. >> those are good questions. >> thank you.

>> so i think during the primary, during the campaign days being a bodyguard was hard. i was carrying a lot of stuff. nobody was helping me. didn't have a lot -- there wasn't as much infrastructure. you really kind of had to rely on a select few people that you kind of knew who were going to be in different cities to really help sort of with the process of finding fried wall -eye to meet or chicken sandwich with extra may -- mayonnaise. i also think it was fun. there was like an excitement about being out and being with people less insular. and i think i got to spend a lot

of time with this guy who was the trip director, who was really good. >> i heard about him. >> legendary guy. >> yes. >> during the white house, but the white house is great, too. you got to -- look, i probably seen more places in the world now because of having worked at the white house place is probably would have never seen and i think made relationship is never would have had, had i not had that experience, but it's a little more rigid. papers to sign, phone calls trip calls, can't hang anything on the wall without getting five people to sign off on it. but still nonetheless you have real impact. you could really see the impact that you were having on -- for the american people. i remember the first visit he

went to walter reed and he is in visiting a patient and this guy lost one of his limbs, and he had all this pittsburgh pairer in fail ya on the wall, and he says to him reggie come over here. this guy is a huge steelers fan. and why don't you have jim rooney sinned him a jersey. and it's like, you send it over the guy gets it, his family sends a picture of him wearing it and writes this really powerful note about how such an inspiring thing, and stuff like that you don't see that stuff any other place. and really makes you know with what you're doing is actually having an impact right then and there.

i miss both actually. i want to do another presidential campaign. i hear there's one in 2016. i think they're looking for a trip director. >> in the primary you woke up one morning and were like, hey, think we might win the nomination? and then between was there a point in the general where were you like, hey, we just might win this thing. >> in the primary i thought we could win the primary when the day we were in indianaola, a steak fry, some he goes into the steak fry in a safe of obama os and thune poo i howth if a guy named barack hussein obama can do it in iowa, he can do it anywhere. during the general election no. i knew for a fact that after

mccain made the comment that we were going to win. i think start -- i started talking to the trip director if we win i definitely should not go. >> go where? >> to the white house. >> i'm glad you did. thank you sir, appreciate it. >> that a great question. what was your name again? >> marvin. [applause] >> my question has to do with taking you back when you were younger. you mentioned earlier when you went to school and you looked around and you said, these people don't look like me and they don't sound like me, and i don't know about being here. at my kid's school we're looking at issues of equity and how do we go about as a community really making everybody feel comfortable and welcome, and i

would be interested in sort of what -- if you have any advice on things that people did that made it harder for you or things that people did that made it more of a community and made you feel sort of pulled in and part of it. >> that a really good question. so i think in terms of feeling a part of it i still get e-mails today from the parents of my friends who went to the school that i -- at providence day. look doc hallway, clifford cal wally and jim. i lived on the other side of town and i couldn't go home between practice and then to school, and they would invite me over for -- to say, if you need a place to study or want to have

a place to grab a meal, take a nap or do whatever, they didn't like have to do it. they barely knew enemy. just knew i went to school with their kids. but definitely opened up their homes and their hearts to me, and something that i don't -- have not forgotten forgotten and am still appreciative to this day. thing that made it tougher. i don't think there was anything that made it tougher that someone specifically did to me, but i think -- i'm on the board of providence day now and something that is really important to me, but i do think that the cost of -- especially for some of these schools where they do a lot of like extracurricular activities and so the baked in price for school is not actually the sticker price. it's the sticker price with a 10

or 15% increase because you have lunches and uniforms and class trips and all sorts of things out there that require additional resources that aren't always calculated into that budget when people are saying, i'm going to send my kid to this school. so what we have done at providence day is we actually have a pool of money that is given from private -- all private money given and it's given to one of the teachers and they have a discretionary fund for people who basically -- so they're not in a scenario in which they want to participate be part of whatever class activity is out there, yet they don't have the resources to do it. so it's not necessarily -- obviously it's not the best solution in the world but i think it's something that helps, but i think that really -- it's hard to be 15 or 16 and you want

to do what everyone else is doing and you're looking around like it's hard. >> hi, brian. congratulations. >> hi. >> teacher and educators and she is a student in the d.c. area, and one of the questions we -- beyond what you have placed in your book is based on sports exposes character, and with that being the case if you were talking to the youth in the room, what would you tell them would be one piece what one word they would be able to use to carry them to the heights where they don't know what life is actually going to bring toward them but that sport has allowed you to do in your work life. >> there's so many words. only one?

i will say commitment is probably the biggest piece of it because so much about your ability to have success is really about what you're willing to put into it. i think -- i don't know if eye write this in the book or not. everyone wants to win and have a championship and be the best. right? but what sports teaches you is that you can't be good at something and if you're not, like having some tough days in the summertime, working on your craft, and that's really sort of the thing that it shows you that if you -- it's like a very

definitive thing. you go out and do this work and then you see that work actually will pay off into something, and sometimes a lot of thing wes do in life don't have that short of a life cycle. one season is just a year. a lot of things that we're committed to do sometimes takes ten, 15, 20 years but it's always -- you can go back to that example and be like oh, yeah, remember when i was after that and how great of an outcome that was? i want to do that again in something else. some and i think the other piece of it i would say is a big learning piece for me is i think friendships -- i write -- if you go back to the book, probably four or five of the guys that are some of my best friends are guys i played with. there's nothing out there that

builds bond stronger with people than being on a team and all people in that group sacrificing and commit took something that is better than individuals. and for me, i tell my friend this all the time. people say what's the thing you like love the most? and i was like thing i love the most, i have some of the best people. i love all my people. and i'm lucky to have had really great friends and teammates along the way. so i think the relationships and friendships you build from sports are invaluable. >> thank you. >> no, thank you. good luck in your upcoming season. >> thank you. [applause] >> i have a question. hi name is richard. >> hi, richard. >> how do you comp up with the title of your book?

>> let me tell you. i love simon & schuster. the original title was "i, reggie." and i said to myself i am not a going to schlep that book around touched with that tile. so the we worked collaboratively, and paw "power forward --" he came up with that and he is a really good guy. [applause] >> thank you for coming. the books are on sale and you can bring them back here and have them signed. >> loom as these sharpies. >> i know. [inaudible question]

[inaudible conversations] >> you're watching booktv on c-span2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. booktv, television for serious readers. >> here are some programs to watch this weekend on booktv. pull litter prize winning historian eric phoner discusses the downtowns ground railroad on afterwards. has san hassan on the rice and leader happyship of isis. and we visit the literary sites of columbus georgia and barney frank remembers his political career and this year's national

book awards. visit booktv.org for schedules. booktv, 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors, television for serious readers. up next, fiona hill and clifford gade, senior fellows at the brookings institution examine vladimir putin's foreign and domestic motives wind the historical context of russian leadership. this authors spoke at kramer books and after words cafe in washington, dc. [inaudible conversations]

welcome to kramer books. this is yet another one of our events this -- can you hear me? you're not here to hear me anyway. is that better? okay. this evening we have these two fine authors from the brookings institute around the corner that made the nice long trek. to my left is mr. cliff gaddy and perhaps the more esteemed of the two. fiona hill. i thought of that on the way in. please give them your warm attention. shut down the cell phones. [applause] >> and at the end you'll have a

few minute tore questions socks please save those for the end. thank you. >> i'm going to introduce the more esteemed of us -- she is probably not even going -- i know in her office she never sits. she has standing desk so maybe she wants to stand. >> everybody hear okay? and -- we're very happy to be here. very happy to see all of you and very happy for the chance to talk about the new edition of our book. we would like to call it a new book altogether. we had an edition a year ago. we have added about 40% 40% to 50% more new material on to the book. we have not revised what was there. the book about vladimir putin, a book that we originally wrote to try to explain who this individual is what kind of

ideas he has what is his outlook, and where those ideas came from. that was the first edition of the book. he decided last year -- we decided last year, slightly before all of the events that began to transpire in ukraine that we desperately needed to write maybe another book, maybe a new edition, that would explain how putin looks at the outside world. how he understands and what he knows of the outside world. and so what you'll find in this book is, as i said, ten chapters that explain who he is how he came to power, how he keeps power, how he manages his system, and explains it in terms of his own personal experiences and also notably in terms of him

as a representative of russia as an embodiment of russia. russian history, russian people russian hoe site and you'll find this new material that talks about mr. putin and the outside world. i'm going to let fiona take over now. we want to have a chance to talk about the contents of the book and especially its relevance for what is going on right now in a real sense we think that this book has never been more -- could not be more important than it is right now, and not least because if you go out there to the book table where the new edition, paperback editions of books that kramer book always has there in the middle, you will find at least five, maybe as many as ten books that talk about world war i, the beginning of world war i.

and one book in particular right on the top of the pile is called "the sleepwalkers" many may have read it. this our greatest fear right now. we may be sleepwalking into a new major global conflict even that originally stems from the idea that we just don't understand each other countries don't understand each other's intentions and individuals are misunderstood. so let me give the mic to fiona. and talk a little bit about this motion of -- notion of where the misreadings we're having to deal with right now and perhaps what-under book can hopefully contribute to trying to clarify those. >> thank you. can everyone hear in the back? we'd also like those be a discussion with people. many people who are here we know who know a thing or two about russia and certainly about globe

affairs and everybody here is extremely well read and we have more things you can buy. this is -- we're at the point that -- i know many of the people here in this room would never have thought we would be. we're 200 years after the anniversary of the end of the napoleonic war some rather interesting gentlemen did a few things that people weren't expect only the european continent, and napoleon tried to invade moscow and was rebuked. and we're 100 years since the beginning of world war i. also most importantly in the perspective only putin, in the anniversary of the end of world war ii, so putin, world war ii is a -- one of the reasons in fact that he is actually seeing a major struggle to the point that the feature of russia and

ukraine. gets anyone notice those who are reading the papers so many of these images of world war ii the rise of fascism and nazism and slaughter of minorities and all of it being evoked in the conflict in ukraine. and against this backdrop of all these other anniversaries as well, if i hold the mic further i can still hear because i'm getting a built of feedback here. so as clifford said it's very important to understand the kind of person you're dealing with, and why should we fixate so much on the person. why so much of an obsession with putin. why not the country itself? well, the russian system in the last few years has become personalized. it's become much more about one man than before. and it is the real russia, in

even the dows of the czar you had a much more complex political system and the receive yet period you -- soviet period you had a communist party, and politburo and checks and balances. putin came back to the presidency in 2011. he made the announcement -- his arrangement he had with dmitry medvedev who was a president for the period of time elm he said that the politics were being handled by one person. that's why we spent so much time focusing on putin himself. so the misconception and putin has become a fixation for the u.s. government and in terms of the sanctions the u.s. government has tried to implement in terms of dealing with the crisis in ukraine and

clifford can talk about that. there's been an assumption that russia runs in the past, some kind of oligarch can i, some kind of larger group that somehow has an influence on putin. i think we're seeing very clearly over the last ten months or so, the crisis in ukraine that is not the case. there's not the group of vested interests around putin really able to influence his behavior. we hear time and time again the biggest mystery for everybody is what does putin think? what is the decision that putin will snake who gets in to talk to putin who has influence? it's much more clear one man making the decision even if he listens to ideas and hears from other people. the second mis -- misconception about putin is his a run of the

mill autocrat dictator that can be swayed by other persuasions. people say he -- putin is the kind of person you're dealing with. but also not the case and that has led to some really serious underestimations of the kind of person that putin is. the title of the book mr. putin and the kremlin we chose deliberately. putin is another rupture with the russians under soviet power. there's no other leader in either russian history or modern hispanic who have come up through the intelligence agencies so the kgb. people pound to an drop've, who was more previously for many years of thad of the kgb but he came from the communist party. he didn't come up fr