he will be signing "american warlords" at the back in a few moments so be sure to get your copy and mark your calendars for another speaker to this audience august 4th to speak on the block the avenue of spies. thanks to all the veterans who are here and to jonathan jordan. [applause] . .

>> now we're live with author and former active lady, lynne chaney. nowl be from now until 3:00 eastern. she's written several books easr yncluding the most recent a biography of james madison... >> lynne cheney, what was your name when you were secretary? >> guest: they picked a letter of the alphabet and every one who has unrelated to detail has a code name that starts with a letter they choose and ours was [inaudible]

also offer seemed like a natural and i has been close angle or because his fishing habits. >> host: did your writing style change while you were in all their? >> guest: know that my subject matter did. i'd been working on a book for education when suddenly he was chosen to be vice president and it wasn't as though the book i was working on really contradicted anything that president bush was saying out on the campaign trail. e it just seems to just seemed seems to me inappropriate and o confusing to put out a book sitting setting forth my ideas on education since it was a hotc topic for president bush. booan so i started writing children's books, and that was an amazing gratifying thing to do.

>> host: you are a history buff is that fair to say? >> guest: yes. >> host: in the book telling the truth which came out in theu late '90s, you wrote it issaid a sometimes cited the negative slant we are teaching now is overreaction to this land in th to the past and it's true that in the past we sometimes presented as a laboratory history in our schools. >> guest: we did.t: w there is no question about itk but i think the reaction has been extreme and i think learn sometimes they don't learn about the greatness of this country. >> h "t host: the beginning of tellingel the truth you're the ch chairman of the national endowment for the humanities.hav >> guest: i had gone through a l great siege of the moral relativism.othin

there's nothing true, there'shi nothing false is just an area ss that was the point of the title d the book and that we areobge obliged to do what is close tosi it. we can >> host: here is the opening of telling the truth as ones witness reported at the scene orw when the citizens are required to rise to the pictures of a man known only as goldstein the oy s great enemy of the state and oe of the enemies whose name he joked tears from the assembly.y. what h what happened? >> guest: i don't remember if an it was anything in particular but i did as a conservative chairman of the agency that is clearly connected to the academic community find my name

names was used in that way and also eminem did it.tuall i felt quite cool. my children and grandchildrenea. have no idea what i knew eminem, which i don't. but there was a sort of outraget and it's amazing to think ane t outrage i think there was such a thing that was true or that ind believe there's such a thing as right and wrong. i'm not sure how that's alle played out over the years. i'm not so closely connected to it it now as i was then that i ound it outrageous.r viw >> host: what in your view wasoe not being taught in college andw scasses that was taught when you >> gut: hen you were in school? >> guest: the good side of thefe story as i freely admit i onlydi got the good side of the storyfs growing up and it's when i went to college and afterwards i began to understand that this

country has made many mistakes that we have not been always perfect but what we don't tell our children as we have comeclr closer to perfection than any other faith on the earth that wp have saved more people's lives than any other nation. that we have been a force for good and it felt as though thato was being left out of theou st narrative.t before i suppose i started just before w got into school. i do remember learning to write while i was in grade school tha i didn't start writing books until i couldn't get a job as ab phd. i have a i had a phd in english and that is when it started. i think it was 1970 that i got my phd. and i think that there were

it 30,000.y those were the days when it wase a great disadvantage to theervie female. i remember interviewing at one english department come actually george mason university and they asked me are you married or are you really interested in the job? [laughter] that might have been a legalobrr then that there was no fervor to take people to account for such an amazing statement. >> host: and/or congressman husband was a congressman at the or a. point?as an >> guest: i think that he was to an aide to donald rumsfeld.at to >> host: and went on to thetre chief of staff so you wonent ont : shington. guest >> guest: until president ford sadly lost in 1976 and then wetn host:home. >> host: what was the goal

after you got your phd and in which? >> guest: to teach 19thentury century literature in the romantic. though and victorian. host: in >> host: in blue skies nonces fences you talk aboutout discovering at the local library and casper ....>> gue >> guest: stindeed what a shocking thing. i was reading in the fictionficn section being very systematicatd and it didn't take me long tolo get toto the jays. and t i'd never heard of a book likel. that. >> host: you talk about how you hit it in a camper at home. >> guest: i don't think that my parents would have picked iti up and read it from beginning tt end but i didn't want him toen open it. ?you >> host: what was so shocking >> g:u? >> guest: we didn't use those words with company.ompa now i think we over use those words but it was the vocabularyr

>> host: in your view is this? a masterpiece? >> guest: no, i don't think don't so.at i don't regard it as a great classic. i had my own favorite.. i think jane austen pride and prejudice is it classic., great poetry.try john it's a great classic. 20t certainly 20th century writersl are fine.o et but i still think to get yourself a classic you have to hang around for a while and see the work.est >> host: from the newest book in life we considered the best jame seller, you write it as ayou wri promising time to clear away the misconceptions about madison, brush off the cobwebs that have accumulated around ande to seekt deeper understanding of commande who did more than any other toot concede and estaablish the natin we know. >> host: >> guest: it's been claimed but i think it's true. thnk

the misconceptions are that hehe was shy and sickly.nception those words appear time andut again when people write about madison. and it seems to me that you u coul couldn't be fundamentally shye and accomplish what he did in the public arena, nor could your be sickly and that implies that you are never well and as in began to look at his career, there were indeed times when hes was second out of action for d three or four days. but the rest of the time he was taking these amazing trips across the country with jefferson or with monro. to the energy that it took to travel from his home inmontpetoi montpelier and then he was the e main impetus behind the

constitution. he spoke at the s convention an. almost more than anyone else. i think morris spoke more times than he did at the combinationvh and he kept going.the fe the federalist papers wrote itse think it was 22 federalist papers and 40 days. i like to say to the collegehe w audiences i could probably write 22 essays in four days. they wouldn't be masterpieces. o they wouldn't stand the test of time orey the brilliant. i like to think of the energy and brilliance. i think that he was rather send the brilliance and energy. >> hos >> host: who were his parents? >> >> guest: he was born in g virginia.believe i believe that it was in wh westmoreland county not where he co grew up which was in orange

county. all of his ancestors worked ther land.sme they came from england, they came to virginia and they wereea essentially farmers.they that's what the open source evey though be like elect out as a plantation.t they didn't think like that.. father was a farmer, his motherl was a perfectly nice person but it was his grandmother that really influenced his life as dach as any. r >> host: how so? >> guest: she ordered a spectator for him. getting books wasn't an easyor matter and i do think that hea v was a book loving boy from thete beginning.the thi but one of the things she ordered for him was the spectator i think in eight volumes.eally you can see the influence of the spectator inluen his life.theri there's a lot of wisdom.his i think it also opened his eyes to urban life. ad i

if you are living on a virginia plantation or farm you have no c idea what cities are like or what the theater is like where bookstores ora coffee shops and think for a boy and young man ii virginia that would have been an amazing world was opening up. >> host: how did he become james madison? >> guest: through a lot of hard work.cided itust his father decided there was too much scandal going on at williad and mary. people were drinking and playing cards and he wanted james to got somewhere else and princeton wac a choice. it's also tritue that they felth princeton was a healthier climate about whether, not just about the moral climate and the salad was also cheaper. james madison, father, was very

tight with a dollar. he went to princeton and ad finished i think with two and a half years because he was ablehe tosh scrape his freshman year b then the effort of trying to do the last two years and one year led to a collapse of some kind a and i believe it was one of the first manifestations was epilepsy. >> host: when did that h epilepsyos should itself? >> guest: there is evidence not conclusive but enough to show me that he had seizures as a young child. they go away off and there's also a pattern where a young

child might have seizures and then as a madison's case had seizures again as an adult so maybe it's kind of you a foretelling of epilepsy. i'm sure doctors right now are very nervous that i'm connecting these two but his grandmother sent him them off from the suffering of policy - epilepsy. i could figure out what are the things on the list and what was his grandmother trying to treat. >> host: did it manifest itself at all during his presidency? >> guest: i don't have any evidence of that. there are indications for example - there's an instance

when they are traveling to philadelphia from washington but i can't remember if it's when he was the secretary of state or president but it's very clear that something happened. they are going along and suddenly this thing happens and later she writes i couldn't fly to him as i used to do. go, help him and he did right at the end of his life that the attacks became less frequent as equals or. >> host: how did james madison get himself involved in the revolution what a revolution what was the role in the lead up? >> guest: he was caught up as college students have been forever in the politics of the time and people at princeton were demonstrating against the

british but when he tried to enlist, he was practicing to be part of the militia. he talks about a thing that happened to him in training that convinced him he couldn't be a soldier and that would be unlikely at all. so he did not become a soldier. he wasn't involved until the revolution began and he got involved in politics. >> host: what was his relationship with george washington have any? >> guest: it was good enough in the beginning but he wrote washington's inaugural address. they tried somebody else but it hasn't worked. sometimes the speechwriter just

doesn't get it right and washington do that so he knew that so he called on madison to come right to the address. once washington was elected he called him again and again and said i've just imagined this conversation. i need to thank everybody for the inaugural. madison also wrote the response of the house back to washington so i like to think of this as his voice echoing off the walls. later on he and washington became not exactly estranged. they were in opposition. >> host: why? >> guest: it's such a long story but basically alexander hamilton came into the government and took washington in the direction that neither madison or jefferson thought was

appropriate. he was a big government man and both jefferson and madison were concerned that the point about the central government becoming over powerful. >> host: relationship with tom jefferson? >> guest: they were great friends. it's one of the great friendships in american history. jefferson could be a very exasperating friend. always interfering, get things lined up. jefferson was often fooling around with madison's plans and madison was very forbearing but a wonderful history and wrote of the two the account balanced. jefferson was a dreamer and madison was attached to the earth and understood practicalities and politics of the situation so it was a very beneficial friendship for the

both of them. >> host: way learned in the first series that we did on c-span last year was that dolly madison had a role in washington and politics beyond just james madison's lifetime. what did you discover that dolly madison? >> guest: one of the interesting things about the virginia founders is that they ended up poor. jefferson had to have a lottery at the end of his life. the same was true in the madison dolly brought this onto their marriage and john payne todd was his name. at one point he was taking stuff out of montpelier and serving on the street corners. i actually have a friend in maryland on the eastern shore

who said to me i have to madison letter's. when people say that you are a little skeptical, but he does. they are short but they are very important for the winding up stories that we don't know the end of ended occurred to me if somebody tells you they have a madison letter you should pay attention because of all that stuff out there in any of it still hasn't been captured by scholars. but any case, there was great financial stress in the dolly as a widow was poor. it showed her depending on a loan of 75 cents. 75 cents is more than now but not that much more. she started wearing the same

clothes all the time she worry black dress and white turban. there's one photograph of her and she has that outfit on that people didn't care. they helped her put her poverty didn't mean she wasn't thoroughly entertaining and fun to be around. she was quite a citizen. and i read her funeral was the largest up until that time as they had been seen in the federal city. >> host: this was published in may of 2014. when did you start your research and working on this book? >> guest: at least five years before. it's a luxury to have that much time to work to be at >> host: where did you start? >> guest: i research and write the same time.

so you start, right preface and keep going then go back and rewrite and get yourself burrowing into these stories or situations like madison's epilepsy. so it takes a very long time. >> host: where did you do the research? >> guest: i did most of it at home. i have to work from real books sometimes. there are many books important that haven't been digitized so i usually end up with a big pile of books on the floor of my study there's an amazing amount of information online. all of madison's papers are online. the university of virginia has a digital program that's just amazing. jefferson is online, hamilton, washington, madison, munro.

people upload google stuff a lot. there's something called archives that that's done a lot. kind of the most. >> welcome to our monthly "in depth" program. one author and his or her body of work. this month it is lynne cheney the author of 13 books, beginning in 1979 in novel came out, executive privilege. a mother began in 81, the report of educational practices was published in 1990, telling the truth while the culture and the country have stopped making sense.

it came out also in 1996 and then the second lady several children's books. the family adventure in 2006 and about memoir of childhood and family in 2007. we the people, the story of the constitution. seven to 88201 for those in the

mountain and pacific time zones. can't get through on the phone there are. (202)465-6842. we also have social media. there's a lot of ways to reach you today. i want to go back to james madison. this is what you've written. scraping his club across the page madison recorded what seemed to him the essence of the strongest and sound mind possessed with the most sickly bodies. the knife

>> we found this with john locke when he was reading and it was a comfort. epilepsy was such a misunderstood comment the 18th century and it was thought to be the result of demonic possession we thought it would be the result of sin. and that made having seizures even more dramatic than the offense themselves. i don't think madison's seizures were always of the kind that made him fall to the ground. what he described seemed to fit very well with a partial complex epilepsy. as he described it the intellectual senses are

suspended which is exactly what people say that partial complex seizures so nevertheless i think sometimes these seizures that weren't were not quite as dramatic manifest themselves in a dramatic way and he had a complete seizure. any kind and he recognized of attacks representing the books he said he knew that it was linked in having that happen to you is all the more dramatic when there's this overlay that somehow dangerous and full of for him it was a comfort to read this idea that often the strongest minds have some physical ailment and the metaphor is like a sharp knife

that she she can't hold. >> is the path to the presidency inevitable at the time? is a he certainly had many has many advantages. he was from the largest state and as you know the first president was from virginia but being from virginia was in and of itself a great advantage. being brilliant also helped quite a lot. i think that as you were saying earlier she had a role she wasn't an adviser. she didn't tell them about what to do with the louisiana purchase but what she did do didn't do is bring people back together so that they not only admire him for his until it that they had a chance to see his personality to know that he was a warm fellow.

it made them feel warm and happy and fixed southern comfort food so people would walk by and learn there were other parts. there was a senator who wrote home to his wife that mr. madison has a great advantage in the upcoming caucuses to choose a candidate. >> was the war of 1812, what was that about? >> guest: sometimes i think the best explanation is that it's a second war for independence. we've managed to be independent from great britain of course in the revolution that one of the

things they were doing is pulling sailors off fighting the war with france and they needed more than they had so it's to go on board and ask people to say a couple words so this was a great insult as well. that's one of the kinds of the senses ended the war of 1812 i think the world understood that we were no longer under the thumb of anyone. >> host: was james madison's popularity increased by the war was a curt? >> guest: during the course of the war itself there were

problems. there were many in new england for example that it meant economic suffering and shut down the trade or at least made it difficult so there was talk of secession of madison handled so well. he didn't try to put anybody in jail for suggesting that new england should secede. they did have some troops strategically located so it turned out they tried to cut themselves off from the united states. he's such a believer in free speech and freedom of opinion. the way to handle it reflected very well on him and certainly by the time the war was over he was admired. >> host: phd in 19th century literature your first books were

contemporary novels and now you are writing about james madison in a historical biography. >> guest: the connection was i they didn't understand when i got a phd in english. i sort of followed this path and a major in english and then it starts to seem to be a master's degree. the fact i got it in the 19th century tells me even then i than i really wanted history and that to me is the most important thing now. >> host: what is your specialization? >> guest: matthew arnold was a poet the right to say i wrote my dissertation most of his prose. >> host: from the book madison a life reconsidered over the course of a long public life

matheson had learned to learn. >> guest: i'm not sure that i wrote that exactly as they meant. he knew how important learning was from the beginning but i also think one of his skills as a politician is that you ever assume the other side is wrong. if there are people that don't want to go of right and people that do want to go off right, and right now this is before there was a bill of rights health can i get my way through that so that everybody ends up feeling happy? postcoital is the point was the point of time for freedom? >> guest: is one of those things i don't know if you see on television they frequently have this one on fox but somebody goes out in the street

and says do you recognize this case, it might be ronald reagan or abraham lincoln or do you know when the civil war was and it's an impossible question to answer so the idea was to provide a kind of primer something that would be easy for entertaining. >> host: some days ought to be locked in memory and think 1492, 1620, 1776 and 1787. 1492, columbus, 07 jamestown, 1620 would have been? in 1787 clicks seven? >> the constitution. >> what was he doing in 1787.

he said the context saying if there is a convention general washington, we need you. he was through with public life and admired throughout the country over the world but he thought he was through and madison knew that it wouldn't be without him. a traveling up to congress to be sure that they didn't do anything that would somehow make the convention more complicated. then of course in may he wanted to put off you and was there before any other out-of-state delegate putting in the plans and the final touches and talking to people and getting them to sort of understand what he thought the agenda would be that he worked harder than any other person until september to get the constitution in place.

>> host: do you see any parallel issues from those days to today? >> guest: i think freedom of speech and freedom of expression always need to be guarded. >> host: what was your path to becoming the chair of the national endowment? esko they baited into the chair man. i can't remember who re-signed. i had perfect credentials. i was actually writing for the washingtonian magazine that i was writing columns on history. some of them i just love them still today. one column i wrote was on call ones that you see all over the city and why you see them so i

forged a role as a public intellectual and a phd so i called the white house personnel office and said why not me so they took my applition. and the rest is history. >> host: what is the importance of mph, today do you think it still has an important role? >> guest: that was a question that i worried about the whole time i was there. i'm not sure that the founding fathers would have put this in the category the government should be worried about but there were so many good things that we did, preserving documents and newspapers buffing on the shelves. now they are being digitized. there were programs underway to preserve the papers, just bees

things seem to me exactly what the nih off to be doing. >> host: where were you born? >> guest: casper wyoming. we live in wyoming right now and it's grown so much and there are so many people. sometimes i can say that nobody else in them was born in wyoming and are usually right checks and we get a lot of tourists. >> host: much time do you spend in wyoming? >> guest: eight months a year. >> host: and you still come back from time to time >> guest: yes we do some of my children live in wyoming. some of my grandchildren live in virginia. during the summer they are all in wyoming. but it's important to be in virginia so i see those japan. >> host: you were born in 1941. there was casper and then there wasn't so the kids had no doubt about where they were from. you could encompass casper in

the wind and sea forces at work and imagine that you your self might have an impact. you could see were so creating your own future rather than having one handed to you. >> guest: that's true. i suppose there are times like this in nebraska but in casper was the town and then there was the prairie so was a kind of manageable universe intellectually and physically you could write or bike to school and he used to go out on the prairie. his house was the muslim east side of town so we would go out on the prairie. i think his mother - mp sure that it's those rabbits whose mother used to put in his lunch bag. >> host: and that was march? >> guest: yes. she was very energetic.

there's nothing she could do. she could sew and cook and pitch a good baseball. she was a very energetic person. >> host: she played on the softball team did and she? >> guest: she taught him how to catch and how to throw that she had been on the team called the bluebirds in the nebraska. but that movie with tom hanks and rosie o'donnell? a league of their own. it was kind of like that. they traveled around him had uniforms and it wasn't as valued as it is now so dalia pioneers in the way. >> host: you spend time talking about your education &-and-sign blue skies and no fences. but here you are answering a question from a student about

the importance of education. >> when you were a child were you interested in this? >> guest: i was and i'm not sure why. i suppose it was teachers that were able to tell us the stories. some people think history is boring because they think it's just names and places and dates and don't really know that it's people that have hopes and fears and aspirations. it's when you talk as great as real people it becomes interesting. i had some really good teachers that told me stories in a way that made it come to life. >> guest: i'm just amazed that i said something like that. it's true though.

that's what kept me going for five years how did these people relate to one another and when were they mad at each other, when were they friends and accomplishing things, what challenges do they face? do they have lives that were mostly happy? it's when you are working with that kind of thing that i think history becomes a dynamic and great story to read. >> host: who was margaret? >> guest: when we were growing up there was a whole class of women who didn't marry and became teachers and of course now they would be scientists in the ceos and so on but we were

so lucky to have their energy invested in us. she taught latin and was one of the teachers i could of in memory and think. >> host: you spent a lot of time on your teachers. what was it about them? were they nice were part of the community? >> guest: nice isn't the first thing that occurred to me. they were not there to make us feel as though we deserve we deserved to crown no matter what we did. they were there to make sure that we worked hard and the lesson that we took away his mostany subject. it could be physics, latin, history. but if you dig deeply enough into it, it's interesting. if you just stop on the surface and say he = c. squared, but if

you dig down underneath and especially if you understand the people involved, then it becomes interesting. >> host: you wrote this in 2007. it's about your parents. your mother loves you and your father loved her but there is a difficult marriage. >> guest: it's true and i think a lot of marriages are difficult. they saw it through. it wasn't always happy. life isn't always happy. >> host: you go on to write my father never shouted that my brother and me updated raise his voice when he and my mother quarreled although never as spectacularly as ralph was always threatening to send alice to the moon. my father gave his threats for people outside the family but his blowups were still memorable and frequent.

>> guest: he did have quite a temper and george washington did, too come to think of it. it's not an unusual human trade debate coach rate. it is one we should control also i find myself doing it every now and then. but it's better control of course. >> host: was he a drink or? >> guest: yes. >> host: do you think maybe he was an alcoholic? >> guest: could be. >> host: did that affect the speed you're sometimes? >> guest: maybe may be so. >> host: i'm only bringing this up because you've written about it. >> guest: it's hard to judge other people, isn't it, particularly when they gave me in childhood and teenage experiences and so supportive of me.

>> host: your mother died in an unusual way. >> guest: she drowned. she went out to a pond and she didn't come back. when we found her, when my father found her to the door of the car was open, she had a couple little dogs she liked running around and she was dead. >> host: where were you at the time? >> guest: college, graduate school. >> host: blue skies no fences and memoir of childhood and family came out in 2007. she was second lady. i don't mean to be all touchy-feely touchy-feely that was their therapy in writing this book? >> guest: i don't know if it was their peak that i enjoyed writing that book may be more than any other other book that i've written partly because it gave me a good excuse to go back and talk to my friends and find

out what happened. there is one story in the book about a girl in her high school class who got pregnant and when i think of those days i think of all the good about them that if that happened to you like the end of the world it's so nice to go back and talk to this woman now because she got through that her husband, father of the baby was killed the baby was born and that is a really dramatic beginning. to see how her life has been good and she made it through that awful time and is now a good friend. >> host: when did you start dating? >> guest: when i was 16. he just turned 17. >> host: how did you meet? >> guest: we argue about that. i think it was chemistry class and he thinks it was algebra.

>> host: and what happened, wasn't automatic? >> guest: he tries to tell the story in a way that is very flattering to me. he says he knew who i was but i didn't know who he was. during my junior year i woke up to the fact that this is a pretty good guy. >> host: you broke up for 11 days you wrote about it. >> guest: he broke up into the '90s did his best friend who had a golden colored convertible and i think that when joe and i were seen driving through in a cold gold convertible or talk to his senses. >> host: a message for a retired air force colonel how does your writing habits differ from his? >> guest: i'm much more

disciplined i get up every morning and right unless there's something else i have to do but >> host: are we talking 6 a.m. come 8 a.m.? >> guest: i will be at my computer by nine but that's what i do. he does a lot for traveling. he likes to fish. maybe i've got the wrong approach. >> host: do you write in the same fashion? >> guest: he still likes to write by hand a lot. there there's an importance of having notebooks for something you want to remember don't write it on scrap paper. get yourself a leather notebook and ask yourself all the important things so when you say what was james munro thinking on the morning of august 17, 1777

and it was important going back and time. >> host: did the madison book experience, has led you to another book at this point? >> guest: james munro was understudied. that's an interesting story. i've been reading a lot about munro. >> host: are you working on that right now? >> guest: the way that i write write write books i helped myself as an example i write it anyway and it's like the story emerges and then you think that's what i was trying to get to and they go back and start again. >> host: back to blue skies. >> guest: you're lucky i remember these.

[laughter] >> host: why was it important to you? >> guest: again in those days girls did into track. i don't even think gymnastics were very much on the screen. physical activity wasn't something that girls did but this was acceptable like cheerleading and i worked at it really hard. i had the state championship, do you want me to say that? [laughter] >> host: and he went to nationals, that was your first timeout of wyoming? >> guest: my reference was wyoming and only later did i learn the whole continent beyond that. >> host: you had a scholarship

why did you not attend? >> guest: it was expensive. even though it was full tuition all that i had to get there and get back. it seemed really prohibitive, so i went to colorado college where i had a scholarship and/or hearings could drive you there so it wasn't so hard hard, complicated and expensive. >> host: did it occur to you to go to college and were junior year in high school? >> guest: it wasn't an option. you didn't think about not going. you only thought about where. >> host: wasn't rare in your college to go? >> guest: nobody was also not acceptable to not go to coverage that >> host: our guest we will begin taking calls in just a minute. we are going to put the phone numbers back on the screen and

if you can't get through, you can text your message or make a comment on social media. those addresses will be on the screen in the next few minutes. we are going to begin with this call if i can figure this out. we have eric and whether so. good afternoon you were on with lynne cheney. >> caller: i admire your scholarship and i recently purchased medicine. i haven't started yet, but it's something i look forward to. >> guest: thank you. i hope you enjoy it. >> caller: my question to you is and about history although i'm a great lover of it, but about contemporary politics and that sort of thing. >> guest: i don't know i think about that. >> caller: i think even a rocket scientist to know what your opinion on the iran deal

but i want to put you in the place of the majority leader of the senate. if the democrats try to filibuster this so as not to bring a vote to the floor when you invoke or let me say it this way would you do it with a 60 vote filibuster requirement and get a majority vote to bring it to the floor? >> guest: that's a hard question. the nuclear option i've heard that cold. you probably know more about this then i do. don't the democrats already do that? i know now in this congress the republicans are not chosen to do it. but please, if you're out there i'm not trying to give you advice but if i would. >> host: do you miss being in

the center of the storm? >> guest: it was not onerous. many sad things happened when he was vice president. 9/11 of course at the top of the list. and guess it is a little bit better at the end of the day. but you have a the feeling of being involved in an important cause and maybe in those years more than sometimes true and that's gratifying at the end of the day to think that you've been involved in something important but it's also very nice to have a lot of our privacy back and just to pick up and go to the grocery store if i want to and not the secret service picked me up. there are good things about it. >> host: do you get stopped on

the street when you're out of? >> guest: occasionally. he does much more often than i do. >> host: in the time for freedom you ended that time period. where were you that today, day, but was your day like? >> guest: i was downtown and someone told me that a plane had flown into the world trade center. and like everybody else i think i thought to myself what a strange accident and then of course the second plane went in and of the secret service took me from where i was. i rendered it took me to the white house - >> host: which is where the vice president was. but i can remember looking up and there was smoke. you couldn't see where it was coming from and i wondered even if the white house had been hit. so i was taken into the white house and everyone else was running out and spent the day in

the presidential emergency operations center. it was a stunning day seeing things happen in real-time. it was a day am always proud of him. it was an eye-opener to see the kind of leadership he was able to bring to the situation. and at the end of the day you were taken to this undisclosed location which everybody knows by now his camp david terry at >> host: how much time did you spend their? >> guest: the. not always that once. and it's not like we were there just pinned up back and forth but the situation would warrant when the alert levels were high they would take us to camp

david. >> host: how much control over the schedule did you have? >> guest: a lot. i didn't have meetings and so on and the people that the vice president's office were so skilled. but my life was not at all enclosed. >> host: next from paul in pompano beach florida. >> caller: hello, i'm a recent retiree in rediscovering history on my own and i was reading a few books lately like the great divide on the quartet and i wondered if you wrote the books what do you think of them and

should it be ted burns burns entering this point to give another civil war revolutionary period because it is so stunning i can barely contain myself. >> host: what do you think of those books? >> guest: that they are each in their own fashion utterly amazing. .. they would try to undo each other and jefferson was trying to undo washington's tradition and alice seems to have a different take on it. sort of with the idea that they were all ultimately gentlemen and they all respected each other and our country was the amalgam of especially madison who he portrayed as turning against jefferson at the end because jefferson was flying off as the napoleonic fan and so it

seems like the story is never ending almost but it seems to be something that everybody should be totally aware of like ken burns brought to the civil war. >> guest: zero while ago peter was asking about the national endowment for the humanities initiative mentioned one of the things i am the proudest of that happened when i was there is that we provided major funding for the civil war and this was before ken burns was of world historical importance as he is now great but that was a good thing. i am reading the quartet. you asked what books i'm currently reading and the quartet is on my list. ..

>> caller: hello, peter and you are a >>

one. >> deal had any adn how many books you own or whether your favorite types to read when you were not researching for your own riding? >> that is a good question. your personal library? >> i spent most of our married life building bookshelves are having them built because we have so many books. but did does not want to let go a single one and people have given us many books over his public career so i would say that most of them are history. there is quite a bit of commentary on the political scene but mostly history if i am not reading history i do like a good thriller

right now i reading the english spy that is a very good thriller mystery. also i don't spend all my time reading books i'd also like to watch thrillers are my i patted maybe i enchanted with this series they are swedish mysteries but i started to watching them with the subtitle's and dick came into the river to said what in the world are you doing? with the wall and a series. >> another text message. dick cheney said that you play the role to get him back on the straight and narrow. what did you say or do?

>> i don't think i said or did anything. i just made it clear i would not marry him unless he shaped up but i don't think i said it that way. >> what was he doing? gimmicky was kicked out of yale twice coming he was arrested twice for driving under the influence and he was without direction. i don't think it is uncommon but he was without direction of the to see that imports and some direction. >> host: to have the western u.s. perspective of the world? >> yes. not a lot of finance eunice to be around subjects, not getting dressed up a lot.

we both like to be in wyoming his jackets that our fuzzy. i will think of its budget we are not athletes anymore. we both used to ski but the course he is a fisherman. the last time the offer to take me i hooked him in the year it is not a good fishing etiquette. [laughter] >> greece still writing? to make yes -- writing. >> no but my granddaughter has three and she is becoming a world-class barrel racer.

so all the kids love that. she has something that says cowgirl up. [laughter] >> host: the caller from indiana. >> caller: talking about straight talk it seems to me that the issues that are horrendously complex it is impossible to even discuss them in the campaign rather trying to be straight or not. to talk about the iran nuclear deal with the big complexities is if the united states is able to inspect the iranian sides with obamacare and another complexity than ever like to hear you talk about the most with a fair tax that

huckabee is behind and that is my a suspicion in trump got into the race at all. >> i degree. there is too much complexity so i just pick the issue. so you can imagine the lee it is the iran deal and i am so concerned with the inspections regime that is proposed to do their own inspections which sounds worries some. and with delays you put your finger on an important part of a problem. >> host: i'm surprised we

haven't had a caller yet from wyoming. >> guest: it is not in time. they are all outside you know, how beautiful the weather is right now? >> host: annapolis go-ahead. >> caller: my friend had the pleasure to take you and dick out of his go into said don't get ideas about getting a boat. [laughter] >> over the years year used to be on tv quite a bit and i admire everything about you and as i am looking at you right now, you could

have been a senator or president of this country per you have all the attributes but made the old and a sacrifice. >> guest: that is very kind of you. >> host: it is common knowledge you were considered at some level for the vice presidential position? >> give may be yellow and imaginative level. i think more likely would be for me to run for the senate when there was an opening right after he was secretary of defense. i thought about it but you have to do what is involved

in never really liked writing books so i appreciate the comments but i don't think i made a sacrifice. >> host: did you make that comment to the vice president about a boat? >> guest: that is absolutely true. but i did even know how we have three horses to be honest. [laughter] himself i did not want to approach. >> host: do you have protection today? >> guest: i don't think we should talk about that. >> host: the next caller go-ahead.

>> caller: george bush was advised not to travel to switzerland because he could be charged with war crimes. darr sure husband had any problems traveling overseas? >> guest: we have managed to keep busy here in the united states though i don't feel there is anything we are avoiding. even in the middle east we have done so much traveling and i have a great longing to do travel right now. >> host: speaking of books your daughter has the book out did you have any part of that? >> if you want a good copy

editor i am a, queen. they don't like there are rules for, as if you have a series including before a and i have them internalize. i do copyediting if there is a historical fact then you are on their own. >> you don't really write together you just take topics is each review undertakes that topic then you work on that after that her crowhop also one of the interesting things i found is madison and hamilton were so frantic to get "the federalist papers" finished they didn't read with the other one had written and if

you think how it hangs together it is a miracle. i don't know how that happened. >> host: when were the federalist papers written? >> guest: they were written specifically to get the constitution ratified in the state of new york. of the failure to ratify would have been as damaging to the process or deadly as virginia failure to ratify. so they were published in newspapers as an essay to give up our rationale for the constitution and. maddow said major with the virginia ratifying convention had copies so that is what they were now regarded as a classic

importune to interpretation they take up some of the ada is that it doesn't have to be small. with the idea you could not be larger in the republic. >> host: every talked earlier of a college professor today and we found some of the video of you talking about college requirements. >> the opinion the american history is now required because faculty members would have to teach a.

[laughter] petraeus met in academia comes from publishing and there is little market on the subject header broadly conceived of specialized article that is ticino specialized courses people in academia are doing what other professions do to avoid activities for which there is little professional incentive. >> host: day remember that? >> guest: no but that is a good point. [laughter] we don't provide reinforcement for some activity so we should not be surprised when they don't happen.

and that is required to re-read. >> host: calling from massachusetts. >> caller: ic the teaching of history with american exceptionalism coming out. what books are of interest to you? i am thinking of kennedy's "profiles in courage". sole focus of the episodes that one teacher is. i even thinking of doing a webster and tuesday and for the union to be celebrated as heroic but not to overlook the fact so because

of my interest that the real things in this universe are events. so with american exceptionalism and our need to recognize the al rashid rose wouldn't that be taking care of by focusing on heroic events in shouldn't we teach kennedy's profiles encourage? director has been a long time since i have read that. 25 did thrilling. with the treatment of the top down the cherry tree is not true but ivory totally with your point let's look

at people and what they did or the bench that surrounded the constitution and don't forget the serb people like us. one of those examples is jefferson and madison and they understood slavery was morally wrong even more than that. that is a simple explanation but it was wrong in real understood that. but at the same time with medicine in particular a friend of mine used to say they created a constitution

for a society more just them their own but when the supply of indentured servants began to dry up and then from the rivers offer of the chesapeake bay ambrose is recorded to buy slaves and then he bought more than he died in his thirties and it is said that the slaves poisoned him and

that was unusual. to take free human beings to transport them and awful conditions to bring them into a place where they don't want to do the work they want them to do as an extreme response but it is not surprising. >> host: for lauderdale e-mail will there be a renaissance of history in our schools are seems to be a lack of interest to us lerner our past. >> knifing we're not doing a very good job. 0 understand

where they are and what their ancestors had done. somebody wrote ones history is looking into a rearview mirror. it doesn't give you the forward vision that is the only thing we have. how else do you understand the universe and human life. >> host: next call is from gordon who happens to be in miami, wyoming. i come aboard and purity were on the air. >> host: howdy, folks. thank you. great show. i just want to thank the chinese for being a great conservative here in laramie. we need that here as you know. and also i'm really hoping this will run.

>> host: what part of the statist laramie, wyoming and? >> guest: >> caller: 35 miles west of cheyenne. >> host: are you a native of laramie? >> guest: >> caller: no, i am not. i have been here since 1996 and while minimizing of colorado as a kid. i love it here. >> guest: . so much to contribute in the years ahead. and you like thrillers. i now care for her politics becher writes some good

thrillers. >> guest: i like mr. bob, a native of wyoming and writes for thrillers. >> host: lynne cheney comment your first two books were novels. why? >> guest: it was much more practical. in those days you couldn't do research on your computer. i don't even think i had a computer. dick and i are moving around the country. that's when we started in washington and went to wyoming. so it's a fun experiment. >> host: the book he wrote together, kings of the hill, power and personality in the house of representatives. your husband was serving at that point. nick longworth is one of the people your profile. why was seeking at the hill?

>> guest: it is no easy thing to do, plus it such a colorful character. and he is dreamy passages and i one of the things this profile tom reid speaker of the house. here he was this fascinating, fascinating person. we decided there was a bookie or anything of the last person we profiled. >> host: does the congress is significant to date as it used to be? >> guest: i think we have seen the fact that the congress has not been able to assert itself

very fact of late. i don't know what the solution is and there's lots of old town in their heads to think what the solution is. the iran agreement should have been a treaty. how can we get to the situation where we are worthwhile takes two thirds of the senate or the house to pass it. i'm sorry. it'll take two thirds of the senate or house to override the president's veto. it should be two thirds of the senate or house to pass it. i don't know how we got in this upside down situation. >> host: bill is calling in from sebastian, florida. you were on with lynne cheney. >> caller: good afternoon, mrs. cheney. i would like to know if you agree with president obama's

policies and your opinion on frankie and in the controversy that it's created. >> guest: you are not surprised one of the few decisions i agree with his drilling in the arctic. i think for our team is the way we've seen with energy independence which could not be more important to our national security. even as i say those things, one of the things i'm proud of dick for having done this for setting aside of the million acres in the west and wyoming in particular for preserving wildlife and preserving nature.

i don't think we have to either choose to be green or not green. we need to evaluate it situation by situation. postcode doug sends an e-mail and a native of orange two miles from mount hillier. in your research, did you find out infant madison traveled from point conway to montpelier? why no credit for the bill of rights and how do you believe madison was the look on to shine today? traveling as an insolent, why no credit for the bill of rights and madison constitution today. >> guest: i am having trouble thinking what body of water you have to cross, but mostly by horse and carriage.

george mason has been given him and he refused to be involved with the constitution because it did not contain a bill of rights. madison was a little more politically minded. he wanted to get the constitution ratified. that was his main goal at that point. if he started each day adding a bill of rights they would no agree. so maybe that the necessary states to ratify it then there is another huge ratification. they did exactly the right thing that kept everybody from putting a bill of rights in. but then after you got the ratification, madison is the primary author of the bill of

rights. mason was also not for another reason. he thought the vice president he was a strange office at the constitution as the vice president in the executive branch. he sought this is a great conflation that threatened the separation of powers. but there's so much interest in glad you brought it up. the third question? >> guest: madison and the user can't do to shine today. >> guest: even if you brought that, if you brought back any founders they would be absolutely confounded. i think this has gone so far beyond what any of them could possibly have imagined. >> host: in your research on james madison, did any

contemporary politicians come to mind? could you do any comparison? >> guest: i think that's really hard. the challenges are so different. >> host: wasn't james madison responsible for making the vice president or president and didn't he play a role in making sure that happen? >> guest: probably. i know when they came to be at loggerheads about how to elect a president, that was the question. madison stepped in and drove a plan and got this through the constitutional convention. it was a big state, but a state issue. if we say the number of electors is going through the number of senators plus the number of representatives, the big states are going to have to much influence on the selection of the president.

so then i think it was madison who came up with the idea of real actor has to go for two people in one of those has to be knocked from his day. in other words, the author virginia elect durst cast one vote and one vote for somebody not from virginia. so this gave the big states less power because the votes would be scattered around. then madison is so smart started worrying what people throw their second vote away. they will take all the non-virginia does and give them to go down there who doesn't have a chance to be president. they will throw it away. and then you say okay, let's make the second vote count and the person who gets the second-highest number is vice president. that is how the vice president came to be. >> host: and political

recently wrote an article entitled the father of partisanship. here's the opening sentence. partisanship gets a bad rap taken the blame for problems and government including turning citizens away from politics and you go on to say we should thank george mason for partisanship. >> guest: i would've thanked james madison. are you sure that's me? >> guest: i'm so sorry. >> guest: thomas jefferson even though james madison was more to move her. the thing that happen as i mentioned before is alexander hamilton came along and seems to have captured george washington feared in either madison or thinks is correct that they are faced with this problem. after a revolution, after a

constitution you get something going and everybody thinks if he say anything about the way we are going that is seditious. you can't act against it but that is sedition. what they did and madison in particular is get across the idea that it's okay to criticize the government, that it is their duty to hold the feet of people in power to the fire and madison wrote essays in newspapers that now it is not disloyal to criticize. it is loyalty to a principle you believe in and with that kind of camels nose and of the 10 i guess you call it, madison and jefferson formed the first opposition. it's a breakthrough in political science. >> host: steve, oklahoma city, please go ahead.

>> caller: i'm interested in whether bodysnatcher came from. there's two madison. one window with a party to marbury versus madison and allied to stop the republic from being undermined by excess national power, does the republican party. yet that is the 19th century madison. eighteenth century as father of the constitution advocated frequently and almost endlessly that the new congress be in power to veto any state law they find offensive or so-called negative. >> guest: thank you for calling in with. it's one of the most interesting episode scholarship. how did this man who is so concerned about the central

government not having enough power, so concerned he suggested there should be a veto. how did he turn into this defender of small government that he became the answer one right time is alexander hamilton. it wasn't until alexander hamilton came with his report on public credit with the national bank and george washington was perfectly aligned with this. it wasn't until then madison saw the overwhelming threat was not from the central government to weak, but too strong. you could call it a bodysnatcher or someone who looked at the situation and decided he had taken a wrong track and put himself another way.

[inaudible] >> guest: you said that twice now. ) sorry. phd 19th century british literature university of wisconsin from a senior the american enterprise institute from 94 to today, second lady of the united states 2001 to 2009, member of the board of lockheed for several years. cohost of cnn's crossfire, and author of the teen books. first of all, you used the term cheating and i know there's been talk about how to pronounce cheney -- has become cheney in today's world. how do you say? >> guest: cheney. this is a good one. this is about dick going to a

family remembers oldest living relative is. so there had been this question that cheney versus cheney. he goes for his uncle was standing with this very odd dog. he jumps in and makes you nervous. he went over and said uncle art, tommy is said cheney or cheney? they said thank you. he wants out of there but he doesn't want to be rude so he says what kind of dog is this. uncle art says it's a big old. so that leaves you perpetually confused. >> host: it's a little confusing because you said it right on the air. do you remember classmate named tl quan h.?

c-span traveled to casper wyoming. about your high school years. we are going to show a little bit video and is referred to earlier, we will show you some of the books she's reading and some of the influences in her life. we will be back to take more calls life. >> this is a copy of our county high school senior year of 1959 when dick and i were classmates and along with land all in the same class together. the first one is a picture of dick coming down the stairways and we were all juniors.

he was a junior also and that was the group of individuals picked to go to the conference around the state fairgrounds. some of the better students and boy status but is actually called. they had grossed it also of which land and this picture happens to be a picture when she was getting ready to go down to gross state, too. i moved here starting at the eighth-grade when dick and land and we all met each other at the school year. we would all go to the same parties and they never dated

until they were seniors because everybody call mingled with everybody else. not like it is today. they were very popular of ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ >> host: lynne chaney, we are showing influences in your life. we talked about margaret scheidler. another is richard himmelfarb. who is she? >> guest: an amazing intellectual who i have been interested in the taurean period. she is much more insightful than i think i've ever been about while we condemn as morality of the victorian period with this underway. how was important and what we

gain when they move away and what we lose. he's been a wonderful writer on the enlightenment in america. she resigned the national and i'm up for humanities council when i was there. you could just count on her to be incredibly perceptive about whatever the subject at hand was. burchard as i call her miss mary to crystal and her husband as bill kristol of the weekly standard. it is a family that has made the intellectual life seem so energizing and reporting. >> host: when you were second lady did you maintain an office? >> guest: yes, but i didn't go down very much. this trouble to get secret service agent and a couple of

cars. >> host: this text for you. can mrs. cheney comment on the role of think tanks and contemporary politics? >> guest: well, they are different. aei is even different since i've been there. i suppose there was more influenced -- more attention paid to the humanities. i think it has evolved so the issues that are front and center are those that are front and center on capitol hill and in the white house. it has become a much more dynamic and energize placed as the evolution has occurred and we have a great leader right now. a fellow named arthur brooks. >> host: this text goes on to say what in your opinion would madison and the other founders think of the think tanks?

>> guest: they would probably want to be in one. >> host: 202. a little over an hour left. author and scholar, lynne chaney. (202)748-8201 for the mountain and pacific time zone. several other ways to get ahold of a city can get through phone lines. e-mail otb@c-span.org. or a twitter handle. facebook.com/booktv you can make a comment there. and finally, text a message (202)465-6842. lynne chaney is the author of 13 books. six or seven of those are for children. a couple novels for the most recent bestseller and james madison and michael is in ft.

pearce, florida. hi, michael. >> caller: good afternoon. mrs. cheney come i first want to let you know i have some fond memories -- memories. i have the opportunity to travel all over the rockies. so you have a beautiful postcard >> guest: it is beautiful. >> caller: my question has to do with the political environment today and why conservatives seem to have such difficult the in communicating their message to the average individual. they do very well singing in front of the choir but depending upon the audience it doesn't seem to get through relevant. >> host: michael, are you conservative? >> guest: they'll actually made a conscious effort to maintain my independence.

it hasn't kept parties from contact amy for support but i'm a registered independent. >> host: in your view what would be a good message for conservatives? >> guest: the benefits of a conservative sort of government in a place like east st. louis take a message to where it is needed. you know, speaking to the american enterprise institute, you're going to have a very nice reception is a conservative. conservatives need to get out and get their message to people who need it most. >> host: who i have heard recently talking about this in a very informed wastelands previous was the chairman of the republican party. i heard him go on at some length about the necessity for

outreach. you don't make phone calls trying to get those. you go when men say they are and the fellow failings you have with people who are working hard and making their way up. arthur brooks has also spoken about this very well in his book, the conservative heart. when you're a conservative you find yourself saying no a lot. we don't want obamacare in what you have to do is explain why it is often really gas. no, we don't want to raise taxes because yes we want to support people who are working their way and do understand the importance of free enterprise. we don't often get our message across while, but those are a

couple of people who have been contemplating the subject sensibly. >> host: text from 10 tidbit come i'm sorry, facebook comment. i'm a teacher who shares your america book every year. what advice do you have for your second grade writer? what did you like to read in elementary school and here is one of the children's books. >> guest: one assam member clearly was about my dog and the dog was named heidi and i got lots of praise for this essay from my teacher. one breakfast a home and having the teacher find what is good in that as well as pointing out where you could do better. there aren't a lot of stories in american history that would be good subjects. one of the books i wrote for

children is called when washington crossed the delaware and it is such a great story because it's enclosed. washington after this long retreat decides to go on the offense and does this heroic thing crossing the delaware, capturing a thousand haitians, taking them back and then he goes to princeton. this is the kind of a story. the glorious end of the story followed doubt and difficulty leading up to it. so i think there are stories like that they have to tell the children first. maybe you can ask them, what was heroic about what washington did? >> guest: here is the inside of america, the children's book from madison i guess you could

say. what is the difference between writing for children. how did you change your style? >> guest: you can't write for long sentences and you have to be thoughtful about your vocabulary. i have to tell you that is wonderful discipline. when you move through that, there's also this great feeling of freedom because it doesn't matter if i was sometimes prayer for lifelong. i've compared this to writing haiku. you have to condense so much in such a little space. you have to make it accurate and that is important for children and it has to be understandable and still enjoyable. i was lucky with this book and a couple others who have a wonderful illustrator who brings such joy to the process.

>> host: here is her picture. she's also a dancer. >> guest: just, she is. she has now written a series called fiancé nancy that is so wild and popular i don't know if i'll ever get to go straight again for me. >> host: another caller. >> caller: hi, i just want to say mrs. cheney in such a great admirer of the research you put into your book will be fascinating if you could write a continuation to blue skies, no fences if you could describe your phd years devoted to motherhood and also behind the scenes of her political life. is that something you would consider? >> guest: jazz, but i want to be a lot older first. you can be franker as you get older.

i don't want to tell tales right now. maybe when i'm 90. but thank you for that suggestion. there's a lot of things i would love to say that i would have to be tactful. >> host: have you kept a diary? >> guest: no. i wish i had. as someone who is close to a public figure, it would be a mistake. we could get subpoenaed. >> host: are we losing information with e-mail with some of the ways we communicate today? >> guest: washington papers are the ones that knocked me over because he had a lot of people helping him right. there are many people. you know every day for washington was doing during the revolution. every day. i'm sure there are exceptions but mostly not.

i don't think we will no doubt about president obama for president bush or anyone who has lived as far back to the 20th century. >> host: in your husband's book coming he writes about driving across country after surveying the secretary surveying the secretary of defense and delivering his papers. he delivered quite a bit of material to the university of wyoming in a u-haul. did you accompany him? >> guest: now, do i look crazy? dick likes to drive. he loves the way the various aspects and he loves going across nebraska which can take you forever. she just loves it. he wanted to take a drive. he also needed to get the car

out there. >> host: you did not participate in the driving? >> guest: i flew. it would be nice to have them all in one place. >> host: next call comes from the weeds in bozeman, montana. you are on booktv. quote >> caller: hello, mrs. cheney. it's quite an honor to speak to you. i'm going to be a celebrity at our dinner party tonight. everyone will be so jealous attack to one of the cheney members. without your daughter and her son -- and in your husband. the reason i called this i didn't know you had written so many children's books and my sister and i are in a mission to get better history lesson.

my question is simple. what are the age groups for being able to read it and secondly to read it to themselves. >> guest: i've had my own experience reading it to 4-year-old grandchildren and by the time they are six. the illustrations and that's a wonderful reason to read it with them because you can talk about the illustration. i mentioned a minute ago the book i wrote about washington crossing the delaware from an other one called we the people about the constitution. the pictures are so wonderful. here is madison, benjamin frank lindh. while they could read books themselves by the time they are six or seven, i also think the x

variants of rating them to a young person for a clinch road is very, very rich and enriching for both parties involved. >> host: dear mrs. cheney, what is your next children book in your next nonfiction memoir going to be. let's bring it back to the conversation. this is from tom in tampa. >> guest: you know, i don't know when i'm going to ride it but i sure would like to. these books are so gratifying because you go do a book signing with little kids and thompson died who want them to know about history. i look forward to doing that. i've got a couple titles in mind that i don't want to give them away. i am interested in the work of in the worker junior presidents as is a book for adults. there's so many great personal stories. not only great accomplishment,

amazing, schmidt, but just so many great stories i would like to tell. >> host: we interviewed david macauley yesterday at a book festival and a caller asked him where he got his boys in the senate put it it on the shelf for two weeks and then i go back and see if it stands up and if it bores me. >> guest: i have also heard david mccullough reads his books aloud to his wife. i think that's a great idea. britain and prose is so important. there is a copy of the declaration of independence as these marks on it. as you scan poetry to see how the river marks. another way to do it is read it out loud and you hear it working. ..

>> caller: yes, thank you. hi, ms. cheney. >> guest: hi. >> caller: i just want to ask do you think that barack obama a should be impeached? >> guest: well, no. no. i think he's been a disastrous president in many ways, but i don't see high crimes and misdemeanors. i just see taking the country in the wrong direction.

>> host: jill is in woodburn, oregon. jill? >> caller: hello, mrs. cheney. it's an honor to speak to you. i want to ask you when did you first decide that you were going to become a writer? and did you have a mentor, and was it difficult to find a publisher when you wrote your first book? and then just a real quick comment about -- i'm actually born and raised in colorado springs, and i wanted to ask you what was your experience like at colorado college? thank you. >> guest: gosh, that's a lot of questions. >> caller: jill, where'd you go to college? >> guest: i went to college in bend, oregon. >> guest: thank you for what you do. let's start with the last first. my experience at colorado college was terrific. my two daughters went there, my son-in-law went there, i have a grandchild there. it's, you know, peter and i were talking about small liberal arts colleges, and it's just my cup of tea, you know? where you can get to know the

professors. now at colorado college there's this thing called the brock plan where you -- block plan where you study one class three weeks in total depth and nothing else. and that works very well. so for me, that was terrific. i honestly -- and this doesn't sound like a very inspiring answer, but as i said before, i became a writer when i couldn't get a job teaching. and, you know, you don't know how these great disappointments in life are going to turn around and be a great blessing. but for me that was certainly the case. getting published, i think, is harder now than it has ever been. partly because the publishing industry isn't quite as robust as it once was, but there's a lot of self-publishing going on which i find very interesting. and, you know, people find ways to set up web sites and promote their own books and sell their own books. so in a way while the publishing industry itself is not as robust as it once was, there are these

other entry points that i think are very promising. >> host: your james madison was reviewed far and wide, liberal, conservative. it got pretty high marks right across the board. do you care about the reviews? >> guest: oh, yeah. i mean, i wish i didn't -- [laughter] but sure, i do. especially when you've spent five years on something. you know, you'd like to have a little ratification, a little hint that maybe it wasn't five years wasted. >> host: next call for lynne cheney comes from dorothy in kentucky, i think that's ur langer, kentucky. >> caller: hi. hello, ms. cheney, it's a privilege to talk to you. >> guest: hi. >> caller: my concern is freedom of religion. you know, the separation of church and state has gone way too far, if you ask me. the state is trying to take freedom of religion and god out

of our public, and my problem is with this ms. davis in kentucky being jailed and because of her belief, isn't that the state impeding the religion of the american people? >> guest: you know, there are many people who look at it that way, and i understand that. i guess i also think, though, that ms. davis is a public servant, and in that role has to uphold the law. i mean, it's a very difficult problem. but, you know, you can't have policemen, for example, refusing to arrest people or arrest them because -- it would be more fitting to say not arrest them because of their gender or their race or their sexual

orientation. so i find the fact that she's working for the state problem mat you can. problematic. it's a different matter in private life, i think. but i think ms. davis has to uphold the law, or she's always free to find another job. and i'm sorry you and i, i don't think, agree on that. >> host: what did james madison, what were his views on religion? >> guest: views on religion. well, he never said. i think he was most likely something like a unitarian. he thought that religion was very important to public life because it turned people toward the good rather than the bad. but he mostly, his most underlying important belief is that each of us ought to be free to worship as we wish. now, you know, i'm not sure that this case is the same as that.

we're all free to worship as we wish, but if we're in the pay, in the employ of the state, don't we have to enforce the law of the state? that's -- this is all very complicated. >> host: how did you pick the charities that the proceeds from your children's books go to? >> guest: oh, well -- >> host: i know there's some educational endowment funds there. >> guest: yes. it seems to me to put some of the money into causes that support children was very important, and i think also causes that support the armed forces. that was very important during a time that -- and it still is very important. so i have to say it wasn't as systematized as it should have been, but i felt so grateful that i could do that. >> host: and i think it was reported about eight million, at least $8 million -- >> guest: no, that's a different pot of money. >> host: isn't that the money -- oh, was that from -- that's a different pot of money?

of halliburton, and he had these things called unvested options which basically are promises that in the future you're going to get options which are worth some money. so unvested options, promises in the future. there was nothing illegal about keeping them, because, you know, they were already a done deal. they were already baked in. but he thought, and i agreed, that it wasn't as clean as it should be. and so we set up a plan whereby the unvested options got donated to charity. and there was i'm not sure of the number, and or -- seven and or eight million dollars. a lot of that money went to

george washington hospital where dick's life has been saved many times, a lot to the university of wyoming, some to an organization in the district of columbia that helps put kids who are not in good schools into better situations, and so that, i think those were the main contributions. >> host: vicki is in meridian, mississippi. hi, vicki. >> caller: hello. >> guest: hi, vicki. >> caller: hey. i'd first like to thank c-span for booktv. it's a wonderful window for so many people. and mrs. cheney, your family for all your public service. my question is during your research of james madison, was there anything that surprised you? that you weren't expecting to find? >> guest: well, i certainly didn't know at the outset that he had epilepsy, and i am now convinced he did. i always knew that dolley madison would be fun to write about, but i was surprised at

how much fun she was to write about. when you're, when you write books, you're always trying to give people images, you know, so they can see it as well as just understand it intellectually. and dolley has some great images. one of my favorites, you know, is a pink velvet dress with lots of gold chains involved and a high white turban with peacock feathers coming out. she was already taller than james, but the time you add the turban and the peacock feathers, she must have been a foot and a half taller than he was. this is just a delight and to be able to convey to people. so those are the two things i would say, james' illness and dolley madison's wonderful dramatic self. >> host: stephen in charlotte, north carolina, e-mail. what does lynne cheney think of the decision to change hamilton's $10 bill? which woman should be on a bill and which bill? he this thinks jackson -- he

thinks jackson should be replaced on the 20. >> guest: that's interesting, because i've had that same thought, why hamilton? you know, he contributed so much to the economic system that we have in this country. also i just, not so long ago i saw the play "hamilton" in new york which is, oh, it's quite wonderful. why hamilton? i don't want to replace hamilton. now, like the person who e-mailed, i'm not that great a fan of jackson, but i'm also not sure what we're doing here. i'm not sure what we're doing about changing the name of the mountain range from mount mckinley to denali. people were already using both names. why do we have to break these connections with the past? we are more moral in some ways than our predecessors were in virginia in those days, but they had many things to contribute that we don't have. so i'm just not a fan of this.

>> host: kate is in austin, texas. kate, you're on with author and scholar lynne cheney. please go ahead. >> caller: hi, good afternoon, and thank you for this wonderful show. i'm a big fan of dolley madison, and i'm wondering, mrs. cheney, if during your research do you ever come across any evidence, for example letters, that dolley and -- influenced james' political ideas on the form our government should take or on the bill of rights? >> guest: ing no. she wasn't abigail who was quite clear in her letter to john that you shouldn't forget the women as you form the new nation. now, they did pretty much forget women as they formed it anyway, but abigail was out there pushing her point of view. dolley's influence was maybe as great but more subtle. one of my favorite dolley stories is, you know, you know the story a little bit, how

she's in the white house, and the british are coming during the war of 1812, so she saves the george washington portrait. but you look at the letter that dolley wrote, it went over three days. and it just seems such an unlikely thing, that you're writing a letter over three days while you're running away from the white house, and getting someone to cut george washington out of the frame of the painting. it almost -- she writes it as though she's writing it at the time, but i really think she wrote it after. she understood the importance of telling the story right. and so she told it really, really right. it was a different kind of influence. it wasn't a political one, i think. >> host: although he had long regarded an army, in particular as dangerous in a republic, he now realized that military strength was essential to the nation's security. from "james madison." >> guest: you know, during the revolution when the revolution got started, it was widely

believed that an army was a monster, you know? you maybe needed to gather a few militia together, maybe even a lot of them to fight this war, but you didn't want an army because they could turn on a free people and make a tyranny of what had been an independent land. so it took a long time during the revolution for congress to even come around to the idea that, you know, maybe we ought to enlist them for three years. but first it was like six months and a year. so let's enlist people for three years. and the whole notion that a standing army was evil lasted in american consciousness for quite a while. madison, faced with the war of 1812, certainly saw the need for a standing army. he also, he had never wanted us to build ships. thank goodness for john adams who managed to i think it was six frigates that he managed to

get authorized. there's a wonderful book called "six frigates" by ian toll. ian toll is the author. you know, those ships, the constitution, these ships kept american hope alive when the war of 1812 wasn't going well. >> host: we haven't talked about john adams and james madison's relationship. if any. >> guest: not much. not much. >> host: why? how did they miss each other? [laughter] >> guest: you know, adams was the interloper. he was the second president. and otherwise the virginians would be in charge. what relationship there was was pretty hostile, because adams signed the alien and sedition acts, and madison -- who was a great champion of freedom of expression -- suddenly found himself in a country where, you know, the president said, you

know, you start talking ill against this country, you start talking ill against the alliances we have, well, we'll put you in jail like we did that newspaper publisher and this newspaper publisher. so that, that was a great shock to both madison and jefferson when that happened. >> host: when you look at james madison, you look at the executive branch today, the powers, what kind of powers would james madison have as compared to today? >> guest: very small. i mean, today it's grown so amazingly. i mean, you know, executive orders, executive agreements, i think jefferson is even on record as having said, you know, when we've got some business to do, we can't always have a full treaty and the full vote and all that's involved. so that started very early. but i cannot imagine that something like the agreement with iran wouldn't have been properly regarded as a treaty. >> host: larry is in las vegas. larry, we've got about 30

minutes left with our guest, lynne cheney. >> guest: good morning, mrs. cheney. it's a pleasure to ask you a question. number one, how do you think the people that framed the constitution and our laws feel about when they were in their later life? and also what do you think they thought about, would think about potus, the supreme court and the congress today? >> guest: i didn't quite get the first part. >> host: yeah, larry, could you repeat? >> caller: this their later life -- in their later life, the framers of the constitution and everything, how do you think they felt in their later life? do you think they felt they had achieved success? >> guest: yes, i think so. there was this whole tradition. it was around the country but especially in virginia, you know, the ideal outcome of life

was fame. and that didn't mean being famous, it meant being honored by posterity. it was regarded as a kind of immortality. and if you had done something grand, and the grandest thing you could do would be to be a founder of the nation, then you would be remembered by posterity. so i think they all understood at the end of their lives that they had, they had achieved that. it's an interesting question to think, you know, what if i could have james madison for my house guest, you know? and drive him around downtown d.c. i just, i think it would just be shock, just complete shock at the size this whole thing has achieved. now, it had to be a lot bigger. you know, the country's a lot bigger. but i still think they'd, you know, have to be taken to a bar and have a good, stiff drink, you know, after having seen the gargantuan that we've created. >> host: the president was modest when he spoke to congress for the last time in december.

he spoke of his pride that the american people have reached in safety and success their 40th year as an independent nation and that for nearly an entire generation they have had experience of their present constitution. he did not mention his role in creating the constitution. instead, attributing it to the citizens of the united states. >> guest: that's really nice, isn't it? >> host: that's from your book, "james madison: a life reconsidered." >> guest: and i think they also understood that they had created something so innate. it hadn't been seen under the sun, a great republic. and they had seen -- because they'd been through the french revolution -- they had seen how this can go awry. you know, revolutions don't always end well. revolutions don't always end up in republics. so i think, you know, yes, modesty was considered a great virtue. that was one of the things that

madison learned from reading "the spectator." modesty was really important. but inside i think they just must have burst with pride and happiness at what they had created. >> host: once you finish your manuscript, how many pages did you have? what happens to it? when do you see it again? how often do you work with an editor? >> guest: well, you get several chances, you know? the editor will read it first and send it back, and then, you know, you rework -- if you think you need to -- parts that he or she has pointed to. if you think you need to. i mean, it's usually a back and forth. and then it goes this again. you might get it back again. and pretty soon you get it back in a way that is in print, but you can still make some changes. and then you get it back again in a way that it's more firmly locked in print, and if you make changes, it better not change the lines. you know, you still want -- i don't know what it is, 23 lines on the page.

so if you're going to make an addition or subtraction, it better fit, because other the index will have to be changed. the index drives a hot at the end. they prepare the index, and it says this is on page 323, and if you do a lot of changing, it won't be. you know, it goes back and forth quite a lot. it took nearly a year, i think. now, this isn't the case with all books. >> host: did you turn in more than 400 pages of manuscript? >> guest: is that only how long the book is? >> host: i think it's about 400, is what i want to say. i'm looking at the soft copy here. about 435. >> guest: okay. that's -- u know, i'm sure that is not very far off what i turned in. i do a lot, a lot of rewriting, but not at that point. >> host: diane, mission viejo, california. hi, diane. >> caller: hi, mrs. cheney.

it's such a pleasure to talk to you. >> guest: my pleasure. >> caller: this is a funny story, but my maiden claim is cheney, but it's c-h-a -- >> guest: ah, so no question about how to say that one. >> caller: no. i'm so looking forward also to reading your husband and liz's book, but i also wanted to ask you i have a 4-year-old granddaughter, and which book of yours for chirp would be more -- for children would be more appropriate for her age level? >> guest: oh. well, i'm not sure it's age level, but whenever i'm going to give a first children's book to a girl, i give "a is for abigail." it's just a perfect gift for a little girl. what's her name? >> host: diane, you still with us? >> caller: yes. >> host: what's her name? >> caller: her name is bella. >> guest: then you buy a is for abigail, and inside the page you

say, and b is for bela. and she will love it her whole life. >> caller: yeah, because she can spell her name real well. thank you so much. it's a joy to have this program. >> host: that's diane in mission viejo, and next up is david in cape coral, florida. wow. cape coral, florida billion. hi, david, sorry about that. >> caller: hi. hi, mrs. cheney. >> guest: hi. >> caller: i just called to express, i always wanted to tell somebody how grateful we were that your husband's willing to take on the job as vice vice president at the time he did and when, you know, he really had no expectation of going on to run for president or anything like that and was so secure. we really appreciated that. >> guest: well, that's so nice. i'll pass that along. i'm sure he'll be happy to hear that. >> host: he is out on -- david, did you want to add something else? >> caller: well, no. just that irene and i just got

back from wyoming. we visited -- >> guest: oh! >> caller: it's very interesting how close and personal the political life there seems compared to other places. >> guest: that's a really good observation. everybody knows everybody. it's like someone once likened wyoming to a sort of small town with very long streets, you know? a whole state is lined up. so we all know each other. >> host: 202 is the area code, 748-8200 in the east and central time zones, 8201 if you live in the mountain and pacific time zones. we're going to put up some other addresses, including a text address, 202-465-6842. go ahead and send those texts to lynne cheney. she is the author of 13 books. we want to show you the covers of those 13 books. the first two were novels, "executive privilege" came out in 1979.

mrs. cheney, when you sat down and you saw a copy of that, you kind of laughed, because you had forgotten about that book. [laughter] >> guest: people often ask me how many books i'd written, so this morning i thought you would, and i was trying to total them up, and i don't know the number i came up with, but i didn't count "executive privilege." so thank you. >> host: sisters in 1981, another novel. tyrannical machines, 1990. telling the truth: why our culture and our country have stopped making sense and what we can do about it, 1996. kings of the kill written with her husband, 1996, it's about power and personality in the house of representatives. america: a patriotic primer, her first children's book, 2002. a is for abigail, 2003. when washington crossed the delaware: a winter time story for young patriots, 2004. a time for freedom, 2005.

our 50 statements, another children's book, a family adventure across america, 2006. and then her memoir, "blue skies, no fences: a hem worry of childhood and family," 2007. 2008 another children's book. her newest book, "james madison: a life reconsidered," came out in 2014 to very good reviews, and it also became a bestseller. did you do a book tour? >> guest: oh, yes. >> host: did you enjoy the book tour? >> guest: well, more than i might have because dick went along. he was -- he used to joke he was my arm candy. you know, wives go along on everything and, you know, smile nice at the crowds, but dick came along. and so instead of giving speeches, which i find, you know, i can give a good speech, but it's just a little bit stressful. instead of speeches, dick interviewed me. and so everybody loved it. i loved it because i could just

answer questions and not have to stand up and give a speech, and i think he enjoyed it too. and audiences, for sure did. >> host: and, in fact, booktv covered you out at the reagan or nixon library with the two of you sitting and doing that conversation when the book first came out. >> guest: yeah. >> host: was it like campaigning? >> guest: a little. but, you know, you're not so worried about saying something that, you know, is going to cause a big bruhaha on the nightly news. so it's more relaxing than campaigning. when we campaigned, i didn't get to talk very much. so this was a little more enjoyable than that since i got to talk a little bit as well. >> host: well, i remember the '04 campaign you did some town meetings where you interviewed the vice president. maybe not interviewed -- >> guest: no, that's probably right. i got to ask questions. but this time i got to answer them, so -- >> host: why is speechmaking stressful for you? >> guest: well, not that it's --

i think it's stressful for everybody. you know? you have to try to entertain people by talking straight at them for a long time. and having been an audience member in a lot of speeches, that's just inherently boring, you know? you don't -- people always like the question and answer after better than they do the speech. so, you know, i think they just enjoy this interview format more too. it's a little easy -- it's more surprising, you know? you never quite know what's going to happen. dick will ask me a question like what's the best thing about me? [laughter] you know, i actually have never asked that, but some surprising questions. i just think the entertainment value is achieved without so much work. >> host: marty, trenton, new jersey. hi, marty, you're on with lynne cheney. >> caller: ms. cheney, i saw your list of books, and among them was david hackett fisher's -- [inaudible] and that's also one of my very

favorites. and, in fact, i taught an immigration course for quite a few years, and i used that as one of the texts. >> guest: oh, great. >> caller: and i also teach new jersey history, and david hackett fisher has also wrote "washington's crossing." >> guest: exactly. >> caller: i assume you've read that as you wrote your own book on washington. >> guest: yes. >> host: crossing the delaware. marty, why did you teach albion seed as the one of the books you taught? >> guest: it's a good introductory book to the whole problem of immigration. he poses a scenario where four groups of people, the puritans, the quakers, the virginians and the irish, scotch-irish formed

the basis for the mores of america. >> guest: yep. >> caller: but his accounts of those communities are absolutely priceless. he really is quite a good historian and a very good writer. and there's that and, of course, there's the washington's crossing. there's perhaps half a dozen or so accounts of washington crossing the delaware. i think of all of them fisher's is the latest and the best. he's a great admirer of washington. he brings out some of the superb qualities that washington had. this doesn't come out in the book, but for example, ms. cheney talked about the fear of a standing army. well, that's why they formed the society of since gnat discuss. i mean, washington could have been king. he could have been anything. and he gave up his control of the army and went back to mount

vernon. that's perhaps his finest hour, i don't know. but, you know, these are things that fisher brings out. that's all i wanted to say. >> guest: i enjoyed albion sea because it was at the time i was writing "blue skies, no fences," in which there's some genealogy. and i became interested not only in my own forebearers, but in dick's. as a result of that we figured out that dick had -- one cheney came with puritans. but another cheney came with the roilists -- royalists into maryland. and there are so many wonderful documents about the cheney that came into maryland, but you just see how one family line became so different from the other, because there's hardly a more different contrast, greater contrast than between the new englanders and the virginians,

the marylanders. this ancestor had come because of religious oppression. you know, the puritans were being discriminated against. this ancestor came because of the civil war in england. he was a royalist. and oliver cromwell was making life for the royalists difficult can. so i loved the book in that context. and, yes, when washington crossing the delaware came out, david hackett fisher's book, dick was vice president at the time, and so we were fortunate enough to have him come for dinner and talk about his book. he does a great job of that too. >> host: and you have a family tree here -- >> guest: yes. >> host: -- in "blue skies," your family tree at least. in the acknowledgments of this book, you thank i think it's the mormon church, their genealogical records and some other laces that -- are those hard to navigate?

>> guest: you know, it's easier than ever now on the internet because so many people are navigating things. i was trying to, you know, discover the identity of a young woman, her last name, in fact, was brown. but i found, you know, a great record of her in the french family records because one of her ancestors had been named french. one of my maternal ancestors was a woman named katura vaughn who was recruited in wales by brigham young and the people. so she came over as a mormon. it's just a heroic life. you know, she landed in louisiana. therecholera on the boat, her hd died, her baby died. she went up the mississippi and the missouri to council bluffs which was a stepping-off place to cross, you know, the whole west to get to utah. and, boy, they were just tough people. and i just loved knowing her

story, and i certainly got a lot of the information from the mormon archives. >> host: this is i think my favorite quote in the book, and i think it was written in your yearbook. lynne, you have a wonderful personality, you're very pretty, and you're awfully intelligent. most girls are either pretty and dumb or smart and plain. [laughter] you have a rare combination of both. >> guest: or dick. dick cheney wrote that, of course, but he's evolved. >> host: and here's a picture of lynne and dick cheney at their high school graduation, and that's your mother in the background. >> guest: yes. i remember that picture. she's trying to keep the light from coming through the door to the living room, so she's up there kind of holding it back. >> host: rita, daytona beach, florida. please go ahead. >> caller: yes, good afternoon, mrs. cheney. >> guest: good afternoon. >> caller: my mom, my mom passed away over 30 years ago, and she

suffered from epilepsy, as did james madison. she was a very intelligent woman, and she also was a lover of history. she believed, as i do, that truth in government was very important, and for those interested in truth regarding the issue of iraq, i suggest they go online at center for public integrity.org which documents over 900 lies told by the bush/cheney administration. >> guest: i'm not going to go on that, because it sounds like propaganda. but i just will say that i think president bush and my husband did a fine and honorable job, and i'll further point out that when they left office -- because of president bush's courage in pushing forward a surge -- iraq was a stable place, which it is not today. >> host: i want to go back to your mother,. [applause] cheney, because you write about

her -- mrs. cheney, because you write about her quite a bit. having her teeth pulled, it turned out, wasn't the answer. she was still sad and tired from the moment she got up in the morning. finally one doctor suggested that she wasn't sick, it was her nerves, a diagnosis that she decided was maybe right. she needed to be busier to quit thinking about herself so much, and so she got a job. >> guest: well, you know, women didn't work very much in the '50s. unless you had to, but if you could afford not to, you stayed home. she was just the whole issue of health. i mean, i look at a lot of 18th century health issues and think, gosh, if modern medicine would have been there, this would have been so different. i think it's the same with my mother. but when she got her job, it was as secretary to the police chief. and a few years later she became a deputy sheriff. and she was so proud of her badge. when she would come back to see us in washington, d.c., she kind of carried it and showed it to people. partly because it was so

unbelievable. here was a woman, and she was a deputy sheriff in casper, wyoming. i also think she provided a model for me. it's good to be busy in your life. it is good. and if you find work that is rewarding, you're very lucky. >> host: did she go to college? >> guest: no. >> host: did she finish high school? >> guest: yes. but my grandmother, her mother, came to wyoming with my grandfather to work -- my grandfather was going to work in the salt creek oilfields which is about0 miles from casper. and through long, hard winters, i mean, they were very poor, my grandmother raised five children in a tent with wooden sides. i know. i mean, you think of these women like vaughn, like this grandmother, i could, you know, go on, these women were so strong. >> host: eleanor in texas. eleanor, what's the name of your town in texas?

>> guest: it's wax hatch chi, texas. >> host: thank you, ma'am. where is that? >> caller: it's south of dallas. >> host: all right. go ahead and ask your question or make your comment, ma'am. >> caller: okay. my comment is this. i'm so full of gratitude to vice president cheney and lynne cheney, his wife, the second lady. they were unbeatable during that time when everyone was so shaken up by the 9/11 attack. >> guest: well, that's, that is just so kind of you that you're making me a little bit weepy. but thank you for those thoughts, and i will certainly pass them on to dick. >> host: even though you've been out of office for quite a while,

do you still have any official commitments or official roles? do you get invited to certain things? >> guest: well, in wyoming where lots of our friends show up in august, you know, we go out a lot. and that's just fun. you know, these are people we've known for such a long time, and some of them don't want to do the winter in wyoming anymore, but that's great. and when we're back here, we have trends. but, you know, it's not official really. >> host: do you -- you're out there eight months. do you spend the winters in wyoming? >> guest: it varies. oh, of course. we were there all of january and february this year. i will tell you it's not as easy as it was when i was younger. you know, you worry about slipping in the parking lot at the grocery store. there i go talking about the grocery store again. [laughter] gosh, it's beautiful. i've got a wonderful picture taken at christmas time of the lights are on in the house, and there's a moose in our backyard.

you know, a christmas moose, i call him. he's eating our willows, of course. but that's okay. he's so beautiful. >> host: jane, chicago. go ahead, please. >> caller: hi, lynne, thank you so much. i'm enjoying this program very much. i also appreciate you and your husband's service to our country. >> guest: well, thank you. >> caller: i think you were there just as we needed you. i am so grateful that you and the bushes were there for 9/11. you helped the whole country get through that. but i wanted to know if you think we will ever get to the point where people limit their public service that they -- on their own, that they don't spend whole careers like 50 years in the senate? >> guest: well, you know, there are term limits now for president at least. i think public life may be --

but this isn't answering your question. i'm thinking that people maybe don't want to go into it as much as they used to because it's become so contentious and so difficult. once you are an incumbent, though, it's not so difficult. and since these people are the ones that would have to pass term limits, i'm not sure i see it happening. it's also the case, though, that there is wisdom gained. you know, i think dick was much wiser after he'd served ten years in congress than he would have been, much more prepared to be secretary of defense. and i realize he's changing jobs, but there is wisdom that comes from experience, and i'm positive that that time as secretary of defense was crucial to his being able to deal wisely with the job as vice president. so there is this other side to it. but i know what you mean. there are definitely some people who have overstayed their

usefulness. >> host: time for a few more calls with our guest. jim is in jackson, ohio. jim, hi. >> caller: hello. >> guest: hi, jim. >> caller: yes, in traveling from the state of ohio to visit my family out in washington state, we've crisscrossed wyoming many times, really enjoyed it. >> guest: good. >> caller: i have a question about the book you wrote called "telling the truth." i was just wondering if you might make comments on why you wrote it and does it still have relevance today? and perhaps to put it in context in today's world. >> guest: i think it does, certainly, have relevance. it came out of my experience dealing with people in the humanities who'd moved in a direction that i thought wasn't helpful. the whole direction thing, you know, there's no truth, there's no right, there's no wrong. one of my favorite responses to

this idea that there's no right and wrong, there's just how you think about it and i think about it, was to say that i knew things that were wrong. slavery, for example, was wrong. now, that's a very hard assertion to challenge. but that's what this book is about. and i still think we have a lot of this happening in our colleges and in our schools. the whole idea that, well, what you thought was great when you were young really isn't so great because, you know, for example, the united states' victory in world war ii wasn't really great because we interned japanese. now, we shouldn't have done that, but there was rationale for it at the time. and even recognizing that there may have been error there doesn't heene that the whole -- doesn't mean that the whole thing wasn't great. so that was the notion that i was trying to battle then.

don't think i won, but i think it's still going on today and is something we need to be aware of. >> host: one would sometimes think, you write in "telling the truth" from reading today's textbooks that the founders of this country were a most singularly flawed group of men. >> guest: it's true. the best example of this is to read howard zinn's "history of the american people." that's his story. >> host: and we had an e-mail here from somebody about howard zinn, and it was about, that howard zinn focused on people as you talked about focusing on personalities and maybe that was an area where you agreed with howard zinn. >> guest: i doubt there are many, to tell you the truth. [laughter] >> host: and i apologize, i'm misquoting the e-mail, but i'll look for it. next call is another jim, this one in per sillville, virginia. hi, jim. >> caller: hi, thanks.

i'm sorry, i was confused with your earlier caller jim, but i just want to say i have a daughter bella too, and i'm going to get her a is for abigail. i'm just wondering if a part of ms. cheney would want to vote for hillary? and if not, would she win? [laughter] >> guest: no, i won't support mrs. clinton, but, no, i don't see myself running either. i do think it's a better world than it was when i was growing up in that we have women moving into higher positions. how many are in the senate now? i think 14. we're going to have more and more chances to vote for women, but i don't think i will ever vote for someone just because of gender. i will vote for someone whom i think will make this country a secure, a more secure and better place. >> host: are you having fun watching the 2016s? >> guest: oh, gee. i mean, you know, it's terrifying and interesting, and i've never seen anything like

it. >> host: here's that e-mail, just so i didn't misquote michael in fargo. i'm glad to hear your comment that the way to teach history is to focus on the people, this is what howard zinn did in his aptly-titled "people's history of the u.s.," can you offer any thoughts about mr. zinn's contributions to our country? >> guest: well, is it -- michael, did you say? i think, michael, that was a good question. [laughter] >> host: nathan's in san antonio. hi, nathan. please go ahead, just a few minutes left. >> caller: hey, how you doing? it's an honor to speak to you, mrs. cheney. >> guest: good to speak to you. >> caller: yeah, i had a question with the founding fathers, and you had discussed name and legacy. what do you think of your husband's legacy as the guy who brought back torture? [laughter] and would a good children's book be be w is for waterboarding or

w is for war criminal -- >> host: nathan, what do you do in san antonio? >> caller: i work. >> host: you want to tell us anything about yourself? >> caller: i grew up quaker, and i'm antiwar. maybe that's it, or maybe it's that the gloves came off after 2011 or whatever the excuse was for, and i think it's wrong. if he does go to the international criminal court, and if he does get prosecuted -- i know he can't travel in certain countries -- are you going to visit him this prison? >> host: that's nathan in san antonio. >> guest: nathan in san antonio can't just say those things without my answering. you've heard, i know you probably heard that most important information that we got that kept us from suffering another attack after 3,000 people had been killed in the first one came from khalid

sheikh mohammed. there were three people who were waterboarded, and california leak shake mohammed produced information that was absolutely vital to saving more lives. let me just say, though, that i appreciate your quaker heritage and salute your belief in peace. i just am firmly convinced that the way you get to peace is through having a strong national security defense and policy. >> host: lynne cheney is the author of 13 books, she's a scholar at the american enterprise institute, she's the former chair of the national endowment for the human the cities. the e-mail, and kate repeats something that we talked about earlier in the program, but just in case people weren't listening then. mrs. cheney, dolley madison appears to have been a very highly intelligent, politically-savvy and active woman. is there any evidence that she influenced her husband's ideas and thinking about the form of our new government in creating

the bill of rights, and is the story about dolley saving the white house relics when the british burned the white house true or just legend? >> guest: you know, i don't think dolley was a policy person, so i think that the answer is, no. you know, she wasn't telling james that we have to have a bill of rights. she wasn't doing that kind of thing. actually, they weren't married then. [laughter] she wasn't telling james what to do about the war of 1812. yes, the story about her saving the washington portrait is true, though it has become distorted over years. the historical evidence is that she asks someone in the white house to cut it out of the frame. it was rolled up and sent off with a mr. carroll for safety. and she did say some -- save some other things. she put silver in her tote bag. so, yes, yes, that story's true, though it has been exaggerated. >> host: time for two more calls. we're going to begin with tom in

hollywood, florida. tom, just a few minutes left. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. i would like to say to mrs. cheney thank you and your husband for your service. >> guest: thank you. >> caller: and a comment on the japanese internment during the second world war. >> guest: good. >> caller: i believe that the colombian government at that time was greatly compromised by activities from the japanese populace in that country. and i think roosevelt was looking at that, and that's what caused the internment. although i don't completely agree that everybody should have been interned. all the japanese should have been. and they a bit overdid it. but i think that was the fear. >> guest: well, that's interesting. >> caller: and i would like to pass on to your husband thanks

for standing up and speaking out about the administration as it -- and the, oh, well, the failure of what they've done to really stand up for america. >> guest: thank you. thank you, i'll pass that along. >> host: and final word is from sarah in olympia, washington. hi, sarah, you're on booktv. >> caller: thank you. mrs. cheney, i've got to read all 13 of your books. i'm a reader. [laughter] >> guest: good. >> caller: i, unfortunately, had my career cut off very early. i wanted to be a teacher. i didn't have the chance to do what i wanted to there, and i'm thinking i've been very patriotic all my life. i've been active in politics on getting people elected sort of thing. what do you think about older people, i mean retired people,

knowledgeable people going forward to actually volunteer to run for office? it seems to me there are many young people out there who could use our help. >> guest: i think it's great. i think it's great. i heene, ageism is -- i mean, ageism is a great social impediment just as sexism is. i think if you're fit and energetic and you want to do that, you should. i was also thinking though as you were talking that being a teacher, reading to kids in school, i mean, these -- wow, is that ever needed. especially by someone who knows a little history and wants to share it. >> host: mrs. cheney, do you have to be in good shape for a presidential campaign? >> guest: oh, my, yes. i have to also say dick did it after five heart attacks. but, you know, it came at a time in his life when he was very fit. he had a bad heart, and we're so lucky now, you know, since he's left the vice presidency, he's

had a heart transplant. and it's a miracle, modern medicine. you think how it's changed our world, and when i raze history, i can't help -- read history i can't help think how it could have been different. >> guest: we've got some video we want to of -- to show of you campaigning at ellis island. >> guest: oh, what a wonderful place. >> host: there you are campaigning. what's a normal day of campaigning like in the middle of a presidential -- tell me your schedule. >> guest: well, you know, you just get up and go all day. but the wonderful thing about a political campaign is that you don't do anything else. it just totally absorbs you. you just can't worry about the laundry, you know? [laughter] it's total energizing and absorbing. >> host: were you handed a piece of paper with your schedule on it in the morning? >> guest: yes. i mean, i went -- i had some part -- maybe not during the campaign, but after in developing it. oh, look at those little girls, they've grown so big now.

>> host: do you remember that day? >> guest: yes. >> host: or do they start to bartend? >> guest: i see those little girls, and i remember that day. >> host: lynne cheney. author, scholar, second lady for eight years and the author of these books, a couple of novels, executive privilege and sisters, '79 and '81. tyrannical machines came out in 1990 on educational practices. telling the truth, which we've talked about quite extensively today, 1996, why our culture and our country have stopped making sense and what we can do about it. kings of the hill written with her husband about house of representatives. children's books while second lady, america: a patriotic primer, 2002. a is for abigail, an alma that can of amazing women, 2003. when washington crossed the delaware, a time for freedom, 2005. our 50 states, another children's book in 2006, and

blue skies, no fences, her memoir, 2007. we the people, her last children's book, was in 2008. and then james madison, a bestseller, a life reconsidered, came out in 2014. lynn cheney for the last three hours has been our guest on booktv's "in depth." >> guest: went fast.