>> one theory holds forth. if you introduce someone before any think it went just fine, stick with it. in other words take the easy way out. thanks to the miracle of modern technology, i plan to do just that.

>> i am sure that for the more than 1000 gathered here this evening it is indeed special. that is because tonight, we are in the presence of another true american hero, vice president cheney and liz, welcome to the reagan library. [applause]. here is another more modern definition, one that i i know about the family and millions of people in this country will easily embrace. hero, a man of distinguished ability for his brave deeds and noble quality. i like that. in all honesty, it does not to demand justice. how do you find someone who has quite literally dedicated his entire life to his country? someone who has served five presidents and in the process

has selflessly come to the aid of our country great crisis. if any of your accounting, that is for presidents i've listed, not, not by that i previously noted. the fifth vice president cheney served with great honor, perhaps not directly, but surly with great honor, without hesitation, was ronald reagan. first is a foot soldier during his time in congress, then then as a member of the intelligence committee and represented of dick cheney of wyoming was a critical player on capitol hill who help make president reagan's legislative program, indeed a reality. okay, not bad. he has lost a few pounds, that is good to see. but i want to say that every word of that introduction remains both timely and true. what is new, what is exciting about their visit today is that

they are here, with a new book entitled, exceptional, why the, why the world needs a powerful america. i don't know if the idea for their book had its origin in the striking opinion piece they vote for the wall street journal that was published last year, to me it seems. they wrote them that the obama form policy doctrine, that is trying to lead the world from behind was in a state of collapse and ramification for america were dire. their book just published, expands on that theme in great detail. it is a must-read not only for those following the events on the campaign trail in 2016, i16, i am hopeful that it will also become assigned reading in history classes for decades to come. that's what it is, historical evidence that america exceptionalism that president

reagan helped to define and defend has been under attack by president obama and his administration for years. it has been an assault that is quite simple leading to the undoing of america's stature and position of the world. with that, ladies and gentlemen, let me please ask in joining to the state vice president dick cheney, and former deputy of state, liz cheney. [applause]. >> thank you very much. it is a real joy and honor for us to be able to be back at the reagan library.

as john mentioned, the whole concept of america exceptionalism is one that president reagan would not have even questioned. in many ways we were very inspired by pres. reagan, by the things he did and said, both during his presidency and before. his notion that it was critically important the united states lead the world is understanding that without us, there there was no one who would step in. his rejection of ideals and ideas of moral equivalent were at the forefront. you will see, when you buy our book, which i i hope you will do, that we open the book, the quote which leads the whole thing is by president ronald reagan. on march 23, 1983 he said it is up to us, in our time to choose,

and to choose wisely between the hard but necessary tasks of preserving peace and freedom and the ten tatian to ignore our duty and blindly hope for the best, while the enemies grow stronger day by day. we are again, as we sit here tonight at another moment like that. at a moment when the nation is under tremendous threat. we have to decide, it can sometimes be very easy to sort of say, you know what things are such a mess, washington is a mess, i am just going to live my life and focus on what is happening very close to me here at home. try to shut out the fights and debates that are going on. one of the reasons we wrote this book is to urge people not do that. to make the point that this republic depends on people not

to do that. british historian, and roberts once said, to the question of whether america was born great, achieve greatness, or greatness put upon her, the the only possible conclusion must be all three. that we were born of this revolutionary ideal, we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights. that made us a us a model for others around the world. then during world war ii, we became freedom defender. that is where we begin the book. talking about the role america has played, beginning in 1939 defending freedom around the world. at the end of the cold war, because of the leadership of ronald reagan, in large part we became the world's sole superpower. it is not just our involvement in world affairs that have made the difference, it is our leadership. our willingness to lead.

my dad and i felt very strongly that when you talk to your kids, my kids, his grandkids about what they are learning in school, it's not about what they're learning, they are not learning that america has been a greater force of good then any other nation in the history of my kind. they're not learning that because of us, hundreds of millions of people around the world, for decades have lived and freedom. we wanted to not just talk about where we are today, although that is a critically important part of the book. we wanted to put it into historical contexts and to talk about the truth about america and what we did, and world war ii and in the cold war, in the first years of the war on terror. ronald reagan said, if we forget what we did, we won't know who we are. we were very much inspired by that and by the idea that our kids have to have a place they can go to understand the reality of what america has

accomplished. one of the great blessings, for me, was being able to work on this book with my dad. who, along with my mom, gave mary and me a tremendous blessing as kids of learning to love history, and learning to love this great nation. somebody who obviously has been involved in the participant and many events in the book, not not as far back as 1939, but close. so i would like to start tonight by getting your impression. when people talk about president obama, for example, one of the things we did was go back and look at the context of this president. talk about the extent to which you think, where does he fall in sort of the spectrum of democratic and republican

presidents. how do his policies fit with what has come before, particularly on the democratic side of the aisle. >> okay, that is a good introduction. i have racked my brain trying to understand why president operates the way he does. i think back and reflect on it. i was welcoming, the way you are with the new president even though i didn't vote for him, i work for the other guy, i'm a republican, republican, conservative, and he was a liberal democrat. i was deeply disturbed about 48 hours into his administration when he announced that he was going to close down guantánamo, they're going to investigate and possibly prosecute career professionals who have carried out our counterterrorism program out of the cia, they had run the

program in terms of national security agency, our ability to intercept communication between al qaeda overseas, and their contacts in the us, or what, or what we call the enhanced irrigation program. we set that up in the aftermath of 911. these people who carried out the instructions of the president of the united states, programs that have been approved by the national security council, been signed up by the justice department, and been done by the books by the constitutional standpoint. he wants to go and have those people investigated and arrested. i thought that was not rages proposition from the standpoint, i understood he won the election, he gets to put his policies in place.

but what i did not understand, and he was prepared for example, to prosecute people, men and women who are patriots and who put their lives on the outline all of the time. on the time. on behalf of all the rest of us. it was one of the things that he came to do. i found that deeply disturbing. it raise questions in my mind about why that would be some of the first things he wanted to do in office. i thought back about it, and a lot of time reading history and especially interested in world war ii history, my own dad served in the navy during the sears, sure some of you have that same family background. as i thought about it, i thought about the fact that there has been, i think, over the decades for 70 some years, basically a bipartisan consensus between

republican and democrat alike, on a proposition on the u.s. role on the world and the knee first significant the need first significant military capability, the willingness to use force if necessary. that included people like fdr in world war ii, harry truman took over and on believable circumstance at the end of the war and into the cold war. dwight eisenhower, ronald reagan, jack kennedy, there is a consensus there that basically brought out and they didn't always agree on everything in their differences between the parties oftentimes at election time, brock obama was clear outside that basic consensus that in my opinion and my study of history was fundamentally disagreed was not in accord with what i think is a bipartisan accord the u.s. role in the world, that i think has dominated our history and our policies, and our actions over that. of time. that is partly what stimulated our thinking about the book. if you look at the book and go through, i think you'll find we

have document very carefully where we believe he has in fact, done things that aren't not the way would have been done by earlier presidents. he is outside the mainstream, if you will of presidential leadership and even raising questions about how big of a role the u.s. should play in the world. the policies over the course of the last six or seven years now are remarkable at odds with our history, what we believe as a nation, and with what will have to be able to do going forward if we are to get through very bad patch and get things back on the right course. >> in 1983, president reagan gave a famous speech from the oval office. in a large part of the speech he talk about spending, he laid out

the way defense budgets ought to be put together. he explained explained it is critically important the nation decide first what are the threats they have and then allocate the resources to it. one of the issues we talk about in the book, we have recommendations at the end, is this is this issue of our defense budget. it is an issue that we heard some candidates talk about in this election cycle but i don't think it has enough attention. i like to hear you talk about that, the extent to which we have got to make a real change in that regard. >> i am oftentimes asked what job i like the mouse. vice president, secretary of defense, congressman from wyoming, chief of staff or jerry ford. all of them had something to appeal all aspects of my career i was fortunate to do that. my favorite job, that was

secretary of defense. especially especially during desert storm, the collapse of the soviet union and the old end of the cold war was a high point in my career. i came away with that with deep regard for military and what we had to do to run the department on a reasonable basis and understanding of why, in my view the role of the commander-in-chief was the single most important responsibility by any president. more important than anything else we do. build highways, grow food, all the very things that federal government gets involved in. that is, in my opinion the single most important of the president of the united states. i also became very much aware, i don't want to get tangled up in a lot of detailed arguments about the budget, one of the most important things was the

length of time it takes to change course when you have to do that. when you inherit a mass as the president of the united states you can't write it check and go off in the direction you want to go inches it doesn't doesn't work that way. i was tremendously impressed, frankly it involved ronald reagan when i got to be secretary of defense, saddam hussein invaded q8 in 1990, the first weekend of the crisis the president sent me over to get the egyptian and saudi signoff for us to begin to deploy forces. we are able to drip ploy in relatively short order, half 1 million men and women halfway around the world and produce ultimately what became desert storm. one of the most successful military operations in the nation's history. as i thought back on that, we

were blessed because ronald reagan have become president ten years before. he believed in a strong america, america, he believed in a strong military. he gave us the quantities we needed an absolutely first rate people were attracted to service. and then training, training, the f-15 fighters, the fighting vehicles, the abrams tank, all of those things that he had been a part of starting or continuing in his administration, that is what we used to win in desert storm. first thing i did after desert storm was over with, i called president reagan. he was then retired living in beverly hills, i think tim, when i first got him on the phone i thanked him for all the $600 toilet dollar toilet seats. he said they didn't cost hundred dollars. yes sir, mr. president i

understand. at one point during the welcome home ceremony for the troops, the spring of 91 after desert storm was over, i had the opportunity to visit the president and mrs. reagan at their home in bel air. i spent a few hours with the present that afternoon, he was doing well healthwise, he was intensely interested on all aspects of desert storm. also our relationship with the soviet, things have been involved with as president. i remember he sat me down in a chair like this one and then he pulled a footstool over front of me, he stand on the footstool facing me directly and focused right on my face. he started asking me questions. i think part of it was an effort on his part was to compensate for some of his memory problems he was beginning to deal with. he can can be there for two hours, grilling me. again i thanked him profusely for what he had done. he was

directly responsible for what we are able to do ten years later. now think about going forward with what barack obama has done, the military is in terrible shape today. we just had the army chief of staff just retired, he was a superb soldier, he was a major commander for us and general patrice was involved, ray was the guy who actually operated on the ground and delivered on the search in 2007 and 2008. he commanded, first significant period of time over there. ray made a speech, a testimony before congress within the last six months, he just retired, he said that in terms of the readiness level of the united states army, the army readiness level today is worse than it has been any time in the history of the united states army.

that goes back to hundred years. the air force chief of staff has announced that we are now operating the air force with fewer aircraft, older aircraft than any other time in our history since the air force was set up. of course that was right after world war ii. all of the chiefs, the current crop as well as some that just retired, within the last year we had a testimony congress that given the current state of affairs, of readiness and so forth, they are not capable, in a crisis a crisis probably of being able to execute the national strategy that the military is called upon to do. militaries in terrible shape, we have not had a budget prepared the normal way where you look at the threats around the world, you decide what you need to meet those threats, you meet the budget, go through the process of the white house. now we have a thing called the sequester.

this is a result of the budget act of 2011. what it does, it was adopted because it is so egregious in terms of its impact, the assumption on the part of congress is that either you live with this because it is so bad and you're in so much pain that will come up with a better solution. will they never came up with a better solution. solution. now we have a sequester and it takes an across-the-board and all of the spending accounts, it hits hits the military harder than anyone else. the defense department accounts for 17% of the budget, it takes a 50% hit. we are now in a very serious question about how we perform in a crisis in our capacity to meet threats that we see around the world because of what is happened in the unites states military during the obama era. it is a huge concern to me and to our recommendation in our book it is sort of number one in terms of what an agenda for the

next administration would focus on. >> as we're finishing our book the agreement on the iran nuclear deal was announced. so we have a section on the book that analyzes the agreement and recommendations about it, you gave a major speech yesterday in washington, one of the things that you talk about in the speech was the can consent to the concessions that made at the end have potential to be devastating. you talk about lifting the restrictions on the icbm program as giving the iranians the ability to launch a nuclear attack on the u.s. homeland. it is a very direct, tough criticism of the deal. obviously the obviously the administration is out there making claims about it. i like to hear you talk about the issues and concerns that you have with the deal, particularly

what you think about the claims the administration has made just in the last few days. >> it was intrigue and, i gave gave a speech at the american enterprise yesterday was scheduled for a few months. the white house response was to put up on their website basically an attack on me. it was a personal more than politics. they didn't answer any policy questions that we racer the people have raised. i don't mind getting attack, he goes with being vice president, if i wanted to be popular and well loved, i'll come to california and be a movie star. [laughter] >> it's a terrible deal and in so many different ways. one is, the president has made a lot of claims but his claims are not valid. he gets into the area where to stop liberation of nuclear weapons. no it won't.

once the iranians have nuclear capability, even before that, others in the region are going to want theirs. they're not going to have all of those countries, the saudi's, and so forth israelis, are not going to sit tight and allow the iranians to be the only one of the neighborhood with nuclear weapons. they will go acquire their own. i'm certain they will have the money to buy them and thatthere is no doubt in my mind what this agreement will precipitate. part of the frustration, is that at the end of the negotiation we were told, this was just about a nuclear nuclear question, it's not about terrorism, it's not about what iran does to support his bala and terrace organizations. it's not about ballistic missiles. it's it's not about

conventional weapons, nuclear conventional weapons. but, it when it turns out when they did the deal it was about all those things. he put all of those on the table at the end of the negotiations. so the embargo on ballistic missiles and doing business with ballistic missiles has been lifted. a few years down the road, same thing same thing for the approach on conventional weapons. the agreement was signed earlier this year and the general who commands the force, the worst of the worst, in terms of an evil proxy for the iranians who are deeply involved. one of the key activities in recent years was building the ied's using troops in afghanistan and iraq. those other related issues are

all on the table, they have been lifted the sanctions that have been imposed on ir gc. they have already been to moscow since the agreement was initially to buy f3 hundreds, and s300 is a very capable russian antiaircraft missile. he he is over there, even supposedly those restriction remain in place for five more years. he's been to moscow doing a deal. with putin. >> if you go through the sequence, i don't want to go through the whole night talking about it. >> ..

the iranians have demanded as part of the agreement that they be allowed to enrich. even though it violates the non-proliferation treaty. of 1970. it also tears up the six you and security can always solutions that were adopted over the years, five of them promoted by the u.s.. three unanimous votes. all of those are targeted on iranians because of their bad behavior. the agreement obama signed wipes out the security always solutions. they are known zeroed out and we

have sanctions the ability of the iranians to have enrichment capabilities. only one for doing that, a direct violation of the in ct but that has been ignored. it should go through the process and look at what has been done here. the outcome is bleak, a terrible direction to go down. i think we have done a lot of work over the years with respect to trying to avoid proliferation of nuclear weapons. the president has put in place an agreement that is bound and determined to create enormous pressure for the proliferation of nuclear weapons. at least we are going to have to live with all of that in the future. >> i think another point or way to some up how people should think about the agreement when you appear the president say is

better than nothing, remember this is the man who says he won't accept a bad deal and now he says this bad deal is better than no deal land seems to me it is important to remember number one it won't accomplish what he says with respect to nuclear weapons. for a number of reasons, also because the inspections regime is swiss cheese, absolutely full of holes and will not allowable of us to have any understanding what the iranians i doing, won't enable us to catch them if they want to cheat, amazing to see john kerry to know with 70 what the iranians are doing, we certainly won't, it won't prevent them from having nuclear weapons, it will have international cover and legitimacy because suddenly they are no longer a pariah state because of this agreement. it gives all these benefits,

$150 billion in cash, lifting the restrictions, you have iran which is worn to destroy israel, sworn recently to do everything it can to attack america, chanting death to america on a daily basis, now provided with funds and up halfway to a nuclear bomb. when you think you have a president of the united states which has put that in place, very difficult to understand why, if you said ten years ago our president is providing money and weapons iran needs to attack the united states before you get to the issue of the path way to nuclear-weapons. it is a dangerous deal. gets back to this notion of the president's view of the world and one of the things that is the theme that runs through the book the we spent a lot of time

on, the extent to which you had presidents roosevelt, truman, eisenhower, kennedy, nixon, ford, carter to a lesser extent, reagan, weakness is provocative. this president doesn't understand that. it will be interesting to hear your assessment, places like russia and china, the impact of his unwillingness to defend red lines to project american power, what impact at has in those relationships in the future. >> we have been focused on the iranian situation in the middle east, it is a huge set of problems that gets worse. and look at russia and china,

the strategic situation and capacity to deal with it. one of the strength of u.s. had going back to world war ii as we always had a significant did vantage from a technical standpoint in all the basic technologies that you need in the military, things like still aircraft or precision guided munitions for the abrams tank which is the best in the world's, nobody else can be. the technological advantage is disappearing. if you look carefully at what is happening in russia and china, you see the evidence that that gap has been a great advantage for us, you begin to worry when you see what is happening. if you look at russia just yesterday, the clips that i get that the russians are building

an undersea unmanned robot submarine to do all those things underwater the we do with the drones. that has all kinds of ramifications that they publicize what they were doing. if you look back at china's defense budget since 1989 there has only been one year when the chinese defense budget hasn't gone up by double digits. we are a long way from that defense budget going up by double digits. the chinese have developed a ballistic missile, they are concerned about our submarines, that is a major core of our strength especially in the western pacific. they know what our aircraft carriers are capable of doing. they have got now a ballistic

missile taking up our aircraft carriers. you can look what they're doing in the south china sea, building man-made islands, shallow reefs in their, they are building airbases, military facilities, part of the south china sea. up until now. look at what vladimir putin has done in ukraine, crimea, i think he has aspirations of similar activity with respect to the baltics, estonia, lithuania, latvia were all part of the soviet union going back to world war ii and have significant minority russian populations and 100% dependent on russia for their natural gas supplies and are members of nato. we have a solemn obligation should they be attacked but the question is could we do that?

are we capable of putting together that kind of operation if we had to? i think vladimir putin is bound and determined while obama is in the white house did take advantage of that because he knows weakness when he sees it. it is provocative and he also has this objective, the desire to undermine, i can see him pursuing a strategy of operations basically that would put a lot of pressure on the united states, we are 75% of the natal budget, the only one, the united states leadership and u.s. forces to be part of a scandal of that is contested in the next couple of years by vladimir putin. he knows what is happening to the defense budget. he obviously has a set of beliefs, somebody suggested the other day a more dangerous than the predecessor, gorbachev's

predecessors, the argument was there is the politburo there. a 1-man dictatorship with aspiration of trying to undo what he sees as the damage done by the end of the cold war. there's a lot of concern about the chinese and the russians at both the chinese and the russians are working very hard to fill those gaps in places where we have military capability that they have not been able to challenge previously like a ballistic missile aircraft carrier and the trap that poses to us, the weakness, antimissile capability, poland and the czech republic and obama threw away, closed down that part of the

program, there's a long list of threats out there but it is the multiplier. you concede one foul-up, one weakness, one budget cut added on to the other and they do something like move into the eastern part of the ukraine and what penalties have been opposed? not much. you see china moving into the south china sea, not much. they look at obama's approach to the syrian red line, when he is active militarily, used gas on his own people and bashar al-assad did at and obama walked away. allies and adversaries respect united states the way they have in the past and every day that goes by there's more evidence of a special something like the iranian nuclear deal that pounds

home the proposition for adversaries to interfere from the united states. >> let's talk about iraq. but for the of the white house put the yesterday in response to your iran speech criticizing you for the decision to liberate iraq in 2003. in my own personal view anyone who referred to isis as the jayvee team is not in a position to be lecturing anyone on the topic of iraq. finally let's talk about iraq, your sense of what you did, why you did it, was it the right thing to do and what other impact it had as people may not be fully aware of? >> true. after we did desert storm, the question of whether to go on to baghdad, there was unanimous view that we should not. what happened between that and 1991, and 2003 was a little item

called 9/11. we lost 3,000 people in the united states, the world trade towers, the pentagon, flight 93 would have taken out the white house and the capitol building. we had reporting in the aftermath of that that osama bin laden was trying to get his hands on a nuclear weapon. 19 guys with box cutters, that is what they had, box cutters, launched that attack and an awful lot of evidence that the thing we had to worry about in the future was another attack like that with far deadlier weapons, a gas or nuclear. we had been if you looked at the history of the world and that part of the world, no question proliferation, one of the things we were concerned about was proliferation of nuclear

weapons. just came up on one intelligence report prior to 9/11, go back to 1981, baghdad, saddam hussein had a nuclear reactor operating outside baghdad, is really stuck out, 1991 saddam hussein restarted his nuclear program again, we took out in desert storm at fast forward to 2003 we made the judgment based on fact that saddam hussein was again back in the nuclear business and we went in, took down saddam hussein regime. the side ended any threat to iraq but also adds significant impact on the proliferation, two examples already, 81, 91, also what happened after we took down

saddam hussein is muammar gadhafi, centrifuges and feedstock and a weapons system and when we took down saddam hussein, five days after we dug him out of his whole, muammar gadhafi got religion and turned over all his nuclear materials to the united states and he did. very wise man. that did a couple things. think of what would have happened in libya in subsequent years if he had not turned over those materials when he was finally overthrown and isis moved in, killed gaddafi, they would have inherited the libyan nuclear program. they went in and took that back to the libyans and that uncovered mr. kann, a pakistani

engineer who had a major hand in building nuclear inventory, nuclear-weapons for pakistan and he had gone into business for himself. instead of a black market operation libya was his biggest customer but he also had been involved with north koreans, iranians, if you go back to 1987, in a meeting and hotel in dubai, it was con's people who got $3 million in return for providing the basic design of centrifuges for the iranians, 1987 iranians get their start with something, we shut him down, he went to pakistan and we shut down his black-market operations. those are all examples where we use military or the threat of military operations to halt the

proliferation in 2007, in my office and the west wing, he had photographs of israeli intelligence taken inside a nuclear reactor built by the north koreans or syrians in eastern syria. that was in 2007 and the israelis took it out. imagine what would have happened if they hadn't taken it out. the middle of isis territory, part of the caliphate that isis now has, another instance where we were very lucky radical islam did not get their hands on nuclear material but only a matter of time. i think we are safer today than we would have been if we hadn't taken down saddam hussein. those who argue against it have to explain the fact that you still have saddam hussein around. very important i believed then

and believe now we did the right thing in 2003 and the world is less for now and it was but barack obama is about to turn it on its head with his operations and the deal we wants to do with the iranians. >> isis, the rise of isis. do you think the caliphate can be contained? >> i am not sure how you contain the caliphate if you are going to withdraw u.s. forces. cross your fingers, pray, try to find somebody who will go in and do it for you, but isis is such a deadly combination. caliphate is a very significant thing, first time we had one in hundreds of years where they established a regime that governs under sharia law, extraordinarily radical. we see what they do recruiting success for example leaving in united states, young people being encouraged to go to syria

and sign up with isis and be part of that system. very potent, very deadly force committed to the destruction of all the infidels, a foothold in libya as well. the thing i worry about is some of the refugees flowing out of syria into europe, some of the may well be operating members of isis. they're trying to transferred revolution to europe because it is already significant presence. i think the only thing with isis is they have to be destroyed, you have to do it sooner or later, it will take longer. the longer we wait, it will be especially dangerous if by the time we decide we're going to do something about it they have a nuclear weapon. because one of those governments

over there has fallen after they acquire the capability, then we will have a grave difficulty situation where you have great instability, and rest, terrorist control, got their hands on deadly weapons. >> let's talk about hillary. [laughter] >> why is everybody -- >> secretary clinton had a very interesting approach to e-mail. [laughter] >> as secretary of state. i would like to get your thoughts on her decision. she could conduct all his business including sending top-secret e-mails on a private server that resided in a bathroom in denver, and what you think that says about her fitness to be commander-in-chief. >> i --

>> it is not a -- >> i don't think she is qualified to be commander in chief obviously. the private server, anybody who has been fair and gone through that process, secretary of defense or states or part of the cabinet, dealing with high declassified informational the time, you don't make mistakes like that. some reason why she did it and i assume we will find out what it is because they are pretty aggressively pursuing the server, in the last couple days they found their word top-secret papers on the server, the highest classification there is, very specialized areas and i don't -- i am not a hillary fan. okay? >> breaking news.

[applause] >> i am getting a look that says move on. >> as you look at 2016 i know you mentioned before you came in you wanted to use the opportunity to announce your endorsement. >> that is a fast one. not part of the program. i haven't endorsed anybody yet. i know a lot of the candidates and worked with some over the years which i consciously stayed away from endorsing anybody for a couple reasons. one because the book, what i am concerned about and liz has been concerned about is we -- the efforts we made in the book, continuing stuff, the republican national chairman, the finance

chairman i help from raise money for the republican party rather than for candidate at this stage because they do as well too. the thing that concerns me most, these issues, national security issues are front and center of this campaign. it ought to be if it is the most important thing a president has to do and have to worry about it ought to be right at the top of the agenda to make a choice about who want to support. i am interested in how various candidates will respond to our suggestions. don't expect to dictate policy at all but those are the problems i see based on 47 years in the business and i think the record is there for itself but obama is taking us down of primrose path and the next president, man or woman, is going to have to take on that

task the day they arrive in office and i want to make sure they are up to the task so that is my number one priority. >> no endorsement tonight. >> no endorsement tonight. it was the case as we worked on the book there were days especially when we were doing the research and writing about the obama year and that it can be ready dispiriting. we have a whole section on the extent to which the president traveled the world during his first year in office literally apologizing for us. talking at every opportunity, taking every opportunity to make sure he conveyed to foreign governments, foreign audiences that he believed america had been arrogant, he believed america had not listened, he listened to a diatribe by daniel ortega about the things, the

lies ortega told about america and the president's response was to say i am glad he didn't blame me for things that happened when i was 3 months old. he end ed his apology tour and cables that have been leaked and news reports, when he went to japan and the 40 got to japan the american ambassador sent a cable to washington saying japanese government had rejected the idea that president obama traveled to hiroshima and nagasaki and apologize for the nuclear bombs showing no recognition at all, no understanding at all of the importance of ending the war when we ended it and why it was the right thing to do. it can be dispiriting and we want to end tonight with something that is more hopeful and that is first on want to read to use something charles

krauthammer has written and i will end by asking my dad to read a section from the end of the prologue in the book, so we right that there is good news, just as one president led the path of destruction in his wake, when president can rescue us. the right person in the oval office can restore american strength in our alliances, renew power and leadership and defeat our enemies and keep us safe but it will not be easy. there are difficult decisions to be made and very little time, we face grave challenges as a nation before and right leaders have brought us through. as charles krauthammer observe, quote, it is one of the enduring mysteries of american history, so near providential as to give the most hardened atheist pause, then it should have produced at every hinge point great men who matched the moment, a wailing revolutionary british colony

gives birth to the greatest cohort of political thinkers ever. jefferson, adams, madison, hamilton, washington, franklin and j.. the prices of the nineteenth century brings forth lincoln, the 20th fd are. we are living at another image point of history and require a president equal to this moment. we must choose wisely. now i want to ask my dad to read about another duty we have. >> as citizens we also have a duty to protect our ideals and our freedoms by safeguarding our history. we must ensure that our children know the truth about who we are, what we have done and why it is uniquely america's duty to the freedom's defender. porche children should know about google's raiders and the battle of midway and he would

jima. they should learn about the courage of young americans, the light is bad, young americans who fought the nazis in the battle of the bulge and the japanese-okinawa. they should learn why america was right to end the war by dropping the bombs on hiroshima and nagasaki and the fundamental decency of the nation that established the truman doctrine, the marshall plan, the berlin airlift, the north atlantic treaty organization, the need to know about the war of the holocaust and promise never again. they should know once there was an empire so evil and bereft of truth it had to build a wall to keep its citizens in and the free world led by america defeated it. the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11, the courage of the first responders and there was some of the passengers on flight 93. they should understand what kind of world militant islam will

create if we don't defeat it. they should learn about great men liked george marshall and dwight eisenhower and harry truman and ronald reagan. we must teach them what it took to prevail over evil in the 20th century and what it will take in the 21st. the brave to plans women who defend freedom and security for millions of others as well. our children need to know that their citizens of the most powerful, good and honorable nation in the history of mankind, the exceptional nation. ordinary americans have done heroic things to guarantee her survival. america's future and the future of freedom for all the world now depend on us. speaking at omaha beach on the 40th anniversary of the d-day landings president reagan put it this way. we will always remember, we will always be proud, we will always

be prepared so we may always be free. thank you very much. [applause] .. you're watching the tv on seeps bantu with top-notch authors every weekend. book tv, television for serious readers.