mother the benjamin in august. she is the founder of code pink and author of several books. now coming up in the next two months on book tv in-depth program, walter williams will be our guest in november, he has a new book out as well. and in december, abc's cokie roberts. she has written several books on history and women. that is what is coming up on in-depth. but tonight, from last month we want to show you lynn cheney, her best-selling book on james madison was the focus of a lot of our discussion during this interview. >> now book tv where live with author and former second lady, lynn cheney. she will be answering your phone calls via phone calls, text, tweets, until 3:00 o'clock eastern. she has written several eastern.

she has written several books including her most recent, a biography of jane madison. >> lynn cheney, what was your secret service name when you are second lady? >> author. >> how did you get that. >> well they picked a letter of the offer belt and every one on related details had a code name that start with the letter. ours was a period so author just seems in nature and my husband was angler because his vision habits are well known. >> use wrote seven books as second lady. >> well it was a good way to stay at a trouble. host: did your writing style change while you're in office? guest: know but my subject matter to you. i had been working on a book on education when dick was chosen to be vice president. it wasn't as though the book i was working on really contradicted anything that president bush was saying on the campaign trail and working on this president. it was just from a different angle. it just seemed to me,

inappropriate and confusing to put out a book, setting forth my ideas on education since it was such a hot topic for president bush. so, i started writing children's book. that was a gratifying thing to do. i i love those books still today. host: you are a history buffs. guest: yes i am. host: in your book, telling the truth which came out in the late 90s, you wrote, it is sometimes said that the negative slant of what we're teaching now is overreaction 282 positive slant in the past, it is true in the past we sometimes present its laboratory history in our schools. guest: well we did. there's no question about it. i do think the reaction to that has been extreme. sometimes i think our young people, our children don't learn

about the greatness of this country. don't learn learn about what makes us is exceptional. host: the beginning of the telling the truth, you were chairman of the natural endowment for the humanities. guest: yes, i have gone through a great siege of moral relativism during the time. host: what is moral relativism. >> basically relativism, there's nothing right, there's nothing there's nothing wrong, there's just an area. so that was the point of the title of my book. is that there is truth. we are obliged to be as close to it as we can get. host: here's the opening of it. as one witness reported it the scene, the daily minute of hatred in george orwell's 1984's 1984 when citizens are required to rise and hurl pictures of a man only known as goldstein, the great enemy of the state.

i was goldstein. one of the enemy. what happened, zero. guest: i don't remember the scene with anything particular. i did as a conservative chairman of an agency that is closely connected to the academic community find that my name was used in that way. i also remember eminem did it. in other words, i felt quite cool. my children and grandchildren had no idea that i knew eminem, which i don't, but it was sort of an outrage. it was amazing to think an outrage there could be such a thing as truth. or i could believe they're such such a thing as right and wrong. i'm not sure how that is all laid out over the years. i found it outrageous.

host: what in your view was not being taught in colle to admit i freely admit i'll make up the good side of the story growing up and it was when i went to college and afterwards and i began to understand that this country is made many mistakes, that we have not been always perfect but what i think we don't tell her children is that we have come closer to perfection than any other nation on the face of the earth, that we have saved more people's lives than any other nation, that we have been a voice for good and it felt to me as though that was entirely being left out of the narrative. >> host: when did you start reading and when did you start writing? >> guest: well i suppose just before i got into school as a 5-year-old, writing. i do remember learning to love to write while i was still in grade school but he didn't start writing books until i got a job

as a ph.d.. i have a ph.d. in english and that was when the glut started. i think it was 1970 that i got my ph.d. and i think there were 30,000 ph.d.s and maybe five jobs i think it was 1970 when i got my phd. i think there think there are 30,000 phd's and maybe five jobs. it was very difficult. those were the days when it was a great disadvantage to be female. i remember one english department it was george mason university, and the chairman of the english department asked me, said dr. cheney are you married or are you really interested in a job? now that may have been illegal then, but there was nothing to take people into account for that. it was an amazing question

really. spee1. host: your husband was a congressman at that point. guest: either a congressman or in a. i i think he was and eight at that point. host: and then went on to chief of staff and you stayed in washington. guest: right until president ford so sadly lost the election in 1976. then we went back home. host: what was your goal after you you got your phd in english? guest: to teach. nineteenth century literature. i love the victorian period. host: and blue skies no fences, you talk about discovering your local library .-ellipsis. guest: yes, what a a shocking thing. i was reading my way through the fiction section. and it didn't take me long to get to the jays and then it was

james joyce you leases. wow, i never heard never heard of a book like that. host: you talked about how you hid it in the hamper at home. guest: i don't think my parents would have picked it up and read it from beginning to end but i didn't want them to open it. host: what were so shocking to you? guest: the words, we didn't use those words in polite company. now unfortunately we over use those words. it was the vocabulary. host: in your view is that a masterpiece? guest: no i don't think so. i don't regard it as a great classic. i have my own favorites. host: such as? guest: i think pride and prejudice is a classic, there certainly 20th century writers who are fine but i still think maybe to get your self declared it classic you have to hang around for a while and see if the work endured.

host: from your newest book, madison life reconsidered, you write it is a promising time to clear way misconceptions about medicine. brushoff cobwebs that have accumulated around his achievements and seek a deeper understanding of the man who did more than any other to conceive and establish the nation we know. guest: the big claim, but i think it's true. host: what are some of the misconceptions? guest: that he was shy and sickly. those words appear time and again when people write about madison. it seemed to me that you couldn't be fundamentally shy and accomplish what he did in the public arena, nor could you be sickly. sickly sort of implies you are never well. as i began to look at his career, they were indeed times when he was sick. times when he was out of action.

for maybe three or four days, but the rest of that time he was taking these amazing trips. 100e country with jefferson, or he took along one with munro as well. the energy that it took to travel from his home in montpelier to his home for congress. he was the main impetus behind the constitution. he spoke at that convention almost more than anyone else. i think someone spoke more times than he. he kept going. the federalist papers, the bill of rights. i think he wrote 4022 federalist papers. i could probably write 22 essays in 20 days, they would not be masterpieces. they would not stand the test of time. they would not be brilliant. but he was brilliant and i like to think of him as that. the the energy and his brilliance rather

than his shyness. i think at brilliance and energy. host: where was he born, who is his parents? guest: he was born in virginia, i believe in westmoreland county. now where he grew up which was in orange county. his father, all of his ancestors worked the land. they came from england, they came to virginia and they were essentially farmers, that's what they call themselves. even though now we like to say plantation, they didn't, they said farmers. his father was a farmer, his mother was a perfectly nice person. it was. it was his grandmother who really influenced his life as much as any. she ordered the spectator for him. getting books was not an easy matter. i do think he was a book loving

boy from the beginning. one of the things she ordered from him was the spectator, i think in eight volumes. you really can't see the influence of the spectator in his life. there is a lot of wisdom there. i think it also opened his eyes to urban life, if you are living on a virginia plantation or farm, you have no idea what cities are like. you have no idea what the theater is like or bookstores, or coffee shops. i think for a boy and a young man living in virginia that would have been an amazing world that was opening up. spee1 how did did he become james madison then? guest: well through a lot of hard work, his father decided it was too much scandal going on with william and mary, people people were drinking and playing cards cards.

he wanted james to go some place else in princeton was the choice. it is also true that princeton was a healthier climate, really about whether or not just about world climate. so it was also cheaper. james madison father was very tight with the dollar. he went to princeton and finished in what i think was two and half years. he was able to skip his freshman year, his, his latin and greek was so proficient. but then, the effort of trying to do the last two years in one year led to the collapse of some kind. it is my belief that it was one of the first manifestations of his epilepsy. host: went in that epilepsy show itself, when did did it manifest throughout his life? guest: while there is evidence,

not absolutely conclusive but enough to convince me that he had seizures as a very young child. now, little kids often have seizures and are called febrile seizures. they go away often. but there is also a pattern where a gang child may have seizures and is in madison's case, have sees seizures again as an adult. so it may have been a foretelling of absolute sea and some sense. i'm sure doctors right now are very nervous that i am connecting these two but there is a note, his grandmother's sending sending off for medicine for epilepsy. one of the things i did for this book was read 18th century medical books so i can figure out what were the things on this list and what was his grandmother trying to do.

host: didn't manifest itself itself at all during his presidency? guest: i don't have any evidence of that. there are indications, for example well wait a minute. no. there is an instance when he and dolly are traveling to philadelphia from washington but i can't remember now if it was when he was secretary of state or president. it it is very clear that something happen. they are going along in a carriage and suddenly this thing happens and later dolly rates, i could not cry to him like i used to do. go, help him in some situation that she is accustomed to. he did right at the end of his life that he called them sudden

attacks that they became less frequent as he grew older. host: how did james madison get involved in the american revolution, what was his role that would lead up to it? guest: he was caught up as college students have been forever in the politics of the time. people at princeton, even before he got there were demonstrated against the british. when he tried to enlist, he was practicing to be part of the virginia militia. i think he had one of the seizures. he talked about a thing that happened to him in training that convinced him he could not be a soldier. that would not be unlikely at all. so he did not become a soldier, he was really not involved in the heart of the american story until the revolution began and

he got involved with politics. host: close his relationship with george washington, if any? >> well it was good enough in the beginning that he wrote washington's inaugural address. washington had tried somebody else and it didn't work. this was familiar ground to any politician. sometimes a speechwriter just does not get it right. washington knew that. so he called on madison to come and write the address. once washington was elected he called on madison again and again and he said, look i'm just imagining this conversation, i need to thank everybody for the inaugural so would you write that for me? some edison did. then madison also wrote the response of the house back to washington.

i like to think of this as him talking to himself really. i like to think of it as his voice echoing off the walls in the early day. later. later, he and washington became not really a strange but they were certainly in opposition. host: why? guest: is basically alexander hamilton who took washington in a direction that neither madison or jefferson thought was appropriate. hamilton was a big government man. both jefferson and madison were concerned at that point about the central government becoming over powerful. host: relationship with tom jefferson? guest: zero, they were best friends. it was one of the great friendships in american history. jefferson would be a very exasperating twang, madison we get things lines up and jefferson would be off in paris fooling around and madison was very forbearing.

merrill peterson who is a wonderful history once wrote of the two, the account account balance. jefferson was the streamer, madison was the guy who is attached to the earth and understand the practicalities and politics of the situation. so it was a very beneficial friendship for both of them. host: what i learned from our first lady series that we did here on c-span last year, was that dolly madison had a role in washington and in politics beyond just james madison's lifetime. what did you discover about dolly? guest: one of the interesting things about many of the virginia founders is that they ended up poor. jefferson had to have a lottery at the end of his life, he couldn't pay his debt.

the same restaurant madison, in part because of dolly's son who brought the sun to her marriage. at one point he was taking stuff out of montpelier and selling it on the street corner. i actually have a friend in maryland on the eastern shore and said to me you know i have two medicine letters, and when people say that to you are a little skeptical. but he does. they are short, but they are very important to winding up stories that we don't know the end of. it occurred to me, that if someone tells you they have a madison letter you should pay attention. because of all of that stuff was out there and then he wasn't captured by scholars. in any case, there is great

financial stress at the end of the marriage, and as a widow was poor. there is one manuscript i remember reading of her depending on a loan of 75 cents. now $.75 5 cents is more then than now, but not that much more. so she started wearing the same close all the time, black dress and a white turban taught. there is one photo of her and she has that outfit on. but people didn't care, the mean they cared and helped her but her poverty didn't mean that she was thoroughly entertaining and fun to be around. she is quite a citizen of washington. i read her funeral was the largest up to that time. host: lynn cheney, this book was published, your original james madison was published in may

may 2014. when did you start your research, when did did you start working on this book? 's. guest: at least five years before. these big books take at least that much time. at the luxury to have that much time to work on them. host: where did you start? guest: i research and write at the same time. so you start, you write write a preface, you write a chapter and you keep going and then you realize the first chapter was all wrong and you go back and rewrite. then you get yourself burrowing into the stories, or burrowing into the situation like madison's epilepsy. so take the very long time. host: where did you do the research? spee2 research? guest: i do most of it at home. i do have to work from real book sometimes, there are many books that are important that have not been digitized.

i usually end up with a big pile of books on the for my study. there is an amazing amount of information online. all of madison's papers are online. the university of virginia has a digital program that is just amazing, jefferson's online, hamilton online, hamilton is online, washington, washington, monro not. i have just begun to tell you how rich this resources. there are many others as well. people upload google does a lot. there is something called archives.org that does a lot. you can find the most, you think obscure things. spee1 good afternoon and welcome to book tvs in-depth program. this is our monthly program with one author and his or her body of work. this work. this month, it is author lynn cheney. she is the author of 13 books,

beginning in 1979 and novel came out executive privilege, another novel, sisters in 1981 to report on educational practice gone wrong when i was published in 1990 telling the truth of why our culture has stopped making making sense it came out in 1996, king to the hill a nonfiction book written with her husband came out also in 1996. a menace second lady then a second lady several children's books including america, a patriotic perimeter. a is for abigail, when washington crossed the delaware in 2004, a time for freedom, and we'll talk about that later in the program in 2005. all 50 states, family thousand five. all 50 states, family adventure across america in 2006, her memoir blue skies, no fences, a

memoir of family in 2007. we the people, story of our constitution in 2008 and finally james 2008 and finally james madison, life reconsidered in 2014. if you'd like to dial in and talk to our guests this month, we're talking about history and education and all sorts of issues. 202 as they are core 748-8200 in the central time zone if you can't get through on the phone line there are several other ways to get through. including if you want to send a text message. you can text at text message only, don't call this number 2(202)465-6842 we also have some social media getting whole. facebook.com/book tv, apple tv is our twitter handle, finally you can send an e-mail to book tv at c-span.org. there is a lot of ways to reach you today. i want to go back to james

madison, and this is what you've written. gripping his quill across the page, madison recorded what seemed to him the essence, quote the strongest strong mine often possess the weakest bodies, the knife cut sheet. guest: well he found this in lock, john mark when he was reading. i think for him it was the comfort. epilepsy was such a misunderstood ailment in the 18th century. it was thought to be the result of demonic possession. it was thought to be-that may having seizures even more traumatic than the events themselves. i should just pause for a minute. i don't think medicine seizures

were always of the kind that made him fall to the ground. i think what he describes seem to fit very well with a partial complex epilepsy. as he described it, the intellectual senses are suspended. which is exactly what people say who have had partial complex seizures, temporal lobe issue. so nevertheless, i think probably sometimes the seizures that were not quite as dramatic manifested themselves in a more dramatic way. he had a complete seizure. he recognized, he said i have been attacked somewhat resembling epilepsy. so he knew that what happened to him was linked.

having that happen to you is all the more traumatic when there's this overlay that somehow it means you're simple. i think for him it was a great comfort to see this idea that often the very strongest mind have some physical ailment. the metaphor is the mind is so strong that the sheath, it's like a really sharp knife onto a knife that the sheath can hold. host: looking back it's easy to see but it was his path to the presidency inevitable at the time? guest: well, he certainly had many advantages. he was from the largest state and as you know four of the first five presidents were from virginia. being a virginia was in and of itself a great advantage. being being brilliant also helped a lot. i think dolly, you're saying earlier, she had a role she

wasn't an advisor, she didn't tell him what to do about the louisiana purchase or the war of 1812. what she did do was bring people together so that they not only admire him for his intellect but they have a chance to see his personality. to know that that he was a warm fellow who had guilt. she gather people together at their house, this is where they lived when he was secretary of state. they made him feel warm and happy and she would fix southern comfort food. james was in the corner, people would come by and talk to him and learn for this other part, there there was in fact a senator, i think it was who run home to his wife that mr. madison had a great advantage in an upcoming caucus that she was a candidate because of dolly.

host: was the war of 1812, what was that about? spee2 i think sometimes the best explanation that it was the second war of independence. we had managed to gain our independence from great britain in the revolution, it's kind of as though the british didn't think that was a big deal that it might be. one of the the things they're doing of course was stopping our ships and pulling sailors off. they were fighting a war with france and they needed more sailors than they had, so a good deal was to stop an american ship, go on board, ask people to say couple of words and declare that oh, you and declare that zero, you must be a british citizen because you use a word in this manner. they would take them off, this was a great insult to america as well, it wasn't was a very fair tour sailors and being a problem. so that was one of the kinds.

at the end of the world of 1812 i think the world understood that weird no longer under anyone. host: was james madison's popularity increased by this work? was it hurt? guest: i think during the course of the war itself there were problems. there are are many in new england for example. >> .. there was even a movement in new england, there was talk of secession. that madison handled it so well. he didn't try to put anybody in jail for suggesting that new england may secede. he did have some troops strategically located so it turned out they really tried to cut themselves off from the united states. there would have been consequences. he was such a believer in free speech and free expression and

freedom of opinion. the way he handled it reflected very well on him and certainly by the time the war was over he was widely admired. >> host: lynne cheney, connect this. ph.d. 19th century literature, your first books were contemporary novels and now you're writing about james madison in a historical biography. >> guest: well i think the connection is i didn't understand when i got a ph.d. in english that you can get a ph.d. in history. i sort of follow this path. i majored in english and as an undergraduate in next step seemed to be to get a masters degree and i never thought, the fact that i got it in the 19th century tells me even then i really wanted history and that timmy was the most important thing. >> host: what was your specialization in your ph.d.? >> guest: matthew arnold.

>> host: who is? >> guest: matthew arnold was a poet, a british, fine poet though i have to say i wrote my dissertation more on his throws. >> host: from your book "james madison" a life reconsidered over the course of a long public life madison had learned a word. what does that mean? >> guest: i'm not even sure i wrote that exactly because he knew how important learning was from the beginning. but i also think one of his skills as a politician is that he never assumed the side -- the other side was totally wrong. there are people who don't want a bill of rights, people who do want a bill of rights, and right now this was before there was a bill of rights when the constitution was being ratified. how can i manage my way through that so everybody ends up

feeling happy? >> host: what was the point in "a time for freedom"? >> guest: someone goes out on the street insists he recognize insists he recognizes might be ron reagan or abraham lincoln and nobody will or do you know when the civil war was an attendant possible question to answer. the idea was to provide a primer for the important events in american history. something that was easily refer to and possibly even entertaining. >> host: something out to be locked in memory the right, 1492, 1607, 1620, 1776 and 1787. 1492 columbus, 1607 jamestown? 1620, what happened then? >> guest: it's been a long

time but pilgrims. >> host: 1776 and in 1787. >> guest: the constitution. >> host: what was james madison's role in what was he doing in 1787? >> guest: well he began the year by trying to sort of set the context saying if there is a convention general washington needs you. washington has decided by that time that he was through with public life. he was admired throughout the country over the world but he thought he was through and madison new the convention would not be successful without him. so getting washington to say he would come, to be sure they wouldn't do anything that would somehow make the convention more complicated and then of course in may he went to philadelphia. he was there before any other

out-of-state delicate putting in their virginia plans and talking to people, getting them to sort of understand what he thought the agenda would be and then he worked harder than any single person until september to get the constitution in place. >> host: do you see any parallel issues from those days to this day? >> guest: well i think freedom of speech, freedom of expression allies need to be guarded. it's just easy when things make us uncomfortable not to let people say them so i think that's important. >> host: what was your path to becoming chair of the national endowment? >> guest: well i was very brash and they didn't have a chairman. i can't remember exactly who resigned. maybe with bill bennett and i had perfect credentials. i had been a public intellectual and i was writing for the

"smithsonian magazine" but i was writing these columns on history once a month i wrote a column. i love them still today. one column i wrote was on collins, the call until you see all over the city and why you see them so i worked the role as a public intellectual and i had a ph.d. so i called the white house personnel office and said why not me so they took my application. >> host: and? >> guest: the rest is history. >> host: what is the importance, 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 quite would have put this in the category of something the federal government should be concerned about that there were so many good bings that we did, preserving documents. newspapers were rotting on the

shelves. now they are being digitized. we sort of had an medium path. we were microfilming. there were programs underway to preserve the papers of the founders and this seemed like exactly what we should be doing. >> host: i want to go to "blue skies, no fences". >> guest: we live in wyoming now. wyoming has grown so much in there so many people. i'll bet nobody else in this room is -- was born in wyoming and i'm usually right that this is an jackson-lee usually get a lot of tours. >> host: how much time to do you spend in wyoming? >> guest: probably eight months a year. >> host: india still come back to washington from time to time? >> guest: yes, we do. some of our grandchildren living wyoming. some of our grandchildren live

in -- virginia. it's important to be in virginia so i can see those grandchildren. >> host: there was casper you write and then there wasn't so there's no doubt about where they were from. you could encompass casper in your mind and begin to see forces at work in it and you yourself might have an impact on them. you would see yourself creating your own future rather than having one-handed to you. >> guest: that's true. it's an amazing thing. i suppose there like this in nebraska but in casper there was the town and then there was the prairie so it was this manageable universe. kind of manageable intellectually and manageable physically. you could ride your bike to school and were used to go out on the prairies. he and his brother would go out on the prairies and catch jackrabbits.

i think his mother, and pretty sure it was those rabbits that his mother used to cook up and put in his lunch bag. >> host: marge? what was she like? >> guest: that was march. marge was very energetic. there was nothing she couldn't do. she could sew and cook and could she pitch a good baseball. she could fish. she was very energetic person. >> host: she played on a softball team did and she? >> guest: sheet taught how to catch and throw but she had done on a team called the bluebirds in nebraska and it's just like what's that movie with tom hanks and rosie o'donnell? the league of their own. it was like that. they traveled around and had uniforms and athleticism wasn't something that was valued in

their early century so they were pioneers in the way. >> host: you spend a lot of time talking about your education and "blue skies, no fences" and i want to talk about that in mena but here you are second lady answering a question from a student about the importance of education. >> when you were a child were you interested in history? >> i was and i'm not sure why. i suppose it was the teachers who were able to tell us the story. sometimes kids think history is boring. i'm sure that's not anybody in here but sometimes kids think history is boring because they think it's just a bunch of names and places and they don't really know people who had hopes and fears and aspirations and they got mad at each other. it's when you tell the story so it's real people that becomes interesting and alive. we have so much to 02 teachers.

i suspect i had really good teachers who told me the story in a way that made it come alive. >> guest: i'm just amazed that i said something that intelligent. it is true though. we don't i thank often enough teach about the people who were involved and that's what kept me going for five years. how did people relate to each other and when were they friends and accomplishing mighty things? what challenges did they face, how did they die and when did they die? did they have lives that were mostly happy? is when you are working on that kind of thing that i think history becomes a dynamic and great story to read. >> host: who was margaret sidler?

>> guest: at scheidler. >> host: scheidler, sorry about that. >> guest: when dick and i were growing up there were class a woman who didn't marry and became teachers and of course now they are probably, they would probably be scientists and ceos and so on but oh my we were so lucky to have their energy invested in us. ms. scheidler who taught latin was one of the teachers that i can hold up in memory and think. >> host: you spend a lot of time with her teachers. what was it about them? where they stared, were they nice? >> guest: nice isn't the first thing that occurs to me. they were pleasant enough but they were there to make us feel how do i say it is that we deserve the crown i matter what we did. they were there to make sure we worked hard and i think the lesson that i took away from

these good teachers is that almost any subject, could be physics, could be latin, could be history but if you did dig deeply enough into it if you just stop on the surface and say a a e=mc2 but if you dig down underneath you understand the people involved then it becomes interesting. >> host: you wrote this in 2007 about your parents. your mother she loved him and your father her father loved her but theirs was a difficult marriage. >> guest: it's true and i think a lot of marriages are difficult. they fought through and it wasn't always happy. but life isn't always happy and i love them. >> host: you go on to write that my father never shouted that my brother or me but he did raise his voice when he and my

mother quarreled although never suspect regularly as ralph kramden who is always threatening to send the list to the moon. my father saved his best 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 trait to explode. i think that it is one we should control of course and i've find myself doing it now and then. >> host: was he a drink or? >> guest: yes. >> host: do you think baby maybe he was an alcoholic? >> guest: could be. >> host: did that affect his behavior sometimes? >> guest: maybe so. >> host: i'm only bringing this up because you have written about it. >> guest: yes, i know but it's hard to judge people particularly when they gave me a

childhood and teenage experience and were so supportive of me after that it's hard to be harsh and judgment. >> host: lynne cheney your mother died in an unusual way. what happened? >> guest: you know we don't know. she went out to a pond. wyoming doesn't have many ponds and she didn't come back. when we found her, but my father found her the door of the car was open. she had a couple of little dog she liked and they were running around and she was dead. >> host: where were you at the time? >> guest: at college, graduate school. >> host: lynne cheney's "blue skies, no fences" came out in 2007 while she was second lady. i don't mean to be all

touchy-feely but was there a therapy in writing this book? >> guest: i don't know if was there be but i certainly enjoyed writing that looked maybe more than any other book i've ever written. partly because it gave you a good excuse to go back and talk to friends and to find out what happened. there is one story in a book about a girl and my high school classic that pregnant and when i think of those days i think there was much good about them but if that happened to you it was like the end of the world and it's so nice to go back and talk to this woman out because her life has been -- she got through that. her husband the father of the baby was killed in the baby was born after a car accident and that's really a dramatic beginning. to see how her life was good and she made it through that awful

time and is now a good friend. >> host: when did you start dating dick? >> guest: when i was 16. he had just turned 17. >> host: how did you meet? >> guest: i think we argue about that. i think his chemistry class and he thinks it's algebra. >> host: what happened, was automatic? >> guest: dick tries to tell the story which is very flattering to me. he said he knew who i was but i didn't know who he was. he was the new boy in town and probably didn't give them the time of day but in my junior year i woke up to the fact that this is a pretty good guide. >> host: you broke up for 11 days. you write about that. >> guest: he broke up with me to tell you the truth but then i dated his best friend who had a golden convertible and i think when joe and i were seen driving to casper in a golden convertible at brought it to his

senses. >> host: retired colonel in the u.s. air force, rich larson, how do your writing habits differ from? guess why much more disciplined. i get up every morning and go right. i went through some times but. >> host: 6:00 a.m., 5:00 a.m., 8:00 a.m.? >> guest: i'm probably at my computer by 9:00 but that's what i do. dick does a lot more traveling. he likes to fish. maybe i have the right approach here. >> host: do you write in the same fashion? >> guest: dick likes to write by hand a lot. he likes yellow tablets and real fountain pens and i'm not particular. i usually write on my computer. i have learned the importance of having knelt looks.

is there something you want to remember don't write it down on paper. get yourself a leather-bound notebook and asked all the important incentives to when you say oh my gosh what was james monroe thinking on the morning of august 17, and it was important for me to go back and find it in the notebook. >> host: did your medicine book coming your medicine experience, as it led you to another point -- another book at this point? >> guest: james monroe is really understudied but i'm also the virginia dynasty that's an interesting story. i've been reading a lot about monroe. >> host: are you working on that now? >> guest: kind of. way write books at hold myself up as an example of discipline and it's not very disciplined. i know it will have to be shredded in the end but i write it anyway and i think it's sort

of like the story emerges and any think that's what i was trying to get to and then you go back and start again. >> host: back to "blue skies, no fences," sorry we are skipping around quite a bit. >> guest: you are lucky i remember these. >> host: baton twirling. >> guest: do you know that ruth bader ginsburg was a baton twirling her too? i love that. >> host: why was it important to you? >> guest: in those days girls didn't do track. i don't even think gymnastics were very much on the scene. physical activity wasn't something that was thought the girls did. this was acceptable. it was like cheerleading and i worked at had a really hard. >> host: and? >> guest: i was a state champion. did you want me to say that?

>> host: you want to nationals, your first amount of wyoming? >> guest: that's true. my reference was wyoming and only later did i learn a whole part of the continent was beyond that. >> host: if do you have a scholarship to barnard. why did you not attend? >> guest: i did. even though it was full tuition somehow i had to get there and get back in plane fares in those days were really prohibitive so i went to colorado college were also had a very nice scholarship and if your parents could drive you there, it wasn't so hard and complicated and expensive. >> host: did it occur to you to go to college in your high school career? >> guest: that is one of the things i credited my parents were. it wasn't an option. didn't think about not going. you only thought about where.

>> host: was it rare in your high school class to go into college? >> guest: not rare, but it was also acceptable not to go to college. >> host: lynne cheney is against them will be taking your calls in just a minute. we'll put the phone numbers back up on the screen and if you can't get through you can text a message or you can make a comment via social media. those addresses will flash up on the screen in the next few minutes and we are going to begin with this call. if i can figure this out we have darren in lutherville maryland, good afternoon you were on with author -- lynne cheney. >> caller: mrs. cheney i admire your scholarship. i recently purchased "james madison". >> guest: thank you, hope you will enjoy it. >> caller: yes, my question for you is not really about

history although i'm a great lover of it but contemporary politics and that sort of thing. >> guest: i don't know if thing about that. >> caller: i knew you didn't and i think even a rocket scientist would know your opinion on the iran deal so i'm not going to ask you specifically on that but i want to put you in the place of the majority leader of the senate. it is the democrats would try to filibuster this so as not to bring a vote to the floor would you invoke or let me put it this way, would you do a 60 vote filibuster requirement just to get a majority vote to bring to the floor? >> guest: that's a really hard question. the nuclear option is what i have heard that call. you probably know more about this than i do eric but didn't

the democrats are to do that? i known as congress the republicans have not chosen to do it but please i'm not mitch mcconnell. if you are out there and not trying to give you advice but yes, i would. >> host: do you miss being in the center of the storm? >> guest: it was not onerous. many sad things happen when dick was vice president. 9/11 of course is top of the list and you do feel a little bit battered at the end of every day but -- you have the feeling of being involved in an important cause and may be in those years more than sometimes that's been true and that's gratifying at the end of the day to ink that you have 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 have to get a secret service detail to pick me up. i don't want to mislead you. i'd don't go to the grocery store that often but there are good things about it. >> host: do you get stopped on the street when you're out of? >> guest: occasionally. take much more often than not. >> host: in "a time for freedom" you did that on 9/11 or in that time period. where were you that day? >> guest: while i was downtown and someone told me a plane had flown into the world trade center and like everybody else i thought to myself what a strange accident and then of course the second plane went in and the secret service took me from where i was. i can remember certainly in the white house. >> host: which is where the vice president was. >> guest: exact but i can

remember looking up and there were smoke. you couldn't seaworld's coming from and i wondered if the white house had been hit. smoke was coming from the pentagon so i was taken into the white house as everyone else was running out and spent the day down in the kiosk is called, the presidential operation center. it was a stunning day. many things happened in real time. it was a day and i'm always proud of deck but gosh that day was a real eye-opener, to see the kind of leadership that he was able to bring to the situation. at the end of the day we were taken to an undisclosed location which everybody knows by now his camp david. >> host: how much time did you spend there? >> guest: weeks, not always the ones but a long long time.

and it wasn't like we were there penned up the back-and-forth and when the situation would warrant when the levels were high they would take us there. >> host: how much control over your schedule did you have? >> guest: a lot. i didn't have meetings and so on and the people at the vice president house are so skilled. if you want to have a dinner party they know how to do it. i maybe had to figure out who to invite that my life was not at all and close. >> host: the next call for lynne cheney comes from paul in pompano beach florida. hi ball. >> caller: hi peter. hi ms. cheney. >> guest: how are you? >> caller: i'm fine. i'm a recent retiree and then discovering history of my own

and i was reading a few books lately on fleming's the great divide and ellis' the quartet and i was wondering if you had read this book and shouldn't ken burns be entering the scene about this point to give us another civil war history back to the revolutionary period because it's so stunning i can barely contain myself. >> host: paul, what do you think of those books? >> caller: they were utterly each in their own utterly amazing. fleming made it sound like a daily gossip column. 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. .. . .>> it is a fascinating read. >> host: lynn cheney what

book which you require a few teachers college class? and will let you think about that and to take our next caller. >> caller: hello. peter, you are a gem andd mrs. cheney i think the world of you.bout yo i want to ask you about your personal library.y i books you on what your favorite types are to read when you are not researching for your own writing. thank you very much. >> host: deborah, great question. wish i'd thought of it. >> guest: i've spent most of our married life building bookshelves are getting them built because we have so many books. i can read them once in a while, the "we the people" doesn't want to get rid of a single one of them. we have a lot in a day most of them are history.

there's quite a bit of current contemporary commentary on the political scene, but most are history. if i'm not reading history i like a good thriller. right now another book i'm reading is the english right now another book i'm reading is the english spy. it is a really good thriller mystery. i don't spend a lot of time reading books i hate to say, i also like to watch thrillers on my ipad. i have lately become enchanted with a series by man kale, they are mysteries. some of them are in english. there's one starring kenneth -

but i started washing them in swedish, subtitles of course. dick came into the room the other night and said what the world are you doing. because it was swedish coming up. but they are really good. the walling or series. host: another text for you. dick cheney has said that you played a role in getting him back on the straight and narrow, what did did you say or do to influence them? guest: i don't think i really said or did anything. host: you heard him say that. guest: i made it pretty clear that i wasn't going to marry him unless he shaped up. i don't take us headed that way. host: was he doing that needed shaping up? guest: he had been kicked out of yelp twice. he had been arrested twice for driving under the influence. he was just without direction. i do not think this is uncommon, but he was without direction. i think i just let him see the importance of direction.

host: do you think you have a western u.s. perspective on the world? guest: yes, it is kind of straight talking. not a lot of fancy nests being around the subject. not getting dressed up a lot. we both like to be in wyoming. dick loves his jeans, what you call those jackets that are fuzzy. host: sheepherder. guest: know we will think of it. loving the outdoors. we are not athletes anymore, we both used two ski. but just just being in the air and wyoming. dick is a fisherman. host: you don't fish? spee2 no. he has taken me, the last, the last time i went he has taken me in the year. that is not good fishing etiquette. host: are you still writing? guest: oh yes. host: do you keep horses out

there. guest: overriding. my granddaughter grace has horses, she's become a world class barrel racer. she is doing the rodeo princess and all of the kids love it. grace has become a real cowgirl. she wears a thing around her neck that says, cowgirl up. you know if things aren't going right, cowgirl up. host: next call comes from joe in indiana. >> caller: yes, in regard regard to what you just said about straight talk, it seems to me that the issues we face today, many many of them are so horrendously complex it is impossible to even discuss them in a campaign, whether you're trying to be straight or not. you're talking about the iran nuclear deal and one of the big

complexities about that is whether the united states is able to inspect the iranian sites and then there is obama care, then then there's another example of complexity which is the 1i would like to hear you talk about most. it is the proposed fair tax that huckabee is behind. in my suspicion that is why trump got in the race at all because they would hit real estate so hard. guest: i agree with you there's too much complexity out there aren't too many issues. issues. what i do is i pick my issue. i try to understand it as well as i can. living living in a household i do, you can imagine lately that it has been the iran deal. i am with you, i was so considered about the inspection regime that is imposed and the fact that in some instances the iranians will be able to do

their own inspections which sound to me worrisome. the fact that we have to give them notice and they get at least 27 days, with delays with delays that could go into months. i think you put your finger on an important part of that particular complex problem. host: we haven't got a call from wyoming yet today. i'm surprised to. guest: it is mount time out there. host: mountain specific time, 202, 748-8401. guest: the outside, you know how beautiful the weather is right now. host: no i don't. i'm in a studio in washington. rick is in annapolis, rick you're on with lynn cheney. >> caller: highland. imb my dr. friend here in the community who had the pleasure of taking you and dick out on the boat at the klatt crab claw. he said that you said to do, don't, don't get any ideas about getting a boat.

what i really want to say is, over the years like 30 years ago you used to be on to be quite a bit. i admired everything about you. i i said to myself as i'm looking at you right now, you could have been a senator, you could could have been president of this country. you have all the attributes and you made the ultimate sacrifice as far as i'm concerned, in fact your husband was great too. guest: that is very kind of you. host: it was common knowledge that you are considered, at some level for the bp position. guest: it may have been at some low imaginative level. i think a more likely point would have been for me to run

for the senate when there was an opening right after dick was secretary of defense. host: did you think about it. guest: yes, but you have to want these things so much to what is it do what is involved to getting elected. you know, gosh i really like writing books. so i appreciate the comments but i don't think i have been a sacrifice, i think i've done what i wanted to do. host: did you make that comment to the vice president about a boat. guest: oh yes, that's absolutely true. we have a house and still do on the eastern shore maryland. we may be the only people who live on the water on the eastern shore who do not have a boat. i don't know how we got three horses, these things they just take up your resources and your time. i did not want a boat.

host: you have protection today? spee2 i don't don't think we should talk about that. host: that's probably good. doug is in massachusetts. >> caller: hi, good afternoon. three or four years ago george bush was advised not to travel to switzerland in order to promote his book. he could have been charged with work crimes under the universal jurisdiction. does your husband husband have any problems traveling overseas and are there any countries he needs to avoid. i'm looking for to your answer. thanks. guest: we managed to keep busy right here in the united states. i don't feel there is anything i'm avoiding. he and liz were in the middle east a year or so ago. we have done so much traveling in our lifetime, a a lot of people do this when they are retired, that i don't have this great longing to travel right

now. i just want to write my book. host: speaking of books, vice president and your daughter and liz have a new book out, exceptional. did you have a role in that? spee2 that? guest: oh yes, i am the, queen. if you want a good copy editor, come see me. they do not always like the idea that there are rules for comments. if you have a series, you put it, after each each member of the series, including ants. i have these things internalized so i do some copy editing for them. if i come across and historical fact i will point that out there on their own except for the, queen what's there. host: was there writing spot style you take topics in each of you undertake that topic any work together on it after that.

an interesting thing in the madison book is that i found is that madison and hamilton were so frantic to get the federalist papers finished that they ended up not reading what the other had written. if you think about how the whole things hangs together it is like a miracle. i don't how that happens. host: let's go back a step, what are the federalist papers, when were they britain and what is their importance? guest: they were written specifically to get the constitution ratified in the state of new york. new york's failure to ratify would have been as damaging to the process, deadly to it as virginia's failure to ratify would have been. so madison and jefferson wrote these essays that were published in the newspaper to provide a rationale for ratifying the constitution.

i have heard people say that they did not have effect beyond new york but i do not think that is right. madison made sure the delegates in the virginia ratifying convention had copies of the federalist papers. that's what they were, they are now regarded as a classic, important to interpretation of the constitution. they do help point out the genius of the founding. they take out some of the ideas that, in in my opinion were breakthrough ideas. the republic does not have to be small for example, a a republic can be big like our republic is. for madison to sort of see his way through that prohibition, the the idea that you cannot be larger be a republic was to me, the breakthrough thinking that you see. host: you talk early about what book you read require fewer college professor today.

we found video of you a second lady talking about college requirements. i want to get your response to this. >> an important reason that american history is not required is because if it were, faculty members would have to teach it. there's very little professional incentive to do so. advancement in academia comes in publishing, there is little market in academic journals for articles and subject that are broadly conceived. one of our specialized articles that are compatible with specialized teak courses, and not wanting to take on general education, which is what a survey course of american history is, people in academe are doing exactly what people in other professions do. avoiding activities for which there is little professional incentive. host: to remember that. guest: know, but that was a good point. it has to the test of time. it is still true that we do not

provide reinforcement for some activities that are really important. so we should not be surprised when they don't happen. oh the book, i would just say bind the constitution up and make it into book form. require it to be read. host: a call from massachusetts, hi ben. >> caller: hi. i have been listening here and i see teaching of history and i see american conceptualism coming out and i see the question, what books are of interest to you? i am think of kennedy's profiles, now what i want from kennedy's profiles is first a focus upon episodes that one teaches, i'm thinking of daniel webster is in their and

his behavior and stand for the union is to be celebrated as heroic but we don't overlook the fact that we in some ways he was a crook as far as the banks in new england are concerned. i focus on events because of my interest in a suggestion that the real things in this universe so wouldn't our american exceptionalism and our need for recognizing our heroes have clay seats, when therapy taken place of heart heroic events instead of heroic people and should we therefore teach kennedy's profiles encourage? host: think you been. guest: it has been long time since i read profiles and curry, i do remember when i read it and i found it thrilling.

i think it, it's when he chop down the cherry tree which isn't true. that kind of reverent treatment is not very interesting. i agree with your point that let's look at people, let's people, let's look at what they did, let's look at a bench that surrounded say the creation of the constitution. let's let's not forget that these are people like us. they had clay seats. one of the best examples of that of course was that washington and jefferson, madison, and more row all had slaves. that slavery, and they understood - morally wrong. it's even more than that, it's, it's too simple an explanation of what slavery is.

but they had slaves, and and it was wrong, they understood it was wrong. at the same time, madison in particular created a constitution-a friend of mine bob goldman who is dead now, he's to say they created a constitution for a society more just than their own. i think that is a good way to look at it. host: ambrose madison, james madison father, correct? wasn't there some questions about his death, whether he had been put to death by slaves. guest: i think he probably was. the family never wrote about it. ambrose was the first madison to have slaves. as long as there were indentured servants coming over from england nobody thought about having slaves or it wasn't an important thing. when the supply of servants dried up, slave ships began

going up the river on the chesapeake bay. ambrose's record it's about two slaves and then there're more. and more. and then he died in his 30s. it was said that he died of a slave poisoning him. it was not unusual. when you take free human beings, transport them in awful conditions across the atlantic, brought them into a place where they don't want to do the work that you want them to do. so they're forced into being a slave even through whipping, so a extreme response like poisoning your master is wrong of course, but it is not surprising. host: paul, fort lauderdale for florida emails. do you think there'll be a renaissance a renaissance of american history

in our nation's schools? there seems to be a lack of interest among our teachers and youth to teach and to learn our great past. guest: i think the latter description is right. we are not doing a very good job of teaching history. i would sure do whatever i can to help bring this renaissance about. our children need to understand where they are and what their ancestors have done. somebody wrote once that history is looking into a rear view mirror. that's what gives you, it doesn't give you the forward vision but it is the only thing we have. how else do you understand the universe and human life? host: next call is from gordon, he happens to be in laramie, wyoming. i think gordon was listening. >> caller: howdy folks. thank you ms. cheney, thank you lynn. thank you peter. great show.

i just want to thank the cheney's for being a great conservative leavening here in laramie. we need that here as you know. i am also hoping liz will run. host: gordon, you live in laramie, what part of state is laramie, wyoming in? >> caller: southeast wyoming, we are west of cheyenne. host: are you a native of laramie? >> caller: know i'm not i'm in next greeny and i have been here since 1996. wyoming reminds me of colorado when i was a kid back in the 50s. i love it here. guest: thank you for your kind words about liz. she she is a good one and gosh she has so much to contribute in the years ahead.

>> caller: i hope she, i would vote for her for president in a heartbeat. guest: thank you. i would too. >> caller: you bet. you said said you like thrillers, i was wondering if you ever read nevada bar? i don't care for her politics but she read some good thrillers. guest: i will try it. i haven't read it but i will try. i like mr. box who is a native of wyoming who writes thrillers. or at least he is in wyoming. host: lynn cheney, your first first two books were novels, why? guest: in those days,, 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. i know i have an ibm electric. dick and i are moving around the country, that is about when we started washington and went to wyoming. it is what i could do. it was a fun experiment.

host: the book you wrote together, kings of the hill, power and personality and the house of representatives. your husband was serving in the house at that point, nick longworth is one of the people your profile. why was he he a king of the hill? host:. guest: he just was. he was in command of the house of representatives which is no easy thing to do. plus it is a powerful character. this whole book started when dick and i, maybe he was reading the proud tower, he would remain passages and i would grab the book so i could read the whole passage. one of of the things she does and there is profile tom reed. speaker of the house. but we had just barely heard of him. and here he was a fascinating person. so we decided there is a book here, starts with tom reed. i think nicholas longworth is less personally profile.

host: is the congress as significant today as it used to be? i'm not a very elegant way of asking a question. guest: i think we have seen, and the iran deal the fact that congress has not been able to assert itself effectively. i do not know what the solution is. i'm sure there are a lot of people on capitol hill just pounding their heads trying to think what the solution is. the iran agreement should have been a treaty. how did did we get to the situation where we are where it will take two thirds of the senate or the house to pass it? i'm sorry.

it will take two thirds of the senate or house to override the president's veto. it should be able take two thirds of the senate or the house to pass it. i don't how we got into this upside down situation. host: bill is calling in from florida. >> caller: good afternoon. good afternoon ms. cheney. i would like to know, do you agree with president obama's policy of drilling in the arctic in your opinion on fracking and the controversy it has created. spee2 what you're not going to be surprised that i think one of the few decisions i agree with the president is the drilling in the arctic. i think of fracking is absolutely the way that we have seen giving away energy and

independence and it cannot be more important to our national security. even as i say those things, one of one of the things i am proud of dick for having done is setting aside, i think nearly 1 million acres in the west, in wyoming in particular, for preserving wildlife and preserving nature. i do not think that we have to either choose to be green or not green, i think we need to evaluate the situation by situation. host: an e-mail, i am a native of orange, 2 miles from montpelier. in your in your research, did you find how madison traveled from point conway to montpelier. why no credit for mason for the bill of rights, and how do believe madison would view the constitution today? so we have traveling to point

conway to montpelier, why no credit to mason for bill of rights, and madison constitution today. guest: i would assume that he was taken mostly by carriage. i am having trouble thinking of what body of water you have to cross between conway and orange. slid by horse and carriage. george mason is someone who is worth so much worse study that has been given here. he has refused to be in the constitution because it did not contain the bill of rights. madison, how should i say this was a little more politically minded. he wanted to get the constitution ratified. that was was his mingle at that point. if he started each day adding the bill of rights they would not all agree. so at the end, maybe you get the necessary states to ratify but then there is a huge argument over what the bill of rights is.

i think madison at the and did the right thing. he kept everybody from putting a bill of rights in, made george mason mad and went home. but then after you got the ratification, madison is the primary author of the bill of rights echoes through congress and is ratified by the state. seems to me that mason was mad for another reason. he thought the vice presidency was a strange office that threaten the constitution. because the vice president had a foot in both the senate and executive branch he saw this as a great conflation and a separation of powers. there's so much interesting about it, i'm glad you brought it up. and. and that their question was. host: i think madison and the use of the constitution today. guest: i think even if you brought back george mason and a

proponent, i think if you brought back any of the founders they've absolutely compounded at the size of the federal government. i just think that this has gone so far beyond what any of them could have possibly imagine. host: in your research on james madison was there any contemporary politicians come to my? did you do any comparison there? spee2 i think that is very hard, the challenges are so different. host: wasn't madison responsible for making the president of the senate, didn't he play play a role in making sure that happen? guest: probably, i have forgotten forgotten that part. i do know this though, when they came to be at loggerheads about how to elect a president, that was the question, how do we elect a president? madison stepped in a draw up a plan. he got this through the

constitutional convention, it was a big state, little state issue. if we say the number of electors is going to be the number of senators plus the number of representatives than the big states, who have more representatives are going to, in view of little states have too much influence on the selection of the president. so then, i think it it was madison who came up with this idea,. >> .. virginia elect durst cast e 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 ♪ ♪