their airborne divisions are moving towards airfields and we've got american forces on heightened alert. i cannot have my attorney general successfully defined me whenwe got brezhnev over there watching my reaction to what's going on. we got no choice but to do it . and to this day, i think the president had no choice. [applause] i think he did the right thing. they're going to call me back to another committee. but that's the circumstances of this are all lost in what you see as the president just went over to just clear

everybody out of thespecial prosecutor's office when they were doing such a nice, honorable, upright job . so let me now turn you now, i think we want to get to some questions. let me talk about what are really the achievements of richard nixon and again, this library really has done it magnificently. greenfield is an editorial editor at the washington post, and no fan of the president, said i think we belong to the next generation. we've never been in a time growing up and he was not an issue in the election and likely in our lives we would never know a time when he is not a matter of discussion and that's right. doug shown, i don't know if

you had him out here. the democratic, i guess they call him democratic strategist, a very brave fellow, worked in the kennedy and he said richard nixon was the most consequential political figure of the second half of the 20th century. bob dole in his eulogy said this was the age of next in. only two men in american history had been on five national tickets. richard nixon and fdr. richard nixon set the all-time record for being on the cover of time magazine, five times from the outer this case through the senate races through the vice presidency, ruby and missionaries to his own presidency. and beyond. >> and in foreign policy, but did he achieve? he promised to bring on us troops and dfw's home from vietnam and again. negotiated the greatest strategic arms limitation's agreement since the 1922 washington naval agreement.

>> he opened up china which was communist china which had been sealed or 25 years and the horrors of the korean war and in the six-day war, turned out to the six-day war, the yom kippur war i just described, he saved israel. so the mayor herself among american presidents, richard nixon is the best friend we ever had. >> he drew egypt, even damaged his presidency, he brought egypt background out of the soviet bloc into the western camp. domestic policy, he and the draft. >> he enacted the 18-year-old vote. some of these things incidentally i wasn't that much for. he created epa. and i wasn't involved in that, i remember day and all of these issues, i remember one comment as we were sitting in a meeting . howard baker was there and

the center we gone in for baker in 1966 as director and senator baker was there andhe was , they were working on the clean air act i think. i do remember a calmer, that senators made, he said we get finished with this thing, the only thing that's going to be able to move in america is a small pony. >> what else did he do? he created osha. the index social security to protect against inflation. the elevated the national cancer institute. >> and declared war on cancer. he got four justices elevated to the supreme court including one president, one future chief justice. ed segregated the southern schools, even tom baker, a liberal democrat and anti-nixon columnist of the us the times wrote one of us about nixon where he said that was his greatest achievement. he moved the nation also off the gold standard. all these things are historic

events. so politically i think he was rivaled only fdr and he prepared the ground friendly for ronald reagan who got another 49 state landslide 12 years later. i work for ronald reagan at one time he pulled me aside and said i think mister nixon, i think mister nixon had a pretty good foreign-policy. despite what he had said about caisson. so richard nixon. politically speaking, again, let me tell you a story, were born was a famous british correspondent and had been writing good thingsabout resident nixon . and he wanted an interview and he got to me and i told mister nixon he should do it. so i was in the room with oval office when nixon knew he was going to get these

great british writers don't take notes, they sit there and listen. and they memorize it and walked out and re-created. but he i remember, i asked nixon if he would have been a new dealer if he entered politics at the time of the new deal. >> rather than when he did post war era. and nixon wrote him a long memo which is in my book, about how the way he grew up in yorba linda affected who he was. he was not against government action. didn't believe folks like him should really rely on it, people should only use government that really needed it. so nixon came to power in the postwar gop, 1946. and anti-communism and the cold war, these were the issues thatinitially i think made him and defined him . i'm six, and 46, the elder this case, the battles against douglas, thebattles against adlai stevenson .

but by 1968 he had clearly moved on. i do think he moved on from anti-communist conservative to a much broader vision. of the world. and i do think he genuinely, it was a clutch of woodrow wilson in him. his idea that he could create ageneration of peace . i thought myself if he hadn't had one of those in world history so it might be utopia. he genuinely believed that. so in domestic policy, i think the term for him is progressive or pragmatic, probably when it comes to issues like epa he was not adverse to using government if he felt he could do good for the people. he was not adverse to that. a lot of the programs you will see described here indicate that. he was not a libertarian as terry goldwater, my first political hero once. but he was also in their

internationalist but not a globalist and you go back to 1947 . where he's going off to europe and he and jack he was like that in a way, they both afforded the marshall plan, they both supported nato. able supported containment of the soviet union unlike the old conservatives. >> politics, richard nixon i think it's fair to say in his strategies political strategies and tactics, he was anti-elitist, partly populist, middle american as i said, representing those who are unrepresented, in his own way, a combination of those three things i think were the things that gave him that landslide in 1972. socially and culturally, he was a traditionalist. and he had many idiosyncrasies about the old man, was historic i think it fits in my book, i did the briefing books after agnes

who did with nixon when he was vice president and when i went to work for him and 65 or 66, she had done the briefing books and so nixon pretty soon had me doing the briefing books in new york and during the campaign is 68. and during all the presidency, he would go over to his office and he would say i want my briefing book by such and such and i would get, i would go through all the papers and get all the questions out that the press was asking, go through the briefings, the questions, call on the major departments, what are the supporters over there pushing the secretary on? and give them a call, give me a heads up if you're after something after a while it got so that i could predict almost every question that was asked at the press conference. and sometimes i actually predicted every single one. >> after one of those press conferences where nixon , in 1973, i've gotten every question and it was obvious i

predicted everyone. he called as he did after press conferences and buchanan, you did your usual excellent job but i noticed you predicted every question the president. i said yes sir, i believe we did sir, yes sir. he said, well, there are other questions in the briefing book that were not asked. i paused and then he said next time, leave those out. [laughter] one other time, and it dates to one of my various runs for the presidency, 1992, it took a lead from crossfire and iran against the president of the united states 10 weeks before the new hampshire primary and so my sister and i put together a organization, we went up to new hampshire and nixon was i think president bush was at 70 percent and i

was 15 and i think david duke was five. >> i went up there and really work in the campaign and we did well and sure enough , he cut down to what president bush beat me but it was only 51 to 37. so we don't and 10 weeks. i went to georgia and we did as well. then came super tuesday and there were eight primaries and i was wiped out in all eight. so we were sort of feeling down and i called up mister nixon and he came on the line. and he said mister president, 10 for 10. not bad, a? and nixon said buchanan, you're the only extremist i know with a sense of humor. >> you very much, i appreciate. >>. >>. [applause]

>> thank you, pat. pat has agreed to answer some of your questions but before he does i wanted to plug the book. the, they are available for order in the museum store and down the colonnade, our first question. >> a, so the first four months of, over here, on your right. i'm sorry, go ahead. >> i can't stop thinking during the first four months of our current president's administration about nixon's final speech the moment that he resigned when he said things like those that hate you don't win unless you hate them and then destroy yourself. also he said never be petty. and he was telling people like monica crowley at the end of his life, he probably

told you, he was asking rhetorically why did i go through the fire if others were not going to learn from my mistakes? are you afraid that the current president is doing things that are going to hand the same sort of proverbial sword so that as nixon said to frost, stickit in and twist it with relish . >> i do think this, i think that president trump has gotten the worst media i've seen of any candidate or president of the last ice age 18 months of the campaign and first four months of his presidency. there's no question about it and the mood in washington dc, let me say this about all that. things that havebroken so far, in terms of substance , this is no watergate. we didn't even have a single crime yet that has been alleged against the president or his white house staff and yet the mood and the hostility and the animosity, on the cable tv and the rest

of it. are all unlike anything i've seen. i think i was quoted in the press and i don't know how you sustain this kind of intensity and hostility, it's only been four months. >> and you've got 44 to go in his first term. so i don't know how this is going to end but i don't know that it's going to end well for the country. >> i do think the president is in some danger now of losing the critical margins that he's got in the house as people are moving away from him and the congress so that he's unable to do really what he wants to do. i supported donald trump. one reason was frankly, it came down and the issues i've raised, the border security. the staying out of foreign wars, which are not of america's business. new trade arrangements which,

we don't have a $400 billion trade deficit in thechinese taking all these factories out of the country and all these jobs so he had all these issues and i supported him . and i do think he's, i think he's got some real problems and i think frankly, it's dependent on how he's handled it. we didn't call the press names and we had a major speech, he took speeches and we move off it. and president nixon, there's no doubt he felt he was getting terrible press at times but he contain himself and he was very disciplined and i think self-discipline is not the first phrase that comes to mind when i think of the president. >> so yes. >> question on the back row. >>. >> i was a young individual, i'm very much concerned about the massive immigration and i just want to make sure that what can we do to modify and repeal the 1965 immigration

law that has drastically changed his country. it had a huge impact in california and what's your thoughts about wall street? >>. [laughter] i worked in mister nixon's office at the corner of braun for three years on the 1965 act. i will say i was an editorial writer in st. louis and i don't recollect even taking a position on it and i don't, if you read lyndon johnson's memoirs, when that was enacted i don't think he even mentions it in his memoirs. i looked it up one side and couldn't find it in his memoirs. i agree with you, this is one of the issues i ran on in 1991 which was i called for a moratorium on all immigration, the numbers down to a certain level.

so they could assimilate and americanize and again, acclimate everyone who had come, many many millions over those years, the way the folks that come from eastern and southern europe came in the 1890s the 1920s. and then you. of low immigration so that by the time you got the 1960, 97 percent all spoke english and we all had the same culture, traditions, histories, holidays . but to your point, to your point, i don't know that you could get that through if you talk about repeal of the 1965, i don't know that you could get that through the progress of the united states right now. i don't know that all republicans would go with it. i don't know that, i'm not sure president trump would go with it but i understand and i do believe immigration and i read a great deal about your and immigration is a problem i think of western civilization. >>. [applause]

>> you tell us about what to your recollection mister nixon thought about george wallace and how much he was inspired by wallace access work past democrats. >>. >> we're talking about governor wallace. well, we went with nixon, but wallace, wallace in 1964 had come out of alabama and were not the democratic primaries. >> did tremendously well in wisconsin and indiana and maryland. i think he won a majority of the white vote in maryland coming out as a governor and he stood it off as basically it was anti-civil rights laws and things were being imposed on the south. and wallace then in 68 of course ran as a democrat. you wasn't goingto run as a party candidate in 68 . but wallace appeal, there was

no doubt about it. he had an enormous appeal that rick nixon recognized and it was populist and the longer wallace was around from 1964, 68, the more it added to his repertoire and he was talking about you know, he gave audiences and would say i know some four letterwords to . wor k and soap. so wallace was starting to move people along those lines and there's no doubt the boats wallace got where the boat we wanted to get. but next had a position on civil rights, he wasn't going to abandon so what was best for us was to get wallace out of the race or lose the democratic nomination but then in 68, governor wallace was shot right there in maryland and i'm sorry, shot in 72, he was leading the democratic party in votes and

in all the primaries and he won michigan and maryland the next day so wallace was a powerful force but i think, my own view was that wallace could not win a democratic nomination. and he could not win a general election and if he got into a general election as he did in 68, basically he siphoned off votes that would otherwise go to nixon. i did look after the 73 election, wallace one present where wallace had gotten 173 votes, nixon got 172. in other words, they didn't go to george mcgovern, they came to us. this was the whole idea of the southern protestant strategy, bringing in votes but you need to get wallace not to run. to do that as a third-party candidate but as rising any higher, he couldn't do it but in a way nixon couldn't compete with him. he couldn't compete. in 68 we sent spiro agnew to

the upper east side and i went there with him because he did very well getting those votes and frankly, there's a quote in my book from frank gannon who got it from mister nixon where lyndon johnson told mister nixon on the ride up to the inaugural that where everybody was praising musty, one wonderful job he had done and johnson didn't think anything of musky but he said agnew had done away with the job and had one states like that helped us in north carolina, tennessee. north carolina, tennessee and states like that. >> you have a question for the center? >> right here. >> people think a lot about what president nixon inherited in vietnam, next monday is memorial day and i lost my dad in vietnam. back in hindsight are there a couple things president kennedy, johnson or nixon might have done to either change the outcome of the war

, the departure from vietnam? >> obviously since i was, my brother was over there and i was supporting the war from the beginning from the time i was in journalism school and jack kennedy, 16,000 green berets went in. my view and you know, wallace , george wallace and 68 wasn't all wrong when he said his slogan was win or get out. he wasn't all wrong. i think the united states of america which had reduced the japanese empire to roll, the greatest empire asia had seen in four years, could have won that war. i think what happened was the american establishment was broken on vietnam. it lost the will. it would not take the measures necessary to win the war and therefore when president nixon came in and 69 he had decided he had to get out and the consequences,

you have to know the consequences could be bad. now, my view was and president nixon, i will say this. i talked to him afterhe left office . as he should've done in 69, but he did in 72 was the harbor bomb hanoi, unleash full power of the united states to win the war were to break the north vietnamese. and i don't know why you do that.i don't know why, i don't think you can blame president kennedy. he put 60,000 men but lyndon johnsonis up to 500,000 troops . consequently, the news national security advisor mcmaster i read yesterday his book, he wrote a book about 20 years ago which he blames the johnson, president johnson, mcnamara and the others as really having behaved dishonorably during

that war and not realizing what the outcome was going to be. so that's something that, i would almost, had i been over there, a lot of people knew that about what was going on. >> we have time for one question. just as a reminder. >> what's your comment? [inaudible] >> right. right. i will say the president, the cambodian thing was a success. on the standpoint of it costs a lot of people but the american casualties strike down from cambodia, penn state all the way to the end of the war. when they came in we were losing guys at 200 to 300week .

yes. >> we have time for one more question, i want to remind everyone that books are available to purchase at the colonnade or bookstore. our final question. >> it's an honor to ask you this question. and you've been my political idol since i was a kid. my question to you sir is how do we go about ringing younger millennial's to our cause? thank you. [applause] >> you know, as they say on tv, that's a great question which means i need time to think of it. [laughter] is hard to say because in any number of books, i really think the 60s is a time, was a time when a significant slice, a slice of the country basically threw over the ideas that animated

the country and through all the generations previous to that one on culture, on morality,on issues of race , on various things like that. and what ideology, that ideology has spread and deepen to the point where we could win 49 states and 84 or 72. we can't do that anymore. the country is so changed and the academic community is very changed and the school systems are changed and the values are so changed that it is very tough, when you say bring them over to our side, you mean win them to the republican party. the republican party is doing okay at the state and local level, is exceedingly well that i'm a believer and i'm a bit of a pessimistic if you read any of my books, i am a believer that things that have changed are not going back again.

and that if you're talking politically, what they call the blue wall, those 18 states, the district of columbia that in 2016 went democratic, in all of the previous six elections, that is growing. demographically, it's very difficult for me to see how the republican party at the national level as any great longevity especially with the gentleman's question , the continuing mass immigration which comes now, the third world folks who depend heavily on government, who don't understand many ideas of republicans about smaller government, best government programs. i remember when i was running in 1992 it was in the gym working out and there were all these hispanic americans and said what are you going to do for education? i said education by and large is a local state responsibility. the federal barn only fence that six or seven percent every education dollar so you

need to focus on state and local. he said what are you going to do for education? that's what i care about, he wants the federal government to do it and i think republicans have a difficult time reaching these folks, there's no question about it. >> television broadcasting? now foxes got some problems these days. [inaudible] >> love, i went to journalism school in 1962 and it's a tough journalism school, 65 americans, i was the only individual in school. i knew which way they were going and my contemporaries and friends. >> thank you very much.

[applause] >>. [music] >> book tv recently visited capitol hill to ask members of congress what they are meeting this summer. >> ways and means chairman kevin brady, what's on your summer reading list? >> a lot of tax reform issues but i love to read. right now, stephen ambrose book about custer and crazy horse which is fascinating, he's a great writer and brings history to life so i love that. i'm a huge mike lupica fan. he writes all these books on

sports. a lot of these types of books i read when i was growing up and i love him as an author so that's sort of the fun reading i'm doing right now. >> i noticed on your phone, do you read from your phone? >> i do and i got an ipad as well. you need a break from healthcare, tax reformand trade . on things you can enjoy as well so i just love it. >> you is that your reading time back and forth to texas? >> when i'm not preparing for landing, normally i'm finding some book on the phone to read. >> kevin brady, thank you. >> tv wants to know what you are reading. does your summer reading list via twitter at book tv or instagram bookótv or posted to our facebook page, facebook.com/book tv. tv on c-span2, television for