dangerously. michael lewis talks about his books including the latest, the undoing project. he has written the big short and the new new thing. join us for in-depth first sunday of the month at noon eastern on booktv on c-span2. >> you are watching booktv on c-span2, television for serious readers. one of the things we like to do is talk about books that are coming out later this year. joining us is lawrence o'donnell. his new book coming out in november is called playing with fire, the 1968 election and transformation of american politics. mister o'donnell, why do you have the word transformation in the subtitle? >> so many things were transformed utterly in 1968. for example, that is when what is now called our culture wars

began. our culture prior to the 1968 campaign was pretty unified around most things. there was a big disagreement especially in the south about segregation and civil rights. that was the disagreement that ran through the 1960s but by 1968 you have a massive antiwar movement going on which becomes the cause of the presidential candidate who really kept going and that was jean mccarthy who made a decision but no one before him has ever done. he decided to run for president, go to new hampshire, and against the incumbent president of his own party, lyndon johnson. this opens up a kind of division in the democratic party that we had never seen before and in

simplistic terms this would be called a liberal conservative split or a liberal moderate split within the party, so the culture war became about war itself in addition to civil rights. it is about the peace movement versus the vietnam movement which wasn't really a movement, just a kind of hope of a certain political class in washington. that is when our politics was suddenly flooded with long-haired, bearded young people who looked like they were against every value held by people who looked the way you dress right now and many of them were against every value held by people who were still wearing

neckties and getting regular haircuts. the country felt itself in many ways to be culturally coming apart which was then being expressed in our political candidacies on the left with jean mccarthy and on the farthest right of the spectrum at that time, george wallace, southern segregationist governor, in the hope of turning back the clock on integration, feeding sort of discreetly piggybacked by the republican nominee, richard nixon who didn't want to say anything to alienate, with a combination of basic republican support and some of this anti-civil rights

support, he could squeak out a victory which he ultimately did but the culture war continued and continues to this day and you can listen to its fireworks every night in various sectors of cable news about what those horrible liberals are up to today and whatever neanderthal thing those conservatives want to do today, that culture war began in 1968. >> host: any parallel between senator mccarthy and 68 and senator sanders in 2016? >> exactly. i don't believe there would be a bernie sanders candidacy in 2016 if jean mccarthy hadn't shown the way. jean mccarthy was polling at 0 because no one dreamed of jean mccarthy running for president or any democrat running for president against lyndon

johnson, who wasn't just the democratic incumbent senator. he was, by every account, the shrewdest, most dangerous in his way, politician you could possibly choose to go up against. lyndon johnson did not lose, lyndon johnson got things done in the senate no one thought he could get done when he was majority leader. this with a texas politician who had become president in the worst way, quite literally through the assassination of president kennedy. vice president johnson moved up and the idea someone would challenge him after his 1964 landslide victory for his own term was inconceivable. jean mccarthy did it on principle. jean mccarthy made the decision one day in a senate foreign relations committee hearing that this government is not telling

the truth about vietnam, and will make this government tell the truth about vietnam. i will run for president if i have to and that is why he went after. you go to bernie sanders in 2015 if he begins this. he is polling at 3% when you throw his name in because he is making some noise about maybe he is going to run. hillary clinton is polling at something like 67%. what we all believed was prohibitive polling number for the democratic nomination. bernie sanders was polling at 3% in new hampshire. his neighboring state where they knew who he was. they were not excited about bernie sanders but he went into the campaign, what looked exactly like the young people's fervor of the jean mccarthy campaign. and 68 they called it heading

clean for jean. you would shave your head, cut your hair, find a necktie and a blue blazer and go to new hampshire and knock on doors for jean mccarthy. it was that important. we saw that kind of surge come out of what would have been the jean mccarthy supported for bernie sanders. very much to my surprise bernie sanders starts climbing in the polls. i thought bernie sanders if he does really well, he will go all the way to 6% and he will be the dennis kucinich of the 2016 campaign on the democratic side and hillary can say she had been opponent, the nomination wasn't handed to her, she only won 90% of the vote but it turned out to be bernie sanders campaign was catching that mccarthy magic in

new hampshire, where the jean mccarthy campaign caught its magic. we saw something none of them predicted, highly competitive race between the liberal insurgents on the liberal side of the democratic party against hillary clinton, what many of us that represented a liberal senate democrat party but in this construct, she represented the establishment, represent the moderate democratic party, very similar to the role hubert humphrey played in 1968. hubert humphrey was once the most liberal democratic senator leading the civil rights movement in the democratic party and here he was cast as the stodgy horrible establishment, the jean mccarthy and bobby kennedy -- the jean mccarthy candidacy and it was in the end

the nominee ended up being hubert humphrey but the dynamics in the democratic primary in 2016 were virtually identical to the dynamics of what we saw in the democratic primary in the nomination of 1968. if our fk -- >> if he waited for johnson to bow out of the race -- >> guest: it was bobby kennedy who pretty much got johnson involved pretty much. johnson was stunned by jean mccarthy's winning new hampshire. technically, jean mccarthy did not win but got a higher vote than anyone expected. jean mccarthy was supposed to get 10% of the vote but he got 40%, playing as a win, johnson was stunned by it. and wasn't sure where to go. bobby kennedy was also stunned

by it. when i was watching this, what i didn't know was bobby kennedy had been thinking about running for president before jean mccarthy and people who helped talk jean mccarthy into running for president first tried to talk bobby kennedy into running for president. bobby kennedy chose not to do it and he wished jean mccarthy luck at the beginning of it, not sure if he meant that but when he saw what jean mccarthy achieved in new hampshire, bobby kennedy announced right away that he was -- he saw how weak johnson was.

>> we're stunned by this. well, it turns out everyone working in the white house was stunned by this. ladybird johnson was one of the

only people who knew that this was one of the optional endings of lyndon johnson's speech. he had worked out a few different ways to end it that did not include dropping out of the presidential race. but by time he got to that day, he made that choice that this is what it was going to be. most people working for johnson, very close to him, were absolutely stunned. they learned it the way we did. they saw him say it on tv. >> rfk's in the race, gene mccarthy's in the race. hubert humphrey, at this point, is he in the race? >> he's struggling -- >> vice president humphrey. >> to get in the race. it's difficult, actually, for him to get in the race. and when he's about to get in the race, martin luther king jr. is assassinated. and then the country really comes apart for a month.

there's rioting in most major cities. one of the really dramatic moments in the book is there was no rioting in indianapolis that night that martin luther king jr. was killed. and one of the reasons for that is that bobby kennedyed had a campaign -- kennedy had a campaign stop scheduled in indianapolis that night. when he got off the plane, he was told that martin luther king jr. had just been assassinated. he was told you have to cancel your event. he had an outdoor, public event scheduled in the heart of the black community in indianapolis. the police chief didn't want him to go there. the police chief told him i can offer you no protection if you to go in there . we send, basically, our troops in there, that will be provocative. please don't do this. bobby kennedy listened to that advice, took it very seriously. he worried every day of his life since his brother was assassinated, he worried about assassination himself every day of his life. he decided to go and do the

event as scheduled. but he didn't make it a campaign event. he threw away any prepared remarks. he got up and spoke extemporaneously are about a what had happened, and he was the person who announced the news to most of the people in that live audience of his in indianapolis. most of the people there did not know it because they'd been there waiting for him to arrive, and they didn't have radios, no cell phones, and this there waso way of them having news. and is it was his job that night to stand up on that stage and announce it to that crowd. and it's just a stunning moment when he does it. he then talked very personally about his own loss through assassination, something he hadn't done publicly before. and so he left the stage quickly. it wasn't a long thing, you

know, maybe about ten minutes that he spoke, maybe less. quoted some poetry. it was really a beautiful, extemporaneous moment. and indianapolis was one of the cities that did not break out into rioting that night. hubert humphrey was stuck with the problem of when can i get to a public announcement in the aftermath of this tragedy, and so he had the wait several weeks. and by that time, the primary game was basically over. it was too late for hubert humphrey to actually enter primaries. and the only way he could get delegates was the way that bernie sanders' voters were so upset by this last time around, the inside game. just working what would now be called superdelegates which were then just plain delegates. most of them were just up for grabs. most states did not have primaries. and even the states that had primaries, delegates would not necessarily pledge to you. and so collecting delegates was

almost entirely an inside game. and humphrey excelled at that over gene mccarthy, which is all that was left because the next giant tragedy that occurs in this book and in 1968 was the assassination of bobby kennedy who, on the night that he wins the california primary -- and withthat win, bobby kennedy was probably on his way to the nomination. because he did two things. he show you how strong his electoral appeal was with voters, and he was impressing the party professionals with that win. a lot of party professionals were watching california to say if bobby kennedy can win this thing, then i think he's the guy who we should send in to the general election. so it probably would have been bobby kennedy getting the nomination after that. but what humphrey be had after california was basically

humphrey versus, you know, gene mccarthy for the nomination. hum free's way better -- humphrey's indescribably better at the inside game. and gene mccarthy is actually, at that point, dazed by the kennedy assassination. he became understandably kind of dysfunctional as a candidate. it was, he literally did not know what to do next, and he did not know how to go about pursuing tell gates in the aftermath -- delegates in the aftermath of that a assassination. and humphrey did, and he went for it and he got it. >> march 30th lbj announces, april 4th, martin luther king is killed. june 6th, i believe, rfk is assassinated. what was going on on the republican side? >> well, just think about what you just recited there. any one of those events in any other presidential election

would be the single biggest event inside that presidential election. the incumbent president drops out, quits, decides not to run in the middle of the campaign. that would have been historically the biggest event that happened. one of the fears that i had when i was approaching the writing of this book is, boy, the republican side's boring. what am i going to do? they're boring guys x it's a boring story -- and it's a boring story. well, only if you're a high school kid in 1968 watching would you think that. now, which is what i was. now that i went back in and dug and i found out what was really going on on the republican side,s it is a very dramatic, stand-alone story all by itself. the book's first sentence is richard nixon meeting roger ailes in the makeup chair of the mike douglas show which changes

our political history in a way that is incalculable to imagine without it. roger ailes, who's the executive producer of this what nixon thinks is a dumb talk show that he has to do because someone told him he has to do this dumb talk show that usually has actors and comedians on it and now they'll have nixon on it. he meets this guy, ailes. roger ailes turns out to be far more influential on republican politics and on american politics over the course of the years that follow than richard nixon was even though richard nixon is twice elected president. roger ailes is never elected to anything but goes on to become the president of fox news. and by the way, works on a bunch of other republican presidential campaigns in the meantime -- >> including h.w. bush. >> exactly. helps get other republican presidents elected. the ailes legacy is so much bigger than the nixon legacy,

and we live with it today. but nixon himself is a far more interesting character than i could possibly have thought when i was a high school kid. as is nelson rockefeller who's one of his competitors in this story. the first fifth avenue billionaire to decide he's going to run for president as a republican, but he's running as a liberal republican -- something that no longer exists. and in this book, we see literally, literally the last liberal standing on a republican convention stage. and that is the liberal mayor of new york, republican john lindsay, who has to go up on that stage as part of the nominating process for the vice president, something he was hoping maybe he could get himself. and lindsay not only doesn't get it, but we now know -- we didn't know that night. any of us who were watching that

night did not know you will never again see a liberal be a factor in any way in republican presidential politics. that is gone forever, and that was the night that the liberal did have the last moment of liberalism on the republican convention stage. and so the republican side of it is a fascinating drama. and nixon is the biggest loser who's ever tried to win a presidential nomination again. richard nixon in 1960 got the republican nomination, of course, because he was the sitting incumbent vice president of two-term president dwight eisenhower. richard nixon then went on to become the very first sitting vice president many history to lose -- in history to lose a presidential campaign. losing doesn't get worse than that, and he lost by less than 1% of the vote. everyone thinks his career's

over except richard nixon who then goes on to run for governor of california and manages to lose that. and then gives this very bitter press conference where he kind of walks off the national stage. and i remember seeing this, i was in elementary school. i remember seeing this moment because you'd never seen anything like it where he says to the press, you won't have nixon to kick around anymore. he quit! we saw him all quit. he's out. now in 1968 he's back, nixon is back, and the campaign's calling him the new nixon. what nixon had to do to get back is a fascinating story in itself. the team he assembled who were mostly new to this is a fascinating team that includes roger ailes who'd never done it before. his campaign manager had never done it before. i mean, here is, in a certain sense, one of the most professional presidential campaigners we've ever had who assembles a team of kind of

outsiders and renegades to do this. because he had decided that he had been kind of sent off in the wrong direction by the institutional wisdom of, you know, republican campaign machinery that he had used in the past. and so nixon's rise, nixon -- which seemed to me when i was a kid, oh, of course nixon's going to get the nomination. well, nixon getting that nomination is really quite a miracle and quite a drama in itself that i didn't know was there until i sat down to write this book. >> was it surprising that the democrats did quite well in the popular vote in '68 with all the different factions they had going on? >> yeah, you know, there's that theory that if hubert humphrey had one more day, you know, he would have -- because the momentum was going. the polling momentum was squeaking in humphrey's direction in the last few days of the campaign, and he ends up losing by less than 1% of the vote. so that's our second sitting

vice president who loses a presidential election, and he loses it by less than 1% of the vote. the, but the democrats seemed utterly hopeless. by the time you got to september, they had the worst convention in the history of political conventions and sadly for them, it was televised. america was not yet accustomedded really to -- accustomedded to full-fledged, televised conventions. this was a relatively new thing in 1968. and there were riots outside the convention hall, anti-war protesters with chicago police. those riots were later officially adjudged by a commission that studied them to be police riots, that police themselves got out of hand and overreacted to the protesters. there was what you'd call rioting inside the convention hall. if you'd been in the convention hall, you might have gotten pushed around as dan rather did and mike wallace did covering

the convention for cbs news. and we're sitting at home watching this on tv. we're watching the mayor of chicago who's running this convention, in effect, from his front row seat screaming up at the podium at democratic senator abe ruin cough, yelling anti-semitic things about him, to him that we can lip read what he's saying. stunning stuff is going on inside the ugliest convention we've ever seen. and outside is the ugliest happenings outside a convention that america has ever seen. and out of that comes a democratic nominee. hubert humphrey believed he was cursed coming out of this convention because it was such a disaster. and he was. and he had no money -- [audio difficulty] the campaign because everyone thought he was going to lose. he was way behind in the polls the nixon. and eventually humphrey decided

i've really got to say something about what this campaign is about. i've got to say something about vietnam, and i'm going to do it whether lyndon johnson wants me to or not. and finally, humphrey delivers a speech that feels as though he's declared his independence from lyndon johnson's war policy, and he starts to go up. and he starts to attract campaign money as he starts to bo up. and frank -- to go up. and frank sinatra does a tv commercial for hubert humphrey where he simply says, please, send him money. there's nothing even subtle about it. [laughter] and here's the p.o. box. and he goes up. and so that's why, in the end, all the momentum was on the humphrey side, and that's where the whole, you know, one more day theory comes from. and, you know, plenty of campaigns when they close, when they're closing and it's going in their direction, they have that feel anything the end. oh, gee, if he'd had one more day, and that's one of the feelings they had in '68.

>> lawrence o'donnell, from your book "playing with fire," you indicate that president johnson is kind of the stick that urged melson rockefeller to the -- nelson rockefeller to the race. >> it's amazing how much secret communication was going on. we had no idea about this. secret communication that lyndon johnson, the democratic president, is having with richard nixon, the republican nominee about vietnam because he's trying to get nixon the make sure the democratic nominee, humphrey, stays in line on vietnam with johnson. this is stunning stuff. johnson at the same time has a secret discussion with republican melson rockefeller -- nelson rockefeller, urging him to get in and run. johnson was just an incorrigible politician. what i mean by that is he loved politics so much. he just loved everything about

the game of it, and he was trying, he was always trying to figure out every angle of the game of it. and so, you know, he thoughting he saw this way for rockefeller. he saw what rockefeller should do. he also saw what nixon should do. lyndon johnson would have been maybe the greatest campaign manager in history if that's what he decided to do with his life. he might have been the greatest democratic party version, maybe, of what roger ailes eventually became, someone who got people elected president and then someone who eventually figured out how to message all of this, you know, through, as roger ailes did eventually, through fox news. lyndon johnson was an obsessive kind of back room campaign strategist who also had to be candidate. and he was better at the back room piece than he was with the on stage piece.

>> was he active in the humphrey campaign in the fall of '68? >> he was and he wasn't. he was distressed by it. he was -- there are times when you're watching this kind of movie unfold as it feels, it pelt to me like i was -- it felt to me like i was writing the movie of this campaign where you say right now, today, does lyndon want nixon to win or humphrey to win? today, right now. and tomorrow it might be different. [audio difficulty] persecuted and put upon and sometimes he felt kind of, you know, bold and daring. and in the end, though, there was absolutely no doubt in lyndon johnson's mind that he absolutely did not want richard nixon in the white house. and it's because especially of what he discovered literally in the final week of the campaign where it became very clear to him through intelligence that the united states had picked up that nixon and the nixon campaign were communicating

indirectly with the south vietnamese and the north vietnamese trying to get them to stay away from the paris peace talks that lyndon johnsonned had set up because nixon was basically delivering the message hang in there, keep the war going. you will get a better deal with nixon as president than you will with lyndon johnson right now. and so when president johnson discovered that richard nixon was willing to keep this war going, keep sending american soldiers to their death, keep the parties away from a peace negotiation in order to get richard nixon elected president, that is decisively in this book when you know that lbj did not want to see nixon get away with what he describes in the book as treason when he discovered it and did not want to see this man succeed him in the white house. >> potential parallels to the 2016 election? >> stunning parallels. we're talking about collusion.

was there collusion between the republican campaign more president in 20 -- for president in 2016 and a foreign power. there is documented collusion between the nixing son campaign -- nixon campaign and a foreign power, two foreigning countries, technically, at the time. north vietnam and south vietnam, these two warring factions. collusion to keep that war going because it's good for the nixon campaign to keep that war going. the nixon campaign desperately feared that lbj would succeed in some kind of peacemaking, some kind of serious deescalation of the war. the nixon campaign desperately feared that lbj could create, possibly through some breakthroughs in the paris peace talks, a sense of optimism that the vietnam war might be ending. and if that happened, they felt humphrey would surge, nixon would lose. and so the nixon campaign and president nixon himself directly were involved in communications

with the parties, north and south vietnam, to keep this war going, do not, do not advance the paris peace talks. and that kind of collusion is much worse than anything that's being discussed about 2016. >> this is your second book. >> my second book. it took me a while to get through the second book. the first one was 1984. i had had a few second attempts at books that didn't make it to the finish line. and so i've never discussed the existence of this book project until it was finished because i didn't believe i was going to finish it. and i don't believe any of the long-term writing projects i've engaged in, i never talk about them because i have, no one has less faith in my ability to complete a long-term writing project than i do. but we got this one done. >> coming out in november of this year, lawrence o'donnell's "playing with fire: the 1968 election and the transformation

of american politics." >> thank you very much. >> you're watching booktv on c-span2, television for serious readers. here's our prime time lineup. at 7 p.m.eastern, science journalist peter brannon examines previous extinctions on earth in "the ends of the world." then at eight, new york times chief white house correspondent peter baker examines the obama presidency in his book, "obama: the call of history." at 9 p.m., former marine corps officer tracy crow and former naval officer gerri bell provide a history of women's military efforts from the american revolution to today. on booktv's "after words" at 10 p.m., arizona senator jeff flake calls for a return to core principles of conservativism. he's interviewed by s.e.cupp, new york daily news columnist

and host of hln's cupp unfiltered. and at 11, robert o'neill -- the former u.s. navy seal created with the killing of osama bin laden -- talks about his military career and some of the 400 missions he participated in including the rescue of captain richard phillips and the attempted rescue of marcus la trel. that all happens tonight on c-span2's booktv. >> booktv recently visited capitol hill to ask members of congress what they're reading this summer. >> what i'm roadwaying this summer, and -- reading this summer -- and it might take me all summer -- is this commentary on the book of romans. the reason i'm reading it is because, first of all, it was just given to me. i'm part of a bible stud, members' bible study here in the capitol. and our teacher, dr. scott redd who's the president he