tv American Lion CSPAN September 1, 2017 12:45am-1:58am EDT
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constantly learning. . >> mentioning john beecham -- mecham's biography who won a pulitzer prize we want to show you the author presentation. >> i am delighted to be here to let the history of the last 40 years i was standingg at the nixon library and now i am here. [laughter] why not? that they have day
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john adams was doing soel well. bid to capture that popular imagination and then to go back and recover someone who represents the best of thed worst andrew jackson does that for girl -- does that. you cannot but they are the man to catch up to that possibility of progress alive by preserving the union and then i a.m. talk about -- interested your questions.t-elect the president-elect walked through the streets to his
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mother's door. to write the inaugural address. and called for a copy of the constitution with that speech on the compromise and calls for andrew jackson proclamation to the people.ksonn now we did was i dave jackson me and. in ma and may 1833 it and that in that ultimate crisis in one to do have that document
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and that they came from within.the enem and as my enemy powers, and even closer harry truman rifled fdr he built day courthouse to have a statue of jackson in front of it.er to drive over to the upper heritage and then put a bronze of jackson indy oval office.d after he looked after the little fellow who had no pull.
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in to be truly the first self-made man that comes from the upper echelon of american life.the into that pinnacle of power. but that is unprecedented in american life. so then years later but then he would never stay that way. jackson he never knew his fatherl with his paradigm in that way.strong, he had a very strongather fi dominant father figure. with the bushes and the adams and a the kennedys so
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what they think that did with the psychology of the union jackson to rise too power to control as much ofnd those circumstances as much as they could.unsettle accustomed to being unsettled. his mot to have a strong home of his own once the mother dies.na, dit and doesn't seem to pay much attention. even in the neck -- and even in with him was not taken lightly but he was what we would call a troubled teen and not particularly
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popular.mself. so he learned how to depend on himself. and obama said i had to learn how to raise myself. to have that necessary self-reliance. so the reason was the american revolution.his moth he lost his mother and brothers that his family is bled concentrated the american union we being a gash in his head that was as long and deep there was the joke of the officer that hit jackson in the cost benefit
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way was that a good idea after new orleans? [laughter] but spending a lot of time to figure out how did he do that? may be a year. many people were on the frontier. in that here at home? i don't know how many presbyterians are here and i an episcopalian. there are six of us left. [laughter] we just used to fight now we have complicated it but we do things relatively quickly.n
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so particularly of the 18th century so you don't skip breakfast in wait for lunch so to hear a the catechism perot and police to use those rhetoricalnd questions back and forth weber and catechism form. but the bible was hugely important. tool is fallback when klay threw in his lot with john quincy adams that jackson won the plurality of votes
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manners' guide and most importantly and there is only one president but there is a new age of jackson but into always control way you feel and project for you feel the matter what is going on inside this was a critical element in his ride to have that compassionate temperamental man to be the master of the passion he did i get to be the president and the united states with his background to have that record this just doesn't
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happen that way and then to turn it into a strength and then to say they were wrongewed and then to have this visiondood but then jackson turned to visit a to say didn't die manage him well? [laughter] he knew exactly was doing. day river that "saturday night live" skit? so it is of little like that and then
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believed he was in the best of he and. that was of the most common political view. except of course, the man whose library we are in. fdr political scientist one said it fell to a lot like that. [laughter]ke that. but in a good way he became a leader of men. there are very few men or women to have physical bravery there is max komen
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it's not so much about democracy but republicanism. the people have a role to play in the founder's vision but it was fairly limited. in jackson's view, the republic structure created too many corrupting influences to the point where the country was itself in a kind of moral crisis because the channel between the president and the people have become called like an artery.e . he loved religious people but didn't like muddling ministers. again there is nothing new under the sun. [laughter] he believe in classic republican thought that the virtue of the t people was what formed the virtue of the country so he wanted to clear out those
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institutions and establish a direct channel between himself as president and the people believing that would create a more just and stronger society. it happened in 1824 ore in 2000, we are working on it as a statei bill frist is worried about this all the time now. i think that if he believed that the country was slipping into corruption in 1824, what the election was decided by the house of representatives and not by the people, he became obsessed with it and began running for president shortly after february 1825.
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he had a wonderful thing with jackson in the white house, adams and clay cut their deal. adams had become president and clay is on his way to becoming secretary of state. it was much easier this is clay you didn't have to talk about her trips to dubai, as far as we know. [laughter] this is going to be great. this is a story that will notca end. so jackson goes to the white house and has a woman on each arm and comes in to purchase john quincy adams the son of a president of the most brilliant men in the country than the
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european diplomat from the time he was eight and forward.d no every advantage, he had no advantage. he just stood still. here's andrew jackson out of nowhere and simply says house you can see i've given my arms to the fair but i hope you are well and moves on. brilliantly at this point he has become the noble loser and adamo has become somewhat of a sour winner. that dynamic would change until jackson won a decisive victoryna with the remarkable personal tragedy in those intervening months. he had married in 1799 the love of his life. there was a slight complicated factor. at that point she was
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ms. donaldson. there was some confusion as it happened in those years this ish not entirely uncommon about when the divorce was final so jackson mary's rachel and what was okay with them so great 30 years later. most importantly they would use anything they could to fight it. she was called a bigamist and there was said that she was unfit to occupy such a place as the wife of the president of the united states. roughly midway through the
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transition it was th a great tragedy and crisis of jackson's life. they buried her on christmas eve, 1828 and afterwards, he went back in and said i, if i could have my way i would stay here and never leave but i am now president elect of the united states and i will go and do my duty. he blamed henry clay and came ultimately to blame john c. calhoun for a lot of this and as you know later his only regret was that he didn't hang calhoun and shoot clay. again i hate this partisanship in washington now. people are so mean on cable. [laughter]
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>> i was actually sitting on the set when your former governor challenged them to come for a duel. chris will do it. he was happy to go out there. so i'd like to think that-part e been part of the story since modern political history. he later expressed those regrets but dedicated himself to his job in a way that perhaps if rachelb
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had been alive he may not have been able to do as much as he did. he felt as the redemption he would show his enemy and he was going to do everything he couldv to save the country. it was a dreadful danger and he really believed this. he saw himself as the champion of the common man as long as the common man was white and a man. this is an important point we will talk about more in the second. one of the things that makes him so relevant for us is his vision of the relationship between the government, the private sector, the financial sector and the people. 1832 when he was vetoing the bank of the united states after
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martin van buren walked in one e night and he gets two bullets in him and can't keep anything down but he drinks gin because of his health, that's what i tell my dr.. [laughter]d jackson rises up and says the bank is trying to kill me but i will kill it and he did. he did it with a veto message i would like to read a little bit of because you could hear thisll literally this afternoon. it is to be regretted that in the acts the distinctions in society will always exist under every just government, the education and wealth cannot be produced by human institutions and the full enjoyment in thend
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economy and virtue every man is equally entitled by law but when they undertake these advantages come artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuity and exclusive privileges to make the rich richer and more powerful, the humble members of society, they mechanics have the time or means to secure the favors ofhaa themselves have a right to complain of the injustice of their government. there are no necessary evils in government. it exists only in its abuses and they would confide to equal protection. it would be an unqualified blessing that it was not an unqualified blessing. jackson believed that he was the man and he held the office it
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had to protect the people from these intermediate forces. this is something we take for granted now. it's like the air we breathe. he was the perfect representative of the american people, not exactly a radical proposition now.w. it was a radical proposition. he said what a dark ambition mainly because calhoun couldn't be president and they were truly insatiable. he believed that he could play the role of interpreter and an actor. he believed in the system of checks and balances and the virtue in the intelligence and the wisdom of the people that
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ultimately win out. they have put the people in the audience and they were there and they were vital to thehe production. jackson took been out of the office and put them in center stage and was the director and producer and sometimes the star of the show. all in all we would be better off as a country in a democracy if the people's voice was heardm more loudly than those that might have more specific interests.
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>> andrew jackson was an unrepentant slaveholder and fought the abolition in 1835 and afterwards i and was the architt on the trail of tears. we are standing in a state that his party tis party to the suprt cases involving the removal. i grew up on land that was onces cherokee. i am always careful about, i went through some of this when i was writing about franklin roosevelt and winston churchill about their reaction to theholos holocaust. it is tempting and wrong to be self-righteous in retrospect. arthur schlessinger used to say that it would be easy and also cheap. and c the test has to be how loud were the voices in real time that the men and women who were architects and implicit work on
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this at in the course of action was there a case being made and the answer is yes. she was the central player and was the william lloyd garrison.b thaththe south was underwhelmedy that case as happened a little bit later. it was easy for people from new england who had already driven off to lecture to us. it stands, however, as one of the two darkest chapters in history. the twin tragedy and treatment of african-americans in the treatment of native americans is no getting around it, there is no sugar coating it, there is ni to be sure, there's no excusing
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it. he was securing the country and he believed indians were potential allies. he was the great father of that he was doing something to save them automatically. but the country was wrong with him and to dismiss him in tight yearly because of this tragedy i think would be to make a serioua mistake because great leaders have to teach their vices as well as their virtues. before we get too self-righteous we should take stock of the sins of our own kind and wonder what
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will people say of us in later generations. what did we do and not do. what jackson davis kept the union together. it was not a sure thing. south carolina, south carolina and start the war. i am in charleston tomorrow testing that out. it was a close run thing. john c. calhoun wanted to nullify and the baby of federal taxation was the advantage and
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is a more modern formulation that would allow abolition and jackson said i expect the extermination two comments. he dispatched winfield scott and issued a proclamation that lincoln called for in 1861. he was addressing the people in south carolina. he would always act at two levels, the absolute projection and meanwhile he was trying to cut a deal in the back. that's what ronald reagan did with the soviet union. remember he went from 1981 after the inauguration as the focus of
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evil in the modern world to kissing babies with gorbachev in red square in 88.ry hoff contemplate the condition in which the still form an its g important part uniting one bond of common interest with so many different states getting the proud title of the american citizen protecting their commerce, the literature and art, facilitating the communication, defending theme e frontiers and making the name respected in the remote parts ot the earth and the extent of the territory is increasing, it's advancing the art that renders the life and science is to elevate the mind, the education
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spreading the delights of religion and morality and general information into every cottage in this wide extent of the territories and states and hold it as an asylum where they find a refuge and a support.e, work on this picture of happiness and honor and say we are citizen of america. he won that battle by acting on two different levels by threatening on the one in working to cut a deal on the other. he did it because he believed that the union was sacred. i use this quite consciously hear. they concentrated the union. you want to call it one great family. his idea was we can be at the table together approving turkey at each other or whatever you
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want to throw at each other in a family squabble and family fight, but you have to be together because the familyy could solve it ultimately. he later said that i they had fallen before the intelligence of the age standing armies and military can no longer uphold tyranny against the resistance of the public opinion and the mass of the people have more to fear from the conversations of the wealthy classes teaching secretary paulson, however well adjusted from securing the freedom the president and speaking in third person the president felt it was his duty to exert the power with which the confidence had closed him in
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an attempt to purge the government grow influences which have been incorporated in this administration. you couldn't run across the plain or through the jungle fast enough he was the protector and predator. i submit that the history of this country and region and state it is exactly that. we have been about freedom and equality to see is only overturned with moral clarity inside the next.
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people talk about the party afterwards. i don't want to project any of my own personal issues on you all the tips given to a wedding that is very serious and moving and lovely and maybe the reception is a little out of control with a woman named margaret smith who was the town chronicler and they were incredibly struck as the crowd was the capital and kissed the bible and bowed to the people ar
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he delivered a not particularly interesting inaugural address again, not uncommon in american history. the language they used is that it is a sublime spectacle that there was a kind of majesty of the people. so, that was the wedding. then they went down pennsylvania avenue. a jackson wrote rode a white he appropriately and got their and basically people went a little overboard.
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so again, we did a lot of that. [laughter] it was used at a time as the mob has come and there is a story of the supreme court justice thatm said the majesty of the people was replaced by the king there at the white house, and it scared people like daniel webster clay and john quincy adams understandably to some co' extent. jackson was someone they couldn't control and everyone else had been from the same club not to say that jackson was a far more sophisticated figure
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but it was in his political interest for people to believe he was somewhat rough around tht edges. when the wife of edward livingston had a ball there was this terror that andrew jackson was coming and all the ladies were worried. he came through and one of the ladies that had been terrified came up and said that it's your backwoodsman, he is a prince. i think the white house story has come down as the madness of democracy running a but you can't be the common man runningm against independence for
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democracy but one man's pork is another man's steak. >> you would have to go by charleston and say hello to his mother's grave. >> [inaudible] [laughter]ked oat >> if you've got an e-mail that said he killed three people personally with his revolutionary war battles would it surprise you?ll that he had killed ten man himself? >> there were certainly ten people he wanted to kill. he was a tough customer.
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remember this is not an hbo miniseries. he was in tennessee in the late 18th century and southwest. therthere's a wonderful story os leading settlers from north carolina, classic jackson story come indians were after them trying to get across the river so they slashed together a raft quickly and jackson says don't worry i will take care of it and he starts going down towards an waterfall, jackson jumps off and says don't worry, follow me and i will save you again, wonderful. [laughter] that's why people loved it they were always willing to ride with him again because they knew he wouldn't fail them. if he was on your site, you were
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in good shape. i think this answers it. there was great violence but he also inspired a great love and loyalty sometimes at the same time. he was in a gunfight, the only president to have a sort of gunsmoke moment in tennessee in the early 18 hundreds with jesse and benny cometh it is a name that just slipped out of common currency that he became acu senator from missouri and the greatest legislative ally that they were not on the same side, they were fighting each other.
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there's also the debate but you are living in the air when a fundamental assumption about the way the world works was changing which was summed up with jeffersons all men are created equal with certain inalienable rights and it was the assertion in the western world that the rights of man didn't come from the hands of the king but from god and therefore they were sacred you couldn't take them away if they came from god, nobody could do it. that was a revolutionary and largely american principle. the spread of evangelism
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absolutely fed this idea of individual liberty and capacityr of people to shape their own destinies very quickly on jackson and religion very interesting he resisted calls beginning in 1827 for the formation of a christian party in politics. a man named ezra stiles eli became more notable than a leather evening. [laughter] hard to do, 40-year-old political humor. [laughter]
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resistance to the formation and they wrote an interesting letter about it. the subtitle was the duty to elect christian rulers and jackson wrote back saying it isr more important. he refused to join the presbyterian church while still in life for political reasons he went to church a lot, rachel went to church more than she was alive and she refused to sign proclamations calling for national prayers and fasting and there was an epidemic and 32 henry clay running for president against him as anti-caller and
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the safe position it seems to me and drafted a bill we must pray and jackson had a vito drafted up until they put the draft of the vito still exists and he was an interesting separationist. i would like to say entirelyprii principled and it also had to do with the fact he didn't likeat what he would call a combination of clerics he didn't like the idea that there were ministers that were standing behind them and th the congregation so thate the arrival of the power center. >> welcome to atlanta thank you for being here. there's such a shift in time now we've seen a historical election and change.
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what do you think is the next direction we are moving in this total political landscape of the norms and you've spent some time with obama the president elect what does he feel a connection with him that he is drawing the strength to move forward. >> linking is obama's favor. we have a separate conversation about this i was talking about mccain and obama and presidents failed to in the i also asked what failed presidents have you learned from. obama said i haven't spent a lot of time thinking about failed presidency and mccain said herbert hoover. make of that what you will but there we are. he has a very strong connection
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and has a sense that history is a mystery into the idea that anything is magical in the sense if we say a few words or do one thing everything will be perfect that's something that lincoln resisted and jackson resisted. i think with many great presidents have in common is the appreciation of the tragedy of history. we are never going to work all this out if you are a religious perhaps one day they will wipe the tears from their eyes but if you are completely secular there will be something. what lincoln and jackson
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understood and i think obama understands and certainly senator mccain understands life and politics are not going toto ever be perfect. the kingdom of god is not at hand just because obama won. sorry. i've been on some college campuses recently you can tell some of the kids are puzzled that disease is still with us. [laughter] obama has the capacity to be an incredibly transformational president. everything smart alex like me have said he can't find white voters while he can't do this, while he does. we have come in kind of a small
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category of the bush administration will be the phrase ms. underestimated. [laughter] we have underestimated obama again and again and he wants it i think he's sitting there just enjoying it. [inaudible] [laughter] so like lincoln and fdr he knew politics was provisional. you do everything you can to get a solution to a problem that's going to fall apart again but you don't give up. the tragedy is different. the first part of your question
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one thing with the amazing obama campaign the 30-year-old in the 28-year-old republican coalition is fatally flawed. fdr lasted 36 years. the republican party of reagan, the first president bush andnd second president bush was an alliance of religious conservatives, fiscal conservatives and foreign-polic. hawks. they are unhappy because the claims of the movement for school prayer and pro-life amendment to the constitution got them remotely close to passing. fiscal conservatism into the conduct, and i want to be clear about this i feel strongly aboub
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this on a personal level not the fact of the iraq war but the conduct has given foreign-policy hawks a bad name.name. i think people of good will can disagree about the intelligence and the road to the war but there is little debate it seems to me once you get through the summer of 03 that what we were doing wasn't working so i think kicking them in the shins late 02 and 03 is pointless. so also after the 15th ofcain -5 september jesus running on judeo on the republican ticket couldn't have one so it was a challenging environment. i think they got 46% and it is thazing to me and i admire and
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like senator mccain. you could add up the number of people who thought the country was on the wrong track with the people that disapproved of the president's job performance and it would have been like 182%. so that's the negative explanation. the baca, whatever the politics infused a sense of possibility and hope tha but i don't think anyone has done since president reagan and again wherever you stand, the significance of the
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election i don't think can be overestimated. on a personal note it's fascinating to me i have afour-a 4-year-old, and eight -month-old, that's why i'm here. [laughter] they will not know a country that wasn't possible for an african-american to be president. my four year old little girl who talks like carol channing [inaudible] [laughter] but she is obsessed with the obama children. she wants to know whether rooms are going to be like.e it's just terrific ... one country november 3 and another on november fifth.
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no matter where you stand, given our complicated tragic, difficult racial history a good bit of which unfolded not far from where we stand led by a man that decided not far from where we stand it's a remarkable moment and i think the demographics are changing and i think that something is afoot that he can't quite put our finger on. we could overstate the political but i do not believe we can overstate the significance of this historical moment. we have time for two or three questions. >> been goini'm going on too lom sorry. it's been compared and nobody has grabbed more power for the presidency than bush and his
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team. you have the certainty that theritwill raise reteam him if e democracy ever comes to the middle east will be because ofs him so one of the dissimilarities between jackson and bush whereby you think history would never look untimely like they do on jackson. >> jackson was more successful. again, low bar. [laughter] i think that's one view of presidential power has everything to do with how one thinks the presidential powerf h was used, so with roosevelt ther busting the trust and ushering in the progressive era and saying he was of the jackson school i suspect that a lot of
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people would be for that when fdr did it. my sense is as a historical fact, he created and sharpened the tools of presidential power, presidential centrality called the vital center action, and we have a pendulum in the country and the pendulum swings too far one and sometimes too far to the other. one that has the virtue of being true as henry kissinger used to say is remember the last time the overcorrected for the presidential overreach and 74 and 75 there was a young man that was the white house chief of staff who was frustrated by that, his name was dick cheney so now it's come back the other way. at some point, we need to keep a
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pendulum in the right place and i think jackson used his powerw usually wisely sometimes not but he is a human being, all presidents are human beings and we don't appreciate that enough. i think that we expect they run for the job, by and large we don't go out and force them to do it, quite the opposite. but at the same time, we talk a lot about leadership in the country and we should, we should also talk about followership and about the patient, the virtue of patience. this goes to the obama question. he clearly understands this. the speech in grant park, the road will be lon long into the m will be steep, there will be setbacks, and in that way he was arming us and managing our expectations in a realistic way. churchill once said a free people can save a misfortune as
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long as they are convinced of those in charge of their affairs are not deceiving them or are not themselves dwelling in a fools paradise. that is a great model. you don't have to go to an englishman to do that but there we are. >> that was a very powerful close the eu red and you mentioned it could easily have been written in a newspaper. today regarding the national meltdown of the economy. i was wondering if it could help me find it on google.e as the title of the document? >> it would be the veto message, ththe bank's veto message of 18. >> jackson had it framed with his proclamation into other things. but he liked his own work. [laughter]
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and rightly so. >> given that the obama campaign was one of the best run ever in a wonderful ground game and allu the money they raised and the bush administration and the economy, still he only won by 4 million votes. why is that you think because you would think that it would be a landslide. >> i have a very strongly held view on this. i think we are still a center-right country at heart. i think our natural place if you look at us in western politics including in europe, we are basically right of center. if you dispute that, and many people do, i would submit that a democratic president has just
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been elected who is not insisting on mandated universali health care as a human right. i'm not saying it is a good or bad thing but as a fundamental piece of centerleft to left ideology and policy, 60 years after harry truman called for it it seems a little bit like tables the. he mentioned the money he raised. let's not forget he opted out of the public system. practically, and i think ultimately shrewdly. this is where he's come in at 52.6 or seven, that is the biggest number in 20 years since george herbert walker bush, the first clean majority president in 20 years, longtime. i think if you look back the biggest numbers in history leave 36 out of it, 48 "-close-quotes,
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52 and 56 were probably within the percentage margin, 60 was who knows who one. [laughter] 72 was a blowout, 76 "-close-quotes, 80 quick to the end, 84 was a blowout, 92 clinton won with 42%, 96 we c forget he came in under 2%. bush only got 50.7 in 04. so historically it is more likely to have a close election then a big one but in historical terms the last 20 years this is a significant victory.
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i don't think we should. someone else raised this with me recently. i don't think we showed and i'm not suggesting you are but if some people say it's close so it's not really a mandate in recent historical terms it is a pretty big mandate and we will see what happens. i noticed senator mccain and senator obama met today and talk about football showing that there is in fact a common vocabulary in this country. thank you all very much. it's been great to be here. i appreciate it. [applause]
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and you have over 100 authors from children's authors and illustrators, graphic novelists, all these different authors there all day over 100,000 people coming in and celebrating books and reading, you can't have a better time i think and i'm a little prejudiced because i am a librarian i have to tell you if any reader or anybody that wants to get inspired, the book festiva festival is the pet place. >> live all-day coverage saturday 10 a.m at 10 a.m. with featured offers including pulitzer prize-winning authors david and thomas friedman, former secretary of state condoleezza rice and best-selling authors michael lewis and jv vance.
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the national book festival live on saturday starting at 10 a.m. eastern on c-span2 book tv. this is booktv on c-span2 in prime time visiting with members of congress learning about their reading lists and showing you some of those programs. representative phil roe is a republican from tennessee. >> i chair the veterans committee in washington and it's a book about ptsd, reintegration of our veterans back into society, so it's a great book i recommend that you read it. i serve also as the cochair and that the literacy caucus here in washington and one of the things i've encouraged evne
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