>> tonight on the communicators, chair of the federal communications commission on the future of fdc under a biden presidency. >> i do think the time has come in 2014, the open internet productions and all we agree on, transparency, basic principles we can all agree on. it's up to elected officials in the next administration to make that determination but i hope as the debate comes, will not see repeat of what we saw in 2017 and 18. >> tonight 8:00 p.m. eastern on the communicators on c-span2. >> good afternoon. thank you for joining us in a virtual event where we are here for an important reason, the

release of a new book, the book is rivalries in the white house from truman to talk. commentary on this book. let me start by introducing our guests and then we will talk a little bit and we are looking forward to having some of you ask questions as well. i'm excited about this book but also our guests. it's a rare thing to be good at public service being a person of action and a rare thing to be a scholar excellent of the study something. both bring this to the table. someone who worked in many places in public service in congress to several departments of the department of labor also important of the white house which is what these books are about.

also accomplished author's written in addition to this, election in the white house as well as emergency preparedness for the white house and use of social media. i hope take the time to listen but also think about buying this book. fourth of july is coming up, we have more birthdays in the summer. anytime is a good time for a loved one to learn more about the white house and presidency. also a person of action and scholarly refused, someone who's worked most really recently in the white house state department as director and policy, serving in a number of other administrations and advisory in other roles as well as campaigns but also professor and director

of the institute of politics and strategy at the university. she studies the presidency and has rinsed look on ronald reagan and foreign policy as well. we have a great lineup today. we are going to jump in, we want you to get a sense of what's in the book he points and alternate over for her thoughts. we will have some conversation and then return it to you. come to you with questions, a number of ways submit questions in the section on facebook and also the youtube channel and on twitter, #g cp live. let's begin. you written extensively on the white house but what i like about the book is it's about

personality important advisors in the hospital so the white house itself, it says a lot about how the institution has grown. my first question is, you say over the period you are talking about, the white house has become a much bigger instituti institution. more staff and prominent and yet, the advisors there are often maybe younger and cabinet secretaries but also the president. tell us about the growth of the white house in relation to the cabinet and if you can, with the many examples you have in the book, give us a sense of what some of it was there. >> thank you for doing this. the book is really about white house staff, don't realize this but before the fdr ministration, didn't have white house staff

present. the truth is, presidents may have on a secretary or two but roosevelt, you have something called ground low commission. it was a conclusion, the present needs help. that led to the creation of the executive office in the president has 1800 people. most are career staffers the administration but there's about three to 400 what we think of as white house staff. they are younger and have the advantage, they are close to the president but not delegated authority. they are close to the president and often based challenges the secretary is in charge of the area and this idea of fighting

within the white house. the first to present i look at our truman and eisenhower. the first two president to think about how they wanted their white house staff in both for the most part were believes cabinet government. the cabinet officers are in charge of the white house staff guide but really it's the cabinet. eisenhower was known to tell cabinet officers in your area, you handle it. that said, i highlight a couple of instances where you did have cabinet secretaries with white house staffers or people seem to be delegated by the president in a way that was different from what that would seem to entail with this administration, in the

face of the issue of whether they recognize it, it's not just a controversial composition that was a big question for most. george marshall is not only a war hero but also secretary of state reviewed more than anyone else. truman new he wanted to hear the other side of the issue so white house aide making the case for recognizing israel in a white house meeting where he'd run up against. marshall was not that interested in having his aide weighing in on those issues and that the president no what they are doi doing. he said he makes the case for recognizing them but marshall is so angry he never spoke to

clifford the rest of his life. the eisenhower administration, the successor estate and white house people and eisenhower decided to bring in the former minnesota governor to be negotiator on the deals in the new york times had an editorial about staffing. this really hurt him who said what does that make me, secretary of war for constantly trying to undercut staff and get rid of him. and these two presidents who believed in the government, you often have been designated to handle the issue in respect cabinet secretary. >> another think you address is how president centralized

authority or not. he wanted to have chief of staff for them and others didn't want them at all. have this operation is sometimes it was the bull from the wheel. what many people have access to the president. tell us about the organization and what health and how it affected what you highlighted the book. >> on the eisenhower, you have the back-and-forth for the next three or four administration for wasn't clear the chief of staff would be in a recurring positi position. after eisenhower, you have candidly and didn't have chief of staff nixon prominently of the chief of staff is a serious

fellow. the subsequent administration reacted against nixon and that presidency you heard the chief of staff, he didn't want to call him chief of staff. he called coordinator. jimmy carter want to chief of staff not have led to fall because of challenges. it starts with the chief of staff and reluctance to come around strategist and eventually death becomes the chief of sta staff, the guy who butted heads with hamilton during the campaign of 1976 because is in charge of the transition in the campaign people. in the modern era, people will brief the transition people with trying to get the selected a pretty good at it and when ronald reagan says to him from

what i hear, if you have the vision earlier, it might not be in now. carter had grown with it early on. the chief of staff is an important role in the reagan administration widely regarded as the best of and once he comes in the dog you basically had chief of staff consecutively in every administration that doesn't mean there are not problems. reagan replaced jim baker chief of staff and not nearly as effective and didn't get along merely as well is missus reagan. he hangs up on missus reagan on something he doesn't want to do. jim baker is about this and he

was fired not much longer after that. at the same time, sometimes they get involved in the. >> i ask you to give advice to a president, incoming president especially in respect to how you deal with conflict in the white house. is it necessary? you need to manage it? does it depend on who the president is? what is your advice for president knowing examples from the book would be great. >> is a continuum. on one side, you have no conflict you see in the johnson administration, you hear opposing forces and there are

some people at the state department uncomfortable with the vietnam policies and they formed a group to discuss alternative policy options but they were so nervous johnson might find out that they call themselves non- and they met secretly so johnson wouldn't be aware of it take revenge. it's way too much conflict. on the other hand, there's too much conflict and with the ford administration, you have the wild uncontrolled white house and people leaking to the press and not able to trust one another. everyone thinks he was a nice guy and he was but that excluded him from being in the white house. there's a guy named robert who

is in skid egocentric fellow. we know what he did as well and for this reluctance to control him and hartman did shenanigans, he would control the presidential inbox of the office so even shared about him with him. what he would do was iffy something going to the inbox, he pulled out and then if he wrote something, without going through it, this was not manageable and they had to do something about it. gerald ford was close to him and didn't want to do anything with

the deputy chief of staff later became chief of staff. this figure out a way to deal with it in one thing he did, he took hartman out, he knew he couldn't say let's get rid of your friend but he did say here is room for you can quietly think about the issues of the day, it was a contemplation room and found him out of office so he no longer had the office where it would be problematic. it wasn't necessarily with the president was willing to articulate to address that but for extreme chaos, someone in the middle something comfortable. you have a president only to provide little chaos to get

better results. the famous story of bill clinton who loses the midterm election in 1994 because they were too far left. they need alternative voices and brings an advisor and we find out there, morris was a political consultant to clinton but also republican consultant charlie brings in the most that are trying to bring him back to the center and they don't like it. they eventually find out make it to the press. people like stephanopoulos and harold hickey's, among the more rural white house aide the entire time he's in the white house. stephanopoulos was no more talks

about how much he dislikes and but in the end, he noticed clinton the in the force had results. sometimes the president recognizes benefits, fostering little bit of chaos to get the. >> thank you. i think you have given a good sense of what is in the book. there's certainly reason to go out and buy the book. i'm going to do two things. first, i want to remind you the audience, we will come to you later for questions. submit your question on facebook, or the youtube chat function or twitter. you have all sorts of work in this area. first, some thoughts on the book and then if you want to share some of your experiences in the

trump or reagan experiences. >> i'd like to thank you all of the center for going this book event in the work you across the political divide to bring us together and talk about these policy issues. this is a great demonstration of what you did and believe in. republicans in the white house interacting in a scholarly way. that being said, i'd like to ask about, comment on the models he sets up for his analysis. he talks about three big factors that govern this work at the white house. he talks about ideological things. the administrative the

decision-making process and finally, he talked about the broader category. i am interested if you could take a higher altitude and say, which variable you think has the best outcome for public policy and the white house? i'd like to start there. i think that's a fascinating way of looking and framing this. ray david, interested, many of us are old enough to remember the amazing columns and what they were going to say next. what you think about the role of linking leaking and the leaders in the process. do they do something that is important or are they just a nuisance and corrupt and corrode

destroy the democratic process? those two big areas i'd like to have a conversation about. >> that is great. thank you for your scholarship so you know i have three levers in the book and address number one, have a team that gets along ideologically, you're going to see us fighting because of this. number two, the process whereby people can get their voices heard and have looked expressed to the present even if they don't win at the end of the day, they have this process are like me to block at the end of discussion and had my chance and work to accept this. the third is presidential

tolerance. if the president is willing to speak, then you will have more. if he thinks i don't want to see it and the no drama obama, he made it clear he didn't want to in the white house and there's a great story i have in the book, he didn't like something written about her and she wrote an e-mail to many of the white house staff in the way she was treated. obama called her into the oval office, she doesn't know why. they don't even bother the e-mails. the very first thing, i want to see these shenanigans. we are the levers. in terms of which one has the

best policy results, i think is hard to say. i think this alignment is helpful because you know where the president wants to go. reagan for example, eluded and even if they were fighting in the white house, the idea of the reagan rules meaning that people generally what reagan wants and even the people might have these, the fact that they wanted in this direction, i think the process was extremely important. the process is extremely important and what we tied to anyone in the process. presidential power said they are

important. in respect to your second question about the press, inc. the press plays an important role. we need a press that lets us know what is going on. i think we know more today than we did previous eras. each one looked at, i went and looked up in that particular price. the publisher of this book, the fact that i was looking at this so i think the press plays an important role but there are people who take advantage of the press and speak against their colleagues, then take leak to

the press about this policy act. i don't think that kind of self-serving in the bush administration, not only was it his administration, the reason i say this, the reporters complained and i have a whole stream of quotes in the book complaining about this administration. cooperating better if they don't feel in this. >> can i maybe get you to ask more, talk a little bit about your time in the trump administration or studies in the reagan administration. the book obviously doesn't cover as much but some of your

thoughts about it, maybe you could interact about your thinking. >> absolutely. he talked about saying we understood reagan was charge from ideological policy standpoint but also there are numerous national security advisors. there was a turn in the white house every 14 months or so over eight years. there was a new national security advisor. there was a tension between his ideology and everyone knew what that was. his ability to have the prospect of the white house work but a study found and i often wondered how did a president who had that many national security advisors have a historic breakthrough in

the cold war that he did? for example, in december 1987, the washington summit led to the first nuclear treaty of the 40 year old work. could you speak to how he got that done in the midst of having new faces, not just the national security advisor but downstream, the people under each one coming in and coming out? how does that happen from the work you did? >> national security advisor, the secretary of state position, early on in the process he says baker was the chief of staff and they didn't like it and they tried to keep him off and out of airports one and he said what am i, a leper?

a 42-year-old deputy chief of staff, parading around in. could not imagine on twitter somebody would do something like that. so it goes relatively quickly but then an excellent secretary of state had a clear sense of what he wanted and i think the stability there really helped. the other thing, the idea of reagan rule. he had a sense of the president wanted, you are more likely to have aid, know the direction in which the president is going to go. george h.w. bush, who had much more conservative staffers because it was a little less

clear about his position. he's not clear on where they were going to go. >> related to that, i would like to say that sometimes it is difficult for us i'd like to draw on this, it's often difficult for the white house largely cohesive on the 36 variables you mentioned to get the work is a form sense when there is chaos in the agencies and related to that, secretary happened to disagree the president i think we have seen that in the trump administration and that may be much of the story so far. can you give us his soft

examples that may be corrected with the trump administration has experienced a few agree with what i just described. >> it is certainly clear about fighting between the national security advisor and secretary of state in the nixon administration. have the national security advisor hard to remember cap because group is young and aggressive william rogers, the secretary of state new nixon going back to the eisenhower administration, they were close friends and get the red rings around rogers and recognize what he could learn on foreign policy.

rogers had to teach. so have a national security advisor and have them going around the secretary of state. the have this issue in the administration of fighting between the two and the secretary of state, they knew each other before the administration. the night of the election talking about them together and on the first day of the carter administration, he's briefed on the council and the secretary of date and he stopped the secretary of state, i worked for the president, for him. in the administration, he's arty laying this out but sometimes

you can have a relationship that works better so in the nixon administration, i talked about the secretary of defense and he wouldn't put up with those shenanigans and he has the bureaucratic standing to push back and he was much more effective as secretary of defense because the air him off as a bureaucratic bully he's an alpha male and he would push to the limit. if you could stand your ground, you could talk about that bring value to the process, that would be my advice. >> i think we will want to go to

audience questions. we got some more, and. can use youtube chat function or twitter. we have a number of questions in and i will start with cj. what role do vice presidents play in creating resolving conflict? taken on an active role. >> thank you for the question and thank you for your excellent podcast that i listen to regularly. the vice president does play an important role but doesn't necessarily have to. the vice president is really the pleasure of the president, he gets in some ways, as much power and then we have an interesting circumstance in the lbj administration, lyndon b. johnson is the vice president

under john f. kennedy. the attorney general is kennedy's brother and they were both in the senate and staff are johnson as senator and he's constantly trying to demean lyndon johnson and we can his role in robert f kennedy was the most powerful person in the kennedy administration for those first 1000 days. ... the sitting attorney general

was talking to the president for two months. sometimes you have a president giving certain powers to the vice president that they may have one a administration to another, it's interesting in the book i point out lbj's vice president he might've learned from the extremes that he had would be more nicer of his vice president in the opposite was the case he was as belittling of humphrey as the kennedy people were with the measure of events, and later years the vice president have become more powerful and if you look at my chapter on the bush 43 administration cheney and their administration deputy chief of staff, he is very involved with the clash of the titans between secretary right in the national security advisor and secretary right and if cohen powell of defense in cheney's vice president and i mentioned

earlier that the bush domestic team, the bush foreign policy team with insight. in the vice president was only parts of that, the vice president i have not really seen in such a situation where the vice president was able but i think the vice president is sometimes involved. >> we have a lot of questions coming in so i will try to get drugs many as we can and maybe we can keep it short so we can get to more of them, we are happy to have you share your wisdom as well, i've another question from gabby g, which white house had the biggest fights that actually impacted the execution of policy.

>> i would like to go with the florida administration was really paralyzed by the inciting and i mentioned the instances, your presidential addresses including states of the union that would not get resolved because of the insight and there's one instance where it was the night before the state of the union yelling at his staff because he had not resolved all the conflict at the state of the union and a great story i have in the book where the thinking of ways to celebrate the bicentennial in 1976 and hartman is afraid that the other staffers are working against him so they get a bunch of ideas from the outside world and by various intellectuals, jim and those kind of people and hartman raises of what the others will pick he comes up with the code so you don't know the individual person who made

the recommendation and he would have person a, person b, person c in the pre-computer era hartman loses the code any tricks himself and does not know which paper belongs to which collar, sometimes the states can only paralyze because you're fighting with other but to protect yourself it can rebound against herself. >> i would actually like to jump in before we move on, this is a little bit of a different question but a city issue of leaking we think of novak they were the high watermark of journalism. but in this era we have technology and social media where many people are waiting in and have limited if any journalistic background, but we also have government officials going to the various individuals

and leaking important information, what do you think about that, you're seen especially in the trump administration where there is an attempt to smear and destroy people who are serving and is leading to a lot of turnover. >> it's a good question about leaking, what i found in the book there is a constant rate of technology and the technology is improved for leaking in the technology improved for chasing down the lin leak. lyndon johnson asked the white house operators to report to him on who white house staffers were calling, he can try and identify leakers similarly with the white house motor pool to report to him on where white house staffers were being taken by the army drivers who drive around the white house staff, presidents are always trying to get a handle in the nixon a administration it became a unit

that led to watergate, it is because they were designed to stop leaks, the ended up breaking in to the watergate hotel but the reason that they started in they have that nickname, there is a bit of a cat and mouse game between administrations and staffers on the leaking issues and i think there's always going to be technology, there's was good to be technology to identify who the leakers are and i really think the best way to address it is to have the president set a standard and make it clear with his behavior and bringing people who are willing to not be leaking against, that said i don't want to suggest that all leaking is evil, sometimes a president or in a administration will put out a trial and talk about a certain policy or personnel, it is not necessarily

designed to destroy, sometimes is designed to get a policy so you can assess whether policy would be treated by the american people in washington, the leak has these negative complications but is not always the case. >> we are going to take another audience question, if you look carefully not only his current book but present a jefferson red and intellectuals in the white house slade behind him, you may feel the need to buy more one of these books. i'm going to turn to question from russell newsom, that question begins with a comment i agree and the white house is a great book about the modern presidency, the book gets into this but i would like to hear the author discuss whether these

rivalries imminent more from personality or from policy? >> it is a great question and he is a former white house staffer so he knows, personality is obviously an issue a guy like kinzinger is a sharp skin fella who will get close to people no matter what and a person like robert hartman also a guy who i can imagine, sometimes people would try and put the policy above and in them reagan administration you had ed neese who is the true conservative advisor to reagan but he did not get the chief of staff job because he was disorganized and his briefcase known as to never go in and never come out it's called the black hole and they have a lot of nicknames in the book but the only object is the briefcase, they were fighting away for james baker but he also

unilaterally stepped out on the fighting and said i'm not going to leak because leaking against baker would not only hurt baker but hurt the president. sometimes people that is a higher sin of what they're trying to accomplish from a policy perspective and they say not necessarily linked to advance myself but i do what i can with a healthy administration and i think it's unilaterally disarming. i think personality drives it, you cannot have this but then on a policy side if you have strong disagreement about policy and policy direction, personality is a constant policy. >> we have another question and actually maybe karen will weigh in on this as well, this is from herbert and the question is what

are factors that have contributed to successful relationships between a given chief of staff and cabinet secretaries. >> that's a good question, the chief of staff views himself amongst everybody else but at the same time he doesn't necessarily have cabinet rank and go to cabinet meetings, sometimes you president like the chief of staff will get ahead of himself so reagan who i mentioned earlier nancy reagan said is pretty good at the chief part but he does not get the staff part. i think the way to make sure that they get along is to try and implicate the sense that they're all in the president's team and they have an equivalent ability to access and one of the reasons that don wanted to become chief of staff, whether here's treasury secretary he

never had one on one time alone with president reagan so if you keep the cabinet secretary isolated from the president i think that will hurt you as a chief of staff because you are isolating the president and not letting them have the facetime that they need in order to get a sense of his policies and to get the stuff done, i think the chief of staff needs to be an inclusive player i sell this with andy when i work for the bush white house and we really recognize the importance of the cabinet secretary and the need to pull them in to the process i think that's a good model to have the chief and the cabinet secretary. he himself omitted cabinet secretary previously so he knew about this. >> let me speak on that question based on what he said from the standpoint of the trump administration, again in a administration that is had a lot of turn in the white house not just the national security

council but in the role of chief of staff, what i've been able to affirm is both in the chief of staff has become so critical for the modern american president, i don't see how a president could preside without a chief of staff, the sheer amount of operational activity that the white house is responsible any given day but the common factor that i think that we see a great chief of staff that may have been missing in the trump administration in the prior relationship with any that that individual has with commander-in-chief. a lot of what we see in the trump administration is a collection of people who really didn't know donald trump when they came to serve him, either in the cabinet or chief of staff or the national security advisor, that is a hard place to

be, it's hard to build a relationship in real time and often when you're that close to the president the more that you have prior history the more i think the trust is there and if you been in the trenches before, either on the campaign or some other phase of life, we are seeing in this. a collection of people who are serving the president where they really don't know him very well and he does not know them very well. >> i don't know if you want to respond to that based on your findings. >> i think she's raising a really important point which is a sense that the president has the most trust that the people often have in the arkansas mafia or the california mafia or carter had the georgia mafia, it's not mafia in the mob sense,

but is people who were with him before, if your president anybody as president apparently have to have some level of distress because they want to talk to you because you are president and what would they have thought of you before you are president and the people who knew you really have a close view of the has value to it and that's what i talked about bob hartman he was the only president but before florida was vice president and the honesty that comes in that relationship is extremely important to the level of trust a president can put. >> on board to remind the audience we have a little more time if you would like to submit a question you could do in the comments section of facebook and a u2 chat function or on twitter at # dgc live, the question coming from peter, that is proper structure and process

usually provide the outcomes desire when the president does not care about either what are the alternatives for better outcomes? >> as i said earlier process and structure is really important it is hard to beat that if you don't have process and structure you will have some problematic outcome. if you have a clear direction you can overcome some process problems potentially by everybody knowing where you're trying to go, the question if you don't have a good process and you don't get clarity of direction that can lead to chaos and i think it's a really good question but the process is boring and dole but it's incredibly important for getting things done. it's a not a bipartisan thing, the white house process is a tradition that goes from administration to administration that is perfectly in line with the bipartisan policy center

there are certain structures of government that we should maintain and adhere to regardless of the ideology or the nature of the administrati administration, is not the most exciting thing but let me pass it. >> let me get you to talk a little bit more about the reagan administration and also weigh in on this, the reagan administration they had three people at the top and as described it seems i could've been very chaotic, wasn't necessarily something you would recommend just that model on paper with the president but there is a way that it settled in and was successful it was one conflict may be could say more about the reagan triumvirate which may not even operated the way it look like on paper. >> i think the way it worked is jim baker chief of staff and

he's counselor to the president and the chief of staff they work together really well each had specific roles to play jim baker chief of staff was operator he made the white house trains run on time and a piece of paper i talk about in the book the divvied up the rolls in the white house, baker took all the logistical pieces that actually helped him run the white house successfully. meets was the keeper of the ideological playing, he was outreach to the consumer groups in the reagan administration and he tried to make sure they did not go off the rails ideologically even though baker was more moderate and he didn't care about ideology at all he is more of an image guy and it was so important and he was really good at making reagan look good, because each had a specific goal even though they might have

caught they did not step on each other's specific areas and i think that's important, another thing i read about stories about this in the white house, the extent of which the distrust of each other so that we stuck together as a group and the other staffers knew that they could get a lot done without the three senior people bothering them because nobody wants to have a meeting with reagan without the three because reagan could say something that was detrimental and there's even a story with reagan in the hospital the three of them have to visit him at the hospital altogether you know that they could not visit him at the hospital and reagan joked, i did not know we were going to have a staff meeting here. i think that is one of the instances in which it was able to work in part because the reagan management style gave people a little bit of slack and because of reagan's ideological guidance but because they each

have those specific goals. >> i could add to that he wasn't coming into the white house that these three men would emerge and could work together and help work the president, what made the could call different in the first couple of months of the administration and how they perform during that presidential crisis and he ended up being outside the community surrounded the president because the first performance especially before the press when he said i'm in charge, these men comported themselves in a way that got reported back to the president that they were respectful and dignified and collaborative, i think the presidential also help the framework of the administration in the also made

george h. w. bush a trusted aid in the way that may not have happened in the first sees that it did. on the other side even with him in place it could not stop the chaos around the national security council which ultimately got the scandal which almost toppled the reagan presidency. i think sometimes leaders are great with the vision and not with reagan. even nancy reagan said her husband was no manager and you really need the president to have the ideological or policy direction with some ability, not complete ability but serious ability to manage, reagan was better than one then the other. >> the initial crisis of reagan was very interesting and george

w. bush did, he was effectively acting president but he refused to have a helicopter land on the white house lawn during that period and i thought that was a symbolic step in reagan saw that he wasn't trying to increase power to himself in a certain stance and some other put themselves during and was in the situation room and kept it excuse in himself and unclear why and richard was a national security advisor and did not trust him and thought he would leave the room and that's why he named him professor leakey. >> if you have a last stop that you want to put on the table about the book that i would ask them to close it out with the final summation of whatever else has not been set. >> what i like about the book,

fills a void in presidential history and in the context get scandal after scandal and you read these books looking for some inclination about a particular person that we did not know, that is not what he did, he took it seriously with intellectual exercise and as i said to him the other day this is a book i will use with my students as they teach american politics, it really helps us understand the american form of government and what in the federalist papers they were confirmed about and what they were predicting, much occurs on the pages of his book, we always have to worry about factual wisdom, we always have to worry about even particular individuals who can corrupt the process, but his book gives us hope because even though we have to worry about the potential to

destroy the democratic process, somehow in the american system of government, we keep recovering, we keep course correcting and get really big policy outcomes, remember over the time that he writes, the united states is the predominant power on us and for each president increasing amounts of possibilities for below in domestic policy as more people push for racial, gender, disability, that is a lot to do in a relatively small white house with a relatively small staff and despite the leaking and despite the fighting in the ideological battle in very levels of presidential tolerance for all of this, we still get the outcome that makes us a world most fully functioning

democracy, thank you for this important work. >> your final thoughts? >> thank you for participating and also for the kind words, i admire your scholarship in the service to this great nation. i really think that you captured what i'm trying to get in this book inside out because people are human, you may look if your democrat or republican with the democratic restriction, these are human and they have families and thousands of challenges and they worry what's going to happen after the administration, i was really trying to capture the human element in this book because you have so many instances where people think of them and you read about in the new york times and the washington post but these are real people with real life and there is a great thing i want to mention in the book and the reagan campaign in 1980 there is a lot in this campaign, guy

named john pierce was a campaign manager who is systematically going after the californian and getting rid of them and they talk in the book about a confrontation of ronald reagan's house that led to mike being accused of proprieties he is some very close to the reagan and tim baker said to him i'm able to go to the bedroom and he's allowed to go into the bathroom about, that's how close he is and when he's accused of these priorities, he gets addicted and storms out of the house and says if you don't want me i quit, and the next minute he sheepishly walks back into the house and says i forgot my wife drop me off, i don't have a car, can i borrow nancy's station wagon to get back into the city is the human moment a guy who resigned from the campaign and at the same moment he recognizes his friendship with nancy would allow him to borrow her station wagon and she

sheepishly comes back. i have all kinds of human moments in the book because it is important that the personality really shapes policy in the direction of this great country and i recognize that each president has ideological and away to some degree they help shape the direction you are going but also what they're trying to accomplish and what their concerns are and the obama administration there is a story why mentioned earlier the deputy chief of staff and she is frustrated there aren't conditions and feminine products in the white house oval office in the west wing back under bathroom and she makes a big announcement and she talks about the blank stares and that's a reality she brought to the role the human element is important and i appreciate everybody calling in, i appreciate it i

hope people will purchase the book and i look forward to engaging people in the future and only the last few seconds to john. >> the control audience, thank you to skinner and the university, thank you presidential historian chevy troy and the author of the great book we've been discussing, rivalries in the white house from truman to trump. ♪ >> you are watching c-span2 your unfiltered view of government, c-span2 was created by america's television company and today brought to you by these television companies who provide c-span2 to viewers as a public

service. >> weeknights this month for petri book tv programs as a preview of what's available every weekend on c-span2. tonight congressional biographies and memoirs, senator john mccain former speechwriter and aid market shares his thoughts on the life of the late senator. then time magazine national political correspondent molly discusses the career of house speaker nancy pelosi and later florida republican representative matt gaetz on how to move the populist movement forward in america, that start to 8:30 p.m. eastern. enjoy book tv this week and every weekend on c-span2. >> good afternoon i am president of the american enterprise institute and it's my great pleasure to welcome to this afternoon's conversation with john maggie, he is the cofounder and ceo of whole