people whose voices should be heard and seen, and so that's how i think about it. >> senator kamala harris of the great state of california, thank you very much. [cheers and applause] >> thank you. ♪ ♪ ♪ [cheers and applause] >> you are watching booktv on c-span2, and we begin with the latest nonfiction books and authors. booktv on c-span2 created by america's cable-television companies. today we are brought to you by

these television companies who provide booktv to viewers as a public service. >> welcome to pp live. i'm brad graham co-owner politics and prose along with my wife lissa muscatine we have a great program for you this afternoon featuring two political experts. evan osnos at pete buttigieg to talk about joe biden, a week before the election. but first for those of you not familiar with how this virtual format works, that me explain if you want to ask a question of our guests that you can do so by clicking on the q&a icon at the bottom of your screens. the chat function also will be active and in that, you'll find a link for purchasing a copy of the new book entitled "joe biden." evan is one of the most talented journalists of his generation but the first part of his career overseas, from the "chicago

tribune" shown at the graduate from harvard and which three years later send sent to te east report from iraq and other countries. next he went to china for the trip and in 2008 share the pulitzer prize for investigative reporting. that year he joined the new yorker, stayed in china for several more years before moving to washington where he's been covering politics and foreign affairs. his excellent book about china, agent ambition, was a 2014 national book award and was a finalist for the 2015 pulitzer prize. his new book is adapted from an occasional series of new yorker articles he's is written oe past decade including most recently profile of biden last august. as he says, , biden for them has become an area of accidental expertise. the portrait he presented as the former vice president in the book highlights biden's extensive experience, deep empathy, fundamental decency and language appealing.

this is a compact work put together quickly but written with evan's articular sniffs and insight. speaking of articulate this and insight, in conversation with evan will be buttigieg, former mayor of south bend, indiana, and the 2020 in aquatic presidential candidate. mayor pete also has a new book out, trust, america's best chance. we did an event for that three weeks ago so the mayor is it to recognize evan's work and also of course put in a in a pls former primary opponent and now enthusiastic pick to be the next president of the united states, joe wyden. evan and mayor pete, take it away -- joe biden. >> wonderful. first of all thank you so much. it's an honor to treat you, to be participate under the auspices of a place as iconic as politics and prose, and having now have the privilege of appearing both virtually and in

person i am delighted to be here once again especially for a journalist and a writer and observer of the caliber of evan osnos i think is so well-suited to help really open window into somebody who underwent hand is a very well known and recognized figure in u.s. politics, and on the other hand, i think even know often misunderstood, and his work covering him before during and since his vice presidency and out in his campaign i think it's crucially important for the country to spend time with them especially as i fervently hope and andt pretend to be neutral on this one, we're talking about somebody who own week from tonight or very soon thereafter we will know as the next president of the united states. so evan, thanks for the chance of this conversation. i'm really looking forward to digging in on a number of

subjects with you, but let me begin by asking about the role of state. i think about the first time i worked up the nerve to ask what my predecessors as mayor back when it's in my 20s thinking about running, if he thought it might be a good idea for me to run. instead of directly answering my question, this was governor joe kearney who had his own remarkable career in indiana after serving as mayor of south bend. he stared at his desk and his french fries for what felt like old men and returned to be and he said, in politics so much it's out of your control, and let me know the first thing you need to think about is to prepare for that. in the moment so many americans feel excellent is outside of our control, and when somebody like joe biden is going to be leading us forward who on one hand it feels the many ways is meeting a kind of lifelong destiny, and on the other hand, in many ways never knew he would reach this

point i wonder if you could share with us a gripping opening anecdote you write in the book about his aneurysm and brush with death? and the more broadly what will you think vice president biden's relationship beyond control has played in his formation, in his political life and is likely to play in his presidency. >> thank you. i had to say, mayor pete, it's a sort of ludicrous honor to be up here we did talk about the subject and i'm really grateful. to politics and prose thank you for taking the time to do together very busy schedule right now and i think, to brad and lissa for making space for us come to talk about this, we can load people are thinking about politics it feels like an important piece of work, and i'm grateful to be talking about it. look, you raise what for me as one of the most interesting elements of the story of joe biden.

i decided to begin this book with a piece of his biography that is often overshadowed by some of the political milestones. he has a a political part of effective fill a book of its own which in some ways made it all the more reason to begin the something people don't talk about witches he woke up one morning on the floor of the hotel room in 1987 and he was unable to move his legs. he couldn't figure out how he got there. he had had a brain aneurysm. he had two in fact, the ballooning of two arteries in his brain, and the description of it was agony. he was able to get himself onto the bed. they got into a hospital and the surgeons told him that he was at risk of such grave injury, he could've died so quickly that they had to summon a priest to deliver last rites even before his wife could get there. and joe biden had been on the campaign trail for months.

he had this kind of nagging headache, , keeping putting it aside and effect it was a strange bit of faith that he had dropped out of that race, bombed out of that race as he was when you tell the story, and the fact he was out mid he went to see come he's able to sort have a moment. he was going to give a speech and that's when he was attacked with his aneurysm. the doctor said frankly, you're a lucky man because if you on the campaign trail and continued a going to symptoms you might be dead right now. they sit joe biden you will go under the knife, we'll give you surgery to try to save your life and you may lose your ability to speak. somehow in that moment i have to note he did find some bit of humor in any said i sort of wish that it happened to me last summer. sure enough they did operate on him. he did of course come through it and it was an ordeal of the kind that shapes the persons conception of their own

vulnerability, their failed to come to role as a father, husband and, of course, as a political person. he was out of congress for seven months, comes back and what i think is fascinating is through his life you see this recurring pattern of these moments of extraordinary misfortunes and in the own curious ways extraordinary fortunes. i pursued that for for a qun you started this with him for a long time trying understand how he conceptualizes fate and control over one's own circumstance here . he has come to bit of homespun philosophy about it. he borrowed it from instead of which he says everybody in the end has some sort of philosophical cosmic ledger in which the great highs will be complicated by the great lows, and that's how we make sense of it in his own life. of course it has continued this pattern all the way until today. i think sometimes the one of the

things that's interesting is he grew up at a time in which the was this great sense of control, this great sense of you could define your fate. that was sort of the american mantra of the postwar period and i think and i would put it to you, i think there is the feeling today that americans have that they don't have that sense of control. they feel as if things are happening beyond their reach, and fate has become something that less people than to define and something that happens to them that's what of a nerve ending that runs to our politic politics. >> that leads to something else i wanted to explore with you which is this question of being shaped by the moment or the generation you come from. i came of age in a generation that started out with the big argument over whether it was the end of history, where the things had just settled down and all the tough stuff was over and we were just going to ease

ourselves into a time of prosperity, consensus with technology, spatially digital media, helping to create that since sense of fact-based reality and decency. it sounds almost tragic comic now to think about the way we thought about it in the '90s. that was the kind of time in which i was born, only death history, rolling back at us starting with 9/11 which was for many of us first time that a chain of events that started 1000 miles, thousands thousands of miles away bound of affecting us in a very direct way. i think about that with the students that i now spend time with the undergraduate i teach at the university of notre dame almost exactly 20 years apart from me. they have had their lives rocked my chin befits the started overseas but in in a differey also i think feel that their entire experience, has basically, their awareness of the world has been fashioned

during the era of president trump and formed between the crushing blows of the great recession in which they were gradually become aware of the world and in the pandemic and everything that's happened between. joe biden is interesting generation because he doesn't quite fit in the generations with the most convenient political stereotypes, right? there's a baby boomer generation that he what i think the qualified more as was called the silent generation. ..

he meets this unique moment of 2020 >> i found that sort of generational framework really compelling. there is a way in which, and you talked about it in your own work and your writing and i see it in joe biden's life distinctly. you don't want to assign them characteristics who define what they are there are certain characteristics in the we will be, age that she bus and there's a great essay written by my former colleague eli once wrote the postwar generation. he called them the society of movers and doers and he said it is as he put a very pompous lot in the. what he meant was it community itself as it they could do things because it was this, they sort of have the tools to create their own reality.

in functional terms and were coming out of world warii and oppression which they were one of the smallest generations . the first version to be smaller than one before the. at all kinds of specific advantages that were allowing them to me, this is practical matters there were so few of them sociologists call them the lucky few. this is a generation by it was easier to become vice president will start in the show easier to get promoted on the way that in his own way does she politics. she way people imagine this degree of control and to some degree they need to thinking on, they didn't need to trust an institution asmuch . they could do it themselves and then you pass for today in which millennial's are the largest generation inamerican history . the most diverse they had come of age obviously in his time in which you have two

recessions in 20 years, you have worth at the 9/11 have given them this very different sense of what they can control and i think one of the challenges in some ways, at some point when i was reported by, i spoke to a political scientist who studied agent policy. he said there's never been a moment in which the gap politically, culturally, technologically, ideologically between the generations has felt as pronounced as they are . and i think that poses a challenge to you, it poses a challenge to joebiden . how do you begin to build for people and i would put this question, how do you pose for people and encompassing identity that allows them to say i'm coming of age at a different moment but you and i can find something together . >> this is one of the challenges right now and i think so much depends on having some touchstones of

shared reality they're not generational that otherwise. to take one example experience of my generation is radically different from the experience of the baby boomer generation those who experienced the vietnam era but i found that i can walk into an american legion and half certain terms from talking to a veteran of the vietnam era because we both had the experiences in service was service all the same. it was the same country, same branch and it gives us a touchstone to better understand all thethings that were different . part of how american society and communities are supposed to work, something that goes back to de tocqueville is these circles of overlapping. you don't belong to my church but i belong to your soccer team. you don't care for soccer but we live in the same

neighborhood and the more there is overlap more there's some chance of trust. this is an area where technology has been such a conundrum. it shows the potential to cut across our pockets of belonging . i can as quickly be in conversation with an elderly resident of pakistan as i can my next-door neighbor and yet what we often find is that it's all rhythms that circled to us things that reinforce our pockets of belonging those circles to be overlapping increasingly have proven to be concentric what does which does a sorting that's dangerous so we are running out of things. we want to create more like voluntary national service but we're running out of things we have an common. one of the things we have in common is the presidency part of the point to the presidency is the symbolic, not to be discounted as the president is a walking symbol of some minimal amount of things i have in common with people who are different.

we may not support the same person for president but we have the same president at any given moment and a president who grasped that can use it in the same way the mayor knows that there are they are a walking symbol of the existence of the city they serve . i had to learn the hard way because i took office wanting to do policy course was my focus but i get began to lean into once i had and how important it was began to lean into the symbolic functions of the office and their power. >> this brings me to another question which is central to joe biden's appeal. it's certainly central to his message and that this idea of unity, this idea of bringing us together whether it's across generations or political boundaries, across regions at our country has alright and sliced and diced, what attributes did you see or maybe actors did you encounter that might shed light on how as president he would be able to deliver on

this appeal and this promise of bringing us together which is one of the reasons i support him and i think part of what he has to offerthe country right now . >> you on something that is interesting which is the idea of is it plausible to talk about unity? is that a euphemism for inaction or paralysis or saying we're going to come to some mealymouthed consensus that's not what it has to mean. i think one of the things i've found fascinating is you go back through his last or you follow him, what you see is he has these kinds of what we would call democratichats . small democratic. these habits of unity and there are ways of establishing connections with people in which you try to transcend theboundaries of belonging that you talk to . i've been with them overseas in various places and seamen in beijing and i went to ukraine at one point when i was following him reporting. he has a line this is a classic political line that

he has a line he says to people wherever he goes. he tends to say to somebody when he meets them, a power politician say if i had here like yours be president and he's used that in baghdad, beijing, wellington. he's probably tried in south bend and the reason why it works is it's disarming no matter who he says it too and there's something in his understanding of how political people function that he said to me at one point and this is a deep truth that he and obama have a shared idea that unity is possible . that's the thing that brought them together and they go about in slightlydifferent fashions . obama has this ability to use a transcendent language that just reaches down into your soul and finds the thing that you may not have had a name for puts it out there and you begin to feel elevated by americans, that's what we saw at 2004, at the famous moment

when he emerged for americans talking aboutnot a red america and blue america . o'brien does something more practical because he believes that as he said to me, a lot of diplomats don't like me because when i start in on a process of negotiation the same thing applies in domestic politics. my first idea is that i can't say something to somebody that i think is bullshit. he says i have to understand that they have often our radical conception of their own inference and you have to from the beginning just acknowledge that they have a claim. acknowledge they have something that is worth listening to and i know that sounds like almost by now except it's a radical notion in washington right now to say i'm going to have a conversation . i would be curious. i'm sure that you encounter people along the way who say to you i'm the same age.

how can you look at our politics and think that unity is possible right now? how do we just need to fortify our own tribe and prepare forscorched-earth ? >> all of us think about this through the lens of our experience over me a lot of the redemption comes by way ofthe local . i've been in so many local political processes are no less ferocious and national politics in terms of how fired up we get with one important difference which is coalitions aren't quite as stable. they're not predicted bythe party or in . so the same person who might be at my just at my throat and vice versa on a zoning dispute might turn around and be the swing vote that delivers my budget on our counsel. the same person who i might be going toe to toe with on an issue of housing policy could turn around and be my

greatest ally in honor of lgbtq equality and because of that shifting nature and the fact we encountered each other first as human beings, because when you're a mayor you eat what you cook. you are on the same streets and shopping at the same grocery stores as anybody else you sir, to me that creates a certain level of bedrock in the possibility not that we will all be unified on what to do, this is what politics is for is to adjudicate differences but that we can at least are either public sphere in good faith and not completely blow each other up there might be an unlikely kind of strange bedfellows moment around the corner where somebody we are fighting on this issue winds up on our side on that issue. the trump moment as open up possibilities for that in many ways as he's done so many things that are as contrary to conservative

values as they are to liberal values, it creates a once in a generation moment especially if the election goes as i hope it will in the house and senate and forces the republican party to decide what is going to be next. there could be an interesting moment for that and i don't think that requires any 90 to 90 day the cold hard power of politics of washington and this may be something else that is a quality that comes together in july. no one can say somebody with as many years in the senate as he has under his is 90 innocent how things work and at the same time you're right . he really as he often says, i do mean it. you really does mean we talked about this need to bring us together and i think you can feel that. i want to mention icy questions coming in on the q and a feature and just a little bit later in the hour we will turn to those keep them coming. i'm looking forward to bringing someone's questions and not before i share a few more that i can't resist.

>> you been mayor pete,slayer pizza, now you are moderator pete . >> i will take it, it's good honest work. >> i want to mention something that builds off what you are talking about about that share basis. there was one of the questions we often hear about and is how is he going to contend with the left side of the party that doesn't agree with him on things and is really suspicious that his fundamental instincts, his motives. i had a fascinating conversation with a progressive activist who said to me, i've been surprised by the degree to which joe biden has been genuinely open to what i have to say before this progressive activist was saying to me early sanders was saying it . i'm campaigning have been more open than we expected and nobody is saying that's a trojan horse and to see donald trump is talking about but there's an openness to it and. example is that if you take for example alexandria

ocasio-cortez has been open that she had her differences but she said if i was in europe i might not even be in the same party is this person and they get to the end of the primary jawline within his rights to say i don't want to have anything to do with you but he said i'd like you to come in and write my climate policy so that's how you ended up with alexandria ocasio-cortez andjohn kerry in the room with voices representing different interests . after that perception of power politics and all of them were given a chance to speak and i talked to a progressive activist later who said i was seized by how much they weresurprised by how much they were interested in hearing . and i think that's the tenor, that's the tone and if people know anything about politics if the reallydoes matter . >> that's definitely his instinct . i think of moments where if

you are a sitting or a former vice president of the united states and some dude like a 30 something-year-old mayor shows up challenging you in a contest and at one point is actuallyahead , i would think you would have every reason to say who do you think you are?? or worse. and yet one of the things i appreciate about him is at the beginning middle and end of the art of my campaignwhen i was up and when i was down , he was equally interested in being decent and getting to know you talking to you and building you will in a way that i found there was no kind of break or need to change tone in terms of how he treated me certainly. and also i way before during and after my decision to support him. which i think just speaks a lot to an instinct that's clearly not only a political strategy but i think the thing that's more woven into the core of who heis . i want to talk for a moment

about where is. i believe today he's in warm springs which is a place at horse is associated with fdr. and there's i think a growing interest in comparing this moment as we look for anything at all possibly seem parallel to 2020 in the past and there's nothing quite fits it a moment when democracy seems to be in question or both here and around the world, although it whenpeople are hurting in many different ways . a moment when the future of the american project is in question in many senses. in a moment where perhaps the immediate decisions that are going to be made about managing a crisis will also turn out by their very nature to be decisions about what our political and economic order might look like for a generation. you can see quite a lot in common between the circumstances that greeted

fdr when he reached the presidency and what would be rain waiting for president-elect i . i wonder how much you think analogy holds the or are there any constructive ways that maybe it doesn't even some of the mentions that joe biden has made a presidency in that moment, how much you think that might be part of the way he approaches the historic character of this season in american history he may well be arriving in as as our president? >> i think there are a lot of americans, and even some on this call are skeptical of the idea that somebody who's spent his career as an indefatigable centrist may say even now i'm performing transformative change and 80 is that a measure of authenticity? i had a conversation with barack obama and he printed this way. he says not that joe has changed his stripes, it's that the circumstances changed.

it's a different country than it was when he enteredthis race . he understands the structural issues that we're facing a functional and moral emergency and that we weren't even before and calls upon from him this greater ambition for the office and i think this ties into this thread that we see running through his life. something i tried to capture in this book which is in some ways his ambition to achieve something meaningful in public service is part of the reason why he then finds himself in this moment taking on a mental or taking on the aroma of this much more ambitious presidency, even one that you might not have imagined when his identity before and that gets to something that i think is a feature of his that we don't talk about explicitly enough and is worth talking about which is, it came through in my encounters with him is he does something not everybody in washington does which is

he will admit mistakes and i say this because this book is full of examplesof him making mistakes and nobody's had a career as long as his has been . is going to have a life of unblemished choices and their think are things that he deeply regrets and things he realizes he didn't fully understand and rising to that moment is partly about the ability to be reflective. i don't mean to say the obvious, is on is not endowed with those same categories of self reflection on how to example which is after the killing of george floyd i said how this change you? how did this the killing of george floyd, what did you learn from that? he said one thing i learned is was i was wrong and he said i've been telling this parable, this kind of fable about race in america that began with me growing up in essentially the jim crow

delaware in which african diplomats going between washington and new york were stopping in segregated rest areas . and i then became the vice president to the first black president and there was in that dissatisfying art of progress and what i saw, what so many of us saw it on video was that we were wrong. that history was not finished to go back to your earlier point area that history was ragged and alive and we were contending with and he said i discovered you can't extinguish hate. hate hides and it waits for a leader to get oxygen and then it comes roaring back. and i think there's an element of that of him coming through the trump experience. coming to actually even have higher belief in the power of the office than he did before him because he sees what damage it can do. and i think that's been for him, a learning process. >> it's a moment that definitely i think can drive

people either into their habits or into that kind of reflection and one of the remarkable things about it is that he continues to see ways to respond to what's happening and to learn from it in so many ways. and update his account of the way the world works even now after so much work has been done within. i wonder if you thinkthat's one of the qualities that served him well in the primaries . the primary victory is an extraordinary thing if you consider how much was written off at various moments and the fact that he attempted to run for president before more than once and had fared very well. and a lot of folks didn't see him getting even to iowa, let alone past it, earning such a commanding lead coming out of south carolina and then

pretty quickly after that bringing the party together under hiscandidacy . so i wondered what you think were some of the factors that helped to encounter that and explain that there was a period when few political commentators would have described him asthe favorite . >> i'm going to have to swap hats because i'm going to ask you the same question in a minute but a couple of interesting features rise to the surface and one is this was a measure in ways in which my industry gets things wrong because we get locked into certain patterns of understanding and we say this is what the democratic party is today and it's nothing but that and we say this is what the electorate is and it's nothing but that this is who joe biden is and all of a sudden , what we discovered and there was something that the campaign had believed from the beginning which is the democratic party is most people in the party would describe themselves as moderate democrats were conservative democrats and even though a lot of us in the press paid attention to the frontier edge, the newest members or the most public members of the party, that

may not be aware that rides but the other feature i found powerful was i was turning to jim clyburn who for this crucial endorsement in south carolina which allowed joe biden to break free and eventually to secure the nomination. and jim clyburn reminded me that look, he may not look to you in washington or new york like he's the heaviest guy around but in a place like south carolina which after all was contending with a massacre in a black church at the same time that donald trump was announcing his presidency. for us, this is a matter of x essential significance. this is not something in which we are going to gravitate to the newest most dynamic person. and for that reason we know joe. he knows us and there is as cornell william brooks put it to me said there's a certain

unapologetic pragmatism about black voters in south carolina and that drives them to make some of the choices they made i would ask thesame question of you , were you surprised by the results when it happened and to what degree did you see this coming and what do you think we got wrong from the outside right up until as i said, how do you interpret what happened in the race and how should we understand it ? >> a lot of it has to do with trust, especially south carolina and for him to have been able to expectation were alreadyhired for him going into south carolina and he . and i think that reflects a level of trust including trust with southern black voters that no other candidate, not onlycandidates like me evencandidates of color . he had something different and i think part of it is longevity , just the idea that even if there was a sense that you didn't agree with him on everything for

every choice that he made there's a sense of who he was good just got across all. there's also a kind of persistence. the fact that he didn't get discouraged by results that might have compelled others to question whether they were going to stay in the race and i think that gets back toso we began this conversation talking about . a sense of awareness of the ups and downs of life and the readiness when the lows can get low in order for the highs to be what they could be. and i think all that served him well as well as those qualities we've been talking about make him so recognizable that really connecting to people even if they are from a different generation or a different ideological province of our big ten party and i think they're going to be different , they're going to be important for government so i'll try not to be greedy and turn more to the audience questions there's one that touches on exactly this from zebulon in sweden who asks i

think in a december deceptively simple question, how do you think mister biden would make decisions as president? >> i have no illusions the swedish numbers are here to see me, they're here to see you for it. that question is a fascinating one because it's something i was running through a lot of my inquiry about alice's mind work ? how does he take in information? how does he decide what to do and i had encounters with people who worked with him closely in lighthouse and elsewhere . in one particularly memorable encounter, when interviewed in the obama administration said look, the clichc about joe biden is that he talks too much. we know that but what people don't get is that he is listening and here's an example. in this particular case the person i was talking to said he would call me up and read about things and he would talk for 90 percent of the occasion he would benefit

clapping on the back and say great talk and i go out there a little dazed but he would always pick something up i think he would build into his decision-making matrix you would hear him use that are used at point of analysis. you can make an obvious contrast with the current occupant of the white house who can't seem to read his own intelligence briefings in this case you have somebody is and i think part of this comes directly from a kind of productive insecurity that joanne has had. as he said on the stop he is first nominee without an ivy league degrees sense walter mondale and i think he carries with him a certain openness to continue to grasp for that new piece of information. as i put it in the book, the thing that he knows you know that he doesn't know hewants that he's constantly seeking . i'm guessing he would probably talk to you about that and try to figure out what's happening. >> he would ask me questions

about things i didn't know much about who would have the humility to want to poke you for information? at gets lost because he can talk, we all know that but he can listen. he's always filled with those questions and i can see that process in speaking out and soaking up information and informing his decision-making . an interesting question about an institution where all thinking about right nowwhich is the senate . brett says the senate is a unique and powerful legislative body in the us imagination. if you have spent more time in it and joe biden. i think his background as a us senator drives his understanding of the presidency and the role of government in general ? >> it's interesting, he is to the molecular level a center. it is core to his conception of how human beings interact. you mentioned this idea that we can disagree on the first

day and make a deal on tuesday a senatorial way of looking at things. to the point at as i mentioned in the book at one point when joe lied and joined the vice presidency he actually kept his locker in the senate jim because he enjoyed going over there and just kibitzing with people. he really is a little like an intelligent gather where he would go over and come back to the white house with little tidbits about just the color of thenegotiations, the way things were going . that's who he is and i think the problem with that in some ways and i'll talk about why i think it's okay but there's a disadvantage . barack obama said the problem is joe i came of age in the senate which function. it was a senate in which you can get things done to use obama's work, it's been painful for joe biden to come to terms with what might need to be done to make the senate functional again. i think that's where we get back to some of these important doctoral reform

prospects. the question of whether in fact he will undertake something like getting rid of the fellow roster and those are, where at a point now where it's a basic question about whether the basic functioning of thesenate needs to be revised . i'll point out i think he's, you mentioned in the book and is important for people to remember these days we forget that we use to actually refresh the democratic functioning more often than we do and one of the things you mentioned in trust his every 10 years we use to do these kinds of reforms and we don't do that now. how did that become outside the boundaries of doable things? >> it feels like we're out of practice as a country in revising some of these things although you could argue the republicans have done it in their own way. the idea of changing the number of justices on the supreme court, the only modern actor to do that was mitch mcconnell who changed it to eight until the power and in terms of going through

the motions of updating our democracy, even things like one of the last voting related amendments we had, champion i birch bayh was to lower the voting age to 18. you could be old enough to draft in the military yet not old enough to vote . and we do seem to be out of practice but i think there's a moment of reform ahead and it's interesting to see how many of those who actually are creatures of that old senate area you see none other than harry reid come out for ending the fellow roster for example tells you that there's no danger of a dramatic reform destroying the senate. that happened and it's all about how we're going to put it back together and it's going to be interesting to see how a president by and willguide . one anonymous attendee asks the question that'sdefinitely just for me .

[inaudible] unfortunately, no, they are out of the house at the moment so they will be making an appearance but that also means we won't be interrupted as we sometimes are by their guarding. >> they might find their way in. >> there's a question from another anonymous attendee that draws attention to the transition and you know, this is a period where i can't think of another time in certainly modern history where the window of transition has mattered more or there's been more pressure on the people doing it. maybe a little bit under president obama during his arrival and it's worth mentioning that for all the dramatic differences there was a remarkable degree of collaboration between outgoing george w. bush administration incoming obama administration pauline legislation and really for the great recession because

those crashes happening in september and october couldn't wait until january to be some kind of game plan and baby that gives us an end a good standard of the transition would look like but even so there is nothing like this so the question is how does joe biden movement during this transition both are at a period went ambiguous to the future when it will be during all the days waiting between election andinauguration . >> i'm so glad you mentioned the fact that we often forget even this very contested transition between the bush presidency obama presidency, was a high level of collaboration. just even down to the functional handshake to incoming department head and outgoing department heads makes a huge difference. when we talk about the peaceful transition of power, we never used that we were talking about a president who wouldn't acknowledge the

results of a legitimate election . >> what we also meant was we had thisextraordinary ability , even among big parties are kind to be able to hand off what is effectively an enormous, complicated set of 250 companies working together in the federal government to do that every four years or every eight years and we didbetween parties . by as an advantage in this regard because he did come in after all in the obama administration early on. one of his first assignments the president asked him to do was to take on the limitation of the stimulus bill. so he had some sense of how the you essentially begin to retrofit or to fix the airplane while you are still flying at 30,000 feet and that's what what's going to be required. there is now a process of very intensive process going on that you don't hear as much about in the news. that's partly by design but it's a serious plan to begin

to know what can we do on day one? what could a biden administration published with executive action, things like returning to the paris or the world health organization and what is a legislative plan. one of the things you hear very much from joann's advisors is we don't need to use the old playbook in which we more or less plan for two years on a highly sequenced legislative plan. this is an emergency and were going to treat it like oneand use all the tools at our disposal and they know how to use congress, that's one thing i have experienced . >> at least another question or what a lot of the questions are about the distinction between a biden presidency obama presidency and we had this extraordinary partnership but they also had different people and that was part of the chemistry of the obama biden administration. one questioner asks and puts it this way, how does biden and you mentioned there's a

lot of obama era veterans who are here on ways to shape a biden administration meaning the domestic and foreign policy challenges in 2021 versus sliding into a familiar playbook that yields obama three administration. and tim has a similar question about what might be might be distinct about his residential leadership comparatively. >> i think there's a significant detail that we haven't even talked about today which is the world as fundamentally changed even while we have been drawn into our own sort of domestic drama around president from. the nature of geopolitics has changed. china plays a different role in the world did 4 years ago. the nature of democracy being in retreat in so many places present another crisis for this administration to contend with one of the things i think you would find with a biden administration if it comes to pass is one of the things they will have to do when they go out into the world is to begin to infect

reestablished american credibility. to use your words to reestablish trust in what the united states represents. that was something similar obama had to do. it was coming out of the iraq war experience, people who were distrustful of what the united states intentions were and he began the process. the difference is biden comes to us with some pre-existing relationship. somebody said at one point when i was writing the book they said you could drop joe, this is one of his foreign-policy. you can drop joe by into any capital in the world and he'll know some joe blow, he will have metthat person at some point along the way . and there's something valuable there for a country like ours in a moment of call it what it is, reconstruction . >> it's rare to have a new president that's surefooted on foreign-policy as joe i is in terms of these relationships you're talking about and his tenure in the senate even before he came to the white house where he insisted on being a central

player in the national security and foreign policy decisions of the obama administration and this is a lot of the questions are on the subject and i don't want to miss the chance especially for your insights on this, you were in the middle east, you know china area you know joe, you know china so how's he going to handle china and all that that entails? >> one of the things that first got me interested in joe biden was when he came to beijing and he did a very unusual thing . instead of eating inside the hotel, he and his staff, some of whom are still with him now working on china projects decided to go to a little restaurant in a very working-class part of town, happens to be around the corner from where i live. >> pause therefore just how remarkable, that's exactly the kind of thing a political

figure does in iowa, find a local diner and go there. if you're on a diplomatic mission on china i don't know how the security detail lets you do that . >> the secret service made theirheads explode, were going to go where and do what ? they go to this restaurant that specializes in student letter and he goes into this place and he says everybody i know you guys came down here to have quiet here i am screwing it all up. for years afterwards this restaurant carried a biden special on the menu. the reason he did that and the reason i mention it wasn't just, it was a nice start but it also had the meeting about the nature of the american and chinese contract policy which is china point was going through this recent scandals around official corruption and luxury and self-dealing. so i just making this subtle gesture, i think we're not going to treat ourselves like

we are all royal visiting party, weare going to meet with people . he puts chinese political class on notice. and afterwards, not too long after that xi jinping went tromping out to go have lunch at adumpling restaurant in town .call it by there is something fascinating. there's a direct relevance to that now because i think one of the things he has to do, one of the kind of messages he will have to do as president is he had that opportunity will be to begin to realize people around the world what is it actually to be a freecountry ? what does it mean, what are the countries that are today practicing democracy and doing the hard work of maintaining it and restoring it? i think you are as we move into the space let's call it what it is, it's a phase in the world in which we have to , to governing systems, the american system and chinese in contending and offering

claims for a certain natural reckoning. it is incumbent on us particularly now when we look , when our democracy is weakened to go out and begin to makethat case again . and he comes in from the point of sincerity. he's been doing it for a while. >> coming back closer to home, i'm thinking about the question of unity within the coalition that is the democratic party or maybe on the democratic party and one thing i took as encouraging was that the rnc didn't really have a lot of common republicans. the bush wanted nothing to do it for at least they weren't there . no sign of the mccains or even previous rnc chairs. the democratic party by contrast had folks like aoc, bernie sanders, folks from the moderate wing of the party and republicans, not even former republicans

saying we don't agree on everything but we've got to be different for joe biden. one of the most frequent questions i would get if i were doing a panel or an appearance was how can the democratic coalition day together even long enough to make it to election day and i think it's worth remembering how it exceeded expectations how unified our site has been and how none of the kind of years have really come to pass which i think is a credit to joann's leadership but also to the leadership figures from the progressive wing of the party. who have welcomed the invitation to become part of the conversation and the involvement of independents and republicans see something bigger at stake but it's one thing to do that in a campaign so roberts question is if biden takes the office in january how will you deal with the competing factions and try to satisfy the different wings especially as robert notes because democrats will have an imperative to avoid a repeat of the midterm wipeout

experienced in 2020 in the mid- first midterm of the obama white house so what have you observed that might give us insight into how he will: a coalition together? >> i see the clock and i want to reserve a couple minutes for a question for you . the question of unity is an interesting one because the truth is the left end of the party, the democratic party is going to start pressuring joe biden if you wings. approximately 30 seconds after he wins. that is built in to the nature of the system and frankly it should. that's how the system works. they should continue to push the party because that otherwise how you get the kind of stasis and ultimately how you fall out of touch with thedemands that people have . there's a difference between pushing and seeking to undermine the possibility of progress that the boundary between optimism and cynicism and ultimately somebody sent

me a progressive activist and if we find ourselves in the fortunate position to have a jawline presidency we will have to figure out how you go from test to persuasion. how you actually get things done without being self-righteous and i think that's in comment on all of us as citizens to decide how do we face forward without just carrying somebody down so the question i want to ask is just a hugely important piece of your book about trust is about national service. you mentioned this earlier and it's something i think about a lot coming back to this country after being overseas . we talked about unity over and over and one of the things you came to after thinking so hard to trust is that the sheer experience of doing something together, laboring or a purpose larger than yourself has this kind of almost miraculous effect on your view of yourself as a person. you see in your life in military life. and we have someinstitutions

that can do it .but it feels to me like we are approaching a moment and we are ready for something better. there was a moment before the peace corps and then there was the peace corps. i wonder how you think about national service and what it might take for us to reach that new phase. >> i think america always does better when we have a project, a national project of some kind in at times the cold war amounted to such a thing but it's not always work, the landing had that same spirit even if not as many americans were participating directly. and i think right now we've got no shortage of demanding urgent, even existentially important national projects us which bring this pandemic in the butt something like covering climate change is no less urgent. a lot of these would benefit from engaging more americans in more ways that part of the promise of national service i

believe is not just work waiting to be done but really as you t helping your question, it's the experience itself. even if the work weren't quite so urgent, it is even leaving that aside just the fact that more americans would have some occasion to deal with other americans in a collaborative way. they might have nothing in common with the size being american. as my experience in the military. there might be nothing besides the uniform we were wearing the flag on her shoulder to connect me to somebody who would have different backgrounds or different racial background or very different politics a lot of time. these are people i trust my might do in a heartbeat because of the pressures that we were under the mission in front of us . i don't think you have to go to war in order to get. that's why i'm excited about lining up the funding for more voluntary national service opportunities. not only for young people especially for young people

and i don't think we have to make people but we could make it such a norm and properly pay for it so everybody could afford. then he would get to where it was close to universal and i think that would do so much good and it's an idea that i'm excited about the cost i don't think a partisan idea but i think it would help us deal with some of our political estrangement. i write about what that might mean in the lawful like senator biden's risk outline in the senate that laid out legislation that doesn't require to enhance a lot of new departments but you basically just fund some of the interest instruments we've already. commission on service that helps deal with things like americorps can bring in more people and i hope that idea gets more attention. >> one of the things that surprised me that you mentioned in the book is for americorps at the rate is less than one in five . you want to get in and there's not enough space in

some ways this is a practical answer to this big question we're all thinking is how you unify the country? one of the ways is by taking practical steps of the kind that you outline. >> i think our time is drawing to a close but i am so thankful to have been able to visit with you and again, encourage everyone to read what really amounts to a handbook on the style and character and priorities of the person if i get my way most americans do i think agree on this ought to be and will be thenext president of the united states . you so much for the chance to be here and i will turn it over to you bradley and thanks again for hosting us here atpolitics and prose . >> great moderating. we are grateful for yourbeing here this afternoon . congrats again on a terrific book. as this afternoon's discussion made clear it is much better understand the very public figure who we think we know but who as you

convey has even more to him. >> you're watching the tv. the tv on c-span2, created by america's evil television companies. today but do you buy these television companies to provide book tv to viewers as a public service. >> you're watching book tv on c-span2 on this three-day holiday weekend. television for serious readers. teacher programs tonight include former german ambassador to the united states wolfgang issinger's thoughts on the challenges facing europe andefforts to improve water and sanitation in rural areas around america . find more schedule information onlineat

booktv.org or consult your program guide . >> visit c-span's new online store at c-span shop.org and with congress in session are taking preorders for the congressional directory. every purchase of support c-span's nonprofit operation. shop today at c-span shop.org . >> now on c-span2's book tv, more television for serious readers . >> good afternoon everyone, i am robert doar at theamerican enterprise institute and it's my great pleasure to welcome you to this afternoon's conversation with john mackey . john is the cofounder and ceo of whole foods market and the cofounder of the nonprofit conscious capitalism and he's here today to talk about his new book "conscious leadership: elevg