politics and get things de. at 10 p.m. eastern on "after woociologist beth truesdale looks at the future of retirement and where the working longer provides better financial security in her book over time. she's interviewed by wellesley college economics professor courtney coile. watch booktv every sunday on c-span2 and find a full schedule under program guide or watch online any time at booktv.org. >> weekends on c-span2 on intellectual feast. every saturday american history tv documents america's stories, and on sdays booktv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span2 come from the television companies and more including mediacom. >> the world changed in an instant but mediacom was ready. internet traffic soared and we

never slowed down. schools and businesses with virtual and without a new reality because that mediacom we are built to keep you ahead. >> mediacom, along with these television companies, supports c-span2 as a public service. >> good afternoon, or good morning. good morning. if feels like afternoon already, summer. welcome back to the gaithersburg book festival. my name is michael sesma, a former member of the gaithersburg city gets a depressive order of the gaithersburg book festival since its inception. if you joy does for the first ten book festivals, welcome back. it is really great to be here in person this year after two years of virtual book festival. as you know gaithersburg is a city that ballers and supports the arts and humanities and we're pleased to bring you this fabulous festival. thanks in part to the generous support of ourur sponsors and volunteers.rt our volunteers are wearing these breitling shirts so if youou see the i make sure you say thank y.

and if you see our sponsors they're the ones walking around with money falling out of the pockets, say thank you to them, too. before i introduce our author michael dobbs let me make a few announcements. please silence all of your electronic mobile devices. for the latest updates about the book festival make sure you're the gaithersburg book festivalut on facebook and twitter. if you post about the festival if you're one of those people that social media savvy, please use the hashtag gpf. your feedback is really important to us. surveys are available on our website which youou can access t gaithersburg book festival.org or by using thehe qr code that u will see displayed prominently around the grounds. i submitted a survey you'll be entered in a drawing for a $100 visa gift cardll which we hope u will spend in our bookstore. michael dobbs will be signing books immediately after thisio presentation in the

air-conditioned comfort of the activity center, so please meet him there. copies of his books, books are onon sale in the politics and prose store which is also in the activity center. a quick blog are buying books. remember this is a free event but it does help our festival if you buy books, lots of books. the more books were so at our events the more publishers want to send their authors here to speak with us. purchasing books from our partner politics and prose help support one of the great independent bookstores, booksellers in the world and a benefit our local economies, supports local jobs. by the way books make great gifts. so if youhe enjoy the program please stop by the bookstore in activity center and purchase the books. so our present today, our author did a michael dobbs has been a foreign correspondent for reuters and "washington post" in eastern europe, paris and moscow. he covered the collapse of the soviet union, written about the

history of the cold war and teresa mugabe of madeleine albright. during the 2008 presidential campaign he returned to the post to launch its online fact checker column. so we have michael to thank for that. "king richard: nixon and watergi can tragedy" is his most recent work. we're counting the days following the landslide reelection victory of nixon and how the investigation of watergate blew it all up. reading king richard for may me brought me back to college days and all of this was happening when we crowded into tv lounges because that's how we watch tv. it was a shared experience that will watch the select committee hearings instead of going to class. it was educational, it was riveting, and for many people and was traumatic. like the title suggests the story is a shakespearean tragedy. no heroes and one notorious figure in the character in the center of it all. watergate for me it's like a car crash that you can't turn away

from. and with this book michael shows to us all. he helps us relive it again but this time in slow motion. so i'm looking for doing what my class to say about his book and the process of writing it, so please join me and welcoming michael dobbs to the gaithersburg book festival. [applause] >> well, thank you very much. so as was explained -- can you all him a? i'm a former journalist. i used to work for the "washington post," and after 30 years of being mainly a foreign correspondent i turn myself into a historian. and actually to distinguish myself from all those presidential historians out there, i call myself a presidential crisis historian. he goes i try to focus on not just the entire life of somebody, writing biographies

like biography of nixon, but i i try to focus on the most dramatic moments of that person's life, when they faced an existential crisis of one kind or another. i wrote a book about the cuban missile crisis called one minute to midnight, which is about the time in 1962 when the world came closer than ever before, or since, perhaps with the exception of the current time, to some kind of nuclear exchange. obviously that was the ultimate crisis that a president could face. but nixon also faced a crisis. he faced a personal crisis. he faced a national crisis, and that's the crisis that i've tried to describe in this book. so why did i call it king richard x action and didn't think very good at titles but i think king richard is a pretty

good time because it summed up the spirit of what i i was trg to do. obviously that phrase has canada shakespearean tragedy. shakespeare wrote, you know, king lear. he wrote to macbooks, two plays richard richard ii and richard the third, but also there's a connection to nixon's life because his mother out in california, as you probably know she came from a poor quick of them out in california, graded to california from pennsylvania. she called her sons, she named her sons, three of her sons, after the kings of england. and she named richard after the first king richard, richard the lion heart. two others were named after of the english kings. in fact, they died when richard was very young during his

childhood from tuberculosis, so he had a tough upbringing. and he climbed all the way from this dirt poor background family in california to become president of the united states. and then same qualities of persistence and drive and hatred of his enemies and determination to get even, qualities that had carried him to the presidency, then ended up bringing him down, which is to me very shakespearean story. i tragedy, you have a tragic hero has a fatal flaw he has to be capable of greatness but then the fatal flaw brings him down. and i think that's the case with nixon. so that explains why i chose the title "king richard" because it's personal to nixon's life and it's also, the folks the

subtitle of the book is actually an american tragedy. we can talk in the questions and answers about whether you see, we would be that nixon was a real tragic figure or not. but, okay, so i want to talk a little bit about my approach to writing because i'm a former journalist. i'm not a professionally trained historian and, therefore, i try to tell history as a story using the techniques of fiction to apply to nonfiction. actually there are a lot of journalists who have become, you know, outstanding popular historians. david mccullough is an obvious example. erik larson is another example and at the "washington post" one of my mentors was rick atkinson wrote a wonderful trilogy of the second world war and then wrote, is now writing a trilogy of the american revolution.

but these authors, most of them former journalist, , they sort f pioneered these techniques of writing nonfiction or history but using fictional techniques of developing characters using plenty of dialogue, creating scenes and moving from one scene to another. now, of course, if you're writing nonfiction it has to be every bit of it has to be accurate. you can't just invent things. one of the reasons actually i chose the subject of nixon and watergate is that you don't have to invent it. because the historical record is so rich, and it's much more interesting and much more colorful than, i mean, i haven't got a great imagination but if i was a novelist i don't think i could invent many of the lines that crop up in watergate. and, of course, we have the tapes, which is an amazing

source for real life authentic dialogue. okay. so how do i write this book? i focus on nixon's reelection in 1972. this is after six month after the watergate. he was inaugurated for the second time as president. one of the outstanding election victories in american history. he won by the largest popular vote margin up until that date. so you have the country behind him, particularly the second time he ran. he thought that he is had lay put watergate behind him. watergate is june 1972. he is reelected in november 1972, and my book begins with a scene just before his inauguration in january of

1973. actually 20th of january 1973. and nixon has, you know, he's feeling pretty good about watergate. he's about to conclude a peace treaty with north vietnam. he's had his big opening to china. he is being claimed as a great foreign policy president, and this little matter of watergate doesn't seem to be all that important. even the "washington post" have run out of leads to investigate and then suddenly in the space of just three months, or actually 100 days, it all falls apart. this very disciplined presidency unravels completely, and nixon is facing the greatest personal crisis of his life, and the country is facing one of the greatest political crises in american life. so i was interested in how this happened. it's an incredible story of joseph the unraveling of a presidency which you are able to

witness from the inside, thanks to these tapes. okay, so i begin the story, it's 1 a.m. on january the 20th. at noon nixon's going to take the oath of office for the second time. he's in his, he had a favorite room in the white house, which is the lincoln sitting room. it's in the corner of the mansion on the second floor overlooking the washington monument. actually the smallest most intimate room in the white house. and nixon love to go there. he would go up there. there was a roaring fire going. actually his daughters liked to joke that even in the height of summer on a day like this, nixon would go to is cubbyhole, the linking sitting room, and he would have this fire going set by his faithful retainer, mount laurel sanchez and then he would have air-conditioning full blast

to counter the effects of the fire and he would settle in their and right on his yellow legal pad. so basically this is what he's doing in the early morning hours of january the 20th. and he can't get to sleep. he's too excited and thinking about what he will tell the american people the next day. and at 1:04 a.m. he calls his crony, chuck colson, and they start talking about everything he wants to do in the second term. and among the things they want to do in the second term is to screw all nixon's enemies, you know, hold the antiwar crowds, they're going to get even within. pick up this tremendous, tremendous triumph in securing peace with north vietnam, as they see it. and they are also, so they're going to screw the enemies, and

really as colson says, , we're going to slash the bejesus out of them. then they start talking how they're going to screw the "washington post" because of course hates the "washington post." and so colson has a plan to drive down "washington post" share price. i think was $38, and colson has succeeded in driving it down to, as he says, $25. actually $28. and so is boasting about this to nixon. he's delighted to inform nixon that the economy was doing great. everybody's fortunes are up except those of the post. oddly enough, their stock has dropped three more points since i told you last. it's now $28. that's too damn bad, nixon replied sarcastically. isn't that a shame? says colson. it was $38 in december in december and had record earnings, and it's a dropped ten points. keep them busy, nixon instructe

instructed. it was nearly 2 a.m. finally time to go to bed. the .. .. two floors below in a d cabinet in the west wing basement. you are 4,000 real to real tape recorder. stop worrying. now if any of you did ap literature in school, you know, that's an example of for shout i think it's called foreshadowing which means you put in a little detail. to suggest what is going to happen later in the story? and in this i'm introducing the tape recorders and as a character in the book and they're a very important character, their own witness to everything that happens rabut there also an inanimate character of course.

but there also the agent of the tragedy because i'm convinced had nonixon not take himself, then you would have survived his presidency. there was only the existence of the smoking gun, his own tape recorder eventually led to hisresignation . so the tapes have an incredible historical importance. but they also have an importance for history because we never get again are going to get as intimate a look at what it's really like to be president as we do during this very crucial period of the nixonpresidency . no president because of president nixon is ever going to take himselfthe way nixon did . we can say that for sure. so this historical record is never going to exist again.

some people say trump tweeted a lot. i'm sorry, but the tweets were intended to be public in the first place. the tapes were not intended to be public . tapes were private documents nixon never intended to become public and when they did becomepublic he was horrified by it . so now,'s and was not the first president to take himself. actually, taping in the white house began with franklin roosevelt who taped his press conferences during the second world war because he was angry with the press about disclosing him and he thought he had a device in his desk he could turn that tape machine on but he got fed up with it after a few sessions and stopped the practice but then after the war kennedy taped himself or he taped meetings in, not in the oval

office, inthe cabinet room down the corner from the oval office .and i drew on those dates actually read my book about the cuban missile crisis. they're very valuable source again, kennedy was able to turn the tables of the recordings on and off and johnson take himself, take his telephone conversations but the difference between all these former presidents and nixon was that some genius in the white house actually robert haldeman thought nixon is a technological >> to say the least. he's very ham-fisted with technology and as haldeman but no one's ever going to trust you and you're not going to trust yourself to turn on the tape recorder when you want it. so let's have a tape recording system without an on off switch. imagine. it will take everything. it will start recording when wyou get into the room.

think of that in your private houses if you had tape recorders that recorded everything you said whenever you walk into a room or when you picked up a telephone. and they thought this was a great thing because it's someone didn't have to worry about it but in the end it proved his undoing because the take system recorded the good, the bad, the ugly, the illegal and they're very, it's not just all terrible things on the tape. it's some intimate moments with his family and daughters that show nixon in a different light but there's also coursethe illegal stuff . so you know, with retrospect this was the biggest active self-harm that a president could ever do to himself. but for a historian or hopefully for a reader it's an incredible gift. it's the gift that keeps on giving as people have said because it enables us to see this presidency unraveling before our eyes and the

president facing all these incredible strains. you think of stress in your daily life, think of it feeling as a president trying to deal not only with the crises of the country but also the crisis in your personal life and that's what we have here . and i sometimes say that ambition was to make the reader a fly on the wall to all these events that normally people like you would be would never get to see . to witness. and we can imagine ourselves as a fly on thewall in the white house orthe camp david . or the lincoln sitting room . but actually i think it better analogy is a bug in the desk because the actually drilled holes in the desk in the oval office to plant their bugs so the perspective we get is exactly that, of being a bugin nixon's desk .

when all it comes in with a cup of tea and they start moving coffee cups around on the table and you get a sort of breach where nixon picks up his feet on the desk and it sounds like a thunder roll or something. so that's how we're listening to this . okay, so what interested me was how this very disciplined presidency fell apart. and how one thing leads to another withall these unintended consequences . now, when after water behind in june 72 there's an election in november so they figure there's no, nixon ordered a lot of things but no evidence that nixon actually ordered watergate. he said he caused it to happen and created the culture in which it happened but he didn't actually order the break-in. so have you been honest with the country in the summer of 1972 he could have blamed it

on a fewof his aides . and probably got away with it . but his instinct cause there was an election initially and just a few months time was to cover it up. and that was what brought him down. it wasn't watergate that brought him down, it was the cover. he understood thathimself, he said it's the cover-up that destroys people and it happened in his case .so there's a guy called jim mcgruder as far as we could tell he was the person who authorized the breaking. he was at the committee to reelect the president and was pre-to their enemies. mcgruder lied before the grand jury tbefore the fbi. and his rationale was well, we were covering up a burglary, we weresafeguarding world peace . we and in order to safeguard world peace it has to be

essential that nixon be reelected president and probably a lot of presidential aides think. so that was his rationale, his justification. then one thing leads to another. so in germany 1973 nixon is reelected. he thinks he's got watergate behind him but something happens that is the trigger for this unraveling and the trigger is this guy called james mccord was one of the supervisors, a former fbi guy. and he been arrested because he had connections to the burglary. but he was sitting in the dc jail which i describe in my book as the most unpleasant place you can imagine particularly back in the early 70s. sand he's thinking to himself why am i going to, is an upstanding he considers himself an upstanding number of the community and he's not

very far from here, could have been one of your neighbors. he thinks why should i go to jail when this schmuck mcgruder is getting off scott free and what's more the washington post is writing us flattering profile about him. he was writing the inaugural festivities at that time. so mcgruder, mccord is not wanting to put up with it so he writes to the judge and says perjury was committed in this trial. in fact the orders from the break in went much higher up. it wasn't just the burglars who decided of their own accord to break-in. orders came from higher up particularly mcgruder. so that triggers a whole long episode of one of nixon's aides running forcover , one nixon aid accusing the other and nixon himself had a very colorful expression for this, he said the my aides are going to stop pissing on each other and then they're going to start pissing on the president.

excuse my language but it's actually nixon's language. so this book describes what happened, how this happened. mcgruder's, the fingering of mcgruder leads to john dean becoming worried about his future and john dean turning trader on it nixon and cooperating withprosecutors . it's like a sort of in shakespeare you have one big tragedy you have hubris and then you have crisis and then you have catastrophe and then ndyou have at the end some kind of catharsis or resolution. and so this is what happens, because of hubris the opening scene of them thinking everything is wonderful, s let's resolve this watergate problem and then you got the mccord's letter to the judge and then you get

the catastrophe of all the aides starting on each other and finding nixon then being forced to part with his closest, to closest aides, haldeman and ehrlichman. and nixon coming very close at that point to thinking he had to resign himself. he actually manages to hang on for another year but that's the case, he had gone long enough to be fight he you probably all remember it over whether or not the case will be published. >> so we see the other quality or characteristic of the tragic story is that you have to see the hero suffering . and i think we didn't see nixon suffer. we've seen this human side to him. when he gets with haldeman he says i love you and then there's paul is, like my

brother. so i think there is referring to his two brothers who died of tuberculosis as a young man and it was painful for him to get rid of all women as it was for two loses two brothers as a young man. he wasn't like trouble who just fired people like to, to nixon it was painful. as he says to kissinger at one point, nobody will ever know what they put a president through in atime like this . so we can talk about whether or not nixon is the true tragic hero. we can talk about someof the great minds of watergate . i loved the line from haldeman says to dean. dean will do, once the t toothpaste is out of the tube it's going to be hard to put it back in which describes their problem they face because once the aides started e talking and dean

started talking in particular it wasvery hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube . then there's next and to david frost actually, this is after the updates his resignation he says i gave them a sword meeting his enemies, which they twisted with relish into my wounds. if i had been in their place i would probably have donethe same thing . there's nixon on his own downfall. where he says, he tells his staff always remember others may hate you but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. and then you destroy yourself . and i think that pretty much sums up the tragedy of richard nixon. so thanks very much for the nice conversation. >>.

[inaudible] >> how you handled the erasure in the tape, did you do it novelistic lee or just skip over or whatdid you do ? >> you're probably referring to the famous 17 and a half minutes i think it is erased tape. that's actually from one of the first recordings. one of the first sessions after watergate in july 1972. my story begins in january 1973 the where i tell the story so i'm not trying to include every detail from watergate, and focused on the downfall of the president and the unraveling of the presidency but since you asked about the incidenti think it's obvious that the deliberate erasure .

the national archives did a big investigation into that e. it's not just one accidental sort of pressing of the recording button . there are about 30 pressings of the recording button. and it was probably either nixon or it could have been rosemary wood, his secretary . it wasn't done verystbo efficiently . and suddenly they were trying to copy it was embarrassing stuff in that 17 minutes but i don't think it was any really more embarrassing than a lot of other stuff on the tapes. the reason is that nixon repeated himself a lot. so you wouldn't have found just one little bit of very damaging stuff on one tape with no reference to it somewhere else . those, that meeting haldeman we have another source which is all the men kept a private diary. every night he would go and record his private diary so then that was typed up. that was meant to be a private diary.

he had no reason to hold things back and he writes what happened in that session and certainly there was discussion of coverups but it wasn't u, but my point is it wasn't any worse than a lot of other tapes so i'minclined not to pay so much attention to that . of course everybody was interested in what happened, how this had been raised. is one of the big mysteries of watergate but i think it's been sort of exaggerated actually. >> i hope you'll get a nice long answer on this from a historical perspective. i say this in undergraduate, i think a couple of comments . just to get, to shed more information for us. it really is nixon's implosion. he had thoughts, he did lots of dirty tricks for years and he was highest and he said everybody does it. i feel like we've learned in

nothing as a culture. i think there's been revisionism and rehabilitation, pat buchanan, diane sawyer so as you look back now did we, i mean, to be honest the republican party and the being vengeful. they felt they were decapitated their leader and the washington post did it and in fact it was self imposed by funds so there's a cultural discord from this moment and if you could talk to us tfrom your perspective now, your comments, did we learnanything ? >> where 50 years from the watergate break-in, june 1972 next month will be the 50th anniversary of the watergate break-in which gives you a certain detachment and historical perspective. you know, everything is relative . and of course nixon was, he committed criminal acts while in office for which he was forced to resign. and as i say, the cover-up is

it's called obstruction of justice. and his aides went toprison for that . but since i've some people say that my book is more sympathetic to nixon than some other books and actually i don't think sympathy is the right word but i do think it's important for a writer to tell the story through the eyes of your protagonist.ta and so a lot of it is through nixon's eyes or things that happened in nixon's presence. and i would like since you obviously are not nixon fan, i'd like to just mention a couple of redeeming qualities. first of all nixon never questioned an election. well, i mean, now the presidential election of 1962

was a much more close run election and the last election richard nixon certainly had some basis or challenging it in illinois and texas but he didn't. but he bore a grudge from it. he thought the democrats have screwed me and i'm not going to allow myself to be screwed again. but she resigned. i think the system did actually work in 1972. and i think the system came close to breaking point in recent years and particularly the question of these stealing of the election which nixon never or the question of challenging the result of the election which nixon nevertried to do . a reader wrote to me and he said thank you for your book. it was well researched and interesting, however richard

nixon was not a tragic figure in any way . it was a michael heating, heating and conniving sleazeball. no moral compass in any way. i'm 74 years old i wish i could. [bleep] on his grave before i die . so obviously it reflects a certain strand of opinion out there about nixon. i'll read my reply to him. and say thanks for yournote . glad you liked the book even if you hate nixon. as i hope you noticed i wrote it on the principle of show don't tell.i tried to capture a particularly dramatic period in nixon's life and the country's life as vividly as possible. the way a novelist or a playwright might while sticking strictly to historical facts. it's up to readers like you to decide for themselveswhat lessons to be drawn from history . from the story. as for the subtitle, american

tragedy, that can be interpreted in different ways. personal tragedy, a political tragedyor a national tragedy . i perhaps all three take your pick. that pretty muchdescribes my approach . >>. >> i haven't read your book yet but i was wondering did you bring zero avenue is the story and did his actions sort of add to the corrupt aura around the nixon administration and kind of make it all fornixon. >> the former governor of maryland you're talking about . agnew makes a sort of bit part entrance. actually at the same time this is all going on with the president, the vice president is facing his own investigation of crisis that nixon often used to joke richard nixon can be quite

ohumorous and he says one thing i've really got going for me is that if they get rid of me, they'll get agnew. do they want agnew? the answer was no but of course agnew was forced to resign so that clear the decks for getting rid of nixon so i mentioned agnew in passing in response to your question. >> a couple of comments on technology and about tape recorders in our homes. they are in our homes and her name is alexa. curious about when you're developing this project how were you able to work with or collaborate with carl bernstein and walk bob woodward on that project if you did ? >> i knew both of them from the washington post, particularly bob woodward and i was interested.

i didn't, actually i asked woodward for a blur and he agreed and then he said he had his own book to focus on so he didn't even give me a blur but anyway, no hard feelings. but i wasn't really didn't feel the need to do a lot of interviews. i talked to woodward particularly woodward often about watergate and investigated distal , mark the question of who was deep throat. that's all comes outin this book . but i didn't really need to talk to people 40, 50 years after the event because i had enough problems listening to all these tapes and dealing with contemporaneous material is so rich. that it's much more valuable as much more authentic than people's memories 50 years later so if you want to read

or get woodward's perspective on something he's written lots of books and you can go and buy his books. i didn't feel theneed to , it's not woodward's story. plus this unraveling of the presidency, i think all the presidents men has created kind of a distorted version of a journalist bringing down the president and the journalists certainly played a role and washington post played role and woodward and bernstein played a role but there was the judge jericho i mentioned. and all these people, there was an internal dynamic. inside the white house which he didn't know about at the time but all these people turning on each other, mcgruder turning on dean and dean turning on mcgruderand that was all hidden from the view at the time . so i'd like to think well, all the presidents men was

the first rough draft of history told from the perspective of the reporters but i've 50 years later you get many more interesting perspectives so i didn't want to rehash all that stuff . >> i think your book is evenhanded for a criminal like richard nixon but i would say if there were heroes in the story land the way we look at it as a story, if it's john dean, some people think john dean is zero. it was interesting to hear the rendition of how he came up with his testimony and how to use the taste create his own testimony but the central one here, the most perhaps the most one was alexander butterfield get a lot of credit even though we have all the states that basically once he explained that these tapes were there, it's

confirmed everything dean said and all of the other actions. so maybe you want to comment on the i think there are heroes in the story but it's certainly not the protagonist here g. >> you mentioned butterfield, was not anaverage political hack . he'd been in the us air force and haldeman recruited him to the white house. but he was not a sort of party guy. he was a, he was in charge of the paperwork but also happened to be in charge of keeping system so he was not going to blow the whistle on nixon but if he was called to congress and he was asked to direct quote direct question about the taping system he was going to answer honestly so i think that's a great perspective for a civil 'servant. but you don't go out and put a knife in your presidents

back even if, but if you're called to testify and by another branch of the government or by investigations then you answer honestly and that's what he did so i agree with you, butterfield is zero and without his actions and without those tapes nixon wouldn't have been forced to resign. >> it's interesting, dean comes up as a hero and has been rehabilitated and is now a commentator everywhere. so it's, there's a series on right now called gas lit. which is funny because it's as much about dean as it is about mitchell. and i wonder if what we're seeing in gas lit which is dns this not comfortable in his own skin, low-level thinker but not a high level player is actually the demon that was in the white house.

>> dean i think is neither to me a hero nor a villain or perhaps he's a mixture of the two. sometimes there are shades of gray and i think dean, mark phelps also illustrates this but people have different motives for cooperating with whistleblowing. and then not always honorable motives. dean's case, he came to detest the nixon but in his first motive was he didn't want to, and actually he's pretty smart. he was smarter than any of the other guys because he saw the to him. which was up and going to prison. and so he was not prepared to go alongorwith that . but he had personal reasons for that. you know, somebody like dean is a good example of and like many people with with mixed motives and i'm not black or white, it was somewhere in

between and i think dean is a good example of that. i haven't seen gas lit but martha mitchell two, she's an interesting character but she's sort of blew the whistle early on but she was also to be honest pretty impossible woman to be married to i imagine. i have some sympathy for john mitchell but i should see, who's seen gas lit here? i've had enough of nixon and watergate by then. anyway, >> five more minutes for questions. >> so you talk about the nixon story as a shakespearean or a greek tragedy but i mean, it's

really the elements of human nature. it's elements of human nature that kind of repeatthemselves over and over . i was wondering if you care to talk about any similarities with the situation with trump and january 6. , tell us what you think is going to happen with the various players and their mixed motives . >> as was said i tried to be evenhanded to nixon. personally in terms of rating presidents i consider from to be far worse than nixon. because nixon of course hated this, he hated being forced to resign, he hated his enemies, hated everybody else but in the end he was he respected the system. he respected it in 1962 and he respected it in 1972. there were many elements in nixon's politics you can draw a straight line betweenthe silent majority , the race card he played, the southern part. draw a straight line between

nixon and trump in many ways but interms of the , i mentioned one of them, nixon is to me more human character . tyou see nixon suffering, you see nixon in the states having conversations with his daughter. he had of coursefamily, i go into some of the family crises they faced . he was a loving family person ultimately. i see perhaps in 50 years time we will get a different view of trump but i'm not sure we'll have, i can't see the human qualities in trump i can see in nixon i can't see the suffering, i can see the basic respect for the system and i certainlycan't see , nixon whatever else you think of him was a brilliant mind, wasn't kissinger who opened up to china because in you that might not have been such a great idea now but the problems in china but that was, nixon was very creative, foreign policy thinker. he read deeplyabout american history .

you know, so i'm perhaps a bit too close to truck with them in. >> i think to me, there's a lot of things i could accept from trump but to me that ended was january 6 and questioning the results of the election which is a continuing threat to american democracy in my view. >> i want to thank michael ... [inaudible] [applause] >> book tv every sunday on c-span2 features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. at 8 pm massachusetts

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