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cox connected to comte. >> cox along with of these television companies support c-span2 as a public service. steven hayward how would you describe the perfect conservative, what does that person really of? >> guest: gosh, not sure there is such a thing as a perfect conservative, but i always like to say there's five or six different kinds of conservatives and i love all of them. i'm the ultimate old-school fusionist that is an old term that has fell. but everybody has got to -- it's like the old parable the elephant and a blind man, some people say it is and tree trunk or snake, but i see someone that certainly has the generosity of spirit of the other camps rather thanan having these theological disputes about who's right and wrong about the points. >> host: you've written as much about ronald reagan as

everybody in a two-volume work and several other books of different kinds of conservatives you talk about, what kind of conservatives was ronald reagan? >> guest: and idiosyncratic conservative. >> host: what does that mean? >> guest: he wasn't that conservative and a couple ways. remember he was very fond of quoting tom paine who was the radical sympathizer for the french revolution and he loved to quote him saying we have enough power to make the world over again. i remember george will at the time, four years ago now saying anytime anywhere that is nonsense. that is the most unconservative thing you could think. people say that is part of reagan's optimism and creative spirit and there is a certain truth to that but the point on his headstone where he's buried at the reagan library and semi valley, i think the word is i know in my heart that man is good so reagan was disposed by his character to look at the good side of humans but that leaves out the christian doctrine sin, which other

conservatives keep the forefront of their mind especially in the institutions and so forth so that's why reagan was in idiosyncratic conservative. he had libertarian sympathies of course and traditional, but he was his own a special thing. >> host: when did ronald reagan become a conservative? >> guest: that's an interesting question. probably starting may be in the 40s, when he certainly adopted liberal anti-communism. he was a supporter in 48, number of americans for democratic action. but it's inn the 50s, especially during the general for general electric and hosting general electric theater he was reading a lot of conservative literature, whittaker chambers, hijacked road to serfdom, economics and one lesson, those were the big conservative lessons and he worked them into the speeches andns talked himsef into being a conservative. he didn't become a republican i think until 1962 but he certainly was moving for a long time. >> host: talk about the change

becoming a republican. >> guest: well, that's -- i'm not quite sure. well, he said once somewhere i finally woke up and realized i've been supporting all the people whose ideas i'm criticizingas now trying to maka change. i think he'd been part of democrats for nixon in 1960, so he moved to supporting republicans at a pretty early time, but slow in changing his party registration. >> host: stepping back from philosophy, political philosophy to reagan the man. a quote from blue cannon that you view in your book. ronald reagan was hugely accessible to the people who had never met him and impenetrable to those who tried to know him well. why? >> guest: loose theory, whichen i will go with is this had to do partly with reagan's upbringing as the son of an alcoholic. and i will trust lou on this, there's good psychological evidence that people that have alcoholic or abusive parents

tend to become more remote. his father wasn't abusive by the way but i mention that in the domain of literature. also, reagan moved a lot as a kid. he lived in a downwardly mobile family because his father struggled to keep a job. so he's always the new kid in school and i think that attempts to makee him shy. fore are some explanations why he carried this remoteness and distance into his adult hood but it's not unique to him. a lot of people said similar things about franklin roosevelt. his own kids didn't get along withth him very well. but like reagan, roosevelt had a great connection with people. he just understood people intuitively and could connect with them and then of course reagan radio and television so that's not unusual to be a little remote sometimes. >> host: and connection does that come from his acting career or where did that come from? >> guest: he never cared about

the review of his movie because he was always denigrated as a b actor. but he understood box office, and i think that he always understood that there are two audiences and don't pay attention to the critics. you want to pay attention to the people. >> host: did he keep that through his entire life? >> guest: there were certain issues he seized upon that were not showing up in the polls. when he ran for governor in 1966 he said iov think people are mad about the chaos on the campuses the political people around him said nobody's telling us that in the polls. it turned out to be wildly popular and a little ahead of time in 1976 of course he opposed the panama canal treaty and that wasn't showing up. pollsters were not really asking erabout it but when he gave the line about the panama canal in the speeches, it just erupted and he very nearly sank the treaty when it was finished under jimmy carter.

>> host: the polls today versus during reagan time, how much a president pays attention. did ronald reagan care? >> guest: yes he did. richard was a very good pollster. we do a poll every 15 minutes and i think there's an overload. i sometimes joke that if i could wave a magic wand and make one change, i would outlaw polls. not really, but he did pay attention. he was known as the great communicator and the legend is that if reagan gave a speech, he would carry all before him. he gives very effective speeches but there are some in particular on central america about especially in nicaragua that was such a big flashpoint and the big scandal of course in the second term. he would give a couple speeches and 83, 84 and the polls show the public opinion didn't move at allov and reagan found that discouraging but he didn't pay attention to the polls. he just didn't talk about it normally. >> host: ronald reagan is the

rsubject of two of steven hayward's books. a1600 page set of books on the history of ronald reagan. the age of reagan, the conservative counterrevolution 1980-1989 is the latter of the two. the former, i'm sorry the age of reagan the fall of the liberal order 1964 to 1980. some of the age of books by steven hayward and we are talking about all of them on "in depth" this morning if you want to join in on the conversation. the phone lines as usual in the eastern or central time zones (202)748-8200. mountain or pacific time zone (202)748-8201. you can also send a text. that number (202)748-8903. if you do, please include your name and where you're from. also on twitter it is@booktv. steven hayward will be with us until 2 p.m. eastern joining us throughout this entire

conversation of "in depth." i want to talk about ronald reaganan and his relationship wh mikael gorbachev. gorbachev died on august 30th just last week and what was their relationship like when they were both in office and later? >> guest: that is an extraordinary story because they were inclined not to like each other. reagan wrote in his diary after gorbachev took office that people tell me that he's a different kind of soviet leader and reagan said i'm too cynical to believe that. however, reagan always said he hoped to someday to sit down witht a soviet leader and see f they w couldn't make a breakthrough. that's part of his confidence and other aspects and gorbachev turned out to be that person, but not initially. for his part he thought reagan was a dinosaur, that was the phrase thatt gorbachev first used. >> host: what is the difference between the two? >> guest: gorbachev was 55, 56, so 20 years almost difference between them. it didn't mean he was a dinosaur

because he was old. gorbachev said in many of the meetings we got transcripts from leader that while he was a creature of the capitalist class in america, but they came to like each other and my perception is they came to like each other because they argued directly for the first time in a way that no american president or soviet leader ever had. they o argued about fundamental differences between the two country and some of the transcripts of those are fascinating. word of this in the 1990s that these private exchanges between them were very frank and serious and earnest but also -- >> host: what was the setting for those exchanges? >> guest: the most interesting was the summit in 1986. that is thene that was so dramatic because it looked like they were on the cusp of the deal to eliminate nuclear weapons. what is unthinkable as the decades before that and it all fell apart at the end because reagan wouldn't give into the

demand to r get rid of these strategic initiatives star wars defense mechanism and that was always the drama everyone concentrated on. i got my hands on the soviet a transcript of their face-to-face meetings which is much more complete than the state department notes because there's always a notetaker in the room and at times they would have tough arguments on ideology and reagan at one point is arguing about we have a two-party system, a one-party system and gorbachev says it is a part of history that is worth marxism and gorbachev says while i respect your system and we have to coexist and then reagan says but you know i would like to persuade you to become a member of the republican party. gorbachev said that's an interesting idea can we getet bk to nuclear weapons now. and there's other interesting arguments in that particular meeting that veered off the arms-control stuff. >> host: did the public know they were having these meetings and exchanges? >> guest: little drips and drafts came out especially the first face-to-face meeting they had in front of the fire place

in geneva in november of 85 where they were bothbo smiling d reagan was very tough in that meeting but also friendly and that is when reagan came back from geneva saying i think he is a different kind of leader. margaret thatcher's right we can't do business with this guy and they started liking each other better. still had sharp disagreements. one of the things gorbachev brings up himself was all i can tell you still believe in the talk of the evil empire and your speech from 1982 about how soviet union is going to end up on the ash heap of history. what am i to believe about that. it sounds like you want to wipe us out so reagan had to reassure him we have no intention of that. this is what i think and then the argument goes on. >> host: how did he go about reassuring him? did you find anything in the donotes how did he walk back soe of the statements? >> guest: it then connected back to the subject which is reagan says we are the only two people right now that can

prevent the destruction of the world with each other's countries. so once it became clear that they were sincere about really wanting to do that, it all broke down not just over the strategic defense initiative but the technical details of the whole arms-control thing that got so complicated and everyone thought we've never had fundamental conversations about this. both about the differences between the countries and about how we actually unravel the arms race. it makes me think to the thing you described in the book and fairly certain he was talking about gorbachev at the time that reagan wanted to tell him that if the earth was invaded by aliens -- [laughter] they would have to work together to fight them. >> host: reagan said that in their first meeting together and it's known as his little green men a speech. the aides, george scholz, colin powell had been working on the national securityng council thought this sounds so crazy. then reagan said that speech a

no caps speech a couple weeks later off the cuff. lou cannon had a great line about that quote he said i'm sure gorbachev was wondering what the right marxist right was cooperating to fend off martians. it used to be here's one important difference it used to be in the summits nixon or carter, whoever would sit down and there were very slow affairs because they had delayed the translations and then the russians including the premier went off with his big fat notebook and they would have a prepared response for a question or statement and they would be flipping pages, so there's probably no pages on aliens. gorbachev didn't do that. that's the first summit they have simultaneous translation and a few notes but they were not referring to the briefings and it was that's what made it different from everything that had gone before them. >> host: "time" magazine hailed gorbachev not ronald reagan as the man ofof the deca. what did you think about that? >> guest: i mean, gorbachev

deserves a ton of credit he was a liberal reformer, confused one but that's another story. he wanted to end the arms race and he repudiated the prison of doctrine that said once the socialism we defended by force which is what the soviet union had always done and he announced in 1988 unilateral reductions in the soviet troops in eastern europe. we always thought that negotiation and now he gave us that without any concessions from our side which was remarkable. i think part of what's going on is imaginative especially when you go forward a year imagine if you had gone to graduate school to study soviet and at the end of 1991 the soviet union didn't exist anymore now you're back up to the nobel prize that gorbachev got and "time" time magazines% of the decade. i always thought part of that was a lot of the media establishment and academic establishment couldn't stand that reagan had been so ineffective and vindicated in many ways against all the

criticisms people like strobe talbot said this is just a disaster way reagan is going about arms-control and then you've got real deals. so he made them all look bad and kind of embarrassed them. i think that is one way of getting back at reagan ignoring him and giving gorbachev all the credit. >> host: did they have a in life?hip later >> guest: i don't know how much they kept in touch. i don't remember nowli if he was or left but he visited him at his ranch in santa barbara know there are pictures of them there looking like two old pals getting together sharing some jokes. i do know that gorbachev send somebody later he was unimpressed with reagan's ranch. his house is 1200 square feet. it's a big ranch but gorbachev thought president of the united states ought to have a big mansion, not this little ranch house. as of again cultural differences i suppose. >> host: talked about ronald did his journey to

becoming. what was your journey? >> guest: i grew up in a conservative town outside of la with conservative parents and so my mother and dad were big and the goldwater campaign and 64 and i was in the first grade and everybody, goldwater stickers everywhere. he was going to win by a landslide of after, not only did goldwater lose but he lost by a lot. that was the first question saying the rest of the world must be different in my neighborhood. i guess i was precocious i started reading national review in the eighth grade because i'd seen buckley. it seems fun and interesting and i want to be part of the action.

both with all the rest of that i was always sending these words from the national review my teacher would sayaz where are yu getting all these. they would say that's weird. i was precocious that way. i went to lewis and clark college and didn't want to go to a gigantic university and was a student journalist and became the opinion editor in the paper started learning howhe to write all beds and then right after college if i ever come back to

washington i thought i need to know more to be a curious journalist or writer that's when i decided i would go to graduate school and i then went on to claremont graduate school starting 40 years ago this week in fact. i thought about chicago and a couple of other places that i went because it was close to home i will tell it briefly i got stuck one day in one of those leadership seminars that i didn't like very much but the person doing the workshop kept

mentioning churchill you said at the end you learn a lot about churchill you want to write a book about his leadership style and i thought it was a terrible idea. at claremont graduate school one of the principal thoughts his biography and lincoln, churchill. what i've learned about a better ways to approach understanding political life. >> host: that coming out in

77. fast-forward this year you come out with stanton evans conservative with. you write that it could have easily been called why stanton evans matters. i thought this fits that sort of genre so i thought he deserved a biography because he died seven or eight years now and he's already being forgotten and is unknown by a younger generation. if you are of the sort of reagan and buckley era. as a journalist, as a thinker. finally as a historian the last book was a pretty serious attempt at a vindication of joe

mccarthy. he was friendly with everybody. he was a funny person. seldom inny his writing. everyone had their famous stanton evans jokes and was a great teacher for a whole generation of conservatives. i'm blinking on a lot of them which i do on these big names but he influenced a whole generation of conservative journalists. this is stan evans from the archives december 16th 1994. >> i don't think it is any secret c-span viewers a number of times, but what, i mean, by

that very much the things i was just talking about. i'm interested in conserving certain themes not just because of the status quo and in fact quite often critical of the status quo in any moment but this traditionng of freedom of limited government which is the tradition of the united states and the tradition of western culture generally. that isn what they need and because i believe in those values of freedom because that is what i am trying to conserve. >> host: known for the sharon statement, what's that? >> guest: the founding documents for young americans for freedom which was formed fall of 1961. the short version is coming out of the goldwater 1960 convention a lot of people said let's try to capitalize on that enthusiasm and organization they came up

with young americans for freedom. he was asked to write a statement 350 words long. contrasted with the later statement of the new left that was 5,000 words long and just a basic statement of conservative principles and the necessity of women government, the primacy of individual freedom. resisting communismf of course, which that's the one part of it now that's archaic but the rest can be repeated today verbatim. stan never bragged about being the primary drafter if you asked him years later he would say and it's correct i didn't come up with anything original i was trying to boil down and express conservative wisdom that's our inheritance. so you never boasted about it. >> host: we believe the foremost among the transcendent values as the individuals use of

the god-given free will wounds drives the right to be free and the restrictions of arbitrary force liberty is indivisible and that political freedomis cannot exist without economic freedom that theon purpose of the government is to protect those freedoms through the preservation of internal order, the provision of national defense and the administration of justice and it goes on from there. is the statement so relevant today in the conservative circles? >> guest: there's three or four you can go on analyzing parts of that particular statement. descending from that in the 1950s one of the intellectual currents was behaviorism. it's partly pushing back against the idea that human beings are

actually truly free to be fancyh about it that we have genuine physical freedom. you can also interpret it as much more simply and directly political as the view that the government should plan or supervise more aspects. that is less ideological but a present form of the political divides that we see these days. >> host: half hour into the interview with steven hayward if you want to join the conversation eastern and central time zones. mountain or pacific time zones (202)748-8201. (202)748-8903. i want to start in freeland michigan. glenn, good morning. go ahead, sir.

>> caller: i would like to ask what you think about the overall current estate about how americaner history is being taut in higher education now especially stuff like the ku klux klan stuff like that that's really taken off in the post george floyd psychosis that happened in 2020 and specifically would you comment on an article that was a little bit on your website power lines it was an american greatness article called america never existed. >> host: do we have a whole extra hour on this question? >> guest: i could go on literally for days but i won't.

the short version is the teaching of history and now i think it is fully deplorable. maybe it started its older roots, but the famous book in the united states nevermind the lawyers in it but the framework essentially is this. the defects and the sins of america represented the whole of america. i think that's wrong. the new versions of it like the 1619 project and so forth also want to reduce america to its defects and historical lapses in history. so the second part of the question, see i may actually see him later today. the article about america never existed. that was a provocative title trying to getit people's attention. asking the question just this

week to several people, if all ofif america's leading cultural and educational institutions shift to the view that america's run, our histories terrible, constitution stinks, going down the checklist, can the country survive in its present form? i'm very worried about there's a lot of talk about are we heading into another civil war and it seems unlikelylk because we dont have the geographical divisions and so forth, but i do think when, you are leading cultural institutions teaching the country is so defective as to not deserve any respect at all that's going to be a problem for the longevity of the country so if those views become accepted by american citizens, the country may not fall apart as an actual. the united states might go on for a couple hundred more years but it won't be the same country that we used to cherish and celebrate for its great achievements and its

breakthroughs like the declaration of independence saying we hold these truths that all men are created equal. >> host: power line. >> guest: that is a blog that i write for. even though it's faded away, it's pretty good traffic. it became most publicly visible 20 years ago when one of my riders on the site about 11:15 at night said the documents stand to say george w. bush didn't show up for the texas air national guard they look fake to me. the story unraveled almost 24 hours and we have had a big traffic ever since. scott johnson made the site famous. they asked me to join us several years later and i write for it almost every day. >> host: the criticism of higher education, a fellow,

scholar, lecturer, georgetown university colorado, boulder, pepperdine university, uc berkeley. why continue to do that if you have such a concern about higher education? >> guest: it is precisely because of that concern. it's a mistake if they don't compete for these institutions or don't compete to be with them there's intellectual diversity then there are in a lot of small private liberal arts colleges. the problem is worse at those places like overland. it's good for people to hang around with people who have different views.

i do enjoy that kind of life and like i say i have a disposition for it. i tend to be a people person. the whole covid year was a disaster. i didn't teach for aen whole yer i did events and conferences but it's not fully quite back to normal. it's just slowlyly recovering ad that is very discouraging. >> host: you talk about competing for the space. who are today's conservative

thinkers? >> guest: i mentioned glenn elmer's earlier. michael anton is a hugely interesting person i hope will write more longer series. the thing about conservatives is a lot of our -- tom soul who is still alive at age 93 or something a lot of what you say about conservative books is we don't need new books. a lot of the old books hold up just fine so you can still read the 1950 book economics one lesson with profit. i think some of the older books like knowledge and decisions from 19 '80s holds up extremely well. a lot of philosophical books. i know you've held up patriotism wasn't enough, leo's spouse. leo strauss has been dead for 49 years now and his books are

still on the reading list of conservatives so we have a lot of literature we don't necessarily need new. although there's a lot -- there's the impresario of the new thing called national conservatism and patrick mead, those figures are challenging the liberal tradition itself, which is kind of new. the fruit of them the liberalism berkeley was for example. >> host: one of those that you brought up, one of the older thinkers the book patriotism is not enough. first, who was harry jablon? >> guest: longtime philosopher. most of his career at claremont men's college and graduate school. he's known for two things above all. one i want to savor rescuing lincoln but for directing attention to abraham lincoln as a much more serious thinker than

a lot of historians treat him and that was the famous book the crisis of the house divided and then more notoriously perhaps the principal author of barry goldwater's speech in 1964 including the famous line extremism in defense of liberty moderations defense of justice is no virtue. that was a scandalous lie and a very controversial end of the scandal was also among a lot of his political philosopher appears because he had been a democrat until 1962. a lot of those people we now think of as conservatives were sort of liberal anti-communists and democratic w party members. leo strauss cast his first book for adlai stevenson for example so anyway, he's known for those two things and later on for a lot of his views with some of his former friends and that is what the book is partly about including walter burns, who i knew. he was a colleague at aei and a handful of people knew him

pretty well and i always regretted their feud which turned personal. disagreements about several things. in the 70s he wrote some pretty staineded attacks on a couple of scholars especially kendall who had died and they were not around to defend themselves. he took some offense martin diamond was the other person that he attacked. another important political scientist for conservatives and walter took some offense to that and came to their defense and then it spun out of control with personal insults going along with serious arguments back and forth. >> host: they both died january 10th 2015. what did the conservative movement to lose that today? >> guest: they lost a lot. they both had a generation or two of students that loved them and learned a ton from them. the fact that they died on the same day i think both at age 95

is like adams and jefferson dying on the same day in 1826 i think. i wrote an article saying adams and jefferson put the feud behind them in later years. it died down some, but i thought there is a book in that and i will say two things about it. it's intended to be for people who are not marinated in political philosophy or academia. it's meant to be an introduction to this unusual world of fraud that they both represented. the literary model for it that may bebe migrant members 40 yeas ago there was a terrific book by william barrett who taught philosophy at nyu for a long time called adventures among the intellectuals and it was a memoir of partisan reading a magazine from the 30s into the 70s that had been a literary magazine at the left that kind of stayed onon the left but peoe like irving kristol and a whole bunch of other figures now

forgotten. there was a wonderful memoir and i try to emulate the style. i don't think i quite caught it. >> host: patriotism isn't enough came out in 2018. define patriotism. >> guest: yes. so, the title refers to the fact that here's one thing agreed upon. patriotisme isn't simply the tx where you live because of where you live especially in the american cases the last book was called making the patriot and he said patriotism doesn't have to have, it doesn't happen spontaneously. it has to be taught. it has to be inculcated to deliberately and this gets back to the question about how we teach american history these days. they used to say we need to have informed patriotism. you can't love the country unless you understand it and understand its principles. >> host: what is the difference between patriotism and nationalism?

>> guest: good question. i like to say that the critics of nationalism by definition of patriotism they don't like. nationalism. has this baggage from the mid-20th century of course. germany comes to mind, italy and so forth and an awful lot of historical views like the former yugoslaviaeu that sort of old nationalist. i do think that there is a case for the attachment to urination because of its history and cultural traits. patriotism really is more connected with the political principles ofth a regime let's t it that way. that may be a little hard to understand. i'm not quite sure the distinction is hard to work out i think. >> host: and how is that playing out today? >> guest: first you think about bricks it shocked everybody and donald trump shocked everybody. i think what's going on is

especially in europe is the rebellion against the centralization of things like the european union. the european union began as this economic cooperative scheme that would make everybody more prosperous but it's grown by degrees into this very ambitious somewhat culturally smothering organization and part of the nationalism as countries saying it's one thing to have a common currency. we will see if that survives in the long-term, but it's another thing to impose a cultural uniformity. the pariah member of the european union people say bad things about victor. okay. i don't know a lot about those cases but with the european union is really mad about his we are goingth to make traditional marriage a matter of positive law. the european union is threatening them with sanctions and all other kinds of things because they are not on board with what most other countries

are doing with same-sex marriage and other aspects of identity politics. they felt like can't we just leave them alone people can leave or go there if they want. >> host: you mentioned donald trump. what would ronald reagan thinknk of donald trump? >> guest: i am not sure. that's a hard question. i know they met a few times. reagan, like roosevelt and like i think most politicians they had a way of making attacks on the other party especially roosevelt and p reagan with a twinkle in their eye and with some weight about them. they also talk about their friends on the other party. there was always sort of a latent generosity to their disagreements with their opposition. trump seemed to have less of

that. he could be funny but not in the same way reagan is funny. trump sort of is more performance art and it's easy to miss it i think. so i think reagan might say it may be effective at rallying your own troops but i'm not sure, and i think we saw this i am not sure that it gets the independence that you need. i don't think it leaves the other party lost to consent to i thinkr we saw the democratic party really didn't accept trump's election. i don't mean the less but they thought there was something wrong about this happening which wasn't true with reagan. they didn't like reagan, they didn't like being defeated by him but they accepted it. >> host: you wrote in 2017 that you would take donald trump à la cart. what does that mean? >> guest: i am not original in saying this. i would have loved the trump administration without trump. he kept doing things i approved of, so that's why i say i'll

cart. when he was doing things i liked, appointments, regulatory initiatives, foreign policy things, i thought that was unexpected and i'm pleased with that. i didn't expect him to be as consistently conservative as he was with some exceptions. i think that problem with china was a mess. i agree with the impulsively think that is a very difficult problem and some of the steps may have been counterproductive. we will see about that in the long term. he did change i will say one more thing about china the public opinion polls here and overseas the public regards for china plummeted in the last seven or eight years. it's a large reason for that and the biden administration is continuing with this disposition about china they are not going back to business as usual in the bushnu administration or obama r clinton. >> host: you want to see him run again? >> guest: i don't think so.

i don't know. i mean, i didn't want to see him on the first time and thought he would lose so what do i know i've been wrong about so many things. >> host: do you think that he would get the republican nomination? >> guest: as we are speaking right now, i think that the democrats are successfully goading him i into maybe making some mistakesis lashing out abot the fbi raid i understand that. i don't know. i always worked for him in the past.. it is astounding how resilient he is. y.and it could be i will say ths in his favor it could be for the obvious flaws in his age is an issue he may be the best vehicle for channeling a lot off populist energies in the country right now. >> host: "in depth" en booktv. steven hayward is our guest.

forty-five minutes and we are taking phone calls as well. dave has been. waiting in omaha nebraska. good morning. >> caller: you are a prolific writer and in addition to your academic duties you write for powerline and have your podcast so could you describe your writing process during the last two books? >> guest: >> host: by the way i think i know what dave you are. >> guest: in the fourth grade to write a short story i came back with 28 pages single spaced so i clearly have a problem i try to live by the advice everyone not to write a thousand words a day. it doesn't necessarily have to

be good for something, a diary or letters. i've lived by that for a very long time and so when i'm writing a book i make it a point of putting your blood in a chair and writing. there's lots of things you don't want to do it and these days there's lots of distractions. my general discipline i sit down and step out. article, short or long or in between were making notes for lectures and seminars it's usually the morning. in the afternoon i usually run out of gas in the afternoon trying to read and do something

else. >> host: it's rarely having guest recognize a caller. is that a friend of yours perhaps? >> guest: i've never met him but he's a loyal reader and i hear from him by e-mails and comments and i know he is in omaha. >> host: how many of those do you have? >> tguest: a lot. it's not unusual. it's not unusual to get 300 or 400 comments on each item it depends on the topic. you've got to turn on your television and -- turn down your television. we will let john work on that as

we go to dan in brooklyn new york. the best way to have the conversation because we are a little delayed as to turn down your television. go ahead. >> caller: i like to give a little historical background to my question if i may. i came to uc berkeley and 64 to study with neurophysiology but i walked right into the crisis that was a matter of providing university students adult hood status instead of being local and the victory for this notion which was 5,000 or 2,000 as a student body of 27,000. of the next semester the left that had been the originator of thishe whole thing there was another referendum for the free

student union so that now the central committee could rule those activities and we struggled to beat that with reasoning and they were defeated 21,000 to the same 5,000 before so clearly b there was a great issue of the non-involved students and i fought very hard to understand why. when i i looked into it by stepping out of my area and looking especially in the history classes i saw american professors of history they see it as a kind that you excuse the term [inaudible]

nonsensical and tremendously ego importance twisting the fact and massaging reality. as a result, i see the next year the whole thing had completely died and it's the same thing as the professors were doing. the cold war revisionists what a spur of the cold war revisionists so i wonder what is this holding pattern. they sealed the right to just misrepresent in the material and as a conservative, i have to say the conservatives are as bad as the liberals. i would like to think why you think history is such that you

don't have to do anything with it.g >> host: got the question. >> guest: a lot there. >> guest: i recommend to you and viewers look at the controversy in the last ten days of the historical association where the president james sweet who is a historian at wisconsin of african history and the slave trade and the liberals wrote what afflictss the history profession academically these days is what he calls presentism to the political biases and he thinks that's a mistake. he's absolutely right about that. the blowback was ferocious and he had to apologize within 48 hours for the harm he caused.

with graham and hamilton and so forth they are almost always written by nonacademic riders. the biography of truman and others biography from the academican historian anymore one or two exceptions like that of frederick douglass but you go back 75 years academic historians were people like schlessinger in harvard. by the way the age of reagan was a play in the age of roosevelt. wonderful books reading wise. schlessinger made a good strong arguments. but he had a liberal bias and that's fine so i tried to return the favor. that is a very big problem.

the speech question you started outt with. we don't want administrators coddling with us. that's what was said at berkeley. what do we hear about on the campuses and hate speech. for homecoming weekend people that graduated years ago they come in and looked like they haven'tle left with ponytails ad beards and they say the same thing. what is the matter with students

today. we work for free speech and we meant it. now it's diane on campus. this is something that's true and the second part about how the free speech movement at berkeley metastasized there and elsewhere for the radicalism is also true, a longer story. on the one hand, the movement was a great milestone for the principled free speech. the university was trying to control political free speech too. much. they blundered every step of that episode. a fascinating story but at the same time you had the roots of some of the campus s conformism. >> host: given that you are a california native now at berkeley, what is your view of the current state of the one-party governance in california and the reasons for that and is there a potential for reform how would that be accomplished?

>> guest:. there's a lot of data on this and other people writing about this. california was always a reliably republican state and presidential elections until bill clinton flipped it in 1992 and it's close to never coming back. the economic base completely changed and the cold war ended. the entertainment industry and they left the state. a lot of the voters moved to

texas and idaho and everywhere else. i don't see democratic control being overthrown anytime soon. but i do think and i've said a lot of controversial things. i don't shy away from that i think iti would be less controversial to say when you've stayed a one-party rule, it's bad when you don't have any political competition to start getting some corruption. for the first time in its history of the states that is just astounding.

the conversation with steven hayward talking about his books. two of the largest of the books the age of reagan a two-volume work from the 1960s. take me through ronald reagan's navigating entertainment industry. i would say liberal democratic maybe but at least inib the 40s and 50s and 60s with t director like john ford, pro- american you would say. the late 40s when he was head of the screen actors guild.

the communist influence was the misadventures of mccarthy fanaticism but not really true until we later got some documentation. he carried a gun for a while because they had been threats on him for standing up to this. they weree kind of dupes i suppose, but. he ignored the book and his own talking points for the first summit at camp david and secretary scholz said we know there's people in the statere

departmentgh worried you might t be fully prepared or equal and there's a nervousness about it. after a guy like ray brewer who was his right-hand man worked hard to seal off the threat. one of the linesri that showed w quick he was on johnny carson 1972 after you leave the governor's office you think you might go back into making movies and just like that he said no

i'm too old to take off all my clothes. [laughter] why was there such an affinity towards winston churchill and quoting winston churchill. here's how that came about. i forget his name but he said it's kind of an imperative politics.

reagan quoted and that's interesting. then i noticed using the famous familiar quotes from churchill and employee and churchill in a very serious and substantive way which separated reagan from other conservatives. not that it's a bad thing but the soviet union itself was unnatural, that's a phrase reagan used about it. everybody else thought kissinger, nixon, liberals, the soviet union is here to stay. they can make missiles but not cornflakes.

churchill thought the same thing. there's an old-fashioned tyranny that had been thrown off or it will collapse. >> host: ronald reagan quoted winston churchill one of the many times january 1981. here's what he had to say. >> can we solve the problems confronting us the answer is an unequivocal and emphatic yes to paraphrase winston. churchill, i didn't take the oath i've just taken with the intention of presiding over the dissolution of the world's strongest economy. the original quote was i think it went i didn't become the first minister to provide over the liquidation of the british

empire which actually happened anyway but is a whole separate story. reagan use to like to quote churchill. there was a monopoly of the weonand we didn't use it. is there any doubt that if the russians had a monopoly for conquest reagan said the same thing in the mid-1960s. he clobbered kennedy but at any case you can see the thought patterns were alike. we started this by talking about the writing style and it's one of the things you get into in your book one of the similarity, the writing and preparation for moments like that for the big

speeches. explain the parallels. >> churchill wrote all his own speeches. but the speechwriters say it's easy to write for them we had just gone back to see what he said before and updated it. above all they both practiced their speeches and i don't know if in front of a mirror but they always went having rehearsed it in their mind. i think reagan took some of that through's show business. churchill came to that because one day as a very young mp around 1903 he froze one day in the house of commons and couldn't finish his speech and he would rehearse the speeches so he always wanted to be prepared. and i have to say i'm very critical of speechmaking. it's one thing if you are not a

great speaker. they haven't really practiced it and they gave it poorly and they do too many of them. going to speak to the national association of realtors convention those speeches are usually pretty bland. in the ordinary sense obama was a good speech maker. obviously some natural talent. it's not surprised the way that it used to be. nixon who wasn't that good at it the speeches usually had some affect. the book on reagan and churchill the title greatness and the making of extraordinary leaders what makes somebody politically

great. this is one of my hobby horses about the academic conventions these days. i think they were both statesmen that is a term disappeared from the academic literature. modern and imperialists say there's no objective definition of that but that's not new. i think it was the famous republican speaker of the house thatte said to be sure the partisan passions often say if you're liberal, okay but i think that when youdr drill down intot the statesmen combines two things. some key principles about how they think the world ought to work or whatug is the most important issue and combined

with a profound grasp of the circumstance. in other words here's the world as it is. how am i going to maneuver in that world so that is how lincoln isis a great case study and churchill. they go onbo a lot and then the last thing i i will say there ia great moment in the spielberg movie about lincoln where it has lincoln talking with the character played by tommy lee jones and he says and i'm paraphrasing you're like the sailor that sees the northstar and just goes right at it. people think about politics that's the goal of socialism but lincoln says you're not taking into account the shallows, the swamps, things you have to get around to get through that would

require you to zigzag. the people that exulted that statesmen aree people who understand that and can actually do it. >> host: this is john in el paso, texas. you are on with steven hayward. >> caller: i am concerned i served in the military 1964 and at that time it was a requirement to serve your country and we don't have that requirement anymore. we have politicians serving as campaign contributors and the popular vote because the winner takes all when they run for president so the ones who don't

get the majority vote really doesn't count, so why vote. my question iss, what do you thk we could do to actually make somebody become a member of the united states other than paying taxes because that seems to be the thing they have to do to be a citizen of the united states. ie believe we would have natiol service. it could be social services, an engineer helping to build levees or solving water crisis drought stricken states some form of service to the country because right now it seems everybody's out for themselves and nothing

is going back towards building a love of the country and support for the country the way we used to have the draft it periodically resurfaces and there's a lot to it in the abstract. i think in practice it would be difficult for the country to do because of the size and diversity is rightly understood. it would be hard to manage but i think it's going to surface again because at the back of it at the second part of the question which is what makes uss citizens beyond the legal requirements of paying taxes and registering to vote so national service would depend on and real

meaningful citizenship depends on what we have in common. determined by skin color, gender orientation and if we start thinking of other americans as alien from each other, it's hard to have an idea of citizenship. they might solve that by the way the military service which not everybody, but huge participations are quite the right of passage for a lot and now it's down to 2% of the population. the idea is national service would get people together in a way that national service used to get people together in different backgrounds and the

american melting pot. i think in practice today you get the special-interest saying you don't have to join the armyy but joined the environmental lobby or the rifle and pistol club. we are very good these days at organizing our special-interest and i have a hard time seeing how you would avoid that. if it's having the government define a one-size-fits-all americorps service under clinton i don't think that would work very well. could be wrong. i hope i'm wrong if we try someday. you often hear people say the person on the street will say the country comes together at a time of national crisis like the depression of world war ii. you hate to say we would need a crisis to draw the country back together because lots of bad

things happen in a crisis of that kind. was covid a crisis and why didn't you draw the country together? yes and no. a serious illness, but the response, the mistake was we are going to be studying this for years and arguing about it for years but i think the centralization of policymaking when there's so much uncertainty that we didn't know early on that we should have been more openti to letting local states d health officials experiment with different strategies. so they start calling him governor death santis.

it turns a lot of these interventions didn't have a lot of effect. people will argue about masks forever and i'm tired of it all, but i think that making one person the oracle for everything i think he was overexposed. on tv every night on the networks and i thought that was probably a mistake. should have had a lot more plurality of the voices weighing in and improvised through it. >> host: was at a certain crisis that you think might bringg us together? >> guest: the public wasn't a threatwo to the regime. world war ii was. 9/11 was a shocking event and for the first couple of years president bush enjoyed 80% approval ratings. that was the country rallying around and he had a lot of cooperation from the other party that dissipated.

that's a long unfortunate story. so it probably has to be what people perceive as a threat to the survival in the country. you hate to put it that way, but when something like that happens people put a lot of their passions aside. sayingo we can come back to tht leader and i don't know if we can get back to that by persuasion. we may be beyond, i had to be pessimistic but we may be beyond the point of no return where the inspiration of i a gifted leader can bind up the nation's wound. ..

>> . >>p but remember the for the

election washington dc but the focus was to win it would be riots and then people thought the threat of violence and destruction would come from. >> and then from popular supporters are involved in the whole mess and that muddied the waters they heard reliable sources from the federal bureaucracy said. >> and letting people in

around the other corner of the building with other police officers so what a mess and it really should get people more than just thehe shock value. >> generates 72022 this is what you wrote the hysteria amongemocrats from one year ago not only the hypocrisy of the left but also the insecurity ideological hollowness that psychologist call rejection attributing to others it's going onn in your mind spirit there's article i haven't published yet and a lot of what you see today from democrats even douglas and the black republican party. >> aic straightforward appeal to

racial bigotry and it may be that they oppose slavery but they didn't want that in their neighborhood so it's not but the frame that biden is using you to draw parallel i think there are some others and they forget was some of the other ones are bit you can see some very deep roots the favorite cliché to say our democracy the joke iy have used our democracy, trademark that stephen douglas and other democrats in the 18 fifties referred to the democratic party with the federal implication the fall proprietary of the democratic party so if you are for a

trump or disagree with the democrats or liberals of a threat to democracy this has a very distinct is 18 fifties that's a very strong thing to say but the irony is that nobody seems too see this like the 1590 project that is what calhoun and alexander stephens and they all said 150 years ago nobody notices that the talking points the left and today was the talking points of the confederacy in 1860. >> tucson arizona you are next. >>caller: i went to school

in southern illinois and there was a man named buckminster thorpe who designed the geodesic dome it uses 16 of the building materials and one third of theat energy to heat and cool. so what a great time for his idea to come to fruition and had do you think this can best be presented? i'm not the roads greatest public speaker but it should be acted upon. >> yes i was a teenage fan boy. exact biography but i made one in high school with a couple of friends of mine andec it took all summer we actually bought aluminum

piping and we measure things out inn different ways so we made one. but the problem is they are a dome seen a few houses made in the form i will say they are ugly but don't think people would find that aesthetically rewarding if they were widespread that energysp efficiency i use to do work with energy policy but now we have lots of energy efficient design features that are rolled out allou over the world so the superiority it had 50 years ago as opposed to conventional building materials than is much less so now. >> in the threat of climate change quick. >> that's another hour.

i am a lukewarm her dad is not allowed. you have to be all in on the end of the road coming the climate skeptics say you have to say this is natural and nothing is happening but the lukewarm says that ridley in england says human activity not so surety how much more we extreme views are way overestimated but as a policy analyst you want to analyze policy with uncertainty and risk of long-term climate change to what the statisticians called the

probability of a consequential effect. and climate policy here and abroad last 20 or 30 years. so the more serious climate change might be in the future the more we could be frustrated were contemptuous to what the environmental movement has to feed us. >> they went to make carbon more expensive and energy more expensive. i understand how you want to phase out coal. it is subsidies and a lot of happy talk to be completely carbon free in ten years. hydrogen was a new thing. he laid it on —- later did a complete 180. nobody is calculating and then

we talk about net zero by 2050. we used to talk about an 80 percent reduction of carbon emissions by the year 2050. and i figured out what that meant by going to energy consumption it would take back to the use of 1910 with 100 million people, no cars. someone has too show me how we are going to power the country with british thermal units of energy someone has to show me how you're going to get there. that doesn't add up very well. >> . >> there waser a political idea

from national review authors. and with ourti types of fusion. and the like to hear your thoughts on the social conservatives displace the republican party and starting in 84. >> that was trying to bridge the theoretical and practicalnc differences. and for those who worry about tradition the cultural things with the family and so forth

and then more in line with traditional conservatives like pornography and erosion of morals and even abortion. so fusion is a he hated the term fusion is a because it applies you're trying to put two things that go together and unnatural match and you can't have liberty he thought it rested on some traditions of what human beings are and high act that much the same. like abortion. most libertarians arest pro-choice. most traditional conservatives are not.

so that split on behalf of the social conservatives a lot of them were former democrats. but what ought to be said even abortion was ati national issue on a state-by-state basis a lot of views of how it should be handled but once we nationalized it then suddenly itol was unavoidable. it doesn't matter what you think about abortion what is the national issue what you are conservative it's very hard too keep that coalition together. >> is there follow-up question? >>caller: now. i appreciate that. >> will end of florida good morning. >>caller: good morning.

the republican party leadership is very confusing. unlike what happened in watergate finally the leadership came to nixon and said enough. you are caughtu you have a problem and you have to go we built leadership one hand one day january 6 and 7 will criticize trump or may criticize him on those behaviors and then we will turn around like kevin mccarthy to go down tomorrow lago and make nice. - - at mar-a-lago and there are so many misbehaviors with trump that he is not held

accountable for in the public forum except for people like liz cheney. so how can we accept a person and with those behavior most recently now with these classified documents and nobody comes out and says your behavior is wrong, get off the public forum, work in a different way if you wish, but this cannot represent the party. and yet we continue to pander to him constantly. >> michelle, we will mark you down is undecided on the trump question. no. but on the leadershipp that is

bill rogers great comment on non- and organize political party i am a democrat. but now it is the republicans. there is no mystery. trump has a lot of republicans intimidated because he does have a hold on the energetic base of the party. the days and hours after january 6 there were a lot of senior republicans who were saying he has to go and the rumors to be like nixon to say wait for january 20th go now. maybe someday we will find out. is just that simple. and this is true. and indisputable he is a dominant political figure in

the last decade. and for people that don't like him think he is a drag the party, and that may include mccarthy and mcconnell, they cross their fingers hoping he will go away. it looks like ron desantis is gearing up to - run and my opinion is he should run now. people say he is young and should wait that's true and there are moments in politics i think it is now. if he waits i think that moment may not present itself again. >> viewers on the close-up

shot of you have seen your right shoulder the real to me carter. we talk a lotot about reagan and trump they are probably wondering what you think of the real jimmy carter and why write about him quick. >> several reasons. he bugged me. [laughter] ige should say i think it should be said that him taking the presidency was genius showing insight that after johnson and nixon andr watergate what people really wanted is somebody to talk to people and sunday school i was a metaphorical but there is a serious point in his campaign was well organized. but the post- presidency is the mostst interesting.

i think is l the first president who took on significant causes after hein left office may be an exception of hoover on truman's request how to restructure the federal government that hoover wasfo a perfect person for that. habitat for humanity, developing world issues, humanitarian issues but but he also interfered with form policy as an ex-president running up to the first gulf war in 1990 knowing he is actually on the phone to leaders in the middle east to seeing you really shouldn't go along with what presidento bush is trying to do and the bush administration got wind of it and were outrage. can wepl charged him with the logan actor other statutes?

and he has moved to the left of it since he left office talk about israel is the apartheid state. may be a little tooin far but doing back to the seventies campaign in georgia the race baited democrat and that has been forgotten and somebody said he is enemy. machiavelli and with his smile and religious faith and he was a tough guy the overlooked metal or - - meddler. >> ever that book 15 years ago i forgotten some of the details but he was communicating with people and most ex-president should stay off the scene but it wasn't

just the presidential library but an activist organization about human rights but a different kind of ex-president and now the model for ask presidents. >> florida good morning you are next. morning. good talk about desantis and history i and then broward county were activists sued the schoolol district and keeping schools open or closing them is a' matter of life and death and with the elderly. and it's on video you can check this out.

that they were wishing to increase the population by using kids to spread the disease because they don't get it among theo population to increase herd immunity that is the dictionary definition of genocide so i think if he runs it could be a problem for trump. but my question is i don't think these people are evil but to be pushed to suggest slavery on based on what they are calling it and herbert spencer who founded the education system came up with a false belief of competition of survival ofnd the fittest that evolution works by cooperation. >> there is a lot there.

>> there is. i have been trying to stay out of the covid stuff. but i will take this part. i think we learned early on unlike the spanish influenza children had amb very low risk of complications i think the number of children that died is in the single digits. i think even the british have said we should have embraced a focused protection model for thefo elderly and governor, new york sending the earlier the elderly back into the nursing home spreading it but we

should have had much more focused protection for those who were the most vulnerable with the comorbidity and the elderly i think more is coming around to that. we were hoping we could get around the pandemic like we saw with the spanish influenza without herd immunity reaching a critical mass so the fact that we have to get there at some point the vaccine was oversold that was much harder than people thought i do think they were vindicated that might be a little harsh but that's where we are. >> you are on with stephen hayward. a >>caller: go back to reagan i apologize you are talking about carter but we introduced regulation to the banks to avoid economic catastrophes

and afterwards we experienced a wave of economic stability. so when reagan came into office he had the decision to reintroduce deregulation to the economy so what role or responsibility do you think he played to the eventual 2008 crisis? >> not much. one of the big d regulations was changing the savings and loan associations that crashed in that eighties 2001 —- 20 years before 2008 and a legislation he changed actually passed in the lame-duck congress and 80 before reagan took office that was bipartisan fiasco. now glass-steagall was the

main banking regulation separating commercial banking froman investment banking and the big banks of new york hated that and that was until clinton was president. and the role of that with the 2008 financial crisis wasas overstated that one of many elements. i don't think the one —- reagan is a bad actor in all of that. it was the middle of the eighties when you had senator mccain and grandson from california were caught up to easy on the keating savings and loan in arizona you can blame that under regulators but don't blame reagan for that that's commonplace. >> arlington virginia you are next. >>caller: good morning it's

great to talk to you today mr. haworth. i do thank you are exaggerating on the covid-19 the former president was the executive at the time and we should keep that in mind but really going to the americas first movement in the thirties and when not theism was spreading throughout germany they issued radios to every citizen i do believe our cable media are entertainment channels. what is the impact of misinformation and why wouldn't we defend the country againstst all enemies foreign and domestic why would we want to do that? i was in the line. >> we do want to end the first part of your question is we disagree who the enemies are. we all make enemies of the other side but i will say this

with the parallels of the thirties and now that people comment on this a lot you don't get to pick information you are the left you watch msnbc on the right watches fox that like when cronkite was watched by 70 million per night now network is 20as or 25 million that is a great day. seen if you think fox is bad or msnbc is bad the only reach a small portionn of the population.. thinks boxes top-rated show is five or six may not a good

night? is not 70 million like walter cronkite. >> the watch much quick. >> i was watching network news in college andnd people thought i was weird and they still do because i like to see how they cover stories. but one observation to make these days all three networks and with the spotlight on a fire man who has rescued a puppy dog nothing you never would have seen on a walter cronkite broadcast but they like that the today show became tonight's news. >> also about junkies so we asked him his favorite books and what he is reading now here are his responses.

>> which of those you want to talk about quick. >> i could give you 50 is the problem in different titles. the modern times i like not only because it's a great read but the styletr i tried to emulate i call it the narrative so you tell a story but then you drop analysis and of what it means so as not

just the facts. of what happened. you could go on enforcement churchill did the same thing and his history books and it's been two or three pages on what it meant andhat is a style i try to emulate. cs abolition off man is 70 pages and dance and on the surfbout literature but it is a restatement and the criticism i don't care about that term but it's in eloquent estatement i have a half joke which is to say you can tell someone ended up by finding out what they read as a

teenager. >> why one and not the other? >> it is so much more epic lewis did something very creative with serious theological teaching and i am more partial to the three science fiction books and that hideous strength the longest to get through it stands up and 84 somee of the great anti- utopian novels. >> writing a lot about religion and then asked him in

an interview how much the religious beliefs were in his books and inri his writings how much of that are in your book send in your writing quick. >> not much at all. i don't knowbu while the phoenician mention it and my best friend who died a decade ago mysteriously only talking about religious faith and politics and other things so we spend a lot of time talking about all kinds of issues of religious faith and sitting

with a cigar in the backyard and teases describing our fusion friendship and to feel very blessed and maybe i can finish the story maybe i will finish doing this and have a book any more personal way that have never tried anything like thiser before. >> we thought so much alike about certain things. >> we met in college we were inseparable after we met we be on the phone all the time i was all over the place and he was a lawyer in oregon we would keep into touch we use to write each other at the end of the year long letters we went

summarize our lives the previous year whatpr we read what we were thinking about and exchange those letters that new year's something like that i cannot believe we did that but then we got busy later and stopped. maybe there is a story and a place. >> what would be the most important thing in your life in the previous year if you have that today? >> this is pretty personal. one year ago yesterday i had cancer surgery. some very small notes by accident way earlier and ever since then i thought why wait quick so i took my family on an extravagant two-month vacation to europe.

so don't wait i normally wouldn't start on a book manuscript without a contract i have toopt much to do so i will not wait on that either. and also not thinking of how there's no way he could win and then who could predict this is increasing socratic ignorance of things i thought i knew but i don't so the older i get the less i know but it gets more confusing to sort out the world. don't wait. >> ten minutes left north

carolina. >>caller: i very familiaren with professor hayward i am a big fan of his happy hour podcast. and listening to him talk about reagan i'm not friends with him but i feel that i could be what prompted my call was the call t from michelle and her question i just want the thought about the idea that i just discovered in theur last three w or four years about nixon and other side or area of expertise that a retired attorney who served under nixons his entire presidency and makes the case that nixon was driven out of office as part of the plot by a series of people who took advantage of the situation that he had no idea that it was going on.

and up to n the place where can defend himself and he resigned and the fact that he comes out into tally with criminal acts they should been prosecuted but it wasn't mexican who was the criminal in that situation. >> you mentioned and jeff shepardd i did a two part podcast interview with him a few months ago. >> a fascinating guy there's a lot to that subject but i have often wondered if watergate would have happened differently if we had today's different media environment twitter alive and foxim news offending him he may have gone

quicker or he may have survived. we don't. know that i think it will be a lot of revisionist history written about watergate that will come to different conclusions. >> new york good morning. >>caller: good afternoon. first it's great to hear about your cancer recovery. and also talking about the reagan presidency is the role how they played the chief of staff and iran-contra look like he was in trouble with questions of his mental

capacity and how critical - - how consequential was that chief of staff quick. >> what an interesting question a complete answer would take a while because the whole chief of staff is interesting so one me reason reagan chose to retire from the senate but to be the ranking republican on the watergate hearings and reagan wanted somebody who had good relations with the hill, well-respected a pillar of washington don reagan was a terrible chief of staff and he knew that was a mistake. i'm not sure if there was an undertone of baker was a bad influence i think that's not

true is very much his own man but the widespread view that he was staff driven was almost entirely wrong we know that from documents that have come out or certain meetings and to triangulate a lot of material i could give l you a lot of examples the most famous was the star wars speech just about everybody was against it even secretary of state scholz and they did it anyway only two people on staff that it was aa. good idea. >> the right reagan was more

successful and rolling back th soviet empire than rolling back the domestic empire chiefly because it's a harder problem. >> another big question. but with that conclusion of the second volume got criticism from reagan's associates but now i sit back with ironicat satisfaction to stay reagan is totally irrelevant to today 90 for this a lot from pretty smart people that i know like there usually younger but this can next to the big problem of the administrative state erosion of separation of powers the entrenchment of the bureaucracy and that this was tougher than we thought so now

things have marched on for a while and in his own people say that in hindsight but it's more than soviet union. >> was he. >> sarah certainly. i thought of that is a title to the book. >> we have been talking with stephen hayward authorr of eight, books