wasn't behind nixon and agnew? this is three years -- this is four years after the '68 election. >> let's turn to bob from george mason, and there's some student questions. >> i have a quick question and a question from a student. pat, you alluded to the tension between the nixon administration and the nixon campaign and then administration and the media, some of which was carried by speeches by president agnew, vice president agnew, and i understand a pretty good speech write writer had the phrase the bombs of neglect tichl to characterize the network anchors and reporterses. can you talk about how it's safe to say this was the historical moment which it happened. there was an inkling of conservatives about the media in the 1964 convention speech of

dwight eisenhower. eisenhower was not a great, blazing or for, and he got up and made a statement like, and we don't need the advice of sensation-seeking columnists and commentators. in that convention, the roof went off it. it said americans at least conservatives had already taken to heart the idea that the media was negative. then in 1969 dafsh this was agnew's famous speech in des moines where he attacked all three networks. incidentally, i wrote na speech. i suggested the speech first to the president. he said go ahead with it. so i wrote it, and then i wrote -- i did two best drafts for speech writers and the best draft is your third draft in my view. after that it turns to mush. so i had the first draft done and the second done. you had to take some things out. i was over there -- president nixon calls me over into his

office. nobody saul him. he wears glasses, you know. he's wearing glasses and he's reading the speech and he says okay stick in this in here, stick in here. he leaned back and took his glasses off and said this will tear the scab off those expletive deleted. it was great but it put in some stuff i was concerned could get us into trouble. agnew went out and delivered that sfeech in des moines. we got a venue, and we said get in the venue and find the venue. there's midwestern republican conferences, so let me tell you a story. i went out there deliberate, and i was in my office and i was nervous how to come out and he's going to carry it live. i'm going to the university club going swimming, you know. i got up there, and they said cbs and nbc are going live with the agnew speech.

my career was sitting right there. i was like, this better work. what happened is agnew's speech resulted in 50,000 telegrams immediately hitting the networks agreeing with agnew, and the next monday "newsweek" and time, which were different, therm the publications in those days both had the anchors on the covers and the whole issue was about network power. what that did was table -- lyndon johnson said you don't fight with people that buy ink by the barrel. you don't fight the press, but we had to. my argument to nixon is if we don't fight these guys, they're going to break us. we didn't start this. nixon is pulling out of vietnam, and so that -- it worked, and then a week later he went down to montgomery, alabama and pbs covered it laif. we took on the new york timdz and "washington post." that was the beginning. >> as you say with a smirk on

your face. >> agnew loved it. i'll tell you a story about agnew. it was november right after the -- it was november 10th or whatever it was, the day after agnew invited me to go down to to apollo 12, the second moon shot on the vice president pal ep plane. i got out to andrews and drove out the beltway, and i think he got in about 5:00. he came on the plane, and he just came back and looked at me and went, gang busters. so it was a great moment. the key thing about that was that enabled richard nixon to pursue his presidency with a solid political base with almost the entire republican party virtually but what's the reagan democrats that were the new majority strategy. to take the northern catholics, ethnics and those folks who are very patetic whose kids were

fighting in vietnam and southern conservationive traditional lists and move that segment into the republican coalition, which we did in '72, and then leave the democrats with the mcgovern base of 30, 39, 40%. and nixon created that, and they say reagan's landslide was 49 states. it's the same thing we want, only we lost massachusetts and he lost minnesota. >> interesting. let's stay with george mason. one of the student questions and geel to the wash center. >> just as we asked the previous guest about what the legacy would have been had humphrey been laektsed, you had a question similar. >> my, mr. buchanan. i'd like to know how you think nixon's election changed the course of presidential elections to come. >> i think the richard nixon certainly one thing he did, richard nixon created the new

majority coalition. it was one of the things we had worked on from 1966. fdr had this magnificent coalition that he had taken out of the republican party and put it together that governed the country and the democratic party by 1964. it was about twice as large as the republican paerlt. what nixon did straight politically was take the socially conservative catholic ethnic southern bloc and move it into the republican coalition so that in the next five elections -- the next four after 1968 republicans won three landslides of 49 states, 49 states, and 44 states and george h.w. bush won 40 states. so i think richard nixon is the most important political figure he and fdr in terms of putting together ruling coalitions, governing coalitions in america. we see that gradually

disintegrate for reason i described in other books we're not talking about today. >> we should point out this month marks the 40th anniversary of the trip to china, which was historic. >> i was with him on the trip to china. as i told folks, by the end of it, he would have been happy to leave me there. >> let's turn to brad and tim from the washington center for a question or comment. brad, we'll start with you. >> hi. i'm brad misell. it the story that really gets lost here is that in the summer of '67 george romney was actually the front-runner. do you attribute george romney's collapse to nixon's strategy and his popularity? romney's brainwashing gaffe and questions about romney's mormonism or questions about romney's policy as a candidate? what would you attribute his

downfall to and the subsequent rise in nixon. >> let me tell you a story. at the end of the '66 campaign after this tremendous victory for the republicans, nixon was the only one that campaigned nationally by all the republicans. nixon took a six-month sabbatical off new interviews, no politics or anything as he toll me about romney. let him chew on him for a little while. romney at that point -- i think it was only one or two months, was leading for the republican nomination. i think november and december of that year. and people wanted basically preferred nixon, but they didn't think he could win. it was the electability argument. we love you, dick, but we don't think you can win. you lost twice to kennedy and lost the governorship. the brainwashing was made in september of '67. romney -- one of his problems

was he was perceived as on the liberal wing on the republican -- the rockefeller ring of the republican party. he contributed 400 grand to him. he was a rockefeller republican, and by '68, unlike '60 when nixon went up to cut the deal with rockefeller, '64 goldwater might have got beaten but we took over the party. it was the conservative party. the center of gravity moved south and west. so the people we needed to get to win the nomination was john tower, barry goldwater and strom thurm thurman, not nelson rockefeller. romney was perceived as that part of the party. i remember the late nick timmish. it w it was before the bible shlg. we were on park avenue at the fabricated offices. he said you better get up to new hampshire. romney is working extremely hard

doing four or five coffees a day and he's really doing the state in retail politics. i went to president nixon, vice president nixon and ig said timmish is not a hostile guy. he said horomney is breaking ground. nixon said he can wait for the final day. he announced on february 23nd o election year. the republicans would be like announcing right now. so he announced and went in there then. what happened is romney -- it was at any time mormonism. i don't recall mormonism being brought up. romney was running on moral decay and denouncing moral decay, and we said the ads looked like toothpaste adds, you know? he desperately tried to get nixon into a debate. we're not going to debate him, and nixon said the debate is with lyndon johnson. he wouldn't mention the opposition. he's a good man, but my quarrel

is with lyndon johnson. it was frus freighting to romney. we had private polls showing us to beat him 5-6 to 1. in a contested primary, we get about 75% of the vote and he gets 15%. so he was getting polls that showed he was going to get clobbered, so he got out. that's when the ball was for rockefeller. you have to do this yourself. rockefeller had problems at the time. he got up and announced, i'm not running. >> personal problems. >> tim, we'll go to you next. >> hi, pat. tim from ohio. i'm curious to get your perspective on the 1970 kent state shootings that left four students dead and nine injured. i'm curious how that affected

nixon's public image, if at all. >> that was one of the speeches i worked on, was the cambodian incursion or what they called invasion. we went in 630 kilometers for 30 days to clean out the vietcong base camps in cambodia. i think that speech was on april 30th, 1970. 1970, right. and the speech was called created sort of a firestorm on opportunities on the left. there were protests all over the country, and to be honest i had never heard of kent state as a school. i'd never even heard of it. i remember being at my house and mort allen said four students have been shot and killed at consent state as the gentleman

said. it was a tremendous jolt that created sort a firestorm in the country, and the demonstrators, thousands of them came to washington and that's in a defected nixon personally. he got up at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning and took somebody with him. >> to the lincoln memorial? >> to the lincoln memorial to talk to the students from syracuse and try to explain to them. but it was a, that affected him, once he did it the incursion -- once you do something like that i believe as teddy roosevelt up said don't hit soft. you knead to dleen out the things and take out the time you needed to clean out those nests of viet congrecong and vietname. there was a spike in that one month, but there was a sudden

drop. the number of american dead fell off by half. i think it helped enable us to continue the policy of withdrawal from vietnam that nixon had already decided upon. it probably confirmed him in his feeling that it was necessary to get out of vietnam. i don't know that it ak set rated anything, but it certainly affected him dramatically and personally than anything that occurs in that presidency. >> can you follow up on tim's question and take a step back as we look at the scenes from vietnam, 45, 50 years later. what was it all about? why vietnam? >> well, i'm older than you, and i was a young editorial writing in 1962, '61 and '62. to us it made all the sense in the world. we were in the cold war with communi communism. our policy was one of deterrence of nuclear weapons, that they wouldn't strike them with those because they blew us off the map, too. at the same time we had to stop

their gradual encroachments out of china and the soviet union into the third world where they were taking over country after country. we stopped them in korea, but in vietnam after 1954 and the country was split we felt that they were -- all of southeast asia on the mainland of southeast asia would fall to communism. kennedy believed that, and if it fell all those countries of southeast asia might say communism is the wave the future. i think that even though vietnam eventually fell, it was a success in this sense. if you take indonesia and malaysia and singapore, thailand, all those countries that are the tigers of asian, they decided in those areas that we're on the side of the rest, and the americans are fighting.

this asian communism is not necessarily the future of our region. maybe freedom and maybe independence are and maybe western oriented societies are. so i think in that sense vietnam was a success in terms of what it demonstrated the united states was willing to do to fight for to prevent the spread of communism. and so i think in that way -- but then as said there's noo argument for going into the war and losing it. >> let's go back to bob. >> i have a couple questions. one from ray and another from chris. >> mr. buchanan, in the past you expressed discontent for neoconservatives and the likes of reagan democrats. would you liken these conservatives to present day establishment in gop members or to tea party members? >> the neoconservatives are a -- are basically -- i would tell

you. the neoconservatives were welcomed into the conservative movement and the nixon/reagan coalition. not so much nixon because they came later. they were liberal democrats on the campuses and who believe that the democratic party of carter and mcgovern was not fighting the cold war successfully. and so i remember talking to moynahan and the others and we welcomed them into the conservative movement and republican party, and they are a contentious fact. i worked with them, and elliott abrams at state and the contra campaign and the rest of it. what happened at the end of the cold war is we divided philosophically. some of us believed in americans that had to fight the cold war. it was delayer claired on us by stalin and the empire. they killed all the pro western people in russia and china and

they were on the march. then when the soviet union -- soviet empire collapsed, soviet union collapsed and the wall came down and the red army went home and communist china is moving towards state capitalism, we said, our war is over. the cold war is over. bring the troops home. give the europeans nato. get out of all these bases and things because we've been -- we had to pay an enormous amount, americans did. but the neocons basically move to the world democratic refr lugs sort of policy you saw george bush with. then they went for the war in iraq. they went for the war on serbia. they wanted to nation-build in afghanistan, and the older right, the older conservatives split. some of them went with the neocons and some said this is wilsonism and not kwefsh active. this is new word ordinary

nonsense. it's utoppian. we can't build the societies and things like that, the 19 skrerld kids and marines. you can't build societies in afghanistan that are based on thousands of years of tradition. we split with them, and it's become very acrimonious. it's mainly an old right neoconservative split. i think those of us who argued against interventionism, we're beginning to prevail now but it's after ten years, which i think led to a disaster for the country in the middle east. and to the conservative movement in the republican party, nobody mentions george bush anymore. i noticed today before we go to tehran we're headed for damascus. we want a couple new wars. >> let me go to chris conway and sarah kel lar from front row with a question or comment from pats buchanan. sarah, we'll start with you.

go ahead. >> my question is about nixon had lost previous elections, obviously one for the presidency, so what made '68 so different? was it nixon that had changed or was it kind of his other candidates for the presidency or what was different about it? >> let me add to that. could that happen today if you've lost and then come back? three points there. >> lost -- >> if you lost the previous nomination and came back. >> if you lost a previous nomination and then lost for governor, could you come back today? i don't think so. the media is interested in who is new coming along, so i don't think you could do that today. what enabled him to do it, first, nixon was a man of extraordinary talent. that's undeniable. i think jack kennedy is quoted in chris mathews' new book as saying he was the smartest man in the senate, nirks on was. he naut nicthought nixon was ve

and he debated kennedy. he had been in the republican party in the '50s, he had all this, if you will, money in the bank with republic kanans and e with many conservatives, who were suspicious of it. they felt -- they sort of grew with it. but the barrier nixon has was he couldn't win. he had been beaten in 1968, as you point out, beaten in 1962 by governor pat brown who reagan defeated, and they said nixon can't win. nixon used to tell me, well, the knock on me is i can't win, and the only way you're going to getd get rid of that is by winning. so we're going to have to go into the primaries and beat everybody in the primaries or we're not going to be a nominee. so we went in, and the only one to challenge him was romney, and we had him knocked out. percy, none of them got in.

we were marching through the primaries. rockefeller sent lindsay out to oregon, and we said, look, rockefeller ran on the slogan, he cared enough to come in 1964 and win oregon. this is 1968 and he sends lindsay. he turned to john lindsay and said, vote for john lindsay. we crushed him in oregon. how can you not give in to the nomination when he won the delegates? we had about 690 delegates on the first ballot than he did in 650. but that was it. i mean, nixon was -- they felt a great sense of royalty and debt to nixon, and if he could prove to them he would win, they would go with it. the interesting thing was rockefeller kept running. these polls showed rockefeller beating humphrey and nixon losing.

and just before we got to miami, they had one with nixon stronger against humphrey and rockefel r rockefeller. they didn't have any argument left. so cliff white was with reagan and they started working with the rockefeller people to get together, a rockefeller-reagan kick-in. but who was going to be on top? rockefeller wasn't going to be number two to reagan. and ronald reagan, i think if he had gone with nelson rockefeller to deny nixon the nomination, he would have really damaged himself with conservatives. >> rockefeller went on to become president with gerald ford. >> let's go to chris conway. >> hi, mr. buchanan. i had a question. i think it's fair to say that in 1968 you were fairly involved in the republican party, but by 2000, you ran as a reformed candidate and expressed some kind of dissatisfaction with the state of the party. could you tell me what kind of shift you saw and what you see

as the state of the party today? >> well, there were about three or four issues i ran on in '92 and '96. one, 20 years ago now, i said if we don't get control of our border, you can have 10 to 20 million illegal aliens in the country, which we do. we didn't get control of it. i said your trade policies are going to destroy the manufacturing base of this country. we're going to lose all these factories to china, and in the first decade 21st century, we lost 65,000 factories. i opposed the gulf war. i said, if we get in there, this will be the only american held war we fight. there will be one after another after another, and that's happened. i said we'll be in a cultural war of america, and it looks like that today. even the catholic bishops understand that now. these were the ideas that animated my campaign, and george

h.w. bush was a friend of mine, and it was tough running against him, and they animated my campaign in '96, and in the year 2000, i went with the reform party, and the wisdom of that was really questionable, because you knew you weren't going to win, and the probability if you did well, you would cost the republicans the election, in which case you would never see me again. fortunately, in palm beach county, we heard al gore and cost him the election rather than george bush, so we survived. but that's why basically i just felt the ideas you fought for and you believed in, they were not going to be advanced by the republican party of george h.w. bush -- george w. bush, excuse me. so i sort of made the decision, and the reform party nomination was there for the asking, and it turned out to be a mess and a big battle with the pro people. it just all ended very badly for us. >> let's go back to george mason

university. bob lichter. >> i have a student question. pat, you worked in a very high level of communications adviser to two different presidents, and then you ran for president yourself. and in conjunction with the question my student is about to ask, i question whether your running for president made you think differently about how to communicate with the elector according to your experiences. but i also would like to you answer chris' question. >> my question is obviously president nixon was a great debater and president reagan obviously labeled the great communicator. i was wondering what can be learned from both of those presidents for president obama or anyone else moving forward. >> well, i think president obama is an effective communicator, and i think one of the things that president obama has going

for him, which reagan had going for him, is he's a very likeable man. he has a wonderful sense of humor, he seems to take critici criticism, it rolls off him, and he responds really well. again, i think president obama delivered a masterful speech in 2004 at that convention which launched him in many ways, and he delivered some victories. i don't think president obama is as great a speaker as a lot of people do, but i think he's an effective communicator and he's going to be very tough to beat. reagan and nixon are sui generous. ronald reagan, at the time he was president, he's like a 14-year-old kid. you go in and he's making jokes and telling stories. i was with him at richovick, and the whole summer was filled be

explodes. you're in there with him and he's angry, almost cursing angry at the embassy. and we get on the plane, and he comes back and i'm with tony dolan, the speech writer, and we thought reagan did great. we were drinking and everybody else was somber and not happy, and he comes back and says, hey, pat, did you hear the time that jimmy stewart and i -- he was talking about hollywood. he had just put it behind him. reagan, when he got angry, is like a 15-minute horrible storm, then it's over and the sun is out. reagan was an entirely different person. he brooded about a lot of things and they were on his mind, but i just don't know in terms of communications what you can tell a president because they each bring different skills. i do know nixon used his skills well. he was -- nixon would sit in front of that -- as you're sitting there, he would go with

the country again and again and again with the president address. and he had his speech, good evening, my fellow americans, you know. can we find a new way to open this? all the kids in the country would say, good evening, my fellow americans. in the end, he said, well, i'm comfortable with that. so he would use that every time. his arguments were loirly and persuasive. what made reagan so effective were anecdotes. you start making a point and then he starts telling a story that makes the point effectively, so you're riveted listening to it and your emotions are engaged. but that's something that -- i don't know that you can train people to do that or you can train them only so far. and reeg panel -- i