environmental activism. there is an extra day of book tv this holiday weekend on c-span2. aaron burr may be best remembered for his duel with alexander hamilton. h.w. brands on a different side of the new york politician and vice president, saturday night at 8:30 eastern. and on afterwords," the former director for asian affairs victor cha on the impossible state, north korea. >> the dialogue with the north koreans on human rights is kind of a ridiculous dialogue. you can tell them you need to improve your human rights situation, and their response to you will be, and we've had this conversation at the official level, their response to you will be well you in the united states have human rights problems too. i mean that is not a comparable discussion. >> that is saturday night at 10:00. also this weekend, marcus latrell details operation

redwing from service, a navy s.e.a.l. at war, sunday night at 10:00 eastern. three days of book tv, this weekend on c-span2. now a discussion on how americans communicate with their presidents. from "washington journal," this is 40 minutes. >> our guest now is eli saslow, who is a staff writer for the "washington post" and has written an interesting book. it's titled "ten letters: the stories americans tell their presidents." there is the cover there. and i wanted to ask you, mr. saslow, first, how interesting a concept in this era of electronic communication, lots of folks still hand-write letters and send them to the white house. >> yeah. >> how many? >> 20,000 a day. 20,000 a day the white house gets. and they process through this sort of deluge of mail. it actually sort of operates out of a whole building of its own here in downtown d.c., where there is a staff of 50 people whose job it is to sort through

this mail and deliver ten letters, an accurate sampling of this mail to the president at the end of the day. >> here is the staff in the book, working through these 20,000 a day letters. did this start with president obama? when did this idea start? >> sure. other presidents have read the mail, going all the way back 100 years and more. president obama is the first to sort of decide that he wants this to be a daily ritual, where every night at the same time he gets ten letters in his briefing book. he usually writes back to one or two letters by hand. and then those are sent off the next morning. i cover the president for the "washington post." and in sort of the early days of his time in office, one of the most striking things to me was just any modern president is so isolated now from the people he governs. you know, everything about a president's life is outsourced. one of the antidotes that president obama decide he wanted to have to this is these ten letters, or this direct connection to these ten people writing these hand-written notes every day. >> what does this do for him and

his ability to lead the country, to be able to receive and write back? >> i think, for any president, all presidents complain about the bubble, this idea that you're so isolated that it's sort of harder to have an actual feel for the problems that people are going through out there. you know, most things that come to him go through a staff secretary's office, where 120 people are deciding which pieces of paper make it to his desk. a team of 100 people make schedule. six caligraphers write anything he wants to have written. his day is subdivided into these 15-minute chunks. and every meeting is made for him. to have a little bit of a chance to get a little bit more of an unfiltered -- these letters are unvetted, specifically unvetted. they come from republicans, democrats, you know, everything and anything. and to get some actual stories, some textured stories from the country to the president is actually a pretty rare thing. >> i want to get our numbers on the screen for eli saslow, a writer for the "washington post" who is author of this book, "ten

letters: the stories americans tell their presidents." we look forward to hearing from you. i want to start with the photo of a young lady. her name is nadrea lattimore. she is a fifth grader in kentucky. here is a photo. she is holding a shot of the handwritten letter she sent to the president. well actually have an enlarged copy of the letter. hello, my name ladrea lattimore. i am ten years old. i go to elementary school. i used to go to thomas 4r789ry, she writes. they closed it down because of the economy. tell us more. >> yeah, for most of these letters, of these ten that the president gets every day, one letter might be purely positive. one letter might be purely negative, criticism. the other eight are stories about what people are going through in their lives. nadrea is one of these. she is a fourth grader in kentucky, lives in a housing project being taken down by the city and goes to a school that is dramatically underfunded.

and wrote to president obama, basically explaining these sort of dire circumstances, this train wreck every day when she went to this underfunded school and asked for his help fixing these problems. and one of the amazing things about these letters was sometimes, you know, the transformative effect that they could have on the lives of the people who wrote them. and also occasionally, the impact that they would have on the president. so the president in this case got nadrea's letter, used some of it in big education reform speeches, tried to implement a few of her little suggestions. and she meanwhile because he was broadcasting her letter, became an education advocate in her little area of kentucky. by the time i was there in kentucky writing about her and her school, she was giving speeches to the superintendents there, and sort of trying to help solve some of these problems. >> a little bit more of what this young lady wrote. i know you are busy, but i could really use your help on this. one more thing, you need to get the government to lack at us differently. yes not black. we are not white.

or biracial, hispanic, asian, or any other nationality. we are the future. she writes. any help you can give me will be greatly appreciated. >> pretty moving stuff. and i think one of the reasons that the president and a lot of his staff have gravitated toward these letters is because they are moving. people write, i think often not expecting that the president is actually going to read their letter. these read almost like journal entries. this is a letter that nadrea wrote one night after school with a little bit of her grandmother's help. she didn't know if the president would ever respond. but knowing so little about the process, she doesn't have an e-mail address herself. i think in the letter she includes her grandmother's e-mail address, hoping the president can respond with an e-mail to her grandmother. it's sort of endearing stuff that comes in from all over the country. >> as the title suggests, this is one of ten letters featured in this book by eli saslow. where did the idea for the book come from? >> i had been covering the

president and noticing all these ways he was disconnected from people. he would occasionally try to bring groups of people into the white house to talk to him about their concerns. and he found when he brought people into the white house in person, their criticism would turn to appeasement, and they would get nervous, and they wouldn't necessarily speak their minds. what he always talks about during his speeches, i would say one out of every three speeches he gives, he mentions these ten letters. he knows that it makes him look like he is connect to talk about these ten letters. so it's a bit of a political tactic. he also uses a lot of these letters in his speeches. i is smart enough to know that if you're giving a policy speech, using an anecdote from a letter and making it a story about a person is effective for speeches. but one time in a speech when i was listening to him, he said that he believed that these letters were his own direct connection left to the people that he governs. you know, and if that's true, that felt like something that was definitely worth spending some time to go write about. >> one more story before we get to calls. there is a photo here of jen and

jay klein, who lost their jobs. they're in michigan. living in a small duplex apartment with their two sons. they wrote to the president. tell us more. >> yeah, they wrote to the president because they were sort of at the epicenter of the economic collapse. jen, they live in monroe, michigan, which is sort of halfway between toledo and detroit. and jen had lost her job. her husband's pool business had gone under. jen had then been diagnosed with cancer. medical bills were piling up. and they didn't really know what to do. and she was writing to the president, asking essentially for advice. the president wrote back, encouraging her that things would get better. in fact, things did not get better. and jen filed for bankruptcy. and in all of these cases, you know, the sort of narrative journalism that i do for the paper and for the book, i went and was there in monroe for, you know, a week or two with jen and her family as they were filing for bankruptcy. thinking that this was going to be their only way out, and waiting to hear if they had a chance to sort of escape this.

in the end, they didn't escape it. and the year continued to be bad in michigan. and that handwritten note that they had gotten back from the president that she really treasured more than anything in her life, they eventually drove to new york. the first time they had ever been to new york, and sold to it an autograph collector for $10,000 to pay off some of their debt. so not always happy endings with these, for sure. you know, sometimes the president's responses end up being very uplifting for people. other times the reality of a pretty difficult three years in the country wins out. >> irving, texas, our first call. thomas, a republican for eli saslow. >> caller: i'm going on. >> morning, sir. thomas, are you there? >> caller: yes, i'm here. >> go ahead, sir. >> caller: hi, mr. eli. >> hey, thomas. thomas is actually one of the letter writers who is featured in the book. pretty exciting to have you call in. >> thomas, go ahead and turn

down your sound. we do want to hear your story. >> caller: okay. hit mute. >> thomas, you want to tell a little bit? >> caller: i'm on. we're hitting mute right now. great. eli, i actually have you on my computer. so it kind of flags me when you're where every you're at. i saw this and thought wow, this is a perfect opportunity to get on the radio and talk to you. >> what is your last name, thomas, and what is your story? >> caller: thomas ritter. i wrote a letter to the president kind of just -- i was kind of angry. and the health care debate was kind of a tough deal. and i didn't like how it was just rammed down the throats of the american people. my classmates are laughing at me. and so i just, you know, kind of vented some things that i thought, you know, were happening with that whole process and how it kind of needed to just take a step back and let's make a really good health care policy that maybe everybody would vote with. and so i was really surprised to

find out that he read it and actually wrote back. >> and we read, thomas, that he wrote a two-page response. what did he tell you? >> in response, he said that hey, i have to -- i read your letter, and i have to challenge you, though. and that was the biggest thing that made me realize oh my goodness, i'm talking to the president of the united states, you know, in letter form. and he had to challenge me. so i just couldn't wait, the little lump in my throat. and he challenged me on the part of that he doesn't take criticism seriously. and i've -- you know, i listened to it, and i kind of, you know, i respected him for it, that he responded back. and kind of talked to me and said i do take seriously, you know, serious criticism, i take it serious. and so that kind of shocked me. and then i looked for the writing. when i saw that he edited that, just hit me. we teach writing here at elliott

elementary. and it was kind of an interesting deal that he revised that letter. he stopped and revised it. >> and one of the -- one of the remarkable things about thomas's story that really touched and stayed with me is, you know, thomas, correct me if i'm wrong, but this is somebody who really doesn't agree with very much that the president has done. before he sent the letter, doesn't agree with much the president has done, probably after he sent the letter. but this is a case where thomas's letter, which was sort of about, you know, the rhetoric in washington and being able to listen to the other side with respect, it became this great touch point both for thomas and for the president. the president after getting thomas's letter started talking a lot about the importance of listening to the other side and trying to be respectful. thomas in this really amazing move, thomas is a fourth grade teacher in dallas, and he might be there with his students right now. these handwritten responses from the president are worth

sometimes $10,000, $20,000. thomas decided the biggest value for him was to take the letter in the school and let the kids in the class run their hands across the ink, tack it up on the desk and let them interact with this letter and make it this great interactive lesson about how a regular person can write to the president and get a response. >> thomas, any final thought on your takeaways from this exchange with the president? >> caller: well, you know, and eli is right. i'm really trying to -- the biggest thing i learned if that letter was that we do need to have some kind of discourse where we can talk. and that is kind of one of the disappointing things i see with this white house, when you say something, you're immediately attacked. and the simpson-bowles thing came out and we didn't look at it. and it's in attack mode now. and i really wish that we wouldn't do that. we got some serious problems. we need to get them fixed. we need serious people to tackle them. and that's kind of the thing i'm looking at now is trying to george bush how can we bridge

this gap so we can get some problems solved. >> thomas ritter calling from irving, texas. thanks a lot for explaining your story and calling in this morning. >> caller: thanks, eli. good to see you, buddy. >> you too, thomas. >> great to have him so early in the show. pensacola, florida. now eric is an independent. good morning. eric, are you there? >> caller: yeah, i'd like to suggest also that maybe we consider muting people who don't turn their tv down before they get on. it's kind of frustrating. but i'd like to take issue with your premise. and not your premise so much, but the president is some sort of figure to which we have -- owe felty. he is supposed to be a ceo type of thing where he doesn't allow unconstitutional things to pass. he is not supposed to be a legislator. he doesn't have any kind of financial purse strings. he is not supposed to be able to declare war except in very minimal times. i'm wondering is this book more

of an indictment on the public's lack of civic knowledge? certainly it's nice human interest, man bites dog kind of stories. but i think that especially in thomas's idea, you know, the president's letter is not something for people to run their fingers over as if he is the second coming. doesn't it scare you that people have such weird examples of what the president is supposed to be? and they forget congress is what is supposed to be representative of the people. thank you. >> sure, thanks for calling. i don't think in thomas's case or in any of these cases people are running their hands across the ink because they think the president is some sort of deity. in fact, i think what this whole process and what the book conveys is the exact opposite, that it is important for a president or a ceo. and the example you use to hear directly from his employees or his constituents. you know, that's where -- that's a feedback mechanism that in washington too often is broken. the layers between a president and the public are such that

direct feedback is almost nonexistent. and sometimes direct feedback can be the most valuable kind. i think ceos would agree with that, that sometimes of their best suggestions come from low-level people on their staff who suggest something, and there is a direct exchange that makes a big difference. it's the same case occasionally at the white house. >> there is a lucy gutierrez in the book. it says her family considered moving from their home in kingman, arizona after the state passed a controversial immigration law. quite lengthy. tell us more. >> lucy's was another letter where she was not necessarily a supporter of the president or a critic of the president, but she was just writing because she felt really stuck, and she did not know what to do. lucy is 23 years old. she lives in kingman, arizona. she is an american citizen, but she is mexican-american. arizona had just passed its 1070 immigration bill. she was very worried about

whether she was going to be persecuted against. and in fact, even though she was an american citizen, her life had changed in these pretty dramatic ways. people -- other hispanics were leaving her hometown. the school populations had dropped. and, you know, her hometown that she loved was feeling less and less like home. and she wrote to the president, basically asking should i stay here or should i go? saying i'm an american, and i want to be treated like an american. but i'm now considering going back to mexico, where i haven't been since i was four years old, and what should i do. and oftentimes i think that's the burden for a president reading ten of these every day. i had the privilege of reading ten every day for a year. and these are not happy-go-lucky letters. sometimes they are. sometimes there is an occasional funny letter, a positive hang in there note. but a lot of times it's people writing about, you know, how the policies of washington are

echoing in their lives in ways that are troubling them. and that's a huge -- that's a huge burden and a harder thing to read at the end of the day for anybody, when you hear these ten sort of searing personal notes about the problems in people's lives. they're really intimate stories. and lucy's certainly was one that stuck with me, and i think stuck with him. >> we have a caller from boston, robbie, democrat. good morning. >> caller: good morning, c-span. >> good morning. >> caller: i have a question about my uncle received a letter back. but can i just make one quick point about this? my blood is still boiling from the last guy. i watched the debates on c-span about the bush tax cuts. and they were supposed to sunset. does no one understand what sunset means? they were supposed to end. all right. but forget all that. my question now. my uncle who is a korean and world war ii vet, he wrote the president -- it wasn't that long ago, i don't think.

and so just it's funny you're on today, because just like three days ago, he received a letter back. and he was so excited. and when i read it, i said to myself, this is a form letter, because it was typed and it looked like a stamp of president obama. and i hated to burst his bubble, but i said uncle, i don't think the president read your letter, because if he did, it wouldn't come back as a form letter. could you please explain that part of it for the people? thank you. >> sure. well, i hope a little bit that your uncle isn't watching because i am going to burst his bubble. that was a form letter. the letters that the president writes himself are always written by hand. they're in sort of this sweeping black cursive. i think we might have a copy in here that we might even show. they often have cross-outs in some of the responses that i saw him you, there were occasional little grammatical errors. they're not typed up. but in the mailroom, which

processes all this mail, their goal is that every single letter should be responded to somehow. sometimes it takes them eight months to respond to a letter. but how this works is there is a form letter that has been written for almost every issue imaginable. there are, for instance, 62 different form letters that fory have ready to send out about health care reform. every letter sort of has an automated response. so for the vast majority of letters that don't make it to the president they're going to get one of these form responses. and it sounds like that's what your uncle got. sorry to break that news. but if he keeps writing, maybe eventually a handwritten one will come. >> how did you decide which letters to feature in the book? >> it was the hardest part. for me this process started with a longer story in the "washington post" that was about one letter and sort of revealing this process. when i did that piece, i realized that, you know, there are 20,000 letters that come in every day. those are narrowed down to ten.

so already all ten stories in that envelope every day are great stories. it's sort of a reporter's dream in that the narrowing has already been done for you. i felt like if i had the chance to read those ten letters that he sees over the course of a year you're really picking from the best of the best in terms of stories. and it also -- it becomes a reflection of the country at large. they're very scientific about making sure this envelope every day reflects what comes in. they measure the metrics in the mail. so if for instance on a given day 20% of the letters are about occupy wall street the president is going to see two letters about occupy wall street. now tons of mail about the re-election campaign. he's probably seeing three a day that are pretty purely political letters about that. and half negative, half positive. i mean, the mix truly reflects what comes in. the president decided he was going to do this on his second day in office, when a lot of these notes were sort of post-congratulatory, you know,

inaugural, great feeling notes. and it probably seemed like a great idea at the time. as time has worn on it's been a difficult stretch. some of his aides have begun to worry if this process is too defeating. a reflection of what comes in is 60% negative and 40% positive. these stories about what people are going through. >> he receives his letters wherever he is. >> wherever he is. they're couriered to him wherever he is. typically they come in in his briefing book. at the end of a president's day the staff -- major staff people's job is to compile this briefing book for the president. it's a black binder that's nearly the size of a phone book. and it's largely scheduling notes for the next day, policy memos, sometimes legal briefings. and also tucked into this folder every day they put them in a

purple folder and there are these handwritten notes from around the country. so i think it's not too much of a surprise that's what most people would gravitate to first. >> we've been talking about these wonderful handwritten letters. but does the president answer e-mail? >> he does answer e-mail. actually nrk this case e-mail and handwritten letters are sort of part of the same process. there's this building in downtown d.c. mail used to be handled -- mail and e-mail used to be handled inside the white house before the anthrax scare. they decided then that it was too risky to have all this coming in. so they've bought this building that's three blocks from the white house. it's a secret building that basically acts as the filter between the public and the president. if you e-mail the president, it goes to a computer in this building. if you send a letter, it goes through a clearing process. a security clearing process and then goes to this building. if you call the white house comment line the phone rings at this building. all of this sort of feedback is processed every day and then the president gets ten of these notes. sometimes those are e-mails.

it might be four printed-out e-mails that he gets and six handwritten letters. in the time that i was seeing what comes in to him even though the white house now gets more e-mail than they get handwritten letters, he tends to read more handwritten letters than e-mails. and i think that's just because handwritten letters, there's still something about them, they tend to stick with people a little bit more. and the stories sometimes tend to be a little longer and more thought out. >> we'll get to those stories. but a couple more calls first. jeremy, oklahoma city, you are up now on the independent line. hey there. >> caller: hi. i was just wondering what type of types of letters does the president not want to see, or has he ever like rejected certain letters? also, just a comment. he grew up in hawaii, went to high school in hawaii. i think that that actually is a very race-neutral environment and people don't understand that enough. >> yeah, i appreciate both of your points. in terms of letters that he does

not want to see or respond to, the truth is he's said a few times that half of these letters call me an idiot i believe was his direct quote, and it's true. the letters that usually do not make their way into that envelope, there are a lost highly critical letters. letters that don't get there are ones that are outright offensive with no sort of point. so when i sat down to speak with the president about the letters, he said that if a letter starts out, "dear socialist jerk," you know, he's unlikely to write a response. just because he feels like what's the point of engaging in that case? but the truth is most of these letters that he writes back to, they tend to be critical, but they're criticism that also is respectful. like thomas's letter that we heard about earlier. >> here's a photo from the book of a second lieutenant, doug tulotte, if i'm pronouncing that right, home from the war in afghanistan, greeted by his mother, holly, and his sister ann.

he exchanged -- or polly exchanged letters with the president midway through doug's tour, it says here, when she was racked with anxiety. >> yeah. the hardest letters for me to read anyway over the course of a year are ones that come from either people who are currently serving in the wars in iraq and afghanistan or from loved ones who are worried about those people. in this case doug's mother -- he had been in a remote part of afghanistan serving in for already three or four months. it was such a remolt part of afghanistan that she almost never heard from him. he did not have access to phone. he didn't have access to e-mail. and as the months went on her anxiety built. ienlly on her birthday she received a call from her son, the first call she'd gotten from him in four months. and wrote to the president about what it was like. at this point doug had five

months left in his deployment. nobody really knew -- first of all, they were praying he'd come back and they were praying that he would be healthy when he came back. his wife was waiting at home. his mother was waiting. his sister was waiting. and they were all sort of wondering what's he going to be like when he comes back? and that's what this exchange with the president became about. >> nassau county, florida on line now. it's norma, republican. >> caller: yes. >> hey there. >> caller: hi. how are you? >> doing well. how are you? >> caller: oh, fine. just got over a health care thing that almost died under the health care plan. but that's another subject for another day. what i'm calling about, i've been an activist in florida on various things for about 30 years. i'm 77 years old. and this question that has come up here about the president and the letters and things certainly under the constitution it guarantees citizens a right to redress a grievance. however, we have the electronic age now and you know, i think that when a country is hurting like america is with all the various things that are going on today people are so distraught

at times that i think the fick that stands out is the president when really these letters should be going to our representatives regarding -- you know, the three parties. that's where they need to be going because that's the people that can do something about the problems. and so i think that's where they need to be going, and i also think that americans need to review the constitution of the united states and see what their rights are. we still have rights. as long as old glory flies. but people don't think that we do. and we do. you go after your elected officials in congress. that's who you go after. not the president. because he really can't do anything but enforce what congress, you know, puts through as legislation. that's his job. >> eli saslow. >> yeah, and members of congress certainly have their own correspondence staffs. they certainly get a steady, steady flow of mail. but members of congress i would

say traditionally get several hundred letters a day. the president gets several thousand letters a day. 20,000. and it's largely because, you know, he's the most famous, he's in public the most often, and when people around the country think about their government they often think about the president first. i agree that you're right that sometimes, especially some of these very policy, legislation-specific notes that are sent to the white house, they should at least also be sent to members of congress because probably that's where they have a chance to be a little more effective. >> one of the other stories here, stephon johnson selecting his freshman year class at lasalle university in philadelphia. the book points out that his father is in prison, his mother unemployed. >> right. stephon's note actually was one of the rare really positive notes. it was a note -- he's one of the few black students at a private catholic school in philadelphia. he'd had a really rough background. really sort of identified with president