>> from the grand public places to those only accessible by the nine justices the supreme court coming the first sunday in october on c-span. . >> frank rich, for those who do not recall on on sundays in the

"the new york times" give us a view of where we are now. >> i and we live in a world that is an enormous transition. not just a transition from one kind of presidential the administration to a very different one, but obviously one in economic transition and a lot of the unquestioned rules of our economy being up for grabs. in case of america, a social transition as the country becomes more and more of a minority dominated country which is causing some interesting fissions. obviously, we are in transition around the world of american foreign policy tries to redefine itself in the middle east once again and tries to remake itself. >> how long have you been writing your 1500 word column? >> that is a good question. i am guessing about 10 years. maybe even longer i am terrible about dates. >> 1999, i guess that works out to 10 years. you have been in politics for 15 years?

>> wright, i have been in the op ed and page of the times since 1994. >> not many people write one column week. how your project? -- how do you approach it? >> it is completely different from doing the twice a week column that is twice that size. it has got to sustain itself as an essay to hold people and i would say that the biggest thing about how i approach it is to construct it as a narrative. even before having an argument for one thing or another, i like to tell a story. it may come out of my theater background. i like to find a topic that lends itself to having several different plot strands that you can tie up at the end. edgewood to start thinking about it? >> he had a monthly column years ago.

it does not matter if it is every day or every month. it is always above your head. i would say that my process is that monday i am considering it or nine things and i try to whittle it down by tuesday and report and research and some more. and then wednesday i've finished up as much as possible the reporting and research. and then i write on thursday and friday. the paper starts printing on friday night. if the world ended on saturday, it would not be in that section of the times. it makes for a very packed week. you can turn on a diamond shift things as major news happens, whether ribby something shocking like 9/11 or something very active like a presidential campaign.

i sort of have a sense of where i'm going by the end of the week. >> how do you know you have a successful column? >> i do not think you ever really know. you cannot really measure by response, whether a ton of e- mail. it hits the bill for people, particularly anything that is thought to be rather partisan. i find that columns that i wrote years earlier come back to haunt me for good or ill. i do not think you really know. if you do want to feel that your being read, but you never know what influence to have. >> you have 14 years as a theater critic for the "the new york times." and now you do politics. what do you like the best? >> i prefer this. it is a much wider world.

one reason i want to get out of theater reviewing was that it was very narrow. few on thursday night that you were going to review hamlet or cats. to me, it has been liberating and i have always been interested in politics and i wrote about it early in my career. i have this double interest in politics. this is how i have been been doing it the best. broadway vs. politics, i was the butcher of broadway. i was lauded by the theater -- i was lowered athed by the theater

people. most of what you see is not great. it was really about 10 square blocks focused on the new york times drama critic and passions were intense and they were very readable. you liked the show they loved you. if you did not like the show, they hated you. i find positive reaction to the column, even from people who do not agree with it. i have a discussion with readers. >> i want to pick off a paragraph from a bunch of columns. i went back a lot of years to find this. i just wanted to respond to how you feel now. this is may of 2009. you say -- the title on it is the "american press on suicide watch." do you write your own headlines? >> yes.

almost no one else at the paper does. columnists and ddo. >> if you wanted to pick the moment when the american news business and on suicide watch, it was almost exactly three years ago. that's when steven cole bear -- colbert delivered a monologue of using his post of being stenographers who had, in essence, let the bush white house get away with murder, or at least the war in iraq. to prove the point, the journalists could be seen fawning over government potentates. in some cases, the very sources who had fed all those fictional sightings of saddam's weapons of mass destruction. >> the colbert speech will be seminal. he criticized the washington press and i feel completely for

the things that he said. the people in the room did not get it. you may recall that the general reaction of the press was that he had bombed. the "the new york times" said -- did not mention that he had spoken initially. the "washington post" said that it was a lead balloon. it ended up on youtube and the country went nuts. it showed me a dramatic this location of washington from the rest of the country. it got a fast reaction. a lot of people in that room did not understand why it was funny. they got rich little the next year. there were so afraid. i think it was an important moment. the difference in the reaction in washington and the rest of

the country is much of what he set himself. >> tell me if i'm wrong. you stuck the needle in the washington press corps at those dinners. the "the new york times" does not even go to them anymore. >> it was a policy made by the news side. but i do not go to them. i cannot remember what prompted that. it is a different part of their columnists. i do feel that is a statement -- is a good picture taking moment of the disconnect. when you see the president of the united states doing a comedy sketch about the and missing weapons of mass destruction, those are interesting. i think that they televise them and that is not the smartest thing. washington has this fascination

with celebrity that is counterproductive in terms of covering the news. >> this is august 31, 2008. before the election. the headline is, well, out what's the [unintelligible] -- obama al whitsunday reaching out w -- obama outwites the bloviators. if i did not know better, i would say that was written by rush limbaugh. >> where i am coming from, the

press got almost everything about this campaign wrong at various stages, starting with the fact it was going to be routed guiliani verses hillary clinton election year. it's stymied people because they -- obama stymied people because they just did not know what to make of this, the first black presidential candidate that had a chance of winning and one of the most bizarre things that i thought of the press was to see a largely white political press corps just assume that whites more races around the country -- whites were racists are around the country and would not vote for him. when he won in iowa, the shock to the press corps was extraordinary. could not believe that hillary clinton was not mopping this guy up. throughout the campaign, and this happened in the liberal media as well as non-partisan media. there was this feeling that

every white person in western pennsylvania hates black people and will vote against him. they assumed the country was racist when it was not in terms of the bombing. -- in terms of obama. >> if we fall to around all week and if you invite us we will, what would we see? when i read your column on sundays, i see something i don't see anywhere else. >> you have seen me on the phone, meeting with people. pretty tedious -- it would not be great television. corresponding with people. >> are you at home? what i am at home when i write -- >> i am home when i write because i can i get anything done sitting in an office. i really need tunnel vision and some of the riding i do at night. i can to work really late on thursday nights. i will be in the office, around

town. i will be in other people's offices and i will be spending a lot of time looking at the internet and dealing with female. -- dealing with e-mail. a lot of people contact me more and more by e-mail and phone. it is amazing how phone traffic has just gone down, even from sources. email can leave a trail. >> how often do you find people trying to get your attention for something? >> a fair amount. and i am findable. you can call up the switchboard and people seem to figure it out. there are comments that are left by the hundreds of columns i write. people can find me pretty easily. the one place that people never find me anymore is by snail mail. it is amazing how people who use to send the documents, you gotta look at this, by mail, it is pretty much pds files.

-- pdf files. >> you lived in new york for how long? >> most of my adult life. i moved here in 1973. >> mary? >> i am married. i have two sons that are both writers. one is 29 and one is 25. both live in brooklyn. >> were they right? >> my oldest son, nathaniel, is aimed novelist who published his first novel last year. he is an editor at the paris review that is famous for being started by george plimpton. he has written for slate and the new york book reviews. my younger son is a humor writer. he has written to collections of humor pieces and is a writer for "saturday night live" for two years now.

>> let's go to 2009. the essence of palinism is emotional, not ideological. how do you know that? >> i know it based on what i listened to in the people that i read and listening to her. listening to other politicians who share her views and they don't overlap. there is a point where the left and right meet, here. what we are seeing is after this huge economic downturn is a sense of inequity in our

country. some people didn't play by the rules and got away like bandits and people who play by the rules got stuck with depleted 401ks. there is this wave of anchor and she has tapped into it on the right. i think people disillusioned by what went on before the bubble burst. i think there is a racial component as well. there is this sense that whites are to be the minority and things are changing very fast. some people are falling behind but there is a populist thing going on right now that is multi-party. you see it everywhere. you'll hear goldman sacks -- goldman sachs rightly or wrongly

attacked on the right as it is on the left. there is a common denominator in all this. >> back in june of 2007, "failed presidents aren't what they used to being." if you wanna start with that. >> i think this was about frost/maxim, the time when that movie came out. >> you mentioned george bush. you did talk about frost/nixon. you really shed a tear for richard nixon? >> there is something about nixon. he was probably the single most hated politician in washington. it was something you heard about constantly, not just people who disagree with him politically.

there was something about his weirdness and his ambition which sometimes was successful such as china. it is compelling and there is an element of tragedy because he really threw it away through a federal personal flaw of -- a fatal personal flaw of paranoia. >> back to your column. explain that. >> my feeling about bush has not changed. he was a guy who was not terribly ideological. he certainly campaigned on not doing nation-building or having a very modest foreign policy and getting a few things done.

most of which he did not get done, like so security reform and immigration reform. after 9/11, he was surrounded by very powerful personalities who had strong ideologies. he bent with that wind. he will probably live to regret

>> nixon was probably one of the poorest of modern presidents. he really came from nothing. he had a terrible childhood and young adult life. he overcame that to become president of the united states and then through the hallway. -- and then to throw when all way is a very gripping story. bush was a child of privilege. he was the product of legacy and missions to places like andover, yale and harvard. he came from one of the most famous, well-connected american families and i think that reflected in his presidency.

there was not a lot of introspection or nuance. nixon, just listening to the tapes, it is shakespearean because at the time he is debating himself and worrying about things. i find the nixon personality morris human or more interesting, i guess. >> win sit here like this, i see a different frank rich then when i read your column. i get the strong language. the you get angry? >> no, i do not get angry. i feel like i'm not vested by way in politics. i do like to write stuff and i like to write sentences that have punch. i want to save what i say clearly. bill safire retired and gave me a bunch of advice.

he said to never begin a paragraph with "on the other hand." i love writing. i like it to be strong. my personal way of speaking may be different because it is not writing. it is conversational. >> so you should not do what the professor used to do when he said the, "however." he is still alive. >> incredible. >> some of the audience may have never heard of him. >> he was a wonderful comedian. >> i have never seen anyone else do that. >> i am going to go way back to november 10, 2001. just listen to the language of them.

that is after september 11 and compared to what we are talking about today. the headline is "war is heck."

>> what was bothering me then was that no one wanted to instill this idea of sacrifice. the idea was somehow everything would be fine. we had a volunteer military fight this war and we would go to disneyland in the president literally said that. cut to now. i am not at all convinced that anyone in washington, including the president, wants to stand up to the public and say that if we want to reform health care and fight a war in afghanistan, somebody is going to have to sacrifice. my memory is that in the last

century there were presidents and to some extent kennedy who said that the american people have to step up to the plate. you cannot have something for nothing. some point, washington never wants to go there. a johnson kept telling everyone that you can't have guns and butter. we can have it now and 2009. but saying this to the american public is difficult. >> let me get a sense out of you. the iraq war. just a sentence. >> my feeling is that we made a mess that diverted us from the war in afghanistan, the war we thought we had one against the taliban. thanks to a lot of brave and persistent troops, we have

cleaned up the mess. history will progress. >> a sentence about today in afghanistan. >> i think it is an unholy mess and i think that the bombing -- obama administration is going to have to decide what its goals are. it is a mess. the corruption, they don't have any kind of troops to speak of that we can train any efficient fashion. >> what will you do if the president of the united states announces another 20,000 troops in addition to what is already announced? >> look at it very carefully. around the time that barack obama was inaugurated, the main mission was said to make sure

there are not people there who can attack us again. that is a worthwhile mission. everything beyond that is optional, including nation- building and all the rest of it. he is going to have to answer our questions about whether additional troops do anything. this is what people are looking at. he is going to be in a rock and a hard place and explain to us what he is doing. he has very smart people including richard holbrooke, hillary clinton, joe biden, who know about this. there is not a one of them that would say that this is easy. >> do you know people that read your column every sunday that are in government or the media world and when you sit there and write do you think about it?

>> i knew that the star of the play would be reading my theater column. i always thought about the reader, not the subject of the peace. your job is to serve the general reader, not people in power or people that are stars or in politics or show business. >> how close to you get to people? >> not very. i keep my distance. i like living in new york. i am always glad to hear from people and do. whether it be in the administration or congress or related areas. i never ever felt that it was my job to be friends or be an insider. by the way, when i was a theater critic, i have never been to the tony awards or party is and that is a much smaller, less important sphere. i feel you can be more objective if you are not caught

up in it. i grew up in washington. my late stepfather was what we now call a case street lawyer. -- a k street lawyer. he worked for airlines. he was not in politics, but he knew journalists and people like jack anderson, johnson, humphrey, and scoop jackson. i saw that as a kid. it is a culture that does not interest me. it is too easy to be stroked. >> say that ron emmanuel is watching this. he says of the president wants to talk to you. you can ask anything you want to. would you do it? >> of course. i would not give him my advice. that is not my role.

i would welcome any opportunity to talk to the president of by united states or rom emanuel. that is great. of course you do that. what i don't want to do is become part of this party circuit or the washington correspondents dinner circuit or off the record, behind-the- scenes stuff. >> i know you are a close friend of maureen dowd. >> we wrote a column together before we had our own columns. >> do you coordinate among the colonists to make sure you do not write about the same thing? >> no, we never have. we do not even tell our editors will we are writing in the advance.

when readers are puzzled if three people have a column on what ever, is real, dick cheney, henry louis gates, it is completely and other coincidence. they don't even know what is happening until it is turned in. >> in november of 2001, all want to go back to four days after 9/11, which many would of had to -- which would have meant you would have had to scrub your column and start from scratch. >> i do not even remember what it was. it was a tuesday. i hope it was not gary condit.

you're talking besides the decade -- decadent dream, you're talking about the fall of the stock market, the rise of unemployment and the the the operation of the surplus, all of which we are living through. >> isn't it amazing? when i wrote that column, the history of on cable business network for everybody was buying e-toys and that whole

day trading craze. it was the day that changed everything. it was the day that did not change that much because we've been through another bubble with speculation on people's homes rather than crazy stocks. all of the same forces were at work. we just tune out reality. it is an interesting phenomenon. it happened in the 1920's. if you read about the land boom in florida in the 20s and what went on in the stock market in the 20s, it is shockingly mimicking what is going on in contemporary america. >> this is from july 2003.

it is interesting to think about where the people are today based on where they were six years ago. mr. o'reilly is on the best- seller list now.

keith olbermann. and then the andrew cuomo factor with a question mark. in the last couple of days, andrew cuomo met with the governor. bill o'reilly is on the best- seller list and al franken is a senator. and now according to the "*" this weekend, that fight is off. >> that by being off is the most fascinating. that is a very interesting tale reported in the "the new york times" it is a very fascinating story.

o'reilly has continued to be a huge star. and even as the cycle has turned in terms of liberal politics being more in vogue than conservative, is only helping him. he has a couple of competitors like glenn back. >> start with a couple of things, al franken in the united states senate? >> fascinating, isn't it? what a crazy race that was and the analysts were counting and recounting and we will see how he does. he clearly wanted to do this. he is the first saturday night live center. -- alumnus to be in the senate.

>> a bill riley's show is rated higher than any other cable news show an almost as high as any cable show on a night to night basis. >> he has a loyal audience. >> why? >> why? i think he gives a voice to the agreed. to their anger about things in their views about bank, not necessarily anchoger. fox is good television. it is impressive that anyone can have longevity. rush limbaugh is in another sphere. he has not been so capable of -- bill left is not been so capable of -- the left has not been so

capable of finding a mass communicators who deliver to their audience the way that these guys do. >> when you attack somebody in one of your columns, and i'm not sure you would even use that word, is a calculated at all? >> it is not calculated. i am not sure that is true. there are sometimes that you can and light in approving way about -- that you can write in approving the way about somebody. i think that if you have no opinion and are just do in one hand on the other hand, then you will get no response. it is a calculated at all. i don't even think that way. i think about what is the story that i want to tell and how do i want to tell what? i righted as sharp as i can to further one want to say. >> i am for to go back to july 31, 1994. >> i was a child.

>> one person we will mention is deceased. gonzo vs. leach. -- talking about whitewater hearings -- >> you are making a statement there.

>> yes, absolutely. do we remember anything about those hearings? we remember sam ervin, but i am not sure if we remember the gonzales whitewater hearings. >> the next person i am going to mention is in the barack obama administration. he now runs the national endowment for the humanities. >> here is the thing about leach. first of all, i have to say that my own words bring back his behavior in those hearings and i found them incredible.

he did this more sorrow than in anchor shtick to a fair the well. he ultimately voted for at least one article of impeachment and i do not think it was his finest hour. he earned the reputation of being unusually thoughtful in terms of this republican party he was a more moderate members. it is about it academia at a certain extent and i think that some of the description that i had in that column will serve him well as he is head of the national endowment for the arts. >> by the way, he went to the democratic convention and endorsed barack obama. are you still doing work for hbo?

>> i was talking about a lot of stuff involving programming as the new regime took over and had to retool and covered was sort of there. it has nothing to do with journalism. the one thing i am not involved with is documentaries. >> the reason i bring up that part of it is because back in 1994, you ask why marion barry? this month there is a documentary on hbo about marion barry. here is what you say.

is your father still alive? >> my father is very much still alive. my father is a very interesting story. as i alluded to in that column, he had a family shoe business. it was looted during the riots. unlike many other black businessmen in downtown urban america, he wanted to rebuild and did not want to flee to the suburbs and give up his business. he wanted to -- it was really kind of a heroic feat. it allowed him to be involved.

it enabled him to be involved in the campaign for marion barry. to this day, he still volunteers for the organization that tirelessly lobbies to try to get full voted and self- government for the district of columbia. >> your dad is 88? >> es kahlah he turned 88 in april. >> here is the first sentence of a 1995 article. >> i was completely wrong and i caught up eventually. but i have to say, in retrospect, i did not really understand it at the beginning. as did most of my profession.

the internet has become a tale that is wagging the dog of all endeavors. >> you did say this. the happy surprise of the the debt is its unpredictable domestic political implications. >> a stopped clock is right twice a day. that is the only thing i wrote about the internet that was correct at that time. if you look back at the second half of the clinton years, the internet became a mass communications medium. that is how the drug report and -- the drudge report and even e-mail really into people's lives for the first funds has not been some sort of fad. ever since then, we have been trying to catch up with what it means.

then, we did not even understand it entirely. the political implications of been enormous ever since. >> a year later, you wrote,"as a professional medium for breaking news, the internet is a toy for those with time and money on their hands. >> it was a completely different thing. some of you quoted me correctly.

that was exactly true that them. it was parallel to television. then, just as television completely changed everything, so is this, even a bigger works the because of the with electronics work today as opposed to tv. >> i found this " of yours and harvard magazine. you remember the profile? >> i did. >> to get any feedback? were you the editor? >> i was the editor of the editorial page. >> who was there? >> evan thomas was the old boys' club. esther dyson was one of the

great philosophers of the internet. many people. it was an interesting group. barack obama, and john mccain, any association? any cultural manipulation?

>> i think barack obama is brilliant at packaging and we should watch it closely. i don't think he has reinvented who he is to the extent that carry tried to and bush did. this is a master of the media that we have, now. mccain, one of the refreshen things about mccain is that he was impervious to packaging. they would try to get him to the set regions and he for the word -- get him to do set routines and he would throw the word maverick rebel tom, but what you saw was what you bought. bob dole was like that. they can't be slick. they're either too old or too stubborn and i think that is refreshing. >> have you ever met barack obama or senator mccain? >> i met them both. i met them as a journalist. i interviewed barack obama and

i was in a group of columnists that he talked to just before he was inaugurated. he came to the editorial board and did not get the endorsement. mccain, i met in passing, including a delightful if vaguely ridiculous party that he did during the republican convention in new york were a lot of journalists went during 2004. not 1992, i did not meet him that early. what i really remember about him is that he was alive for but what i really remember is his mother and his mother's sister were both there, these women who were still running

around in their 90's who were just absolutely fun, completely and packaged, so one like the kind -- completely and package, so unlike the kind of people you meet in politics. >> this is from december 2, 2007. remember that the election was in november, 2008. the headline on it was "who's afraid of barack obama?" >> this was a steady theme of mime.

>> in one of the debates worries that we might have to go into pakistan, that was considered a big gaffe when actually it was his policy. it may still be, to some extent. of the other half of that, -- that the clinton machine was unbeatable was taken as a given.

i could go on. i sense that you like barack obama, but you have been taking regular shots at him geithner and bob rubin. >> i am very disturbed by what got us into this mess. there is no evidence that it is

ending. what we have seen for the past few weeks is what had nothing to do with a value. it had to do with getting rich quick and not building the country. to me, it is an open question about the barack obama the administration. the people that help get us into this mess now on the other side of washington helping to make it better. >> we are recording this on the monday of the week that it goes on the network. predict to us what you will be writing about when the sunday new york times comes out. >> brian lamb, a life and the legend. [laughter] >> i am looking at a lot of things. i am fascinated by the o'reilly

fame that you mentioned. whether a bomb is executing -- whether obama is executing correctly on getting this done or not. a look at some of these issues that we just talked about. some think the fallout of the sky between now and then. >> people can find you atnytimes.com? >> yes. >> vet don't have to pay for it yet. >> not yet. >> frank rich, thank you for joining us. >> thank you. >> for a dvd copy of this program, call the telephone number and your screen. for three transcript or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at the website. these programs are also

available as c-span podcasts. >> next week, we will talk with ellis cose. he produced a radio series about people overcome the odds. that is next sunday. this is c-span, public affairs programming courtesy of america's cable companies. next we will show you bbc's "the record," looking at the last year in parliament. we also listened to the ceo of godfather's pizza talking about a conservative values.

tomorrow on c-span, a live joint news prompt -- conference with president obama, mexican president calderon, and canadian prime minister harper. it will in crude immigration, border security, trade, and the h1n1 flu virus. monday, republican fcc commissioner robert mcdowell on transparency as well as expanding broadcast during -- expanding broadband. "the commissioners"2 on ". -- on c-span2. >> welcome to "the record review." mp's reputation seemed to an all-time low.

the commons speaker is forced out over his handling of row the up. and find out how an actor and a group of soldiers took on the government and one. the expensing the scandal. >> the first installment of allegations from a leaked copy of receipts dating back to 2004. over the following days, more and more allegations were made. the conservatives and his wife both claimed second home allowances. this impi receive 16,000 pounds from a mortgage he had already paid off. the conservative got into trouble for works on his own, including clearing his moat. this impi split her second

home, in southampton. and now the notorious 16,000 pound floating of duck pond for his garden. he is standing down in the next election. all eyes were on the speaker of michael martin as he made his first comments on the claim. mp's he and operational sorensen unit would provide oversight. his announcement that the leaking of the reformation would be a matter for the police drew criticism from some. >> is it not disappointing for both of a sidestep house that bringing in the police, the metropolitan police who had a huge job at the moment of all sorts of problems, to bring the police seem to find out who has leak something