content is available on radio, television, and online. you can also connect with us on twitter, facebook, and youtube. . . >> terence samuel, when did you first think that the public would buy a book about the united states senate? >> i didn't think about the

public buying a book about the united states senate, but i did think about writing a book about the united states senate, and i guess there's a problem in that process. somewhere in 2000, i got fascinated by that idea that this great, archaic, historical institution came out of that 2000 election 50/50, and it was completely trying to figure out how to go forward with this relatively unprecedented -- as it happened before, but not in modern times did the house split 50/50 democrats and republicans, but i saw trent lott and tom daschle, leaders of the party, trying to figure out what to do about making it happened, and i realized that the institution came down to the personality of these two men, and i thought, wow, our government is so personality driven that i thought -- and that was the beginning of the book. host: but you honed in on the 2006 election, and how many people newly elected in 2006? >> there were 10 new senators in 2006, nine of them democrats, and one republican,

bob corker, and as you remember, the election that brought the democrats back into power after 12 years of republican rule after the 1994 republican revolution. host: we have those names that we are going to put on the screen. one republican. it starts with bob casey from pennsylvania, ben cardin, sherrod brown, amy klobuchar, claire mccaskill. bob menendez -- and bob corker, the only republican from tennessee. tell a story about somebody you

followed in that election. guest: the montana senate election was kind of wrapped up in everything that was happening. this was the end of kind of the bush presidency, and the big question was, you know, conrad burns, who had been the republican incumbent, he had gotten wrapped up in this jack abramoff story, and suddenly, he was being challenged by the guy who least looked like a united states senator. he was a farmer from big sandy, montana. he is from the outskirts of big sandy. he had lost three fingers in an accident when he was a child on his farm, and it became a question.

whether democrats could take this seat. i paid a lot of attention to that race and eventually went out to montana. after he became a senator. one of the big stories in the book, and he likes to say that he saved my life, and i actually acknowledged that in the book, because i left his farm on a snowy day, and i tried to go back to my hotel, went the wrong way down the road and got stuck in the snow, and i was looking around with nothing but snow piling up, and the way i got out is because he came in his tractor and pulled my car out and sent me on my way. host: did you spend time in his home? guest: i did. host: why? guest: i do not know. he is a nice guy.

i am shocked at what people will let you do when you asked. i asked if i could do this book about this freshman class and how they adjust to the senate, and for the most part, people said yes. host: so why did he beat conrad burns? guest: even having just reelected george bush, people were frustrated with mostly, i think, the iraq war. there is some question, particularly among senators, about how big a role that played, but there was this disaffection for the president on the war, and conrad burns having gotten trapped in this corruption question around jack abramoff, i like to describe the 2006 election as kind of -- not being able to recall the president, but they were so unhappy that they decided to toss his party out of the congress, and i think in large part, that is what ended up costing burns his seat. host: there were those six

members, if i counted correctly, who lost their seats, including jim talent. what did you find with a need ko -- amy clobuchar? guest: at the minnesota state fair - i am not in amy klobuchar's inner circle, but she is an amazingly energetic politician. our reputation of being a tough taskmaster. i never actually saw any evidence of this, but there is commentary among politicians. she is exactly the face they would like you to see. she is extremely funny, and i like to describe her as the funny senator from minnesota, given the fact that al franken is the other.

one of the other things about klobuchar is that she actually likes raising money, which many do not. she would get on the phone anytime, anywhere and ask people to donate which is part of the reason that she won. host: how did she win? guest: there was a congressman, again, and just could not put together enough -- she just could not put together a campaign to overcome the drag from george bush, and klobuchar was the prosecutor in one county, and she was on television all of the time and well-known, and she ran an

energetic campaign that beat him by 15 points. host: how close did that get to virginia's jim webb? he used to be a republican and now is a democrat. now is senator? guest: i got to know him. i did not go to jim webb's house. he had the reputation of being introverted. extroverted, an accident a senator, only one because the incoming republican at the time. who only won because the incoming republican at the time made some mistakes. he is a writer of popular histories. we got into a writing discussion, books, and he is not the classic politician who wants to talk about, you know,

returns in districts. he is aware of all of those things, but he is much better. in the senate race he talks about why the republican party had been so successful up until that point, because they were willing to talk to the american people about ideas and themes. not what he thought the democrats have fallen victim to for so long. host: we just saw somebody changed parties and lose, arlen specter in pennsylvania. how was jim webb able to switch parties and win? he is not the first. there is a long line of them. guest: it happened a long enough time ago that people did not hold it against him. he was never so publicly republican.

although he did serve in and administration. it did not seem so nakedly opportunistic as the arlen specter switch. host: there is one in arkansas. i think i remember his father had been in the house of representatives. guest: he was partly joking, but it goes to this point. this was a discussion taking place in the context of what we know of as the nuclear option as getting rid of the filibuster, very acrimonious, and my question was, how could this be happening in this collegiate body? the senate is supposed to be prudent and wiser, and the

house of representatives -- they are less and less different than they used to be. host: bob corker, the only republican, how close did you get to him? guest: i spent some time with him here. he is an earnest, genuine guy, who made the point of -- you know, he was the only republican in that class, and he has spent a fair amount of time blocking the party on some important issues, financial regulation being the most recent, but also, you know, the deal on the automotive bailout, s-chip. bob corker is a guy who got out of college and made a ton of money starting his own business with this kind of drive and

obsession for making things work, and then he got to the senate and realized that things do not happen because you say they are going to happen, or they do not happen next week because you put something in a calendar, and he had a tough time adjusting to the pace of the senate and the kind of give-and-take that it takes to be successful there. host: bob corker wins in 2006, the only republican to win a seat that time around in the senate, and george bush does not call them. did he bring that up to you or did you ask about it? guest: we went through harry reid calling everybody, the republican leader, and i said, "and did he call you?" and he said, "no, he still has not called me."

that joke is that he did not have a lot of other people to call. corker does not say this, but president bush the next day went before the cameras and referred to the 2006, and i think bob -- to the 2006 losses as a pumping thu --mping -- thu asmp sayinging as -- as a thumping. corker kind of reflected that. he did not say he was upset, but he did mention it. host: yes, but you go on to talk in your book about a meeting he eventually had, and he saw something in the president up close that bothered him. guest: this was in the height of the discussion of iraq, and he was a republican, and republicans in the senate had essentially been the last bulwark against doing what democrats wanted to do, which

was bringing troops home, passed resolutions establishing a timetable. corker went to see the president about iraq. he got the sense that they did not exactly have a handle on what they were doing in iraq. he was concerned about that. host: you say 44 men have been elected president, and 16 of them have served in the senate. only three have come to be president. only three have become president. -- directly. what do these figures mean to you? guest: they wanted to be president, so this senate is one of the places they go to check that box, and history kind of does this over and over again, but the senate is not a good place to become, to prepare you for the presidency, not

immediately anyway. that is why we see so many governors elected. in the senate, people are literally talking to no one, and they kind of lose this sense of connection to people, and there is too much back and forth. tom daschle describes it as, one, you establish a record where people can use it against you, and you gain a lot of enemies that do not forget, so that makes it harder for you to be president directly from the senate, which is why i think barack obama's decision to run when he did was a good one. host: on a daily basis? guest: i went to tennessee with corker. i went to the minnesota state

fair with klobuchar. i went to montana. those are the four. and then i talked to cardin in washington after they had been elected. host: what about claire mccaskill or bernie sanders? guest: having come from the house and was talking about the adjustment, the trick with the senate was simply a matter of learning how to use power. it had come down to that for him. host: he obviously wins in the state of vermont, and why does he win? how many people vote for him because he is a socialist? guest: not many people would say he is a socialist, but their rhetoric, bernie sanders, the little guy, not being a member of either party, a registered independent, wanting to take on both sides of the

aisle when necessary, i think that is really appealing to people in vermont. he won huge. host: so how did you go about this book? here we are, almost to the 2010 election. guest: on some days, i have described it as more alligator wrestling than writing, but the book started as, like i said, this idea that the senate and the government at large is a personality driven, and then i thought, well, the way to take a look at this would be through the eyes of these new senators, who were trying to figure it out, and so, initially, i started talking to everybody practically. i talked to cardin -- host: in maryland. guest: in maryland, sitting in the office of tom daschle, and

cardin, talking about the differences of the house and senate, was talking about how we only had 20 minutes, and then one minute, so small adjustments like that. not being able to follow an entire class and make the characters and the book, i had to take it down, and i think i went for some of the extreme personalities or personality types, shall i say, who nobody expected to be in the senate, because he was just such a terrible campaigner. he did not want to raise money. he was a party switcher. he was a democrat. there was the issue with his union membership in virginia that did not seem to work. at the end, however, there he is in the senate.

then there was another where there were stories about having campaign workers buy him food -- suits during the campaign. amy -- she had a young child, which is an interesting thing, to have kids in the senate, for anybody, but particularly for a mother. and then corker who simply had to be part of it because he was the only guy there. in talking to jim webb, he made the point that it gives the thinking in the country at the moment. i think he got a sense in the book that corker is the one republican, from the other

party, but there is the way he approaches things, something where there is a commonality of viewpoints with how you can serve the electorate, and corker has gone across the aisle in so many issues. host: you were born in trinidad? >> in 1962, on the birthday of jfk. host: what about your family? guest: my mother was a young woman, single, and i lived with my mother, grandmother, my two aunts, and my father lived two villages away, and, yes, it seems really far away. i grew up in a small village until i moved to the capital when i was 10. i finished catholic high school

when i was 17. i moved to new york city, where my mother had been for the last 10 years or so. i went to the city college of new york, and i started my newspaper career in roanoke, virginia. "the roanoke times." it is long enough ago that there was still an afternoon paper. "world news" was the afternoon paper, and i had a city editor. he never had enough stories to put out an afternoon paper, and he would walk around the newsroom handing out money to get stories. that was enough people -- enough money to get people motivated to

do it in most cases. i was in roanoke for 3.5 years, and then i worked for "philadelphia inquirer," where i covered suburban politics and got the first taste of arlen specter. for three years, i was the bureau chief in new york. i left in 1997, when i was a banking writer, and moved to washington. host: having grown up in trinidad, what is still trinidadian about you, if that is a word? what did you bring with you and how did you make the transition into being eyed journalist about the united states system? guest: interesting question. i think pretty much everything. part of what i think you see and not just the book but my work in general is this sense of wonder about how this works.

it is kind of an outsider's view of a system in a lot of ways. -- an inside system in a lot of ways. someone said about your astonishment -- someone said that writing should be about your astonishment, and i was an -- constantly astonished, and my transition was than evolution io understanding about what i wanted to do, and if you work for a newspaper, it is an unbelievable way to make money telling stories. host: when did you leave the "philadelphia inquirer"? guest: i had a girlfriend. 1997. she was living in washington. i got a job in the washington

bureau. one year later, she agreed to marry me. that was 12 years ago, in here i am. host: -- and here i am. host: you did not stay with the dispatch? guest: the "post dispatch." i covered urban policy i. it was about what was happening in the cities, late 1990's, and st. louis was one of those cities having trouble holding it together. the downtown was dying and everyone was moving to the suburbs. i spent three years writing about those things, philadelphia, tennessee, louisville, trying to figure out taxation systems, and then i went to "u.s. news."

host: and you spent five years there. and there is a website. guest: they do a monthly and a lot of special reports. the magazine as existed when i worked there is gone. host: the "philadelphia inquirer" is gone. -- in trouble. guest: yes, this media world that we live in is turbulent, and i think what we are seeing is a transition to something, a very painful transition to something. what i did at the "philadelphia inquirer" or the "post dispatch," how do we deliver it to a way where people find it

useful and interesting and in a way that is profitable for whoever has chosen to do this, and those questions -- host: in your book, you quote from gerald r. ford, giving a speech in front of the united states senators. we will play an excerpt of it, but that was one of your first quotes. guest: this was 2001, and, so, bush had been president for a few months. very acrimonious about how to move that agenda, and president ford came to the capital to deliver the leaders lecture, which was an idea.

so they invited old political eminences to come back, and president ford use the opportunity to talk about kind of the climate and why his party or any party should not be acting like they had cornered the market on either the eight years or the best way to do things in this town, and the very next day, that was may 23, 2001, may 24, 2001, jim jeffreys switched parties and gave democrats the majority in the senate for the next 1.5 years. host: he had been a republican. let's listen.

>> this has not fully prepared me for the byways of the world, greatest deliberative body. in preparing for this lecture, i came across something from another vice president, calvin coolidge. quote, "at first, i intended to become a student of the senate rules," wrote coolidge. and then he found that the senate did whatever it wanted it to do. "i did not waste any more time," he went on, "because the rules were so seldom applied." host: gerald ford was in the house for years and president, never in the senate. what was he saying there? guest: he was as vice president the president of the senate, so that is what he was talking about, but i think it is lore

for people in the house to make fun of people in the senate because they think of them as being pompous and pedantic, it takes too long, and they talk about it too much, and they cannot get anything done, and there is something of lore in this town for people of the house to do that. his point that the senate has no fixed rules is largely true. he goes on to say that the senate will do whatever the senate wants to do. the problem is, you have 100 people who want to do different things, and that is the difficulty of getting anything done in the senate, and now by extension in the country. host: you give us some up-close stuff about harry reid, the majority leader.

this may seem odd, but i want to ask you one thing that you bring up that i never saw before, and that is that he lives somewhat through the movies. he loves movies. how did you learn that? guest: well, i was asking about spending time, and one of the ways he deals with the pressures of the senate is that when there is nothing going on, because sometimes the senate goes out at noon on friday, harry reid will slip away and go to the movies on a friday afternoon, and then you get talking to him, and he has seen everything that is in the theaters at the time, and he loves to listen to movie reviews on npr. host: what was your reaction to that, and what did you think of him because of that?

guest: there are these american epic stories. harry reid's personal story, it is a movie with a great ending. born poor in nevada, kind of struggled his way -- his father committed suicide. the first money he made, he used it to buy false teeth for his mother. very, very poor. became a cop, a capitol hill police officer in the capital, went to law school at night, got elected to the house after serving as a prosecutor for the mob in las vegas, who, when they tried to blow up his car -- and i think he likes this kind

of sense of possibility that america offers, and he loves movies that tell those stories. host: a few years ago, there was a story showing how he has five kids, and four of his sons -- i do not remember the details, but they are all lawyers, and they are set up in a law firm that deals with the fact that in nevada, a lot of the land is federal owned. he has come from nothing but they are all doing very well. guest: he is very, very comfortable, and in terms of a dynasty that is propagating itself and is connected, there is kind of a sense of legal corruption that we sometimes see in politics. harry reid will tell you that they have never been able to prove anything, but the sense

that he is a very well- connected politician who has set his kids up, i mean, now, i mean, we are looking at harry reid running for reelection and his son running for election as governor, so that story will not go away. host: what are the chances that he will either win or lose? guest: i think, based on the hearing what i just described, never gives up, i think he will win. simply because he knows how to do this. i do not think the anti- incumbency narrative that has been playing out will necessarily hold up. host: what would you have said if i had asked yesterday about a guy you also know, arlen specter? guest: i would have been wrong, i think. i thought specter could have pulled it out because he has

done it so many times before. nobody has ever been elected five times to the senate. pennsylvanians after a while decide they're going to go with something different. alrrlen not only does it five times, but then switches parties. i thought partly based on what turnout was expected to be in philadelphia, he was going to pull it off. when you think about it, arlen specter has spent 30 years infuriated, tormenting pennsylvania republicans. in 1992, when it was supposed to be the year of a woman, he ran against a woman. he won with 49% of the vote. he went into this election essentially depending on people, and we are talking about a primary election, which means we are mostly talking about party activists, the most devoted party people who show up for

elections, he was dependent on those people, who he had tormented, to win. he could not quite pull that off. host: back to your book, you have a quote from harry reid, where he talks about the senate and his approach to it. >> thank you very much, mr. president. the future lies with those wise political leaders who realize that the great public is interested more in government than in politics. franklin roosevelt, 1940. mr. president, i have chosen this line to open this new session of the united states senate because the wisdom it imparts is as relevant today as it was 67 years ago.

people do not want more partisan rancor. we stand today at the cusp of a new congress, ready to write a new chapter in our country's great future. it is a time of hope and promise for our nation. the elections are over, and the next senate campaigns have yet to begin. today, we are not candidates. [gavel] >> please, let us have order in the senate. the majority leader is speaking, and he should be heard. thank you. majority leader? >> today, mr. president, we are not we. we are united states senators. we 100 are from different states. we 100 represent different

people. we 100 represent different political parties, but we share the same mission, keeping our country safe and providing a government that allows people to enjoy the fruits and prosperity and, of course, our economic freedom. host: if you were watching closely, someone was sitting behind him and half the time talking to someone else, looking neil around, not entirely paying attention, and if you listen closely, you can hear nothing but noise and the background, and then the presiding officer says, you know, "cool it." why is that? guest: they have gotten used to not paying attention to each other. they do not seek the speeches aimed at the c-span camera are aimed at them.

you have a lot of distractions in the senate. a lot of what you see happening on the floor in this senate is essentially record keeping, we have to get this on the record, and a lot of the actual work, the actual dealing takes place when two senators sit with each other or send their staff to work together, so a lot of what you see is just show. host: is it bad that the television cameras are there, one, and is it a waste of time? guest: i do not think it is bad that the television cameras are there, because we need to see this. it is one way to keep people accountable, because what they say, we know they say it. we now have it on video. we have it on film. i do not think it is a waste of time except for a lot of what the senate does, as corker says in the book, about half of what the senate does is a waste of time. there are the deals that harry reid refers to in that speech,

all of these things that we ought to do that kind of lives up to this prudent government model that the founders intended, and the day-to-day politics of making the place work, and the real trick, i think, for a lot of people who are successful in the senate, and i think harry reid can be counted among them, is how they kind of slide in and out of those. host: there is the so-called dean of washington reporters. david broder. he worked for "the washington post." i think he is close them 80 years old and is still writing, but here is the quote. "here is a washington political riddle, where you fill in the line."

david just does not go for the jugular. what is going on? guest: they do not like each other. he comes from that generation of reporters where they are always impartial. they do not tell you have a feel about particular people, and this one out of the window. in my view, i think he is kind of a victim of kind of a mythology of what the senate used to be. it used to be a place of statesmen. the majority leader as a model.

and so, i think reid, who does have a temper and can on occasion simply blow up at people and tell you what he thinks, and i think a lot of it was he said the war was lost. he comes across as intemperate when he calls the president a liar, when he calls alan greenspan a hack, but it is a different world. host: i want to ask you if you think the senate is proceed to -- the senate is perceived to be a body of statesmen, but first, here is the other side's take on what the senate is, and this was on the same day. here is republican leader mitch mcconnell. >> the senate has a role in our government.

it always has. it is the place where our two great political parties must work together if i common goal is to be reached. it is the legislative the embodiment of individual and minority rights, a place for the careful design, crafted by our founding fathers, pretty much operates today the way they play and it 220 years ago. -- the way they planned it. we saw this with the civil rights act of 1964. when the two parties forged a difficult alliance to reach a great goal. segregated buses and lunch counters are difficult to fathom, now, but that only came about through the kind of cooperative resolution that has

marked this body from the start. at its best, the senate is a workshop, where difficult challenges, like civil rights, are faced squarely and addressed with goodwill and careful, principled agreement, and at a time when so many things press upon us, it must be nothing less. yet, the challenges ahead will not be met if we do nothing to overcome the partisanship that has come to characterize this body over the past several years. a culture of partisanship over principle represents a grave threat to the senate's best tradition, as a place of constructive cooperation. it undermines the spirit and purpose of this institution, and we must do something to reverse its course.

host: were there more statesmen then than there are now? guest: yes, i think. a personal mystery, that is not available to someone whohas a facebook page, who is on television every day. too much information for any personal mystery to be preserved and that kind of this grand idea of the statesmen anymore, so i think, yes, it was an easier threshold to get to, but there were more than. host: senator mcconnell, it struck me when he was talking

about civil rights. is it fair to say that the democratic party as the image of being the party of the civil rights? guest: it is, it is fair to say that, and for the republican party, they never managed to sufficiently claim their role in it. you know, they were as crucial to what happened on that bill as anything. host: the reason i ask is because i went back to get the numbers, and you probably know, but just to put it on the record, back in 1964, the 1964 civil rights act, there was the minority leader, and lyndon johnson was president. the democrats voted on a civil- rights bill 46 for it, 21 against it. the republican party, 27 for it, six against it. the democrats.

actually, over and the house, it was even worse for the democrats. only 63% voted for it. guest: it is one of the most amazing thing about the party switches because of that bill and that time. the filibuster on the bill was led by robert byrd, and he got the filibuster, and he is now it in the democratic party, but the republican party -- he is now in the democratic party. the finish line, a lot of people who were democrats that are no longer democrats. as lyndon johnson said, it would lose the south for the democrats for a generation. host: as you move around in your social circle and the

friends that you have, how does this compare to yours? guest: i do not see the senate as a huge waste of time. populated by a bunch of buffoons, and i think a lot of people -- i mean, that is the news coverage. there is so much difficulty getting things done in the senate that i think that is being pointed out. however, i have the sense that there are a lot of people working really, really hard to get things done under very difficult circumstances. host: you have spent a lot of time quoted woodrow wilson on the congress. why? guest: because i was fascinated by the president as writer. he wrote his college

dissertation on the congress, and in part because he was also -- he was one of the presidents who had this highly evolved sense of what the congress would be, because he had been kind of a student of it, and it never actually worked to his advantage knowing all that he knew. famously, the treaty of versailles, that he just could not get through. host: something that clears its mind and in some extent, the mind of the republic. do you believe that? >> i think that is the role. the idea that senators would be elected for six years, so they

would be less driven by politics was the idea that would allow them to do all of this great work, because they did not have to worry about the elections as often as the two- year terms in the house, but what you have is all of these people who wanted to be president, so in some ways, the senate becomes even more political than the house because the stakes are higher. i mean, they are doing heavy lifting. but not nearly to that standard. host: of those from the election of 2006, who has done the best? who has gone through the last couple of years in your opinion? the highest and best profile?

guest: so much of the discussion was about the war. jim webb did better before the obama period because before then, the democrats did not have a good voice on the war. i think after the obama period, when the question became what to do about all of these things with the new president and his congress and how they were not going to get done, i think corker and his willingness to reach across the aisle has done particularly well. i think klobuchar has developed the reputation as someone -- someone who can talk to everyone and can work with a lot of people, and she has developed being a good thinker. host: --

anyone getting lost in the dust? guest: i think some people have faded from view. a senatorfr always a big deal back in the state. in terms of personality, i think bob casey, just because he is not a publicity hound, seen as very quiet, and i do not know if that is helpful for him, but he has got an election, so we will see what happens. host: we were talking about your past, and we were talking about "u.s. news & world report." what about after that? guest: i went to aol, a portal for black readers.

that was obviously new and different. i did that for 1.5 years. i started the book during that period. i went back to "the washington post" company tool belt run something called -- to help run something called theroot.com, which still exists. that brings us up to the current time. host: and what are you doing now? guest: thinking about another book. and what is going to be happening with these elections. host: so you are independent right now, not attached to anything? guest: not attached to anything. host: what did you think about this success or lack of the of root?

-- guest: we had the first meeting of the root in 2006, launched it six weeks later. i think it became this vital document during the entire election year 2008, and for something that did not exist htthree years ago, it is something that people have to read every morning. host: are we better off as a society if we go to our own website, black groups, for instance, or hispanic groups, or should we be reading and participating in all? guest: we should be participating in all of the media. the root was not established as their website but added to the conversation. i often described it as if he --

you went to a party, and around midnight, when everybody left, and there were 10 smart people in the kitchen, that conversation, which if it were the conversation among black people or among a diverse crowd, it was a different conversation that would be had. i thought that that was missing and that is what their root tried to do. we looked at the surface from the root, and they also read "the washington post" and "the wall street journal" and "the new york times." i don't think we were siphoning away as adding to the conversation. host: this party is going on, and at the end of the party, 10 of the most intelligent blacks are standing around, and the conversation goes to obama, and

you're talking about this man, mixed race, african-american, whatever, if i am a member of that group, am i happy? guest: you are happy because i am guessing that the politics of that group would be reflected in the president's politics. even more interesting that they are all black. they are people who are not that are not politically impatient. the question about how the president is doing and what he should do next, i think it is not a crucial question.

the question of whether he is dealing with issues of the black community would come up with some back and forth, but i do not think anybody leaves the conversation thinking that we are worse off with obama than without. host: john kennedy went from the senate to the presidency until his dying day. let's assume that barack obama survives successful and all of that, but the question i was asking, really, if i am a senator now, you talk about all the senators who have run in the past, do i think it is a good deal to run? guest: yes. i think the obama model is probably going to reinforce that, and so, i think we're going to see a long line of republican senators thinking about it, and a bunch of people on both sides. well, whatever happens in 2012,

a long line of democrats or republicans in 2016 lining up to run against. host: our guest has been terence samuel. his book is "the upper house: a journey behind the closed doors of the u.s. senate." guest: thanks for having me. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> for a dvd copy of this program, call 1-877-662-7726. for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q-and- a.org. "q&a" programs are also available as c-span podcasts.

>> up next, remarks by british commons house speaker -- house of commons speaker john burkhart. and then george osborn, the british chancellor of the exchequer. and then the australian prime minister can read takes questions from the parliament. tomorrow on "washington journal," renae merle talks about the rate of foreclosures for u.s. homeowners. abdullah abdullah discusses the political and military situation in afghanistan, and president karzai is recent visit to the u.s.. and doona pavetti and renae merle look at the u.s. welfare system -- and robert rector look at the u.s. welfare system. "washington journal" why that

7:00 a.m. missed -- 7:00 a.m. eastern here on c-span. >> hellenic taken will testify before the senate judiciary committee. you can find key moments from previous confirmation hearings on line at the c-span video library every program since 1987, it is washington your way. >> john bercow was reelected to his post on thursday. tuesday's elections were led by the father of the house, the member what the law is continuous service in the house. he is dragged reluctantly to the chair. it includes speeches by the new prime minister david cameron and harriet harman.