then they look at the impact of watergate with a fox news correspondent. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] [captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org--] >> i need you to to remind your members of congress why you sent them to washington in the first place. tell them to stop worrying about the next election and start worrying about the next generation. i'm ready to work with anyone, republican, democrat, or independent who is serious about moving this country forward and i hope members of congress will join me. >> the president also said in his weekly address on saturday we have the answers to solve

these problems. we have plenty of big ideas and technical solutions from both sides of the aisle. that's not what's holding us back. what's holding us back is a stalemate in washington. good morning and welcome to the "washington journal." today is sunday, june 17th. and for the first 45 minutes of the program, we're going to be talking about who has the power to solve problems in washington. the president or congress? the numbers, if you want to get involved in the conversation is at the bottom of your screen -- host: you can also reach out to us via social media on twitter, facebook, and you can also send us e-mails --

as we get into our conversation regarding who has the power to solve problems, the president or congress? went to take a look at how it was reported in "politico." the president's weekly address talks a little bit about this issue and byron tao writes -- >> let's go to the phones in new york. our first call comes from dave on our line for democrats. good morning. caller: thank you. host: dave, who has the power to

solve problems here? caller: i believe the president has the power to solve all problems, because i believe that the president holds the key to congress. if something goes wrong in congress, he should be able to go in congress, and you know, straighten things out. everything comes across the aisle. if you agree with me, i'll agree with you. and this has been going on for too long. the other point i would like to make is when government does, as time progresses forward, i remember many years ago when america bailed out the mexico peso. have we receive payback for that yet? i don't think so. now nobody makes a move unless america has something to say or wants to get involved.

caller: the very first sentence of the constitution says that all legislative authority vested in the congress of the united states. i wish it were scoint the house and senate and the president has no power to issue the executive orders. the president has no power to send our troops all easter the world and the president has no power to spend money whatsoever. the president has no power to declare illegals to be legal. everything is vested the congress of the united states. the duty asks the power of the president are very specific and listed in the constitution as well of the powers of the house and senate. host: let me get your response to this tweet that we have american hero. and he writes neither congress nor the president nor the government in general can "solve

problems without creating more problems." what are your thoughts, jerry? caller: well, yes, the busy body activism of congress of passing moralize and spending more money creates more problems for the united states of america than they do solve. there's too much activism and spending that comes out of washington -- host: debbie on our line for republicans, calling from fort lauderdale, florida this morning. go ahead. caller: good morning. how are you? host: fine. caller: good. my republican party and i'm a responsible republican reporter and i'm voting for president obama because my republican

party is sabotaging this country with the economy. they will move on the president's jobs bill and it is disgusting. and secondly, this will bring the economy up. and i don't care what the republicans say because they're liars. when the bush test expires, the economy is going to grow. and economists say it and i don't care what anybody says. this economy will grow. thank you very much. have a nice day. host: linda is on our line for democrats calling from columbus, ohio, this morning, home of the ohio state university. good morning, linda. caller: good morning. i think it's congress's responsibility. i think they committed treason when they got together and decided to see that president obama's term would be destroyed. in the process, they had destroyed -- we we have been 11

years waiting on the tax cuts for the wealthy to kick in and give us jobs. i'm the job creator because i buy things. without the money in my pocket to buy it, these companies can't stay alive. they're holding back their money. they want him out because mr. obama will help the poor. but we still have to get through the congress who have done nothing. they promised the jobs in 2010. if they were elected. where are the jobs, boehner? host: more from the president's weekly address. he says right now, congress should pass a bill to help states for thousands of teachers, firefighters, back on the jobs. they should have pass the bill a long time ago to put construction workers back to work --

caller: we have massive money influence coming in now and the corporation is being deemed people and my other side of my family is adams and our family fought in the war and i'm sure a lot of these people listening today, there was never one corporation there fighting for us, fighting with us. they were not in vietnam. they were not in world war ii or korea or any to the wars.

the people who do this should be thrown in jail and we should start making these people -- throw these people in jail because they're ruining our country. host: willy in houston, texas. who has the power to solve problems the president or congress? caller: both has to work together to solve the problems. but the problem is the gridlock is caused by the wealthy in corporations and paying the democrats, republicans, paying both sides against the middle. and generally what's good for these corporations are not good for the rest of us. thank you. host: bernard in groveland, florida, is our next caller on our line for democrats. go ahead, bernard. caller: good morning. the president only has executive power and people need to understand that the power lies in the legislative branch.

and congress needs to pass these laws along the president to move this country forward. host: bernard, we've got a tweet here from dirty water. jim at the lake writes what part of leader of the free world is confusing? what should a leader do? oh, i know. blame bush and congress. bernard, what do you think? caller: well, i think that the power lies with the congress and to the president to move this country forward legislatively. host: we've gotten an op-ed from dana milbank from the "washington journal" underhe headline adequate man without a plan." he writes i had high hopes for president obama's speech on the economy but instead of going to ohio on thursday with a compelling plan for the future, the president gave americans a falsehood wrapped in a fallacy. the falsehood is that he has been serious about cutting government spending. the fallacy is that this

election will be some sort of referendum that will break the log jam in washington. lyndon, virginia, douglas, on our line for independents who has the power to solve problems? caller: yes, i believe that when the government and basically the president and congress exercise power it creates problem. the best thing for them to do is not get their hands into every little thing. i just want to say that everybody i hear calling in tends to -- a lot to the callers tend to have a left-wing mindset and the way i see it is, you know, the president has become a dictator. he goes around congress. and congress doesn't have the backbone to finally standing up fast and furious. you have all these scandals. so who's got the power? well, the people should have the power. you know, this government does

nothing but create problems in my view. host: from the politico -- "politico" article. obama politics failing the country. he writes his address touches on many of the themes. the president on thursday told supporters the only way to break the congressional gridlock is by voting in november. this involve is your chance to win over debate over how to create jobs, how to pay down our deficit. your vote will finally determine the path that we take as a nation, not just tomorrow, but for years to come, obama said. delivering his weekly republican address, the wisconsin governor scott walker fresh off a victory in his recall election said that obama's proposals would amount to a government expansion. this is a little bit more of what governor walker had to say in his address. 30 years ago, the national

unemployment rate was 10.8%. but once president ronald reagan's reforms went into effect, we saw one of the greatest economic booms in u.s. history. we need that kind of bold leadership again today. to get our economy back in order. but more big government is not the answer if the president contends. instead, we need to confront the special interest in bearish -- to but the people back to work. host: who has the power to solve problems? the president or congress? our next call comes from manchester, new hampshire. carol is on our line for democrats. good morning, carol. caller: good. how are you? >> i'm fine. what do you think? who has the power? caller: congress does and congress is still sitting back doing nothing and they're hoping they get through and hoping come election time, they'll get the democrats out and get more

republicans in but the republicans are doing nothing for the country. all they're doing is putting in turmoil and i think the republicans should start getting together and start negotiating with the democrats instead of all this fighting in washington. they should stop and think about the people and how many people are out of work and start putting the people back to work instead of just sitting back and doing absolutely nothing. they don't want obama. and they never wanted him in there and they've been fighting against him since he's gotten into office. host: terrell is on our line for republicans calling from smith station, alabama. go ahead, terrell. caller: i would like for somebody to explain to me what obama has ever done in his lifetime would show an accomplishment as far as jobs and stuff like that. number one, the jobs in this country, if people have the common sense to look at when bill clinton and the democrats passed nafta and w.t.o., we're

going back to 1993, jobs started to leave in this country. you can go to any city whether it's north, south, or where and you see the empty factories. the democrats have gone out here and destroyed this country. the republican thing -- if i work for money, i should have first dibs in the money i earned. the democrats want to give it to somebody who won't work. we have a society who thinks they're entitled to live on welfare, medicaid, stuff like that. this is reverse slavery. let them get out there and get a living like everyone else. host: i've gotten an e-mail from steven who offensives himself as a democrat -- identifies himself as democrat --

caller: i think first of all, anything, if you look at our legal system, it's the lawyers. it's a joke. and our congress and our senate is flooded with lawyers. we should take every lawyer in this country in my opinion and run them the hell out of town and it would be a better place to live tomorrow because they don't compromise. they go out here and create problems. host: jeff is on our lines for independents calling from houston, texas, this morning. jeff, you're on the "washington journal." caller: thank you, man. i just want to say the real power is not with the president or congress. the real power is with the people.

host: next up is clinton, alabama, benny on our line for democrats. benny, you're on the "washington journal." go ahead. caller: good morning. i want to thank you for having me on. first of all, i would like to clear up a misconception. you know, i hear a lot of these republicans calling in, talking about all of these advisors and president obama.

there's only 14%, 15% in this country. whites and corporations are given more handouts than anybody else in this country. that's number one. now, the republicans are hell bent on president obama not -- spending only one term. it's a plan and none of their plan include the middle class. it is a war on the women. we need more women representing in congress in the first place. host: that's benny in clinton, alabama. this is a op-ed from michael goodwin in "the new york post." "post" -- he writes --

host: back to the phones. benny on our line for democrats. in clinton, alabama. benny, are you there? benny, are you there? caller: hello? host: hi. is this benny? caller: no. host: ok. then let's move on to frank, an independent in new jersey. frank, you're on the "washington journal." caller: how are you? it seems that to me from what i

learned when i was in college about the american federal government is that the president is basically the commander in chief. he's the head of state. he can come up with ideas because he has, you know, his crew of people around him that are basically a think tank. they come up with ideas. they pass them on to congress. congress has all the power when it comes to the money, you know. where money with spent in this country. but as of lately, it just seems to they just don't want to do anything. and they're just playing a chess game with each other. a political chess game, trying to see who can take the complete power and then push their agenda on to the country, whatever that jeabled may be.

it's been bad the past few years and it doesn't seem to be better. right now, we have a congress that doesn't work and we have a president that just doesn't know how to make it work. host: we're going to take a short break from our discussion regarding who has the power to solve problems the president or congress. good morning and welcome to the program. guest: good morning. host: we've got the headline greek candidates make final plea on votes. tell us about what's happening in greece over the last 24 hours as they move towards the elections. caller: well, -- guest: there was a flurry of campaigning that's gone quiet now. greeks are heading to the polls this morning all throughout the country. everybody goes home to their polling districts and will cast

a vote. it is has it has been for the several months, razor, razor sharp between the conservative new democracy party. that's one of greatest's mainstream party from the right and the leftist party which has really came out of nowhere in the past six or eight months to become a dominant force in greek politics. the economic crisis has upended the political order. host: what is the key topic that voters are going to be thinking about when they go to the polls from where you're reporting there in greece? guest: the key is greece's bailout from the eurozone. they had two by aouts totallying 120,000 euros. the problem is the bailouts have come with tough conditions.

budget cuts. lowering of the minimum wage. a lot is economic reforms and belt tightening that have driven the economy essentially into quite a defunct. unemployment is at 23%. the economy is in its fifth year of recession so things are very bad here and on the minds of most greeks is how can they deal with the injure zone? -- eurozone. host: who are the leading candidates and what are their positions in trying to work their way out of this economic situation? guest: the two main candidates left in the race is the head of the new democracy party. that's the conservative party that's been a mainstream party for the past 35, 40 years. it represents traditional greek

voters on the right. he's a party man for a very long time. he's an elder figure on the party and he's been advocating the pro europe progression, the position that the democracy takes and greece should continue with the bailout. the only solution for greece is to continue to go along the eurozone rescue and try to remain a good standing. this is very unpopular to the bailouts can. they have proposed some softening of the term. the other main candidate is in the other side. he is a former communist youth organizer -- the communist party in greece splintered in the 1990's. he's in charge of the splinter faction. it's a motley coalition of leftist group that has for a

long time decried the rescue plan that the party have endorsed. he is advocating a tougher standoff. host: what's the time difference between washington and athens? how soon do we expect the polls to close? guest: we're seven hours ahead of you here in athens. we expect there will be some exit poll results coming out about 7:30 local time. so about midday for you. and then the official projections and official results start to trickle in. they'll come in between 9:30 and 10:30 this evening in athens and 2:00 or 3:00 in washington. the reason it's expected to be extremely close, once we do know the numbers, it will be difficult to know what sort of coalition governments get formed. there are a lot of parties in contention with greece. there's the mainstream socialist party that was formerly in power

and communist party. there are a faction of offshoot party that take some share. nobody is going to get more than 30% of the vote. there will be an exercise to continue from evening to the coming days to build with a coalition with whoever is the winner. host: and is there a particular candidate or group that the obama administration sort of favors someone that they think that they can work with in terms of trying to help greek out of its current situation? guest: most of the major countries outside of greece, the eurozone and probably the united states would rather be dealing with new democracy because that new democracy has essentially agreed to stick with the general outlines of the program that the eurozone thinks is the right way to go. the u.s. has been quite forceful in country,ing the eurozone to continue with its rescue of the

country. the obama administration does not want to see a split in the eurozone. most analysts think that is more probable if sir rza gets elected. most would probably pull for new democracy in this one. host: charles has been talking with us in athens this morning. thanks for being on the "washington journal." guest: my pleasure. host: back to our discussion here in washington and throughout the united states regarding who has the power to solve problems. the president or congress? our next call comes from jacksonville, florida, sam, on our line for republicans. sam, you're on the "washington journal." caller: good morning. thanks for taking my call. i like to inform the democrats that congress has passed several bills.

all they want to do is blame the republicans. and when he was running for president, he said that he would zero in like a laser beam on the economy and he passed his democrats -- the senate, the house, and he has all the power and he passed that stimulus and it didn't work and now he's wanting to borrow more money --

and what he's calling the jobs bill -- host: sam, you know some of the senator reid, the majority leader and some democrats in the senate say that it's senseless for them or useless for them to send legislation over to the house side because when it comes to conference, when they trito work things out, the republicans who run the house would never compromise on what the democrats and the senate are trying to do. caller: well, the democrats won't compromise either. it works both ways. democrats just won't -- republicans compromise and they went their way. host: allison on our line for democrats in atlanta, georgia. good morning, allison. caller: i need to make a comment to you. i want to say to you before i get to the question that you were asking. you have a very good voice. the other day someone made the

comment about they can tell what color you are. you sound like you are a person that is articulate and well educated. and i didn't know who your voice belongs. i would hear you in the other room and i thought you was white and i had a friend who heard your voice and she thought you were a white person too. and when we saw you on tv, we say ok. whoever has a good voice like yours is, you know, a person is supposed to speak and have good grammar. back to your question that you were saying before. the congress controls the power in the country. we have a wall street congress and congress is bought by lobbyists and pay for and make deals behind american public's back. the people that are -- that represent the republican party are not real republicans. they are what you call country

club politicians. they deal only with big money like big oil and manufacturings and how they can make money through investments and bills. the only time they're concerned with what we call bubba bill or working class small town people is when they're looking for their vote and they go in the country pretending that we're here to look out for your problems. and when problems arise, they help pepper petch wait the myth that the minorities and those new immigrants of what they call illegals are not what's causing your problems. that's why you get a lot of illiterate calling in always talking about what they're called, the people living off welfare. host: let's go to don, a republican. caller: good morning. i think a couple of your callers hit it right on the nose. the politicians in this country are all lawyers and big business

people. they're not an average person in this congress or senate that are for the people. they're all for themselves. they work for the retirement. they like the retirement and they don't care about us. and i think until we vote them out and get some average people in there, i think this country is going to be in real trouble. host: don, regarding a tweet that we've got from fred. he writes congress, that is what the founders thought should be done. if the rule of law fails, then the republic gives way to the dictator. caller: that's probably what we're going through. they had the house and the senate in both parties -- and both parties are dictators and they control their party coming in. everybody goes in there with the idea that they're going to do something for this country and they all fall into place. it's going on too longing and need to be changed. host: the lead story in

"washington post" in sir ra, monitors forced to pull back -- syria, monitors forced to pull back. it's also the lead story in this morning's "new york times" under the headline "u.n. suspending syrian mission citing silence." they write the suspension of observers activities unless it is reversed quickly could signal the failure to the latest effort

by the west to reach a diplomatic solution and ease to mr. assad's power. the article goes on to say that mr. obama's choices are no better when they were -- no better than they were when the uprising in syria began a year and a half ago. host: you can read about the situation in syria in both the "new york times" and the "washington journal." seattle, washington, jason, you're on you line for independents. go ahead, jason. caller: yes. i'm calling about who has the power in government. host: yes. who has the power, jason? caller: well, it's supposed to be three branches of the government.

judicial, legislative, and elected by the people 2/3 from each state. -- who are elected. and they have to get together and compromise on bills. you just -- you just can't, you know, throw things out, you know? these people really don't care about us. i mean, because they're just -- it baffles me. host: let's move on to ena. she's calling from denver, colorado, on the democrats line. ena, you're on the "washington journal." ena? how about kansas city, missouri, elizabeth is on our line for republicans. are you there? caller: yes, i'm here. host: who has the power to solve problems? the president or congress? caller: i think it should be a joint effort but i would like to say it is very obvious that this

president wants a government-controlled nation. my husband is responsible for these difference every night for his 70 employees. it's very hard for him to see where business is going. as i said, this president does not believe in business. he believes in government control. and until he is removed from power or can learn to work with the congress, there's nothing that's going to be done. thank you. host: that's elizabeth in kansas city, missouri. mixed signals from iran before talks is the headline in the "baltimore sun." paul richter of the "tribune" writes --

host: scott bridge in georgia for the independents line. caller: good morning. i believe it is congress that controls the government. but congress is controlled by big money. and all they are is a bunch of con artists. they are the ones that are raising most of the money. you just look at your show daily on whether it's the senate or the house of these people, --

all these people just standing around and one person speaking. what does that cost us every day? and these speeches mean nothing because nobody else is there. there's no discipline in the house. they have votes. they say it's going to be 15 minutes. it goes 20, 35. they just don't do anything for the people. host: in the washington examiner, the republican of wyoming and an orthopedic surgeon writes still waiting for the "recovery summer." two years ago, the white house --

host: richmond, virginia, ralph is on our line for democrats. ralph, you're on the "washington journal." caller: yes, good morning. thanks for having me on. i've been listening to a lot of comments that the people have been talking about this morning and i agree with some people that the congress is not doing their job, that the people elected them to do. we need to have more people that is for the people and to congress and the senate. so we have to look at the democrats as well as the republicans, but not compromising all these bills so obama is only one figure that only tries to do what he can do to get these bills do but he's got to have the congress to be able to do so. and that's the biggest problem up there. i watch c-span a lot and i see where the democrats come in and they put their 31 votes on the top and the republicans come in

and -- have one or two. we'll vote for it and the rest of them get up and walk out and don't do anything. host: ralph on our line for democrats in richmond, virginia. this news and world section of the "baltimore sun," we've got this article regarding obama says "wields valve office's edge." mark writes --

host: las vegas, nevada, roy is on our line for republicans. roy, you're on the "washington journal." caller: hi. thanks for c-span. i think that the power should be share by all three branches of the government, but i think the keyword is who could be more influential? like ronald reagan was very influential because he struck a chord and it hit a lot of people and therefore had a lot of power. neither congress nor the president is really striking a tone of resonance well with the people. i'm a republican but i'm glad we have a two-party system. i hate to see one party in total control, but the influence strikes the right tone with the people has to be a common sense thing. we've reached a monocle of

critical mass when we have all of public employees and people taking their money from the government. once a critical mass is evolved, we won't be able to stop it. we will become like greece or california and that's where the problem lies, i believe. host: roy, you mentioned president reagan and he is the cover story in this week's edition of the weekly standard. the real reagan, written by fred barnes. what is the difference between the way president reagan governed and how he dealt with his congress and the way that president obama is governoring and how he deals with his congress. caller: well i believe that president reagan didn't really hit the problems -- he didn't stress that. he spoke more as a as a whole. and president obama seems to think that the republican is a dirty word. you get that impression and we

are all americans. and if president obama would take more of a reasonable approach to things, i think the country could be more behind him. host: as most people who have been paying attention over the last couple of decades know, today is the 40th anniversary of the break-in at watergate and there are plenty of articles regarding that. here in the "new york times," there's an op-ed by barbara allen who talks about female athlete and their thanks to nixon regarding the anniversary of title ix.

>> nixon, there seems to be a concerted effort too separate the memory of the man from title ix which prohibits sex discrimination. the espn website is running a tribune to the amendment called the power of ix, which it praises as a law whose ripple effects extended far beyond the u.s. creating a woman's sports culture awash in opportunity but there's no word of praise to be found for the man who created the opportunity for the opportunities. back to the phones, our discussion regarding who has the power to solve problems. congress or the president? our next call comes from robert on our line for independents in washington, d.c. go ahead, robert. caller: hi.

this is a great question. while the camps were still up and occupied, this is a question that i ask many of the staffers that would come through the camp protests in d.c.. and the most common answer was neither congress or the president. the most common answer was the american israeli packet pact. almost nothing gets passed in d.c. host: moving on to jeannie on our line for republicans from washington. go ahead, jeannie. caller: hello. i would like to make the point that the last midterm elections were the direct result of this -- how do you say it?

disturbing obama's work. that was the whole point was that was what the elections when the house was suddenly republican. it was to obstruct obama's plans. and they obviously are very successful at it and actually, i think that's a very good thing. host: we want to thank everybody who's participated in our discussion regarding who has the power in the first section of the "washington journal." coming up, we've got a break, but we want to let you know what's going to be happening later on in the program. after the break, a discussion with author and radio talk show host bill bennett. and later in the program, american federation of teachers president randi weingarten will join us for a discussion on education and the role of unions in campaign 2012. but first, c-span's steve scully sat down for a conversation with former massachusetts governor mitt romney.

c-span interviewed the candidate in cornwall, pennsylvania, during his five-state bus tour of election battleground states. governor romney was asked about washington being broken and working with nancy pelosi and majority leader harry reid. >> i think it is broken. i think it's virtually impossible for a group of 535 men and women to be able to make decisions. i think you have to have a leader. you have to have a president who will be actively engaged in the legislative process putting forth his or home run views working with people on both sides of the aisle and try to build coalitions. and i was elected governor of a state with a legislature that was 87% democrat. i couldn't have gotten anything done had i not willing to work with the leaders of the democratic parties to find some

common ground here and there. not everywhere but a number of important areas. that has to happen in washington but it will not happen unless you have someone who has the experience and the capability of really being a leader. and president obama is a very nice fellow, according to people who know him well, but, you know, he's never served as a leader before he hasn't run a state or a city or a business so he's learning this leadership thing on the job and he's making some of the errors that i think have accounted for the fact that this economy has been so difficult in terms of rebooting and putting people back to work. >> so do you think you can work with a nancy pelosi and harry reid? >> i think i can find as members of the democratic party both in the house and in the senate who feel that this is a critical time that the nation is close to a precipus and that we have to work together to find common solutions and you're seeing that. that happens more often than is given credit inside the house, inside the senate but then the

white house just drops the ball on obama case, for instance. there are republicans and democrats that came together with health care proposals and put them forward but they were struck aside. the president has his view. it was his view or no one's view. it was passed on a patterson basis. that's not the way to get the job done in a way that the american people will support. >> "washington journal" continues. host: we want to welcome back to c-span. former education secretary, author of how many books? guest: three. host: bill bennett, thank you for being with us. let's begin with the issue of independents. >> happy father's day. host: and to you too. the announcement made last friday by the president on immigration. was it a policy decision or a political decision? guest: i don't know if it's a political decision. it lends itself to that analysis. certainly a policy decision of

significant proportion. the question of whether he should be doing that. the law says otherwise. the law says he can't do this. so part of his job under the constitution is to be sure he executes the laws. the laws says other. he will say we will do it administratively and the law does not allow us to do. that is a constitutional question in the first order and that's the first kind of focus that we ought to give to it. you could argue he's trying to shore up his space with latinos, hispanic-americans for the election and that's possible because he's getting some good reviews in that community but nevertheless, we have to answer the constitutional question first. host: where does that put the republican party? where does that put mitt romney as he considers as a running mate? guest: the political question, it helps rubio and he as has an answer to it. marco rubio owe has his version

of the dream act which is an act to allow the children who are brought here illegally but -- against their will or without any say in the matter to the united states to become citizens once they fulfill certain conditions, complete high school, serving the military, whatever. he will be an important point man for the republican party. we're not opposed to principle to something like this if we can do it in a reasonable way but this is not a reasonable way to do it. imagine this. just think about this. if you're a president -- and in many ways, this is unprecedented what obama's done here or president obama's done here. suppose romney becomes president and decides that he doesn't want to raise capital gains taxes. he wants to reduce capital gains taxes. but administratively, he sends out the order we will no longer

prosecute anybody who doesn't pay their taxes. say wait a minute. that's the law. you've got to do that. same thing here. that's the point. host: let's talk about the issue of pension. do you look at any budget issue when you deal with the built-in programs that you have to pay whether it's medicare, medicaid, social security, pensions in california. that really does lock in the states in trying to come up with a solution. as you point out, california does have the highest tax rate in the country. guest: locks in with what you have to pay and locks up the money. host: so what do you do? guest: first thing i think we need to emphasize and mitt romney was off when he said people didn't get the message out of wisconsin about teachers and fire firefighters and so on. scott walker had the -- to issue a mild correction. it's about teachers and fire firefighters and policemen and other public services. when you lock up all the money in one place, remember the old expression lock box? set aside for pensions and

you're paying this huge pension bill every year, you can't do other things. you can't provide for your parks. you can't feed the homeless. you can't provide soup kitchens. you can't do all sorts of things in the community, pick up the garbage and you can't hire more teachers if you need more teachers or more policemen or more fire firefighters. the interesting thing out of wisconsin is that a number of the school districts have a lot more money now, now that's -- the pension has been de-- decreased. the problem with the pension is is that they're so huge there's a politically convenient way for people to avoid paying the bill. they say we will just put it into pensions and that bill comes into later after people retirement you just keep putting it off into the future and make rosey assumptions of what your economy is going to be. in california, they were ridiculous. and then the bill comes and you

can't pay it. so people have to give. politically, the most interesting thing to me about all this is how many democrats, democrat governors have seen their duty here and done it. people like governor of rhode island, mayors in san diego and san jose. democrat mayors have said we have to do it because there's no money left and there's no money left for essential services. host: jerry brown addressed people on the state's fiscal legislation. >> would the legislature pass another gimmicky budget? i did something that had never been done in the state's history. i vetoed it. i knew we had to do better and we did. as a result of the actions we took, california's bond rating went from a negative outlook to positive. and state spending is now at its lowest level in decades. unfortunately, our work is not finished. we're still recovering from the worst recession since the

1930's. tax receipts are lower and the government and the court have blocked us from making billons of reductions. the result is we're facing a $16 billion hole. not the million we thought in january. we would have to go further and make cuts greater than i asked for at the beginning of the year. host: bill bennett, your reaction. guest: yeah, he will have to make cuts far greater than he thought. and he will have to do something at state level and looks like some people are trying to address that as they have done at the local level. i mentioned san jose and san diego. but one of the reasons tax receipts are lower than expected is people are leaving california. very interesting to look. c-span has put a lot of work looking at people's patterns from moving from one state to another. you've got a test going on all over the country now. take that cluster of state, wisconsin, indiana, illinois.

where is the movement? high tax state, illinois, lower tax state, wisconsin and indiana. see where people are moving and see where companies are moving. one thing seems to be off the table and this is interesting. a couple of years ago, we were talking about with the federal government bailout, you don't hear much conversation about that right now. host: let me remind our audience, our guest is bill bennett, author, radio talk show host, served as education secretary in the reagan administration. our phone lines are open. and to join our conversation on line, our twitter page and facebook page or send us an e-mail. let's go to richard in lake placid, florida. good morning, sir. thanks for waiting. caller: good morning, mr. bennett. guest: good morning. caller: what i see here is president obama is basically usurped the power from congress

and called abusive power. imoperation ruling that -- immigration ruling that had just passed and you might look at the act which gives him the authority right now to use military martial law any time they want. when he by passed congress going to war in libya, now these are basically the acts of a tyrant, not a president of a free nation. host: richard, thanks for the call. guest: it goes back to the constitution and recall why things are in there like the phrase that the president -- execute or take care of the laws and be faithful and there are other phrases like that. there was a worry of course, back then, 18th century that the king would not do what parliament wanted, what the people wanted through their

legislative voices so this was a requirement that if it were the law, the king had to follow and it in our new system, we hadn't decided what to call this guy yet but we decided to call him the president. there's a great debate about what to name the new leader of the country. but the point was to harness the president and the laws and what to caller says is right and worrisome. there are other things that are worrying people about the president's actions. i find the whole business of his going through these pictures of these terrorists and putting his finger on one or another saying this man will die, let's take this guy out with a drone is odd and unusual. it makes me a little uneasy. but he shouldn't be doing that.

someone else should be doing that. but this latest challenge is a very serious thing because it's a big and important issue of immigration. and i think we actually coddle come to some legislative agreement on this. we need to see what the rubio proposal is. if you know marco rubio owe will attract a lot of attention for his proposal because of his charisma, because of his popularity and because he's being considered -- has to be considered the number two spot. host: you've written about this in your book. are kids today learning about the constitution? are they getting enough civics in elementary and middle school? guest: no. interestingly, adults are. we found that doesn'ts are very interested in the tea parties about folks who walk around, carrying constitution, declaration of independence, one of our sponsors of our radio show giving away copies of the constitution and the declaration and hope they will read it on the fourth of july.

and we do the constitution and seminars in the constitution all the time. it doesn't get down to the school level in the way that it should. and that's the problem. niall ferguson who teaches at harvard has pointed out that every culture has its cannon. that's the basic truth somewhere. .

guest: so the relevant advantage of unions in many places are on defense and they deserve to be on defense. my own experience as secretary of education, i determined that said often that i found the unions to be reactionary and aggressive. they were not interested in pushing forward with serious reform and accountability. maining accountable, there were good teachers and pay them more. host: coming up later in this program, randi weingarten will be joining us from new york. guest: she'll disagree with me. host: robin has this point

saying the fed is putting money to buy treasuries keeping rates low and causing my grocery bills to skyrocket. the president is the biggest government spender in world history from "forbes" magazine. guest: i suspect that's true if you look at the numbers. spending is one thing and myopia is something else, failure to see the whole picture. i don't want to jump on this president in the thing that every republican has jumped on before including me on my radio show on the idea that the private sector is fine and it isn't fine. he's trying to correct that. what wasn't appreciated in that whole debate is how big the private sector is. we took a look at the numbers on my radio show right now. 133 million people work in america. 110 million in the private sector. 22 million in the public sector so obviously what happens in the

private sector matter more because it's so much bigger. that's .1. .2, unemployment in the public sector state and local is 4.2%. if you're at 4.2% across the board, 4.2% in the private sector, a lot of economists would call that full employment. you'd be very, very happy with that situation. so when you realize the bulk, the lion's share of jobs is in the private sector, clearly that's where the attention must be paid and secondly, when you look at the unemployment rate in the public sector it's about 4.2 and in the private sector it's about 8.5%. host: next, from columbus, ohio. good morning to you. caller: good morning. i want to thank you for listening to my call and i have a question for secretary bennett. the question that i have is

addressing the initial question about constitutionality for the president. and i want to have you expound on the fact of what president reagan did and what the air traffic controller and was that in the constitutionality and responsibility of his presidency. also would like to bring up the fact, they brought up the issue earlier in the program about what president nixon did in the title 9. host: let's talk about ronned -- ronald reagan for a minute. guest: i don't see constitutional problems with ronald reagan but with richard nixon. you have to call it straight. when a republican president messes around with the constitution, you have to say so and when the democratic president does as obama does now, you have to see that happen. host: fred barns, the real reagan out this morning from "the weekly standard" and inside, he points out this.

reagan's own writings, the four elements of the conventional profile that he was uninformed, detached, dependent on advisors and lazy and in his piece, fred barnes points out not only his personal experience in interviews with ronald reagan in the 1980's but a number of books including the reagan diaries. guest: no, i knew reagan pretty well and i sometimes smile when i see these caricatures of him. he was very well informed. a lot of intellectuals think is that if you are smart and well informed, you have to be agonistic. you have to be restless with ideas and sweating and so forth. reagan was at peace with himself. he was a man at home with himself and his wife, very much at home, his family and this country. and he had a relaxed style about him. read all the time. wrote all the time. how could you write the things in the diary that he's written unless you were thoughtful? he didn't rely on one source of information.

didn't rely on the steady stream of memos coming in. he also went here, there and elsewhere. he would hear something on the radio and he'd call me. he'd read an article in the magazine and he'd call me. i remember he called me in my office about an article he read about a kid who was misdiagnosed for special education and ended up wasting two or three years of the kid's life. he says how do we do that? how does that work? would you explain that that to me? i said sure, and you have to remember this, too. there was a great essay called the hedgehog and the fox. the hedgehog moves slowly and only knows a couple of things. reagan was focused on two or three or four important things in his presidency. restore the american confidence in the country to a solid basis economically and culturally and destroy the evil empire. destroy the soviet union. and a lot of other stuff didn't

interest and that's fine because he saw the big picture and went after the big picture. host: when jeb bush says ronald reagan may not be a nominee of this party based on his past tax record. do you agree or disagree with that? guest: no, i think he would be criticized certainly but i think he would muster through. i noticed george herbert walker bush sr. that i also work thought his son was wrong about himself and about reagan. host: jeremy is on the phone. lawrence, kansas for radio talk show host, former education secretary bill bennett. good morning, jeremy. caller: good morning. class of 2001 and a father and i would like to -- guest: williams college. caller: very good. guest: i went before it was the number one small college in the country, though, i don't know about you, caller. i don't think i would have gotten in there.

caller: i went when they were, i think, number one college. guest: that's all right. guest: ok. caller: so i would like to remind us in talking about these theories that martin luther king said when a society begins to invest less and less in social upliftment and more and more into war and destruction, it's headed towards the spiritual death and so i would like dr. bennett to comment on what i see as two crucial pieces of what we're discussing here. one would be on the education tip which has to do with the way that truth has been overwhelmed by official narratives over and over in our country over the last century and then the second part of this has to do with the financial system and why we don't -- there's never enough money for the things that we obviously need and with dimon testifying to congress, what we see is the actual, you know, global corporate and financial system that runs our government,

runs our so-called federal resee, you know, teaching our public servants what they need to do. host: i'll stop you there. we're short on time. guest: sounds like williams college to me. that's the kind of stuff they teach there. nice to hear from you. caller: university of texas and harvard. guest: yes, i did my ph.d. at texas. my older son is there now getting his degree and my youngest son is in the united states marine corps, second lieutenant in the marine corps and both boys will be home today hopefully getting huge presents for their father. but whatever. look, i actually think we do have enough money to do the things we need to do. talk about education. but i've been working a lot lately in higher ed, this whole business about the financial aid and the burdensome on students. $650 billion we spend on education and it's enough. it's enough to get a better result than we're getting.

we're among the world's most expensive education systems per capita. but we're not getting our -- not getting our value. and we look at higher education, enormous expenditure as well and a lot of that burden as we're seeing increasingly falls on student and the family. we're running out of people in the family to put to work in order to pay for college education. i think some of that is changing by the way. we're now at the edge of a major revolution in higher education. when you see there's an article in "the wall street journal" a couple of days ago about an organization, this was courses offered on line by stanford professor. and students from all over the world took these courses. it was 411th place for one of the stanford students themselves showed up in terms of the top students taking the course. 410 young people, maybe not young people. around the world did better than the stanford students. what happens when m.i.t. starts

offering all its courses on line for free. you've heard about this amazing teacher who teaches the math lessons on line. again, for free. people might say maybe someone, you know, if i could take a test and prove how much i know, i could do this on line. and maybe i wouldn't have to pay $200,000 and be in debt $100,000 when i get out. things are changing there. and wouldn't it be interesting if people could get a first class education basically for free. all you need is a way to certify it and validate it and i think that's coming and i'm very interested in this whole area. host: you write about this. piece is available on line at cnn.com, "do we need a revolution in higher education"? chris is on the phone from canton, ohio. bill bennett, republican line. good morning, chris. caller: yeah, i wanted to say good morning to mr. bennett. i'm a big fan of his. i listen to his radio show often. and my question was that i

believe president obama's term is between liberalism and conservativism being that liberalism believes everything done is for the greater good of society over the individual where i believe that conservativism protects the individual rights. if you can take any one of his problems, let's say taxes. he believes that individuals that have higher incomes should be taxed more and higher in order to funnel that money to the lower classes which he believes would be the greater good. so i think that obama has illustrated the primary difference between liberalism and conservativism. i'd like to hear what dr. bennett has to say on that. guest: i think he's certainly liberal and very liberal and i think his model is the european model. i think that's the closest way to talk about what he's talking about. i think a little differently. i think he believes someone like plato in the republic, there is a group of extremely smart, well informed individuals and we as a

society would be better off if we let them make our decisions for us rather than make our decisions for ourselves. host: "the amateur" by robert klein is number one on "the new york times" bestseller list. guest: interesting title for a book. we knew two things about barack obama coming in. people shouldn't act as if they're surprised by that, the most liberal voting record. i talked to business groups and say he's dehumanizing us, he gave a pretty clear signal of that. secondly, he had little experience in administration quite apart from business. you can be a lot of things. you can be a haberdasher, you know, and being a good president like harry truman or be a general like dwight eisenhower. but he failed it seemed to me to

have a full appreciation of what the country is about. he's a smart guy. i don't think he really understands what this country is about and what it's for and that he is working for us, we're not working for him. host: our twitter page says this, mr. bennett, do you think we need the department of education? guest: no. host: we don't? guest: we don't, no. you might want to have some of these if you cans at the federal level and certainly want to enforce the laws, the federal laws and you might want to have certain kinds of student aid and other things from the federal government, though not to the degree that we have it because as i insisted 25 years ago, i think that availability of large amounts of student aid actually have up at higher education. we educated people before 1980. there was not a department of education before 1980 and we did fine. we actually did better. you may want to have some federal functions but don't need this monolith federal

department. guest: do you think mitt romney would dismantle this department? host: no, i think we had that moment back when i was nominated. and the chairman of the senate committee said i'm not going to confirm you, let you out of committee until ronald reagan promises he won't abolish the department. that was after the 1984 election and if you couldn't get it then, you couldn't get it done. you couldn't get it any time. i don't think that's high priority. the priorities are obviously to get this economy moving and not to worry about the department of education first off. host: warren is on the phone. chattanooga, tennessee. good morning. caller: thanks for taking my call. i have a comment to make on immigration and i have a question. the comment on immigration, the biggest problem with immigration in terms is mexico, is mexico is broken. mexico is a failed state. they have some of the best and brightest people. they could have what the united

states and canada has but the corruption has killed their whole society. and secondly -- host: what type of corruption are you talking about? caller: the corruption that's evasive throughout mexico where the people don't have the land, the drug cartels. mexico is a failed state anyway you put it. guest: well, they have a lot of problems. warren is right. notice the patterns of the flow to states declined a bit depending on our economic situation. this is the situation that we'll have to address. one of the last things that the government of mexico would want to do is ask the united states for military assistance against the cartel. i think they'll have to. i don't think they can do it themselves. i don't think it's a big job for the u.s. military if they were asked to do it, even to be at

the borders. i'm not sure the mexicans can do it. what this whole thing is doing instead is generating this -- i think, very bad argument for legalization of drugs and to make drugs more widespread. that's not the way to address these criminal cartels but that situation is not going away and it's getting worse. host: let me show you the front page of the "washington post," all eyes on greece, the future of the euro at stake. we look at that and we look at the u.s. debt clock which is something that mitt romney continues to talk about and the president now approaching $16 trillion. are there parallels? guest: i hope not. one hopes not. obviously, we're a lot more resilient than greece and a lot better off than greece. it looks to me that the reformist juices are working here. you know, i wrote something and one thing that i learned in reading all these other books that i read to gather my own history is don't count this

country out. just when it seems like we've missed point, we get it. sometimes we go right to the edge but the american capacity for self-renewal, we get it together and figure it out. irony is there. greater civilization, you know, athens and reflection and reflection may not be on top now. we'll find out what these results are. we're a long way from greece but it's a cautionary tale. it does tell us what happens when things get out of control and the state becomes too big. when you do not emphasize the right aspects of your economy and there are lessons here for all countries. there are countries in europe closer than greece but it's a lesson we can all learn. host: final question. founding father constitution, one underrated figure. guest: benjamin rush from philadelphia. he helped finance a lot of the revolution. financing revolutions and financing wars is a big thing. i just read this book "freedom's forge" it's a fascinating book

by arthur herman and it's about how american business helped win world war ii. you know, one thing that happened at the battle of the bulge is one german colonel was said to be crying. he was blowing up american tanks at a pretty good rate and they just kept coming, you know, this is the great detroit we want to recapture in this country and american business kept coming. without benjamin rush financing things, i think we might not have pulled off the revolution. one other is john witherspoon who was the first president of princeton who gave one of my favorite commencement addresses. boys, do not be useless and die contemptible. host: we'll leave it there. bill bennett, radio talk show host, former labor secretary. guest: education secretary. host: education secretary and author of 20 plus books and commentator on cnn. your work available on line at cnn.com.

guest: you didn't want bob bennett? you got the right guy? host: we always want bill bennett. there's a headline this morning in "the washington post" and an important headline. it was 40 years on this date that the watergate break-in took place. and the headline today, financing comes full circle after watergate. focusing on the 40th anniversary of watergate with james rosen coming up later in the program and the author of the strong man. his look at former attorney general mitchell, randi weingarten will be joining us next, the head of the american federation of teachers. first, as always. what else is being talked about on the sunday morning programs. nancy keeping track of all of that in our studios. >> good morning. on today's talk shows in addition to the discussions on health care law and national security, presidential politics will be a featured topic with the senior white house advisor david plouffe appearing on four of the five programs. c-span reairs the programs with

nbc's "meet the press." talks with david plouffe and the ranking member of the senate armed services committee. republican senator john mccain. also appearing, the author of the new book "barack obama, the story." abc's "this week" follows at 1:00 p.m., guests include david plouffe and former minnesota governor tim pawlenty joining the political roundtable. "fox news sunday" follows at 2:00 p.m. host chris wallace talks with david plouffe and senate homeland security and governmental affairs committee chairman joe leeberman. also the former director of the c.i.a. michael hayden. cnn's state of the union follows at 3:00 eastern and then reformer republican presidential candidate rick santorum and the republican senator john varasso talking about the health care law. face the nation is on cbs completes the line-up airing at 4:00 p.m. eastern. host bob schieffer talks with mitt romney and then former vermont governor, democrat

howard dean and republican senator lindsay graham. again, five network talk shows reairing as a public service beginning at noon eastern time with nbc's "meet the press". 1:00 abc's this week. 2:00 p.m. "fox news sunday" at 3:00 cnn's state of the union" and at 4:00, face the nation from cbs. listen to them on c-span radio and nationwide on x.m. satellite radio. listen on your blackberry, down load as an iphone app or go on line to c-spanradio.org.

host: joining us from new york is randi weingarten, the president of the american federation of teachers. good morning. thanks, as always, for being with us here on c-span. guest: good morning. great to be with you and for all the fathers in the world and in the united states, happy father's day. host: thank you for that. let's begin with some of the news from the wisconsin vote that took place just a couple of weeks ago. what are the lessons and what does this mean for the future of

public sector unions? guest: you know, i always find this question fascinating because when there was a vote in ohio just a few months ago where clearly when the question was simply about collective bargaining, should unions or people actually be able to collective bargain teachers, firefighters, police officers and that won by a far greater total than scott walker won in wisconsin. no one said, what was -- you know, are unions on the rise again? people just said, this was bad policy and they could see that and understand that. what happened in wisconsin and certainly, i am disappointed by it but what happened in wisconsin was that the voters basically said the following to all of us. don't use a recall for political decisions. recalls are for misconduct.

in fact, when some of us were fighting against bill clinton's impeachment, we said the same thing. so i think we need to learn the lesson that you have -- you fight out political battles, you know, politically. you fight out policy battles politically and you don't use recalls for those kinds of things. even with all of that, even with $50 million being spent against the regular working folk in wisconsin, they flipped the senate and there's one other thing i want to say about this and i was actually very pleased to see that scott walker the next day said we have to start working together. because that's frankly what we wanted him to do. the unions, when scott walker became governor said we will give you the concessions, mr. governor. we just want to make sure we have our voice. we understand that budget issues are important and we have to solve them. but he would not listen.

and unfortunately, we had to go through all these different steps and the last thing i wanted to say is money really matters. what people said is they never saw or virtually never saw a barrett commercial because barrett was outspent basically 8-1. host: let me frame this in terms of the national political debate that we're having and this is what mitt romney said last month with regard to teachers union and other public sector unions and what was happening in wisconsin during the height of the recall vote. [video clip] >> the teachers unions are the clearest example of a group that has lost its way. whenever anyone dares to offer a new idea, the unions protest the loudest. their attitude was memorable expressed by a long time advocate of the federation of teachers. he said "when school children start paying union dues, that's when i'll start representing the interest of children."

yeah. the teachers unions don't fight for our children. that's our job. and our job keeps getting harder because the unions wield influence in elections and campaigns. host: mitt romney last month. randi weingarten, your reaction? guest: look, i would actually expect someone who has been a c.e.o. and someone who actually says that he really follows evidence and follows the facts to actually get the facts right. frankly, al chancre who is the person he was referring to never said that. we've all tried to find out if al actually said that but he never actually did. i knew al very well. every president of the united states with who he worked, republican and democrat talked about how al was one of the foremost leaders for trying to

move america's education system into one where we help educate all children. those are the facts. the bottom line is when someone wants to actually pit people against each other, they do exactly what mitt romney does. when someone wants to actually try to ensure that schools work for all kids, they don't try to make the schools choice that if you're for teachers, you're against kids. and if you're for kids, you're against teachers. if you look at the facts for the last several years, it's totally different of what mitt romney said. that's why he's so out of touch with regular working americans. just yesterday, in california, the teachers union made an agreement with the board of education in l.a. where there was about to be 9,000 people laid off. do you know how many services to children would have been lost and the teachers union in l.a.

said no, not going to do that. we'll take pay cuts to make sure we stablize the system. on the other side of the united states in new haven, people from yale university to the mayor of new haven to the governor of connecticut to the secretary of education are all looking at what the new haven school system is doing. it's union and it's management together to turn around schools. yale is so interested in this that they have said we're going to step in and make sure that every single young person who has gotten a certain g.p.a. and certain attendance rate is going to go to college because of what we've seen the system do themselves to turn itself around. but if you actually don't want to listen to the teachers who are closest to the kids, then you're going to do what mitt romney does. if you actually want to make sure that we're helping all kids get to the knowledge and skills they need for the 21st century,

you're going to invest in teachers and you're going to try to make sure that we make schools the best they can be. host: a former high school history teacher herself from brooklyn, new york and taught in the early 1990's. she's a graduate of cornell university. also is a former president of the united federation of teachers and now the president of the american federation of teachers. i'm going to ask the same question i asked bill bennett which was asking him about the constitution, one of the most underrated figures who was responsible for the constitution, maybe i'll ask you a broader question in a moment. one of the most underrated figures in american history. let's get to your calls and comments. carrie is on the phone, independent line. good morning. carrie, you with us? try one more time for carrie. going to barbara in santa monica, california. good morning. caller: good morning, i wanted

to comment about bill bennett when he was talking about education and during that interview when he was on the show for that half-hour, he said nothing that was challenging to anything that he said from all the articles, everything referenced was something that bolstered his positions or his thoughts and for someone who said that there would be less crime if there were less black children born, i found his opinions about education or anything else really irrelevant but to randi, i'd like to just say randi, i need you to make another point and that is that scott walker was about union busting. all this, you know, we all know, yes, all the teachers, they gave in. they said fine, we'll take whatever -- we'll do it. we'll compromise. it wasn't good enough because it had nothing to do with teachers. it had to do with their unions

and that's my opinion about wisconsin. host: are thanks for the call and comment. we'll get a response. guest: well, look, barbara is right. what happens with all the tv ads is you would never know that the unions actually said we are -- we understand what the problems are. and we will take money, our members will take money out of our own pockets to be able to balance the budget in wisconsin and what walker wanted is actually eliminate the rights and that's really the conversation that we're having in the united states of america right now. and it's two competing economic theories. what america has always been is we have more opportunity, more rights, more of us being able to have a voice in our democracy and what walker tried to do successfully and that's why

people were so angry was he eliminated rights so he cut education for kids. he cut care for seniors. he cut the right and the ability for teachers to actually have a voice in their classrooms so of course, initially, you're going to see a budget shortfall that gets diminished but in the long run, it is not the way you create opportunity in america. look what happened in terms of right after world war ii vs. right now. right after the last recession, the last great depression vs. right now. right now, we have the largest income inequality than we've ever had in the united states and at the same exact time, we see the least amount of union organizing and least amount of organizations. there's something connected with those two figures and barbara is absolutely right. host: dan has this point on our twitter page saying bill bennett was one of the problems, not the solution.

education in america has gone downhill since the reagan administration. your reaction? guest: look, let me take a step back if i may and this is part of the reason why i love c-span because you can actually talk in more than soundbites so thank you very much. so if you look in terms of american education, we've always done a very good job for some kids and bill bennett was right about the issue about america and the ingenuity and creativity and we always come back from the brink and republicans and democrats, progressives and conservatives all hopefully agree on that point. the difference is what johnson did in the 1960's and ultimately, we saw in the 1970's as well with kennedy and johnson, with the first elementary and secondary school act is that they created it as an anti-poverty program.

and said that we have to help the kids that have the least. and what we saw actually was a huge decrease in the achievement gap when we first saw those federal dollars going with kids who have the least. and that's when we saw a big jump. we saw less of a jump with no child left behind, the bushed -- education policy because that was more about sanctions than really learning and teaching. still, right now in america, we have the highest high school graduation rate. we have the highest literacy rates. so do we need to do more, do we need to do better? yes. i would actually take a page out of our colleagues playbook and out of the other playbook, people and countries that have done a better job in the international rankings. this is what they do, they

respect their teachers and do the kinds of services that kids need outside of classrooms and what's happening is all of their kids, not just some of their kids are being prepared for the knowledge economy that we face. host: lee followed up on the issue of reagan and bill bennett saying education is downhill because of the department of education. and bill bennett did say here on the program that he thinks the education department should be abolished. it probably won't but it should be. >> this is what and i often watch people who believe in the market say this. they don't want any regulation. they don't want any oversight. look what happened in terms of the market economically when there was very little oversight. american families between 2007 and 2010 have lost 40% of their wealth. and a lot of what happened that led to the great recession that

we're still trying to get out of is because of lack of oversight. what the department of education does, and i don't agree with everything that they do, they try to say if money is going to districts, it needs to be spent in a way that helps the kids who are least enfranchised and that's what department does. host: todd is joining us from chicago, republican line. good morning. caller: good morning. i live in the chicago public school district which has a 50%, 5-0% graduation rate. they spend more per student than the state average. yet, they have a graduation -- excuse me, yet, they're asking for a 23% grades. can you name any other industry where 50% success rate gets you a raise and not a pink slip? and i'd like to stay on and listen to the answer, if i may.

guest: let me just ask this -- most industries, most markets have a niche and they get to decide where they are and what they do and who they sell to. our market is very different. we have an obligation, rightly so, to educate all children. all children. and i actually worked in a high school in new york where it didn't matter where kids came. it didn't matter if they knew mathematics in ninth grade. it didn't matter if they knew anything about u.s. history. i was their history teacher in 11th grade, my obligation was to help all kids. so sir, what you're seeing is you're seeing the effects of poverty, the effects of mobility and what we have to do is we have to do a better job. but our obligation is for all kids, not some kids and it

doesn't matter what kind of resources we have and what kind of materials that we have. what happens in chicago? let's go through this. the money that they're asking for is simply because the mayor has actually said let's extend the day. and what they said is ok, if you extend a day, let's actually get paid proportionally for extending the day. the union is not opposed to extending the day. they want to make sure it works in the right way and let's look at the conditions, what they're really asking for. they have said let's make sure more kids go to college. we need guidance counselors to help those kids. let's make sure that kids have health services. we need nurses to help that. let's make sure that we can differentiate instructions and the needs of kids and we need to actually lower class size, not raise class size. these are the issues that the union has raised. and so at the end of the day, when you see that 98% of the people who voted said i'm really

frustrated and the only way they can make that point to their mayor was through the vote that they just took. let's actually listen to what they're saying. i don't think anyone wants a strike. i don't want a strike. i want to see that school system work the best it can work. i want to see all systems work to actually really help all kids succeed. host: you want to follow up? caller: yes, i am. i think you're right, we should listen to what they say. but i'm also listening to what you say and what you seem to be saying is that half of the kids in the system are incapable of graduating or your union is incapable in helping them to do so. in which case, i say why don't you -- guest: i'm actually not saying that. caller: you are. that is what you accidentally said. guest: sir, we've actually had

market ideologies in education, you know, we've had charter schools for 20 years and had voucher programs and also seen what happened internationally when systems actually have that. so in the united states, in the charter schools, about 17% of them do better than other public schools. about 34% of them do worse and about the rest of them do the same. kids who had vouchers have seen over and over again that the voucher systems don't do any better meaning this notion of competition in our system really doesn't work. what really works and i've been in schools that have turned around, i've turned around schools myself. what really works is we prepare teachers and we really collaborate. one thing i'd say is this, i've taught kids in every single walk of life. my kids have actually won competitions on the bill of rights and the constitution.

i'd bet on kids all the time. i want all of them to succeed so please, don't put words in my mouth because i've actually chosen for my life's work to work with every single school child in america. host: talk about the societal influences as well from lee on our twitter page pointing out that poor families tend to move five times a year and kids have little chance to settle in schools and there was a figure in "the washington post" here in d.c. public schools, that only 1 in 8 children have a dual parent home taking care of them meaning 7 out of 8 have a single mom or single dad. guest: so what, you know, so this is -- i get into the debate in a very leary way. social, economic issues really matter. what the research shows us, that it's 2/3 of the achievement gap. but on our obligation is to try to trump that, not just to say

oh, my god, this is a problem. we have to try to trump that and so one of the ways, for example, to do that is early childhood. this is where budgets matter. early childhood these days have been cut and not advanced in terms of america because of the budgetary problems that are afflicting every single school district in the nation but what we know, for example, is when we invest in early childhood, you can actually overcome a third of the achievement gap. every dollar we invest in early childhood has a rate of return of $7 or $8 later in terms of the child's livelihood, a child's life. in terms of what the social price that we pay. but that's where the issue about resources come in. does it mean that we have to spend money a lot better? yes, we have to spend money a lot better but we have to spend money on both instructions and on trying to trump these socioeconomic issues. so, for example, that's what we're doing at mcdowell county,

west virginia. this is the eighth poorest county in the united states of america. and our union is leading a couple of private partnerships to not only turn around instructions to the young people of that county but look at the other issues that may affect that. for example, bill bennett was talking about technology. you can't actually do technology if you don't have broadband and in that county, we don't have broadband so the one high school in that county or the two high schools in that county, if you have the system on, you can't actually use the internet for anything else. if you don't have housing, you can't actually recruit teachers to the county. so we're looking at economic development, housing, instruction, socioeconomic issues, eninsuring that kids have health care. you have to actually look at all of this. when you do, take a place like cincinnati where we have actually wrapped around these services after school care, health services, things like

that around school. half the schools have these schools around them. what we're seeing is cincinnati is the only urban district in ohio that has made the testing requirements, the annual yearly progress. we're seeing that home values are increasing. we're seeing that kids are coming back to school. so up there are things that we can do. let's not pretend that poverty doesn't matter or challenges don't matter in children's lives. host: we're talking about education, unions and presidential politics. our guest is the head of the american federation of teefrach. mark is on the phone from florida. caller: thank you for taking my call. i want to challenge your talking this morning, and the actual facts are it's 2-1 for spending. my question is this -- wheat do you think the children of wisconsin learned when teachers went on strike and trashed the state capitol and the people who were elected to represent them

fled the state? what do you think the children of that state learned to handle any disagreement that their politicians had? do you think they learned how to trash their state? and i feel that the unions are teaching all the wrong things. and that's my comment this morning. thank you, c-span. >> let's see. i was actually at the capitol when you're saying that people trashed it. it was unbelievably -- it was an unbelievable civics moment where people have said that if something they don't like has happened that they should have the ability to freely associate and the ability to freely speak their minds. and you had the tea party speaking their minds and you had the farmers coming in with their tractor-trailers speaking their minds. you had teachers, you had

families. i know there were some signs that i frankly were concerned about, too. i know from other evidence there was lots of people in that place that were really, really coming together to speak their minds. i think that is a wonderful piece of american democracy. at the same time, i didn't condone the strike actions that people took and those strike actions actually ended very quickly. the issue is if there is an abuse of power, how people fight that abuse of power and in our democracy, people actually in a peaceful way, people have first amendment freedom of speech. i think that's a good thing. i think it's a good thing for the tea party and good thing for progressives. i think that's what helps us make an american democracy. host: lot of comments on our twitter page. do you tweet? guest: yes, i do tweet and my

twitter address is rweingarten and i think that twitter, 140 characters is a way of democratizing the political discourse. host: one comment from one of our viewers saying teachers have been turned into scapegoats in his words due to failed u.s. economic policy. guest: look, teachers, firefighters and police officers, regardless of what the economic situation is, we are honor bound, duty bound to every single day make sure our communities are safe and make sure the next generation has an opportunity to learn so this level of vitriol that is against people who spend their lives helping others is shocking to me. teachers, firefighters and police officers are also taxpayers. and what's happened in america is that instead of us actually

being able in the last 10 years to have people follow the american dream and actually with each and every year have enough economic security so we can actually put our kids through college, what's happened is the economic situations that created winners and losers. teachers, firefighters and police officers want to make sure our communities are safe and our kids learn and regardless of anything that's thrown at us, that's our job and we are proud to do it. host: yet, you have heard this criticism. many claim that unions protect teachers who are not performing well in the classroom. who are not competent and it's very difficult to get them out of the classroom. host: you know, i hear this criticism all the time. and this is where i say that we are at -- that our country these days is becoming an evidence free zone. because our union several years

ago took this on four square because at the end of the day, job security shouldn't be a job for life. what should actually happen is that teachers should do a good job and if they can't or if they're not doing a good job and are measured fairly by a decent evaluation system and have been helped, they shouldn't teach. so our union has come up with a way to evaluate teachers fairly, prepare teachers and evaluate them fairly. help them and pick due process, process, if they're not doing a good job because you're right, teachers who are not doing a good job shouldn't be in the classroom. but we have to actually evaluate them fairly and make sure that they get the help they need. what teachers want more than anything else is the tools to do their job, the time to be able to work together and the time to be able to work with kids and the trust from the american people that the job they're

trying to do to make a difference in the lives of kids, that people acknowledge and respect that they really want to do that job. host: michael on the phone, st. louis, democrats line. good morning. caller: good morning. host: good morning. go ahead, please. guest: good morning. caller: listening to the program that came on this morning and they were talking about who runs the government and i really think that somehow the american people have to identify each individual -- part of the government. the executive, the judicial, they have to be separated. then those people have to do a certain job. president obama came with a beautiful message to the american public and it was called the audacity of hope. we began to hope with president

obama. many things took place. then we had this economic downfall. president obama says stop, and threw money into it. he helped businesses start back up. can you imagine millions of people being helped at one time? so it was not that that failed. it was that the executive did not spend the money as it should. host: thank you, michael. any response? guest: i think what michael is saying is he's seeing from the ground, you know, what happened after the last economic downturn. look how many people lost their jobs. look how much of the middle class has been decimated. and so people try to find scapegoats for. it the very people, the labor movement who has actually tried to help people increase their income, increase their ability,

their opportunity to give a good life to their kids and their grandkids, we should be partners with business in trying to create jobs, in trying to create opportunities. in trying to stablize neighborhoods. this notion of dividing the only entity that actually at the bargaining table tries to ensure that people get a decent wage is crazy. and no other in terms of what you see in education and what you see economically throughout the world and education, no other country that succeeds does this to its teachers and the countries that succeed the most like finland, they have strong education unions. host: your earlier point from john says i'm a teacher. i don't want an incompetent teacher in my school. this makes my job more difficult. guest: and john is totally

right. we hear this from teachers all the time. my point is i've not seen -- i've spent a lot of time with my locals throughout the country. when we saw it was being used in a cloak against confidence, we have to change, too. we have to be in there trying to make sure that there are good evaluation systems because we don't want incompetent. what we want is quality and fairness and john's right. when there is someone who can't teach, it does hurt not only kids but the teachers who are teaching beside the person who can. host: self-described communist dog has this point of view on the twitter page. you can join the conversation on twitter.com. pay attention to the war on teachers, cops and firemen. military personnel, you are next. republican line, daniel on the line, defiance, ohio. good morning.

caller: good morning and i've been sitting here listening to your guest and trying very hard to keep my temper. apparently, your guest doesn't like talking points but she has repeatedly used them. in ohio, senate bill 5, something she has not read and the second page, part one, paragraph five, it clearly stated that the collective bargaining right would not be affected and clearly stated that collective bargaining rights was still able to be used for wages and for benefits. and for her to sit there and state that this was about collective bargaining rights in ohio is an out and out lie. don't even get me started on the american federation of state and municipal employees numbers that came into our city council and

clearly stated on a daily basis that people had 50 buses of people from out of state shipped into columbus to protest this thing. how dare you, madam, sit there and lie through your teeth about my state. if you can't say anything, do like my daddy said, keep your mouth shut. guest: well, sir, i actually love your state. i actually spent a bunch of time in your state but when i was a kid. i love your state and you have a right to your opinion. but that's not what the rest of that bill said. there were a lot of things in that bill that actually attempted to undermine any kind of voice of teachers and others and in fact, that's what john kasich, the governor was then saying. what he said was we want to make

sure that we take away the rights for collective bargaining so that you have the right to do your budgets any way you wish. and by a 69% to 31% percentage vote in ohio, they said no, don't do that. yes, they want us to work together with governments as you've seen in cleveland. there's been this change where the mayor of cleveland, governor, the cleveland teachers union has worked together on a new law to totally transform the cleveland school system. but what i'm saying, sir, is we have to actually work together. you and i, people all across america, if we want to help all children, particularly in this really tough economic time, we actually have to work together and that means that teachers voices have to be heard. they want to educate children and that means using collective bargaining to solve problems like we did in cleveland. host: last question. earlier, i mentioned in your words, in your view, the most

underrated person in american history is a former high school teacher, clara bart on high school in brooklyn, new york. who would you put on the list? guest: ok. i actually think even though he's gotten a lot of play, i think theodore roosevelt is the most underrated person in american history. i think theodore roosevelt actually had -- in a time when you saw huge changes in america, roosevelt actually really pushed to ensure that there were not only parks, but things that created checks and balances in terms of american business without cutting off american business. i think that his foreign policies as well as his domestic policies were such that they put us into a far better situation going into the 21st century than

we would have been anyway. host: thank you very much for joining us on this sunday. guest: thank you. host: speaking of teddy roosevelt, a book on teddy roosevelt expected to come out next year. his new book on barack obama will be featured tonight primetime on c-span 2 and chance for you to call in with your calls and comments and you can check out some of the video on our web site at booktv.org and james recognizen, author of the book looking at the former attorney general serving in the nixon administration "the strong man, john mitchell, nixon and watergate" on this sunday morning, the 40th anniversary of the break-in that took place at 2:30 in the morning on june 17th, 1972. james rosen and our look back at watergate coming back in a couple of minutes. a look at the sunday morning shows all heard on c-span radio and 9:00 for those on the west coast. nancy keeping track of all that.

good morning. >> good morning, steve. on today's talk shows in additions to discussions on the health care law and national security, presidential politics is a featured topic with senior white house advisor david plouffe appearing on four of the five programs. c-span radio reairs the five programs beginning at noon eastern with nbc's "meet the press." david gregory talks with david plouffe and then the ranking member of the senate armed services committee, republican senator john mccain. on the program, david marinis on his new book "barack obama, the story." abc's "this week" follows at 1:00 p.m. guests include david plouffe and former minnesota governor tim pawlenty joining the political roundtable. "fox news sunday" follows at 2:00 p.m. eastern. senated homeland security and governmental affairs committee chair joseph lieberman and michael hayden. cnn's state of the union follows at 3:00 p.m. eastern. talks with david plouffe and then former republican presidential candidate rick santorum. also on the program, republican

senator john barasso and democratic congressman chris van holland talk about the health care show. face the nation from cbs completes the line-up airing at 4:00 p.m. eastern. bob schieffer talks with presidential candidate mitt romney and then former vermont governor, democrat howard dean and republican senator lindsay graham. again, five network talk shows reairing as a public service beginning at noon eastern with nbc's "meet the press". 1:00 abc's "this week" at 2:00, fox news sunday. 3:00, state of the union and at 4:00 "face the nation" from cbs. you can listen to them all on c-span radio on 90.1 fm in the washington, d.c. area. nationwide on xm satellite radio. find us at channel 119. listen on your blackberry or go on line to cspanradio.org.

host: joining us from new york is the chief washington correspondent for the fox news channel and the author of the book "strong man, john mitchell, nixon and watergate" james rosen. thanks very much for being us on c-span. guest: thanks to you and happy father's day to you and my dad, mike rosen in staten island, new york. host: 2:30 in the morning, not far from where we're located here in washington, d.c. at capitol hill, what happened in the watergate building?

guest: in the predawn hours of june 17, 1972, three plainclothes d.c. policemen who were working overtime at around 1:30 in the morning sponlded to a dispatcher's call at the watergate office and hotel complex at foggy bottom just below the potomac river in washington, d.c. there had been a recent burglary in the federal reserve building, federal reserve board in that same building, the watergate building, they started out there with their guns drawn and finally came to the sixth floor. the entire sixth floor of the watergate office building in 1972 was occupied by the democratic national headquarters and there, the police found five burglars inside the democratic national committee headquarters wearing business suits and rubber gloves outfitted with listening devices and they arrested them at gun point and over the next two years through the efforts of investigative

reporters, investigative committees, judges, lawyers and despite a massive cover-up that was mounted by the nixon administration, it was determined that these five burglars had ties to the nixon re-election campaign otherwise known as the committee to re-elect the president and to the central intelligence agency. the efforts to cover up the origins of this crime and others led ultimately to the resignation of president nixon in 1974. that's the closest to a grand summation i can give you. host: share with our audience, some of the comments of the events that took place last monday. james rosen, for a recent piece you wrote for the atlantic magazine, you point out there are some inconsistency siz to these stories. how so? >> well, i think it would make, steve, a very fruitful avenue of

scholarly research and it's easy to do now with proquest and the internet and other technologies that we have today for a graduate student, someone who had been -- have to be both smart but also brave to look at every single sentence that was published in "the washington post" and in "all the president's men" under the byline and the truth to each sentence and i think the -- as the years go by, we see a higher and higher untruth quotient in that woodward bernstein cannon. we could get into the specific stories. the details that would be lost on your viewers. i gave an example in my book that i published four years ago. there's a famous episode and i think it's recounted in the movie "all the president's men" in which carl bernstein awakens the former attorney general john mitchell late at night on the evening of september 28, 1972,

to seek his comment for an article that was going to run and did run the next day that alleged that mr. mitchell, while he had been attorney general under president nixon had secretly controlled a slush fund endowed with hundreds of thousands of dollars that was used to spy systemically on the democrats. and this -- having awakened mitchell late at night elicited his famous threat to the anatomy of the "washington post" publisher, katherine graham but in fact, throughout all the watergate trials and hearings, all the memoirs and so forth, no evidence was ever produced that john mitchell ever controlled such a fund when he was attorney general. there is no evidence that he controlled such a fund. and in fact, that story was wrong and it's one of the number of inconsistencies and untruths that have since been detected in "all the president's men" and the writings of woodward and bernstein and i refer your viewers to the new biography of ben bradley published by an

author, a former researcher to bradley and bob woodward who documents as much in that book. host: full hour with james rosen as we look back on this 40th anniversary of the watergate break-in. as mentioned, "the washington post" hosting a forum that included former white house counsel john dean who served in the nixon administration until 1973 and reflected on the days after watergate inside the nixon white house. >> been personally in manila gave a graduation speech and made my first mistake when i came home. but i did go to the office on monday and magruder said you have to talk to gordon libby. he said i can't talk to him. i said what's wrong? he threatened to kill me. i met with libby and learned from libby that confessed the whole thing to me, not only has he been involved in watergate but two of the men as part of his team were involved in an

earlier operation at the -- on behalf of the white house to break into the psychiatrist's office. it's right at that moment i realize we have really big problems and i don't have a clue what to do with them. host: that was from last monday here in washington, d.c., former white house counsel john dean. your comment or reaction? guest: steve, john dean was a culpable actor in the watergate break-in and cover-up in my view. he is a benevolent actor ever since where history is concerned. imagine if sherman and grant after the civil war had ended kept going on the mike douglas show and on the internet and writing blogs and columns and a bunch of books all designed to portray themselves in a favorable light and constantly muddying the waters along the way. last week in an on-line column,

he promised he's now at work in a new line of transcripts and probably his most audacious effort to control the narrative of watergate, something he's been at work on for decades and i think he sees he can exert further control over the narrative if he in fact prepares his own set of the watergate white house tape transcripts. in my book "the strong man, john mitchell and the secrets of watergate" i identify as john dean the most likely candidate to order the watergate break-in and the creation of the crime that he by the way omitted in that recitation you just saw explains his frenetic nine month long effort starting with the arrest of the watergate burglars to try to cover up the crime. it's not because he was besotten with blind ambition, the title of his 1976 memoir, it was because he had a very large role in the origins of the crime itself. host: another player in this is a man who just recently passed

away. this is from the nixon conversations that took place inside the white house. many available on our web site, and you can also go to nixontapes.org to listen to these recordings. this was from september 17th, 1972, the president talking to charles coulson. >> people may -- >> i think that's part of a likely possibility plus the fact that they look -- i saw them on tv last night. >> you did. >> he looked -- >> we know from the polls that that's not helping when he does that. the only thing he had ever going for him was a nice guy and what

he did there, 11% of the american people thought it had to do with watergate. i think i have more confidence in the american people. i don't think they buy that. host: referring to mcgovern and the 1972 presidential nominee. i want you to take a step back and as you listen to that conversation and think about the media environment in the early 1970's compared to what we have today. guest: for contextual purposes, that conversation took place two days after the indictments in the watergate case. the indictment on september 15th of the five burglars who had been caught red handed plus

gordon libby and took place a few months before the 1972 election in which richard nixon won the electoral votes of 49 states and racked up one of the greatest landslides in the american presidential history. as a side note, i think ununique in media circles and certainly where i work in seeing things through a centric prism rather than a nixon centric prism and all too often, they ignore the model of 1972 that richard nixon puts together and tries to re-create in 1980 and 1984. in any case, with regard to your question about the news media environment of 1972, richard nixon used to sit in the oval office and pound the desk and used to say, we must build our own establishment. let's get ross perot to buy cbs. we need our own network. we need our own academia and need our own business roundtable and he was frustrated because during his first term, there was

no conservative intellectual infrastructure that would have talked about the president's vietnamization policies or john mitchell's law & order policies and over the years since president nixon's resignation, we have seen the emergence of a conservative structure of media and think tanks and all the kinds of things he used to sit in the oval office and demand that his aides get busy building. host: let's go to steve from haymarket, virginia from the republican line. good morning. caller: you asked my question about john dean before i asked it. are you aware of a quote by ben bradley where he said, i think he might have been a little bit tipsy but he was at a smithsonian party that said the hell with the truth. we don't print the truth. we print what people tell us and it's up to the american people to determine what the truth is.

and to get an example of where this actually happened, it was during the disney debate in which the potomac news, the journal messenger, the washington times all reported the truth and "the washington post" just simply fabricated and lied about the entire event and i think this is a good study in what the difficulties of trying to break through this fog generated by the democratic party. host: thank you, steve. james rosen? guest: thank you but i'm not familiar with the ben bradley quote you're citing. let's be clear with nixon's legacy in watergate in my view and i say this in my book "the strong man" richard nixon did eventually join the watergate cover-up conspiracy and there was no doubt an attempt to cover up the origins of the watergate break-in as well as previous crimes. that said, nixon was a good

president in my view. and as well, even richard nixon was entitled to due process. what i did in my book and with the permission of dan rather, i read every cbs news transcript from 1972 to 1975 and although nixon's resignation have led over the years to the mythology that everything that "the washington post" or cbs news said about him at that time was correct, if you read the transcripts you'll see quite a bit of untruths. for example, the cbs correspondent at the time, daniel shore reporting that former attorney general mitchell had told the grand jury that he, mitchell had approved watergate hush money payments to silence the burglars. mitchell never told the grand jury that and never admitted that at any forum and he wasn't guilty of having done that. that was one thing that went out over cbs in that time period that was untrue like some of the "washington post" stories that i cite earlier. it's a complicated business but

we owe it to history to slog through all those accumulated facts and report it with the complexity it deserves. host: comment on our twitter page. in other words, the break-in was unnecessary for nixon's re-election? so if that's the case, and clearly he did win re-election easily, why did it happen? guest: as i lay out in my book, you had gordon liddy running around, he was a fanatical anti-communist and someone who believed deeply in america and in the re-election of richard nixon and believed that the campaign should have the benefit of a state of the asht intelligence operation with both offensive and defensive capabilities. he did not propose a break-in at the watergate office complex of the dnc headquarters. all political professionals at that time including the chairman of the national democratic committee and richard nixon

agreed after the fact that they couldn't imagine what anyone would have -- would have imagined would have been worth seeing inside the dnc offices. however, we've done a lot of research since then. and we can take a look at the two wiretaps installed in the d.n.c. headquarters in the spring of 1972. one was on the telephone a secretary to mr. o'brien and that wiretap never worked. it could not have worked. it required a line of sight of transmission from the telephone over to the listening post across the street on virginia avenue at the howard johnson's motor lodge. the other wiretap was placed on the telephone of the secretary to a man named r. spencer, oliver jr., that wiretap did work for three weeks and it was monitored. and by all accounts, the conversations that were overheard on that wiretap by the wiretap monitor alfred c. baldwin, another ex-f.b.i. agent who was installed across the

street with a lot of electronics gear listening to the conversation at the howard johnson's, by all accounts, those conversations were sexually explicit. there is evidence to suggest that this telephone was being used for the purpose of setting up dates for democratic party chairmen from around the 50 states and other young democrats who would come into washington, d.c. in the spring of 1972, and a prostitution ring that operated out of the columbia plaza apartment complex just a few blocks away from the watergate. the evidence further suggests that john dean's wife maureen dean might have something to do with that prostitution ring and that's what's accounted to suggestions over the years that increased that it's john dean who ordered this break-in. there has never been any evidence to suggest that richard nixon knew about the watergate break-in in advance. host: as you know and we've talked to john dean about this,

he strongly refutes anything involving his wife and prostitution ring and has done so vehemently. guest: he has and he has mitigated over the issue without much success. he has threatened me multiple times over the years with lawsuits or -- and the last time that he was on your program, as i recall, he said to you, steve, rosen and i are going to have our day. and that was vaguely menacing. the statute of limitations lapsed in all ways he could follow suit. he promised he was going to eviscerate him in his reissued edition of "blind ambition" that was 100 pages long and made no mention of me so one has to conclude if mr. dean had the evidence with which to contest my version of the facts, he would have done so by now. he has not. host: we've been asking our viewers to share in their questions and comments, here is one of them for james rosen.

[video clip] >> given the level of scandal that watergate caused at the time, i'm curious how you feel it has affected the american political landscape since. guest: watergate was a multidimensional profound event that touched every area of the american political system from campaign finance laws that have been enacted in its wake to conduct of the news media to the conduct of the presidency and so it's hard to identify just one of those aspects but i would say we are a more cynical nation since watergate. we have less trust in our institutions including the news media and if you read a book like the one about the lawsuits against "time" and cbs by ariel sharon and general wes moreland,

that's one good reason why. but it's also the case that the internet has occurred, has arisen since watergate and a number of other things, 9/11 which put watergate in its perspective. i think the idea of fred larue skulking around washington with a manila envelope full of recycled $100 bills sounds petty when juxtaposed to people on 9/11, so history continues to unfold and give us new perspective on watergate and what the effects were. host: couple of follow-up points. focusing on the financing and the essence of the piece. financing has come full circle since watergate and the incidents have been undercut by changes, most notably of course, the citizens united case. guest: you know, i did a three part series on political advertising for fox newschannel over the last week, steve and we

looked at bash because it's important that the advertising is directly related to what you're raising. it's estimated that half of all money raised in politics, whether the house, senate or presidential levels all added up goes to the purchase of tv and radio air time. so when we talk about campaign finance, a lot of times we're really talking about political advertising because that's what so much of that money is used to purchase and we saw that in my research that although the citizens united decision had a profound impact and we should note for the benefit of your viewers, it was a 2010 u.s. supreme court ruling that recognized as free speech virtually unlimited raising and spending in political campaigns by outside groups and unions and corporations, but although the impact of citizens united it's not the only that changed the political landscape and there was another one that severely

limited the ability of parties to raise funds and spend them in political campaigns. when you decrease the amounts that the party candidates can raise and you recognize virtually no limits on what the outside groups can do, that's where you get our modified landscape. it's also important to note that even before citizens united back in 2004, for example, of a billionaire like george soros could write very large $20 to $25 million collection to liberal groups for the purpose of airing attack ads against the incumbent president george w. bush so citizens united is not a kind of one stop shopping for reversal of everything that happened by way of reform after watergate. host: our conversation with james rosen who began his career as a researcher at cbs news. he covered the white house and state department for the fox newschannel. chief washington correspondent and graduate of johns hopkins university, earned his master's from northwestern's school of journalism and we have a twitter

comment. how did mr. rosen feel about wikileaks? before you answer that specific question, let me take you back to this panel we covered with bob woodward and carl bernstein when they talked about the digital age we live in today compared to the watergate in the early 1970's. [video clip] i think the internet could have helped with connections and so forth. we talked about this to journalism students in schools and they somehow think that the internet is a magic lantern and you can google secret thoughts and out would come all the data you need and, you know, that's just not true. the good stuff is not on the internet. >> the night that we found the check that established that the nixon money had gone into the burglars -- nixon campaign money had gone into the burglars account. i found this check in florida and called woodward back into

the office and he went back into the library and found about a dozen city directories and we had a name, kenneth h.dahlberg and we thought he was from minnesota. he found a minnesota directory. and he found the guy. the difference today is you would find them quicker through google but it wouldn't be basically different. the basic methodology remains. host: james rosen, comments, reaction? guest: i'm inclined to agree with those comments. with respect to the viewer comment about wikileaks. wikileaks is an enormously important event and it takes the leaking of classified material which under the nixon administration had reached a kind of zenith particularly with the involvement of jack anderson and his publication in his syndicated column in 1971 of minutes from a national security council meeting that had occurred just four days earlier

concerning the indopakistani war at the time and the number of other leaks that went to anderson and, of course, the pentagon papers which were leaked by daniel elsburg to "the new york times," the leak of the united states fallback negotiating position at the arms control negotiations with the soviet union in july of 1971, nixon and his men felt they simply couldn't conduct government under those conditions and they were right about that. which is one of the reasons why we saw a profusion of wiretap -- national security wiretaps under president nixon but the wicksy leaks event takes that, magnifies that exponentially in sheer scale of the documents although it's interesting from all that came out of wikileaks and i didn't follow it to the letter but i don't recall, steve, and you correct me if i'm wrong that there was one giant story that came out of wikileaks other than the prosecution of the leaker or the suspected

leaker. whereas in the nixon era leaks, you remember those leaks. the fallback negotiation for the talks, the systemic deception of the united states over the previous administrations of kennedy and johnson in the pentagon papers, these were major disclosures but i struggle to think of something huge despite all the scale of the leaking in wikileaks that we learned from it. host: claude is on the phone from wendell, massachusetts. good morning. caller: good morning and happy father's day. and i was compelled to put this out on the table. my coin term mccabre, plumber-esque, that comment is in regards to your question. do you believe -- i'm always concerned that people like

reince priebus, it seems to me that the republican party doesn't have a revolutionary platform that's so compellingly revolutionary that they couldn't revert back to these, like i said, really mccabre and it's going to be more complicated than it was back then, this is 21st century. i'd like to maybe comment on that. guest: i, too, am a fan of that word mccabre. i'm not sure what to make of the question honestly. host: let's go to alan who is joining us from orange, new jersey. republican line with james rosen from new york. good morning. caller: good morning, how are you? happy father's day. my question is do you know the black man that originally was the guard that noticed the break-in and he was the first one to call the police? do you know his name and why did

they black ball him all those years? host: that's one of the opening scenes from "all the president's men" that you know so well. guest: and the individual the caller is mentioning plays himself. we're talking about the corporate security guard on duty that night that detected the movements of the burglars not once and not twice but also delayed calling in. the most thorough reconstruction of the events of the watergate break-in itself was published in a book called "the secret agenda" and he tracked his movements very carefully. he was the first pair of outside eyes outside of the government to gain access to the 10,000 pages of the f.b.i.'s original watergate break-in investigation file and that's how he was able to reconstruct the break-in so

vividly and in such detailed fashion. i don't know that frank wills was black balled per se over the rest of his life but he's deceased now. host: let's go back to some of your calls and comments and questions. this from one of our viewers. [video clip] >> i was wondering in regards to the watergate scandal, i was going to see, are we still feeling any repercussions from that or any long-term effects? host: long-term effects of watergate, james rosen? guest: i think we covered some of this earlier in terms of the decline and trust of institutions. i think the presidency is not as strong as it, perhaps, once was. there have been aefforts by actors in the white house to try to reinvigorate the presidency and reclaim powers that were lost in the wake of watergate. the war powers act was passed which circumscribed the president's ability to wage war, the budget act that placed limits on the executive where's the budget is concerned, it goes

on and on. this continues to be a struggle between the executive and legislature. host: more infamous conversations from march of 1973, nixon in the white house with his counselor john dean. >> i think that there's no doubt about the seriousness that we got. we have a cancer within the cloak of the presidency that's growing. it's growing daily. and it's compounded geometrically now because it compounds itself. be clearer if i explain some of the details about why it is, basically because, one, we're being blackmailed. two, people are going to start perjuring themselves very quickly, they do not have to perjure themselves, two protect other people and there's no

assurance. host: james rosen, put this conversation in context, it was after richard nixon was re-elected early in the investigation just before the congressional inquiries begin in the spring of 1973. guest: that's right. the senate had recently voted to establish a select committee to investigate watergate. the wiretapper who had a long history with c.i.a. had recently issued a letter to the judge in the case alleging massive perjury and cover-up. what had happened was that, you know, you heard john dean use the term blackmail. they were being blackmailed, he alleged, by the burglars and their attorneys. the burglars and their attorneys didn't see it that way. howard hunt who had helped mastermind the break-in and gordon liddy and the bay of pigs veterans, the cubans and the c.i.a. men all part of this break-in team regarded not that

they were blackmailing the nixon white house but they were expecting the traditional rules of the spy game to be observed which is when you're caught in an undercover or covert mission of some kind, your principles, the people that hired you take care of you and your families and your legal fees. the nixon administration had nine months in which to do that. they were skittish in doing that in the run-up to the november 1972 elections. john dean was the acknowledged ringleader of the effort to provide money to the burglars and their lawyers and their families and when we hear him in that famous clip that was just played in the cancer on the presidency meeting, it has been dean's contention this was his whole effort to pull the plug on the dean cover-up. they never fully paid up the burglars and their lawyers. they were always in arrears. frankly, if you imagine any subsequent administration being asked, how much is it going to

cost that nixon went on in that conversation and dean held out a figure and said i figure it's going to cost about $2 million, you can't imagine any subsequent white house having trouble managing a mundane task as the provision of $2 million in untraceable cash to two ex-c.i.a. men. one imagine any subsequent presidents saying fine, what street corner and what denominations? the nixon people were inept at it and never paid up. far be it from john dean's effort to pull the plug on the watergate cover-up, if you look at the tapes and listen to the tapes that surround the clip that you just played, the day before, the day after, dean was very much active in trying to enlist the president and former attorney general mitchell to try to get that money paid. that's my take on that conversation. >> it was three weeks later that he had this conversation and this is from april of 1973. let's listen.

>> at least i think -- i think now they pretty much know what the worst is. i don't know what the hell else they could have if any worse, if you know what i mean. >> that's right. >> i don't know that -- unless somebody has a piece of paper that somebody signed or some goddamn thing but that i doubt. >> doesn't appear there is such a thing. no hint of that. what's in here is all stuff that has been hinted at. it goes further than what was in that area. obviously, it's totally consistent basically with whatever they've done. >> let me ask you this -- i wonder if it's not only fair but in our interest for either you or john without going into too much detail to fill them in on magruder.

i mean, having in mind colson has -- >> colson. we have no interest, you know what i mean, in getting his ass up there, you know, on a perjury charge. >> nothing he's said that's consistent with anything that chuck has said. >> oh? >> you could be right. i thought the lady project was -- >> that's what he does say. >> he does. >> as i said in questioning a certain thing that he said that he didn't get into the -- any specifics on it and they had

nothing that hits him on any specifics and i think he's probably clear on it. >> i think he believes that, bob. i know. >> he does. >> i think he believes that. but -- >> felt that all along. >> james rosen put that conversation into perspective. it's important to note that shortly thereafter, they had left the white house and they were forced out. guest: right, bob halderman was the white house chief of staff. he deserves a good book to be written about him. i'm not sure what the title would be but the subtitle should be h.r. halderman and making of the modern presidency. he revolutionized the communications era of the white house. and he was brilliantly efficient. he described halderman as a precomputer organizational genius and so he deserves a good biography written about him. as for the specific context of

the conversation we just heard, i lay this out in "the strong man" richard nixon was not the puppeteer of the watergate skablgdz. nixon was ignorant about the origins of the original crime. he had trouble keeping all the players straight. most of them were junior men whose path they didn't cross and he couldn't keep the magruders and deans straight in his mind. he couldn't keep straight in his mind whose testimony was hearsay and who was direct. watergate was a series -- aside from the certain concrete sweaty acts like the break-in, certain destruction of evidence, mostly all the obstructions of justice consisted of conversations on the phone, conversations in meetings. it was an information age event, much of it recorded on tape.

and having researched it i can tell you that if you have five participants in a conversation, most of them lawyers, by the way, and these same five rotating cast of people with a few additions and subtractions and then have several more conversations and each individual is questioned about it in the grand jury by, let's say, "the los angel by the f.b.i., by the senate hearings, in the executive session of the senate, in executive session before the house impeachment committee or in public session by the house impeachment committee and they go off and they write five or seven memoirs where they change their stories some more, same with magruder what is you have a matrix of different recollections. you have five guys and 25 different recollections. richard nixon who was an atomic age president couldn't keep that all straight in his mind. and even john dean noted that he

had found nixon disorganized, rambling. not lucid when it came to his discussions about watergate. he was fumbling through this event. and i think the taped clip that you just played demonstrates that ambly. host: on c-span radio heard coast to coast. we're looking back on this day, the 40th anniversary of the break-in that took place in the middle of the night on june 17, 1972. our guest is james rosen, senior washington correspondent for the fox newschannel and the author of "the strong man, a look back at attorney general john mitchell, nixon and watergate." vick is on the phone, pittsburgh, missouri. good morning to you, vick. caller: good morning. i was trying to look at notes that i wrote down about a week ago actually and there was a discussion of one author, i can't remember his name. he was being interviewed and he was talking about the relationship between when nixon was a vice president, when --

and during, i think, back in 1969 or something like that with the castro assassination attempts, with tropicanti and all these other guys and all these savory characters related to the j.f.k. assassination. and it was something in the watergate thing that apparently was in there, obviously that gave indications that his association. host: thank you for the call. are you familiar with the book? gues yeah, the book that the gentleman is citing, i believe, is recently released and i can't

come up with the title but the author is one that previously written about the kennedy assassination at length and the book that was just released about watered gate is on the order of 700 pages and seeks to establish that the purpose of the watergate break-in was to retrieve evidence that might somehow link nixon to mobsters as i understand it. i haven't read the book but read accounts of it. i consider myself a scholar of watergate. where the kennedy assassination is concerned, i'm merely a buff which is one level below scholar, perhaps, maybe more than one level. in all my years of research and i spent 17 years working on "the strong man" "i never uncovered any evidence that linked the kennedy assassination to watergate. over the years there have been dogged efforts including an effort to establish that e. howard hunt was one of the tramps photographed being led away from the plaza site, or

that frank sturges, one of the watergate burglars was also one of those tramps. i think those efforts were misguided. and there is no evidence that nixon himself ordered the watergate break-in and there have been efforts over the years to link nixon to organized crime figures at various points throughout his career but again, nixon and his men couldn't come up with nearly a million dollars in untraceable cash. if nixon was so tight with organized crime figures in new orleans and around the country, it would have been a simple matter for him to call up one of his mafia pals and get the dough. but it didn't happen but there was no such relationships between nixon and organized crime figures. host: in terms of the legacy of watergate. this is from jim heinz, he sent in this twitter.

i would say the persecution of bill clinton was a get even plan left over by watergate. you covered the clinton impeachment. your thoughts? guest: i would say that the putrid air of watergate still hovered over the nation's capital by the late 1990's. i nonetheless think where the impeachment of president clinton was concerned, we ought to regard the prospect of the president of the united states lying under oath is a serious one and one worthy of full investigation. that's all i would say about it. host: nancy joining us from missouri city, texas. good morning. caller: good morning. am i on? host: you sure are. good morning, nancy! caller: yes, i wanted to ask james about martha mitchell. i remember hearing that they kept her sequestered because she

was so outspoken and i continue to smile at this. it's not true. i even remember -- i'm 80 so i remember the gossip back then. host: martha mitchell? guest: thank you for that question. ma'am, you would enjoy reading my book "the strong man" that benefited from being the first researcher to access the f.b.i. files of john and martha mitchell. mitchells when they -- when they came to washington in 1969 were the first cabinet officer and wife to receive round-the-clock f.b.i. protection. because of the death threats that were made against john mitchell at that time. j. edgar hoover being j. edgar hoover used this as an opportunity to basically spy on the mitchells and everything that john mitchell said that the f.b.i. driver who took him to the justice department every morning or to the -- everything that martha mitchell said to the f.b.i. men that surrounded her was beautifully typed up and

sent up the chain to j. edgar hoover. we know this because hoover would actually write in the margins and initial it & unfortunately, martha mitchell was a sick lady. in the spring of 1970 to be alive and to be an american citizen was to be inundated with news and gossip, as you said, about martha mitchell. in a very short time period, she went from complete anonymity, if you will, to being one of the 10 most reported on women around the world of a list that also included the first lady pat nixon, the former first lady jacqueline onassis, indira gandhi and others. she was on the top 10 list of the most reported and most admired sort of women in america. she was on the cover of "life" "time," she was on "60 minutes" and she had a tendency to speak out and speak her mind. she was not very well informed on the issues. while her husband would be sleeping in their watergate apartment complex this their

duplex, i should say, mrs. mitchell would steal out of bed while her husband lay sleeping and have a few pops of whiskey, get on this little lime green princess telephone that was attached to the wall at around hip level in their bathroom right off their master bedroom and she would call helen thomas of the upi and just let rip with the kinds of things one says when one has had a few pops of whiskey including a certain senator from arkansas, mrs. mitchell's home state should be crucified for his vote against a certain nixon supreme court nominee. she caused her husband endless problems and on top of being a bit unstable and volatile and having a drinking problem, also had severe emotional difficulties. she could be a very charming lady. but she could also be a nightmare in social settings, on the phone to reporters, and i think she compounded her husband's problems during the watergate scandal. you'll find a lot more about all of this in my book "the strong

man." host: another tout from another viewer with a question or comment about watergate 40 years after the break-in. [video clip] >> i love the phrase those who forget the past are deemed to repeat it. i'm curious what we have learned as a nation and then as leaders of this nation and then what we should learn in the future from watergate. host: james rosen? guest: this is similar to some of the questions that we've had about the legacies of watergate and lessons of watergate. one of the conventional wisdoms that surrounds watergate now is it's not the crime, it's the cover-up. i'm not inclined to agree. there was great debate when 1977 ex-president nixon participated in the marathon discussions with david frost and the president said -- the ex-president said when the president does it, it is not illegal. that was widely ridiculed at the time but i think it bears

further scrutiny. we've just read, for example, and i don't think the obama white house has discounted these stories about president obama himself personally having control over a kill list of foreign and suspected terrorists. who are to be targeted with drone operations and other lethal means. if you or i had a kill list, it would be illegal. when the president does it, apparently it's not illegal so i think that is one of the great conundrum of watergate that we still wrestle and probably should but again it gets to the question of presidential powers and we should point out when the articles of impeachment were drawn up against richard nixon, there were five proposed and only three approved. the house judiciary committee declined to approve one of the articles that had to do with

nixon exercising more powers in the bombing of cambodia so there are aspects of watergate that touch on a national security dimension and i think we should continue to focus on those. host: another tweet saying it's obvious that white water was payback for watergate. guest: this is similar to sentiment expressed about monica gate. white water was a very complex set of transactions of real estate and finance in arkansas during bill clinton's years in that state and i don't consider myself expert on them in order to comment for that question. host: let's go back to this panel we covered with carl bernstein and woodward and the role of deep throat in their reporti reporting. [video clip] >> more than anything, he did contribute key details at

various points but really what he did, which was so terrific is he gave us this assurance that we knew we were right. that he confirmed these things and it eliminated a lot of doubt that i think we might have had. host: deep throat, a.k.a. mark felt. guest: for the purpose of context for younger viewers, woodward and bernstein, when they published owl the president's men in the spring of 1974 introduced for the first time a character in that book who had not appeared in their newspaper reports named deep throat which was kind of a humorous nickname taken from a pornographic movie at the time to refer to an executive branch source who they consulted in their reporting on watergate. over the years, woodward and bernstein have suggested that deep throat only confirmed things for them, that they had already run across in their

reporting. at other times, though, they have made clear that deep throat was a source of original information for them. what is clear from reading the woodward and bernstein papers that are deposited at the harry ransom center at the university of texas is that deep throat was an umbrella device that was used to refer to more than just mark felt. mark felt was the number two man at the f.b.i. for many years under j. edgar hoover. a new book has been published by historian mac holland called "leak" why mark felt became deep throat which examines in terrific detail how mark felt came into contact with woodward and how he maintained contact with woodward. how he deceived woodward at many times and passed off to woodward very wrong information a lot of the times but another book that was published recently was the posthumous memoirs of the man who appointed after hoover died

to run the f.b.i. mark felt was jealous he didn't get that job so his leak campaign was truly orchestrated to dislodge him away from the job and secure for himself and the memoir made clear it was finished by his son, ed gray who was a talented journalist and made use of the woodward and bernstein papers makes clear that there were other individuals who had filed under woodward's own filing system as deep throat but who are not mark felt. one final example, steve. the final garage encounter between deep throat a.k.a. mark felt and bob woodward occurred in 1973. by that point, mark felt's leaking to newspaper reporters and not just woodward, by the way, had been detected by the f.b.i. and he was forced out in june of 1973. so here it is, five months later in november of 1973 and he's meeting one more time with woodward in the garage as portrayed in "all the president's men" the film and he passes along a tip. again, not just confirming

information but providing original information to woodward and this turned out to be true, that there was a deliberate erasure on the nixon tapes. that turned out to be 18 minutes of gap on that tape. that gap had recently been re-created on those tapes. it's the knowledge of that gap was held very closely in the nixon white house, to the president and the person doing the transcribing and responsible for the gap on the tapes. how on earth would mark felt who used to be in the f.b.i. but had been forced out five months earlier have known that information? there are various explanations for. this the most plausible of them is, in fact, deep throat was more than just mark felt. there were other individuals and in fact, in those woodward and bernstein papers out at the university of texas for this last garage meeting, the tape gap meeting, there's no document associated with it.

host: much more to talk about and we'd love to have you come back on c-span any time. the author of "the strong man" your look at attorney general john mitchell and his look at watergate. joining us on this sunday morning in new york city. appreciate your time. guest: thanks, steve, and happy father's day. host: real quick, we'll continue the conversation tomorrow morning as we always do here on c-span's "washington journal" 7:00 a.m. eastern time. 4:00 authorize those on the west coast, and begin with the conversation of the executive director of the center for community change as we focus on the president's policy on illegal immigrants. we'll also have a conversation with congressman allan west, republican from florida as we talk about the african-american vote in this presidential election year and ken walsh, white house correspondent for "u.s. news & world report," author of a air force one" a history of the presidents and their planes. all tomorrow morning on "the washington journal" thanks for joining us on this sunday. it's father's day so to fathers and grandfathers and godfathers

and uncles and all of you have a great father's day and enjoy the rest of your weekend and have a good week ahead. [captions copyright national satellite corp. 2012]