of -- to susan b anthony. she told her i want you to say this is for me as a gift to all of you. later on, she corresponded with susan b anthony. a friend a friend of hers later confirmed that she very strongly leaved in women's suffrage. that is the first incumbent incumbent first lady to publicly support suffrage. >> on this trip, she has a massive seizure. is this when her health really begins to to deteriorate? >> yes. what also happens, mckinley has thatased an original house they had the first three and a half years of their married life together. , they had rented it, i should clarify, they rented it for a year during the 1896 campaign.

,he house, which still stands and he lived there longer than anywhere else, that is not where the campaign was. the campaign was at the other house, they rented, and then it came up for sale. she is very depressed because of the onset of the seizures now, but there are these blueprints. i will expand it. he gets her into this idea that they will finally retire. record a very strong here of his assassination. .t was very rational it was because of the movement of the anarchists killing leaders around the world. fordid not want him to run a second term, and he refused to say whether he was or not, and as that summer unfolded, she

began to become -- it became very clear to her that they for getting the house not the retirement use, but to house his campaign and campaign staff. that saysletters this is the most depressed and the lowest she has ever been. ida couldthe things do is this, counsel those who had a political benefit. we will learn more about that in our next video. >> we have this billfold. this has never been on exhibit. this was recently donated. what is wonderful about this is inside, it has a picture of william mckinley, and this is something that we see in a lot of her personal belongings. and was her sewing bag,

she would keep her crochet items in here. this is one of her crochet needles. it is her favorite color, blue, and inside, we have a picture of william mckinley. even when he was away from her, she would have something to remind her of him. ida mckinley was known for her crochet the slippers and she would spend hours crocheting the slippers. we think she made approximately 4000 pairs in her lifetime. these are unique for the souls -- soles they have. she would make them in various sizes. we have a pair from, obviously, a child's size. they were usually made in a variation of blue, grey, or an ivory color. these represent the basic colors that she would use. since she was not well and was not able to do other types of work as a first lady, this is one of the things she could contribute, one of the ways she

could contribute. she would donate these to a charity, to needy children, war veterans, or she would donate them to the auctions to raise money for a charity. sheldon cooper wants to know, did william ever give knitted slippers to his political friends and adversaries? >> yes. there was actually, it was pretty brilliant. i understand she was a very witty woman. if she did not like someone, and the one area where we do see her really having an influence is in judging the character of people that he is considering for higher positions, to be around him. if she didn't like someone or if she didn't trust someone, it wasn't like she threw a fit. rationalhim a very explanation. anyway, she also indicated how

she felt about them by the color of the slippers she gave. as a way give purple of saying this guy is worried loyal, and yellow if she thought he was a yes-man, and a bit of a coward in expressing himself. >> well, the so-called friend was watching this relationship between the two more closely than the public could. she said the fact that her husband had been a shield between her and reality had made her a pathetically spoiled it difficult woman. mrs. mckinley knew what she liked and got it royally. >> i would say that is partially true. it was more true and held up that he wasnd out going to run for reelection, and he had not told her. at this point, she is more physically disabled, which is now going into the year 1900,

his reelection campaign. she was very frustrated. she was really remarkable. she was basically saying, the longer i live without him, the more i realize how completely dependent i was. you know, the story has always been painted like, you know, he was a great hero and protector, but he was also controlling the situation. , heontrolled her medicine controlled a lot of things. you know, from her point of view, she was willing to accept her limitations and adapt herself, and there were times he didn't want that. >> i will come back to you in a second. joe from kankakee, illinois. >> i have been enjoying the program a lot. i am looking forward to the second season, especially since i am a history geek.

i meant to call with this question last week and didn't. i have been to the harrison home in indianapolis and the weekend i was there, there were actors. do any of the other homes do they reenactere the presidents and their families? >> at the mckinley home, you have a docent. i have not been there recently, but i know there were those in the past who did volunteer re.i it serves a dual purpose of being a center of study for all the first ladies as well as -- there have been docents at the saxon mckinley house who have done that. >> jonathan from chicago. up a few miles away

from camden, ohio, and i visited the mckinley monument where william and ida are married. my question, down the freeway in chicago, there is a southside area called the item mckinley home. is it just ang, memorial named after her? i don't know if you would know that. >> specifically that, i don't know. i will say this. thee was, you know, again, story never gets fully written and people get miscast and caricatured. she was involved with two organizations. one was the crittenden house and the other was the red cross. the crittenden house was interesting because it specifically helped women who had been battered, who were

homeless, and it provided them shelter,ters, and with education, and really helps them reestablish their lives. , you know, willy- nilly support every group and everything. she did do the slippers. they fetched a lot of money at auction, but she was very careful about where she allowed her name to be used. it might well be that there was a connection either with the jane addams and hull house, the crittenden organization, but i am not sure entirely. >> we heard that the president didn't really consult ida on his decision to run for reelection. we have a quotation where she said of him, i will be glad when he is out of public life. i do not want him to run a second time. i thought he had done enough for the country, and when his term expires, he will come home, and we will settle down quietly, and he will belong to me.

what was the 1900 election all about? >> the 1900 election was a rematch of 1896. mckinley ran against william jennings bryant. it is a testament to how much mckinley had succeeded. prosperity, he was, by 1900, seen as the man who was out of the great depression of the 1890's. thenew america's place in world. it was new to most americans -- imperialism. andnt and the democrats good government republicans, basicallypublicans, opposed to the idea of american empire. mckinley, on the other hand, for a number of reasons, he was a reluctant convert. the question i have, we have been told, i believe by the white house military aid, the

most important decision he had to make as president, after going to war, was deciding whether to keep the philippines. hugely important question. very controversial. the white house military aid , it was ida'sfact constant hopping on all the good work done by methodist missionaries that heavily influenced her husband's ultimate decision, which he always said had religious connotations. , and " the philippines educate and civilize and christianize" them. >> i actually found that evidence not just by benjamin montgomery, the military agent who was there in the middle of the night tom of the guy transmitting all of the messages to and from the front with president mckinley in that little telegraph room upstairs

at the white house, but also foraker, also a political operative, and there were several people. what is interesting is mrs. mckinley is not what you consider a traditionally religious person. she never went to church. she went to the theater a lot on sunday, but she sure didn't go to church. she was a very devout methodist. thought he was going to be a minister. that never quite took, but he literally, all of his life, was a significant influence in his decision. >> he went alone. she did not go with him. the suggestion is, though, that she really believed that, from the sub -- from the reports they were getting, they were intrigued because the whole population was summarized as if they were, you know, living in a primitive way, that their lives

were less about christianity, more that their lives needed to be improved in a way that, you know, only the americans -- >> people believe that is why he was annexing the philippines. >> with ida's concerned about reelection, one of the stories was about potential assassination. she had good reason. here are stories of the assassinations happening all around the globe at that time. the president of france. the prime minister of bulgaria. 1897, the prime minister of spain. 1900, the king ability -- italy. those were all attributed to anarchists. --anarchism was a worldwide it is terrorism today. >> and their choice for the leaders of the country. >> you cut off the head of the system, and the system will die.

>> it was not always cooked up by a large -- these were people acting on their own. >> can you speak to his decision to put theodore roosevelt on the ticket? >> it wasn't exactly his decision. they had managed to alienate political bosses in new york who had, in desperation, turned to him as the great hero of the war, the only one who could win election as governor of new york in 1898. he was a reformer. most of his reforms seem pretty mild to us today, but they were at the heart of the political bosses and the status quo that they wanted to preserve. the united states senator from easy boss, as he was known, basically hatched the idea of getting rid of t.r.

mckinley seems to have ambivalence about this. people might ask, why did you have him? he already had a vice president. hobart had died in 1899. so, there was an opening. the convention went wild for t.r., who had tried to indicate he didn't want to be vice president. he knew his own temperament. style.not his >> there is a very important factor in this about ida mckinley. she was crucial in at least two instances, at very important points in the rise of theodore roosevelt, perhaps the most dramatic one, i will just tell you that one, is when roosevelt was with the cavalry and was trying to get on a train to get to the transport ships in florida so they could go to cuba, nobody would give him permission. he was saying, why are to their

telegraphs to the secretary of war? it was mrs. mckinley. she took it and she brought it to the president. she had met roosevelt and trusted him. that is what got roosevelt to the transports in florida. roosevelt responded to the president, please tell mrs. mckinley to think of the rough riders as her very own and we will make her proud. from that point on, roosevelt earned a favor with ida mckinley. there was an event in 1899 where she came in, big dinner, thousands of people, roosevelt is speaking, and he thought she was coming and right at the right moment, three cheers for mrs. mckinley. .he sort of gave favor to him >> 13 a t more story to tell. you are on the air. go ahead, please. >> i love your show. i love, love it. is it true that robert lincoln,

abraham lincoln's son, who was at his bedside when he died, was also at mckinley's assassination? he was at garfield's. he was at the train station at the time when garfield was shot. he was in buffalo. [indiscernible] >> before we get to the isassination, the question asked, if she was frail, how did she function as first lady in the white house? we have talked so much about politics and bringing people together to perform politics. did the mckinley white house do that? >> she was not interested -- this is interesting. apart from her illness, because even before she had gotten the seizures, she was not interested in housekeeping. she was not really interested in the menu or entertaining.

they have basically lived in hotels in washington and in columbus. she was interested in him. again, that is a good question, that she wasidea always this invalid, and she was not. mckinley took control. mckinley was the one who actually planned a lot of the dinners. she was at them. receptions.he she did a lot of the traditional stuff, but she was not particularly interested in making those decisions. >> presidents are being sworn in in march. it was six months later, in september, that they went to the exhibition. we have more footage about the exposition. it is a new american century. is america beginning to change its place in the world? >> absolutely. the pan-american exposition was a celebration of the western hemisphere, but in a larger

sense, it was a coming out party. america now owned most of the western hemisphere through the spanish-american war, cuba, puerto rico, and the pacific guam, of course, hawaii, and the philippines, all in one presidency. again, you have this remarkable explosion of activity, and the american people are having this debate, which in some ways goes on to this day, what is our role in the world? and time, heace was shot by this anarchist. how long did he linger before he died? >> was it six days? eight days. >> what happened to ida mckinley after his death? she -- it isknow, very interesting.

she wanted to be with him. she wanted privacy. she wanted to have a moment with him. on the day before he died, the night before -- in the late hours, she was brought in to be with him. they did have some private words , you know,nd mckinley said something that i found that has never been quoted widely before, but after she was brought out, he said to the doctor,"what will become of her?" it is almost a little bit cold. it wasn't. he knew he was dying. was really a good guy. he was the one who really got her on a regimen. they would not allow her to attend any of the public

ceremonies. she was in the white house. upstairs with a closed coffin in the east room, and then she was just brought to the train, brought back to canton. the coffin was an open coffin for the public to pay their respects to. she was not permitted. she said one thing. she said, i want him one last night in this house alone with me so i could look at him one more time. they brought the coffin and they sealed it. she was very bitter, frankly. she was very angry. i have found instances of her saying things that were really sharp and frustrated. she did it after they did that. >> our final video is returning to ida mckinley -- the museum,

learning more about mrs. mckinley in morning -- mourning. >> now we want to take a look at some of the things that happened to ida after the white house. her white house years were cut short by mckinley's assassination and she spent the next six years in mourning. there are not a lot of things that represent this time for her. she mostly was a recluse. she stayed at home almost all the time. when she left, it was usually only to visit her husband's grave. when mckinley first was assassinated, condolences poured in from all around the world, and she couldn't take care of each one of them personally. she sent out this card, which would acknowledge that she appreciated what people had sent to her, and she often didn't sign these. this would've been something you would have received after you sent her a condolence. now, we also have a bound book.

this is family and intimate friends. professionalof and public condolences. this one is extremely special because these would have been closer friends of hers. they would have been family members, cousins, things like that. these would've been the types of things she would have wanted to keep close, and it would have been bound for her to have and look through. some of them are acknowledged on the corner. they will have a date on them. the secretary can keep track of which ones she had acknowledged. not all of them have that. these are also, this is a good one because it shows some of the mckinley family members. she's -- these would have been the most nearest and dearest friends and family. , johnwe close out here richardson asks a very interesting question to both of you on facebook. if ida mckinley had written a description of herself in the third person, what do you think she might have said about

herself? by her ownd wife choice. >> i will leave it at that. [laughter] , were idants to know 's daily trips to her husband's grave seen as a mentally therapeutic process for her? >> they began right after the services. he wasn't buried. they would bill that monument. that monument. it looks like a church of stone. in it were large floral displays, then eventually banners of groups that came. everyday she went. at first it was therapeutic and a way that was helping her to get out. ratherr time, it became ghoulish and grim for her because she was focused on death.

thewas even focused on flowers that were dying and trying to keep them alive and trying to get new flowers that she would put and. -- put in. it was sort of grim. she wanted it done. there was a really incredible little moments that happened. i thought that was the rest of her story, and it is not. old have a daughter each. suddenly, at the end of her life, there are these two little girls in her life and she starts going to the tomb every day. they start walking again in the middle of winter. they were talking about the flowers in the new buildings and she really returns to life. you have something here? >> queen victoria for 40 years grieves the death of prince albert. some of this is the victorian

obsession with death. to me, this is the earliest chapter in this whole story. , she would have another seizure. i won't get into it here, but peoples, you know, still have seizures. there are many different types of seizures. byad material reviewed members of the board of the national epilepsy foundation. it has to be handled well in describing it. we only know so much. she had is that regulated her life to this point in terms of dress and diet, and then expected the nurses to take care of her later on, kind of became secretaries, may account for that, but also the stress, the paradox of this. part of the reason they would get stressed out his she was worried about him being shot.

, that now being gone stress was removed. >> he died in may of 19 oh seven, just shy of her 60th birthday. 59 years old. i wonder how the country reacted when she died. asit reacted with, you know, often happens in the context of this young family, the roosevelts in the white house, there was some sort of nasty little thing that, the roosevelts were aristocrats. the mckinley's were village people from ohio. there was almost nothing said about her as a person. everything that was said about her was a symbol. it was all through the lens of him. the truth is, in their lifetime, she didn't really care what people thought about her. the public loves her.

she cared about what they thought about him. it ist.rt. -- it is t.r. >> they want to know about the fact that you have written a whole book about her without a picture. they want to know why you were so interested in this first lady to tackle a biography. >> it was inspired by the founder and president of the national first ladies library. , she sensedtuition there was a real story to tell here. that really began it. it was quite an undertaking. it was a lot of work. there is not one repository of the papers. the effort was far and wide. , ones like taking a magnet letter from here, one from here. it was pretty arduous, but like i said, even toward the end, you thereat the 11th hour,

is hope. at the end of her story, it was true. so, i hope what it will do is eventually wear away at that character -- caricature and give history a little bit more of a fully developed human being. >> we will give the people the last word on this. we are running out of time here. where do you think she should sit in the pantheon of first ladies? the book is exactly what this series is all about. taking a fresh look, beyond the caricature, making the re- acquaintance of women, who we may know very little about, or we may know broadly about. it is a wonderful note on which to end this first series and a wonderful springboard for part two. >> thanks to both of you for

helping us learn more about mckinley's presidency and about the side effects on the first lady during that first term. we appreciate you helping us learn more. as we close here tonight, you have heard several times, this is the final installment of our first part. we will be back on september 9 to pick it up again, all the way through president's day of 2013 with a look at the modern first ladies. during the summer months, we will continue to have historical things on the first ladies during this time slot. we will continue to try to feed that interest. thanks for being with us.

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] our website has more about the first ladies, including a special section, welcome to the white house, produced by our partner, the white house historical association, which chronicles-the executive mansion during the tenure of each of the first ladies. , we are association offering a special edition of the book "first ladies of the united states of america yuriko -- america." it has comments from historians and thoughts from michelle

obama on the role of first ladies throughout history. now available for the discounted price of $12.95 plus shipping at www.c-span.org /products. >> c-span, created by america's cable companies in 1979, brought to you as a public service i your television provider. by your television provider. >> in a few moments, the new america foundation hosts a discussion on the immigration bill working its way to the senate. it it is a little less than an hour and a half. talks about preventing sexual assaults in the military. at 12 a.m. eastern, we re-air the first lady's influence and image program on ida mckinley. >> the senate appropriations subcommittee on defense tomorrow morning will hear from secretary of defense chuck hagel

and general martin chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. our live coverage of this hearing on the 2014 budget request is on c-span3 at 10:00 eastern. as the u.s. senate began debate on an immigration bill, the new america foundation hosted a forum on immigration policy and the legislation proposed by the so-called gang of eight. this is a little more than an hour. >> we are going to go ahead and get started. welcome, everybody. amname is andres martinez.i the editorial director here at the new america foundation. thank you for joining us for what turns out to be an even timelier discussion than we had anticipated when we scheduled it, given the week ahead here in washington on immigration reform. to my left is simon rosenberg and to my right is tamar jacoby,

who is a fellow here and is the president of immigrationworks. thanks. as you know, both these individuals have storied biographies, but to keep things rolling i will leave it at that other to say that would be hard- pressed to find two other people in town who have had as active and engaged experience with immigration reform and who have been more influential, both in this round of immigration reform, but also previous rounds, so we have battle-tested experts. a great deal of traction this year. we hear a lot about how

washington is broken. there is excessive polarization, nothing gets done, and that has been the working narrative for quite some time about our political process, and yet we have seen this year great progress on one of the more intractable difficult issues of recent years, immigration. in fact, a lot of the conversations i have been around on the political climate in washington generally always point to immigration as the one kind of sunny exception to the gridlock that has occurred in d.c., and one thing i worry about is that might be too optimistic and maybe to prematurely optimistic because,

as these two individuals know, it is not quite done yet. we have seen a very ambitious bill put together by this gang of eight in the senate, voted out of committee, so we have an ambitious comprehensive immigration reform under way, and this week it is going to the floor of the senate and then the house will weigh in at some point. some of us have seen this movie before, 2006, 2007, so i am a little skittish to predict victory. we have seen improbable success so far, or progress, i should say. one thing i would like to start us off with and maybe you could get us started is to step back and talk about what we have seen in the senate, how comfortable are you with the parameters of what this immigration looks like now? is this something you are ecstatic about? and then since you are playing the role of democratic advocate

for immigration and you are playing the role of republican advocate for immigration, i want each of you to talk about the potential pitfalls and obstacles that the other side might throw out and play with and have at the end of the day another instance of gridlock and disruption in washington. then we will reverse roles and each of you can see what each of your sides can compromise on to get us to the promised land. simon, in terms of what the legislation looks like now, how >>e you feeling about it? optimism first and then poison pill. >> been a happy ending. >> thanks. it is great to be here. it is always good to be up here with tamar, who i have learned a lot from, and i think she has had a harder job than i have over the last eight years, which is keeping the fire burning on the republican side.

i have incredible admiration for the new american foundation, so it is great to be here. i have to say if we go back to when these gang of eight negotiations began, there was not a lot of reason to be optimistic. this is an issue that has been brought up, we passed it through a republican senate in 2006, mccain and kennedy leading the way. then the house would not take it up in 2007. the democrats had won the senate. for reasons we could spend the rest of the program talking about it did not pass. there was caution, cautious optimistism. we were cautiously optimistic, and the gang is a new group. i think it has worked. even though there are things and that are in the immigration bill

that i do not like, i feel all the compromises that we saw were understandable. i could explain them. i did not feel democrats accepted things they did not get something in return for. this is in some ways -- it goes back to the origins of the bill, mccain and kennedy, when they built the bill in 2005, did so in an old-fashioned way, or everybody got something and everybody gave something, and there was a powerful force was going to see the bill through. that spirit prevailed in these negotiations. as a democrat, we would like that path to citizenship be less arduous, and there is the main complaint that you will hear this is anrats. ambitious bill. this is at a time when

partisanship has diminished the legislative ambition of a lot of legislators in washington. this is an anecdote to that. it deals with border security, significant infrastructure investment along the border that will create jobs on both sides of the u.s.-mexico border. it deals with illegal immigration system so it is more skills-based undocumented in a way that the undocumented immigrants that at the end of the day i will take it. it may not have been how i would have done it, but i will take it. those are the major components of it. optimism, happiness can't explain the compromises, and that is why you see democrats fighting for this. >> thank you for being here. it is great to be on the stage with simon. i also am very astonished at how much progress they made and how in the big view how good a

product it is. we can get into the weeds about the concerns come up, but it is remarkable, the work they have done, and a year ago, to say that republicans would be for partners in a comprehensive reform bill, people would have laughed at that on a panel like this. they were at the table and they were full partners and the sides worked together effectively to find the sweet spot. i think all of us in washington think that they had lost those muscles, that people do not know how to do bipartisan compromise anymore. what is astonishing is you put eight guys in a room and they have the will, they still know how to negotiate and get to a deal. they did that not just on the big things, because on some level, the grand bargain for those who want an answer to the 11 million unauthorized, more enforcement, they made the bargain, but this comes down to

every little detail has to be worked out so it works for democrats and republicans and works on the ground. they did quite an amazing job of getting those things right. they looked for the sweet spot and found that. the biggest one is a humane and practical answer to the 11 million unauthorized, combined with a pretty serious determination to get enforcement on the border and in the workplace. they are going to spend up to $5 billion on the border, and every company in america is going to have to use e-verify to make sure that the people that hire them will work. those are big enforcement pieces. the other big deal here, the big compromise, they rebalanced our immigration system. right now 66% of the green cards of the permanent visas go to families, and 7% go to the employment space, 7%. way out of sync with other countries.

and in canada, 25%. the idea is there is a rebalancing. you talked about skilled people, but workers we need for the u.s. economy and what is in our interests and a rebalancing with their interests. it will be hard to predict and it will depend on the economy and how many people apply, that we could get up to 60% to 40%. that was bipartisan agreement on that. republicans might have been after that for a long time, or maybe some democrats. the answer for the unauthorized immigrants is there is an answer, it is tough, not automatic, but there is a path.

we try to find the sweet spot. concerns on my side -- obviously we are going to see it playing out in the senate in the weeks ahead over are the border triggers tough enough, that it has these provisions that say people cannot it be citizens until the border is secure, and e-verify, every company is using it. there are many republicans who say it is not a meaningful trigger. we will see a lot of debate around that. >> and there are amendments. unless you harass the 101% of people trying to cross --

>> the key point there is that for republicans to have meetable requests -- >> you both are appreciative of the compromises that have been made, and i should say you both played a role in making that so. let's interrupt the kumbaya vibe. tamar, tell us what are your concerns of what his team might do in the next few weeks, months, both in the senate, but when we get to the house that could get us off track and we will be here in the fall bemoaning the fact that

immigration is another in a long list of things that congress cannot handle the partisanship. >> if i was imagining -- if i was a democrat, i would say we won the election with 71% to 27% of latino votes. that is a good score. why would you want to change that? parties work hard to get numbers like that. why would you want to change that? why would you have to share credit with the other party and go back to latinos and say you do not have to eight republicans anymore? without knowing anything that anyone said -- it is not hard to imagine that there are people thinking like that. will they prevail? there will be opportunities where things will be going badly, going rough, where it will be easy to say let's not compromise on that and let's make it look like it was the republicans and it will fail and

they will say we tried. there is a lot of talk about should the house vote on the senate bill, and there is hope among democrats and you hear advocates on immigration reform groups saying the senate bill is a good compromise and the house should vote on it. the house will not and cannot in a million years vote on the senate bill. the house will want to come up with its own product. if it was forced to to vote on the senate bill, the answer would be no. people who continue to say that, that is in my view a nonstarter. to a lot of republican members, this is liberal democrat-driven with afl fingerprints all over it. that is not what they want. even if it was good, they would not want to take it up to the senate, the democratic senate.

that is one the issue, and there has been a lot of talk and recent weeks there is a bipartisan group in the house working to craft their own bipartisan answer that they hope will be parallel to the senate bill, and there is a lot of talk that the democrats have made it difficult for that group to get to a solution, that they have not been as forthright in compromising as some in the house. i have not been in the room, and there has been talk that it is hard to get to a compromise there because there are folks who want the house to have to take up the senate bill. that is all procedural stuff. >> what to you think are the-- what do you think would be kind of unreasonable things on the part of democrats that would derail this and would be beyond the pale that you would consider the

parameters of what is doable? is it health care subsidies? the pathway to citizenship? >> there will be people who want the borders to be tougher.that will be the biggest fight. when you get to the house, there will be movement to the right, and the house will try for something shaved back, and the issue, where there will be issues is there will be a path to the legalization for the unauthorized.i don't know if the house can go as far as the senate that is gone -- has gone. the question is, can the democrats accept that? there will be huge debate on health care, and the issue that has kept this secret group in the house, that is where they have been hung up for the last month.they have a deal now. health care, but not only health care.

also the low skilled worker program will be an issue. i and many republicans think the low skilled worker program in the senate bill is a good design, but it is too small to diverge and rechannel illegal immigration. republicans in the house who are concerned about we do not want to be here again in 10 years facing another unauthorized 11 million, that program needs to be more responsive. the afl is adamant about that, and can't it be more market sensitive and can democrats give them all of that? >> i am sure tamar was not referring to you when she was talking about democrats looking at the scoreboard and saying,

why don't we preserve this lead and not endanger it by allowing republicans to seem constructive on the immigration issue? you weren't, right? >> no.i wouldn't be here. >> talk a little bit from your perspective, what are the stumbling blocks of republicans? what might cause this to be derailed? >> just listening to both of you, i thought about this in a new way, which is democrats have basically signed on to the senate bill, not in the house yet, and we will see what comes out of the house this week, but in the senate there is no effort to drag this to the left. we have accepted we are happy with the bill, we picked up republican support in the committee process, a 13-5 vote, kind of extraordinary. i don't think anyone predicted that. even though as we gain this out there is this other body that is

about to weigh in that is in all likelihood going to attempt to move the bill to the right. there is no parallel effort to move the bill to the left. democrats are accepting what we have, which in itself creates a little bit of a curious-- precarious situation in the way washington works, because in theory if in any negotiation one side gets more, the other side has to get something, and structurally this is not being set up that way this now.-- right now. the house republicans have a decision to make because it will pass a series of smaller things that will not be the senate bill, and the question, is how far do they go? do they try to make something that will be reconciled in a normal conference committee, or will they stake out such difficult ground that it will be impossible for their members come back and accept compromise? we may need only 20 or 30 republicans, so we could have a

situation where there is a bill that passes with 100 republicans in a house, goes to conference, and only 20 or 25 can accept it and the bills still passes. how much of an obstacle that is we do not know. the bill goodlatte and gowdy introduced last week is something that goes so far that it's hard to understand how the republicans go back from it, because it includes things like providing weapons for ice agents and mandatory body armor, and it sounds like they are going to commit extraordinary acts of violence against undocumented immigrants. it is the wackiest moment we have had in this immigration debate.two other quick things. stumbling blocks is the border triggers are a real issue. republicans have a legitimate concern about the border.i don't think the idea that 700,000 people can walk across any order of any

--try when they want is not any border of any country when they want is not anything any country can accept. we have to do a better job policing our porous mexican border. it makes sense, and there is a lot of effort that to toughen up on the triggers, democrats have said no. the senate gang of eight have said no on any re-altering of the trigger mechanism that was negotiated. the third thing that make it-- may get complicated down the line is the house republicans have said no new spending, no new net spending. the cornyn amendment, right now the senate immigration bill, it's $100 billion over five years. it will be $10 billion, $15 billion, $20 billion a year to achieve the ambitious enforcement goals. i do not know how we will reconcile, and the cornyn bill

andled for 10,000 new guards. blah, blah, blah. that bill alone was $70 billion over a certain time period. the issue of whether or not the house republicans are ever going to accept a bill that has new net spending in it, it will be a bigger issue in the fall, but they have been aggressive about that and the senate bill will be expensive because it is ambitious. what is interesting is a guy like cornyn, the amendment he is floating around is an affirmation of the role of government, giving government a lot more money to achieve goals. -- achieve important societal ends. can house republicans accept that? that worries me in the fall and not in the next couple of months. >> the asymmetry that you describe, where a few facts on

the gay and lesbian amendment, it did not get voted on, but it was discussed, would have taken away from the left that republicans could not before. there were people in the committee, democrats, who when somebody's points of labor business balance came up, said they would vote for it, but with an asterisk, where they would fight it for another day on the floor, so it is not as if -- i -- not praising it either. praising either side. >> has simon described them correctly, where we started the conversation, where there is this compromise that has been achieved in the senate, but now we have to have compromise between this bipartisan compromise here and a republican

majority that is not symmetrical? >> i would argue the original proposal was not entirely symmetric. >> do you think it is fair to think of the senate bill not as >> it is aan bill? bipartisan bill. it is a little bit leaning toward one side. that was because, let's look at the low skilled worker visa program. the afl was always saying if we are not happy we will walk, and if they walk, we will not get enough democrats to vote, and that was always a sword hanging i thinke negotiations. the program is a good program. the afl had a veto on how market sensitive it would be.it is a

good bill. it is a good compromise, that leans and little bit toward some of the people on that side of the table, on the border triggers as well. >> describe for those of us who are not as steeped in the detail, i think i know what we mean when we talk about a trigger. >> in the original legislation, they had requirements that had to happen. there were requirements to be met on the border and could only be met in three of nine districts on the border. why would you have these requirements that they had to be met, but only in three out of nine districts? they were the three busiest why just for the sake of, humor us.

read 10 you will secure the not just three of nine districts. >> the triggers that are in the current senate bill are metrics that have to be met for both monitoring the border and people coming across and the number of apprehensions across the entire border.that was one of the things that was changed. the second thing is -- and they are kicking at different points, e-verify, a new, wildly ambitious effort to create a legitimate worker verification system is going to be national. >> for part of it, in the beginning -- >> before what? before anybody can be legal? >> before you can be legal, the government has have a plan.-- has to have a plan.

it doesn't sound very interesting. then for people to get citizenship, certain things have to happen.>> green card status and then citizenship. >> the key thing is what happened -- this was the huge thing that democrats gave up. the democrats got stuff out of the negotiations, but democrats accepted something and many people in the democratic family thought it was an unacceptable compromise, which is that the citizenship path was connected o a series of metrics. historically they'd never been connected before in any of the negotiations going back to mccain-kennedy. the whole thing for democrats became are the metics -- metrics that have to be met reasonable and will the government have the resources? because these are expensive things. e-verify is an expensive thing. will they have the resources in the time prescribed?

one of the things we're trying to solve with this bill is having a huge number of people who live and work here, pay taxes here, be in this netherworld status, where they're neither here nor are they foreigners, which seems to be deeply inconsistent with american values about how we treat everybody. 're not -- if the triggers are too hard, we are not solving that problem. >> one thing that strikes me a bit -- [inaudible] an observation. i feel in the last few years there has been a lot done to make the borders more secure, and one of the fallacies of the political debate is it presupposes that nothing has been done since 2006 and 2007. >> let me articulate the republican concern. what people are afraid is 1986, e legalized 3 million people

and we said there was going to be enforcement, and no enforcement happened. for years, there was a year when three notices got sent out to employers who were supposedly hiring fraudulent workers. >> they said they were going to enforce it at the workplace. >> but a lot didn't happen. people are very skeptical. they said we are going to give you the candy, but we are not going to get the prize. so a lot of republicans are skeptical about that and want to make sure there is real enforcement. it is not necessarily anti-immigrant. from my point of view, i don't want to see -- i want to convert from an illegal immigration system to a legal immigration system. >> my quibble isn't whether it's anti-immigrant or not but whether it's legal or not. you would think the boarder is

as porous as it was in 1986 and it is not. >> but people are asking, is this a real measure, it's actually real, and who is going to be in charge of this to certify that it's done. >> in a report we released recently, which we're going to find out at the end, we raise this issue, what's changed since we began the process in 2005 and let me throw this out, it's kind of amazing. since 2005, now violent crime, for example, on the u.s. side of the border, take the two biggest cities on the u.s. side of the border, el paso and san diego, violent crime is win third the rate it was a decade ago. look at the total number ofing a gating every border community on the u.s. side of the border, 19,000 violent crimes in 2004, there were 14,000 violent crimes in thotes same communities a year ago. so this notion that has been promulgated by many that the border region on the u.s. side,

it's the wild west, out of control, violent place, it's not true. there's been virtually no spillover violence from mexico and it's a sign of d.h.s. doing a good job working with local law enforcement to take what was a precarious and dangerous situation and make it better. we know that the net migration of immigrants went from 5,000 to 6,000 a year to now zero. while rd wing we know is these goals were achieved, i think the only reason at some level we are able to have this debate is because those things were executed successfully bethe obama administration and the democratudesing the enforcement regime to make things better, trade with mexico has exploded. by the end of this year, we have gone from $300 billion a year in trade with mexico in 2009 to almost $600 billion in 2013, that's a doubling of trade.

we not only have a significant gain in enforcement, we've had an incredible explosion of trade. i said to the president myself when i met with him recently, i said, this has been a wildly successful part of your administration. incredible demest expolitics, huge violence in mexico yet trade is exploding, making the u.s. side much better, take credit for it. i think it's been a mistake by our side that we haven't leaned into the border success because i think it's allowed republicans to get away with an exaggeration of what is actually the state of play today and i think that's affected the -- >> let me say two things and then talk about cost. i'm not going to dispute the number bus you do still meet ranchers in arizona, just like senator flake, he and mccain come to it with a constituency behind them, ranchers in arizona who say mitigating circumstance life is still not what it should be, there's still danger, still not just workers coming across my territory but dangerous people.

i'm not disputing the improvement but i don't think it's unreasonable to say we want a real measure. we can do bert. let's have some real measures. one thing. immigration is going -- immigration is way down now in part too due to better enforcement but also significantly due to the economy being in bad shape. as the my improves, we'll see people come across the border again unless we have a legal way for them to come so the -- what you describe is going to be challenges. it's not unreasonable to say, let's have a trigger, let's have it be a meaningful trigger. that's what's insurting about the three sector. if it's going to be a trigger, have a deal. now this is where we get to the part where we have questions about our own side. i agree if republicans who say, try to set standards that are unreadable, you know, 100%, never let anybody cross, no, never see a gun within 100

miles of the board e, there are plenty of unmeetable things, keep moving the goal post and you can't get to a deal and it's unmeetable, that would be bad for our side. , but to ld be people have meetable triggers, tough but meetable triggers, seems to be a reasonable thing. >> do you feel a republican majority in the house is going to go along with having some pathway, however arduous or nonarduous, to citizenship in its version of the legislation or do you think one of the defining kind of schisms at the end of the day going into conference is going to be legal status vs. citizenship? >> i think that's the $64,000 question about the future, it's hard to tell where the center of gravity is among house republicans. i hear a lot of people basically every office i know

and go to visit, people say, we have to do something. a lot of the offices i go and the center of gravity, i start to see emerging, we're ok with legal status but not comfortable creating a special or direct path to citizenship. so we don't want to say that these people who came here who the first thing they did was break the law, that they get a reward a special pathway for them, a shortcut. people think of it as a special pathway or direct path. don't hear too many people say they can never have citizenship, there are other ways to have citizenship, we'd be ok with programs where they and other people, if they came in a guest worker program where they and everybody else in a guest worker program had a chance to get citizenship. allegedly that's what the senate bill has in it. i think there should be room here to find a sweet spot.

this is certainly going to be one of the more important issues and exactly where the majority of republicans are and i think, you know, the famous, the term of art, the hastert rule new york bill can pass without the majority of the majority. i don't see republicans being able to pass that doesn't pass on the hastert rule. what can the political marketplace bear, what can we get the majority of the majority to be for in this round. i don't think we know yet. i think that's going to be something that's going to be emerging over the next few months that's going to be obviously one of the big go marks going forward, along with the costs. >> how high do you see health care on the list of -- >> costs are going to be huge. i was talking a few minutes ago about the cost. the senate bill as i understand t a lot of costs are built going forward.

there's a big budgetary number but the idea is that this is -- the financing of this is -- i don't know exactly how the financing works but the fees will come in later and come back to pay for stuff. always complicated, if i understood that stuff better i'd make a lot more money working at a bank, but it's not meant in the senate bill to be a huge outlay. it's meant to be paid for as you go town the road by money coming in. i certainly think costs will come up, it's a big issue, health care has already been the issue that kept the house -- the senate came to its health care answer but in the house bipartisan group they spent the last month fighting over what the health care, how this should mesh with obamacare. and just barely came to an answer. it's my understanding that the answer is so vague almost no one can tell you what it is. so it is definitely going to be a subject of debate, costs will be a subject of debate i can

almost guarantee you. >> do you think you would be -- do you think a democratic majority might be willing to accept that politically you have to exclude these 11 million, you know, legalized residents from the benefits of the subsidies that people might be getting under the affordable care act? >> i think it all depends on the deal. the question is if democrats keep feeling like they're being asked to give, give, give and if the house stuff gets dragged too far to the right, on friday, the house, the senate democrats and the gang of eight saying no to this amendment and i know that not everybody watching and in the room know what is the cornyn amendment was but there was an amendment by senator cornyn and he would be a good -- it would be better for cornyn to support this legislation than not, he has certain things he wanted, there

were big chunks of what he wanted that i think were very positive, all the border infrastructure investment, given how much the board trade has increased in recent years, there has to be much more done about this, that was a thoughtful part of the bill. the senate democrats said no because they felt it would alter the structure of the deal. this is the whole, if i can use language, vocabulary as we go to the floor over the next three weeks, there will be two types of amendments, cosmetic amendments, ones that don't alter the subject of the deal, the deal that was done and then there will be things in there that will alter the structure of the deal. those things will be resisted to a great degree by the gang of eight, they were during the committee process. they determine the -- the derms determined on friday despite marco rubio's involvement for the perception that he went outside the gang of eight operating process, was that they said this thing was

structural and needed to be rejected. the cornyn amendment is dead. he's apparently going to come back and try with orrin hatch to come back and salvage pieces of it and reintroduce it in smaller pieces but that was showing the resilience and efficacy of the gang of eight, the integrity of the gang of eight process which has been an amazing thing. >> i think you're going to see some version -- the cornyn amendment i think was dead on arrival but i think there is going to be a significant effort to toughen up the border treatment in the house and even on the senate and there will be considerably more movement on a lot of things in the house. >> can i just this really quickly, i think when we say toughen up on the border, what really -- what that means for republicans right now is moving up at least with the cornyn amendment, to move in that period where you went from legal to citizen to take some

of the triggers that were at the end and move them much further up in the process, right? is we're leading up the process so it's much more front loaded than back loaded. that's what the cornyn amendment was. >> the other concern is who is signing off. is it the person who is -- the fox forwarding the chicken coop. is it the person -- is the person whose job is to make it is cure going to get to say she's done a good job or will someone else say that. >> the same thing i asked you about what are things that might make you nervous, you know, when you think -- step back and try to be fair minded about the desirability of getting legislation passed as opposed to keeping this kind of convenient political issue alive, what are your concerns about what some fellow democrats might throw up as nonnegotiables? >> sure. let me just as a point -- i was

groping for a third trigger, and i couldn't remember, it's the entry-exit visa issue which we're not going to get into tonight because it's supered for they. >> we need a whole other segment on that. >> here's what i would say. here's where i'm coming from on this. i have lived the last decade, part of my history is that in a previous legal incarnation, my organization i ran the first set of adds ever by a center left group in spanish that was ever run in american political history. we did the first poll of latino voters ever done in political history. in 2004 we ran an ad campaign using what were called 527's that went head-to-head with george bush in spanish it was the first major national campaign conducted in spanish by any center left organization. my organization has more pa ten -- paternity for the evangelizing around the latino

for han any other except george bush who did a good job and that's why democrats needed to answer them. i look at as a societal demographic change manifestation. what i think is so important about the bill is not only will the senate bill give us a better imdwration system, but it will also resolve the issue of the undocumenteds. it will be resolve asmed lot of the horrible racial rhetoric and language we've seen in the u.s. is something intolerable and something i can't accept, making me upset, would be gone. the -- >> talk about your side. >> no, but i mean, i think this is -- what i'm saying is that i think for that, there are a lot of things we can accept. in the tradeoff. i'm saying that if you're -- i'm saying i think the democrats have already exited -- exhibited by allowing there

to be triggers, which was a much bigger concession than anybody understands, and when the bell came out i was flabbergasted by it, it meant our side was really trying, frack ly, to -- frankly, to accommodate what we believe are unreasonable and almost ridiculous border objectives by the republicans so i think the first of all, i think we're going to get a lot of -- out of thises that important to us and we've got to stay focused on that. some of these other things we can compromise on. the second thing ewail say is i do think that the low-skilled visa program, what's being called the w visa program is imperfect. if there were ways to make it better, i think democrats should be open to that. because i think that the whole theory of the low-skilled visa system is to reiterate what she said is, we don't want illegal workers in the country, it's bad for everybody, bad for them, bad for businesses, so many businesses, by the way, aye talked to are excited about the idea that they have to

worry about someone they're hiring that they don't know if they're illegal. the idea that this is going to get resofted, they'll put up with e-verify to it resolves the legal penalties for unknowingly hiring illegal workers. i think the low-skilled visa program if it's too small, too restrictive, too narrow, will encourage more illegal immigration. i may not be as sanguine or resolved that the flows will be what it used to be, because i think mexico is changing, mexico is producing more middle class jobs. there were reasons after nafta that mexico had reasons to export jobs, jong the flows will ever be the same, and we could debate this all day -- >> you're characterizing this as an a.f.l.-imposed, on the

one hand cosmetically, we have a temporary visa program but the numbers are so small, so almost not being material. >> what's amazing -- let me put it back -- >> is that an accurate characterization? >> i'll characterize it as, in the original mccain-kennedy bill in order to ensure we legalized the flow and restored circumstance lairity of labor in the united states we needed 550,000 visas a year to do that. the first year is 0,000. you don't have to be good at -- the first year here is 20,000. this is a significant break from where we were with something ted kennedy negotiated in 2005. so i think there is -- republicans have -- let me just anticipate where this is going. republicans in the house have democrats have made it clear they're not accept anything altering of the

current a.f.l. negotiation, i have a feeling in the tradeoff to come, this is an area where democrats will give a little if we get something on the back end. >> do you think it would be unreasonable for the democrats to not accept those numbers? >> i said in a reasonable fworks taking place over the next five or six months, if there are things we can get that are important, this might be one of the things that can be improved. >> let's talk for a second about numbers. this is important. it's important not just to businesses but for america because of what we're -- because what we're trying to do is deal with undocumented imtwration, we have to deal with past unauthorized immigration but you want to prevent -- why would we do all this in order to not fix the problem and be back here in 10 or 15 or 20 years facing it again, surely we want to prevent future illegal immigration as much as address the past. workplace verification and

punishment of the bad apple employer but the most important thing we need is a way for the workers we need to come legally. as you think of it as water, but if you think of it as water running on the dusty ground, you want to put it in a pipeline, the pipeline has to be big enough to take the water oirs we'll spill half the water on the dusty ground. the numbers, it's true that mexico is changing, becoming more middle class but america's work needs are not going to change that much. what draws them is a push and pull. the american work force in 1960,-of the people in the work force were high school dropouts wanting to do unskilled work. today less than 5% of the people in the work force are high school dropouts. we don't need as many but it's like a swimming pool has shrunk to a dixie cup. >> she's been doing this for a long time. >> so the point of that program

it's not -- you can change it without changing the absolute you were ins, you can make it more sensitive. that's one way to change it. but more sensitive to employers' real needs not as -- the numbers should be adjusted, the numbers should go up in good economic times, we need this workers, it should go down in bad economic times when americas are looking for work. and employers should have to hire americans first, no question. >> i want to add one thing. i didn't come this to the this position until very recently which is, we need a lot more immigrants in the country than we have now. >> we're going to get a lot more. >> we aren't going to get that many more. i think we have to be careful. this is a negotiation thing with the republicans. the house republicans have taken a position, at least they verbally say they do, no new net visas, which is going to drop out of the debate and we don't know where they'll end up on that. that's a consequential position that could end up killing the bill.

>> it's going to increase. >> it is going to increase but i don't want to otherly dramatize, particularly if the w. visa has been shrunk so much. this is -- let me spend 30 skeds on -- on this. part of the debate that has been grossly exaggerated by the opponents of the bill, which is the notion that millions of people are coming and everything else, it's out of control, the immigration, look, we -- for the size of our economy, the size of our country now, which has increased dramatically since many of these numerical targets were set 20 or 30 years ago, we're allowing in legally each year a million people, give or take. you can sort of carve it up different ways, the economy needs more than that. so what we're doing is, we're still, i think at the end of this, one of the things that may keep tamar in business, i'm not personally convinced that the way we're dealing with the legal immigration system is

really at its core dealing with the 21st century american economy. i think there will be opportunity to improve that as we learn about work flows and where the american economy is. >> here's where -- i'm a little off the reservation. i think there's not enough -- i think the discussion is about unauthorized crossing the border and what america needs for the 21st century, and obviously we haven't talked abthe high skill the high skilled is a critically important piece of this bill. u know, in the 19th century, countries come peed -- come peed for coal, iron ore and colonies, now they compete for the smart immigrants who can help the country innovate. if we're not friendly to them and remove some uncertainty, we're going to be at an economic disadvantage. the bill attempts to address that. there's a whole newfangled

system for how we give out green cards but almost doesn't get discussed. the merit based system, how many people even know what it is? there's not probably, for all the deal making that's been pretty good here and we're going to go on having a lot of deal making, there's some parts of this that, you know, aren't getting considered. >> i think we're going to have a better legal immigration system but i think will will be opportunities to make it better still. >> what are the chances from one to 10 that we're going to pass comprehensive immigration reform. >> and sign it into law? i think very high single digits. >> give me a number. >> eight or nine. >> can i tell a joke first before i answer? so there's a republican member of the house who has been very engaged in this who has a little riff he does, he says i've never seen the -- this is one thing -- i've never seen the chances better, the president sees it as his legacy, the republicans see it

as their future and the chamber and the a.f.l. agree and it, soft and intel are for i've never seen the chances better. i'll give it 5%. so but i'll give it 50-50. optimistic. >> i want to get into whether the public is engaged. but looking at the clock, i'm eager to get your paring tissue par tess penguins. this is being stream sod wait for a microphone and -- participation. this is being streamed so wait for a mike stone and identify yourself. >> hi, may name is brad, i run a group called help save maryland. i came today really needed to get reenergized. fortunately, i -- unfortunately i didn't have lunch before i came over. some of these chesher cat

smiles about, oh, my god, we're oing to have everify in place, if you make everyone legal on day one you may as well throw e-verify out the window. we'll spend 509 $5 billion. in maryland we spend close to $2 billion a year for education, incarceration and other expenses for the 300,000-plus illegals we have. crime on the border, low. sure. because it's up here in baltimore and in chicago. and in other places where the illegal immigrants have moved to. they're too smart to stay right at the border. i mean, i could go on and on. internal security measures here have been gutted by the administration, 287g is no longer even on the i.c.e. website. secure communities is not being enforced and there are many communities just waving -- their thumbing the nose at i.c.e., come and get them if you want them. i was at a protest friday, the

district is driving to give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. say you know, who cares about real i.d. for driver's license, it's come and get us. so this whole thing is really a joke. what is -- this is a new dynamic since 2007, is that on july 15, the black american leadership alliance is leading a very large protest from freedom plaza all the way down to the capitol system of now we have black americans who have double digit unemployment and when they hear simon say, oh, my god, we need more immigrants, we don't need more immigrants. we need jobs for americans right now. and this is going to be a historic march and there will be other groups supporting it. i think this is going to crash and burn as it should. >> thank you for that perspective. let's take another comment. let's take a couple of comments and questions if you have some. but appreciate that

perspective. in the back. >> good afternoon. peter boyce, community of fears consultants. isn't it true that this bipartisan group came together as a result of the demographics of the last presidential election, one, and two, given is is this bill alive or it dead? imon, you first, please. >> lurds -- let's take another question. please identify yourself. >> i'm from the american foundation. we have a do-something posture but the most the house can do is here. to do something is to reclaim some part of what they lost. is that enough to reclaim the -- are latinos going to go for

the most republicans can do is -- is that gap irreducible? >> why don't we take some of these now. >> is this all because of the election? >> i think the next woke a lot of republicans up, no question. i think, you know, there are some republicans who, very thoughtful republicans who know the system is broken and want to fix the system. as marko rubio says, we have de facto amnesty right now, we have to do something. a lot of people have known for a long time, they've noin the system was broken. there's no question that the election is what triggered it but i don't think it's only bandering. will it work as pandering, so to speak? you know, i think, the problem is, with republicans -- immigration reform has become a kind of stand-in litmus test issue for many latino voters.

many latino voters are skeptical about do we need more imgrants and some of those questions we've talked about but they've come to equate how elected officials talk about immigration as really a substitute or proxy for how those elected officials feel about them. the famous ads in california, run by the republicans, they said, they keep coming and they showed people running across the border and you know, third and fourth generation people saw this on tv and said, who is they? what are you talking about? how do you feel about us? i am a republican and romney was my candidate but the problem with the way romney campaigned is a lot of latinoed heard it as, we don't like you you and want you to self-deport. t's like an encyclopedia salesman come to your door and say, i want to sell you encyclopedias but i don't like

people like you. republicans, even if they get everything they want, i don't think it's going to make latinos say, oh, ok, now we're republicans but it's going to take that bad feeling that they're enemies and don't like us, start to take that off the table so republicans can talk to latinos about other things where latinos might be interesting in what they have to sell system of whether it's about small businesses or about education and social mobility and conservative values, president reagan used to say latinos are republicans, they just don't know it. maybe that -- there could be argument about that around the country but i think there are a lot of things republicans believe in that could be appealing to latinos that they can't hear because they think we're the enemies on immigration. whether or not it's exact, if it's legal status, no special path to citizenship, is that going to be enough to level the

playing field? i think it depends on the the nor of the debate and who likes -- looks like they're leaning in and who looks like they're trying to solve it, and what happens next. this is not just about republicans, this is in a way not so much about republicans coming alive to the reality of the guy who is washing your dishes in the back of the restaurant as it is to republicans coming alive to the reality of the latino voters in their district who are, you know, increasingly on blue collar and middle class people who are on campuses and in state legislatures and involved in our communities. they're in the room. it's just that republicans haven't been talking to them. i think this is an awakening to them and how they handle it going forward is going to be as important as exactly what positions are in the bill. >> and i think you were asking if the bill is dead or alive? >> it's very much alive. you know, again, to me, the most important sign is that

after the boston, the terrible tragedy of the boston bombing, the bang of eight an guys like paul ryan stood together and said this shouldn't affect the debate we're having around immigration. that was an early important task. i think the gang of eight group can'ts to prevail. just on the other two things, quickly, i won't spend too long, one is that i think the question was asked by your colleague, it's really in some ways the important one. my own view is there is no bill that democrats can support that would pass the house, period. i don't think it's possible. i think the idea that we're holding that out, tamar has to say this, it's her job, she works inside the republican party, it's not possible given where they are, given that goodlatte is introducing a bill to give body armor and guns to i.c.e. agent this is week and they'll be debating that this week, i think going from there -- and remember the last time the house voted on immigration

reform in 2005, the house republicans voted to deport 11 million people, it wasn't self-deport it was deportation and funding for it. the house republican party, i think the republican party is trying realy hard, i don't want in any way to be critical of it, i think the republicans in the house and senate, as tahar said, have woken up and gotten the memo they need to try harder here, i think they are try, but there's a limit to how al politician ly can travel in 0 queers without sounting like he lied to his constituents. >> even if boehner was willing to sacrifice his political career to ig or the the hastert rule, i don't think the rank and file republicans would follow. >> i think it's things like how

effective are the argument hourks does the debate fall out, i think the democrats have done a bad job at trying to win this argument about the border which i think would have weakened the republican resolve on some border issue well, didn't lean into this issue. on the final -- >> one statistic i want to point out, there was a lot on the table here by the gentleman in the front row, is that, you know, the one thing i always go back to about the role of the undocumented and latino community is that the community in the united states that has the highest worker participate rate, people who work more than any other demographic group, are latino imgrants. if you're an undocumented, cow can't get welfare, yes, you can go to school as required by the supreme court, yes you have to be treated in an emergency room as any civil society would to if somebody came in who was sick but this general aspersion that the undocumented community is more law breaking than the general public, not true.

they actually work more than the overall public. so these ideas that somehow this vast pool of undocumenteds left the border region, which would be surprising to hear for the people who live on the border and moved into places like baltimore and are committing crime well, would call that, if i could say it on tv, bull-whatever. and it's not fact-based and it's sad to me that there are people making making assertions like this. there's some -- they're so easily refutable and untrue and it reflects the racial bias driving this debate. and the reason i'm saying this, there's nothing he said based in fact and so, for example, worker participation rates, crime rates, go look at this stuff. latino americans don't commit crimes at higher levels than the rest of population, that's not true. what we have to do, i think, in order for the country to work through this, right, this is a hard issue.

we're going through profound demographic change in a very rapid way, we're seeing how europe with their migration is tearing themselves up. that's not happening here. so i'm just going to conclude by saying that i think it's incumbent on all of us to do our best to be fact based. i sat here with statistics in this entire discussion today trying to keep this civil and fact based and i think it's incumbent on everyone do the same. >> the gentleman from maryland did, he also mentioned and this is true, that we're living in a time of relatively high unemployment across the country, and rereferenced the even higher unemployment rate among african-americans, he referenced the fact that local and state governments do absorb lot of the cost that the undocumented population brings, you know, in some ways, some

people have now -- our current immigration system is sort of unfunded mandates. there might be aggregate benefits to the u.s. economy but some of these costs are either born by county hospitals because of the e.r. rooms and education systems at the local level, they're not seeing, they're not -- they're not being compensated for -- now if ou had legalization -- but the perspective that he presented you know, at the end of the diwas kind of where the center of political gravity was the last time we tried to do this reform in 2006-2007. you had bipartisan support here in washington for it, you know, you had the establishment, you know, corporate, labor, everybody was lined up to do this and it seemed like we were going to do it but the perspective that he injected into this discussion turned out to be a pretty prevalent or at

least quite a heart felt perspective around the country. since then we have had an economic crisis. >> why do we feel that sentiment won't carry the day again? >> a, i think polling shows the public is even in 2006 and 2007 it was actually kind of the polling showed when you dug deep that it was a small minority that was adamantly against the bill. it was every poll, you know, i saw a dozen polls and you saw a different dozen polls showed that adamant minority to be in the 15% to 20%. there's another adamant minority on the other side that's totally for it. most of the public, sort of 60% is in between, as they are on many, many issues. if that day they saw on the news a d.u.i. illegal immigrant was in an accident they'd be against it and that day if they had just are done their house and the guy did a good job, the drywaller, they'd be for it

system of the public is very movable. the 20% on the very anti-side dominated the debate and the big question this time is where is that middle 60%. polling shows that they see immigration as much less of a kind of make or break, do or die issues. it's way, way down, 70% to 40% or something like that. i'm waiting to see in this next couple of weeks, the public hasn't been paying attention yet. it's been in the newspaper articles we've been read bug not leading the nightly news. is this going to get to the point that so much of the public is paying attention it does lead the nightly news, i'm not sure. and when it does, i wonder, is the public going to slug and say, yeah, it's -- going to shrug and say, yeah it's time to do that, what is what the -- they did when the president introduced the initiative to legalize young people brought here as minors, even

republicans shrugged and said, yeah, it's about time to do that. so i'm waiting to see, are they going to shrug or are they going to roar? i think they're going to shrug. and let me say sm about -- say this about unemployment. we used government numbers to look at the difference between jobs americans do and jobs immigrants do we looked at three occupations, maid in a hotel resort, a dishwasher, and i'm going to forget -- landscape guy. we looked at the percentage of people unemployed in the last five years who have taken those jobs, those are really hard, physically intensive job and the percentage is under 10% in every case. even unemployed americans don't want those jobs. >> i want to take a couple more, do we have more questions? omments? >> i'm from indianapolis, i'm

currently in school in austin, texas, at the university of texas. the immigration debate is big there. how do you think the president has played out on this, he seems unusually quiet on this issue, at least the media tell us us tissue tells so. should he get more involved? > is he leading from behind? mundofox. jose with a couple of questions, he doesn't seem to get the love from those people opposing the bill and also from the democratic side, what's his logic? >> you get to answer that one. >> i will. >> why don't we take those. the president and senator cornyn. >> i do want to say that even though i don't agree with senator cornyn, it's important now that he is involved in the debate and is, you know, he's an important senator he

represents a state that's got a lot at stake in the immigration bill. i think it's much better now that he's actively and afwressily pursuing some public objectives than sitting on the sidelines so i think in that sense, this is helpful and as i said earlier, there are in the cornyn amendment, there's a sere rose of thing he's proposing about border infrastructure investment that i think are hugely critical to the mexican and u.s. economies that i hope get adopted even if his amendment doesn't. so i'm -- i don't -- i'm not personally characterizing senator cornyn's involvement so far in this in the way "the new york times" did on sunday, they called his amendment toxic, i thought that was a gross overstatement of the role he's trying to play. we need him and hopefully we can work something out with him in the next couple of weeks of but his amendment is ted and we'll see what happens. on the president, you know, i think that the -- clearly the

white house has made a decision to allow the senate to lead. reasonable decision. it was going well. they've hung together. they're doing a good job. they produced a good bill. what has perhaps been lacking and i think the second calculation was, all the reports from republicans, more of this felt -- the more this felt like obama's bill the more it would raise the ire of opponents of obama, of which there are many inspect country and the more it seems like a bill that came out of congress with a lot of republican support, that it would be easier to sell to the 60% that tamar referenced in the middle. i think what's -- the cost of that, however, has been the defining of the issue with the public. to your point that was just raised, we're going to have a debt -- debate in the next three weeks, i'm not sure we've had a debate in the country that's been this spirited and organized in ha long time, i

think this will be a god exercise in democracy we're about to see. whether or not the american public pays any attention to anything that happens in the senate is something we're going to find out, i think, as there's a general unhappyness with the congress and washington. but i don't know what messages will come out. there's going to be a lot of horse trading and weird amendments and everything else but i do hope the floor debate will bring the american people in, because i think it would be better for this ends up passing, which i think it will, it would be better if the ublic was indegree rally involved in this debate and coming to their own conclusions. i don't know whether we've tone -- i want t i hope to say this about the floor debate. in virtually every poll taken about immigration reform there's been 55% to 60% plus support for comprehensive immigration reform.

msnbc -- nbc/"wall street journal" last week in their poll when you demn straited a second truism, when you define specifically that the path to citizenship will include back in line, pay a fine, conditions, support in the nbc/"wall street journal" poll went up to 76% in the public. there is broad bipartisan support for this bill in the country and there has been for eight years. what there has been is a very effective opposition and frankly the advocates have not been nearly as spirited and as engaged at the opposition. i think that's changed and i think that's why we're going to win this time. >> so the president, i think if the republican point of view, is, thank goodness he's left it to the senate, right? i think the president is viewed as a polarizing figure among republicans and it's been -- if the president had been more engaged from the beginning i don't think we'd be where we are. i think it's very -- he's -- at

the beginning there were some of us who wish head wouldn't exercise so much restraint but thank goodness he has. there are people, again, when i have my cynical, scary, bad nightmare fantasies, it's that the president has a good angel on one shoulder and a bad angel on the other and the bad angel are people who say, let's make this a partisan issue, and make this the d's win. i hope the president doesn't have that angel, i hope i'm wrong about this cynicism. i hope that the self-restraint we've seen and the willingness to let the bipartisan process work its will will continue. about cornyn, you know, what's been interesting, i'm not going to try to get into -- to channel john cornyn, because i can't to that. but i think it's been interesting to see how all the republicans, many republicans, right, in the -- even who do

not support the bill, i mean if you watch the judiciary committee markups, senators lee, senator cruz, they have different positions but even republicans who in the end won't end up voting for the bill have tried to be sensitive to thinking that -- thinking about being part of the solution. what can we do to fix the immigration system and isn't legal immigration a good idea? senator cruz who no one thinks will come anywhere near voting for this bill, his amendment in the jew tishary committee was to add a million green cards, to say we need more immigrant well, need more immigration, immigration is a good thing, i'm not prepared to legalize people who broke the law but i'm for immigration. that's -- that is evidence of the sea change going on in the republican party about latino voters. again, you can read that cynically and say, they just want their votes or you can say, they're listening to them. and you know, i think what you're seeing is people starting to listen to their

skits -- constituents and say what can we do? someone like john cornyn is, has always -- his role in life, his platform, is about law and order. that's not going to cheage. he's trying to reconcile his listening to latino voters and what latino voters need and how do we fix the immigration system within -- his prosecutors' concern about the law. he's got ideas about that. and i think the amendment was some combination of those things and as simon pointed out, the concern about fixing the border infrastructure so it works. going forward, texas will be the state where latino demographics will make the most difference in the next decade. texas has been a pretty solidly red state for quite a while. that will not always be true. if the latino vote comes of age in texas and republicans haven't started to win more

hearts. >> i think this question that tamar raised about whether there is this thought in democrats' head that this thing could fail and we'd still benefit and eep the status quo, i have never heard anybody say this -- say that this time around. it may have been whispered before. i think -- i was in a briefing with someone from univision who was showing clips of how the network is prospering and one jorge ramos st was cob fronting obama over him not keeping his promise. i think that about the immigration system. i think what democrats are motivated by is the sense of obligation. we said we were going to do this we said we were going to do this for a long time. we have to keep our word here. we've got to get this done. s that real thing that's going to materially affect a lot of people and also give us a better immigration system. so i don't think democrats, i

think the political -- the politics of this has been settled. republicans have lost the politics of this. they misplayed this issue terribly over a long oord period of time and been damaged by it. what they need to do now, to have any chance, this is a suing for peace strategy, this is not about creating prosperity with a latino electorate, this is about getting latinos to open up to their party again and give them a chance to make the case. i don't think they'll get a lot of material benefit as a party if this passes. i think a lot of it will accrue to the democrats. but it's going to put him back in the game and give them a chance to rebuild their standing in -- with latinos over the next decade in ways that fit them well before. this is not pie in the sky stuff. george bush was an expert at winning the latino vote. this isn't something that should be hard for them. the politics, democrats want to get this done. >> i hope you're right. ? we're going to find out.

>> we have some interesting weeks and months ahead of us. thank you for sharing your perspective. thank you all for coming. let's do this again later in the year. thank you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] >> president obama is going to speak about the senate immigration bill tomorrow morning. our live coverage will be on c-span at 10:20 eastern. on the next washington journal, we'll focus on several issues in congress including immigration and tax policy. our guest is the former head of the on gregsal budget office, douglas helts-' kin. steven aftergood will talk about data collection programs

that use phones and internet. and we'll be joined by connie cass to discuss an article about how washington investigates itself. she'll look at the executive and legislative bramples of government. "washington journal" is live on c-span every day at 7:00 a.m. eastern. ow, army chief of staff genere odierno on preventing sexual assaults in the mill tear. here's some of what he had to say at the army's annual sexual assault prevention summit. you can see the entire event nline at c-span.org. >> so, because of many factors, i believe we have -- you've heard me say in public we have a huge issue. and the main thing i want everybody to understand is that this is not just a passing

issue. for whatever reason, this is one we've had for a very long time and we have not been able to defeat it. i wruse that term because that's the -- i use that term because that's the term we're all familiar with. we have not been successful in solving this problem. and the issue becomes as women take on a greater role in the becomes even more important that we ensure that they have the environment that they can excel in. is is about creating a environment where everyone can excel. i realize men get sexually assaulted too. i realize it's about creating an environment where we do not tolerate sexual assault. but i will tell you from the things i see we still have people out there who tolerate

sexual assault. sexual assault harassment. and until we solve that problem, it's going to get worse. so i bet if i go around to everyone in here, you'll tell me, i got it, no problem. i understand the importance. out to ly, we've been some units and although we get it at this level, as i get further and further down, we're still not there yet. because the answer is, i don't have a problem here. there's no problem in my platoon. there's no problem in my company. there's no problem in my battalion. that's baloney. that's the problem. we're not seeing ourselves. i'm in an all-male unit, i don't have a problem. no, that's not right. in fact, you probably have some perpetrators.

probably have some predators. and you probably have some males who have probably been sexually assaulted or sexually harassed. so this isn't about i don't have a problem because i don't have females in my unit. this is about getting down to sergeants, staff sergeant, sernlt first class, master sergeants, lieutenants, captains, majors, lieutenant colonels, where they take this on seriously. because we are not doing that today. the way i want us to do it. you know, we were talking, i was talking earlier, we were talking about, we have an i.e.d., every soldier knows what to do. they have a battle trill. they know how to react to it and then once we started figuring out we started getting i.e.d.'s, we started fwoning to the left of i.e.d.'s and

started figuring out how to keep them from exploding. sexual harassment and sexual assault is maiming our soldiers. we got to have the same thought. every soldier needs to understand what their role is. what is their battle drill? to prevent this. what do they do to the left of the incident? what do they do when thence dent occurs? and what do you do after the incident occurs? so we put it in military problems, we have no problem, we can deal wit, that's something we can understand. but we have to understand better what it is here. and we have to do the same type f thing. >> the name of this place still resonates with a shuddering in the hearts of the american people. more than any other name connected to the civil war except lincoln's, gettysburg

reverberates. americans retain the knowledge that what happened here was the crux of our terrible national trial and even americans who aren't sure precisely what transpired on these feel -- fields knows that the tragedy we associate with the civil war resides most palpably here. >> the 150th anniversary of the battle of gettysburg, live, all day, sunday, june 30, on american history tv on c-span3. >> c-span, created by america's cable companies in 1979, brought to you as a peculiar service by your television provider. tissue as a public service by your television provider. >> in a few moments our series first ladies: influence and image, will focus on ida mckinley, wife of president william mckinley. in an hour and a half, a forum

on internet security hosted by the council on foreign realizations. after that, a new america foundation discussion on the immigration bill working its way through the senate. >> the story of id. mckinley can this be told through an expiration between her husband william mckinley. they spent 30 years together route them happiness early on. changedstrike an struck and their life into illness and motion to shape the presidency at the turn of the new century. joining us tonight to tell the story, richard norton smith and carl anthony. we will start our program with some film and that is the first time that the president and first lady have ever been

captured on film and the united states. this footage is a dash of president mckinley and mrs. mckinley arriving on stage at the pan-american exposition on september 5, 1901. the very next day the president would be filled i and assassin possible it. what was it about this exhibition that attracted the president to want to go? >> it was a world there. -- fair, it was a celebration of america's place in the new world. the presidency was very surprising in many ways. in fact, he was the president who took the country to the world stage. the spanish-american war and

turned america into a republican into an empire. at the end of his life in the last speech he gave, in effect he talks in ways that years later we can all appreciate about opening america to the world. >> we were looking at our posting and everybody is asking about what is known of ida mckinley, her ill health. here she is traveling with the president. what did the country think of the president to know about her? >> it is an interesting dichotomy. this is the pattern of her life. she had been grossly miscast by history as this victorian invalid on the fainting couch. there were times when she was that way. she had chronic illnesses. one was seizure disorder, known as epilepsy. she had damage along her left

leg which led to immobility. she also had a compromised immune system. she was susceptible to infections. they took a tour across the country, six months before he was shot. when they got to california, she almost died and sever cisco. the presidency -- in san francisco. the whole nation, and the world was focused on this. six months later, she was walking unassisted. >> the very next day, an assassin struck and killed president mckinley. who was he? what were his motives? >> his name was leon czolgosz.

i have trouble pronouncing it. you would call him a drifter. he was in an anarchist. >> what does that mean? >> it meant that people at that time thought existing monarchies was at the attachment of the common man. some and a press -- anarchists were against the system that was topped by the powerful. mckinley had power and he said he had none in effect. he had planned on killing the president early in the year. the king of italy had been murdered. leon would stay up late at night reading newspapers about the

death of the king. it may have triggered it. he made plans to kill the president. ironically, the people around mckinley -- the secret service protection and there was one guard at the white house that retired early that night. >> we asked this with the last assassination. this was the third president. >> and this is why we got serious about protecting our presidents. the secret service was busy working on counterfeiters. the president's secretary wanted to cancel the reception at the fair. he worried about such a threat. ironically, leon czolgosz got in and wrapped a gun around a bandage around his hand so it was unnoticed. he shot the president twice.

at first, it was thought that mckinley would recover. about a week later, he took a turn for the worse the -- for the worse. that was the last time the american people focus on william mckinley. >> we are showing an illustration of ida mckinley at the presidenct's deathbed. she was not at his side on day two when the assassination took place. how does it play out with her? >> at this point and we will get later on to the story of her epilepsy, finally among the string of doctors she had, she had one who committed to helping her in controlling the seizures.

part of that required a very strict regimen of food, diet, and rest. she had been with him in opening day. they went to niagara falls. then the doctor said, it is time for your rest. both the president and mrs. mckinley had bought off on that. she was taking her scheduled rest. she suspected something had happened when the hours started going by and he did not come back. she was very calm when she found out. she rose to be extraordinary. she was going out walking. she was walking along the sidewalk in talking to reporters which defies perception of her. >> we have some video we are going to show of the mckinley in

funeral. what was the country like at that time? >> the fact is if you talk to the man on the street in september of 1901, he would've told you mckinley was certainly the greatest president since lincoln. there were people who compared him to lincoln. he was not simply admired, he brought us out of the greatest depression since that date. he projected american power, economic and military onto the world stage. he is a very large presence for somebody to become almost forgotten. when he died, the enormous grief in the country and the reason why people love to mckinley, even people who do not love --

vote for him because they saw his tenderness and devotion to this wife area >> we are going to go back in time and learning more about ida saxton and life with william mckinley. we are going to go back to her early days of canton, ohio. taking you to the saxton house which is what it is called today. and to the mckinley museum. this our first video tonight. [video clip] >> it is significant in the life of ida because this is the house in which she was born. she grew up in this house along with her sister and brother and parents and grandmother. this was the house she lived in up until she met and married future president william mckinley. this is the family parlor where the family would have spent evenings reading and conversing with each other. this not a place where they would entertain.

we have on the wall one of the earliest known those -- photos of the item her sister and brother. on the wall above the mantel, we have a portrait of ida's father, -- james saxton. over on this wall, we have a photograph of ida's beloved mother, kate. this room was actually replicated from a photo that we received from a descendent that is one of the few interior photos that we have of the house. we are in the formal parlor of the house. in this room, we have examples of ida's love of music. we have heard -- her piano. she became the first first lady to provide entertainment after state dinners and showing that love of music. that was part of her formal education.

when she and her sister went on a grand tour of europe in 1869, one of the items she broke was this music a box which was donated by a descendent. she bought it in geneva. there are letters she wrote home to her parents throughout the trip talking about looking for music boxes. she sees them in different places but does not care for the quality. she said she would wait until she goes to switzerland and i will buy one there. this is the one she bought. >> we are going to see some of the letters. the letters that we have a

written to her parents from her and her sister, mary. they went to europe to see all of the countries that they could. the letters that we have detail a lot of the post was that they saw in the countries they went to. this one is from scotland. she said people should travel to see how much there is to learn to react how much i will enjoy anything that burns has written. she really made the most of her trip. she was studying the different countries and seeing things you can see on the grand tour which took six months. we have other things that her life. this is what she would've carried when she went to church. this is before she married mckinley.

these are some of the hymns she would have sung at church. this is one of my favorites. this is the actual wedding license that william mckinley jr. signed. he dropped the jr. after his father died. this is what they filed after they got married. at the time, it was not necessary for the woman to sign. william signed it, but i did not. -- ida did not. >> she was born to well-off parents. what is important to note that mark -- know? >> they were radical against slavery. and also equal education for women. ida's mother was extremely well educated. ida mckinley is the most fully

educated of all the first ladies up to that point. her father was friends with a fellow abolitionist. her grandfather was friends with horace greely. oh hi jo was the california of the day. -- ohio was the california of the day. it represented the far west. his movement for equal education for women. ida's father helps to bring a famed abolitionist whose name i cannot remember now. ida follows her with the teacher goes to teach at an academy during the civil war. she goes on to study in

cleveland. she studies at the brook hall in pennsylvania. what you see is a worldly, educated young woman with an interest and finance and a capability for mathematics and also great physical activity. she is an unusually fit young woman. she hikes up to 10 miles a day. two significant factors on that trip to europe. one is that she sees for the first time poor and working- class women working in belgium. she finds out how very little they make and have to live on. she is sort of devastated by this. she reflects and a lot of letter. she buys a lot of lace to try and to do her part to help them. she sees an artist born with no hands who is painting in one of

the galleries. at first, she is put off by this. a real sense of empathy for people with disabilities. >> her father who owned a bank gave her a job as a teller. was it normal for a woman to work or was it ok because it was for her father? >> certainly not in a managerial capacity like this. it does tell you a lot about the relationship with her father. >> we want to invite you to join in. we are using some of your tweets. use the #first ladies. you can also go to our facebook page. we have a good old-fashioned telephone. the phone numbers on the screen and divided by the region. we welcome your participation. she met at the bank major

william mckinley. >> it must be said that he married up. this is a young woman with a pretty cosmetologist back -- cosmopolitan background. he was born in ohio area from a family in the iron making business. people think that's where he got his attitude of protectionism. he came back home homesick. that was the real classroom for somebody of his generation -- the war. he entered as a private. he exited as a major. along the way, along the patronage of hayes. he took a liking to this young

man. years later, ida was spent a good deal of time in the hayes white house. that relationship became a significant one. >> they were married when she was 23 and he was 27. what were her early years like? >> they were conventional. she stopped working. he was interested in politics. when i went rule breaking this new biography on her, you see the first legal cases in the business he was handling. the saxton family helped build canton. it became an important

industrial center in ohio at that time. certainly ida's father and grandfather helped build it. mckinley helped to sustain it and make it famous. he was not -- he rose in prominence because of her. >> a few years after they got married in 1873 was an onset of problems for her. what were they? >> and they were living in a house that was described as their house -- her father had bought it. she gave birth on christmas day to the first a daughter on katie

who was very healthy and the central focus of their lives. ida's mother became very ill with cancer. i should say at that house, the saxton/mckinley house was the white house. it was owned by her maternal grandmother. it is passed through four generations of women. ida was very close to her mother and grandmother. she was pregnant for a second time when her mother had cancer. her mother died before she gave birth. there is a picture for falling her mother's burial service. from what we can tell, people were later on recalling it, she struck her head. she may have had a bad spinal injury. she started developing seizure disorders. >> jennifer on facebook says -- i hope that she suffered -- i

heard that she suffered from depression. were there more depression episodes? >> it comes and goes. the great discussion that this biography will point out is that for the entire first half of the mckinley's years in the white house, ida was fine. she was traveling on her own to new york. she was relatively active. she was still disabled that she had a mobility problems. she adapted to the role of first lady. she did not hide the fact is she

an occasional walking problem. the depression, you know, her physical problems and resulting emotional problems. sometimes frustrations with her husband because it was a loving and devoted relationship, there were like any marriage, times of strained. it is all good about being optimistic when you are the one who can get up and walk away. there are times when this young woman who was so active find her life and different. >> i have read and you know more about it. there was this amazing scandal of the murder of the first lady's brother supposedly by a mistress. then a trial which had been sensational. the mistress was acquitted. there was a cause and effect.

she went into a severe depression. >> that was a story that was largely put out in a book by margaret leach. it is actually not true. that happened in october of 1898. it is not until june of 1899, a good amount of time after the trial that other factors -- his reelection and campaign and not telling her he is running begins to cause this depression. >> will take a few phone calls. >> thank you for having this wonderful program. my question is really specifically to the hobart's and mckinley's and more specifically to the role that jennie hobart played as an acting first lady during the years that they were in the white house. can you speak to that issue?

>> i will summarize it by saying it is false. she was there more as a friend and support. ida mckinley never was absent from any of the official duties of first lady and had someone substitute for her. she had her younger nieces, mary barber, who she was very close to. sometimes they were frustrated because they did not want to undertake the obligation. mrs. hobart was very close to her. she advised the president, if you want to change the seating arrangement you can. ida really considered her a very genuine friend. she never substituted for mrs. mckinley. >> maria is watching us from rhode island. >> thank you for having me on. my question is, how did ida mckinley deal with the death of her children in comparison to

other first ladies such as mary todd lincoln? >> she was up in the attic of writing letters. it is the worst thing that a parent can go through. it is universal area -- universal. >> it became known as the mckinley home. it was seen through different euphemisms. they only lived there for two years. they moved into the saxton/mckinley house. mckinley lived longer and that house than any other place at all. katie came with them. she died of scarlet fever. this is after ida has been through the trauma and is going

through dealing with this very bewildering new factor in her life -- and the seizure disorder. some years later she began to take comfort in buddhism. it was reincarnation. you begin to see ida mckinley instead of writing letters to her dead child, she kept katie alive. she would always have a picture on the wall. she kept her close -- clothes and rocking chair and spoke sometimes as if the child was still alive. there are first-hand accounts of her looking at young children because she tapped that perhaps katie had been reincarnated.

>> we will return to the house to learn more about the political partnership between the mckinley's. >> during the years of william mckinley's political career, the house served as the residence. they had living quarters on the third floor of the house which was originally a ballroom and was turned into a living quarters with a bed room and entertaining area. off of that room that we used to conduct business. we are in his office right outside the ballroom which becomes the living quarters of ida and william mckinley. this is the kind of set up they had. everywhere they went during his political careers. the doors stayed open to the living quarters. ida stayed in the living quarters so she could hear what was going on.

she would never take part in meetings. she would never express her political opinions. she would never join in. this the kind of set up they had when they were in columbus when he was the governor. there was no governor's mansion. >> william mckinley, u.s. congressman became the party's nominee in 1896. what were his party politics? what was the republican party like with him in it? what's it was the party of big business. -- >> it was the party of big

business. protecting american industry. it is hard to believe but you can look at the political map in 1896 and it would flip-flop today. mckinley and the republicans swept the industrial northeast. it is absolutely reverse of what we take for granted today. mckinley had become identified with this issue of the tariffs. he had been gerrymandered out of his job. the democrats tried twice and they got him. they should have reconsidered. the next year he was elected governor of ohio. he was reelected two years after that. one reason why he again is today out of a prisoner of big business is his association -- >> there's a story that he had a ritual that he would get up from his desk at 3:00 and wave to ida. >> is actually the governor.

he will go to their home, a residential hotel in front of the plaza and he would go out and do this. tourists new at 3:00 -- look at how devoted he is. none other than teacher president warren harding -- future president warren harding told the story. they knew that mrs. mckinley had been back in canton for a week. he was putting on a good show. that's devotion to ida he became to use as presidential timber. he was disciplined and focused and devoted and loyal. these are the kinds of things you can look for in him. >> it seems strange that he would get up during meetings and way. it was very shrewd.

>> shrewd political theater. he used this little bit of theatre because he would get off the train and carry her purse. he will put the shawl around her. people would clap. this became part of his persona. >> was he as popular in america as he was in ohio? >> he was. we are talking about the height of the victorian era. apart from that, mckinley was a lovable political figure. they are always being petitioned.

people want jobs. people want something. the governor of ohio was no different. mckinley had a disability, -- had an ability. he had developed he would change the subject. he would take a carnation off his coat and pin it to his petitioner and send the guy out who did not get what he wanted. he had this mode of connecting with the governor. this is what made his political genius. it was not sophisticated. what ever it is, he had it.

>> hi, charlotte. >> before you get to my question i want to say i really enjoyed the show. this a second time i've been been watching this with my mom. my question is did ida mckinley play anything else besides the piano? >> did she play anything else? >> i found no evidence. they think she took an interest in a wide variety of music. she loved the opera. she was big on the theater. she had a lot of friends. what you love about being first lady was having all of the stars

of the stage, this was before hollywood, come to the white house. she had all kinds of music played at the white house. she had mexican music. she had a british club. she had african american music. she even had a rack time performed at the first valentines dance. >> marilou in kansas. >> my question was answered already. i want to thank you for this program. i really enjoyed it. i want to ask if there will be a dvd of the programs available later? >> all of them are online. you can order dvds from our website. go to c-span.org. we have it all online for you to

watch again. the 1896 campaign was jennings versus mckinley. jennings campaigned through many states. he was on the road all the time. mckinley conducted what was known as the front porch campaign. we'll learn more in our next video. >> mckinley played an active role in in the campaign and in the front arch campaign. she would be seated on the porch. she would never speak. she was always there. there was a perception of by the public that ida was an invalid. campaign managers wanted to dispel that, they wanted to show that ida would serve her role as first lady. there have been many first ladies in the past that were ill that it did not really play an active role. now it is 1896. we are coming on the new century.

communication is better. people are learning more about the president and their first lady. they are starting to have expectations that that first lady play a role of. you do not want her to hide way. that is what the campaign managers wanted to do. they wanted to bring up that this is not an invalid, she was active and wanted to play that role. we have some of those items that were created for the campaign, for ida mckinley. we have been campaign biography. we have some ribbons that were put out by different organizations. we have a piece that is a paper tray and the wife of the other candidate. well the piece of china that has ida's image. all of these pieces were out there in the public. ida was out there in the public. she did not make speeches. she was always there and always present. >> how well was -- how well known were her illnesses known by the public? >> the greater problem which william mckinley never ceased searching for a cure for the seizures. because visually he would see

well the piece of china that has ida's image. her with a gold handled cane and will chair did not, toward the end of his administration. he would always give his arm to her. it was easy to focus on that. she would talk to reporters and say, i have a lameness in my leg. that for a while cap things, kept the public satisfied. you start hearing expressions like nervous affliction. they never used the word epilepsy in her lifetime. what was really going on and was tragic in and of itself was the ignorance of the vast population about the seizure disorder even

when the agent knew balaji is donning, people got -- age of neurology is donning, people thought it was mental. mckinley was afraid people would and his wife had a mental illness. he contacted a doctor in new york, this was before the fda. this guy broke the code by giving a mckinley salts to control the onset of seizure. the doctor started writing and said i gave you the condition i would give a weekly report. it is a very precise measurement

that has to change week to week based on that. mckinley would never write. he did not want to put anything in writing. over time, it crated -- it created a greater harm. over time, it can damage the nerves. >> in an attempt to help her he made her condition worse? >> yes. >> can you define for people what to be salts are? >> i cannot recall the chemical. i think it is potassium. a white powder that would be stirred into water.

it was not a tablet. there were tablets that i made reference to. i found this largely by looking at his canceled checks. they wanted to get rid and he did not reply to the doctor, he did not agree of the checks. it is a sedative but it does the senses and nerves. >> we saw the use of campaign. was this a new trend, it into the country where the wives helped the candidates of pill to the public? >> the last of the old-fashioned campaign. theodore roosevelt exploited it. they were very exploitable. edith roosevelt was the least willing to go along. the children had a great time. this is the hinge. you have newspapers with pictures.

all of a sudden, presidents and their families who were very remote figures before, they have faces and personalities. that expanded to the families as well. it would take off as the media became course is physically. >> good evening. first of all, i want all the callers to know i have a comment to make. this program that you have put together on c-span has been phenomenal.

i have watched most of the series and i've been educated and enlightened. i have a couple of comments. >> the gentleman sitting across from you, it was decided to do the series and our producer worked very hard on this. thank you. >> you are absolutely right. richard norton smith, it is a pleasure and an honor to be up to talk to both of you folks. i have as a love of history i have followed both of your works for years. i'm just honored to bring to talk to you tonight. first of all, with regard to mrs. mckinley's help -- health, i noticed you comment about six months before mr. mckinley was assassinated she was gravely ill when they had a trip out to the

west coast. i noticed there was a report that was in the "new york times" about how near death she was. was that the first time that a first ladies held was publicly reported that mark i am curious to know why they felt the need to even get that out there. maybe 20 years since that a president or first lady would not have wanted that information to be released. >> thank you. >> a really great question and observation. the only other first lady would go through an element -- an illness was caroline harrison. that was toward the end. before she died, more details were learned. in large part it was they were traveling. they went through tennessee down to new orleans to texas. ida mckinley got out of the other side of the train and ran away with a bunch of women who took her to a big breakfast across the border making her the first incumbent first lady to leave the united states. they came to the fiesta flowers. at that point should be shaking hands that she had cut her

finger, she had a ring on. it became ineffective. as they were going up the coast and i go through all the details in the new book, to summarize this debate about issue going to get better? mckinley said i've seen her, she is always gotten better. the doctors said this is pretty serious. when they had to cancel everything and she was really near death that is when, of coarse reporters were traveling with them. they had to tell the truth. they were very honest about it. they gave daily reports.

>> with regards her seizure disorder, the president developed a technique when they were at events. it was described by taft who attended a home in canton. let me read how he described it. "at that moment we heard a hissing sound, mckinley through a nap and over his wife's face and without a trace of excitement handed me his pill so. -- pencil. not a word was said by the incident." people have heard the napkin story. is it true? is it is true but has been exaggerated. here is what the truth is. that only occurred in private. his was at their home. -- this was at their home.

the other accounts are in reference to private dinners. this never happened at state dinners. this never happened in public. and in a way, it would have been better. the reason it did not happen in public was because she was being kept on the drugs that were dulling her senses. when you people talking about how vague and distorted her conversation was becoming, this is a 1099 and afterwards -- 1899 and afterwards. the of fact of the nerve damage that was occurring.

>> we are going to return to canton, ohio and look at some of the dresses of the first lady that they have preserved their as a sense of how she preserved herself. >> in order to see some the most fragile and important pieces from ida mckinley, we have to go into our main storage area. this is where we keep her white house dresses and other artifacts. this dress is my favorite. and we are in the middle of a process so that we can have these dresses repaired so they can be on a mannequin. this one is my favorite because it is so heavily ornamented. you can see on the beadwork. it has silver beats. -- beads. it has tiny little mirrors. it would have reflected light beautifully. this is typical of ida's style.

the fashion would have been high collar. the puppy sleep -- puffy sleeves. it was her ivory -- favor ivory color. she did not have a lot in her life to be excited about. she was a semi invalid. fashion was important to her as reflected by the guilds in our collection. >> we are beginning to see first ladies club set the trends. was she a trendsetter? >> she was not. she did get into a bit of trouble with the audubon society by wearing a feather in her hair. ms. cleveland and mrs. hayes, great lovers of animals. ida mckinley was not a great animal lover.

let me clear up a stupid and untrue story was that she ordered the trunk of cats during the spanish-american war that been named after spanish leaders, political and military. i've really tried to track that down. there is zero evidence that she did not do it and that there were any cats. >> it was a busy time in the country. some of the major events that were occurring during the administration. 1898, the spanish-american war. it brought teddy roosevelt to prominence. [laughter] the war of revenue act.

the open door policy. 1900, gold standard act. you talk about him as establishing the power of the presidency. >> two quick examples. 18 -- 1896 matters because it is an election. they cannot know it in 1901, when william mckinley -- for the next 40 years up until the new deal, republic had been the dominant party. he broke the logjam after the civil war when he went back and forth. that is important. one other case of presidential power that is relevant is mckinley dispatched 5000 american soldiers to combat the boxer rebellion which was a secret society of chinese who were set up with the explication

of the country by western imperial powers. they had laid siege. a young cunning couple -- honeymooning couple and hundreds of westerners and thousands were threatened. mckinley sent these troops as part of an international expedition in the nick of time they arrived and were able to save about 900 westerners who were there. he did it on his own power. he never talked to congress. presidents would use that example in situations that may have been similar. that is one way in which he transformed his presidency and the presidency. >> i love this program and my

question was when we learned in elementary school, they told us that when mckinley was assassinated and had died his wife sat in the white house quite a long time playing the p&o and got up and took a canary and left the white house and everything else in it? is that true or false? >> and that is false. i'd mckinley -- well, it is shocking how so many of the simple request she made in regard of her husband and his coffin and his remains were ignored. she was not really treated much her requests as a widow were not honored.

>> when he was looking at all of these issues, it was the custom to drink a mixture to stay awake that contained cocaine? >> americans drink coca-cola. it contained the same substance. >> the answer is yes? >> it is yes. >> the pope used it. >> was consumed with his wife's health. how does that affect his presidency? >> a ship was sunk in havana harbor in february. he is reluctant to go to war. the negotiations with spain are

down. we go to war. there were times when he stayed up late at night but the truth was that was the period when she was worried about him. in act, there is a strong record their shows she was trying to talk to his assistant we need to do something about him. she was playing the protective role. this apl when she is -- is a period when she is physically -- strong. after the war is declared over, then the filipino american war because we took the philippines they did not welcome us. and they resisted. it was bloody and horrifying. there were atrocities committed on both sides. that is when she was at her

neediest. that is when the pressure really did get to him. he had to constantly make the choice between his work and his wife. >> surprising parallels between then and now. the 113 days it took to defeat a spanish empire. what we tend to forget is that like iraq and afghanistan, the immediate victory was followed by a protracted, very bloody insurrection which went on for four years. 70,000 american soldiers who were in the philippines trying to put down. while mckinley was preaching benevolence, the problem was the filipinos do not want to be assimilated. >> joshua in florida.

>> first of all, i want to thank you you for this program i enjoy it. i want to talk a little bit about what you mentioned last week. last week this story and mentioned that many eisenhower was the first fashion icon and then jackie kennedy was. i cannot help to think that would've first for slaves to be -- they would have been the first firsrt ladies to be seen on tv. >> i would not place too much emphasis. it was a matter of fact. these were shown more on

nickelodeon's. a few of the movie theaters that would become an newsreels by the time of woodrow wilson. the very first one was the presidential campaign, his brother was always asking for railroad passes and looking to make a good on his brother. his brother got involved and one of the first film companies. mckinley takes his notification. you see ida on the front porch walking. it was more of a haphazard fact that she appeared. it was not a factor. what i will add is there are newspaper illustrations, hand drawn illustrations that allow for them to take photos that looks like a cut and paste of actual photographs with people's faces and drawings of them in various scenarios. the first impression cast of her in a wheelchair when she almost

died in san francisco. >> that is 1899. rachel on facebook asked what was her view on one man's suffrage? she goes to massachusetts at smith college. do we learn about her views on women's rights? >> this is something i discovered. like everybody else, i had a general impression of her as the invalid. in fact i'm a she goes with the president and at smith college he becomes the first president of the united states to address the issue of women's education. today we do not think of it as a big deal area in that day, it could be the end of american society if women get jobs. the social fabric of the families will go away.

we do not have the text of what her speech was. she delivered a short speech. and one of the rooms inside a building, presented with a silver cup and made some remarks. she was very decidedly in favor of women's rights to vote. on one day, the anti-separately came and president mckinley went with them. ida did not come down the stairs. and nothing further was said. when susan b anthony and the suffrage leaders came, ida said bring them up into my private suite. and went and gave a huge load of

to susan b anthony. she told her i want you to say this is for me as a gift to all of you. later on, she corresponded with susan b anthony. a friend of hers later confirmed that she strongly believed in a friend of hers later confirmed that she very strongly believed in women's suffrage. that is the first incumbent first lady to publicly support suffrage. >> on this trip, she has a massive seizure. is this when her health really begins to to deteriorate? >> yes. what also happens, mckinley has purchased an original house that they had the first three and a half years of their married life together. so, they had rented it, i should clarify, they rented it for a year during the 1896 campaign. the house, which still stands, and he lived there longer than anywhere else, that is not where the campaign was.