those are two alternatives to our regular programming. happy new year. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> q&a is 10 years old and to mark a decade of compelling conversations, we are future one interview for each year of the supers over the holiday season. today, documentary filmmaker rory kennedy on "last days in vietnam," where she chronicles the evacuation of u.s. personnel from south vietnam in 1975. tonight at 8:00, conversations from the 2014 washington ideas for rum.

the event brings together ideas authors, and innovators to look at the latest trends in technology, culture, and business. here is kerry shteyngart talking about his immigration status. >> in 1980, being rushing -- russian was the worst thing that you can be. i was sentenced to eight years of hubris school that -- for a crime i did not commit. when i was sentenced there, it was so bad being a russian, being a commie, i had to pretend that i was born in east berlin. i was trying to convince german kids there that i was german. [laughter] 10 years later, i show up at oberlin college, this small

marxist college in ohio. being an immigrant was the coolest thing you could imagine. nobody wanted to be the heterosexual white male. so i got as russian as you could be. i wore the whole thing with the bullets and all of that come up i tried to annex another college . [laughter] it was productive. >> that is part of the washington ideas for an airing tonight at 8:00 p.m. also a conversation with the founder of not impossible labs, talking about his efforts to bring prosthetics to war-torn sudan. former new york governor mario cuomo died yesterday at the age of 82. he let the empire state for two terms from 1983 to 1984. here is his keynotes beachfront the 1984 democratic national

convention which put him in the national spotlight. >> the 100 14th congress gavels in this tuesday at noon eastern. watch live coverage of the house on c-span and the senate live on c-span2, and track the gop-led congress, and have your say as the events unfold on the c-span networks, c-span radio and www.c-span.org. new congress, best access on c-span. >> as we said, former new york governor mayor cuomo dying yesterday. here is a portion of his democratic national convention speech. >> thank you. on behalf of the great empire state and the whole family of new york, let me thank you for the great privilege of being able to address this convention. please allow me to skip the stories and the poetry and the

temptation to deal in nice but vague rhetoric. let me instead use this valuable opportunity to deal immediately with the questions that should determine this election and that we all know are vital to the american people. ten days ago, president reagan admitted that although some people in this country seemed to be doing well nowadays, others were unhappy, even worried about themselves, their families, and their futures. the president said that he didn't understand that fear. he said, "why, this country is a shining city on a hill." and the president is right. in many ways we are a shining city on a hill. but the hard truth is that not everyone is sharing in this city's splendor and glory.

a shining city is perhaps all the president sees from the portico of the white house and the veranda of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well. but there's another city; there's another part to the shining the city; the part where some people can't pay their mortgages, and most young people can't afford one; where students can't afford the education they need, and middle-class parents watch the dreams they hold for their children evaporate. in this part of the city there are more poor than ever, more families in trouble, more and more people who need help but can't find it. even worse: there are elderly people who tremble in the basements of the houses there. and there are people who sleep in the city streets, in the gutter, where the glitter doesn't show. there are ghettos where

thousands of young people, without a job or an education, give their lives away to drug dealers every day. there is despair, mr. president, in the faces that you don't see, in the places that you don't visit in your shining city. in fact, mr. president, this is a nation -- mr. president you ought to know that this nation is more a "tale of two cities" than it is just a "shining city on a hill." [applause] maybe, maybe, mr. president, if you visited some more places; maybe if you went to appalachia where some people still live in sheds; maybe if you went to

lackawanna where thousands of unemployed steel workers wonder why we subsidized foreign steel. maybe -- maybe, mr. president, if you stopped in at a shelter in chicago and spoke to the homeless there; maybe, mr. president, if you asked a woman who had been denied the help she needed to feed her children because you said you needed the money for a tax break for a millionaire or for a missile we couldn't afford to use. [applause]

maybe -- maybe, mr. president. but i'm afraid not. because the truth is, ladies and gentlemen, that this is how we were warned it would be. president reagan told us from the very beginning that he believed in a kind of social darwinism. survival of the fittest. "government can't do everything," we were told, so it should settle for taking care of the strong and hope that economic ambition and charity will do the rest. make the rich richer, and what falls from the table will be enough for the middle class and those who are trying desperately to work their way into the middle class. [applause]

you know, the republicans called it "trickle-down" when hoover tried it. now they call it "supply side." but it's the same shining city for those relative few who are lucky enough to live in its good neighborhoods. but for the people who are excluded, for the people who are locked out, all they can do is stare from a distance at that city's glimmering towers. it's an old story. it's as old as our history. the difference between democrats and republicans has always been measured in courage and confidence. the republicans -- the republicans believe that the wagon train will not make it to the frontier unless some of the old, some of the young, some of the weak are left behind by the side of the trail. "the strong" -- "the strong," they tell us, "will inherit the land."

we democrats believe in something else. we democrats believe that we can make it all the way with the whole family intact, and we have more than once. [applause] ever since franklin roosevelt lifted himself from his wheelchair to lift this nation from its knees -- wagon train after wagon train -- to new frontiers of education, housing, peace; the whole family aboard constantly reaching out to extend and enlarge that family; lifting them up into the wagon on the way; blacks and hispanics, and people of every ethnic group, and native americans -- all those struggling to build their families and claim some small share of america. for nearly 50 years we carried

them all to new levels of comfort, and security, and dignity, even affluence. and remember this, some of us in this room today are here only because this nation had that kind of confidence. and it would be wrong to forget that. [applause] so, here we are at this convention to remind ourselves where we come from and to claim the future for ourselves and for our children. today our great democratic party, which has saved this nation from depression, from fascism, from racism, from corruption, is called upon to do it again -- this time to save the nation from confusion and division, from the threat of

eventual fiscal disaster, and most of all from the fear of a nuclear holocaust. that's not going to be easy. mo udall is exactly right -- it won't be easy. and in order to succeed, we must answer our opponent's polished and appealing rhetoric with a more telling reasonableness and rationality. we must win this case on the merits. we must get the american public to look past the glitter, beyond the showmanship to the reality the hard substance of things. and we'll do it not so much with speeches that sound good as with speeches that are good and sound; not so much with speeches that will bring people to their feet as with speeches that will bring people to their senses.

we must make -- we must make the american people hear our "tale of two cities." we must convince them that we don't have to settle for two cities, that we can have one city, indivisible, shining for all of its people. [applause] now, we will have no chance to do that if what comes out of this convention is a babel of arguing voices. if that's what's heard throughout the campaign, dissident sounds from all sides, we will have no chance to tell our message. to succeed we will have to surrender some small parts of our individual interests, to build a platform that we can all stand on, at once, and comfortably -- proudly singing out.

we need -- we need a platform we can all agree to so that we can sing out the truth for the nation to hear, in chorus, its logic so clear and commanding that no slick madison avenue commercial, no amount of geniality, no martial music will be able to muffle the sound of the truth. and we democrats must unite. we democrats must unite so that the entire nation can unite, because surely the republicans won't bring this country together. their policies divide the nation into the lucky and the left-out, into the royalty and the rabble. the republicans are willing to treat that division as victory. they would cut this nation in half, into those temporarily better off and those worse off than before, and they would call that division recovery.

[applause] now, we should not -- we should not be embarrassed or dismayed or chagrined if the process of unifying is difficult, even wrenching at times. remember that, unlike any other party, we embrace men and women of every color, every creed, every orientation, every economic class. in our family are gathered everyone from the abject poor of essex county in new york, to the enlightened affluent of the gold coasts at both ends of the nation. and in between is the heart of our constituency -- the middle class, the people not rich enough to be worry-free, but not poor enough to be on welfare;

the middle class -- those people who work for a living because they have to, not because some psychiatrist told them it was a convenient way to fill the interval between birth and eternity. white collar and blue collar. young professionals. men and women in small business desperate for the capital and contracts that they need to prove their worth. we speak for the minorities who have not yet entered the mainstream. we speak for ethnics who want to add their culture to the magnificent mosaic that is america. we speak -- we speak for women who are indignant that this nation refuses to etch into its governmental commandments the simple rule "thou shalt not sin against equality," a rule so simple -- i was going to say

[applause] i was going to say, and i perhaps dare not but i will. it's a commandment so simple it can be spelled in three letters: e.r.a. [applause]

we speak -- we speak for young people demanding an education and a future. we speak for senior citizens. we speak for senior citizens who are terrorized by the idea that their only security, their social security, is being threatened. we speak for millions of reasoning people fighting to preserve our environment from greed and from stupidity. and we speak for reasonable people who are fighting to preserve our very existence from

a macho intransigence that refuses to make intelligent attempts to discuss the possibility of nuclear holocaust with our enemy. [applause] they refuse. they refuse, because they believe we can pile missiles so high that they will pierce the clouds and the sight of them will frighten our enemies into submission. now we're proud of this diversity as democrats. we're grateful for it. we don't have to manufacture it the way the republicans will next month in dallas, by propping up mannequin delegates on the convention floor. [applause] but we, while we're proud of

this diversity, we pay a price for it. the different people that we represent have different points of view. and sometimes they compete and even debate, and even argue. that's what our primaries were all about. but now the primaries are over and it is time, when we pick our candidates and our platform here, to lock arms and move into this campaign together. [applause] if you need any more inspiration to put some small part of your own difference aside to create this consensus, then all you need to do is to reflect on what the republican policy of divide and cajole has done to this land since 1980. now the president has asked the american people to judge him on whether or not he's fulfilled the promises he made four years

ago. i believe, as democrats, we ought to accept that challenge. and just for a moment let us consider what he has said and what he's done. inflation -- inflation is down since 1980, but not because of the supply-side miracle promised to us by the president. inflation was reduced the old-fashioned way: with a recession, the worst since 1932. now how did we -- we could have brought inflation down that way. how did he do it? 55,000 bankruptcies; two years of massive unemployment; 200,000 farmers and ranchers forced off the land; more homeless -- more homeless than at any time since the great depression in 1932; more hungry, in this world of enormous affluence, the united states of america, more hungry;

more poor, most of them women. and -- and he paid one other thing, a nearly 200 billion dollar deficit threatening our future. now, we must make the american people understand this deficit because they don't. the president's deficit is a direct and dramatic repudiation of his promise in 1980 to balance the budget by 1983. how large is it? the deficit is the largest in the history of the universe. it -- president carter's last budget had a deficit less than one-third of this deficit. it is a deficit that, according to the president's own fiscal adviser, may grow to as much 300 billion dollars a year for "as far as the eye can see."

and, ladies and gentlemen, it is a debt so large -- that is almost one-half of the money we collect from the personal income tax each year goes just to pay the interest. it is a mortgage on our children's future that can be paid only in pain and that could bring this nation to its knees. now don't take my word for it -- i'm a democrat. ask the republican investment bankers on wall street what they think the chances of this recovery being permanent are. you see, if they're not too embarrassed to tell you the truth, they'll say that they're appalled and frightened by the president's deficit. ask them what they think of our

economy, now that it's been driven by the distorted value of the dollar back to its colonial condition. now we're exporting agricultural products and importing manufactured ones. ask those republican investment bankers what they expect the rate of interest to be a year from now. and ask them -- if they dare tell you the truth -- you'll learn from them, what they predict for the inflation rate a year from now, because of the deficit. now, how important is this question of the deficit. think about it practically: what chance would the republican candidate have had in 1980 if he had told the american people that he intended to pay for his so-called economic recovery with bankruptcies, unemployment, more homeless, more hungry, and the largest government debt known to humankind? if he had told the voters in 1980 that truth, would american

voters have signed the loan certificate for him on election day? of course not! that was an election won under false pretenses. it was won with smoke and mirrors and illusions. and that's the kind of recovery we have now as well. [applause] but what about foreign policy? they said that they would make us and the whole world safer. they say they have. by creating the largest defense budget in history, one that even they now admit is excessive -- by escalating to a frenzy the

nuclear arms race; by incendiary rhetoric; by refusing to discuss peace with our enemies; by the loss of 279 young americans in lebanon in pursuit of a plan and a policy that no one can find or describe. [applause] we give money to latin american governments that murder nuns and then we lie about it. [applause]

we have been less than zealous in support of our only real friend -- it seems to me, in the middle east -- the one democracy there, our flesh and blood ally, the state of israel. our -- our policy -- our foreign policy drifts with no real direction, other than an hysterical commitment to an arms race that leads nowhere -- if we're lucky. and if we're not, it could lead us into bankruptcy or war. of course we must have a strong defense! of course democrats are for a strong defense. of course democrats believe that there are times that we must stand and fight. and we have. thousands of us have paid for freedom with our lives. but always -- when this country has been at its best -- our purposes were clear. now they're not. now our allies are as confused as our enemies.

now we have no real commitment to our friends or to our ideals -- not to human rights, not to the refuseniks, not to sakharov, not to bishop tutu and the others struggling for freedom in south africa. [applause] we -- we have in the last few years spent more than we can afford. we have pounded our chests and made bold speeches. but we lost 279 young americans in lebanon and we live behind sand bags in washington. how can anyone say that we are safer, stronger, or better?

[applause] that -- that is the republican record. that its disastrous quality is not more fully understood by the american people i can only attribute to the president's amiability and the failure by some to separate the salesman from the product. [applause] and, now -- now -- now it's up to us. now it's up to you and to me to make the case to america. and to remind americans that if they are not happy with all that the president has done so far, they should consider how much worse it will be if he is left to his radical proclivities for

another four years unrestrained. unrestrained. [applause] now, if -- if july -- if july brings back ann gorsuch burford -- what can we expect of december? [applause] where would -- where would another four years take us? where would four years more take us? how much larger will the deficit be? how much deeper the cuts in programs for the struggling middle class and the poor to limit that deficit? how high will the interest rates be? how much more acid rain killing our forests and fouling our lakes?

and, ladies and gentlemen, please think of this -- the nation must think of this: what kind of supreme court will we have? [applause] please. we -- we must ask ourselves what kind of court and country will

be fashioned by the man who believes in having government mandate people's religion and morality; the man who believes that trees pollute the environment; the man that believes that -- that the laws against discrimination against people go too far; a man who threatens social security and medicaid and help for the disabled. how high will we pile the missiles? how much deeper will the gulf be between us and our enemies? and, ladies and gentlemen, will four years more make meaner the spirit of the american people? this election will measure the record of the past four years. but more than that, it will answer the question of what kind of people we want to be. we democrats still have a dream. we still believe in this nation's future. and this is our answer to the question. this is our credo: we believe in

only the government we need, but we insist on all the government we need. [applause] we believe in a government that is characterized by fairness and reasonableness, a reasonableness that goes beyond labels, that doesn't distort or promise to do things that we know we can't do. we believe in a government strong enough to use words like "love" and "compassion" and smart enough to convert our noblest aspirations into practical realities. we believe in encouraging the talented, but we believe that while survival of the fittest may be a good working description of the process of evolution, a government of humans should elevate itself to a higher order.

we -- our -- our government -- our government should be able to rise to the level where it can fill the gaps that are left by chance or by a wisdom we don't fully understand. we would rather have laws written by the patron of this great city, the man called the "world's most sincere democrat," st. francis of assisi, than laws written by darwin. we believe -- we believe as democrats, that a society as blessed as ours, the most affluent democracy in the world's history, one that can spend trillions on instruments of destruction, ought to be able to help the middle class in its struggle, ought to be able to find work for all who can do it, room at the table, shelter for the homeless, care for the elderly and infirm, and hope for the destitute. and we proclaim as loudly as we

can the utter insanity of nuclear proliferation and the need for a nuclear freeze, if only to affirm the simple truth that peace is better than war because life is better than death. [applause] we believe in firm -- we believe in firm but fair law and order. we believe proudly in the union movement.

we believe in a -- we believe -- we believe in privacy for people, openness by government. we believe in civil rights, and we believe in human rights. we believe in a single -- we believe in a single fundamental idea that describes better than most textbooks and any speech that i could write what a proper government should be: the idea of family, mutuality, the sharing of benefits and burdens for the good of all, feeling one another's pain, sharing one another's blessings -- reasonably, honestly, fairly without respect to race, or sex, or geography, or political affiliation. we believe we must be the family of america, recognizing that at the heart of the matter we are bound one to another, that the problems of a retired school teacher in duluth are our problems; that the future of the child -- that the future of the child in buffalo is our future;

that the struggle of a disabled man in boston to survive and live decently is our struggle; that the hunger of a woman in little rock is our hunger; that the failure anywhere to provide what reasonably we might, to avoid pain, is our failure. now for 50 years -- for 50 years we democrats created a better future for our children, using traditional democratic principles as a fixed beacon giving us direction and purpose, but constantly innovating, adapting to new realities: roosevelt's alphabet programs; truman's nato and the gi bill of rights; kennedy's intelligent tax incentives and the alliance for progress; johnson's civil rights; carter's human rights and the nearly miraculous camp david peace accord.

democrats did it -- democrats did it and democrats can do it again. we can build a future that deals with our deficit. remember this, that 50 years of progress under our principles never cost us what the last four years of stagnation have. and we can deal with the deficit intelligently, by shared sacrifice, with all parts of the nation's family contributing, building partnerships with the private sector, providing a sound defense without depriving ourselves of what we need to feed our children and care for our people. we can have a future that provides for all the young of the present, by marrying common sense and compassion. we know we can, because we did it for nearly 50 years before 1980. and we can do it again, if we do not forget -- if we do not forget that this entire nation has profited by these progressive principles; that

they helped lift up generations to the middle class and higher; that they gave us a chance to work, to go to college, to raise a family, to own a house, to be secure in our old age and, before that, to reach heights that our own parents would not have dared dream of. that struggle to live with dignity is the real story of the shining city. and it's a story, ladies and gentlemen, that i didn't read in a book, or learn in a classroom. i saw it and lived it, like many of you. i watched a small man with thick calluses on both his hands work 15 and 16 hours a day. i saw him once literally bleed from the bottoms of his feet, a man who came here uneducated alone, unable to speak the language, who taught me all i needed to know about faith and hard work by the simple eloquence of his example. i learned about our kind of democracy from my father. and i learned about our obligation to each other from him and from my mother. they asked only for a chance to

work and to make the world better for their children, and -- [applause] and they -- they asked to be protected in those moments when they would not be able to protect themselves. this nation and this nation's government did that for them. and that they were able to build a family and live in dignity and see one of their children go from behind their little grocery store in south jamaica on the other side of the tracks where he was born, to occupy the highest seat, in the greatest

state, in the greatest nation, in the only world we would know, is an ineffably beautiful tribute to the democratic process. and -- and ladies and gentlemen, on january 20, 1985, it will happen again -- only on a much much grander scale. we will have a new president of the united states, a democrat born not to the blood of kings but to the blood of pioneers and immigrants. and we will have america's first woman vice president, the child of immigrants, and she -- she -- [applause]

and she -- she -- she will open with one magnificent stroke, a whole new frontier for the united states. now, it will happen. it will happen if we make it happen; if you and i make it happen. and i ask you now, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, for the good of all of us, for the love of this great nation, for the family of america, for the love of god: please, make this nation remember how futures are built. thank you and god bless you. [applause] ♪

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> that speech from the democratic national convention in san francisco. he died yesterday at the age of 82 and let the empire state for two terms from 1983 to 1994. here is president obama reacting to governor cuomo's death. he said -- this from new york senator charles schumer, who was a congressman at the time eric roma was governor. right now, a 2004 book notes interview with mayor cuomo on his book "why lincoln matters most what about politics and governance.

♪ >> this week, our guest is former new york governor mario cuomo. he joins us to discuss his book why lincoln matters, today more than ever. >> mayor cuomo, author of "why lincoln matters," what year did your sister give you a copy of lincoln's collected works? >> 1955, the first year. >> why did she give it to you? >> i had shown an interest in lincoln already and she knew it and she was my older sister and education was everything in my household. my parents were immigrants. my mother died at 95 never having been able to read a book in any language which is

something we talked about a lot, the kids in the family. my sister and older brother were constantly after me, buying books for me. i was not a kid when she did it in 1955, had been around for a while, but she knew i had an interest in lincoln and thought it would be a good idea. the collected works have become a treasure since then for me. >> how big are the collected works, how many volumes? >> nine, and they have those magic indexes they did for a while, the additional indexes. i wish they kept writing the collected works because they do find new things from time to time, but i think it's original form, nine. >> 1955. how old would you have been? >> i was born in 1932. >> so you were in your 20's. where were you in your life, college? >> in 1955, i had just started law school.

1949 to 1953 was college. 1953 -- i was in law school. >> how much time did you spend with the collected works? >> and i have been married for a year or so. >> this is your 50th anniversary? >> we just had our 50th anniversary. >> how much time did you spend with the collected works? >> over the years, i have read lincoln regularly. i am no lincoln historian or scholar, but i have read lincoln . i had done the lincoln portrait twice, written on the lincoln not for publication, although we did do a book in 1985 1986, that i edited with harold holzer. i gave speeches in springfield with jim thompson couple of times. i have read not everything that comes down, because every once in a while there is a book in lincoln i'm not interested in because, to me, the thing that i

was totally dazzled by was his extreme intelligence, his incredible ability to analyze his suppleness with the law, and his big ideas for a man who never stepped out of the country except to go to canada. in new york state, we don't count the canadian border as foreign policy. the only time he left the country but he talked constantly about the rest of the world and the effect of the american experiment on the rest of the world. father only went to school for a year total. his sense of the big truths in the world especially -- and this is particularly relevant now -- especially on the religious issues. he talked a lot about religion, we are confronted now by very big religious issues abortion, stem cells, with religious predicates. and his thinking of the fundamental truths, the basic

spiritual truths that every religion starts with. what is your relationship to other human beings, how do you regard are the human beings, what do you do if you conclude that you are supposed to respect them, love them, if you will and work with them. what is your mission? hebrews say the mission is to repair the universe. christians say to be collaborators and create. he was not a christian or jew but said the same thing. the whole mission is to try to make this place better, make us living experience that are. that is wonderful stuff. we don't have anybody that talks about that now, which is why i wrote the book. >> you say he wrote a million words. do you think he wrote them himself? >> well, let's see what his choices would have been. he was practicing law when he was not being a politician. when he was being a politician,

even the people around him were perfectly suited to where he was, love tim, -- loved him. he was not where clinton was on slavery from the beginning, so we had to write it himself and mechanically, did not have much of a choice. he did everything, just about everything, on his own, unlike most modern politicians. he had to think of the ideas. he did not sit around with a bunch of brahmins trying to figure out how to get around the constitution, which he became extremely adept at. and i marvel at the suppleness he showed in dealing with the constitution, making it sound like he was not breaking it in half when sometimes he came close. he did everything himself. >> were you often able to write about yourself in your political life? >> yes, on the major speeches

always. i have had some brilliant, brilliant people work with me. peter quinn, who wrote a great historical novel on ireland and is doing well known as an author . had written speeches for hugh carey, the governor before me. i worked with him several times. but in the end, if it is a speech i was going to give, and not the ordinary day-to-day address that you give to this group or that group. sometimes i did not even see the cards until i got to the event. but if it was a speech at a convention, like the one in san francisco in 1980 four, nomination of clinton in 1992, or the notre dame talk, i had peter quinn, bill hanlon, a friend of his, we all worked together for five weeks, but that was mostly on the theology of it and the logic of it making sure we had it exactly right.

if i was going to read the speech, that i wanted it to be as much as possible. line. otherwise, it was not easy for me to deliver it as well. i was capable of delivering it if the words were mine. >> for a moment while we are on it, in your lifetime, who are the best speakers? >> you see, that is difficult. if you mean readers of speeches -- >> i'm not talking about politicians, you know, one side or the other, but who, in your opinion, have gotten the message through? >> reagan did it better than anyone that i have ever seen. first of all, you cannot separate the persona from the performers because if there is somebody up there that you do not like the looks of or who seems surly or negative, you are not going to give him the same willingness to be persuaded but

reagan was perfectly non-menacing. nobody ever looked at reagan and said i had to look out for this guy. they love tim. in part because they are membered him from the screen, and in part because he was the kind of person. he was not a negative person. he was a gentle, sweet person. so he started with that and then he could read anything and make it sound good. he could read a menu, i'm sure and make it sound inspiring if you wanted to. his wonderful smile and his good looks. my mother i mentioned already. i was sitting with tim russert and we were watching the candidate -- i was governor at the time. we were watching the candidates, the mother -- my mother in the room with us. she saw megan and she asked me, how old is he? i said, 70, 75. she said, did he darken his

hair? they say it is his natural color. she said, god must love him. when a mother -- my mother can look at him and feel that way about him, he was wonderful. in his speeches he was wonderful. we make a little bit of fun of him in the book, harold and i. we got together at the beginning and he cited some things, lincoln epigrams, but that was not really his fault. he was a great reader, communicator. no question about it. he transmitted in severity which is the big thing for a call -- politician. bill clinton is a great talker, very fluid very fluid sometimes too much so. that is what happened in 1988. but he is so knowledgeable and intelligent, and has the

obvious charm, which makes him a good communicator. i thought nixon, who i got to know a little bit, in the book of monica crowley wrote the only person that ever describe this on relationship that developed outside of camp david. his economic speeches, which i read, are some of the plainest easiest language to read on economics that i have ever read, and he was good there. >> what was your relationship with richard nixon? >> one of the reasons i went into politics, and i went in belatedly -- i was not a politician, still have not by instinct. i love politics, i love governance more than politics. i love serving in government, which is a wonderful opportunity. i was on the second council with the catholic and jewish relations committee, with a

rabbi, and then came watergate and the rabbi said to me, we are talking about the right name, you have been lawsuits, mayor lindsay of new york, rockefeller -- you constantly beat up the system. one of becoming part of it? so i went into government and decided to try it so we do not feel so much like hypocrites for a couple of years. i stated 20. so nixon, in a way, and what he did at watergate, when the did to the system, in part convinced me to go into politics, and i did. years later, 1983, i become a governor he is out living in jersey, former president. i had never met him. i bumped into him a couple of times but i cannot say that they were meetings. maybe i shook his hand, i'm not sure, but there was no relationship. and then i do the inaugural in 1983 and we get a call from the president's office in new jersey or wherever we were. did the governor get my note?

nobody knew anything about my note, they looked in the trash pail and it was in a trash filled with a tomato stain on it, i confess to you. apparently a ham and cheese with tomato on rye. a note came in written in ink governor cuomo, and then typed sincerely, richard nixon. i looked at it and i figured -- this is ridiculous. so i put it in the pail. i thought it was a wiseguy republican sending it to me. there was a congratulatory note on the inaugural address in his office called and i was humiliated. i called to apologize and told him the story actually. that started a series of phone calls. and monica crowley -- i believe in his last four years, and she was very young and bright, and

he talked to her all day long and she made notes and they say nixon always knew that she would do a book. he was really kind of using her to get his last story out. in the course of our conversation, some of which is reported in the book, he must've talked to her about them or she must've overheard, i don't know which. he suggested, for example, that i run against the first toward bush. -- george bush. it would be good for the presidency, he said. he had a kind of peculiar way about him. also, armand hammer, now deceased said about the soviet union, i will arrange a meeting with gorbachev, which you did. that was strangely erased just before i left for moscow. he swore that it was because the bush people found out and did not want it. it was that kind of thing.

we talked a lot about the economy. he talked a lot about it erie it at that stage in his life, it was very hard to interrupt his flow. he would call you, how are you? i saw this, governor you did well. then you say thank you very much, mr. president. incidentally, what do you think about -- and that was it. he would say on that whatever the subject was. economy, foreign policy. when you are trying to get in, he would say, oh yes. it was mostly a way to ventilate the conversation. once he was in new york after that. most of it was just the telephone conversations until finally he passed. >> let me go to abraham lincoln speaking. i know you studied him closely. what would he have been like, do you think, in the television age? could he have made it? >> such a difficult question.

i start with a blunt crude evaluation. he was so smart, he was so wise, he was so cute in it -- acute in his intelligence, i cannot imagine any of the technological impediments hiding that. i don't know what his voice was. you hear all kinds of descriptions, it could be heard 1000 feet away, but it was high -- i really do not know. and a beautiful voice like ragan's would help, surely. a screechy voice would not. i think, no matter where you put this man in our history, whatever period, whatever the technology, in the end, his ideas and intelligence -- i don't know about his sense of humor. he has a great reputation as a storyteller, etc. but when i discover that he liked puns, that kind of

disappointed me. i hate them. once i heard he was walking down the street and he saw the sign t.r. strong, the name of a company, and looked at it and he said t.r. strong. but our coffee is stronger. >> why do you hate puns? >> they are too crude a use of humor. for a guy like him -- i am glad i did not hear the stories that he told as a young guy. i think if you had him today and i tried doing this -- i page -- on page 1686 of the book, i do a state of the union by lincoln today in the guinness language. harold, who everyone knows is a great lincoln scholar and old

friend of mine, harold holzer -- i said i'm going to write this tonight. he said, how can you ever get away with that. and i did it, and harold called me up and he says, you know, son of a gun, i think we can make this work. and i said, now, go through second inaugural and the other places. pluck out sentences for me that are actual lincoln sentences that fit this speech that ive written. and we did that and worked on it. and so thats an idea of lincoln speaking today. i think hed have to change some of his syntax and some of his grammar, but we need him desperately today. thats why i wrote the book. i think what he said, what he believed, the big ideas he offered you, the wisdom he offers you, we need desperately now. were confused.

we're riveted on terrorism and the war, which we need to be. we're still losing men and women, and other innocent people are dying, as well. and sure, we have to think about it, but we have to be thinking about that and much more. he thought about the civil war. he thought about each battle. but he thought constantly about much more than that. he thought about what was going to happen when he finally did win the war and how he was going to reconcile and how he was going to make us one again and how he was going to preserve us for the benefit of the entire world. that's his mind. that's what we need now. >> you say in the introduction had lincoln not existed, had he been less than he was or had the battle to keep the nation together been lost, it would have meant the end of the american experience -- experiment. excuse me. not experience, experiment. >> right. that was lincoln's assessment. that is my assessment. that's essentially what he says

to greeley when -- people came at him, and as we know, offered all sorts of possible compromises -- let these guys go, the heck with them, you know, we'll be better off in the north, we can survive as two countries, et cetera. and he said no to all of that. all of that would destroy the original idea. the original idea was we went from the articles of confederation to a constitution to bind us together as one, and we have to show we can make it work. and if you allow them to secede, and if you allow them to create their own republic, then eventually, there will be -- it will be a temptation to have still another fragmentation. and the process of fragmentation having been established, youll eventually crumble into particles. that, in essence, is what he was saying. and he was, im sure, right. he said, look, the whole world is looking at us. there have been attempts at democracies before. never one like this. never one with the potential success of this one. and this now is the big test, to see if we can govern ourselves or whether the first time you

have a really passionate disagreement amongst yourselves, you're going to break up balkanize -- a word he wouldnt have used, but i do. and that was his feeling. and i think hes right, and i think he made the right judgment, and that was to pay the price to keep the union together. >> you also right in the introduction, neither party, republican or democrat, so far has presented a compelling comprehensive, achievable vision that sets out the basic principles we must live by to bring us closer to the more perfect union described by our founding fathers. now, your own party's not going to like to hear that. so be it. neither party so far has presented a compelling comprehensive, achievable vision. >> i think that's absolutely true, and i think its absolutely true of my party. and i'm devoted to my party and i'm devoted to the candidate we have, but its clear we havent

done it yet. now, thats not to say we wont, and i think, as a matter of fact, well have to, to win, to be honest. i think theres a reason why we havent done it so far. i think, right now, its -- the campaign is bush against bush, and bush is losing for the time being because the fact of the situation is that everyone is watching iraq and everybodys still concerned about terrorism. and he is the commander-in-chief, and he is in the middle of the action. and so, of course, we're focused on him. it makes very little difference what john kerry or anybody else on the democratic side says now, joe biden or any other other spokesperson, because we're watching our president. they don't have the power to influence that president. and -- oh, this is not -- and even tactically, if you see the president is subsiding and taking a hit, not as big a hit as you might have imagined, but -- you don't interrupt that process. just let him stand until he stabilizes, now its moving up, and then you make your move.

so i think kerry hasnt made his move yet. he's not going to be able to -- it's not going to wait until the last two weeks. you're going to have to start pretty soon, and i think probably, the convention is the date. starting with the convention, he has to start offering the vision i'm talking about. he has to say to the american people, here's where we were wrong. that's easy. fifty-four percent of you already think that the war in iraq was a mistake, so convincing you weve made a lot of mistakes is not the problem. convincing you that i can do it better than he did, thats our challenge, and i accept it. and here's what we're gong to do, bing, bing, bing, bing. and then he has to lay it out. >> you say that parties shouldn't try to claim lincoln either side. >> oh, you can try, but -- oh, well, i would -- i -- forgive me. i think what i say is, dont try to make him a republican in today's terms or a democrat in today's terms.

as a matter of fact, don't besmirch him with any of the modern labels -- the old ones were bad enough -- because the modern labels are an absolute joke. >> what would you call president clinton? a conservative? no, no, no. a liberal? no, no, no. he wouldnt like that. well, then, what do you call him? and if the word "conservative" meant anything, why would george bush have to come from texas where he was a conservative, and suddenly become a "compassionate conservative"? and if "democrat" meant anything, why would you have to run as a "new" democrat? why would you need those mitigating muck-up words attached to the label, if the label told you about the -- so the labels dont mean anything. and they didnt mean much in his time. he was a whig who became a republican. i say you shouldn't try to label him. he's too supple for that. and if you absolutely forced me to give you a label which only had two words to describe him,

i'd say, well, call him progressive and call him pragmatic and make him a pragmatic progressive, or a progressive pragmatist and -- because he was broader than that. here's a good example, i think, of that. right now, if we have an argument about who are the conservatives, who are the liberals, you'd probably have to start it by saying, ok, what do they say about the role of government? and the conservatives would say, as reagan did, and as clinton did, at one point, the era of big government should be over. the era of big government should be over. big government is the problem. little government is what we believe in. and then you go to liberals, and they'd say well no we need more government. you go to -- lincoln what does he say? he doesn't fall into that foolish trap he doesn't play that simplistic game. he said look, it's basic.

the constitution brought us together. government is the coming together of people to do for one another collectively what they could not do as well or at all privately. and so if you can use the market system, use the market system. don't bother with us. if you could build all the roads we need in this country don't ask eisenhower to do the road program, just build them and make them toll roads like europe. if you could educate everybody in this country through the market system, lincoln wouldn't have wasted my time saying one of the first things we have to do is education and for your information, neither would adam smith have done it in the wealth of nations when he says look market systems are inevitable if you're going of to have a good society, but they're not sufficient by themselves. there have to be interventions and he named specifically education, so lincoln didn't read the wealth of nation. maybe he did. but he didn't need to. he was as smart as smith was

only said it better. and if you take that test and apply it to everything, you end this argument about the role of government. it gets to be very easy then you're arguing ad hoc. space program kennedy wants one. conservatives, you want to leave it to the private industry? maybe boeing will do it. i don't think so. how about government in -- government? yeah it's a good investment so we're in it. with hamilton, it was the national bank, etc. etc. but that's always a correct analysis. when it got to roosevelt and poor people were dying because nobody would go to help them and old people who were sick had no help roosevelt said look we have to make a change in this democracy there there are a lot of things the market is not doing for us beyond public schools and that's health care and work for people or help for people who are out of work and retirement

benefits, so you do social security, unemployment insurance, workers benefits of all kinds and then lady johnson does medicare and medicaid and this is lincoln and if you had paid attention to lincoln in the early stages and didn't make these simplistic arguments about government is bad government is good, it's neither. it's necessary. when it's necessary you use it when it's not you don't. we could use that talk today for lincoln. host: i don't want to bore you but you've gone over this territory so many times, but i want to go back to your beginning. your very beginning. because you point out in here that abraham lincoln was poor came from poverty, didn't have any education. what was the neighborhood like what was your life like when you were born? where was it? >> well it wasn't a little creek in the middle of a forest and it wasn't a log could be cabin in kentucky. where was i born? i was born on a table behind harry and ruby kessler's grocery

store. i was delivered by a midwife. all the children, four children my parents had two of us left my older sister and myself, were delivered by midwifes. host: 1932? >> 19 1932. and we at that point spent all day in one room with a black tub in which we washed with a cloth and we washed clothes, etc. a blackstone tub and a toilet and cots and curtains. gypsies lived in the middle of the block at that time. that was not unusual in neighborhoods, you know gypsies that lived in empty stores and they put curtains up and they would read your palm and stuff like that. so my mother and father were helping the kesslers by doing physical work in the grocery store. neither of them could read or write english. my father had been a ditch digger in jersey city new jersey but the depression came he was out of work by a

miracle, a miracle a miracle somebody in south jamaica queens who was from the same neighborhood as my father was a customer of mr. kessler, who had a heart attack and couldn't do the work said look there's a couple in jersey city going to starve to death because there was no unemployment insurance there was no workers' compensation, there was no welfare, etc. etc. and they work like horses, just give them a place to live give them a little something to eat and a few bucks now and then and they'll help out. seven years later, the kesslers turned the store over to my father and they stayed for a long time helping him because he needed a lot of help. host: how long did the family live in one room? >> in the one room in the daytime, we lived for i guess five or six years, and then -- but after two years he found a bedroom for the kids upstairs and my mother and father stayed in the one room and after that we found an apartment.

let me make it clear before i -- that sounds like a very you know tough, bare existence and it wasn't. you have to keep it in context. south jamaica queens was all tentments. across the street were three gin mills portuguese, spanish all side by side. it was a very poor neighborhood. there was a synagogue on the corner. everybody was poor. the jewish people, the portuguese, the black struggling to get into the middle class and compared to everybody in that neighborhood and the kids that went to ps-50 where there was no library and no bilingual education so they didn't understand names with i first went there because nobody spoke italian and could interpret. we lived well because we had

food, we had our two parents home all the time because they were working in the store and we lived there, it was really a very secure comfortable and good life for me and the fact that yeah, we were poor and that i got to know them and meet them because they all came in to the store, the really poor woman, the woman with the scar on her face who happened to be working if in a house of -- it's not what we would call it now but you saw all of these people and you concluded after a wile they're all the same, they're all like my mother and father working, struggling, poor they're just like me and that's something i never forgot and i wish everybody had had that experience. host: parents weren't educated? >> to. host: how far did they go to school. >> never. not in italy or here. host: how long did you speak italian? >> i consider it a compliment if you had heard me and you called it italian, it would have been a

compliment because it was a bastardized italian. from a rural part of west virginia would be the counterpart here speaking the way they speak in the hills compared to english, so they spoke a terrible dialect to begin with they weren't educated and then they come here and gets mixed with the language of the street. for example, the word for toilet is. [speaking in italian] the word for italian was a corruption of back house. that was the italian word for it. so i spoke italian and i speak that kind of italian still but then until i was about 6 seven years old because i was mostly in the store and didn't have a lot of experience outside the store. i was locked behind the store, my brother had been nearly killed if a car accident in the street in front of the store so they didn't want me running around, but i caught up after a wile. >> one of the reasons i ask you go back to the lincoln

upbringing and no education and lots of kids around, all that and you had four kids in the family. aft some point you have to get interested in education because you talk about education here the need to spend lots of money on education. but it clearly neither you nor abraham lincoln had a lot of money spent on you for education. somehow you figured it out. >> but i have a mother and father -- lincoln's father apparently was not so prone to encouraging his son. his stepmother was and his stepmother pushed lincoln very hard to read and to learn i had two parents who did nothing but push us on education. i had two parents, my father particularly, he was a very smart man he really was and it's hard to think of him now even at my advanced stage and you get choked up thinking about what it must be like to be as smart as he and my mother were and know what you can't communicate, you can't write, you can't read etc. etc. host: so they were smart? >> they were very smart and he

would say to me always the same thing. i'm working for one reason -- so that you people get the education we didn't have so that you can be more than i have been able to be. now, if i can get you educated i will have done my job. you're going to have to do much more because you're going to have an education, and so everything they did he had four bank books andre i can't cuomo in trust for my brother, andrea cuomo in trust for maria, my sister. and one of the children who died was mario. so i was the second mario. those were little bank accounts, put $5 in $2 in. they were used for one purpose -- not to buy a house. they were for school. so that someday you would be able to go to school. he had no notion how much more school would cost than he would be able to save but that was his whole life. my sister brother, my older sister and brother they both did very well in school.

unfortunately, they never were able to go to college because they had to help out in the store and so neither of them went to college, although their iq's were much higher than mine and they were terrific students in high school and elementary school but they invested a whole lot of time giving me books, giving me advice. they would bring books home -- my brother would bring books home from the joining yard. i have read radcliffe hall "the well of loneliness," i had not been introduced fully to heterosexuality yet and this was a book basically on lesbianism and i remember struggling as a young person with -- holding it up trying to figure out what this was all about and i had nobody to interpret it for me. but that's an example of how they -- they just saturated me in every opportunity. they saved me from work where

they could, if it meant a difference between being able to take a course no school, an then i got another lucky break from priests because i went from south jamaica to a high school run by priests who had been chased from the missions years before and turned to education and created st. john's university, they had a high school st. john's prep beer i eventually went four years, got a scholarship to the college across the street, then got a scholarship to the law school and eventually wound up teaching and representing the priests. so i had a lot of people helping me. lincoln had nobody. lincoln had nobody in his family, except his stepmother encouraging him. he didn't have any books being delivered to him by his sister that he couldn't read. i mean i had -- i had a wealth of facilities made available to me from the people around me. >> have you passed on

abraham lincoln to your five kids in any way? >> yes. it's kind of inevitable because you talk about it a lot in the house, etc.. i think -- i'm no expert on him although we have five children and 11 grand daughters. i'm beginning to get to be an expert on granddaughters because 11 if a row you have to learn something, but today the state of mind is not let me be like my old man or my mother, but i think the children see well, ok my father about d that now i -- my father did that, so i should do something more. i don't want to do something more otherwise there's no addition to the family accomplishments. so let's go off and do something else. while i encouraged three of them to become lawyers, no one wound up practicing. andrew is working as a lawyer now, but he's basically interested in public service and he'll be running for office i'm

sure. my daughter margaret quit altogether the law and just raising her children and christopher, my son quit and quit a big law firm to go on abc and do electronic journal. >> i. the other two kids what are they doing? >> my first daughter is a doctor a raidologist and she's doing all kinds of things, including raising a second child who came as a blessing to her 15 years after the first child and maria, my daughter maria did not become a lawyer but is now running the largest homeless housing project in america which means in the world. help for the homeless, which was started by my son andrew and is now run by maria and has been for the last eight or nine years. >> you practiced law you live in manhattan. do you speak much? >> i have debate and i speak, yes, i do speak and i debate. i debate bill bennett and jack

kemp and dan quayle, republicans, basically. >> around the country? >> around the country. >> people hire you to come in and do this for their meetings. >> new york i do the 92nd street but in new york they're not going to pay any politicians to talk. they don't think enough of politicians to give them money. host: let me go back to the book and because time flies ask you to be brief on this so we can give the audience some sense of what you write. you have a whole series of what would lincoln say and i'll go through them and then you can just give us a minute or so so we can find out roughly what he was thinking. what would lincoln say about war? >> i don't like it. i'm against it the way i was against the mexican war. i may be cute about it sometimes and do a bill for appropriations to play the political game but i'm against it. don't do it preemptively and if you do it preemptively as you did it here in iraq then don't

make a double mistake of having ended a previous war or evacuating afghanistan because you could never do two wars at once. >> what would he said about civil liberties? >> civil liberties, sometimes you have to play the game with the constitution, if there's something really at risk then in this balancing of liberties in the constitution against protecting the nation and protecting the individuals, you lean toward protecting them even if they have to give up some liberties. i did it with habeas corpus, i did it with a lot of things, as to you president bush, you took me a little bit more seriously than you should have because you didn't have as big a problem as i did. the country was at stake with i did it but terrorism is a very important problem, but it's not big enough to justify what you're doing to the constitution. that's what i think it was. host: because you talked about the role of government earlier i'll skip over that and go to opportunity. what would lincoln have said by opportunity? >> chance to work.

the opportunity to work. the opportunity to rise the writ in his book the opportunity of the chance to rise up. the opportunity to work your way up to a higher level. and he would have said you do it through a free market system we have to insist that you work as hard as you can yourself the way i did abraham lincoln, but then having worked as hard as you could if you feed some help, then the rest of us should chip into educate you, to give you the skills you need etc. etc. and in our economy there are two things that are important -- capital and labor but labor comes before capital. he said that over and over and you should remember that. and in talking about opportunity now, remember those distinctions and that tax cut you gave that some people say will come to as much as a trillion dollars for the top 2 percent of the taxpayers, that's two million, a trillion dollars for two million million, too much kill that

give some of that back to the middle class, put some in education. help people enhans their productivity. only four out of five americans is skilled. give them real opportunity, give them more education. >> on global interdependence. >> he would say, you started president bush by being dissident in your campaign, you said well, you know we shouldn't mess around with the rest of the world, we'll take care of ourselves, we don't need those protocols we don't have to get involved in environmental deals we don't have to get involved if a criminal justice deal, we don't have to prush off to israel to bail out. let's be strong more modest about it. no nation building, none of that ok. you were wrong. the world is interconnected and interdependent. it was with i was president. i could see it then and i never had what you have. the mobility, the total reliance

on one another. you're not big enough to do without the rest of the world. and the rest of the world needs you, so you should be more leaning toward the interconnectedness and interdependence of this world than you have. now belatedly, you've been forced into it good stay on that path. work very hard to get the support of as many people in this world as possible and help as many people as you can. >> supreme court? >> supreme court i think he and bush and franklin roosevelt and most of the presidents would agree regrettably which i disagree with all of them and that is look when it comes to the supreme court, you can talk all you want about the niceties of the difference between judges and politicians. but you make sure first you get your political wishes done. if you want to end -- get somebody who guarantees you to do what you want. i don't know how you have do that within the technical rules

but i took care of myself politically but putting people on the supreme court who i thought would protect me on the judgments i made on the war the political judgments. that's what you're doing obviously because you say you want somebody like scalia and thomas and that's what roosevelt did. clinton was not. clinton because himself was a constitutional lawyer i think had a more refined and sincere sense that hey look there's a big difference between judges and politicians. the same person as a politician could arrive at a different conclusion as a judge because the judge uses different criteria, so to make them politicians is to demean them. lincoln did it bush is doing it. they would probably agree on that. host: were you offered a supreme court seat? >> yes. host: why didn't you take it? >> well, first of all i was hoping i would never have to explain it so i never said anything about it but then somebody, stephanopoulos put it

in the book and then the president said it a couple of times. my family doesn't understand this either and it's difficult to explain. if you look at the problems of this country politically, now i'm a lawyer, the thing i do best is as a lawyer, not as a politician, but i did spend 20 years and i was governor for 12 years and it's why i wrote the book and there were all kinds of problems. some of them have to do with the constitution, but you get 75 cases a year maybe two or three or four of them would be really big. i would be a dissenter probably and every once if a while maybe i would write a good dissent and maybe it would change somebody's mind, but if you leave me off the bench, then for the rest of my life, i'll be able to bring to bear everything i know about politics, everything i learned in new york state for 12 years as governor and eight years before that. everything i learned about poverty, about the role of government everything i've learned from lincoln, can i go and participate in arguments, i can help and i feel myself that

i'm more valuable doing that. now, nobody hears my speeches because i'm not in the public eye and probably not as many people as i like will read the book, burr from my own -- but from my own point of view the feeling i have is i'm giving everything that i got by way of my experience back. every day that they give me a chance to do it and i just feel better doing it. >> did you ever come close to saying yes? >> no. host: as long as we're on this topic, why didn't you go for the president? >> oh, well you know two possibilities there. i suspect and i -- believe it or not it's hard to believe although i was in polls a couple of times, i never never once discussed it with my wife or the kids. it never came up. host: never talked about it? >> it never came up. host: did they ever bring it up? >> never did. host: they've never asked these kind of questions. >> what you just asked me no child and my wife to whom i'm

married 50 years, have ever asked that question. host: doesn't that seem a little strange? >> no, because other people did. host: they'll watch this show and find out. >> the -- first of all this intrigues me. an editor of the "new york times" once said to me i don't think you have the firing ability to be president. i said well look if thanes i don't have the courage then i'm going to be offended, because running for mayor -- for governor wasn't easy and i had roger ailes against me twice running campaigns and they were very, very tough campaigns and i survived those and a campaign with he ed koch and i've taken a lot of hits as governor. so i'm not afraid of that. if you say i don't have that desire that's driving me that says you have to be the president, you're absolutely right and the reason is to do it right i think you would have to look around at all the owe other potential candidates and say none of them are as good as

i. to be decent about t you have to say i'm the best person to lead this country and therefore much of the world. that's a heck of a conclusion to reach about yourself. i know myself very well. it's very hard for me to believe that about myself to be candid. now when you showed me a group of people on the governorship in 1982 and i looked around, they were good people, but i said i'm better than they are for whatever reason. i ran with all my heart and ran as an underdog, against the money, against everything. host: don't you think -- this is not a fair question. don't you think you're better than john kerry and george bush? >> today? absolutely not. george bush i'm not -- john kerry, absolutely not. no. today, i mean, my age my background no. >> better than bill clinton? >> no. no. clinton was in the field in 1991. i finally did look at it in 1991 because they made a big thing of it i said let me take a look at it, i did. people came back and said

there's plenty of money you're first in the polls. i announce i will look at it seriously and if the republicans will make a budget, they have controlled the house, the senate in new york for 70 years if they make a budget, i will run but i can't lead this state without a budget because that -- they'll destroy me in the campaign and it would hurt the state badly. and the republicans for reasons i will never understand refused to make the budget until the primaries were over. host: was the plane really on the runway? >> it was but i didn't know it. and i mean i've had to defend myself, you know, why did you let that happen? i didn't let it they -- there were a group of people who wanted me very badly to run and were pushing me to run. i told them i will make the decisions. i didn't tell -- and ron brown, may he rest in peace, who i taught -- he called me professor until he died much too early in his life. and he called me from paris two days before he died.

but ron brown had said make the new hampshire -- please make that a deadline governor because people are go to be asking you -- so somebody put a plane out there, they raised money, they had it going. i didn't find that out until later. >> how in touch are you with today's nominee? >> well i talk to people. i talk to bob frum and people in the campaign just about every day. >> what would abraham lincoln do if he were president today based on what you know about terrorism? >> ewould say -- he would say first of all don't call it the war on terrorism. you did that because it allowed you to run up the flag and allows you to take a vote etc. it's not a war like the war in iraq where you're taking a specific piece of land against a specific government and it will have a conclusion. this war is not going to have a conclusion any more than the war

against crime will have a conclusion. or the war against poverty will have a conclusion. or the war against illness will have a conclusion. so get that clear in your mind. it is not the same kind of war. number two it will take military force real force and where you find the nation that is hosting -- truly hosting terrorists and nothing else works but military force you will have to use it. when you find groups of like like al qaeda you will have to use it. to get osama, you have to use it. you need military force. but to think that military force is going to end terrorism is ridiculous. why? because the terrorists are willing to give their life to take yours. and so you can't frighten them with force. you'll need other things. you'll need propaganda to stop the mad rasss from teaching young jihadists to kill up a infidel that there is no answer but the slaughter of the infidels. you have to stop that. you have to stop the saudi

arabians from feeding it. maybe now that the terrorists are attacking them you have an opening there. in addition to that, you have to do what colin powell has a program to do, but nobody has allowed him to run it by giving him money, and that is the partnership program with other arab nations to work on the economic problem of the arab lands. there are 90 million young muslims between 15 and 24. a lot of them are out of work. a lot of them are desperate. they're easy to teach in a school to hate somebody. take it from a governor who knows you can't stop crime. you can't stop killing with prisons and police and judges and all of that. it takes much more. you have to figure out what the source of this is. but you people won't talk about the source of it because you think that's mushy-headed liberalism. no, no that's stupidity of you people, not to consider the other causes here. and deal with them as well. i think the analogy i use in the book he would like. and that terrorism is a cancer.

and you have malignant growths and you must extro pate those growths but terrorism is a perverse kind of cancer that when you pull one out and osama bin laden, for example, it's going to produce others. so you have to get at the cancer that creates the growths, and that's different than the force that extropates the malignant growth. >> you can never be sure of the vote that the people use, the house vote to go -- to allow george bush to go was 296-193. 81 out of the 296 were democrats. in the senate it was 7723, 29 of the democrats voted for it. if the democrats had stuck together and had not voted in either house for it, he wouldn't have gotten this resolution. >> that's right. >> can you blame just the republicans for what happened in iraq if you don't like it? >> no, no. no, you can't. you can blame president bush for for -- in a nutshell. before >> before you say anything let me say i got the distinct

impression -- and you may not like this language, that you really don't like george bush. >> no, no. i don't like his policies. >> well, you're very strong. i would say a book about you, a book about abraham lincoln and a book about george bush. >> well i liked his father a lot. i don't know this george bush. i know fred willpond who told me he's a terrific guy if you get to know him. i like the fact that he's a man of of faith. i don't like the way he uses it. religion is the most interesting piece in that book, how lincoln's religion would be and bush's religion. no. so i do -- i do not like his policies at all. i don't like them on the war. here's why not on the war. you say that weapons of mass destruction, complicity and imminence of the threat. you admit that you were wrong about all three, but you say the war is justified anyway. why?

because you wanted to take down saddam who's a bad man. so you're saying you're going to justify the loss of 850 americans thousands of innocent iraqis the loss of $150 billion billion, the loss of the respect of much of the world, and you're saying that would justify your doing it again. if you had a similar situation, a dictator who was a tyrant there are plenty of them. in africa in syria, in korea god forbid north korea you ever get it in your head, but that same rationale i say this mr. president. if you didn't lie and i'm not going to call you a liar, i'm not god so i will assume that you were fooled. but if you allowed yourself to be fooled so badly now why should i put us in a position where you might do it again? and that's my -- and on the economy, it is an outrage, mr. president, that you could give $1 trillion in tax cuts and leave us with the biggest deficit we ever had and

education that is faulty and health care that's faulty and a middle-class that's sliding downward. so yes, i can't stand his policies, but that has nothing to do with him as a person. >> did you know on your bio sheet, on the harry walker agency that they credit you 20% reduction in taxes in the state of new york? >> oh, well, i reduced the largest tax in new york which is the income tax more than any -- more than governor kerry, more than governor pataki. >> nothing wrong with reducing taxes? >> no no no. as a matter of fact, with his tax cuts what i would do is take the money from the $2 million at the top and redistribute a large portion of it to the workers. and to the people who are making $100,000 and $60,000 and the national wage is $42,000. no, i'm not against the tax cuts. i cut taxes in my state when i had to. >> last question. your favorite thing about

abraham lincoln? >> oh, gosh. i -- i don't know. there were so many wonderful things about him. my favorite -- my favorite thought about lincoln is he believed in two things -- loving one another and working together to make this world better. i think that's good enough to start a religion with and that's what he did. he started a civic religion and we need it now. >> mario m. cuomo, our guest. mario cuomo that yesterday at the age of 82 -- died yesterday at the age of 82. >> watch live coverage of the house on c-span and send live on c-span2, and track the gop-led congress. have your say as the events unfold.

new congress, best access on c-span. >> retired supreme court justice john paul stevens on his life legal career, and the supreme court. he has a new book, how and why we should change the constitution, which outlines ways he believes the constitution should be amended to protect democracy. justice stevens retired in 2010 and is the second longest-serving justice in the history of the supreme court. >> well, good morning, everyone or good afternoon. it's -- it's a great pleasure to

welcome justice stevens to georgetown law school. this is -- this is a new tradition that we're starting today and it grows out of two programs that we've had in the past few years. so a few years ago justice sotomayor spoke to the first year class. and last year justice kagan spoke to the graduating class. and so a number of the faculty were thinking what would be a good new tradition would be to have a leading member of the bench and bar come in at the start of the year to talk to our first year students about their career and to offered a vice about legal careers as people start their legal studies. so i can tell you how delighted i am that justice stevens is joining us here today. so a round of applause for justice stevens. [applause]

>> maybe i should quit while i'm ahead. [laughter] thank you all very much. [laughter] >> so just a few housekeeping matters. if you have cell phones, turn them off. i'll wait. and what we're going to do is justice stevens and i will talk and a number of students submitted questions in advance and so i will read those questions in addition to some questions that i've written. if we have time at the hour we'll have hand mics and we'll ask questions.

it's great to see so many distinguished alumni and faculty and senior staff, my wife allison treanor and so many great new students. what a great way to start the year. we normally say that our guest needs no words of introduction. that's actually true today but let me say a few things about justice stevens' career before we start the questions. justice stevens is a native of chicago. and as the baseball postseason is starting right now, i think it's worth noting that he was present at the 1932 world series game where babe ruth pointed to center field and called the home run he was about to hit. and i believe you had the scorecard from that game in your office. >> i do. it was kept by justice jackson's court years before because a lot

of time had gone by. but when he hit it he went through his library card and gave me the card. >> oh, my god, that's terrific. that's terrific. >> jim marsh is his name. >> justice stevens went to the university of chicago as an undergraduate. enlisted in the navy in december of 1941 hours before the japanese attack on pearl harbor. won a bronze star for his services as cryptographer, informing american officials that the japanese were going to attack. he clerked for justice rutledge on the supreme court. after that he went into private practice in chicago specializing in antitrust law. and then he was appointed to the seventh circuit.

and he was nominated in 1975 by president gerald ford. president ford wrote that he chose justice stevens as having the finest legal mind that i could find. justice stevens' commitment to justice, integrity regarding to the rule of law imbodied the highest yd -- ideals of the judiciary. i can't think of of a better speaker. so thank you. i first met justice stevens. i was at fordham law school as the dean and abner green and one of justice stevens' clerk put together a symposium in his first 30 years in the supreme court.

and to my surprise i received a letter from president gerald ford about justice stevens and i'd like to start by quoting from that letter because it's really extraordinary. historian study dear deans trance, that's my favorite part. historic and economic events that occur to evaluate their presidency. normally little or no consideration is given the long-term effects of a president's supreme court nominees. let that not be the case with my presidency. for i am prepared to allow history judgment in my term of office if necessary exclusively by my nomination 30 years ago, justice john paul stevens of the united states supreme court. i endorse his views on criminal law.

he served his nation well at all times carrying out judicial duties with inteelect and without partisan concerns. it's an extraordinary letter. i don't know -- i don't know any other president who has ever made a president like that about a supreme court justice. >> if the dean introduces me like this, i'm happy to do so. that was a wonderful letter, i must say. and i'm very, very proud of it. i thank the dean in his part in making the letter that hangs in my chambers. as i look out at the group i

know you're not all freshmen but it reminds me of my first day in law school in booth hall at northwestern law school. the shape of the room is similar to this. it's set in a little higher up as you go. and those of you who are freshmen are -- you're going to have a fine year ahead of you, what you're doing. >> what made you decide to go to law school? you originally thought you would be an english teacher? >> i did. there are probably -- there are two principle causes. one was the g.i. bill of rights and gave me more opportunities than i would have been available. my brother wrote me a letter recommending that i go to law

school in describing some of the benefits of being a lawyer and the rewards that he received from being able to use his skills helping people who really needed help. and that really made an impression he described what he really enjoyed was his work. he was in practice with another young lawyer in chicago. and he never joined a big firm. he did a lot of good things. he changed my thinking. >> so that convinced you to pursue a legal career? >> that through -- that together with the g.i. bill, right. >> yes, i did. --

>> and did you like law school? >> yes, i did. i -- i think about it a great deal as i say this reminded me of it. at the time northwestern was a smaller school that had a smaller faculty of maybe eight or 10 people on the faculty and they were all fine people. dean green was the professor. and leighton matteson the professor. it was a small enough class that you got to know the professors well. i think that benefited from the small class and the small number of professors and the enter change between student and faculty. >> now, as our students are beginning their legal careers do you have any advice about what they should be doing in law school? >> it's hard to say but you better study hard. [laughter] it's not as easy as it may seem. it pays off. you enjoy it more if you really

work at it and you really -- it's worth the work and you should study hard. >> that's very good. hope everyone's paying attention. and as they're thinking about their legal career doss you have advice for them? >> well, the one thing that's funny, i said this more than one group is you should realize when you start practicing law is your most important asset is your reputation for integrity. and you must always remember you have to play by the rules. it's terribly important. if you don't people know about it, and the word will get out. >> one of the questions. are you a faithful person and has your faith formed and changed your career? >> that's an interesting question.

i don't know exactly how to answer it. but as i -- and i read that question over. it was asking about the extent to which it might have affected my -- my work on the court. and i think a lot about my mother in these cases. my mother was a christian scientist. her mother was a christian scientist before her. i went to christian science sunday school and so forth. so that was my religion that had the greatest impact on my own work on the court. and i would often think about whether -- whether a statue was being fair or unfair to a religious minority, i would often think about requiring medical procedures or certain things like that which the christian science do not believe in. they don't believe you need any medical attention at all.

and i often thought about, well, how my mother would react of being compelled to obey such a law. and generally i found the general good was more important than the individuals that needed the assistance thans her own interests. >> that's very -- that's very interesting. >> another question is, how important were mentors for you? >> i don't really think of anybody as mentor. justice rutledge taught me a great deal and the faculty taught me a great deal. edward r. johnson who was the senior partner of the law firm that i worked for years and practiced was a person i admired and respected. i haven't thought of him as a mentor.

i'm not sure i had any mentors. >> what did you learn from justice rutledge? >> well, i learned a great deal. one example, -- you get a certain amount of case where is the prisoner or other personnel will file a paper that's in handwriting or typewritten or something like that and the procedure when i was a clerk was that those papers went to the chief's court. and the chief had three courts and the other chambers only had two. and the chief would prepare a memorandum. we called it a flimsy. those were the days before computers.

they had to pay paper -- eight by six or something like that. they would type up an original and eight copies. and then they would send them the memo -- that memo with the poppers to each chamber. in many chambers they would read the chief's memo of that might summarize by saying an illinois prisoner hasn't exhausted his rights and was denied. justice rutledge insisted that his clerks would get the original papers and go through and make it as an independent judgment on what was going on. he taught me and stan, my co-clerk that every case is important. i have to find out what's on before you brush it off. and so he had a part of his job was he looked at it that every

litigant was heard and hearing the uniform popper's cases we had a different responsibility than any of other justices. another thing i that learned from it is same -- same idea. every case is important. he thought it was important to let every lawyer know that their arguments had been considered and thoughtfully. so he wrote longer opinions than anybody else on the court. he was careful to try and let the reader know that the argument had been considered and the reasons for rejecting it. and as a result he wrote much longer opinions than some of the others did, much longer opinions than i ever wrote too. i did learn that the respect of the litigant that he -- he fell for.

and even more important -- i had another thought that i seemed to have -- oh, he wrote his own opinions. that's the point he wanted to make. he wrote his own opinions on a yellow pad -- on yellow pads which aren't so necessary with your computers now a days. but he wrote them out in longhand. and then the -- and so i learned the value of writing the first draft of opinions. and i followed the same practice although my law firm made valuable additions to many of the opinions that i wrote. but i always wrote the first draft and that's largely because justice rutledge did it. and when he did it, his first drafts were generally typed up and that was it. it was the final -- it did not go through a series of changes. there would be changes suggested by justices from other chambers and sometimes they would accept them.

sometimes he wouldn't. but it's pretty much is known for a first draft. so that's the thing i was going to say. i learned the importance of the first draft because you do learn i learned the importance of first draft because you learn much more about the case when you write about it, rather than a draft prepared by somebody else. __ no, i was the third. the first was byron white. who i met during world war ii. and __ know, i guess i was the second. bill had been a clerk. i don't know __ if bill was senior to me as a justice, but he was a clerk.

now there are several __ >> ended your experiences as a clerk shape your work as a justice? >> oh, i think so. it made me understand the process better so that i didn't have to ask __ i never joined the cirque pool. but i think i had a feel for what goes on in the court as a result of my work as a clerk. >> let's talk about __ because i think is our student start law school __ can you talk about a little bit about what the circle is and why didn't participate in it __ cirque pool is and why he didn't participate in it? >> well, the cirque pool is __ i don't know whether it refers to the people who write it or

not __ but all the people have cirque memos written __ so they all receive the same advice from the clerk. and all them get the same advice. so the cirque pool writer rrecommends a grant __ is making that recommendation to the justices instead of just one. and i think, in that job, there is a risk to deny, or something like that. so i think the cirque pool has an adverse effect on the number of cases that are granted. >> how important __ let's talk about oral argument. how important is oral argument?

>> well, when i was there, i considered it a very important part of the process. it frequently changed your thinking on the case. make a few new insight onto a particular issue that might not have occurred to you. it __ it is very important. in fact, i think the oral argument is important, which explains why they do not televise the argument. televising the argument by bring about changes in the procedure that you cannot anticipate. whenever television get into it __ into a new arena __ it sometimes has unexpected impact other people were being televised __ on the people who are being televised. my strongest argument against televising is that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. and i think it reflects the

fact that the justices think the arguments are important. i know i thought they are important. and my colleagues felt the same way. >> so, justin. justin had asked __ do think the supreme court should be broadcasted live on video. >> i have vacillated somewhat on the issue. because it would be __ they would be favorably pressed and probably surprised at how well prepared the members of the court are. it would be well to have people tto have the opportunity to see arguments.

but i also __ i think you are better off not making a change that might be as important as this. it is a close question, though. >> now, do people recognize you? i would think one thing about the supreme court's being broadcasted __ you know, it becomes much more public. >> that is true. and that is one of the reasons __ a reason for not doing it because you are not really a public figure. your name may be known, but when you have a name like john stevens, it is sort of like john smith. [laughter] i was almost never recognized outside the court. >> so, you are not __ has questioning changed over time for when you served in the court?

>> well, i understand __ i haven't been to any argument since i retired __ but i am informed that they are even more active in the questioning but when i was there. of course, there were a lot of questions than. and there are pluses and minuses and that. everybody has the opportunity to ask any questions __ as many questions as he or she wants. but if you take up too much time, it sort of defeats the purpose of the argument. >> now, when you asked the questions, what was your goal? >> well, there was very often aan issue that had not been fully spelled out in the briefs. sometimes i would ask the same question of both adversaries. the question would help you

understand aa problem that is bothering you when you're thinking about a case. and on occasion, you ask the question when you had pretty well made up your mind, and your adversary was making a argument that really doesn't hold water. you are then ask a question that would be designed to expose a flaw in the argument. but most of the questions i asked were to seek information that i thought might be helpful. >> and what makes something a good supreme court argument? you know, as people are starting to think about being an advocate. is the advice that he would give them? >> well, the first devices read __ advice is read the record before anything else. you know what the case is, and you know the details yourself. the first thing you have to know it's really know the record.

than the second thing, of course, is you have to think through what you want to say. and narrow the number of points down. obviously, you don't read your arguments. there's no point in reading what you have in the brief, but you can emphasizing get through those points before all the questioning makes it impossible. >> and what about brief writing? do you have any advice for people as brief writers? >> well, again, yyou got to __ you got to be honest in your briefs. you have to acknowledge if there's a serious problem in the case. don't try to bury it in a footnote because the people who are going to read the brief are intelligent people and are not going to be misled or easily satisfied with some kind of

silly answer. so you must think through the issues and explain them the best you can because you realize that very intelligent, good lawyers are going to be reading that brief. >> now, you talked earlier in response to question about the way in which __ the fact that your mother was a christian scientist, it affected __ you served in the military. did that affect your service in the court? >> yes, i'm sure did. well, one example ccomes up fairly often. the work i did in the navy was analyzing enemy communications __ the intelligence. and most of the communications

cannot be read. some can be read and translated by cryptographers, but my specialty was radio intelligence. the volume of traffic and who is sending messages to whom and so forth. and one thing i learned __ i can still remember when event when the watch house ahead of me had told me he received the message from a japanese battleship to a naval base in the south pacific. if that battleship was down there, it required some very important thinking about where forces might best be located. anyway, he suggested i look for more evidence for this particular battleship. and not long after i took over

the desk, i had copies of the same message that he analyzed. it was not the battleship that he thought it was. it was just personnel using it in a routine way. so i learned to be aware of __ [laughter] which, in turn, is something that in reading statutes, you have to be aware of __ errors. there are times where it clearly does not reflect what the address intended, which is one of the points that justice scalia and i disagree on. he thinks you should never look at legislative history, given the prominence of the staff of congress. and i think you should look

into as much as the legislation history as you can to be sure that you understand the statute, and that the words that they use when at the equivalent of garble. so that particular expense did have an impact on my approach is statutes. >> at an event last week __ >> oh, yes. >> what is that? >> aabout his book. yes, i have read it. and he did a great job. >> so come he argues that legislative history should be used in interpreting statutes. >> he had a lot of experience in congress, and i spent a few years myself. i think that people who have had more experience in congress are more prone to study the history because they think that

you can learn more about the statute because of your background. and i think that is a good purpose. >> in your experience working in congress __ benefits the way you work in the court __ >> yes, it does. and i remember one occasion when i was talking to a congressman __ i explained the complication in the bill, and he had a little trouble understanding it, but he said __ why don't we let the judges decide? he actually thought it was appropriate for congress to leave certain gaps in the legislation that could be filled out later on through the judicial process. >> and did you agree with that? >> i agree with that completely, you. there are times __ you cannot anticipate every problem that is going to arise as a result

of a statute. i think it is a mistake for congress to time be too thorough and __ in trying to answer every possible question. __ i guess that is right. one __ one difference between statutory interpretation and constitutional interpretation that has been set in many opinions as of the court should be more willing to take a second look at a constitutional provision because nobody else can correct the constitutional mistake. but when the statute has been construed, i was a very firm believer in statutory cases __ congress cannot change it. and if we got it wrong, i think

that the court should __ a subtle rule is valuable. let's try to take responsibility for any editorial changes in statutes. >> but in __ so in statutory history, you look to a congress had in mind. but in constitutional history, you are not so concerned with what the drafts had in mind? >> no, i don't think that is 100% true. you always try to find out what you can. but that is not necessarily the answer. in fact, there are some constitutional provisions that are construed today that have a meeting directly opposite to what the framers intended, but they didn't really understand the full implications of some of the provisions they enacted. my favorite example of that is

under the religion clauses. the clauses were designed to protect the christian religion, but non_christian faiths were not intended to be protected. and that is demonstrated by the contemporary writing. but when you look at the problems today, you obviously cannot have freedom of religion just for protestants aand catholics, and not for jews and mormons and so forth. so the principle that the framers adopt may be broader than the actual intent. that is the same with segregated schools, for example. >> now, iis there __ your opinions changed over time in the court? >> i don't think of any here today. >> now, let me go back. another question __ a few questions about your service on

the court that i wanted to ask about. joe asks during your time in the supreme court, who is the funniest justice you worked with? >> i think scalia. he has a wonderful sense of humor. i think you would qualify, but there __ they're a nice group of people. one example, my friend was baron white. there is a telephone. and so when the phone in the conference room rings, it is almost certainly a run number. [laughter] because if they do have messages, they knock on the door. and the junior justicehas to get up and __ [laughter]

__ and answer the door. i was a junior justice for many, many years. and tom used to describe the junior justice at the highest_paid doorman in the country. [laughter] but white, when the phone would ring, he would generally pick it up and say __ joe's bar. [laughter] and it would usually be a run number. [laughter] i will tell you another one about byron. [laughter] it has nothing to do with anything, but __ [laughter] but he was a great athlete. i am sure you know who he was. he was an all_american football player, and he was a generally very, very good athlete. and he would use the gym __ the

floor of the gym was the ceiling of the courtroom. and he would go up there and dribble __ play basketball by himself. shoot baskets. and the sound of the courtroom would be distracting. as a result of byron's aactivities, there is a firm rule and the courts __ you may not play basketball while the court is in session. [laughter] as a result of that >> to the justices get along? >> yes, they really do. they are all wonderful people. it is interesting __ you have some pretty firm disagreements, no doubt about that. but everybody understands what of the general rules. you are just doing the best you can. and sometimes you put stronger

language in your opinions. >> which justice did you look up to and why? >> you know, i thought about that. i'm actually not sure because in different areas __ i really respected all of them that i worked with. they are exceptional people. i would like to say thurgood

marshall, but my strongest admiration for him was work you did even before a justice. tthe hard work you did and the risks he took, he was very remarkable. and i'm not sure __ i do not have a single candidate. one other example __ lewis and i were quite good friends. he had been engaged in a form of intelligence during the war that was similar to the work i did, so we had some background in common. so, he was a ggood friend; although, we certainly disagreed in some cases. >> now, do deliberations among justices affect the outcome of a case? __ asked that question.

how much deliberation among the justices occur, and how important is it? >> it is important, but the amount varies with the cases. some cases, the deliberation is very brief. but the deliberation almost entirely occurs at the conference. the conferences on friday, we take the cases on tuesday, and argue on wednesday and thursday. wednesday, we talk about the monday cases. but the liberation is __ the justices speak in turn, going around the table, and usually the discussion is over after everyone has spoken. but, sometimes i the more difficult cases, they will go back and forth later on. by the time the conference is over, most of the cases have been decided aand will not be __ and will come out the way

they have decided the conference. but there are some cases that are difficult. and the deliberations occur at later times and spontaneous occasions. you can't really say. >> when you are the senior justice and the majority, and you are thinking about who to assign __ what do you think about? is that part of the process? >> well, it varies. you __ you are concerned about distributing assignments fairly and equally __ is one thing. mainly, the primary thing when i had the assignment of responsibility was to try to pick the justice who would do the best job writing an opinion. on occasion, you would think that someone __ if it was a

very close case and one person's vote was in doubt, i would think that person is the one who ought to read the opinion. because i found that very often when you are writing out in opinion, your views become more firm than they were before. so i thought that if you sign the case to the person who was least committed, he is most apt to stick by his original vote once he has told of the reasons for it. whereas if you assign it to someone who is not __ who is clearly on that side, he may lose the court. if it is a five four case. so, that is one __ and other areas that you think hhave shown the best understanding of the case. >> george asks, how do you build a majority? do you have any strategies? >> well, no.

no, you just do your best. at the conference, you explain the reasons why you think the case should be decided in one way. sometimes, when someone is in doubt, he may try to talk to them later to further convince them or i convince them, whatever it might be. but most of it is just straightforward discussion of the merits. >> so, justice brennan ''s order famously talked about __ or is esteemed to talk about time and personal persuasion. is that __ ? >> well, he was a charming guy. i liked him very, very much. he was very effective __ aa very effective advocate, too. i'm not sure that child really sways many __ charm really

sways many members of the court. him and justice scalia were very good friends, but they do not convince each other all that often. [laughter] >> i won't even ask you a case they might have convinced each other on. >> i don't have one readily in mind. >> so, i want to go back to your nominations. were you surprised to be nominated for the supreme court? >> well, yes. but after __ after __ just might explain the timeframe. the timeframe was quite sure between douglas is resignation and the nomination __ douglas's

resignation and the nomination. i was even more surprised, of course, when he made the decision. >> i think __ yeah, it was a remarkable decision by president ford. because, you know, it was a time in which the nation was still suffering from watergate. and there was a real crisis and belief in the rule of law. for him to make __ there were a lot of people being pushed for four different groups, conservatives __ betty ford said that carl hill would be a good supreme court nominee __ and president for decided that it should really be someone who was with outstanding integrity and extraordinary ability and deep commitment to the rule of law. and he picked you.

that is why he was so proud of your selection. >> you are awfully nice. [laughter] >> so, with your __ so, you were __ what was the preselection like? yyou saw your name in the newspaper. >> interestingly, i think of the four or five days before he actually made the decision, he had a dinner at the white house to which he invited maybe 25 or 30 judges. most of whom were __ were newspaper candidates, or something like that. and i was invited to that dinner. and i met president ford for the first time at the dinner.

and the supreme court justices were there, too. and we kind of knew that we were being __ that the pending nomination had something to do with the dinner. >> wow! >> and i do remember meeting the president for the first time. he came over to our table and talked to both the financial crisis in new york __ the federal government was pouring is a money, i don't remember the details, but i do remember being very distinctly impressed about the fact that the president was obviously a good lawyer and thoroughly understood the issues and explained what was going on in a way that __ that the average person cannot have done. he was a very articulate person, even though he is not known, generally, for that. he is a very likable person.

and really a decent person. and i have come to the conclusion __ he made good appointments. [laughter] >> he was a great president. so, how did you find out that you are nominated for the supreme court? >> well, i can tell the story about phil? >> that would be great. >> another judge, who had been seriously mentioned __ and as i understand it, during the final decision_making process, there were either two, three, or four were most fiercely considered. one of them was my collie, philip __ colleague, philip. who had joined the same law firm in chicago __ which i started. after i left the firm, we continue to be good friends, and eventually, he was

appointed to the court of appeals after i had been appointed. so we found ourselves being competitors, good friends for the vacancy. and we had a conversation about it. we both said it was kind of hard to do your regular work not knowing what is going on here. so, we agreed that __ each of us agreed to tell the other one if we heard anything about the nomination that might affect our opportunity to get the job. so, about three or four days after we had a conversation __ that was the friday after thanksgiving __ president ford called me up. and my secretary wasn't there. he said he was going to nominate me, and i was obviously very pleased. i told him so, and we talked for a minute. then he said, we are going to

announce this at about 5:00 pm this afternoon in washington. i would ask you not to tell anybody about it until it is announced publicly. and i said, well, i would like to, mister president, but i have this problem. [laughter] i had told philip that i would __ i would let him know if i heard anything about it. the president responded by saying, well, i am sure if you tell him __ i asked you not to tell anybody __ and he would understand you forgive you. well, i was unhappy about that solution, but of course it did with the president requested. then hhe came back about 5 o'clock that afternoon __ aand i had visited with my mother.

i got __ >> did you tell your mother? >> yes, i did. [laughter] i knew she wouldn't tell anybody. anyway, i did. [laughter] anyway, to finish the story. when i got back to the office __ about 4 o'clock in the afternoon __ the phone rang again and i answered it. it was the day after thanksgiving and my secretary wasn't there. and the person from the other and said, i'm calling from the white house and the president has asked me to tell you that you can tell philip that we are going to announce it publicly. and i thought, that is a pretty thoughtful guy who would take it that searcy to call me. after i hung up, phil walked in the office to congratulate me. he had already heard it.

[laughter] that is an interesting little bite. >> it really reflects, again, so well and president ford. >> i have often thought about that. he had an awful lot on his mind, and he took the time to tell me that i could keep my promise to fill. >> he really was an extraordinary man, with great judgment. >> yes. >> so, let me ask you a few questions about your recent book. so, this is a book about six amendments you think we should have for the constitution. how did you come to write it? >> well, it is interesting. i think i explain in the first chapter. it was the newton massacre __ after the shootings up in connecticut, there was a "new

york times" story that stated because of the decision of the united states supreme court a few years ago, the databases that the fbi uses to check out prospective purchases of firearms are not entirely complete. because some states do not provide all the details that the fbi request. and the reason they don't do this because of the supreme court decision __ the article didn't name it __ and i had sat on this decision. i thought they had very unwisely adopted a rule, which i call the anti_commandeering rule, that prohibits the federal government from telling state officials to pay any federal command. even though the world war i draft, world war ii draft were

largely conducted by state officials. and not paid by the federal governmentbecause it was an efficient way to run it. in any event, the court adopted this anti_, jane rule. which, i thought at the time, was unwise. and they really should change that. so, what proximately caused the book was that story. after that __ after i wrote that, i thought, well, other thing should be changed, too. such as the gerrymandering __ the court could easily correct that by applying the same role of by racial gerrymandering cases. they could apply that to political gerrymandering. so i put in a chapter about that, and a chapter about campaign financing.

in the other chapter that i think is really the most interesting in the book is about sovereign immunity. the notion that a state official doesn't have to be a federal law because the king of england, back in 1500, used to have immunity. so i made those four chapters, and then i thought having written those, i thought i should also include chapters about the death penalty anger control. both of which i think should be changed. >> so the death penalty, you think they should not be a death penalty? >> that is right. and the reason is a very simple reason. i am perhaps not as persuasive as i should be, but we now know that our criminal justice system is by no means infallible. proof beyond a reasonable doubt

is very much __ but it is not avoid a very serious risk of executing someone who was found guilty on fairly. and that is the reasonmichigan doesn't have the death penalty because one of the legislators had participated in the execution of a man who later turned out to be innocent. >> oh, my god. so, of the six, if you could pick one, wwhich is the most important amendment to put into effect? >> i think the gerrymandering is most important, although i think the campaign finance is most important. >> and why gerrymandering? >> well, two reasons. it is very rarely defended on the merits. if you figure that a government officialshave a duty to govern impartially, and not try to advance their own personal interests or their own political interests when they are acting in a government

position, they clearly have a duty to draw district lines into nonpartisan, impartial way. they're not doing it, and everybody knows. you can tell by looking at the maps which districts are crazy shapes. if you apply the same role that you apply to grace of gerrymandering __ you put an end to it. it really distorts the political process. i think it makes primary elections more important tthan general elections. and, as a say on the merits, they clearly needs to be changed. >> one of the points you make in the book is that __ because districts are partisan, and forces people to the extremes. republicans to be conservatives, democrats to be more liberals. and that is the reason why we are in such loggerheads today, politically.

>> i have to say that is right, and it is influenced by the couple years i worked over in congress for the house judiciary committee. on most of the work in congress at that time, the parties worked on a collegial basis. on high visibility issues, they would tend to take __ to take partisan positions and make more speeches and so forth. the congress then was a legislative body on which they were all one team, for the most part. >> it is amazing transformation that occurred in the truck. of time. and the book was really remarkable. i think we have time for a couple of questions. so, do we __ aaron, if you could __

>> hi, my name is caleb gray. in a recent interview, she said that citizens united was a very bad decision of the court. what do you think would be the worst decision by the court? >> well, i think that probably the worst decision that has been handed down while i was in court was a bush against gore. i think that was really quite wrong. and i think it becomes more and more obvious. specifically, the order prohibiting a recount __ i think that citizens united was certainly bad enough, but i think that bush against gore was even worse. >> and why was bush versus gore so bad?

>> well, i think that they give the public the incorrect impression that courts are political institutions, rather than doing the best job in trying to figure out what the law is. >> and you have written that early in your career, while you are on the circuit, you actually had a decision that was most like your position in bush versus gore. >> yes, that arose out of the election in indiana between two candidates. and a recount had been ordered. went to college soccer recount actually increase the risk __ my two colleagues actually thought there at risk of the recount __ and that case was was reversed by the court.

>> now, if the recount had continued, it probably would not have altered the outcome of the elections. >> there have been some studies that have indicated that that is the case. but the thing that may have produced results is the ballots they had in palm beach county, if i remember correctly. pat buchanan was on the ballot, and he received a large number of ballots in an area which probably would have voted democratic. there is a belief that gore lost more votes to pat buchanan that he lost to his opponent. and that, conceivably, could've made a difference. it was a very strange ballot form they had. it was hard for the voter to use. >> okay, we have time for one more question.

>> i wanted to ask about your thoughts on the equal race amendments. i know it wasn't addressed in your book, and i was wondering if you could talk a little bit about __ if you think that it was an effective need for change and the women's rights court. >> you have to repeat it for me. >> yes, so the question is __ in your book, you don't talk about equal rights amendment. >> that's right. >> should the equal rights amendment have been adopted? and what difference would it make? >> well, that __ that was an issue when i went to the confirmation process. and i made, my guess is a tactical error, that i do not think the equal rights amendment was necessary because

i thought that if the equal __ law was properly construed, the equal rights laws to be entailed. the women's rights group opposed my nomination for that reason. and they also oppose me for some of the reasons __ that i was not a woman. [laughter] that was a good reason, by the way. but i really don't think it would make much difference if you had the equal rights amendment adopted. >> do think the case law would still be the same? >> yes, i think so. i think ginsberg was not on the court, and i don't think she actually made the oral argument. in the case that she wrote, it

was irrational to disqualify women from the executor. that is a groundbreaking case, and i don't think that weinberger is given enough credit for that __ warren burger is given enough credit for that. he just basically said that this is a lot of nonsense. [laughter] >> this is terrific. >> read against __ reed against reed, to name the case. >> and people have been concerned about your health. >> that's right. [laughter] >> and you have proved them wrong. >> well, just two years earlier, i had had a heart bypass surgery. a very common procedure. >> i have to say, you know, in the weight of history __ the

fact that you are nominated and confirmed __ is an extraordinary moment in history of the country, in terms of the interpretation of the constitution. and for more than 30 years on the bench, you are an extraordinary champion of the rule of law and integrity. we are all really privileged __ as her students are beginning the law career __ to listen to you. on behalf of the entire georgetown law community __ i would like to say we have ties, but we do not have bowties. so i cannot give you a georgetown law bowtie. but i can give you a clock that commemorates this occasion. it says: to justice stevens. it is a pleasure to be able to present it to you. please, a big round of àpplause+.

[applause] >> thank you. [applause] >> on tuesday, the court released its annual report on operations. chief justice roberts wrote that they will have available on their website all written material that the court takes up this year. the c_span cities tour textbook tv and "american history tv" on the road. >> we are in the private suite of linden and lady bird johnson. this was the private quarters for the president and first lady. when i say private, i mean that. this is not part of a tour that is offered to the public. you are saying it because of c_span's special access.

vips come into the space, just as they did and lyndon johnson's day. but it is not open to our visitors on a daily basis. and the remarkable thing about this space is that it really is a living, breathing artifact. it has not changed at all since president johnson died in january of 1973. and there is a document in the quarter of this room, signed among others by lady bird johnson, telling my predecessors, myself, and others that nothing in this room can change. >> so we are here on the 100 block of congress avenue in austin. to my left is the colorado river. and this is a historic site in the city's history, because this is where the waterloo __ i am actually standing at about

the spot where it was. this was where the mayor was staying wwhen he and the rest of the men got wind oof the big buffalo herd in the vicinity. so he and the other men jumped on their horses. congress avenue __ or, it really wasn't an avenue, but in those days, a muddy ravine. the men galloped on their horses. they had stocked their belts full of pistols. and they rode into the middle of the herd of buffalo, and they shot this enormous buffalo. from there, he went to the top of the hill, and that is where he told everybody that this should be the seat of the future empire. >> watch all of our events from austin on saturday at noon eastern and sunday afternoon at 2:00 pm. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> the house comes in and about

10 minutes for its final session of the 113th congress. david hawkins recently sat down with us to discuss the day_to_day operations of the house and senate. he looked at the different roles they have in each chamber. >> and joining us to talk through the people and the positions is david hawking's. good morning. >> good morning. >> so, tell us a little bit about his positions that we see all the time. >> well, as you can __ on both the house side and the senate side, they are a team of sort of bureaucratic functionaries who are designed to keep operations running smoothly and according to parliamentary procedure. and make sure that records are kept properly, completely, accurately, and quickly. there are teams of people that you see on both the rosters who make that happen in ways __ if

they're doing their jobs properly, the public never notices. and that is the way it is supposed to work. >> starting with the house, we all know where the speaker stands. but talk about the people behind them. who are we seeing on the side? >> sure, so the person you see right under the mace __ and that is important to note that the mace is actually carried into the house whenever the house is in session. somewhat predictably, the person who sets right under __ no, i am wrong. the person who sits right under the mess is actually the parliamentarian. he or she has a sheet of scripted papers that he can

hand the presiding officers __ and to say that you should rule this way or you should rule that way. >> so, on the opposite side. what are these positions? >> that would be actually the formal spot for the clerk of the house. a woman named karen haas. i should note that for people watching today __ this is the one day of the year where karen haas, or her predecessors, becomes tv stars for a few hours. because the way the house works is when the house convenes at noon today, in a parliamentary sense, it won't really exist. none of the members will have been sworn in yet. so for a while, karen haas is the reside of the house.

then a new speaker, presumably john boehner, will take __ and can house will go back to relative anonymity to the speakers left. >> and this position we often hear all about is the sergeant at arms. >> so, the sergeant of arms is the chief security officer of the house. they're supposed to ensure that the chamber secure, and members are secure, and that the house chamber is in good working order. the sergeant of arms __ right_winger panders __ sits down by the door __ right where your pen is, since ray, the door. it is the sergeant of arms who does that.

the people in the lowest tier by the bill clerks. when you talk about a member introducing the bill or putting a bill in the hopper, that is actually where the hopper is. going around the front, go up to the two children above that. those two chairs that are empty in this picture __ because i guess this is not a moment for the voters about to __ wear a vote is about to happen __ sometimes if you're watching a recorded vote, towards the end of the vote you might be able to hear somebody searching the vote. the way they work actually is an electronic vote. they put their credit cards and his little machines. they vote yes or no. if it gets to the end of the vote and they want to change the vote, they actually have to had a red card __ to vote no __ or a green card __ to vote yes __ to one of the members in

those cards. __ there's a republican reading clerk and a democratic reading clerk __ the one that is empty at the moment __ they actually announce what amendment, what bill they're going to do next. of course, down in front __ way down in front __ sitting on either side of that lovely dining room table other people who are transcribing the debates. they are old_school transcribers. for years, when i covered congress, there were still men and women doing it with shorthand, pencil. >> so they use these machines, read here. >> they use those machines that type in a weird way that only they can decipher. >> so the senate has a little bit of a different configuration __ but let's start with the presiding officer. >> the presiding officer, who in that picture, is ed markey. that is a typical picture.

unlike in the house, with the speaker of the house has enormous power and how he or she rules from the chair has an enormous amount to do with how the day goes. in the senate, the rules are so fundamentally different that the presiding officer has minimal power. it is sort of a thankless task, but it is a side to members of the majority party who are brand_new. so the next years, we'll see all the new freshmen senators __ i think there are 11 freshmen republican senators. they will all take turns sitting up there. they cannot really do anything else then sign letters, sign autographs. but they do run the process. in several of them say that they become procedural experts by sitting up in a chair. so in that close in chat community the man right to add markey's front __ right there

__ she is the senatorial equivalent of the parliamentarian. see, just like we talked about in the house, has some script sheets. you will see him handing the presiding officer scripted announcements. he also advises the presiding officer on what to do next, what is the next thing and proper parliamentary order. >> enter his right? >> i believe that is the journal clerk, who helps kkeep the proceedings. and help run the proceedings of which the transcription is taken. again, this is a picture __ this is a picture were no vote is about to happen. so, again, the empty chair would be the tally clerk. the clerk who calls out the role. you know, you always hear, in sonorous tones __ the person who is first in the alphabet gets his or her name called out.

then they slowly, slowly call the role. when an actual vote is happening, they are the ones in charge of the hubbub of both calling the role, and simultaneous to calling the role, members can go and get that person's attention to vote even when their name is not being called. i think he is the assistant to that job. then down in front, you'll see these two tables. one is run by the republicans, one by the democrats. it is where the republicans and democrats go to ask what are we voting on and how much post about. >> how do people get these jobs? >> all different ways. some bubble up sort of in the bureaucratic system of the clerk's office. and they need to be willing to spend long hours sitting on television and behaving themselves. it is considered a prestigious job. so some of the lesser jobs are people who are careerists in the bureaucratic sellers of congress. and some of them, like ms. haas

and the secretary of the majority and minority __ have gotten the trust of the leaders and might have worked at the chiefs of staff.