going to say anything at this point unless they make a mistake of course that is newsworthy. polls do not matter. anything that will affect the campaign happens behind closed doors were they are lining up money or campaign operatives. these events are perfectly staged and control as much as they can be controlled. and yet all of these news organizations are spending thousands of dollars to send somebody to des moines and stay at the hyatt so they can walk 20 minutes of jeb bush talking to a room full of iowans. it's pretty weird. brian lamb: what is your sense of why these people run? andrew ferguson: a lot of them -- one thing i have noticed about this field, and i think it is different on the republican side than it was before. how many of them are pure politicians. that is, they really haven't done anything in their life since they started their campaign for hall monitor in seventh grade and have been

running ever since. scott walker started out of college, marco rubio has never really had a job, jeb bush started really late but he had these business jobs that depended a lot on his celebrity. christie is a guy who was with the prosecutor's office and straight into elected office. their motives i suppose are slightly more suspect because this is the next rung on the ladder for these guys. this is their profession. to show that you are king of the hill you get to run for president, it is the next step. brian lamb: i want viewers to know that they can go to google, type in andrew ferguson, "new

republic" -- "new republic," "the weekly standard." [laughter] andrew ferguson: not anymore. brian lamb: this is a column that you wrote earlier this year, 2015, about huckabee christie, and paul. "the fantasy will come to an end long before he reaches the white house gate. they wanted, we can assume, not a professional gambler, a fashion designer, or a collector of 19th-century doll houses. no racecar drivers need apply. neither do they want a prickly unconvincing hipster or a 52-year-old man who still plays air guitar." andrew ferguson: those last three people are huckabee, paul, and christie, who i lumped

together after they had one bad week. huckabee was actually a very good governor of arkansas but he seems to have decided they wanted to be a talkshow host and a preacher at the same time, a terrible combination for a presidential candidate. he started to show signs of his prigishness. the hipster is rand paul who have shown himself to be short tempered and i thought if he is getting this mad this early he is probably not going to be able to sustain a campaign. and the other one was chris christie who was just portrayed as returning from a trade trip to england.

i think the "times" reporter talked about him going to three different parties with bono the rockstar. that also does not strike me as a presidential kind of affect. i do not think fdr ever went crazy because he met bing crosby or ronald reagan because he met madonna. i hope you never met madonna. it is not something a self-possessed and worldly guy does. brian lamb: your career, we saw you back in 1987. you were working for "the

american spectator," how long did you work there? andrew ferguson: it started in indiana and i think i started in 84. we all moved out here in 85 the following year and i worked 88 i covered the 88 campaign so probably until 89. then i went to an editorial features writer and did that for a couple of years and was asked to write speeches for the first president bush. his chief speechwriter was a friend of mine. i did that for a year. as i said before, when i started working for him in the hellish year of 1992, i started in january when his approval was 47% or 48% and by march i got it down to about 35%. it just continue to plummet. the longer i worked, the worse it got. it was an invaluable experience and i have tremendous respect for him.

then i went to "washingtonian" magazine as a writer and then john called up and said we are going to start a magazine and we have fred barnes and david brooks so let's go. i went to "the standard." brian lamb: on the personal side, if you are talking to young people today, they do what you have done? you have a family, can you make enough money to make it work? andrew ferguson: i really do not know because the business in the time that i have been here has changed utterly because of the introduction of the internet. we started "the weekly standard" because there was no weekly conservative opinion magazine. there were monthlies like "the spectator." there was a biweekly which was bill buckley's "review." we decided that the pace

accelerated to the point where we would be behind if we did not have something every week to comment on what happened the week before. of course i am going to look back on that as just a joke. now you are out of date if you are five hours behind the new crisis of the century and you have not read the last 40,000 tweets about it. when that change started to happen i thought, what i do is done for. there is not going to be an opportunity left for people to come up and write the kind of stuff that i write, which is sort of longer and more free-form and relaxed. it is not really on the news, to say the least. but i was wrong about that. in fact, now, there are so many journalism jobs and so much journalistic activity in washington, three times when i first came here. when i first came here and you wanted to be in the opinion line of work in journalism, you could work at "the spectator," "the new republic," "washington

monthly," that was about it. now buzz feed has a huge political operation, the daily caller, the huffington post. but all seem to have 80 people working for them. that is one of the reasons that you go to these ag summits and there are all these people, have generated enough money they can send somebody. brian lamb: one of the things i want to do is talk to you about writing and words and what they mean. this is chris christie on the

campaign trail. chris christie: i think what really matters to folks is do you get the job done? do you tell them what you believe from your heart, even if they do not agree with every word of it? let me say this to my fellow republicans in the room as we prepare to enter the primary season. if the standard you will hold candidates to is they must agree with you 100% of the time, let me suggest something to you. the only person you agree with 100% of the time is the person you see in the mirror every morning. the fact is, if we hold candidates for public office to that standard, let me tell you what you are going to get. liars. brian lamb: your reaction? andrew ferguson: every time i

see him, even when he is making kind of an inoffensive comment like that, he has a way of turning it into kind of an accusatory thing. you people do not get it. let me explain it to you. you are not supposed to agree with him 100% of the time. it just reminds me of this tremendous truth that all of my friends from new york and new jersey do not understand which is that the rest of the country does not like people from new york and new jersey. i saw the same thing with giuliani. all of my friends in new york and jersey, when he ran for president last time, and of course he did not make it into the presidential year, were saying that he was a shoo-in and he is so popular. i was not going to like him, indiana is not going to like him, he is a new yorker and they do not like new yorkers. i think that is christie's problem as well. it is a harsh, in-your-face, unpleasant.

brian lamb: you wrote in your column "history records no case in which a republican hurt his reputation among fellow republicans by yelling at a reporter. it is always assumed that the reporter deserved it just on general principle." andrew ferguson: right. he had gotten in trouble because he snapped at a "new york times" reporter on the trade trip i was talking about. people were suggesting that that was a faux pas to a reporter and i have been around republicans all my life and they do not mind it.

brian lamb: why do republicans not like reporters? andrew ferguson: they assume they are all antagonistic and to a large degree they are right. they feel that they have not gotten a fair shake, that they are an unknown species to a lot of reporters and again i think they are right about that. there are a lot of reporters who have never had a conservative republican in their circle of friends. and tend to think that conservative republicans must have a screw loose somewhere. brian lamb: i do not know how close you get to calling yourself a reporter, but here is something you wrote, talking about antagonistic and sarcastic. "the book is pretty good, by the way, written in a smooth and jokey prose." that is the book that mr. huckabee wrote. andrew ferguson: i was impressed

that he spoke truth to power. i am not big on name-calling but when you have the insult and the person perfectly matched as huckabee does there are think it is fun. brian lamb: does anybody tell you what to write? ever? andrew ferguson: no, and i have probably suffered for it. brian lamb: you are told to write what you want to write? andrew ferguson: bill kristol is the chief editor of "the weekly standard," and i have known him for 30 years, since the mid-80's. we started the magazine with total respect for each other and if anything my respect has only grown. i cannot speak for him. he has never had called to call me on the carpet for something i have said and i have never had reason to think i have to ask to say something in particular. brian lamb: in a lot of these columns you have been critical. let's watch a little bit of rand paul, and you talk about his open shirt.

his jeans, his cowboy boots. [video clip] rand paul: i do not get it, i am from pennsylvania and i do not get it. you want to be new york? do you want to be california? you have a governor that is allowing your energy industry, something nobody predicted was there 10 years, 15 years ago, it is there and you are tapping it and creating all kinds of jobs and you have done for your second now? why would you give that up? what kind of craziness is going on in the state? how could you even consider? do you want to be new york? there is no fracking and no natural gas. there's natural gas, but it is under the ground and remains there. in california, the monterey shale formation is one of the biggest in the country and it sits there because the idiots do not want to bring it up. they do not want civilization, they do not want to advance. do you want business or growth

or jobs? please by all means, return your governor to office. brian lamb: does calling somebody an idiot work? andrew ferguson:, hardly ever especially if you mean it. brian lamb: does he mean that? andrew ferguson: probably, i think so. i have called people names and print over the years. but it shows that you have run out of other ways to discuss the person you are just going to because you ran out of gas, your creative juices are dried up so you are going to say he is an idiot. he's a windbag or something. on the other hand words like that can be used to good comic effect but if you really mean it and are hurling it as an epithet i do not think it is effective. brian lamb: here is how you wrote about it and i want to ask how much you think about it.

[laughter] andrew ferguson: not at all. i can guarantee that. how long did it take you to write that? [laughter] andrew ferguson: longer than it would you to read that although that does take some time, it is a long sentence. it takes a long time. the way i would do something like that, i think the sentence is probably overdone now that i hear it read back to me. but, what would happen was something like that is i would write it out in the first draft

and i would over elaborate. there would be too much going on in the sentence, too many jokes or idealettes running around and i have to comb it back and do it again so it does not sound too extravagant. my problem is extravagance, the thing i have to avoid. too much singing and dancing. brian lamb: what are some of your favorite words to use in a column? or what are words you do not ever use? andrew ferguson: i can't use them, i won't tell you. [laughter] andrew ferguson: you know, if you gave me another 10 minutes i could come up with them. brian lamb: you did a column on the word issue.

andrew ferguson: i hate "reach out" as a verb meaning that i telephoned or called somebody or asked something. i am not big on the word "share," i shared with him that i am going to dinner. i have a whole list of those. i have been really on alert lately for the phrase "data-driven." i've noticed mrs. clinton loves to say things are data-driven. first cousin to that is evidence based. what they are usually talking about is somebody did some social science studies somewhere that produced some lame data ostensibly to prove one thing or another and that is data. data drives their judgment meaning that we are not putting emotion into this, we are not thinking off the top of our heads, we are taking the data and going where the conclusion would lead. and that is never true. brian lamb: i've got a word i want to ask you about at the end of a sentence here. "it is no suprise that a candidate that would use twitter to engage adversaries would be uncomfortable with an interview

with a cnbc cupcake." cupcake? in this day and age you can get away with that? male or female? andrew ferguson: i have called men cupcakes, too. i use it as the shorthand for the extremely attractive sometimes too attractive people that have reading the news on the cable channels who do not carry a lot of gravitas and show off a lot of -- it is not like they all went to the sorbonne or are members of mensa or something. they are there because they are pretty. brian lamb: are you a member of mensa? andrew ferguson: i could never get in. brian lamb: what is the requirement? andrew ferguson: 200 and

something. probably double what mine is. brian lamb: another politician you write about is governor huckabee. >> "god, guns, grit, and gravy." explain the title, first of all. mike huckabee: it is not a recipe book for southern cooking. i went to put everybody 80's. -- i want to put everybody at ease. if you are saying, i do not even know what a great is, relax. -- grit is, relax. here is the point of the book. there are three major cultural bubbles in america. new york, washington -- we are in two of those. and the other is hollywood. from those three cultural levels and might fashion, government, music, entertainment, movies television, all the things that set the american cultural table. but my point of my book is there is a big disconnect from the people, the values, the attitudes, the lifestyles of people living in the three bubbles and people living in

what we often call the flyover country. brian lamb: does that work? andrew ferguson: his demeanor? brian lamb: talking about flyover country. you hear a lot of politicians say that washington is horrible and new york is horrible. all that stuff. andrew ferguson: i don't think it works. there is a great deal of resentment towards washington and the over class in general, whether in entertainment or media or finance. i talked about in that piece about huckabee, was the danger that republicans, especially in this hyper specialized age where the echo chambers are the only components of the political conversation. right-wingers only talk to right-wingers and the same with left wing. they will pick up remarks from the other side just so they can refute them.

you can get your own kind of bubble that he is not talking about there. in which -- i said this about him, when he was promoting his book, when he would get in trouble was when he went with like-minded radio show hosts and he would just start talking. you forget you are in a bubble as well. you are always exposing yourself to people who agree with you on almost everything. as i say, the internet is really only tripled the tendency people have towards that. brian lamb: the once you have covered and written about, who do you think is catching on the most out there?

andrew ferguson: i think everybody says scott walker. who i have never met. in person, once i think. he does seem to have a lot of things that people like. especially primary voters. talk about the bubble. they want somebody who looks like he's stood up for them. i'm amazed to the degree to which primary voters are the most motivated by resentment. the sense of being put upon. those people really don't understand us. here is a guy who does understand us and he is going to stick it to them. and that happens on both sides. hillary clinton will give her own version of that kind of thing. i don't think i was actually true 30 years ago. resentment has always been part of politics, obviously. the degree to which it is almost exclusively the motivating factor in truly committed republicans and democrats is you know. brian lamb: in your article about jeb bush, tell me what you

envision of the audience reading this. i think he proved he was fairly conservative when he was governor. then you dredged up this. andrew ferguson: i think he tried to defend it at the time. but it's so shocking and grating on the ear. pure ideology is often grating to people. you would think it was '94 when he ran that campaign. when i first met bush, he would come by the american spectator

office a few times. he liked to hang around journalists and intellectuals. that would not have struck me as particularly harsh, because i was used to the conservative point he was trying to make. not a hard point, but simply a point about government either serves everybody or it doesn't serve anybody. if you start dicing the

population up, you have programs over here and there. you do it more over by racial classification, then it can be something quite pernicious. brian lamb: less famously, he said women on welfare should be able to get their life together and find a husband. andrew ferguson: he talks about the mistakes he made by saying this not much line about programs for black people. but he did not bring that one up. very much. i think because it is so crude. brian lamb: how much time you spend researching? andrew ferguson: a longtime. brian lamb: you did an article about mitch, a number of years ago when he talked about his split marriage when his wife left him and married a doctor in california. where do you find this stuff? andrew ferguson: i don't remember the daniels thing. i think a friend had told me about it. there was an old clip about it. so i followed up with other friends. brian lamb: are you worried you will do damage to these folks? andrew ferguson: absolutely. that one i was worried about. my god, i've never met mrs. daniels.

i have nothing against her. i think her life is her own. it's not true of her husband, he thrust himself into the public light. i really went back-and-forth on whether this should even be brought up in the story. i figured if the article is going to have any claim to being comprehensive, i had to mention this. if he was going to run for president, somebody was going to mention it. i was partly covering my rear end professionally, but also because i thought somebody should say. if somebody was going to push it into the front, might as well be me. i really didn't like it. it was just mentioned recently.

brian lamb: almost offhandedly. let's change to another politician. ted cruz. you did a long piece on him. you went to houston to see him. andrew ferguson: they were quite accessible. this was last year. 2013. a year and a half ago. time flies. yet, they were very accommodating. i think it was not about me, it's about the magazine. they thought they would like to reach that audience that "the weekly standard," reaches. brian lamb: you wrote, you will discover that ted cruz is far more than a freshman senator. only eight months in office, he is also the scary mccarthy-ite bomb thrower known for extremism and arrogant disregard of the facts. what were you getting at? andrew ferguson: the headline was, "washington builds the bugaboo." he was a guy who definitely wanted to become a public figure.

the sort of washington journalistic establishment was more than happy to accommodate him and make him look a lot more extreme than he actually is. and also they ran all the -- one of the terrible things about journalism are these so-called fact checks that magazines and newspapers run. they are much more complicated than simply checking facts. miracle of miracles, i kept finding that half of what ted cruz said was not true. in fact, it is much more ambiguous than often he was absolutely correct. this is sort of a method by which they turned this guy into a monster. when he is not. i'm no big fan of him, but he's not what people want to be

scared of. brian lamb: let's look at a little bit of him on the stump. [video clip] [applause] >> thank you very much. thank you all for coming out. god bless the great state of new hampshire. [applause] i've spent all of last week down in washington, d.c. it is great to be back in america. [laughter] jennifer, i enjoyed hearing, you said that you thought new hampshire was ready for hillary. i'm actually told that this dinner tried to get hillary to come speak. unfortunately, they couldn't find a foreign nation to foot the bill. [laughter]

brian lamb: why is it politicians take their tie off? they are dressed in a suit and then all of a sudden it comes off. andrew ferguson: because they're just people. they really want to just talk to you. they want to get down and said the formalities and just talk straight. brian lamb: god bless the people of new hampshire. andrew ferguson: [laughter] it was terrific. a lot of that piece is about the way he comes across in his person, which is -- i trace it back to him being a champion, i think national champion debater in college. he started in junior high and high school and i want who had helped coach him in high school said he would stand in front of the mirror for hours and practice his gestures. and repeat what he was going to say. and look at himself to make sure everything was moving right and would be at maximum effect. you still see that here.

this is a guy who looks like you wound him up. and let him go. if you came back to years from now, he would still be making the same hand gestures and using the same jokes. brian lamb: in this piece about him, you write,

you mentioned that more than once. andrew ferguson: that's what i mean about winding him up. i was riding around with him in the back of a car, in close quarters, and he was doing the same thing. putting himself with what he had already told me. he was one of the more odd experiences i have ever had in reporting on somebody. i made a joke that i thought how badly would i get hurt if i just opened the door and slipped out, and he would keep talking? this tells you a lot about him i guess. his press secretary told me not long ago that after the came out, he wanted her to buy a

crash helmet to give me for the next time we rode around in case i jumped out. she didn't do it. i appreciated that he didn't hate me completely after i wrote that. brian lamb: what kind of column do you enjoy writing the most? andrew ferguson: you know, because i think i'm iffy as a reporter, and i doubt myself, i like doing an essay where i have 4 or 5 books. they just stay put. i put them on my desk and they are still there when i get back. whereas, literally a human subject is a moving target.

it's almost infinite the amount of money -- information you can accumulate about a person. you never feel like you are done. brian lamb: a political candidate in another column, this is in 2012. let's watch a little bit of gore vidal when he got the award at the national book foundation event and was -- you tell me what you see. [video clip] >> nowadays it seems that the progress of literature is really first you print the book, then you publish it. -- pulp it.

and it saves such a lot of time. it is for everybody, everybody can dance around the fire and he delighted we live in such a glorious era. where is buckley tonight? bill? bill? you can come up now. usually i let him out at midnight, but. [laughter] brian lamb: he's talking about the deceased bill buckley. andrew ferguson: they had a long-running feud. brian lamb: do you remember what year? 68 when they debated each other? andrew ferguson: yes on abc, and buckley called vidal and unmentionable name referring to his sexual inclinations. and he called buckley crypto nazi, and it got worse from there.

i was with buckley one time, where i can't remember it oh ted koppel was going to interview him. a very well-known abc news reader. he was interviewing buckley. he had a set of where he had a screen, and he showed buckley the tape of that famous encounter. from 1968. buckley, one of the few times i've ever seen it, was taken aback and speechless. it was because he had been told there were no copies of this confrontation with vidal. he was ashamed of it. he thought he had lost his cool -- he was ashamed of it.

he thought he had lost his cool. anyway, he hadn't seen it in 45 -- 40 years, i think he was not happy to see it. brian lamb: in your column, you write about the death of gore vidal, about something that was said by diane sawyer. that he had a celebrity novelist of taking special care to tag buckley as the arch conservatives. why arch? the two tags make for a serious imbalance. for 50 years buckley's views were safely on the rightward edge of the american popular consensus. vidal's were shared by a tiny minority.

andrew ferguson: the reason i wrote that, it was right after gore died. i do believe in not speaking ill of the dead, but that doesn't mean you can't speak ill of the dead's fans. they were lionizing this guy. i have tremendous respect for vidal's style. but he was an anti-semite. he was a crank. his views were so far beyond what ordinary people would think of as even remotely plausible. about huge conspiracies running the country and stuff. for some reason when he died people held him about some kind of paragon. it was all a slight defense of the establishment protecting its own. it is important to protect his reputation. brian lamb: you said, the man

the word 'crapola', did you look that up? andrew ferguson: i think it has anglo-saxon roots. [laughter] brian lamb: i found the subject you have for in the most about is written most about is dwight eisenhower. here is comments from brigadier general karl, retired as executive director of the dwight d. eisenhower memorial commission.

>> these monumental, heroic sized images of general president and eisenhower will be framed as you see here by three transparent 65 foot tall stainless steel tapestries depicting a great plains landscape of kansas, artistically rendered as you see here. this will be the only national presidential memorial placed in a very difficult urban park setting. but this is a superb site surrounded by institutions directly related to eisenhower's presidency and will be directly accessible to millions of visitors. brian lamb: why have you written about this so often? you point out $44 million have already been spent on something that does not exist. andrew ferguson: probably another $100 million planned when they actually build the thing. this story appeals to me in many ways. one thing is, i actually get kind of irked and passionate passionately irked about this.

which i don't often get emotionally entangled in what i write about. but, i do agree the eisenhower. i think he was an amazingly great man. in all kinds of ways i think some people don't even realize. it's another thing about circling the wagons. this commission went out and hired an architect -- the most famous in the world. they seemed to hire him because he was the most famous in the world. for no other reason. you just can't really criticize when he comes up with. he came up with this mess of a totally preposterous arrangement of columns and screens, to put

in the middle of this park in downtown washington. not far from here, actually. it seemed like a classic case of what tom wolfe used to talk about, the most average people are so intimidated by the assertion of artistic superiority, and we all feel so disarmed when talking about the arts that when somebody like that comes around and throws this, we are supposed to say, he is frank geary so he knows something. the next thing you know, $44 million is going to him. taxpayer money. we are stuck with a big empty square down there. on maryland avenue, and no memorial to eisenhower at all. i'm worried about what will come from this. nothing will get built. that wouldn't be the worst. the worst outcome would be if they actually build the design. it is a very just dispiriting kind of display. brian lamb: you went to

occidental college. a man, who is deceased, he worked for kcet in los angeles. he wrote a program on occidental and relationship to barack obama. i want to show you his promo of that. then ask you why you wrote about occidental and barack obama. >> we spent the entire day on the campus of occidental college, whose claim to fame this day is that the president-elect, barack obama, spent the first two years of his undergraduate college experience at occidental college. during this day we spent there we not only met his very first political science professor, but we actually stood on the very steps barack obama stood on to make his first political speech ever. we also visited his exact dorm room. it is still there. in one piece.

i've got inside information about his dorm daze with one of his dorm roommates from back then. brian lamb: promoting his program on occidental and barack obama. you wrote about a dvd. explain. andrew ferguson: he did a segment about occidental college and barack obama. you can see from that, he was such a wonderful television presence. he was so enthusiastic about things. it went right through the screening grants you. just a wonderful performer. he applied that kind of enthusiasm to barack obama time at occidental college. the thing about barack obama's time at occidental college is he left almost no impression of any

kind. there is a shrine set up to him in the lobby of the student library, or used to be. it is supposed to be you know, obama's time at occidental. but there's really -- he wrote a poem in the literary magazine. other than that, there is no real trace of him. kind of like a water bug skidding across the top of the surface of the school. the school has twisted itself into a pretzel to try and assert its importance in barack obama's life. in fact, it wasn't that important to him. it got him out of hawaii, but then he went onto columbia where he actually did start to have real intellectual influences. he is a perfect metaphor, if i can use that phrase, for people trying to gin up enthusiasm when there really isn't anything there. brian lamb: and that it reflected the way he did his television. andrew ferguson: yes, everything was breathless.

he stands there, and there is a place where obama supposedly gave an anti-apartheid speech. he stands there with the camera on and, it's like the enunciation has happened. it's almost overwhelming to him. i really like that about him. again, it says a lot about obama that there really isn't that much in there. brian lamb: i would suggest to our audience that they can look that up, june 18, 2012. the remainder of it is you talking about two books written about barack obama. from a conservative and one from that you ended up liking david

mariner's book better. andrew ferguson: is a wonderful book. there is another one by a guy who claims to be a right-winger. but the book is just trash. i say the truth as a conservative republican, i'm always kind of sad in when the intellectual standards on the left are higher than they are on the right. one of the reasons i used to be a lefty -- one of the reasons i drifted right was because the left had abandoned intellectual standards. i saw this in graduate school. instead of embracing those standards, so many of the people on the conservative side fall for just preposterous books like klein's books about obama. brian lamb: last time you are here you talked about your son. how old is he? andrew ferguson: 24. he has a job now.

he went to uva. brian lamb: when i was looking on the web, i thought i saw a picture of him with -- how often can people see your work in "the weekly standard," at all? andrew ferguson: if you ask my boss, i'm sure he would say not often enough. every couple of weeks. i am doing a sequel to "crazy u." my publisher asked the to do a sequel. they are supposed to be making a movie. it would be great if i could time the next books to release with the movie. then i might actually sell some. which would be a first. brian lamb: andrew ferguson, writer for "the weekly standard," and book writer. andrew ferguson: thank you for having me.

>> for free transcripts, or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at qanda.org. they are also available at c-span podcast. >> at c-span marks 10 years of compelling conversations on q and a, here are some other programs you might like. sp 380. cup talking about her political views before she became a television commentator. george will discussing his book about wrigley field. and robert novak on his memoir "the prince of darkness: 50 years reporting in washington."

you can watch these anytime on c-span.org. >> during this month c-span is pleased to present winners in our documentary competition. it encourages middle school and high school students to think critically about issues that affect our nation. there asked to write on a theme based on "the three branches and you. " ally lee haley leavens and claire bene. they are one of our winners.

>> we live in oregon where same-sex marriage is legal. >> i really love the fact that leah well eventually have two parents that are married. i think that is very important. that she will get to see that in her lifetime and, you know, now it truly does feel like we are a solid -- not that we were not solid before, but now we are a recognized family. >> 15 states have marriage bans. in seven of those 15 states same-sex marriage bans have been appealed. these states are arkansas, kentucky, michigan missouri, and texas. those a completely against same-sex marriage are alabama

georgia, ohio, south dakota, tennessee, and nebraska. the other 36 states have made same-sex marriage legal. one of the arguments against same-sex marriage is made by religious groups. some believe that same-sex marriage is not traditional and devalues it. god says he does not like it and it made lead into other nontraditional marriages and that same-sex marriage threatens their relationships. >> if you are in a religious organization that does not accept same-sex marriage, you can, but it does not mean that others have to at herne to your particular religious view. >> religious institutions in many ways discriminate quite a bit, they are allowed to decide who was going to be a member, who is going to be eligible. they will get to decide and

always get to decide the religious definition of marriage. separate from the state civil contract that we call marriage. >> that's who we are, that's who they are, that is how god made them to be. >> the big difference between much of money and civil union is that matrimony receives both types of benefits and civil roller receives --. >> there are over 1000 rights and protections that are in federal law that civil unions do not get a end domestic partnerships do not get. >> i personally do not think civil unions are appropriate constitutional or respectable, and so i have never been in favor. i do not inc. there should be a

distinction between marriage a end something else but into people who are committed and who love each other. >> wonders for smart, straight white couples and now there is this lesser marriage for "you people." if they want to have different benefits, they need to have a good reason to do that. the government said, they really do not have a reason. the reason is morality and history, two things we cannot rely on. >> about 3 million lgbt-identified adults of fat children. that means 3 million families are not equal to other families. >> it is not about the same-sex aspect. it is about the children of same-gender families.

how they are treated in terms of financial right. but, more importantly, it is dignity to families to say we have the same recognition as other families. >> for children, i think there is a lot of advantage. not just a legal advantage, but the social structure of knowing we feel like a complete family. we are wrecking dies to as a complete family and our community. i think that is very important. >> some people believe families should have one mom and one dad. that's 1 -- two women or to man cannot. >> we have never known any other kind of families. i felt like we have just a normal family. it is not traditional, but there

are very few traditional families. i did not have a dad. i am sure some people have great memories with dads with the father different than an experience with mother. so, i just have those. but at the same time i had a totally different thing and i would not change it. >> legalizing gay marriage would help our economy like boosting our tax revenue, helping city economy, and making relationship parameters easier. >> i think anybody that can contribute to the economy can make america stronger and provide more opportunity. >> they do the same work as the rest of us and they contribute to society. they are entitled to the same benefits. >> social status plays a big part in our society. >> it is an important social

commitment in our culture. i think social commitments are important. when we commit to a community or a cause or a church or a person we are a more solid human being because we have made a commitment and i think those commitments are important and marriage follows closely behind. >> every society must recognize the rights of each individual. that is very important. we are talking about equality. you have to actually recognize it. it is the glue that holds this country together. we are all created equally. >> it is very clear where the courts wanted to go. towards binding constitutional right to same-sex marriage. >> we are more protective of each other as time goes on.

true loyalty. >> to watch all of the winning videos and learn more about our competition, go to c-span.org and click on student camp. also, tell us what you think about what the student said on facebook and twitter. tags coming up next, washington journalist live with your calls and this morning's headlines. at 2 p.m., the house returns from a two week break. at 5:30, we take you to florida where marco rubio is expected to announce his candidacy for president. >> coming up on this morning's washington journal, former american idol can -- contestant clay aiken will discuss his recent run for political office. the subject of a four-part documentary series. also, tax foundation economist talks about a new report on how

much of americans will pay in federal and state taxes this year. into a look at the pentagon spider program and other weapons systems with defense global business ♪ host: good morning. monday, april 13, 2015. the house and senate return from their two week recess. one senator likely not to be in session today is senator marco rubio. today he will make his announcement that he is running for president in 2016. you will start our program asking your thoughts on the upcoming candidacy of senator marco rubio. here is how to be part of discussion. for republicans, your line is