captioning sponsored by cbs >> schieffer: it's sunday, april 21st. i'm bob schieffer, and this is "face the nation." breaking news overnight as coordinated bombing attacks in sri lanka leave hundreds dead. we'll have the latest. then we'll turn to the news at home. president trump was not taking questions from reporters about the mueller report's release as he headed to mar-a-lago for the holiday weekend with the first lady. >> sir, why did you think robert mueller's appointment would end your presidency, sir? >> schieffer: but mr. trump did take the time to tweet out a

silent video of celebration with his version of the report's conclusion. unsurprisingly, democrats say it is not over and that the next move is up to congress. >> i have called on the house to initiate impeachment proceedings. [cheering and applause] >> schieffer: we'll hear from the chairman of one of the house committees investigating the trump administration, maryland's elijah cummings. plus the senate judiciary committee will hear from attorney general william barr soon. we'll talk with utah republican mike lee and margaret brennan talks with new jersey's cory booker. plus a look at three new books about powerful women and an interview with pulitzer prize winning biographer robert cahill. finally i'll have some thoughts on the fire at notre dame. it's all just ahead on "face the nation." good morning an welcome to "face

the nation." i'm bob schieffer. margaret is off today. it is a grim easter sunday and third night of passover as we come on the air. there have been eight bombings overnight in and around three cities in sri lanka. at least 200 are reported dead, 450 more injured, and those numbers will likely go higher. our cbs news senior foreign correspondent elizabeth palmer reports now from new delhi, india. >> reporter: on what should have been the most joyful day in the christian calendar, there was shock and grief. one bomb went off at st. anthony's shrine in the capital colombo. another at st. sebastian. the blast was big enough to have destroyed the roof. violence is nothing new here in a country that has suffered years of civil war, but an attack of this scale on christians is unprecedented. and it appears that foreigners were targeted, too.

at the shangri-la hotel, a five-star destination for foreign tourist, a bomb shattered the massive split glass windows the whole length of the second floor while bodies lay around the entrance. this complex and coordinated attack has stunned the nation. so far no one has claimed responsibility. elizabeth palmer, cbs news, new delhi. >> schieffer: we turn now to the mueller report and the chairman of the house oversight committee, congressman elijah cummings. he joins us from baltimore. mr. chairman, thank you very much for being with us. i want to start with this: the report is out. the partisan divide seems wide or even wider than ever. what happens now? >> this document, the mueller document, has now left us with a roadmap to go forward. i think he basically said to us as a congress, it's up to you to take this further with regard to

obstruction and other matters that might come up. >> schieffer: well, already mr. chairman elizabeth warren, alexandria ocasio-cortez, maxine water, julian castro, they have said we should begin proceedings to impeach the president. are you there yet? >> i'm not there yet, but i can foresee that possibly coming. but again, the fact is that i think we have to be very careful here. the american people, a lot of them clearly still don't believe that president trump is doing things to destroy our democracy and has done a lot of things very poorly, and so i think that we need the make sure the congress has all the information. and then we need to be able to have the public know that information so that they can see

that they have a president that basically has been about the business i think of doing great harm, not only to our country, but to our democracy. >> schieffer: but there is also this reality: at this point there simply are not enough votes in the senate to remove the president even if the house does move to impeach him. so is it smart to start impeachment proceedings under those circumstances? we all know what happened in the clinton impeachment >> i think this is a little different than clinton's situation. we have a president who here... who basically was instructing government employees and non-government employees to commit crime, to tell lice, and to be deceitful. he himself was on television constantly railing against our... the prosecutor and

railing against just about anybody who had to do anything with this investigation. he went against the f.b.i., the c.i.a., whoever it was that he felt could play a role in him being indicted. >> schieffer: it's the numbers that we're talking about here. this is a political act, and if you do vote to impeach him and then the senate votes not to remove him, won't that look like a victory for him? >> it may very well, but you know, sometimes, bob, i got to tell you, there comes a point in life where we all have to make decisions based upon the fact that it is on our watch. history, i think, even if we did not win possibly, if there were not impeachments, i think history would smile upon us for standing up for the constitution. you know, i hear a lot of people say they're tired of hearing about the mueller report.

well, we don't have time to get tired, because the russians aren't getting tired. they are attacking our electoral system every single day if not every hour. so we have got to... we're going to have the stand up. the other thing, bob, is that now that we know all the information that we know, we can't just allow this to go on and on. if the president... if we do nothing here, what is going to happen is that the president is going to be emboldened. he's going to be emboldened, because he said, i got away with that. and then the people, his aiders and abettor, the republicans in the congress, they will say, oh, he is pretty strong, and they'll continue to go along with him. we can not afford that. our democracy cannot afford that. >> schieffer: what intrigued you most about this report? what do you think needs to be investigated now? >> oh, my god, i think we need to look at the finances of this

president. i think we need to look at what he knew with regard to the firing of various people. we need to know why mr. barr gave us a one-sided summary which has almost no resemblance to what's actually in the report. and we also need to know something else, bob. we need to know from mr. mueller exactly what his intentions were. did he intend for us as a congress to look at this and take some type of action? or did he feel as if there was truly no collusion or conspiracy? we need the hear that. and then we also need to hear from people like the counsel for the president and see what mr. mcgahn, who was very

clearly disobeying the president in many instances and actually by disobeying him, he came to his rescue. >> schieffer: talk to me about the way this report was released. first, we got a letter that suggests the president has not been found guilty of anything. and then they choose to release it on easter weekend, when most people are thinking about things other than politics. was this some kind of a public relations plan to soften the blow of this thing? or did it just happen this way? >> i don't think it just happened this way. too many things have happened. and then don't forget, he talked about the trump campaign being spied upon. there was so much here. but clearly mr. barr is acting as the defense counsel for the

president of the united states when really, bob, he's supposed to be our lawyer, the people's lawyer, and i am appealing to mr. barr to please do the job that you're supposed to do. there's supposed to be some kind of independence, but he bent over backward to give this president the benefit of the doubt. he even expressed empathy with the fact that the president when he came in was under pressure. well, all presidents are under pressure. and if they're not... if they don't expect to be under pressure, they shouldn't do the job >> schieffer: what about mcgahn? how do you feel about what he did? >> you know, i feel pretty good about mcgahn, because mcgahn stood up to this president. and there are a lot of mcgahns out there. we need more of them to stand up. bob, i'm telling you, i'm going to fight with everything i've got. because as i told the president

not long ago when i met with him, i said, mr. president, the greatest thing that you and i can do is leave a democracy intact for generations yet unborn. >> schieffer: what did he have to say to you about that? >> he just smiled and put his head down and that was it. >> schieffer: mr. chairman, and this will be my final question, the investigation itself, did special counsel mueller this a good job? >> i think he did do a good job, but i will know better once we see the report, the unredacted report come out. i want to say to everybody, all of our whistle-blowers, we need your help, because the president and his lawyers are blocking all, every bit of information that we need to do our investigation, he has been trying to block us. i beg you, whistle-blowers, come out and help us.

call us. >> schieffer: mr. chairman, thank you so much for joining us this morning. >> thank you. >> schieffer: and we'll be back in one minute with senator mike lee. so don't go away. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ >> schieffer: well, for a different view, i assume it's going to be a different view, we're going to turn now to senator mike lee, who is not only the senior senator from utah but also a constitutional scholar. he's the author of a new book "our lost declaration: america's fight against tyranny from king george to the deep state." senator, thank you. we're going to ask you about that book, but we obviously have to start with the mueller report. you just heard chairman cummings. but here's the question: you're on the judiciary committee. democrats seem ready to, some of them at least, ready to impeach right now. do you believe that as chairman

cummings and i think chairman of your committee, jerry nadler, said this morning that what mr. mueller did is leave you a roadmap, leave congress a roadmap for further investigation? >> i suspect that's what the democrats, particularly in the house of representatives, are going to want to do. that's political question. i think politically speaking it would be a mistake for them to do it. it sounds like some of them are inclined to go down that road. but what we have to remember, bob, is the number-one take away from this report is that there was no collusion. we've got people who for the last two years have been using the russian's attempt to undermine the legitimacy of our electoral process as an effort within this country to undermine this president and the process by which he was elected. but there was no collusion. it isn't there. not a scintilla of evidence supports that. so it's time to move on. >> schieffer: your colleague, the junior senator from utah,

mitt romney, put out a pretty stunning statement yesterday. i just want to read this to you. this is mitt romney speaking. "i am sickened at the extent and pervasiveness of dishonesty by individuals in the highest office in the land, including the president. i am appalled that fellow citizens working in a campaign for president welcomed help from russia, including information that had been illegally obtained, that none of them acted to inform american law enforcement, and that the campaign chairman was actively promoting russia interests in the ukraine." your reaction? >> well, first of all, i think senator romney has some credibility with regard to russia. remember. it was senator rhom rg10 as a presidential candidate in 2012 who pointed out that we ought to be very concerned about russia. sadly, his warnings went unheeded. and under president obama's leadership over the next four years, russia's activities, its

nefarious efforts to undermine our system continued. and perhaps that's some of what's motivating senator romney to speak out about this. >> schieffer: well, do you agree with him? >> there is nothing in this report that changes my view of this president. i don't think most americans, i don't think most senators, most members of congress, i don't think most americans will have their view of the president of the united states changed by this report. there's just nothing in there that should do that. >> schieffer: do you think the special counsel, mr. mueller, was fair to the president? >> well, i think the special counsel certainly was thorough. i find pieces of the report a little bit odd. for example, when he talks about obstruction. i think it's odd to say, i'm not going to make a recommendation, but i'm going to sound like i'm making a recommendation. there is not evidence that i can point to, but nonetheless, i couldn't get there even if i did. it's kind of strange to spend two years on that and then speak

with the sort of tone that is reminiscent of pinocchio in the movie "shrek 3." i'm not going to say that i'm not deciding. it's full of double negatives. it's kind of confusing. >> schieffer: i want to talk about this book that you've written. i liked it. it is about the great truths expressed in the declaration of independence. you argue that the government has gotten too big. i totally agree with you on, that but i'm not as worried about the bigness of government so much as i am about the incompetence of government. and i think some of that has come about simply because the best and brightest in america are turning away from public service and turning away running for office. i would ask you, how can we change that? >> well, bob, first of all, i'm not sure those two things are different and i'm not sure that you andry that far apart. when government gets bigger, it necessarily becomes more incompetent.

human beings are flawed and fallible. one of the reasons why i wrote this book is i wanted to point out that the more things change, the more things stay the same. human nature hasn't changed in the 2.5 centuries since we became a independent nation. it is stem cell still the case that governments have to rely on fallible, mortal human beings, and just as king george iii sent forth swarms of officers to harass us and to eke out our substance. we always have to be wary of large government agencies, the deep state if you will, that has a tendency to become this self-perpetuating organism, one that can eat out our substance and harass the very people it's supposed to serve >> brennan: >> schieffer: let me read you what you wrote in this book, which i found very interesting. "over the last eight decades, the people's representatives have made countless choices that have been steadily diminishing their own power, and with that the power of the people they

represent. in many r-79s they have done so for a simple, understandable but indefensible reason -- delegating to other the difficult and contentious tasks of making law has a tendency to make reelection easier." >> that's exactly right. what we've seen is the gradual shift of power away from the american people taking place in two steps. first it's proved from the state and local level, where most people have more control over their local government than they do their national government. it's moved from the people the washington. and within washington, people's elected lawmakers have voluntarily relinquished the law-making power. the one job they have got, they have handed over to unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats. bad for the people. it's bad for the separation of powers, but it's in some cases good for the elected official, because it makes it easier to get reelected when you're not making real law, making real decisions. and that creates problems >> schieffer: and this leaves our representatives more worried about growing a primary opponent

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there. we can't fight each other as opposed to unifying each other, which will make us stronger some this election, this is why i talk about things like grace, why i talk about a more courageous empathy for one another. because there are definitely a politics in this country that believe that they will do better if they can divide us against each other. i'm going to run a ways, not getting down into the gutter, not trying to fight darkness with darkness, and i'm crawling through a more courageous empathy and a revival for us to get back to what i think patriotism is. >> brennan: new jersey is a pharmaceutical hub. you have signed to on to bernie sanders' proposal for this medicare for all bill. what happens to all those companies and people employed by those touching the insurance or drug industries? >> we share a value in america, and that's where we should always started, with our common values, that nobody in this country should go bankrupt because they get sick or put aside life-saving drugs because they can't afford them. that's a value i think all americans share. now the question is how do we get there? i think the best way to get

there is medicare for all. there are a lot of pathways to get to that end. we have to start now >> brennan: so what happens to the private insurance companies and to the private pharmaceutical companies under your... >> under my presidency? hopefully in my first 100 days we will put forward having a public option for americans, that means doing things like lowering medicare eligibility down to 55, which by the way, would lower costs for private insurance because more older people would move out. number the work one of the biggest drivers for health care costs is the price of farm suit cal drugs. we would use the power of medicare to negotiate down costs. >> brennan: this doesn't mean doing away with private health insurance, this doesn't mean government setting drug prices? >> we live in a country where 180 million americans have private insurance and are satisfied with their insurance. and we have unions who have negotiated for their insurance rates. anybody that will come forward with a bold health care plan has to show the pathway to get there.

the first way to earn trust is to create a viable public option >> brennan: what is cory booker's immigration plan? do you accept there is a humanitarian crisis in >> i accept there is a humanitarian crisis that is being caused by this president. there is a humanitarian crisis when you throw children into cages and separate families. that's a human rights violation. we can keep our country safe and strong and honor human right, as well >> brennan: what do you do with the record number of family units that are crossing? >> first of all, donald trump is not even listening to his own people >> brennan: what does cory booker do? >> i'll tell you what cory booker does. it's the exact opposite of what he's doing. the president is not helping the places where that immigration comes from in the first place. we do lots of foreign aid from africa to the middle east. we should make sure we're doing more to intervene to support human rights and human dignity in those countries. that's a lower-cost way to deal with it than having thousands of

families with small children coming to our border. at the border, we have to have a asylum system that works as republicans and democrats dedined that asylum system to work >> brennan: what is your view on how the attorney general has described what he has said was spying on the trump campaign? >> for the attorney general of the united states of america to make such a claim, back it up with no evidence whatsoever, delegitimized his position as an independent -- he's not the president's attorney general. that's attorney general for the united states of america, the highest law enforcement officer in the land. i think what he did was unfortunate and eroded even more of the trust the american people should have in their attorney general. >> schieffer: margaret's full interview with senator booker is available on facethenation.com, and we'll be back in a moment. (alarm beeping) welcome to our busy world. where we all want more energy. but with less carbon footprint. that's why, at bp, we're working to make energy

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>> schieffer: and welcome back the "face the nation." i'm bob schieffer. margaret is off today. we have just come through women's history month, and here is some news. historians are not only taking more notice of women of consequence, but more and more people are reading about them. example one, michelle obama's memoir "becoming." it is on its way to being the biggest-selling memoir of all time. today we're going to focus on three more very different women of consequence who are the subjects of our new books by our panel. lynne olsen is the author of "madame fourcade's secret war."

susan glasser's new book is "the matriarch: barbara bush and the making of an american dynasty." and evan thomas is with us to discuss his latest, "first: sandra day o'connor." welcome to all of you. >> thank you. >> schieffer: evan, i want to started with you, because in a rave review in the "new york times," jeffrey to toobin, the legal analyst, said that she was perhaps the deciding vote in so many crucial cases, abortion, affirmative action, and the vote that gave the presidency to george w. bush, for example, that she was the most consequential woman in american history. >> yes, in terms of her impact. obviously there have been a lot of great women, so maybe that's a beat too far, but she had a big impact. if you preserve abortion rights and affirmative action for 25 years and you're first woman on the supreme court in history, that's a lot of power.

>> schieffer: could she have been confirmed today? >> no. i don't think she would be chosen today. she had no particular track record. i don't think that a moderate republican president, this one or anyone else, would name her, because now they want a track record. they want to know how you're going to vote. and with her, it was a guess. >> schieffer: as you know, sandra day o'conner and barbara bush were friends, but they were quite different. as the wife of one president and the mother of another and also the mother of a governor, how influential will she be remembered as? >> she was influential more behind the scenes than in public, but on issues like addressing the aids crisis, she played a big role behind the scenes in her husband's administration. when it came to the iraq war, she was a voice who spoke up against the iraq war and the direction it was taking with her son until he finally told her to stop.

>> schieffer: marie madeline fourcade was a woman and she led the largest intelligence service in france. how did she do that? >> it's particularly interesting because back then france, well, to some degree it still is, was an extremely patriarchal conservative society. the idea of a woman doing anything like that wassing just beyond the pale. >> schieffer: how did the men react to her? >> i think part of it was she was as courageous as any man, and she was willing to be in the field with her agents. she was willing to face and she did face the same dangers she did. she was captured twice by the ga -- gestapo and escaped. i think they got beyond their gender and they saw her for what she was, which was an astonishing leader. >> schieffer: you know what i found interesting, in all three of pease books, these were not books really about icons but

about human beings. there is some good and some bad in all three of these characters, and also what i found interesting, all of these books had love stories. you got a little scoop on that. >> yes, turns out that bill rehnquist, the chief justice of the united states, back in his law school day, actually proposed marriage to then sandra day was her name. both sandra oh conner and bill rehnquist kept that a secret for the rest of their lives. they didn't even tell their families. my wife found that in a box of correspondence. it wasn't in her regular papers. it was her in papers in the chambers. i don't think the family knew it was in the box. there is a love letter, 14 love letters actually. and one says, "sandy, will you marry me?" now, the answer is no. she married john. she married the right guy, and rehnquist married the love of

his life, so it all worked out in the end. >> schieffer: we all know about the love story between barba and george bush, but you ford out allotted about that. >> we know that it was essentially love at first sight at a high school dance over christmas in 1941. long marriage, 73 years, ups and downs during the marriage. a very fierce partnership at the end. and at the very end, when i was interviewing barbara bush, she expressed no fear about dying, but she worried about dying before he did. and two days before she died, they had an incredible exchange where she said, "i'm not going to worry about you, george," and he said, "i'm not going to worry about you, barb." he gave her permission to die. she gave him permission to live. it was the final statement of the love affair that happened at that high school dance. >> schieffer: and then of course, madam fourcade, this was quite an unusual love story.

>> it was, and again, i didn't find out about it until last year. she wrote a memoir, and talked very lovingly about her number two, her deputy in this network who was a dashing air force pilot. when i was reading the memoir,er thought, there's more to it than what she's writing about, and as it turns out, she, in fact, did have an affair with this guy. she fell madly in love with him, he with her. they were both very passionate, charismatic people, and she got pregnant in the middle of the war. she got pregnant in november 1942. and she was on the run from the gestapo while she was pregnant, going from place the place to place. finally had the baby in june 1943 lyon. the love of her life was captured three months later by the gestapo and executedded toward the end of the war. >> schieffer: all three of these women made the most of being underestimated by the men they were dealing with.

>> yes. she definitely did. again, you know, the idea of a woman doing what she did was just extraordinary. and she benefited and other women in the resistance, women played a huge role in the french resistance. they were absolutely necessary. but germans come from the same kind of society as the french do, very conservative, very traditional, very pa personalistic. and women don't do that kind of thing. they're either wives or mothers. so you don't expect them to be out there spying. and so they got away with a lot initially. >> schieffer: and you know, evan, one of the things that struck me in your book is how much sandra day o'conner learned from her mother and how her mother managed her father, especially when he has been drinking too much and how she used that when she was on the court. >> sandra sandra oh conor, she d

stupid fights. she didn't take the bait. she had a way of avoiding provocation, just walking away. this was very useful to sandra o'connor in dealing with men. sometimes she did have to stand up to them. there was a great scene in the arizona legislature. she was majority leader. the house appropriations committee chairman is a drunk. and she calls him on it. and he says, "if you were a march i'd punch you in a nose." she said, "if you were man, you could." so she picked her shots. there were times when she did, but at other times she walked away from the dumb fights. >> schieffer: and we'll be back in just a minute.

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♪ >> schieffer: we're back now with our biographers, lynne olsen, seuss, and evan thomas. evan, i want to get back to you about how women in those days were dealing with men, and you talked about sandra day o'connor and how she dealt with her mother. there was one important issue, and abortion, and the way she handled it with scalia had an impact and turned around that issue. >> scalia was continue sending to her, big mistake. scalia thought he had five votes to overturn roe vs. wade. it looked like he did, but scalia could be a continue sending person. and he was cobdz sending to tony

kennedy, who he thought would be his vote, and she was respectful to justice kennedy, and at the end of the day, she formed this little coalition and surprised scalia, and by being modest and respectedful and shrewd, she was able to get a vote to her side and preserve abortion rights in the casey case in 1992. that was a very subtle moment of human intelligence. >> schieffer: did any of these women consider themselves the feminist, susan? >> i talked to barbara bush about that at some length, because it seemed to me she walked the walk of a feminist. she was strong minded, she was forceful, she didn't hesitate to speak up whether you wanted to hear from her or not, but she refused to call herself a fennel nisms i think she felt that the women's movement had been disrespectful at least in the early days to women like her who had chose on the stay home and raise their family rather than pursue professional careers. she was mocked at points during

her life, and there was a famous case of the wellesley college commence. where she was going to give the commencement address which she did, but some of the graduating students had a petition saying she wasn't an appropriate role model for them. she definitely did not consider herself a feminist as we regard it now. >> feminism wasn't even a blip on the radar screen back then. she was an extremely strong woman. she gathered woman like her into the network, but her main goal was to free france from the germans. it wasn't to further a woman's cause. >> schieffer: justice o'connor had to be careful not to come across as a woman's libber. she was careful and smart, but she did care about women's rights. of course she did. >> schieffer: how did these three remarkable women deal with their own vulnerabilities. >> you can't imagine... i can't imagine what it's like to know

every day that you can be arrested and executed, that every day you are risking your life. not only was she risking her own life, but she was risking the lives of thousands or agents, and she felt that responsibility tremendously. she was very, very aware of her vulnerability. >> schieffer: susan, you wrote at one point that barbara bush became so upset that she contemplated suicide. >> that's right. 1976. she had an emptiness at home. her husband had take an job heading the c.i.a., a job she had encouraged him not to take, by the way. she found herself falling into darkness. she told me she would be driving her car and have an urge to plow into a tree or steer into the path of an oncoming car and she would have to pull off the side of the road and stop and wait for the impulse to go away. she told me that she wasn't sure how she came out of this period of darkness after about six months, but one thing she did is

she began to volunteer at a hospice. and there is maybe some lesson there, if you hit a rough patch, find somebody who has hit a rougher patch and help them and it will help you. >> schieffer: how did these three women change in your own mind as you... the more you got into this research? >> well, to me she became more lovable. i said she could be scary. she was suspicious around journalists and rightly so. i found her to be a formidable analytical. but as i got to know her and i got to know her family, i realized i was wrong acted that. she was... she was a good politician. she could work a crowd. but there was part of her that she was never going to reveal. i think this is a key actually to her success. >> i admired barbara bush. i thought she was formidable and consequential and i thought her story hadn't been told, but one thing i found in writing this book is how much fun she was. interviewing her was a treat, and her telling stories about

her relationship with nancy reaganer for instance, it was as though she was reliving their friction from yesterday. >> schieffer: they didn't like one another >> they did not like each other. >> i think pain and grief really stayed with marie madeline for the rest of her life. after the war she survived, as did a number of her top people. they went off. they were men. they went off and formed an airline and they did all these great things. she basically devoted the rest of her life to the agents who survived and especially to the wives and children of those who didn't. she raised money for them until the day she died to make sure that they could continue living, you know, in a substantive way. france was not willing to give them much money, and she did her best to do everything she could for them. >> schieffer: wow. well, i'm sorry we have to leave it there. thank you all for a great discussion, and we'll be right back.

>> schieffer: robert caro, the legendary biographer of lyndon baines johnson, has just released a book on an unlikely

subject, himself. that seemed reason enough to pay him a call. so this is where the magic happens? the only dedications in robert caro's new york city office are the outlines of his next book tacked on the wall and the manual typewriter that's hammering out. why do you do that? why did you never go to compute center >> to slow myself down. so i write my first draft in long hand, because that's the slowest way of committing your thoughts to paper >> no one can accuse 83-year-old robert caro of rushing his work. he's devoted his life to investigating and reporting on just two figures. robert moses, the urban planner who never held elected office but whose roads, bridges, and buildings and parks helped shape new york city more than any mayor or governor in the 20th century. and lyndon johnson, who held every high office in washington,

including president of the united states. after more than 40 years and four books about johnson, he is trying to complete the fifth and final installment. he says they are not biographies but studies in power. you talk about power, and we all know the old saying, "power corrupts and all that," but you make a point of saying that it also causes things to happen. >> what i think power always does, bob, is reveal. when you're climbing trying to get power, often you have to conceal what you really intend to do or how you're doing it, because if people saw that, they might disagree with your aims or be afraid of the way you're doing it and not want to give you more power. >> schieffer: johnson always knew just how far that power would go. his first rule was never tell man to go to hell unless you can

make him. >> exactly. that was a great rule. >> schieffer: i've always thought that johnson not only had a great ability to explain to people why it was in their interest to be on his side, but also why it was not in their interest to be against him. >> you know, john connolly once said to me, lyndon johnson never forgot and never forgave. and you didn't want to be on the wrong side. >> schieffer: johnson was never afraid to go against conventional wisdom. >> you know, when johnson become s president, four days later he has to give a speech to a joint session of congress, and so he's not even in the oval office yet, four of his speech writers are gathered around his kitchen table writing a speech. so some time late in the evening wearing a bathrobe, lyndon johnson comes down and says, how you doing.

they said, we only know one thing, don't make a priority of civil right, don't emphasize civil rights. if you do that, you will get the southerners who control congress angry and they will stop your whole legislative program like they did with kennedy. so it's a noble cause, but it's a lost cause. don't take it up. johnson says to them, well, what the hell is the presidency for then? and the n his speech he says, of course, our first priority is civil rights. >> schieffer: and he never gave up on that cause. >> it is the effort of american negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of american life. their cause must be our cause, too, because it's not just negroes but really it's all of us who must overcome the

crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice, and we shall overcome. [applause] >> schieffer: johnson went on to score one legislative victory after another, but he also wielded his power to expand the war in vietnam, and it tore the country apart. >> hey, hey, l.b.j., how many people did we kill today? >> schieffer: the criticism became so intense, in 1968, johnson decided not to seek reelection, hoping to spend full time on ending the war. but the war would go on for another seven years, eventually taking the lives of 58,000 americans and three million vietnamese. caro refuses to compare johnson to the current president, but when the airwaves are filled with talk like this -- >> no politician in history, and i say this with great=n

has been treated worse or more unfairly. >> schieffer: the robert car york it's just old news. >> i think lyndon johnson felt the very same way, i can tell you that. he said, no president ever endured what i had to endure. >> schieffer: has any president that you know about ever felt while he was in office that she was getting a good or fair press? >> not that i know about. >> schieffer: in his latest book "working," caro writes at length for the first time about himself, even sharing some of his best advice, shut up and let the other guy talk. >> i have to keep reminding myself because i talk too much to shut up. so the way i do it is to write f.u. in my nolt book. if you looked through my notebook, you would see a hell of a lot of s.u.s. >> schieffer: the one place caro is never silent is on the page. he says the end is in sight for his shienl book on l.b.j. >> this is what i've written so

far. this is the manuscript of the last volume as far as i've got here, the last page is 392. >> schieffer: let me ask you this: if you had known these books were going to take this long, would you have embarked on this project, these projects? >> probably not. i had no idea. and i had no idea that johnson's books were going to take... you just keep coming across things that seem to you to be worth telling people, seem to me to be worth telling people about. >> schieffer: well, i think we're glad you did. >> thank you. >> schieffer: and we'll be >> schieffer: and we'll be right back. th ♪ we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪ how do you get skin happy aveeno® with prebiotic oat. it hydrates and softens skin. so it looks like this...

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>> schieffer: like so many of you, i am sure i sat before my television all day monday as i watched in profound sadness the burning of notre dame. i could not turn away.

it was even more compelling to those in paris. the "washington post" james mcauley reported that when police ordered spectators to move back from the fire, they could not bring themselves to turn away and instead walked backward. seeing it go up in flames reminded us of the fragility of old things, that nothing is forever, even people and things we didn't know we would miss until they were gone. maybe it was more than that, because it had been there so long, notre dame had become a symbol of the evolving continuity of western culture, a reminder of how we weymouth who we are, a symbol of the great truth that runs not only through christianity but all great religious tradition, that love is stronger than hate. then in our sadness, within 24 hours, we realized that the bell towers of notre dame still stood

tall, and millions of people had pledged to rebuild it just the way it was. so it was that notre dame reassured us once more that for all the chaos good people had come together to demonstrate again the power of love and to help us understand who we are. for "face the nation," this is bob schieffer in washington. margaret will be back next sunday. i want the thank you for inviting me into your homes once more. moderating "face the nation" was never a job to me. it was a privilege. captioning sponsored by cbs captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org a business owner always goes beyond what people expect.

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