c-span: when did you first go to the uss john stennis, and what is it?>> guest: well, it's an aircraft carrier. it, at that time, was one of the very brand newest. it's nuclear powered. it's a fantastic behemoth with every modern convenience, like stairmasters and frozen yogurt and things like that. and i went on that for about five days in may of 1998. i wanted to look at--there's been a lot made of the carriers because the carriers were gender integrated. they brought women into the crews in 1994 and it was supposed to be a whole new world. so i wanted to go look at that whole new world. and i-i wanted to look at the "new military," the "new navy" in action. c-span: what'd you--what did you find when you first got there? what was your first reaction? >> guest: it's not a happy world. it--this ship in particular was not a happy ship. i--i can't attribute all of that to the political retr--political correctness that's currently sweeping the military. but it was not a happy ship mainly because of many of the things that have been happening in the navy lat

. >> rose: john stennis from mississippi. and all those people now he had to say to them we're going to take forward a civil rights program. >> yes, and it's something to watch the newsreels. they're all sitting in a row watching this speech. this is the man they raised to power and he.... >> rose: and he was younger than all of them. >> yes. >> rose: johnson knew that bypassing the civil rights bill that... what did he say about the future of the democratic party in the south? >> well, he said with the second bill... he said with the first bill, you're right, he said "we're turning the south back to the republican party for 40 years. >> rose: and he was right. >> yes. yes, he was. >> rose: how do you decide when to end it? this volume? >> well, you know, the last lines of this book really say that johnson had had all these things that made people dislike him, his rages, his bullying. but he knew he couldn't do this in this crisis and he had kept these instincts under control, vanished, for seven weeks and i said he had done