thank you for this wonderful year at the national press club. we are looking for more great years to come. this meeting of the national press club is adjourned. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> "washington journal" is next with the day's news and your phone calls. we will be live at 10:30 eastern with the republican national committee winter meeting. the agenda includes the election of a chairman. the current head of the rnc, michael steele, has four challengers. in about 45 minutes, we will discuss how the democratic base sees president obama's priorities. our guest is a contributing writer to the nation and an author. author.

from the national press club in washington, this is an hour. >> good afternoon and welcome to the nationalrg news and president of the national press club. we are the world's leading professional organization for journalists and committed to our professions future through our programming and by fostering a free press worldwide. for more information about the national press club, please visit our website at www.press.org. to donate please visit www.press.org/library. i would like to welcome our speaker and attendee's today's events which include guest of our speaker as well as working journalists. i would also like to welcome our c-span and public radio audiences. after the speech concludes i'll ask as many audience questions as time permits. first i would like to introduce our head table guests. from your right, executive strategy advisor for humanity first, u.s.a. loose skin or a reporter for investment news and a new member of the national press club. geraldine, international news manager for world vision. sam worthington, president and ceo of an action and a guest of the speaker. david,

he spoke of the national press club for an hour. >> good afternoon and welcome to the national press club. my name is alan, reporter for bloomberg news and the president of the national press club. one of the world's leading professional organizations for journalists committed to our professional future so our programming and by fostering a free press worldwide. for more reformation about the press club, please visit our website at www.press.org to read to do it to our programs please visit www.press.org/library. on behalf of our members worldwide, like to welcome our speaker and attendees of today's event which includes guest of the speakers as well as working journalists. i'd also like to welcome our c-span and public radio audiences. after the speech concludes i will ask as many had audience questions as time permits. i'd now like to introduce our head table guests. from your right, tom rice and, freelance political reporter, emily, as a seat editor for the hill. associate dean of georgetown university. the honorable bill o'brien speak of the house for new hampshire. bob finton, se

from the national press club in washington, this is an hour. ome to the national press club. my name is allen buerga. we're the world's leading professional organization for journalist and committed to the future through our programming and being fostering free press worldwide. for more information, visit our website and www.press.org. visit www.press.org/library as well. i'd like to welcome our speaker and guests. i'd also like to welcome our c-span and public radio audiences. after the speech concludes, i will ask as many audience questions as time permits. first, i'd like to introduce our head table guests. from your right, executive strategy adviser for security first,. liz skinner, reporter for investment news and new member of the press club. international news manager for world vision. sam worington and a get of the speaker. senior vice president of the national services for the american red cross and a guest of the speaker. melissa with the news hook media, speaker committee's chair and organizer of this event. skipping over the speaker

please welcome to the national press club, american red cross president and ceo, gail mcgovern. [no audio] [applause] >> thank you very much veryallen and i am really pleased to be back at the national press club. it is quite an honor and i am grateful for the opportunity to be able to report to you and to the public about our operations in haiti on the one-year anniversary. i plan to talk about how the american red cross is putting your donated dollars to work and i will also talk about some of the challenges we are dealing with and how we plan to move forward to help haiti and its people recover. first i want to point out that even though haiti is by far the largest operation that we have worked on in 2010, it is certainly not the only disaster we have responded to. it is not the only thing we have been focused on this year. one in five people in the united states have been touched by the american red cross. it is unusual for me to meet anyone that knows everything we do. we respond to 70,000 disasters every single year. we do this with volunteers who where pager's 24-7. these

i would like to present our guest, and this will be a matching set, with your national press club mud. >> how do you beat that? >> thank you. [applause] i am a minnesota native. this is my last lunch and i am hosting as the president of the national press club, and i am here to tell you, being president is great. i had the honor of being inaugurated last january. i graduated from the university of minnesota. i was presented with a brett favre jersey. given his year with the minnesota vikings, would you like to take it back with you? >> we appreciate brett favre s performance last year. >> the final question, you have said that you are contemplating a presidential bid. you have talked about springtime being when you would make your decision. given that you don't seem to want to announce it right here, right now, what factors would keep you at this point from deciding to run for the white house? >> i should mention again -- by the way, i spent a fair amount of time in area he grew up in. one of his relatives owns a bar there. as it relates to running for president, i am seriously consid

. >> welcome to the national press club. i'm a reporter for bloomberg news and president of the nation national press club. we are the leading professional organization for journalism and committed through our programming and fostering a free press. for more information about the national press club visit us at www.press.org. on behalf of our members i would like to welcome our speaker and attendees. i would like to welcome our c-span and public radio audiences. after the speech concludes i will ask as many audience questions as time permits. first i would like to introduce our head table guests. from your right, executive strategy advisor for human iity first. a reporter for investment news and new member of the national press club. international news manager for world vision. president and c.e.o. of interaction and guest of the speaker. senior vice president of international services for the american red cross and guest of the speaker. the speaker's committee chair and organizer of the event. over the speaker for a moment.

in the national press club talking to andrew young and kabir shegal about book "walk in my shoes: conversations between a civil rights legend and his godson on the journey ahead". tell us how you came up with the idea. >> he came to interview me when i was mayor and he was in second grade. we started a friendship. i was impressed with him as a second grader. he has been to the dartmouth school of electronics and now he is with j. p. morgan. we are 50 years apart. it is a generation dialogue. we don't agree on anything. we say things and do things to provoke each other intellectually but what that does is it makes for lively ideas. >> what are some of these debates that you have? >> whatever it is on the economy and unemployment, how we should go about that. he was the big leader and the civil-rights movement. the jobs and economic front was part and parcel of the civil-rights movement. we are you about the approach to this or more keynesian approach. we also argue about funny things like he believes it arranged marriages. i don't. my tradition is, we need to find someone for you and find someon

i'm alan bjerga, president of the national press club. ture through programs and fostering a free press. for more information visit our web site at www.press.org. to donate to the professional training programs please visit www.press.org/library. on behalf of our members worldwide, i'd like to welcome our speaker and attendees of today's event which include guests of the speaker as well as working journalist. i'd also like to welcome our c-span and public radio audiences. after the speech concludes, i will ask audience questions. first head table guest. from your right nasir ahmad. international news manager, sam, president and ceo of world action. david melzer, senior vice president for the american red cross and guest of the speaker. melissa sharbino, organizer of the event. skipping over the speaker, susie francis. rachel ray. rachel donahue. april ryan, white house correspondent and washington bureau chief for the american urban radio network, and finally brooke stoddard, freelance journalist. [applause] [applause] >> today is the one

wow, the national recovery month press conference here at the national press club- exciting, excitingortunity. i'm very familiar with the press. believe it or not, i received a little press a few times in my active addiction. you laugh, but it's true. but i think the important thing is, now i am getting press as a result of my recovery, about sharing my recovery story with others. this annual event is so important because in addition to alerting americans about the dangers and trends of drug abuse, we must also educate them about the reality of recovery. having people like me who've been through the trials of addiction and found recovery, telling our stories, it's an important part of broadening social understanding and building broad public support for our cause. this is the 21st annual observance of national alcohol and drug addiction recovery month, and faces and voices of recovery is honored to be able to share this day and this lunch with you. we're really grateful, as a matter of fact, that you've taken the time to be with us, and as you'll hear throughout the program, the theme

. >> we are at the national press club book and the other night talking to eugene robinson about hisnew book "disintegration" the splintering of black america. can you tell me how you came to form for groups in these new splintering? >> it just seemed to work out that way. you know, for seems like an arbitrary number. it seemed to be the way that it worked out. it is clear there was, one group was the mainstream middle-class black america. was clear one group was the abandoned non-middle-class black america. and then the other groups were you know, i did think that the distance of a small but very powerfully powerful elite was something new and so i call that the transcendent group and that i needed a category to deal with other groups that didn't fit the other categories like immigrants for example from the caribbean and africa, and also bi-racial americans. and i thought they would kind of fit into an umbrella group called the emergence so that is how i got two for. >> yes i noticed that you put new immigrants and bi-racial people together. and you are comfortable with that, groupi

. >> we are at the national press club talking with author ted gup about his new book, drank a beer can you tell us what is the secret get? >> the secret gift was a book -- is made in the deaths of the great depression by an anonymous donor to 150 families. and his identity remains unknown for 75 years. two years ago a suitcase was handed to me that contained hundreds of letters i in the period and the identity of that secret donor, was my grandfath grandfather. >> and can you tell us more about the gift? what was the donation? >> the kid was $5 to 150 families had written to him and for the last two years i have tracked down their descendents to find out what the gift meant to them, did it affect their lives, get a change the fortunes, and so that's the book is about. >> thank you very much for your time. >> next from the booktv archives and event from 2003 with anthony swofford who discusses his

. >> we're here at the national press club with diane rehm, npr host and honorary chairwoman of the press club's book and author night. she is promoting her new book, "life with maxie." can you tell us what that book is about? >> maxie is a little long-haired chihuahua who came into our home seven and a half years ago when we had a big home with a big garden, and then he had to move to a condo. and it's all about life with maxie, and that move and the impact he has had on our lives. he's such a special dog. >> what are some of the changes that max is si had to become accustomed to. >> >> well, for one thing, he wouldn't walk. he wouldn't walk on a leash. so i had to push him many a stroller -- this a stroller before we left the house. he was king pa is sha, you know? and i was the one getting all the exercise. but since we moved to the condo, he finally learned to walk. he's become friendly, he used to nip at people, and now he's the friendliest dog in the world. i could have brought him here tonight, and he would have gone up to everybody and allowed them to pet him. >> what inspired you

. >> we are here at the national press club talking about lights out. can you tell us what some of these solutions are to our energy crisis that detail in the book? >> i will. i watched what is in the work and what i felt was not working. we get a real energy challenge facing america going forward. first we need to increase dramatically the nuclear energy role. right now it is 20 percent of our power, and i think it should be 30% by 2013. we also need to increase the role of renewable energy here in the united states. right now it is wind, solar, biomass, geothermal links. only about 2 percent of our energy. we really need them to be much much higher. the need to support that effort. i am a conservative, so i believe in conservation. one of the things we also need to do is find ways to improve our energy efficiency so that we don't demand as much growth in energy has right now is projected to be the case. >> what should he do about the arguments to keep costs down in terms of incorporating other energy sources? >> well, that is certainly a challenge. i

international studies and later, live coverage of the former minnesota governor tim pawlenty at the national press clubnutes, a look at state and federal gun laws with the president of the brady campaign and john lott, author campaign and john lott, author

. >> you are at the national press club talking to eugene robinson about "disintegration: the splintering of black america." can you explain this? >> it seemed to work out that way. for an arbitrary number, it was clear this was -- one group was the mainstream of the middle class back america. it was clear that one group was the abandoned nonmiddle class black america. and the other groups were, you know, i did think that the existence of a small but very powerful elite was something new. and so i called that the transcending group. then i needed a category to deal with the other groups that didn't fit the category. immigrants from the caribbean and africa. also by racial americans. and i thought they would fit into the umbrella group called the emerging. that's how i got up to four. >> i noticed that you put new immigrants and biracial people together. you were comfortable grouping them under the same umbrella? >> well, i was mostly comfortable with that. it was not precise. it didn't make for as clean of a category as the other categories. however, i thought that similarities were the c

. >> we are here the national press club talking with author ted gup about his new book a secret gift. can you tell us what is the secret gift? >> the secret gift was a gift made in the depth of the great depression in 1933 i an anonymous donor to 150 families and his identity remained unknown for 75 years. two years ago is the case was handed to me that contained hundreds of letters from that period and the identity of that secret donor who was my grandfather.

. >> would hit the to national press club national press club withstand very, very and kathy goldmark to talk about their new book "write that book already!." tell us what this book is about. >> it's a book about how to get published and how to keep going as an author, how to get your career up and running. so we do encourage people how to write, but it's not so much a craft of writing a book as the business of being an author. >> once somebody advise you have? >> your book will not get finished unless you start a. that's the thing. you have to write a bit every day you possibly can, and we have a lot of tips for the moment when you get stuck, the moments when you feel insecure, tips about finding an agent. we sort of walk the authors through the publishing process from beginning to end, and we hope to give people sort of a more realistic sense of how the whole thing works. >> and i notice the forward is by maya angelou. how did you work that out because well, i will admit she and i have been friends for 25 years. i called her up and asked her. >> what are some of the other books that

[applause] [applause] we are at the national press club talking with mark helprin and john heineman about the best seller can change. is there another books in the work for the two of you? >> we are working on a sequel was using in hollywood. hbo is making a movie about this one and at the same time we are working on a book about the next presidential campaign. >> and will there be and probably the paper like addition any kind update to this one? >> there is. the paperback is just come out and we have a new "after words" that takes into account everything that's happened over the 22 months between the last election and this one. >> and what was probably the most fascinating thing about doing this book for the two of you? >> our original goal when we had our first conversation about doing the book we had a goal of what kind of book we wanted to be and what wet

tim pawlenty, the national press club. he left the governor's office and is now on a tour promoting his recent book. he has been listed as a potential republican presidential candidate in 2012. you can see his, as life and 1:00 p.m. eastern. >> later today, tavis smiley lievsay a discussion on the war, the economy, education, jobs and america's future. beginning at 6:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> lawmakers gathered on the house floor to pay tribute to representative gabrielle giffords and the other victims of the shooting in tucson. see what members said on line with c-span as congressional comical -- chronicle. it is washington your way. >> last night, president obama spoke at a memorial service for the victims of the tucson, ariz. shootings. organizers of the gathering called this "together we thrive." he speaks for about 35 minutes. [cheers and applause] >> thank you. thank you very much. please, be seated. [cheers and applause] to the families of those we have lost, to all who call them friends, to the students of this

know another thing is that so many journalists organizations out there you can talk about the national press club it really is just around the corner from our offices here in d.c. they for the moment are being completely silent on this entire weekend leaks issue and they've put statements out there saying that if indeed a criminal charge is filed against julian assigns that then they'll stop it because then they actually have proof that this could be an affront to journalists freedoms to the first amendment but where is the solidarity you know why do they have to wait until a criminal charges filed because if you ask me the way that the government is going after week the leaks be it through the use of twitter or the intimidation of businesses like these and pay pal it's already happening. yes i think that's a great point it's a excellent point and the u.s. media should really look at itself take a good look at it from the office itself what it stands for where the response for freedom of the press freedom of speech whether it is going to show solidarity with with a fellow journalist who's doing w

[applause] [applause] >> we're at the national press club talking about the book flights out with spencer abraham. what are the solutions to our energy crisis you detail in the book? as energy secretary i watched what i felt was not working and we have been energy channel facing american going forward. first we need to increase dramatically the nuclear energy plays in the united states. it is 20% of our power i think it should be 30% by 2030. sony to look at renewable energy here in the united states. it is wind, solar wind, solar, geothermal it is only about 2% and we need them to me much higher. we need to support that effort. i am a conservative so i believe in conservation. they need to find ways to improve energy efficiency so we do not demand as much as right now is projected to be the case. >> what do we do about the arguments to keep costs down of concerns of incorporating other sources? >> that is a challenge but most of these are crossed that we should be willing to bear. first of all,, the private sector should and can and will play an active role to these new forms of energy b

. >> we are at the national press club with diane ream, and the our hostnd

. >> we are at the national press club of diane rehm, and b are posted on a rate chairwoman of the pressclub book and author ni

national women's democratic club here in washington. for more information visit demoraticwoman.org. >> we are the national press club talking with mark feldstein 's book poisoning the press. can you tell us with the book is about? >> the title comes from the fact during the nixon white house they actually plotted to poison a journalist, an investigative reporter named jack anderson. no wonder the age of 60 probably remembers who he was but at the peak he was the most famous and feared investigative reporter in the country and he drove richard nixon crazy and the white house tapes are filled with all of these attempts to get anderson to ultimately culminated in an actual plot to poison it. and do you know if anyone else had previously written about this particular aspect of the nixon history? >> no, nobody had. i was an investigative reporter with myself and then i went to grad school and i am a historian now and so this intersection between history and journalism is a lot of great dirt in the past to be found if you know where to look and how to look and interview the right people and there are amazing tales i found in my book of sex scandals

he has won the 2006 fourth estate award from the national press club. he's also won more than half a dozen overseas press club awards. lectured at many universities throughout the country and abroad. a graduate of city college of new york. and then from harvard and he's a continuing scholar who is currently just wrapping up writing a book on the american experience in vietnam. marvin kalb. [ applause ] >> thank you all very much. it's a pleasure for me to be back. i was here last year, not in this building. somewhere else. and it was a good experience for me and when steve called and invited me back i said, yes, immediately. my pleasure. what i know about you is that there are about 130 of you here and you're here for a week or two and i think you're extremely lucky. and i wish that when i were in college i had the opportunity to sit in on a group like this and meet people like p.j. crowley who, in fact, are terribly important in the fashioning of american foreign policy. he's one of secretary clinton's closest advisers. what i would like to do is divide

[applause] >> thank you, jennifer, and i'm grateful to the national press club in particular to my friend robert web who steered the initiative that has led to this event, so if we could all thank him. [applause] we know who to blame at the end of this event. it is an honor to be at the press club and glad c-span is recording this. i appreciate that very much. as a passionate viewer of c-span viewer for many years. i thank you all for coming out this evening. i really appreciate it. let me give you an idea of what i hope to do this evening. the book was written to try to look at gandhi's life in one piece, one who can be touched, could be seen, who could be understood. that is how and why i wrote the book. what i want to do this evening is offer a selection from his life, almost a random selection to give you an idea. it is a large book. it's 700-plus pages. it was a long life, and a life full of a number of events. i would start with gandhi's youth. as a result of his previous autobiography, the world hasn't mentioned him as prepossessing, unexcited young man. how accurate is that pictur

. >>> we are here at the national press club talking with author ted about his new book a secret gift. can you tell us what is the secret gift? >> the secret gift was a gift made in the death of the great depression in 1933 by an anonymous donor to 150 families. his identity remained unknown for 75 years. two years ago a suitcase was handed to me that contains hundreds of letters in that period and the identity of the secret dillinger who was my grandfather. >> and can you tell us more about the gift? what was the donation? >> the gift was $5 to 150 families who had written to him and for the last two years i tracked down the descendants to find out with the gift meant to them, did it affect their lives, did it change their fortunes so that is what the book is about. >> thank you very much for your time.

. >> we're here at the national press club's book and author night talking with veteran newsman jackfuller about his new book, "what is happening to news?" tell us, what is happening to news? >> what's happening to news is that the audience is changing fundamentally. and that's as much as anything else reshaping the way we're getting our news. >> in what way? >> well, there are obvious ways. the attention span shortened, but there are deeper, deeper ways too. not the least of which is the information environment we live in today actually because of its, because of the way our brains are designed, built causes us to be much more drawn to emotional presentations of information. than we were in quieter times. and that's really manifested itself in the way people are trying to communicate with us. with a lot more intensity and often anger and passion and so forth than 15 years ago or 20 years ago, anyone would have thought is appropriate. >> what are some examples of this phenomenon that you have in the book? >> just the commentators on cable news, for example. that's just one example. i

. >> we are at the national press club talking to christine miller about what inspired you to write about president wilson's life? >> i have been writing about women and politics for the past 25 years and these two women were instrumental in the success of the wilson administration completely in a different way. ellen wilson got him to the white house and died in office. after his stroke edith wilson helped him stay in the white house. they are powerful women in their own day. >> what do the women have in common personalitywise? >> they were completely devoted to woodrow wilson and what he needed and wanted. >> was there anything surprising in your research? >> he had girlfriend too. this man was a romeo. >> did he have a girlfriend with each wife or just one? >> the first wife doesn't believe it would harm him politically so she acted so the girlfriend was a family friend and basically, what did her. there's no intention of sharing him with anybody and the relationship had come to an end before she came on the scene. >> how did either or both influence his politics or policies? >> neithe

. >> we are here at the national press club talking about his new book poisoning the press. tell us what this book is about. >> you bet. the title comes from the fact that during the nixon white house actually plotted to boys and a journalist, an investigative reporter. nobody under the age of 60 probably remembers or knows who he was, but that is peaky was the most famous and feared investigative reporter in the country. he drove richard nixon crazy. the white house tapes are filled with attempts to give him, altman the culminating in an actual plot to poison him. >> to you know if anyone else who previously written about this particular aspect of the nixon history? >> no, no one had. it was surprising to me. i was an investigative reporter myself. this into seconds between history in journalism, a lot of great there in the past can be found if chino were in have to look. there are amazing tales found in my book, sex scandals and love letters and blackmail and burglary in bribery. all of the juicy stuff that textbooks leave out. >> with of the more surprising things that yo

. >> we're here at the national press club talking with baesley. can you tell me what aspect of her life you concentrated on? >> yes. well, this book concentrates on the way eleanor roosevelt wrote the script as first lady. every lady since then followed the script or have not. they had to at least know about the script. there's a lot of books on her, but this book tells about what she did in the white house to make the job of first lady more than just that as a hostess. she made the first lady shift a potent part of the american presidency. >> so was the script that she wrote giving the first lady a role to play in policy? >> the script showed what a first lady could do. the script showed that the first lady can make the job of the president's wife into one this which she could promote the administration or she could show the public that the presidency was interested in individual. she was the public face of her husband's political program, the new deal, but because she traveled so much and because she really had an innate love of people, she pers

[applause] >> we're here at the national press club talking about the new book tammet tells us why these four fish are the future of the last wild? >> we have chosen for mammals with sheep and goats and look at the birds we have chosen turkeys and ducks and chickens and geese are on the verge of what will be the domesticated forms of fish for the future of the ocean and the choice is remake will have huge ramifications for the future of the notion. because if you look at salmon, a very popular form of fish, it requires three or 6 pounds of wild fish so if we take these little fish and grind them up we will just feeding a large portion of the notion causing population declines of other fish in their place. there are other fish out there that require those huge deductions from the ocean that tilapia is a vegetarian fish and it is the option to throw out to go out into the next farm fish of the future. >> are you advocating from staying away from certain types of fish than others horror those that the eat the most? >> some is just better practices like farming salmon the way it is done now

it will be at the national press club. the chairmanship debate for the republican national committee, live tomorrow. janet, republican live -- republican line. biggest political surprise of the year? caller: it would be if the powers that be would allow us to drill for oil. especially in alaska. we have been blessed with all of the natural resources that we need the but the government its involved and we become dependent on other countries for our resources. i would be very surprised if that happened. host: larry, texas, good morning. caller: murray. host: merrilee? caller: yes. host: sorry. go ahead. caller: my biggest surprise would be if the supreme court would repeal the decision on the united way. the second thing that would surprise me is if congress followed up on the repeal of that united way decision. run by the people, not by the government or corporations. host: twitter.com/c-spanwj is our twitter address. here is another twitter message this morning. what would surprise this viewer? we also got a couple of e-mai

. >> we are here the national press club talking to lincoln historian james swanson about his new bookell us what inspired you to pursue this angle? >> when i finished manhunt i realized the hunt for john wilkes booth was just one-third of a trilogy of stories on the end of the civil war. the other two stories for the final journeys of abraham lincoln and jefferson davis. after they fell from power and each became a greater murder to his cause and a greater hero after his fall than during the height of his power and his presidency. so that interested me because i think that these final journeys of lincoln and davis are as important as other great american juries like the churning of was and clark or the selling of the west or even the journey to the moon because it created so many myths about what america is and what our history is, and i don't think the civil war mike is over. we still discuss the issues lincoln and davis argued about. i thought of doing one book of each of the stories. one book about the lincoln fuel train and pageant and then the data seascape. but one day i was vis

. >> we are the national press club talking to mark halperin and john heilemann about best seller "game change: obama and the clintons, mccain and palin, and the race of a lifetime". is there another book in the works for the two of you? >> we are working on a sequel as we say and hollywood. hbo is making a movie about this one and we are working on a book about the next presidential campaign. >> will there be in the paperback edition any update? >> the paperback just came out and we have a new after word that takes into account everything that happened over the course of the last 22 months between the last election and this one. >> what was the most fascinating thing about doing this book for the two of view? >> that our original goal when we had our first conversation we had a goal about what book we wanted it to be and what we thought might succeed and executed what we wanted to do which was pretty rewarding in any aspect of life. >> had you worked together before? >> we had written not so much as a shopping list. we had a meal and a few drinks but never written to get there. there a

. >> we're here at the national press club's book and author night talking to leslie dunton talking about "the establish is coming." what's this book about? >> it's at the globalization of the english language. we're looking at the book at the words that have come into english from hundreds of different languages and gone out as english to all around the world. so the english that people are speaking all around the planet actually includes words that often comes from languages that are their own native languages as well. one interesting detail is that today english is spoken by people who don't use it as a native language the home. for every native speaker of english, there are three nonnative. numbers likely to jump to six in just a few years. this is a time when the english language is changing very quickly. it's an exciting time to be the speaker of a language for people that speak it natively and not. you focus on 30 words, i understand, how did you choose those words? >> well, i really wanted to pick words that came from different sectors of the language. and just to show the range o

. >> we're at the national press club talking with andrew young about the new book, "walk in my shoes." can you tell us how you came up with the idea for doing this book? >> well, he came to interview me when i was mayor, and he was in second grade. and we started a friendship. i was impressed with him as a second grader, and then he's been through dartmouth and london school of economics, now he's a banker with jpmorgan. and we're 50 years apart. so it's an intergenerational dialogue. we don't agree on anything. and we say things and do things to provoke each other intellectually. but what that does is it makes for lively kind of salty ideas. >> well, what are some of these debates that you two havesome. >> we have debates on, really, most things. i think one of our biggest debates is on the economy and why that's -- unemployment right now, how we should go about solving that. civil rights, he was a big leader in the civil rights movement. the jobs and economic front was really part and parcel of the civil rights 3450u6789. we argue should we take a more keynesian approach to solving

. >> were at the national press club talking with someone about his new book, "poisoning the press: richard nixon, jack anderson, and the rise of washington's scandal culture." tell us what the book is about. >> you bet. the title comes from the fact that at the nixon white house they actually plotted to poison a journalist, an investigative reporter named jack andersen. no one under the age of 60 remembers who he was or knows who he was, but at the pt was the most famous and feared investigative reporter in the country and he drove richard nixon crazy. and the white house tapes are filled with all these attempts to get him to ultimately culminate an actual plot to poison him. >> you know if anyone else had previously written about this particular aspect of the nixon history? >> no, nobody had. and it was really surprising to me. i was an investigative reporter myself and i went to grad school and i'm an historian now. and so this intersection between history and journalism is a lot of great dirt. in the past, if you know where to look and how to look and interview the right people. and the