after words, portf c-span2's booktv we can. >> dan balz, washington post national political correspondent and pulitzer prize winner haynes johnson review the 2008 presidential election. politics and prose in washington d.c. hosted this event. it is about an hour. >> in i want to welcome dan balz and haynes johnson, former colleagues at "the washington post" and they both have long careers in journalism. dan has served as the post national editor, political editor and white house correspondent and he has won several prominent awards for his coverage of politics of the presidency. haynes has served as the national correspondent, and it was during that time that he won the pulitzer prize for his coverage of the civil-rights crisis in selma. he has been a columnist for "the washington post" and he has been assistant managing editor of the's, until he left journalism to join the academic world. he is now, holds in night chair in journalism at the university of maryland and he has had also academic appointments at a number of other universities, including princeton, berkley and duke. i don't kn

there is a famous scene in the movie, michael plays the movie of-- portf gordon gilgoff and there's a famous scene where he picks up the cell phone and it is like a brick with little antennas coming out of debt and the amazing thing about that, as we go back and look at the prices of these things, in 1987 the price of a cell phone was $4,600. it was only things that rich people had and now they well give them away for free. this was prosperity and it wasn't just reagan. it was reagan, paul volcker and bill gates and yes it was bill clinton. we were big fans of what bill clinton did on the economy. we did the welfare reform, the capital gains tax cut. we balance the budget by 2000. i would like to see more of bill clinton and barack obama's policies. one of the things that concerns us as the democratic party is that is not a democratic party any longer. it is kind of an old democratic party. the democrats talk over and over about how this thing to come in new deal we are facing right now. this is the last thing i will say and i will turn it over to arthur. we have a chapter in the book