reagan sent into a funeral. they hit it off on the plane and spending next 25 years doing about 25 projects together. they become such a good friends that ford and carter promised to give the eulogy of the other guy. this goes from being people -- we have a situation where two men who fought bitterly in 1976 promised to give the eulogy of the other. we see carter and gerald ford's funeral. that is amazing. these men go through things and have scars that no one can understand except each other. that bonds them in ways that all of them are writing about politics and policy that few of us can experience. >> i want to ask nancy about the hoover/truman relationship. what did you find specific examples of where those two words together? >> initially it is a difficult thing. german found himself president. year is facing a catastrophe. literally hundreds of millions of people are at risk of starting. it was a mammoth undertaking to figure out how we're going to get europe on its feet. no one knew more on how to do this

that is what reagan did. the medicare ideas we talk about? they are all saying that this is a good idea. it is the best way to save this program. what we need to do is to invite democrats into our coalition and work together. we can fix this country, not by cramming a vision down their throats like they did, but to come upon an agreement on these ideas. two of the biggest ideas we have to do and there are plenty of democrats to agree with what we are saying. we need to win the election and bring them into our coalition. that is what reagan did. that is not the kind of democrats you have any the senate are in the congress. but we need to have a coalition. [applause] >> here is a specific question regarding banking regulations. what type of regulations and do you favor for banks? >> i am a big opponent of the dodd-frank law. [applause] because what it does is ample if you are a large banks, you'll be deemed system quite risky. that means you can go into the market and get cheaper money. since you are making it

a blood sample drawn from ronald reagan in 1981. orr has the story. >> reporter: the anonymous seller says the vial of blood was drawn from president reagan the day he was shot 31 years ago. the online auction posting notes the blood was to be examined for lead level. a five-inch glass tube carries the president's name and the last name of his doctor, aaron. the label has the designation thor, meaning mr. reagan was a thoracic patient with a chest wound. and it's stamped with the date of the shooting, march 30, 1981. the overseas auction house says traces of dried blood are clearly visible in the tube and bidders are interested. the price is approaching 9200 pounds, nearly $15,000. the executive director of the reagan presidential foundation. >> i don't know that a reaction could be anything other than outraged. this is not baseball cards that are being sold on the internet. it's the blood of the 40th president of the united states, ronald reagan. vial of blood has been in his family for 31 years. his mother, then an employee of the

reagan. [laughter] but that's when i decided to get involved in that primary, and i got to spend a long time with him, a number of 14-hour days. and what you see is what you -- he's a very sincere, very smart, very committed man. what i see in mitt romney are the kinds of tools, the kinds of skills, the kinds of character and attributes you need in a leader. he makes decisions. he doesn't pander. and so what i see is a person who understands the moment our country's facing and a person who is willing to do what it takes to get us out of the path we are on and back on the path of prosper by. i -- prosperity. i really believe he's the right guy for the times, and i think he's going to beat barack obama, and we're going to save this country. [applause] he's very funny as well. he's got a really quick wit. he's a funny guy, he's got a good sense of humor. >> he's been here a couple times and received a wonderful reception. we'd love to have him back. next question is, will the major budget decisi

whether congress or the reagan administration, you note even in the reagan administration there were voices of a different faction, a different wing in the party. how did that affect the way choices were made when these issues were debated as you said not only between the parties but within the parties? >> jeff, your book is -- >> sure. i think conservatives had to think about what was going to appeal to people in their party. and then to go on to sell it to the public as well. this actually disciplined conservatives and made them realize the need to actually persuade people of their views rather than simply rally the troops and impose it over any kind of opposition. and here again i think ronald rangen that was his lieutenant governor. and the only man whose opinion on politics reagan respected i think. i think reagan saw the need from -- after the goldwater defeat that if a republican was going to triumph it had to cooperate with the moderates, and it had to make the case for unaffirmative conservatism that could solve some of the nation's problems. >> and reagan, we often forget,

it was reagan who posed this 11th kmanment. it tended to moderate the conversation and probably the philosophy a bit, too. >> al has a book coming out in the next couple of years on william buckley. >> thank you. >> okay. from new jersey originally. in jeff's book he attributes one of the causes of the moderates' demise to their inability or lack of interest in doing precinct work, organization ability. lee talks about conservatives taking over the party machinery, which they're relinquished. my question is and i looked back at that period, you had about a third of the senate called themselves moderate republicans and they had two dozen governorships. i'm from new jersey, not california, but the same story. went down from maine to maryland, couldn't find a state without one or two republican senators or republican governor. why are they so allergic to doing precinct work? and is there any reason for this. the second is do they have any appeal at all. nixon, silent majority. they were not all against nut deal. many were rockefel

about reagan. >> say something about reagan. maybe how he governed in california before he governed in washington. >> yeah. i mean, i think one of the many great lessons of reagan is, he really was a practical, prudent, even call him a statesman. here's why. obviously he had deep ideological views and understood you cannot govern as an executive without having all wings of the party represented in your administration. you still have moderate republican pops think i counted 17 or 1 senators, elected in 1981. when he became governor of california, even before governor, he beat george christopher in the primary, first thing he did, bring in most of christopher's people into this campaign including that rockefeller, cat weinberger. supported christopher. so during the '80s you had the media loved us, the split and woe whole washington leaking game going on and a mutual attraction between hard core conservatives and people in the media. they loved conflicts. played it up. conservatives loved to talk abo

ronald reagan, the l.a. times detected him -- depicted him as saying he is going to bring back the american nazi party. people actually said this. and vice versa. republicans say that stuff. that is a normal piece of political discourse that is not helpful. however, i am also reminded of eugene mccarthy's comment that the task of -- is to shoot the wounded when the battle is over. i have a paradoxical view of this problem. the people in the middle are the ones around whom you get a gang around, you would get budget deals. in the 1990's with clinton and gingrich. when those people disappeared and you have the interest groups, that makes it a compromise. no doubt that is true. among the five or six, one problem is that if you like the old model -- he described the party dynamic, you have a son and the moon. one is the dominant and the moon party has to adapt if it is going to survive. i think that describes the world of the new deal or republicans with modifications to improve them, and limit them and so forth

he had been through the reagan administration. you have a lot of these meetings where nothing happens. but instead the meeting ends with the president saying, let's do it. it's only going to get worse, this needs to be done. the people who were present in the room report different things that the president said. they all amount to that same message, a really decisive decision. so everything i told you so far has nothing to do with the transcripts that have just been released. let me tell you a little bit about how they help us and what they do for us. following that decision to invade panama, much of the news commentary and many of the scholars who have written about this subject since say exactly the same thing. those events at the roadblock weren't really important. this administration had made its decision well in advance that noriega was going to go. they were just waiting for an excuse. there were secret plans put in place and the events in december were just the trigger. that is a widely reported account of what transpired.

that's reagan would say. that's the sound of cement cracking around my feet. >> give me a second, larry. okay? give me a second here. number one, what john boehner said today is we want to move a bill to extend the tax rates for a year to prevent this tax cliff but to have a system where we bring tax reform to the floor under exper dieted procedures so that we actually act on tax reform. now the debate is around how best to do tax reform. there are a lot of democrats who adpree with us on the need to lower rates and broaden the base and you get more revenues into the system that way without harming the economy. but we need to extend the current tax system to get us to that point. >> would you say, for example -- >> we think that is a good offer. >> pat toomey was criticized that he had one that took a lot of deductions out -- >> i supported what pat was doing. >> all right. and came one a pretty big revenue number. maybe in return for a pretty big revenue number, you get your lower tax rates, the democrats ca

epidemic in america with the obesity rate tripling since one nine hundred sixty so what's ronald reagan's role. in the best of the rest of the news since nine eleven air travel has been a nightmare for americans as we're forced to take our shoes off get x. rayed get groped before we can just step foot on an airplane or one group of americans has a particularly bad sikhs according to the sikh coalition sikhs have to go through secondary t.s.a. screenings at the airport virtually one hundred percent of the time strictly based on how they dress many sikh men and some women wear turbans on their head as a religious symbol of equality and justice and unfortunately thanks to the mainstream media and the entertainment industry's portrayal of turbot wearing fur it's something that's not accurate at all by the way law abiding peace loving sikhs are unfairly targeted by the t.s.a. every time they fly but now the advocacy group the sikh coalition is doing something to push back against this a bitch will profiling by the t.s.a. today the group launched a new free mobile application to give sikhs a ch

and when reagan got caught, as he inevitably had to, the reagan administration's justification for all this was, essentially, just an update of what nixon had said about watergate. nixon had said, well, remember what nixon said? >> well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal. >> okay. the reagan update on that was essentially, if the president does it and it's about national security, that means it's not illegal. even though reagan had done both sides of the hyphen in this scandal, both the iran side and the contra side, even though he had done both sides secretly, hoping nobody would find out, the reagan administration's after-the-fact justification for what he had done and why he had done it was that under reagan's commander in chief powers as president, it was perfectly legal for him to do anything he wanted to do, no matter what the laws were of the united states, because he was president. it's crazy, right? i mean, this was a disaster. there were high-level indictments, administration officials went to jail. amazingly, reagan himself avoided impeachment, bu

forward obviously libertarian reagan was a reagan libertarian i think that his policies the idea that you know that government is not the solution to our problems government is the problem from his first inaugural address that is the core that's the kernel of libertarianism yes and i think that every government grow underneath ronald reagan oh i'm not saying that he was an affective libertarian but he was promoting those policies rhetoric is one thing and what we see is another and what we do know is that option for seeing laws against hiring people who are not citizens reagan stopped and foreseen was the sherman antitrust act after over one hundred years. i should in an era of mergers and acquisitions that created giant monopolistic corporations that are eating us alive we've got that all libertarian philosophy government and corporations were really in bed in this period of time and what we're talking about is libertarianism is a terrible description libertarianism is strictly the reduction in the size and scope of government and the life of people not oh they they forgave. the immi

president reagan's blood being auctioned off? it's true. we go live to get the reagan family response. >> i'd be remiss if i didn't say facebook was perhaps the single worst ipo i have ever seen, everything done wrong from where it was placed by morgan stanley to perhaps this new call, that some knew the earnings were weaker to how badly the nasdaq handled it to every single aspect and it's just a blight on our market. it's always a bull market somewhere. i'm jim cramer. i will see you tomorrow! >> hey, sully, what are you looking at? >> i can't say it look you did. but the facebook ipo, a big uh-oh. i'm filling in for larry kudlow as he takes a few days off. and it is a big news night. your top story, breaking news, a new nbc news/wall street journal poll released minutes ago shows most americans are losing confidence in the president's ability to handle the economy. also breaking tonight, facebook ipo finger pointing. the nasdaq admitting it was a mess. envestors filing suit and now morgan stanley has been issued a subpoena. the question

that's what reagan was good at. that's the message he communicated to not only all americans, but all the foreigners he dealt with. >> sean: it was interesting. at the time, the threat economically was want the decline of europe or china, it was japan. >> japan. >> sean: you have a great story in the book about that. >> i end that chapter telling the story of the whole cabinet marching in one day to complain about the japanese buying everything in 1988. and reagan is sitting there, listening and they are saying, you know, they bought rockefeller center, they bought pebble beach. are to be spared nothing. what are we going to do about it? congress is mad. the people are mad. reagan looks back and calmly said, i am glad they think america's a good investment. that was t. meeting was over. he was over here. of course, they didn't know if it wasn't a good investment. they lost their money and we got it all back. >> sean: hopefully, look, i have never been more worried than i am today about the economy and the world situ

after reagan. bush, dole, another bush and john mccain that talks to known democrats and now mitt romney, right? these are not the - how come we can't get another ronald reagan. i really need to develop a three this. among the republican party that's been executive oriented party for a long time and the democratic party for a variety of reasons is more delegislativy dominated and that's why they run better than republicans can. there's one reason now where your especially suppose to the extremisms that control the house which is the chamber. newt gingrich is unthinkable if he'd been senator i think. in my observation you have to go after term limits and watch the assembly which was always food fight in california. the assembly of the state was passed by one vote and the senate would pass nearly unanimously. after your six years throughout the assembly and a couple of cases someone would be gentile and start throwing food fights again. that's kind of the nature of our institutions that we design the

reagan wanted it out quickly. so although i was working on the roosevelt i had to make a decision do i continue working on the roosevelt book or is this such an important thing to do. my wife and i endured katrina and so we ended up saying look let's bring the kids and go out to the reagan library nearby, we moved to thousands oaks, california. >> you were living in new orleans. >> yeah, we came back to new orleans, i was professor at tulane and even named my american studies center at tulane the theodore roosevelt center i was teaching classes on theodore roosevelt and conservation at reich conservation. at rice university now uh-huh teach a class theodore roosevelt on conversation. meaning when you say when you start writing a book, i have been informing myself on the research part of this story for a long, long time. the main thing i'med to do is the write the history of first off if dr and u.s. christian wildlife. up until the present time dealing with global warming and the modern green movement. i wanted to

reagan want as a thoracic patient with a chest wound.stamped with the date of the shooting, march 30, 1981. the overseas auction house says traces of dried blood are clearly visible in the tube and bidders are interested. the price is approaching 9200 pounds, nearly $15,000. john heubusch is the executive director of the reagan presidential foundation. >> i don't know that a reaction could be anything other than outraged. this is not baseball cards that are being sold on the internet. this is the blood of the 40th president of the united states, ronald reagan. >> reporter: the seller says the vile of blood has been in his family for 31 years. his mother, then an employee of the lab, brought it home about a week after the assassination attempt. the auction house has offered no proof that it actually is president reagan's blood. historian douglas brinkley says that's just one of the problems. >> taking the presidential memorabilia notion to a very bizarre new level. >> reporter: very personal presidential memorabilia is nothing knew. facia

he said this guy ain't reagan. >> if you talk optimismically about the future, this is one for reagan. he was helped by the jobs picture but it was i have a vision of a new america. and he laid out a vision for the future. now between romney and obama, the one that can convince people that he has a plan and -- chris: isn't that right? it's about a plan for the future? >> yes. the strongest -- but the elements of the past -- the strongest thing about romney's argument on jobs is that it's a two-sided coin. he could say obama didn't produce the jobs. he didn't focus on jobs. what he did focus on was obama care and you don't want to have that, do you? so it's a double-edge sword. he can go positive, negative. it's the best thing that romney can have. chris: obama's known as the health care guy. he didn't grab on that that brand he could have grabbed on which is i'm the job creator. >> he spent the first year of his presidency or much of the first year of his presidency caught up over health care reform that most people think it's a waste of political capital for him and a waste of and op

reagan explained perfectly. a single reform romd ray gap has identified with it is tax reform. ronald reagan offered supply side economics at home and a roll back of soviet communism abroad. reagan. >> receiving only applause and adulation, ryan defended a budget that cuts taxes for corporations and the rich while slashing the social safety net with cuts to food stamps, medicare and medicaid. and ryan argued that his plan is better for the nation's poor. >> president obama's policies take from hard-working americans and give to companies and privileged special interests. i will call it what it is. it's corporate welfare and we propose to end it. >> in the same evening, the republican congressman accused the president of being guilty of the politics of division and attempting to recast romney as mitt the messiah. >> americans have always rejected those with nothing to offer but cynicism and the politics of division. and right now, that's all they are getting from the president. i really believe he's the right guy

open borders and a shared currency the americans did the same particularly during the reagan and clinton administrations by doing away with over two hundred years of protections trade policies unilaterally eliminating tariffs and tearing down laws and regulations that protected labor and small businesses from the giant transnationals interestingly the asians mostly knew this was starry eyed crap the chinese moved from a failed form of communism to government sponsored and heavily regulated capitalism to taiwan and south koreans and japanese all kept their tariffs and trade protections in place although they often disguise them as for example reverse vat taxes or through regulatory barriers and ironically so did the germans. they protected their manufacturing industry by keeping national ownership trade barriers and laws that required big companies to have half their board of directors come from the ranks of the labor unions that worked in their factories they protected their workers by aggressively stepping in with things like the kurds are program a short week is what it means in englis

craze that happened when reagan changed the tax laws to allow people to use to be against the law to buy a company or somebody else's money and then dump the debt on that company when the laws changed in that happened you know all this stuff blew up it's but but they they ended up having to change their names their reputation was so bad they're no longer called the leveraged buyout private equity create creates a lot of wealth for a lot of pain and that's it. that's it brings a lot out of course but we have to determine what's there there are no loopholes i'm not saying they don't exist let's just let's name stocks as a loop you know it's not a loophole let's take responsibility for our laws it's there for a cynical reason i might say that but they're not loopholes it's not like things are going to like mitt romney hired a lawyer spirits to get in there you go to the polls they're left in there for reasons of those might be cynical reasons they may not have time to hear lupul it makes me think somebody's going to be the same in let's me responsibility for what the law says and what i

. >>> well, coming up, a rare look inside of the reagan family. >> after former first lady nancy reagan takes a nasty fall, the prognosis and the well wishes. that's coming up. >> announcer: abc's "world news now" will continue after this from our abc stations. >>> welcome back. former first lady nancy reagan is now 90 and still recovering from a fall that left her with several broken ribs. >> mrs. reagan has been incredibly private about after her husband's passing. abc's david wright spoke to nancy's daughter patti and got an update on her condition. >> reporter: nancy reagan's accident happened six weeks ago. but the news only broke when she was unable to attend a speech at the reagan library. >> she's tuning in to our live broadcast from home tonight on doctor's orders. >> reporter: she's doing okay? >> yeah. yeah. >> reporter: everybody's worried about her. >> reporter: we caught up with her daughter, patti davis. they once had a rocky relationship but now speak every day. and what happened? >> i believe she got up in the middle of the night, which is when falls usually happen. >>

after he's elected up in l.a., he asks reagan for any advise you might have, and reagan says, well, i've been watching you. you don't know how to salute and you've got to learn how to salute and they sit in his office practicing. [laughter] this is the real benefit of the club. gwen: well, thank you to you all for a fascinating conversation. we have to leave you now, but the conversation continues online. well keep talking on the "washington week webcast extra." you can find it at pbs.org/washingtonweek. keep track of daily developments with me every night on the pbs newshour. and its the beginning of a very special weekend. dont forget to honor and remember those who gave their lives for our freedom. thats the best kind of memorial day. well see you again around the table next week on "washington week." good night. captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org-- s >> funding for "washington week" is provided by -- corporate funding is also provided by prudential, norfolk southern, antawn jamison, rethink possible. additional funding is provided by the eyen burg fo

reagan was a patient with chest wound and its stand today to the shooting march 30, 1981. the overseas auction houses traces of dried blood are clearly visible in the tube and bidders are interested the price is approaching 9,200 lbs. nearly $15,000. >>> the executive director of the reagan presidential foundation. >>> i don't know the reaction can be anything other than outrage they're being sold on the internet's the president added states then his family for 31 years his mother and an employee of the lab brought home about a week after the assassination attempt to auction houses offered no proof that ashley as president reagan's blood historian douglas brinkley says it's just one of the problems. taking presidential memorabilia to a very bizarre new level. their personal presidential memorabilia is nothing new facial hairs were plucked from abraham lincoln after his death and then warning is honor hair clippings from john f. kennedy sold for $3,000 in 2010 and this year before and locket containing hear from george and martha washington brought more than $7,000. but bri

and i got a call from george schultz and president reagan asking me to leave the company. i was running a pharmaceutical company at the time. to leave that and help out. so i did. and it was -- it was a new experience for me, who'd kind of served in the pentagon during the cold war, here was something that was notably different from the cold war. it was terrorism. and i remember at that time people were writing books and giving lectures about the end of history, if you remember that. the theory was that communism was kind of behind us. and i ended up speaking to the u.s. army association and talking about terrorism. and i said to them, look, as lemmon wrote, the -- this is back in october of 1984. 17 years before september 11th, 2001. and i said, first, as lenin wrote with characteristicic terseness, the purpose of terrorism is to terrorize. it's not to kill people. it's to terrorize. and it's to alter their behavior. it's a technique. terrorism is growing, i said. in the 30 days ending last week -- this is 17 years before 2001. in the 30 days ending last week it's estimat

we had to work for eight months in 1981 to pass the reagan tax cuts.ean, look what scott walker is going through in wisconsin. if you want really big change, the election just starts the dance. it doesn't end it. so every conservative should be prepared to work every single day, long beyond this election to bring to bear the best ideas and to develop the best future. now, i think in the reagan tradition that there is a shining future ahead. i think maggie and robert's generation will live in a freer, safer, more prosperous america with greater opportunities. i am not totally certain i will get to the moon. i am certain magazigie and robe will. i think it is almost inevitable in the sheer scale of technological change. i think they will live in a generation that resolved the challenge of autism and the challenge of alzheimer's and resolved the challenge of parkinson's and that has mastered mental health and i think their generation will look back and the olden days and people didn't have hollow grams at home and actually had to do so many things manuall