he laughed, not at ronald reagan, clearly, with ronald reagan. a mistake, walter. and then with the camera on ronald reagan, he took up a glass of water and took a sip and put it down with a sense of satisfaction on his face. at that moment, it was game 7, match. it was over. we saw this so many times where ronald reagan would win the day. this is the last thing i would say. but neither of us has gone longer than bill clinton when he said, "one more thing in conclusion." [laughter] he would ignore as when we would ask him questions. sometimes it did not work, but usually it would. he asked the president in the fall of 1982 when ronald reagan's gallup approval rating was 37% -- barack obama is 44% today and we wonder if he is going to be reelected. at that point, white house correspondents are really tough. when they are down, you kick them. he called on me and i said, mr. president, tonight you have blamed the continuing recession on congress and the mistakes of the past. doesn't any of the blame belongs to you? yes, he said, for many years i was a democrat. [laugh

ronald reagan was a wonderful president. he has really helped the republican party and meet in where i am going in the future. i usually do not prepare a speech but speak from my heart. i can go on and on about what is going wrong in washington. there are several apartments we want to get rid of. energy. [applause] there are so many departments in washington and the federal government that we have to disband. my personal background, i have been doing this for 30 years. and applying cost savings. i have travelled throughout all of iowa to bring back revenue to the bottom line. most of the rural hospitals in the state of iowa earn one of 3% profit margin. i save $330 they do not have to lose in income. i know what it takes to run a business. i know what it takes to get the job done. if i had the authority to go to washington, within one year i could erase $1 trillion in spending. i know where to look. i know how to find it. they talk about fraud constantly. mainly one congressman senator that is talking about eliminating fraud

ronald reagan did it. that was the beginning of a reagan ending up as president was that speech which was written for barry goldwater. >> it also led another -- a number of california executives to coach according to governor in 1966. >> he had given similar speeches the early '60s. the people who had been in charge of basically handling the money for. cold water's television account for so fed up with the terrible commercials, that basically said if you let us spend it the whole way, will spend it the way we want to. we are going to basically sequester this money. they played hard ball. that is how they got ronald reagan on the air. after he gave that speech, telegrams poured into the campaign. money poured into the campaign. people started talking about ronald reagan as a gubernatorial possibility. david said it was the best political debut he had ever heard of since the speech by william jennings bryant. >> the relationship, was it a close relationship or was it more of an acquaintance? >> ronald reagan

that is one of the keys to ronald reagan. he would have the chance with the public many times going over the heads of congress and the news media going directly for the people and he was very effective in mobilizing the people behind these ideas and that is why he was able to assume many of them are not in agreement with his ideas, but they understood the people who were behind the president and what he wanted to do 1987. >> thank you for being here today. one component -- spank what is your name. i'm from notre dame. given that the time the unprecedented budget deficits, you know, and decrease in taxes and increasing the defense spending to you think that ronald reagan should be labeled a fiscal conservative? >> should he be labeled a fiscal conservative given the deficit -- >> i mean the deficit for themselves. 3% was unprecedented at the time i think postwar time. >> 3% was not unprecedented by any means to lead i certainly think he was a fiscal conservative. again, you know, it is all in perspective. the budget deficit wa

he laughed, not at ronald reagan, clearly, with ronald reagan. a mistake, walter. and then with the camera on ronald reagan, he took up a glass of water and took a sip and put it down with a sense of satisfaction on his face. at that moment, it was game 7, match. it was over. we saw this so many times where ronald reagan would win the day. this is the last thing i would say. but neither of us has gone longer than bill clinton when he said, "one more thing in conclusion." [laughter] he would ignore as when we would ask him questions. sometimes it did not work, but usually it would. he asked the president in the fall of 1982 when ronald reagan's gallup approval rating was 37% -- barack obama is 44% today and we wonder if he is going to be reelected. at that point, white house correspondents are really tough. when they are down, you kick them. he called on me and i said, mr. president, tonight you have blamed the continuing recession on congress and the mistakes of the past. doesn't any of the blame belongs to you? yes, he said, for many years i was a democrat. [laugh

before that i tended to agree with ronald reagan. you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all.ñ [laughter] but the site and the sound ofñ that buzz saw biting into theñ bark of the great pine tree outside our house, and just wok me up and next thing i know i'm out there in my socks, 7:00 in the morning, hugging the tree.ç preventing its destruction. well of course, i did not succeed. the tree actually belong to the owner next door and they had every right to cut it down. so i had to retreat back into my house and listen to the rest of the destruction of that tree.ç feeling just about worse than i've ever felt in my life. and sort of astonished at the intensity of my own feelings.Ñ wrote an article about it for "the new york times," and so much later i happened to be talking about the incident toñ howard nemerov, the great american poet. and he said, you know, i onceñ wrote a poem about the destruction of a tree at theñ çttom of our driveway. and he said of all the thousands of poems i've written in my life, that was the

it was at precisely this moment that ronald reagan entered their lives and entered the picture. as controller militancy was growing in the late '70s, as their determination to improve their situation grew, then came the election between jimmy carter and ronald reagan. by this point the controllers were so disaffected with the carter administration's faa that they didn't consider really endorsing carter's re-election. they thought it would be more of the same. they began negotiating with reagan's campaign, and ultimately, arrived at an agreement. they would endorse reagan, and in return reagan would promise to help them if he was elected president. the book goes deeply into this, and i'll be happy to answer more questions about it if you have them, but i'll just simply say that that bargain created expectations on each side that were unrealistic and that couldn't be fulfilled, and each side misread the other. the reagan people believed that they were bringing in to the republican fold reagan democrats. most patco members were democrats, though they endorsed reagan, but they were

i think that was one of the keys to ronald reagan.he would have these chats with the public many times going over the heads of congress, going over the head of the news media directly to the people through the medium of television, and he was very effective in mobilizing the people behind this idea, and that is why he was able to persuade congress that many of whom or not necessarily an agreement with his ideas, but they understood the people were behind the president and what he wanted to do in the 1980's. >> yes, next. >> thank you for being here today. one component -- >> can you tell us your name. >> i'm a student from motor game. >> given the legacy one component that is often seen today is that a fiscal conservative. given at the time of unprecedented budget deficits and a decrease in taxes and increasing defense spending, do you think that ronald reagan should be labeled a fiscal conservative? >> should he be labeled a fiscal conservative given deficit -- >> i mean the deficit for themselves, 3% was in president of the time i t

actors that get residuals have one person on to thank for that, ronald reagan.had great pride in it. he loved to talk about his years in the film industry. i remember hearing bill clinton one time talking, and i won't quote them exactly, but it is an acting job in some ways. the notion of communicating to people what the role of the presidency is is not an unimportant point he made. >> people have said to me the thing about bill clinton is he can both capture what the problem is and then speak in a very high level about what the solution would be. now, how you evaluate that depends on on where you sit politically, of course. do you think this is a liability actually for president obama? do you think he lacks that same ability it to capture all that? >> i think he does. he's communicating different. i should have added bill clinton. i said roosevelt and kennedy and reagan. bill clinton qualifies as well. we stee it today. it's wonderfully persuasive and engaging and real to president. president obama, we're in it in the moment and because we're so preoccupied wit

well there's probably more or less like ronald that come to ronald that are after after after gorbachev comes to power then then before this system was relatively stable and there's a very good book about how everything seemed to be permanent until after they change and then people read back that it had to happen you know in the west the major interpretation of the fall of the soviet union with the system and the state is that it was inevitable it was in the code of the revolution the system was failing there were serious problems there was no mass uprising there was no determined from the bottom demand for change until gorbachev actually started this whole thing so my own view is that it was certainly not inevitable that it was largely a contingent event that it was something that happened because the reform was very radical was badly carried out and gorbachev ultimately was unwilling to use the power of the state including the army and the police to preserve a state i would put it this way gorbachev was no abraham lincoln leader was ready to use power to say the united states when the

i mean, there is one thing we associate with ronald reagan and i think it is accurate. he thought government was too big and he thought there were too many federal workers, and he believed much more in private-sector of course than he did in government and i think that morale among federal workers plummeted in the early 1980s. you know one of the best that i have read is haynes johnson's the journalists book called sleepwalking through history, the history of the reagan years. he talks about the impact of reagan's seeming when the neglect of federal workers on the federal workers themselves. i don't think your perception is all that wrong. i would add though one thing, that i think in history we have assumed that reagan was more antiunion than in fact he really was and in part i think that is partly what happened with the patco situation that him in history in that particular way. he thought government was too big but he never did oppose the idea of collective bargaining in government. in fact, you know in this is something many conservatives today would publicly be sur

ronald reagan did it.e beginning of a reagan ending up as president was that speech which was written for barry goldwater. >> it also led another -- a number of california executives to coach according to governor in 1966. >> he had given similar speeches the early '60s. the people who had been in charge of basically handling the money for. goldwater's television account were so fed up with the terrible commercials, that basically said if you let us spend it the whole way, will spend it the way we want to. we are going to basically sequester this money. they played hard ball. that is how they got ronald reagan on the air. after he gave that speech, telegrams poured into the campaign. money poured into the campaign. people started talking about ronald reagan as a gubernatorial possibility. david said it was the best political debut he had ever heard of since the speech by william jennings bryant. >> the relationship, was it a close relationship or was it more of an acquaintance? >> ronald reagan, his father

ronald reagan did it. that was the beginning of a reagan ending up as president was that speech which was written for barry goldwater. >> it also led another -- a number of california executives to coach according to governor in 1966. >> he had given similar speeches the early '60s. the people who had been in charge of basically handling the money for. goldwater's television account were so fed up with the terrible commercials, that basically said if you let us spend it the whole way, will spend it the way we want to. we are going to basically sequester this money. they played hard ball. that is how they got ronald reagan on the air. after he gave that speech, telegrams poured into the campaign. money poured into the campaign. people started talking about ronald reagan as a gubernatorial possibility. david said it was the best political debut he had ever heard of since the speech by william jennings bryant. >> the relationship, was it a close relationship or was it more of an acquaintance? >> ronald reagan

you can't see the expression on ronald rage p's face. you are deprived of body language that accompanies these words, often a person's body language and facial expression denies what the person is writing with a pen, so there, again, is a boying based on -- biography based on transcripts, authentic, or do we miss a large part of what the truth really is? what is the truth? oliver windell holmes once defined the truth as what i can't help but believe. what we believe is true to us as any interviewer will discover when they ask questions of a person, that contradict that person's fantasies. you can get no more violence reaction than when you question a long held fantastic belief. ronald reagan, one of his favorite stories, he's a modest racket, which never failed to tear up with a story of world war ii bomber flying over germany and being struck by anti-aircraft fire and beginning to plummet towards the ground. now, reagan would tell the story time and again always with exactly the same up flexions -- inflections and pacing about how all t

we know ronald reagan isn't running. he's been passed in the debate and he has a demonstrated ability to track liberals into voting for him. >> book tv interviews former president bill clinton about his recent book back to work why we need smarter government for a strong economy. >> president bill clinton in your book back to work you talk about the fact the u.s. should get back in the future business. what do you mean by that? >> i mean we should have the strategy to build a future of share prosperity and shared responsibility is based on a cooperative relationship between the strong private economy and a smart government. i fink this battle we've been asked whether the government is the source of all of our problems and there is no such thing as a bad tax cut or good tax or bad regulation were good regulation has obscured what's really going on out there in the world. we still have a lot of the enormous advantages in america but we've lost ground relative to a lot of other countries and the percentage of the young adul

ronald bridgeforth was taken into custody in redwood city. kraig debro joins us live to explain why he turned himself in after all these years. good afternoon. >> reporter: govern. both sides have a theory on that. ronald bridgeforth as you said stopped running and turned himself into the san mateo county jail this morning but why would a father of two, a man with two master's degrees and a college counselor do that? because before 67-year-old ronald bridgeforth was any of those things, his attorneys said he shot it out with police officers in 1968. appearing with his attorney this morning outside the courthouse, bridgeforth says he will plead guilty in his role in the gun battle. he says his family was one of the reasons bridgeforth made his decision. >> well, this seems to be the right thing to do and in the end it's always about family. >> reporter: what do you mean? >> no, let's just go on. he's taking responsibility for his actions. he wants to be a model for his sons. he wants his sons to continue to be proud of him, for the man that he

. >>> there is a new statue that will greet travelers at ronald reagan airport. there will be a 9 foot tall iran statute of president ronald reagan at the airport. this stands in front of turmoil a. this is one of several rate in statues being released worldwide in celebrations of 100 years since ronald reagan's birth. >>> a beautiful day to have an outdoor ceremony. >> yes, i'm excited. finally have a nice stretch of lovely weather. the high-pressure is in place. clear, calm, pleasant. >> pleasant. finally. >> there is a caveat coming up and that is friday morning. a beautiful sky conditions. some patchy fair weather clouds. that is all we will see in the next couple of hours. we will see these dissipate because the daytime heat from the sun that causes those clouds to develop. 52 now in martinsburg, radian nacional, 57. -- reagan national, 57. even cooler is great falls montana which is that the freezing point. that is really cold air. not that bad across the country. wyoming is expecting anywhere from six to 14 inches of snow through tomorrow with the next far

continuously prints money and give money away even though it may make you feel good then why did ronald reagan hired to do it the bill. you know that exactly what was it suggested a crank a doubled military has been massively increased military spending cut taxes on the very wealthy cut taxes on corporations yes he actually is and what do we get triple the national debt and it made it look like things were good for a couple of years but as you and i both know we were living on a credit card i mean you know ronald reagan had to be hard and now it's backwards two trillion dollars was a hell of a lot of money that's largely because of the unintended consequences of the tax revision act of one thousand nine hundred eighty six the fact of the matter is ronald reagan was a visionary but things have changed so what we have to do is cherry pick the ideas that work let's get one area of a little international doubting and then claiming the that the good times that come from the cal backings i mean he was the ultimate keynesian at least at least f.d.r. when he was you know running up a big debt t

and ronald rainan came in, funny, optimistic and with a plan to restore america. it was not part of republican doctrine until ronald reagan made it part of republican doctrine. he told america get up. >> sean: they weren't lazy or soft. >> didn't think we're the prob problem. they're looking broad. and he held up the truth and the banner of america. weather china, soviet union. how many stories are in this? you know? things are going to change. we knew change was coming. real change is coming. >> when you make comparisons, what could any g.o.p. candidate glean from the way reagan ran his campaign? ear we know obama can't run on his record. they're going to run really negative campaign. they're going to whoever the g.o.p. is spend a billion dollars doing it. >> unprecedented amounts of money. and you said republicans with. >> there is another similarity. article today pointed out they may avoid white working class. but more can't go to the left. i don't think they can stay on the right. reagan won the right vote. capitolists. they're reagan democrats. key part of t

this is a live look at ronald reagan national airport. the 9 foot tall, 900-pound likeness was funded by the ronald reagan foundation and will stand in front of terminal "a." four lanes t

goes to ronald mcdonald charity. for san francisco. >> kimberly: this is typical of the san francisco board of supervisors. my supervisor for where i have my place in san francisco -- >> bob: you were married to the mayor of san francisco, weren't you? >> kimberly: bob! >> greg: that was a fun happy meal. >> kimberly: can i give the toy back? [ laughter ] >> bob: whoa! slam dunk. >> kimberly: wow! this is like the least obnoxious thing the board of supervisors has done. they pride themselves to be activists and they like the to overrun the mayor's office. they do things in the pass like we want legislation about burma. really? >> greg: this is the same city they allowed people to walk around naked in restaurants. >> bob: what is wrong with that? >> greg: they're not attractive women. >> bob: okay. sorry, sorry big greg. okay, can you imagine what mcdonald's would have been like with 5-year-olds denied toys? imagine how loud that would have been? i can speak on this. when you went through your government rip, your eye

that president was ronald reagan. since when do we have republicans voting against ronald reagan's ideas? >> we can't simply wait for congress to do its job. if continue won't act, i will. >> tell them, don't be a grinch. don't vote to raise taxes on working americans during the holidays. congress has a very simple choice next week. do you want to cut taxes for the middle class and those who are trying to get into the middle class or do you want to protect massive tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, many of whom want to actually help. >>> but republicans are more interested in helping the rich. three times in the last three months they've been faced with a choice between creating jobs and protecting millionaires from paying their fair share. every single time they voted with the wealthy. but the president is keeping the pressure on. next week congress is expected to vote on the president's plan to extend the payroll tax cut that would save the average household $1,500, $1,500 to help folks pay the bills and

his relationship with ronald reagan? >> he was a lifelong friend of ronald reagan.onald reagan was pretty much the same politics back in those days. he was the head of the actors' union. he was a democrat and he had the same philosophy. ronald reagan changed, but humphrey remained the same. but they did remain friends. >> goldwater? >> they were even better friends. they were giving speeches in iowa on the back of a hay wagon. they district each other apart. -- the district each other apart. later on, someone saw them having dinner together. >> before we talk about kennedy, talk about the united states senate. people recognize the names from history books today. was there by partisanship? did people work across the aisle? >> there was a lot of camaraderie. humphrey was friends with a lot of republicans. it was more cordial and there was more camaraderie than there is now. i am not in the senate now, but they were very close. >> jfk and their relationship? >> in the early years, they voted together on many of the same bills. humphrey helped him with farm legislation

the process of the end of the communist party of the soviet union i'm joined by ronald suny and ann arbor is a professor of social and political history at the university of michigan in princeton we have mark bystander he is professor of politics at princeton university all right gentlemen this is cross-eyed i mean you can jump in anytime you want mark if i can go to you first in princeton the primary reason why i'm doing this not only is it a twentieth anniversary of the end of the communist party of this oh you mean but to remind people of the events of nine hundred ninety one and how much it really changed the world and how we how the world has. moved on from of one great epic conflict to maybe another epic conflict and we can throw in the economic crisis here what is the most important legacy of what happened twenty years ago in the country that i'm living in right now russia well i think for there's a there's a global legacy obviously the end of the cold war the end of the. vision of the planet within russia russia had been ruled soviet union had been ruled by a party state essential

you see that as well. >> ronald reagan won the cold war. >> i think ronald reagan played a vital part in winning the cold war. the way that he did it was to ramp up pressure across the board when he took over in 1981 militarily, economically, diplomatically, idealogically. and i think that was one of the factors that forced the soviet union to really rethink its approach under gorbachev, yes. >> did the end of the cold war change republican foreign policy? >> it did. as for all americans, republicans had to decide, you know, where do we go next? what should america's role in the world be? and for republicans especially prior to communism had been such a unifying force during the cold war, it left remins sort of confused and divided. there was the sort of pat buchanan wing, more isolationist in the 1990s, there was the henry kissinger type school of thought, there were american nationalists who believed in military strength but were more skeptical of humanitarian intervention, and i think george w. bush ended those disagreements for a while through the concept of the war on terror. but

that president was ronald reagan.licans voting against ronald reagan's ideas? >> well, there you have it, ron. the president out there building bridges, saying the smart thing for us with so many unemployed out there in the country is to begin working on our public sector, and working on things that are below safety code and need to be fixed. what's your counterargument? >> my counterargument is i'm glad he invoked ronald reagan. he was exactly right. i think what reagan said was exactly right. the truth of the matter is when president obama came into office in 2009, the highway bill needed to be reauthorized. it expired in 2009. that is a six-year multi-year effort to build our roads, bridges, et cetera, so while the president is attacking republicans for refusing to go along with part of his jobs bill, there are democrats and republicans in the congress alike who want a six-year reauthorization bill. we've had this thing punted several extensions, the most recent one will expire in march of next year. we need six ye

ronald reagan reluctantly agreed to taxes on businesses and wanted everyone to the table and lo and behold the tax hikes and spending cuts never materialize, it's a sucker punch and probably going to happen again. anything the super committee would create would be a frankenstein deal. two different worlds used and ideologies, whatever they put together is going to be sort after monster and we can be sure we'll see tax hikes and little spending cuts. >> neil: ben stein? >> i think we're going to he see tax hikes, it's baked in the cake and responding to taxes for many, many, many years now and there are going to be tax hikes. >> and don't you think we will be even more irresponsible with spending? >> we're spending irresponsible with both. and we'll be italy, if we don't quickly cut spending. >> the food angle, we could do worse. >> you're right. >> neil: charles? >> i don't disagree, it's a treacherous slippery slope and you know, we saw it before, with ronald reagan and with the first bush presidency and it's, i get worried when i hear the g.o.p. start to talk about this because i think t

reagan as i say ronald reagan was clearly the obvious winner here but ninety eight times for the ronald reagan and then war and. i mean this is really more of like a war is i mean we've got the drug war you got the war in afghanistan you got the war in iraq we have the war on morals in america war on poverty long gone but that was said at one hundred one hundred and five times for war. i think we all know what that means right early so think you know which one i was drinking for all right so basically what happened is a little drunk but that's that's all the coverage we got time for tonight we're going to take a break. broadcasting live right. the heart of moscow this is our right to have you with us let's take a look at the top editor. palestine it gets a seat at the u.n. cultural agency for the first time in a move widely seen as a strong show of support for the nations a bid for recognition unesco voted overwhelmingly in favor of the move but will pay a hefty price as washington cut its funding of the organization in protest and us is against the recognition of palestine outside of p