and friday december 25th, also at 8:30 author, historian describes his book, the final years of ronald regan. be sure to watch c-span's washington journal during author's week starting december 21st. ♪ >> john ferling is the professor at west georgia university and the author of several books of history. the book whirwind. what is the greatest misconception on the u.s. victory independence war? >> probably the greatest misconception that many people think that it was an uneasy victory or ene visit able victory but it was an eight-year war and to the very end in 1781 we were very close to losing the war, john adams was riding home from france and say if you don't score a decisive victory in 1781 then france is going to pull out and we won't get independence, fortunately for the united states, we won the war and, in fact, because when john adams was reflecting on the revolution, he made the comment that the war had nothing to do with the revolution, and i think it had everything to do with the revolution in part because we declared independence in 1776 but we didn't have it, we weren't indepen

>> guest: ronald regan in a way who. is a strong principal leader that could change politics. >> host: this is an entertaining book, it's packed with information, it has the big themes, wonderful little detail with my favorite detail on the question is who is going to give the opening indication of the republican convention. you mentioned the tension with the american protective association. is it going to be a minister or a catholic priest, how do they fines the point. >> guest: it's an enormous signal, i'm in charge. they have ministers thereafter. bishop ireland of st. paul who delivers explosive nature. >> host: okay, great detail. thanks very much. >> guest: thank you. >> book tv is on instagram follow us for publishing news, schedule updates. instagram.com/book under score tv. >> sunday night on q&a. talks about the second volume which gives insider's take of washington, d.c.

ronald regan, the great communicator, 34 times he spoke from the oval office, this is president obama's third speech in two terms. it speaks to the fact that this is a president with some trouble with communication, and on this front you see it in the polls, you see people giving them 35%. this is something that he has to address. the white house is clear on that. the president is clear. a little too late. he should have done it sooner. it is a good start for the white house to say the president is on top of this, and he understands the fear and insecurity, which is very, very real. >> what do you think about that, will an address do anything to repair whatever doubts the american public will have. >> it will put folks at ease at the moment. >> i think a lot of it is not just about easing the fears and intentions of the american public. just to put in a political line here. there are a lot of folks running for office next year. senators, governors, and want to say that the white house is taking a firm position. and go out and tell voters what they'll do to work with the white house, som

he's no jfk and no ronald regan and he became president of the united states because person after person at every stage in his life, almost anyone who met him with some exceptions, we can damn near count on one hand, believe that he was someone the hands of the affairs of the nation and the world would be safe. and that's a particular kindti f gift, a particular kind of charisma that doesn't fit in the usual categories, and so your dad created a much more difficult literary task, which you know because you did it. >> yeah, mine was a different perspective starting with you never president. [laughter] >> and the world is a lot better off because of it. i can assure you. >> margaret mentioned this and that iios something that i didnt realize that he had kept a lot ofth diaries. he had spoken to tape recorder for years. >> years. >> and he gave you full access. >> unconditional. >> so how did that happen, in that his sons had no idea he had a dairy? >> we come from a common gene pool. >> speak for yourself. >> direct conversations are never a big thing in our family except is where the oliv

the only real connection that george bush had to ronald regan was on taxation, bush championed, tax reductions, he got them. bush had no problem with activist government to build a moral society. it was cheney that want today -- wanted to cut programs. a man who sought to improve citizens' lives using the compass from born-again christianity combined with resources of federal government. outlook on life was to the painting and you heard me mention that before. he named his book after the painting whose message he believed was to serve god in one action. that was the message he want today bring to presidency and that was his political ideology. he had a charge to keep. he says, faith changes lives and i know because faith has changed mine. he wanted to use the values of his faith to change as president. ideology was simple and straightforward. government can improve lives specially if faith-based values are woven into governmental action. conservative want to reduce government programs, particularly social programs, certainly he had only limited rim to the regan revolution. bush accepted smalle

his father cannon, was ronald regan's biogragher. carl cannon. [applause] >> and our final panelist is someone i had just gotten to meet over the past two years, krissah thompson. a reporter who is covering michelle obama and has written many detailed stories. she just told us that she finished the story on first gentlemen which is going to be in tomorrow's newspaper. in addition to covering laura bush she has covered laura busha as well as michelle obama so she joinstous bring the journalist modern day perspective, krissah thompson. [applause] >> now, that many of you bring the cell phones and we've got a twitter account set up tonight. as i mentioned the questions are going to be at the one-hour point but if you see interesting topics along the way and you want to send us a tweet, i'm going to send them right here. i will mix in your twitter questions as well. that's for our c-span audience at home. i will be getting them and using them throughout the session. so welcome everybody. we are going to start with the first one which is reality of pu

occupying the white house in modern times winning a nobel peace prize in 2002 after losing to ronald regan in 1980 he returned home to plains, georgia to form the carter center for democracy, human rights and other key global issues and has been active all over the planet helping to cure river blindness in africa and other illnesses and champion free and fair elections and the resent book a full life reflections at 90 was published in july. >> i want all of you to remember that name. >> reporter: unlikely to forget it, one of a number of breakthrough drugs that tipped the balance in the favor of the immune system helping patients fight their own disease. >> by blocking these molecular breaks which normally maintain sort of a state of equilibrium and keeping the immune system to keep getting too active. carter says even though his doctors say he is cancer free he is going to continue with the treatment for the time being just to be sure and president carter is the second oldest living american president and george hw bush is also 91 but he is three months older than president carter. stepha

. >> i don't usually quote ronald regan. "you have to trust but to verify". do you trust and verify? >> of course we do. >> how many of the 15,000 transformers in san francisco have you conducted? >> we chose the region. we go to the office and look at the records of the entire region. not just transformers. you have underground and overhead facilities. they are both combined into one audit. we look at the utility record. we see if they have conducted the inspection. we make sure they have documented any violation. we look at the field, we look at the facilities to ensure they have inspected and corrected what they said they did and in addition to this we document any violations we discover. now, how often we do this every year for many of the regions. >> so it's specifically with pg & e how many of those safety audits have you conducted? >> i don't have those numbers with me. we post the audit report on the website. anybody interested of looking at our report and observing how many violations we have documented they can log onto our website and look at the r

. >> i don't usually quote ronald regan. "you have to trust but to verify". do you trust and verify? >> of course we do. >> how many of the 15,000 transformers in san francisco have you conducted? >> we chose the region. we go to the office and look at the records of the entire region. not just transformers. you have underground and overhead facilities. they are both combined into one audit. we look at the utility record. we see if they have conducted the inspection. we make sure they have documented any violation. we look at the field, we look at the facilities to ensure they have inspected and corrected what they said they did and in addition to this we document any violations we discover. now, how often we do this every year for many of the regions. >> so it's specifically with pg & e how many of those safety audits have you conducted? >> i don't have those numbers with me. we post the audit report on the website. anybody interested of looking at our report and observing how many violations we have documented they can log onto our website and look at the r

. >> i don't usually quote ronald regan. "you have to trust but to verify". do you trust and verify? >> of course we do. >> how many of the 15,000 transformers in san francisco have you conducted? >> we chose the region. we go to the office and look at the records of the entire region. not just transformers. you have underground and overhead facilities. they are both combined into one audit. we look at the utility record. we see if they have conducted the inspection. we make sure they have documented any violation. we look at the field, we look at the facilities to ensure they have inspected and corrected what they said they did and in addition to this we document any violations we discover. now, how often we do this every year for many of the regions. >> so it's specifically with pg & e how many of those safety audits have you conducted? >> i don't have those numbers with me. we post the audit report on the website. anybody interested of looking at our report and observing how many violations we have documented they can log onto our website and look at the r

. >> i don't usually quote ronald regan. "you have to trust but to verify". do you trust and verify? >> of course we do. >> how many of the 15,000 transformers in san francisco have you conducted? >> we chose the region. we go to the office and look at the records of the entire region. not just transformers. you have underground and overhead facilities. they are both combined into one audit. we look at the utility record. we see if they have conducted the inspection. we make sure they have documented any violation. we look at the field, we look at the facilities to ensure they have inspected and corrected what they said they did and in addition to this we document any violations we discover. now, how often we do this every year for many of the regions. >> so it's specifically with pg & e how many of those safety audits have you conducted? >> i don't have those numbers with me. we post the audit report on the website. anybody interested of looking at our report and observing how many violations we have documented they can log onto our website and look at the r

ronald regan re-ignited the american economy, rebuilt the economy, bankrupt the soviets and i will dog taxes, cutting regulation, unleashing small businesses and rebuilding the military to defeat radical islamic terrorism. >> all right. the grades? >> the grades. you saw republicans absolutely the highest it could go. highest of the night, gave him an a. democrats an f. independents a b. >> lee carter, thank you so much. always fantastic. >>> when we come back, fascinating things about a food chain you know very little about. anncr: when the attacks come here... ...the person behind this desk will have to protect your family. will he be impulsive and reckless, like donald trump? will he have voted to dramatically weaken counter-terrorism surveillance, like ted cruz? will he have skipped crucial national security hearings and votes just to campaign, like marco rubio? 27 generals and admirals support jeb bush. because jeb has the experience and knowledge to protect your family. right to rise usa is responsible for the content of this message. after a dvt blood clot.mind when i got out o

. >> i don't usually quote ronald regan. "you have to trust but to verify". do you trust and verify? >> of course we do. >> how many of the 15,000 transformers in san francisco have you conducted? >> we chose the region. we go to the office and look at the records of the entire region. not just transformers. you have underground and overhead facilities. they are both combined into one audit. we look at the utility record. we see if they have conducted the inspection. we make sure they have documented any violation. we look at the field, we look at the facilities to ensure they have inspected and corrected what they said they did and in addition to this we document any violations we discover. now, how often we do this every year for many of the regions. >> so it's specifically with pg & e how many of those safety audits have you conducted? >> i don't have those numbers with me. we post the audit report on the website. anybody interested of looking at our report and observing how many violations we have documented they can log onto our website and look at the r

regan that way please. >> interesting to see the hazing ronald reagan would get from the republican primary elected. they nominated moderates in recent years and reagan would seem like a relative moderate. this would not be news to reagan, conservatives complained about him as soon as he was elected, you had the same conservative movement that elevated him attacking him for not being conservative enough as it is he was in office it had to make compromises which he did but amnesty, taxes, all these issues reagan would get a different reception today. >> it is common in history, lincoln once made a speech by saying you democrats have been feeding off jackson's carcass forever, what have republicans and in turn? fed off of lincoln's carcass. i used to say in class you say the name ronald reagan and you can tell who the republicans are and who the democrats are and with a stern age groupies a franklin roosevelt and democrats get that -- it is common. with good reason. >> that is why he was reagan's favorite president. >> they were great politicians. >> i guess we won't see somebody running the in the mo

ronald reagan. there's talk of impeach inspect the air -- impeachment in the air, and the white house needs a radical shake-up. the president's chief of staff, don regan, is the mortal enemy of first lady, nancy reagan, who's trying to have him fired. so it was quite a dramatic time. and i thought if i was going to write about the whole panorama of characters surrounding reagan, that might be the year to pick. >> would a reader recognize your reagan? >> i think so. except one of the things they'll recognize about reagan that sounds funny is his absence. in that he was very remote in many ways. for all of his warmth and geniality, he's defeated a lot of biographers. i think he opens up more possibilities for historical fiction than a lot of political figures do. i think they'll recognize him on the surface, but a lot of people have spent decades scratching their heads wondering what was really going on inside this very genial man. even nancy reagan, to whom he was extraordinarily close, i mean, their marriage was famously close and intimate, she had mentioned in her memoirs that there were whole portions of ronald reagan that she could never really acc