glenn made me a t.a. he was building a house with a california architect. he took me there on a hunch. after that, he enrolled me in usc architecture class at night. i suspect he paid for the tuition. i was not able to. i did really well. that was the first inkling. tavis: when you say it was the first inkling, when you did well at usc, let me back up half a beat, what do you recall about the prospective class -- that perspective class? what made the difference? that is the first sign he were passionate enough to go back and get it right. >> i think it was the teacher. he realized i failed for other reasons than skill. he took me back. it worked. i think he was a guy who was respectful. he could have said, forget it. that happened to me at usc. i took a night cuss and architecture. they put me into second gear. -- year. the teacher brought me in and said, this is not for you. tavis: i was going to ask you about that. >> he became the architect for the airport. he worked for lax. i used to run into him after he said -- i know into a sink in. -- what you are

not just the point, but they had what they called t.a., total absorption, meaning you couldn't let anyna smoke get free and -- it was serious dope. >> when you bring these threads together, didn't you prove, whether you set out to do this or not, that obama's book was highly misleading? >> i wouldn't draw that conclusion, howard. >> conservative critics are using your book -- >> they certainly are, yes. and, you know, people can draw from it what they want. what i drew from it was that his book was a valuable insight into his internal thinking during that period. which you don't usually get from politicians. but it's not rigorous biography or historical fact. >> you usually don't get publishers writing their own books. >> nicer, too. >> my sense is you found a mosaic, and there were a lot of damaging threads in that mosaic. but that you didn't pound away at this as you might, say, if you were writing a newspaper story because you -- >> that wasn't the point of my book. >> you sort of admire the president in a way? >> well, i -- i'm not going to go that far. what i would say is that i w

taking a look at basically how our political process has bee paralyzed by thebipartisanship lack of prs t.a d as n of real practical steps he wants to suggest how to fix the process. one, the house should not hold -- the house speaker should not hold an office, he should tually denounce hisar henk thirtf dictsh b privated and done with an independent counsel. the book is an analysis of the problem as it stands and also a kind of of way to fix it. really interesting. >> and he was a congressn back in the '80s, early '0s. prtoe' been at harvard. right now he's a senior officer at the aspen institute, a think tank out in the boulderarea. so ptty amazing career. susan jacoby is anuthor faar totof o ew aeroy h i >> so this is a book about one of the sort of great atheists in e political process who in the late 19th century actually ran for president and had a huge, listcryof sportor att thact that he was pushing a completely secular agenda pissed a lot of people off. and so his campaign was stopped short by peopl who had a real interest inreing urndat n oeno sng to this topic. she did a book a f