Transcripts For CSPAN2 Lawrence ODonnell Playing With Fire 20180107

1968 was the year where the real decisions between the party that we see now were first locked in cement and we saw as one of the more poignant scenes in this book what literally became the last liberal standing on a Republican Convention stage in 1968, and it was the moment when mayor john lindsay of new york was forced at least half against his will to second the nomination of spiro agnew to be president of the United States after lindsay himself wanted to get that nomination, he then had to second that nomination for agnew and that was the last time a National Republican of significance stood on a Republican Convention stage as a liberal and john lindsay eventually left the Republican Party not long after 1968 so we now have a world in which when people hear that you are a democrat or they hear that youre a republican, they think they know everything about you. Its not just a know whether youre a liberal or conservative, they think they know everything in 1968 had more drama and chaos and utter madness in it as a president ial campaign than anything weve seen before and what we saw in 2016 was in fact a perfectly normal standard president ial campaign with the exception of one eccentric candidate, okay . But if you look at every other moving part of that campaign, it was all operating according to the way it always had. And in the democratic side, what we were seeing was a rerun of 1968, which was the liberal insurgency from the left which starts at about three percent in the polls, challenges the overwhelmingly establishment favorite of the Democratic Party , ms. Hillary clinton, Bernie Sanders and that insurgent candidacy rockets up from three percent and becomes a very real challenge and wins a bunch of states. This is what we saw happen and 1968 when Jean Mccarthy made this historic decision without which this would be a very different and very much in her book. Jean mccarthy made the decision that changed history that year. He decided to challenge and, president , we never seen that before. Bobby kennedy had thought about it before mccarthywhich is something i didnt know before i put into this book, he thought about it, decided not to do it, but about it again , decided not to do it. Then jean did it and jean won New Hampshireand bobby decided to weigh in. I didnt know. It was decades after 1968 when i first learned that Jean Mccarthy actually came in second in New Hampshire. But for a High School Kid consuming the news, it felt like he won New Hampshire but the news was he did so shockingly well in New Hampshire coming in a close second that the all of the calculus was upset from that moment forward. And that changed everything. Every what if that you could come up with with 1968 comes with what it Jean Mccarthy had not run . Because if Jean Mccarthy had not run, Everything Else means nothing. We wouldve had johnson versus nixon. The likelihood is johnson would have won that race but as we know, the outcome in terms of the issue of the day which is the war would not have made any difference which one of them won that race. This is not just a history book. Its an eyewitness account in many sections of this book. I dont always identify the eyewitness. For example, i was sitting on the floor at home with my parents and older brothers were sitting in the chairs around me. As we were watching the Democratic Convention and watching the rioting in the streets in chicago. I was watching that so some of these accomplishments here are things i saw with my own eyes and its a combination of looking at the Research Material and remembering what i saw and the things i could never forget from the convention was the moment when the mayor of chicago, Richard Daley who was really running that convention is standing and yelling antisemitic, profane slurs at senator abraham rubicon because abe stood up at that podium at the convention to nominate George Mcgovern and said George Mcgovern were president today, we would not see this gestapo behavior in the streets of chicago and that set off Richard Daley and i could read his lips. I knew what those words were you was saying and for anyone who could not read his lips, within an hour , the networks actually had lip readers on telling you what Richard Daley and just said. The Richard Daley moment at the Chicago Convention would have been the most Dramatic Convention moment of any convention in our lifetime, just that one Richard Daley moment. It is but a moment in a week that was just a stunningly outofcontrol week for americas political system, which believes thateverything must be controlled. I want to read you a passage or two from this book, and yesterday, i was in president Harvard Square and i was doing one of these appearances there and i had with me this wonderful guide basically guides people through book to her stuff and this is what she does in boston. So i asked her advice about how to handle these things in one of the things i asked was about readings from the book. She says well, with nonfiction you dont really want to do that. [laughter] and i said okay, i dont have enough material. If i cant read from the book. And so i violated the rule and i reached for the book. Because i want you to get the feel for people who havent gotten the chance to get the start with this book is there are some very personal observations with some very personal experience that goes into living through 1968 and life in 1968 and i want to give you just a bit of that and i want to get to your questions as fast as possible because in this room, ive got a room full of people who are smarter than me and id like to learn some stuff that i might be able to steal and use on tv. So 1967 is the year bobby spends thinking about running for president and deciding against it and everywhere he goes, everywhere he goes whenever he gives his speech anywhere, all he hears is run bobby, run. Run bobby, run, thats all he hears. And this part of the story picks up in that spot. Underlying bobbys speeches of course we have never seen before in american politics, something weve never seen yet. Something shakespearean. When bobby stepped up to a microphone no matter how sunny the day, no matter how wide his smile, he was always framed in tragedy. A personal and National Tragedy of the assassination of his older brother, the president of the United States on november 22 1963 in dallas. Bobbys audience knew his pain as they all felt their own version of that pain on that surrenders day in 1963 that shook the country to the court. In kennedys hometown of boston, it felt as if the world stopped. I was in Saint Brendans Elementary School in boston when the nuns got the news the president had been killed, the first president , something the nuns never expected to see. Now they had outlived the Irish Catholic boy who had made them so proud. The systems of st. Joseph were the strongest women i knew but this was too much for them to bear. They simply couldnt carry on. They closed school early and sent us home. We had never seen them cry before. We were all crying when the nuns got us into our lines to marcus march us up to the sidewalk. Everyone we saw was crying, every driver at every traffic stop. Men carrying tool bags were crying, boston cops were crying, boston was filled with people crying who had left work early to cry with their families and to watch the kennedy families ordeal unfold on tv. We watched bobby holding his brothers widows and when she arrived in washington still wearing her pink bloodstained clothes. We watched them holding her hand at arlington cemetery. Nothing could ever happen in this world to make us get those images which were only four years old in 1967. When bobbys audiences started chanting run bobby, run. Bobby had a movie star smile but when he smiled his audiences believe they were seeing a grieving man who was somehow Strong Enough to smile through his pain. Bobby was the only politician whose smile could make peoples eyes tear and with those tears in his eyes when they looked up at Robert Francis kennedy, they were always seeing John Fitzgerald kennedy. For them, justice demanded that rfk take jfks seat behind the desk in the oval office. History demanded it. No other politician in our history ever had such an advantage. Or such a burden. Theres the part of this book where we go into great detail about the decision that bobby was going through. How to decide this. Its fascinating who was in favor and who was against it. His wife ethel was in favor of it, Jackie Kennedy was in favor of it. Although jackie, when he finally did decide to do it did privately tell someone that she believed this would end for bobby the same way it ended for jackie. The assassination cloud was in bobbys head all the time. As he was trying to make this decision. And also there was just a tactic. There was just, this has never been done before, this is crazy, i cant win and no one was sharper about that. Jean mccarthy knew nothing about running for president and they may have enabled him to run for president. Bobby knew too much. Bobby was a realist first, a politician second and a dreamer third. When he heard audiences urging him to run for president he knew it was herein dreamers. Their dream was not so much another kennedy presidency as a restoration of the first kennedy presidency. They wanted to put their shattered dreams back together. Bobby knew what they wanted was maybe even political suicide, running against the incumbent president for the nomination of his own party was madness. Running against Lyndon Johnson, the nomination that he owned was something more than madness. Lyndon johnson and richard nixon, the most ruthless democrats and ruthless republicans feared that dream of a kennedy presidency, as did all the other republican president ial hopefuls and bobby didnt think a dream was enough to run a president ial campaign. Bobby was almost certain that challenging johnson was hopeless but it might be the only way to put pressure on the president to deescalate the vietnam war. The chance, the dream, the war, and antiwar democrats urging him to do it all contrived to get bobby to think about it. It was a rerun of the way he approached running for the senate three years earlier. At first he resisted, then he wavered, then he resisted again, then he wavered again, all the while johnson and nixon and the others believed that bobby held history in his hands. Bobby did not yet realize the 1968 president ial election would be about nothing less than lifeanddeath. In the nuclear age, all president ial elections were by implication at least about lifeanddeath because the commanderinchief had the power to start world war iii in minutes by launching Nuclear Missiles but the 1968 election was going to be about the lifeanddeath of people we knew. In the spring of 1968, my cousin John T Corley junior graduated from west point, then visited us in boston before he shipped up to vietnam. Johnny was the tallest among us, a west point football star. We worried he would be an easy target in vietnam. Johnny wasnt working. You grow up on army bases with his father and was trained for combat and eager to try to rival rival his fathers korean war record which built their home with 26 awards and combat declarations including a recordsetting eight silver stars. My oldest brother michael showed his draft notice which had just arrived in the mail. Michael was worried. He didnt want to go to vietnam. No one we knew wanted to go. But johnny. He wanted a career in the military like his father and combat was part of that. Johnny advised michael the best way to avoid vietnam might be to voluntarily and list before being drafted because then you might get a better choice of assignments. Yang drafted was the fastest route to vietnam. Michael took johnnys advice, enlisted, easy assignments in the army and never left the United States. Johnny arrived in vietnam may 9, 1968. Over the course of that summers letters began to question the wisdom of the mission in vietnam. Johnny earned a silver star in four months. On september 8, 1968 the day he was killed in action. His funeral was the first i attended. Tragedy has many faces but nothing quite like a general crying, eluding his son. It was just another day in the life of america. In 1968. The president ial election good and all that if bobby ran on ending the war in vietnamand one as antiwar democrats were assuring him he could. I was in high school in 1968 and i never heard my brothers and their friends talk about career planning. Only talked about how to deal with the draft in vietnam. It was no career hopes and dreams, life was a shortterm game. Many young men in 1968, it was as if they were prisoners who could only begin to think about life on the outside when they were outside. Their prison was in their pocket, the draft registration card that controlled their lives and block their hopes and dreams. The president ial election could end all that. The president ial election was a matter of life and death for people we knew. That meant this time running forpresident didnt have to be about ego. It meant running for president didnt have to be political calculation. It wasnt about what was best for bobby future, it was about life and death. The death bobby thought about was his own. He worried that announcing his candidacy might tempt an assassin. The new assassin was driven more by madness and logic and maybe getting the second kennedy on his way to the presidency would capture and assassins twisted imagination. He was the only potential candidate who had to worry about a copycat assassin going for another kennedy. And so bobbys thinking about running was modeled. He was leaning against running most of the time and bobby who had been the manager of his campaign could see every detail of what could go wrong with his own but he could not get yet see what the election was going to be about. Life and death. And so bobby held history in his hands for so long that someone who couldnt see what the election was going to be about decided he couldnt wait any longer and grab history out of bobbys hands. Someone know what no one expected to seize the moment until he did. And that decision by Jean Mccarthy was the pebble that started running down the mountain to make an avalanche in american politics that year. Theres much more to say about this, many of the you know much more about it and lived through it and i would love to talk to you and your questions or anything you might want to eliminate about the subject or anything else. Hes a wicked nice guy. You just explained the transformation of bobby several years later to what he hadthen become. I think its the question you hear a lot about bobby. Wasnt he kind of a ruthless and nonliberal guy in the 1950s and how did he get to be this liberal icon by the time hes running for president . The answer is the 1960s. The part about the roy code section of bobbys career, two things to note. It was very brief and he despised roy cohen every moment of it. It was a. Where basically, the kennedys were looking for a way to bobby to fit into washington. Jack was already there as an elected official and bobby found his way into the senate staff and he was working on Joe Mccarthys committee. He really didnt like him, got out of that in less than six months and he went on to do a bunch of other things. What i tracing here is what happened to this country in the 1960s. Bobby kennedy was not the same person in 1968 that he was in 1961 and no one in the country was. There were segregationists, in 1961 who were not degradation it in 1968. When you look at what happened to peoples opinions and their view of the world, Bobby Kennedy was someone who changed i would say an average amount for someone with their eyes open in that period of time. There were people who went through much bigger pendulum swings in their life rather than Bobby Kennedy did and thats something i get into in depth about how the 60s changed everyone. Jean mccarthy and everyone else from the senate except for one senator voted for the gulf of tonkin resolution, that was the resolution Jean Mccarthy then, president johnson then used the wage fullfledged war. Jean mccarthy wanted that boat back a few years later. Jean mccarthy ended up running for president because nick hassan back who had been the hero, the hero of the integration of the university of alabama when he was a deputy you the attorney general, it was nicholas who was standing in the doorway steamrolling over governor George Wallace to integrate that university, a couple years ago hes in undersecretary of state and hes testifying to the Foreign Relations committee where Jean Mccarthy is a member and nick says he believes declarations of war are outmoded. And that the president has all the authority heneeds to wage war in vietnam at any level he wants to and theres Nothing Congress can say about it and that was the moment , that was the statement in the hearing that made Jean Mccarthy walk out of the room too angry to speak about it and ask a question and he said to his chief of staff when he got into the hallway, if i have to run for president , i will to stop what Lyndon Johnson is doing so everyone knows about bobbys resume, its much more vivid in everyones mind so that sort of conservative or moderate, to the liberal democrat, its all sort of questions about what kind of opportunism was that, what was that . It was the kind of experience and enlightenment that people were going through in the 1960s. Before the assassination, summer of 1963, bobby goes to north dakota which jfk lost and had no hope of winning. There was no conceivable political benefit for Bobby Kennedy to go to north dakota for anything. And he went there, to address the convention of indian tribes. That were meeting in north dakota. And he delivers a speech to them in north dakota that is a breathtaking piece because if you read it, and if you stood up out at Standing Rock at the reservation where i was last summer during the demonstration and if you read bobbys each , every word of it would be relevant to what they were doing there that day. And he actually quoted chief joseph who gave a speech in 1877 about his what chief josephs hopes for the way the United States, what everyone here would be able to live together as one tribe under one son and all that. So theres much in his evolution in here that i think clarifies that question which i think is always the central biographical question about bobby and sorry that answer was so long. Im intrigued by vijays decision not to run and i think the conventional wisdom of the time was he read the handwriting on the wall and backed out. He was only 60 years old so im only wondering whether you were able to nail down what his ultimate plan really was. Do you expect if he had run, he never would have lived through his second term but i dont even think he filed in New Hampshire, in fact. I think he won in our rights in or he had some surrogate run in his place. In those days, incumbent president s didnt file anywhere because no one was going to challenge them though it didnt matter. All the primary action was on the republican side, you could enjoy it. Lbj used to say he had his resignation in his pocket all the time and he was kind of a quitter. He actually was. There were times he was ready to give up on certain things early in his career including the Senate Campaign and it was lady bird who was the strength that kept him in it. He dropped out because bobby got in. He lived in fear of Bobby Kennedy. I dont use that word likely. Theres very rare for one politician to take the other. They each said enough that you can safely say they each hated each other. But lyndon lived in complete fear of bobby and bobby never lived in fear. So he saw what mccarthy did in New Hampshire, it shocked him and lyndon understood better than anybody what that weaknessmeant. Bobby jumps in and he simply could not see how he could successfully campaign against bobby and Jack Newfield had a brilliant theory at the time and Jack Newfield was a Village Voice columnist and he said to bobby privately, he was the only one who said i think if you get in, johnson will drop out and this would be a reference to people of a certain age. He said i think lbj is sonny liston. Sonny liston was the most fearsome heavyweight champion of all time until he simply sat on the stool at the end of around and refused to go back into the ring against caches clay who after winning the championship changed his name to mohammed ali who he said hes going to quit and jack neufeld was completely right. Anybody else . Is there any lines between the corker decision and lbj decision . Not really. The question was can you draw any comparison between senator jeff flake and senator bob corkers decisions not to run for the senate for reelection this year. Having worked in the senate there is one decision that i always understand and that the decision not to run for reelection. If the decision to run for reelection youve got to explain to me. If youre a junior senator like jeff flake. Once youve got a chairmanship, youve got a reason to go to work but before you have that, i could spend most of my time describing the powerlessness of the job. Once you throw in all this crazy static frustration that surrounds the lives of the republican senator, that job is just not worth what you think it is. The guys who were running for reelection were the ones who have to explain something to me, i dont get that. I was in graduate school at the university of chicago. In 1968. So in the thick of much of this stuff, i was thinking 1968 from the for many of us, i did say its kind of like having a sword too. You know that it hurts a lot but somehow you stay away from it. And i wonder if you would comment some on the violence. I dont know, a lot of the , some of the weatherman were in graduate school with me and i dont know that they really got going and 68 but that was another bit. And i mean, i was very sympathetic with the demonstrators at the Democratic Convention. Ive lived in chicago long enough to know that they didnt go but i wonder, did , what do you see as the effects of the violence, the protests . I tend to see them more positive but they also turned a lot of people off. The commission was convened to study the riots at the Democratic Convention in chicago and it was a Bipartisan Commission of the kinds of people in those days for always on those commissions and they reached a clear conclusion. They called it a police riot. They said that yes, the protesters were out there and they moved in such restrictive spaces that they were supposed to move into but all the reaction by the Chicago Police was overreaction. They were beating people hitting in restaurants. Eating people inside of the doorways of hotels. They were beating people who were legally assembled on sidewalks. They were beating delegates trying to walk back to their hotels. They were completely out of control and that was documented to the point where its jan argument. The violence was something that many of the protesters wanted to see because they wanted this violence to be able to teach a lesson to america about the way this country really was. They perceived the country as a police state and they believed this kind of imagery would help deliver that message. Most people there were the victims of that rioting did not think that. Most of them were clean for gene kids who were not violent in the least. Mccarthy himself was horrified, he felt guilty. He felt the lord these kids to New Hampshire. They all shaved their hair and beards and they got clean and now they were getting beaten horribly on the streets of chicago because of him. He felt it very personally. He opened up the Mccarthy Hotel rooms in the hilton that night to basically use for a First Aid Center and walked around it himself as if a general visiting the wounded troops in the middle of a battle. For he was up in his tweet waiting to see his nomination moment where he goes over the top and the networks cut from the nomination process to the violence in the streets so humphrey never got that moment on tv and just before that happened, just before it happened, the people in the humphrey suite, the world war ii veterans, there was a smell they recognize coming through the ventilation. They were smelling teargas in the humphrey suite. That was the closest the humphrey world came to what was happening on the streets and the next day, mccarthy never addressed the convention, never went to the Convention Hall but the next day he went out into grant park where all the wounded demonstrators were and he addressed them as what he called the government of the people in exile. Since you brought it up, myother question was going to be, im sorry. When Bobby Kennedy declared, it was kind of unfair. At that point, as a kid when i was watching it it looks to me when Bobby Kennedy jumped in and at the same time i had this romanticism about the kennedys so i was torn about who to cheer for. Now i know there was a lot more to it than that. Jean mccarthy wanted Bobby Kennedy to run instead of him and al bornstein was trying to get any democrats to be the candidate to dump johnson and they go to Bobby Kennedy. You think about it and he say no. They would go to Jean Mccarthy, he would say no right away and jean would say youd ask George Mcgovern. Mcgovern would say you should ask Jean Mccarthy. This went on for months so bobby was much more active in the brewing of what this campaign became then i realized. It wasnt a decision made immediately upon seeing the returns in New Hampshire. I wanted to get your opinion on a current event with judge roy moore. Im wondering if you think he will win if he stays in the race and also, whats your reaction to what steve bannon said in reaction to the situation that the media, specifically the Washington Post is the opposition party. This is an example of why they are the opposition party. If steve bannon said it, it must be right. We will have to take his word for it. As it stands tonight is one of those things that fastmoving but theres kind of a flash pool thats out in alabama tonight after 24 hours of this that shows the two candidates tied now so thats a pretty big drop for roy moore. I dont have any predictions for things that are still kind of hot live news events. I dont know whats going to happen next. Ive never before predicted the outcome of an election in alabama. Ive never thought about it. And heres how much i know about it. When i was serving in the senate, both the senators from alabama were democrats so what do i know about the current life in alabama . I asked the question because they cant take his name off the ballot. You can do the writing and thats how Lisa Mccluskey held on to her seat in alabama so writeins work. Ive discovered in recent researching this book lbj one as a writein candidate because they didnt bother to put him on the ballot, there wasnt supposed to be a contest. Thank you. Thanks, im not going to try to abbreviate but i want to try to get comments on an analogy between the political divide in 1968 and the political divide today. I was the previous speaker, i was a graduate student in 1968 election with a low draft number so military policy and Foreign Policy were important to me for personal reasons as well as philosophical reasons and but today, things are different cause we dont have a lottery, we dont have adraft. Yet we do have a divide and we have a divide between part of the population that is in some sense vulnerable or economic reasons vulnerable to sort of the risk of military Service Versus maybe elites who are not quite so vulnerable. So is there, am i trying to make too much of the importance of military and Foreign Policy because of americans involvement not only in the younger part of the electorate but their parents and so forth . What, can you comment on what things were like then compared to now . Thats a great question. Every kid in high school is a Foreign Policy expert. And those were the days when a High School Student like me could think that he was smarter than the president of the United States and smarter than the secretary of state can be right. And boy, it was an amazing time. And it was because of the way the vietnam war was fought. The order of magnitude of the vietnam war, we haventseen anything like it since. I want to glance at the numbers. 1968 alone , 16,000 589 military funerals in this country. My cousin johnny was just one of them. Eckstein thousand 589 in one year. Iraq, the entire 16 years there, 4497. Afghanistan, the entire 16 or 17 years, 386 so the total combined 21st century war dead in the United States in afghanistan, its less than a half. Less than half of 1968 of one year. So that scale changes everything and of course you can only get those vietnam numbers with the draft as you were just talking about. So every 18yearold got that draft card and he immediately became a Foreign Policy expert, immediately had an opinion about most of it and most of us had an opinion before that time because everyone was threatened. Your boyfriend was threatened, that meant you were threatened. If yourbrother was threatened, that meant you were threatened. Your nephew was threatened, your grandson, that meant you were threatened. Women were not immune from this. You know, so every family was threatened by this. You had dear friends who were threatened by this and it determined the way we thought about not just our politics and policy but our lives. And i wasnt intending to do this but i want to read you a passage of this book that is relevant. And since you know who won, i will be giving anything away. Im going to read you what is actually the last couple of pages of the book. Its the epilogue, not giving away any plot here. None. Its all going to be a surprise. And one of the things i get to in the epilogue is this question of what if. What if bobby didnt run, if jean didnt run. What Kennedy Kennedy accepted Jean Mccarthys offer to give him all of his delegates in chicago and tried to get the nomination for teddy kennedy, the secret offer of the secret plan that was alive for almost 24 hours before it collapsed. What that had happened . What if Bobby Kennedy had left the stage on the other side, the side he was supposed to leave on instead of the side toward the kitchen. I want to read you this part because it touches on this question. That is what it all is what it Eugene Mccarthy had not run . What necklace cat had not provoked senator mccarthy with his testimony about the president power to wage war in Southeast Asia without a declaration of war, what about lowenstein who had not urged mccarthy to run . Jean mccarthy had not run, Bobby Kennedy would not have run and would not have been assassinated on the night of the california primary. President johnson would have run for reelection, Election Night when you bend down to johnson versus nixon, no matter what the outcome, Bobby Kennedy surely would have run for president as the antiwar candidate in 1972. And then, but Jean Mccarthy did run. He made the bravest decision of any candidate in 1968, the decision that changed his party, changed the campaign, changed the Antiwar Movement into an important faction of the Democratic Party and changed the course of history. The most important thing mccarthy did in 1968 was save lives. We have no idea when the vietnam war would have ended if Jean Mccarthy hadnt made the ending of the war a president ial Campaign Issue in 1968. The war ended seven years after mccarthy ran. Its the first antiwar president ial candidate did not run until 1972 with the war had ended seven years later . In 1979 . We dont know. The Peace Movement one. The Peace Movement drove us forces out of vietnam, not the north the enemys army. American politics responded slowly to protest. Richard nixon and Henry Kissinger companion complain for the rest of their lives they were not able to achieve peace with honor in vietnam because congressional support for the war kept dropping. That is a complaint about democracy. Or and more members of congress turned against the war because the plate Peace Movement, their voters forced them to turn against the war. The Nixon Ford Administration not have declared an end to the war in 1975 if the Peace Movement had forced them to. The last man to die for a mistake would not have been killed in vietnam april 29, 1975. When that man have been killed in 1976 . 77 . 78 . 79 . How many more would have died. The millions of men and women who were active in the Peace Movement save lives by forcing the war to end sooner than it would have if they hadnt taken to the streets in protest, something most of them had never done before. Martin luther king jr. Saved lives by raising his voice against the war, Bobby Kennedy saved lives by adding his antiwar voice to the growing chorus when it was still apolitical risky choice. Our lowenstein, hayden, john kerry and other leaders of the antiwar Fate Movement data lives. Jeans wife Abigail Mccarthy and their daughter mary saved lives. There are thousands of americans who owe their lives to people who forced the United States to get out of vietnam on april 30, 1975. I received a draft notice in december 1972. I was in college. Twoweeks later i had to report for my physical exam and army facility. The place was filled with young men standing in line for their physicals. Some had doctors letters they hoped would disqualify them. Others were going to pretend to be gay or mentally ill to get disqualified. I passed the physical and went home to wait for my induction notice to arrive in the mail telling me when to report for duty. Then, about a week before my induction notice was supposed to arrive, president nixon ended the draft on january 27, 1973. If Jean Mccarthy had not run for president in 1968, the draft would not have ended in 1973. None of the young men i saw at the Induction Center that day were killed in vietnam because the political pressure of the Antiwar Movement forced nixon to end the draft. Many of the young men i saw at the Induction Center went on to have children and grandchildren who dont know they owe their lives to the man who stopped the draft and the war. There are thousands of families living in vietnam today who wouldnt be there if the war had continued for another year or two. Or three. The last word about Jean Mccarthy should always be that no one did more to stop the killing in vietnam than senator Eugene Mccarthy. If i have to run for president to do it, im going to do it. Senator Eugene Mccarthy, august 17, 1967. [applause] this question is about Jean Mccarthy and his counterpart Ernie Sanders who you pointed out is our version. I was one of those people who went door to door for Jean Mccarthy and like young people today whove gone doortodoor for Bernie Sanders and hes also opened up the protest and the possibility for the future for young people and we see what happens in virginia as a result of the womens mart and as a result of what bernie did so in the same way, you have so much accolades for Jean Mccarthy, my question is why doesnt msnbc and other mainstream news stations cover the alternative to the establishment point of view . Virginia took everybody by surprise and these were all firsttime candidates who were inspiredby this new wave. So thats where i hoped for when i listen to the news and we love your show but i would like to hear that other voice coming in. Is the other voice bernie . It is bernie, i love to hear bernie and i also want to hear about county elections, i dont want to hear about the two candidates for governor or senator or whatever, theres a lot of other stuff going on we never hear about. So the Party Establishment as this book shows is always the last to know when something new and important is happening in a party. That was true in the Democratic Party in 1968, true in the Democratic Party this time around, drew in the Republican Party this time around. No one sought from coming. So the establishment of the party is always going to behave that way, nothing new about that. They will be behaving that way 20 years from now. They will be the last to recognize any new and important phenomenon. As to exactly where we point the cameras and network television, thats such a complicated question. Im going to leave you with this one note about how much bernie coverage at msnbc. As far as i know, we did a reasonable and fair amount of sharing that coverage between the clintons and Sanders Campaign but Bernie Sanders to this day has never once accepted an invitation to come on my show though if youd like to see him there, im not the person to ask about that. I dont know if its the 10 pm thing. When im his age, im not going to be doing this at 10 pm, i guarantee you. At the same time, lori clinton has never accepted an invitation to appear on ms nbc at 10 pm but that didnt stop twitter from every night during the campaign accusing me in equal amounts of being completely pro bernie and hating hillary and completely pro hillary. There was no conceivable way for me to cover that and get any other reviews. Theres one more question. Thank you for coming, i was wondering in 1968 and through the vietnam war, the American People and generation lost faith in the institutions of government and now this generation of americans also have no faith and that was even before trial. So how do people build trust in institutions that want to strip the rights away from transgender people and people of color, from people that part white men that control everything in the government . How will people tell us that trust is restored . Because i was a High School Kid in 1968 and smarter than the president and secretary of state, i have never once ever used the word trust in relation to this government. Its not a concept i believe government is worthy of. Its not a concept that one should ever apply to government or the people that run it. They certainly didnt trust government and they didnt trust the people who were going to end up in it. Thats why they put every check and balancethey can think of everywhere they could think of it. So we have a government that has to prove itself to us every day. There was a kind of trust in government prior to say 1966. The first draft earnings i think were 64 or 65 and by the way, it was not a crime to burn your draft card. Because no one in the government had ever thought anyone would ever do that so they had to write it as a crime in 1965 for which you could get two years or six years and all that but it was a crime if you didnt have your draft card on your person. You had to have it on your person at all times so thats when the First Institution to collapse was the Defense Department. By 1968, the trust and there was trust in the Defense Department and military collapse completely and the kind of worship of the generals ofthe Trump White House want was a laughable concept in 1963. Generals were being burned in effigy. We knew all their names. We believed they were all incompetent. None of us knew anything about the military and it turns out we were allwrong. So i dont think , i worked in the senate. I dont think you should trust the senate or senators. I think its nice if you dont, if you dont insult them and say nasty things but i would say thats true of everyone you see on the bus. You just dont do it. But trust is the biggest mistake i think you can make with government. Take them earn it, thats why we have elections as frequently as we do. The press doesnt trust government and thats the best thing about the press. The press should not trust government, not trust the people who populated. We have to live with it and the Supreme Court issued an opinion, we have to live with it. You dont have to respect it, we dont have to trust it. Theyve been horribly wrong in the past and they will be horribly wrong in the future. So i think this notion of trusting government is a kind of fantasy. That, by the way, when i say fantasy, its everywhere, all across the media. Everything im saying is a general heresy in the american media. You will hear that all the time, what happened is trust in government as though its some wonderful concept thats been lost along the line. People trusted the government lets say in 1968 when there was no such thing as a Campaign Finance law, none, zero. You can take bags of cash, that was legal, is that the government you want to trust . So its a romantic notion about us being able to relinquish all the energy it takes to Police Government as citizens and just say, now im trusted. Dont do that. [applause] books are available at the desk if you would like them signed, lineup to the right of the table. Please help by folding up your chairs, thank you. [inaudible conversation] tonight on after words, appellate judge john newman looks back at his 30 year judicial career. Hes interviewed by connecticut democratic editor richard blumenthal. As a judge of 35 years, having gone from that active life of making decisions and going to court and advocating to judges, was that a difficult transition for you and did you ever miss the life of advocacy . It wasnt difficult. It has been. Ive known people who became judges and so disliked the decisionmaking process that they left. I was an advocate, i was glad to be an advocate. I found the decisionmaking prime process while it was difficult and enormously challenging and enormously satisfying. While i like the attorney ive got to say i like the judge because theopportunity to resolvedisputes , large and small, they all matter to somebody. All of them have large public significance and thats a very satisfying role. Watch after words at cspan2. Visions and values, offering a Clear Pathway away from my taxes, a chance to contribute to the greater world out there and still retain my families love. If mario cuomo could do it, face a set of different challenges like not speaking english until he was eight years old, so could i. How then that i tell mario cuomo that a story would appear in the press the next day linking my brother , our name to john gotti . How do i talk about organized crime in my family with the one italianamerican and elected official who personified the complete opposite . I pictured myself on the 57th floor in the press Conference Room at the World Trade Center tower number two, telling reporters any notion of material cuomo having mob connections was bullshit. But the mob was in my family and the inside word about cuomo was that he was unreachable. In my Imaginary Press Conference i resigned and as an eyewitness condemned the mob rumors. Instead i condemned myself for not suspecting mario cuomo from our family and for being unable to resist the pull to work for him in the first place. Looking at my work for cuomo as tenant for the sins of my brother and the monsters who marred our lives, i would do good through Public Service. I would clean up the family name. I got up and paced around my office. Kindly i sat down, wrote out a script i would read to the government. Governor, i have some very unpleasant news which i feel obligated to share with you. My brother spent three months in prison for tax evasion today. From federal court in uniondale. Judge in his decision also expressed the belief my brother had some association with organized crime. Two reporters were present, oneof whom i knew. I anticipate there will be a story in tomorrows paper but i dont want you to learn of this secondhand. I read over my little speech, hands trembling. There was no escaping now. No need for rationalization. I could not pretend that everything would be as it was. The phone on my desk rang. It was the governor. I traced the script in front of me, clinging to it like a life preserver. Hello, governor,i said. Whats going on steve, mario cuomo said as he usually did. I read my script word for word. The governor was silent as i read. I finished, closed my eyes and waited for mario cuomos response. My heart pounded. This is mario cuomo. I dont see how it should affect you, he said without hesitation. I certainly feel for you, but i dont see how it affects you. You are a superb public official and i dont think it should have any effect on you. Stunned, i think mario cuomo. I looked at the photo on my office wall, a large framed color photograph of the World Trade Center. Selfcontained world where i had stayed each day for 12 to 14 hours, a world of Public Service and doing good with a brilliant italianamerican of the highest integrity, a world of my own peeled off from my family which no one couldtake away from me. Watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Were very excited to have you at the barnes noble event series. Featuring John Hope Bryant and his latest bestseller, the memo five rules for your economic liberation. We are very excited to have you with us today and we also want to thank barnes noble for allowing us to