Transcripts For CSPAN2 Books By Hoover Institution Fellows 20240712

Ferguson, former george w. Bush Administration Justice from an official john you and awardwinning author shall be steel it up first, here is a portion of a 2013 interview with George Scholz, secretary of state during the reagan administration. He talked about his book, issues on my mind. And issues on my mind you right when it comes to terrorism we in this country must think hard about the moral stakes involved if we truly believe in our Democratic Values and our way of life, we must be willing to defend them. Passive measures are unlikely to suffice and means a more active defense and deterrence must be considered and given the necessary political support. Well, you say if you have a Law Enforcement approach, you say, okay, let a terrorist act happen and then we find out who did it and then we try them in a u. S. Court and if we make them guilty with their endless appeals they go to jail. Well, what does that accomplish . A certain deterrent but in the meantime the terrorist act has taken place and a terrorist act like 911 can kill a lot of people. If you know something is coming at you why not stop it from happening . In other words, prevention and i think when i first said that in 1984 it was very controversial but after 911 people have said of course, we should be trying to stop that from happening. So i think this doctrine of trying to prevent things is very important and it has become common and we do it a great deal in this country and i think there have been lots of terrorists acts that cannot happen because we found out about them through intelligence and prevented them. Were talking with former secretary of state, secretary of labor, former secretary of the treasury George Scholz about his new book, issues on my mind. Mr. Secretary, what was your favorite job you ever had . Use a job but job implies something that you have to do in order to get money. If you say that i never had a job in my life. Ive always done things that i have found rewarding and interesting and if i want up doing something that wasnt like that i would find Something Else to do. But in government it is a great privilege and opportunity to serve and i had a succession of jobs and all of them had their tough moments but all of them were rewording starting with my two and half years overseas in the United States marine corps in world war ii. There i was fighting for my country and in the end we were victorious and i did not have much to do with it but i was one person out there. I served in the Eisenhower Administration as his council of economic advisors and it was a great privilege and i remember going down my office was in this Big Office Building right next to the white house and used to be called the old state building and anyway, i had an office with a window that looked out on the south lawn of the white house and i remember my father who died not too long after that but he came in i took him to my office and he saw this view and he said son, you have arrived. [laughter] so, it was great to work there and when you are working in the white house complex you have a view of the whole government and i learned a lot about how you put the statistics together and we talk about all the time so that was a great experience. But when i was secretary of labor i had, i knew the subject matter very well and i knew the department well because i had done some things in both the kennedy and johnson administrations and it gave me that exposure but i did not know anything about washington and politics and the press and all of that. So, i had a good base of knowledge from which to learn about these things and i was fortunate in persuading amand name joe loftus to come and be the press person and show had worked the New York Times for, i dont know, decades and he was the premier labor reporter anywhere and he was really good and everybody read his stories. He really knew his subject. He said he would sign on but he had conditions. I said okay joe, what are your conditions and he said well, first of all, if i will be the spokesman i have to know what is going on and i had to be able to look and i dont want to be blindsided. If i am blind sided than i am over. I said of course, go anywhere you want. Anyone would be glad to have you there. What else . He said dont lie. I said come on joe, i dont lie but he said you would be surprised what happens to people. They come down here, get under pressure and they dont lie but they mislead and misleading as bad as a line. So you got to be straight and i said okay, ill be straight. But what else and he said we will never have a press conference unless you have news and i said well, dont reporters like to schmooze around and he said look, you dont understand. Reporters are guys were trying to make a living in the way you make a living is you get a new story with your name on it and he gets on the front page of your paper and you call a News Conference and they reporter thanks this is my story and he comes and you dont have any news what will he do, start asking questions to try to make you Say Something stupid and that is the news. So he had a whole bunch of things like that that i call loftus law. Then i learned a lot about the press from joe. While sometimes people write things you dont like on the whole if you have a constructive attitude and you help them get the facts straight you will be much better off. Then i had a guy named bryce harlow in the white house who was the political counselor and congressional relations guy. He took me under his wing to a certain extent and he had rules and he said never make a promise unless you can deliver on it. If it turns out its really hard to deliver, try all the harder. People only deal with you if they trust you and they trust you if you do what you say you will do. And his word was trust is the claim of the realm. Trust is the coin of the realm. I always try to remember that. But in the Labor Department i had some my first big battle in the congress and i learned something about that so it was a great learning thing. Then i went from there to be director of budget and there you have the whole government in front of you. So, that was great and then i became secretary of the treasury that was a time when we were redid the International Monetary system so i had lots of dealings with people all over the world and i learned a lot about how to do something internationally so that was great experience for me, it was fun and i enjoyed the people. Some are still good friends today. But of course when i was secretary of state the tectonic plates of the world changed and when Ronald Reagan and i took office the cold war was as cold as it could get and when we left it was all over so that was a huge thing to be involved in and watch unfold. Mr. Secretary, in your book issues on my mind you got some rules for leadership in a couple of those you have already expounded on, the harlow rule and the joe loftus rule but your first rule is to be a participant. Oh yeah, well, that is what democracy is all about. Early on when i was working in the primaries Ronald Reagan gave me a tie and on the tie it says democracy is not a spectator sport. So be a part of it. Be a part of the politics and will be willing to serve and be a participant. Rule number five. Competence is the name of the game in leadership. It is a great start to be competent. If you are not competent you will get in big trouble. I had a tough experience. I told you when i went to wash and terry as secretary i was innocent and politics and i had a bunch of political appointees slots to fill and i realize that you are trying to work with a diverse constituency so i said i need the best management guy in this industrial, Labor Relations field there is an everyone told me it was a guy named jim hutchins and i talked to him and we got to have a real labor guy, not a lawyer who advises but somebody who negotiates and contracts and stands for election and real union guy. We found a guy named hilton what and he knew his manpower training. We got that. We got to get somebody who worked in the area of how to deal with discrimination in the workplace and so a lawyer who knows the labor market and you get a lot of these people lined up and president elect nixon thought it would show progress in his administration so we thought why dont you bring them to the pure hotel which was no nods and then we can have a meeting and introduce him to the press so we have a meeting and we go down to the press and night introduce jim hudson and they asked him all kinds of questions and it was pretty obvious that jim hudson was a real pro and he knew what he was doing and some guy in the back holds his hand up and says mr. Hutchins are you a democrat or a republican and in my innocence i never even asked and he says im a democrat and so the next week was ernie weber who was dazzling and he just was same guy also his hand up and says im a democrat and it went like that in the last guy was our nominee to be head of the bureau of labor statistics and he was a statistician and arthur burns who is very close to president nixon was something he wanted and i wanted so i thought finally weve got a republican. The sink i asked him the question if he stands there like a cow chewing his good and finally says well, i guess you have to say im an independent but anyway i get back in my hotel room in the phone is ringing off the hook and all durable goods on the Senate Labor Committee are saying dont you know there was an election and i said look, i cleared these names in the white house and with the ranking republican and he was not their favorite republican but anyway i was getting credit because all my guys did terrific and they were competent people and even some of the people who objected called me to say we like your guys. Tim had skin was secretary of the labor and later became our ambassador to japan and ernie became the first [inaudible] at mn ob and so on. If i ruled all these people out because they were registered democrats i would not have had the competence and i am not saying i should have asked the question and done something about it but anyway, if you have competent people around you you will do much better than if you dont. Your first job is to form your team and get people who are competent in those slots. George scholz was one of several Hoover Institution authors be interviewed in 2013. Can find them all on website booktv. Org. Up next, another former secretary of state and soon to be director of the Hoover Institution condoleezza rice. In this portion of the program from the Reagan Library 2017 she talks about her book democracy, stories from the long road to freedom. When i think about the democracy it is mysterious thing that people are willing to trust these abstractions constitutions, rule of law and willing to go to the polls and elect people to represent them rather than going into the streets or rather than binding them to clan they trust constitutions and rule of law and that is a very mysterious process and i think as a kid and as a child growing up in birmingham, alabama i was perhaps one who very early on but something more mysterious and i thought that in segregated birmingham alabama you cannot go to Movie Theater or to a restaurant if you were a black person and where you were most certainly a secondclass citizen i saw black citizens still absolutely devoted to the institutions of american democracy and i have one incident in the book that encapsulates it for me and i was six ish years old and my uncle alto had my brothers brother picked me up from school and it was election day and there were long lines of black people waiting to vote and i said to my uncle well, this must mean that man wallace, George Wallace cant win and i knew in my own six yearold weight that we probably didnt want him to win. So my uncle said oh no, he said we are minorities so he will win and i looked at my uncle and said but then why do they father and my uncle said because they know one day that vote will matter. As i went around the world as secretary of state and saw a long lines of liberians or afghans or iraqis in south africa and latin america and people voting sometimes for the first time ive said one day that vote will matter and we are blessed with this extraordinary gift of democracy and americans in particular were blessed with Founding Fathers who understood and institutional design that would protect our liberties and our right to say what we think to worship as you please and to be free from the secret police at night and to have the dignities that, with having those who will govern you and ask for your consent but if we were blessed with dad and we believe we were endowed by our creator with those rights it cant be true for us and not for them. One of the marvelous legacies of the United States of america and the building in which we sit in the library in which we sit on and the most marvelous legacies of Ronald Reagan was that he never forgot our obligation to speak for the voiceless and he never forgot our allegation to do the right thing in supporting those who just wanted the simple freedoms that we had and he delivered because he believed that the United States of america is an idea and it is an idea that is universal and so that is why i wanted to write this book. [applause] when you are secretary of state you are in a position to rule the worlds opinion of the United States and its actions better than any other american i am sure and i know you are not in office now but you have just over 100 days since we have had the Trump Administration in power and i wonder if you were able to speak to or has there been any change in your mind as to how americans are viewed as we transition from president obama to President Trump . I was in europe not too long after the election and the first thing i said to all my friends was to just settle down. The United States of america is engaging a little bit of a democratic experiment. We have just elected somebody who has never been in governments before and never even sniffed the government before and that president is going to take some time and its a bit of a learning curve but the one thing you can trust is america has institutions that are absolutely firm in absolutely concrete and will hold america in check. If you look at the president s i think he is getting use to the fact that actually it is not as easy as it looks in their and that the american presidency is not just one person but an institution and a constrained institution with the Founding Fathers were very, very terrified of executive power. They were leaving a king and did not want to create a another one. They created a congress to help as a separate and equal branch of government and in fact, it is article one of the constitution as the cars will constantly remind you if you are in the executive branch. And today that congress is made of 545 people and they all think they should be president of the United States. He has courts which he learned will challenge the president and he has governors, 50 of them, half of whom think they should be president of the United States and they have legislators and by the way he has the press as well and Civil Society and americans who are ungovernable. And so, the job of getting to be president is one thing and once you are there it is quite another. The learning curve, i think has been a steep but i think we have seen something that really the world likes and what they see in america. I think the decision to strike the Syrian Air Base after the chemical weapon attack by the a shod regime was an important corrective that we had laid out a red, five years ago and it has been crossed and we have done nothing. That eroded american credibility. In that single strike the administration said, this far and no further. There are just some things that are intolerable. I thought Something Else to in the way this president did that. She remember he said i couldnt sit by and watch babies choking on chemical gas. What he was really saying was as president of the United States i cannot sit by and watch the bees choking on chemical gas and so, i think there is still a lot of water to pass under that bridge and we are still learning in many, many ways what it is like to get up and not just react every time but that some very good things have happened and the one thing i will say is as an american, we have only one president at a time. We have to do everything we can to try to make our president successful and that is where i stand. [applause] a very large of our audience here might think that some in the left and the right that its a waste of our tax dollars is why we would put money into foreign aid when our schools need to be rebuilt and our bridges and all the rest of that so coming from a former secretary of state do think theres a foreign aid argument that is, you know, that is really important for the American People to grasp . For me it is a little bit of the same argument i would make for democracy and promoting democracy. You can say lets just Pay Attention to our own affairs. Weve got to build our bridges and rebuild our bridges in pennsylvania so why are we building bridges in afghanistan and you can say our schools are not in great shape so why are we trying to send girls to school in nigeria. You can say all those things. But i think there are two very powerful arguments against that kind of thinking. One is a moral argument and one is a practical argument the moral argument is this, america is an idea. If life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are universal and are good for us than it cant be good for us and not for them. We are at our best when we leave from both power and principle. Now, the principal that no man, woman or child should have to live in the direst of poverty in the worst of circumstances because we are also a compassionate nation but actually believe that as many problems as we have we have been given an extraordinary bounty that if you go to some of the places in the world i dont care how bad it looks in the United States of america that it is much, much worse. How can you turn a blind eye to those children playing in the dirt in haiti . How can you turn a blind eye to an ebola pandemic in liberia . Now, we are just too good to be that way. And so, the moral argument is that, you know, i am christian. I have been told that what you do for the least of my brothers, you do for me and whatever your tradition is or wherever that impulse comes from compassion, america has had it and that is what we need to keep. That is the moral case but now the practical case. Democratic states that can deliver for their own people dont invade their neighbors. They dont track the child soldiers who are ten or 11 years old and they dont traffic in the human sex trades women end up in brothels in Eastern Europe and southeast asia. Governments that try to take care of them. Now, as for foreign assistance, yes, i think there was a time when foreign aid was just given for strategically since the sew e yet union was giving money so we gave money to somebody else or maybe a little bit of guilt about colonialism or whatever. But those days have actually been long gone for a long time. And if you look at some of the foreign aid programs that we now run, the millenium challenge is a very good example of this, the my eleven. Yum challenge says to countries you will receive large foreign aid packages from the United States only if you are governing wisely, if you are fighting corruption, if you are investing in your people. And if you are doing those things, then we will give you foreign aid. Ill give you just one example. They wanted to do the, you know, a lot of farms in the third world are actually quite inefficient because theyre very, very small farms, and one of the problems in combining them is nobody knows what the title is for the land. So they were going to do land titling. But there was a law on the books that women couldnt hold land in their own name. And so the United States of america said to them if you want to see a dime of this foreign assistance, you will change that law. And they changed that law. So when you go abroad and you look at what america has done in aids relief for, in humanitarian crises or in the kinds of programs that we fund all over the world, were the largest donor of food aid, you recognize that the most powerful country in the world also ought to be the most compassionate. And its good for us too, because when you create responsible sovereigns that act in the International System in a way that enhances prosperity and security, were all better off. So foreign aid is a very inexpensive way to keep us from ultimately having to intervene in other more expensive ways including by military force. Stanford universitys Hoover Institution was founded in 919 by Herbert Hoover with the purpose of collecting materials about world war i. It has since grown to nearly 200 fellows who specialize in a range of Public Policy fields. Our look at books one by Hoover Institution fellows continues with economist thomas sowell. He a appeared on cspans Author Interview program book notes in 1990 to discuss his book, preferential policies. I was fortunate in the one sense of having growing up in the south, i was just between Different Levels of education. So i was a top student in my class in north carolina, and then i was immediately the bottom student in my class in harlem. And i was way behind because the educational differences were just that great. It was a painful period of adjustment. There was no racial issue involved. For the first time in few life, i went out on my own when i was 17, and i didnt return to college full time until i was about 25. I went into an environment that was very difficult compared to what i was used to, and once again i was very far behind. Host where were you then . Guest harvard. For the first time in your life, youre a fulltime student in harvard without a high school diploma. [laughter] cspan and studying what . Guest oh, at that stage i was studying general things, but i majored in economics. All my degrees were in economics. Again, an enormous adjustment to make, but there was no one there to tell me all these white professors have it in for you, and thats why youre doing bad. Because the reason why id done badly in harlem and id overcome it, i was doing badly there, i overcame it cspan what happened, how long did you stay at harvard . Guest i graduated. Cspan graduated from harvard, i thought you said earlier you went to howard. Guest i went there for a year and a half. When i went to harvard i was a fulltime student for the first time in ten years. And so that was cspan and what years did you go to harvard . Guest i graduated class of 58. So you can understand how the student would find this plausible. I talked to a black man recently, a lawyer, said he was in law school he was told when he first got there that professor x never hears black students. You know, and he got a b . There was great conner the nation. Its consternation. Its truly criminal, what goes on in terms of manipulating the students to serve all kinds of purposes. Cspan can you give us an idea of the kind of external purposes youre talking about . Guest oh, political purposes. Just a couple days ago i was told by someone from wellesley that theres a Divestment Campaign at wellesley e, demonstrations, the whole thing. Those black girls that do not want to participate in that were threatened with violence. And thats not unique. At stanford the hispanic students, some hispanic students have complained that the hispanic e establishments has threatened them if they dont want to go along with whats being said and done. And they claim that only 15 of the hispanic students at stanford have ever attended a single event which speaks boldly in their name. And so you have this kind of thing going on in these schools across the country. Again, once you let in the students who cannot meet the academic standard, youre going to end up letting in professors, create courses that dont meet the academic standards. Cspan correct me on the names, doug bell . Guest yes. Cspan harvard law school, back man. Guest yes. Cspan threatened the law school if they didnt hire a black woman in hes gone, hes leaving. Guest hes taking, if i understand correctly, hes taking unpaid leave until such time as they hire a woman of color. But hes also said that by black, he does not mean skin color, he means those who are really black, not those who are think white and look black. So what hes really saying is he wants ideological conform few in the people conformity in the people that are hired to fill the positions. Thats not uncommon. I know a back woman, for example, who got a ph. D. , shes had a book published, just got a contract for another book, shes taught at couple of very nice places. She has a devil of a time getting a job teaching at a college. And the reason that she gets shot down, backballed, whatever blackballed, whatever, by people who dont like her ideology. Not only racial lu are, those a law school i learned recently there was a woman who was being considered for a tenured position, and all the men voted for her, and all the women voted against her because she did not follow radical feminism. And so youre getting these ideological tests so so that at the very time theres all this mouthing of the word diversity, there is this extremely narrow ideological conformity thats being enforced. Cspan what are your politics outside of the race issue . How would you describe yourself . Guest i always say that im biased against politics. I havent been a registered member of any Political Party since 1972. And i really am quite disenchanted with politics. Cspan why . Guest i guess mainly just by following what they do and how they do it. Theyre really quite clever as the things they do, but the things they do really dont benefit the public very much. And thats not just race issues, all issues in general. Mans has this change cspan has this changed over the years . Guest if its changed, its been for the worse. I see some hopeful signs. I would like to see term limits. If youre going to allow a member of the house of representatives, for example, to spend four years in washington, i would rather they change that to one fouryear term rather than two twoyear terms because the problem reelection x. As long as they have to raise all that money, theyre going to sell out the Public Interest to get the money. Its really quite simple. You know, for example, an industry like the cigarette industry can contribute money to congress, and congress will appropriate enough money in subsidies to pay them back 1,000 on every dollar. You cant get that kind of return on your investment many places. So theres no signs theyre going to stop doing that, that either their going to stop wanting the money or congress is going to stop giving them money. Cspan looking at the cover of your book, preferential policies, published by morrow. Thomas sowell, our guest. We have about 20 minutes left in our discussion. In history, who are your favorite not politicians, necessarily, but who are your favorite people in history . Guest oh, do you mean historic figures, or do you mean people who i looked up to when i was growing up . Cspan who have you follow over the years, you know, if Winston Churchill types . Guest i think Winston Churchill was the greatest man of the 20th century. And i find it horrifying that most American High School students do not know who cspan what was so great about him . Guest win son alone, i think winston alone, i think if any one man could have been said to have saved western democracy, that one man was Winston Churchill. He saw the enormous dangers that led to world war ii. There might have been 40 Million People that have lost their lives, but even at the 11th hour, it was enough to pull britain through. Had broun not pulled through britain not pulled through, its doubtful the United States would have pulled through x in that case its highly unlikely i would be sitting here aalive. Cspan whos your favorite american president . Guest oh, my thats a tough well, abraham lincoln, i guess. But its a same one has to shame one has to go all the way back to lincoln to find a president that one can admire in a qualified way. I think among the modern people, in different respects i would say fdr, john f. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. Even though domestically they were opposed, they recognized International Danger and saved the life of this country which, without which all the other issues wouldnt matter. Cspan do you have an ideology . If not a Political Party . Guest oh, i suppose, yeah. Im a great believer in maximum freedom. Cspan libertarian . Guest not in the sense in which the American Civil Liberties union is. I dont believe hoodlums should be kept in school because of some strange reading of the constitution. But i think people are to recognize that all people owe their lives to surrounding society. And if they cannot simply demolish it because it is unjust because everything human is always unjust. And what youre going to do to make it better will have to be within that context is so that my tendency to want more freedom for the individual and less i dont want people making decisions who dont pay the price of their decisions. And thats what politics is all about, you dont pay the price. Thats what i wrote in the book, one of the reasons we had a jim crow era in this country was because the politicians didnt pay the price of that. That was enormously costly to the population, but the politicians who put that in didnt pay any cost. They drew their full salaries irrespective of all that. And i want someone who discriminates to have to lose money discriminating because of the examples that i gave in the book. People tend to back off when they start losing big money. Or harlem was an allwhite community, they became a black community, and despite organized efforts to keep blacks out because people were losing money trying to keep it a white community. And i think people in the Civil Rights Era by not trying to promote more free markets because that a makes discrimination the most costly it can be. Cspan one of the most interesting sentences here in the book is about india where you say that they are the most diverse country in the world with 180 different languages and 500 different dialects. Are they more of a melting pot than the United States is . Guest good heavens, no, not in the slightest. Theyre polarized. In fact, i think one of the tragedies is we have organized groups in the United States trying to balkanize the United States to create in the United States the enormous handicaps under which india is laboring, under which many part of Subsaharan Africa are laboring due to all kinds of historical and geographic reasons. And now the United States having escaped all that, having been blessed with one language and a culture other a distance that in europe [inaudible] to moscow, having had that blessing, were now going to, were going down the drain, and were going to go to balkanization. Not being aware, apparently, of what has happened in the history of the balkans or what happens when you have people who speak different languages and different, radically different beliefs trying to be in the same society. Cspan back to your campus, you said the relations on, Race Relations were bad on the campus. If this keeps up, whats going to happen . Oh, its going to be worse and worse. There are already skinheads recruiting on some college campuses, white student unions being formed, there are already harassments of minority students on a scale unseen 2030 years ago. And, of course, then theres the reaction on both sides that escalates because a what you do is give a lot of leverage to the crazy elements in all the different groups. That is, just to give an international example, in israel someone said on the radio, on television because the israelis managed to kill these, what is it, six or seven arabs . That any thought right now of any rapprochement between the arabs and the jews have to be put aside. To youre saying that one man has the leverage to prevent millions of people on both sides if from working out some kind of liveable arrangement. And once you get this racial hype, you put that power into the hands of demagogues and hoodlums to [inaudible] people not to be able to do anything because they are polarized by the relative handful of crazies or whatever. Cspan back to campus again, what is creating the prejudice . Other than the elites that you talk about that have their own and what is it about, among people that creates the differences that they dont get along . Well, the differences have always been there, but they got along before. I mean, blacks and whites were different at harvard when i was there, but you didnt find all the black students huddled together at lunchtime at the end of some table as you do on many campuses today. All the black students i knew had white roommates, and i would say that the ones that i knew were all popular other than me. Thats not the situation today. Cspan so whats causing it . Guest the fact that you do have those little elites that do have their agenda, the fact that black students are forced to come out and do their demonstrations and what not. The fact that you have students there who are tremendously alienated because they suddenly find themselves in the situation where academically all they can do to keep their nose above the water, if they can do that. And then theres someone there to tell them this is all due to power structure. The white students are sick of hearing that. If you cant hack it, thats your problem. Dont give us this junk. Its also, its selfreinforcing. There are some actions that keep feeding each other. Lets say an ugly racial incident happens on the campus of one of the elite columns, invariably we must have a larger quo that of minority students, minority faculty, these sensitivity courses or ethnic courses or what have you, otherwise it wouldnt be necessary to force them. That is not going to make things better, that is going the make them worse. If they get worse, you keep doing that, so its just an upward spiral. I see it leading only to bad things. Cspan what would you do if you were in a college or university . Guest see, youre bringing me in now 20 years later 20 years ago i said, if you do it, this will be the consequence. And i wasnt the only one. And people simply did not want to hear it. So i am very unsympathetic to the administrators. You made this mess, you get out of it. Now, fortunately for me, nobody wants to hear a what i have have so to say, so [inaudible] i think hes associated with the university in some way, come to princeton and. [inaudible] i said, no. No one has ever asked me in all these years to come to a university and do this. I dont think theres the slightest interest at princeton or anywhere else in what i have to say about these matters because the id ogg logs can idealogues dont want me confusing the issue, and the others are afraid of the id e logs. Just to chitchat with people at princeton. To watch the entire book notes interview or other programs with thomas so welshing go to booktv thomas sowell, go to booktv and search his names. Fellows from Stanford Universitys Public Policy think tank, the Hoover Institution. Next, historian Neil Ferguson discusses his authorized biography of former secretary of state Henry Kissinger who is also a fellow at the Hoover Institution. Mr. Ferguson appearedded on booktvs weekly Author Interview program after words in 2015. Host so this is the first of a twobook authorized biography, and in your preface you say that, quote not only has this book been written with Henry Kissingers cooperation, it was written with his suggest. Howld that happen . Guest well, this [inaudible] i suppose authors ought to be nervous of it because it implies that he a had some control over it. But when he suggested this to me,s which is now more than ten yearsing ago, i said, yes, i would be willing to do this, but on condition i have a completely free hand. You have to kind of accept that if you ask me to do this, you give me access to your private papers, i will write what i think is the truth. Finish which was, incidentally, the basis on which id written the previous book on the rothschild family. So he agreed to that. Host oh, good. Guest and i think i wouldnt have taken it on on any other bay us. Host how does it happen . Ty you know him beforehand . Did you know him beforehand in. Host he knew of you . Guest he had read my stuff. We met at a party in london, full disclosure, and we were talking about one of the books that i had win are about the First World War written about the First World War. We were having a conversation about that. So we met on that basis, and i forget exactly when, but sometime after that this subject came up. I think he was attracted to the idea of a scholarly biography being written. I wasnt the first person that had been considered for this job. Look, when he put the question to me, i initially said no, and he then wrote me a very Henry Kissinger letter host a letter or email . Guest it was a letter. Host wow. Guest he didnt do email. And the letter said, what a great shame. Just when id had decided you were the ideal man to do this and just the right to go through 150 boxes of my private papers that had lost. I im afraid just a week or two days was looking at those boxes of papers. When i started looking at this stuff, i decided i should do it. Ive been a bit daunted before because it is an extremely difficult life to write for a whole range of reasons. Its controversial, its just a difficult thing to do. These papers, particularly the early correspondence and dire ily extracts within a few hours i thought, well, i really have to take this on. Host so this is not a man who has been up documented. I mean undocumented. Hes written his own memoirs extensively, even longer than your book. Guest three volumes. Host so why do you think he wanted and hes also shared some information. He spoke with Walter Isakson for his biography. Why do you think he wanted this book written . Guest he is, by training, a historian. And a historian knows that the memoirs are different from the histories, from the biographies. His three volumes, after all, cover mostly his time in government, really next to nothing about the period before 1969. And so there was half of his life, in effect, that he hadnt written about and said very little about walterize act softens book, which is very good, is essentially a journals book based mostly on interviews. And i think the idea was somebody should write a scholarly biography based on the document, on the archival sources because that simply didnt exist. And although there are a whole bunch of books that you can find in library that are thought to be biographies of kissinger, most of them are not really based on terribly much more than hearsay. So i think the argument for a scholarly biography was a compelling one, and as it comes out too, it was very good, are rich. And i was lucky because that whole period really from his earliest days growing up in germany right down to the moment Richard Nixon offer him the job of National Security adviser in late 1968 had largely been neglect by previous writers. Host you are often described as a conservative historian. Do you think he chose you in part for that reason in was the other unnamed person also a conservative historian . Guest yes, he was. I think its more important that im british though because [laughter] i think theres an advantage to being an outsider in writing a, who of american history, oddly enough. One characteristic feature of henry kissingiers life of has been the extraordinary political controversy that can be, dates back to the early 1970s and has ranged on more or less incessantly ever since. And in some ways it is of the generation that came of age during the vietnam war. Host my generation. Guest now, im somebody who can come at this history. I dont have memorabilia from woodstock in my attic host nor do i. [laughter] guest thats important. On the question of conservativism, i think its worthy of maybe adding a footnote because conservative meaning Something Different if you have grown up in the u. K. Is its not republicanism, the u. S. Version, and i am not by any means a republican in my, in my politics now that i live in the United States. Im a conservative in rather the withdraw that Henry Kissinger was a conservative. Im a sort of european conservative. And you often feel like a liberal if youre a european conservative in the United States because things that american conservatives say are so completely jocular to you. But in the same kind of way that kissingers [inaudible] really a european variant, sos mine. And that may be one reason that he thought it would work. Host when you say a european conservative and things that you find shocking, are they in the National Security or realm, or is out social issues . No, its the social issues. Those things not being in the domain of politics that are in the domain of politics in the. National security issues, its often the case that people get confused into thinking there is some kind of straight punch and judy show argument going on about National Security. Ive been critical in recent years of president obama. I was also very critical of his preds sor in the book colossus published in 2004. I was extremely critical of the invasion of iraq and the way that the occupation was handled. So part of the reason for doing this, i suppose, i have been drawn into it by u. S. Policy from the moment i set foot in the x. I probably approached it rather naively thinking that id criticized both republicans and democrats. Of its hard to be in that position. You inevitably are expected to be on one side or the other. But i think on National Security issues and on much else ive proven more independent. Host im not sure what finish theres no question that theres been a convergence since the end of the cold war, and if you look at issues such as bosnia or iraq itself that there were people on the left who saw the humanitarian challenges, there were people on the right who were isolationists, a im not sure what an dependent. Is other than perhaps somebody who chooses it case by case . Host right are, or at least somebody that recognizes there cant be a simple party line on these National Security issues. And somebody who doesnt want to be divided by party line on social and cultural issues. Interestlyingly, i find interestingly, kissinger found himself in the same position. He certainly didnt selfidentify as a lib rat in the 1950s or 1960s harvard. But when he encounters Barry Goldwaters supporters at the 1964 republican convention, he was appalled. And he alwaysed had a very uneasy relationship with the right of the republican party. It may explain why hes a controversial figure. He had enmaines on the left enemies on the. Left, Christopher Hitchens who really attacked him, but he also had enemies on the right, the debates in the 1970s about whether detente with the receive crete union concern. [inaudible] so the book is called the idealist, which is a rather contrarian take on kissinger who was even the most timely description is described as the ultimate realist,s if not a direct descendant of machiavelli. Your choice of words or is not a notion of idealism, its more of a conti notion of ideal. Can you explain what you mean to the people at home . Our notion is, of course, communism, but thats really not the description youre using. Guest i was really struck by the fact that they were critical of the book about the congress, the essay is highly critical. The maestro of 19th century real politic. So i started to think theres something funny here. And then i delved deeper, and three things are really striking. One, his inexperience growing up in the 20s and 4030s and driven to free germany in 1938 made him, not surprisingly, highly critical of appeasement of Foreign Policy, the appeasement of dictators. He appears as a realist in a very interesting essay because they thought they were pursuing a rather narrow, selfinterested approach to Foreign Policy and disregarded the human rights abuses of the dictatorships. Number one, his own experience in the 1930s makes him suspicious of what he saw as the realist appeasers. Number two, he come to harvard and to try and get rid of this rather pushy undergraduate graduate says go away and read underestimating him. Put it into his, often he put it into his senior thesis. He was deeply influenced. Marley in the problem that on the one hand there is free, freedom of choice, but on the other hand he argues that there is some kind of plan for the world, for humanity leading ultimately to perpetual peace. And the central discussion kissinger rejected materialism. He rejected materialist theories of history like marxism and leninism. But also he rejected capitalist materialist theories of the sort that said if our growth rate is higher than their growth rate, then well one the cold war. I think on those three counts, kissinger i americans emerges as a rarity. But i think it made his contribution fundamentally distinctive and made him stand out from the pack of people who thought you could solve the cold war with system analysis or something of that sort. Youre watching booktv on cspan2. And were looking at authors programs with fellows from Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution. A Public Policy think tank founded in 1919 by stanford alumnus, president Herbert Hoover. Up next, john yu who worked at the Justice Department during the george w. Bush administration, spoke at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco in 2012 about his coauthored book taming globalization. So let me just briefly describe the case of med e year v. Texas and explain how that, to me, encapps lates a lot of the issues in taming globalization. Medellin v. Texas is the case of a Mexican National who crossed the border and committed murder, capital murder, and was sentenced to death by the state courts of texas. He was not, however, given his warnings under the Vienna Conventions which require that when an alien is arrested in the United States, he be given warnings that he can seek access to his consulate, that he can get assistance from translators and so on. Texas refused even though it had not provided the warnings required by treaty. The cup of mexico went to the country of mexico said that the United States had violated its treaty obligations. The International Court of justice found against the United States and said, in fact, it issued an order to a halt the execution of mr. Medellin and the others on death row in the same situation. President bush issued an order to the governor of texas i trust he knew the address to put on the letter. President bush issued an order to governor rick perrying asking him effectively ordering him to stop the execution so that the United States could come into compliance with the Vienna Convention and the International Court of justices decision. Texas refused to obey it and actually was sued in the Supreme Court and, ultimately, the u. S. Supreme court refused to stop the execution. Mr. Medellin was executed shortly thereafter. And in that decision, the Supreme Court said that even though the United States had signed the Vienna Convention that required these kinds of warnings, that Congress Still had yet to do something, congress had to act to put it into effect. And until congress did that, the courts were not going to get into the business of enforcing a treaty. Even in the Death Penalty case of someone on death row. And it was that one case, and its very complicated, but that one case summarizes a lot of issues in this book. The first is that globalization, although we use the phrase a lot, has caused a lot of changes in our political and legal system. And when we say globalization, we mean a few things. One is the easy and rapid and cheap movement of goods, capital and people across national borders. So, for example, in the United States millions of aliens cross our borders every year coming in and out of the country. Billions of dollars of goods and Services Also cross our borders. In the last, i think the economic report of the president a few years ago, 30 of american Gross National product is either related to imports or exports. And, of course, billions of dollars move with the press of a button between accounts here and abroad. Globalization also refers to, i think, the ease of communications and the rise of the internet and the creation of new kinds of networks that make it extremely easy and cheap for people to communicate and for things abroad to affect us here at home in a way they didnt use to 50 years ago or even 25 years ago. See, if you look today at the american stock markets, they move up and down in reaction to whats happening in greece whether greece is going to be able to pay back its bonds has a direct and Immediate Impact on, in the same day on the dow jones. Finish thats something that probably wouldnt have happened 30 years ago or 40 years ago, but the speed and quickness and cheapness of communications makes that possible. However, wed be also the first wed be the first to admit that globalization is not an undie luted good. Uncreate diluted good. For example, transnational criminal networks, drug smuggling, pollution crosses state borders, terrorism crosses state borders. In fact, a a lot of these problems crossuse the same channels of commerce and communication to move around the world just as goods, capital and people do. That has sparked, i think in our view, a response which is to try to create regulatory regimes that control these new types of globalization. We call it in the book global governance, but people refer to it as many different things. But the basic idea is that its outside the power of a single nationstate to effectively regulate any of these things anymore. Out used to be within the power of one country to affect most of the goods, services and capital and to control problems like pollution and crime that occur within its borders. But today because of the ease of transportation, because of the ease of communication, because of globalization, it lies outside the power of most nationstates to effectively regulate these new types of problems. To what youve had is the rise, we argue, of a new kind of governance, global governance. It has two features to it. One that International Agreements now try to regulate world wild, that to effect worldwide, that to effectively regulate something, International Law has to have a copy that it didnt used to have. For example, to regulate chemical weapons worldwide, the Chemical Weapons Convention regulates the production, storage and existence of every kind of chemical in the world no matter who pezs possesses it. Even chemicals held by research lab tour, by industry, by private persons fall under the chemical weapons commission. So one thing you see is just broad scope that reaches well into a nationstate in a way that International Law did not before. The second thing is the rise of new kinds of International Institutions or that are neutralling and up dependent from any one independent from any one country. In order to effectively regulate and enforce these new kinds of International Law, the institutions have to be seen as outside the control of any single country. So you have the rise of things like not just the United Nations and the Security Council and the International Court of justice which i just mentioned, but things like the Chemical Weapons Convention, again, has a secretariat or the World Trade Organization has new forms of courts and new forms of regulatory bodies that sit outside the control of any one country but also have, because of that independence, a kind of power that International Institutions didnt have before. It used to be, i think, fair to say that International Institutions were more directly under the control of a few nations or some nations. Now theyre seen as being independent of any nations. So for, just to give an example, if the United States and other countries in the world were ever to reach an agreement about Global Warming, you would have both of these characteristics; a Global Warming treaty to be effect effective would have to reach into Energy Production and use in a country in ways maybe that the federal government today doesnt regulate here at home, even maybe to the, tent of regulating domestic or home energy usage, at the same time, it would have to create an International Institution that would have to decide how much each country was allowed to produce in terms of energy, how much pollution it was allowed to make and also to measure whether people in violation and to issue sanctions. And no one would trust that institution if it was directly under the control of the United States or the European Union of or china. It would lose its legitimacy, and the regime would not function unless you had an independent institution separate from the controlled nationstates. To i dont feel so i dont feel and i dont think we feel these particularly controversial descriptions of whats going on in the world. I think were still in the early stages, but its been accelerating the last few years. And our view is as globalization ties the United States economy tighter to the rest of the world, that youre going to see more and more of these kinds of agreements and institutions. The problem from our view is not that these are done at the international level. The question for us and the question for the book of taming globalization is how does the United States political and legal system respond. Can the United States cooperate with these International Institutions, these new kinds of regimes, and how does it do it. Thats the fundamental tension at the heart of the book. As you can guess maybe in my description, some of the new kinds of regulation and some of the new kinds of institutions are intentioned with the way are in tension with the way that the United States traditionally exercises public power and particularly run into the prerogatives of congress especially over control of domestic law and things like taxation but also the prerogatives of the executive branch and of the judiciary. To give one example, when a treaty regulate ares an issue regular a lates ap issue, this regulates an issue, the treaties are not limited by the same restrictions on behalf of federalism that apply to congressional statutes. So there was a famous case called missouri v. Holland where back in the 1920s it was thought that congress could not regulate the flight not control the flight, could not regulate and protect species of birds for endangered species reasons. The court, the lower court struck down statutes that tried to protect birds. But the United States then entered a treaty with canada called the Migratory Bird treaty and it was implemented by congress where congress did exactly the same thing that the courts had said it could not do under its domestic powers, and in missouri v. Holland the Supreme Court said, yes, the United States could do that, and the federal governments powers could be broader to regulate things domestically that it couldnt do via just a normal congressional statute. Another example would be in the area of accept rawtion of powers. Separation of powers. If the counts play the same role with International Affairs as with domestic affairs, i think the powers of the court will grow. Theyll be called into areas traditionally they havent been involve with. Because International Law and International Regimes and these International Institutions are affecting more and more things that used to be under the control of the National Government or the states, it will, by nature, draw the courts into the kinds of delicate decisions about politics and Foreign Affairs that they used to try to stay out of. We conclude i our look at Hoover Institution fellows with author shelby steele. Mr. Steele was with there to talk about his book shame how americas past sins have polarized our country. I wrestled with the title for a long time on this book. There are many different anemias in the book, and i couldnt find that sort of single thing. Finally are i came upon with my wifes help the word shame. And that word seemed to bring together all the themes that i was trying to work with in the book. Host what was that central theme that you were going for . Guest the idea is that america, arguably the greatest country in all of history, also committed one of the greatest sins, person taut perpetrated that sin over centuries, dehumanized an entire race of people relentlessly, year in and year out, for a very long time. So its a profound evil amidst stunning greatness. And so now that greatness, i think, is what finally delivered us from what we were doing wrong. But on the other hand, it is a shame that we will not have to deal with. And so its maybe were still too close to the 60s when we first acknowledged the shame to understand its importance. But think its one of the most important events in all of american history, certainly. How is a society that believes in freedom, grounded in freedom dealing with having betrayed it in so the book sort of tried to look at different aspects of that irony. Host and in my reading of it, the shame belongs to the 1960s liberal movement, in your view, and its thats whats caused our current political polarization. Guest yes. Thank you. Thats [laughter] host is that a Fair Assessment in. Guest thats e a very Fair Assessment. In the 1960s american liberalism changed and took responsibility for dealing with that shame. And saying, in effect, we are the politics, the ideology that is going to redeem america. Going to bring back american legitimates su e as a democracy. Thats our mission. And liberalism has, i think, dominated american politics for the last 50, 60 years simply because it took propriety over this terrible shame and said we will save america from it. And we will end racism, and we will end sexism, and we will overcome all of those things, and we will the people we hurt, we will have great societies and wars on poverty, and well redeem them and bring them up to par with everyone else. Well correct that, and that will restore our legitimacy as a free society. So host and in your book, the nword is used pretty liberally. Guest uhhuh. Yes, i guess so. Host you say that some people, some groups coopt it. They didnt necessarily wanted to be, but they coopted the word. Guest yes. Host for their own political purposes. Guest yes, yeah. For well, took it over and almost made a romance around it. Sort of ascribe to that word a kind of power and a truth that had never really been there before but did serve their argument. Because much of the argument certainly coming from minorities in america for the last 50 years, since the 60s, has been now you have admitted all that you did, and we are, we now demand in the name of what we suffered. That empowers us, that gives us entitlement to special consideration in American Life now. And so that word was just a part of a theme that contributed to that larger point of view. Power and and victimization. Host why dud you include the why did you include the story of your swim team and your quitting of the swim team in in this book . Guest i included that story talking about quitting the swim team and this story that i was the only black kid on the Swimming Team host captain. Guest i was the captain of the team, and the coach and i were very close really. But in the summer before my senior year, he had a three week sort of Summer Vacation for the entire team, at his mothers home in upper lake michigan. And he never invited me. I was, i was excluded. Not meanly in any way, but the team organized around without me knowing anything about it this wonderful time they were going to have on the lake, and i was never told about it. Well, the implication there is that he collaborated with racism. He was my friend. He was a good coach. We were we liked each other. But he, he wasnt going his mom said no blacks can come and so he honored that and plotted with the parents of the other swimmers and so forth so that did not happen. He was a metaphor in that especially for america. In that sense for america. He knew better. He liked me. I liked him. I babysat for him. And yet he collaborated in a way that was certainly at the very least cruel. But sending me a message that larger america said there was something unacceptable about me. And he, he claimed he was not able to see that, but i think he was. And so i talk about him, and this is the situation of this sort of profound hypocrisy that america is now in. Americas now looking at minorities as my Swimming Coach looked at me. He got mad, he called me every name in the book, and he said i was a middleton and i was all this. I was very calm because i knew he was wrong, and he knew he was wrong. And america now stands before its minorities humble, apologetic, begging for some relief from the stigma of racism. And that is minority power. That is the power minorities have wield in American Life now for 350 years. So that 50 years. So that little incident of quitting the Swimming Team and i did not quit the Swimming Team because of what he excluded me, or i grew up in segregation, i had seen it all the time. I was, you know, id be here all day talking about all of the incidents of segregation i endured. But i knew that he was, he was compromised. And so thats what, thats what the sense it ended up amounting to. Host whatwhat was your pare life like in 1940 chicago in. Guest my parents are two Exceptional People. Im going to actually write about them in the future. They were, my father was black from the south, third grade education, taught himself to read can and write. My mother was upper middle class white from ohio, daughter of a contractor, had a masters degree from the university of chicago and so forth. So they were very on the surface, they were very different, you know . Once you got to know them, you saw that probably it was my father who was better read and spent more time reading than my mother. But they, they for them life was there were Exceptional People in that thaw knew, they had no illusions about the fact that they were going to have to fight for a place in American Life. And they did it. And they did it without ever complaining, without any come come compunction. I grew up at what they call a core baby. I was a core baby. So i marched all through childhood, demonstrated. That was the ethos that i came out of, and they lived their entire lives fighting for civil rights, and they were, they were true. Add admirable people. Host were they wrong . Guest were they host were they wrong . Guest they were not wrong, this were right. And this is, points to something i think important. Finish they were not wrong. In their day this was a deeply, blanketly racist society. I grew up, i couldnt go here, i couldnt go there. I never ate in a restaurant until i was 17 on the Swimming Team. Because you blacks couldnt go in a restaurant. You couldnt get a job this, you know . Segregation was everywhere. They were fighting a real, concrete, una i poll jettic unapologetic enemy in American Society that said, listen, youre going to stay inferior. Youre going to be that way, forget about it. Or, you know, like william faulkner, the great novelist said in a famous essay in the 50s, youre probably right but go slow. Well, you know, obviously he had never heard of patrick henry, give me freedom [laughter] you know, give me freedom or give me death. Well, my parents were give me freedom or give me death. They were not ever apolo jet you can e. They fought to the bitter end. So i grew up seeing all of that, and it certainly had an impact on who i became in the long run. Butbut they were two now man, 50 years later americas a different place. America is not virulently racist. Racism is no longer stopping the dreams and hopes of any black person in American Life. You can do anything you want. You can be the president , you can be a ceo. You can be a dishwasher, you can be anything you choose to be in america today. Does that mean that every white persons going to love you . I dont know and dont care. Whats important is that you have that opportunity. The opportunity is what its all about. So the Civil Rights Movement today is very different than back then. Theyre not fighting against a real racism, a real enemy that is going to stunt their lives with bigotry. Theyre fighting now basically for the rewards, for all of for their manipulating white guilt. Theyre using the story of black victimization to manipulate the Larger Society into entitlements, and we have a generation of black leaders who do nothing but shake down major american corporations. This is not the Civil Rights Movement of my parents. Its not the one i grew up in. Its a very different one. Host whats your connection to Stanford University and the Hoover Institution . Guest i am a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University which is, ive always been very happy about. Its a great, great institution, great people there. A great environment. Colleagues, its. Meant everything to me its meant everything to me and to my work and has facilitated that. So im, im a fan. [laughter]. Ceo of in tca on expanding broadband into rural areas, the challenges small providers face with a coronavirus pandemic. My broadband providers over literally kicking into action immediately and not only by how they continue to operate safely and keep staff safe but they have to spend time thinking about how do i get the school kids who dont have activity online, they were getting calls and demands from providers, from customers who are not yet customers who realized they needed conductivity or they needed higher speeds, most importantly they served a lot of communities that were economically significantly impacted by covid and really had to work through how do you connect people and knew that you would not necessarily get paid for it right away. Shirley bloomfield tonight at eight eastern on the communicators on cspan2. Weeknights this month we are featuring book tv programs of whats available to every weekend on cspan2. Tonight starting at 8 30 p. M. Eastern represented ilhan omar honored journey from somalia as a refugee to becoming one of the first muslim woman elected to the u. S. Congress. Then author heather lindy details her experience with local politics and are hometown of alaska. And senator martha rick sally, the first female ba fighter pilt to fly in combat, she reflects on her career ensures her guiding principles. Enjoy book tv on cspan2. Former First Lady Michelle Obama and 2020 president ial candidate Bernie Sanders addressed the Democratic National convention tonight, live coverage begins at 9 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan, Live Streaming and ondemand as cspan. Org dnc or listen with the free cspan radio app, cspan, your unfiltered view of politics. Up next, a book tv we are going to show some author programs from our archives that focus on the issue of race in america, a couple of the authors you will see include cornell west and abram candy, but we begin with the