Authors, on american politics from different perspectives. Jonathan darman it was a journalist before maybe still is before becoming a book author, he was a correspondent for newsweek and he covered among other Things National president ial campaigns in 2004 and in 2008. Turned hisently has attention to another Political Campaign in the 1960s. Landslide, lbj and Ronald Reagan at the dawn of a new america so he will be talking about that and anything we will be speaking of. On my left is chase under meyer who has been a practitioner of politics. He served in the president ial administrations of Ronald Reagan, george w. Bush, and george w. Bush. When things went right is drawn from his diary of the first years of the first Reagan Administration. Please help me give a hand to our two authors and we will get started. [applause] jonathan, since your book comes chronologically before chases, im going to ask you a question that is kind of a two fold question. Number one is, how did you find covering the campaign of 1964 in historical times after you had covered in realtime the campaigns of 2004 and 2008 . Part two of the question is, how do you perceive that politics . Hanged in that 40 year period jonathan thank you, i am very happy to be here in texas, most of the places ive been talking about the book the weather is not quite as nice and i have not have need of the charlie fan which i wish we had today. Under the table. [laughter] that aside i am very happy to be here. It is a great question, i would back fromtepping presentday political reporting hasook at the 1964 campaign on the most basic level made me feel a lot more charitably towards politicians. People who are willing to step forward and run for office, when you cover a president ial campaign, we are very hard on them and we talk about all these forces that they should be paying attention to in the , whaty and how hard it is they need to be doing to connect with the country. Looking 50 years back in time, what you really see is in a lot of ways impossible to know with the country is actually dealing with in the moment. Illustratedgets when you think about the 1964 president ial campaign. If you go back 50 years ago this the next 50 can see years in american politics being laid out before you. Had lyndon27 you johnson, the sitting president who had been president for less than a year looking forward to the next week is landslide election in to win the presidency in his own right. He is traveling all over the country trying to get as big a margin as possible and he gets really carried away and a lot of the rhetoric he uses. Goese day of october 27 he to pittsburgh and he says it is a time of peace on earth and goodwill among men, the time is here and the place is now. When we talk about managing expectations pretty high bar to set for yourself. Meanwhile, that same day, that same night is the National Broadcast of a underemployed, underappreciated former actor Ronald Reagan who is actually at that point still. A working actor, making the same case for every goldwater in a speech that is sort of viewed universally as reagan launch as a national politician. His storyginning of political storied political career. It is easy to look back at the split screen and say there you have it, the choice is going to be between the two parties over the next 50 years the johnstone in set of promises for all the government can do to deliver. Really solve all the problems of humankind and the reagan alternative of government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem. That is a pretty impossible standard to court Lyndon Johnson hold Lyndon Johnson two in the moment. That this guy Ronald Reagan of all the possible threat is in a lot of ways going to be the one who has the largest effects on his legacy. I would say that looking at history, i hope that in my current political reporting i will be more charitable toward politicians and understanding and the expectation of what they should understand about the country. Remind me of the second half of your question. How is politics changed between the election and the election . Jonathan it has changed in a lot of ways, my book deals with the thousand days after the kennedy assassination which if he wants to look at a moment in time when politicians actually got stuff done as opposed to what i think we all feel like today where they cannot get anything done, it is a fantastic moment. Leadership johnson in the presidency you have the transformative legislation on civil rights with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 end of the Voting Rights act of 1965. You have the passage of medicare, you have important legislation on poverty and education and there really is this sense in most parties that you can Work Together and pass programs that are going to transform peoples lives. We certainly do not have that at all today. It is also i think and you see one of the sub themes in the book is the passage from politics really being about the hnstonian of managing the congress and being one of the same to the importance of president going beyond thinking about the country as a whole and beyond just a political machine all over the country. The person understands that best is Ronald Reagan. When Ronald Reagan first starts talking about running for governor of california, it is seen as a joke that this actor could be the best candidate the republicans can muster for the president governorship that year. It is how bad the state of the Republican Party is. What people do not realize is ablereagans gift of being to communicate, being able to sense the shift of mood in the pot country which he has learned in his career is going to be the most important asset for a politician in the decades to come. You, chase, thank you observe politics more or less from the inside. Jonathan and i kind of look at it from the outside. When did you first since the shift that i guess gives rise to the title of your book, when did you and i assume you mean this in a double sense, things got more conservative and i gather you approved. Drawn into get politics and when did you since the shift occurring . As early as the 60s with the emergence of reagan or was closer to the time when you joined the administration . Chase my actual origins were not with reagan but with his Vice President george h w bush. I was always interested in politics going back to junior high school, but the opportunity to get involved required working in the campaigns which in those days, the mid 60s in texas was a genuinely generally hopeless cause for republicans. Therefore it was a delight to find this young oil man named george bush running for congress on the west side of houston which drew my time as a campaign volunteer. Did addressing envelopes and i did some Campaign Research and it was a great thrill when he got elected to congress that he invited me to be an intern on his staff. That began a relationship that 14 years later, led to going to washington with him. At the time, i was working at the head of the avenue here is a member of the texas house of representatives when the Vice President elect asked me to join his staff in the west wing of the white house, i realized that was the end of my active career in texas politics. I tortured over the decision for about 2 10 of a second before accepting, resigning my seat, going off to washington. When i arrived there, i had ofnkly doubts of my boss and many people in america that the reagan program would actually work. That it was not mere hocuspocus of some sort poor voodoo or voodoo . That term is used. It was something that was deadly in the mouths and fingertips of the opposition and it got to be so sensitive for Vice President bush that at one point he actually today National Audience he never said it. He did not say that as a conscious lie, i think at that point, he had himself become a and was in effect embarrassed by the recent memory of their very long and bitter primary campaign in a 19791980. This man was now not only his boss, but his friend. In the way that elder busch has a way of looking toward the future rather than the past, to him, voodoo economics was just some press phrase, not anything he himself had said. Of course it was all on tape and he had to apologize when that was shown to a National Audience. I think with the illustrated was that it was during the course of 1981, the first year of the Reagan Administration as the legislative Program Began to work its way through congress and as the Congress Country began to have a greater sense of itself, a greater sense of confidence that it changed in the mind of the Vice President of us as much as the rest of us. Prof. Brands jonathan has posited that the mid1960s was when the system worked. When a president with a legislative agenda could get something done. And chase has pointed to another period when the revolution was taken hold and the things did happen. I did not ask you and you have not weighed in on how uss to the situation today, but jonathan has adjusted that today it does not work very well, if at all. I suppose we could have a show of hands to see how many of you think that the political system is working really well today. [laughter] this, howow much of much of this is a matter of changing times and how much of then either the existence or the comparative lack now of a leader . Y president ial Lyndon Johnson had a vision for what american america could be. Ronald reagan had a vision for what america could be and i think they were both successful and communicating that vision, is that what is lacking now or have there been structural changes in the american political system to make that kind of leadership much more difficult . Jonathan i think it comes down to a question of emphasis. Im sure chase gets asked a lot of that question of could reagan get elected in todays Republican Party . Would people talk about a lot there are so many. Stte in todays Republican Party that even Ronald Reagan is not ideologically pure enough for todays Republican Party. My own feeling on that and this is something i try and describe is reagan is incredibly good at figuring out exactly where he needs to be as a conservative to get elected. I think the difference, and this is partly what made it an effective political leader, starting in the 60s is at the same time as he is focused on what does he have to do to win the support of his fellow conservatives, he is always asking himself, how do we sell this to a broader and broader audience . And it starts really early in his political career. He was involved in old waters 1964 campaign against johnson, he was the cochair it the California Campaign and california was of course a very important state in the 1964 president ial primaries where there is this sort of final definitive showdown between goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller to be the republican nominee that year. It is a very bloody fight. After they finish that campaign, there is a Victory Party for goldwater, the Goldwater Campaign that reagan goes to and reagan stands up and says, lets go quote make love to democrats. We do not want to win a convention, we want to win an election, he gets booed in the room for saying that. But that was always aware his focus is is how do we sell this message to as broad a group as possible and i think today in our fractionalizing universe, that set of questions is one that politicians do not have to ask themselves. In thinking that through, how do we bring as many people on board as possible . That will force you to come to the more important questions of how do we create broader governing coalition to actually make this stuff happen . Prof. Brands so chase how are we going to make things happen today . Ways for my fellow republicans to say they are admired stop saying they are admirers of Ronald Reagan and to say they start acting like Ronald Reagan. I mean by that is any number of politicians today will tell you with all sincerity that Ronald Reagan is their idol, their absolute model in terms of politics except insofar as what they do and say is not the least bit like Ronald Reagan. Let me identify some of those qualities i am talking about. One it is that as jonathan said, Ronald Reagan did had have a positive vision for the future. It was positive, it was for aeating prosperity through reduced government footprint in the lives and businesses of people. The idea was prosperity. It was not recrimination against the enemy. Far too many of todays politicians are highly negative, it is sufficient, they think, just to be against barack obama and his policies. I believe that might help republicans win in the midterm elections this year, but the morning of wednesday, november 5, the Republican Party had better start having a positive agenda like Ronald Reagan or ed will find itself with not much to say as people recognize barack obama is going to be out the door on in january 2017 and being against him is insufficient. Another thing reagan did beautifully is to work across the aisle. His famous whiskey drinks with chip oneill and the after hours are the best example, but not the only example of his belief that you had to work with the asosition as he had to do governor of california. Today just being seen in the proximity of the paulo opposition is thought by either party a betrayal and worse would be reagans believe in compromise, he had his firm set of principles, but to him principal was what you built upon. What you built up from there was a matter of give in take, a matter of working with the opposition which is what he did in those sessions with chip oneill and others. Today the notion is that if you deviate at all from what some people consider to be the principal, the bedrock governing idea, then you a traitor to the cause. If people who believe that say they are like Ronald Reagan, managing then they in a Ronald Reagan that never was. A difference between reagan and those who are today his professed heirs is that Ronald Reagan had an immense and very effective sense of humor which he used as a very effective tool against the opposition. Grim andssues are serious, they were not so cheery back in the 1970s either, but reagan was able is humor that today is somehow dismissed as trivializing serious things. Prof. Brands if i could follow up on that last point, one of the striking things about reagan is the fact that he gives conservatism a friendly approachable face. Theou read his message in 60s, it deviate hardly at all from a Barry Goldwaters, yet Barry Goldwater did not have an observable sense of humor like that, did not draw people in. It strikes me that i do not know if it is a default setting for conservatives. It is maybe in the nature of conservatism in the United States, they tend to do righteous indignation better than they do a lot of other emotions. With Barry Goldwater, there was this sense that you were being lectured to. Orre is an undercurrent explicit overcurrent of anger, but reagan took that away. Is reagan maybe the anomaly amongst conservatives . Goldwater sort of more like the conservative mind and maybe we are returning to that where as jonathan suggested, there was blood on the floor in the convention of 64 among republicans. It was ari going to be conservative enough . Is it too much to ask republicans or conservatives to come up with a northern another reagan because is the personality type just really rare . Wellt humphrey does amongst liberals, but reagan is almost the Hubert Humphrey of conservatives. The question is interesting, it is in a lot of ways why have we not seen conservatives over the last 50 years in spite of the fact that republicans had this long streak of winning the presidency. Why have republicans not been able to put forward would everyone think of as the positive governing agenda under a conservative vision . Republicans are good at winning elections in a year when there governmentg anti sentiment in the country, 1980 when reagan went the present the wins the presidency. That is 2010, it might be this year. To do andare not able particularly this is true in the last 20 years is then continue thehat path of broadening gains from there and i think it is because there is no pressure in the way that we talk about politics to present that governing positive governing agenda. I think a lot of the roots of that is in this period in the mid1960s where you see politics starting to be about a contest between one side which is presenting government as this of the solution to all palms and the other side which sees government as the problem as opposed to before which is the sense that government can set out to solve the biggest problems and the argument should be about what the best way is. That pressure does not exist for todays Republican Party in the thisway because they sound very occasionally potent tool of saying we are going to run against government, that has made it harder and harder for them to hold onto power once win. Chase, prof. Brands prof. Brands are conservatives looking in vain for another Ronald Reagan . As i dont have to tell a fellow historian, those people come along very rarely. This is a large country, somewhere out there is such a leader, but that person may be leading a corporation today or maybe even being a University Professor rather than being a protector practicing politician. The sad thing is the current atmosphere does tend to diminish the interest of younger people to get involved in government, elective government in particular just because it is seen as so unpleasant, so unavailing in terms of being able to actually do something. We live in a time where young people are motivated toward public service, but it tends to be private, Nonprofit Service or of jobs such as in health care maybe less that have reward, less fame, but a great deal more satisfaction. I am an optimist, i believe in this country there is somebody out there ready to lead and who can if not copy Ronald Reagan, at least have some of those positive you choose virtues of the leaders we have all grown to capture can begin the imagination of people such as Theodore Roosevelt and abraham lincoln. Prof. Brands one of the great things about the book festival is audience anticipation and im going to guess a lot of you were drawn here because you are interested in politics and the sort of things our authors have been discussing. If any of you have any questions, here is your chance andome up to the microphone give your best shot at our authors. Please speak into the microphone so everybody here in the cspan audience can hear us. Have sitting, i here listening about conservatives, cannot talk about a liberal for a minute . Prof. Brands sure. I just read a fantastic book by bill bradley, the allamerican from princeton, 10 years in the nba and also a three term senator from new jersey. I just read his book, it is awesome. , can we reach out like with what bill bradley did and cross the aisle and got the republicans and democrats to Work Together . This book is phenomenal, you get a little cynical on what it takes to put a big bill through congress today. Prof. Brands let me put the question to our authors. Chase, you are in washington when bradley was there. When i think about how todays politics particularly legislative politics resembles the trench warfare of the First World War in which there was a great deal of artillery and a great deal of death, but not i thinkward movement, of that rather trite reading card, let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me. I think when somebody from one side of the trench or the other begins to out of some form of courage, to reach out and begin to work across the aisle as we see from time to time, but not so emphatically, that might just catch on. It will particularly catch on when people realize they can do that and survive a primary, be reelected in the fall, and perhaps get things done. Im confident enough that the majority of the american public, vast majority want to their elected officials to get the job done, whatever the job is be at liberal or conservative, they want them on the job of making a difference rather than making speeches. Prof. Brands jonathan . \ this might sound impossible, but it is possible to be too hard on our current leaders. [laughter] spent a lot of time thinking about Lyndon Johnson, you come across people who say particular talking about the current president , if only he could be more like Lyndon Johnson, someone who was just relentless in his reaching out to legislators in both parties aroundtheclock and this overwhelming personality, we would not have any problems we have today in terms of getting something done. I did not think that is true, when you talk about the mid1960s and that phenomenal legislative record that i was talking about before, yes, Lyndon Johnson is formidable personality and legislative presence is an important piece, but the most important piece is the progressive majority that Lyndon Johnson had in congress. When the progressive majority start to crack, johnson really loses a lot of the power he has. In fact if you look at the comparable moment in the johnson presidency which is in a lot of ways the mid mid term of 1966, people were talking about Lyndon Johnson as this guy who was detached and all the energy was drained out of his wasidency and he concentrating on a lot of foreign conflicts, that he was resources toequate in vietnam, all these things that people say about president obama today. It is really as much about this political moment and understanding where the country is as it is about the actual act of interpersonal relationships and reaching out across the. Question. Ds next simply delayed the revolution or entirely reshape the Republican Party forward into the 80s . Is that it would have delayed in it in that fordecall reagan opposed and the conventions of 1976, came very very close and it was functionalthe majority of that convention wanted Ronald Reagan and would have him as indeed they did. I tend to think it would have been a delay given the cycle of american politics if reagan gerald ford had been elected in his own right, he would have come up against all of the economic and foreignpolicy politics problems that hit jimmy carter during the late 70s and perhaps that would have helped power a Democratic Victory in 1980. Happening ashat much as the eventual election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. James baker who worked for george bush and Ronald Reagan and work for george bush again said that it was his thought and he said it to reagan when reagan was in the white house, he said if reagan 76,not challenged ford in then ford might well have won the 1976 election. If he had, than reagan never would have been president because if a republican had one in 76, ford would not have been the incumbent would not have been challenged by another republican and reagan would have waited until 1984 by which time he would clearly have been too old to run for president. Next question. Hello. This, who have not addressed the media yet, changes in the media over the years. The other question is, you know the bushes, is jeb bush going to run . Prof. Brands im going is put that into two parts, i will let Jonathan Deal with the media because he is media, and i will let chase weigh in on whether jeb bush is going to run. We talk a lot about how the media is so much tougher on president s today than the media was back in the day and it is often cited in terms of their private lives or sex handles scandals, and i think that is true. If you actually spend a lot of time looking at the way the press wrote about Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s, they were not exactly easy on him. Johnson felt and with a lot of good reason that this Eastern Ivy League influenced press corps looked down on him as a texan, in their eyes, no offense to any debt anyone here. They were really unfair to him, they constantly would bring in these completely overused cliches to describe him as this larger figure in a 10 gallon hat. Lyndon johnson was a texan, but he was a creature of washington first and foremost. We just thisut week have been mourning the passing of ben bradlee who of course was a legendary editor of the Washington Post in the watergate area who died this week at the age of 93 and the famous story about him and johnson comes when he got a tip that Lyndon Johnson was going to replace J Edgar Hoover as the director of the fbi which was an amazing story if true because no president of course had dared to go up against J Edgar Hoover at that point in over 30 years. He reported it and found out it was in fact the case, he published it, johnson found out and disliked ben bradlee and the sort of idea that his administration was leaking to this eastern influenced press corps so much that it holds an impromptu press conference, announces he is appointing J Edgar Hoover fbi director for life. [laughter] says is stepping down he him i saidus tell forget you except he did not use the word forget. [laughter] been a little tough with the press. Prof. Brands and chase, what is the future of republican politics . Aase before politics, i was rack journalist, so im going to jump into the answer to say of course the socalled 24 hour news cycle, instantaneous communications infect our politics to a degree unknown in past times if only because the expectation of that news cycle Public Officials are immediately, instantaneously wise with regard to what is happening at all and what to do about it. No human is capable of doing that and in past times when communications were much slower, Public Officials did have the luxury of thinking or discussing these matters before they spoke and before they acted. That is a luxury not allowed today and it is in a given that cannot be unscrambled and a that cannot be unscrambled. I cannot speak with certainty about what jeb bush is going to do, this is his last best opportunity to run. I hope he does, that will not surprise anybody to know. He is a man of great capability who has a depth of knowledge and a sense of leadership that this country needs. They ikes me is that there are very few people whose names have been mentioned who have executive experience. This is another trait of Ronald Reagan that we cannot forget and that is he came to the presidency having been governor of the biggest state and having to deal with budgets and personnel and judicial appointments and dealing with the legislature. That prepared him in a way that frankly very few of our current crop of mentioned candidates have in their arsenal. Question . Ds another both lbj andut not lbj andi did reagan both make a mess of the United States budget . Lbjs why i suggest that, in his last year he was running in a real problem with in the vietnam war. He basically took a lot of weight incoming for Social Security. Social security is probably the profit we had in the u. S. Budget, he took that away. All of a sudden, his deficits safetying into in 19 eight. Reagan was also running into a problem with deficits in the 80s and i forget what year it looked some more at Social Security that could be then out of the budget and deficit looked bad prof. Brands jonathan ill let you take on as much as you want. Is anan i think it interesting point because it could but gets back to this idea that we should not over mythologized either of these president s or any of these people who are from the distant past as just so much greater than anyone we have today or are capable of producing. It is not true and what you see in both the johnson presidency and the reagan presidency is a certain trepidation about if you give the public too much reality , they will extract a political price. That has famously happened in the johnson presidency in the 1960s. There is a sense that johnson cannot level with the public about the sacrifices that are this war in fight vietnam because he worries his Political Support on the left will disappear and worries he will be vulnerable from the rights to people saying he is tough on comets and. What i think you see particularly in the earliest moments of the johnson presidency is that the public is capable of a lot more sophistication and understanding ever give thems credit. In the first hours of the johnson presidency when he is faced with this Monumental Task of moving the country forward after the death of jfk and this awkward moment of how do we honor this fallen president while still getting back to life, he is able to say look, we need to honor kennedy, we need to pass the Kennedy Program and do all these important things that he set out to do. The country rises to the challenge, they get behind this idea of moving on and doing big things. If we saw more politicians do that today, act with the idea that to the public can take a certain amount of complicity and will forgive you if you are honest with them, we would have a lot better results. We dont need a medical Political Force to emerge prof. Brands do you agree that the public can handle more than politicians give them credit . Do and thattainly is why use the analogy of a Critical Mass of people being able to break away from the president and Work Together on common issues, they will find a majority out there. I may speak with regard to the deficits of the Reagan Administration read this is much more nuanced on both the left end of the right than is given attention, Ronald Reagan was always for reducing the budget and ideally getting rid of budget deficits, but he of hiszed in the context administration that it was worthwhile, incurring a deficit if it meant and in this case the buildup of the Defense Forces of the time and the toppling of the soviet union or more specifically, convincing the soviet union a could not possibly keep up with an america that was willing to make those expenses. This worked in later times by certain republicans who felt was, ronaldphrase reagan proved deficits do not matter. That was not the case, but he was willing to incur the deficit temporarily. Lets not forget to that he was most happy to sign legislation called the Graham Rudman hollings act which began to put caps on spending and that coupled with the tax increases that his ex successor was courageous enough to implement it did lead to eventual budget surpluses in the 1990s when unfortunately it felt to the credit of bill clinton. All that begin with and graham rodman in the Reagan Administration. [indiscernible] prof. Brands jonathan . Jonathan if youre going to pick a president to figure out how to blow up the hatchet rule, Lyndon Johnson would be your guy. He is just obsessive about the congress, there is a famous story that larry obrien who was a kennedy agent who became johnsons legislative strategist told about one night where johnson was up on capitol hill trying to pass a bill, he was trying to bring it home and he came up short. He felt bad about it and procrastinated, he spent a couple hours before reporting back to the white house. Finally, he goes in first thing and tells president johnson that he has come up short and johnsons first question is when did this happen . Obrien tells him and he says why did you why didnt you wake me . Johnson says when youre bleeding up on that hill, i want to be bleeding with you and that assorted sort of the ethos of the johnson presidency is all managing the congress and relations with the congress. That becomes the detriment of the johnson presidency, but when youre talking about legislative problems that is one way in which he was much better positioned than almost any president in modern memory. Prof. Brands we have time for one more question. A question for both of you related, jonathan im new to your work, but when you talk about being less critical of politicians, are you talking about the number of times we are critical or just in what our criticisms are . Jonathan i think there is always going to be an abundance of things in which we should be critical of politicians. What i was talking about before about inflated rhetoric and the sense of the public cannot take reality is something we should ask more of from our politicians and do it in a concerted fashion. I think what i was trying to suggest is we hold them to a heart standard in terms of understanding what the important inues that are going to be the moment. Whereas you look back at history, you really see that it is beyond their powers of understanding to see it. Lyndon johnson again could never have imagined that Ronald Reagan was going to be such a definitive figure in the longterm success of the johnson legacy. That is where i ask we be more charitable for them and we should hold them to a really High Standard when we talk about what they think and what their ideas are for the country, but we should not necessarily expect them all to be political in real time. Prof. Brands do politicians today deserve greater charity from us . Yes, ive given criticism there. I believe todays leaders are intellectually as capable as any we have ever had, i do feel cheered by the kind of people running for congress these days who have had direct military experience as of a generation ago, two thirds of the members of congress had military experience. That gave them greater ability to wait such things as Defense Budgets and National Security issues then and their successors in the intervening time who had none of that. Todays crop of those who have been veterans of iraq and afghanistan i think will provide a new brand of leadership. It is too early to say out of that will come the eisenhowers or the reagans of the future, but it is encouraging. I should say, the kennedys and the johnsons and the other democrats who had served in uniform in world war ii. Prof. Brands a nice concluding note of bipartisanship. [laughter] i will ask you all to join me in a round of applause first, remember they will be going to the book signing tent and you can purchase a copy of their books and get it signed. Now you can applaud. Thank you. [applause] history bookshelf features the countrys bestknown American History writers of the past decade talking about their books. You can watch our weekly series every saturday at 4 00 p. M. Eastern here on American History tv, on cspan3. Skelter sabin however discusses the process behind crating a soldiers journey, the structural component of a new National World war i memorial being constructed on pennsylvania avenue in downtown washington