Has announced it will issue its analysis of the bill later today and you can read more at thehill. Com and watch the senate live this afternoon at 4 00 eastern on cspan2. This week on q a robert caro. He talks about on power, his audio project looking at the evolution and exercise of political power in america. Brian robert caro, why did you decide to do, for the first time, an audio of what you are thinking instead of publishing . Robert when you write your book, hopefully it endures. Sometimes you are doing a lecture and you say, that was worth saving. But the thing about lectures is, the moment they are over, they are over. They disappear. So when audible said, could we record two of your lectures, i said, great. Brian so its audible. Com for eople that do not know it. They can subscribe to that and get this hour and 42minute talk that you made. It was from lectures . Robert it was the 100th anniversary of the pulitzer prizes. Last september. So the Neiman Foundation sponsored a celebration of the centennial at harvard and they asked me to give a talk. I put some work into that talk and i said, i wish this ouldnt disappear. Someone from audible came up and said, that was a very moving talk. How would you feel about it eing recorded . I said, i would like that. But when they did it, they transcribed it. They said it would only come out to 47 minutes. It was not long enough. Are you giving any other lectures . As it happened, i was giving one next week also on the subject of political power. But from another angle, at the New York Historical society. So they basically took down my words, turned it into a script. I wrote a little abridged thing combining the two things saying how they joined and i recorded t. The interesting thing was, my books are all recorded by an actor. Ou hear my new york accent perhaps so i said to my agent wants, maybe i could record what. She says, then the price will go down. Rian you mentioned lynn nesbitt and this talk that you made on audible. Com. For people that have no idea the value of an agent and how important it was to you, tell us how it happened. About lynn nesbitt. Robert thats a good story. I was a newspaper reporter and i wanted to do a biography of robert moses as i thought that was a way of examining how real political power works in the cities. Because we are in a democracy and we are taught in high chool and college that basically the power comes from people casting ballot boxes and people getting elected. But in robert moses, you have a man who was never elected to anything and he had more power than anyone in new york state and new york city that anyone who did. More power than the mayor and governor combined. E held that power for 44 years and i had no idea it, nor did anyone else, how he got that power. So i wanted to do this book, but the only advance i could get was for 5,000. They give you 2,500 in advance. So for six months, i tried to work on the book while i was a reporter. But i wasnt getting anywhere. We had no savings. So i quit, i got a grant from the Carnegie Foundation for a year, and the money for that ran out. Ines sold the house. We had a house in long island. That got us through another year. We moved to an apartment in the bronx. Then i was really out of money. And i had written about half the book by that time. Three or four years into it. It took seven years to do it. Nd i had dinner with my editor and he said basically, the Publishing House liked the book so keep going. I said, can i have the other half of my advance . And he said, no bob. We like the book, but nobody ill read it. Ot many people will going to read the book on robert moses. So you have to prepare yourself for a very small hunter. So walking home that night, i did not know what to say to her. We had no place else to urn. We were out of money. And very quickly after that, my editor left the Publishing House, which allowed me and i said, i need an agent. So somebody gave me a list. And three of them were men. In my talking too long ere . I think i am. Three of them were men and it was 1970 the Womens Movement had not come to the bronx. So i went to see the men first. They all reminded me of me. Hornrimmed glasses and tweed jacket. Hey were too much like me. Then i went to see this young agent, lynn nesbitt, who was young agent, lynn nesbitt, who was just, i think, setting up. She called and said she read the book and she would like to represent me. Could i come in and see her . I went in to see her and she said something very complimentary about the book. Lynn always understands the books. And she said, you have to tell me something first. What do you look so worried about . I didnt know i looked worried. But i was. I said i am worried i will not have enough money to finish the book and she said, how much do you need . I dont remember the figure, that i figured i needed two more years. I told her what that figure was and she said, and she remembers this the same way is that what you are worried about . You can stop worrying right now. I can get you that by picking up the phone. Verybody in new york knows about this book. Was up in the bronx, i had no idea. Thats how i get her. She has been my agent now that was 1970, 47 years. Ive had the same agent and the same editor for 47 years. Brian i did some calculations. 4,513 pages you have written. I am sure you have written more than that. How has this business changed for you . The business of writing, since he first book that came out in 1974, 1975. Robert the business of writing has not changed much at all. I still have the same way of doing it. Brian what about the way you look at power since that first book . Robert right, because i was never interested in doing a biography of robert moses or Lyndon Johnson to write the life story of a great man. I was never interested in that. I was a reporter that covered politics and i got interested n political power. And i conceived of these books as studies in political power. But i thought when you are a reporter, i won a couple of really minor journalistic awards. You think you know everything. The first time robert moses story was told to me, i realized i did not know anything about power at all. Nd you are just constantly learning things. What Lyndon Johnson in the senate, you say, how did he run it . This way and that way. I had never heard of these things. Brian my numbers here are, when you published,robert moses the powerbroker, you were 39. When you published the years of Lyndon Johnson, you were 7. When you published the years of Lyndon Johnson in the senate,means of ascent, you were 55. When you post master of the senate in 2002, you were 67. And the last book in 2012, you are 77. Obert sorry to hear it. Brian did you think you were going to do five books on Lyndon Johnson . And can you get the presidency written about in one volume . Robert well, the answer is no, i dont think. It was supposed to be three volumes, but when i got into it, i realized i wanted to spend a whole volume on the senate, master of the senate, how the senate works, because i think it is fascinating. The senate before Lyndon Johnson, it was a great institution. The days of webster, clay and calhoun. Thats the 1850s. Then for 100 years after that, until 1955, it was the same dysfunctional mess it is today. If you want to know the truth. Lyndon johnson becomes majority leader in january, 1955. And he stays until january, 1961, until he becomes Vice President. For those six years the senate works. It is the center of governmental creativity and ingenuity and energy in washington. It is not Dwight Eisenhowers civil rights bill, it is Lyndon Johnsons civil rights bill. I said, if i could figure out how he did it and explain it to people, for one thing it will take a long time. That made it four volumes. And then there was the stolen election. I was only going to write one chapter on that. That he as your listeners probably know. He was like tens of thousands of votes behind when he ran for the senate in 1948. He finally wound up winning by 87 votes because the ballot box was found in the middle of the desert with 200 votes had the same handwriting cast in alphabetical order. So as i got into that, i said, i am supposed to know something about political power. I never thought about what a stolen election means. What is a stolen election . How is it done . I am going to explain the whole thing and thats another volume. So its up to five volumes now. Brian i read this on wikipedia and i know you hate this question. We talked about this over the years. But im going to read this back to you and have you fill in the blanks at the end this is on wikipedia, its about your books on Lyndon Johnson. In november, 2011, caro estimated he fifth and final volume would require two to three years to write. In march, 2013, he affirmed a commitment to completing the series with a fifth volume. As of april 2014, he was continuing to research the book. Where are we . Everyone wants to know and i know you hate that question . Robert ive done almost all he research already. Ive written about 400 type pages of it. I have one more big thing of research to do. Brian is that vietnam . Robert yes. All i can say to you is, it will take this long. I am not going to change the way i do it. Just because im getting older, i dont know what the point would be. Brian on the vietnam stuff, you were going to go and live in vietnam like you did in the hill country. Are you still going to do that . Robert yes. As it happens, when i finished the section i am working on now, which is Lyndon Johnson passing and this incredible urst in 1965, he passes the Voting Rights act, medicare, medicaid, i think 16 separate education bills. Whenever poor people get paid to go to college now, its Lyndon Johnson. He passes headstart, he does this all in a few months. So its quite a study, one of the formative moments in american history. The moment is three or four months. He wins this landslide election in november, 1964, against barry goldwater. And rams through so much of what has made america what it is today. When you are old today, what did you do before when you knew doctors bills were coming . Hospital bills were coming . Its a new world in so many different ways because of what he did. I said im going to explain this how he managed to do it. In the same i dont say im oing it good or right, but its the way i do it. I am going to show how he got these things all through so fast. Brian when i listened to the audible. Com, roughly twohour bob caro talking about himself, his life, his books, his power and all that. That was one word, there was one word i kept hearing. Do you have any idea what that is, besides power . Robert ina . Brian lets stop there for the moment. Thats not the word im thinking about. But ina, if i remember right, you have been married for 60 years . Robert yes. Brian she is the only other person to Research Anything for your book. Robert thats true. I know other historians, really good historians have teams of researchers. There is nothing wrong with that. Three or four. I look at the acknowledgment, sometimes they have for research assistance. Assistants. They have a team of research assistants. But i have a team, and its ina. Shes the whole team. Shes the only person beside myself. Other people do xeroxing and stuff like that. Shes the only person i ever trusted to do research on the books beside myself. Brian where did you meet her . Robert i met her at princeton. Brian what was she studying . Robert she was at connecticut college, a sophomore. I dont think she was well, i depess she had already started her interest in medieval france. She has written two books of her own about france which are enduring works on the section of intersection of history and travel. Really revolutionary ideas. But she has always been there for me. Brian how much has achieved how much has she researched for you . I dont know if there is a way to categorize it. Is she always at your side . I know you spent a whole a lot of time in the hillside. In the l. B. J. Library and she was there with you then. Robert when i shes always the thing i was talking about before when the money ran out, the first time, when we were doing the powerbroker, we had talked about selling the house. Ina loved the house. I didnt really care. Ina loved it. And she came home one day and she said, we sold the house today. That was one moment that involves ina. There are so many. Another was, i said you know, i am not understanding the hill country. I am not understanding these people. They are different from new york. Were going to have to and therefore, im not understanding Lyndon Johnson. We will have to move to the hill country for maybe two or three years. And ina said, why cant do you a biography of napoleon but then she said, what she always said which is, sure. So she does her own books. But she also does an awful what lot of research for me. Brian this is about a minute i think. This is the word that youll hear it that i heard. I want you to talk about this word. Robert so i was at harvard alone and i never particularly liked going to social events alone. I spent a lot of my evenings alone there in that office. It was a land of incredible loneliness. I soon realized that i wasnt really understanding this loneliness. When youre alone like that Little Things becomes bigger things. Rebecca was home aa lot. The gentle, dreamy, bookish woman would be alone. Alone in the dark when she went out on the porch to pump water. Alone with the rustlings in the trees and the sudden splashes n the river. Alone in the storms when the wind howled around the house. Alone in the horrible nights. Alone in bed with no human being to hear you if you should call. Brian the first part of it was you talking about being alone. The second part was about rebecca, the mother of Lyndon Johnson. But i kept hearing the word loneliness, lonely, and alone. Robert thats very perceptive that you picked that out. No ones ever done it and thats a word. The hill country was so empty, one of the most remote, isolated, and empty areas of the united states. When Lyndon Johnson was growing up, they had the johnson ranch, which is 18 miles beyond johnson city. Johnson city was a little huddle of houses with 300some people. But the ranch was 18 miles further up into the hills. Lyndon johnsons little brother Sam Houston Johnson said the kids was so lonely he and his brother they would go down one corner of the ranch down to next to what they called the Austin Fredericksburg highway. But it was just a gravel really, just a graded path. He said he and lyndon used to go down to that corner of the fence nearest the road and sit there for hours in the hope that one new person would come by on a horse or carriage so they would have somebody new to talk to. I said this is a loneliness here. I grew up in new york. Im not getting what it means. So one of the things i did was i took i wanted to see what it was like to have a whole day with nobody to talk to. Like the women of the hill country. If they didnt have kids. A whole day with no one to talk to. Go to sleep, get up the next day with nobody to talk to. So i took a sleeping bag and i went to the hills. Not on the johnson ranch. And did that. What you had, what you play for your listeners, was one of the Little Things become big things. But also the nights are really scary. And you say these women, the women of the hill country, their husbands were often away like sam johnson was often away. He was a legislator, she was out there all alone. And all alone means something, which is hard. Its hard for me. Its hard for people in cities to even grasp. Brian how lonely i know you vent done the vietnam thing how lonely do you think Lyndon Johnson was dealing with the vietnam war . Robert i have not been to vietnam, but i have spent months, if not years of my life, researching how we got nto vietnam. What it looked like from inside the white house. Let me say that. The story of how we got into it vietnam, im just really up to t now. I think i am going to have to take a pass on answering that. Brian thats fine. I know you are in the middle of the book. Im just wondering if youve discovered, when you talk about loneliness, if Lyndon Johnson as ever lonely and what did he do about it if he was . Robert as president . Brian yes. Robert he narrowed the circle of decisionmaking to very few people. Many of the crucial decisions on vietnam escalating the war for the first time, the first large escalation, and all the succeeding escalations, a lot of the details of that were decided not in cabinet meetings and not in meetings of National Security council, but what he used to call the tuesday lunch. As every tuesday at 1 00, they would have lunch in the family dining room. It varied, but there often be only four people at the table. Dean sat at his right and next would be john bundy and after johnson fired him and and on his left would be robert mcnamara. Next to him was the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, gus wheeler. So if you can get an idea of the thinking among this very small group of people, ultimately you learn a lot about how an empire, which is what we are, goes to war. By just figuring out best you can what was happening at those lunches. He narrowed the people who knew about the decisionmaking the secrecy was almost an object. He was a secretive man and he wanted secrecy. He kept the group of decisionmakers so small that you really say, its just this little group of men that are oing it. Brian how much can you tell us what your plans are in vietnam . Where are you going to go, how long are you going to be there, how we you get the feel of it now that the country is no longer at war . Robert well, i want to go to he great battlefields. A i want to get an idea of i want to describe there are a number of good books on this but i want to go for myself what its like to fight in the jungle. You know, because thats really something. Something we havent counted on. I had a friend who was a great war correspondent. He was a great friend of ine. He said, i covered the normandy invasion in world war ii and i remember the biggest guys swaggering through the hedrerows of normandy. Then they sent me to vietnam and i wrote in a helicopter and s i was going into the jungle, we landed in a clearing. I saw this file of men and as each man entered the jungle, they disappeared. I knew in that moment we were in something we had never been in before. So i wanted to try and learn about that. I wanted to go also we dropped more bombs on vietnam then we dropped on all of urope in world war ii. I want to go to one of these villages. There is a lot of stuff i want to do. You know me. Brian how long do you think you will have to spend there . Robert i dont know. We stayed in the hill country ntil i could feel like i could write about the hill country. Like everything with me, it takes longer than i thought. Brian how do you stay healthy . Robert how do i what . Brian how do you stay healthy . I know you are a swimmer. Robert yes, i do a lot of xercise. I swim a lot. I used to run a lot. My ankle gave out. In my house, i have an elliptical. I do a lot of exercises. Brian we have talked so much, i think you talked about in the audible. Com program that you had a serious back problem based on playing basketball. And were you laid up a long time for that and is it still other you . Obert well what happened was, i was at harvard when i was 29, or 28. I played an intramural basketball league, a big mistake. I really hurt my back badly. I had to stay in bed, i had a bad thing they did not want to operate because the chances of success was too small. O ina had been teaching to earn money. That was the money that was coming in. But then i could not get up and around for a lot of months. Thats when she started doing esearch. Because i was an investigative reporter. I was then researching how robert moses got the political parties, the republican political party, they represented the robber barons. The gold coast. They did not want the people from new york out there. Robert moses wanted to create jones beach. How did he persuade him to do that . And i learned one of the ways he persuaded him was to let the Top Republican political bosses out there know where the jones beach was going to go and where the exits would be, because thats what the price of land would go up because you would have developments there. I had to prove that. I knew how to prove that from y days as an investigative reporter, but it means going to the courthouse and looking up transfers, deeds, incorporation apers, a lot of stuff. Ina would call me and id say, there is a telephone booth on the second floor. Call me. We didnt have cell phones back then. She would call. And right behind you is swinging doors that go into the county clerks office. I said, go in there and turn to the right. I said there would be a guy there and you want to look at the deed transfers and youd like to look at them yourself and hell let you go through. You go to the second corridor there. Go down halfway. I really knew this courthouse. Thats how ina started doing research for me. I knew that, its not something that goes away. Brian weve talked about Janet Trammell in your office. I want to go back to some video. Not video, audio. You bring up in your talks on audible. Com. You bring up a scenario with Lyndon Johnson in the civil rights bill where hes talking about the senator of c. D. Senator van harkey of indiana. Before we listen to that stuff, so people can get the flavor of that, what is the story . Robert thats an amazing story. Robert it is a story about legislative genius. Johnson also had the tactical streegic genius pu he also had the tactical genius. He gets a telephone call. He realizes something that no one else realizes. That richard russell, the leader of the republican southern caucus, allsouthern caucus, was stopping the civil rights bill in 1964. One of the ways he was doing it was saying i am not oversimplifying it we cant bring that up until we get the tax cut bill out of the way. They were stalling the tax cut bill. They think theyve gotten rid of they think that its going to go through harry byrds finance committee who is sitting on it. They think its going to go through but the southerners are smathers and george calls Lyndon Johnson at the lunch break says it is all over. Weve lost and theres nothing we can do. They put in this thing on excise taxes and we lost. We lost three of the votes. Theres nothing that can be done. We will just have to give it p. Lyndon johnson says to his secretary, line them up for me. Have the three of them on the telephone. Lyndon johnson is a genius with men. Theres no time for him to do anything else. But go to the heart of it. What is going to work with each man . Clinton anderson always wanted to be a leader of the senate. He was never elected to lead anything. Johnson says something like, maybe it is on the tape. Show some leadership here, clint. You can be the leader. Change your vote back. Another, he knows the key thing is Musical Instruments. E doesnt want excise taxes. And his largest employer is some Musical Instruments company or one of his largest abe says, i cant change my vote back. He says, i promised my constituents. Johnson says something to the act abe says, if you change dd i change my if i change face will save today, ill save your face tomorrow. He knows Lyndon Johnson is a really good guy to have on your side, and a really bad guy to cross. He changes the three votes back in whatever i say in my book. Is it nine minutes . Six . I didnt get the quotes exactly right. You say, my god, smathers was a real powerful senator. He said theres nothing anybody can do. Johnson changes it all around in six minutes. Brian this is one minute 30 seconds. Of the six minutes but you say all of this happened the vote changed within a period of six minutes of calls. All right. Lets listen to this. Ill do anything to get that damn tax bill out. He told me hed have it out today and he wouldnt bring up anything except back on. I dont think so. I dont know. I just dont see thats what id try to do. You get anderson to go back with you and get russell and looks like you got members, cant you get byrd . Byrd hasnt voted with us yet. Senator, 91. Us on this go with excise thing . Let us get a bill, god damn it, you need to vote with me just once in a while. Dont you worry about saving your face. Your face is in damn good shape and going to be better when i get with you. Ill save your face. You save my face this afternoon, and ill save your face tomorrow. You get down there and get ribicoff to vote with me. He wont go with anybody. I try to get him, though. You get him there and get in that meeting and take this leadership. Ill try to do it. Get in there and try to help me if you can. One vote to put all the excises back so we get the majority people. Let me try and get that done. You do that and get a hold of Clint Anderson and see if you can do that for me. All right. And ill do something for you. I know you will. Byebye. Brian the last was vance hartke who wanted to save that horn company in indiana. What were you thinking when you listened . I know youve heard this many times. Robert this is legislative genius. You asked me why my books, why the number keeps expanding. We dont understand legislative genius in this country. In england, there are all these books on parliament. They understand how important legislative we have no when i say we, bob carroll had no idea what legislative genius was like. You just listened to a few minutes of it. Hes changed three votes. Hes gotten the tax bill out of the committee, on the floor, they could get rid of it and civil rights could come behind it and those utt civil rights bill of 1964 gets passed. You say, would we have that civil rights bill today if Lyndon Johnson hadnt been majority leader then . Im not at all sure that happens because the country turns to the right right after that. The southern lock is so skilled at keeping it stalled in the senate. So i say, i have to explain this. I may be wrong approximate this, you know. You have to explain this. You have to show what to explain it you have to show what the senate was. You have to show why no civil rights had passed in 87 years. And you have to say, you have to show what is happening out in the country with the protests and africanamericans wont take it anymore. Whats going to happen if theres no legislation that they deserve to have . All of these things hinge on Lyndon Johnson being able to get that not the civil rights bill but the tax bill out of the way and you just heard how he did it. Brian whats your conclusion of Lyndon Johnson . Was he interested in civil rights for political reasons or for personal reasons or both . Robert oh, no. Well, you always ask good questions. You said or both. With Lyndon Johnson, it is or both. He had compassion since the beginning. I wrote in the book, but ambition was the overriding consideration with him. It was only when compassion and ambition coincided. When hes in the senate, he realizes if he wants to be president , he has to pass the civil rights bill. That he really turns to this. So then you say, was he false . Not at all. All his life, he had wanted to help poor people, and particularly poor people of color. How do i feel that i know that . When he was 21, 22 years old, he taught in the mexican he went to college, what he called the poor boys school in texas. But he had to take a year off between his sophomore and junior years just to get enough money to get enough money to go for the junior year. During that year, he teaches in a mexicanamerican school in texas. I wrote in that book, no teacher had ever cared if these kids learned are not. This teacher cared. He thought it was important for them to learn to speak english, so he would tonguelash and at recess if he heard a boy shouting in spanish hed rush out and spank him. If it was a girl hed rush out and yell at her. They didnt have teams. He got the school board to give them baseball bats and all. That he wanted to have a debating team like the white kids had. So what he would do, he would walk over to the migrant huts and persuade the farmers, people who couldnt lose a days wages in the field to take the kids to transport the team to sporting events or debate events, so you knew that he cared. Throughout my books, you see moments where you say, this is from the heart. When he hears that the town of three rivers wont bury a soldier killed in the korean war and wont bury him in the Town Cemetery because hes a mexican american, how do we know this scene . Because i asked his two aides. He was standing there. Johnson comes in the office and jenkins hands him the telegram saying this and johnson says, by god, then well bury him in arlington. The national cemetery. So you say its genuine. . I taking too long brian no. Of all five books you have written, which one sold the most . Which one has been the most popular . Robert off the top of my head, i dont think i know. The last three have been number one bestsellers. How, i dont know. I dont know which one has sold the most. Brian what kind of stories have you heard special stories of people that have used your books . I read somewhere in preparation for this interview that somebody listened to the 150 hours of all the johnson books on audio. Yeah. What kind of stories have you heard were someone has made a course out of it, the kind of thing you want in the way of impacts . Robert of course, a keeper i keep remember this editor saying, not many people are going to read a book on robert moses so some years ago, random house they dont do it anymore did a computer printout of i dont remember how many bookstores ordered at least 50 copies of a book. And the power broker was used in 230 colleges. Sometimes you realize that someone has really understood it. I was giving this talk at some college in queens, and this young man comes up to me and says, you know, ive really studied the powerbroker. Im in Student Government and i chose to be on the bylaws committee. I said, theres a guy who got the book. The other thing which is so moving to me is the life of these women without electricity. Of course, they are all dead. Ina and i interviewed them. Ina did a lot of thoot interviews. How hard life was without electricity. Now theyre all dead. That world would be gone now. I used to give a lot of talks or several talks more than several before electrical operatives associations. Conventions, whatever. Women would say, im so glad you wrote this book because my mother told me how hard life was, and i wanted my daughter to know. I could see she thought i was exaggerating, but now she can read the book. There are things that people take away from the books that really moved me, thats the most moving. Brian in all of your research and study about power, if you didnt write about robert moses or Lyndon Johnson, who would be the next person youve found that you might think would be interesting . Robert brian, i answer all your questions. Im very superstitious. I have another topic in mind. I feel if i say it, i am not going to do it, so i am not going to answer that. Brian how many people are left around Lyndon Johnson that you can still talk to about him . Robert i talked to scores and scores of them. John connelly, you know, walter jenkins. Spent many interviews. I spent almost the whole week at john connollys ranch, often wed sit on a fence watching his horses exercise. He would talk to me from dawn to dark so hes dead. Walter jenkins is dead. I used to be able to call george reedy. He understood. You didnt have to make a lot of nonsense. Youd say, george, that scene you told me where johnson was talking to george wallace, was johnson in the rocking chair or behind the desk . Reedy would say, in the rocking chair. You go back to type. I dont have that. He has a secretary, marie, whos been a great help to me. She was sitting right outside the oval office all this time. She was on the plane coming back from dallas. Larry temple, his last white house counsel, has been very elpful, tom johnson, who later works with johnson when he was 23 and later became the president of cnn. Brian and hes still chairman of the foundation . Robert i think hes chairman. Joe calafano spent has spent so much time with me. I had three or four long interviews with him. He was johnsons chief of getting the Domestic Legislation through congress. He said, is there anything else i can do for you . He has this row of big, black scrapbooks. With photographs. I was embarrassed to ask. I said, what you could do for me is take down these books one at a time and tell me what was happening in each of these photographs. He said, ok. We must have spent two days doing that. So you get a lot of help. Brian what is your plan . All your archival material, do you have any idea where you want to place these interviews and this research you have done . Robert thats a very important uestion. I happen to be wrestling with it right now because i have a lot of stuff in my files. What percentage is in the books . 5 would be a lot. Im sure its less than that. I have hundreds and hundreds of interviews with people who are now dead, so they cant be interviewed about these things anymore. They do oral histories, and they dont often get to the heart of what was really happening. The most important thing for me is to have them in a place where they will be accessible and roperly indexed so researchers in the future can have them. I remember in the powerbroker, i said, this is such a fascinating figure. Al smith has been called the major american political figure most forgotten by history. Franklin roosevelt said to frances perkins, you know, 90 of everything we did in the new deal, everything we are doing, al smith did first in new york. There were 14 people left alive who had actually worked closely with al smith. I interviewed all 14 of them. If someone comes along to do a biography of al smith, i wanted them to know there is a place where they can go to these 14 interviews. That is a real problem i havent solved. Brian is it likely to be in a university . Or a big library . Library of congress . Robert it is a problem im thinking about a lot now. Im wrestling with it, and i havent decided. Brian i can get away with asking you this question because i am only six years younger than you are. You are 81. Do you have a plan in the event that something happens to you with the last book, and what you o with it . Like in the case with the paul reed follow on the Winston Churchill book . Robert my plan is that i dont want anybody to write a book with my name on it but me. I dont happen to think that was a very good idea, what happened with manchesters book. Ive written an awful lot on power. As i say, i am not rushing this last book. Im trying to do it the same way as my other books. I dont want people to think that something is written by me when it is not. Brian i know bob gottlieb has edited everything youve ever done. Do you pass on, as you are writing the fifth book on Lyndon Johnson, to bob gottlieb to edit what you have done already . Robert no, with one exception. I never show my books to him or anyone until they are completely done. There was one exception when i just needed more money back when i was doing the first volume. He wanted to see what i had done, which is reasonable. So that he saw it halfway through. But the second, third, and fourth volumes he didnt see until they were done. I havent showed him any of this one. Brian theres a point in your audible. Com audioonly session people can get it on audio. Com where you reveal, in my opinion, what your personal philosophy is about power and what it is good for. Im going to run the audio from that, and you can either agree with me or disagree. Tell us more about it. Robert there is injustice that can be caused by political power, but also great good. It seems that people have forgotten this. They have forgotten what Franklin Roosevelt did, how he transformed peoples lives, how he gave hope to people. Now people talk in vague terms about Government Programs and infrastructure, but they have forgotten the women of the hill country and how electricity changed their lives. Theyve forgotten that when robert moses got the triborough bridge built in new york, that was infrastructure. Steel mills had to be reopened in 14 different states just to get the steel for the girders. That bridge created 6000 jobs. We certainly see how government can injure you today. People have forgotten what government can do for you. They have forgotten the potential of government, the power of government to transform peoples lives for the etter. Robert i am glad you played that because that is something i hope people take away. When we were in the hill country, and you started to learn about women who didnt have electricity, so they have to do the wash by hand, pull up every bucket of water from the well by hand, their lives were the same lives as peasants in he medieval times. I said to ina, they get this new uy, if you write about the effects of political power, there are all these crosscurrents you have to get in. Social forces, economic forces, immigration. But here you have a tabula rasa. An area in the middle of nowhere, it is isolated from the rest of america. They are living a certain kind of life, it is a hard, mean, cruel, bitter life to eke out a living. It is a tabula rasa. To get a young congressman who basically comes in, hes a genius of government and hes bringing the power of government to bear. Said, its not like a city. If we really examine this, if we talk to the women over and over again and the men and see, were lives changed, how they were changed, we will be showing what government can do for eople. I feel that that is the most significant thing underlying so much else that has unfortunately happened to america. Yes, we have forgotten the power of government to transform your lives. I keep thinking that i needed new glasses, i went to an eye clinic. You see a lot of these people, a lot of them pretty obviously low income people. Medicare and medicaid pays the entire bill. They go in and see the doctor, walk out. Does anyone understand it took a political genius to pass medicare . The night after kennedy is assassinated, Lyndon Johnson cant sleep, so he calls to his bedroom three of his aides and starts talking about what he wants to do. One is, i am going to pass Harry Trumans health bill reform. Harry truman had tried and failed to pass medicare. Franklin roosevelt had thought about it. But Lyndon Johnson came along and did it. When im looking around, does anybody in this room understand that that is what the power of government can do to transform ives for the better . Brian i remember talking about the resistance you got from the Johnson Library when the first books came out. Have you tried to talk with his daughters, or did you try to talk with his now deceased wife lady bird . Robert Lady Bird Johnson talked to me. Im now forgetting the hours. Brian you had twenty or something. Robert we had many hours. The daughters have both expressed that they dont like the books at all. Lady bird, too, stopped talking to me before i published any. I think i said this to you on some program, i has said to them when i started book, i sent her a copy of the power broker and i said, this is the kind of look i am trying to write. I am not trying to write a favorable or unfavorable book about your husband. But i will check out every story that somebody says to me. I think when it was realized that somebody was going around checking out all these stories that they decided that lady bird stopped talking to me. But she was immensely helpful. I have many pages of many hours with her. The daughters have expressed dislike of the books. I dont know that i blame them. If i had a daughter and someone was writing a book about me, and there was negative stuff in there as well as positive stuff, i think i would like her not to like the books, either. Because of the views that have been expressed, i havent really tried to talk to them. Brian what period of Lyndon Johnsons life have you enjoyed he most . Robert have i enjoyed . I can answer that. The most amazing thing to me was what he does in the first days and weeks and months after kennedys assassination, which is in the passage of power. To me, it is he has to take over the power of president. Think of the president we have now. I wrote in that book, what if this new president didnt inspire confidence in people . They hadnt voted, he was a new president. He wasnt jack kennedy. What would it mean for the country . The way johnson comes in and inspires confidence in the country, takes over, makes people think the government is still working and says, im going to pass Jack Kennedys legislation. The civil rights bill, medicare, the way he does this in the first couple of months, the way he takes over the government, to me, if youre interested in political power, the very essence of it, it is in the first days and weeks and months after jack kennedy is assassinated when Lyndon Johnson comes in and takes over the government and keeps it running and passes a lot of stuff that wasnt getting passed before. Brian thats for talking with us. There is no book this time, but it is on audible. Com, you can find one minute 42 seconds of your stream of consciousness about writing, about power, about Lyndon Johnson, and about robert moses. We appreciate you very much for joining us. Robert thank you. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q a. Org. Programs are also available as cspan podcasts. Next, a look at efforts to improve i dont think theres any dispute on either side of this debate that everybodys in favor of basic open internet rules that can be enforced. The only way to ensure that is through legislation. Robert quinn, Senior Executive Vice President for external and legislative affairs at at t. The Largest Telecom lobbying operation in washington, talks about key issues in the companys interest. Such as Corporate Tax reform, privacy and net neutrality. Hell also discuss the proposed merge within time warner. Merger with time warner. Were going through the process. We initiated the review at the department of justice last fall. Shortly after the deal was announced. I think we kicked it off in november. Were going through a process with the department of justice. I think weve told the street that we expect the deal to close by the end of the year. We still have some foreign approvals that hang out there. Were not completely done. Some of the big poles and the tent on the foreign approval side is we have an operation in mexico, so that deal has to go through that process there. Weve got operations in brazil. But theyre not the only ones. So were going through a process at the department of justice expectation isur , you know, we should be through that process, we should be through the operational issues that we have to go through in order to be able to close without a license transfer and the foreign approval process. And were hopeful, pretty confident, that were going to be able to get through that by the end of the year. Watch the communicators tonight at 8 00 eastern on cspan2. Next, a look at efforts to improve the state of u. S. Homeland security. Part of a larger Conference Last Week on capitol hill. You can watch all our coverage on the conference at cspan. Org. Josh testing. Good morning. My name is josh rogin. Im a
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