A United States senator again respectfully is subject to a sense of selfimportance after it while and youve got to guard against that. I think at the time president elect reagan said to you, think he came up to you at a party. Jack is too modest to tell the story but i will tell you the story that i heard. And the story was that on his first visit to washington having won the election he was being vetted at Katharine Grahams place, the famous owner of the Washington Post and there was a receiving line. Reagan arrived. Jack happened to be there and reagan came in and he was talking to kay graham and he looked over and he saw jack watson. He made a beeline over to jack. The story i heard said jack, its so good to see you. My people tell me that if you had been chief of staff from the beginning i wouldnt be here. [laughter] a story of extreme exaggeration. [laughter] i think theres a little bit of truth to it. He did say it but he was also one of the most charming man that ever journal a breath. I want you to have a chance and youll have a chance to ask some questions outside. I wanted you to have a chance if you dont already have this book and chris is going to be signing copies of it, it is as jack said, it is a fascinating story. You get to know not only the chiefs of staff but the president s they serve and the people around them. Its hard to put down this book. I encourage you to get it. Please join me in thanking chris and jack. [applause] and if you want join us in the lobby. Thank you all very much for being here tonight. [inaudible conversations] next on after words pulitzer prizewinning journalist Helene Cooper reports on the life and presidency of liberias first elected female president in her book madam president , the story of Ellen Johnson sirleaf. Host i must tell you that i have enjoyed every minute of reading the book. Thats the best thing you could say to me. Host when theres a book that you really like huron most disappointed when it comes to the end and thats exact to the way i felt in reading it. It was very special to me because i certainly know president Ellen Johnson sirleaf if i thought i knew about her past and all that you went into such incredible detail about her rise and it left me feeling what an unbelievable leader she is, International Leader but it also made me want to ask about you. I know this isnt your first book. Your first book is the house of sugar beach, is that right . Guest thats right. I will just echo something you just said. I thought i knew a lot about her too. I had heard about for all of my life. She was a political dissidents so once i started digging into it i was amazed at how much i didnt know. I am from iberia and my family to send it from the free american migrate great great grandfather Elijah Johnson was on the first ship of slaves that sailed from new york harbor in 1820. They ended up first in sierra leone and eventually ended up in liberia in 1822. And thats on my moms side. My fathers side there were five brothers sailed from Norfolk Virginia in 18292 liberia and thats where my dads side of the family comes from. So i grew up there and only moved to the United States in 1980 right after the military coup in my. They were buried rave and courageous but they set up a very unbalanced antebellum society the same society that they had fled from the American South except this time they were the ones that made it over. This whole unbalanced system exploded in 1980 after the military coup. I had family members who are in the government who were targeted. Host was he in the book where he said they marched the people out . Guest one of the 13 but interestingly there were 13 cabinet officials and one of the few who was not and we explored some of the reasons why in this book as well. Host i have to tell you was one of the riveting scenes in the book because when you talk about how she was basic way pretty much anticipating being executed because she knew what had happened and the way the people were crying to her to save them before they were marched out. He was not able to do that obviously but that was one of the most captivating parts of the book. I have to tell you i think theres a part of u. S. History that people dont really know about and i like the way in the beginning of the book you describe how was really a combination of forces. There were that wanted the races that wanted the black people to leave because they didnt want free black people roaming around the state. There were abolitionists that combined forces that led to the first shift but i think the u. S. Population knew so little about the slavery. Back in this part of our history we didnt know about but i do have to tell you i was disappointed to hear that our ancestors went back there and replicated not completely the oppression they face in the United States but certainly the way they treated the native liberians for the native africans because they were on liberia was not very good. Guest i think about the universality of the way human beings treat each other. Our ancestors who went back there, one of the good things they did, britain had outlawed the slave trade in west africa at that point and they were very very antislavery. Keep in mind a lot of the native africans who had met them there had been engaged in the slave trade. They were the people who were selling their brothers and sisters into slavery and they were saying this way of life as an economic staple for them eradicated. That was part of some of the tension that you also had a lot of belief among these colonists that because and this is where you get into some of the racial complexity that liberia has been dealing with for almost 200 years now. A lot of these were mixed race, children of white slave owners had these mixedrace children and wanted to get these children off the plantations. So these kids went back to africa thinking that, many of them thinking that because they had white they were as superior. This race and class and the slave trade and all of that is a part of what became liberia. Its such an interesting history and so wedded to the United States. In the beginning of the book you talk about the various tribes that were in conflict with each other before the africanamericans arrived and then later in the book you talk about the tensions between the various sects. Were their original tribal differences . Guest some of that was in some of the wasnt. That goes back a long way so a lot of these entities when the freed american slaves arrived it just became native liberians ursus the freed slaves. We called them the congo people. Once that slipped away we sort of went back to a lot of tension between the different ethnic that have been there to begin with then and there were some that were created later on when the military coup was led by the guy who became president and he elevated and pointed all of them to high levels of the library and office. It was just different people and that angered a lot of the other tribes. We have a lot of tribe warfare going on as well. That was one of the things that led to the civil war. Host when you were 14 come he left in 1980 and i wanted to know if you could describe what life was like before the coup. As a 14yearold you saw some of the beginning to happen in the attention and all. But what was life like for you in liberia before . Guest for me it was at completely normal childhood. It was treated as the Little Princes protected and my family was an upperclass position. Even though we werent terribly poor country i was protected from all of that. I went to school and i have my brothers and my sisters. I played out in the yard. My parents, we had moved to this big house to house some sugar beach that was on the Atlantic Ocean with 22 rooms. I had eye on bedroom for the first time in my life and i was scared to sleep by myself. What was common in liberia at the time they went and got my sister and her mom lived with us because it was a chance for her to go to a better school. This was very common in liberia. We were raised together as sisters and when the coup happened in our family was attacked we ran away and eunice didnt come with the spirit she chose not to come which was something i didnt realize at the time. I thought that we just left her but its a long complicated story that i go into in my first book. We were separated for 23 years and a wasnt until 2010 come i didnt know she was alive. I went back and found her again. Thats what the first book was about. At the time when the coup happened in 1980 my family, my mom was gangraped by soldiers. We went there a lot as immigrants as refugees actually. We got amnesty under the reagan amnesty act in 1988 but my childhood was growing up as a librarian. My life seizing up in the 19802 and coming to the United States in trying to push the library and part out of my life. All i wanted was to be like everybody else. Host of course. Guest and realizing years later i needed that part of my life back. Host when did you know madam president . What she president or did you know her before . Guest when we match it does become president in 2006. She addressed a joint session of congress. Ive known about her all my life rated. Host what did you know . Guest she was minister of finance in 1979 in 1980 when the coup happened. She knew my parents and she was somebody as a child growing up in liberia i heard that she was always speaking truth to power and i was criticizing the same government that she worked for and then in 1985 when she was arrested and thrown into jail i heard all about that. She became at this time sort of a political icon. I was about to say a bad word. She was the angela davis you know political fighting truth to power and jailed and she wasnt going to bend and they were trying to get her to take the senate seat and she wouldnt do it. Host i think i remember seeing a picture in there of her and it certainly reminded me of the 60s actually where she comes out wearing that tshirt. She looks like a rock star. Guest i had known her for a few years so i knew her as the elegant stateswoman. Host you have met her. Guest when you first meet her she comes across as very standoffish and then you put that together with [laughter] host absolutely. You were talking about you knew her as minister of finance. Wasnt she the only woman who had a commission that high in the country . Guest at the time i think she was the only woman in the cabinet in 1979 in 1980. She was the certainly the first woman to be in such a high position but its a very page for a cool place. Thereve always been a handful of women in higher levels of government but in 1979 that was a pretty big deal. Host a few things that were fascinating to me. I knew a little bit about her past in terms that she worked at the world bank and i. She was a harvard trained economist and the way you describe in the book she systematically build Close Relationships with the International Finance community and i wondered if she had it in their mind. You talk about in the very beginning she knew she was destined for something but i wondered if she had it in the back of her mind always that she would wind up being president. Shes her tediously use those relationships to deal with liberia. I dont think anybody else would have been able to have done that. I dont think anybody else could have. She was about to be kicked out of the imf. The country was postwar apocalyptic mess at this point. That then through 15 years of civil war, 23 years of financial mismanagement and the place was a rack. Because she had International Compacts and she had this background she was uniquely qualified to begin the proper process and to get the debt forgiven so that was a big deal. I asked her many times when did you decide he wanted to run for president than ive ever gotten a good answer from her. I think it started a long time ago. I think it started back when she left her abusive husband. She was the victim of domestic abuse. She got married at 17. By the time she was 20 when she had four boys under the age of four or five. She left them and came to the United States. She let them with her mother and her motherinlaw and came to the United States to get her associates degree. She went back to liberia and started working as the ministry of finance. A very few handful of women were working in those positions of finance in the 1960s. You can imagine a very maledominated area and i think it started back then. She had fights with her husband and he was very abusive. She started an affair with another liberian man. Host that was pretty bold in the 1960s. Guest but she finally walk out and took control of her life it was the middle of the 1960s. You think back to then, women didnt really do that. She just took it and took it so she was pretty extraordinary from the getgo. Has gone knowing how humble she is guest she is not humble. Host everything counter ive had with her she is so understated. She comes to the u. S. And she is no stranger on the hill. And most people know her but she has always been understated given her stature and all. But i think given all of her experience in the financial world, internationally i dont know how she could have looked at those guys whether you are talking about doe or taylor or any of them and not see them as guest idiots . Host thank you. I think that was the name of one of the chapters of the book. She calls the president and idiot. Guest that was in philadelphia. Then she incomprehensibly went back to liberia. She called the military dictator of library and idiot and went back to liberia and they fear her in jail. Host do you think it weighed heavy on her initial support for taylor . Guest thats a big one mission her reputation. When Charles Taylor in 1980 find right at the turn of 1989, 1990 she supported him. A lot of people who probably should have known better better supported him at the time because they were so fed up. The cia helped bust him out of jail. Host looking at the people that initially supported taylor we could be here all day. She initially supported him and it took eight months before it became, it was clear in liberia that few forces were as bad as though was bill was. But it became known that the people that he unleashed in the country were easily as violent as he was and he unleashed this of rape andasol the murder on the civilian people not only attacking the government soldiers to the library and resilience as well. When Charles Taylor killed one of her Close Friends for her to turn on him. She still paying the price even today. She should. You turn out to be a math man. Host but i wonder and i dont remember you describing in the book what was the initial reason for it . They killed doe. Guest those tribes supported him so that was what the whole civil war was about. John taylor stayed in liberia in december 1989 through the ivory post and came over the border. There were so many people the tribes that have been attacked by the doe regime, the people that supported another liberian who tried a coup in 1985. He had gone after everybody in that tribe so there were people who were very very angry at doe and they were the ones who flocked to taylor that those tribes stated thats where you, thats where the actual civil war comes from. And that was terrific and thats what started the whole thing. Liberia became famous for the child soldiers. Both sides, government soldiers and the rebels, the children of these women turning them into child soldiers in raping the mothers and from the children and taking the children away. It was a truly horrific time for liberia. Host and you would read about how the kids were drugged. Switching gears a minute thinking about the market women, the women who organized. Guest they were my favorite. Posted definitely one of the favorite parts of my the book knowing how they deliberately organize and then theres one part in the book where they are organizing separate, Johnson Sirleaf going about doing a Traditional Campaign and they were doing their own separate organizing. They essentially confronted her at one point in the capital and she becomes very emotional. I just wondered what you thought about that. Why didnt she recognize them in the beginning . Was that that she didnt want to be the woman president . She didnt want to be associated with womens . What was the reason that they organize separately . Guest i dont think that she didnt want to be the woman president that their technocratic parts of her personality. They dont rule her but this woman is in her heart a mobile bureaucrat. She looks at things, she breaks down problems pragmatically. She is not overly emotional pitch he can be and there are times that she comes that weighs weighs things in a very poor cat bureaucratic way. She thought this is a country that is this and that and that im going to fix fix it. She thought that she could win the presidency on her own merits just presenting her wonkish will. She gave speeches and people just looked at her. Guest meanwhile though and she was aware of this but there was this underground Guerrilla Campaign going on by these market women who had endured 15 years of horrific civil war which they thought was brought on and it was, brought on by the men. They saw this harvard educated global bureaucrat. She stood up to doe and they are to knew who she was in they thought she is our girl, we are going after her. She took away while to realize the one she realize she embraced the entire move in. Host another fascinating part was when they were praying and they could have been executed. I know when the men drove up in tanks and. They are very feared soldiers and this is 2003 in the end of the war when the women were so tired of war. They started paying for humanity there is this scene and i talk to the women who were there. They were praying in their white tshirts at airfields. They had been praying for days. Its a deeply religious country who believe in african religions and also very christian and also a lot of muslims as well. Charles taylor Security Forces would order to shoot them. The women are continuing to pray they couldnt bring themselves to shoot them and they walked away. That was a moment. Host it was just like it was a moment for her. When she became president and then they were trying to clean up the streets because the market women for creating a little bit of a problem. I wonder what happened. They did create some booths where they could market in a better way. Did they ever assimilate to that guest its still a fight. During the war the market was in, cant say enough about how the market women carry that country on their backs. During the war these were the women who walked to the border to all these rebel held territories and they were attacked by all these crazy man and halloween masks. It was all about magic and voodoo and they believed it they afford this and that it would protect them from bullets. The or gave in they believed that they were a bullet wouldnt penetrate their body and there was all this kind of stuff. These women were the ones who what economy there was functioning and people fed and they protected the children the best that they could. The rape percentage was 70 and they had the children of their. They put their children on their backs and went back to the market. These are the women who brought in many ways an end to the war when they started demanding peace and praying. These are the women that galvanized Ellen Johnson sirleaf they got her elected. So many men, she was running against a Football Player and still running. This was a guy who didnt have a credible education of the young man were flocking toward the Football Player and the women flock to allen. They got her elected and then it turned out that they were immediately one of her biggest headaches. They wanted to continue to make their markets in the streets where they had been doing in the past. She is a bureaucrat and said you need to go to mark her place and not on the side of the road. We need the road for development and all of that. Host and she had her enforcer. Guess of the liberians have been plagued by corruption. Host so the men were never fully brought in . Guest they were brought in but by whenever they had a problem they went to her. She was also their biggest advocate. The Ellen Johnson sirleaf market fund and she did a lot of that. They were her biggest backers but there was asa push pull tension there. Host considering the pathway that a bullet took and the case that you talk about do you know what happened to the women . Guest the women were hit hugely because the women tended to be caregivers and ebola the biggest tragedy in my mind of ebola is the punishes you for caring about people. The people were family members of people who were Health Care Workers are caregivers punished for helping people. Its going to hit a lot of women that way. That was a big part of the whole tragedy of ebola but liberians were able to pull themselves out of it. They were hit harder. Liberia was hit harder because it got into monrovia. That was a big deal but liberia got through quicker than the other countries in part because of the women, in part because of madam president Ellen Johnson sirleaf. She had some huge missteps at the beginning of ebola epidemic. She didnt want her Foreign Investors and people who were looking to develop. Host did she negotiate the airlines coming . Guest there was a Health Epidemic going on so she didnt do well in the first few months but she eventually got some sense knocked into her and she went into high gear. At that point she got the whole country in the whole country in many ways pushed her. In large part there was a lot of free speech and a lot of criticism of her on the airwaves. That was a big deal. There was one misstep after another but madam president got her act together and at that point she did extraordinarily well getting out of it. Host remember when she approached, in your book and i also remember when she approached president obama. It was one of his incredible legacies the way he mobilized the entire world. She also was one that approached him. Guest as a librarian i would watch george bush on african that i would watch barack obama and watch barack obama on africa leading up to that point. I almost felt as if obama was Holding Africa hands off because he came into office saying the president of United States will approve that. When ebola happened i was interested in how he was going to react and Ellen Johnson sirleaf wrote him a letter saying you have to help us. You have the history. The french and the british are going to help the sierra leoneans. The United States has to and i was really curious how he would fight it. He thought it in a huge way. 3000 american troops. It was a really big deal. I think their response and ebola made up in my mind for many ways what was a weak african policy overall. Host actually do think he did some significant initiatives in africa but anything he did or said considering he was accused of being a canyon and snuck into United States it was deftly hard for him to have an association. I want to know a couple of things. Did all the Women Leaders survive . Are any of them still active . Guest liberia is in the middle of the a campaign and their women involved right now. The Football Players running again. His running mate is Charles Taylors wife and george we ups baby mama is also running. She is also running for president against him. For sushi and elected official like taylor . Guest no, she is a former model. Host here in the u. S. . Guest here in the u. S. But now looks that shes throwing her hat in the ring in liberia as well. I dont at the moment see a good female candidate. Things dont really get going. Host i was reading a librarian paper the other day the year that Charles Taylor was calling. I didnt know he had access to a phone. He was actually calling. Guest i saw that report as well. Yet a phone conversation with george leo. I dont know enough about that. He is in jail for war crimes for life. Theres another crazy story that says he comes back to liberia a year after year. Going back to earlier in the book when madam president received the nobel prize and also taking the voting cards away from their sons because they didnt want their sons to vote for we up, tell me more about that especially the nobel prize. Guess that maybe we should do the tax verse because chronologically they were so fed up with the men. They would do it any way they could. Allen Johnson Sirleaf a day found there were a number of things their supporters do. They gave them voter i. D. Card so when the men showed up they wouldnt be able to vote at all the young boys would vote for the Football Player and a lot of their mom stole their voter i. D. Card so they couldnt vote. There were two rounds, first round in the second round and a lot of young men didnt realize they needed their voter i. D. Card after the firstround vote in the second round of thats how the women were able to get around it. The women were part that bars up and down the highways saying give me your card for a cold beer. Good give me a card. There were women who passed the same baby around because if you are a nursing mother you could cut in front of these 10 hour lines to the front. There were all sorts of sneaky things. They dug up this video that george leo the Football Player had made when he was playing in italy in milan in which he appears in a commercial talk in front of white women. They unearthed this video. He was 14 years old and they chopped it down in the middle of the liberian political scene. Liberia is a mentioned earlier has a mix of puritanism and deep racial anxiety and having this video show up, the women saw this as a rejection of black women. The men were jealous and either way it was an issue for him. So there was a lot of to get Ellen Johnson sirleaf a lack did. Jumping from there to the nobel in 2011 what is really funny about this is the nobel came in the middle of the reelection, the reelection campaign. Guest there were other male president of candidates running at the time. Literally two weeks before election day is the Nobel Peace Prize and the men went crazy. We cant believe it. She is and the Nobel Peace Prize committee. They were like that said we are way caught doing it. For a liberian leader this is a country, all the president s of liberia died in office or were run out of town. A were convicted of war crimes. We are not a country that reduces Nobel Peace Prizes so people were so shocked at the idea. They woke up that morning. The election was basically over at that point. Host is so appropriate because she won in what was liberia before . There was no end to the war when she was president. Guest a lot of attention that led to the civil war is still there and she has done a really good job of keeping that at bay by bringing Charles Taylor people into the government by trying to reach out to the opposition so that you dont have people who feel they are so completely left out of the process. You have to remember Charles Taylor was a horrible madman in my opinion but he had a lot of supporters. There are a lot of people in liberia who still believe in him. Host why do they still believe in him . All of his crimes were exposed to the world and they were horrific. Guest they think the other people did worse and he was just fighting back. Not comparing that to her. Host but i would think after seeing the decline of everybody you just mentioned and then how long was the term . Guest to terms. Host for 12 years, 12 years of someone being completely the opposite. And the fact that taylor who is a force to be contended with. Guest he was a Football Player. He was not one of the participants of the civil war. He wasnt there. He was playing folk wall in europe so one of the things he does bring to the table was this idea that he had a time when the civil war was looking like crazy people all over the world there was this one liberian guy who was bringing honor to the country. He was an african player. Thats where a lot of this popularity comes from. Host he was a celebrity. And you didnt warrant the liberian people about celebrities. The african woman women in the chapter is called the oracle what happened with that . They asked her, because they were so excited and that was before president bonda. Guest where was it related . It was around the same time. I was there for that meeting. I was in the room. I took off to research for the book. I followed her around like a fly on the wall. I was with them for an hour and a half as they were waiting for her to come. They were very quiet. Host who were they . Guest they were aweinspiring African Women in politics. A couple of them were in office but a lot of them wanted to go into office that they wanted to know how she did it so they could take it back to their own countries and organize their own grass movement. These beautiful women in their outfits. They were also nervous. It was very quiet in the room sitting in there trying to talk to some of them. Then she walks in and the room goes crazy. Slight beyonce moving walking into chooses rock star in their eyes. They look at her as monrovia coming to pay homage. She talked to them and she held the sessions often. She still does it. She still has women from all around the continent and she meets with him all of the time. Host so they didnt form guest she was talking about a highlevel politicians around the continent and organizations that back with women. Host what world do you think shes playing now in terms of the election . I know her Vice President s running and i know she supposedly backing him. Guess that technically she is backing her Vice President she hasnt come out in any real way. Nobody really believes she wants him to win. There was a conference between the two of them where she basically told her if you want to be president you have to go out and fight for it the same way i did. Host that actually worries me a little bit because you know for her not to play a very aggressive role when what looks like is going to be an opposition which is doe and the former wife of Charles Taylor and i do want to say it because she was his former wife. I dont believe that she was with him at the height of his reign. Is that correct or no . Guest she was his wife. Taylor isnt someone i have focused a lot of attention on. Host we have the situation and you said a few minutes ago that attentions from before madam president might have kept it at a but it also seems as though they couldnt vote again. Guest thats true but dont assume that weah taylor is going to win. Weah has lost twice now. Host this is the whole thing about democracy. One of the things that worries me in my role and in congress i meet with African Leaders often and we in the United States have a policy that we want to see fair and free elections. It worries me sometimes that some countries might not be exactly ready. I know im worried about what happens in a library opposed to madam president so if the Vice President is relatively weak and you have leaked taylor. Guest there are other candidates as well. As Alex Cummings which is a former cocacola executive. He is probably the most devoted to Ellen Johnson sirleaf, probably the one the u. S. Would like to see when because if that that has that same finance background. I think he is a possibility. He is very americanized. Im going to get in trouble the next time i say it. Host there is charles rodkin who has run in the past. He was beaten by her before. They are all reassembled and ready to go at the starting gate and at this point we dont know, theyre a whole cast of characters who this election as a journalist it will be fascinating. Host will you go back . Guest i want to go cover it and write about it. You have an election where you have an ax couple. How do you even begin to write about that . Host is that a small child guest i dont know. Host lets hope its not a small child. I remember talking to president Johnson Sirleaf and her telling me about how they didnt have the electricity infrastructure as that had been destroyed. Thats hard for us to comprehend guest i went to liberia for christmas and they had just turned the lights back on after 26 years. During the civil war the dam was attacked in the lights went out. I have talked to people who have not had electricity, you have a power outage here for a few days. The ones who can afford generators came, even those people that have electricity day today they are not going to have lights on. Their refrigerator has been turned off. It runs for three hours the middle of the night just enough to keep everything cool. This is the way the country is lived for so long. They are just getting there at the structure back so you are right there are a lot of reasons to be worried about the end of this term where we have seen 12 years of relative calm. I think there are also plenty of reasons for hope. I think one of the things that she has done that i think is going to be hard to turn back his freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Liberians have gotten used to that. They have gone on the radio and they can call her an idiot if they want. And they call her every name in the book. They are so used to that that is hard to imagine they are going to tolerate being talked back into her oppressive regime. I think its become so ingrained in the liberian character. I think that something is hopeful. Host do you think if she had a third term she would win . Guest i think if she had another term she would win but shes not running again. Guest these are people who have been in office for 30, 40, 50 years. They did not step down until you put a gun to their heads of the first woman elected president of an african country and steps down as a huge thing. For the first time in liberia we are going to have an example of a post president ial. Host i had the honor of seeing her in january and the one thing that she did that was also incredible in african history is when the president of gambia changed his mind and decided to stay and she was in charge of the west african region. She then went over there and basically said either you step down or we will come and get you. Guest she organized the echo watts and the military complex than they went in. So we are making progress and i think we are making better progress than west africa. Not only do we have far better, our food is better. Our clothing is better. We have better arts and better animals. Or whatever they eat. What do you think the future holds . Guest i think it will be the speech circuit. Shes going to retire. I dont think shes going to be quiet. She is 78 years old and she has an enormous amount of vigor. I have been following her around for this book. We went on these country tours and we finally got back to whereever we were staying at 2 00 in the morning she be ready for an interview. Im like, i got to sleep. Host i just think shes an incredible role model and again having interacted with her a lot over the last seven years, my seventh year in congress and to see her extremely powerful i only wish that i would have been in congress that was the first time, no, nelson mandela. Guest another liberian president had done it. I think it was back in the 70s and liberia has always been americas biggest ally. He addressed congress to but it was a big deal for Ellen Johnson sirleaf to do it. She had her pearls and her whole outfit. She can do english and american english and go back and forth. She wraps herself up in her american cloak in this americanized type speech and she thanked congress for all they have done. This was the same congress that was called a donothing congress. It was a huge political trump for her. Host was it during the time that leader pelosi was speaker . Guest she was brought in by boehner and pelosi and cheney was there. It was quite the scene. I have watched that video again and again. I remember at the time boehner was walking her down the aisle, Ellen Johnson sirleaf and pelosi was right there as well. So theyre coming down the aisle and they are stopping, members of those sides shaking hands and theres a moment where she gets toward the front and barack obama was standing there. Boehner just disappeared. Pelosi comes around and refers to senator obama and that was the first time she had met a rock obama. I would love to see her give that speech and imagine that in congress. That mustve been an exciting time. It was a cool theme. Absolutely. Itll be interesting to see what she does next and i like that you told me that shell be on the speaker circuit. Maybe ill see you both on the speaker circuit. Guest you know im always plugging this or that. I really enjoyed working on the book and its clear now because its taken me four years to write and you get to the point where its a labor of love. Its also this now im still working at the New York Times and i have the state job but im like what do i do at 4 00 a. M. Host its a wonderful book to read and it was a great contribution. I really appreciate having the opportunity to read the book and have a conversation with the author. Guest this has been so fun. Thank you very much for one thank you. Cspan where history unfold daily. In 1979, cspan was created as a Public Service by americas Cable Television companies. It is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. [inaudible conversations] i think we are ready to start. Good evening, everybody. Good evening. Im eric the director and behalf of the society, im pleased to
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