Years of the 20th century, by the way. Thats whats interesting. The jim crow rules, thats when they came in, when i talked about that transit, the boycotting the Transit System being segregated in mobile. I mean, up until then it was a very different world. Up until then black people could go to the restrooms. Not that they often had the money to go there, but they could go to white restaurants. So that changed. And the south is at a crucial juncture now, and well see which way things go. [inaudible] okay, thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] next up, former white house president ial events director josh king talks about his book, off script an advanced mans guide to white house stage craft, Campaign Spectacle and political suicide. Mitchell schwartz, andrew frank and steve barr, swaggering advance men who learned the craft on walter mondales campaign against reagan in 1984, served as my role models. They were the democratics answer to Michael Dever during that summer of 1988, and they taught me well. Schwartz was a lead advance man brimming with selfconfidence and quick humor. [laughter] all right, was that selfserving enough, by the way . [laughter] i had to read that. Mort, whos out here, claimed that he was his mentor, but in the book mort got more pages, four pages, and was known as a great teacher. So just to be clear on that. Josh is a good buddy and a good friend, and a lot of people here worked with him, worked with me. We all worked on Democratic Politics together. So its nice seeing everybody. But josh has written a really interesting book that, obviously, most of you here have bought, and he said he would sign everybodys. The tv, tv has really changed politics dramatically, and there are just a quick couple of examples of that. In 1960 the famous debate of nixon versus kennedy. A lot of people said when they heard it on radio, they thought that nixon had won. But when they watched the tv version, everybody thought kennedy had won. He looked younger, he was shaven whereas nixon looked like he had this 5 00 shadow and stuff. So that was a little bit the dawn of the tv era. Throughout now the campaigns in the last 50 years, i guess, the portrayal of the candidates through their Campaign Stops and through tv has made a tremendous difference. And there are constant examples, and ill just give yo a quick three. You a quick three. Our former governor, arnold schwarzenegger, when he wanted to abolish something called the car tax, what did he do . He did this huge event where he had a car literally destroyed. Do you guys remember at all during the campaign . It was such an extreme example, but it got a ton of attention. He was saying were going to abolish the car tax, so he destroyed a car. Im not exactly sure what that had to do with destroying the car tax, but thats an example. Bill clinton, who mort and others probably did more work for than anyone, had something where he was dedicating a monument in utah or designating land to be under the monument terms which means that you can, it was limited to how much building and other things you could do. He didnt put up banners, he didnt put up anything. What he did was set up a nice wooden table, and there was a gorgeous view of the whole area. Mort, were you at that event . You did that . That was an example of just letting the picture speak for itself. You didnt have to put up banners or signs, you had the beauty of this wonderful wilderness area behind him, and that was a gorgeous shot. Cut to this election. What do you remember about some of the visuals . Not a ton, but donald trump boo, boo. [laughter] what he would do is coming in in his big, huge plane that i guess was supposed to evoke well, thats how he flies around, but its supposed to evoke air force one. Or when he announced and he came down the escalator, just this picture of grandeur. So the theatrics of campaigns are more and more important. And josh stayed with it and became one of the experts and one of the best people at it and learned a lot from some of the folks here but just on his own became one of the best at it and stayed with it and worked for the clinton administration, has continued to do work. And this book is just wonderful to read because, first of all, we all know all the people in it. But its a somewhat overlooked part of campaigns, and its so important. Picture says how many words . A thousand words . Probably more these days. In a day and in an age when the average sound bite on tv is now five or six seconds, the pictures are critical. So people like josh and others who do this maybe have an outsized influence in the political system. Whether thats a good thing or bad, im not sure. But when its for the cause of good, like josh has always worked were good folks and its a wonderful thing. Hes going to be interviewed by todd purdham, a recent citizen of l. A. , right . You guys moved here [inaudible] two years. Okay, not so recent. Todd came from washington, d. C. With his wife whos not here, but he was the head of the New York Times bureau for a long time in washington. He now works for variety. Todds a fascinating guy because hes one of the best political writers if you follow him. Its wonderful to read his stories, because he writes really well and is so astute. But his next book is not on politics, its on rogers and hammer steven, how he made that transition im not sure. People like that. Of course they like that. So were really in for a treat, and its my pleasure to introduce to you josh king and todd. Im sorry, right before that, though, a quick plug for those of you who dont its your first time being at che vallieres, its been ab institution here on largemont boulevard, and its kind of the epicenter of all of this whole area. Its a wonderful street. You see people all the time in the community x its just a wonderful thing. So, but bookstores are hurting. More and more people are buying books at amazon, and burt dykesler whos in the back there, can you raise your hand . Whos a very accomplished attorney, bought this bookstore in order to save it from becoming who knows what, another, i guess, coffeeshop or something, and has pumped money in here, has built it up, and he does these salons all the time. Please get on his list and come back. We say if everybody who does books writes books, sorry. Comes here and speaks. Its really wonderful. He has salons a couple of times several times a month, and hes added to the intellectualer if very and fervor and stuff in this community, so we thank you for that. Its a wonderful thing. [applause] without further ado, i give you the great twosome of josh and todd. Thank you very much. Josh, very good to be with you. I actually want to say i actually work for vanity fair, not variety, although i admire variety, and i was the l. A. Bureau chief and never the Washington Bureau chief. From your lips to gods ears, mitchell. [inaudible] anyway, exactly. [laughter] because this is on television and the internet forever. So welcome to you all, and welcome, josh, its really good to see you in particular. And this is a timely topic, a day after really the end of this years primary season. And because were old friends and have known each other for a long time, im going to start by asking you a somewhat provocative question i how you dont i hope you dont think is unfair. The best advance work is somewhat invisible. And advance people are supposed to have what Franklin Roosevelt called a passion for anonymity. So i wonder why youve chosen to lift the curtain, reveal only reveal some of the trade secrets. Its a little bit like youre a magician, and youre telling how the tricks are done. Right. Could you react to and what explain what you thought the public could learn by this exercise . Well, thanks, todd. I think that every time you finish a political trip, and mort and david and rica and so many other people who have been doing trips as well, you would get around a table and have some beers. It was called the wheels up party. And at some point during those wheels up parties, someone would say someday im going to write a book about advance work. And i would be part of those conversations. And i always thought that the people that do this work have never been the people who have written books. But chiefs of staff have written books, domestic policy advisers have written books. There is a code of you dont talk about what happens on the road. I felt like i was always obsessed with this one event, september 13th, 1988, Sterling Heights, michigan, mike dukakis rides in a tank. And i knew that my friend, matt bennett, had had some involvement in it, had been on that team. And one day were having a beer in new york be in a pub, and not unlike those other times during wheels up parties, matt said, you know, josh . I have this journal from 88, and i havent looked at it in 25 years. But it tells the story of my impressions of doing that trip that turned out to be such a calamitous failure for the governor of massachusetts. And i said could i take a look at it . And i have a copy of it here. Its six typewritten pages in the old dot a matrix style. But it brought back history, and it brought back that time in 88 when it was george h. W. Bush against mike dukakis. And it was just such a wonderful, evocative story. And by honing in on this trip for the first third of the book, i could tell the story of how the press works, how tv how political advertising works, how an advance team works, how convention works. And i just thought that we do see, we have we see plenty of other books about other aspects of the political process that for all of those hundreds, perhaps thousands of advance people out there who would be loathe to tell their story, if i could start with matts story in 88 and follow an equal number of republicans and democrats moving up to the very present day, that i would violate that code and get this story out. Well, in fact, you dont telltales out of school in the way that policy advisers often have told. This is not a David Stockman book where somebodys going to take you to the wood shed. But it ban as a part in a began as a part many a political magazine where you just focused on the dukakis event. Because matt gave me the journal in the summer of late 2012, and i was thinking, oh, i know Politico Magazine is thinking about trying to launch a long form vehicle for politico which i always thought was a great idea. And if i could just get in touch with her, because the 25th anniversary of dukakis and the tank is coming up in september 2013, they might like it. But i went to the aspen ideas festival in july of 2013 and had matts journal, and i said ive got to start writing this up. Maybe it could be an ebook or something. And i started hammering away, and i started saying, well, it would lead me down all these rabbit holes of other aspects of political stagecraft. So by the end of the summer of 2016, i had about 60,000 words wow, so thats a book. And susan said, well, i can only take six. Just do the due dukakis story. But they also sent matt soak yes, sir key to do a Mini Documentary on that, interviewed matt benefit and me bennett and me, talked to sig roguish who made the famous dukakis ad. So once that ran in politico, and i think it was one of the most widelyread stories of 2013, their first year of publication. An agent came up to me and said could you come up with any of these stories . I said, frankly, yeah. One of the distressingly Common Threads is so many of these events that turn out to be disasters were thought at the time, i mean, even at the end of that day, the dukakis staff felt theyd kind of nailed it. So could you without taking the whole session walk us through the anatomy of dukakis and the tank and how it happened and what we dont know about it that we think we know. Ill just give you the quick story. Its the summer of 1988, and dukakis has really wind at his back. If you looked at polling, some of those critical measures of cares about people like me, he had a decisive advantage over Vice President bush but a real deficit when it came to would be a credible commander in chief. He was against the guy in Vice President bush who was a congressman from texas, the youngest, one of the youngest aviators in world war ii, envoy to china, chairman of the rnc head of the cia. And head of the cia. So dukakis really had to build up his props to stand toe to toe as really could be entrusted with the keys to u. S. Arsenal. So beginning back in the primaries for some speeches looking at what would be a good policy on a conventional deterrence instead of reagans star wars, dukakis is talking about the conventional deterrence initiative. And the m1a1 tank, the abrams, is the perfect example of that. Lets buy more tanks to put them in the european theater to counter the soviet threat and forget about this star wars program. Possess september 11th through 14th 1988. Monday brought them to philadelphia, and to cincinnati, and tuesday would bring them to chicago and Sterling Heights, and matt bennett is dispatched to Sterling Heights where General Dynamics land systems has a facility where they sell to the pentagon and foreign purchasers, and so is told by boston headquarters, you wont governor dukakis to take a ride in the tank, and they to through a dress rehearsal and test that. Matt gets in the tank and says well do a standard run at 45milesanhour. Turns, got to wear a helmet to hear what is going on and to protect your torso because you could really be hurt in a tank like this. And that is told back to boston and he says, it was damn fun but dukakis is going to look terrible the primary rule of president ial behavior is never put anything on your head. Never put something on your head. Politics 11 politics 101. This is where the book starts, and says give you a lesson in politics 101. Never put something on your head if youre president , and this stems from dukakis with this it fit him but oversized it was helmet with this large label on it, black writing on a white background, said, mike dukakis and looked like pete mav risk mitchell from top gun. But he didnt look like tom cruise in the helmet. So finish up, because we can talk about dukakis all night and spend a third of the book doing it, but when the event was actually over, the correspondents, producers, writers, but mostly the tv guys who were traveling around with dukakis came up to joe lockhart, the deputy press secretary, and says you guys really figured out out. We have been covering reagan for eight years, and you gave us a reagan moment today. Do more or this. So sam donaldson, Chris Wallace and bruce morton, correspondents sponsor abc, nbc, and cbs, that night did two minute packages that you look at them in isolation and you break down the way Chris Wallace, for instance, reported that day. He gave dukakis all the visuals he needed. His speech in chicago, to the World Affairs council, the council on foreign relations, a quick ride in at the tank, but his policy focus against Vice President bush and the way that story was put together sort of showed Vice President bush and dan quayle on the defensive that day, to try to defend their policies. So if you were just saying, hough did we do that day . We got great visuals from Sterling Heights, great substance from chicago, the testify networks had video to put together a package, and the way tom brokaw and Peter Jennings and dan rather reported looked good for dukakis, mean while in washington, dc, the runner for media for bush quayle days i have an idea. So five weeks later the tank ad. One fatal flaw of the day that they tank took a sweep close to the photographers. They wore supposed to have that closeup shot of him, and also i didnt real iowa, 45 miles an hour he was a little car sick after that. Very. So arthur here . Arthur grace was a photographer assigned to shoot for news week behind the scenes and the tried to warn the campaign this was headed for disaster. He is it seeing pictures back in the hangary dukakis there was a huge debate whether the helmet should be worn or not. General dynamics wouldnt let the ride go forward without it. Would he just do a slow roll in front of the press . That would look wimpy. But if the broker a compromise, todd, where the governor would emerge from this behind closed doors in the hangar and is riding with corden of General Dynamics, who would become secretary of the navy, and they did a slow role slow roll for the cameras and these are 60foot long constructions on flatbed trucks with a back row and front row, and you could do a a model going down the catwalk very slowly. Get all the pictures you went. Governor dukakis wont be wearing the helmet and he will look like george c. Patton. Then the tang will cruise out, have a stop, she governor will put his helmet on and get to see how this conventional piece of military equipment can operate. And General Dynamics wanted to show everything they could about their tanks this guy could be president and they want to sell more of these models. And so there is this story between matt bennett, who gave me his journal, and jack weeks, who was on the dukakis plane as the trip director, where matt is trying to tell boston, im not comfortable with this, i dont think its going to work, and so a tour that had gone from philadelphia to cincinnati is running into snags. Theyre booing him at the General Electric plant in cincinnati. They say, jack, you better get to General Dynamics because we cant have another day screwed up on our Foreign Policy week. And jack flies to Sterling Heights, gets on site that morning, and im trying to decipher the stories that matt and jack told, but as best as i could determine, they tried to have it both ways. This slow pass in front of the reporters, and then have the helmet on. The way jack tells it he had no idea the helmet would go on, and that the tank stopses at the far end of the proving ground and he says, holy st, the story is going to be tank runs out of gas. Why else would the tank stop. Then it goes on passes back and forth. Then, strangely and oddly, it comes back toward the press riser, a quarter mile run at full speed, or close to full speed, and takes a lastminute lefthand side turn almost with 105millimeter turret almost decapitating the reporters in the front row. But it is at that moment an ap photographer gets a closeup shot of dukakis, a small on his face, the white teeth, mike dukakis label. Does bush decide dukakis looks like a turtle . Looks dorky . He was a great ad man. He made ads for his las vegas base, made ads for Ronald Reagan in 1984, and he is thinking of that old 60s and 70s, hang on, snoopy, snoopy hang on, and looks like the way Charles Schultz drew snoopy in his fight again the red baron show, wants to buy the rights to that song and also wants to buy the footage shot by the news cameras that day. Now abc, cbs, nbc, didnt want to sell wouldnt sell footage for political commercial purposes about he found an independent guy who gave him 11 seconds of footage, and all sid did was flip it in the machine, slow it down, add sound effects like the wheels of a tank grinding, because it was silent footage of dukakis in the tank and makes the ad. Would the networks be so principled today or would they want the revenue . I think today you find campaigns regularly assigning what we call trackers, to show up at any of these open events and get their own video for use by use it any way they want and that is what happened to george allen in 2006. Jim webb with his makaka moment. They talked about the kennedy, nixon debate. When did the modern age of optics begin in the 6s with kennedy on television . Well, i had to look at a when everything conspired to make daily storytelling of a politicians life more important and easier. That would be reagan as tv transitioned from film to video and satellite their footage back to new york for ed editing, but this is when white house correspondents become brands unto themselves, like donaldson, and that he can get on with the way he storytells of reagan, from 81 to 89, and then picks up, and so what im thinking about the age of optics, its reagans reagan has always seemed to me, as well as the great communicator, a person who understood through michael deaver, the ability of statescraft to tell stories. Then the question as the 88 Campaign Comes up, who can understand the reagan model better, george h. W. Bush or dukakis . And what im seeing as i remember it as a young as a young man, but also going back and looking at it, is a spring the primary season and then the spring and summer and fall as every day both campaigns were trying to tell new stories. So i call it the age of optics. And its not just the pictures are. Theres the sound. One thing i remember from your days with president clinton, the music. The theme from magnificent seven. That was a staple. How do you pick the right kind of music for a candidate . Well, i learned some of this from mort, too, and i remember i think it was in 84, mitchell, at a western Governors Association event where someone decided, lets have all the governors of the western states walk together toward the event. Lets position the press just so, so they can see them walking and you can actually capture their strides, and lets play on the loud speaker the theme to the magnificent seven. Almost just trying to coopt the way a movie producer or movie director would film a scene and then add musical soundtrack in postproduction, so that always stuck with me, and whenever we would do an event with governor clinton, and then president clinton, i would say, what music in particular is going to fit with this scene . So, in 1996, for an for example, an example you wrote about, he goes to concord, New Hampshire, in the beginning of his reelection effort, and to show his focus on education, and early in that day we brought him to an elementary school, concord elementary school, and he is look over these kids shoulders as theyre playing with this new fangled thing called the computer, and we programmed the computer to speak to president clinton, and when the kid pressed their mouse on the button that says, you will be reelected, and we positioned the microphone right next to the computer through cabling and what we call multibox, so that the networks can play all the same sound. Then to finish the day we went to a large auditorium and gave a speech to several thousand people, but for his walkout music we played the theme to mr. Hollands opus now about a beloved music teacher. You talk about the realities of sound in a crowded place and talk about governor howard deans famous scream in iowa in 2004. Leave aside the fact his campaign had already collapsed before that moment, he didnt fail because he screamed, but he screamed only to the people who were watching him on tv who didnt hear what he was really doing in the room where he was speaking was struggling to be heard and her himself above the roar of the crowd which was not picked up on the mic in front of him. Go back to the ballroom in january of 2004, the iowa caucus just concluded, dean has come in a disappointing third, but you have these thousands of volunteers who have all streamed into the state, who came in with the highest of hopes with him on top of the polls, no farther back than thanksgiving or christmas, as suddenly theyve got this huge letdown. Governor dean is back stage with joe trippy, what should i say . Trippy says give them hell. Fire them up because we have the next morning we have to send them to all the followon primary caucus states and we need to keep them energized. The ballroom is one of thieves great old ven others that these great old venues that usually house rock acts week in and week out in West Des Moines and still 3500 people, to the rafters, and they are so loud, as governor dean walks out, a young advanceman who would go on to become the executive producer and show runner of house of cards is trying to figure out how to put the event together itch dont have that much equipment. He has a microphone. Doesnt have big stage monitors, which are the things that rock musicians use to modulate their own voice based how the crowds dish. To the decibel level in the room. So dean is trying to project way out to 3,500 people and he has no idea if they can hear him because he cant hear himself. All he can do is give his speech, a few minutes long, and go through the long recitation of statessed where were going to go to South Carolina and north carolina, and washington, dc, take the fight yeah and he can hardly he cant hear himself, but because he is speaking into this microphone, follow it long, that wire, all the way to the book of the room to the press riser, to this box, and the mult box is plugged into by all the networks and the people watching the reporting of the iowa caucus results back in new york and washington, they dont hear 3,500 people. They hear one person speaking into one microphone who is sounding unhinged. And this this season, select can clinton has been taken to task for shouting and screaming, is that the same thing . She is in large place last night, i was struck that she did not sound seen a development over the last surveil month the last several months because both her and at the Technical Support she is getting her advance team is Getting Better because she would get in front of crowds and try to match the energy of the crowd, and maybe she didnt have the size of the monitors she needed to blow back sound at her to tell the speaker, its okay, you dont need to project as much as you were. Remember that scene, todd, back to trump, if he is trying to he says, im playing the woman card, deal me in. And really trying to get back to the back of the house. And thats where she took some criticism from trump and others oh, shes being shrill. And i think the monitor should be reflecting her own voice back to her so she is hearing how it sounds. Now, fast forward to last nights Brooklyn Navy yard. Just listen to the way she is speaking, she is very conscious of the fact that there may be 2,000 people in the Brooklyn Navy yard but theres millions of people watching through the cable nets, and to have them see me with modulating, managing my voice, modulating my volume, modulating my pace, delivering my attack lines, my teleprompter, really good timing. I dont a couple thousand people in front of me and a thousand people behind me in naval yard. Got to say it, todd, theyre props because she wants to sound now just right, president ial, not overbearing, and someone that you watching at home and then whatever clips get used the next morning on the today show, thats the person who has the temperment for the oval office. You make the point we wont know what the outstanding gaff or success of this cycle has been, but so far, what would you say is one or two of the best staged political moments and one or two of the worst. Well, i think what the point i make in the book is that a lot of the many of the things that really came back to haunt candidates about what they did in public, you wouldnt have known it at the time. Quick recitation of that would be dukakis in the tank. Not until five weeks later that the tank ad airs which is what we remember him by today, the ad, not the event. Mitt romney singing america me beautiful in 2002 singing america the beautiful. He does that in january in villages. That case is logged in the obama campaign, and that devastating ad of him singing the classic patriotic song, over pictures of empty boardrooms, boarded up factories, swiss bank conditions, debuts in june, just when its most important for him to position himself as the republican nominee and the opponent making it clear that he is of the one percent. The other example is john kerry and windsurfing. Goes wind surfing in august during the republican convention. Thats matched up with his infamous quote i voted for the 87 billion before i voted against it, and you add to that the sound track of the are you blue danube and its a great ad. They flip the video and he goes back and forth. So whats happening in this cycle . My point is that the creativity of these opposing ads we know that secretary clinton has her team well wired and theyve logged everything trump has said going back a year or even more, in some cases. We dont know what theyre getting ready to spring on him in the weeks before cleveland or maybe in september, right after labor day, and you dont know, too that trump for trumps sake he is doing the same with secretary clinton. But the thing that has been most damaging, probably happened to marco rubio and that wasnt necessarily an advance or stagecraft and a half snafu. That was the candidates selfimposed error which is repeating over and over again the debate. His line, barack obama knows exactly what he is doing. And you think about that. He comes out of the iowa caucus with a strong third place. He is starting to get real heavy dopers. S heavy endorsements and if he came out of New Hampshire strong and the republicans got behind this 45yearold candidate from central casting could have been a very different situation right now today. I think people dont understand, and certainly even i, having covered politics for long time now, i dont think i understood how many things can go wrong. I but you decided to get president clinton out of the static sterile summit press venue into a beautiful park in june in france, and its warm, and suddenly you notice a whole bunch of bugs are swarming around the lectern. What do you do . Its 1996. And i you could either have the president give his post News Conference in the sterile International Press center, where everyone else has done and it it would look like every other ball room. That any president speaks in or the Prime Minister of great britan, so i look around and find this beautiful park, but i but its 90 something degrees, its the end of june, one of the hottest days of the year, and im looking at the podium from back where the cameras are positioned, and im seeing that its got a lot of bugs on it. A little cloud of gnats, and this wont work but ive already sort of convinced the white house that they have to scrub the plans and do it here. So i say, well, think theres a little store, a small supermarket over there im going to see what i can find. And i see, like, can of aerosol with a bug on it or something and looks like its the right thing. If i just spray that they will disappear and wont hang around this president ial lectern, the blue dos, blue goose. I cant read the french but looks like it will work, so i sprayed the podium, leather it up lather it up to make sure the gnats dont cloud think the picture im trying to create of president clinton. Instead they hung around and got sort of thicker as these cameras these movie lights we set up and trained could tom right on the president ial podium, made hot and they liked it. It was a nice place to be. President clinton arrives, gets behind the podium and its he is under withering questioning. A couple things happening in saudi arabia, the truck bombing killed 19 service men and women and so many others. Back in the states, theres the emergence of this problem for the white house called filegate. So wolf blitzer is asking questions about file gate and which u. S. Government officials had their fbi files accessed, and im seeing clinton do his usual thing, hold on to the podium, and so its getting hot because ive got these movie lights on him and its 90 degrees to start with so probably about 115, 120 at the podium. And he goes to the podium. Sort of rubs his brow, and clinton does not have beautiful complexion to start with, and he very sensitive, allergies to a lot of things. And he just rubs his eyes with toxic poison. And has about 20 minutes to go left in his News Conference. And so by the time this News Conference ends, he is like this. Trying to answer questions about the towers and filegate and is a highs are closed like he just went to see cassius clay. What disleon pa net to say . He said, dont even bother to come home. Were there repercussions or did they understand it was mistake. I almost got fired many times and that was one of them but it made i out there until late. 97. Lets go to france and the 50th anniversary of dday, even i thought you were blamed and deservedly blamed for something that wasnt your fault. It had to do with president clinton using some stones on the beach at normandie to normandy to make a across and there was rumor you whips speakerred in his ear to do that but thats not the case. I was telling a friend earlier, getting ready for the 50th anniversary of normandy was the most meaningful thing i had done and i look back its as a wonderful, wonderful experience. Mostly because i started out by looking at list of veterans and medal of honor winners who are going back to normandy and called them on the phone and heard their storiers directly. Then i studied a lot of footage of reagan from 1984 at the 40th and i was trying to think of somethings that clinton would do that were like what reagan did, which all president s must do, and things that would distinguish clinton differently. So don bayer, the head of communications at the at the time was developing this messaging around clintons big keynote speech, saying were the children of your sacrifice. And so if i could find a few veterans,some of whom won the medal of honor, walk with president clinton from the cemetery, where he gave his big speech in front of thousands of veterans, down this winding path, over the bluff, down to omaha beach, and there they would be met by the chief Army Chaplain, and clinton and the veterans and the Army Chaplain would say a prayer to their comrades in arms who had fall on the beach. That would be a wonderful way to finish up the 50th anniversary of dday. Now, as clinton is walking down, tenminuter walk, the secret Service Agent whoa im assigned to work if hears on his raidover that the countersnipers, the people who net to ghetto vantage points to make sure they can cover the president and prevent any problems that might happen, have said, if he goes too far out on the beach or too close to the water we cant cover him dirks. Wont be in range. So can you guys just develop a marker to no more than like 75 feet from where you are and that will be tell the president he cant go any farther. So the secret Service Agent says, josh, get me a marker. Awful i see is, like, seaweed and sea grass and rocks. That form a little ribbon before you get up to the hill moving up to up omaha beach. I said, okay, well, these rocks will work. So i take about 20 of them, and pile them in a little pyramid about 75 feet out into the beach, and when the president walks down to my position i whisper, sir, the secret service doesnt want you to go any farther than the rocks and he gets it. I got it, i got it. And so clinton and the veterans have their moment and their prayer, and ive got the pool with me, and that works out the press pool with me a and they can taking pictures but theres a delay because somebody made a private deal. We get it done and im like, great, lets pack up and go away, because anything else just ruins it. Its been perfect. But eddie adams, the great pulitzer prizewinning photographer for newsweek who shot the famous picture in vietnam of the police chief shooting one of his prisoners, its now many years after vietnam but eddie is on assignment for newsweek, and has cut a deal with another white house staffer to do a private photo shoot of president clinton on the beach, after the one that i had set up. But we have to kill time as eddie as we have to move the veterans away, bring the chaplain away, and just going to be eddie and the president on the beach, but eddie is fumbling with lenses, taking a little extra time, and clinton is saying, what do i do now . Its taking a few minutes. And it was such an emotional trip, todd, we started in italy, where had been wounded. We went to cambridge, england, where some of the bombing raids started, cemetery there. And then finally made it to normandy. So, all week we had seen so many crosses so many reminders of the american sacrifice, and as i was saying earlier, tom brokaw was with us, and i think pictures of this got back to, like, Steven Spielberg and tom hanks and this 50 inform anniversary and all the stories that got told because of it really let up to appreciate what the greatest generation had done, maybe suspended saving private ryan or spawned band of brothers or creating new content from it. But clinton is trying to figure out what to do with a few minutes of time and looked at this little pile of rocks i have put in position to basically mark the point at which he should go no further, and im 75 feet away and i see him bending down in front of the pile of rocks. And he is just hasnt been told what to do, just trying to rate for eddie adam to get ready for him, and he takes these rocks and forms them in the shape of the white cross. The same indelible image he had seen day after day for all of those cemeteries and just stands back there and looks at his cross. And mater that scene gets report in what we call the pool report, video of it gets looked at and it becomes construed by people writing stories, and by Rush Limbaugh as the clintons phoniness. Instead of general genuineness. I thought it was genuine. Clinton at that time, 47 year old, 48, saying the words the said, we are the children of your sacrifice, and cant have again through those stops and not have felt that deep emotion, and to even spend so much time with these veterans who back then were only, like, 70 years old and were full of victim and vigor and telling their stories and youre trying to honor them. We want to open up to your questions in a minute but i want to ask a couple more things. As you point out there are all kinds of are its a game of telephone with the reporter because these moments like that cannot be seen by 250 reporters so a tight pool of 14 or 15 videographers, pencil reporters, photographers, move around with the president. The print persons responsibility is to file a report, was circulated only privately among the reporters. Enough its posted they post on he white house web site but widely circulated by email and they can essentially theyre public documents. They used to be private full of little jokes and inside baseball stories and one colleague for example was in russia, and found himself trying to make sure that the american photographers could move to certain places in red square, when suddenly the Russian Police grabbed him in a place that was not diplomatic and stopped him. The next stop or a couple days later he found a hockey stick in his room. He said he was quoted as saying, well, that got my attention. But theres. But theres a lot of lingo that goes with what is a clutch. They have to do fundraisers at so many cities they visit, and a clutch might be any person who wants to spend as much time to the candidate as possible theyre clutching on, and you know that the candidate or the president wants to sort of move around and talk to other people, so an advance person will figure out how to usher he clutch away. Isnt the feeling the clutch is a person that should know better because their a staffer or supporter or wealthy donor and should make room and time for other people, but instead the abuse their proximity to the president by hanging on. You have seen the president 15 or 20 times might be an opportunity for a person who has never met him or her to see them. So you wish a constant clutch would not spend as much time. So its a kind of term if you call a fellow worker a clutch, its not a compliment. It is derogatory. Theres one that my colleagues have protested. Understand theres some practical ropes ropes and thate Obama White House has taken the practice of producing its own images, photographs and video, to an alltime high because they dont want the photographers generally speaking decline to go in settings where there are not some word journalists as well. They dont want to just go in and just if you ask photographers individuals theyd say i dont care if print reports dont go but as a collective thing they all agree if somebody is going to take a picture, somebody ought to be there to hear the words in caves theres interesting word, because the president doesnt want the words to be heard theyve want to control the pictures. This white house has its own tv station, own glossy online magazine, and it has a very sophisticated way of presenting, and i have to say some of the single most striking pictures the White House Press corp is full of artists, but now the best picture, so many of the best pictures of oObama White House have come from the president s official photographer. Does it give you concern as a professional, political image maker . It does, and it occupies pretty much the last third of my book. The metta question of should the white house be its own news agency and to what extent are they veering towards constant propaganda . And as much as i respect president obama and as much as i respect pete, the photographer and former news photojournalist for the chicago tribune, i think that what has happened, and i think the way you characterized the views of the many News Organizations, the way theyre conferreddized, the white house news photographer 0, or he white house Comers Association, you get a different story depending on who youre talking to and whether theyre talking with anyone else do. Some reporters know to put themselves in a situation where its off the record with the president , ask the New York Times on principle will not allow reporters to be in that. So what happened is because the white house and the Comers Association have never figured out how to just take in one other photographer, to give a event have it be seen by a third party, a photographer, what official photographer will take pictures and will either put them on the white house web site or on twitter stream or on flickr, and News Organizations are invited to use them freely, and they do sometimes. The New York Times, if they had not been granted access to certain event, will take a pete picture and put it in the paper and sometimes there are moments when you cant possibly think that any other lenses or photographers or news people could get into a room, such as the night that Osama Bin Laden was killed, and the president and Vice President and secretary of state and some of the other members of the cabinet were in the situation room. That was no place for anything other than the official photographer and any News Organization would rightly take that picture as a historical document, credit the white house, and put it out. But other times, when the president has visited by is visited by malala, for example, the from afghanistan, or he is coming back from Nelson Mandelas funeral in south africa and is with secretary clinton and former president bush, you would think a very historic moment that in the back of the plane you have steve crowley, another New York Times photographer. If he could be invited up to take a few snapshots as president bush is showing off his post president ial provings, an artist. The legitimatizing effect. But it becomes only petes shot and that the chief criticism of doug mills. Frankly youre taking one, youre hurting the business mod of photojournalist, and because you are denying an independent lens on this moment, the only words to describe it is propaganda. Perversely for historians and authors its a good thing because the pictures taken by pete sousa are Government Property and if somebody wants to write a book, theyre basically cheap and free. There are questions in the audience . I dont know if we have audience mics. Or come to the mic ive been asked to say. This is fascinating. Although im a little disturbed. I feel like youre pulling the curtain from oz, die want to know more . So you have talked about unintended consequences. Can you nip that around and talk about flip that around and talk about something that you worked on, something you put together, that you did, that maybe didnt think went very well but had an incredible effect, a positive effect . Im sure nit your book but let me think about that. What i do in the book is look at one of these events for every four years, and i focused a lot of on the things that happened to president clinton and president obama at the first third and the last third. I think as todd started out so much of what those who produce events for the white house do is invisible, and any day ends and turns into a nice report. Theres not a problem and sort of think that everything went well. There was one time early on, i think when did amore core start in they watched this premier called americorps and erected a tent on the south lawn where he would sign americorps legislation but he sensed on the lawn, final affairs with ugly plastic sides, and i looked at that and i said, how can we make a good picture of this . You want to have the president sign the law backed up by some young people who were going to become members of the first americorps and its going to look like any other signing. And probably against the wishes of the National Park service and the social office staff, the people who really govern what went on in the on the 18acres of the white house, convinced enough people to say, lets take all these young people that the president is going to sign with. And to the plastic tent and sign and go. Come this way. Walk down the south lawn, and as he went behind the tree which war now shrouded from the audience and the press, what i say is, why dont you start walking, mr. President , all these young people and their beautiful array of colored jackets for americorps and city year and other youth organizations you just surround the president and you all walk up together. So we started this conversation, remembering that western governors walk towards the lens, the scene of the magnificent seven weapon had the cranberries or something playing on the south lawn and we strike up the cranberries and tell president clinton to start walking, and have all of these young people fill in behind, and this is 150yard walk. Way up toward the white house. Well, the press pool is crouched down and they can track this forward movement, so must have been like 90 seconds, and that gives them all the opportunities in the world to get kids smiling, walking forward, the president having time, the Washington Monument and ellipse behind and turns out paul is one of the photographers another New York Times photographer, gets a beautiful wide angle shot and ended up on the front page. So i sort of thought and thought to make that choreography happen and no one can say why are you doing that youre wastes his time and bringing kids down to the dewy grass. I said i wanted to see people moving and mort taught me about the portion of having motion toward the lens. Im curious about your opinion about the impact of technology on the craft of advance. In 1992, i think only leads had cell phones, like bag phones you call an airstrike in with. It created a whole wild west kind of culture unto itself amongst advance people and allowed for a lot of latitude for creativity, whereas even when we get into the white house, it was totally inefficient and i imagine now, advance is super efficient but you pus a web cam on the advance guys head and tell him to turn in a circle. Im curious how you think technology affected advance in good ways and negative ways. The same thing is true for the press. Its tracked the same way. Can remember photographers for upi, the poor mans news service, having to take the film and dry if with hair driers in the boysm of Public School gyms. And what you mentioned was small miracle. You could call the white house switchboard and say this is purdum and they would put you on hold and patch you together and you would say, get me anyone and it happens. Now i stole your answer. No. Another set of problems for people who followed in your footsteps, you used to be responsible for, what, 1200 words a day on the road and then as soon as you press file you were done. Now your successors have to do videos, do a blog post, tweet, do anything else, to carry the platform over the New York Times across the Digital Assets forward so its not the time that you would have where johnny apple would have to say, ive done my story, lets go eat and drink and have fun. Or to do the best shot you could with maybe three or four hours of thinking about it, this is what the day really meant at the end of the day rather than like, heres this part of the day. But no one is never off deadline. To answer the question that ben posed about the technology and president ial stagecraft, mort would talk about the story that the most important rule advance people have on the road is carry a roll of dimes with you. If you needed to make a phone call you had a roll of dimes, and kind a pay phone and make the call. And youre right, ben, the thing that i always one thing i always did as an advance person, i think maybe more than some others, was i would have this distance wheel that could measure out distances from whatever venue i was doing. Would use geometry and go back to my hotel room and draw out every detail of the site on graph paper with a pencil and protractor and ruler and have this, a czech to all style elevations and fax them back to the white house and say this is the picture im going to create. Sort of a oneway conversation. You can sit there and look its by phone but theres not much you can do. Im basically on my own because im tethered maybe by a sky pager. Dont have a cell phone, the lead advance person might but theyre off doing the local politics and im on my own, and i contrast that with an experience that i had in 2009, many, many years after id been an everyday choreographer at the white house when i said im going to go back and work for this new president , barack obama, at least one trip hes going to make to the caribbean for the first the summit of the americas, and i u. S. Remember i had to send back photography, and get in everyday Conference Calls in a skiff, a secure communications apparatus, in a hotel room, because the threat of espionage or eavesdroppers was on us at all times and i couldnt do anything to break the mold in those early days other than the proscribed plan that the white house had sent it us to do. Now issue think things have changed somewhat as president obama gets into his final year but the creativity of the people like Mitchell Swartz and mort engle berg had, you wouldnt touch what they were going to do because they when youre a lead advance person you are the lead, and anything you want to do, from basically wheels up, wheels down, sitting until wheels up, youre in command, but that doesnt seem to be the case. First of all, let me thank both of you for an unbelievably interesting and fun evening if feel improved already. And with that in mind let me ask you the negative unintended consequence of what you do. To what extent is the political stagecraft in which you engage has led to a culture of cynicism, where people who watch it think, its all phony, its being presented by people who are pretending to play parts, and why should we trust anybody with these important positions . Yes. And we could argue that the last year, the g. O. P. Nominee has been dependent completely on stagecraft, that is basically a onetool candidate who knows the rally and the power of the rally , through history if one person is speaking to thousands of people who are responding in cadence to his clarion calls, this will be a powerful enough to defeat 16 other candidates and bring him to the nomination. I wrestled with this, and i wondered, is it a chicken and egg story . Is the only way that a candidate can get through to enough people to tell their message or president was traditionally through the networks and is still through video storytelling, and if in history abc, cbs, cnn, later joined by fox, and msnbc, required that enough b roll, these images, be created so that they could create their twominute packages, that to get on the news that night, or the next morning, or into the paper, you had to create something compelling enough so that a producer or an executive producer or layout editor of the times thought, thats a cool enough picture or good enough video that were going to match it to donaldson or Chris Wallaces story and give you a twominute package because were competing against other thinks for the news hole, and you better hope that your campaign or your candidate creates enough interesting things to make your photo or story worthy of front page. And so i think its part of this mutually dependent relationship between politicians and the media that cover them, that Everyone Wants enough content to do their jobs. One of the stories i tell at the end of part three, as i think president obama is finding his voice, and for the end of his presidency, is not a visual one at all. Now, he comes out to los angeles for a fundraiser, but he also goes out to the garage of mark merem mo who has a podcast and mark usually does it with his guests sitting across the table the his garage and their onehour conversations about what the person really has to say. And the way mark and his producer, brendan mcdonald, toll the story, they were reached out to by the white house through the normal channels of click here to connect to the show, and the Communications Office at the white house said we have a guest who would like to come on the show. How do we do it . And turns out the president of the United States wants to go and do an hourlong pod cast, and mark says, its at the president. Will cap sear my tour go to the white house and sit in the oval office, stick the microphone there so we can have this conversation. No, no, the white house says. We have we want to do it exactly the way you do it in your garage, staying true to the brant brand of what you represent. So i think theres several months worth of back and forth, will this work, when is the tour going to be on and off, and finally it happens, and marine one flies from pasadena to the neighborhood, secret Service Blocks off the roads, the motorcade pulls in, and president obama promptly sits down in this cluttered desk with two microphones and mark and obama have this hourlong conversation. Some will remember it was a conversation that made news because the president used the nword in the context of what they were talking about. But if you listen to that hour of conversation, talking about the problems of cities, gun control, Foreign Policy, obamas own history going back to hawaii and his time at pomona and his College Years at columbia and then Harvard Law School you emerge from that hour of listening without a single visual of what you had with a much deeper appreciation of the president s past, how he macs this presidency, how he sees important aspects of policy today and what he wrestles with. This is right after the shooting in charleston, South Carolina, and what to do about that. And so i came away with that thinking, like, if all of us could get somehow away from the stagecraft and the artifice and the visual, and listen and give people enough time to talk and not trying to condense two minutes, might have a couple sound bites but the correspondent has to make their reputation the way he or some open the report and closes it and talks back to the anchor. If we just figure oust a way that we could give people the time and the latitude to say their piece, and just put it in our ears without the distraction that the visual creates, probably be better off. I came away from that wtf episode with a much better appreciation of this guy who occupied the oval office for six years but i didnt understand him quite as well as i did until i heard him speaking for an uninterrupted hour. A thoughtful place to end and were at the limit of our time. Its probably worth remembering that imagemaking is as old as politics him. Bill sapphire used to say the city success of George Washington was he was always the tallest person in the room. Josh, circling back, whether youre lifting the curtain, and you remember the movie, Dustin Hoffman creates a phony war ask doesnt care about the money but at the end of the movie when he realizes he cant get the credit, and his handlers can control him, they have to take him out. So im glad youre here and glad you have written the book. Atthank you very much. [applause] no one here dont want to do the clutch glad to sign any book you have. [inaudible conversations] this is booktv on cspan2, and we want to know what is on your Summer Reading list. Send us your choices, booktv is our twitter handle. You can also posted on our facebook page, facebook facebookdom booktv or send an email to book tv cspan. Org. Whats on your reading list . Youre watching booktv on cspan2. One of the things we like to do on booktv is look at different aspects of the publishing world, and one of those packets is the author. Mary wassenbergerrer is the director of the group attempt Authors Guild cincinnati is an Organization Going back to 1912, it has formed to represent authors, to represent their interests, authors rights, copyright, free speech, and we have been doing the same thing for over 100 years. We represent their interest advice eave publisher advice ave publishers, and had a conference looking at the standard trade Publishing Agreement and asking questions about whether the terms are fair, if theyre still fair today in the digital world. We have 9,000 members and provide services for our members, free contract reviews, Legal Services for authors and agents, and lawyer members. We you cant be a book author without a web site so we help them build a web site, we host them. Very, very low cost. And we send spend a lot of time on advocaciy for authors. Were the only gro i