and nichola discuss olympia snowe, barbara mikulski and of elizabeth dole and why they have not been considered contenders for the presidency. this is just over an hour. >> thank you for coming out tonight. great to have you back. great to have you here as new friends. let me start tonight and ask you about your book on nine women. how did you select those nine women? >> the best answer is we could have looked at more, but within the confines of the vote you can only do so much but we want to diverse city. we want the democrats and republicans, two parts of the country, everyone of different ages. we knew on the basis of nine, make generalizations that are 100% certain and our collusions are hypotheses -- we needed a fairly diverse group. >> we also included women, the white house project in the election cycle -- a libya snow and kathleen sibelius were in there. we also wanted to consider this notion and several years ago, which last round of madame president, talking about looking at women governors. we wanted to look at women governors who have been through training as the pipeline. we also made the observation that when a male is elected to senatorship he is the immediately cast as a future presidential hopeful. scott brown hadn't even been sworn in in massachusetts and scottybrown.com was already purchased but so many women had been in washington so many years as legislators working on important work and yet their names never bubble to the top and we were curious why not. >> how did you decide you wanted to write this book? you all studied similar topics. how did this book come about? >> it was my idea. i have been a political nerd, my parents remember my sister and i in 1960 staging a knicks and/kennedy debate. my elephant beat her ratify. the magazine issues came out in advance of the presidential election, preview the eight or ten or 12 people who ought to be considered and it struck me after seeing so many issues, women were not making it on that list. they were not thought to be presidential. they were thought for some reason not to be presidential. as an academic you tend to ask well, why? that was the origin of the book. women are not quickly coming into those. >> there was a conference paper. for those graduate students you can take conference papers and turn them into publications. we started this as a conference program and did two women and there was an editor nikki worked with on her list of books who was in the audience and came and talked and said can you expand this? we said sure. it is a matter of picking and choosing. >> two of the women are worked on often i will hear people say i don't know who they are. as governor of washington state, former governor of hawaii, little known on the national stage, begs the question why not? why are they not well-known? >> i think i know the answer to the question and our last in a neutral way. is there a double standard in the way women are covered by the news me and how they are judged by their appearance? [laughter] >> he knew the answer. >> one of my co-authors, one of my graduate students, she and i did an article this study in 2008. looking at the news coverage, the sexism, it was appalling. when i had my husband read it and we sent it off, you are making this stuff up. chris matthews did not say that. and it is far worse than you think it is. we did have some of that. >> it is more complicated for women to present themselves physically in public because there is no uniform. there is a lack of a legacy. we haven't had a woman say this is what a president looks like. the press tends to cover her appearance before they cover what she stands for and what she plans to do as president. >> there is discrimination generally. be particularly inte women the lived in the kremlin was ridiculed for her appearance. remember to articles about her appearance. it is an example of the scrutiny women feel when they run for office. >> why did you find that to be the case? i can't remember a single time someone said the vice president is not wearing a suit today or why is mitt romney wearing jeans instead of a suit? who is wearing -- i had a candidate for noted for wearing gucci loafers and that made the media but that is the only example i can think of with men. >> jimmy carter had his car again. if you were old enough -- there was some criticism but nothing like what women go through. we had some examples in the book. kathleen sibelius' told a story about being in the first debate when she was running for governor the first time and she had on pink toed shoes and the writer who is a very good political writer talked about the color of her toenail polish and this was the lead thing that she had shut up and was describing what she was wearing and if you remember when michele bachman was running there were photographs of her french nails and whether or not these were appropriate for someone running for president, the way they were shaved and the french nails were appropriate and nancy pelosi we mentioned -- it was somewhere in the book, when she first became speaker there was this series of pearls, they took nick shots in the first few weeks she had worn six kinds of pearls and this was -- nobody has done six kind of necklines. maybe because there's not enough variety. >> there's plenty of variety. what you where can send a messages but for men the messages art received but quickly pushed aside. he is more casual or uptight but the messages are quickly pushed aside. dianne feinstein has fine fashion tastes, early in her career had a tough time getting people to thank that she had any understanding whatsoever of problems that the disadvantaged experience in san francisco because her attire screamed she was from a wealthy part of the city. and her attire was sending a message that got in her way as a public servant. >> what are some of the other key differences women seeking high office face? rather than men seeking high office? >> there are so many. we were talking about this at dinner time that a woman needs credentials of the highest caliber whereas as i mentioned earlier a man who comes to the national scene, just elected senator can run for president or be seen as presidential whereas a woman needs foreign affairs experience, needs preferably to be a governor and that is what barbara lee has done in the governor's mansion, that it wouldn't be acceptable for a woman to get elected president from a senate position. you would need more than that. the highest level of credentials, accept the thinner resume from a male candidate because he looks the part. >> we were talking about this at dinner. a male candidate can appoint a vice presidential running mate to fill in the gap. that experience in foreign policy and you get somebody to take care of that but women have all of those things. we interviewed most of the women in the book and they talked about that and she had been on the senate foreign relations committee and was an expert in africa, and part of the issue is do i look presidential standing next to the generals and she laughed when they made a comment and elizabeth dole, recounting almost wrecked my car and after the iowa straw poll and elizabeth dole did very well so i had a round table of pundits on national public radio and talking about the surprising issue, and when the husband was running four years ago and can't take it seriously because she has no commander in chief background. what has she done to prepare her to be commander-in-chief? that is when i almost wrecked my car. >> two other things. women have to worry about appearing too feminine or too masculine. they are negotiating a minefield and either way they go there are problems. men have to worry about appearing feminine but no one is going to say he is too masculine to be president. it is a lot more complicated and also a male candidate can be more aggressive without running the risk of being labeled. there are barriers but there are also factors that women are caught in a, areas they have to take a nuanced approach where men are a lot more free to move. >> women have been fantastic surrogates for their spouses who were running for president. elizabeth dole was a good example. she was such a powerful campaign. he crisscrossed the country working on behalf of bob dole, spoke lovingly on his behalf. i have not seen a male spouse the caliber of the women we have had. i think it is fair to say bill clinton was hillary clinton's best ally and worst detractor when she ran for president and bob dole also had trouble with the surrogate role. the spouse of a woman running for president be described as needing to be a benefactor spouse, someone who is quiet enough in the background, not making any gaffes in the press and yet supportive of the spouse. we haven't seen it yet. >> in defense of those men, the role hasn't been defined. it is not that they are messing up necessarily. they don't know what the role of male political spouse is. >> two women who were very prominent, hillary clinton and elizabeth dole, their spouses are very prominent politicals in their own way. they want to get in and say something in their lives as well. >> interesting discussion. we talked at the outset that you wrote about nine different women and how you selected them. are selected four that i want the three review spend time developing your thoughts on and three have kind of a direct relationship to the institute in kansas and one of them is the most prominent united states senator so each of you kind of took the lead on each chapter so if the person who took the lead on the individual person could starch and the other two can jump in, let's start with elizabeth dole. you did that chapter. >> one thing i want to mention about elizabeth dole, she was penalized as a presidential candidate, her preparedness. i don't know about you but when i hear a speaker or like someone who came prepared to speak well and elizabeth is known to prepare extremely well for her speeches. i interviewed elizabeth dole twice. i interviewed bob dole and bob dole was funny. i put this quote in the boat, tell me how you prepare for your speeches, he goes i give a month and that is how i prepare. that is why i am not any good but in contrast elizabeth, i can hear a voice coming of the kitchen and that is elizabeth practicing her speech for tomorrow. she might have given the speech 28 times that she will practice it one more time to make sure it is good. i have seen her speech in public and she is eloquent and engaging and excellent. i have been teaching public speaking over 20 years. has all the qualities of a good speaker. as a presidential candidate her perfectionism as a speaker was cast in the negative. the press would write that her assistants count how many steps there are to the podium but that is a good thing to know if you have to walk the steps but yet she was seen as overly prepared, perfectionist thick. male candidates describe this discipline. that is a big drawback that as of boldfaced. it wasn't her fault. most appreciate speakers to be prepared and speak well. that was one big way that she was penalized in the press. when she ran for president she had not held elective office and so i think that was a big drawback for her. she subsequently the effect a republican senate seat from north carolina and served one term and that would qualify her for a presidential race after that. that was a real drawback for her. . one other thing i would say is she was cast strongly in the eyes of the american people as the spouse of bob dole because of her art campaigning for him. some voters have a hard time casting her as the candidate herself because she was the wife of bob dole and helped him through so many campaigns. that surrogate role followed her. >> it lopsided affected she served on white house senior staff and cabinet secretary to two presidents, one at the time and came back later. >> and president of the american red cross, huge humanitarian organization, secretary of transportation, secretary of labor, a long washington career and she would often recount her biography in the beginning of her speeches person's to establish herself to her audience but mainly for those three reasons i think she had a hard time as a candidate herself. >> moving on to the second one, secretary kathleen sibelius. >> i took the lead on that one and had a chance to talk to her and followed her career. she had been from 84 on -- 2004, had been in office two years and there were already rumors about potentially as a vice-presidential candidate for john kerry and was funny because she had been washington and told a story and they went to see the john kerry staff about something on agriculture so they assumed both of them were being into view. she told me she had not been vetted by the kerrey campaign at all. once the name is out there the media starts paying attention and people were fascinated that here is a democrat who won in a republican state but when they forgot is over the last 40 years there were more democrats in the governor'sship than republicans so wasn't an anomaly but the present office doesn't have a historical memory. so this was a real anomaly the democrat had been elected and her father having been governor of ohio and she had the ohio connection which is very important so she really captured the national attention very quickly and they had her showcased and all, but by 2008 she was becoming a serious contender for vice president and when she endorsed obama, that moved her stock up and she was one of the last three or four people obama was considering and the lot of newspapers around the country where saying this should be the choice, but there were a lot of things against her. one was her speaking. she is not a very exciting speaker. at the democratic convention last week, it was not and emanuel cleaver speech or bill clinton's speech. was a very measured speech, she was reading off of the teleprompter. it was very solid information but almost monotone. if you hear her off the cuff she is different. she can't do a speech very well when she is reading off of the transcript and she was savaged in the press by it. when we did the program at the communication convention i brought a clip of john daly or john stuart on a daily show, really lampooning her speech that she gave after in response to president bush's last state of the union. anyone given a response to the state of the union is someone who is perceived as an undercover party. it was not well done. i am seeing some heads shaking and john stuart had a great time lampooning that speech and a lot of other people agree with that. from a communications perspective she was not that inspirational but kansas wasn't going to bring anything to the ticket for john kerry. that was a lot of what was written in 2004. she is not going to bring a lot here and that was true. and she had no foreign policy experience and when i talked to her she said the thing that made the difference in joe biden versus her was foreign policy experience and she agreed that was the essential. she had several strikes against her but she was a good cabinet secretary. who knows where that might take her in 2016. >> and our third is senator nancy katzenbaum. >> she was the first woman elected to the senate in her own right. there was a political science article written 35 years ago about women in congress and the title was over his dead body and still quite a few women in congress -- some of the first women like margaret smith who was in the senate, she followed her husband who took that over, so she was the first two had never followed staff and that once again gave her a lot of attention and was a very highly visible race that was covered, even the london newspaper commented on it after the elections so here we have one woman in the senate, if you are 1-woman you get a lot of attention. two years after she was elected she was one of the temporary shares of the republican convention. people were already touting her as a national force and national figure and she had a lot going for her that did commend her to be on the ticket if not presidential and vice-presidential land she blended, those who remember nancy katzenbaum, she's the perfect example of the way of politician should be. she can be very forceful and very feminine at the same time and i remember watching her on c-span grilling somebody in a foreign relations committee hearing where they were not giving her the answer she wanted and instead of being aggressive, she said maybe you didn't understand my question. let me rephrase. maybe i can become more specific. wasn't her question the person didn't want to answer but she kept after him until she got the answer and she smiled and was very polite, aggressive but aggressive in a very feminine way. and she really balanced that. when she ran for the senate the first time there were two adds i will never forget. he was pumping gas in one and wearing a strap like a good kansas housewife and talking about gasoline. in 1978 nothing like today. and the second one where she was walking out of the earth restored talking about the price of groceries and appealing to families. she had that common touch and was also able to attract a lot of democrats but there were a couple things that held her back. she was a moderate and we all know the extremes tend to dominate parties especially in primaries and we talk about that in the book. she was on the short list for consideration for george h. w. bush and she told me when she found that out and there was polling being done where she was the top choice of a lot of people nationally, she asked to have her name removed and she did because she had really disagreed with the republicans, with reagan several times and she knew george bush would follow similar policies and she felt the president needed someone he could agree with and they would have enough differences of opinion that it would not be comfortable for him or for her so she withdrew for that reason. >> the fourth that i wanted to highlight, dianne feinstein. >> kathleen jamieson is the former dean of the school of communication at the university of pennsylvania. a prolific political communications dollar and several years ago she wrote a very good book, a number of double binds that women are in when they run for public office and dianne feinstein was amazingly able to overcome most of these. although earlier in her career saying san francisco as mayor there was a lot of attention paid to her attire for and how it was -- somebody noticed very early in her career that she lived an awful lot like snow white. that stayed with her through the years. i forget the exact year and the exact situation when she was being considered. it was for the presidency along with 7 diminutive male candidates. she managed to look very stately. she is very tall. she looked sufficiently feminine, but it makes her look like a highly successful businesswoman. feminine, yes, careful attention to the tire, but at the same time the stateliness. she found a way to work the masculine feminine double bond. we do this in the chapter on dianne feinstein comparing her to barbara boxer, elected to the united states senate the same year. newspaper accounts refer to them as the bond see twins which if you know there politics and their style they are not really twins. barbara boxer has a very aggressive style. if you know the research, the theory that is out there on the feminine trial, she is a classic example. hairstyle is quite different. she is not a warrior by training but a very lawyer style, outlines what her arguments are, she presents the evidence, she quotes authorities and moves on. it is the serve and strong but not overly aggressive. she avoids a lot of of problems that women face. he manages with finesse almost all of them that jameson talks about. the chapter begins by talking about her as a moderate. the more accurate term is she is an independent. some of her political positions our position is that liberal democrats do not like. her position on capital punishment. on the other hand there are positions she has taken down through the years that republicans do not like. it is not that she is in the middle, and the primary process, a heavily active trade as that she simply in the primary process, by democrats who would not think that she is democratic enough and a fair number of democrats say as much, called him a closet republican, say she is a democrat in republican clothing, problem was her politics, moderate independent politics disqualified her. we say at the conclusion of the book, many women, this is the generalization and the generalizations are subject, many women go into the policies rica as they wanted to get something done. there was a problem, they want to solve it. there's a problem, they want a legislative solution, but and food to get into politics because they like the game. there's a higher level of ego. dianne feinstein has worked long and hard to solve problems and she has done it in a cooperative way, an independent way. she can be very strong and always in her career in san francisco and the senate, tries to solve problems and it is really unfortunate when you go into public office trying to solve problems you have a record that will make you unpopular but that happened to dianne feinstein. you wanted to solve problems and the positions that made sense and some of those positions caused her ultimately to not that consideration. she was almost the vice-presidential nominee in 1984. she got that close. she said long ago, something she wanted, the way she conducted her political life was too independent. >> what are the key factors in why a woman hasn't been elected president? >> we haven't had enough women in the pipeline. the fact that a governor runs for president, he or she hasn't gotten into the legislative issues that often disqualified them and that can help from have a smoother if run to the white house and we need more women governors to move them into the pipeline. i would say a lack of critical mass, enough women with credentials. >> preferably a woman governor who spent some time in congress. and served on the services committee to bring that foreign policy and don't have the elizabeth dole problem or kathleen sibelius. >> there needs to be a cultural change. many people have a difficult time envisioning a woman in the white house and we need to get over that. we need to be able to think in those terms. some pictures have shown us that, television shows have shown us that. maybe we need more of that to envision a woman as commander-in-chief. >> we did a poll as part of our research for this book and we asked over 500 college age women whether or not hillary clinton and sarah palin help them think that a woman with the president in their lifetime, because the thinking is they are the future candidates and the results indicate that yes, the more women who run, the more likely young women believe a woman will be president. we need more women to run for office, to get into the pipeline to qualify to run for president. >> kathleen civilians have a lot of young women talk to her about what it takes to be in politics but they kept saying i don't know if i am qualified, i don't know if i am capable of doing that and the quotation in the book is men don't say that. every last man who runs to the president goes to congress. there is not that lack of self-confidence and a lot of young men who are interested in politics that there is with young women. one of the things katzenbaum talked about is so many women who got into politics got in because of something. barbara mikulski, preserving her neighborhood, highway. i was at a program at the national archives four five years ago. i happened to be in washington and a letter cliff was on the program and madeleine cumin who had written the power of politics and they had a couple other women politicians in both parties and they have all gotten some issue that they needed for her kids to get to school safely on the local level land katzenbaum started on the school board. if you can get within and at that level then you can begin -- they begin to develop their confidence but it is hard for women to see themselves in that position. >> something said at dinner which struck me. is not in the book but should have been in the book perhaps. up until recently, the women who were trying to seek the presidency were symbolic candidates and they recognized they were symbolic candidate. they didn't think they had a chance to win. that has changed. hillary clinton thought she had a chance to win. michele bachman did not quite symbolize anything. once upon a time many african-americans who ran for the presidency also thought of themselves as symbolic and that has changed. perhaps that shift from i am running as a symbol, i am running seriously, has occurred and we are going to see women not just making a gesture but really going after the office. >> one last question and i will open it up to questions and answers from the audience but i'm going to ask one of my staff members to find out if we were able to sell the book, we were having a problem selling the fourth, if somebody could find that out and let me know. we know we can sell the book. good. i know everybody here tonight wants to buy one. to your questions, my final question tonight for each of the three is named linda two women who are in the pipeline, who are out there, who might in four years depending on the out, this election might the serious candidate for president. >> i would say debbie wasserman schulz from florida. i heard her speak. she was running the democratic national convention and she is a very articulate spokesman for democrats. i would watch her. she is one to watch. >> four years is a long time. who in 1972 would have predicted jimmy carter in 1977. do eight years ago would have thought barack obama would be the standard bearer in 2008. could be somebody we are not even thinking about. the second thing i would say, when you ask the question earlier i have a hard time thinking of the name but it strikes me we have a gap. we are seeing women who were part of feminism, women reaching that point in their career where they are retiring, added point where there beyond -- it didn't stop john mccain. that is something we talk about. age, how women age faster than men. there used to be a gap between that generation, a new group that is coming up. so it is hard to point to somebody but the person i would point to is nicky haley. she has managed some things in south carolina very well where she has the advantage of ethnicity, bringing diversity to the republican party. confession for that one might argue the republican party needs diversity. >> we all looked at one another when bill and search -- asked this question. the pipeline is a little thin right now. suzanne martinas, governor of new mexico, if you buy this idea we elect more governors than we do members of congress, that is where the pipeline is likely to come from. she is very articulate. has only been in office a couple years. give her six years depending on how she does. she has the potential. elizabeth warren fa depending on what happens to. she is somebody everybody is going to look at. we need to get more women elected as part of this. we only have 17% of the congress as women right now. research has been done at rutgers, to make any kind of a difference you need 25%, minorities in a body. part of a culture comes with congress seeing more women, more women having an opportunity to share important committees. one of the unfortunate things is a lot of the women we profile in this book who are still in congress, olympia snow is not running and has the same problem dianne feinstein had but on the republicans' side so a lot of women are giving up on it or don't see themselves being able to compromise, get things done in order to fix the primary. >> for various reasons, women are achieving the house in place and besides being easier for anybody who has been elected to a state house, the focus many women have on solving problems where they live is pushing women into the house. there's a real precedent experiencing someone who is only experienced in the house of representatives. don't tell members of the house this, but it is the minor leagues. they don't really know national issues because they are asserting just the local constituents. there has only been one president who wasn't collected from the house so women may be in getting into the house but getting into the house might not mean the white house. it will take governors. >> okay. let's open it up to questions and answers. if you have a question raise your hand and wait for a microphone the come to you and let's give students a chance to ask questions too. if you have one we will start with you. >> you deal with the issue of children candidates in your book and how you do that because i think that is a very important image that people have, is she a good mother and what age and so forth. >> the women in our book all have 0 children, they really didn't get into politics in a serious way other than -- kathleen sibelius' ran for the house after children were holder but she didn't run for governor until one was in college and one was in high school. her children were pretty well raised. >> her she asked her 16-year-old daughter of it was ok for her to run for the house. that was her youngest child. >> katzenbaum didn't run and her children were college. .. and any number of ways to deal with it, sequencing being among the first, the political career after words is one of the ways that you handle the issue. a daughter, and a lot of people in san francisco probably did not even there she had a daughter because her daughter was really off to the side, very good day care. so that is another way of handling it. a lot of daycare. [laughter] or in the case, i mean she replaces -- >> nor does she. >> as you know, the whole state being patrolled. advertise herself as an it barbara. it works in maryland. then have the and i -- the entire state, his question does not have children, but -- >> also one of the things we talked about, very unlikely to elect a woman who has never been married. >> i also think if the children are a liability if they get into trouble the press is more likely to blame bad mothering than that fathering on the part of a milken did it. >> you have a question? >> other countries. because we've seen him no leaders. what is different animal we urge parents in? >> we talked about that earlier. there is gender parity. and the pool to run for elected office we talked about family legacy in some countries. but it's part of the lead in other countries. obviously we are lagging behind. >> the parliamentary system make it much easier than our system does. and i raise this question, the class in politics. i ask why you think you know, especially since european countries have had women presidents the problem is something to that. you have done the, the father, a lot of other examples of that type of family legacy. >> and i pointed to other countries. arguably the most like us. canada and only one female prime minister. and to australia, only now. so in those two countries that think you see some of the cinemax that exist in this country. it is only noble. and the sole woman prime minister of canada, she encountered -- she really encountered a lot of the same problems that we talk about in the book when she ran for both leader of the party which made her prime minister and then ran in the elections she calls shortly thereafter. her entire response about marital history was talked about, the fact that she was single was talked about, the fact is she was dating somebody was talking about. and so those two cultures, i think, you see some of the same things easy. >> do we have a question? >> we might have to juggle more roles your life. an advantage over all. with the future, ignoring the fact that because they stopped later it won't get done far of. but, you know, enjoy that point. the flexibility, the juggling of roles is advantageous. >> in know, a book i read about those with dole describes a rhetorical style as rhetorical multitasking. even though she has that had children, i would argue and she has juggled multiple roles in a way that perhaps the male has not. and so i think that successful women politicians are able to address a number of constituents when they give a speech, for example, speak about her role as american red cross president. issue zero to bring that kind of rural perhaps there's something to that. perhaps families and moving to more and get -- egalitarian life, that will also receive demanded think it's probably better if it does. >> in the next question? >> i just wanted to follow upon one point raised about women being presidents and other countries and that he did not realize that for argentina, chile, nicaragua, panama, and my favorite country, custer rica. >> good point. next, we have some students. let's get them. and now we have one right here. don't skip anybody. if they were first and get them, but let's make sure we get some students. >> hello. >> this is similar to what you guys have been talking about for a while. and i have noticed specifically that things like women can be critiqued if they have what is seen as a bad family or an not normal family like that lady who is single and critiqued for it while they cannot really play the card that they have a successful family without people critiquing that as well. like, i have heard that people are critiquing hillary clinton and bill clinton because they think that bill clinton's support of the democratic party in this election is only so that hillary can maybe have a better chance in the next election. so she is not allowed to use her family has anything to promote her campaign while a man would be allowed to. at the same time she is critique, she might be critiqued for having a bad family. >> good point. >> if you assume that the clinton marriage has had some difficulty, i think the general public probably plans hillary. i think if bill clinton could run again he would be elected. >> that's probably true. >> kent -- hillary, there are still nagging questions about the relationship and family baggage. i think you're right. >> we have a question over here. >> this kind of follows the same track as that last question. because the media plays such a crucial role what advice would you give government to file a woman in public office. >> i think the best way to deal with any criticism is the sense of humor. really get this. it was not so much that she got criticism, but she had such -- so much attention on her being the only woman. sheikh -- there were a couple of lines i "in the chapter where she's talking about, it's so difficult being the only woman in the senate. i have to take care of cleaning somebody's set in making sure that the red vests are press. chicken of just, you know, just about of bank. then she was also talking about the fact that people criticize her for being fairly soft-spoken , not aggressive. if anybody does that will mark time, and rented them over the head of the franc grant. if you can approach this with some humor, that is bob dole, being where we are right now, so good that. and we all teach communication as one thing. we tell our students that humor is the best way to deflect a really intense situation. if you can laugh yourself and your fine. >> an exploratory bid for the presidency. bob dole created a negative press for campaign when he said he was going to give a thousand dollars to john mccain. and he said, you know, as is because your wife is running for president does not mean you cannot support another candidate . and elizabeth dole deflected some of the native press by saying she was sending in up to the woodshed. penalize him for that. i think you're right. humor is the best way to handle and negative press situation. >> two kinds of negativity. native press that you really feel is focusing on irrelevant issues a really good way to deal with those kinds of matters, but i think the criticism is of legitimate matters unique test respond directly in fairly strongly. the first danielle would do is try to sort the criticism. >> and that is true. very, you cannot just ignore legitimate criticism. >> more difficult for women to get elected in either party? one more difficult than the other? >> a good question. >> i don't really see a difference. if you look right now there are more republican women and democrats. become pretty balanced. party does not seem to matter as much when it comes to women. pretty strong women in both parties. >> the question. >> in the last presidential election it appeared that the existing president pretty much mobilized hillary clinton, at least that is what the press is saying. is it easier for a woman to be negative on the male candid as it is for a male to be negative on a female can it? does the press treats that the same way? has had to cross? >> minute attack women. more a backlash against that. she runs the risk of being labeled overly aggressive which could hurt her. >> if you remember in the vice-presidential debate which everyone, more larger audience. everyone was just waiting for biden to do something to sort of an assault palin. if you can keep it from the one-on-one, for instance, women tend to run as many if not more negative ads, women can use the negativity, but it is not the direct attack. >> we are going to take two more questions. one here in right up here. >> hi. i was wondering. you talked about seven dozen -- feminism. i read a book a while ago call girls don't cry. it was written budget summit criticize hillary for not calling upon her feminism more during a campaign. she sort of really know is a fact she was this the male's role buzzer until really her concession. and then pale and obviously had some criticism on how she dealt with feminism. no, you know, being a feminist is still sort of a bad word. i was just wondering how you think a female candidate would approach feminism and how they would approach it. >> i don't think she should call attention to her trail blazing effort while she is running because i think that too many women your age cannot relate to some of the obstacles that you face. more women than men are in law school and medical school now. wind elizabeth dole would describe how she was one of 24 women at harvard law school, it really is an older notion at this point, and i think it distances her from the younger audiences. i don't think it is a good idea for our modern women candid it's debbie describing the obstacles that they face and how unique they are because we tend to resist voting for someone who is the first of anything because it seems scary and throw another good idea because we have never done before. i think taking attention away from that is better. >> and not labeling issues as women's issues are feminist issues. at think all of the women in the book really did not run as women . there is a book called running as a woman. i cannot remove the first name, but when pat schroeder ran the first time for congress out in colorado somebody asked her, do you plan on running as a woman and her response was, do i have another option. end it is obvious that this is a woman. obviously have never had a woman president. i don't think you need to make a point of it. all of these women have been successful in getting legislation through that has impacted women, but they framed it in no way that is not a woman's or a feminist kind of issue. and every one of them has examples of that. at one time education was really considered more a woman's issue in the state legislature until in the 80's began connecting it to economic development. once it became an economic development issue than it is no longer woman's issue because it takes care of the children. this is not everybody's issue. >> is one thing million people need to understand. for us, for our generation women and also many, many men, feminist was a positive word, a good thing. very good thing. and so you have these women who embraced feminism, think it's a good thing and have now discovered that it is not working anymore and there are -- the women i teach don't want to be identified. the last thing they want to be identified with. and u.s. tim, do you believe in this, this, this. they say, yes to yes, yes. well, you know, your a feminist. the label is a problem. many women don't want to use the label, don't want to send signals that are associated with the label because they know their is a group of voters out there who don't see it the way it our generation sought. >> time for one last question, i think. you have had your hand of says the very beginning of the q&a session. >> how does rate and is this the -- at this city intersects? are there additional challenges the woman of color might face? >> you know, when shirley ran for president she in 1972 said that voters were more sexist and racist. i think that thinking still holding chair today. and not sure of my colleagues have a sense of idea on that. you mentioned nikky haley having an ethnic advantage combe. kaifu. >> i don't want to expand on that. this is a difficult question because if people of color want to say no, i think that in politics ethnicity and race are no less of an issue. at the sexual orientation is a big issue. that is an incredible hurdle for many men and women alike. and it is not just because we elected barack, president. at the number of things have occurred in our society down through the years. yes, there is still discrimination. discrimination galore in our society, but in politics at the high level i don't think race and ethnicity are as much of a problem as gender. and please feel free to say you are wrong because i am not speaking from those positions. >> thank you all so much for a wonderful program tonight. >> thank you. [applause] >> you're watching book tv on c-span2. forty-eight hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend. >> i want to talk to you today about my book. i want to begin by telling you a story of my strom thurman story. when you go and do research in south carolina and you go into our cars and people ask you what you're interested in writing about and you tell them strom thurmond and they say, oh, let me tell you my story to let you cannot throw a stone and south carolina without having somebody who has a great story about strom thurmond. he did something for him what they saw and do something crazy or that sort of thing. so my story begins in -- it's late july 1992, and i am on a flight from washington d.c. to charlotte, north carolina. and i have been in turn that summer up on capitol hill. and one of my regrets of the summer was that i had never seen strom thurman because all my fellow in turn said, well, you have to seize temperament. he is such an unusual appearance about him. added not know what the men really, but i had my suspicions. some on the flight. i look ahead in front of me and cnn has got these kind of orange colored hair. so brightly colored. first generation. and it it shows you how slow i am. i think to myself, that what -- that must be what strom thurmond looks like. i knew that when people are reaching over trying to shake his hand. well, i wanted to shake his hand as well because i had been in d.c. that summer for the first time. i met all of these politicians that i had seen on tv. go home and speak to my dad's are a club. i wanted to tell them about the famous people and had met in washington d.c. and so i was trying to shake his hand when i got off the plane, but as i got off the plane there were people already lined up to shake his hand. and i did not get in line. and i did not -- i was not a constituent, not a south carolinian. i don't have anything to say to him. and to be honest was a little self-conscious. a busy airport. i was kind of self-conscious about standing in line waiting to greet a man who is best known for his segregationist harangue. enough to kind of say that i had seen him and keep on walking. so and conflicted. and conflicted. i walk down the concourse about 100 yards and look back and everybody had dispersed, shaking his hands. this 89 year old man. the briefcase in one hand and a travel bag and the other. a package under one arm, and he's just shuffling down this busy crowded airport. well, without thinking a go back and introduce myself. i say, and on capitol hill and would be happy to help you get in next. well, are you sure you have enough time? don't delay you. i have plenty of time. happy to do it. and pick this up and we walked together. and i was just trying to make conversation. and so i told them about all the people i met the summer. he said nice things about the various colleagues i had met and that kind of thing. i told him i was on my way. a girlfriend from florence. i said some silly comment about south carolina girls because the kind of small talk one made. and i got into his flight. i shook his hand again. that was it. but i thought about that story a lot as i have written this book because that story really is a metaphor for the difficulty that i had in writing about -- the challenges that i face in writing about this very controversial figure. there is no easy are straightforward way to write about a figure as controversial as strom thurmond. and sometimes, a wonder some of the stuff in this book is not another effort to kind of carry him back, you know, carry his baggage. goodness knows he has perry is that he's carrying, but the other challenge and i had to really the challenge ahead in this book was to kind of fight the urge not to kind of, you know, simply walk away and not meet them in face-to-face, you know, and present him as a kind of brega original character, a living breathing human being. so that is the challenge. what i wanted to do really is to write a book about -- right a history of strom thurmond in a way that -- in a critical but dispassionate way that would shed light on some of the issues that have shaped, you know, each of our own america's debate. and they have that in doing so you can add a sense of -- a measure of reason and this passion for these issues that imperil our politics today and that the vinous so. so that was the goal. that is the mission, as it worked. but what are the big issues, the issues that a history of strong terms america speaks to? we remember, a lot of us remember who strom thurmond was. he was the 1948 dixiecrat presidential candidate. he was one of the lead authors of the 1956 southern manifesto, which is the protest of the supreme court decision in the brown versus board of education, 1954. the record holder to the state of the longest one man filibuster. in the guinness book of world records, 24 hours and 18 minutes. he spoke against the 1957 civil rights bill. we remember in today as one of the last of the jim crow demigods, and he was. he was that. he was one of the last to be what we forget is that he was also one of the first of the sun belt conservatives. what do i mean by that? well, the sun belt, it's one of the major stories in the history of 20th-century american politics. that is, the flow of jobs, of industries, of resources and population from the states of the northeast and the midwest to the south and the southwest in the post-world war two timeframe. southern states were recording industries. passing right-to-work laws, receiving lots of funding from the federal government to build military installations a time when the united states was involved in the cold war is the soviet union. so states like mississippi, georgia, texas, florida, southern california, arizona, north carolina, of being transformed in the post-world war two to and from five this historic shift in population and political influence. just think about it. really from 1964-2008, it could be thought of as the sunbelt dominance of american presence of history. every president elected from 1964 comes from the state of the sunbelt. lyndon johnson, richard nixon, gerald ford was never elected, not even elected vice president. jimmy carter. the first george bush for texas. bill clinton from arkansas. the second bush from texas. 2008 is in some ways a watershed election. it ends is 40 years of sunbelt dominance. there were issues that were critical in the politics they tended sets be oriented around is