Transcripts For KRCB Charlie Rose 20130712

You want to be able to at least contain syria to syria and not have it still over to lebanon to turkey, to destabilize the monarchy in jordan, to create a regional war with the israelis. Those are role american interests. We continue with a look at social media, politics and history. Jonathan karl talks with the historian Michael Beschloss about his twitter feed full of incredible historical photos. I always felt that in history images tend to be underrated. We write books and theyre based on letters and documents, the usual sources. But oftentimes i like it to look at pictures from the time or about people im wroiing about because i think they can tell you an awful lot. Thats why i think it works on twitter. And to teddy goth, the former digital director of the 2012 Obama Campaign, about the role of social media and modern politics. You mentioned that the president had 34 million facebook fans on election day, a little higher now. Those people were friends with 98 of the u. S. Facebook population. Thats actually more than the number of people who vote in this country. So we knew that if we talked to them in the right way, served them with an experience that they enjoyed, gave them reason to feel inspired and stick with us and maybe hit the share button every once in a while we could reach almost everybody that way. Foreign policy and social media next. Funding for charlie rose was provided by the following . Additional funding provided by these funders. And by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Welcome to the broadcast. Im richard haass, president of the council on foreign relations. And im sitting in for charlie rose who is traveling on assignment. I should say that charlie has been away for about three days now. The stock market has gone up every one of those days. Make of that what you will. We begin tonight though with a conversation about the United States and the world. This is a rare moment in history. Its also a unique time for this country. Many of us, many of you watching came of age during the cold war when america mostly faced one overarching challenge, the soviet union. But the situation now is obviously quite different. Content with dozens of sm and med why sized problems. New tensions in asia including rising competition between china and japan. Instability in egypt, civil war in syria, and an inn iran apparently seeking nuclear weapons. Then theres continuing turbulence in the eurozone. Climate change, terrorism, and cybersecurity. And all of this at a time when the United States faces considerable challenges here at home. From inadequate immigration policy and failing schools to crumbling infrastructure and an underperforming economy. So the big question is this how do we as a country navigate this world . What is to be our compass . Big questions, and joining me tonight to discuss all of this are two of the freshest voices in International Relations that i know. Michael fullilove has come from halfway around the world to be with us tonight. Michael is the executive director of the Lowe Institute for International Policy in sydney, australia, also the author of a new book, rendezvous with destiny, how Franklin D Roosevelt and five extraordinary men took america into the war and into the world. Also here is brett stevens, de editor of the wall reet js editorial the author of a weekly column on Foreign Policy for which for good reason he won a Pulitzer Prize earlier this year, bretts columns are always worth reading. That said, you dont need to agree with them to learn something. Which is good since i only agree with some of them. But i would like to thank him since it has been more than a week since he has called me an isolationist. And i simply hope hes to the going wobbling. Let me begin with michael because he has traveled farlt from across the world rather than simply from across town. Asia, tremendous things going on. Indeed there are those of us who think we are seeing in some ways the return of history to asia. The United States has talked about a pivot making a greater emphasis of this part of world. How does it look from up close, how does it look, if you will, from down under . Well, as you know, australia is probably americas lost reliable apply. We fought beside the united so you guys always look good to us. We see you as a very important force for stability. Of course our strategic situation is getting more complicated. Our largest economic partner is how now a competitor of the United States, china. And region is become more intense. That is change the debate in australia. But i think a Strong Majority of answers see the alliance with the United States critical to our security. And i think if we have any concern it is that america doubles down on asia. We know that u. S. Policymakers are drawn to the middle east like irons following to a magnetment but were here to tell you many of marks opportunities and challenges are in our part of the world and we hope you retain your presence there. So when we tack about a pivot to asia, a rebalancing in asia what is it you would like to see that you are not seeing now. What would make you feel even better about the United States in. I think its about a concentrated presence in our part of the world. I think when obama announced rebalance, i think was terrific. I think secretary clinton was great in that she was out and about in asia but i think a lot of people in asia are now asking whether the pivot was last years story we have a secretary of state more concerned in bringing peace to the holy land. He spends not a lot of time in our part of the world. The trips tend to be brief an unremashable. The military elements of the rebalance are important but to the overwhelming. And i think its important for america to make it mare but a sustained effort at the president ial level, the secretary of state level, that americas here to stay an its here to continue to bring balance to our region. Dow want to see more planes, more ships, do you want to see more diplomats, trade negotiations . What is it that again you get up in the morning, you would say okay, these americans, theyre really serious about our part of the world. I think the diplomatic elements of the rebalance are the ones that need the most work. I think, for example, the more ship visits in southeast asia, theyre good. The marines, thats also good. Obviously america has to play a careful game where it shows its presence without being overintim tory. But i think on the diplomatic level we need a more sustained focus on the region. Because if you dont do that, if your allies such as south korea and japan start to doubt americas will to stay, then what will happen is that they will take it on their you know, theyll put their own hands to this sort of thing. Theyll start to arc up and that could be dang rouchls i think also if you dont project that presence in the region, then i think china might interpret that, misinterpret that as weakness. Last question, when people like me say that there is a danger, the 21st century asia could go the way of 20th century europe and the way that early on in the 20th century the great powers of europe began to jockey and it lead to two world wars and a cold war, do you think im way off the mark that that is a serious exaggeration or is that in some ways your Worst Nightmare . I think there is a very 20th century quality to my part of the world, very strong states. Very focused on maximizing the National Interests and their power. A lot of people spending a lot of money on arms. And i think the other element, of course, that you elude to is that in the first half of the 20th century isolationism was a pretty powerful force in the United States. And to me we need to make sure that america retains its international and doesnt sort of swing back to that old style. Come back to isolationism in a few minutes. Let me turn to brett. This new emphasis on asia to some extent rhetorical to some extent real. Are you worried that that pulls us out of the middle east. Weve already left iraq completely. Theres just been the story of the last few days. Were probably now going to accelerate or draw down, do you think the United States essentially is making the mistake of doing too little in the middle east . I think the moment that you signal are you pivoting to asia you are telling a large swathe of the world that were less interested in you. We should be interested in asia. If going on there is massively porn, above all, whether china is going to be a specific rise pog we are or whether its going to be a spoiler state on the model kaiser will hell number the early 20th century germany. But i think is a mistake. In the geographic sense. In both senses, as a matter of fact. But its important to say we still have incredibly important Strategic Interests in the middle east. We dont want chemical weapons to find their way out of syria to boston to say. We dont iran to develop nuclear weapons. We still want a powerful transatlantic partnership. And one of the things i applaud the Obama Administration for doing, believe it or not, is pursuing this idea of a transatlantic freetrade agreement. We should, by the way, be doing that across pacific as well. Wherever we can show that there are gains for all sides in joining in the kind of free trading, prospering system, we will be putting threats like Chinese Nationalist and chinese militarism to rest. But if you ares going to say pivot to asia, then the most important thing you can do is demonstrate to beijing that their attempts to increase their influence militarily will be met with demonstrations of deterence and willnd close cohesion between our respective allies. Tell them that they have two paths to go down, one is a nationalist mill tarristic path. The other is the deng ping path of growing economically and encourage them to go down that second path. One of the aferkts for doing more in asia is not simply that you have great powers there and there are maybe useful things the United States can do but in the middle east now there is fundamental questions that no matter what we do, we wont have a lot to show for it. Isnt it possible to argue that there is something simply fundamentally wrong with the middle east that unlike europe, unlike asia, even unlike now large parts of latin america and after ca, the middle east is not succeeding and no amount of greater american involvement will necessarily bring better results . Look, thats a fair and intelligent argument. What i would say is this. When we look to asia, we see possibilities where we can have real victories in asia with japan, even you know n a case i was just in burma, the other month. Thats a country that is changing in interesting ways, moving in a more proamerican direction. In the middle east, no, you dont want to expect that these countries are going to become blossoming democracies that egypt will find its way out of its travails, similarly with syria. What you want to do is keep the nightmare scenarios at bay. You want to make sure that the things you fear the most dont come to pass. You dont want saudi arabia enticed into gaining a nuclear cap ability of its own because it fears it fears iran. You want to be able to at least contain syria to syria. And not have it spill over to lebanon to turkey, to destabilize the monarchy in jordan to create a regional war with the israelis. Those are real american interests. So its hard to tell the american public, look w what we want to do in its middle east is avoid total disaster but that is a real interest. How is it we get our friends to stand up to china, take japan, south korea, without encouraging them to act recklessly. The economists have a phrase, moral hazard and you want basically to encourage people to invest but you dont want them to invest recklessly. So how is it we tell our friends were there, we want what the chinese do, act badly towards you. On the other hand we dont want to necessarily give them a blank check to challenge the chinese on every issue, how do we get that right . Thats an extremely good question and very tough to do. Here you have taiwan which has some of the lowest, spends a pittance on its military. Extremely wealthy economy. The japanese are now finally beginning to increase their military spending after a yearonyear declines. We certainly dont want to tell the japanese, by the way, were not really interested in your security, you have all this spent plutonium, maybe you want to do something with it, i think what you do is you show there is a workable alliance, a commonality of values that the United States does intend to check chinese power within reasonable limits. And where you can, you show that america is willing to act. I think one of the places that gets neglected but is massively important is the South China Sea. The chinese have been planting their flags on little holes and islands throughout the South China Sea. This is a sea over which one third of the worlds commerce, sea traffic travels. A sea that sits on Something Like 230 billion barrels of energy. The chinese are trying to assert that its answer their own link that is correct they own it based on 1949 map. The u. S. Could help itself a great deal, help itself in the philippines, in vietnam, by saying we intend intend clearly to keep the South China Sea open to all the players. And this is not simply a chinese territorial water. You would like that but not at the point of the United States and china having something that again looks like a new version of a cold war. Exactly. No, you dont want a destabilizing rival roe in the region. As you say, you want to reassure American Allies that america is to the going anywhere without emboldening them. I think we can learn a lesson from obamas china policy. It seems in his first year n particular, he went too far in trying to accommodate chinese interests. And you know, gifts to rise pog we ares are rarely reciprocated, they are just pocketed. He thought the chinese would help him in copenhagen and all these issues. They said we are not interested in that or your fine speeches. We care about our National Interests. At that point obama toughened up his Foreign Policy. He met with the dahl aye lama. Approved the arm sales to taiwan. I think the chinese respected thatment i have never heard a say the one thing the chinese respect is weakness. Thats not true. They want to be a strong power and they respect powers that show strength towards other powers that show strength towards them. At the risk of putting you in a position of speaking for all conservatives i have been dying to ask a certain question. Which is why is it that so many conservative analysts are so ambitious at times about what they think we can do in remaking other societies, iraq, afghanistan, potentially syria. Yet theyre off sown modest about what it is they think we can accomplish here at home. Why is it that there seems to be that inconsistency running throughout some of the debate . Look, i think a lot of conservatives have learned that you have to modify your ambitions. And that when president bush in 2005 gave that second inaugural speech, you know, saying you know, our goal is freedom throughout the world, that was not only ambitious t was utopian. And utopian schemes tend to fail. And i wrote a piece for Foreign Affairs saying that we need in a sense a rebalancing of Foreign Policy views within the Republican Party to understand that we have vital interests that we cant simply pretend that investing in the world is somehow is our loss, but we have to be modestly realistic about what it is that we can achieve. That being said, i think we could have achieved more in iraq and afghanistan had president obama not been so keen to withdraw so quickly. You mentioned the Republican Party. You almost now have three camps or schools. You have the rand paul who basically are extromly narrow view, a limited view about what the United States can and should try to accomplish. You have the quote unquo theyo cons elements of bush 43 and the more traditionalist, 9 bush 41 who believe more in international institutions. A different form of internationalism, how do you see this playing out . I think, well, i think this is the great debate being played out within the Republican Party. And when rand paul filibustered for 12 hours on the theory that the American Government was going to be sending drones to your local starbucks, it was sending you received tremendous support, certain kind of tea party quarters, kind of conspiracy minded. Also some democrats across party lines. Yeah, because it is a cooky idea that your government is out to get you in black helicopters, and all the rest of it. I think the argument is being waged right now about what kind of Foreign Policy the Republican Party should support. And my own view is that it has to understand that we cannot simply go back to a view that the rest of the world can take care of its own business and well mind ours. Do you worry about there . You see this debate and its not just the Republican Party, Democratic Party has its own tendencies, people in its own end zone. Are you worried. You are a real student of American History you look what f fdr said in the World Running up to world war ii, he had to pull the country, reluctantly, gradually in the direction warted to. Are you worried history is repeating itself. Look, i dont think history can ever repeat itself when only one american in 40 was in vafer of an immediate declaration of war against germany even though hitler was a madmen and obviously a threat to american interestsment i dont think america will ever go back to that because its impossible now to isolate yourself. I dont worry about that. I do worry about the pendulum swinging more than it should. Certainly writing this book and getting the sense of the strength of the isolationist argument was quite powerful. One of the things i relayed in the book is when churchill was meeting roosevelt in the atlantic conference off the coast of new foundland, the congress by only one vote just failed to renew the peacetime draft. In other words, one other vote against it and the army would have been sent home even as roosevelt was peting with church toil decide the fate of the world so things like that do give you pause. The other big question is not simply how much we do in the world but the balance between what we do in the world and what we do here at home. It is about your book. I have recently come up with a book, with des fini, Foreign Policy that the real threats are domestic. Our economy is growing slower than it should, our infrastructure isnt there. Our schools an. What they need to be. And what these things often have in common is not the lack of ideas but our political system. And whether we can get the executive branch to congress, the federal, the states, the cities working together. To what extent do you sit up at night worrying about, to put it wluntly, american dysfunctionality or govern ability. I think its increasingly becoming the great question of our age. Just the ability of government to do things. My colleague dan heniger in the journal had a column in which he points out a number of incidents. In the irs, it is defense when it came to the question of targeting conservative groups was, well, washington doesnt quite know washington doesnt know what its Cincinnati Office is doing. The nsa is mad at Edward Snowden for excellent reasons but to one is ask be how is it some 29yearold kid walks out with i zip drive and apparently the crown jewels of the american of american intelligence. Obamacare was just delayeds it is the implementation of the employer mandate was delayed by a year because they looked at these rules and are incredibly complex. So increasingly weve become a country that just cant get stuff down. I think by the way that is one of the things that deeply impresses americans when they go to china. Theres losses wrong with china. When you go to china you see buildings getting built, bridges leting builtment some of these buildings and bridges arent of the best quality but look, i live within eye shot of ground zero, okay. I have watched for nine years for this site to be developed, okay. Its impressive, i understand its a big construction project. But really nine years to develop, not quite two office towers. This he is a basic problem that we have in American Government. And if we cant sort of sort this out just the ability to get stuff done to do, you know, runways, overpass, regulatory approvals, we are going to become an overregulated ossified type of country where people are reluctant to do business. You have written this book about fdr. Imagine someone like he were president today. Is it your sense that the american system, or even more broadly that mature democracies, australia being foreone, the europeans obviously the case v in and of themselves now become os i find. Talking about specialists interests having taken over, without you actually think when you look at america that you are still more optimistic in a funny way than we are about ourselves, that if an fdr, lbj, choose your president , were to come in we could get things done. Im optimistic about america because of the resilience of its power, entrepreneurialism and all those sorts of things. I must say that i find and i think most americans, for example, would find the american political system lovable but odd. We have a parliamentary system, a party goes to the public. It gets a pan datement we go into parliament, party discipline. Usually you have part discipline, people put their hands up and you get voted through. What that means is that government can make tough decisions whether its economic reform, whether to the left or the right, they can take a tough decision and be responsible to the public at the next election. So i think theres something where the genius of the framers in of its u. S. Constitution seems to be coming part a little bit at the edges. That being said, i mean i do think its important. Im not a declinist. I think this country has capacities for selfrenewal that are extraordinary and that prove themselves time and again. A lot of people could be haig a conversation about the decline in america in 197 a 5 or right after sput nick or in the 1930s and so on and somehow america always comes back. I mean look, im obsessed with the new York Real Estate market. Im always interested in what is going on. Actually we have gone long never any conversation in the history of new york without having mentioned real estate. This is welcome. These are the interesting stories. All of these incredibly expensive brandnew buildings will going up, thousand foot towers. Who are they catering to. They are cat evering to multimillionaires and billionaires from china and russia. These are two of the countries that are supposed to constitute the socalled bricks, the rise pog percent. Why are these chinese billionaires so keen to have marments for their twoyearold children in new york if china is supposed to be the country of the future. What is this that they know about the United States and what is it that they know about china that we ourselves arent noticingment i think what they are saying is the United States still is i country with a Free Enterprise system, a decent rule of law that they lack. And i think thats one big reason theyre betting on the u. S. And i think so should we. They are sending their kids here in many cases to be educatedment one more thing add energy. If we have been having this round table five years ago we would have been talking about looming imports, great energy crieses crisis and all that. Instead we are on the verge of north America Energy selfsufficiency and our dependence and reliance on the middle east is literally going done by the day. Last year we increased oil output by more than a Million Barrels a day, does this give us more cushon to basically say to the middle east and the rest of the world, work yourselves out. I hope it doesnt give us too much cushon. Countries that have too much energy tend to wither you know, tend to whittle away their other human resources. Look at saudi arabiament look t means the potential revival of manufacturing in this country. It means jobs in out of the way places that never thought about before. I mean its just you dont want to look a gift horse in the mouth. This is an extraordinary opportunity. That said, it is still a Global Energy market and we shouldnt pretend that were going to move towards Energy Independence where what happens in a place like iran or saudi arabia is no relevance. There is a useful distinction between selfsufficiency and independence because the latter is unachievable. I want to come back to new some ways for the final word because are you the one, you have the book. I think all authors deserve a chance to be shameless. So let me ask you, to give you that chance to be shameless. Which is about fdr. Yeah. You thought of and wrote b i think five principal aids and the way these six men, had extraordinary influence. Was it something about that world that allowed them to have that influence or was it something about these six men . And to the extent was the 4r59er, about these six people, what is the colonel. What is it we can take from these people that hopefully ought to make us feel a little better than some of the thrust of this conversation . Look, i think cometh the cometh the man is part of it. I think what fdr and these guys showed was a couple of things that are relevant. One was supreme president ial concentration. He transformed america from an isolationist, nervous middle power into the global leader. And de with that with a deluge of speeches and messages and broadcasts. And i think America Needs that kind of leadership. I think the other thing he had in his toolbox was great charm, great he was great at personal diplomacy, written stone church el said that meeting roosevelt for the first time was like opening your first bottle of champagne. Some of those soft things help diplomacy as well. I look forward to opening a bottle of champagne afterwards. Congratulations, michael, on a new book, brett, thank you for your column. Keep churning them out. Go easy on mement an thank you all for joining us tonight for this conversation about the United States and the world. Im Jonathan Karl sitting in for charlie rose who is off on assignment this week. My guest tonight is Michael Beschloss, a president ial historian, author of of author of nine books and took to social media last year sharing rarely seen and incredibly timely images. Into the past this march Time Magazine named him its list of 140 best twitter feeds in 2014. Im pleased to have Michael Beschloss on the program am are you somebody, like el, who is used to writing big books. The first book that i read of yours is about 830 pages. The crisis here probably at least. And now now here you are, 140 characters at a time, so welcome to the program. Thank you very much, jon. What a relief to be so brief. So one of the things that you have done remarkably is you share these historic images, some rarely seen photographs, some from documents. And i want to get right to some of these. Beginning with one you have of the exiled king of egypt, king faruck who was exiled in 1952. There is a remarkable shot we have it up there. A heavyset guy, but the more things change in the middle east, the more they stay the same. How exactly did he leave power again . By military coup. Good thing that hasnt happened in egypt ever since then. But it shows what you can really do on twitter. Because i tweeted that the day that there was this change of power in egypt, not least because farooq was a fascinating figure but also to suggest that as in history very few things is did not happen, at least before in some way once before. And what this does, because your tweets are always theyre historic shots but always incredibly timely and in this case it sends you back looking into what was the story. And this was a military coup, that was at the very least tacitly supported by the United States. I think that is probably a safe thing to say in retrospect. Thats right, king farooq who was there at a time, very different world. And the lead their it brought in was nassr who served for the next 18 years. So the point i was making was that this is obviously something that there is a heritage of in egypt. Its not just politics here obviously. One of the things that i do is you get these incredible combinations of individuals, so take a look at this, bob dylan and muhammed ali, cirka 1977 or so. 75. 75. I dont imagine these two were together all that much. No, i think not, although they look certainly warm in this picture. This was 1975, dylan was playing the rowling thunder review and got muhammad ali to participate in the finale so here they are backstage. Incredible. This one, my favorite, Frank Sinatra with lou gehrig. Two names you always put together. Of course. What i love about this is if looks like sinatra is just giddy because he has gotten lou gehrigs autograph. Thats about it. This is the world series in cincinnati, i believe, 1939, not long after gehrig retired although so this unknown guy who was performing in cincinnati goes up to the dugout, there is gehrig and did indeed get his autograph. And sinatra is at this point what, 24, 25 years old. About that, yeah. Unbelievable. And here weve got roger maris, and mickey mantle. Weve seen those guys together but theyre with harry truman. Harry truman who was in new york. And who had actually a daughter and a soninlaw who lived in new york. Thats why he was there. And who was very loyal to teams in kansas city but relaxed that for this day to pose to the two guys who were the most famous Baseball Players of 1961. And have another shot with john kennedy and stand and this is a theme through allots of what you do on twitter, which are these, its a lot of sports and a lofts 308 particulars. Have we ever had a president that just hated baseball. Not one without condition fessed to testimony kennedy was no exception. This is sort of an example that i try to do these images. It will be a surprise to peoplement and you might think why was kennedy so friendly, they certainly did get along together. But the diamond and the chandelier was that campaigned for john kennedy in 1960, kennedy was grateful and a big backer of his career thence forth. And the other thing is when weve got a major issue, so immigration is the hot topic now in washington. Youve had recently kind of a whole bunch of photos that you have put out on the theme of immigration. There is one that struck me. You can explain this photo from the island. The fascinating thing to me is to take a look at number one how they were treated when these new american arrived. Number two, just sort of you wonder what happened to them, what happened to their descendants with. So this is explain, it is a dining hall so theyre waiting to be processed. Waiting to be processed. And some of them might have been turned away, probably not given the numbers but there is sort of a symbol of how america has welcomed new arrivals all through our history. So with where do you get these photos . Because youre writing books. I imagine are you working on a project right now. I am. And i see you, sometimes it can be so, 20 times a day, there is a beschloss photo waiting in my twitter feed. Well, oftentimes on weekend i plan these through the week when you can predict it. But a lot of this i always felt in history images tend to be underrated. We write books and theyre based on letters and documents, you know, the usual sources but oftentimes i like to look at pictures from the time or about people im writing about because i think they can tell you an awful lot. And thats why i think it works on twitter. Because what i am trying to convey is not only surprise people about, you know, images they might not have known about or for instance how theyre block in the city might have looked a hundred years ago am but also, you know, to make the point that if you are trying to understand the time that were living through, not too have known what happened 100 years ago or 200 years ago or some people who are dealing with the same problems, you know, youre really missing a bet, were going through a very confusing time and this gives you a little bit of enlightenment. So where do you come across, stumble across a photo of Frank Sinatra and lou gehrig. That came from actually an archive that was connected, i believe, to lou gehrig who has a lot of fan sites but having written these books, you know, and done all these pictures, i have really gone through a lot of archives. And i tend to remember things visually so a lot of these things are things that i have seen over the years, have a reason to use them so you know for instance when something comes up like king farooq i remembered seeing that image somewhere and went out and grabbed it. Now heres another one you had, mildred and richard loving. Which he put out at about the time the Supreme Court was going through, the gay marriage decision. Two people almost forgotten now but this is a couple, one black spouse, one white spouse, in 1967, that was still illegal in virginia where the term mysogination. If Barack Obamas parents had come to verge that they would have been illegal at that point. That was the year the Supreme Court overruled the prohibition of marriage between africanamericans and white americans. And so i thought that was an obvious precedence precedent for Marriage Equality and the Supreme Courts decision. How big a decision was that seen at the time . It was not as publicized at this one, interestingly. And thats one reason we dont know about it as much, because it wasnt as how many states had those laws on the books. Not many and also at that time it was still something very unusual that you would see a marriage between a black and a white, for instance that was the same year that the secretary of state dean rusk aes daughter mohr ed amerin. Thas considered to be so newsworthy they were on the cover of Time Magazine. Okay. Now this one, i have to confess, i had no idea what this case was about. But you have two gentlemen who defected to russia to the soviet union what year is this is. Summer of 1960, martin and mitchell. And they worked for the nsa. They worked for the nsa and the nsa at the time said this is the worst securities breach that he we have ever suffered and we cant imagine what in the future, these are the words they used what could be leak it. Do we even know that we had an nsa at that point . I mean that was something that was virtually unknown among americans until they had this press conference, dram anything moskow w this image and announced that they had given stuff to the russians. Also, interestingly enough that they did not think that the American Government should be in the business of listening in on people. And what were the feelings back here at the time on that issue . People were outraged about it. They saw them as treasonists. The two guys stayed in moscow, lived there for the rest of their lives. They were pretty well taken care of. I can imagine. Now i just got back from president obamas trip to africa. He went to capetown and delivered a speech in the very same place that Bobby Kennedy had visited. And gave his famous ripple of hope speech. And im there in capetown checking my twitter feed and there you have posted this shot of Bobby Kennedy, i guess at the time he gave the speech in capetown. And whats remarkable about this photo is he is right above a sign, an appear advertise sign. Absolutely. And forcing the policy which was not by accident. And this, it speaks very well for Bobby Kennedy that this was not an issue that a lot of american mrs. Talking about at the time he was. He helped to put it on the map so that later on when americans helped the end of apartheid belatedly and the fact that Nelson Mandela came to tower there was that precedent of beenee kennedy having gone there. What is the danger of a president going to a place where such incredibly historic and important speech, in the space of a couple of wokes barack obama spoke with kennedy, president kennedy gave the berliner speech and then where Bobby Kennedy gave what is by far his most famous speech. Its hard to make a suf lay rise twice and so that is probably why president s shy away from going to a place where a speech that was delivered that was that important, although sometimes it works. Ronald reagan went on dday in 1984 to the cliffs of france where the dday invasion had occurred. A lot of people said to him there is nothing that you can says thats going to rise to the level of what happened here as it happensed this was one of the most we areful speeches in his life. Theres another photo which is Lyndon Johnson signing the civil rights act. And he gives one of the pens to Martin Luther king. And look at the look on their faces. You know, now a days, i think both of us complain and weve talked about this, that president ial events are so unspontaneous and so sort of stage managedment but look at the look between the two of them. You really just know what was going on in their minds that its finally happened. Civil rights has come. We never thought it would happen. Perhaps this day would ever come. And theyre almost on the level of being very emotional about it. And both of them look like theyre going to cherish that pen, right. I think thats true. Which this did. And the other irony is right behind them is a gentleman called peter redino who was the chairman of the house judiciary committee, exactly ten years later that was acting on president nixons impeachment. Now one thing that will drive people in the white house today, crazy is comparisons to lbj, you have some of the president s friends say if only he were a little bit more like lbj, get in there, get in the faces of members of congress, and really work it. But one thing they point out is lbj had massive majorities. One thing a school i went to yearbook said most likely to succeed so everybody voted for the richest kid in the class because he was most likely to succeed it is a pretty big benefit when you have these overwhelming majorities in house and senate as johnson z larger than anyone except for fdr for a democrat in the 20th century. Plus coming off that landslide. But in john owe johnsons case, even he said there is only so much i can do, probably ive only got about six months in 1965 because members of congress are going to be tired of making sacrifices. For me theyll start to rebel. That happened even to johnson. So you know, given the antagonism in congress nowadays its almost a bond ter that a president , second term is able to get as much as he does. Sometimes its not just photographs. You put out documents which i think is kind of this is your stock and trade. My line of work. Something we done see very much. One that caught my eye was abraham lincoln, a note that he wrote a few days after the victory in getties burg and whats amaze being this is first of all he predicts the rebellion will be over. But what struck me is this document want discovered until six years ago. Thats it. How will were still finding new things about abraham lincoln. Things were filed in the wrong places. Just this week, for instance, we saw the first motion picture, Franklin Roosevelt in a wheelchair moving. Would you have think we would see that a long time ago that is one reason why history is so exciting because people like mow discover these things all the time, even as in lincolns case it was 150 years ago. Okay. I want to tick through quickly a few more. One that struck me, babe ruth, and this had to be one of the scariest scenes he had what, run into the wall and he was getting, looks like hes practically knocked out here. Although i would worry more about the wall than babe ruth in a case like this. But he was, and if you look at this image he looks almost as if he had died. You know, thats the kind of thing at a time that now we worry about concussions and sports injuries. Thats the kind of thing that happened an awful lot. Next up, dodger stadium, rafine being constructed this is pretty amazing. Yeah, and i think another thing to remember was a lot of people were put out of their houses to build dodger stadiumment but look at the way it lookedment you couldnt have even imagined, i think, a stadium of that quality going up there as quickly as it did. Incredible. And then explain this pretty incredible shot there world war ii. This is an invading an atol in the pas civic. It gives you an idea of the heroism much world war ii which sometimes given the way that wars are fought nowadays very differently, we sometimes forget the way it was fought in the 1940s. Another theme that you often have transportation. Which i never realized that was one of your passions but theres some interesting, this, the oldest continually operating airport in america, who knew s in college park maryland. I wouldnt have guessed it until recently. I was just curious what is the oldest airport in america. I thought it might be albany new york, or Something Like that. But there it is. And someone actually tweeted back to me, yes, and the ice machine is still broken. And then here a shot from be a airshow in chicago, is this a real photograph . A real photograph. And im a loyal chicago native so i love putting up pictures of chicago if i can. This is 1911, there was an aviation meet it there were a lot of planes over grant park which want on to be known for other things. Yes, incredible. And in here, this is the first driveinfilling station. In case anyone was wondering. And what year . 1913, this is pittsburgh, gulf oil, before that. And again i didnt know this until i researched it fairly recently. If you wanted to get your car filled, would you drive up, basically to a Hardware Store and go in and get a tank and take the gasoline out and put it in yourself. So this was a great progress and something we obviously use today. Okay. And then here is a traffic jam of sorts. In washington, d. C. ,. I mean i done even know what the story behind this is. This is amazing. The white house in the background and some kind of a bicycle contraption. Right behind, and the two ride ares on the bicycle looked eck at that timic, dont they. Pennsylvania avenue. They should have known how much traffic was going to be this years later and what they were missing. And how outraged they would be when they found out pennsylvania avenue would get closed to traffic, but not to bicycle traffic. Indeed. And then this, a photo by stanley kubarych, which just blows me away because this looks like its taken t could from a stanley kubarych movie. But when was this taken. This was 1949. He was a photographer before he became a film director. And obviously a spectacular one. But the wonderful thing for all of us is that he took the same ability that he had in graphics and composition and lighting, that you see here, and used it for his wonderful film. How old roughly would he have been . I think 20s. Unbelievable. Yeah. All right, well, i have to say, if anybody is on twitter and are you not following Michael Beschloss, are you making a mistake. I think weve proved that here. Great to talk to you. Thanks. And thank you very much for coming. Wonderful to see you, jon, thanks. Appreciate it. Social media has revolutionized the way campaigns are waged. And my next guest has done as much as anybody to lead that revolution. Teddy goff led the digital efforts of 2012 campaign. His team ran the Largest Online Advertising Program in political historiment they raised more than 690 million dollars, and registered over a million voters online. They had 24 million twitter followers, 34 million facebook friends am im pleased to have teddy goff on the program. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me. All before the age of 30. So my big question, so much has been said of the way the o booma campaign used social media. So the fundamentals question i have for su if he had none of that, if the Obama Campaign had none of your efforts, none of the twitter, the facebook, the online fundraising, all of that, would he still have won reelection . Yeah, i think he still would have won reelection. He won reelection because obviously i think hes an exceptional candidate and inspired a lot of people but i think social media allowed limb to inspire more people an maybe most importantly for them to inspire their friends. You mentioned that the president had 34 million facebook fans h that was on election day, its higher now. Those people were friends with 98 of the u. S. Based facebook population that is actually more than the number of people who vote in this country. And so we knew that if we talked to them in the right way f we served them with an experience that they enjoired, gave them reason to feel inspired an stick with us, and you know maybe hit the share button once in a while we could reach almost everybody that way. Im trying to get what the actual impact is on its end result. Obviously in the Romney Campaign had a famously inept social media operation. Their whole get out 9 vote program basically crashed on election day which is very bad timing for Something Like that. No, not the best timing. So if he had had a perfect operation, the president had an inept one, would this have been a closer race . Was this i mean did it really move the numbers at the end of the day . Look, i think, i would be the first to say i think the president would have won either way. But i think, and the fact is, as we all know t want that close of an election, so had we had a florida in 2,000 scenario it could very well have been decisive. You mentioned we registered a million voters online, supplementing 1. 8 million we registered offline that is a decisive number in dollar da and a number of other states. We had a tool whereby we were able to target undecided voters on facebook. We concluded 78 of the people we thought were undecided but were contacted by that tool wound up voting for the president. So was it decisive . Who knows. But you know i think 2 is increasingly, you know, social media is obviously increasingly a huge part of how people receive their information. We also know from all kinds of studies and our own research that people trust the information they get from their friends. They dont necessarily trust the information they get from campaigns or even from the media. And so its an inyesterdayably powerful way to get at them. You had an amazing amount of information on the people you were targeting. I mean you know in the old days you could look through voter roles and see who was registered as a democrat, republican, when they last voted. But you had a lot of information. You can go up to that door, knock on it, and you could know as much about me as, you know, as my best friends. You can know, you know, i mean tell me, tell me the stuff, you could go through my facebook, you can see maybe what kind of pizza i liked, what kind of soda i drank. We certainly were able to do a pretty sophisticated level of tar getting. Although i think we knew less but than you think. And we also werent able to connect a lot of the information that we have about people to their individual identities. So we know about you what you tell us about you. If you want to come to our web site and say i want emails about Veterans Issues and i dont want to hear about health care tlarx is a good indication that you care about Veterans Issues and not health care. We know you what tell volunteers at the door. We know how you votesed or if you voted that is public information, that is available in every voter file. You know, you see these stories that get written that suggest we foe about your browsing history what kind of web sites you go to, the reality is, first of all we dont have that information in almost every case. We are able. But you do get that information. Not in a personally identifiable way. Were able to say we want contact, we want to touch with our banner ads a bunch of people into sports. We cant say lay, tell fuss john karl went to espn. Com yesterday, that we condition do. And so the other thing i think is important to realize, i think it is not just true for the campaign but virtually every corporate advertiser, other campaigns in both parties, we dont really care. What were trying to do is use the information we have to be able to serve you with a better experience. If it is the case you are interested in Veterans Issues, you should be able to get more content from us about Veterans Issues. So you know, and thats what almost, even the he commerce site, someone trying to sell you shoes, theyre just trying to market to you in a more effective way and the platforms, facebook, twitter, et cetera, they are trying to make sure the experience you have on their site is not polluted with a whole bunch of advertising that has nothing to do with you. So i think you know there are bad actors out there, of course there are all kinds of risks. That is why it is important that there be laws in place, that people be smart and to the do stuff like put their Social Security number and email which is something that probably half the people watching this show have done. But i also think its important not to sort of misunderstand the technology or assume that there is allots of nefarious activity going on that in almost every case is not. You started this companying precision strategies with stephanie and other veterans of the Obama Campaign team and you have corporate clients. So are there lessons that Corporate America can learn from the Obama Campaign . You can sell pepsi the way you sold, you know, obamas reelection . You know, i think i absolutely think there are lessons that can be learned. I think there are two really significant takeaways that apply in almost every context, particularly in a context where a company is trying to market to individual people. You know, the first is as you mentioned, the data and targeting capabilities that any kind of constitution has are so much more sophisticated now than they were a year agoing five years ago, and less sophisticated now than a year from now and five years from now. Every element of what we do as a campaign and now were trying to help companies do the same thing, was informed by data. So you saw Television Ads that we bought bought on the basis of well a lot of people watch this show so lets advertise there. But on the basis of where are there actual concentrations of persuadable voters an how can we hit them in the most Cost Effective way. That informed how the president s time was scheduled. Where we put resources into calling reporters in this local media outlet and not that one. Certainly informed a lot of what we did online. Every corporation is trying to figure out how to use their resources as wisely as they can and target people as effect efly as we can. The other thing worth noting and that applies directly, so much has been made of the data and targeting and analyst analytics. Its if you and very interesting. But we spend more time thinking about content and thinking about the message and the policy. And how we were relating to people and how we were zfbing them with the kinds of experiences and the kinds of consent they couldnt tent they were going to enjoy and find interesting. We truly believed if we kept them inspired, gave them a reason to believe in us, that would be more powerful than any optimization or testing or targeting. You also tested not exactly whether or not to put hey in the subject line. We did a lot of subject line testing, button testing. Its really as if naingt. The example i love is we tested the phrasing with which we asked for money in a fundraising email some we would say will you donate, will you please donate, please contribute, we found that you should donate was by far the most powerful such line, we raised millions of dollars because of the use of the word should. Emails asking for money can be really annoying. But you said one of the real lessons in this campaign was dont be afraid to be annoying. Yeah. Essentially. You know, we did a lot of study around how frequently we could get away with emailing people. And found that you know, though its anecdotally a little annoying. Certainly my mom and dad and friends would ask me what the heck was with all those emails. We found that we really didnt see a drop in response rates. We didnt see an increase in unsubscribed. And we did see more returns. Not just fundraising, volunteer activities or asking people to share videos and that kind of thing as well. Hillary clinton, does all of this apparatus, the people that worked on it, not all of it, but a bunch of this transfer to Hillary Clinton. I know jeremy bird, was the key force behind ground operation is now at this Hillary Clinton in waiting super pac. Do you guys just suly go over to hillary or what happens . You know, at this think certainly a huge number of people without worked in ot bama administration and campaigns, myself include ready very supportive of secretary clinton. In terms of the expertise and technology and data, some will and some wont. You know certainly the proprietary data f you came to barack obama. Com and said im an o kbama supporter then your data will not be transfered to Hillary Clinton. Hopefully will you go on your own initiative and sign up too, but these are obama people and that is the obama list and its to the going to change. Some of the technology probably will be made either licenceable or put in under possession of the znc so it can continue to build them for the next couple of years and maybe hand them off to our nominee. I think obviously anybody who cares about the Democratic Party and all the things weve been able to learn and accomplish in the last eight year was hope that whoever is our nominee in 2016 isnt just starting from scratch. All right, teddy goth, precision strategies, former digital director for the Obama Campaign. Thank you for joining us. Well see you next time. 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