, lozada. And, at 7 00 this morning we open our phones and take a look at this mornings headlines on the washington journal. Announcer this week, Carlos Lozada talks about the books written by the 2016 president ial candidates. Brian Carlos Lozada of the Washington Post. A while back, you went through a whole bunch of books written by president ial candidates. Why . Carlos it started with donald trump. When he launched his campaign this summer, he kept talking about his 1987 book the art of the deal. He kept saying we needed a president who could write a book like this. It sort of embodied who he was. So i figured i would read it. I never read art of the deal. I thought i might write something about it for the post. I learned he had written many books. Three memoirs, Business Advice books, even a golf book. So i decided to pick a few of them. To see what i could learn about the guy through his own writing. Brian why did he interest you, other than the obvious . Carlos a lot of politicians memoirs tend to be sort of formulaic. We know, they are very prescreened and scrubbed. This sort ofect planned wholesomeness and all americanness. Trump wrote his before he intended to run for president ever. The first was when he was 41 yearsold. I thought they might tell me something about him. I thought he would be more interesting than reading all the other sort of longterm politicians, which is the same reason i ended up reading ben carsons books too. Brian what is the number one reason candidates write these books in your opinion . What is number one and number two and number three. Carlos there is probably a lot of reasons. I think they are part of their Campaign Propaganda in some ways. I just read a book by a buzzfeed political reporter about the gop race for 2016. He says up front that he consulted the candidates memoirs but he treats them as the Campaign Propaganda that they are. And so, i think they write them because they want to put out a statement of their general beliefs. They want to appeal to particular audiences. I dont think they sell very well for the most part. Publishers go with them because it is a sweepstakes. Maybe this guy will end up being president , in which case the book will sell big. Brian i have here Hillary Clintons book hard choices in 2014. It was actually published a year after she left the state department. You write a lot about the acknowledgments and the introduction and things. What have you learned from that . She wasnt a candidate here. Do you think she was thinking about being a candidate when this book came out . Carlos i suspect Hillary Clinton has been thinking about being a candidate for a long, long time. What i find interesting about Hillary Clintons memoirs is that she wrote one after the white house, right after her years as first lady. Then she wrote this one after her period as secretary of state. What we dont have of hers, that i would love to read, is a memoir that really includes her 2008 campaign, the failed campaign. I think that would be the most the story that we havent heard from her yet. Brian a couple things. And i will go to the acknowledgments. She starts out i want to get your reaction. This is how she starts acknowledgements, the motto of the Clinton Foundation is we are all in this together. Carlos i havent read this book yet. Reacting to it right now, it sounds fairly typical politician speak, the sense of the american family, we are all in this together, connecting to readers. But it strikes me as a bit bland. Brian she was paid 14 million for this book. And, in an earlier book she has , done several with simon paid 8 she was million. And her husbands last book was 10 million. I think it adds up to 32 million. When did this happen . When did this come to the authors over the years . Carlos president obama, the memoir that he will be writing, when he leaves, the estimate is 15 million to 20 million as an advance for the book. So it better sell. I think that its a fairly recent phenomenon. President ial memoirs, probably the ones that are considered the best memoir, is that of president grant. And he wrote it because he was broke. He wrote it because he actually needed the money and and ended up in a terrific book. I think it is only in the last few decades, couple of decades, that the advances for politicians books, political memoirs, have gotten so out of control. Brian and she didnt come close to earning the money back on this, she ended up selling selling 250,000 copies. Carlos this book, from what i understand, has not sold enormously well. Brian i want to show you a video about a guy named bob barnett. Here is what this looks like. She says, i am once again indebted to bob barnett. Here is what the video looks like. [video clip] bob barnett a lot of people from political life come to me. I just dont think there is a book there. I dont think i can get the book published. And if i do, it will be for a very small amount. It wont sell anything and they will be angry at me. Even though i did not have anything to do with it. People come to me after their career is over, people who would have in a fun book, but they wait 10 years too long. And by that time they come for me, they are out of the public eye and it is a bit of a hard sell and i dont like to disappoint. Brian he acts as an agent and has has 375 journalists and political people that he has represented. He does not take a percent of that commission. He just charges by the hour supposedly. What does he do . Carlos ive never met bob barnett. I have only read about him. He appears in virtually every acknowledgment section of every book by any notable politician. It is comforting to hear that he turns some of them down. Because it doesnt seem that way. Its not a surprise at all that Hillary Clinton thanks him. In marco rubios acknowledgments of his latest campaign book, american dreams, the first person he thanks is my lord and savior, jesus christ. The second person he mentions is, my lawyer bob barnett. That tells you something about the standing he has. When you mention about how some people come to him too late about books, you know, i might disagree with him a little bit. I think that we are seeing some books coming out way too early before people have a chance to really be reflective about their experience. And when it feels like there is a little bit of maybe too much score settling going on. That sort of thing sells books but it does not make for terrific reading. Sometimes i think a little bit more time would help, even if it doesnt help sales. Brian what stood out in the marco rubio book . Carlos he wrote a more personal memoir called american son, i believe. And then his latest book is called american dreams. It is a straightforward book about policy and personal experience in which he uses a lot of case studies in florida where he is from. He is a senator from florida. He talks about his various policy issues. The things he cares about, whether education or tax policy. In the acknowledgments of the book, he thanks barnett. He thanks one of his major donors but doesnt identify him as such. He just thanks him for his help and advice throughout the years. Brian you say he is an 83yearold man now. I think his name is bremen. How much of that goes on in the books that you have read . Carlos in the substance of the book themselves, not at all. People arent thrilled to mention their funders and their donors. But they thank them sort of in subtle ways, in acknowledgments and forwards and that sort of thing. Brian one of the people that Hillary Clinton thanks is a woman named named Linda Muscatine and her husband. Who along with her husband, own a bookstore. She interviewed her in a forum. [video clip] Linda Muscatine you seem like youre having a good time . Hillary clinton yes. I think i am having a good time. I think that is in part due to the enthusiasm that i have experienced as i traveled around in these last couple of days. It is a great feeling to have written a book about four years that were consequential in my view and we can talk about that more but which for me were both a personal journey with heavy responsibility. And what i try to do in the book was write it so that i could give you, the readers, a bit of a peak, and the curtain. Because the headlines surely tell some of the story, but not all of the story. Brian who writes these books and how often is it somebody like Linda Muscatine who is involved in it . She didnt say she wrote it. She just read the chapters, but she has written speeches for her. Carlos i think on many occasions, the politicians write them themselves. I think often they state this clearly in their forwards or acknowledgments. They have a lot of help. They have ghostwriters or people who serve as readers of various chapters. On occasion, they will put the name of the coauthor or ghostwriter right on the cover. With, not a with. But a but usually, you dont care so much about that other individual. And i find it a little unusual to have the person interviewing you. Im a huge fan of politics and prose, but that was sort of a softball question. Are you having fun . Brian the interesting thing ive found is there is one name that is missing, both from the index and from the book and from the acknowledgements Sidney Blumenthal. What are the chances that Sidney Blumenthal would not be mentioned in this book . Carlos he played a more significant role during her white house years. I seem to recall there was a conversation about him maybe having a role in the state department. It did not happen should talk about that. But i dont recall that. Brian he has been deeply involved with the emails back and forth when she was secretary of state. Carlos on consequential matters, sometimes deeply inane matters. You know, i think i would subscribe to the rule of thumb on political memoirs. These are not meant to be or should not be interpreted as a true record of what took place. Brian you have written several articles on donald trump. You talk about he doesnt seem to be a huge fan of the gipper. You say in another book he is starting to talk favorably about the gipper. Say afterther one you he lost the election to Ronald Reagan, talking about jimmy carter, this is donald trump. Carlos yes. The donald turned him down. But he said that it impressed him that carter had guts to ask them for something big. He hadnt been impressed with carter as a president. But asking in and asking the donald for five million made him seem like a gutsy guy. Brian later you said ronald ronalds another all, reagan is another example. He is so smooth and so effective a performer he completely won over the American People. Now, seven years later are the American People beginning to wonder if there is anything beneath that smile. Carlos i believe this is in one of his earliest books where he brian the art of the deal. Carlos his first book then, when he is critical of president reagan. Which leads me to believe he probably wasnt planning a huge career in the republican politics of the time. Later on in subsequent books, he speaks glowingly of Ronald Reagan. He seems to have gotten religion on reagan. Brian and you say he spoke glowingly of Hillary Rodham clinton. And there is a picture of the two of them in the book. Carlos as we all know from one of the Republican Debates, Hillary Clinton attended Donald Trumps wedding. Doesnt know, he he is an interesting mix because he holds these deep grudges. They can be famous people, journalists who have wronged him, bankers he felt gave him a raw deal, and he will call the out to viciously in these books. But he is also a man who cultivates relationships longterm, including, it seems, with the clintons. One of the best moments in the Republican Debate is when they asked him, you know, why do you give money to democrats . Why do you give money to so many politicians . What did you get from Hillary Clinton . And what he said was, she came to my wedding. Its these personal touch things that matter to people. And i think thats why he kept up the relationship with the clintons. Brian you write something called book party. Carlos its the name of the blog the Washington Post has given me on the site to write reviews and to write things about books i find interesting. Brian how often do you write . Carlos there is a review that runs every week in the print Washington Post on sunday in the outlook section. And so, i read or write i read a book and write a review on it at least every weekend a few times during the close the course of the week, i am writing online. Sometimes, i take a deep dive like into the trump books. I dont think i wrote anything while i was working on trial. Brian i saw a tweet on twitter from you saying that it is a strange year to become an american citizen. [laughter] carlos yes. Bryan is 2015 your year to become an american citizen . Carlos i became an american citizen in 2014. It was my first year as an american citizen. Im sort of thinking about that a little bit because i have just been reading for the first time, it is embarrassing, a book i should have read a long time ago democracy in america by alexis to tocqueville. Anis a lesson in sort of introduction to advanced physics, i hope, for the United States. When i look back on 2015, which is my first year as a u. S. Citizen i lived here for decades. My kids are american. My wife is from ohio. You know, you cant get more american than that, maybe indiana. And so i didnt think a lot would change about the way i felt. But you know, once you take the oath, you feel like you are all in. And everything that is going on sort of you feel invested in any field is possible for. Seeing everything that has happened in american politics this year, the rise of donald trump, Hillary Clinton and the email obsessions, that sort of extraordinary republican race, has made it interesting. I havent decided who i am going to vote for. I paid attention more than i have, even after all these washingtone post to be an american is a glorious burden. Brian when did you come to the United States . Where did you come from . What has been your career path . Carlos i first came when i was three years old. Threeyearsold. My family we moved to Northern California where we had some relatives. Brian from where . Carlos from peru, from lima. My family is from peru. I lived in california for seven years. Then we went back to peru when i was 10yearsold. And, i stayed there until i finished high school. Then i returned to the u. S. And went to the university of notre dame for college. And i pretty much stayed here since. I did a graduate program at the Woodrow Wilson school at princeton university. The maybesoontothe school ated princeton. I worked at the Federal Reserve for a couple of years because i thought i wanted to be an economist. But i found it sort of dull. Im sure my colleagues from there are going to see this now and complain to me. They were terrific. But it was the late 1990s. At the time, we thought the economy was great. We thought the fed was doing anything perfectly. Only later did we learn everything would go wrong. I moved to washington and started working at a magazine here, Foreign Policy magazine and i was there for five years. I learned a lot from smart journalists. I took a fellowship year at Columbia University at the Journalism School there. Business journalism fellowship. And then i went to the post. And ive been there for 10 years. At the post, i have had a chance to do a lot of different things. I was reaganomics editor first. I was a National Security editor. And for five years, i was the editor for our sunday outlook section, which is the greatest job in journalism. You get to sort of dialup any person you want to write about anything. I did that for five years. And then i figured i should try something new. And i saw that our old, long time book critic was going to retire. I figured maybe that was something to try and maybe i could try to do it a little differently and really, the experience i had at the post, getting a chance to edit some a different lines of coverage is sort of the perfect training to then be a Nonfiction Book critic because we cover politics and history and economics and writ large. So this is my first year doing that. Brian going back to some of your reviews, here is a video clip of ben carson talking about his book. [video clip] ben carson when i give a speech, you know, i dont have a written text. I just go up there and i survey the situation. I ascertain what kind of audience we have. And, you know, i will have a few points that i will make sure i make, which i have written on a card. And then i just start speaking. And basically i write the same , way. I have a chapter title and i will write down some bullet points about what i want to say and i order them. I just start dictating. So its very much whats on my heart. I always pray and i ask god to guide me in my writing, to give me wisdom in terms of what points need to be brought out. And i think he does a pretty good job of that. Brian are you siding with marco rubio in the reference to god. What did you find in his book . Carlos you know, what he just said, it fits perfectly with the way his books read. He talked about when he goes to speak for an audience, he doesnt really prepare a lot. He just kind of goes. That is enormous confidence. Politicians are usually so scripted. Ben carson is not. He has enormous selfconfidence in his intellectual abilities. And what comes across in the book as well is he ha