Transcripts For CSPAN2 After Words 20150914 : comparemela.co

but in high school you wear dresses and i literally got a permission slip to my house and i shed a few tears i will say that much. i used that example of why i wrote the book to show how through it all to change a culture that i ended up able to wear pants and able to be the girl that could respond to start a petition drive or do something else but at that moment i did what she said and the one little tangent to the story is that when the book came out i actually got a call from someone and he said i am the son of her principal and he said i didn't like what you said about my mom and i said it was true she really did take me out of the school. and you know what you said about her hair and i said i jumped on the internet and she does have the beehive. all of a sudden you hear laughter and was our friend and my colleague. but that is how the book starts. >> one of the things i took from that story is that it is the process to learn how to stand up for yourself in a situation like that and it takes time especially for girls to figure out how to do that. >> guest: and i think we are seeing this change. one of the reasons i wrote this is about trying to get people from regular background growing up in the middle class neighborhood in the suburbs, trying to get people to think i can do this i can run for something or i can get involved in the political process and for me my teachers were incredible mentors back then. guess she wasn't that nice but a lot of the other teachers, there was the one that got me off the front of the door when i got stuck, or my wild fifth-grade teacher with the bright red hair that would literally stand in the back of the class. she would write on the report cards speak louder, and she would spell it out putting a space between each letter. and those are people that influenced my life and made it easier for me as i went ahead but i found it at every step of the way from back then until the last few years where i went to asia with all of the mail readers he would start the campaign and then look over at this young man and he would say no, senator klobuchar is the democratic leader you will address her now. so i think those people that have helped you it hasn't been all women but they've helped others along the way with what the book is about. >> host: you write a lot about your family and your dad was a much you love it: as for the minneapolis tribune and worked for the associated press and in a year that you were born he played an important role in the presidential election. tell us about that. >> guest: my dad is the one that called the election and this is the situation where they were the last three states out and it was all down to the wire. california ended up going to nixon. there is my dad. he's a young reporter in the associated press office. i got this from interviewing my dad which is a lot of fun and then verifying some of the memories from an 87-year-old. my dad told george moses that he had whittled out the region northern minnesota would go from kennedy. if you grew up on the iron range in the middle of the 20th century later said the area had as many bars as churches, and the prospects in northeastern minnesota in 1960 were as bright as the temperance movement chances in western duluth. he and faculty told moses that in northeastern minnesota for working-class stronghold kennedy would most likely pick up more than two thirds of the vote and win the state and if kennedy won the votes that would put him over the top. after hearing the the reporters out, he placed a call to the general sandbox. we are going to elect kennedy. i have two words for you in minneapolis, he finally said pausing before adding a great emphasis. so my dad, they go to wordsmith of the hour than in his early 30s got the chance to write the story that declared john f. kennedy victor in minnesota and that is the next president. he was hammering the keys furiously with no time to follow the usual protocol of three carbon copies under to beat the chief competitor the united to the punch by dowd handed over a single paragraph at a time. moses would check the copy for the typos. without a carbon to review and with each page including only a small piece of the story my dad kept yelling to the teletype operator. how did that last paragraph and. after a night of little sleep, he would yell back with a period my dad story calling the election sent out across the wires that 12:33 p.m. eastern time so this is the next day appeared in newspapers across the country. and james rustin of "the new york times" explained that the next day the calling of the race in minnesota was monumental. at 12:33, he wrote, senator kennedy clinched minnesota in the election. 13 minutes later mr. nixon made his formal concession. after he conceded my dad celebrated a groundbreaking story with losers and johnson. nice work doing the story. i almost died twice and barely missed a hernia that the party was brief. my dad went to lunch at a nearby café and returned to the office and was given his next assignment. three papers were stuck in a mud pit. he went in and wrote his story so that's when i was born in the list possibilities, when that kid from the iron range of minnesota could write a story calling the presidential election and win the country took a risk and eat like that a vigorous leader of the catholic dot. it was a good year to be born. >> host: they did end up getting it right. >> guest: he found some of the old writings to help confirm that. so, it was fun to go back and remove or those times. >> so your dad was covering everything politics, sports and other things. did he think that girl is going to be a u.s. senator? >> guest: my dad always had ambitions for me i think that he always wanted me to be a judge. but he always encouraged me and inspired me to go on these bike trips together that were 1200 miles in 11 days those kind of things. when your dad says i think we can do 20 more that is a lesson of perseverance. >> host: although the stories are terrifying. you write about wearing no helmet, going 145 miles. you wrote at one point i got off my bike and pretended that i have fallen. he didn't buy that. >> guest: he was writing about the stories and so we were showing that we have a map showing the progress. the second part was that most of the trips were after my parents got divorced and this was a gift from him in my mind to get to know each other again in a way for a teenager that maybe didn't want to sit there and have long dinners with their dad and talk through how he was doing and what was happening. this was a much better way and was my dad's idea and was a great one. >> host: your parents got divorced because of the struggle with alcoholism which you write about in the book and i wonder where you fully aware of what he was dealing with it when you were growing up? >> guest: a lot of it for the first half of my parents marriage and around the time i was born it wasn't that bad at all but it got worse and worse as the time went on and part of it was the life of the reporter. back then people would go to drinks with football coaches and he was covering the vikings at the time and very highflying life and then the other part of it was his own background. my grandfather was an iron ore worker and never graduated from high school. and my grandfather would go to the bar and eat all the time and drink and my dad grew up seeing that. so whatever it was like he was an alcoholic and distorted to drink more and more and often times secretly. when i was growing up i remember being in the car with him when he went off the road no one was hurt but it was because he was drinking and we got home and he cried and told me he wanted to do it again and he had a drinking related arrest. >> host: because he was a prominent person. >> guest: right before my wedding in 1993, he got a third driving related incident. this time the law had changed and it was treated very seriously. i went in with him and his lawyer and the counselor and talked to the judge and we went through everything that happened in our lives and he said he stopped drinking for a while but then he went back and finally went through treatment and literally that's when he found redemption and wrote a book about how his religion and faith helped him get through that time. he goes around and speaks about it all the time to different groups in his whole life has been turned around he's happily married for the first time and so i was able to see not only the difficulties and the sadness of oklahoma's own and the effect that it had died was able to see them recover enough redemption. >> host: he is open about it but was it hard to write about it in your? >> guest: he's written about it before so that made it a little different he's written about it in a different way but for me yes and obviously i showed it to him ahead of time because i want to make sure that he was okay with it. you have to sit back and think about the effect on you and that is how he was portrayed into the world about what it meant to me and my mother and sister. >> host: another family crisis helped propel you into politics into the political career and this is when your daughter was born. tell us what happened. >> guest: my daughter was very sick when she was born. she couldn't swallow and they came in and said in the middle of the night she's sick and can't swallow. so they thought there was a tumor, they thought she had cerebral palsy. they couldn't figure out what was going on so she was in intensive care and everything else and back then they had a rule if you got kicked out of the hospital in 24 hours. even if the baby was in intensive care and i had no sleep at all. they were trying to give me all this stuff and i got out and i stayed in the room. it was a difficult thing. when she started to get better it took about a year and a half but somewhere in the middle i went to the legislator and worked with some legislators and realized you could go to the legislature and talk about things like a pc pc oddities and then there is all of the mail legislators. so we got one of the first past guaranteeing 48 hour hospital stay that they have done in new jersey and some other states and then clinton ended up taking it up on the a national level. but i also learned how to end up at the conference committee people couldn't say that they were against it but some of the lobbyists were trying to delay it and it's a vibrant six pregnant women to the committee and they outlawed the lobbyists tend-1. the pregnant moms raised their hands and said no and didn't wait until august 1. it went into effect today that he signed it. >> host: tell us how your daughter is doing now. >> guest: she's doing much better. she's a great kid. she was sick a lot growing up because she was so small, the bottom 1% for the three or four years and then she kind of came out of it with a lot of hope from the separatists and doctors, and it was just a unique condition that could lead to didn't lead to any other major disabilities. and a lot of time she also didn't mind having the story told. i don't know if it would have been her choice but she's a great kid. >> host: if there is a thread that goes to your new book is summed up by a writer. obstacles in the past are not obstacles. they are the past. what does that mean to you? >> guest: a lot of people had worse problems than i did that's for sure but the key is what do you do with them and how do you move on and do you try to gain some strength from what happens to you and try to help other people and that is the key to a lot of people that become public servants and i try to make the case and about not everyone in the book not everyone is a cartoon picture. there are a lot of people that go into it for the right reasons and a lot of it has to do with things that happened in their lives that they think they can fix either in elected office or back at the time so that is a lot of what i see you in my job, and i view these things that have happened to me as actually gets and i don't mean that in a pollyanna played that they were gifts and made me understand how other people felt and how the parents and kids with permanent disabilities field so i got involved in that issue for what it's like to have an alcoholic in the family and how that led me to work on the drug courts as a prosecutor for some of the trade bills that we have right now that are proposed in the senate. >> host: minnesota has legendary politicians from hubert humphrey to jesse ventura and of course walter mondale who played a role in the political career. how did you meet him? >> guest: walter mondale was someone everyone still loved in minnesota and i first got involved with working with him when i applied for an internship at his office. i ended up getting the job it was so glamorous i showed up in the executive office building next door remember i had my skirt on and i showed up and buy a site meant ready to write a big policy piece was to do the furniture inventory of every piece of furniture in the office to crawl under desk and write the numbers down. it took three weeks and i tell kids that was my first government job in washington and this was my second so take them seriously. >> host: ultra mondale was somebody that you knew to follow and what why did you take from his career or from what he taught you or just by example? >> guest: i think that dignity that he has is something that is missing in today's politics and i've tried my best to practice that and how he would treat people. when i was working with him later after the law firm, there were the republicans that were called in to talk about issues because he just viewed his job in that way and he didn't use a lot of heated rhetoric for being too norwegian but i think there was a value and a lot of fun. there was value to that and it helped him to get things done. >> host: when you were becoming politically active yourself you were source of you were addressing the democratic national convention in 2004 and he gave houston a device and i wonder if you would talk about that story. >> guest: john kerry is running for president and it was my first major involvement. i introduced them the end memorize too many speeches and i give to you my first wine and he's up there with me. he puts his hand on my shoulder and says i know you're not done yet so go ahead and finish up. >> host: you have such a strong grip on the microphone -- >> guest: they told me yes i was being nice i knew i couldn't get it away from use of this is actually then later they had me speak at the boston convention and this is an example of what a great bond rate cut -- great mentor team was. that you couldn't say certain things and i had a joke that wasn't that funny i said i'm going to end with the words of someone famous from texas. she said what america wants is something as good as its promise and so that is the background when they told me i couldn't use that. walter mondale came up to me. you've memorized your speech. there's a total prompter. note that is in fine. remember that time at the convention when -- i remember. that was a teleprompter screwup. memorize the speech. this struck me as a little out of date but even so i turned up at the appointed hour and found myself backstage patrick leahy, chuck schumer and charlie wrangle and the county attorney. don't ask me why the organizers put me together with that high-powered congressional crowd but they did. the senator was up just before the theft of about half a minute he stopped and looked around and tell the prompter had gone dark. he had made a joke by suggesting that the malfunction was tied to the light that he had with vice president dick cheney. eventually someone brought out a copy of the remarks. my god i thought. from where i stood waiting at the corner of the stage i could see walter mondale. he was sitting right there in the front row. i made eye contact with him and i have never seen a more poignant i told you so in my life. after the senator finished his remarks i stepped up to the podium. someone gave me a printed copy of the speech and at some point after i launched into it, the teleprompter came back but i rarely looked at it and i never looked at the printed copy. we had fun and the speech went great and i used the line. what's your agenda and nasa or a liability? >> guest: the majority leader had run one time and 80s and before that in the 70s the secretary of state had run and they both lost. when i started running people would literally ask do you think a woman can when and was a reference -- was a reference to kay bailey hutchison, i said while a woman one in texas, so i think a woman can probably when. so then i finally ended up -- i didn't really gender that much because of that issue into the other women that were accomplished had run a lot on that issue. i would just say they would speak to these big rooms of steelworkers and i would say what someone would see what someone would ask that question and say look last time i checked half the voters were mad. we didn't when. i'm running as my record as a prosecutor of what i want to do for the state of minnesota to get us at the end of the election one of the newspaper editors write from the minneapolis tribune i have been emphasized gender and it doesn't mean i didn't have a lot of women support i had a group called amy's angels that meant a lot to me so we did do a lot in terms of gathering support but that wasn't the theme of my campaign. there have been fewer than 50 elected and history of the country. it's really remarkable for the women that are now in the senate do you think that they tend to behave differently than the male senators? >> guest: . they are more bipartisan suites not just anecdotal. i have seen time and time again. it was eventually adopted by the leaders. if we see barbara boxer working with which mcconnell just last month to get a chance petition build on so we passed the six-year highway bill out of the senate so we see the women showing this kind of leadership and there is a lot more trust because it is only 20 of us and we have a every other month dinner and what we say of course we never talk about that. i'm just kidding. but i think that is an important way. >> host: they never eat like that of the women in the national office. hillary clinton is now favored to win the democrat nomination. they are running in the gop race this time. to what degree do you think it is a factor in the national race is? >> guest: i think that the governor's level it is difficult for women to win those kind of jobs where we've gotten better now and we're still at 20%. but, first there is the money issue. a lot of men so i think that will be to our advantage in the second piece of it is that sometimes voters just -- is for people to think of women in that kind of management role that you see that percentage even smaller. and then of course the women haven't been achieved yet even though it's been achieved in many other countries. and that changes with thinking. >> host: your supporter in the presidential campaign has had some challenges. do you think that sexism is behind some of the criticism or is it the same criticism that she would be getting if she were running. >> guest: throughout her life as every other woman woman of the show, she has gotten criticism. that has happened to everyone. and i think that the key again is what do you do about it and how do you move on. i talk about how the low expectation will be what can she really do this job and then you have a debate and a speech where you show you know your stuff and it can be to your advantage. these harassment harassment issues that go on around the country and must be taken seriously and the names in so many patty murray called a mom in tennis shoes and claire mccaskill gets the opponent who is talking about the brace is the fault of the woman. when you go through those things you start to boomerang and actually hurt. someone called me a probably, i wish. the challenge to me is the thing that is so hard to define when you are a minority. it's really hard to define those to talk a lot about that with leaning in and of some of the column sheets and the subtlety of being kept out of power or being kept out of the rooms and having to assert yourself to get in the room i think that is the level of the leadership and when i do not discount the rewards are the harassment going on and i think when you get at leadership level that's where the fight is now and it gets into the presidential level to make sure that we are calling people and they exclude women from the decision-making world. >> host: one of the things we've seen is the handling of the sexist charges in a different way with more of an inclination of who confronted. >> guest: they are able to use it to their advantage. i wasn't talking much about my opponent at all created this is in the second of senate race. but i think that when people can see it for what is it actually helps candidates and it is viewed as a mistake when someone says something like that. >> host: thinking about hillary clinton she was involved in this controversy over her use of the private server for e-mails exclusively when she was the secretary of state. do you think that this is a serious issue that she needs to address in a serious way or is this a passing kind of partisan slump? >> guest: is a needed focus and i think she has responded seriously. she understands when there's requests to the server she has complied. she's voluntarily given over 55,000 e-mails and has acknowledged that she take us the responsibility for what happened and that it's for responsibility. she has agreed to the hearing in front of the house of representatives which are not exactly her friends. she could publicly ask questions about it. i think that when you combine the review of the e-mail and the release of the e-mails by the state department with the public hearing into the responsibilities my hope is that then when all that is complete, we can then move onto some of on to some of the major differences between her and some of the people of the on the republican side who were talking about deporting kids that were born in this country were talking about building a wall into canada or saying things like one of the problems for american workers is the they are not working hard enough. those kind of things into the serious policy prescriptions being put forward whether it is people who are hooked on prescription drugs, serious problems in the country that leader leads to heroin abuse or the work she's been trying to change the campaign-finance laws which are so detrimental right out of the process and to hitting the compromise to the economic proposal that she has made. that's where i hope we will get into the next few months. >> host: i think that they exceeded everybody's expectations. why do you think that he has managed to strike a chord? >> guest: . someone that has really spoken and have a strong grassroots following i look at this not as a negative but as a positive that we have a robust interesting primary going on and i think that hillary clinton has made clear she meant what she said that it wasn't going to be a coronation and that there would be debated there would be the contest of primary. that is what happened. there was a major difference between the democratic side and the republican side. iac more similarities in their views on the democratic side but i also do not see those attacks that have been so classic. i don't see the candidates putting their cell phone numbers on tv for example. these kind of things are imported as we go forward when we get to a candidate the candidate on our side to unify the party. >> host: if you want to have a robust party that be boosted by having the vice president run what is your political sense, what is your political gut tell you? >> guest: i don't know. i have a lot of respect for the vice president. he is loved by all of us and he has come to my state many times and i think that he's going to have to make his own decisions based on what he wants to do it with and what his family wants him to do. >> host: you mentioned jesse venture earlier in this conversation who was kind of in his way a predecessor of donald trump, an outsider who manages to get the attention and support of a lot of the voters and we will see what happens in the campaign. what is behind the surprising appeal on the republican side to be sure? >> guest: i was on the front line when we were less funded by was running for the county prosecutor and he was running for the governor and then the opponent somehow had got into the back of the parade. his people that have these signs of the state retaliate in 98 and i think that kind of sentiment captures how some people are understanding the feeling about institutions. there are people that are now the government and other matters business. there are people that just feel left behind. you can see that with the income inequality that is happening in the country so i think in that way that has fueled this phenomenon that i think it but i think it is real in terms of how people are feeling. what are your real solutions between the two parties and what really will help ease people? it is compared that they came out at the end. i was with him and he was running a good campaign throughout the year but he didn't really touch people's attention on till after the state fair. and then that is at the end of august in case you didn't catch it and then the other thing is that while she was certainly provocative committee didn't quite say the things that his opponents in the same way that trump. there were some comparisons but a lot of differences. >> host: you have had a lot of experience in optics. do you think it is possible that he will be the presidential nominee? >> guest: anything is possible in politics. i see that in our state and i do not rule anything out. i think the fact that he now has said he wouldn't run as an independent, which is of course what ventura did when there were the candidates on either side and now they will be running in the republican primary. and i think there will be quite a path for him. >> host: your book is called the senator next-door. what does that mean? >> guest: i named that because i wanted to bring back this idea of representing your neighbors to the idea of the democracy you get elected by your neighbors either the city council or the u.s. senate and you represent your neighbors and you view over it to them to act like a neighbor so if you have someone next to you that you don't always agree with you have to find some way to get along and that is not what has been happening in washington so i make the case that there are a lot of good people that went for good reasons and i tell some stories working across the aisle weather for me it is with the senator in north dakota or senator mccain. then i make the case that we awake to our neighbors to the citizens that we represent to not act like boxers in the corner of arrangements to find that common ground in the plaintiff compromise. >> host: you talk about redefining what political courage is. we think about political courage someone standing up to the principles and unyielding. but you make the argument that there is perhaps more courage to be but to make it otherwise. >> guest: it does does invite given examples of lindsey graham coming out first even though he would never -- he got a lot of grief on the right for that. or when i came out for a certain kind of -- we had the public option debate and i thought that it should be a public auction when it came to the affordable care act. i got grief on the left for that and there are example after example of people that showed courage in my mind when they are willing to stand next to someone they don't always agree with and come up with the compromise instead of just going to a chamber into giving a speech on loud. but that has turned out in the recent days to be pretty easy too. what is hard to do with your own base is to find a way that you can reach some common ground. >> host: a lot of americans look at washington and throw up their hands and say it is a dysfunctional capital. how did the ability or the willingness to make the compromises to get things done, how did that get lost and is there a way to bring it back? >> guest: the way the money works is detrimental to the compromise because with the independent expenditures and the citizens united and anything we can do to reverse that decision, the money tends to go to either extreme of the independent expenditures that gets to the candidates and want you to get things done that happens all the time. that gets a lot of our message up to the citizens but the rumors and things spread again from one side or another are sometimes written and sponsored by interest groups and then also the media of course not every discussion is like this. on our c-span appearance today, a lot of the discussions are people screaming at each other going back and forth and that is encouraging. we get a lot of attention. ask donald trump. you get a lot of attention when you actually got. and when you are more conciliatory doesn't mean you stand your ground. one of the things i love is talking about with moderation means and it isn't necessarily the middle viewpoint or necessarily your character. we talk about dwight eisenhower but john mccain doesn't exactly have that character but it's whether you can see inside the other person's views. whether or not you can put yourself in their shoes to figure out where that point is coming from and it's just this idea that you can stand your ground and look for common ground and i think that has been missing and some of it involves the way politics is no longer just let's try to figure this out. every single thing we do is covered by the second on buzz feed or it is harder to find those moments. yet as i tell in the book there are great stories of people that have the immigration bill in the senate. people came together -- we have a roadmap for the next president. if that wasn't easy and people took grief on both sides, you have the recent infrastructure built i just brought up that i think is a good example so you have those examples and courage and i go through my own experiences with that as well as others and it's important for citizens to know that happened in every word that. >> host: in the wake of the decisions there is an unprecedented amount of money being spent in political campaigns there's more money that's not disclosed. when you are a u.s. senator, how much time and attention does the prospect of raising money for the next campaign how big of a role does it play in your life? >> guest: both of mine were about $10 million that i had to raise. it sounds daunting but it's not like the 50 or $70 million so i told a story that for me yesterday but just having raised more than 500 more per person and suddenly having to raise 10 million i literally ended up having to try to call people and actually no one calls me back and five monday i just give it up and went through the rolodex and i raised $17,000 from an ex-boyfriend and mike husband finds out it's not an expanding base. so just you are given an environment and have to find a way to survive. that's how i look at it. i do not let it dominate my days. i've been fortunate enough to have a good bit of wealth that made a difference and i reached out a lot across the aisle. and i haven't had those major partisan warfare is but that doesn't say that for those races that you can't be up to the fight. you have to be. >> host: you mentioned al franken calling you. when he was elected to some of them took you aside to give you advice noting that you were the senior senator from minnesota to celebrate the latest celebrity compatriot united challenges. >> host: i had just gotten used to being the senator and it was hard for any senator coming in and suddenly now they talked about their experiences. >> they have to worry clinton as the senator and then dick durbin had barack obama so they told me the stories of what it was like and said this isn't as easy as you think having to be your constituent asking you to take pictures of them and i said okay i can handle it and it all all culminated into getting on the plane with a flight attendant to announce that she's from the south and minnesota. while id we have some celebrities on the plane. mr. and mrs. al franken. everyone laughed. then the flight attendant said how cool is this, husband and wife senators. it's never easy. >> host: what are worth it to current issues dealing with first the nuclear deal. the president seems guaranteed to put the deal in effect because it would be sustained or maybe there would be a filibuster to prevent a vote in the senate. are you a supporter of the iran nuclear deal or are you comfortable with the idea that this important agreement will go into effect because a minority of the senate is willing to back it even though a majority of the congress opposes it? >> guest: there was a bipartisan agreement between the senator corcoran and senator cardin about the rules of the game and how that was going to work and like any other vote in the senate a major issue of the vote is basically on the threshold how it works for the supreme court nominees and major pieces of legislation and that is how it works since i got there. is that how i would change it, yes i would like to do that is the but that is the rule that were set for this bill and i propose changing it overall. so that is the answer to it and if you have what looks like i don't know what the exact number will be but it's going to be over 40 senators that approve of this come if you even put it forward as a motion to approve it wouldn't get up to 60. if you put it as a motion to disapprove, it would indicate over the 60 vote threshold. if you did it as a motion to approve however you did it wouldn't get those numbers. it's like any other bill we have and not only that but it was negotiated with republicans about what the process would be and we followed the process. so that would be my first answer. the second is that this was an agreement the president made. and there is no doubt about that in the sanctions. i think that's why you are seeing the congressional involvement. that involvement wouldn't have to take place. i was one that thought it was important. we made an agreement how we should do it. the last thing i say i hope that there would be a bipartisan agreement on another package of the proposals aid to israel and more security and tracing the money that goes back to iran and other i'm hoping that will happen to be knocked by the way that it to happen. >> host: it distresses some americans to look at this debate and see that about every republican is going to pose a nuclear deal almost every democrat is going to support it. although there are some democrats who are not. and it's not an issue that you think would naturally or inevitably split. what does it say about the politics? >> guest: i think traditionally it hasn't been partisan but it has become a little more that way in the recent years. you always have some republicans kind of going the way that it used to be and realizing realizing foreign aid is important to the country security and a lot less expensive and the military involvement. i did have a game that people come together both sides to say we agree on a process and part of it was nothing in the end of this this might break down on the party lines. so i would go back to the fundamental reason in the idea that we did come up with a process that was bipartisan and i'm hoping after the vote there will be a package of things that are bipartisan because traditionally that has been imparted to the country that foreign policy has been more bipartisan. >> host: it's more a tradition finding the government would break the partisan lines. we have groundhog day september and of course the government isn't funded for the fiscal year october 1. what are the odds that you think there will be another government shutdown this fall? >> guest: i don't think the odds are great. i heard from the republican leaders i know there are some people like senator cruise that talked about shutting things down that played an instrumental role. that didn't go very well in terms of the reaction of the american people. the rules were made then that this shouldn't happen and they have been kept. i saw that mitch mcconnell recently said that the issue is that the funding of planned parenthood you would need a new president to do that. i think that is some acknowledgment that was given as a reason to shut the government down but that probably wouldn't work and so i'm hoping that means that there will be some pragmatism. we saw in the negotiations on the bill that we recently had we saw some pragmatism that the speaker boehner and nancy posey appropriated the doctor sticks with the medicare payment at the beginning of the year. and so my hope is that we can get through this and come up with an agreement. that being said, on our side we think it's pretty important that you have -- that we try to change the sequestration of the try to do something that is fiscally responsible that involves both the domestic and the military side so that we have done so much of our budgeting that has been coming up i supported the cuts that they have now been something like 3-1 or 4-1. and all of those reports would suggest things like one to one or two to one. and we have exceeded that in the cuts to the revenue. so in the long term as we are looking at a tax reform and how we will move the country forward me to get in that range as we look at reducing the deficit. hispanics are the five senators are running and one democrat. how much affect does it have on the debate that we will see this fall? >> guest: i think it does because you see mitch mcconnell dealing with people running for president who as ted cruz did back in december, call everyone back and tell the story in the book, when they said they could go home to vote on the constitutional point of the immigration reform the party ends up opposing. half of has its own party including mcconnell to react to me that his chairmanship. whatever you think about the issue that was an issue that wasn't going to be victorious in with so many important things to do with confirming the very important positions in this u.s. government, we had and of year bills that have to be passed and we were off doing that and that was to make a point. and i think you've seen that's time and time again again on onto these issues including some of the issues with the revisions and important changes that have to be made to the patriot act with rand paul. with a way that it's done with tv ads into the capital blowing up and coming to the sunday showdown that is designed for the presidential campaign, not for governing. >> host: you were marching in minnesota. who was that? >> guest: that was on the cusp of the iron range of the paper mill town, great talent. and there were people on the sidelines shouting klobuchar for president. what did you think about that? >> guest: i love my job right now. that's why i call it the senator next-door and there were a lot of people running for president and i am happy doing my job. i would say that as if the statement. the >> guest: if i wanted to i would call it born to lead or something like that. >> host: i was making a list of the generation of the democratic waters that might be considered or might be running for national office. we have kristin gillibrand from new york, cory booker the new jersey senator to the california attorney general pamela harris to the castro brothers from texas now the secretary and member of the house committee and one thing that struck me was how diverse a group days. i didn't intend to make it favors its trust every one of the people i mentioned is either hispanic or african-american or female. do you think the time has come when democrats will no longer nominate a ticket? are we at a point where there will be an expectation of diversity on the national democratic ticket? >> guest: i never liked to say that it has to be a way that we are heading into that type your code and there will be the choice of whoever the nominee is in the party. i think when you look at the democratic party and there is no doubt about this before the re weber's party and the policies bring diversity. you see a big party that brings in new people. that's been a good party for women and a lot of issues they care about the pocketbook issues and family medical leave issues. so that's why you are going to see more and more diversity on the democratic ticket and i would be surprised in the if it was just again what we have seen the path. i think that you will see a difference on this ticket. and by the way, it wasn't always like that because who picked the woman? walter mondale. that's correct. >> host: the only time that has been diversity on the ticket. except for the two elections with barack obama. >> guest: looking at the women's part of it, he's the only one. >> host: thinking about your political career as a county prosecutor and u.s. senator can you name one or two things that make you proud of this like this is what i'm the most proud of as a political achievement? >> guest: it's the work we did on the white collar crime and the fact that we decided the cases are complex. i ran an office of 400 people. we have the major murder cases and property crimes and drug cases. but i made the decision of number one, at this time it was after 9/11. and the u.s. attorney's office understandably minnesota was involved in one of the cases of the missing hijacker that was actually called by some caused by some pilots in minnesota who was in jail. so they were focused on that and we took on more and more cases with van and in our own office and i came to be the dude doesn't matter how someone commits a crime whether it is with a crowbar or a computer it's still a crime. while the cases case is a complicated thing after a judge like we did when i was a chief prosecutor, a guy that had stolen $400,000 from a mentally disabled woman whose trust he was supposed to be caring for use on the second highest court in the state and i said then we do our job without fear or favor we go after someone whether they are running a business or standing on a street corner doing drugs. we made a major emphasis and they realized how to make people understand you can't have two systems of justice one for the rich and powerful and one for everyone else were we when we would get convictions in windows cases but also it had racial implications because if you just close our eyes to the white collar cases mostly involving, not all but mostly involving people that are not of color and then you are spending all your time going after people of color, that contributes to the racial inequity in the system and it was also part of the work that we did on the photo identification working in the process that turns out it is a major problem in the work that needed on dna and we did on dna and other things we've worked really hard to be fair in the system. and i would say when we got the case prosecutor david bring it into me. should we drop it, should we go to trial i would think okay what is -- we would do that all the time it do that all the time it wasn't always necessary that you want to try to be as colorblind as you can use cases. >> host: finally thinking about your career so far tell us the biggest disappointment. not that you won't try it again but that he would say this is my regret. >> guest: the biggest egrets that i don't have right now on a policy standpoint is that we haven't been able to move some of these prescription drug bills that i have in a situation where the drug companies are now paying generic companies not to put their products on the market the estimates are 3 billion in ten years for taxpayers. on the bill with john mccain to allow the start from canada to create some competition. on the bill with a number of democrats that i'm leaving to have negotiations for the medicare part d.. i'm not going to give up that at some point we are going to have to change some of these policies. >> host: thanks for joining us to talk about your new book called the senator next door. >> that was "after words," booktv signature program in which authors of the latest nonfiction books are interviewed by journalists, public policymakers and others familiar with their material. "after words" airs every weekend on booktv at 10 p.m. on saturday, 12 and 9 p.m. on sunday and 12 a.m. on monday. you can also watch "after words" online. go to booktv.org and click on "after words" in the book tv series and topics list on the upper right side of the page. ..

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