was put it into language, how to talk about the one impression versus the image. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> good evening, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming out today. before i introduced tonight's guest i would like to point out we have a gentleman filming, sean from c-span. this will be broadcast on booktv. we ask you silence your cell phones. and also as it is being filmed, the key and a. if you have a question. i will be around with m to get a picture before you speak you have the mic in your hand and also a fantastic event sunday afternoon at 4:00, collegians and will be here, editor of a feminist is a collection called here we are, a collection for ages 12 and up. if you have this in your life it is a fabulous collection, essays from everyone. come out and meet kelly, she will be here along with christine hoeferman, one of the most incredible young adult writers. i hope we see you again. tonight, we are absolutely thrilled to welcome alyssa mostromonaco. [applause] >> alyssa mostromonaco's book is "who thought this was a good idea?: and other questions you should have answers to when you work at the white house". alyssa mostromonaco is chief operating officer at price media in williamsburg, previously she served as assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff for operations at the white house under president obama. earlier in her career she was director of scheduling for john kerry's presidential campaign in 2004 and a currently serves for the john f. kennedy center for the performing arts and is a contributing editor at marie claire. alyssa mostromonaco is signing books after she speaks, we have them available for purchase at the front desk of our store. make sure you grab one. please join me in welcoming alyssa mostromonaco. [applause] >> it is clear i peeked very early. i thought i would read a little bit from the book and then you can do q and a if that works for everybody. my best friend for 30 years. i think they always hoped my sister and i -- they didn't care how successful a prominent and wealthy we would be. the extracurricular of choice or parental pressure for countless young girls no matter your generation, what i like in natural ability i made up for in enthusiasm. i rationalize i dance in the wings because of my height and assumed if i was sweating i was succeeding. my sister, a really great dancer. as i got older i realized because i could see an example of people suited to dance, unlike me, i was investing a lot of time and ours into something, i never had a solo. i was 16 when i told my mom i wanted to quit, quitting is something people are taught never to do. she didn't lose her mind or berate me about having extracurriculars, or do dancing for so long or keep going. she said it was okay if you do it responsibly, quitting something what is and benefiting you, dance classes, to change your life. cruising highways and byways, i was first in the band in school, i took french, down the street every saturday night, back in the day. i would wrap the flowers in paper towels and newspapers, back to the city with tourists every sunday. this wasn't a boozey barn. it was an actual barn. my best friend tara. visited me and brought me soup or donuts, i loved it. bold cool. a grocery store in the center of town. anyone who worked at kmart or walmart or their local grocery store may not believe me, some days you definitely want to hang with your friends instead but i was good at bagging groceries and it meant i could afford tickets to see fish or the grateful dead. i could buy crystal, very cool then and winter sons. i also learned a lot about who used coupons and who didn't. who watched you scan -- only a few, and everything else i experienced growing up. a woman with a kid to figure out, humiliation for holding up the line. help those in need humanely and respectfully. maybe that sounds obvious to you but a lot of people would disagree. food stamps, i focused in coordinating of the plan dealing with times and dates and personality but i sat in policy meetings to understand our priorities to use my judgment as my team decided, 100 different choices per day, how best to use present time. this is a follow-up to a conversation obama had with someone else. often he gathers senior staff to talk over issues after meeting with a particular person. because of the economic recession there were a lot of people on food stamps at the beginning of obama's presidency. the number dropped over his term but we didn't only have meetings about what was happening at that moment because if you were dealing with things as they were happening you were not preparing for something. this meeting in the roosevelt room, i wasn't sitting at the table, i was sitting along the wall, seating is surprisingly limited, chairs are huge and not many people sit around the conference table, and invitations to meetings are exclusive. everyone in the room has a good reason for being there. from the beginning of my career in politics i had a policy about swimming in my own land and not overcommenting on things i wasn't an expert on. i cannot take the educated gang. talking about limits on what food stamps cover, i could tell none of them knew a person who ever needed food stamps. i raised my hand, something i only did once and told them what it was like, and canned soup or milk to watch them realize what they couldn't get, to watch them realize how ridiculous it was, something like sunny delight, much cheaper than orange juice, there is nothing they could do. i usually you start losing the argument when you physically reveal how worked up you are, like the white house where theoretically what is based on fast and figures, and i got my point across. it wasn't a conversation intended to resolve or change anything at the moment. [applause] >> i was going to read, going to questions. do you want me to read more. here we go. high mountain. the best part about those jobs in high school which they gain some satisfaction from and at the time i was thinking i would rather be watching 90210 was they taught me an important way to rationalize when my life felt it was totally off course. if i am never good at anything else i am good at this. you might think it is depressing but i have given me a lot of comfort, no greater feeling of independence, then being able to provide for yourself knowing if you really hate a job and you will probably hate jobs at various points through your life you can leave and be okay. when it came time to apply to college i had one of those moments, at the end of the day, it is good at bagging groceries. if i didn't get into harvard, i would end up where i was supposed to end up. time period was 1992-1994, no email or internet, the us news college guidebook. tara and i spent hours, where i wanted to go. i underlined addresses in the summer before my senior year wrote away to request applications. a few schools to visit, georgetown, berkeley, santa cruz. cornell, brown, georgetown, i did myself. i wrote the essays. which no one proofread and did pretty well. my mom helps me fill out checks for application fees and disclaimers. if you haven't seen saint elmo's fire you won't understand my mindset at the time but i wanted to go to georgetown. the movie takes place a year after a group of friends graduate and try to find their way in the world. i hadn't thought much about getting into politics. he was very self-important 22-year-old working on a congressional campaign, valley sheedy was too good for him. the characters were weird role models, drank a lot and drank a lot of coke, to make it out alive. i credit at all of this to georgetown. to access bret pack energy. i was top 10 in my class and by that i mean number 11. who wouldn't want me? i got all my rejections on the same day. and the second pilgrimage, got a card sticker, i was convinced i could get in, the sticker in the bag. when my dad got the mail, with georgetown and all the others, it was a sign for retrospect. i chose between the university of vermont and university of wisconsin, coming from such a small town the i was too fish out of watery, found it to be in the freshman class of 1994. to register for housing, to make you feel your new life is about to start by never set foot on campus. funny when you think about it. sometimes i leap and look for better or worse. sometimes things could have gone better. if i had a sense of myself in high school i lost it in college. how you spend it matters more. getting the most out of the car, a station wagon lasted forever. i had no idea who i was. i grew up in a town where you didn't know who had money and who didn't, the wealthiest families were the equine veterinarians, the wagon years. i don't remember anyone wearing makeup. i worked close from the gap or marshall and my hairstyle rode the way from magic mushroom to eddie shadegg. with think about when his hair was shorter and the layers were more similar to rachel. it wasn't all bad. i was good friends with my roommate amy, in the listening sessions and amid 90s bug out could describe any number of situations when you encounter someone weird or smoke bad part or have experienced your first bout of insomnia because someone didn't sit next to you and in retrospect, my classes help me branch out, majored in french and became good at japanese which i signed up for on a whim. one semester, in world sociology, focused on poverty in vermont and later used what i learned to make small talk with oprah at an obama event in iowa. around the beginning of sophomore year i began to realize my french major was not taking me the direction i wanted to go. vermont is a political, people say what they think, to have discussions without fighting. governor howard dean came to register, got to jump ona reviled republican car. it was newt gingrich. the contract with america, a terrible time, found myself gravitating toward the political stuff on or off campus. winter i decided to apply for a summer internship with bernie sanders. bernie, the revolution. when spring break rolled around i found out the budget for the french department was being cut and might not be offered as a major any longer. i saw this as a sign so we applied to the university of wisconsin madison to transfer to the junior year and i was accepted. i got the bernie sanders internship, the burlington congressional office. bernie sanders, john kerry, barack obama, just saying. in burlington, around the liquor store, i woke up to see a spider i had crushed in my sleep. it didn't matter, nothing had been more exciting, it was an election year, bernie was in the office a lot and met with constituents more than any politician i have known since. i answered phones and took down notes from voters, at nights i would call people in all parts of vermont trying to raise money. i wasn't supersuccessful but did a great job reminding people to register to vote and telling them about the bernie events he would be doing around the state. from time to time, he looked the same way he looks now. he would usually read the newspaper even though we always had the windows down, never air-conditioning. sometimes he asked about where i was from and explains what was going on in the world. i tried to impress him about the time my friends and i climbed on newt gingrich askar. bernie was unmoved. 's attitude is what else have you been doing? before i met bernie i thought politics was about theater and showmanship and nothing happened or got fixed but instead of focusing on the large-scale changes many people expect from politicians he showed me how to see the people whose problems could immediately impact and solve, dedicated to helping his constituents which is not necessarily true of other senators. many politicians have staff made of climbers who one from and one senate to another to become a legislative director or chief of staff. some politician staff members want to run for office themselves but a lot of time vision in washington is just about being powerful and you can be powerful without a seat in congress. bernie was so committed to these issues that politics didn't feel gross. before i left for madison i changed my major to political science. one day at the end of my internship two important things happen is the first, i had a call come in from a 608 area code in madison, wisconsin. bernie was running late so i told the man in the line he might have to wait a few minutes. i always try to learn about people coming into the office especially people meeting or talking to bernie. i wanted to know what made them important enough to warrant time and attention. i researched everything i could so when i got on the phone and he had to wait i saw my chance. this was an important labor attorney, the nfl players association and progressive leader in amazon and i told him i was transferring to madison. he replied i should see him before arriving on campus. i worked for him for two years i lived there and he passed away three weeks ago and he ran for governor several times. i was glad i wrote about him. the other important things that happened that day, invited me to be an intern the following summer. i don't know if anyone in the office will ever understand what that meant to me. i felt like wonder woman. i was ready to strike out. i saved all that money working fred garney. outside madison a couple times a weekend all i got for my 21st birthday, my summer in dc, going to law school, drove to the metro park. 5 outfits to rotate each week, tomato and mayonnaise sandwiches and packed pretzels for a snack every day, walked into bernie's office ready to jam but this was a different vibe. these interns were competitive and i would rather bang in a drum circle all day than have to compete. i had a minor crisis of confidence, then remembered i knew more about vermont than any of these guys. i was very busy every day walking briskly and professionally over the halls of congress getting signatures on bills or amendments, running everything and anything, sorry. running anything and everything to other offices to draft letters to constituents, legally blonde had come out by that i would have fancied myself a version of elwood meets norma rae, the union organizer. when my internship ended and i was out of money i was convinced i would be back the following summer after graduation to start my career as a humble and committed government employee. i didn't get to interact with bernie that much but it didn't matter. working for him had given me a clear picture of who i was and what i wanted to do. [applause] >> time for questions. i can tell you a story about how the title came to be, you are shaking your head. president obama does not like to be cold ever. he is from hawaii. it was a very end of the 2008 election and we were in pennsylvania and so was john mccain. john mccain canceled all of his events, i went in to see david to keep our events like john mccain canceling his event. i was the one who was going to tell the man who hates the cold. so i did and i emailed reggie love, a personal aide and robert gibbs who you might remember became white house press secretary, i said we are going to keep that in pennsylvania so they wrote back and said boss wants to know whose office was a good idea. that wasn't the first time that happened or the last time by any stretch but i said it is fine, it will be great and my deputy, danielle, who is like my soulmate, we got to the office early and we were sitting there watching it on tv. it wasn't just snowing but skiing sideways and hitting him in the face. daniel said look, the worst possible, worst scenario. we watched and i did an npr interview and they played me back actual event. this is an awesome event. at the end of the event, he is full of sleep and goes to walk off slave and put his hand out and reggie love put the phone in his hand and my phone rang 10 seconds later. i picked it up and put my head on the desk and said to him, pick it up, hello, you are awesome and amazing, john mccain canceled all of his events, where are you? i am at my desk. must be nice, and he hung up. that was it. but then, many months later as my friend danielle from the white house was in the back, damien winter who took the photo, when it came out that day, we were in texas, with kenny thompson, who was there, and you won a pulitzer and he was like i won the pulitzer. that is where the title of the book came from because you always have to know who thought it was a good idea. questions? do it. >> how involved are you now in the political arena? >> i work at a private company so i am not as political as i would be otherwise. but i march. don't tell people i work for. i tried to support women-owned businesses and people who support the aclu and planned parenthood almost entirely. for the first, pre-sale of this book went to the women's march and next week, this is my cowriter, we do a day next week where it all goes to planned parenthood. [applause] >> in some ways you can't march every day but what is happening now is garbage so we have to keep doing stuff. >> what is the takeaway from the experience being in the obama white house? what have you learned? >> what have i learned? what i have learned is you can be successful without being abusive, you can actually being a team in the same direction is the best way to be and i am better with a group than i am alone. >> if we were sitting in a conference table waiting for obama to run a meeting about a policy issue, what was his style of running a meeting? what would it like in terms of how to orchestrate the meeting? >> i would say that he would -- there were times he would come in and sit down and normally in the white house he would get the paper the night before and know what the meeting was about and he would come down and he would have a really -- he loved to go around the table and ask everybody what they thought. even if it wasn't their specific area of expertise. he believed as much as anybody who said in the oval office that the econ expert is not the only one who is good with economics so the example with the food stamps, when i told the story about my experience he didn't -- he turned around and said alyssa mostromonaco knows as much as anybody because she was actually there so i would say he was very open. he is open, like that is what i would say, very open. very open-minded. he is caring. >> i have a career advice question. primarily finance, i was doing a little scheduling. if you have any advice? >> it is not that hard a question. that is what i want to do, what makes you want to do that? slightly more political than finances but you have to be superanal-retentive. >> i was not supernormal, ask my mom. i was superannoying. i would say get into it in a slow way, it is a lot, 24/7, not just someone who runs for president but anyone because you are dealing with someone else's life. if you are okay with someone else's like being your life you will be okay but if that annoys you it will be a problem. >> you are good. you need a microphone. >> i feel like i am at a press conference. >> me too. >> a two part question. the first one is do you miss it? >> i do miss it. i wish i could have left for a year and gone back. you really do get all your energy back. i miss it, having a mission every day. >> how does it feel being sandwiched between two of the most unpopular presidents so far in american history? >> i know for most people george bush is pretty unpopular but it is okay. i will say when you look at what is happening now in the transfer of power that the bush folks were so generous and so helpful that it is very hard for me to think anything bad about them at this point. who wouldn't give to have mitt romney in office right now? >> i want to make a comment. i had a nice life, very rarely read a memoir or biography where i am jealous that this made me jealous. >> that is awesome, thank you. i appreciate that. even the idea, did you read that part? >> i did. >> i read early on that you were going to continue working on the barack obama library. >> i am. it is in the early stages, in french polynesia doing i can't say. all of us were part of the foundation committee, it should be good. >> chicago. >> i work with young college students who want to drop out of college and march every day and not get an education because they want to fight and i am wondering if it is for me to tell them to stay in college and get the degree and fight the fight but i am wondering as someone who was on the hill, how do you see your college education having led you in the past that you took? >> it is very hard. couple weeks ago, march 8th, they had the strike. for a lot of us, i wanted to strike but i had to work that day. there are a lot of ways to protest and support without just going out and marching every day. you can support women-owned businesses, volunteer a couple hours a week in your city council, the local campaign, there are a lot of ways to show your support and protest without dropping out of school because at the end of the day that is not a good idea. >> did you say they have college degrees? >> david did not have a college degree. he left the month before he was to graduate. there are a couple people like that, they were swept up, my assistant at the time and harvard. he left the campaign, he left and volunteered and worked on the campaign. if you do that you have to be committed to go back. you need a microphone. c-span, i am with you. >> you are in wisconsin which was known as a very liberal state, leading in education and totally changed that. do you have any observations or insights into what happened with the gerrymandering, all of the above? what can you tell us about that? >> i don't know entirely. i think some of it had to do with the same phenomena in wisconsin went very trump which was unexpected and there were a lot of people, we can't discount the bernie revolution, showed us there are a lot of people who feel their voices aren't being heard and single issue voters around economics. the gm plant went out of business. very different than when i was there. >> thank you for being here. i imagine a president gets caught up in the business and government, how do they stay in contact, and remain in touch with people they are trying to serve and keep momentum and interest and support? >> i don't know how donald trump does it, there were ten letters from real people, and 10 letters every day and she did it for several years, leaving cbs, nice profile on her, how hard it was but every single night he got 10 letters, what you wouldn't know is, someone wrote saying they needed a refrigerator, he would rate the response and put a sticky note on it and say figure out how to get the refrigerator. he can do a lot with the salvation army and without fingerprints from anybody in the administration, called the salvation army and got them a refrigerator. we all knew it and we would get the notes, did you get a letter from last night. you have to figure out how to solve this problem but he was great and follow up with you. i sent that refrigerator to you. nobody ever knew a lot of things were from him, that is what he would do every day. we are. >> a follow on to that. right to your senators and congresspeople and they will respond, minded. >> especially if you call. listening to the voicemail, it is a good thing. do they keep a log? they are supposed to keep a log. >> i hate to ask this question but wondering what it was like in the white house after the election because i wondered also if obama had any words of wisdom, has been so devastating for all of us, beyond belief but he has been quiet at some point, that he will into the public arena more or have some reflections. >> i left the white house by the time the election happens, but none of us thought this was going to happen. i will be honest, i told all the kids you got to go vote. i was very worried the people who supported bernie might think they didn't have to get out and vote for hillary. what do you think is going to happen? trump won't break 37%, so wrong. when the president, president obama came out the next day after secretary clinton gave one of the best speeches of her campaign, this is it, how we are going to do it, he is the president, i am going to help him and i think there aren't many democrats who didn't think hillary was going to win, it is insane that donald trump beat her, insane. he very much believed the transition of power was an important thing in the continuity of government that he encouraged all of us to get on the program. >> i have a question. >> class of 94. >> where do you think we would be if john kerry had won the election? >> i don't know. that is a question. what do you think? i don't know. i think it wasn't the right time for john kerry in the same way i think -- i am not excited that donald trump has won but it galvanized something that may have been dormant, people are more aware of being participatory and how much it matters so >> i would say my feeling on the election it was in the bag, didn't think donald trump could possibly and in states like wisconsin, i say this with all the love in my heart democrats were not there. haven't gone to wisconsin. and in madison get people excited and i think there might have been a focus on the kill instead of the win and the wind might have been that we end up in a different place. >> do you think ten days before with that whole thing and might have eked it out. that really had an impact. >> i will say, when fbi director mueller was leaving and we needed to find his replacement, i was one of the people who interviewed the replacement for fbi director and i can tell you there was no one more impressive than jim comey. whatever anybody things i have to assume he did what he had to do and we don't know why but i assume the best of intentions on his part and i don't know that that is what drove people at the polls. i there was something more fundamental. >> as fake news has been developing, it started slow during obama's search. how perceptive was he in the administration of its development? >> no one called it fake news, really, answer the question. are you muslim? there is nothing wrong if he had been but were you born in the us and he was, so to us it was sort of we were exasperated but i don't think we saw it ever as what it would become, which is insane. it is good that facebook is addressing how that stuff gets populated on social media along with twitter and google. we were never like this is fake news, we would just, fox. it didn't seem like a movement, just seemed like something we could silo off. >> a totally frivolous question. what was the most fun day you had at the white house? >> i don't know if you are ready for this. we all need a laugh. my most fun day was when we went to the queen's jubilee, celebration of the queen's 62 year. i am obsessed with the royals. we threw a party at winterhouse, it was full of david beckham and people you could -- and she had that -- he was alone. we were really excited and turned out the queen was going to do a receiving line. i was talking to john on a trip and that is weird. so john, we were all there and like john, you go first, the queen will like you. john went first. he muttered something and we went through the receiving line and the queen was the most fantastic sequin down, so elegant and she sparkled and had a tro on. i was beside myself. your highness, so goofy and lame but i had done the seating for the table and i was sitting there and colin firth was behind me and david beckham was over here. i am sorry, i had a bad cold that day and some champagne and british cold medicine which is not regulated like they are here and definitely i am telling you even the guys -- david beckham thinks you are hot, he is looking at you but the best part, not the most flattering, let's separate those two but colin firth is the star of one of my favorite movies, love actually. his wife, the king's speech had come out so his wife was like what is your favorite movie? i thought she meant of colin firth's where he starred. i love love actually, really? i said yes and i went on to do an impersonation of british people in the middle of winterhouse. we love uncle shiny. and everyone was appropriately horrified but that was my most fun day. >> time for one or two more questions. >> hi, bethany. >> i'm a veterinarian. i wanted to ask, what are two or three of the most influential reasons you think you have accomplished what you have is you have accomplished a lot? >> two or three reasons. one, i think i came from a community that was quite egalitarian and where we went to high school we thought we were the same and there was not a real hierarchy and we worked hard and it didn't matter, everybody had an afterschool job, that was one. i never expected anyone to do anything for me. that is one. i think i was very lucky with the people i worked for and i only worked for people i deeply believed in so there was never any sort of moral compromise, not like i just wanted power, i just wanted to impact change and whether it was bernie or john kerry or barack obama, when i worked for barack obama i -- he did one good speech at a convention and that was it which i worked, never thought he would be president or run for president so i think being just well grounded and following your moral compass and not working for people just to get ahead put people i believe in. i only have two. >> during your time in the white house, what was the biggest or first, most emotionally impactful moment you saw the president undergo where you felt something serious happened, viewed his role as a leader. >> i don't know if you want this answer. i would say it was newtown. i am not going to go -- a superdown her way to end this thing. i would say the one thing you don't realize in the white house is that that morning, don't quote me but we got a report there might be a shooting in a mall in connecticut and there might be a shooting, nothing totally crazy like a shooting in a high school and the third report was horrifying and you have a bunch of people, you can't sit down and be sad and this is terrible but you had john brennan who went on to be cia director but at the time assistant to the president for counterintelligence, homeland security and we were in the room explaining what we heard from the governor of connecticut's office and doing our work but barack obama and john brennan and i worked through the tears and that was the most impactful, followed by the gun legislation not passing a few months later. maybe we should do one more question. so it is not such a bummer. >> the queen is awesome. >> a good michelle story? >> the first lady, i know there are many. first lady michelle obama very much believed that when we would go to a barn country, we would have a state visit, it was not a party for us, so we were in tanzania and i was at a table and the tourism minister on the other side of me, people were not talking that much but a lively band was playing and she looked at me and it was like i knew it was my time to leave the conga line to get everybody up. so i did and valerie jarrett got up and everybody got up and at the end of the night she was like why were the boys on their blackberries? i knew i was in good shape and they might be in trouble but that was a good michelle memory. >> thank you so much. [applause] >> thank you for joining us. alyssa mostromonaco will be signing books, you can purchase them at our front desk. the assigning line will start here and go this way. >> very organized. >> thank you all. [inaudible conversations] >> this is booktv on c-span2, television for serious readers. here is our primetime lineup. that all happens tonight on c-span2's booktv. >> march 7, 2015, on board air force one, lying down with president obama, then president obama. i asked him a question about post-racial versus post-obama era and he said i would not equal 8 my election with seminal moment like the emancipation proclamation the passage of the civil rights act of 1964, the voting rights act of 1965, massive changes legal status that represented fundamental breaks in america's tragic history and where is the pillars, the 13th amendment, 14th amendment and 15th amendment, civil rights acts of the 60s, those represent the dismantling of discrimination in this country, nothing will compare to that. moving forward our work is to build on that work, fine tune that work where we see formal discrimination still occurring but increasingly our work has to do with dealing with the ongoing legacy of a divided society. closing the opportunity gaps, closing the achievement gaps, closing the wealth gaps that inevitably have been passed from generation to generation because the's were so wide and that involved no one piece of legislation but requires a host of different efforts. it means investing in early childhood education, making sure everyone has health insurance, public-private work we are doing through my brother's keeper, getting african-americans in stem education, math, science and education so it will be a sustained effort to take us to the journey towards a just society. that was on our way to selma, alabama for the 50th anniversary of blood he sunday. those words ring true today. who are week? this book really goes into the heart of the matter. when you talk about race, isn't it strange to say then president obama? it has just been 10 days or 11 days, can't even keep count now but the bottom line is we have a society that is divided and i am going to go back to something my children's favorite singer leslie odom junior, we are a united divided state so when it comes to matters of race, african-americans have the highest numbers of negatives in every category and issue of policing very important as well as pieces in this book. traditionally in the african-american community there is an instinctive coming of age called the talk, something black fathers or father figures give their sons. meant to be a lifetime tool that might help these boys strategically navigate interactions with law enforcement with the goal of awarding altercations. .. >> what monticello, thomas jefferson's home which i believe is the only private house that is on the world heritage list, the united nations. it is my pleasure to welcome kevin who is associate professor