>> every day in a criminal court room somebody will tap me on this note -- shoulder do you know, who my lawyer is? they have no idea they have not met them. kid you imagine god forbid it did not even knowing who your lawyer was? that is the language of lawyers say and people just have no idea how to navigate and don't even know who their lawyer is. >> said general and fairness is the manufacturer of crime of lot of police departments to undercover stings of buy or bust operation for drugs or for prostitution to use illicit a and other undercover things like robberies' or a police officer with the iphone and i think that adds a level of randomness to cases to devote resources we don't need. >> host: to close out on a positive note. for both of you what to advice would you give to young lawyers speaking of law students going into this field or want to? you don't want to give all the bad stuff. what would you? >> we are happy defenders. >> i guess all of these things that suppress this that one dash sad statistics gives them something to fight for. there is no job more exciting never a dull moment or eight-point and cash because he knows he is going down. truly lifelong devoted criminal defense lawyers there is some the right about why they have the chops for the work in to talk why he does this forever but the reality is it is not for everyone but if you have id you the makings you would not have a more meaningful career. the everybody should get how you could represent those people. thank you. >> good afternoon i am othello here and i will be moderating this afternoon in which we will be recognizing and celebrating on tevi troy new book "what jefferson read, ike watched, and obma tweeted" 200 years of popular culture in the white house". with a title like that you may suspect it is fine a and entertaining stories about presidents idiosyncratic taste of reading, a theater, music, sports, movi es, tv or maybe it is more earthy and that a study of decline from adams did jefferson reading cicero in latin and the current best seller from the u.k. the wealth of nations. to president obama tweet being about his favorite dessert or newest pop song. if there is both of those things in this wonderful book but it is a very serious work. presidents since andrew jackson have been popular figures their popularity has been the most important source of their political power steve politician offical any time in america and their relationship to popular culture has been deep in has changed in fundamental ways and that is tevi troy subject. a fellow at the hudson institute is familiar with presidents and the white house during the of ministration during george w. bush was assistant secretary of labor at the labor leaders on for the president with the senior delegation to security and cooperation to the reelection campaign of 2004 then through 2008 he was deputy secretary of health and human services. philosophers, adjusters or technicians. he is a prolific author to be a intellectual with reason "national review" "the weekly standard" the city journal and washingtonian magazine. where he writes about the presidency as you might expect of politics and policy issues of public health reflecting his involvement when he was at hhs. we will begin with tevi troy telling us about his book and what he thinks the most important themes of the book are to expect everyone to go out to buy the book afterwards then we will hear from a group of panelists those who do read cicero. day blanc, podcast or probably do things that we have not learned about yet. we will start with joan the goal kirk who is editor-at-large a fellow at the american enterprise institute in regular contributor to fox news. jonah has been around the world of popular media to elevate and educate as founding producer of the think tank and written to your times bestsellers including the one that went all the way to the top of the chart liberal fascism. following joe know we will hear from bill senior fellow chair at the brookings institution in he taught for many years at university of texas at the university of maryland also has spent time in the white house as deputy assistant for domestic policy and work on the presidential campaign of both walter mondale and al gore with political policy institutions the most recent public matters in the 21st century published 2005 then we will hear from a nationally syndicated columnist, a journalist and political analyst following the pattern this speech writer for nancy reagan administration and a political campaign working for jack kemp in 1988. of her most recent book her book is called do-gooder's. and jonah's most recent book is how liberals cheat in the war of ideas. i want to make it clear they exempt from all versions just to maintain comedy of mound of our panelists but we begin with the author. >> host: franklin foer the presentations then will talk about it to everyone in the room. the podium is yours. [applause] good afternoon. thank you for that nice introduction into the hudson institute for sponsoring this yvette. the book "what jefferson read, ike watched, and obma tweeted" i mention it because tweet is important you may tweet that at your pleasure it is a tweet happy event we also take questions via twitter. this is how the think tank adapts to the 21st century. getting to the title i recently had a different title and came up with the title after i saw an interesting incident from a presidential historian that surprised me. few years ago obama was trying to sell his health care lot and he went to the white house correspondents' dinner and told the joke about an exemption he was trying to get for the bill and he said we had a canning tax and in order to get this through we will have to put for the exemption for john boehner. the crowd laughed at the time because snookie was enjoying a moment and is now god but at the time she was on jersey shore in which she bestowed the virtues of free number one priorities of life was gtl. gm than laundry how odd that the president of united states cites this person from the podium. it is also struck the president because he was later asked about snookie on the view and he professed not to know who she was. and it led to a question are we better off with a president who knows who snookie is or a president who does not? it is that tension that animates the book. it led me to come up with my initial draft idea for the idea from cicero to snookie how culture shapes the president. i was talked out of that the yvette diagram those who knows cicero and those you know, snookie does not intersect than they were right to. [laughter] but also three years later cicero is just as relevant where snookie has been forgotten so i went to with the alternative title my book is about the different areas of technology and how they have affected the president so at the time those through the available options someone seeking education or entertainment to the printed word or light entertainment. so it is the period of the founders. jefferson and adams were probably the two best read people on the planet. you never think of the president being a the best red. but these people are engaged by books with no hard ship to themselves but in 1776 that first edition the equivalent of $615. with 160,000 books fete was no is significant investment because not only had to spend a lot of money but these books animated the discussion that led to the revolution from england in indeed a revolutionary act with something that had not been done before. the founders found solace in the work of previous people who had gone before them especially cicero and of play that george washington showed to the troops at valley forge to bump up their routes so they engaged with the woman republicans against julius caesar and the onslaught of tyranny. said they found ideas from previous generations and also look to a current is like to meet to look for rationale so use the the idea is in the declaration of independence fend later in the riding of the constitution and james madison and another founder and president reached out to jefferson and asked him for advice on what books to read as he was thinking about this constitutional project. and he sent him to platefuls of books about law and philosophy and history of the subjects that jefferson read so much and mastered in madison read those and wrote a memo to himself and he used that to reform his thinking on the constitutional convention and the constitution writing it self in the federal list papers to defend it. the founders, and not wrongly, had a vision based on having dealt with a population of the colony's engaged in ideas it was of in my in leaders over the educated populace. over the next two centuries we would see that would be challenged in two ways. in the 19th century there were two types of the other was live entertainment if he wanted to be seen he could not go on radio or tv he went to where the people were at live performances so i tell james monroe going around the country on the good will to work to see the theatrical performances. but fitter people on the stage can react to the audience. but television is static. the actors on stage to react to a is in the house that night so i tell a story from 1824 a hotly contested election between john quincy adams who was the best prepared president based on his reading increase it -- previous experience and depth against andrew jackson who was not nearly as well read or barely cracked -- cracked a book. so they have this presidential race he wins a plurality of the popular and electoral'' but does not win the election because henry clay threw his support to adams and clay is named secretary of state and was known as the corrupt bargain so shortly after adams a theater buff went to the theater in washington they saw the president-elect was in the house and the reaction is to add the live references to general jackson then the audience applauded at every mention of general jackson. john quincy adams was so upset he curtailed his theater going after that. the founders' vision came up against the rockets and gaudy and allowed theatrical venues it was more open ended and a man like andrew jackson who would win the 1828 election had reno this? i tell a story about andrew jackson going to harvard to get the honor reid degree this made adams apoplectic fit this unlettered burberry was getting a degree but nevertheless he gets the degree and is expected to speak back in latin which was the vernacular at harvard at the time it jackson says the only thing i know is the purpose and some that he has a common touch but a man of the people you might be educated in a certain way but you need some general jackson to get elected and the person who had the best understanding of countervailing pensions was abraham lincoln and he read a great deal to the disgust of his father tried to discourage him. but lincoln read but to borrow a book from a farmer but he did not have the same selection those to read over andover like the bible, shakespeare, a sops fables, like the history of united states than he internalized those committed when he was running for office he did not cite books but internalized those to express their vision in the way he communicated so he learned a certain type of, and the anchorage elevated speech from shakespeare and innate patriotism for the books in the united states and use those successfully in 18601864 but lincoln was a man do love the theater and like to attend so often that john wilkes booth's planned to assassinate lincoln on the way to a different performance but them lincoln decided to not go that night and wilkes booth change his mind then eventually did assassinated him up for a peter in wilkes booth used his knowledge of the theater to figure how to navigate his way through the house and even to a laugh line in the play so in some ways lincoln went to the theater he was undone by it and his son was at a different theater at aladdin he heard someone say they have shot the president he would it to the white house but did not find out until the next morning. after the 19th century the second thing develops that challenges their vision coming about its new technology first the ability to project your voice to many thousands of people beyond those who are in their room those who speak to this audience there is a wider audience and delano roosevelt knew about that but even before war in fact, because of radio at the convention he spoke at those conventions recognizing there was an audience in front of him butter brodeur radio audience that would hear his message that is how he introduced himself to the nation so radio was a new medium. we also think about roosevelt in the radio that he must have done on the radio all the time but only with fireside chats to three times per year plenitude not to whistle in the paper that did not wrestle so people would speaking off the cuff not to hear the rustle of the paper. one of the themes of the book is the way the president's need to recognize new technologies to take advantage of them. that leads us to the television era but the first president was eisenhower. eisenhower recognized tv was a two-way medium you can watch tv and enjoy it but eisenhower did watch tv. so much including shows like "i love lucy" that the escher's complained that the white house social schedule was determined by the tv schedule. there was no vcr or netflix you would miss that episode then you were out of luck and ike did not want to miss but he understood how important it was as a communication tool. he was skilled but eisenhower was the first president to give a televised news conference including the famous speech about the military-industrial complex in the first president to higher somebody from the tv industry that was in fact, advised on the tv performance obviously kennedy came to out debated nixon and kennedy recognized how important to his campaign to say we would not have had a prayer so kennedy recognized call important tv was. even before he had so i said it is a two-way medium but they affected what was on tv and what eyesight's in the book is the observation president don't just watch tv but they are tv you i tell the story bill clinton during the monica lewinsky scandal. he goes to get out of town with terry mcauliffe and hillary clinton and on this vacation sitting there trying to watch television hillary has the milk bone dash remote control trying to find a channel that does not include the scandal. she cannot find channel getting increasingly frustrated you can imagine. finally she comes to espn. she was not a fan but she settled for some sports programming for on the same vacation 1.the white house ushers came up to them and said would anybody like wine? hillary said no. bill said no. terry said i will take the bottle. following this era that they're very skilled at we have a new era coming into it could be too early but call it the internet era of segmentation every betty saw that that is how you could add peel and even with a successful show like "breaking bad" a successful episode is seen by a tiny minority it does not get as much does so in this era of segmentation i argue obama has spent to appeal to his audience to find places he can get his message out for those who support him for shows like the view with a twitter account when he tweet something directly with the letter bo at the encino it came from him. in this era obama so successful he deserves credit the cost comes into ways the response is not overwhelming with does pop culture venues may have colored people's judgments to talk about syria and does that stature diminished when you have these appearances? the first to appear on a late night talk-show obviously with arsenio hall with the laughs in appearance but obama the regularly goes on and talk shows slow to summarize devil mentioned that conclusions what does it mean? we can learn four things "the washington post" has chronicled obama is seen to be reading a book in the '80s was reading about clancy in mentioned the hunt for red october then no longer had to sell insurance now you have the policy sometimes they have seen something the most famous instance is when you have jfk in 1963 was supposed to read this book leading to the war on poverty but he probably did read a book review so in that way that can influence the policy. president's use pop culture to humanize themselves think about clinton to show a different side had different appreciation. the last is the way the president uses pop culture to convey intellectualism a larger than life image fdr was portrayed did more movies than any of their president and until the movie pearl harbor was never shown on-screen in a wheelchair as president. never shown as president certainly to show an image of this great leader with his physical frailty then by watching tv you could show a certain aspect of appealing to regular people you watch "i love lucy" and david watching it in the white house just like you did of course, that you are cutting it and cool and the bombing has mastered that in terms of the shows that he watches he likes the shows of the 1% rather than -- saddam% hyper realistic like the wire for homeland one incident where obama was briefed about the possible slifer sell situation and he said just like homeland. we can learn a lot by what they've read or watch or listen to and i hope all of you will appreciate what they hear about all that and come away informed. thank you very much. [applause] >> joel goldberg? >> thank you to the hudson institute i am a big fan actually the president introduced me to my wife a while ago the day after he said he called me to let me know she was out of my league and i should not try. that gave me the extra incentive. i will be brief i enjoy the book i think it is wonderful and in many ways a lot like tevi troy very smart and is full of stories in an interesting trivia at the same time it leaves them together the one thing you may want to know when you talk about it in jackson going to theaters to be amongst the people there is a counter trend going miller right now a big open primary for mayor of minneapolis there is a guy running who has a viral ad campaign in the chief thomas is if he is nominated and elected mayor he will the lager go to strip clubs. [laughter] sometimes that works the other way. maybe we go full circle. it a lot of ways this offers a window onto america's soul but before i get into that i wanted to go a different route. tevi troy is my oldest friend in washington high-tech's job at a.e.i. in 1981 if anybody knows him or me she is a much better jews and i am but i have a much better practitioner of seinfeld faith to have the airing of the grievances so i figure i would go a slightly different way. his book is remarkably even-handed that does not mean he does not have sharp ideas are arguments that he is not a hurricane if this in the fight and i figured i would offer sharper points. i think he is way too easy on the progressives and particularly woodrow wilson you may know i of the treasure of the international association of the woodrow wilson and hater society and i am biased. [laughter] but i did not know that wilson probably did not say birth of a nation was like history written lately the next time i have a chance it will correct my book but maybe one of the reasons he did that who reese segregated washington d.c. and initiated the practice to put it in racial quotas into federal policy to keep the whites out and also thinking it is interesting to mention the clan of the 1920's was simply a movie colts in the same way "star wars" storks' get dressed up as star theater there so inspired by the movie it became a cult and wilson's role even less than i had thought i still think is significant tevi troy does a fantastic job the rule of the classics the agents had of the founding fathers and abraham lincoln with a generational interplay of ideas going back it is not surprising he likes this idea i would like more much to my aid this vague along with that new biography there is no mention of hegel who was a huge fan boy he even wrote to of a love letter to his wife he was such a fan and he talks about hall wilson was dead david tae held to be his position with the novel betrayed a famous client to solve the world's problems by that alone that was a arrogance of most progressive said i would have liked to have seen more about the historical school of them wisconsin's school and their relationship the republic was founded in part of the teddy roosevelt colt but as someone who also thinks one of the great monsters of the 20th century i'm doing some of this to provoke the author. [laughter] it is funny "the new republic" was founded from teddy roosevelt but when it was supportive of woodrow wilson teddy roosevelt was really ticked off and his response was i actually wrote to down because i thought it was a great cutting line of the american presidential rhetoric and said the new republic was a negligible she's run by to gentiles and uncircumcised jews. i don't know what that means but i think it is great. i could go 11 of the things that the movie fdr was a script doctor that the president basically has an epiphany it decides to become a dictator say that this be enormous help to me. but now that that is out of my system it is the intense piece of work that builds up slowly from the glacial pace for where the men's minds were led by fire to adjust to this inverse of today where it is can move at lightning speed but there's not much to them but i think it is interesting how one of the great lessons of the book there is the tendency that says every technological breakthrough makes society better than when we had a and often that is true science and medicine and hygiene we're much better off with modern dentistry call me crazy but not necessarily true in the world and try to press upon conservatives is they are so obsessed with ideas and arguments with a candid we always want to have arguments the problem is the technology has a more profound impact the automobile did more to the unsettled intact communities in russia ever could. you cannot argue with a buick this comes across so very well in the book and one of the questions i was left was talking about teddy roosevelt and his adt quality to read four or five bucks a night to come if we had someone like that today would the teddy roosevelt of today with that mental capacity and intensity spend his time reading cicero or mastering the next edition of "grand theft auto" or call of duty five? the it technological changes where they don't have that opportunity they may have had bet some talks about how jimmy fallin introduced barack obama 1/6 people may say that was a step forward for society i am open to the etf but one way to make the argument the barrier between the people a&e representatives are broken down but i don't think it is true i think because of the manipulation starting with jfk and fdr following was obama to manipulate media elites you have more imperial presidency they knew otherwise would have had pitches people sink the guy in charges cool or hip so that seems like a rationalization to as they get it this way the reading is superior to listening fed is not a creaky old man get off my line of scientific fact taken more information reedy than listening to take more for racial listening than watching tv less information on things like twitter with every 100,000 followers i still don't get the point. that is one of the things that tevi troy shows rather than tells it is a gift a lot of conservatives don't pick up briard to obsess to tell people things sometimes you have to show them so there is a wonderful book for partisans and non partisan delight and i expected to share his grievances sure they. think you very much. [applause] >> i appear dawn a lot of panels is now have never been more bad as minor-league then on this one. in the greenroom i listened with a sinking heart as these allusions to popular culture which is by and i end of fuddy-duddy clintonia and who memorize putting people first to find out about arsenio hall the next 40 id "washington post" that says it all. [laughter] but i actually come here and either to praise or bury the book but rather to share with you a few of the reflections it evokes for having done so. and i will make the points quickly and in no logical order. the first is a distinction woven through the book the first half which is not stated explicitly the important difference between the things that former presidents in the media through which they share all or some of that with a democratic public so when we read about jefferson and adams we are not talking about the thing they would use for a democratic political purposes at least not in any direct way and do not make a show of it. i think this discussion of platforms and the media through which they use it is a distinction with a difference and to bring it home the following proposition on the table at this point we want leaders who know how to interact educe pop culture we don't want leaders formed by popular culture like jefferson and adams formed by the classics but what are in the political purposes of engaging with popular culture? here is my rough inventory. first of all, in a democratic society manifesting the quality in your commitment to it is important politically you cannot be seen as putting on airs to say i am better than my fellow said mrs. a and the more you are the more important is to send that message my favorite example is fdr invited the team and cleaved over in the mid thirties and to extend to hyde park and fed them hot dogs front-page news the american people loved it and the keying of queen loved it as well they could sit through steffi banquets at buckingham palace but not why they came to hyde park it was front-page news because it conveyed an important message here is the president who was one of them did not have to put on airs to impress visiting royalty simply by a being proud and straightforward to send the appropriate message high and low as well. if what distinguishes and a rough and ready way to say high culture, there is the example of jfk who deliberately tries to send the message he is more of a highbrow and he is what is that all about? why is that beneficial? raising the following question in my mind of americans entirely lost their taste for aristocracy? is it out of the question and that an american politician who presents himself to have an important dimension to rise above it is impossible in the 21st century? i am not sure. there may be a pent-up taste of aristocracy in one of the future leaders. another important to mention rationale of popular culture is what might be called generational the i get it factor why is this important? that there are real generations in american politics they could be brit -- crave like the depression or world war ii but also a cultural dimension as he found in the 1960's the music that you listen to by indicating familiarity with the next generation of music you sent them an important message not just what you know, but who you are in the inability to connect is usually the kiss of death i could give lots of examples. the third reason is a point that has been underscored in a wonderful book called the reasoning voter ayyad what he argues is that voters use low information and here wrist six commissure cuts rather than reading through policy papers to try to figure out what kind in particular a politician is a and sam pointed out one of the defining moments was gerald ford going to a state fair in texas trying to unsuccessfully to eat up tamale even then you're there are the large hispanic electorate that message was he had no idea who they were or how they lived if you notice a proliferation of food references in this commentary because i think food is a very important part of popular culture and this is not underscore enough. engagement with popular popular culture is any easy form it provides a quick common ground but to break the eyes can be extremely useful and with the disadvantage here is my last point. 88 per of contemporary popular culture and tevi troy underscore this the culture of self disclosure. that not only permits and facilitates and enables but it is one of the things it reveals a not find a ge nef but you've all been conceptions of manhood. we can symbolize that with the transformation baby with alan alda from the strong silent type to the endlessly sharing type. to the one who wears them on his sleeve. . . that were something is small only none of the people's business, but the need for the dignity of the president and the presidency and any other senior elected officials to discuss publicly what kind of cost would someone who wants to be president and her if he or she refused to answer the famous debrief question. couldn't you make points with the american people? bye saying this has gone too far there's a distinction between the public and private even for a public person and being able to enforce distinction as part of what it means to be a good public person and a good public leader and if it means disappointing all of the talk shows, is it possible to pay that communication price and still succeed in the contemporary american politics because if you go on those shows you are going to be faced with those kind of questions and you will look foolish if you don't respond to them with some generosity. so, one of the questions the book leaves me with this whether technology has made certain sorts of stances in public life prohibitively expensive to maintain. and if so, what does that mean for our democracy? >> thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you chris and to the hudson institute for writing this very, very stimulating and interesting book. a bill had a feeling in the room about pop culture and i had a feeling when he was speaking because he referenced several anecdotes i was going to relate which reminds me of that joke about the prisoners who comes into the jail and he's sitting there in the evening and he hears them calling out from one to the other 11 and every but he laughs or 17, what's going on? we have all been here so long we know all of the jokes. so now we call out the numbers and everybody laughs and he says can i try it? sure, go ahead. what went wrong thwacks some people don't know how to tell the joke. so, i will begin by saying i want to shout out number five because i would like to start by mentioning that one aspect of the book which i enjoy tremendously but which i found a little bit depressing is the section in which he outlines the addition of the founding president. it reminded me of what henry adams said in his autobiography the education of henry adams. he was reflecting on the march of presidents from washington to his day and he wrote that 2,000 years after alexander the great and julius caesar a man like brandt should be called and should truly be the highest product of the most advanced evolution made evolution nutter ludicrous. we tend to give him a lot more credit now mostly because of his wonderful memoir which he hadn't seen when he wrote that, but we can understand this lament when we understand the behavior of our sort of present, some of our recent presidents. now having mentioned george washington and the vast reading that adams and jefferson both did that they were familiar with latin and greek he didn't mention that could have their fantastic correspondence that carried on for the last 14 years of their lives which is fantastic reading. first of all, the knitting together of an intensive relationship between two men who had been at odds many times in their life but also their discussion of books and ideas and they were brought back together by a love of country and their tremendous -- who could beat thomas jefferson pen pal who was on his level in the world? there was only one guy and that was john adams, which was amazing to consider. he also mentioned a john quincy to be and he was described by david mccullough as a more brilliant human being who ever occupied the executive office. his tastes were definitely elite. he enjoyed poetry, literature, theater, opera and translating latin text. that is the way that obama spends his afternoons. not to be partisan there is no recent president who could possibly compete with quincy adams. but i do think that we get to a member of the books mainly that in the democratic republic, successful politicians must have or must learn to take the common touch. the man who unseated him become andrew jackson, somewhat unlettered and very notoriously bad speller but knew how to use that to his at vantage the only latin i know so that was game set and match so it set the template for everything that followed. teddy roosevelt, though a wealthy man and intellect himself who published his first book the year that he graduated from harvard didn't make the mistake of being like quincy adams. he filed himself an outdoorsman, spoke with a -- literally and figuratively. he was an explorer. he tells a great story in the book about him when he was out west and he'd gone to montana and he actually decked a bully. he said the hard right to the side of his jaw hitting her with my left and then again with my right. there's never a shortage of great stories. another one from his adventures in the west when he did earn the respect of the cowboys for learning their ways and hardship with them and they tease him a little bit and they called him for eis because he had glasses that they did accepted as one of their own but there was a story that you couldn't quite take the manhattan grand be out of the blaze completely even when he was out in the dakotas and one of them recalled for a biographer that they would nearly double over sometimes when they were on the hard right and he would shout out peace in quickly. i take from his book that teddy roosevelt was pretty much the last republican president of the united states to be well treated to the popular culture. in the 1960's saw the advent of the culture war and the clear sight choosing of the writers, entertainers, musicians and other cultural arbiters. richard nixon, the exception who proved the rule about the common touch made some attempts to connect with the culture. he invited elkus to the white house and he suggested to his staff he wanted to have an evening at the white house to be if he said we will have all of them liked skyey of lombardo. actually duke ellington was a genuine republican and nixon gave him the medal of freedom but that didn't give him any street credit. so, of the 1970's, most pop musicians were leaning left. republicans attempted to use a popular song as a campaign theme has ronald reagan found when he attempted to use a bruce springsteen number and ask bush found when h. w. bush found when he tried to use a bobby mcferrin tune they all fell down and that pattern persists. macina it again and again in recent history. mccain, michele bachman and so on. the one realm of entertainment that is not ferociously antirepublican and the 21st century is country music. but while country music continues to thrive, it is dwarfed by other john russ. country music and gospel sold 24.5 digital albums so you compare that with the combined total for rock, rap, or and become a metal and new age of 81.9 million. so 16 million to 80 million. the results are similar in other venues. movie, television, theater. republicans and conservatives find themselves with few sympathetic artists or creative - in their isolated corner. for many conservative a thing or attempted by the 1960's slogan term on, tune in, drop out without the drug implications. he quotes george w. bush who prided himself on not watching television, not watching saturday night live, he hadn't seen the daily show with john stewart. he said they put an off button on the tv for reason one can sympathize that and i left my own devices. i am to stand the desire to just push it all away but it's important to recognize the mistakes and the dangers i think politically. politics and culture are linked together and it is no accident that the one realm of culture not implacably hostile to republicans is country music, which is very white, very christian, and very expert in -- third ex-urban. they shouldn't do what barack obama does so successfully, be the cool kid, they would get laughed out of town and wouldn't work and arguably, it would violate some good principles. there is a tremendous amount of cultural bill out there that is damaging to our soul as well as our political health. i felt the need recently to comment on the my alisa a -- 11 miley cyrus and in any case it is ubiquitous and we should look for ways to praise what is a good and if necessary, to condemn what they want and feel they must. but they have to be engaged. they have to know what is going on and they have to cite the perception that they are out of touch. so, as they demonstrated in this book popular culture will continue to influence politics. and turning it off, while it may work for the ramesh, the former president's doesn't work for those that hope to win future elections. thanks. [applause] >> back to you. >> i will address the comments that i appreciate in reverse order. thank you for your kind words but also in your wonderful column today that every body should see multiple outlets including the examiner and the "national review" syndicated everywhere. >> i'm flattered that she and i have the same taste and anecdotes. i am glad we took a similar approach. i agree with her successful presidents must have a common touch and throughout the book i try to cite examples of presidents who are successful but demonstrating that they have a common touch the food lincoln before he was running for president he presents a court case not just from the jackson story he says he better get yourself another witness. i also tell the story of ronald reagan who at one point was reading a serious work of nonfiction and his press secretary marlin fitzwater said we should get it out there that you're reading this book to kind of counter the general viewership and he said no i don't think we need to do that. so, there's definitely a sense among the presidents that they need to understand that common touch and feel. as for the notion of politics and culture, she was correct to diagnose that i point out this is an increasing phenomenon since the 1960's and different presidents have tried to combat the different results. i tell a story about mix in trying to appropriate country music on his behalf and i talk about moral haggard who'd written a song that highlighted all the things that makes and saw as a liberal access including pot smoking and the like and he said why don't we get him over to the white house. he did come to the white house and he did sing a song. but he did come and he did perform and ultimately he noted in the diary that it wasn't much of an event because most of the people in the crowd in the elite washington crowd had never heard of any of his songs and the only one that resonated with them was okie from muskogee. you have to be careful about how you do it in terms of the comment the point on which i but most disagree is the notion that he doesn't belong on the panel. he represents himself even if he wasn't keeping up with our braking baddie and seinfeld references in the green room. he says there is a distinction and i agree it's important between the presidents and the way they are viewed in the media in which they used. it's something that i try to address this distinction and the way that i address it is the point to both it's important how the president's performance of the cultural influences are on them but also how to use the media to project their image as well. like barack obama was informed by television and in fact i quoted to merkley from his memoirs how he came back from school to and he went to the school in hawaii he would come home from school and he would watch cartoons and he would watch sitcom reruns' and prime time television that his grandfather until it was time for the johnny carson show at which time he retired and listen to top 40's music on the radio said it is a very pop culture and from childhood and i but argue that his strong knowledge of the popular culture has helped him in his use of popular media today. he isn't taking it when he talks about the media, my snokie notwithstanding. i would agree is that we want leaders that can use pop culture but not necessarily informed by it will fill barack obama has done both. we don't want to think about a president that is watching reality tv or spending all their time watching music videos. i appreciated the point about showing himself as more highbrow more than he really was and for that i would urge you to look at my first book on intellectuals. and i talk about the masterful use and appeal to the intellectual community and it's kind of interesting that in that book kennedy is kind of the hero. he used intellectual better than any president that modeled themselves to some degree. in this book he's almost a villain. but i criticize him the most because he was taking it with culture and when he had all of them come together for the first time in 40 years, kennedy had to have hand written note sent front of him to tell him when to clap at a classical music performance. in the famous book that she supposedly wrote profiles in courage to i think is pretty clear from the residence that i look at. he liked hollywood starlet more than a hollywood movies. he would watch when he was in the white house and he saw about 48 movies when he was in the white house about three years whereas jimmy carter salles ten times as many movies. he saw 480 in a single term so kennedy really by the reckoning of a number who my site in the book didn't have the patience to sit through cultural performances and he liked talking to and engaging with people and there were stories of people in the bureaucracy still would get phone calls from kennedy who was trying to find out what was going on. he liked engaging with people. bill makes a good point about food. it was off topic, but i will note that the famous writer she and i were e-mail in yesterday and we agreed that a sequel to this would be in the white house talking about the president's relations and food so they are watching and we are ready to go off on that. [laughter] finally the point about -- >> about this issue of the reserve is it gone for ever? it appears to be gone for right now. what always be? i'm not prepared to say. presidents need to engage in the pop culture and be aware, but i don't think that they necessarily need to be self-regulatory as we have seen some of the recent presidents bea and george w. bush did have that approach i'm not going to engage in pop culture. i'm not going to bear my soul one ttp degette i'm on how not going to be on some of these shows and watch tv. now, bush certainly had challenges and left it a low approval rating but he also won the two terms. so there may be an avenue for the president to take that approach in the future. i want to talk a little bit about the response which was quite thoughtful and i appreciate that. we are good friends as she set for 20 years, and we have many conversations and arguments about pop culture and politics in that time. sometimes over year and sometimes not. it's correct to note my book is an implicit defense of reading. i focus on a reading and i think presidents should read it. they should read serious work and history and biography and makes them better leaders and informed people but i also recognize the we live in a pop culture age. and you cannot win -- you can't make it and have the opportunity to read these books and have them inform your governing until you have an understanding of the culture and convey that understanding. pop culture is our common vernacular. the greatest flaw in my book is i do not keep enough on the progress of. even in this point i would say that culture helps to define and understand the president. many of his political -- he is accurate in recounting them that at the same time wilson is viewed in the cultural winds and in some ways in most quarters is seen as a successful president because of who controls the culture and who defines it reputations. jonah is working hard to change that. i & that. but what i found in the book and what actually humbled me is that every president in some degree has had to deal with the popular culture of the time and every president subsequently has been defined by the culture both of that time and subsequent. to get back to my initial distinction between cicero and snokie come i think snokie might be out of balance, i'm not sure she's an appropriate person to talk about, but sister grow was someone skilled in the art of persuasion and wanted to use every available tool or persuading and he used his voice. he worked very hard on learning how to speak in the appropriately and trained his body and mind and police in order to convey the point very effective at doing so and i would suspect that he would look at all with the media that we have and be envious and want to make the most and greatest advantage of all of them. and jonah suggests that i don't wear enough of a partisan hat in this book. i take some pride in that because i was trying not to have a partisan hat in this book. let me put out a partisan hat at the moment and say that from the republican perspective, i think that that republicans need to understand the pop culture, and to understand the pop culture better than they have been doing so in recent elections. mitt romney who labored on that campaign for when he made references to the pop culture one of his references i think is a very funny movie, ferris bueler is a movie that we talk about a lot and also those references to seinfeld or two decades old. if you look at wider feed of seinfeld, it is made up of plots that couldn't have existed in the days of seinfeld so it's all about jerry and george and he leaned interacting with twitter or facebook or reddit or in mr. -- instagram. presidents need to be more up-to-date than in the last election. they can illegally quote edmund burke and groundskeeper will leave when it comes to issues of foreign policy. closing with the comments about best of us i think that if republicans are knowledgeable about pop culture and successful in the use of it they can once again make the presidency effective for the rest of us. [applause] >> any rebuttal that he would like to offer? >> before we do, since i have the microphone i want to say a couple things. my own reaction to what i've listened to, a few brief points, on the distinction between local church that shapes leaders and that the leaders use in the culture for political purposes, one thing that i didn't know, one thing that i learned from the book that i didn't sufficiently realize is that the most successful presidents have been voracious readers and i think that if we actually wind them up along with a low of the mengin adel we would find a very strong pattern. but he goes out of his way to point out the enormous capacity for leading and i am talking about since the jackson era inaugurated the democratic presidency, lincoln, roosevelt and reagan were huge leaders and their political ideas were decisively formed by what they've read. i want to say a word on behalf of jfk and there are things such as the faking of profiles in courage. it's creating a public image and i think that taking it i find it admirable that somebody who did not know who he was had the wit to have him in the white house and was trained so that he could hear that he was appreciated and i remember as a teenager being by impressed by that wondering who he was and saw in the president's lead having a robert frost a series poet at your inaugural was another and there were many others and i think that that was a demonstration at exactly the kind of cultural leadership that would be a good thing if we had more of. i have been trying to think of examples in response to the talk of presidents. >> i think of michelle obama's obesity program which was similar to jfk's fitness program to get off the couch and do things and get in shape and pay attention to physical fitness, vice president al gore's wife engaged in a highly controversial campaign against violent misogynist lyrics and the popular music that got a great deal of attention. i remember it was a week before obama was inaugurated he was in an interview talking about the culture of african-american young men in america and he went out of his way to tell them to pull up their pants, the brother should hitch up their pants and get rid of the low-rise present act. i don't know that he has said much about rap music or the particularly offensive and degrading aspects of popular music in all of his commentary, but i would be an obvious opportunity for him there. i wish that ronald reagan had gotten a little bit more in this book to be a i think that he was a pretty good cultural arbiter and he did not want to engage in any disinformation about the books that he was reading but he was a master of creating the visual image, the information about the nature of the presidency being upon horseback with queen elizabeth and standing in front of the berlin wall or on the shores of the d-day invasion so he thought about his words very carefully. he was something of an arbiter coming from los angeles. he criticized the contemporary movies and it never really sounded that way. he was criticizing one. he said when i was in hollywood, the great sex scene would be the man and woman living inside the door of a hotel and dropping the do not disturb sign on the handles of it played to your imagination and he was actually pretty litter it. but on the other hand, when the secretary of the interior canceled the beach boys performance on the mall because he wanted some wholesome family entertainment, he was publicly and very humiliatingly overruled he had a great sensitivity to the culture >> when i think about the explanation of how the culture has become fragmented and there are lots of channels and opportunities for segmentation, we were to match this. i like a president that has to talk to everybody all at once. that encompasses a certain discipline that i like and i think it's important for a democratic leader. he has to lead in a way that he is leading everybody. talking to all of us and i worry a little bit where you can set up these channels where they are communicating political operatives or communicating the message almost by zip codes and all sorts of various channels to become sort of scripted and been able to escape this necessity to speak in a purely space voice to the whole nation. so those were my reactions in listening to all of these wonderful presentations. >> actually every president is mentioned at least once in the book. it was unsuccessful in the regard and one of the important point i make in the book is about that illustration affect that what we talked about and even what i'm talking about in this book isn't always necessarily everything the president has read or watch because we don't know that. they watch it alone in a darkroom or read it in their bedroom but what we talk about is what we know that they watched. that i know is filtered to some degree by themselves. he didn't highlight those books he was reading as mysteries in the presidency. he highlighted the nonfiction that he was reading and i guess that he has to be applauded for that. on the segmentation point, one argument i made in the book is that while we are becoming increasingly segmented in this effort now one of the touchstones we have today is now the president. one of the reasons why the most common subject of the jokes on late night talk show is the president because it's something that everybody knows about and friday can relate to and as i said earlier there is no one movie that anybody watches anymore. so i think that the president has a sort of responsibility to try to get past just their political sort term needs. >> [inaudible] >> if you could please wait until the microphone our lives and then introduce yourself very briefly and ask a question, yes, sir. >> i would like to challenge the opposition that conservatives have any business trying to be part of popular culture. i will say the past half century of least this transgressive. it's not what conservatives are about. i think using the media is to become a part of a culture that is opposed in the notion that we have to do it to get through things i would say that ron paul and brann paul disprove that yet they seem to have a great deal of people who agree with their principles. >> that's for you. >> i would say then i disagree with about 92% of that. i agree with you that its hostile to conservatives. i don't dispute that for a moment. one of the things that drives me crazy when i was listening to the remarks she is right sounds like paul ryan and marco rubio when they got ahold of their plea last they say don't they know that 9-inch nails are dedicated communists and all this and as if it were hypocritical for them to like that music and they never followed through in the logical upshot of that which is if liberals watch that and agree with the communists and lamar can't you just like it because it's music that speaks to you on some other level. i agree there is a lot of what social scientists call crap there's a lot of other good stuff than the conservatives are often either aware of were willing to acknowledge. as mentioned i had a cover story about breaking bad. i not only think it is the best television show currently on air or maybe ever. and what it shows about the moral degradation that comes with lobbying and breaking out the conventional morality and all the rest. there are pro-life message is in the culture and conservatives never really seize on that as much as they shut. i think a lot of issues that in that in the popular culture that the conservatives just leave the chips on the table rather than try to celebrate these things. every sitcom since maud, the only character to have an abortion and one of the reasons that show was so awful. but ever since then every time a character gets pregnant she agonizes about her choice and then she decides to keep and the second she decides to keep the baby some profound metaphysical transformation occurs and she starts treating it like a human being even the wood is still the same as it was five seconds ago and that plays out against the culture. there is something about on the mother decides it is or isn't and at the same time they talk about the decision to have the beebee is much more pro-life than it was pro-choice and a lot of ways but regardless one reason why they should engage in the popular culture is because it is our culture, too. the point of the conservative movement is sent to simply elect republicans. it's actually to move the country in a conservative direction. and it's very difficult to do that unless you find a way to engage in the vernacular that young people are speaking and if you find a way to sort of get to persuade the society and not just one political party to move rightward. and i don't know that you can do that unless you were at least modestly fluent with where the popular culture is. >> well said. >> fenty this presentation. and you talked about two separate categories. how people use pop culture to develop their own ideology and then how they took that ideology and filled it through popular culture. one out of five americans has a disability. and you don't really see presidents throughout history talk about it until you talk about the one president who had a real visible disability hiding. so i wonder what you learned about the president and how the either learned about people with disabilities or wanted to speak to them were a about them. >> thank you for that question and for the good work that you do on behalf children with disabilities. i think that is a feeling that you quickly pick up on that presidents should they have disability and you remember the big argument about whether they show franklin delano roosevelt in his wheelchair by having the cape cover the wheelchair one thing is what role some may have been dyslexic he was so late to start reading that it seems to me that a common theme that he will find is to the extent there have been president of disabilities from dyslexia or roosevelt's wheelchair it isn't something that the advertised from the bully pulpit or the presidential podium and getting to the point about the selfridge rell lipitor the nature of the presidency is something that we will see in the future. >> i would just add very quickly that my husband and i are very involved in the adoption world and the bush administration and ensure that the clinton did this, too they have been very supportive of adopting children with handicaps and so they have provided an uzi and so forth and that doesn't -- media isn't as much attention as it could have been but it hasn't been entirely neglected. >> that is a terrific question and it raises a question in my mind in today's media culture is it conceivable that a president could conceal that fact from the american people for a day. that's what i meant when i suggested the changes in communications have made certain forms of reticence, technologically impossible. but that raises an important question. roosevelt knew what he was doing because he felt that in the cultural context of his own time that disclosing the fact which in fact had no - bearing on his capacity to lead might disable him to become president of the united states and prevent him from doing so. what does that tell us? what it tells me is taken too far, the culture and communications environment full disclosure may end up highlighting facts about individuals that deprive us of our services even though we would be very well served. so the culture enacts a government. it's not just morrill. it makes a difference but not a positive one. >> thank you to the entire panel for your presentation. congratulations on the book. appreciate your remarks about the movie showing fdr in a wheelchair probably the first time that the director has ever been praised for historical. i would like to focus on the technological aspect that has come through some of the remarks here. i just wondered if looking for work not asking for technological projections in the future but looking forward, whether we might see a trend to continue the story, the remarks kind of pointed out a little bit that the fragmentation and the segment that you talked about how it will have a kind of cost on governance when we have a president that has been raised, president obama was watching the same curtains as children elsewhere in the world but a decade for the kovacic -- not able to communicate with other parts of the culture because they are not literally in those other parts of the culture or to turn to what some of bill was talking about for the rise of the virtual intimacy with the president. i wonder whether there is a countervailing force if people are increasingly savvy about the falsity of certain kinds of media and if somebody brings -- if the president brings someone to the white house today, it's going to be understood to be a gesture and there's all sorts of second-guessing in the analysis even more than there was about why this was done and why this person was brought. i wonder if the kind of media savvy voters generally kind of pushes back against some of the fake intimacy that the social media and others might encourage. >> a couple points. first of all, thank you for not only the question that your support for the project. you liked this idea and kept going so thank you. in terms of the question of whether there was a new technological chapter to be written i am quite confident that there is one. there is a story of new technological frontiers that are challenging people and challenging us to figure out how to deal with them and adapt so there is a new chapter to be written. however i don't know what it is and their readers will be ahead of the curve and figuring out what it is, that we don't know yet. but it will challenge our ability to not only communicate but to relate to the president and for the president to relate to the larger body. and that goes to the second point about segmentation. we are going to have a president in the future that is watching what say you only fox news or msnbc and has a certain view of the world but doesn't understand or recognize and some can the president obama to some degree has this because of his -- he grew up in hawaii but his experience was in the northeastern universities and gave him a certain view of the world. so i think we will see more of that in the future and i think that what president need to do to counteract it. i just want to underscore it and put a mediocre credential on the table. during the presidential campaign i know a fair amount about ronald reagan, the president, the canteen, and i am convinced that an essential part of his broad appeal was that he grew up as a member of the political party that was not the party that he belonged to when he was elected president this was a president of voted for fdr not once, twice, but four times. so the maseth phenomenon of democrats, in effect he was the first democrat. the fact that he understood the mind set not only of his own party, but of the party that opposed it i think is an enormous political asset. and i agree with you. the fact that president obama grew up in a politically monochromatic environment was despite all of the foreign travel was a narrow experience. bye contrast the fact bill clinton grew up in rural arkansas and didn't have to read books about what it meant to be in the small town that didn't have a very vigorous economy and where, you know, the bible and guns were not things that you just clung on to if i may drop the reference. but the find a way of life that have an integrity of its own gave him an enormous capacity to appeal beyond the narrow basis of his not political party and i think that capriciousness of experience is absolutely critical if you want to lead a country, which in the best of circumstances will have at least 40% of the population that doesn't agree with you and me not like you very much. >> i think that you make an excellent point. i would also say though that obama is the counter example. he had a broad understanding of both sides and he knew how to speak to the middle of the country. only people on the extremes of either end it didn't like him. but obama has demonstrated that you can do testing and be very provincial, very conventional. you don't have to read anything that the other side says and you can still squeak out to victories and you can still marginalize 48% of the population and be with the help of the press and popular culture you can still be successful in the sense of getting reelected. >> but can you govern whacks >> it is an overture and doesn't begin until all the curtains go up. >> absolutely. the purely partisan victory and one that has gained on a broad basis as night and day. >> my question will take you back to the intellectuals. are we already have the point where the clarification to the federal reserve chairman is to show that you are in touch of the people and really to popular culture? we have been bernanke while he is bailing out the banks that go out of the way to tell the story that he's going to the national schemes. and larry summers who seemed to qualify to be a federal sherman have trouble relating to the people. so are the intellectuals going to be part of this game? >> thanks for that question. we might be going in a different direction. as i say in the book harry truman is the last president not to have a college degree. george h. w. bush is the last president not to ever to graduates degree and not to have a degree from either harvard or yale or both. perhaps we are moving in a more elite direction intellectually at the same time there is a course in the culture. >> going back to the question of little bit. i don't know if it is in terms of the communication technology. maybe it will come up with something shorter than twitter. >> maybe we will see the code in that way. i think we are on the verge of a profound society transformation because of technology. and it's not a communication technology although maybe we will get things straight into our head. there is a big data that i think people can get extraordinarily pennoyer it about. it's getting us to the point where large numbers of people can be manipulated without nothing that anyone is even trying. it's different than the presidential rhetoric of the past where you hear a president say my friends, don't listen to those bad guys, listen to it can be because of mail or phone calls or ads on the internet because something they bought at wal-mart and the have no idea that their lives are being politically tracked or marketing tracked and that has huge repercussions. i also think that we are going to have the rise of the driver of this car that is much closer than people realize will profoundly and permanently change american culture because of a sudden the second someone from outside of your car can take over your car id is not really your car anymore and you don't have to necessarily go where you want to go all the time. it's one thing to manipulate people with ideas and transport them indirections they don't want to go. but i