Transcripts For CSPAN3 History Bookshelf Lawrence ODonnell Playing With Fire 20240713

Notion that it couldnt happen, that they could not elect a catholic president of the United States. If you know our political history for the decades preceding that with al smith and others there was evidence that , you cannot elect a catholic, and that was all transcended and exploded one night in november 1960. And so the world we were looking at in 1968 when i could really finally Pay Attention was a world coming apart in the United States. The vietnam war is raging, we had an incumbent president Lyndon Johnson who had been elected four years ago in a landslide who was on the way to an easy reelection again. He was very likely to be facing some of very good at losing president ial elections. Richard nixon, who had the distinction in history at the beginning of 1968, of being the very first Vice President in history to lose a president ial campaign. He then made Hubert Humphrey the second 1968. As the year began, it was back in that ancient america where if someone said, i democrat or republican, you did am a not know. Is the person a liberal, or is that person a conservative . Liberal from runners liberals were among the front runners, George Romney and nelson rockefeller. There was still plenty of conservative democrats, and the United States senate was filled with conservative democrats from the south. 1968 was the year where the real divisions between the parties that we see now were first locked in cement. And we saw as one of the more poignant scenes in this book, literally became the last liberal standing on a Republican Convention stage in 1968. And it was the moment when mayor john lindsay of new york was forced at least half against his will to second the nomination of spiro agnew to be Vice President of the United States after lindsay himself wanted to get that nomination. He then had to second that nomination agnew. Nomination for agnew. That was the last time a National Republican of significance stood on the Republican Convention stage as a liberal. John lindsay eventually left the Republican Party not long after 1968. So we now have a world in which people here that you are a republican, they think they know everything about you. They think they know everything. Not just whether your liberal or conservative they think they know everything. 1968 had more drama and chaos and other madness as a president ial campaign than anything before. What we just saw was in fact a perfectly normal standard president ial campaign with the exception of one eccentric candidate. [laughter] lawrence ok . But if you look at every other moving part of the campaign, it was all operating according to the way it always has. And in the necrotic side, what we weres democratic side of what we were seeing was a rerun of 1968. The liberal insurgency from the left which starts about 3 in the polls challenges the overwhelmingly favor establishment favorite of the Democratic Party, in this case Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders. And that insurgent candidacy rockets up from 3 and becomes a very real challenge and win s a bunch of states. That is exactly what we saw happen in 1968 when Gene Mccarthy made this historic decision without which this would be a different and thinner book. Gene mccarthy made the decision that changed history. He decided to challenge an incumbent president. We had never seen that before. There were Bobby Kennedy had thought about it before i currently. Which is something i did not know before this book. He decide not to do it then jean did it and then gene won New Hampshire. I did not know, it was decades after when i first learned that 1968 Gene Mccarthy came in second in New Hampshire. Won news like he hampshire, but it was he did so shockingly well in New Hampshire that all of the calculus was upset from that moment forward, and that changed everything. And every what if that you could since 1968 was what if Gene Mccarthy had not run. If he had not run, then Everything Else means nothing. Ixon versus nex the likelihood is johnson wouldve run that race. But the outcomes such as a history book, its an eyewitness this is not just a history book. Its an eyewitness account in many sections of the account. I dont always identify the eyewitness accounts. For example i was sitting on the floor at home ,and my parents and older brothers were sitting in the chairs around me as were watching the Democratic Convention and watching the rioting in the streets in chicago. I was watching that. So some of these accounts are things i saw with my own eyes, looking at the Research Material for it and looking at what i got. The thing i could never forget from the convention was the moment when the mayor of chicago, Richard Daley, who was really running that convention is standing and yelling anti , semantic profane slurs at senator abe because he stood up at the podium at the convention to nominate George Mcgovern and said if George Mcgovern were president today, we would not see this gestapo behavior in the streets of chicago. And that set off Richard Daley. I could read his lips area i know what those words were he were saying. Within an hour, the networks actually had lip readers on telling you what Richard Daley had just said. The Richard Daley moment at the Chicago Convention would have been the most Dramatic Convention moment of any other convention in our lifetimes, just that one Richard Daley moment. It is but a moment in a week that was a stunningly out of americasek for system which leaves everything must be controlled. Yourt to review it has is a passage or two from this book. Yesterday i was in Harvard Square doing one of these appearances there. And i had with me this wonderful guide who basically guides people through book tour stuff. This is what she does in boston. I asked her advice how to handle these things. I said what about readings from the book . She said, well with nonfiction , you dont really want to do that. [laughter] lawrence i said ok. I dont have enough material if i cant read from the book. Violated the rule, and i reached for the book because i what i want you to get the feel of for people that havent gotten a chance to get a store with this book is there are some very personal observations. There is some very personal experience goes in to living through 1968 and life in 1968. And i want to give you just a bit of that. And i want to get to your questions as fast as possible because in this room, i have got a room full of people who are smarter than me. I would like to learn and steal some stuff i could use on tv. 1967 is the year bobby spends thinking about running for president. Everywhere he goes, everywhere he goes, whenever he gives a speech, all he hears is run, bobby, run. Run, bobby, run. So this part of the story picks up in that spot. Underlying bobbys speeches was a force we had never seen in america, something we have never seen since. Something shakespearean. When bobby stepped up to a microphone, no matter how sunny today, no matter how wide his smile, he was always framed in tragedy, the personal and National Tragedy of the assassination of his older brother, the president of the United States, on november 22nd, 1963 in dallas. Bobbys audiences all knew his pain because they all felt their own version on that horrendous day in 1963 that shook the country to the core. In kennedys hometown of boston, it felt as if the world stopped. I was in Saint Brendans Elementary School in boston when the nuns got the news the president had been killed, the first catholic president something the oldest nuns never expected to see. Now they had outlived the 46yearold Irish Catholic boy who made them so proud. The sisters of st. Joseph were the strongest but this was too much. They simply could not carry on. They closed school early and sent us home. We had never seen them cry before. We were all crying when the nuns got us into our lines to march us up the sidewalk. Everyone we saw was crying. Every driver stopped at every traffic light. Men carrying briefcases or bags and boston cops. Subway cars those who left work early to go home to cry with their families and to watch the kennedy familys ordeal unfold on tv. We watched bobby holding his brothers widows hand. We watched him holding her hand at Arlington National cemetery. Nothing could ever happen in this world to make us forget those images which were only four years old in 1967 when bobbys audiences started chanting run, bobby, run. Bobby had a movie star smile, but when he smiled, audiences saw a grieving man who was Strong Enough to smile through his pain. Bobby was the only politician whose smile could make peoples eyes tear, and with those tears in their eyes, when they looked up at Robert Francis kennedy, they were only seeing john francis kennedy. Rfkas justice for them that take jfks seat, history demanded that. No other politician in our history ever had such an advantage or such a burden. There is a part of this book when we go into great detail about the decision that bobby was going through, the how to decide this. And it is fascinating who was in favor and who was against it. His wife ethel was in favor of it. Jackie kennedy was in favor of it. Although jackie, when he finally did decide to do it did , privately tell someone that should believe this would end for bobby the way it ended for jack. The assassination cloud was in bobbys head all the time as he was trying to make this decision. And also there was just the tactics of it. This has never been done before, this is crazy, i cant win, and no one was sharper about that than bobby. Gene mccarthy knew nothing about running for president , nothing. That may have enabled him to run. Bobby knew too much. Bobby was a realist first and a politician second and a dreamer third. When he heard his audiences telling him to run for president , he knew he was hearing dreamers, not the presidency but the restoration of the first kennedy presidency. They wanted to put their shattered dream back together. Bobby knew what they wanted was impossible or political suicide running against the incumbent president for the nomination of his own party was madness. Running against Linden Johnson for the nomination that he owned was something more than madness. Lyndon johnson and Richard Nixon the most ruthless democrat and , most ruthless republican feared that dream of a kennedy presidency as did all of the other republican president ial hopefuls. Bobby was almost certain that challenging johnson was hopeless, but it might be the only way to put pressure on the president to deescalate the vietnam war. The chants, the dream and the antiwar democrats all contrived to get bobby thinking about it. It is the way he approached running for the senate three years earlier. First he resisted, then he wavered, then he resisted again, then he wavered again, all the while johnson and nixon and the others believed bobby health held history in his hands. Bobby did not yet realize this bout nothing less than life and death. In the nuclear age everything was about life and death because the commanderinchief could start world war iii in minutes by launching nuclear missiles. But the 1968 election would be about the life and death of people we knew. In the spring of 1968, my cousin john t. Corley junior graduated from west point and visited us in boston before he shipped out to vietnam. Johnny was the tallest among us, 64, a west point ball store. We worried he would be an easy target in vietnam area johnny wasnt worried. He grew up on an army base with his father and was trained for combat, eager to rival his fathers world war ii and korean records which filled their home with 26 awards and combat decorations including a recordsetting eight silver stars. My oldest brother michael showed johnny his draft notice which had just arrived in the mail. Michael was worried. He didnt want to go to vietnam. No one we wanted to show no one we knew wanted to go to vietnam except johnny. He wanted a career in the military like his father and combat was part of that. Johnny advised michael the best way to invoice to avoid vietnam was to voluntarily enlist before being drafted because then you might get a better choice of assignments. Getting drafted was the past fastest route to vietnam. Michael to johnnys advice, enlisted, and never left the United States. Johnny arrived in vietnam in may 1968. He began to question the wisdom of the mission in vietnam. Johnny earned a silver star in four months, on september 8, the day he was killed in action. His funeral was the First Military funeral i attended. Tragedy has many faces, but none quite like a general crying, saluting his sons coffin. It was just another day in the life of america. In 1968. The president ial election could end all that if bobby ran and on ending the war in vietnam and won as the antiwar democrats were assuring him he could. I was in high school in 1968 and i never heard my brothers and their collegeage plans talk friends talk about Career Planning area they only talked about how to deal with the draft and vietnam. There was no longterm planning or career hopes and dreams. Life was a shortterm game as if they were prisoners that could only begin to think of life on the outside. Their present was in their pocket. The draft registration cards that controlled their lives and blocked their hopes and dreams. The president ial election could end all of that. The president ial election was a matter of life and death for real people. That meant running for president was not about you go. It could be not simply be a matter of political calculation, it was not just about what was best for bobbys future but life and death. The death bobby thought about was his own. He knew assassination was driven more by madness than logic and maybe getting his second kennedy on the way to the presidency would capture an assassins imagination. He was the only potential candidate who had to worry about a copycat assassin going for another kennedy. And so bobbys thinking about running was modeled and slow muddled and slow. He was leaning against running most of the time. As he thought about it, he could see every detail of what could go wrong with his own, but he could not yet see what the election was going to be about. Life and death. And so bobby held history in his hands for so long that someone who could see what election was going to be about decided he could not wait any longer and grabbed history out of bobbys hands, someone no one expected to seize the moment until he did. And that decision by Gene Mccarthy was the pebble that started running down the mountain that created this avalanche in american politics that year. There is much more to say about this. Many of you much more about it than i do and lived through it. I would love to hear from you in your questions, anything you want to illuminate or anything else. And yes, martin sheen is wicked is a wicked nice guy. [applause] if you have questions, please make your way to that microphone. Could you explain the transformation of bobby from working at home into several years later what he had become become . Lawrence the question you hear a lot about, wasnt the kind of ruthless and nonliberal in the 1950s and how did he get to be a liberal icon . The answer is the 1960s. The section of his career, it was very brief and he despised roy every moment of it. It was a. Kennedys werehe looking into a way to bobby to fit into washington. Jack was already there, bobby got his way to the senate staff. He was working on the Joe Mccarthys committee. He did not like that and got out within six months. So i trace what happened in the country in the 1960s. Bobby kennedy was not the same person in 1968 that he was in 1961 and no one in the country was. Nists were segregatio in 1961 who were not segregationists in 1968. When you look at what happened to peoples opinions and their view of the world, Bobby Kennedy was someone who changed an average amount for someone with their eyes open in that period of time. People went through much more dramatic changes with the bigger pendulum swings. I get into that indepth how the changed everyone. 1960s Gene Mccarthy and everyone else in the senate except for one senator voted for the gulf of tonkin resolution. That is the resolution president johnson then used to wage fullfledged war. Gene mccarthy wanted that vote back a few years later. The mccarthy ended up running for president because nick hasson back, who had been the who was was nicolas standing in the doorway steamrolling over governor George Wallace to integrate that university a couple years later he is an undersecretary of state and he is testifying to the Foreign Relations committee where Gene Mccarthy is a member, and he believes declarations of war are outmoded and the president has all the authority he needs to wage war in vietnam at any level he wants and there is Nothing Congress can say. And that was the moment. That was the hearing. That was the statement in that hearing that made Jenny Mccarthy Gene Mccarthy walkout of the room too angry to even speak or ask a question and he said if i have to run for president , i will stop i will to stop what Lyndon Johnson is doing. Everyone knows. Everyone knows that conservative that he wasdemocrat in the 1950s to the liberal democrat and theres all sorts of questions about what kind of opportunism was that, what was that . It was the kind of experience and enlightenment people were going through in the 1960s. Before the assassination the summer of 1963, bobby goes to north dakota which jfk lost and had no hope of winning. There was no conceivable political benefit. No reason to go for anything. But he went there to address a convention of Indian Tribes meeting in north dakota. And he delivers a speech to them in north dakota that is a breathtaking because if you read it, and if you stood up at Standing Rock reservation last summer, if you read his speech , every word of it would be relevant to what they were doing there that day. He quoted chief joseph about his hopes for the way the United States, everyone here would be able to live together as one tribe, under one sun. So there is much of his evolution here that clarifies that question and im sorry that answer was so long. Please go ahead. Im intrigued by lbjs decision not to run. I think the conventional wisdom at the time was simply that. He read the writing on the wall and he backed out. But he was only 60 years old and in pretty poor health. So i am wondering whether you are able to nail down what his ultimate plan really was because it wasbeen said that expected if he had run, he would not have lived through a second term because of his health. I dont even think he filed in New Hampshire. In ork he won in a right had some surrogate run in his place . Lawrence they didnt file anywhere because no one was going to challenge them, what would happen . All of the primary side would be on the republican side. Ladybird used to say lbj had his Resignation Letter in his pocket all the time. Every job he ever had. He was kind of a quitter. He actually was. There were times when he was ready to give up on certain things in his career including the senate campaign, and it was ladybird who had gave him the strength to keep him in it. He stayed in because bobby got in. He lived in fear of Bobby Kennedy. Hated him. I dont use that word lightly. It is very rare for one politician to hate the other. They each sat enough that you eachafely say they hated each other. But lyndon lived in complete fear of robbie. He saw what mccarthy did in New Hampshire. It shocked him. Lyndon understood better than anybody what that weakness meant. Then bobby jumps in and then how he simply could not see how he could successfully campaign against bobby. And Jack Newfield had a brilliant theory at the time and he was a Village Voice columnist. He said to bobby i really, the only one who said to bobby, i think if you get in johnson will , drop out. This will be a reference a certain age will get. You think i think of he said i think of lbj as sonny listed. He was the most fearsome heavyweight champion of all time until he sat on the stool and refused to go back into the ring who, aftersius clay winning the championship, changed his name to muhammad ali. And he was completely right. Anybody else . [indiscernible] lawrence not really. The question was, can you draw any comparison between senator jeff flake and senator bob corkers decision to not run for reelection in the senate this year . There is one decision i always understand and that is the decision not to run for reelection. It is the run but you have got to explain to me. If you are a junior senator like jeff flake. Once you have got a chairmanship, you have got a reason to go to work. But before you have that i could spend most of my time describing the powerlessness of the job. Once you throw in all of this crazy static frustration that lives, that surround the lives of the republican senator, that job is just not worth what you think it is. I the guys running for reelection have got to explain something to me. I dont get that. So i was just thinking, i was in graduate school at the university of chicago in 1968. , 1968,as just thinking and for many of us, i daresay is kind of like having a sore tooth. You know that it hurts a lot. Somehow you cant stay away from it. And i wonder if you would comment some on the violence. You know, a lot of the, some of weathermen i dont know in 1968lly got going but that was another myth, and i mean, i was very sympathetic with the demonstrators and the Democratic Convention except i lived in chicago on enough to know it would be a blood battle and didnt go. What do you feel is the effect of the more, the protests positive but they also turned a lot of people off. Lawrence the commission was convened to study the riots at the Democratic Convention in chicago and there was a Bipartisan Commission of the kinds of people in those days who were always on those commissions. They reached a clear conclusion. They called it a police riot. They said yes, the protesters were out there and they moved in restricted spaces they were supposed to move into but all of the reaction by the Chicago Police was overreaction. They were beating people sitting in restaurants. They were beating people inside of the doorways of hotels. They were beating people who were legally assembled on sidewalks. They were beating delegates who were trying to walk back to their hotels. They were completely out of control. That was documented to the point where it is beyond argument. The violence was something that many of the protesters wanted to see because they theyhis violence believed it to believed it top a lesson to america about the way really was. They believed in the police state and that this imagery would help deliver this message. Most of the people who were the victims of that writing did not think that. Most of them were clean for gene kids who were not violent in the least and didnt want violence. Ccarthy himself was horrified he felt guilty. He felt like he lured these kids up to New Hampshire. They all shaved their heads and their beards and got clean for gene, now beaten because of him. He felt it personally. He opened up the Mccarthy Hotel rooms in the hilton that night to basically use as a First Aid Center and brought them in and ked around it himself as a as if a general. Suiteey was up in his waiting to see his nomination moment where he goes over the top and the networks cut from the nomination process to the violence in the streets. So humphrey never got that moment on tv. Just before that happened, just before it happened, the people in the humphrey suite, the world war ii veterans, they all recognized, it was a smell the recognized for the ventilation system, tear gas. They were smiling it in the humphrey smelling it in the humphrey suite but that was the closest their world came to what was happening on the streets. The next day do mccarthy never addressed Gene Mccarthy never addressed the convention or went to the hall but he went out to grant park where all the wounded demonstrators were and he addressed them as what he called the government of the people in exile. Since you brought it up, my other question was going to be im sorry. Gene mccarthy i mean when Bobby Kennedy declared it was kind of unfair. Lawrence as a kid when i was watching it, it looked opportunistic to me when Bobby Kennedy jumped in but i have this romanticism about the kennedys. I was torn about who to cheer for. Now i know there was a lot more to it. Gene mccarthy wanted bobby to run instead of him. Ton loewenstein was trying get any democrat to beat johnson. Go to Bobby Kennedy and say no. They would go to Gene Mccarthy. He would say no right away. Jean was they ask George Mcgovern. Mcgovern would say ask Gene Mccarthy. This went on for months. Muchs whats more more active in the brewing of what this campaign became then i realized. This wasnt a decision made immediately upon seeing the returns in New Hampshire. Sure. High lawrence. I wanted to get your opinion on a current event with judge joyce roy moore. I wonder if you wonder will he win if he stays in the race and what about what steve bannon said in reaction, that the media is the Opposition Party . This is an example of why they are the Opposition Party. Lawrence steve bannon said it so it must be right. So just take his word for it. As it stands it is fastmoving but there is a kind of a flash pole that is out in alabama tonight that shows the two candidates tied now. That is a pity that pretty big drop for roy moore. Productions for things that are still kind of hot come alive news events hot, live news events. I have never before predicted the election of outcome of an election in alabama. I have never thought about. Here is how much i know about it. When i was serving, both of the senators from alabama were democrats. What do i know about the Current Situation in alabama . I asked the question because they cannot take his name off the ballot. Lawrence that is how murkowski held on to her seat. Alaska was a write in. I was researching this, lbj as a write in candidate because they didnt even put him on the ballot. There was not supposed to be a contest. Going to try to abbreviate this as quickly as possible. I want to get comments you on an analogy between the political divide in 1968 and today. A previous speaker, i was a graduate student in the 1968 election period with a low draft number. That policy that was for personal reasons but today things are different because we dont have a lottery. We dont have a draft but we have a divide. We have a divide between part of the population which is in some sense vulnerable for economic reasons to sort of the risk of maybe weservice versus are not vulnerable to that risk. So is there am i trying to make too much of the importance of military and Foreign Policy because americans involvement not only in the younger part of the electorate but their parents and so forth . Can you comment on what things were like then as to what they are like now for young people and their parents . Lawrence it is a great question. Every kid in high school was a Foreign Policy expert. And those were the days when i when a High School Student like me could think he was smarter than the president of the United States and smarter than the secretary of state and be right. Boy, it is it was an amazing of thend it was because way the vietnam war was fought, the order of magnitude. We havent seen it since. Alone, 1968 alone, 16,589 military funerals in this my cousin johnny was just one of them. 16,589 in one year. ,raq, the entire four years 4937. Afghanistan 2386. So the total combined 21st century war dead, afghanistan half of, is less than 1968, of one year of the vietnam war. So that skill changes and of course you can only get those vietnam numbers with the draft as you were talking about. So every 18yearold got the draft card and immediately a Foreign Policy expert, immediately had an opinion and most of us had an opinion before that time because everyone was threatened. Everyone was threatened. Your boyfriend was threatened. That meant you were threatened. Your brother was threatened. That meant you were threatened. Your nephew was threatened. Your grandson women were not immune from this. Mothers, sisters were not immune from this. Every family was threatened. You had dear friends who were threatened by this. And it determined the way not just the way we thought about our politics but also our lives. I wasnt intending to do this but i want to read you a passage of this book that is relevant to this. And since you know won, i wont you know who won, i wont be giving anything away. It is the last couple of pages of the book. I am not giving away any plot, ok, none. It is all going to be a surprise. And one of the things i get to in the epilogue is the question of the what ifs . What if bobby didnt run . What if gene didnt run . What if Teddy Kennedy accepted genes offer to give him all of his delegates in chicago and try to get the nomination to Teddy Kennedy that secret offer of the , secret plan that was alive for almost 24 hours before it collapsed. What if that had happened . What if Bobby Kennedy left the stage in los angeles on the other side . The side he was supposed to leave on instead of the side towards the kitchen . I want to redo this part because it touches on this question. Wasbiggest what if an all euGene Mccarthy had not run . What if nicholas had not provoked senator mccarthy with the president s Unlimited Power to wage war in Southeast Asia without a declaration of war . What about if loewenstein had not urged mccarthy to run . 15 mccarthy had not run, Bobby Kennedy would not have run and not been assassinated on the night of the california primary. President johnson would have run for reelection. Reelection would have come down to johnson versus nixon, no matter what the outcome, Bobby Kennedy surely would have run for president as the antiwar candidate 1972. But Gene Mccarthy did run. He made the bravest decision of any candidate in 1968, which changed his party, changed the campaign, changed the Antiwar Movement into an important section of the m a credit party importantd the faction of the Democratic Party and changed the course of history. We have no idea when the vietnam war would have ended if mccarthy hadnt made ending the war a president ial Campaign Issue in 1968. The war ended seven years after mccarthy ran. If the first antiwar president of candidate didnt run until 1972, with the war have ended seven years later in 1979 . We dont know. The Peace Movement one. Won. American politics response slowly to protest. It took years. Richard nixon and Henry Kissinger complained for the rest of their lives they were not able to achieve peace with honor because congressional support kept dropping. That is the complaint about democracy. More and more members of congress turned against the war because the Peace Movement, their voters forced them to turn against the war. The nixonford administration would not have declared an end to the war in 1975 if the Peace Movement had not forced them to. The last man would not have been killed 1975. Would that man have been killed 1977, 1978, 1979 . How many more would have died . The millions of men and women who were active in the Peace Movement saved lives by forcing the war to end sooner than it would have if they had not taken to the streets in protest, something most of them have never done before for anything. Martin luther king junior saved lives by raising his single or voice against the war. Bobby kennedy saved lives by adding his voice to the growing chorus, when it was still a political politically risky. ,loewenstein, hayden, kerry and other leaders saved lives. Jeans wife, abigail mccarthy, and their daughter mary saved lives. There are thousands of americans who own their lives to people who forced the United States to get out of vietnam on april 30, 1975. I received a draft notice in december 1972. I was in college. Two weeks later i had to report for my physical exam at an army facility in south boston. The place was filled with young men standing in line. Some had doctors letters they hoped would disqualify them. Others were going to pretend to be gay or mentally ill to be disqualified. I passed the physical and went home to wait for my notice to arrive in the mail telling me exactly when to report for duty. Then about a week before my induction notice was supposed to arrive, president nixon ended january 27, 1973. If Jean Mccarthy had not run for president in 1968, the draft would not have ended in 1973. One of the young men i saw at the Induction Center that day were killed in vietnam because of the political pressure that forced nixon to end the draft. Many of the young men to have went on to have children and grandchildren that dont know they owe their lives to stop the to the people who stopped the draft and the war. There are thousands of families living in vietnam who would not be there if the war had continued for another year or two or three. The last word about Jean Mccarthy should always be the no one did more to stop the killing in vietnam than senator euGene Mccarthy. President ,o run for to do it, i am going to do it. Senator Jean Mccarthy august 17, 1967. [applause] this question is about Gene Mccarthy and his counterpart Bernie Sanders who you pointed out is the modern version. I was one of those people who went door to door for Gene Mccarthy and like young people going door to door for Bernie Sanders, and he is also opened up the protest and the possibilities for the future that for young people and we saw what happened in virginia as a result of the womens march and what bernie did. In the same way you have so much accolades for Gene Mccarthy, my why doesnt msnbc and other mainstream news stations cover the alternative to the establishment point of view . And virginia took everybody by surprise, and these were all firsttime candidates who were inspired by this new wave. So you know, that is what i hoped for. We love your show, but i just would like to hear that other voice coming in. Voicece is the other bernie . It is, i love bernie, but i also want to hear about down county elections. I dont want to just hear about the candidates for governor or two senator or whatever. There is a lot of other stuff going on we never hear about. Lawrence so the Party Establishment as this book shows is always the last to know when something new and important is happening in a party. That was true in 1968 and true in the Democratic Party this last time around and true in the Republican Party this last time around. None of them saw trump and trumpism coming. So the establishment will always behave that way. It will be 20 years from now the last to recognize any new and important phenomenon. You know, as to exactly where we point the cameras and network television, that is such a public question. I am just going to leave you this one note how much bernie coverage 10 00 p. M. Has on msnbc. We did a reasonable and fair amount sharing that coverage between the clinton and the sanders campaign, but Bernie Sanders to this day has never once accepted an invitation to come on my show. So if you would like to see him there, i am not the person to ask about that. [applause] the 10 00ow if it is p. M. Thing. When i am his age, i am not going to be doing this, i guarantee you. I dont know. At the same time, Hillary Clinton has never accepted an invitation to appear at 10 00 p. M. Either. That didnt stop twitter from accusing me in equal amounts of being completely probernie and hating hillary or prohillary and hating bernie. There was no conceivable way for me to cover that and get any reviews. There was one more one more , question. There. Thank you for coming. I was wondering in 1968 and throughout the vietnam war, the American People and generation lost faith in institutions of government. Now this generation also has no faith and that was even before trump. So how do people build trust in institutions that want to strip the rights away from transgender people, from people of color to , from people that are not white men that control everything in the government . How can this book tell us that trust is restored with institutions of our . Power . Lawrence because i was a High School Kid 1968 and smarter than the president and secretary of state, i have never once used the word trust in respect to the government. It is not something they are worthy of. It is not something the Founding Fathers thought should apply. They didnt trust government and they didnt trust the people who were going to end up in it. That is why they put every check and balance they could think of everywhere they could think of it. And so we have a government that has to prove itself to us every day. There was a kind of trust in 1966. Ment prior to say the first draft card burnings were 1964 or 1965. It was not a crime to burn your draft card, first time draft cards because no one in the government thought anyone would do that. So they had to write it as a 1965. In it was a crime if you didnt have your draft card on your person. You had to have it on your person at all times. To First Institution collapse was the defense department. By 1968, the trust, and there was trust in the military completely collapsed. The worship of the generals of the kind the Trump White House wants was a laughable concept in 1968. Generals were burned in effigy. We knew all of their names, the guys running the war in vietnam. We believed they were all incompetent. None of us knew anything about the military and it turns out we were all right. I dont think you should trust i worked in the senate. I dont think you should trust the senate or the senators. I think it is nice if you dont, you know if you dont insult , them and say nasty things to them but that is true of everyone you see on the bus today. Just dont do it. But you know, trust is the biggest mistake i think you can make with government. Make them earn it. That is why we have elections as frequently as we do. The press doesnt trust government and that is the best thing about the press. The press should not trust government, should not trust the people who populate it. We have to live with it. The Supreme Court issues and opinion, we have to live with it. We dont have to respect it. We dont have to trust it. They have been horribly wrong in the past, and they will be horribly wrong in the future. I think this notion of trust in government is a kind of fantasy that and by the way, when i say fantasy, it is everywhere. It is all across the media. Everything i am saying is a general heresy in the American Media right now. You will hear that all the time. What happened to trump, as if it is some wonderful thing lost along the line. Do you mean trust the government in lets say, i dont know 1968 , when there was no such thing as a campaignfinance law . None . Zero . You could take bags of cash. That was legal . Is that the government you want to trust . I dont think so. It is a romantic notion to being able to relinquish all the energy it takes to Police Government as citizens to say now i trust it. Dont do that. [laughter] [applause] if you would like form a right to the line of the table. Start by folding up your chairs. Thank you. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] announcer 1 history bookshelf features the bestknown American History writers of the past decade talking about their books. You can watch our weekly series ever saturday at 4 00 eastern here on American History tv on cspan3. Tonight on lectures in history, we visit the classroom of professor maria diaz to learn about the civil war in places of missouri, texas and arizona. Here is a preview. One of the reasons you see more of the guerrilla warfare in the west is because it was so far kind of from d. C. And richmond and in more underdeveloped states like that you have more just like guerrilla warfare instead of the big armies, or what why dont you see that as much . The reason you dont see the big armies as much is because yeah. At the same time the same role of warfare is going on the guerrilla where for is going on in the west, we are still trying to the union and confederate armies are still trying to control this population. In terms of the eastern theater, they are trying to capture the flag. They are trying to capture washington and richmond. That is in their minds a concentration. You point to a david points to a real issue for the confederacy and the union. At the same time that they are fighting the big fancy battles and fancy armies, all of this other stuff is going on in the transmississippi theater. How much you can actually the theatern to the eastern and the transmississippi and the west all at the same time, it is extremely taxing and it. As an impact on the war it has an impact for the confederacy and the union, and we will see that play out more and more and more as we start to 26 1864 andnd 1868 and the closing. Announcer 1 learn more on lectures in history tonight here on American History tv. Sunday on american artifacts, visit to the Seminole Nation Museum in oklahoma. We are descendents of the ancestors that were brought as prisoners of war to the west. And i just want you to know that even though submittals are associated with the overall indian removal act 1830s and what is known as the trail of were shackledes in chains and brought to the west as prisoners of war. Watch american artifacts on American History tv on cspan3. Susan dr. Alan kraut, you have spent your professional career as an historian studying u. S. Immigration. Many americans look to the