Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On The Presidents First Year 20160910

Over a half million copies between the first of may and the first of june in california. Host where did the title come from . Guest . Goldwater used the title and the minute i heard about it that was it. Its my pleasure to introduce our guest speaker today and george slattin im happy to tell you your prayer has argued that answered. We have an outstanding outstanding topic for you so we are going to have a great program. Sandy cohn iss usa class of 1968. He almost made it and is a well decorated infantryman. I will have to pause before talking about his own career to say that he his knowledge of history, military history in particular is encyclopedic and thats not something that he just learned at west point in fact i think he corrected a lot of the material being taught at west point. As a believe he was found to have this exceptional knowledge of all these battles studied in military art and soon was conducting instructions sessions as a pleads for all of the upper class men that would come in to hear him. Then the fallout of that was that apparently the word got to some of the faculty and he actually, i will let him tell you about some of that if he wants to because i dont know that much more about it but he ended up lecturing in a faculty ive come on at least one occasion. Sandy graduated in 1968 as you would expect right into the vietnam war. He is reminded of this tour in vietnam every time he goes through Airport Security and they detect all the metal thats left in him so sandy will tell the whole story behind this but i think you will know this in his lapel he wears the silver star which he earned during that tour. After he was medically retired and he was the junior man in the room, he likes to say captain u. S. Army retired. [laughter] and began to pursue other pursuits to include writing as one of his most prolific talents i think. He became an assistant to Jack Anderson and the columnist who was writing the washington merrygoround column at the time and that column of course had been, Jack Anderson had been preceded by drew pierson so he was tutored at the hands of the very knowledgeable washington insider columnist and actually eventually took over that column he was ghostwriting a lot of it for jack for many years but ultimately he took over the column when jack left back. He writes today jointly with Eleanor Clift who you may seem from time to time as a talking head. A newsweek correspondent for a number of years and she is still a very prominent on the scene. I dont know how many newspapers are syndicated today. We dont have any unfortunate in washington but is a nationally syndicated column. Many of you probably. Parade magazine in the sunday papers and the very first section and that is walter scott personality parade. Sandy was walter scott for some period of time also and wrote that column for them. We are here today to talk about some of his books and in particular his brandnew book which officially is not out until september but its already available on amazon and other places and sitting down here right in front of me, world war for which is an imaginative book that sandy is the perfect one to have written it exists as knowledge of geopolitics and military capability is probably second to none. He ought to be on the National Security staff frankly. And what sandy does in this book and he will tell you more about it but he posits a think Something Like nine scenarios about how that kind of the war could go and its a german display interesting topic. The second book that is still fairly fresh and i asked him to bring along copies of the day people would like to look at them and purchase them is the president s first year and the English Department would deduct at least a tenth for misplaced apostrophe on the cover because it is all the president s, not just one president that he analyzes their first year and besides rather conclusively that the only school for the president s is the presidency. Thats the only place you learn in you have to learn on the job. So with that too long an introduction i will bring up our speaker today captain u. S. Army retired douglas cohn, better known as sandy. [applause] good afternoon. Thank you allen. For that generous introduction. I assume you all know allen is the head of a superb organization helping veterans and i encourage all of you to look that up. It is a pleasure to be here with the class of 1958 which preceded me by 10 years but even so i guarantee im the longest retired member here. [laughter] i usually introduce myself crt which is mostly general and the eight when it comes time for me to introduce myself and by sam the youngest, longest retired person here and the lowest ranking. You all have that on me. The i have to correct. I didnt do the. The publisher did the. We have checked it to that. Let me begin by telling you a brief story. As we all know Thomas Jefferson in 18 of two created west point and in march of every year class mates get together all around the world to celebrate fathers day and a 1968 i had volunteered in vietnam and before it went over they said these two boards oregon that sector during Ranger School Airborne School and office or school all that is while i was bored or the founders needed to pick the youngest grad to give a speech omission of the youngest grad was to get the humor speech and the oldest grad is supposed to say the court has gone down the drain and then they have a guest speaker. They selected me to get the youngest grad speech in 1968 and its very difficult to give a spa funny speech. I got to appreciate the comedians. I gave the speech and put it together. It was all right but before we started that one up to the podium and they are sitting on the podium was the guest speakers speech and we establish saying in those days, what are you going to do, send me to nam . I went to the general speech and what did i find of the last speech were his jokes and i lifted it. [laughter] when i did this i went and sat down in the general going up to give his speech falls dead flat and i get up there and i do a quick thing on the podium. I said what do we have have here. We have the generals jokes. Would you like to hear them and this is at monterey. There were a lot of retired people may brodney the gas as well and i read through the generals jokes and they were roaring and afterwards they were patting me on the back and congratulating me. Everyone except one person. [laughter] and that was general cost or who was the superintendent of the academy at the time that flown off awake across the country just to give a speech. Thats right so i thought thats in my career but as you will no peak that caught up in the lieutenant kelly scandal and ended up leaving the army not long after that. My career got cut short when i took five zero lets so both of us whats interesting about that it was going off to vietnam in an era when vietnam was certainly the enemy whereas today asia to confront China Vietnam is becoming an ally and accordance the question, the ageold thing, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Following world war ii that was the soviet union so now we say albright vietnam is the enemy abandoned the my friend out except go to the other side of the world. Go to syria thats where alassad is our enemy. We are opposed to him. Isis is our enemy. Assad is supposed to isis. We are opposed to isis. The russians they come in to help assad and they were opposed to isis. The trouble is we are aligned with the rebels who are fighting boshar alassad he we have now come to the point where the enemy of my enemy is my enemy and so we have got is very role going on today. Thats where we get into this book world war for. I was asked representative of the publisher because they designated the war as world war iii. Thats the question of what he what happened to world war iii and what i ended up doing was creating nine scenarios and the idea, this is not intended as a futuristic look. In fact im the military in general historian and this is 70 history, 30 future so as a result you have a great deal of history that precedes each chapter. Furthermore its not all military so the first chapter goes heavily into the hero and brexit and all these other things that go on with the eu and the European Economic community and so forth. So you go into that before you get into the military aspect. I go through the history of belgium for example and belgium as a country was carved out of other countries without regard to ethnicity and all the rest. Very similar to what happened in the middle east. Where after world war i the middle east was chopped up into it for ideas countries without regard for the ethnicities involved which led to some of the problems today. Belgians have that same problem going on. You have the flemish and the wallingsford they dont like each other. They never liked each other. Even in brussels the capitol capital city they dont get together and so you are going to move a foot to break elgin up so the first chapter this puts us into that very thing. Belgium is going to break up the problem is nato headquarters is in belgium. The eus headquarters is in belgium. The eu has two or three headquarters but the main one is in belgium so what happens if belgium breaks up. [inaudible question] if belgium breaks up and you have forgot written u. S. Bowed out of the eu you have what they call greece and brexit to bow out of the eu and they kept them in but they will leave eventually. So you have nato involved in the midst of all of this and they have preceded all of these things. Nato preceded the development of the eu and preceded the advent of the euro. The Federal Reserve controls Monetary Policy and controls Interest Rate so when we had the Great Recession in 2008, ben bernanke who had been studying the Great Depression started nothing much than electronic money, famous british economist said the way out of a depression is to spend your way out of it and thats what bernanke and president obama credited him as being the primary person who took us out of the recession. Now take that same concept over to europe and look what you have. You have the ecd, European Central bank that controls the amount of money and circulation that control it is Interest Rates but each country controls their own taxes and spending, hence, you have the problem of greece. Greece comes up and says, wait a minute, we voted all this money to spend on all of these things and now we have a huge deficit and we cant make it and what is the solution . Ecb says to them, you have to tighten your belt. Well, that makes sense to a lot of people, you know, youre spending beyond your means, you need to tighten your belt. The problem is exactly the opposite of ben bernanke did in this country. Opposite of what john boehner said to do. As a result of this, greece said we want to leave and then they they even vote today leave but then they changed their mind for the moment because germany, of course, is the is the 800pound gorilla in the europe union. In fact, the man from mars landed today and said who won world war ii you might be incline to think it was germany, germany is by far the strongest power of the continent. With that in mind, you now have the united king doll. Well, the United Kingdom never went on the euro and were always luckwarm and i predicted that britain would leave and you write a book you finish it eight months and somebody reads it and say, of course, they voted for that. They didnt know that eight months ago. Now what you have is great britain, the United Kingdom voting to leave the eu. Thats the beginning of the breakup because as they go, who else may go, france certainly may go. You have skippism and Northern Europe tends to be prosperous, southern europe, spain, italy, greece tend to be less prosperous. You end up with creditor and debtor nations and that sort of thing. They go off the euro, what happens . If the southern european nations go off the euro and they go revert to original currencies and then they start issuing a whole lot of currency, they flood the market with money so they with pay their bills, once they do that, the currently is going to drop in value and when that happens they will be able to pay creditors in the north who are trading in europe. Now what happens . You have the great skittishism. Post war and gets into a wide variety of things, one of the things if you have russia trying to take advantage of the collapse of nato, what then happens . Well, one of the interesting things is that you get former yugoslavia and who are they aligned with . Who is albania aligned with during the cold war . China. So you have the collapse of the euro, what currency do they fall back on . The chinese now step in and theyve already stepped in build a huge dam in albania, they send troops in and send economic assistance in and remember, no country in the history of the world has grown as far as fast as china has. Theyve become extraordinarily prosperous and that means they have money money to burn and theyre spreading that money all around the world and so imagine what would happen if the chinese become allied with albania and as a result with the other nations in that peninsula. Then you the southern portions of fight chg would be the Central European forces who are led by germany fighting the russians and you have a total mess. Thats the one chapter. Thats why in this book what i have is 70 of the book is history, 30 is future. Ties to the president s first year. Nobody is ready to be president. Whats the best way to train for the presidency . I said its the presidency. The best school for president is the presidency. Well, what about the Vice President , well, the history of it is the Vice President has historically not been taken in fully by the each president and furthermore the president has only one job which is preside over the nat which he rarely does. What about governors . Kelvin coolidge was a governor and said im going the run massachusetts the way my father ran his farm, you know, we are going to everything is going to be a tight budget. We are going to live within our means and so far and so on and he tries to do the same thing. He forgot that you can do deficit spending at the federal level. You cant do that at the state level. You can print money. States cant print except andrew jackson. Andrew jackson killed the bank and each state started printing money and thats another story. You have the governors who think who can run the country the way you can run a state, you cant. Totally different. The states dont deal with Foreign Policy of any magnitude. Its a completely different things. Governors are not the ones prepared. People say who do you think have more prepared president s . My answer may come as a surprise because i have found in my studies that the president s who were best prepared were those who had expertise in history and those who also were literate. They were often times writers, students of not just history but the arts and science and all the rest and they also had proven courage. You cant have every president served in combat but it doesnt hurt. Who fit this mold, the two president that is come to mind john kennedy and theodore roosevelt. Both of them had served well in combat and had been highly decorated, both of them were students of histories and both of them were writers, both of them had classical education and both of them were best suit today handle all of the in both cases they were highly successful. Doesnt mean they were perfect and did everything right. Kennedy is a classic of the president s first year. The first year in office, what did he do . Total disaster. All right. But think about this, what would have happened in the cuban missile crisis . And ask yourself this question, name one other president that could have been during cuban missile crisis and done differently, case in point, Abraham Lincoln. 1861. Abraham hingon was faced with the prospect of is your honor succession. Go back to 1850, taylor of the mexicanamerican war, large plantation owner, large slave holder was not supposed to be called to be president. But as the issue of slavery expansion came up, a number of southern planters rose up and objected and he initially said, i will hang them as quickly as i would hang a deserted in the recent war. A week later he said, i take that back, i change it. What i would do is i would take tariffs, confiscate exports and that would solve the problem. Therein lies the template, he gave a template on how to solve the problem. Now, fastforward those 11 years to Abraham Lincoln 1861, what happens then . Abraham lincoln did not have experience, oneterm congress and basically a country lawyer. And he seemed to have a lawyer mentality legal cause his attitude was we won the election fair and scare so why should we compromise. The problem is he won the election but he won it with 39 of the vote. Hardly a mandate. He went against advisers, sued secretary of state who had been opponent to get the nomination, said dont invade the seven Southern States if you do youll force the south out. The other famous general from the mexicanamerican war was the commanding general of the army in 1861, he said, no, he proposed what was called called the anoconda, lincoln invaded and that was a great mistake in 1861 because when he invaded, north carolina, virginia, tennessee and arkansas, those four upper south states had all voted overwhelming against the succession. 75,000 volunteers to invade the south and he had quota for each state, those four states went out. Those four states ended up providing 50 of the man power, most of the war was fought on their soil. In sort, without those four states, there would have been no civil war, but so you have lincolns great mistake at the time and now fastforward to can he be dye in 1962. Kennedy who had been an admire of lincoln is faced with the prospect of soviet missiles in cuba. What does he do, most of the advisers were say to go him, you to invade. You have no choice. You have to invade, weve got to get those missiles out, theres no other alternative and he convened the executive committee and he brought back the dolus brothers who served as secretary of state and he brought them, we had republicans and democrats alike, he had his brother Bobby Kennedy running the conference and they ended upcoming with this idea of the blockade which we all know today was brilliant and interesting side story to this, as i had a very good friend by the name of warren rogers, president of the National Press club and a friend of Bobby Kennedy and friend of john kennedy and he was chatting one day and this is long before i knew him. He was chatting at the press club at the bar and the bar tender was russian and they had tasks and people working were spies. Turns out the bar tender was a russian spy and he overheard he overheard my friend rogers talking to his editor and say to go editor, you know, we are going to go in, you know. He said im heading down to florida, im going to go in with the troops. So this was reported to russian headquarters, the next morning a russian spy posing as a journalist met warren kitty cornered across from the white house and he said to him u are the kennedys serious and they only used to talk to them about the kennedys, not just the president. They said the kennedys. Are the kennedys serious . Are they really going to do it, youre damn right they will. Its called one hell of a gamble written by a har voir dire excuse me a yale professor and former man from soviet union and had access to archives. It turns out that the next morning after the interview, the next morning that was on the desk and that morning he turned the ships around. I was asked to give a eulogy and i sat up there. I said, warren was always proud to hell his grandchildren, you know i saved the world. [laughter] so you have a wide variety of things that go on and some of these things are near misses. The cubbianmissile crisis was a near miss and that gets us into we go back to world war and this goes into this whole idea of near misses, possible that through this accident or that accident, you can have things that accelerate. I have never agreed with barbara tuckmans book, guns of august saying that once they started in world war i, they started mobilization that it was too late to turn back. I have never bought that. You can always stop the mobilization. In 1970s the russians quit. They could have quit in 1914. There are other events that do bring this out and thats what this book goes into and the overall writing theme of this book is the concept of mass. Up until now, the nuclear concept has been mad, mutually assured destruction and thats what we have all operated under. Mutually sure survival, Nuclear Power plants can go to war with one other so long its made clear in the outset that we are not looking to destroy your country, take over your country, et cetera, theres always been an example of this. Korea, people often forget that when we fought in korea and we talked about it as being a limited war, the question is who is the war against, we now know that the people flying those north korean fighters were russians. So in many respects we were engaging the russians there. The russians were supply to go North Koreans and yes, it was the chinese that poured the troops across but look what happened, when we drove north of the dmz and drove all the way to the river, did the russians use Nuclear Weapons . No. Even though their ally was threatened with destruction, even though they thought we were going to go, they didnt use Nuclear Weapons. When the chinese entered the war and pushed us back and retook seoul, he was turned down. There was a somewhat of an example of the concept of mass. Both saying we are going to fight this out and not use Nuclear Weapons and limit the war. Thats where we go into all of these various scenarios. Not all scenarios are military. Some get into cyber warfare, terrorist warfare, we i went to a lecture from george once many years ago when he was cia director and he said the real problem in the future is going to be fresh water, the absence of fresh water and so the blue gold, fresh water called blue gold and people dont understand where this fresh water problem comes from. Its not going to be rivers because employees of the countries that have rivers go into the country. The amazon is mostly brazil, mississippi, missouri, mostly the u. S. Canada, thats not where the problem comes in. In europe you have the damn that goes across multiple borders and so forth but they have got a whole lot of safeguards in place for that. The one river that isnt like that is the nakon, originates in china and goes to Southeast Asian countries and every time they open the flood gates it floods the south and when they close up they dont have enough water. Theres that problem. The real problem is canada is the area that has a lot of pristine water and water is coming out of canada in tankers the size that would put oil tankers to rest. And as they try to get those tankers into out to africa to asia, they have to go through and you have blue gold water. Thats a whole different scenario, and therefore you get into a wide variety of scenarios and these two books are tied in because of that, because we are talking about president s who are not prepared with our system and they get in and theyre not prepared during that first year and they are going to make mistakes. And i love to throw out a statistic on this, i ask people all of the time what percentage of the electorate nominated donald trump . And the answers i usually get are 30 , 20 , so forth. 5 . Republicans make up 27 of the electorate, less than half of them voted in the primaries and caucuses, donald trump got less than 30 , multiply its 5 . This is because our Founding Fathers were not they did not envision political parties, let alone primaries. They did not envision Nuclear Weapons, jet airplanes, the internet, automobiles or anything else. Just as we today, if how can any of us here today envision what the world is going to be like 100 or 200 years from now, we dont have a clue. When you go into a book like world war 4, this is what can happen in the near future, we can talk about the near future but it would be ludicrous to talk about whats going to happen 100 years from now. The Founding Fathers knew. Because because they knew that would they be alive today, they would be laughing at us. They would look at us and say, how can you as a free people create Something Like the irs. [laughter] guilty until proven innocent. It is so complex and so convoluted that people have to hire cpa to do taxes which is in fact, another tax. How about the Social Security . Thats a jam. You go out on the street and say, what is Social Security . Im saving for my retirement. Wrong, youre not. Are the Social Security trust fund is going to go broke in so many years . Wrong theres no Social Security trust fund. Why . When Social Security was passed in 1930s the first Social Security benefits were paid in 1940 so obviously the people paid Social Security in 1938 and 39 were not paying for their retirement, they were pay if. The retirement of the proceeding generation, why should it be a dedicated tax, why should it be that in further more, they give you this Social Security only half, wrong. A lot of you here have been in business, own companies and so forth, when you hire somebody this is how much youre going to pay. Now if the government wants you to pay so much there and so much there, thats how much the employee costs you. The employer is not paying half of your Social Security. Thats number one. Number two, with Social Security it tops 118,000, makes it the foas most regressive tax in american history. When warren buffet says to his secretary you pay more amount of tax than i do, why . The longest tax he pays is Social Security 12. 6 coming off the top. It makes no sense. Take the lid off of it and lower the tax. 7 tax, 8 tax and its not as regressive. Thats still even wrong. It should come out of the general treasury. It shouldnt be a dedicated tax, that brings me to this, my favorite, the lock box, in 2008 al gore ran on the idea that hes going to put Social Security in a lock box and theres all the talk about lock box. Theres a little problem with that, Social Security by law has to be invested in tea bills, it has to be loaned to the government, when the government borrows money, it spends it. Theres never been a Social Security surplus, never existed. The only way you get that money back is the government has to tax it or borrow it. Thats it. So these are the types of things that we get into where we talk about the president s first year and the mistakes that they can make and the flaws that we have in our system, in the primary system where the vast majority of americans dont have a say, the flaws we have in our tax system which doesnt make any sense, there are things that need to be corrected and we would hope that these leaders that would come to the floor would recognize some of these things but nothing is more significant than National Security, nothing is more significant than taking care of Public Safety which is first requirement of any government, and what happens when you have a recession . Most Public Safety issues on the domestic side hiring police, fireman, teachers not being a Public Safety but in the same group, thats where they cut, they cut back salaries, they cut back personnel, they cut and all of a sudden you look out there and say, we have the highcrime areas and this is terrible. They say, now what we are going to do we are not going to send policemen out there in one, we will send them out in twos. Wrong again. Wrong again. You should send them out in groves. If you have a highcrime area you should have a policeman in every other corner, you cant afford it, really, you cant afford it . If you put policeman in every other corner in southeast washington which is a battle zone, what would happen in businesses would drive, employment would go up, kids would get educated, you would turn it around the tax revenue around would pay for itself but we dont do it. We are not addressing in this country a lot of the things that need to be addressed and this is where you have the problem with president s running first year and problems with primary systems where president s are cow telling to specific groups rather than facing problems that we face. My children would be the first to tell you that i could go on forever. [laughter] my daughter came up one day and she said u weve got a test coming on the cold war. I want you to tell me everything you know about the cold war. Youve got 20 minutes. [laughter] i think i have now exceeded that and so i will be happy to open it up for questions. Yes, sir. On world war 4 book, do you perceive that the that the federal government today is really trying to address those things or is it just being ignored or not given the the priority that it should be . Donald trump is wrong and wrong and wrong. Hes specially wrong on national defense. The u. S. Military is the strongest force, military force the history has ever known. We just wrote an article, what can stop a u. S. Armored bregade and the answer is nothing. When the first iraq war happened, all of you here i believe know who colonel henry was and i got to know him when he was writing my first book there, he predicted there would be 30,000 casualtieses in that war and i wrote a piece at the time, american casualties under 500 and the war would last as long as as it lasts. That wasnt the point. The point was we could. After the war and fewer than 500 casualties harry called me up to congratulate me, the point is that theres no entity in the world that can stop unu. S. Armored bregaid with choppers and planes and drones and missiles and offshore naval support, lots of support but theres nothing that can stop it. When donald trump talks about the military and the crazy things, its simply not accurate. The romans, 200 romans would envy us for what we have today. The problem is that we all agree that war and the years of military force is a last resort, but theres a corollary to that. It should always remain a resort. We can never, ever take it off the table. Thats one problem we seem to be facing today with this, you cant govern by saying. When we say no boots on the ground, thats a silly statement, thats silliness. You should always say, we are always, always willing to put boots on the ground if we have to. Bill clinton said the biggest mistake that he made was not intervening in the genocide in rwanda. Does that mane we are the worlds policemen, no, we will step in if we can and if we can do some good, you know, and now things going as they are going, we now know that the world has shrunk and shrunk tremendously which is why isis is gaining as much as it has so after 9 11, what did we do . We went into afghanistan covertly and with air power and supported the northern alliance, 20,000 troops that overtook the taliban and knocked down to alqaeda. What happened to alqaeda since then . You dont hear a lot about them. Isis comes along and takes territory in iraq and syria, has Population Centers which are recruiting areas, has oil, and has International Prestige among religious relics. We cant let that stand. One u. S. Armored could have knocked i said to some generals, one of our cirt meetings that alan has, i said, one u. S. Army could have knocked isis out in the week and the general who happened to be my classmate disagreed. He had been a general in desert storm. He said, no, i think it would take two weeks. [laughter] a new strategy, a third way the original being we would use Nuclear Weapons. Then we shifted from that to precision guided weaponry and so forth. Now talking bat new method. And even those who say that russians and chinese have gotten an edge on some of the weapons, overall theyre still miles behind us. After all, why did russia stop . They took the crimea, they went into another country and stopped. Why did they stop . Well, one of the reasons they stopped is theres always going to being me low maniacs in the world but a megalomaniac with money, i. E. Hitler, when he had that advantage in world war ii, where he had 12 billion to our 2 billion, you give aing ming me la maniacmake you have that. But russia doesnt have that. With the fall our the press of oil and bas they eave a problem. China is extraordinarily wealthy and what china is doing in the caught and cease china seas right now, that if is a real problem. That it is a major problem. And i call those, where theyre taking deserted islands and putting military installations on the islands and building islands, i call those the ryan lands of the pacific in 1936 go back to 1918. The treaty of versailles in 1919. Hitler comes to power in 1933 and in 1936 he invaded the rhiinland and the british and the we want do it. And he did it. Well, that was at the turning point because help he did and it he got away with it, all of a sudden he had credibility, all of a sudden he was encouraged to go on the sedate lan and take all of check heck slovakia. So our have this same thing in south and East China Sea. You cannot allow this bold aggression where the chinese are going in and ignoring international law, they already took it to the u. N. The u. N. Sided with the philippines. Chinese says, we dont care. Him that thing that the germans did the same thing. We cannot let that stand. As an interesting aside, i have this thing about the cold war, and in world war iv one of them is a polar war. Five countries have claim in the arctic region and their all making various claims, and were one of them. One of the countries making claims this canada, and among the claims theyre making is the claim to the Northwest Passage. There had all been this search for the Northwest Passage going to rogers rangers and the french indian war ask so forth. Now theyre really is a Northwest Passage because the ice has receded with Global Warming and theres a Northwest Passage. The trouble is canada has claimed sovereignty over the Northwest Passage, take one guess which country has said, we dont accept your sovereignty. We dont recognize it. Its the United States. So, we are actually sending in destroys into the Northwest Passage and disputing what the canadians are doing. Does this mean going to war with canada . I dont think so. But theres another example and so you have the russians and the chinese saying, well, wait a minute. Youre saying we cant good and take these islands and claim sovereignty in the south and East China Sea but youre ignoring the Northwest Passage and the canadians so its not always so clearcut. Theres my short answer to your question. You stated that you considered kennedy and roosevelt to be your top two guys. Where do you rank eisenhower in that . Ice hour is not sure eisenhower is not sure if he ever voted before he became president. His keir was a military career. He was in the class of 1915, and the class the stars fell on. A colonel at the beginning of world war ii and then was thrust into high command. Following the war, he became the first head of nato, and then he became University President at columbia university. By all accounts he did not do particularly well as a University President. And both parties actually sought to nominate him. In fact, in the election of 1948, truman actually offered to step down if eisenhower wanted to step in. Truman had a great fear of macarthur and he thought macarthur was a brilliant general but not suitable to become president. But he thought eisenhower would. And eisenhower did gain a tremendous at of experience in diplomacy running the eto, the ouran theater of operations in world war 2. And from running nato. So he had that going for him. He did not have any political experience, and the only way eeven got into office, he owes it to one man. That one man was richard nixon, because in the election of 1952, robert taft, the son of chief Justice Robert taft, who had prior to that been profit the United States after Teddy Roosevelt robert taft was considered the senator from ohio, considered mr. Republican. Well, robert taft was also an isolationist. He had been an its layingsist before the war and after the war. Even sow, when they went to Republican Convention in 1952, robert taft had the greatest number of delegates. Richard nixon stepped in and huh hoe did it i do not know help has a knack for this thing. He managed to substitute eisenhower delegates for taft delegates and swung the convention to eisenhower and thats how come eisenhower picked him as Vice President. Though he didnt exactly support him for president later on. He famously said, when nixon was running for president in 1960, can you name anything that nixn did, and she said give me a week or two and ill tell you. But at the end of the day, what did eisenhower do . Eisenhower, like most military men who became president , kept the peace. Macarthur is famous for saying that. Anybody who has seen war hates war. All of them had seen war, and none of us re great, im sure, having participated. Served our country, but we also know it is truly the last resort. We know that war is hell on earth. We know it is down, dirty and vicious. In vietnam, it was up close and personal. And in vietnam we were in action on average every three days, and so you dont rush to war. Eisenhower kept the peace. Eisenhower also created the interstate highway system, and he did that for two reasons. One, they had the war maneuvers before the war in louisiana and so forth, and when they had the maneuvers he found out with our infrastructure is in country how difficult it was to mass our forces and then when he fought in europe and saw hitlers autobahn in germany, the whole problems the germans faced in world war 1 is when they knocked the russians out they had to move the troops rapidly from the Eastern Front to the western front and they were trying to get their as fast as we were trying to get there because we only joined in 1920. We were trying to get the before theyed. Started the second battle and the german generals say why did you use . And he says, americans. So he saul the autobahn so eisenhower did that. They say he was a segregationist, however. On the other hand he appoint earl warren, chief justice. He later claimed it was the worst appointment he ever made, yet it was earl warrens Supreme Court that gave us the brown v. Board of education in 1954 that ended theoretically segregation in the schools. So, he had some ups and downs and he left the political acumen to do a lot of things, and thats why he would probably come out more as a middling president but it was first of all do no harm and he didnt do much harm. Yes, sir. Is it true the polls are right and hillary is our next president , what do you see on the horizon for possibly her first mistake, big mistake . Im certainly troubled by the Clinton Foundation, like most people are. Bill clinton and the Clinton Foundation is doing a lot of good but at the same time its dealing with a lot of Foreign Countries and a lot of those Foreign Countries paying big fees both to bill and Hillary Clinton to give speeches. Thats a blatant conflict of interest, and so the big cloud looming over Hillary Clinton is in fact the Clinton Foundation. Thats why the boston globe just called for her to agree to disband the Clinton Foundation if she wins. Its hard to believe she would do that, but if she did do that, if she did do that, that would be a sign that she is on the right track. If she doesnt do that, then theres going to always be this aura of how u. S. Foreign policy is being geared to some of their connections with countries. So thin lies the potential for a real problem. But the other problem that you face in this country is split government. And one of the they talk about bill clintons presidency being a success. Well, he did it with a Republican Congress. So how did he do it . Well, he did it because his three major initiatives, the welfare reform act, which sass after five years youre thrown off welfare. Canceling glasssteagall, which would go back to the 1930s that said banks and Brokerage Firms account be the same thing. And nafta. Which created a trade pact that did in fact and trump is creque did send a lot of jobs south. Well, those were all three republican initiatives. Barack obama came in and he put all of his mary mables on health care. Every president om harry truman on has tried to get universal health care and ended up with obamacare which by everybodys account is flawed, but every other major industrialized nation in the world has universal health care so its a question of, not whether we should have it but how do we fix it, make it work . But because he did that he lost congress, and he has had a terrible time ever since in getting anything through congress. He just a terrifically terrible time but he kept ben bernanke as the head offed ins and he was abehind by george w. Bush, and he decreedded bernanke been as having ended the reseeings, far more so than congress what they did for the supplements. So, bows were things that obama did, but after that he has had a lot of trouble getting anything through. Hillary clinton gets in, theres a reasonably good chance shell the democrats will take the senate. But taking the senate dish dont want to good too far afield but one of the things i harp on is article 1, section 5 of the constitution. That says each house makes it own rules. When the Founding Fathers created the constitution, they assumed there would be an up and down vote on every bill. It never dawned on them it would be anything else. Well, article 1, section 5, says each one gets to make their own so that means the majority leader in the senate, the fill buster in the senate, you dont have a filibuster in the house so you have the speaker of the house you have commitow members of all of these people can prevent bills from coming to the floor. These why we had Government Shutdown, we didnt have one bus the republicans wanted a Government Shutdown and the democrats didnt. There will enough republican to side with the democrats to get bat but never got the chance. So, even if the democrats take the senate, if they dont have 60 votes in the senate, the filibuster kicks in. So you dont have that. And at this point, it is unlikely that the democrats will take the house. The point being, youll have divided government again. So now you have Hillary Clinton with base which i either a Republican Congress or a congress that can stop democratic votes. And if that happens, then its hard to sigh what she can say what she dock or not development thats why theres a problem. So theres call for parliamentary system where the leader of the parties the majority party, is the leader of the country, but there are lot of problems with that, too, and that gets me to one other thing and that you heard me mention, lincolns won with 39 of the vote. No person should be president of this country if they dont have the majority. How do you get a majority . A number of other countries solved the problem. You put, heres my first choice they do this in ireland and heres my second, which i so if the first choice nobody wins they take, who is your second choice . And id have to check my facts but i believe, just memory serves, the current president of ireland was everybodys favorite second choice. He didnt win on the first ballot. But that what you want to have, is a mandate. You want to have a mandate. We dont have mandate if you dont have majority and thats a problem. But on the other hand, madsonnan democracy is predicate upon the rights of the minority. Madison always warned us about the tyranny of the majority. That the tyranny of the majority is just as bad as any other tyranny and thats why we have the bill of rights, for example, the idea toyings protect the minority. But you can also have the temperature enough ominority and thats in the u. S. Senate with the filibuster, you can have the tyranny of the minority. Yes, sir. I agree if we could get back to isis for a moment. I agree with what you said that one armored brigade could take out isis if they were concentrated in one area cut pair not. Theyre in syria, libya, iraq, tunisia, in europe. Theyre in the United States. Theyre all over the place. There was an article i read once when the term isis first came out that said a squadron of u. S. Aircraft successfully attack pedro steroid an isis pickup truck and the aircraft returned home safely. So, is that correct . Are they scattered enough that we cant take them or can we send a brigade in and gather them all in one place . When i knock terms of defeating isis, im talking in the same vein as defeating al qaeda. Al qaeda is still there. Theyre around the world. Isis would still be there. Theyll be around the world. But what you dont when i talk about defeating isis im talking about defeating isis have anding their homeland and having a base of operations. You have to take the base of operations away you cant allow them to have access to Population Centers. You cant allow hem to have access for scarce resourcesoil and so forth. You cant allow them to have territory. So, what you need to do is get them on the run. So when i talk about one armored brig grade, one armored brigade could knock isis out of iraq in a week, or as my friend said, two weeks. Anybody else . Let me just add one more thing. I saw admiral mcgraveen now retired and chancellor of the university of texas on the charlie rose program several weeks ago, talking about the same thing youre talking, isis. He said it will take troops on the ground to get rid of isis. He didnt say that it would have to be our troops. He just said troops on the ground. Well, dont entirely agree. The Obama Administration has taken the stance of no troops on the ground, but now we have troops on the groundspecial forces and others. On the ground. But not in force. And this idea that you can take care of well, let me put it this way. Italian admiral had predicted that air power in the future could win wars. And it was that theory that led to the concept of Strategic Bombing and so forth, which in fact proved to be false. We did not win wars through air power. Were in effect trying to win a war there against isis right now with air power. Thats what were doing. Our main assistance is air power. So, will that work . In the case of isis, yes, it could work, over time, but how much time is that going to talk . Theyre saying, might be done by december. Might be done by january. The problem is, how many more people is isis going to kill between now and then . How much more of this do we have to put up with . After they went into belgium and after the attacks in paris you think some of the european nations would be swarming in there to take them out and it hasnt happened. Just hasnt happened. Its a goslow approach, and when youre fighting terrorist you dont go slow. I have a whole chapper in here called the Nuclear Terrorist war and that goes exactly the way youre talking about, which is, okay, we knock them out of iraq and syria, but theyre making headway inial. If i make headway in afghan who are their buddies . Well, isi, which is not isis, isi, the secret police of pakistan, have been longtime allies allies allies allies of the emergency adean and others and you have the ma grass sass in pakistan which are the recruiting grounds, so if eye hi cyst goes into informing and makes into afghanistan and makes an alliance with pakistani and isis gets political control in pakistan, it means isis gets control of Nuclear Weapons. Thats an utter nightmare. This is why goslow approach does not work. Isis has to be eliminated or, when i say eliminated. Not 100 but have to didissipated and on the run. But we need to do it. Some people huff e have to gut out of here so [applause] heres a preview of becomes being published this fall in september, fox news Host Bill Oreilly are releasing another volume in their killing series, this time looking at war withjapan during world war 2. Candace mall yard looks at the exploits of a young winston