night and prejudice we thought before. >> host: will the presidential election ultimately be decided on the issues to write about in this poker economic issues issues are a mix thereof? >> guest: and mix thereof, but the social issues should stay front and center and if they don't, it's because republicans want to start talking about it because they know how unpopular views are. that's going to be incumbent upon democrats to keep front and center. >> host: her book is called "delirium." find it wherever you buy your books. >> host: it's time for our final panel session. let me tell you that the panel. just over our shoulder here on location at her studio. the panelists includes tom hayden, abe peck and robert scheer. we will begin coverage right now. thanks for being with us. [inaudible conversations] >> you know the rules. please silence all cell phones. there's a book signing follows the session. book signing as insane area seven. all three panelists has books to be signed. personal recording of the session in other sessions are not allowed. i am jon wiener, monitor of the session. i pray for the nation magazine, america's oldest weekly and i host before report and keep esq radio for the 99%. we are here today because it's the 50th anniversary of the port huron statement, the document of students for democratic society, which called for participatory democracy and all parts of life. and that means we are here today because of tom hayden who drafted the port huron statement. [applause] so 50 years later, tom is still a leading voice for ending the wars in afghanistan, pakistan, iraq. he saw for ending sweatshops for ending the environment and for reforming politics are more participatory democracy. he currently writes for the nation, which has a cover story by tom, participatory democracy for port huron to wall street. he organizes and travels and speaks against the current wars has found her interact. the peace and justice resource center in culver city. tom is the author and editor of the 19 vets, especially notable is his memoir now under the title rabble of "the new york times" named one of the best books of the year. before that in 1982 tom was elected to the california state assembly. he served 18 years in home. before that in the 70s, tom organized the campaign for economic democracy, grassroots organizing effort which won dozens of local offices and shut down the nuclear power plant for a referendum for the first time. before that of course was chicago 68, demonstrations at the democratic national convention, which led to time been put on trial by the nixon administration and 69, charged with conspiracy and indictments and eventually acquitted on all charges. before that in 65, tom traveled to hanoi to promote peace talks. before that in 64 as a community organizer in newark. before that in the early 60s was a freedom writer beat in rural georgia and mississippi for direct action civil rights work and before that, in 1962, 50 years ago, tom drafted the port huron statement. that seems like this is the right time and right place to sit thank you, tom hayden. [applause] our format is 10 minutes from each speaker in the first round. >> thanks, john. nice to see all of you. but me just briefly tried to cover some ground here. it's startling to me that this was 50 years ago, especially if you read the september 17 occupy wall street manifesto that calls for a direct participatory democracy. so it is a concept that is detached from its authors, but 50 of us who gathered in port huron. this seems to arise when institutions are unrepresentative enough and burdens are crashing enough that people take matters into their own hands, organize and take action and participatory democracy in my view of the very long future because it has been the propelling force behind so many social movements. i see it in my ucla student i taught this winter quarter who are like the freedom riders. these are young, undocumented undergraduates old enough to make daring enough to come out of the closet and say it, i am undocumented. respect me or deport me. it is that kind of it is that kind of action that reminds me of the freedom section that reminds me of the freedom rights. i see it more in wisconsin. my whole family is from wisconsin, where everything about participatory democracy is on display. the young people outside the institutional process that started it, the occupation of the capital, the demonstrations at the 100,000 people in freezing weather, again and again and again the collection of hundreds of thousands of signatures to recall scott walker is not over. [applause] but they've even managed what we've tried to do, which was to move the more liberal democrats to stand for some income to stand for ideals and a whole bunch of them come as you know, walked out of the capitol in support of the strike and the occupiers. so i see it again and again appearing because of the dynamic. i want to say a little more about it and locate why and how it was written. the two words came to me from professor arnold kaufmann in the university of michigan. i think we picked it up or gave it to her collaborated with the sala baker, who was the advisor to the student nonviolent coordinating committee attributed to john dewey the philosopher and probably goes back to henry david thoreau, saint cast though, but so what your whole life, not merely in strip of paper. so it began with the freedom rights in the south that galvanized students around the country, where young people took a virtual flood of japan, once and for all segregation in the deep south, which was the basis on which races dixiecrat rule over congress can the majority of the committees of congress were dominated by the southerners. and it's no action that i began drafting the notes for port huron after a freedom ride and albany georgia jail cell. so the first notion was direct action, putting your body on the line but there is a political concept goes into it at the same time. through voting rights you could undermine dixiecrat power, mobilize the black vote, and the racist domination of the democratic party and the congress and the weekend a liberal to progressive, even radical constituency of labor, civil rights groups, peace advocates, democratic party liberals. the farmworkers were first being organized at the same time and the southwest and the purpose is by raising this domestic democratic constituencies, demanding participation and the decisions that affected our lives, we could begin to end the cold war whose secrecy and terrorism dominated our lives. so completely and concluding the spending priorities for congress. there was a political strategy to realign the political system that was connected to direct action and the concept. this is 62 mets 62 and much was left out of the free speech movement had not occurred yet. betty for dan had not written the feminine mystique. the national organization for women has not been formed. rachel carson had not been published on the environment. by american advisers, not yet a combat war. one is while we denounced the teeter ships supported by the united states including south vietnam, we did not anticipate at the time that there would be a draft for vietnam that johnson would campaign on a promise not to send young men to southeast asia and turn around and send 100,000 in the first year and would escalate to 500,000. that would lead to draft resistance, polarization, further denial of domestic priorities, black uprisings in many cities and more than anything else, to act the possibilities of domestic economic reform. secondly, the assassination of john kennedy. and the time i have, there's little to say except that it was not part of anything that we were taught about history or american politics or social change. it was not in the model that leaders of the assassinated. not once, but again and again and again. in our view, food push the kennedy administration. after we took the statements immediately after it was published in our naïveté and suits and ties, thinking that the civil rights movement would move the attorney general and president gradually towards reconsidering the cold war. and john kennedy did so in a very famous beach, just before he was killed. so the assassination factor destabilized us and made a lot of visio that we were not has-beens, but my defense was jack newfield once that. sectarian and some -- the statement soon got treated her at the next generation of young activists is to reform the two which i can only say yes, we wanted reform, but there came a kind of sick carrying a sign that included multiple varieties of marxism and faction fighting. and forth at the counterintelligence programs at the police and the fbi that made everybody suspicious, but a lot of people in jail, cost a lot of people billman and so on. i'm done there. i want to emphasize that i think it might be worth your time to read the nation article here on the stage somewhere to be distributed because i believe looking back and i didn't think this site years ago, but i believe that now that participatory democracy may be the overall concept that could unify liberals on the left than even some libertarians when you look at the other ideological alternatives before us. it is a broughton of concept to include social in the hands, politicians, progressive business people, journalists. everybody -- this is that arnold kaufmann said in a hand here. he said the idea is a moral one. the statement is the value section to the front. a moral one because every human being's dignity requires the ability to participate and not be that dems of all the decisions that are being made controlling their lives by remote forces, whether it's the military, corporations, politicians or the media. and in that sense, i think it has a longevity that i never anticipated. perhaps the port huron statement made us, not the other way around because of his time at that time for that idea to be manifest again. thanks. [applause] >> and assigning area with copies of the port huron statement that tom will sign at the end. also have copies of the special issue of the nation magazine at the port huron statement in the stream for those who are interested in copies of the terrific article. our next speaker is abe peck. abe is a chicago guy. starting out in 1967 the work of the chicago seats as editor of the underground paper. then he worked as a longtime associate editor at a tribune of "rolling stone." he wrote the book on the underground press at the great title, uncovering the 60s, the life and times of the underground press for "the new york times" calls it the definitive of the subject. it is reporter, editor and columnist for chicago daily news and "chicago sun-times," where he went to illinois associated press awards and he was subsequently inducted into the chicago journalism hall of fame for his work there. then he worked for 27 years as a full-time professor at the mcgill school of journalism at northwestern university, just recently said down and retire to santa barbara, the remains involved and co-edited until a immediate engagement, the one featured today in the book festival assigning area. he has worked with more than 100 magazines, websites, portals and newspapers. we welcome to "the l.a. times" festival of books, abe peck. >> thank you. [applause] thank you. as tom said, great to see a turnout like this for this birthday party. i'm the guy in the middle. like bob scheer i was born in the bronx, but it came to california a little late and not as a full timer until four years ago. this is my third tour of duty in california and just a background, the first was the summer of love. yes i am a human cliché. five guys in a band coming from the box to seeker pays the future and featuring cisco. i was on the psychedelic side of the bay -- i was on the political side of the bay. okay, good. see you after class. later that year i became an underground press editors john mentioned in the next year i met tom in the streets and the next year after that, the day after woodstock, guess because and that psychedelic cliché, i got back to chicago and spent four months with tom across a crowded room covering for the under or impress. by the time i reached "rolling stone" in the mid-70s, the big ethical story was actually patty hearst experiencing by brandon at the movement we called the 60s. and now that i live in santa barbara i mention this because they teach periodically at northwestern in evanston, illinois. this quarter i am professor friday. i find on thursdays, come back on saturdays. and the reason i tell you this is this week my airplane reach port huron. i have to tell you three big responses. the first was the statement is exhilarating and i'll explain what they mean by that. the second was disappointing perhaps not for the reasons you need. the third and perhaps most important is i was hopeful at this time we really needed that. any talk about each quickly. first of all, under the acceleration: comment being systematic may not sound peppy and wild and wonderful, but these days it's a political battle. but in a systematic document is a real pleasure and thank you, tom and other contributors, too. this is a document spurred by the shadow of the bomb as i look some of us are old enough to remember hiding under our desks, which were going to save us a 20-megaton explosion because they would make a special word. the document also talks about the permeating -- the permeate and then victimizing fat of human degradation. that was the south and people like tom going down to the south to be free riders and i still remember i didn't go to the march march on washington initiative. but the document this really quickly began systematically for racial inequality to economic inequality. from the able too the colonial revolution signals the end of an era for the western power and to college the hypocrisy of an american ideal, but it asked america to be better. overall again it's written from a very interesting point of view. it's written for what the document calls strategic discomfort. it's a document it's kind of antsy when it starts. you know, it talks about our work is guided by the sense that we may be the last generation and the very first being children of converts an uncertain. it confesses his own uncertainty. other students of sociology starting loneliness and community and part of any organization into addition of what side that these organizations brought to us. it's a smart document as someone who teaches writing, it's amazing because any document written by collaborators that reads this welles deserves a shout out. one that is just as true now as politics about publix, a very important phrase. looking for a change in a way to does the wood and was one of reached out to labor and a lot of young people do not do. deposited student says the agent of change. along with very black and white people full text another is sure to. he talked about this almost class of people called students who do something university and use it as a place to make change her call for universal control disarmament and laid out reforms for sweeping anti-property programs to prove that the mental health treatment in prisons. later on at the very end of the document the word militant in movement appeared, but the document is trying to figure out a way to make change. can they sell courses of action and peer at the university will be the place this takes place and lo and behold universities in the 60s became -- i don't know what you want to call them, homes, basins for change. the idea of wresting control of, the educational process and bureaucracy bother us well for the speech movement. part of the things i do in my work, which is not a political thing, but in this political document does the same thing. early in the port huron statement is a statement of values and that is super crucial to the whole nature of the document. it recognizes that in that in no short formulas, no close theories. it calls for building change around reason, freedom and a very special word that i counted at least three times in the document, love. 1962, political document talking about love and i think it's very important. a critique of anti-communist than into the almost communist them, really trying to find its place. again, it is not a political document. it is something bigger about that. talks about the depersonalization that reduces human beings to the status of things. how timely. it talks about finding meaning in life that is personally authentic get beyond egotistic individualism and in the nation piece said quite simply wanted to live like them, speaking of his colleagues. these are people and early 20s. students are breaking the crest of apathy. talks about a remote control economy, talks about the 1% truth of the time. talks about how acidic bodies are subordinated to exchange values and even automation just coming into the mainstream of social dislocation and opportunity. so it's really quite a striking document i think. alice tom mentioned, the port huron statement display on the environment, perhaps culture but by way people only, feminism was absent. overshadowed by phrase is perhaps that fraternity, independents and men. but to my mind, and also the kind of psychedelic size, consciousness sides of the 60s may not be in there strikingly. but that is 2020 hindsight. in 1962, this is a very forward-looking, very interesting and very important document. so my real disappointment the following. one is that the document and could not survive until into the 60s. it was brought into play by the things you've just laid out. i won't go into them again. we find that to be important and yet overtaken by events. the second disappointment is the biggest one is so many problems noted in the port huron statement are still with us. the green revolution says billions spent in poverty worldwide economic inequality has a black president rather than by people who can't vote, but we still have tremendous political problem for nuclear water still have yours. so occupy wall street commotion sure thomas mentioned in mentioned in his piece above will probably mention has much merit and the sensitivities in part or in response to sit hairiness than that later developed after the port huron statement. and perhaps it has to find its own way, perhaps it can generate a statement. i said i was hopeful at the end. a finnish return statement is to play me and did yesterday nsa disembarked at home are positively about the potential for beating back bio from the dixiecrat republicans coalition of today, not 50 years ago and for energizing the disenchantment that many of us who calls themselves progressives, left still feel. the statement at the end of the statement said there is perhaps a good reason to be optimistic of the above analysis. the gray band of young people in michigan that outcome of so much good came at the statement is so much remains to be done. [applause] well, he was for my job as moderator becomes a little superfluous. there's one person who does not need an introduction at "the l.a. times" festival of books, it's robert scheer. [applause] is there anyone here who read truth did or listens to truth did radio or left right and center and keep your debut? bob, just won the society of professional journalists award for best online columnist of the year. that's a very big one. [applause] and in case you haven't heard, truth dig has one for webby for best political blog. via has been a journalist for 30 years. just briefly in case you haven't heard communist vietnam correspondent, managing editor and editor-in-chief of ramparts magazine from 54 to 59. [applause] hold your applause. from 76 to 93 he was national correspondent for "the l.a. times" and in 1993 launched nationally syndicated column based at the times, where he was named contributing editor. that column ran weekly for 12 years and is now based at truth dig. today bob is professor of communications here at usc's annenberg school for communication journalism. he's written nine books. most recently the great american stickup, reagan republicans and clinton democrats enrich wall street while mucking main street out from nation books. featuring a book today and the signing area. just to let their brief items about bob scheer. bob scheer is married to america's aquino who started "the l.a. times" festival of books. 17 years ago. thank you, narada. [applause] [cheers and applause] and one more thing. you also probably heard "the l.a. times" over the last several years has laid out editors. scheer holds a unique position. when his column was canceled, hundreds of readers picketed the newspaper office is downtown l.a. that was a memorable day in the history of journalism here in l.a. so bob, where were you 62 clicks >> i'm going to do a little compassion here. because we have a mormon running for president. it was a mormon tabernacle. in salt lake city i did it with the first people who are openly gay in salt lake city but were mormons and active in the community on peace, civil rights and gay issues. just put that out there. .. >> sweeping the country, and i volunteered that the two times that i used cocaine, i fell asleep, and it didn't have these disastrous effects. i found it quite boring, and i was taken off the assignment because i admitted i might have some knowledge of the thing. [laughter] and with bill clinton, i didn't like marijuana, although i think everybody should be able to use it if they want. and that happens to be true. [laughter] i i don't to be one of the rabbis examining the scripture and coming to some conclusion. there's a lot of great work done by people, and there's no question there's a signature document and it should be read, but i agree it's flawed, as you expect. for instance, tom previously said nuclear power is risky, but the port huron statement wonders why we can't have it for everyone. we have the technology, so everybody should be on nuclear power. it is true that men, men, men are trevored to as no anticipation. no anticipation of gender issues in general and a question, of course, of the gay movement which had begun. there's lots of that sort of thing, but i do think it's an important document. i do want to set the record straight that none of this, what i did with ramparts or earlier we had magazines like in chicago, they had new universities, they had studies on the left, it was a lot of stuff percolating. i had come from city college to berkeley, i don't know, where'd you go to college? >> city college grad, nyu undergrad. >> so a rich kid. [laughter] >> i made a mistake. >> city college in the '50s, my god, it was a wild place. and there's an ayn rand booth outside. we had it in the city college cafeteria a half century ago or more be, and all the disputes and, you know, the civil rights movement was already booming, and eisenhower had given his military industrial complex farewell address at the beginning, you know, when he left office after '60s, and, you know, so a lot of stuff. we should remind a larger audience that might be watching this on c-span books is that the '50s was a nightmare, boring, stupefying experience for america. [laughter] you know? [applause] and you cannot understand what happened after. if you cannot understand how miserable, intellectually miserable, culturally miserable life was in the '50s. it was dumbed down beyond recognition by the emergence of television, by what existed, of radio, what passed for popular culture. and so as a result you had all these currents of protest. they weren't organized in the way the fbi thought, there was no cabal, it was spontaneous, and it happened in many, many ways. it happened that in my office just before -- let me say i also did my homework late. i had the wrong version, it turns out, of scripture -- [laughter] so i borrowed john's and i finished it about 25 minutes ago. by accident i found 1,000 fearful words for fidel castro, so i read that quickly, and this was 1961, and it's this brilliant thing by a guy i love forever, my role model in journalism who said keep an open mind but not so open that your brains fall out. [laughter] love that standard. but you look through his 1,000 fearful words, and it's all there. how dumb the cold war is, how dumb the military complex is, the need for more personal freedom, the need for diversity, the need to be sensitive to individuals making their own dreams, their own lives and so forth. you look back at the work of c. wright mills who was mentioned, that was in the '50s, and c. wright mills alone was a correctness against the whole dumbness of america. the sociological imagination, the power elite, you know? which talked about the division of power in america and wealth and so forth. you had michael harrington writing and publishing just soon after or at the same time the other america. so i'm not taking anything away from one work or one thing, but i'm saying there was a lot going on, a lot. and i know you ask where was i at that time in '62, well, in berkeley, first of all, berkeley had gone through something at the university system, there was a loyalty oath in the '50s. and people were fired from the uc system for not signing that loyalty oath, refusing to. and some of the greatest professors in the uc system refused to sign it. and so you had a lot of ferment at berkeley in the '50s. and when i came to berkeley, you know, the place was a pretty lively pace. some of these people have not stayed on the left, they're not on the panel, but i lived across the street from good old david horowitz who has never let me forget it -- [laughter] you know, he wrote a book called "student," i think it was 1960, trying to capture all of this feeling that was going on, you know, i want to pay particular tribute to the beach at that time because sitting there in berkeley what we did was we ran, ran to north beach, you know? that was where it was happening. where poetry was being read, jazz, you could hear felonious monk, just on every level stuff was going on. alan ginsburg was reading there and even zimmerman came in. you know, there was the committee, and, you know, so i just want to indicate to people, you know, we've made these things seem somehow it was one little thing, it wasn't just political, it wasn't just cultural. believe it or not, plenty of the political people did crazy things. and what it really all was was an eruption in response to how dumb and stultifying the american dream, american life had become, okay? it was a gasp for freedom. it was -- it didn't have to be this way. we didn't have to be the organization man. we didn't have to go along. and the slow -- slogan of participatory democracy, yes, it was a powerful slogan, but the it resonated for the same reason the tea party resonated with conservatives and for the very same reason the occupy movement resonates with people who have the most minimal sense of social justice. enough is enough. the game is rigged. they're leading us to madness. they're wasting our resources. they're getting us involved in mindless wars, you know? they are not adults watching the store. they're fools. they're egotistical. they're ambitious in the wrong ways. the best and the brightest are misleading us. the rewards system is all screwed up. so what it reflected is an anger, yes, we found 50 years later. then downtown los angeles before our supposedly-enlightened democratic mayor crushed it along with all the other enlightened democratic mayors and a few conservative ones around the country. so let me just say specifically where i think we are now relative to the hope of the port huron statement. it's an extremely naive statement, all right? and i'm not blaming anyone. and christopher hitchens, who i don't normally quote on such matters in retrospect even called it a conservative document. it is a plea to reason, to being better and to organize around that and relating to each other. it's all admirable as hell. but what it doesn't address is the specific ways in which this game is rigged. where is wealth? where is power? it even has the call for the parties to become idealogically divided. they were too close together. well, that dream has been realized. [laughter] okay? and both parties are controlled by the same interest even though they seem to be somewhat divided. and so the real problem we have 50 years later or, and i'm bringing this up only because i love this book festival, and i still love it, and i still love the l.a. times, by the way. i'm not prejudiced at all. the people who fired me are no longer there. please, subscribe to the paper, you know, they've been fired, and you have to feel sorry for anybody who's in bankruptcy as many americans are, so we have a paper that's going through. [laughter] so help them out, i'm all for it. however, we meet at a heym 50 -- time 50 years later, we don't have a panel on the economy. we're still in two wars, and despite eisenhower's warning, we're spending more than almost the rest of the world combined on the military, and we don't have a sophisticated military enemy in sight. we're spending cold war levels on the military, and we're not even discussing it at this book festival. there's not a panel on that issue. so the problems raised in the port huron statement, raised by all of these people protesting at that time are, unfortunately, further from resolution rather than closer. and let me specifically talk about this alienation from the culture. if we look back to the time that we were protesting, the major media institutions, the major educational institutions seem relatively benign, spread out, broad compared to where they are today. you look at media concentration, you look at the billionaires as opposed to the millionaires, you look at citizens united decision, you look at superpacs, you look at the pass only of the deregulation under bill clinton, you know, giving wall street everything it wanted for these commodities, reversing glass-steagall, reversing the whole new deal -- it's a pitch for my book, you can buy it at the end. [laughter] the fact of the matter, it's a realistic proposition the world that c. wright mills described is a much more dangerous world now. the military industrial complex is every bit as powerful. we still wage stupid wars without justification. we still hide behind what george washington derided at the imposters of pretended patriotism of the economic atmosphere. we have 46 million americans living under poverty. we have under a democratic president shredded the safety net for poor people, single mothers, 70% of the people on welfare with children, we're not doing anything of the things to support what the port huron statement said you should do about poverty. african-americans have lost 55% of their wealth, not their income, in this recession, reversing the economic gains. hispanics have lost 63%. so we have a disastrous situation in this country. power is ever more concentrated, and what we need, i think, is a strategy for how do you reverse that. how do you challenge that? i don't have the answer, trust me. but i think that's where our focus should be, and the great -- let me finally pay tribute in a really meaningful way to the port huron statement. it called attention to something very important. it said those people in the universities, the professors, the people at the big newspapers, everything else that say it has to be this way, what tom wrote -- which i think was truly profound if captured, it doesn't have to be this way. we have to make our own history, and we have to make those ways in ways that support human existence, and the people in charge are not benign, wonderful adults, they are monsters destroying our independence, our freedom and our democracy. [applause] >> thank you, bob. [applause] >> thank you, bob. so now let's go back to tom. bob called the port huron statement extremely naive and quoted christopher hitchens saying it was conservative. tell us what kind of response you have for this. [laughter] >> i will not be provoked. [laughter] the, just several points. we were 20 or 21 years old. [laughter] and everybody said that we were extremely naive. that's why we went to jail in the south, that's why we walked into police dogs, that's why we walked into guns. because we didn't want to settle for the world that our parents had left us. and a certain amount of five today is valuable at the beginning of any social movement up to and including how the current wisconsin movement started. but we don't have time for that. the, um, the naivete was also another way to look at naivete is idealism and curiosity. and it was a method -- i don't know whose method it was, bob moses, ella baker -- but the method was to talk to people about their problems and demonstrate your commitment by going to live in places of great terror and suffering and poverty , and there was a relationship between the students who were organizers and the poor that we also saw in liberation theology. it was, basically, you would hear people say all my life i'm going to vote. i've been to korea, i was in world war ii, i want to vote before i die. and this is how the idea of a demand arose by interacting with people, because you knew if you could move people from apathy and silence into action, you'd gone from zero to something by opening the reservoir of wisdom that had been neglected. um, i was just down in gees bend the other day in alabama, and there are these quilters that make these beautiful quilts, and now they're making it to very important art museums. they've had a hard time because in the art world you're not qualified to be an artist if you're illiterate and uneducated and you make stuff out of throwaway discards. one person we met down there, thornton dial, 83, he's illiterate, um, and he has made 500 works of art that are now in museums and books out of trash, out of discards. the point i'm making is that our idea was that we needed to organize all of the discards, all of the people who felt discarded, and in their transformation would come a power that would be unleashed, unpredictable. but it would begin to bring things to an end because everything rested on their fear, on their silence, on their feeling that they were not qualified. that was the point. it's an experimental method, and it opens the possibilities of finding solutions in common with people. so i, i'll give you a comparison with occupy. there was a lot of fuss about why occupy didn't have demands. and i felt a kindred relatedness to this because when you get into demands prematurely, you get into fights over, you know, the taxing of transnational capital and people say, no, that doesn't go far enough and so on. but they started a conversation in the same way that the snick and sds organizers started a conversation in the deep south. and i think the conversation will continue through ups and can -- ups and downs, police repression, faction fights, media misinterpretation, i suppose. but if there's ever going to be an end to the one thing the port huron statement predicted had to be ended but we didn't achieve, that is the dominance of 80% of corporate wealth by 1% of the people -- that's an actual quote from the port huron statement, and it says in spite of all the new deal reforms achieved by our parents' generation, there's still 1% control, 80%. so we didn't get there. but that only means a new movement has to begin with this method of drawing enough people, millions of people around the world into a discussion about the problem to a point where they take charge of the problem, embrace the problem, come up with a solution and fight for it with the help of organizers. this is how wisconsin started. it did not start with my friends in the afl-cio or the afsme. paul booth running that in wisconsin, it started at port huron. it started because certain people outside of the reform that had been accomplished in the previous generation, including my cousins in wisconsin who had never been involved in anything, and all these people said we are naive enough to believe that we can stop scott walker. everybody else says it's winter in wisconsin, you cannot gather 800,000 signatures. and they kept doing it, and they kept pushing it, and they met resistance by people who said finally, you know, i'm glad you showed up. let's get -- where's the petitions. and they'd go out ten below zero, twenty below zero, they got the 800,000, they brought the labor movement in, they brought the democratic party in, they brought the clergy in. but it started, strangely enough, with people who were the discards of wisconsin political life. it did not start with paid organizers knocking on doors. it started with the discards. so i do think there is something, um, that is, um, deep and profound about this process that goes beyond who wrote the statement or what line was incorrect. it has to do with realizing that when things are bad and the authorities don't pay attention, people will in their own way, in their own time rise up and make their demands, and that our role is to be steadfast through hard times and good times. but we can't get ahead of the awakening. and i think it's underway. if you don't notice what has happened around this world, mississippi voting down that corporate personhood law, the ohio voting down the attempt by the ohio governor to get rid of collective bargaining, wisconsin is -- again and again i have the sensation that there is an impulse based in the human nature that can only be insulted so long and that we need to talk, think, read and always be prepared because when these moments come, you have to feel very fortunate to live through two or three of these moments when the world shifts. and i think that's the moment that we're in. one other little thing on what abe said that i thought was funny. we didn't, there was no psychedelic because we were, we followed the beats, yes. but we thought our life is going to be like alan ginsburg in howl. we're going to be like classified as mad, dislocated individuals. and suddenly we found that there might be a way to adjust society to us instead of their requiring us to be adjusted to them. and that was a big breakthrough. the first distribution of lsd, um, if you want to be conspiratorial was in the haight ash bury by the cia to do an experimental test on what the effect would be on young people and whether it offered an alternative to political revolt according to a cia type. [laughter] i will leave it there, but thank you for that addition. [laughter] [applause] >> so apec, bob scheer, any -- >> first of all, i want to thank bob for bringing up the richness of the culture then, and in my own political experience, the port huron statement was not the pivotal document as it was in yours. it still remains very important especially how the largest political organization of the '60s in many ways, the large student organization of the '60s was empowered by it. what bob said, i won't try to duplicate it, it was very rich. the thing about the statement that still maintains, i think, is we live in the time of the matrix, you know, the movie. and someone has to rip the matrix open, you know? and whether it's a lot of individual activity or collective activity, there is life beyond that. and the way society is organized now has to be the way that people want it organized. and i do think that the document's success was that it named the problem. or problems. you know? many of which have improved, as you say, bob, intractable, at least til now. and i think also the spirit of especially given what happened later when sectarianism ruled, the spirit of openness, the spirit of fairness, the spirit of empowerment and the spirit of hope really radiates from that document, and i think that's its lasting legacy. >> thank you. you know, i just want to say what is different between now and then. then, first of all, we could get jobs. one reason you had a student movement is you could drop out or you could do this, and you'd get a job. >> or not get a job. >> well, but you knew you ultimately would have a job or career. we weren't up against some of the reality now that students are. i happen to teach here, and they graduate with enormous debt, and parents want to know what you're going to do. we have 83% on some kind of scholarship, and that only means they're really in debt, you know? many -- and this may be the lost decade. people talk about it. and we didn't -- we were the decade that came out, we were the biggest power in the world, everything we made everyone wanted to buy. japanese stuff was thought to be junk, you know? america had the can-do spirit, had the g.i. bill and all that. that's not the time we're living in. and what scares me is that we live in a society as was germany at one point, a society with very high expectations and pessimism about the ability to fulfill those expectations. and i would suggest we've never lived in this time, this kind of time in the our postwar period. i certainly don't recall such a time. we always thought the pie was going to get bigger, opportunity was going to get better and so forth. now we see a scramble. some people get enormously wealthy, and the rest get left behind. some theme are frantically trying to get the new thing to sell to google or facebook, and the others are worried how can they make a living teaching or something. so that's one real problem. and when societies have high expectations, we saw in the case of germany, and they're not realized, then there's a hunt for scapegoats. and the scapegoats become immigrants, gays, jews. it's irrational, it's besides the point, but it satisfies that lust, you know, to blame someone. and as long as you have both parties committed to not blaming wall street, not blaming the people of real power, they're going to find others to blame, you know? and that's just the reality. the second thing is the change in the power elite from c. wright mills' time. we had a fairly rational ruling circle, okay? i spent a lot of time with nelson and david rockefeller interviewing them for esquire and others and, you know, i hung around with these people in my journalist days. these people cared about what their great grandchildren would think about them. they really had some idea of leaving something. what they have been replaced with are people who care about short-term gain. i'm in here, and i'm out. i'll get mine. sanford wile, who was just inducted into the national academy of arts and sciences, can sell his condominium and has a big wine resort up in napa who did citigroup and got the deregulation, and that's where they did all the subprime, so they're off to the races. robert rubin, whereas he now? -- where is he now? all the money, the 15 million he made, he changed the laws legal in too big to fail. and what we have now is we don't even -- it makes me hunger, hunger for nelson rockefeller. i never thought i would say this, okay? [laughter] it even makes me hunger not just for dwight eisenhower, but for richard nixon, you know? [laughter] i wrote about richard nixon, i interviewed him. nixon, like ronald reagan, they were people who thought you've got to leave something. it's not just, doesn't happen just three months from now, and you sell your stocks, and you're gone. they really worried about how they would look 30 years from now, and how would it effect at least their families 30, 40, 50 years up the road. we are now run by people who just care about getting in, getting theirs and getting out. so to bring you back to the port huron statement, the demand for participatory democracy, and can i'm sorry if i use this word naive, but the fact is it did fail in the hope that somehow getting a better mindset would change things, we have to figure out how to counter that power. and i just want to add one little note on that. i am as hypocritical and ambiguous as anyone, okay? i spoke this way yesterday on a panel. i then went up to santa barbara to speak to the democratic county committee where dick flax who helped write the port huron statement is now very active in the democratic county committee. i said the same things aye said here -- i've said here yesterday and today about power. i don't know whether one should be involved with the democrat party any more than the people in sds knew. the slogan was part of the way with lbj. that turned out to be -- [laughter] a disaster. you know, 3.4 million indo chinese people killed after. i don't know how you should relate to this election. i don't have the answer of how you organize. unfortunately, you don't have the luxury of doing the main thing the port huron statement attack which is indulging apathy. you can't retreat to apathy. it won't work because your world is going to be disturbed. it's going to be disturbed. so you have to figure out how you're going to interact with this phenomena, how you're going to counter it. that's your obligation, and we don't have the answer. >> okay. [applause] one minute. in our last couple of minutes, i want to give tom layden -- hayden the last world. >> well, a lot of burdens here. just by way of announcement, um, one reason for this panel is that this is the 50th year. a lot of journalists and media people always commemorate 50th years. there will be a 50th for the free speech movement. i hope that this period of the next several years will include a lot of reflective panels as these 50th moments come about because it will be the last chance to really dig down not into archaic history, but into lessons for the present. this year at nyu at uc santa barbara, ucla, clark, harvard, mit, university of michigan there are actual two-day conferences with dozens of panels on port huron by people who were there and by young people who are in occupy movement or in the dream act movement today including a lot of interesting interchange. and many of the snick people who just went through their 50th, there were three snick people at port huron who kind of directed us according to their agenda. they were trying to recruit us. i guess we were trying to recruit them. but it all worked out. so these are very important conferences to give an opportunity to reflect on the past, but also robbie cohen who's an nyu professor, great guy, wrote the best biography i've ever read on the '60s about mario savio. i don't know if any of you have read it, just a wonderful book. he actually had a meeting last week that i attended with 40 high school teachers in new york on how to teach port huron, how to teach participatory democracy to their kids. and paul buell who was a middle-year sds participant in madison, he's now, does comic books. he's done a comic book on participatory democracy. so it's kind of the moment for the message in the bottle to be delivered. i don't mean to be single-pointed about it, but this is the only year when we will have in this discussion, and i think the several hundred people who have been at these meetings have been just terrific. one last thing, on -- i would look at the '30s as the way wall street is going to be sorted out, not necessarily the '60s. in other words, the new deal, we need a new new deal, a more radical new deal, a more green new deal, more peaceful new deal. but the new -- in our minds we think, new deal, that must have been somebody's idea, and it was a ten-point program. it actually involved libertarians, conservatives, small farmers, communists, anarchists, every faction of the left trying to kill each other, progressive think tanks, writers, and out came social security and out came all of the prompts of the new deal -- projects of the new deal. on one hand, a radical reform of the status quo at the time, on the other hand a way that stabilized the economic system. so the left felt that the new deal didn't go far enough, the right felt it ushered in a bolshevik america. both were wrong. if you look back, both were wrong, and we can learn lessons as to how demands turn into policy changes when we least expect it. so i would not leave you with a desperate or negative message. i think it's happening now. and all you need to do is get totally involved many your community -- many your community with some group, especially young people facing these tuition hikes, and you will hear people who are just like 1960. they don't know what exactly they'll do next, but they can't live with what the parents left them. they can't live with no future. they just can't. and so it's happening. it may take ten years, it may take ten days. i don't know. but it is underway again, and i think there are good lessons when you look at documents written by young people at the beginning, the beginning of their utopian moment. and that's what port huron is, i think, useful for. i taught it at ucla, and the students all broke into six groups, and they all rewrote it in their own way, and then they made a presentation. at the end of the presentation, they got to hear tom morrello stomp on stage and start talking about wisconsin, and everybody was up singing, and it was a great transition from 50 year ago to today. it was just great. and i hope that you get a chance to interact with some of these students who are practicing participatory democracy now. >> well, thanks to all of our speakers. [applause] copies of the nation magazine's special issue are in the back at the back table. right there. pick one up on your way out. our speakers will be signing, including the port huron statement, in the air seven -- in area seven. [inaudible conversations] >> and from inside the panel session to the outside where the c-span bus is greeting final visitor here at the los angeles times festival of books. the afternoon is winding down, and we are in our final half hour. i'm delighted to introduce you to our last author of this two days, elizabeth price-foley, who has written a book on the tea party, "tea party: three principles." you make the point that the tea party is not a party, it is a movement. what's the distinction that's worth knowing about? >> guest: well, yeah. it's not the party in the sense that it has no interest in anointing some sort of central leader. it really is a movement that's defined by what i talk about in the book, three very clear, very old constitutional principles. so you've noticed that the tea party, you know, through the november 2010 elections and continuing to today has been sort of ruthless about throwing its support behind candidates who espouse these principles, and they don't really care much whether those candidates have an r or d after their name, and they certainly don't seem to care that they might be well-entrenched, well-funded incumbent republicans. all they care about is getting their principles embraced by our politicians. >> host: and, in fact, the -- you say the media makes a mistake by thinking that the tea party is nonexistent in this cycle, that because we don't see an organized movement that, in fact, their influence is waning. what are you finding? >> guest: yeah. i think the tea party is still very much sort of alive and well, living in the suburbs, if you will. i've been to several events in recent months, and even though they're not sort of marching in the streets anymore, a lot of people think they're dormant or perhaps even dead because of that. but when i talk to them, their response has been been there, done that. we're trying to mature as a movement, we're trying to spend our time wisely and infiltrate, you know, the existing establishment, the existing system to get them to come our way. so i do think come november a lot of people are going to be surprised. they're going to show up in droves, and a lot of them, frankly, are going to be pulling that lever not so much because they love, for example, mitt romney who appears to be the nominee for the republicans, but because they're opposed to president obama's policies. so you'll see a lot of anti-obama votes just like you saw a lot of anti-bush votes in 2008. >> host: elizabeth foley lives in the miami, and she's a constitutional law professor. this is her third book, and we'd like very much to involve grow in the conversation, and we have about 25 minutes to do so. east/central time zones, mountain and pacific time zones, and if you'd like to send us a question by e-mail or tweet us a question, do that as well. well, so people understand your perspective, tell us more than i just did about yourself. >> guest: yeah. well, you know, i'm a constitutional law professor by trade, i've been teaching it for 15 years, and i have to tell you, sometime around the spring/summer of 2009, i give public speeches to various groups, rotarians, people like that, i had a bunch of people coming up to me afterwards with pocket constitutions. i rarely see them outside of a law school building, and i started seeing them all the time, and these people were asking me sort of intelligent questions about very specific clauses. and it dawned on me about three months into that that these were the tea partiers that i'd been hearing about. and they just defied the stereotype that i'd been reading about in the mainstream media, so i wanted to do a lot more research about who they early were and what made them tick, and it turns out they are a movement of constitutional conservativism and fiscal conservativism. they're not the conservatives of the reagan era. they don't seem to be interested in gay marriage or abortion, and as a constitutional law professor, that intrigued me that ordinary americans were finally interested in our constitution. >> host: you yourself have gone through a political journey in your lifetime. you talked about the fact that you worked on capitol hill and worked for democrats, so tell me about your own migration and thinking over time. >> guest: yeah. it was sort of a slow metamorphosis. it wasn't like i woke up and i'd changed. but i went to law school after having worked on the hill, so when i worked on the hill, i did what my boss told me to do like most good hill staffers do, and i didn't really think much about the constitution. i certainly didn't think about whether or not congress had the constitutional authority to enact the bills that i was writing on behalf of my bosses. and then i went to law school, and i realized for the first time in my life that our federal congress doesn't have the power to pass any kind of law it wants. i thought they did, and i graduated from a top-tier university in this country. and if i don't, if i didn't know that after being highly educated, i bet a lot of other people didn't either. it took law school for me to realize that. and i think once you realize that, that we have a constitution of limited and enumerated powers only, you have to sort of take that more seriously. and from there, you know, still being someone who cared about liberty rather than becoming a pure conservative, i decided i was sort of more of a libertarian. >> host: the tea party, its critics suggest that it is racist, and you've spent time with people. what is your conclusion about them overall? i mean, it's hard to generalize about a movement with thousands of people, but -- >> guest: yeah. it's an umbrella organization. i think that's one of the biggest sort of disservices we've done to the tea party. here's a group that demographically has the same percentage of non-whites as the general population in this country. most people don't realize that. they think they're disproportionately white. it's simply not true. they also when you look at what they care about, what they care about is limited government. they care about reining in sort of unbridled power and unbridled spending. and so they're not motivated by race. yes, thai opposed -- they're opposed to president obama's policies, they're very frustrated and angry at the bailout, bailout, bailout, and then they're also frustrated -- i think the straw that broke the camel's back, if you will, was health care reform. but their opposition wasn't based upon the fact that the president was black as a lot of people seem to think it was, but because they didn't agree with that policy. so i think the problem is one of the reasons why i wanted to write this book is that we've within avoid -- been avoiding talking about the substance of the tea party. every other tea party avoids that 800-pound gorilla in the room. i wanted to talk to people about those constitutional principles that the tea partiers care so much about. and by, you know, distracting based on race, we avoid that, i think, more difficult conversation. >> host: let's take some calls for you. joshua is watching us in long island and, joshua, you're on. good afternoon. joshua, you there? >> caller: oh, yes, i'm sorry. hello. first of all, thanks -- i just want to thank you for the programming this afternoon. i'm a regular listener of booktv and american history tv, and i quite enjoy it. you know, i want to talk about the tea party. i know you're, you've spoken about, you know, some of the intellectual principles of the tea party, but i think you're speaking a lot about some of the core policymakers. but then there are, i feel there's also this group of followers that kind of without any intellectual rigor kind of hear these buzz words, you know, constitutionalism and small government and just kind of follow along. and i think it's those are the people that are making, that are problematic with today's political, you know, the lack of intellectual rigor in today's political arena. i think they really don't know the issues, they don't know the specifics, and they're quite following along and sarah palin's an example of that, that people blindly follow these buzz-word policies and don't really know the specifics. and i think that's really bringing our political system down to a unfortunate level. >> guest: yeah. i mean, obviously, i would disagree with that. i don't know how many tea party events you've been to, but the general format of the tea party events -- and i've been to lots -- is that they are basically sort of book clubs. they read the federalist papers, they read the anti-federalist papers, they read volumes of letters by the founders and more modern books such as mine, um, and so i think they're trying very hard to educate themselves, and i think that they're probably better versed than most americans on the constitution. and if you look at the polling data, the tea partiers actually are slightly better educated than the average american. so again, i think you're dealing more in stereotypes than actualities. >> host: next is a call from cal in yonkers, new york. you're on, carl. >> caller: okay. ms. foley? >> host: yes, go ahead. >> caller: okay. yes, i had a question for ms. foley, if she believed there was a salient moment in the genesis of the tea party movement, or did she feel that there was an underground that goes farther back than the single event or a single ramification in the twist between left and right, old politics and new politics? it seems as if they've drawn much of their spirit from, as you say, from earlier constitutional precedents, earlier constitutional movements, but i also feel that there must have been an event perhaps in the last 10 or 15 years that really struck the verve to create the movement as you've written or as it expresses itself today. any comment, ms. foley, on that question? .. and he started ranch and raving about how we are bailing out the losers mortgages. and all the traitors behind him arrested and chairs and a couple behind that we had our first tax day tea party at rallies. so i don't think it was one thing, but i think is concerned about loss of the constitution of the erosion of the constitution has been for a long time. frankly since the battle over the bank of the united states in the late 1700s. let's go glenn beck makes frequent experiences in her book. since his big rally on the mall, what has happened quite >> guest: i think i mentioned it briefly twice. but you know, i think he was one of the organizers behind one of the big rallies, the largest one in the mall in the. and i think he is one of many disorders commentators who are kind of interested in the tea party and can tune you to give them some air time and a little bit more play in the mainstream. but he certainly not the father of the tea party. if you talk to tea partiers, they don't want a father. they don't want a central leader. they want to be grassroots and dispersed and i want to stay out of formal politics. >> host: next is tina and mesquite, texas. >> caller: hi, how are you doing? first point is growing up in the 60s and integration noa and how to go through some of the oppression and the issues. as i listened to the tea partiers, they remind me of that area and even though it wrapped up in intellectual conversation about the concerns of constitution, it seems to me as a person of color, if i lived in the tea party world, i would not have rights and it would be from terms of my inability to compete, if you will. and i frankly find it disturbing, even more so as i hear people say were not about bigotry, not about hate but yet every dang being displayed a gun says the opposite. and yes, i agree there are very intelligent people come up as a person of color there are huge symbols of color i don't believe them. >> host: thanks, tina. i think that's unfortunate. i wish he would attend a tea party event. you'd be hope welcome with open arms. there's nothing racist. and about the principles they espouse. there is nothing about limited government would keep you from achieving. there is nothing about defending u.s. sovereignty that would keep you from achieving a nothing about constitutional rationalism that would keep you from achieving. he's our american principles, not by people working people are purple people are polkadotted people. they're american principles about our constitution that come from our constitution. i'm sorry you feel that way, but i think you're misinformed. i don't think it ever attended a tea party event in if you have a don't think you feel that way. post the next is michael in seattle. >> caller: professor foley, i would like to ask you three quick questions. first of all, who is a better president, clinton or bush? and wouldn't you agree facing these record $1.3 trillion deficit is because president bush was by far the most fiscally irresponsible president ever? let's have a quick review. when president clinton came into office he inherited 293 billion raise taxes and left a record $5.6 trillion project that surplus and president bush squandered the entire surplus with $2 trillion of irresponsible budget busting tax cut into unpaid wars, even a staunch conservative like joe scarborough concedes president bush has the worst fiscal track record of any president. did you vote for president bush? would you agree? >> guest: let's get a response from our guests. >> guest: if i like clinton or bush, the clinton batter. i think you're missing the point here, and a tea party again is not republican. i personally don't consider myself to be a republican. i think most are independent. some are republican because they are conservatives and republican is more likely conservatives and then the democrat party at this moment in history. i am not here to defend the republican party and neither is tea party movement. i think you are confusing the are confusing republicanism a tea party is on. >> host: but many agree the analysis the college is made of the bush president? >> guest: i cannot tell you how many have been to rate their frail as arguably against president bush and his failure to carry the mantle of limited government as they did against president obama. i mean, they have no sympathy or wish to bring president bush back. >> host: what did you find out about the tea party and money? >> guest: i don't know much about tea party and money as most groups don't get any money. they are grassroots organizations. a bunch of national tea party groups you can google and see right-click and i have no idea where they get money from. frankly that is not the tea party. those are people raising money for their own groups. it's a bunch of grassroots organizations in neighborhood and they don't get money. gop organizations that would like to bring them into a cross? >> guest: .i. know they get any super pack money. big national organizations have super packs are participating super packs. but they're just calling themselves tea party groups. they are not the tea party. the tea party as ordinary people living in your neighborhood. >> host: neck is regina and berkeley, california. >> caller: hi, how are you? i am enjoying your show. i wanted to -- ms. foley, some of the process that i've seen in my neighborhood appear to be angry, confrontational as well as angry. and i am wondering icy racist image as in their protests and i am wondering why that is. and a smile, i would like to know, i tried to understand their issues and what they're about and i think he gave an excellent explanation of that today. but why do they not -- do they associate with the 99%? and if so -- if not, why not? 99% versus the 1%? of the 99% would be all the rest of the public is opposed to the 1% of wealthy people? >> guest: i assume that she party does not consider itself to be aligned with the 1% of the wealthiest americans because they are not in the top 1% of wealthy americans. i'm not sure what matters. >> host: have a angry computational? >> guest: the fact the constitution is disregarded their very angry at the policies implemented by the obama administration. so yes, a lot of angst and anger there. as there is on the other side of the isle that occupy wall street, which is a guest week get the 99%, 1% information from. there's a lot of anger amongst americans right now. they are focusing different places. across theological section right now. >> host: next is afraid to come upgraded, pennsylvania. >> caller: hi, yes, ma'am. doesn't it say that all men are created equal in the constitution? >> guest: declaration of independence actually. >> caller: anyway, nor does it say that the government is to make someone equal to everybody else. i mean, i am really tired of liberals and democrats, and deadbeats pushing their so-called civil rights were pushing on other people's so-called civil rights. we are supposed to pay for schools, illegal immigrants. they never go to the bylaws of immigration saying that their automatic citizen. they always run to the equal rights and civil rights and staff. but if they go to the morals, they find out they really don't have the right of citizenship and staff. thank you. >> host: marcon at thank you. and his sentiment reflects the tea party issues. >> host: i have no idea what the heck he's talking about, but i would say i like civil rights. i think civil rights are great. everyone should be treated equally by the government and i think more importantly there's a government that wants to use taxing and spending power which is an enumerated power to enact programs like medicare and social security, then great. we can have that debate in the arena of politics and political branches. but there's a difference between that and using power regulate interstate commerce and enforce people to buy commerce. there's serious constitutional differences between some of the things that have tried to be done by the obama administration today versus things in the past. a lot of people just been too brought of a brush with the tea party. they don't understand the tea parties concerns earlier cons to too small. they are subtle, but important people don't understand the constitution anymore. much less what they mean. how are we ever going to have a serious and important substantive discourse about what is right in what is wrong with this country unless we know these things? >> guest: unanimous view of the politicians back when the tea party you came in at 2010. marco rubio been one of those. senator rubio is being -- names is a possible vice president pick from that romney. they see is that selection, what does that suggest? you talk about principles that are so important. how do you complement that romney's presidency and the comedic spectrogram? >> guest: marco rubio is the one the political scene. a lot of people don't know much about him. the tea party generally like sinister republicans generally. my senator from the state of florida has a nice story to tell. he came against all odds inserted rows up in the ranks of this country. disagree or her radio alger story. it's too early to tell whether he's going to add anything to romney candidacy or not. much less whether romney is going to actually pick him. the important thing is, is romney a tea party candidate? the surprising thing is if he's kind of a boring speaker, but if you cannot taste it through speeches after the primaries and highlight the words he uses most often, uses words like founding fathers and constitution. so he's walking the walk and talking the talk in the tea party and that's beginning to resonate. his only problem is on many levels they don't really believe him. he is saying that they don't believe him. post another color named mark, this one from boston. >> caller: good evening, how are you. professor foley, since you're a constitution professor yourself, i've heard arius reports that the president's history and that capacity and also that he may have been an editor of harvard law review. what can you tell us about that possibility? >> guest: i do know a lot about a day. he was a senior tester chicago law school. it's not tenure-track it would normally not be called a constitutional law professor. he is sort of morphing adjunct fester, someone who does a part-time while community organizer. whenever a character characterize president upon as a law scholar by any stretch of imagination. he went to moscow that many people go to law school and don't know much about the constitution either. you only take one course in moscow called constitutional law, a one semester course. if you don't study much after that, frankly don't know much why do people graduate from undergraduate. postcode this quon