But the more i worked on this project that i became more and more convinced that as the war came to an end, that it was the americans who were not the good guys. It was instead the british and the spanish who were the good guys. The british and the spanish offered freedom to their slaves. The man who served with them and took them away from this land of bondage and for the americans, well, the americans will keep slaves and bondage until 1865. Next encore booknotes on booktv. Nina easton discussed her book gang of five in 2000 on cspans booknotes. Hourlong interview with ryan lamb ms. Easton offers interlocking portraits of many conservative figures including bill kristol and ralph reid. Cspan nina j. Easton, who isor who are the gang of five . Guest the gang of five arebill kristol, ralph reed, David Mcintosh, Grover Norquist and Clint Bullock comprise my gang of five. Cspan and who are they . Guest well, what i tried to do in this book was look at what i call the flip side of the baby boom generation. These are folks who aremerged on campus in the 1970ssocial pariahs, really, on campus, to be a conservative at that timecame to washington with Ronald Reagan, came to washington behind a victor. But they were part of the baby boom generation, and so they have the same qualitiespersonality qualities that you find among 60s leftists, that sort of contrarianism. They were rebels, they were insurgents. And they remain so today. Who they are specificallybill kristol, im sure, most of your viewers know. He is frequently giving opinions on major networks. Hes the publisher of the Weekly Standard, which is a quite influential conservative magazine. Grover norquist is an antitax lobbyist, but thats only one piece of his claim to fame because really if you think of this mythical rightwing conspiracy we hear about so much fromfrom Hillary Clinton and others, it would probably be taking place every week in Grover Norquists Conference Room, every wednesday morning when he gathers dozens of activists from the righttoplot strategy. David mcintosh, congressman from indiana, who graduated the university of chicago law school. Very smart. Came to congress with the socalled republican revolution in 1995 and was a coleader of that freshman class, who we all remember was quiteraised quite aquite a ruckus in washington. Clint bullock is a constitutional lawyer. Hes at the institute for justice here in washington, which he cofounded. He is a leader of the School Choice movement inthroughout the country, really; is also famous for sinking the nomination of lani guinier forduring the early years of the clinton administration, a civil rights appointee. So hes ahes an antiaffirmative action activist as well. Ralph reed is also very familiar to your viewers, im sure. He wasbuilt the Christian Coalition into a Major Political powerhouse in the 1990s. Cspan whered you get this idea . Guest i got this ideai was with the sunday magazine of the Los Angeles Times and i had written a number of pieces about the conservative movement. In fact, id written about bill kristol and bill bennett and Charles Murray at one point, sort of the early stream, really, of the compassionate conservatism we hear so much today. They were using a lot of those same ideas in the welfare reform debate. But ii wrote about libertarians, and i wrotewrote about pieces of the movement. And i found, brian, that it wasnt being covered in depth. It was fresh territory. And i found it quite interesting. I think there is a lot of working pressthere isdoes tend to be a liberal bias. And there doesand certainly among liberal political people theres ignorance, frankly, ofthey know far less about conservatives than conservatives know about them. So i found it fresh territory. I call it a Hidden History of american politics because the influence and the rise to influence of this particular generation of conservatives has tremendously inflinfluenced the political debate when you look at everything from political muckraking to abortion politics to the budget battles of the 90s. And these guys were very key in helping shape those debates. Cspan what kind of cooperation did you get out of the five . Guest it wasit varied. But mostly, given the fact that i was from the, quote, establishnestablishment media and there was probably some reason to distrust somebody coming from there, they were pretty cooperative. I sat fortheythey sat for anywhere between six and a dozen interviews themselves, long interviews, taped interviews. I interviewed all of their families. I interviewed their friends, their fellow students. I went back to their hometowns. So they didnt put any blockades in my way, and that was quite helpful. Cspan did Grover Norquist let you in his wednesday meeting . Guest yeah, he did. Cspan how often . Guest i was there mostly during the 96 election, when i started the book. And it was very interesting at the time because he wasor this orhis group, the leave us alone coalition, was looking at how to impeach bill clinton even then, when we were just talking about whitewater and so on. And there was a lot of talk in the Conference Room then. There was a lot of presumption that clinton was going to pardon key whitewater figures and, if he pardons them, can we impeach him . We should get it out in the election dialogue, suggesting to voters that wethat this is a possibility . well, of course, it diddidnt happen, and it would take Monica Lewinsky to bring the impeachment business to fore. Cspan how manyitsits one of those parts of washington that the public doesnt see, these meetings. Guest right. Cspan i mean, you talk about paul weyrichs kingston meetings. Guest right. Cspan . Whichare they the forerunner to these . Guest they are. Theyre very much the forerunner. I think grover tried to be both more inclusive amongbecausebelieve it or not, despite this notion of the vast rightwing conspiracy, theres a lot of divisions and rivalries within the movement. Grover tried to make it a more diverse, a more inclusive, a big room kind of meeting. And i think it was generationally different. Hes inhes a different generation. This generation cameand this is really important to rememberthey play to win. They think theyre going to win, as opposed to the Barry Goldwater generation, who played really on the fringe of politics for so long. Or you saw paul weyrich after the last election and the impeachment battle and the public not being on their side during that. He wrote that memo basically saying he was going to check out of politics. He was through with it. These guys dont play like that theythey want to return to the days of Ronald Reagan, and they think they will. And theres a sense ofeven though theres a sense of beingtheres somewhat a sense of being an underdog and that they feel like thetheyve battled a liberal press, they feel like theyve battled liberal groups that are wellfunded and have a better standing with the press in washington, they also believe themselves part of the process, winners. Theyretheyre partitits not an accident that they really became an important part of the Republican Party. Cspan well, lets talk abouta little bit about them. GroGrover Norquist comes from what erawhathow old is he . Whats he like . Is he married . Does he have kids . Guest right. Grover is actually famous for his bachelorhood. He hahas a group house on capitol hill that has served as a kind of nesting ground and Party Central for his fellow comrades, as he calls them. Hehe useshe borrows a lot of leninistmarxist rhetoric to make his point. Grovers interesting because hes the son of an engineer, and he looks athe looks at politics as systems. When he waswhen he was fighting the Clinton Healthcare plan, for example, he viewed that ahe said, clintons Healthcare Plan was an attempt to put more democrats on the payroll, because government workers vote democratic and its going to expand the government. Thats how he views politics, like systems. And hes got a lot of that thinking himself. He went to harvard. He came down to washington, started with the National Taxpayers union, went back to harvard to finish his hahis mba, really just to satisfy his father. He grew up in a very, very tony suburb of boston, beautiful area, where ias i point out in the book, its the kind of regulation that grover hateszoning and everything. Actually, its a lot of very nice suburbs withwithout the trash you usually see with suburbs. Its a lot of strict zoning, twoacre plots. Cspan did you go there . Guest yeah, i went there. I went to his parents home and its beautiful. Cspan what did his parents think when you showed up . Guest well, i had made an appointment with them beforehand. Cspan but i meanbut what did they think of the idea of talking about theirtheir son . Guest they werethey were very happy to talk about their son and themselves. They were shy, though. Theres a shyness and discomfort with people that i think we also see with grover. Grover norquist is very good at dealing with groups of peoplegroups of people, asas somebody in the book said. Groups of gun owners, groups of tax activists. But hes not really good ononeonone. And it kind of has led him into someas some of his Friends Point out, led him to misjudge people along the way. But his parents were quite forthcoming, and pulled out theirtheir own college yearbooks. His father told me the story of how he picked out his wife. He pulled out hishe pulled out the yearbook. He was interested in a wife with these qualities, 15 qualities, the angular face and republican and a nonsmoker. And he looked at the Honor Society at the university of michigan, and he picked out who he would be interested in dating and called her. And that was it. Cspan how long have they been married . Guest a long time. I mean, theytheybackdating back to the 50s. Theyve been married a long time, and had a nice family life. Hishis father is a polaroid executive. Cspan now David Mcintosh, the congressman running for governor of indiana. Guest thats right. Cspan republican against frank obannon. Guest right. Cspan . Whos the incumbent whatswhats his story . Guest he iscomes from a small town in indiana. He lost his father when he was five years old. Actually, they were living in San Francisco at the time. His mothers a nurse. And this is interesting, too, because i think a lot of liberals think that republicans and conservatives just come from elite backgrounds, and most of these guyswell, nothalf of them dont. And hes a good example. His mother struggled. She had four children. He was the oldest, and he was kind of in charge of them. Very unathletic boy, but brilliant. Would sit in thein his room reading math books while the kids outside were playing. And theyd say, david, come out, and he wouldntyou know, he wouldnt come out. Hehis family was known forhis mother expected hisher children to be able to debate, to build a fine argument, a reasoned argument, and theythis was a trait handed down from her side of the family, known as theslows was her last name. And they called the slows slayers, the peoplethethe folks in the family who could really argue the best. And if you couldnt make a good argument at the table and stand up and reason your way out of an issue that you wanted to defend, you could be laughed off the table. So thatthat trait is part of his family and led to him being quite articulate, but also, this led to him being a bit combative and moving in towards debate. Cspan where did he go to school . Guest he went to the yalehe went to yale. And what i started to say, hehelike a lot of conservatives on campus in the 70s, he moved into the Debate Society because on campus in the 70s, liberalism really did hold sway. It wasitit held the moral high ground, if you will, and a lot of conservatives were written off asthis idea of Political Correctness that we talked about in the 80s and 90s, a term that wasnt even invented in the 70sthe most striking thing about my research was to what extent liberal orthodoxy held sway on particularly elite campuses. If you had conservative views, you could be dismissed, ignored, laughed at. David actually started as a democrat, but because of the liberal orthodoxy on thehe and likeminded colleagues felt at yale, they moved in the direction of what was known as the party of the right in the yale political union, which was willing to debate really fundamental issues, wawas willing to have adventurous debates, was willing to risk being called even antidemocratic or racist, for example, if they challenged affirmative action policies. And this appealed to david, this challenging of conventional wisdom. And he took that and he went to that great school, the university of chicago law school, wherewhere great minds do challenge conventional wisdom, particularly in the 70s. Very free marketoriented school. Graduated from there and went on to become a foe of regulation. He worked for Vice President quayle on the Competitiveness Council and so on. So itdoing away with the regulation became his kind of forte. Cspan one of the things we learn in your book, thatbothall of these fourfive men have people in their past, writers, that they admire. But also, there are all kind of groups. You mentioned Grover Norquists wednesday meetings. Then also around David Mcintosh, the Federalist Society. Guest thats right. That. Cspan you cover a lot of the Federalist Society. What are they, who started it . Guest yeah. David was a cofounder of the Federalist Society, actually, with some of his colleagues from yale; Steven Calabresi and lee liberman. Theyit started as a student group, but it soon got funding from bill simons organization. Cspan former secretary of the treasury. Guest former secretary of treasury, which was athe olin foundation, a very big conservative funder. By the way, Irving Kristol was also involved in this and getting funding into this group early on. And in the 80s, it became a real clearinghouse for anybody who was conservative, who wanted to work for the Reagan Administration as a judge, as a clerk and so on. It became much more of a professional society as well as a campus society. And today, it still, as you know, is ais an important fixture on the washington scene and elsewhere, andand and ana very important fixture inin the conservative legal movement. Cspan where did Clinton Bullock grow up, and where did he go to school . Guest Clint Bullock grew up in new jersey, the son of a welder. His father died when he was 12, and his family also struggled financially. Interestingly, clint went to ucdavis law school the year after the famed bakke decision. Cspan california. Guest in california. Andso that at the timethe bakke decision, of course, waswas athe socalled angry white male challenging affirmative Action Programs. And the Supreme Court eventually said the ucdavis medical School Program went too far, but generally, affirmative Action Programstaking race into consideraation is ok. Clint went to davis at a time when the campus was very prickly and sensitive about issues of race, and really wanting to prove its commitment to diversity. He got caught up in a very interesting subplot going on at the davis law school, where he was the lone opponent of the affirmative Action Program there. It was a very lonely, very bitter battle for him. Cspan whats he like . Guest hes actually a very idealistic person. I know were not supposed to find idealists on the right, but he is. Hes somebody who tends to wear his heart on his sleeve, and he tends to not let these kind of battles roll off him, thatthey hurt. Cspan you said hes a libertarian and a follower of tom paine . Guest thats right. Hes a libertarian, who, of course, we need to distinguish. Iit was difficultthethe terms in this book because libertarians dont always like to be called conservative. Libertarians believe in aas we knowa limited government, people should be left alone. And sometimes, especially in the 70s, when clint ran for a state Assembly Seat as a libertarian in 1980, they would veer left on issues, like drug legalization, for example, or carters draft registration, and theyd veer right on budget issues. So he is a libertarian, although hes come to call himself a Big Government libertarian in that he does view more of a role for government than a lot of the libertarian purists, and often he gets in trouble with them for that reason. Cspan take tom paine for a moment. A lot of conservatives didntdont like him. Guest thats right. Cspan how does hewhy does he like him . Why does he follow him . Guest he likes him because hehe coined aaan important antigovernment sentiment that hethat clint has latched onto he was willing to stand up to the king. He was willing to stand against slavery. He was also, however, a proponent of the french revolution. He was this rootless guy. Hehehe was hardly ahardly a symbol of traditional family values. And i think thats why a lot of conservatives keep saying to clint, dont use thomas paine, really, you know. But clint loves thatthat phrase, that sort of revolutionary phrase. we have the power to begin the world over again, thomas paine said, and clint uses that a lot. Cspan by the way, theyare they all friends . Guest they aresome friends and some bitter rivals. Cspan whos the biggest rival . Guest the biggest rival, i think, is between the circle around Grover Norquist and the circle of thinkers around bill kristol, partly because Grover Norquist tends to be a populist type. He tends to draw thethe gun crowd around him. He tends to talk in a language that we heard a lot in the mid90s, revolutionary rhetoric and so on. Kristol is more of atalks more about virtue and familythe importance of family, and the coarsening of the culturewhich Grover Norquist, you know, listens to janis joplin, you know. I mean, hehe doesnt care about those things. And so there is this kind of undercurrent ofand i think that norquist feels like thethe thinkers around kristolwell, theythey write and they talk and theythey get on these big tv shows, but what have they done for the cause lately . theyre also viewed as a bit disloyal, kristol is, because hes willing to criticize fellow conservatives, which does not go over very well in the norquist camp. And thats probablyfrankly, thats probably the biggest division is the iconoclasm of somebody like bill kristol, who is willing to criticize andoh, during the bob dole campaign, hehe was just a thorn in that mans side through the entire campaign. And that really rankled a lot of loyal republican conservatives. graphic on screen Simon Schuster 1230 avenue of the americas new york, ny 10020 cspan just for a second, because i know that you mentioned a lot of these National Politicians and that they differ on them. Take bob dole, and lets go around the horn before we go on with some of these characters. Clint bullock, what would he have thought of bob dole . Guest clint doesnt usually get involved in republican politics. Hestries tries to stay out. So thats ahe did try to get him to take an antiaffirmative action stance. But other than that, he didnt get real involved. Cspan David Mcintosh. Guest David Mcintosh would be a good, loyal republican soldier, you know, bob doles, you know, fine if he can win. cspan Grover Norquist. Guest same thing. I mean, groverfor all of his revolutionary rhetoric, he wantshes a republican and he wants a republican to be. Cspan ralph reed. Guest ralphof course, behind the scenes, the Christian Coalition did a lot for bob dole, and that rankled the rank and file in the Christian Coalition, the purists, who really supported pat buchanan. That was a difficultthats an untold story. That was a difficultthat was a very difficult time for ralph. Cspan you found some rough edges with ralph reed. Guest yes, ralph isralphtheres two sides of ralph. Theres this kind of hardball, playtowinatanycost politico on one side, and theres this very considered, brilliant strategist with good motivation on the other. And they kind ofthey kind of run together. He went to the university of georgia. Hefirst of all, let me back up a bit. Hehe spent most of his youth in miami. And his fatherbefore that, wahis father was a military man and they moved around. Spent most of his youth in miami. But then he moved to a small town in georgia for the last three years of high school. And hes often seen as somebody from the south, small town, bible belt. In fact, he didnt fit in at all. He did not fit in with this bible belt town at all. They saw him as this mouthy, little guy who was just willing to elbow anybody aside to get where he wanted to go. He was not wellliked at high school. He went to the university of georgia. He built the College Republicansin 1980 when Ronald Reagan came in, he built the repCollege Republicans from about five people. They used to call themselves the closet republicans. they could all fit in a closet. He built them into a powerhouse on campus. He washe was brilliant at doing this. At the same time, there was the other side of ralph. He stole the College Republican election. Cspan how . Guest hehe packed the room. He changed the constitution offor the group so that you could sign up that day and become a member and, therefore, vote. And he went out and he solicited all theseparticularly, Fraternity Brothers whohe wasnt in a fraternity, but he shed solicit from the frats and promise them a beer keg party afterwards. Andgive me your five bucks, or he even, apparently, kicked in the five bucks if they couldnt pay. Cspan but it was legal. Guest it was legal, yeah. It was legal. Cspan . That he got the constitution changed. Guest that hehe got the constitution changed. It was very upsetting to the people around him, though. Very upsetting, that theythat the meeting at which theythey voted his ally in instead of thethe original candidate, whichhe was trying to get his ally elected. There were tears. There was anger. The main group of College Republicans broke off and became young republicans, they were so angry. It wasit was an ugly period for him. He was also fired for plagiarism at thefrom the school newspaper, where he wrote some terrific, brilliant columns, but also some that just went over the edge. But the plagiarism incident was the most difficult. Cspan what did he plagiarize . Guest he plagiarized a review of aof the gandhi movie. Andand thewe all remember gandhi, the moviethe richanrichard attenborough movie that came out inwhat was it . 1982. And hehe wrote a review of it, and he quoted verbatim this review in commentary. And i actually went back and checked both, and itsits a pretty Fair Assessment that he took huge pieces of it. And that was a very difficult time for him. He was distrusted enough on campus that the Debate Society, the verythethe Debate Societyit was known as the demosdemosthenian societythey blackballed him the first time he wanted to get in. Literally, they voted members in by placing in black balls and white balls. When he first applied to be a membernow here was the guy who wrote brilliant columns, could debate, you know, circles around anybody and should haveand had a lot of friends in the societyshould have been elected. But one of his friends stood up and said, we cant trust him. We dont trust him. cspan howd you find all this out . Guest i interviewed all these classmates of his, most of his friends. Cspan had this ever been printed before . Guest no, it was interesting. I was really surprised for all the profiles that have been done of ralph, how many people hadnt been interviewed. And these are friendsvery Close Friends of his from that time, who saidin fact, the friend who stood up to give the speech said, this was the hardest time in my life because i felt like he was a friend. But iand i knew him to be a friend, but ii didnt thinkii was worried that he would drag the society down into the mud. well, just to finish the story to be fair to ralph, he mended his ways in the eyes of the society, and they did elect him in a year later. Cspan we see glimpses of himandand you can put the words on itinin automobiles as a kid running around, drinking. Guest right. Cspan . Screaming out the windows, and stuff like that. Guest right. He was the guhe was the lamp shade guy, the guy that was justwould go wilder, was edgier. There was this danger in ralph, which ii say in the book, in a bigger boy, might have been syphoned off into sports, but he wasnt athletic. He was small, and hethere was thisthis dangerous edge to him. One friend told a story aboutyes, where theyhe drove aroundthey were in the back of a pickup truck and hed shoot blanks at people with his rifle to scare them on a saturday night. There was the other story about him walking along a ravine with a couple friends and he just threw himself over the ravine just for laughs, to shock everybody. But there was this shock value. In fact, one of the things i write about in the book was this outpouringat the university of georgia, this outpouring of sentiment over the iranian hostage situation, where people came outstudents came out angry, furious, feeling like america was kowtowing to thesethese hitheseto theto the terto these terrorists, andwhich i thought was fine. I mean, thats a normal atthealthy reaction to this. But then, people were carrying signs like, nuke em. you know, lelets nuke the students going tothey wanted to kick out the iranian students at the university of georgia. It got very edgy and ugly and ralph was taken with that. He liked that. And i thought that washe was drawn to that. And so itthe fact that he washe was drawn to this kind of edgy side made a lot of his friends nervous about him, even in the College Republicans, wherehehe and Grover Norquist went on to the national College Republicanswell, grover was already thereand basically turned it into a communist cell of the right. They purged the leadership of all the moderates. They built up aa system where thethe conhardcore conservatives would be in control. They changed the constitution to elto eliminate entire bodies where the moderates were on. In fact, conconvinced moderates to vote themselves out of office. So before you knew it, in the 80s, you had this College Republican organization with 1,000 members nationwide, access to republican moneywhich the Republican Party wasnt very happy about, by the way, because theythey were angry and felt like they were wasting moneybut access to republican money, and running some real hardcore campaigns. Cspan whats the average age of these folks . Guest the average age is late 30s, early 40s. Cspan what is thethe messageifif youre a young person watching you discuss these folks, and youre interested in politicsforget whether theyre republicans or democrats or libertarians or conservativeswhats the message about how you get involved, based on what you found with these five . Guest they all got involved in college. They all got involved in college, and they all got involved rethethe one thing that motivated them was the fact that they felt like they were not able to speak, that they werethat they were notthey were being shut out of the process. And theythey went in and they made themselves a part of the process. Cspan is there anything about their background that all comes together . Are they from a similar background in any way . Guest theyre fromthats thethats thethats what i like about this group, is theyre actually from very different backgrounds. Youve got bill kristol from a very elite background. His father is Irving Kristol, the neoconservative, his mother is a wellknown victorian scholar. He grew up in manhattan. Cspan b. Himmelfarb, a better nickname for him. Guest byes, exactly. Im sorry, b. Himmelfarb. He went to a very tony and upscale and intellectually rigorous prep school, went to harvard. Very much a part of the establishment if you will. And then theres somebody like clint bolick, whos the son of a welder from new jersey. Cspan so youve got two harvards, one yale, one usuc davis. Guest right. Cspan . Near sansacramento and the other one from the university of georgia. What about grades . Guest they all were pretty good grades. They werethey werethese are smart people atatthe other thing they did, going back to your earlier question, as i think about it, they tended to have mentors. They tended tofor example, bill kristol at harvard, a very famous straussian named harveyharvey mansfield really shaped his thinking. Cspan stillstill going at harvard. Guest hes still going at harvard. And somebody like clint bolickhis mentors are very interesting. One was a city councilman in his new jersey town who is the lone republican but was mnot much of a republican. He used to say, when you vote for the donkey or the elephant, thats what you get. but waswas very much an embattled battler, if you will, of thethe democratic machine in the town. And he had a very sad ending in which thethe machine leaked some material about his personal life that destroyed him. Anyways, clint sought him out as a mentor; later on, sought out claClarence Thomas as a mentor. Clarence thomas was a godfather to. Cspan at the eeoc . Guest at the eeoc. Heshe and Clarence Thomas would talk for hours about Clarence Thomas grandfather and his experience trying to start a business. And this really shaped clints approach to politics. Cspan what about David Macintoshs mentor . Guest David Macintosh had ahis mentorsa lot of his mentors i think were peers. They were the fellow founders of this Federalist Society who had grown up in more intellectually elite circumstances than he had he, of course, you know, rose quickly to their level. Another mentor, though, of his was Richard Epstein at the university of chicago, who believes that regulation basically isis theft of somebody else. That thetransferring assets, whether its welfare payments or a progressive tax system, takes away from somebody else, and therefore, shthat person should be compensated. Cspan what about ralph reeds mentor . Guest ralph reed didnt really have a mentor. I washehe was vhe really looked up to Grover Norquist. When he was a College Republican, he very much looked up to Grover Norquist and the chairman of the College Republicans at the time, a guy by the name of jack abramoff, whos also very active still here in town. He looked up to them, but as far as an older mentor, he didnt really have that. In fact, hishe went to emory and got his phd in history, and his professor there was a liberal, dan carter, who saw in ralph a very brilliant writer, somebody who could put together eloquent arguments and knew history. Cspan who did you come close to picking that you didnt to profile out of the gang of five . What awas there close to being a gang of six . Guest actually, there was a gang of seven. Cspan who were the other two . Guest well, one was a womanii dont know if ii dont want to say it because id probablyshe dsheshe decided she didnt want to do it, so i dont want to, you know, go down that road. The other person was john fund, who is an editorial writer at the wall street journal, and that was a difficult decision. There wasii dropped him really just because we needed to cut, there were too many characters to follow and a lot of his views could be seen through others, such as Grover Norquist. Heand he figures fairly prominently in the book anyways. But one thing i didnt dotheyre all men and theyre all white and itthat bothered meyou know, i kept trying to think, should i just pick somebodyshouldshoulddo i have to have a woman in here . and i thought at the end of the day, no, im not going to force this. Theseeach of them are in there for a reason. Each of these men represents a different piece of the movement, a Different School of thought. And they also are of a generation. Theyre that tail end of the baby boom generation, and they tell a generational story. and their stories are interwoven enough that i can narrate a story through the 70s, 80s and 90s that keeps the readers going. This isnt just profile, profile, profile. Thisi interweave their stories so you can understand things and make it, you know, a little more novelistic, a little more interesting. Cspan what was the reason the woman didnt want to participate . Guest she was going on to other things and wanting toyou know, she was having a baby and so forth and just moving on. Cspan so if theydidwere you concerned that they werent going to cooperate, it wasnt worth doing the profile is what youre saying . Guest yes. I mean, sheshe was not going to cooperate, it was clear, so it wasnti wasnt going to force that issue. Cspan when did you start the book . What year . Guest i started the book in 1996. I put together a 60page proposal inlets see, it was early 1996. It went out for bid in the spring. Two houses were interested simon churschuster and warner books. Simon schuster ended up with the contract. Andand so it wasit was a fouryear project. Cspan and you start, and you acknowledge in the back, theres a young ladyi dont know if shes youngbut a woman at catthe cato institute, which is a libertarian group, who played aa role in this. Guest anna mccollister. Shesshes very important to this because it was her idea initially to take a look at the conservative movement through a more humanistic perspective, to look at these people as people. And shes a libertarian. And shes a libertarian. Shes no longer at the cato institute, but she had some Health Issues and wasnt able to concontinue on the project, but she reallyshe came to me with the ideasort of the broad idea. It wasi turned into thisthis kind of narrative of these five figures. But she was the one who saw that this was fresh territory and would make an interesting story. Cspan where do you come from originally . Guest i come from los angeles, outside los angeles. Cspan wherewhered you grow up . Guest i grew up in a suburb of los angeles called palos verdes. I went to school at uc berkeley i worked on the daily cal there i was managing editor of the daily cal. And i came to washington right after graduation. Cspan what about your own family . Guest too houtoo far away. Cspan whatwhat are your parents involved in . Guest my father is acomes from aerospace, an engineer. And he is now retired. And my mother was araised us. Cspan how many . Guest there was four of us. Threemyi have an older brother, a younger brother, kind of right in a row, and then we have our caboose, my sister marty, whoscame along 12 years after everybody else. Cspan and so when did you get interested in journalism . Guest i got interested in journalism right in college. I just started writing for the school paper and it never left my blood. In fact, at one point, itin school, it cauat berkeley, i volunteered for a congressman for a while and realized this was not for me. I. Cspan which one . Guest dellums. Cspan what was that like . What impact did that have on you . Guest justii just didnt wantit just wasnt what i was interested in. I think im more of an observer than an advocate and always have been. Im not an activist or an advocate. Imii do better at telling stories and observing, and thats what id like to do. Cspan what impact did ucberkeley have on you . Because anybody listening says, berkeley, these are conservatives. thats a big liberal institution. Guest well, thats right. I think itthere was definitelyfunny when i look back on this. This is my generation. Thethese folks are my age. And when i look back, there was definitely a liberal orthodoxy on campus. The daily cal, which i worked for anand helped run, was very much dismissive of conservative views. So iand i didnt really think about it at the time. I justthat wasthat was the way it was, you know. And iit took awhile to, i think, become more openminded about other points of view. But berkeley wasit was a terrific institution and lively andi mean, itsits a terrific place to be. Cspan because you spent so much time in here on the impact of college on these five, what impacted you in college . Did you have a teacher, did you have a philosopher, somebody that you followed . Guest well, berkeleys a big school, so no. I think really the impact was thetheagain, working on the campus paper. I studied political science. I studied third world development, and i didnt end up going that direction. I was much more interested in foreign affairs, and i thought i would move in that direction and i didnt for a variety of reasons. Butbut i think thatsthats where my interests lay at the time. Cspan howd you get to washington . Guest i came to washington, i answered an ad iat the school of journalism looking for writers for ralph nader. And it turns out that the man who became my husband placed that ad andRon Brownstein. I came to washington as a journalist for ralph. I worked on his personal staff. And again, i didnt come as an activist. I was rereluctant, to some extent, to coto come work for ayou know, an activist group like that, but it was the opportunity presented. And it turned out to be terrific because we were given wide breadth to write opeds, magazine articles. Were covering national politics, and were doing this at 22 years old. We wrote this book, reagans ruling class, which profiled the top 100 people in the Reagan Administration. Because the assistant to Caspar Weinberger at the time, the defense secretarybecause he had been a naders raider back in the early 70s, he got us an interview with Caspar Weinberger. We used that to get interviews with everybody from William Casey to frank carlucci. I mean, it was justwe got probably 60 interviews out of those 100. Cspan who was the naders raider that worked for Caspar Weinberger . Guest it was robert taft. Cspan fourth . Guest fourth i think, yeah. Cspan great grandson. Guest yes, i believe. Cspan . Of William Howard taft. Guest i believe so, yes. Andso we were able to get these interviews. We diput enormous amount of leg work in, which you have a lot more energy i think when youre that young, and came up with this book that was a bestseller in washington. And again, we were 23 years old it was a terrific opportunity. Cspan how did it come that Ron Brownstein had placed the ad and then how did you meet and get married . Guest well, he justhe likes to tell the story of how he included thathe was looking for writers and he included that berkeley thing at the last minute asas a chanceasas those things happen. Heanyways, i came out to washington and we worked together, we wrote that book together, and thats how we. Cspan what was he doing . Guest he was working for ralph nader as well. Cspan now Los Angeles Times gets in this somewhere. Guest yeah. Ii worked for ralph a short while, a na year and a half, anand decided i really needed to be a journalist journalist. And i wanted toat the time, it was really important for journalists to specialize, and i was really interested in getting my feet on the ground as far as business reporting. So i worked for legal times covering the sec and a number of reregulatory agencies. Then i worked for the american banker, an independent financial paper. Again, i covered the savings and loan crisis, if you remember, in maryland. I covered thosei got to be in on the entire savings and loan crash of the 80s, the wholewhen the whole system crashed. Covered a lot of that. It was actually quite exciting. Went to businessweek in los angeles and then decided that that wasnt really for me. And i had been writing some freelance pieces for the Los Angeles Times sunday magazine, and i went to shelby coffey, the editor of thethe Los Angeles Times who i knew to be a fan of my writing, and i said, please, shelby, gigive me a position here and he did. And i covered entertainment. That was what was available at the time. I covered enthe Entertainment Industry for a few years and then went to the sunday magazine. And thats where i was really able to do the kind of work that resonated with me. Cspan how long were you and Ron Brownstein at the la times together . Guest together. Well, i started work there first. He hadhe was at the los anthe National Journal for many, many years. I started at the la times two years before he did, and hes still there and im not. Iid have to add up the years i dontsix years or something cspan and there are a couple of kids in the middle of all this. Guest theres a couple of kids. Weve got two sources of Boundless Energy and enthusiasm for life. One is taylor, whos 10 years old, and one is danny, whos six, and theyretheyre a lot of fun and they were very patient with mom through this whole process. Thebooks are more overwhelming than people expect them to be when they go into it, i think. Cspan going back to the fiveClinton Bolick, David Macintosh, bill kristol, ralph reed and Grover Norquistwhat other new things did you find out that no ones ever written about these people that you think will be helpful for people trying to understand them . Guest well, bill kristola very important thing to understand about the school of philosophy that he comes fromthese are not people of faith, shall we say. Religionthey believe in religion for other people but not for themselves. So this whole crop of graduate students, these straussians, followers of leo strauss, the philosopher, who by the way, believed that a virtuous citizenry is much more important than equality oror opportunity or all these other things that weve come to believe are important. Cspan when did he live, by the way . Guest he lived until 1973. He washe was a german philosopher who came to the united states, andand bill kristol was sort of the Second Generation of straussians. And these folks became quite influential, particularly in the Reagan Administration. Cspan diddid leo strauss teach bill kristol or did he know him . Guest no. Heheno. Hehebut heone of his proteges, harvey mansfield, who was aas i said before, a very preeminent straussian at harvard, taught bill, and that wasthat was key. But whats interesting about the straussians isandand i think very much not knownis they defend religion up and down thetheyve defended even the creation battlethe procreationists in kansas. They defended the religious right in the sein the 90s, but they themselves are not religious. Cspan what about ralph reed cspan what about ralph reed now . Heif hed started thewith amr. Robertson the Christian Coalition. Is he aa religious person . Guest ralph found faith in 1993. He became born again. And he. Cspan whats that mean . Guest he decided to turn his life over to jesus and, you know anand that to be his motivating factor in life. He was not a big churchgoer before that. He was, at the time, really living dangerously, living on the edge, if you will. And this came at a very, i think, important time in his life. Cspan is he religious now, do you think . Guest he is still religious he, you know, goes to church. Heshis wife is religious. Yes, they go evevangelicala protestant evangelical church. Cspan you did tell us about his wife. Guest yes. Cspan . Who he met whenwhen she was. Guest joanne, yes. Cspan . She was, like, 16. Guest uhhuh. Yes. She was very young. They marriedshe was very young. Theyi think he waited till she was 18 or 19 to get married, but theythey met vewhen she was 16 and he was 25, i believe. Cspan howd they meet . Guest they met at A Jesse Helms victory celebration in 1984, and she had her eye on him and she watched him for years. And he knew she was too young and stayed away until it was more appropriate. But they started going out after her high school graduation. Cspan so you found that they were for religion but not religious, the five. Guest no. That would be just bill kristol just bill kristol. Cspan oh, just bill kristol. Im sorry. Guest im sorry. Cspan what about the religion of the others then . Guest that religionand thatsClinton Bolick, for example, was atheist most of his life. He now describes himself as a recovering atheist. But hehe was very much in the ayn rands libertarian school ofand beland was atheist. Cspan bby the way, ayn randi mean, a loi want to ask you about a lot of the names of people thatthat wrote books. Diddidhow many of them followed somebody like ayn rand . Just Clinton Bolick . Guest im sorry, onon. Cspan how many followed her . I mean, difollowed her writings . Guest in the book or inin general . Cspan you know, in their lives. Guest oh, their lives. Cspan i mean, of these five. Youyou name leo strauss. Guest right. Cspan . Which is bill kranybody else follow leo strauss besides bill kristol . Guest no. Of the five in there, no. But what i did in there isbut a lot of other conservatives did. So what i did with the book is, you know, kristol represents the straussians, and lets understand where theyre coming from because theyve had an enormous impact on the conservative movement. Clint represents libertarians. Lets see where theyre coming from. David macintosh, chicagos school. Lets see where that goes. Cspan well, who, in the Chicago School, would they have followed that wrote books back then or still writes booyou know, what are their names . Guest again, epstein wasim talking about the legal side, so im not going tothe economistthe Chicago School economists. I wont get into, but scalia, the Supreme Court justice, borkrobert bork. Cspan so David Macintosh is following that crowd from the university of chicago. Guest exactly. Cspan . Law school. Guest right. Cspan but you also mentioned people like Milton Friedman. Guest right. Cspan who followed Milton Friedmans thought . Guest well, Milton Friedman only enters thehe, of course, the libertarian free marketer and so on. He comes into the book mostly as aas somebody for them to look up to in the 70s. But also for somebody like clint bolickhehis work on the voucher movement. He and clint kind of got inwere involved both in that. But iMilton Friedmani dont make him, you know, a huge mentor figure in the book. Cspan you quote him in here. Is that an interview that you had with him . Guest yes. I had an interview at his incredibly beautiful San Francisco apartment. Yes. But we talked mostly about thethis generation of conservatives and how it was different from the previous generation. And he talked a lot about what was going on in the 70s. Pot holes, burlong lines ofat the bat bureaucracies, the sort of disdissatisfaction with government that was so prevalent in the 70s. And so, yes, it became very easy to develop a more conservative viewor antigovernment view. Cspan who followed the Whittaker Chambers book witness . Guest that was Grover Norquist. Witnessi think people need to understand how important witness is to the conservative movement. Whittaker chambers, of course, was thethe former communist operative who came clean and then claimed that alger hiss was also a communist operative. But his book was important to Young Conservatives in the 70s because hiss, at the time, was being defended by the liberalestparts of the liberal establishment, who can stibelieved that he was innocent. He was a speaker on campuses. He was defended by the aclu, even though he had been convicted on perjury charges earlier. So for a young conservative looking at, well, is everything the liberal press tells me really right . and if you read Whittaker Chambers, no. There is thisthis bias ofthere is this conspiracy if youif you will, of these liberal ivy league gentlemen, who keep conservatives like us, anticommunists like us, down and whowho wrote off thethethe whole problem ofi mean, get into thatthe whole problem ofof communist operatives and spying in thein the 50s and 40s. Cspan were there other authors that they followed . Other books that are important to these conservatives . Guest there are. Theretheres sort of a whole canon, if you will, of books that conservatives read and. Cspan still. Guest still. And whats interesting, if youif you subscribe to the amerito the national review, for example, theyll send you a little pamphlet with the constitution and bits of the federalist papers and, you know, maybe some edmund burke. I mean, therethere is this canon of literature from edmund burke on up, with a heavy emphasis on the founding documents, thatthat these folks readand i fini found that quite impressiveandand often, they can quote from. Cspan what about the Weekly Standard, which is the base of bill kristol . Whats that philosophy, other than straussian philosophy . Whowho owns the Weekly Standard . Guest well, rupert momurdoch owns the Weekly Standard, which presents some sticky issues for bill kristol, because if youre looking at the coarsening of the culture, which is one of bill kristols big issues, and youve got Rupert Murdoch, who owns fox network and tabloids and is not exactly promoting a healthy culture for our children, that. Cspan did you get any sense of why he supports the Weekly Standard . Imnot bill kristol but Rupert Murdoch . Whats he after . Guest itits his politics hisi sat next to somebody who was on hismurdochs board atat a dinner, and he just said its his play toy. He likes it. Its hisyou know, heheits his politics and he. Cspan you ever get any sense of how much he spends on it in a year . Guest i dont know that. I know how much heand i cant recall it right nowhow much he put into it initially. Its not making money, but iyou know, keep in mind, liberal magazines dont make money either. The new republic or, you know, nation. This is athese magazines tend to be kept alive by somebody whos, you know, got an interest in it. Or has an interest in. Cspan let me assume that you sit around withfrom time to time, with a group of liberal journalists. Is that an accurate statement . Guest mmhmm. Cspan and now that youve been inside. Guest mmhmm. Cspan . Theydo they ever look to you and say, all right, nina, tell me whats it like inside the conservative movement . guest right. Cspan sometell us something that you know that we dont know. what do you tell them . Guest well, its funny because the wall street journal called me the dian fossey of conservatism. ive come down from the mountains to explain these gorillas in the mist andto theto the liberal establishment. Ii have foundas ive said before, i have found a tendency among liberals to stash these guys in a box marked rightwinger, and thats as far as their interests or knowledge of the movement goes. And as a result, theyre missing a really important piece of the history of this country and theand politics. And what i would tell them is that you need to understand the schools of thought that havethat havethat underpin each of these. Pat buchanan is not the face of modern conservatism. These guys are proimmigration, for example. There are divisions over issues like gays. You will find clint bolick saying, i cant stand the homophobia in the movement and the gay bashing, and you will find somebody like bill kristol saying thatthat the Gay Rights Movement is the most important and troubling movement in theyou know, the recent political history. You know, that this is something that we dont understand. Thethethe breakdown of family, or however he would couch it, is something that were really not even going to understand until later but this is something we need to focus on anand do it. Cspan what about personally . Guest personally, i think thereit tends to be what holds these together, these kind of. Cspan no, more soi mean what did you find out about theyou know, were there hornsdid they have horns whenwhen you got up close to the families and all that orhow do they treat other human beings . Guest i think, again, it varies. I think itthats the problem with sticking them in a box marked rightwinger. I think it varies very much. You haveitit variesthey were all very approachable to me. Ralph reed was not comfortable having me look in his past, but, you know, i mean, he has personal reason for that. And its not easy being the subject of a biography. So itthey were polite. They were forthcoming. Theysome of their families were just lovely. And ii thand then theres people like Grover Norquist who are just so colorful and interesting. I mean, you sit down with this guy and you look at the way his mind works and you stand up and its justits breathtaking. Its justthetheagain, going back to thehow he views everything in thisin the systems, interacting, competing systems, and its just so interesting. Cspan twenty years from now where will these five be . Who wouldwho would you predict would be the most visible in 20 years . Guest i think bill kristol will remain exceedingly visible he knows how to stay visible. Hehe knows, he understandslook, he got fired from abc and hes now on meet the press all the time. I mean, he knows. He understands howvisibility. Frankly. Cspan David Macintosh, will he win anything in politics . Guest David Macintosh, i think, will continue on. I think theyre all going to continue and thats why i chose them. I think theyre all lasting. I dont know if hell win this governors race. Its a tight race, its a popular governor, but i do think well see him in politics. He likes it. He thrives on it. I think well see him continue. Clint bolick is looking forward to the day where he can walk the steps of the Supreme Court to fight a School Choice case that he is convinced will change the lives of innercity children throughout america. And who did we leave out . And ralph reedmaybe ralph will wontrun for office someday, who knows . Cspan were out of time. Our guest has been nina j. Easton and the book looks like this. Its called the gang of five leaders at the center of the conservative crusade. Thank you very much. Guest thank you. One of the major discoveries of 90 million. In at 1800 currency was taking out on the place there was a lot of money they say there were more millionaires per capita then here in helena than any other place but that has never been proven. It is a legend but it is a place where you can see the wealth that was poured into the community in the 18 eighties and eighties and nineties it got the queen city of the rockies nickname because of that