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Transcripts For CSPAN3 The Presidency 20150117

explores the 54-year marriage between john and abigail adams. she uses the couples letters as evidence of their strong and successful partnership. professor gist spoke at a celebration of john and abigail adams 250th wedding anniversary in massachusetts. this 45 minute event was co-hosted by the massachusetts historical society and the abigail adams historical society. >> and i am thrilled and honored to present our keynote speaker she's a stanford university historian and a senior scholar at the institute for gender research. she is the author of numerous articles reviews in books. among them are of course the world of abigail adams, which won the herbert feist award from the american historical association. also abigail adams a rising life and her most recent book having to do with the adams is abigail and john portrait of a marriage which she will discuss today. this book was a finalist for the george washington prize. edith has appeared widely in the media, talking about the adams. and she's also been on the c-span first lady series. she's currently working on editting a collection of abigail adam's letters for the library of america. so, i would like you to welcome her. [cheers and applause] >> according to adams family lore, when abigail smith married john adams on october 25, 1764, the reverend smith, abigail's father preached a sermon on a text from matthew. for john came neither eating wed or -- charles francis adams recorded the story in his grandmother's memoir and explains the reverend's choice of text as his response to the weymouth congregation. he suggests that a portion of the parisher ins thought that the son of a small farmer of a middle class was scarcely good enough to match with the minister's daughter, descended from so many of the shining lights of the colony. the reverend smith message may have included his more personal reflections which charles francis preferred to disregard or excuse. for many reasons, the reverend smith and his wife elizabeth may have disproved of the marriage of their middle daughter. abigail was not yet 20 years old when she married. young for the middle of the 18th century, where on average women married at the age of 22. further, she appears not to have had previous suitors to john adams whom she met when she was 16. that adams was a full 10 years her senior may have weighed as an advantage had he been other than a lawyer. but abigail's roots went deep into the colonial elite. her mother's family were quincy's norton's, shepherds. the solid bedrock of massachusetts society. the smith's family while more recently arrived, represented the other respectable strain of new england society. the merchant class. adams' father was a farmer and a shoemaker. so given either presental or social disapproval of the match, it is clear that abigail smith acted upon her own will when it came to marriage. she chose to marry john adams because she loved him and because she believed that they were compatible. during their more than three years of courtship, she had measured his character, tested her own intuition, as he had in return and in the end, abigail believed that she could live her lifetime in partnership from which there is no escape. the adams' marriage has become legendary in american history. just the mention of abigail and john calls forth an image of an ideal marriage, one founded upon love, loyalty, friendship and courage. which in many respects it was. but the adams' marriage is for other reasons. it appears modern. in fact it has many of the attributes of a modern marriage. it was a love match that endured. it produced at least one famous son and established a dynasty of great citizens. it overcame adversity and tact. it was a match of intellectual equals lending legitimacy to the claim of womans status. above all, the adams' marriage is idealized because abigail is available. probably the most available first lady until the mid 20th century, because her correspondent has survived. no other correspondent of this magnitude by a woman of her era exists which makes her our best chronicler of the american revolutionary period from a woman's point of view. further, the survival of this correspondent is what makes the adams' marriage appear more modern than it was. the ideal as we read it into the letters surviveses a a testimony to an ideal correspondents, if not an ideal marriage. in fact, scholarship and history and anthropology makes it clear that all human institutions are functions of the culture in which they exist. marriage, as much as anything else. 18th century new england was no exception to this rule. and the prevailing culture of the world into which john and abigail married was that of their pure tan forebearers. while pure tainism has transformed and modified overtime into a more 18th century. its characteristic in terms of marriage was pate yarky. the adams' marriage was predicated upon its existence within this. when abigail chose to marry john it was the most spectacular act of will available to her for the remainder of her years. never again would she make a decision of that magnitude to control the direction of her life. there existed no easy exit clause from her decision once the vows were taken. she had little control over the kind of wordship reformed ore over he reproductive life. marriage with her obligations became her destiny in that world. the rules that followed from the existing also prescribed very clear separation of male and female spheres, and these spheres were not equally but were organized. in her famous statements requesting john to remember the ladies she closed her remarks by writing -- regard earth then as being placed by providence under your protection, and in imitation of the supreme being make use of that power only for our happiness. the lens through which abigail viewed her world revealed a devinely prescribed -- and his choice about place, manner and style. abigail accepted that world. she wrote i believe nature has assigned each sex duties and to act well your part, there all the honor lies. at the same time, abigail was neither slave nor servant and she knew that as well. she had leverage within the marriage bond, both because of her character and john's. and because the patriarchy that existed in new england was flexible. the physical magnetism that charged their early companionship remained alive, mellowed into tender familiarity and a deep loving commitment. and rather than contracting under the weight of domestic drudgery, the scope of her knowledge developed over her lifetime so she wame wise. both the emotional and the intellectual aspect overflowed from life into letters once they were parted. in addition to patriarchy, hire arky and separate spheres, two additional aspects marked the adams' marriage. they were the concepts of contractalism and of duty. as all of pure tanism was con tractal, that is binding on human relations so marriage was a contract in which there was no easily obtainable exit clause. finally, there's the theme of duty which of all qualities we can discern as primary to the adams' sense of themselves within the human community. duty refers to the principle of virtue and service and sacrifice, as the governing rules of human behavior. in the best sense then, the adams' with their pure tain background represent what historians call the come pain yon marriage. meaning a love match in which their exists enduring friendship and respect. it is for that reason that mere marriage is in the long run idealized. at its best it represents the ideal accommodation of woman to man in western culture. we know this because they wrote all to each other, and we can read quite intimate letters that provide amazing insights into their private lives. as they lived apart for a large portion of their married years letters became their way of maintaining their relationship and sustaining their bond. when they married in 1764, both expected their lives to repeat the lives of their parents, family and friends. and for a decade, this was more or less the case. after the wedding they moved to their brain tree home that john had inherited from his father. their first child was born within the first year, a daughter named abigail for her mother and often called nabby. she was followed at approximately two year intervals by john quincy, susanna, who died after a year, charles, thomas. a last child was stillborn in 1777. all the while john's law practice grew. he traveled the circuit when the courts were in session, and therefore was frequently away from home. abigail remained at home with children and servants. she visited or was visited by her parents, sisters and friends, but often she was lonely. after eight years she wrote to him alass, how many snow banks divide thee and me and my warmest wishes to see thee will not melt one of them. due to john's thriving business they moved twice to boston returning home in 1770 after john apparently had a broke down. then they moved back to boston and this was the pattern then that for their first decade of marriage, john built his law practice and his reputation. and he later wrote i had more business at the bar than any lawyer in boston. abigail gave birth and ran her household. all this occurred within the context of a closely knit extended family. and among many friends. and it was during this time also that abigail met her friend and mentor the great historian and patriot, -- during the same decade of marriage however, public events were taking place and taking on an increasingly dangerous course. the quarrel with great britain was growing which would lead to breach and war. the contest was begun over taxes. it escalated with the tea party and the inposition of the the intoller rabble act. in 1774, john was elected to attend the congress of all the colonies in philadelphia, and for that occasion abigail sewed him a new vest. he rode off to philadelphia with sam adams, robert pain and thomas cushion for an undetermined amount of time, and they didn't know what the duration would be, or what would be his role in congress. and it's important to acknowledge at this point that he wasn't famous and he went off to philadelphia and he wondered how he would measure up to the other delegates, and it was very quickly he discovered that he could speak and that he could project, and that he was one of the big shakers and movers of the first continental congress. and in the end, the congress lasted for more than two months, and john had discovered his power among the delegates. he returned home in november to practice law but the momentum to hostilities was relentless and he was elected once again to the continental congress in philadelphia. by this time lexington and con chord had occurred and the revolutionary war had begun. and except for a few visits home in 1776, 1777, and 1779, the adams' were separated for a decade. john traveled to france twice, the last time in 1779, with his two younger sons. what is important to realize that at no point during this long period was either abigail or john able to predict the duration of their separation. so what may be concluded about the adams' and their marriage during this decade? abigail's role changed in war time as women's roles always change in war time. she became manager of the farm and the director of family finances, which she did for the rest of her marriage. after two years of wrestling with labor and labor shortages and other responsibilities, she rented out the farm to tenants. with her uncle as advisor at first she purchased property and she invested in security. she also began a business, merchandising items that john sent to her. she managed her children's lives, including their education which was very difficult. schools had closed down, she tried to tutor them, she reached the limits of her own ability to teach them, her own knowledge. and variously hired more tutors or sent them off torell tives for their education. she also decided to take the small pox innoculation in 1776. and she said she wouldn't have done it for herself but she wanted to do it for her children. she educated herself, reading in john's library. she famously read charles ray men's great ancient history when she was helping john quincy with his history lessons. but the great correspondents between them had begun. the war ended and john did not return from france. so she finally traveled to europe in 1784 with her daughter to join him. and it was an immense challenge for her. she was rightly fearful of ocean travel, and she was also concerned about her lacking manners and cultures to move in the same circles as john was now accustomed to moving. she wrote, mere american as i am, i do not know how i'll fit in. in fact, during this long hiatus in their marriage, each had hugely different experiences that changed who they were in many ways. john became worldly, moving in high ranks of european society, and diplomatic state craft. abigail remained a pro ventional new england matron. however, she was no longer the naive young woman of 1764, or even 1774. but rather because of her experience as a single mother in war time, she had matured strengthened. so she went to europe and they came together again and this is the most remarkable thing that i can note about their marriage. that marriage came together again when they met after really a decade of separation. with all of the passion interest caring, sympathy, empa thy and generosity of their early marriage. separation had altered who they were but not altered their relationship. so they now became public figures. after 10 months in france they moved to england for two years and then they returned to america, a new constitution had been adopted, john was mentioned for various offices in the new government. even fleetingly mentioned for the presidency. but of course that went to george washington, and john accepted the vice president si. abigail would have preferred retirement. she would have preferred it because she wanted, because it was her style. her personal style to live in a much more local and personal community. but her health wasn't good, and one of the remarkable things throughout her letters is her declining health and the immense amount of illness that they all lived in, all of the time. but she wanted also to be with her family and live among her children and her grandchildren. but john could not resist the call of duty, and probably ambition. he had expected a role and he settled on the vice president si. abigail as always overcame her reservations and went along. she lived in a patriarchy where men's decisions became a woman's destiny. at a personal level as well she understood him completely and she believed the nation needed him specifically. she had long rationalized his leaving the family as destiny. the war and the new nation would not survive without john's active participation. it was her way of thinking, with her it was an article of faith that grew out of her deeply religious convictions and perspective. it was his duty to serve, and thus it became her duty to sacrifice. john served two terms as vice president, abigail was with him in new york city, which was the first capitol, and then in philadelphia for three years, and then returned home for the following five years of his vice president si. he served one term as president she was there as often as health and her home care commitments permitted. and then the presidency ended in 1801 and they retired. we often hear that retirement is not -- and old age are not for the faint-hearted, and that is certainly the case for the adams'. at first abigail was concerned could john retire? what would his life be like without politics? and she discovered very quickly that he returned to the earth and to the ground and returned to farming. and she returned to her domestic household and friends. there were always people living with them. family members, thomas and his family lived there for a while. john quincy and his family came and went. the widow of charles francis lived with them, charles, their third son, the second son lived with them for a long periods of time. they always had grandchildren with them and they had visitors. they were celebrities after all. and people liked to drop in to say hello to the ex president and first lady. they also had financial problems. a collapse in 1803 wiped out of their securities in england that they had purchased in england, so forth. they weren't like the other founders. they had immense family difficulties. charles died in 1801. there was the may sect michigan and death of abigail adams smith, the daughter. abigail herself nearly died several times. there was the absence of john quincy, they longed for him. he was in st. petersburg. and then as they aged family members began to die, and friends died. they stayed together for those last 18 years and when people would request that abigail would come and visit when her daughter would say come visit, she would say no, i won't leave john. there were no long separations again for the last 18 years of their marriage. until abigail died at the age of 76. so what can we say about the marriage? in the end, they had each other. it was a remarkable marriage. what made it work? theirs was a love match that grew into deep commitment over their lifetime. i love speculating about what makes marriage work, every one of us does. the question was asked earlier which was the better marriage. we all have ore ideas, our opinions about it, here are mine. it was a love match that endured and they stayed in love. was it as jim suggested to me clear because they were separated? did separation make the heart grow fonder? there was compatability of legacy of common culture they came from. of religion, intellect. they were both immensely religious, but abigail especially. abigail's letters throughout quote from the bible. she particularly would become more religious in times of an emergency. almost back to the original calvinnists, belief in predestination, a disease that happened was caused because we had done something sinful, or an epidemic, the small pox epidemic caused by something that had been sinful. they shared values. they knew the difference between right and wrong, they had a shared belief system about the difference between right and wrong, and how to do right. they had tolerance for each other's differences, and they encouraged each other's growth. and finally as sara has pointed out, they had humor. they teased and they joked. humor is a method of relating that deescalates potential hot spots. it eases social relations. at critical times, both of them used humor. remember the ladies. a new tribe has arisen to protest. so in the end, the adams' provide us with more than insights about their personal lives and more than a window into an era. they're more than their letters more than their portraits, more than their artifacts. what they're very famous marriage offers us is a moral compass, a guide to behavior that i believe derives from their pure tain background. they owe bahed a set of val -- they obeys a set of values that were tempered by philosophy, that said somethings are right and somethings are wrong. they were people who understood that the highest human calling was that of the idea that individual virtue entailed service and sacrifice for the larger community. they were citizens who sacrifice personal happiness for a lifetime for the greater good. on october 23, 1814, abigail summed up her assessment of marriage to her beloved granddaughter caroline, and she wrote "yesterday completed a half-century since i entered into the married state, then it just your age. i have a great cause for thankless that i have lived so long and enjoyed such a large portion of happiness that has been my lot. the great source of unhappiness that i have known in that time is arisen from the long and cruel separation which was called on in a time of war and with a young family around me to submit to, that you and the rest of my posterity may enjoy the fullest city that has befallen to me, is my sincere wish and prayer of your affectionate grandmother." when she was dying, john wrote to a friend "i wish i could lie down and die beside her." he lived for eight more years, stunningly dying on july 4 1826, the 50th anniversary of the declaration of independence. their marriage had lasted 54 years. in most respects, it was an ideal marriage. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, if anyone has questions for edith, we have our mics in action. >> i have the first question, it is specifically [indiscernible] about john adams relation with his own mother, and how that colored his relationship with abigail? we don't know much about that. >> there are references here and there in his diary and so forth, and so people read into these very few references, what the relationship had been about. so depending on the historian you can read a lot into very little evidence. that is what has happened. i'm sure he had a fine relationship with his mother. everyone tends to blame mothers for whatever goes wrong with kids whatsoever. [laughter] and that is an easy route to travel in our post-freudian age. so in deed, i think his relationship with his mother was just fine, and she lived a very long life, to his presidency and he wrote letters at her death about how much he would miss his mother, that she had been a very kind and warm and generous mother. so that's what. [applause] >> [indiscernible] >> that was her son john quincy who was the linguist. john quincy had many, many languages. john adams -- no, he was great at english. [laughter] he was really fluent. reading john adams is a real pleasure. i think of all the founders, i think he was the greatest of the -- and i think, of course we don't have recordings, but his spoken language -- when he is responsible for the acceptance of the declaration of independence, he spoke, and they say between 2-4 hours, i don't know, it's just extemporaneous -- he had good english. he learned french when he went to france, and he probably played around with dutch when he was in holland, but i don't think he was a very great linguist. she had a little bit of french but she -- and she studied it when she went to france, she read moliere, she read the plays, she went to the theater in an attempt to learn french, but i don't think either of them became as fluent as their son did. >> i had a question about happiness. how did abigail make that transition from braintree to europe and to london? did she enjoy herself over there? >> she was very nervous about it. she was extremely anxious about going to europe, and she was concerned about what she wore, she was concerned about the manners, and what kind of a figure she would strike, she was a quick study. she learned quickly. and she adapted very well. and she was soon entertaining and being entertained, and did she enjoy it? i suppose so, the way one enjoys travel, it is work, and it is different, it is not at home. she certainly made a lot of observations, she studied, she went to museums, she went to various places and took little side trips and so forth, and always recorded for her sisters back at home and for members of the family. i think she was interested in it, i think she loved being at home, and probably like many of us, are very happy to travel and go and see different places, and like being at home. does that answer your question? >> i was wondering, there was a letter and i know you are working closely with the letters now, and i cannot remember the date of it, but it was abigail to her youngest son thomas, in which she is commiserating with him at some level because he is afraid he is going to be an old bachelor, he has not married yet. and in commiserating she says, you know i married too young. now, was she really meaning that she married too young, or was it just trying to make him feel better? >> she possibly was reflecting. that is a good one, jim. you know, she was concerned about all of her children's marriages, and she did lots of meddling, and she did lots of meddling, and it is to her credit that she meddled, because she was trying to protect them and she was looking for ways to ensure that they would have good lives. she knew very well that who you married was her destiny, and how your life would unfold, and happiness in life very much depended on what marriage would be like. nevertheless, she was always promoting it, so she was always on the lookout for a match for thomas, yes, and he donald in -- and he was in philadelphia for a while, and she was saying, are there single women in philadelphia? she did that also for the other children as well. particularly, with thomas, and married a very well. you mentioned thomas and the letters, and i have been reading the letters now very closely and my impression of thomas has changed so much, the youngest son. first of all, there is a lot of that press with her relation with her sons generally. and how thomas's life turned out, thomas was ill a lot of the time, and she identified with that. she said he had inherited the family disease, rheumatism, and he was apparently very ill a lot of the time. she sent him incredible formulae for medical treatments. how they lived with medicines, how anyone survived with the kind of therapies that they suggested, bleeding and purgatives, and on and on -- and thomas was very ill and she cared about him a lot, and he was very happy with nancy, i believe. does that answer your question jim? was that more than you asked? yeah? >> how did john handle those last eight years, was he miserable, was he sick, was he well? >> john continued to live an interesting life, and he was very frail, he was probably blind and deaf, and he had many, many relatives all of the time who live the -- who lived around him and many friends, and he was care for -- cared for by the woman who was abigail's niece who had lived with them for their entire life and she became a housekeeper and so forth. i presume lonely, always, but he interested himself in the world, he carried on this incredible correspondence with thomas jefferson, benjamin rush, and the old founders began a correspondence about what it was like, and they said, no one will ever know what it was like, and once we are gone, they will never understand what it was like. and they were right, we don't, we struggle at understanding what they were like what it was like. you know, it was a good old age. with disease and all of the frailties that come along with aging, and he did it magnificently, and to the very end, he was going to boston, he was a celebrity, he was a very famous man, people came to him and he went to boston. he was invited to the constitution of massachusetts, which was being rewritten, and he was put on the commission to rewrite it but he could not do it, he was not well enough anyway it was a good last eight years, given the constraints. >> you mentioned the puritan church a number of times, and i was just wondering, how much of a role did her faith play and in who she was and her development? >> central, absolutely central. abigail was a very religious woman, and religion played just an immensely important part in her life. intellectually, she knew the bible, she knew it well, she was the daughter of a minister, and she quotes it all the time, and one imagines that she just spoke extemporaneously quoting from the bible and understood it. but her belief system was a very, very deep, and it sustained her absolutely particularly through the deaths of her children, she lived through the deaths of two of her children, charles and abby. religion was of great solace to her. [applause] >> you made a glancing reference to her closeness to her family and circle of friends, could you comment on how her relationship with her two sisters was central throughout her life? >> well, it was, she was very close to her two sisters, she was probably closer to mary and spent more time with mary, they had shared a room together as girls and live together, and -- and lived together, and then mary was two years older than she. and she was i think six years older than elizabeth, her younger sister. she and mary were particularly close, but she trusted her sisters, they were her best friends, they were the people whom she trusted more on this planet, other than john, and whom she shared background and experiences. when she was concerned during the war, the revolutionary war about how to educate the children she had at home, she decided she would send them to elizabeth, whose husband was running a private school. when john quincy's children live d with her in the later years, she sent them to mary to be educated. the letters that someone was talking about that came later during the presidential years with mary, especially, are very revealing about their intimate lives. they could talk to each other. i called my chapter in "portia" the three-fold cord, and that the reference that abigail made to her sisters and to herself. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. thank you again to the first church for letting us hold this symposium here, take you to our amazing speakers, and thank you to you all for coming. thank you very much. [applause] >> you are watching american history tv. 48 hours of history on american history every weekend on c-span3. follow us on twitter http://twitter.com/cspanwj to keep up with the latest news. >> the deadline for the c-span student cam video competition is tuesday. get your entries completed now. a 5-7 documentary on that theme, that three ranches and you for a grand prize of 5000 dollars. for a list of the rules go to studentcam.org. >> next, a discussion of the correspondence between

Transcripts For CSPAN3 Historians As Public Figures 20150201

if you can see -- i cannot do anything about the space. there's some room on the floor. feel free to make yourself comfortable. this is our session on public intellectuals, and i am delighted to be here for this panel. i apologize ahead of time if i have a little less energy than usual. my appendix did not quite make it to the new year so i am just recovering from surgery. this has been a big debate, ongoing debate about public intellectuals in the academy. there was an article by nicholas kristof which triggered a conversation. he wrote an article -- "professors we need you are cope he argued that many people in the academy have in some ways render themselves irrelevant for various reasons using languages fall of jargon or revocation or not asking questions that were relevant to the public, and in some ways fostered a disconnect with the public that is unnecessary and is also unfortunate. he did not say this was true of all intellectuals, but he did argue that public intellectuals are in some ways a dying breed. others responded critically. there are many interesting voices out there and gave many examples in the rebuttal, including members of this panel, just to say that that tradition is alive and well. the point of today's panel is not so much to have a debate about whether he was right a wrong, nor is it to have a debate which is familiar at almost every aha or oah conference for sure about the role of the public intellectual or should historians even be trying to do this. i think most of us and the panel start the assumption. it is a good thing for a lot of us who want to do it, and it has a lot of value. rather than what i wanted to do when i put this together is bring people together who are doing interesting work and ask them about their lives, about their career experience, and give a little auto we all graffiti about how -- a little autobiography about how this works for them and how we can learn about what the public intellectual is through their own experience was up i will just introduce everyone on the panel. i will then begin, and we will go into about 10 minutes of commentary from each person, and then we will have q&a. as you can see, c-span is covering this, so when you ask a question, it might be a trick for some people, but you can get some exercise, if you can vault just to get to the mic to ask but we will figure it out. do not worry. i will start. i am julian zelizer, director of public affairs at princeton university photo i write a weekly column for cnn, and i also write for other outlets and appear on radio and television. i have a new book that is coming up this week with england press called the "fierce urgency of now: lyndon johnson, congress, and the battle for the great society." we then turn to erikc f who is theoner, to which professor at columbia -- we then turn to eric foner, the dewitt professor at columbia. he has written many classics many awards, a lot of this people in this room i think and learn from "free soil, free labor, free men: reconstruction, the story of american freedom," and the new book coming out with norton. right after this, he just told me, you can go to a book signing upstairs in the book exhibit. he is also someone who appears in the areas places, in the media, television, "the colbert report," he has posted up as in newspapers, magazines, and he consults with very is institutions doing public history. we will go to peniel joseph, who is a professor of history attest university and i think one of the i was happy he could participate in this. he's the author of a very good new book that received a lot of attention, and he has become a regular commentator in the national press am a publishing in "new york times" and "washington post." you will see him weighing in on issues in a very serious, smart fashion. we once got on -- in an argument during some debate on the radio. i was very impressed with the conversation. then we have a good friend and great historian of the american left michael kay's and, professor at georgetown university. he's also the editor of " dissent," something i hope he can speak about today. he's a very well-known commentator. he is heard everywhere as well -- television, radio 2008 he helped launch historians for obama. he's been very involved politically, and i think his work his scholarship has become important to the american left in a way that is quite impressive. and finally, to my right we have claire potter. in the world of social media she has had a tremendous impact. she's a professor of history at the new school for social research, the author of "war on crime," she's writing a book about anti-pornography campaigns, and she publishes in many places, but she has a very popular blog that many of you might read called the 10 year radical, which was picked up by the chronicle of higher education, has been an innovative example of what people actually talk about but don't do very well, of how to use social media to offer commentary to offer and foster useful discussions. we will close with her. at the end we will have questions. let's start with comments, and then we will turn to the professor. in my opinion, there's a gate -- great tradition. i don't quite agree with kristof that that tradition is dead. within this discipline for sure, there are many examples of people who really contributes either sporadically or regularly to what we call the public square, broadly defined. there is a wide range now at places in which this happens from scholars who publish in traditional popular outlets like "new york times" to those who are using social media, those who work with museums or are engaged in debate with policymakers. there is no shortage of people, and there's more ways where you can find them. it is an old tradition, certainly in the field of u.s. history you start with bancroft, who was talking to a broader public and figures charles a beard and arthur and your -- arthur/injure -- arthur schlessinger. they write and speak in a fashion compelling to not simply those practicing historians. the other part of the discipline i always found very important is historiography. you are trained as a historian to engage in debate, to question the conventional wisdom even among their own colleagues, to accept the idea that interpretation can be dynamic and always in flux. that training lends itself to someone who will ask those same kinds of questions in a broader arena. one of my formative moments came about when i was trying to decide where to go to graduate school. one of the places i looked at was u penn, to work with michael katz, who unfortunately passed away this year, whose work is for me also an example of how you can reach a broader public. when i went to visit with him i got off the train and i was walking somewhere to get to his office, and there was a big rally of civil rights activists. it was disconnected from u penn, and the person speaking was holding a copy. 48 21-year-old getting into this, it was very impressive to see -- as a 21-year-old getting into this, it was very impressive to see. my time doing this has been much longer than the 15 minutes i thought this thing would last. i really started in the late 1990's. it was during the impeachment of president clinton. one thing i've learned is to always take small opportunities and make connections with good people, good editors, and learn how to do this. i don't see being a public intellectual always as an art. it's also a science, and it is something i've tried to gain mastery over the years. the first thing i did was in 1998 and 1999 during the impeachment, the local cbs station in albany asked me to come into the morning news show. they squeezed me in between the weather and the sports, with a guy named ed o'brien. he had seen i was speaking on campus grade he liked me and started having me on once a month to talk politics. it was a little odd sometimes. they were dressed up in "survivo r" outfits. i did this because i figured this was a part of the way i could learn how to do this medium. i met great editors in my career. as a woman some people here have worked with, allison silver. she was the editor of the "los angeles times" opinion session and the "new york times" week in review, and now i think she said bloomberg. -- she's at bloomberg. she's a great editor. not simply in figuring out what needed to be written, but helping epidemics learn how do you write these kinds of pieces. she taught me things like how do you put some juice into an article. that was the essence. you had to figure out if there was any juice there. if it did not have it, it was going to fall apart. she taught me how to structure the argument and how to move things in directions i probably would not for an academic piece. she taught how to boil things down to the essence in a way where in an academic piece of writing, you would not want to do. she was phenomenal. in some ways, she mentored me in doing this kind of work. i'm forever grateful. i've had an editor at cnn who also has worked with some people here. i been working with him for many years on a weekly basis. i've always looked for people like that, and taken them seriously and valued their work when they took me seriously. then i had some weird opportunities, even weirder than the cvs that i took advantage of. in album you went to a sports bar on a monday night. there was a guy from the local espn doing his radio show live. he did it right before monday night football, roger wallen of espn albany. he said, any jets fans? that's the only thing probably harder than having your appendix burned, is being a jets fan. i raise my hand. he said, come on up here in -- up. we put the headphones on and we go on the air. he was like, what do you do? i said, i'm a professor. he found this odd that wasn't what he was expecting. he liked it, and he had me on. he said, can you come next monday? he had me every monday night. the professor took calls about the new york jets. i did it for 2 or 3 years. it wasn't what i write about, but i always tell people -- i said i learned something from this too, i will take it seriously. i learned a lot about radio, the rhythm and timing of radio interacting with the host live on the air. that was extremely helpful. i e-mailed him to tell him that. those kinds of people and opportunities i have found to be really important. and i have allowed myself to be open to new developments in the media. i was never a guy who's going to be stuck with am i in the "new york times" or not. i'm fortunate to be in their. -- there. a number of papers isn't the only place i've aimed for. it's opened up many opportunities. i remember in the late 1990's, a guy called me starting this thing. he said, call politico. they were going to be doing online journalism. it was a bizarre concept. i wrote for them. a guy named david mark was my editor there. it turned into a really great experience and introduced me to writing to this new online journalism which is now in many ways surpassed a lot of the older outlets. cnn was the same. my editor asked me, we are starting an opinion page at cnn. they were basically going to do an online page that has the kind of impact newspapers did. i really am grateful to him for asking me, but i think in the world we are in -- we have to have some of that, especially for younger people who are just starting. you do know exactly where this is going. some of these new institutions might become quite important over the coming years great it is always a risk, but sometimes this new form of writing and new organizational outlets can be quite exciting and have an impact on our conversations. there's a lot of outlet for opinion. i'm talking about some of the beneficial things i've learned. one of the things i've tried to do from the start is understanding the world of the academy and the broader public world need different things often right in different ways. -- write in different ways. the role of the public intellectual is to bridge those two worlds. hofstadter is incredible. if you read his books that have such a big impact, he still is very versed in the academic base. i always thought that's what i was trying to do. back to the polarization with politico, that has been a theme i have thought about him anyways, and over and over trying to really explain, what do we learn from political science, what do we learn from historians about how polarization happens in american politics, and how does that add to the conversation of the dysfunction in washington that we are always talking about? there's always questions about what is the legacy of a president going to be. we try to talk about what we learn in the academy about how presidential reputations change over time, and there is no set definition in what a president is and how we evaluate the different aspects, but then bring that to the public. my new book just landed in one of these debates with the film "selma," and i didn't interview in the "times" -- i did an interview in the "times," and it's really rewarding to be able to take arguments that really grow out of academic concerns i've had about the treatment of presidential power and the relationship with the grassroots to congress, and then try to connect them to a debate that more people are interested in as a result of something like a film. it is both useful and rewarding. i wish i would conclude by saying that for those who want to do this, i realize not everyone wants to do it. there are some ways in which this happens. the miller center offers fellowships in u.s. history, and they require people to write and op-ed. if they get it, they write more op-eds. there needs to be one-on-one mentorship with historians who do this sort of thing. i want to be a public intellectual, how do i do it? it's not like you open the door and you are set. it is something that has to be learned. it has been a wonderful experience in my career. i did not fully expected, but it has been greatly rewarding. it has been an additional supplement the complement to the work i do here as a historian. i always hope to continue bridging these two worlds. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you julian. about 25 years ago the historian russell jacoby published a book called "the last intellectual," proclaiming the death of the public intellectual, like many such announcement, turns out to have been premature. today anybody with a smart phone and a twitter account can be a public intellectual, compose his or her views about history or anything else for anyone to see. this is represent the democratization of the public intellectual or is it another sign of the decline and fall of everything? on one hand, we witness the proliferation in the public sphere of ill-informed or downright mythical invocations of history, for example, the supposedly jens of african americans who fought for the confederacy -- supposed legions of african americans who fought for the confederacy. there are nonacademic public intellectuals who are very conversant with history, for example, of the "atlantic," who is able to reach a broad audience with very good history. what does all this mean for us as professional historians, as public intellectuals? julian asked us to reflect on our own careers in this realm. mine is involved museum exhibitions, writing for nonacademic venues from the "new york times" to the "nation" magazine, appearing on tv, the " colbert report," advising pbs documentaries or historical documentaries, testifying in court as an expert witness on history, and lecturing very frequently to audiences outside the academy. some of these forays into the public sphere have been successful. some have not. i think the museum exhibitions i have helped to curate, one on the reconstruction which travels all around the country, and then the national park service's new visitor center at gettysburg. all of those were cut successful -- quite successful and helped to bring up views of the civil war era to a broad, nonacademic audience. in other cases, not so much. i testified in court in the 1990's for one of the university of michigan affirmative action cases trade -- cases. i was questioned at length by the judge about the reasons for the enactment of the 14th amendment. the resultant disabused me of the idea that judges care what historians have to say. not only did the decision go against us, but the only mention of my involvement in the long decision that judge wrote kim in one sentence, quote, the professor also testified. [laughter] i signed on to an amicus brief before the supreme court, which had to do with the interpretation of the civil rights act of 1866. in a very important case patterson v. mclean credit union, it was written by a professor of fordham law school, it was signed i very several -- by several for a prominent historians, but since reefed -- briefs are named alphabetically, you will never have a brief named after you in court. my brief was the last on the list. before that i had sent a copy of my book on reconstruction to justice anthony kennedy, because i was told he was one of the few members of the supreme court who read books. [laughter] he wrote the majority opinion which went the wrong way from our perspective. he said the position of the brief seems to differ from the account of this event in eric phone or's book. it was a warning against the temptation to use history too instrumentally, which we are all tempted by and really ought to resist. sometimes briefs in court actually play an important role. i know one bite george chauncey -- by george chauncey and others in the gay marriage case were important. too often we are tempted to work the history to fit an immediate legal issue. i certainly have not felt satisfied with the end result of tv history documentaries in which i have been involved, which seems unable to avoid the oversimplification of history. not everybody has, but i have. one has to remain cognizant of what hat you are wearing when you are writing. when i write for the "nation" magazine, i'm writing with a different hat and different style and in some ways a different john rudd than a scholarly -- genre than a scholarly work of history trying to apply historical information to the present. this is important. it ought to be done. probably my nation piece most widely cited circulated, anthologized and denounced by defenders of the american way was published just after the terrorist attacks on 9/11, just a week after. it drew on the history of the repression of civil liberties in wartime to argue that the most patriotic thing you could do at the moment is to maintain a steadfast defense of civil liberties and the crisis that was coming. i reminded people -- you know all this history from john adams and the alien sedition acts, to whether lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, world war i, you can go on -- to argue that governments in times of war see civil liberties as an inconvenience, if not outright treason. this would have to be fought. this led to a lot of praise and a lot of criticism from people who thought i was a first cousin of osama bin laden or something. what should we try to achieve as historians who are public intellectuals? one of our most important tasks is simply appointing people with what historical scholarship is in the first place. i'm going to quote you a letter from "the financial times." like all british publications, half the letters are denouncing other letters. [laughter] this guy writes, sir, john templer's letter is so wrong, so uninformed, that the term revisionist historian comes to mind. this is a very common term of public abuse. i would counter with oscar wilde, who said the only ute we have to history is to rewrite it . being a revisionist is what we do. that is our job, to revise interpretations of history. outside of the academy, history is too often seen as a collection of fixed facts fixed interpretations, new interpretations are seen as inherently suspect if not downright subversive. many of you are familiar with the quotation often used from the 19th century historian ernest ran on quote, the act of forgetting i might almost say historical error, plays a significant role in the creation of a nation and therefore advances in the field of history are often a threat to the nation. that is to say, to the mythologies that all nations are built on and promote. there are many people in public life, politicians, columnists others i won't even name, to whom the active reinterpretation itself is a kind of a threat. first we have to tell people what is it that the study of history entails, and why do historians disagree with each other, and why do we think differently about history today than people did in the past? beyond explaining what the study of history is, our job is to try to keep alive -- the role of the public intellectual is to try to keep alive something very endangered in our society today which is respect for the life of the mind. in the last generation, as you know, the values of the market have come to permeate every aspect of our lives. the notion that the public good can be measured in other than economic terms has pretty much been abandoned. the philosopher william james once wrote that an hour spent communing with nature must be considered quote, a worthless our when measured at the usual standards of commercial value. the same can be said of an hour contemplating a work of art or reading a work of history. as a result, arguments for higher education today -- we have been pushed back into the position where we are the defense of history or higher education is couched in economic terms. having more educated people is good for the economy, or for the social advancement of individuals. unfortunately, this outlook hopes amount for the fact that letter -- literature, history philosophy, and the arts, subjects that do not seem to increase economic productivity, are on their way to becoming stepchildren at all levels of education. charles francis adams in his presidential address to this organization noted quote the historical point of view is an important point of view. only when approached historically, can any issue be understood in its manifold relations with a complex civilization. the economical point of view vital as it unquestionably often is, comes much lower in the scale. these observations are as upper pro today -- are as a propo then when adams spoke. the study of history instills equality so lacking among policymakers and more broadly today, the value of critical inquiry, of subjecting all beliefs to the test of reason and experience, of questioning dogmas, whether political religious, or economic, that the fan uniformity of thought. the historical frame of mind that may assist americans in candidly if facing up to some of the problems that we face in our society. i want to close by emphasizing that while we are here to discuss public engagement, the historian does not have to step outside the so-called ivory tower to have a lasting public impact. scholarly works of history can in a sense be quite public. reminiscence about seeing katz's book is a good example of that. the public results of historical scholarship are not always salutary. the period to which i devoted much of my career, the reconstruction area after the civil war, is an object lesson in how scholarly interpretation in this case, the old dunning school, can offer intellectual legitimacy to serious injustice. the dunning school became a powerful part of the political culture, offering a scholarly basis for the defense of jim crow and black disenfranchisement, among other things. if you don't believe me take a look at how often their works were cited into the 1950's and the supreme court itself in decisions to justify the emasculation of the 14th and 15th amendments. if you will indulge me for a moment, i was gratified to read the other day in an article in the online journal democracy this comment about the public impact of works of history. qutoe, every writer i know interested in the american dilemma of slavery, jim crow and institutional racism has read eric's "reconstruction." every feminist has read the history of birth control "women's bodies, women's rights." historians can through good, scholarly history as well as public engagement offer a usable path to those struggling to make this a fairer, more equal, and more just society. thank you. [applause] i'm going to take this question from a different angle. >> one is biography, but two why does it matter that historians serve as public intellectuals? why are we doing this? as a proud son of haitian immigrants, my take on being a historian as a public intellectual is deeply rooted in a specific experience as a native new yorker who grew up in brooklyn, in queens, whose mother was a trade unionist at 1199. i was on my first picket line at eight years old in new york city. i became a scholar after being an activist in the city, in new york. it was activism around issues related to police brutality activism around issues related to anti-poverty, issues related to all these things that were plaguing predominately segregated black communities in new york city in the 1980's. for me scholarships had never been separate from politics from policy, and social movements. when we think about historians as public intellectuals, i'm not going to talk about how you get to msnbc or cnn or how you get an op-ed in the "new york times ." what is important is why we are engaging in the debate. people's lives are at risk. black people, poor people, lgbt, women. when we think about how do you become a historian as a public intellectual, we have to first say what are we engaging in? is it about us and our careers? are we trying to transform public policy and a public discourse that is unequal in the united states and that is anti-democratic? when we think about african-american history historically there have always been black public intellectuals. usually they are not in the conversation. you can have a book by the metaphysical club were there are no black folks and the metaphysical club. where is ida b wells -- b. wel ls? people who contributed not just to pragmatism and philosophy, but american democracy and citizenship. in the period i study the civil rights movement and black power in the 20th century, even though there is not a dunning school in terms of civil rights, public commentary about the civil rights movement has completely been whitewashed. martin luther king jr. is a plastic saint. rosa parks is not a community activist and organizer. she's a little old lady -- even though she was 42 years old -- who decided to not get up off the bus. it has been so distorted that by the time we got the election of barack obama in 2008, people said that was the end of the civil rights movement. the reward for all of us was barack obama. six years later eric garner and ferguson and michael brown, we see that was not a reward. the reason why historians have a vital role in terms of being the public intellectual is about democracy, small "d" democracy. what i've done throughout my career is try to talk about the way in which black radicalism has contributed to that ongoing democratic debate. we thing about this idea of black radicalism, i include martin luther king jr. in that. i include ella baker in that. it is not just stokely carmichael or the black panthers. when we exclude people like hang an elevator and fannie lou hamer, what is political radicalism, and medical democracy, we impoverish the debate. the last six years we have had extraordinary events really book ended by the election of barack obama in november 2008 and the protest we saw starting this last august of 2014 in the aftermath of michael brown hot shooting in ferguson, the grand jury decision three days before thanksgiving 170 different cities arresting in protest, and eight days later, the eric garner decision, and the protests surrounding that. for the first time, what millenials -- they were born after 1992. that was the l.a. writes -- riots. they saw and witnessed first-hand not just institutional racism, not just militarization of the police, but white supremacy in our political process, in our democratic institutions. they had been waging sit-ins all over the place. historians have a role in that to say why are students and young people and activists and ordinary citizens doing that? are there echoes to the past? how can we connect this social movement to policy? the most exciting part about historians as public intellectuals is that we live in a society and a country that is anti-historical. it does not want to remember the martin luther king jr. who said that materialism and racism were the triple threat facing american democracy. it does not want to rubber that martin luther king jr. was despised and demonized in 1966, 1967, and 1968. whether it was the "new york times" or "time," he's coming out against the war because a radical who is so scared of stokely carmichael is also coming out against the war in 1966. we don't want to remember the civil rights movement as a muscular pro-democracy movement that wasn't popular in its own time. but we can do as historians is remind the public that even though 50 years later, we have martin luther king jr., a monument, a holiday -- king was despised in his own lifetime. what does it say in our contemporary period when we say folks who were nonviolently protesting should sit down and shut up and be quiet? that's not how they did it in the 1950's and 1960's, then -- 1960's, when it is exactly how they did it in the 1950's and 1960's. historians as public intellectuals, the reason why our voice matters so much in this discourse is because there are so many people who are talking about issues related to feminism immigration foreign domestic policy, african-americans, latinos, a whole range of people in this country who have no historical context for what they are talking about. even some journalists who do great things, there's a breadth of knowledge they have, but they lack a depth of knowledge. that depth of knowledge is what provides us with context to make our voices be heard. we're here today not because we want our own television show. we are here today because historians as public intellectuals is how can we transform the discourse leads to policy changes, which leads to transformation. things like mass incarceration. things like -- there are thousands of missing black women in the united states that no one is searching for right now as we speak. all these things matter, and what historians can do in this discourse is provide a historical and a little -- analytical framework to talk not just about the past but, how the past can inform the present. thank you. [applause] >> thanks to julia for putting this together. being a historian is not for the faint hearted. we are a tough breed. when they asked me to take part, i immediately thought about the first time i heard the term public intellectual, which was reading "1987." as eric mentioned, the argument of that book was that there were not any more public intellectuals. he talked mostly about white men. it's clear. now, it seems to be everywhere. i'm sure out there you have been thinking, how come that person -- there's a lot of people who could've taken our place. our politics, everyone appear linked decidedly to the left. -- up here leans decidedly to the left. what i want to do is some different point of view, talk about my motivation for doing the public intellectual work i do why i write a lot of op-eds and why i co-edit this small magazine of the left which has been around for 61 years. why i teach my courses the way i do. i don't see a contradiction between those three parts of my professional life. the first motivation is clearly political. i want to understand the way things have developed in this country and the world as part of helping the change of my country and the world. second motivation -- there is a sense that i have a political responsibility as a historian to do that kind of work. second motivation is pure ego. i would not mind having my own television show, but no one has asked me. also my wife would mention -- she would say that's also a motivation. i came of age as a political activist in the late 1960's. i thought of myself as revolutionary for a while. i traveled to cuba with fellow radicals when it was still quite illegal to do so. sugarcane, one day fidel castro cutting sugarcane alongside me. i started writing articles for ap, liberation news service and a lot of underground newspapers. a few years later i enrolled in a program. i cannot figure out what to do with my life when the revolution wasn't happening. i decided to write labor history. some of you my age or younger know about this. this is a way to engage in politics a different way, the kind of americans that are moving to the left have for the most part neglected and sometimes driven them into a fury. i wrote specifically in my dissertation my first book about the trains in san francisco. if you know the history of the 1960's, building trades for one group of the working-class population which was particularly unhappy. in 1970, a few blocks from down here, a group from the building trades had beaten up friends of mine, antiwar demonstrators, and had been praised by nixon for doing so. he put a hard hat on and made sure everyone knew he was on the side. every book has been motivated to explain the roots and development of some aspect of contemporary american politics, whether it is the ubiquitousness of popular language the relationship between evangelical christianity and political passion am a what difference the left has made to american culture and politics. always trying to connect the present to the past in that way. what i found in doing interviews with people in writing op-eds, the media mostly cares about history if it has some connection to what is going on now. every op-ed i write about historical matters, i've got to start with something happening now and work my way back to history and end by referring again to the reason why people who don't care about history should care about what i just wrote. there are a few exceptions. the civil war era is the exception to that. more recently, slavery, helped by "12 years a slave," and held by the african american studies and african-american history which is so prominent in the academy and outside as well. i have written a lot about the late 19th centuries which most people in the media don't care about. guilded age, what is that about? it doesn't make any sense. my one success of getting that kind of history out into the public was, i was amazed to get a note on white house stationery from karl rove, who said i like your book for a much, you made a few factual errors about the weather in texas. invited me to the white house to have lunch. it was a very strange experience. [laughter] i wasn't exactly a supporter of george w. bush and his policies but president bush and karl rove had this contest to read as many books as they could, especially poodle -- political biographies. they found time. we had a great discussion for about an hour about history, about biographies, and rove showed me what a great sense of humor he has. he had a great time mimicking right-wing evangelicals, who we could not stand. at the same time, i've never stopped being an activist at heart. as i have gotten older, i write more op-eds and go to fewer meetings and demonstrations. i became a co-editor of "di ssent." julia asked us to comment on how we balance the responsibilities of being a public intellectual with being an academic. i said, i don't see any great contradiction between the two. when i teach class or write an article for an academic journal i make my own views clear. to try to be empathetic, to explain why the people with whom i would've disagreed believe what they believe. i don't try to convert my students to my point of view. i always assign ratings to take different positions than i do. i encourage debate about any logical differences. some students would say i require it. if a student leaves class thinking more along the lines i do i'm not displeased. i try to tell what i think is the truth without fear or favor. the second motivation is somewhat less honorable. i want to change the world but i also like the fact that people know who i am and want to read what i write. i'm going to quote one of the most uncomfortable sentences i've ever read in an academic journal. a few years ago, david brody in a very good journal was part of a forum which brody called a charismatic book. in his commentary that david wrote about the book, he said quote, the fate of most historians is to write history that nobody reads. an overstatement, to be sure, but not too much of one. for most of us, writing is hard work. mentally hard, anyway. he finished breakfast, you procrastinate a little bit. this always a lot of websites to read, and blogs. you write a few good paragraphs, then you have lunch you do it again and the afternoon, then you do it over again the next day if you are lucky enough to not have to teach class or go to meetings. to be gratifying, to only do academic history, even if all the other academic historians know about your work and only if some of those historians think it matters, intellectual affinity groups have their merits. we could never write good history if we didn't read a lot of books and articles by people who not that many people have read. i get anxious if i don't feel like i'm part of a larger conversation, a large debate, about what has happened in the past and what relevance it may have in the present and future. talk about being a public intellectual everyone can't write a good op-ed, and sometimes, trying to write a good op-ed doesn't just present your knowledge and sophisticated understanding and political commitment to the world, it can also oversimplify things i think. in a way, it can become a caricature of good history. we have to be careful about that. i like to conclude with quoting christopher hitchens. i disagree fundamentally with the last major stand that hitchens took, supporting the u.s. invasion of iraq, but he was still quite capable of wisdom and he knew how to express himself in memorable ways. this is how in 2008 he describes the ideal attributes of an intellectual. quote, this intellectual not need be one who speaks truth to power. powerful people know what the truth is. that doesn't mean they want to go along with it. the attitude towards authority should probably be skeptical, as should the attitude towards utopia, let alone to heaven or hell. other aims should include the ability to survey the present the past with the perspective of the living, and the culture and language of others. to put it another way one needs to have something important to say about the present as well as the past, and to say it well. thank you. [applause] >> i'm very fortunate to go after all these wonderful presentations, and i think you will find that what i'm going to say picks up on a number of themes. 10-year radical was launched october 18 2006 in new haven connecticut. in a little more than seven years, i have written 1795 pos ts. posts on topics as various as the humanities job market, national politics, sexual assault, books, writing, and the bds movement. though i began writing under a pseudonym, that only lasted a couple months. i was outed by my students. not only has blogging brought me a great many opportunities in the old and new media world but it also became a place where i have been able to articulate my ideas and observations about higher education from the perspective of someone who has been in school in some fashion for over half a century now. in the summer of 2010, i received a call from the chronicle of higher education asking me if i would like to move tenured radical. very few of us who migrated our blogs are still active on the site, but our work changed the chronicle of higher education by making it aware that a younger academic public faced with different challenges than even people in my generation had found much of the chronicle lesson relevant. as a result, the chronicle's newest non-fire walled section is bloggy rather than journalistic, opinionated rather than researched. it favors younger authors, most of them in pre-tenure or preemployment stages. many are current and former bloggers, and the articles tend to favor horizontal advice giving, confrontational language, and heretical views about academic success, some of which are complete bullshit. [laughter] i would also argue that academic blogging probably launched a new genre of memoir called [indiscernible] in which academics announce histrionic lead that they are mad as hell and they are not going to take it anymore. my jump to this larger academic audience which has since led to opportunities to be a guest in other venues mass circulation journals of ideas, radio, and television, occurred through a weird combination of luck and pluck. shortly after i commenced publishing under my real name in spring 2007, i wrote a post about a new york city racist commentary on the rutgers university women's championship basketball team, all african-american women, and all outstanding students. i noted in passing that a group of white male athletes at you cap acquired a robust and proactive group of defenders despite a long history of poor academic behavior, violent behavior, culminating in rape and assault charges against a black stripper they had hired for a party. the charges were later job for lack of evidence. i posted a piece and by the next morning i had over 100 comments. i was used to6 or 7. -- to 6 or 7. many of which threatened me with sexual assault, and an inbox full of equally nasty e-mails. the message light on my telephone was linking wildly. i had messages from the president of the university, the chair of the board of trustees, the provost, my dean, the university council, and my department chair all of whom who had also received e-mails and phone calls demanding my immediate termination. this can be the downside of being a public intellectual. [laughter] perhaps what was most shocking to me was that the attack had actually been led by a fellow historian, also a blogger my first introduction to what is today commonplace social media experience for scholars and journalists, being viciously attacked by colleagues and graduate students who you have never met. the moral of the story is that just because a scholar once a wider public, it does not follow that you always get the public you want. this is the pluck part. my comments section can have all the charm of a 19th century lower east side used beer joint, and it makes venues like msnbc where the interviewer peppers you with non-questions that begin -- don't you really think -- seem like models of sane conversation. in the fast paced world of digital publishing controversy sells if it doesn't get you fired. this is probably the place to say that every one of those telephone messages from the president of wesleyan on down reassured me that my blog, which hardly anyone i worked with him a really understood, or liked, which is why it was such a sweet phone call, was covered by academic freedom. this experience was lucky, because i never sought it out but my blog was noticed and i suddenly realized i was actually going to be backed up by my university. largely because i became part of a bigger story and in the process learned to write a fast i acquired an audience of many thousands a week. journalists began to call me for quotes and opportunities in the mainstream media followed. there is a maxim in the blogosphere are coined by my friend that links blogging to more conventional print productivity. what anne says is, the more you write, the more you write. the corollary to that is, the more you are read, the more you are read. it is why lots of people whose reputations have been made in journalism, fiction, and nonfiction worlds take up blogging in the first place. it is called a platform. if you want to build an audience for non-scholarly or scholarly work or in anticipation of a major publication, you build a platform. it's very often a blog. what do i personally bring to the table as a public intellectual? there are political and cultural narratives about higher education out there that are actually vital to all our future that are very difficult to interrupt, whether it is long-awaited death of the humanities, or the crisis of higher education financing, or the assumptions that are currently governing academic hiring. there are very few people who are not presidents of major foundations you are bridging the many constituencies affected by these debates. as a blogger, i can speak to these issues knowledgeably and in ways different publics can understand. by speaking knowledgeably, i don't necessarily mean knowing everything, which i don't, but i do mean being curious about the interrelated parts of every discussion, and the differences between and among conversations occurring simultaneously. i also mean listening and learning from people who join me in the comments section, even, perhaps especially, the commenters i do not like. let me pause here to say that in the middle of my horrible experience with the duke lacrosse people, i talked to a political reporter from the st. petersburg times, a friend of the family. i said i'm never reading my comments again. she said, you have to read your comments. there are people who are trying to tell you things anonymously that they would never tell you in person. it was a good lesson. a blog is an opportunity to start a conversation, if nothing else, and that conversation may finish somewhere else entirely in a journal, on tv, on radio in a panel like this, or in a book. i and a number of other bloggers bring feminism and critical race theory to the table in a journalistic world where some version of a whether beyonce is a feminist or b whether the united states is post-racial seem to pretty much run the table. although the social justice movement that began in ferguson seems to have put piad to be for the time being, few people know how to or want to write and talk about race and gender the way academics do. many bloggers aspire to the status of the publicly engaged scholarship of the late 20th century, whether done by the legal scholars or intellectuals who are more associated with social justice movements. adding high-profile attention to violence, it is very difficult to have a serious conversation about race or feminism nowadays, not to mention about a queer pol itics that won't come to a dead stop with federally recognized marriage in all 50 states. it is even more difficult if you want to do that kind of writing and are that kind of person, a woman, a person of color queer to become visible to publications that will commit to editing and publishing your work. this was an issue very much raised around the curve awful around "the new republic" and the mass resignation of its writers. it is very difficult to be heard . women don't get to write for "the new republic," by a large. when i said, what about queer people? everyone would say, andrew sullivan. he is a very conservative man with debatable politics. blogging creates a kind of visibility that is very difficult for some of us to get in the conventional print or conventional media world. it can actually allow us to make that jump to bridge the gap on the radio and television and film. however, writing for a broader public brings challenges with it, challenges that include the fact that exposure to an undifferentiated audience, as opposed to an audience like you chosen by the fact we are all at this conference, brings unpredictable and sometimes unpleasant outcomes. people who read "10-year radical" know that i'm a relentless advice-giver. first of all, most academics think that they write more accessibly than they do. [laughter] or they have failed to understand that the rhetoric that is impressive to journals and tenured communities cannot engage a general audience. get me wrong. there are many kinds of good writing, and there are many people who do many different kinds of good writing. some of the best historians write intelligently and accessibly across the john is. most people don't. it is a learned skill. so is being on television or in a documentary or even doing the pre-interview that will get you into a mass media production or on a television show. nobody teaches this in graduate school. if we really care about historians doing public intellectual work, we really should. second, writing for spur of the moment, short-term deadlines is really fun, as julian's presentation underlines. you have to be willing to ditch other responsibilities to make it happen. for example, preparing for class. [laughter] going to meetings. grading papers. the things we are actually paid to do. if an editor wants something by 3:00 p.m. or by friday, that is when they want it, and they want it to be clean. which leads me to my next point. initially, your ability to move from self-publishing to commercial publishing to a broader audience will have a great deal to do with your tolerance for disappointment criticism, rewrites, and being managed by people who don't have a phd. many of these people will be interns who just graduated from your college. many academics can't help but see all criticism as very high-stakes, so much so that several editors of important publications have told me that they often avoid working with us if they can. writing for an edited, general publication requires compromises. we are also not very good at making compromises when we think we know exactly the right way to make an argument. compromises include word length, word choice, being fact checked, and perhaps having a piece of that you have worked hard on being rejected at the last minute because of a transportation accident. i once had a piece for cnn.com fact checked for five days. they checked every single clause over and over again. do yourself a favor. practice your writing by blocking. even writing pitches to yourself before writing the post. spend a lot of time reading the publications you want to be published by, other it is "the huffington post," which publishes pretty much anybody or "dissent," "the nation," where the barriers are much more rigorous, and understand you may be rejected numerous times before getting a piece accepted. try not to be paranoid about the grounds for objection. actually, it's not personal l. the reason intelligent outlets for ideas exist in a competitive publishing world is that they are well edited and different from each other and gather an audience of a certain type and offer something special. you need to do that too. if a good piece is rejected, you can probably publish it at 10-year radical. [applause] >> those are great comments. now we need to use our phd's to figure out -- we need questions asked from the mics. if you could just get behind it, we can line up a few people at a time. these come to the mic and ask away. if you can keep your questions on point, that would be great. >> my name is sean driscoll. i am a graduate student in western mass. you touched on it a little bit at the end of your discussion about film. i personally feel that film, if done right, can be one of the greatest openings for learning, whether it be young students, older students, what have you. i was just wondering, one, what is your feeling about public intellectuals and being involved in crafting quality film, proper films, films better educated and b have any of you had any experience in the film industry of being asked to advise? >> i would just start by saying i think it's an extremely tough issue. there are many people here i know who have advised film. films are made, non-documentary films, i assume, with a very different approach from a piece of academic work. screenwriters are willing to play around with time. they are willing to create scenes that never happened to convey a point. they are comfortable with that. ultimately, they will make the argument they are not historians and are not bound by what we are bound by. that is how they do it. we can think of many films where this has become an issue. i'm fine with people doing that. sometimes you cringe. i don't like when someone is portrayed as doing something that they fundamentally didn't believe in or didn't do. i'm a little ok when chronology is used in a way i wouldn't use it because that is how you tell a story. this is much more problematic knowing that what you say is going to be only a piece. >> let me just briefly add -- historical fiction is a wonderful jon runyan -- genre. shakespeare didn't go on tv claiming that julius caesar was accurate, was true. probably people do believe it but nobody should really think that is how julius caesar really was. this is shakespeare. today, unfortunately filmmakers want to play it both ways. they want to make things up, but they also want the impromptu or of accuracy. when they create something which is largely fictional and claim it's historically true, as a historian, we have the obligation to say, wait a minute folks. the historian is a killjoy. the historian steps in and says it wasn't like that. this is misleading. nobody will go to a movie with me anymore. i have sort of given up. the genre is powerful. millions of people see these movies. with some exceptions "selma" being one, most movies hollywood makes are based on one individual, whether it's malcolm x or gandhi. by the way, all of these seem to be men. are there any movies like that about women? amelia ehrhardt had one. >> queen victoria had one. >> it is usually great men, and even when it is an biographical, it is fundamentally one individual driving the history what hollywood seems unable to get away from, and that is rather antithetical to how many of us think about how history develops. >> a little bit of a disagreement with eric -- i think some of these historical films, even though they are not accurate, can start good discussions. i'm thinking of a film that was completely inaccurate, oliver stone's "jfk." i don't want to start a conspiracy discussion, but i think the speculations he made went from one of certainty to another absurdity, but some of you will remember there was a pretty good debate about that film. it got people thinking about kennedy and who opposed kennedy . we were talking about how everybody loves king, but at the time he was alive, not everybody loved king. that everybody loves kennedy either. i students are always amazed at that. why would they have wanted to kill this saint? it depends on the film. if the production values are good, then a film could start a good discussion about history and make people want to learn more. >> i want to throw in something about the production piece of this. my first book very strangely is the only scholarly treatment of the fbi's war on crime. i don't know why that is true. i wrote it first as a dissertation. it has actually been used repeatedly by filmmakers, both documentary filmmakers, and it was used by the people who did the johnny depp, dillinger. it was used by the clint eastwood "hoover" people. on a certain level, your work is done when you write the book. what they choose to do with it or not is their business. the part i would caution everybody about is getting involved with hollywood filmmakers. what they really want is a lot of help for free. both with the johnny depp people and with "the hoover -- with the "hoover" people, we would get to this place two hours into the conversation where i would say look, if you want all of this, you need to hire me as a consultant for the film. they go, oh, and hang up. it is a lot of uncompensated labor. you'll probably find out that they are not -- they will not tell the story you want to tell. the biggest rope about j edgar hoover was that he was a closeted homosexual who hated everybody, and everything that he did -- that is what the movie did. i have been interviewed by multiple people -- i was interviewed by multiple people on that production team and told them a very different story. they don't care. if that is the story that they bought, that is the story that they bought. i don't think historians have that great of an impact on a film once it has gone into production. >> let me add one quick thing. if you think you're going to get rich by being involved in a movie, forget it. i said done with richard attenborough, the british film maker who wanted to make a movie about tom paine. he said, i have your book. we are planning to use it. i said, that's nice. surely, you have to pay me something. buy the rights. no, no, that is public domain, he said. forget that hollywood will pay you. >> there are some great films that are historically based. i'm thinking about a film by raul peck. i'm thinking about "the great debaters." obviously, "selma," "12 years," "the butler." >> the historian can jump in after the movie comes out. the movie creates an opportunity for a conversation about subjects people are not usually talking about. "selma," we are talking about voting rights. most people are just not focused on this on a daily basis. now there is a great debate. i think that is a fortunate development, and that creates space for conversations about serious issues that otherwise it's low on the agenda of most americans. >> thank you. i appreciate -- while i appreciate what you said, you mentioned the author. i feel that you did not go far enough. he was very influenced by psychoanalysis. with regard to the professor over 10 years ago, i corresponded with you, and he wrote back to me. it had to do with psychohistory. you said to me that columbia university was a very conservative school, yet and one time the leading psycho historians in one way or another came from columbia. >> can you get to the question? >> ok. i'm almost there. i will try to be as brief as you have been. some 50 years ago the professor was the president of this organization. in his presidential address, he said this with regard to his tier are graffiti -- historiography. even the best historians are not that good. he said this -- if historians want to do a good job, they have to go into psychoanalysis. that deals with people and the unconscious. that is all i've got to say. >> interesting. does anyone have a comment? >> actually, i would say that psychoanalysis helps everybody. [laughter] i actually feel like i am a better historian because of psychoanalysis, but i would also say that as public intellectuals, it is wise -- i think the panel this morning on international public intellectuals really made this point very graphically -- when we put history out there, it has consequences, for nationalism consequences for certain kinds of public debate. one of the things i was talking to my friend martha jones about this morning is what it would mean for some of us who are committed to antiracism in our historical practice to be proactive, so we are not always responding to things like ferguson, but we are actually ready to go when they happen. in answer to your question, in order to do that, we really have to be rigorous researchers because what people don't want to hear is theory, and they don't want to hear our opinions of why people do what they do. they want actual historian context. as ellen fitzpatrick put it, did it ever happened before, will it happen again, what does it mean? that kind of ease aids the practice of psychoanalysis -- evades the practice of psychoanalysis. >> do you think the right, probably conceived, is a parallel to the left in terms of how public intellectuals function, just a different set of values, but the same institutions and motivations, or is it asymmetrical? you know, i'm thinking of the way some of the recent history that says, the right and the left are not mirror images of each other. they function in different ways. they are not equally motivated in social movements. i just wanted to throw that question out. >> i'm sure we have different opinions about that. in some ways conservatives are in a better position to be public intellectuals because they think we control the academy. that is not true in economics, but for humanists, i think it is more true than not. there are more of us on the left than there are people on the right, certainly in history, philosophy, creative literature, etc. i think that means if they want to have an impact and get paid to write, they often have to write for more popular publications. i have some good friends on the right. christopher caldwell, for example, who writes a column for "the financial times," also "the weekly standard." he never thought of writing like an academic ever. he began as a journalist in "the american spectator." there are some journals like "the claremont review," which comes out of university, but is written in a pretty sprightly manner. i hate to say it on a panel like this, but we can learn a lot from conservative intellectuals, the way they write. not all of them, of course. in terms of style and reaching the public, we could do worse than not follow the politics necessarily, but learn from how they really put forth a point of view very starkly, often very vividly, as well. >> in terms of that question there are a couple of things. the left, there are many different lefts. we've got many different segregated left public spheres that are african-american, that are clear, -- queer an old left now an old-new left. they are geriatric. [laughter] i'm not saying that as a criticism. i'm saying that as a empirical fact. even stokely he was born june 20, 1941. if he was alive today, he would be 73 years old. it's just an empirical fact. [laughter] what is interesting for all of us when we think about left versus right what i think left public intellectuals and think tanks should do is really be antiracist and anti-sexist and anti-homophobia. what it does, you've got all of these think tanks. you've got center for american progress. most of those are very monolithic and homogenous in terms of the character of who is producing that thought, almost without question. you are going to have queer blogs. you're going to have african-american websites like the root, the grio. that is its own public intellectual site. one of the worst things that we have, and i think both obama's election and ferguson brought this to the four, is just how segregated political thought is in the united states, even in the 21st century, whether it's cnn, the kennedy school, wherever you go. they might be progressive, but they are progressives who are segregationists. michelle alexander talks about the new jim crow. it's not just about mass incarceration. it's about the way we teach our graduate students. it's about what we study. everybody is talking about slavery and capitalism. many people are not citing clr james. they are not citing dubois and black reconstruction. you've got new people doing tremendous things, but they are still segregating the scholarship. we do it in the public, as well. that is why it's so important when we have public intellectuals, because there are six people this author looks at, and three of them are women. ida b. wells was a public intellectual. she is a radical activist and a thinker we should all be reading. i started grad school when i was 20 years old and one of the most apprising things to me about graduate school was the way in which white colleagues were not reading black political thought. they just wouldn't read it. people who were interested in democracy, they were interested in tom hayden, abolitionism. you say, what about "black reconstruction"? not interested. why not? my professors haven't told me to read this. we segregated this public. we have a right wing, left wing, but we don't want to acknowledge that the left is segregated. we can do something about it as public intellectuals by calling people out that we've got to converge and have conversations with each other. it's not just "the new republic." it is other forms that have not allowed queer people or people of color to be part of the debate. >> back to mike's comment and nelson's question, the right did invest a lot of money in creating outlets for public intellectuals, and i know there is a disconnect with part of the anti--- anti-intellectualism in the conservative movement. i think now the left in some ways, whatever the left is at parts of the left, have tried to rip it that, whether it is "american prospect" or the center for american progress. i don't know if they have caught up, but it is a period that is probably interesting to study. the right, i think there are parts of the right that take ideas very seriously. i'm sure many people you don't like or agree with, but fierce and promoting the role of the intellectual in revitalizing and strengthening conservatism. i think there are probably lessons that can be teased out from how they did it. i also just want to add. one medivation -- motivation on the panel is an activist public intellectual. i think there is a role for a commentator. to me, it is how washington works. that is what drove me. i come from a family of rabbis. i'm just trying to teach everyone. figure out ways to impart knowledge. i think that part of how historians are public intellectuals should also be thought of and nurtured. there needs to be space for that. i think there are many scholars who have contributed in that way, too. it is important public debate. it is important to add to what you get, which is usually very thin from the media. not that it's bad, because that is how much space they have, but that is another tradition. >> you can definitely do both. he talked about a family of rabbis. rabbi #and dr. king, doing both. sometimes, our commentary is what becomes part of that transformative -- >> today can be integrated. some people do it with a disconnect. i think has show -- heschel is a great tradition. there are different kinds of public intellectual activism we have to think about. >> if i can just throw one thing in. we actually do have those institutions. the right had to build them, but the left has been. years ago, i was in a seminar with andre shifrin. one of the things he talked about was the future of publishing might be with the unions. it was really the unions that had the structure, the financing, the way to actually put stuff out there that nobody else would publish. when you think of expanding that to the lesbian-gay task force the hrc, the naacp, planned parenthood, emily's list, there are institutions on the left that are raising millions and millions of dollars, and it doesn't cost that much to support one or two scholars for a year to get a book out to really let congress know how conception happens. [laughter] >> as someone who co-edits a left-wing magazine, and i know people who edit right-wing magazines, right-wing people believe in funding ideas. left-wing people with money usually believe in funding activism, as if ideas over -- are over here and activism is over there. it is a realistic. planned parenthood doesn't have a lot of historians, i don't think, writing for it. they might have one. the heritage foundation and aei and cato have lots of people writing for them. they get paid very well to write the kind of stuff -- that kind of stuff. >> keith very, hillsboro community college, tampa florida. as public intellectuals, have any of you ever written anything that you regret? [laughter] >> i did actually. it was probably one of the things of mine that got circulated all over the place. it was a piece that "the washington post" asked about -- was george w. bush the worst president in american history? i think this is a debate that historians should resist jumping at. somehow, maybe for the reasons michael pointed out, i jumped at it and wrote a column about why george w. bush was the worst president in american history. it was polemical obviously, but it had historical fact and it, too, here or there. [laughter] i compared him to other bad presidents. looking back, it probably wasn't a very well-considered thing. than a reporter for "usa today" asked president bush about this in an interview. he said, this historian has said you are the worst president in american history, and bush gave the right answer. he said, we will let future historians judge that. this is not the time to make that judgment, and he was right about that. yes, when you write quickly -- and i don't have a blog -- probably there are many things that you later on might say, i'm not so sure i want to have that on my tombstone. >> as the person who has probably published more things that i regret than anyone else in the room, it is one of the costs of writing quickly. it is one of the costs of being responsive to current events. i try to stick to writing about things that i know well enough to be able to stand behind, but sometimes, i write rings -- things either that i'm not as well informed about as i should be, or that are so controversial that i actually wish i hadn't spent the energy on them that i had. one of these is a series of posts i did about a boycott. it cost me more trouble than the duke lacrosse case in the end. i became the object of some really horrifying behavior, and i would not say that i'm sorry about what i wrote but if i had to do it over again, i wouldn't do it, because it wasn't worth it. one of the things to think about if you are putting your stuff out there it's not just, am i willing to stand behind these views, but am i willing to suffer for these views? >> i second what claire said. i wrote one column criticizing the bds movement, and i still hear about it. one of the things i most regret -- this comes from when i was still young and starting to be a left-wing journalist -- i wrote a four or five part series on how great north korea was. [laughter] that was the original kim in power, kim mill june -- kim il-sung. [laughter] i should have suspected something, because all of the north korean sources i was using called him the iron willed come and are in every sentence. i really thought i had done something great. i got an invitation to go to pyongyang, all-expenses-paid. i said, sure. why not? they said, please, bring your wife. i told them i wasn't married and then they canceled out the invitation. i guess maybe they thought i would of scone with a north korean woman. i don't know what they thought. either way, they found out i wasn't married. the invitation to tour this paradise of socialism was canceled. >> this is a lesson in social media. when joe wilson yelled out "you lie!", i wrote a piece that wasn't really about that as much as about how congress has been a raucous place. i did a quick history of other infamous moments when congress has done outrageous things stuff like joanne freeman talking about how they used to fight and have guns and beat each other senseless. that was basically the light story, but to put the context of the institution. i learned people don't often read a column. this was right when the tea party was wrapping up. suddenly, this became a column attacking joe wilson. once it got so severe, the university contacted the fbi. the fbi investigated this guy who written -- have written me who said, i'm going to come and beat you senseless. this unfortunately is part of the new media because it is very easy to get comments out to reach people. when you are a university professor, you can't hide how to get comments. i wish i could just take this thing away. it's not worth that kind of heat. i've learned to get used to that. it didn't go away, but it is part of the new media world. >> hi, i am jane carr. i just want to thank all of the panelists for sharing their biographies of public intellectuals. i want to pick up on a concrete comment you had about suggesting media training as a part of graduate education, to ask if panelists overall would reflect or share examples from or elaborate on how they mentor graduate students and junior scholars who show desire or initiative or perhaps already have experience doing public intellectual work and ways in which those colleagues may have mentored you. >> i think it is very haphazard right now. i would like to call your attention to an article in "perspectives" a couple of years ago in which a group of us put together a protocol for tweeting panels. it was becoming clear that a lot of people were using twitter in the context of conventions like this one, and that there needed to be some agreement on what was an ethical use of twitter in that context. the vast majority of people still do not know these protocols. i think they should be part of the app that was distributed for this meeting, but they include things like asking permission if you're going to tweet, which i always do. are people who feel like they can't speak freely if they are being turned into public intellectuals against their will. they think they are in a ballroom at the hilton, and yet they are out in the world screening through a megaphone. i think the recent whatever you want to call it, the withdrawal of the 10 year offer -- tenured offer to steven's colada, should be a warning shot across the bow that if faculty and students don't begin to talk to each other about what we are doing when we use social media universities will begin to make policy for us, and it will be very draconian. there have been incidents of at least five scholars recently some on the right, some on the left, some who just made a mistake -- my colleague eric tweeted something about the nra that nearly did get him fired and also brought a lot of nasty criticism and death threats on him from nra supporters. i think it is something we have to talk about. we can't act as though our scholarly lives are separated from social media lives. actually, all of the young scholars coming up are on social media now. i think it has to be part of the training not just to think about the multiple venues that will help you get your workout, but what does it mean to be a responsible member of the social media community? i would include facebook. i see things on facebook that i actually think are deeply and profoundly unwise, and i love facebook. >> in terms of mentoring grad students for junior faculty, i think the biggest thing has to be one, to do the academic and scholarly work, because we are not being trained to be public intellectuals. it is just growing out of you being a professional-trained historian. if anything, if you are in grad school, i would recommend focusing on your research, the historiography, turning the dissertation into a book, and not writing blog posts. most of the time, that is taking up too much time. everyone here is a tenured professor. they are fine. they are set. some of them are more set than others. i would say the big training before any of that is getting your scholarship done, and once you have your scholarship done, once you have that book that is going to tenure you come and you have the energy to work on a second project and blog and do this stuff, i would say, that's great. one anecdotal thing -- i have had young scholars who have asked me for advice, and i have given it to them, but these are folks who have published their first book and have a tremendous amount of energy. i do agree with what claire was saying. we have to tell our young people that you can't use twitter and just be angry. i have seen twitter accounts that are crazy. you are saying, people check this, and you may not get a job. the politics, left, right whatever -- they are simply angry and rude politics. the nra can go to -- if you can't write a twitter post that your mom would be fine with, i would say, don't write it. if you can't write something that you can't proudly show your mother, don't write it. that is what is getting people into all kinds of trouble. >> i've done that. i have done this miller center thing. i generally dissuade people from doing it, both because they need to now become scholars and get the job, and two, it is so polarized out there. when you send, you just don't know what is going to happen. something that seems kind of monday and or interesting but not explosive can turn can hurt you career-wise. i have a graduate student -- some of my graduate students have heard this from me -- i will help, but i'm also very cautious. i had a graduate student who started recently. i met him for the first time in person. i said, you've got to get off her twitter. i looked it up. it was fine, the twitter. there was just a lot of it. i don't know. it's nerve-racking because this stuff survives. i don't know how it is going to work with jobs and publishing. i don't know if that was the right thing to say, but that was my advice. >> a slight disagreement. of course, when you write a dissertation, you shouldn't be writing op ads, but at the same time, i think this is particularly true of u.s. history -- i think there is nothing wrong with picking a topic that you think will be more popular, will get you into more of a public dialogue. a couple of my graduate students are here, and they have heard me say a lot of times -- good writing is good writing. my agent also eric's agent, give me the best piece of advice about writing history. one cannot assume interest. [laughter] a lot of historians assume interest. they narrow themselves down at the beginning. look, there are wonderful medieval historians out there. i'm not the kind of person. those historians will have a harder time writing op ads clearly. if you do the kind of history that all of the people on this panel do, then i don't think there is anything wrong with thinking come as you are finishing your dissertation, how can i turn this, how can i get this better publicized? i do try to get my students to think about that, not when they are in the middle of orals or in the middle of doing research, but as they are ending their dissertations. after all, as i said, what is the point of writing something unless people read it? >> i'm going to contradict myself. he is right in that practically given the direction of publishing, like it or not, you have to find ways in u.s. history to have work that will have some appeal to a dying press. i edited at princeton university press. they are looking at books that don't have mass commercial value but have that niche. it matters now if you want to get published. i don't think you can tailor it just to that, but it has to be in your mind. it is going to be a reality in publishing now. >> i would also say one more thing about the pitch, which is a learned skill. it's not that different from the first paragraph out of your mouth when you are interviewing for a job. it's the kind of thing -- we now use the wikipedia exercise for undergraduates -- it is the kind of thing that actually teach us something about how to operate in another mode that is also very useful to your scholarship. >> hi, i work on the emma goldman papers. i consider emma goldman to have been one of the great public intellectuals of our time. i totally respect everybody on the panel, so it has been a real joy. i guess i'm very aware of the fact that to be a public intellectual, you also have to have a certain amount of privilege. for example, when i think of emma goldman, i think, she was an immigrant. her citizenship was sort of iffy. if you are too eloquent and two out there, then you are more vulnerable. one of the things i wanted to say is that almost all of the government records that i have on emma before her deportation, and also clay carson, before martin luther king got shot, was all about their eloquence. that was something that was terrifying to the powers that be. i just think that there is power in words, as you were saying but i also think there's an element -- you were saying that you are all faculty and everything, but i think you have to encourage people. you also have to protect other people who are in a more vulnerable position based on race, country, citizenship, to be able to speak, as well. >> i think that is true, candace. not to return to a subject that is far more complex than we have time for, but i actually can't think what more we could have done for stephen soleda. it didn't work. it is not just our privilege. it is the institutions we work in. it is being proactive about establishing our rights and our academic freedom in those institutions. i went to a panel yesterday on the 150th anniversary of the aaup, and it was really very instructive about the ways in which academic freedom has not always been the gold standard for the aaup and that the academy evolved in an atmosphere in which the aaup said for academic freedom in principle but not really in practice. we can say it is about privilege, but it gives us very little to act on. we did act, thousands of us, in relation to stephen, and it didn't do anything. that is why i'm saying i think we need to turn to our institutions. wesley and protected me. you might say, it's the privilege of that institution. they do not rely on taxpayers but i think there are broader principles to protect. that is going to take a certain amount of activism on our part, to make these issues public. >> i would follow up on that. i think the task -- julian called it activist public intellectuals -- historians as public intellectuals are activists, whether they intend to be or not. what we can do from the position of our ebony and ivory towers is use of -- is utilize that and bring in these other voices. go out to the community. roxbury, dorchester, people who have no former connection to task, we brought them onto the campus, and we do free workshops. it's not just talking. it is listening, as well. how can we use all the resources at a place like tops -- tufts has? they're not necessarily prospective students. they are students that are at risk, young people. some of them are community organizers. some of them are ex-convicts who are trying to make a different way. when they come to campus, they find it extraordinary. some of them have never been to a university campus, and they find out what we do and the discussions we are having. we connect with what they are interested in. some of them are interested in things like gentrification and how it is impacting them. that is happening in new york, as well. we can be not only public intellectuals and historians but people who are shaping policy debates at the local level wherever we are at. it is important for those of us who are privileged enough to have gotten tenure -- for somebody like me, i am in the history department, with the whole field of african american studies coming out of the 1960's, certainly there is dubois and the 19th-century version, but the institutionalization into the american academy was a fraught institutionalization through protest. some places just capitulated because it was a social movement. in the context of a black wives people want to find out more because there is this social movement. in the 1960's and 1970's, these programs came because people were protesting. part of what we are doing is trying to provide access to people who don't have access. >> i think i was misunderstood slightly. [indiscernible] as successful as you are reaching other people, you can be sure that that is considered a danger to the country. [laughter] eloquence is much more powerful. >> we have a few more minutes. let's try to get the final two questions. >> my name is the glenna matthews. i plead guilty to being a geriatric lefty. [laughter] i want to just briefly say something, and then i have a substantive question. just to give some historic perspective, my first publication was in "the nation" 40 years ago, and it was called "women of the boycott," and it was based on a co-authored article. i got one letter. i was teaching at san jose state at the time. oh! i'm a public intellectual. i didn't think that, because i didn't have the term, but that was the general idea. i opened the letter, and the letter -- i'm paraphrasing -- d olores huerta turns me on and because you wrote that letter, you do too. then it went to body parts. you don't have to have the internet to get really weird responses. my substantive question is, something that we haven't talked about yet at all is the public that is school kids and high school kids. i think it is so important for academic historians to feel -- not just writing textbooks which is important, but what other ways to have engaging our young people? the right is absolutely determined to push back against -- we see what is going on in texas, that one school district in colorado. do you have any thoughts about that? >> let's get the next question. >> you made a comment about medievalists. i was actually just wondering if anybody on the panel had any examples of somebody or ideas or comments on historians who work more in an early modern or premodern period, if there is a place for them, or do you feel there is a place for them as a public historian? even perhaps as an activist with that particular area of research. >> i want to briefly address -- i think people are doing it. others are speaking, making sure that high school students get -- whether it is civil rights or the history of slavery -- i do and my center does a lot of outreach that is free and open to the public, both middle schoolers and highschooler's. i think you are right. they are not getting this history. i have worked with different people in boston foundations and such, to make sure that is happening, especially in predominantly african-american high schools. there is a debate over common core. i think one of the scandals of high school history is that african-american history is often not taught. many of my suburban students from tufts have never had one unit of african-american history. they are 18 years old, and it still hasn't happened. there are some school districts where every child has to have a unit of african-american history. people like greg carr worked on that textbook. one of the things historians have to do, even if it's not your discipline, we should be collectively as a unit making the case that african-american history has to be taught in high school, so that by the time our students are coming to us, they have at least had one or more units of african-american history. >> i would like to take this opportunity to make a pitch for outhistory.org, which is a website i work on with my colleague jonathan amelio, one of the original activists in our community. the site was founded by jonathan that katz, who wrote the first book called "gay american history," which itself was an act of public intellectual work. in a broader sense, i would like to make a pitch for digital humanities, which can get primary sources, teaching materials, short, critical essays biographies chronologies. this is the kind of work out history does. you can do it for any field. it often gives teachers and under resourced districts materials they can work with that they wouldn't otherwise have. it gives students who are not getting this history in schools the opportunity to access it over the internet and over mobile devices. one of the things we are really aiming at at out history is making it available on mobile devices. most homeless gay, lesbian trans youth are connected to the internet through smartphones. that is how they get jobs and housing. begin to investigate the ways in which a digital humanities projects can actually put your work out there in a scholarly fashion that speaks to multiple audiences. >> material>> offers a way around the curriculum problem, meaning the way policy is not structured since no child left behind, there is not a lot of flexibility in how the school will reorient its curriculum. it is geared towards these tests. never you speak at one of the programs that the government has for teachers -- and i try to do that -- you will go for hours and have a great conversation. at the end, they say it's great, but we can't use any of it. the curriculum is pretty hardwired, and they don't let it deviate. that is a policy problem. material is something that can be incorporated. it can be incorporated outside the classroom. it is a way to get new kinds of items in front of students. i think there is a policy problem for the public school part of the equation. it is very hard to shift almost anything at this point. >> yeah, i agree. i think we do have an obligation to try to -- like the others here, i speak all the time at pre-collegiate teacher conferences and run these seminars in the summer for teachers. the problem today is not only ignorance of history but the retreat from teaching history in schools. i hate to say this. a friend of mine is very involved in education reform issues and said to me, i never thought i would say this, but thank god there are only two more years for the obama administration. education matters -- are not going to say who is the worst president in history anymore -- they are terrible, absolutely terrible. on the point of view of history it's terrible. no child left behind does not include history. top-notch schools can teach it. >> the bush -- [laughter] >> my old friend taught in england. every president makes his predecessor look good. a sad commentary. yes, we do need to talk to high school students, high school teachers precollegiately. >> i did not want to end without addressing the second question. if you're not a u.s. historian, which all of us are -- though i am a leftist, i think continuity matters. if you write about the catholic church, that has been a run for a while. you can draw on what folks have done -- popes have done and compare them to what france is the string. environmental history is becoming an exciting part of the profession. the environment didn't suddenly emerge 200 years ago. [laughter] one of my colleagues, john mcneil has done great environmental history, looking back at how wars have affected the environment the kind of thing you can draw on to talk about how the environment in the middle east has been affected by almost constant war. human history, as we know, it's a cliché, but it's pretty damn short. you may have to be a little bit more careful to get people to care about anglo-saxon history in "the new york times" or on msnbc, but think about why you chose your subject, what your passion is. her most people, it is not historiographic. you couldn't wait to demolish that book published 10 years ago. it is usually something much more immediate sometimes personal political. i think that will draw you towards trying to convert it into something more interesting to a wider audience. >> you are going to bring the session to an end. thanks to the panelists, the audience, everybody. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> the battle of new orleans was the final major battle of the war of 1812, fought after the british and americans signed the treaty of ghent in 1814. join an american history tv as we visit new orleans for a bicentennial commemoration of the battle tonight at 6:30 eastern on c-span3's american history tv. >> the political landscape has changed with the 100 14th congress. not only are there 43 new republicans and 50 new democrats in the house and 12 new republicans and one new democrat in the senate, there are also 100 eight women in congress, including the first african-american republican in the house. keep track of the members of congress using congressional chronicle on c-span.org. the page has lots of useful information, including voting results and statistics about each session. new >> h week american history tv's reel america rings you archival films help tell

Transcripts For CSPAN Q A 20140721

was that i might have been better off if he was dead. the experience of interviewing him was very difficult. we had a bit of a falling out after the book was finished. i do not really mean that. that was gore but doll, of course. course., of an eminent american. not quite of the significance of mark twain or charles dickens. still, distinctive american and a distinctive character. of deep andof -- conflicting tendencies. he can be generous and loyal. ng andld be backbiti demanding. a controlling personality. this.ch a little of let's give people a chance to t he looks like. had the distinct feeling that we live in a revolutionary time. the rich are becoming richer. the hatred of those inside the outside is those creating a true hatred on the who of the many for the few govern or appear to do so. the decision-makers and paymasters are beyond our reach in board rooms of the world. >> that was in 1991. what did you see their? -- there? >> i saw him at his witty and perceptive best. was, gore, as so often he assertive and incisive. he was more often wrong than right. fascinating,er is riods of ourthe pe history that he lived through with hiselationship semi-aristocratic background and championship of the common voice. >> the year was 1999 that you did this. >> yes. that is correct. >> how did you get into biography? >> i got into biography when i was a student of charles dickens, particularly. i was attracted to someone who had a great influence on dickens, thomas carlyle. author.yist and i got the sense that this was someone who was victorian. he brought up residences of a personal sort. ances of a personal sotrt/ a victorian gore but all -- vida l. he was witty and caustic like vidal. a more elaborate prose writer than vidal. in the general reading world and the academic world. this was someone who attracted me and i wanted to write a narrative, as opposed to writing analytic and academic material. i wanted to reach a wider audience. biography ofodern carlisle that i felt represented him well. >> what year did you do that? >> a long time ago. i am kind of old, at this point. what did i do that? the 1970's. >> you cannot be sure of the publications date. charles dickens in 1969? >> that may, indeed, be correct. i was a professor at queens college in new york. ion, -- by profession, i was a victorian missed. -- victorianist. i began to defy myself as a biographer -- define myself as a biographer. i said that i could immerse years of the life of thomas carlyle and charles dickens. and, say, henry james, mark twain, moving into the 20th century and american literature. of course, i got fascinated by lincoln as a writer. i wrote a biography of him. i immersed myself in 19th century american history and, from lincoln, because lincoln provoked in me and suggested to me my next subject, john quincy adams. >> if you are in a classroom, what would you tell them? give us an idea of what biographers need to do to be successful. >> there are so many different kinds of biographies and biographers. you have to look at the individual. how can their talents interface with the challenge of writing a biography? what kind of biography suits them best? write anto interpretive biography. you want to write a psychological biography. what is it that you bring to the biographical challenge that will enable you to write a successful biography? the attraction was that i could combine my love respectrch and amends for knowing things and knowledge. respect for knowing things and knowledge. to, my tremendous commitment knowledge. my subjects were great writers. and committedelf more fully and vitally because i spent years in the lives of great writers and with their work. i was attracted to lincoln because he is a great writer. john quincy adams is a magnificent writer. not on the same level as lincoln. he is not as precise. he is not as available to us as lincoln once. -- was. he wrote a great deal more than lincoln did. we have to pick and choose. i was attracted to john quincy adams because he created a huge body of literary work. his diary and other things that he wrote. and, at the same time, his literary work was inseparable from his public life and the country that he loved. >> what about the way that you work? your approach is to spend six or seven years. you start from scratch. what you do as a biographer to keep track of everything? >> of the 5-7 years that i worked on a biography, the first 2-4 years are reading. i immersed myself in the primary works and the words of the subject. then, i do the background. had why keep track -- how do i keep track? the computer. i start with -- when i get into the writing process -- notes that i take onto the computer as i read. i say, remember this passage. this will be useful. it is helpful to have a conceptual sense of what the overall structure and the basic theme or themes of the biography will be. because i'm so interested in language and the genius of american english and the importance of it to our culture. -- our culture, i concentrate on the writing i am reading. is it rich? is it meaningful? does it speak to us? i arrange things in chronological order and create a file for each year of my subject's life. quotationsthat file that i have selected that seem to fit the overall vision of the book. and, quotations from the secondary material. then, the basic facts of what happened to my subject that year. >> let's go over the people that you have written about. i'm not would ask you the literary question. dickens.o charles if you are trying to explain him as a person, what would you say? nergetic.ely e a literary genius with a gift for spontaneity and spontaneous expression with a powerful imagination, in terms of character and setting. >> how many books have you read? >> all of them numbers of times. i have taught dickens in seminars to undergraduates and graduate students. in addition to the biography of dickens, ages ago, when i was a phdg man, i wrote a dissertation on dickens and published a book on the hidden strings of fiction. dickens is a fascinating character and was explosive when he walked into a room. he was a man of forceful personality who saw himself as a literary general in the world. >> henry james? >> quieter. reticence. at the same time, the most observant and tentatively observant writer that i have ever encountered. he looked at the world through a sort of quiet internal genius that was optically recites and therecise and magnified qualities and characters that he wanted to capture. he went through various stages and his prose changed. the late henry james is a difficult writer. i don't think he is. teacher,t down with a mentor, or someone who really wants to read henry james, i can claim he is lucid. >> what about mark twain? >> the genius of colloquial language and satire. he had the capability to look at the american scene with painful and evoke theely, nature of american culture and american life in the 19th and 20th century. from tom sawyer and huckleberry finn to later more painful satirical ofk about the corruption american life. vidal.s go back to i have a quote from you that says that he put a lot of pressure on me. does that change anything you are willing to say about gore? into suing me. >> why? rejectede -- because i vet my manuscript , in the faceation of a written agreement that we had from the start. i had a specific and binding letter from him in which he agreed that he would make no effort or attempt to influence directly the manuscript and that i was free to publish it. when the manuscript went to the publisher for process a year before obligation, -- publication, i got a call. was warm ande friendly. sometimes, he was sharp and caustic. also, he was meandering. he had a strong attraction to alcohol. he also had a strong sense of what it was doing to him. . history was written in the present. experience with him about that when i published his letters and exchanges with louis. they are wonderful letters and the new yorker was happy to publish them. gore saw the proof copy and said, we must change this. i said, these are the words of the letters. fiction increator of the presence to suit the reality that he wanted it to be. you cannot change the manuscript. i said, i have this letter. his response was, what letter? i had anticipated the day when this would come and i read the letter to him on the telephone. he was silent and said goodbye. my publisher had heard from a lawyer -- a famous civil liberties lawyer and a high-priced one. and, the lawyer attempted to adjudicate. and, i think from the events that followed, it is pretty clear that the advice from his attorney was, do not pursue this. , legally, is not in your favor and will not suit -- it will not attract -- it will not be presented in an attractive way. they dropped it and it was the end of that. that was the end of an intense and mutually interesting i spent aip in which lot of time with him in the united states and italy, interviewing and taping. >> did he cut you off after that? >> yes. indeed. gore's call and it was voice. i recognized the voice. he said, who is this? it was late at night. i said, this is. -- fred. he said, oh. i said, do you have anything you want to say to me? he said, no. i said, goodbye. television, watch when journalists and politicians talk nonsense. no problem is ever addressed. there is a lot of talk about process and meaningless words. d the director of the budget, novak. what to do about the budget? the defenseent, budget was actually mentioned by mr. evans. apparently, the brooking institute thought that a few hundred dollars might be cut. although the defense budget is the cancer that is killing our body politic, it is not addressed by the media. the director of the budget created a diversion. entitlements, he moaned, if only we could get them on the table. >> was it an act? did he mean all this? >> he meant all this. gore only spoke what he felt and believed. and, of course, he is a public performer when he is speaking. but, he is also a provocateur. a provocateur and a propagandist. he does not distinguish between the statements and the claims that he makes and truth. they are ipso facto true because he makes them and because he has a mission and purpose in mind. and, i still have great respect for gore vidal. i wish his life had been a happier one for him. manhe same time, he was a who made substantial and interesting contributions. on,f all you have written if you had to pick one to have dinner with or a conversation a? --r know, who would've would it be? >> it is a terrible question. my answer at this moment is john quincy adams. it may surprise you. i feel so close to him, having been commenced -- immersed in his life, i would be delighted. i would be delighted to have dinner with dickens, james, or twine. -- mark twain. each one of those gentlemen is just extraordinary. >> call had written a book on john quincy adams and said that he had read every single word of the diary. put the microfilm end to end, it would go nine miles. >> there are 600 microfilm reels at the historical society. library in america has a full set. >> how did you tackle it? son, only surviving charles francis, went on to have a distinguished career in politics and law. charles francis edited in of hisn -- an edition father's memoirs and published half of the material. he did a wonderful job. there are 12 volumes, including the index. it includes the public side of john quincy's life with little bit about the private. for the other half, you have to go to the microfilm. it is what i did -- that is what i did. of the computer is that you can go online to the massachusetts historical society site and there it is. it is in john quincy adams' han dwriting. that is the challenge. >> did you read it? >> i did. it is difficult to read as time goes by and he becomes an elderly man. biographers who deal with material, i have my tricks. i have ways of moving through the material that allow me to be efficient. >> telecentric -- tell us a tr ick. >> dare i do that? of course i do. to make useicks was of knowledge that i had prior to reading the diary or the manuscript -- the handwritten portions -- that allow me to not have to read every word of every year or allow me to get to certain points in john quincy's life where i want to make sure i read every word. i knew from other sources that did not haveds things happening that would concern my interest or the kind of biography i was writing. i can move along more efficiently. have done a lot on john quincy adams and charles francis adams. i want to show you video of jqa and the show we did on first ladies. >> for the first 10 years of their married life, john and abigail lived at home. is where they raise their children. this is the birthplace of their second child who became the sixth president of the united states. is important because the link between she and john adams would be letter writing and he was provided a window to what was happening back in the colony of massachusetts during the revolutionary war. abigail would report to john during the battle of bunker hill june 17, 1775. she took her son and would watch the battle of bunker hill with her son and report to john adams of the fires. she was literally the eyes of the revolution and john adams was at the second continental congress in philadelphia. a list of his life after he saw the bunker hill battle. begin the discussion about john quincy adams and look at all of the jobs, including being state,nt, secretary of minister to england, russia, senator,united states and a representative for 17 years. >> and extraordinary american career. a great man and patriot. he deserves much more attention for his accomplishments and for what he has to say to us today. as theeer can be divided chronology shows. three phases. the first is his career as a diplomat. he was appointed as a young man by george washington to represent the united states in the netherlands and other various diplomatic appointments followed. that we'reyears .alking about career asd his to ther and ambassador court of st. james. the second stage of his career -- i will correct that and say that we have to put his service as secretary of state under james monroe. his twoost proud of major accomplishments in this stage of his career. signed again and finished in 1821. and, that established the boundary for louisiana territory. territory american all the way to the pacific and northwest. -- it pushed american territory all the way to the pacific and northwest. ended the war of 1812. a brutal and silly war in which the united states pushed itself into an unnecessary conflict. the reasons for the conflict no longer existed. transatlantic medication prevented president madison and congress from knowing this when they declared war. he was proud of the treaty that ended that. that is the first stage of his career. the second is the presidency. 1825-1829. he is defeated by andrew jackson. difficult and was painful in his life because he came into office under a mutual -- unusual and controversial circumstances. he was elected by the house of representatives. the first was thomas jefferson. thomas jefferson was elected by the house of representatives under unusual circumstances made problemsburr and trouble. because of the weakness in the constitution that did not distinguish between presidents and vice presidents. aaron burr said, why not elect me president? rate, john quincy adams was elected under controversial circumstances that embittered the opposition. andrew jackson, their candidate, had the right to the office because he had more votes. it is the case that the constitution did not give slaveholding states the 3/5 for vision -- provision that allowed for extra electoral votes, john quincy adams would have been elected in the initial election. agreementause of an with henry clay. it became controversial. initially, it was excepted. -- acceptieded. >> there were -- they were not going to allow him any kind of achievement in office. house and the went to the opposite party, or matter how much he tried to work with the opposition, he was not going to get any place. >> is there any way to bring that to the day so people can understand what it had been like being his background sitting in the white house? >> yes. was the secondms adams to be elected to the white seconde was the northerner to be elected to the white house. of twoonly one anti-slavery presidents to be elected to the white house. >> he was the sixth president. the last one until the 16th which is abraham lincoln. it was deeply feared by the house that worried that his vision of a unified country in which the federal government of the states were partners in a relationship that enables the federal government to play a leading role in binding the country together through infrastructure projects, through supporting manufacturer and so on. he was deeply suspected by the federal states for -- they say he wanted to much power for the federal government. in order to protect slavery. they wanted slavery to remain totally in control of the state, no federal involvement in it. he went into -- office with a lot of people against him. then they used his agreement with henry clay, which from my point of view was an ordinary agreement. he was the most qualified man in the country to be appointed secretary of state. adams appointed him because he agreed on almost everything in terms of their vision for america, for the cut of programs that they wanted. of thepaganda machine jacksonian democratic party was called the corrupt bargain. jackson and his people were brilliant in creating our soundbite culture. it was a very painful presidency for john quincy adams, but what he did accomplish was to get out there for public discussion that inntually bore fruit 1860-1861, of a vision of the american future that essentially was one of the great strengths of the country throughout the rest of the 19th century and certainly the great strength of the country in the 20th and 21st century. amanda matthews talked about the personal side. a as here's a very unpleasant years for the adams is. it was readily apparent. everyone talks about it. their son talks about in his own diary about how sad that household seems at the time. >> what made it that way? >> i think the cloud under which the presidency began. thisver left and because campaigning for 1828 began almost instantly, wheeze to feel very personally the attack on ,er husband, on his character she was not american enough. that situation really did not, they finally reached the pinnacle and it is not a happy pinnacle. it is a very stormy for years. >> how much of that you agree with? >> i agree with much of it. a accurate comment, it is not full comment. it doesn't describe the totality of what they are feeling and what they're going through. catherine, john quincy's wife, a brilliant woman of great charm and great beauty, found the white house years extremely difficult. she also made it -- he alternated between her desire to andnce her husband's career strong detestation of the corruption and the boorishness of washington and washington political society during those years. >> you think if we had lived back then, we talk about a divided city now, would it have been just as divided than? and always. our contemporary emphasis on how politicized the country is, how should beshington is understood in the context that this is all what -- this has always been the case. when the constitution was ratified in the late 1780's, it barely passed. barely gained a majority of the votes of the state. it was -- there was immense opposition to it area did george washington's second term, first term, the great george washington could do no wrong, .ut the seething underneath by his second term, washington says i cannot take this anymore. this backbiting and this ugliness, this awfulness. it has always been our history. you can say it is a great weakness and you can also say it is a great strength. divided.ry as long as our division is part of the articulated public form of debate according to democratic principles, i think we will be fine. >> in the middle of everything that they were doing, talk about george washington adams, who died in the 1829 at age 28. >> committed suicide in fact. >> how? >> jumped from a steamer in long island sound as it went from newport rhode island on its way to new york, where it was going to -- on his way to new york. he was going to travel down to washington to join his mother and father. this is just after john quincy adams and louisa leave the white house. george washington adams is the elder him -- is the eldest of the adams children. a daughter who lived for year and died in st. petersburg, something that louisa never got over. >> st. petersburg, russia. >> russia, indeed. sonlways hoped his eldest would be to him what he had been to his own father. student that he would look up to his father, that he would be disciplined and have a great future. int he would be an ornament the adams family pantheon. >> why did he commit suicide? >> it is so difficult to say. he was a little bit on drugs, he was a little bit on alcohol. he felt he was a failure. he wanted to be a poet. in a verytempted minor way a political career in massachusetts. it didn't work out. he felt himself under the heavy burden and weight of the family history and inheritance and expectations. and there are also probably genetic factors that we can point to but we can't be sure about. -- john quincy adams the second. how did he die. >> he was an alcoholic. there was an unfortunate history of alcoholism in the adams family. both sides, but especially on 'side.l adams john quincy adams brother was an alcoholic, it was the shame of the family. feared thealways potential for alcoholism and immorality. it showed up quite a bit. the third son, charles francis, lived to be 79. what is the story of the brothers going after the same cousin for mary? story is ant interesting story of competition between brothers, but also a very provocative and flirtatious became, with the death of her parents, a resident of the john quincy adams household as a very young teenager. so she grew up into her middle teenage years enjoying her life in the adams household and flirting with the brothers. charles francis as an older adolescent sort of fell in love with her. he always had a bit of a crush on her. then, of course, his brother fell in love with her and fell out. that is george washington adams. they became engaged. then time went by and george washington adams got into more and more difficulty off in the distance in massachusetts while the young lady was in washington with the adams family. then the other brother appeared on the scene, if you will, that is john. adams, that is john the young ladynd became intimate and married. , this write in your book is again a personal thing, about 'daily walkeddams onto the potomac river, swimming in the new? >> it is hard to say, because it seems likely that he was either in the neuter almost nude. nude or almost nude. he is an early riser. he came during the summer months when he was still here and he wasn't at home in massachusetts, he became -- he went to the potomac for regular early morning refreshment, often accompanied by someone, but sometimes alone. he would swim in the river and sometimes got into trouble, got swept away by the tide once and almost drowned. there is a wonderful episode in ,he memoir, the autobiography that a make use of john quincy adams. in which for the last time he goes to swim in the river and there are some young men there who are also swimming who sort of recognize him. i wondered what an extraordinary experience to -- for these young men, can you just imagine seeing our president swimming either naked or just in some small and thenn the water stretching out and drying in the sun on the banks of the potomac river. >> you start off in your book, your first sentence is, john quincy adams adams is a president about whom most americans know very little. how long did it take you to compose that first sentence? >> not for long. it came to me almost instantaneously. i sat down to write this in the preface for the book, and before i got into the narrative of the first chapter, it begins when john quincy adams is president and he learns that his elderly father, the second president, is very ill. he wants to travel home. see his father before he dies. the book is -- it didn't take me long to think up that sentence because i am so aware of how underappreciated and undervalued john quincy adams is. i think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we live in what is predominantly, and i think somewhat unfortunately been semi-thoughtlessly it pro andrew jackson world. andrew jackson has been glorified as a great hero of that. period. he is a hero of the battle of new orleans. in my view, andrew jackson was a terrible president and a disaster for the country. he was proslavery, anti-american indian. he was against a modern economic structure for the country area he hated banks. nasty volatile and temperament. there were some great things about jackson that were totally anti-adams. the fact that jackson is somewhat thoughtlessly glorified in our contemporary world and our contemporary view of 19th century american history, has pushed john quincy adams into a sort of gloomy netherworld, in which we don't think of him as the extraordinary man that he was. >> how much of -- when you get into a biography like this and you sink your teeth into someone like john quincy adams, you like him because he reflects the way you think. >> there is a great deal of that. there's no doubt about that. of -- the fact that i of theertain views american commonwealth of what our basic values are and how they should be expressed through legislation, through law, through moral values of the culture as a whole, it does play a role, of course. but that doesn't mean that i in presentingair even andrew jackson. if i immersed myself in andrew jackson, i would be withhetically identifying what makes him tick and what makes him tick is that he is like all of us a human being, with likes and dislikes, with inherited your neck structure, with values of come from his environment and his culture, and every human being is worth anding at and studying being empathetic with. however, it helps when you're writing an autobiography applicable to use when you think that political figure had an important and valid vision for america's future. >> here's a minute and 10 seconds from the movie amistad. this movie is 1997. anthony hopkins is who we see playing john quincy adams. >> why are we here? that simple issues should not find itself so noble that to be argued before the supreme court of the united states of america? do we fear the lower courts and somehow missed the truth? or is it our great consuming fear of civil war? it has allowed us to heap symbolism in a simple case of nebraska. us. if it stands before truth has been driven from this case like a slave. from court to court, wretched and destitute. any great legal acumen, quite the opposite. but through the long powerful arm of the executive office, this is most important cases ever come to this court. >> the circumstances. performance in spielberg's best film, for me. and839, a group of captured enslaved africans on a ship called the amistad were being taken from africa to be sold in havana, cuba am a witch had a great legal slave market. they overpowered the captain and crew and took over the ship themselves. they attempted to return to africa, but none of them being sailors, they had to rely on the navigational skills of one of crewaptured members of the who sent them in the wrong direction in the hope that they would be captured and the ship would be returned to the rightful owners. the ship was indeed captured off the coast of long island, new york and taken to connecticut. then the united states is faced with the problem, what to do with these 50 odd black people whom the white people on board the ship claim are slaves and their property, but they are not sure? we are not sure. it is a long legal process that followed which led to eventually the supreme court. administration, -- slavee slave dr. c ocracy -- van buren was very much a colleague of and in sympathy with southern values and ideas. the administration and a good deal of the country would have been happy to have seen these amistad prisoners either returned to the white people who claimed that they belong to them and sent to havana, but of ,ourse the abolition movement we're talking the late 1830's, this is 1839. the supreme court cases 1841. the abolition movement which is growing stronger and stronger, even though it is a small minority, and even though most of the north, even though it is uneasy about slavery, it is willing to tolerate it for the sake of the national harmony. certainly most of the north is racist. the whole issue, the whole problem is really causing tremendous concern. what will we do with these people who we have cap sure? how can we satisfy the supreme court? of course, it makes a decision after looking at all the evidence and after hearing john .uincy adams the decision written by justice , that indeed these africans stolen and taken illegally from africa, the do not have the legal status of slaves and they should be discharged is free. 'argument is brilliant. at the end of his speech which i , there's angth glorious paragraph about morality, truth and u.s. values, and a very personal statement of this old man and where he is come from and of all the supreme court justices he is known in the past is just a brilliant bit of writing. joseph story and john quincy adams are both from massachusetts. >> indeed. adams as quincy relatively young man was offered a supreme court associate justice ship and turned it down, joseph story was appointed. >> he was the youngest ever, 32 years old. >> that is right. >> this is the last part of your book, this is the last art of 'life after heams had been in congress and after your dinner president. assist -- here is the historian of the house. in our special on the capital. this will close out a program. >> he suffered a slight stroke the year before his death. then, when he recovered, he came back to the house. it was his duty as he entered -- entered, the door opened. this one-man misspeaking and when he saw adams he stopped speaking. the entire membership started applauding, and they rose to welcome the great statesman. he was escorted to his seat. not much later, the poor man got up and he was about to speak, and he toppled over. several people grabbed him before he hit the floor. somebody screamed, this mr. adams is dying. that he was moved to what was then the speaker's office. anday there for two days then died. die isom where he did boggs room.dy walks >> what was most successful. and john quincy adams life, in your opinion? >> for american history, the most successful. is the. 1814he treaty of ghent in of 1819adams treaty -1821. to transform the country in interesting ways. emotionally and intellectually, the. in which he served in congress and then became the most controversial and outspoken national voice against what was called the gag rule than, and against slavery, and the amistad , thoseall of those instances together resonate most for us today, when we are so aware of what happened between in february 1848 and 1861. the president in 1861 who swore the oath of office, a bible held in the hands of the chief justice of the supreme court, ,oger tawny who was proslavery dred scott decision, appointed by andrew jackson, that man was who was in the, hall, the chamber of the house of representatives when john quincy adams had that fatal and last heart attack. their tenure in the house of representatives overlapped by three months. 1847, january and february 1848, and they voted the same way on every issue. lincoln was very aware of that great man sitting in a seat close to the speaker. >> this e.on john quincy adams, about 600 pages long, this follows gore vidal, henry james, charles dickens, thomas carl icahn a mark twain, and abraham lincoln biographies in the past. does fred kaplan have a next book is going to write? >> yes, i do. it is a book that starts with abraham lincoln and john quincy adams in the same house together , voting in the same way against the american war, against slavery and in favor of ring strong national government which is responsible for infrastructure in the country. it is not a dual portrait of the two men, but it is a comparison between the two of them and the differences and similarities. especially, their attitudes toward slavery and how those work out. the crucial question is, why did john quincy adams say that the notion of colorization, of exporting all of our free blacks and free negroes and slaves to africa and getting rid of them that way, why is that a ridiculous idea and fantasy. why did abraham lincoln right up 1862, right up to late 1862, still believe then -- believed in and >> from new york city to booth bay maine, how many years did you teach? >> i taught in wisconsin at appleton college from 1962 to 64 and then cal state l.a. from 64 to 67. then i returned to new york. from 1967 until my retirement in 2005 i was a professor at queens college. >> the name of the book is john quincy adams an american visionary. thank you. 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Transcripts For CSPAN Q A 20140721

>> my comment was that i might have been better off if he was dead. the experience of interviewing him was very difficult. we had a bit of a falling out after the book was finished. i do not really mean that. that was gore vidal, of course. an eminent american. not quite of the significance of mark twain or charles dickens. still, distinctive american and a distinctive character. a man of -- of -- of deep and conflicting tendencies. he can be generous and loyal. he could be backbiting and demanding. a controlling personality. >> watch a little of this. let's give people a chance to see what he looks like. >> i had the distinct feeling that we live in a revolutionary time. the rich are becoming richer. the hatred of those inside the beltway for those outside is creating a true hatred on the part of the many for the few who govern or appear to do so. the decision-makers and paymasters are beyond our reach in board rooms of the world. >> that was in 1991. what did you see there? >> i saw him at his witty and perceptive best. i saw gore, as so often he was, assertive and incisive. he was more often wrong than right. and, the career is fascinating, in terms of the periods of our history that he lived through and his relationship with his semi-aristocratic background and championship of the common voice. >> the year was 1999 that you did this. >> yes. that is correct. >> how did you get into biography? >> i got into biography when i was a student of charles dickens, particularly. i was attracted to someone who had a great influence on dickens, thomas carlyle. and essayist and author. and, i got the sense that this was someone who was victorian. but, he brought up resonances of a personal sort. a victorian gore vidal. i got entranced by the mystery of this man. he was witty and caustic like vidal. a more elaborate prose writer than vidal. more difficult to fathom. in the general reading world and the academic world. this was someone who attracted me and i wanted to write a narrative, as opposed to writing analytic and academic material. i wanted to reach a wider audience. there is no modern biography of carlisle that i felt represented him well. i jumped into it. >> what year did you do that? >> a long time ago. i am kind of old, at this point. when did i do that? the 1970's. >> you cannot be sure of the publications date. charles dickens in 1969? >> that may, indeed, be correct. i was a professor at queens college in new york. by profession, i was a victorianist. i began to define myself as a biographer. i said that i could immerse myself in 4-6 years of the life of thomas carlyle and charles dickens. and, say, henry james, mark twain, moving into the 20th century and american literature. of course, i got fascinated by lincoln as a writer. i wrote a biography of him. i immersed myself in 19th century american history and, from lincoln, because lincoln provoked in me and suggested to me my next subject, john quincy adams. >> if you are in a classroom, what would you tell them? if they wanted to be biographers. give us an idea of what biographers need to do to be successful. >> there are so many different kinds of biographies and biographers. you have to look at the individual. what are your talents and how can their talents interface with the challenge of writing a biography? what kind of biography suits them best? you want to write an interpretive biography. you want to write a psychological biography. what is it that you bring to the biographical challenge that will enable you to write a successful biography? in my case, the attraction was that i could combine my love of research and immense respect for knowing things and knowledge. and my tremendous commitment to language. to literature in language -- and language. my subjects were great writers. i expanded myself and committed more fully and vitally because i spent years in the lives of great writers and with their work. i was attracted to lincoln because he is a great writer. john quincy adams is a magnificent writer. not on the same level as lincoln. he is not as precise. he is not as available to us as lincoln was. he wrote a great deal more than lincoln did. we have to pick and choose. i was attracted to john quincy adams because he created a huge body of literary work. his diary and other things that he wrote. and, at the same time, his literary work was inseparable from his public life and the country that he loved. >> what about the way that you work? your approach is to spend six or seven years. you start from scratch. what you do as a biographer to keep track of everything? >> of the 5-7 years that i worked on a biography, the first 2-4 years are reading. i immersed myself in the primary works and the words of the subject. then, i do the background. how do i keep track? the computer. those folders in files -- and files. i start when i get into the writing process -- notes that i take onto the computer as i read. i say, remember this passage. this will be useful. it is helpful to have a conceptual sense of what the overall structure and the basic theme or themes of the biography will be. because i'm so interested in language and the genius of american english and the importance of it to our culture. political culture, general howure, i concentrate -- effective is the writing that i am reading? is it rich? is it meaningful? does it speak to us? i arrange things in chronological order and create a file for each year of my subject's life. i put into that file quotations that i have selected that seem to fit the overall vision of the book. and, quotations from the secondary material. and then, the basic facts of what happened to my subject that year. >> let's go over the people that you have written about. i'm not would ask you the literary question. go back to charles dickens. if you are trying to explain him as a person, what would you say? >> immensely energetic. overriding personality. yeshen slid to rare e.g. in -- immense literary genius with a gift for spontaneity and spontaneous expression with a powerful imagination, in terms of character and setting. >> how many books have you read? >> all of them numbers of times. i have taught dickens in seminars to undergraduates and graduate students. in addition to the biography of dickens, ages ago, when i was a young man, i wrote a phd dissertation on dickens and published a book on the hidden strings of fiction. dickens is a fascinating character and was explosive when he walked into a room. he was a man of forceful personality who saw himself as a literary general in the world. >> henry james? >> quieter. reticence. shy in his own way. but at the same time, the most observant and tentatively observant writer that i have ever encountered. he looked at the world through a sort of quiet internal genius that was optically precise and magnified the qualities and characters that he wanted to capture. he is a difficult writer for many. he went through various stages and his prose changed. the late henry james is a difficult writer. i don't think he is. if you sit down with a teacher, mentor, or someone who really wants to read henry james, i can claim he is lucid. sentence by sentence. >> what about mark twain? >> the genius of colloquial language and satire. the great american genius of satire who had the capability to look at the american scene with painful humor, incisively, and evoke the nature of american culture and american life in the 19th and 20th century. a diverse career from tom sawyer and huckleberry finn to later more painful satirical work about the corruption of american life. >> let's go back to vidal. i have a quote from you that says that he put a lot of pressure on me. the year he wrote this -- does that change anything you are willing to say about gore? did you worry about him? >> he did look into suing me. >> why? >> because -- because i rejected his attempt to vet my manuscript before publication, in the face of a written agreement that we had from the start. i had a specific and binding letter from him in which he agreed that he would make no effort or attempt to influence directly the manuscript and that i was free to publish it. nt would not see it until it was published. when the manuscript went to the publisher for process a year before publication, i got a call. sometimes gore was warm and friendly. sometimes, he was sharp and caustic. also, he was meandering. he had a strong attraction to alcohol. he also had a strong sense of what it was doing to him. history was written in the present. i had a previous experience with him about that when i published his letters and exchanges with louis. they are wonderful letters and the new yorker was happy to publish them. gore saw the proof copy and said, we must change this. i said, these are the words of the letters. we can't change them now. he was the creator of fiction in the presence to suit the reality that he wanted it to be. i said, no, you cannot change the manuscript. i said, i have this letter. his response was, what letter? i had anticipated the day when this would come and i read the letter to him on the telephone. he was silent and said goodbye. my publisher had heard from a lawyer -- a famous civil liberties lawyer and a high-priced one. gore was always like to threaten litigation. and, and, the lawyer attempted to adjudicate. and, i think from the events that followed, it is pretty clear that the advice from his attorney was, do not pursue this. this, legally, is not in your favor and will not suit -- it will not attract -- it will not be presented in an attractive way. they dropped it and it was the end of that. that was the end of an intense and mutually interesting relationship in which i spent a lot of time with him in the united states and italy, interviewing and taping. >> did he cut you off after that? >> yes. indeed. i got a call and it was gore's voice. i recognized the voice. he said, who is this? it was late at night. i said, this is fred. he said, oh. i said, do you have anything you want to say to me? he said, no. i said, goodbye. >> i like to watch television, when journalists and politicians talk nonsense. no problem is ever addressed. there is a lot of talk about process and meaningless words. i watched the director of the budget, novak. what to do about the budget? to my amazement, the defense budget was actually mentioned by mr. evans. apparently, the brooking institute thought that a few hundred dollars might be cut. although the defense budget is the cancer that is killing our body politic, it is not addressed by the media. the director of the budget created a diversion. entitlements, he moaned, if only we could get them on the table. >> was it an act? did he mean all this? >> he meant all this. gore only spoke what he felt and believed. and, of course, he is a public performer when he is speaking. but, he is also a provocateur. a provocateur and a propagandist. he does not distinguish between the statements and the claims that he makes and truth. they are ipso facto true because he makes them and because he has a mission and purpose in mind. and, i still have great respect for gore vidal. i wish his life had been a happier one for him. at the same time, he was a man who made substantial and interesting contributions. >> of all you have written on, if you had to pick one to have dinner with or a conversation with or know, who would it be? >> it is a terrible question. my answer at this moment is john quincy adams. it may surprise you. i feel so close to him, having been immersed in his life, i would be delighted. i would be delighted to have dinner with dickens, james, or mark twain. each one of those gentlemen is just extraordinary. >> call had written a book on john quincy adams and said that he had read every single word of the diary. if you put the microfilm end to end, it would go nine miles. >> there are 600 microfilm reels at the historical society. every major library in america has a full set. >> how did you tackle it? >> is only surviving son, charles francis, went on to have a distinguished career in politics and law. charles francis edited an edition of his father's memoirs and published half of the material. he did a wonderful job. there are 12 volumes, including the index. it includes the public side of john quincy's life with little bit about the private. for the other half, you have to go to the microfilm. that is what i did. the miracle of the computer is that you can go online to the massachusetts historical society site and there it is. it is in john quincy adams' handwriting. that is the challenge. >> did you read it? >> i did. it is difficult to read as time goes by and he becomes an elderly man. like most biographers who deal with material, i have my tricks. i have ways of moving through the material that allow me to be efficient. >> tell us a trick. >> dare i do that? of course i do. one of my tricks was to make use of knowledge that i had prior to reading the diary or the manuscript -- the handwritten portions -- that allow me to not have to read every word of every year or allow me to get to certain points in john quincy's life where i want to make sure i read every word. i knew from other sources that certain periods did not have things happening that would concern my interest or the kind of biography i was writing. i can move along more efficiently. >> you have done a lot on john quincy adams and charles francis adams. i want to show you video of jqa's birthplace and the show we did on first ladies. >> for the first 10 years of their married life, john and abigail lived at home. is where they raise their children. this is the birthplace of their second child who became the sixth president of the united states. is important because the link between she and john adams would be letter writing and he was provided a window to what was happening back in the colony of massachusetts during the revolutionary war. abigail would report to john during the battle of bunker hill on june 17, 1775. she took her son and would watch the battle of bunker hill with her son and report to john adams of the fires. she was literally the eyes of the revolution and john adams was at the second continental congress in philadelphia. >> a list of his life after he saw the bunker hill battle. begin the discussion about john quincy adams and look at all of the jobs, including being president, secretary of state, minister to england, russia, prussia, united states senator, and a representative for 17 years. >> an extraordinary american career. a great man and patriot. he deserves much more attention for his accomplishments and for what he has to say to us today. his career can be divided as the chronology shows. three phases. the first is his career as a diplomat. he was appointed as a young man by george washington to represent the united states in the netherlands and other various diplomatic appointments followed. there were years that we're talking about. he finished his career as minister and ambassador to the court of st. james. the second stage of his career -- i will correct that and say that we have to put his service as secretary of state under james monroe. he was most proud of his two major accomplishments in this stage of his career. he finally signed again and finished in 1821. and, that established the boundary for louisiana territory. it pushed american territory all the way to the pacific northwest. the treaty ended the war of 1812. a brutal and silly war in which the united states pushed itself into an unnecessary conflict. the reasons for the conflict no longer existed. slow transatlantic medication prevented president madison and congress from knowing this when they declared war. he was proud of the treaty that ended that. that is the first stage of his career. the second is the presidency. 1825-1829. he is defeated by andrew jackson. the presidency was difficult and painful in his life because he came into office under an unusual and controversial circumstances. he was elected by the house of representatives. the first was thomas jefferson. thomas jefferson was elected by the house of representatives under unusual circumstances because aaron burr made problems and trouble. because of the weakness in the constitution that did not distinguish between presidents and vice presidents. aaron burr said, why not elect me president? at any rate, john quincy adams was elected under controversial circumstances that embittered the opposition. andrew jackson, their candidate, had the right to the office because he had more votes. it is the case that the constitution did not give slaveholding states the 3/5 provision that allowed for extra electoral votes, john quincy adams would have been elected in the initial election. he won because of an agreement with henry clay. it became controversial. initially, it was accepted. however, his opponents insisted that it was an illegitimate presidency. they would not allow him any achievement in office. so, when the house and the senate went to the opposite party, or matter how much he tried to work with the opposition, he was not going to get any place. >> is there any way to bring that to the day so people can understand what it had been like being his background sitting in the white house? >> yes. john quincy adams was the second adams to be elected to the white house he was the second northerner to be elected to the white house. he was only one of two anti-slavery presidents to be elected to the white house. >> he was the sixth president. >> he was the last one until the 16th which is abraham lincoln. it was deeply feared by the house that worried that his vision of a unified country in which the federal government of the states were partners in a relationship that enables the federal government to play a leading role in binding the country together through infrastructure projects, through supporting manufacturer and so on. he was deeply suspected by the federal states for -- they say he wanted to much power for the federal government. in order to protect slavery. they wanted slavery to remain totally in control of the state, no federal involvement in it. he went into office with a lot of people against him. then they used his agreement with henry clay, which from my point of view was an ordinary agreement. he was the most qualified man in the country to be appointed secretary of state. adams appointed him because he agreed on almost everything in terms of their vision for america, for the cut of programs that they wanted. the propaganda machine of the jacksonian democratic party was called the corrupt bargain. jackson and his people were brilliant in creating our soundbite culture. it was a very painful presidency for john quincy adams, but what he did accomplish was to get out there for public discussion that eventually bore fruit in 1860-1861, of a vision of the american future that essentially was one of the great strengths of the country throughout the rest of the 19th century and certainly the great strength of the country in the 20th and 21st century. >> amanda matthews talked about the personal side. >> a as here's a very unpleasant years for the adams is. it was readily apparent. everyone talks about it. their son talks about in his own diary about how sad that household seems at the time. >> what made it that way? >> i think the cloud under which the presidency began. it never left and because this campaigning for 1828 began almost instantly, wheeze to feel very personally the attack on her husband, on his character, she was not american enough. that situation really did not, they finally reached the pinnacle and it is not a happy pinnacle. it is a very stormy for years. >> how much of that you agree with? >> i agree with much of it. an accurate comment, it is not a full comment. it doesn't describe the totality of what they are feeling and what they're going through. louise and catherine, john quincy's wife, a brilliant woman of great charm and great beauty, found the white house years extremely difficult. she also made it -- he alternated between her desire to advance her husband's career and strong detestation of the corruption and the boorishness of washington and washington political society during those years. >> you think if we had lived back then, we talk about a divided city now, would it have been just as divided than? >> equally and always. our contemporary emphasis on how politicized the country is, how divided washington is should be understood in the context that this has always been the case. when the constitution was ratified, it was ratified in the late 1780's, it barely passed. barely gained a majority of the votes of the state. it was -- there was immense opposition to it area did george washington's second term, first term, the great george washington could do no wrong, but the seething underneath. by his second term, washington says i cannot take this anymore. this backbiting and this ugliness, this awfulness. it has always been our history. you can say it is a great weakness and you can also say it is a great strength. we are very divided. as long as our division is part of the articulated public form of debate according to democratic principles, i think we will be fine. >> in the middle of everything that they were doing, talk about george washington adams, who died in the 1829 at age 28. >> committed suicide in fact. >> how? >> jumped from a steamer in long island sound as it went from newport rhode island on its way to new york, where it was going to -- on his way to new york. he was going to travel down to washington to join his mother and father. this is just after john quincy adams and louisa leave the white house. george washington adams is the elder him -- is the eldest of the adams children. they did have a daughter who lived for year and died in st. petersburg, something that louisa never got over. >> st. petersburg, russia. >> russia, indeed. he always hoped his eldest son would be to him what he had been to his own father. he would be a student that he would look up to his father, that he would be disciplined and have a great future. that he would be an ornament in the adams family pantheon. >> why did he commit suicide? >> it is so difficult to say. he was a little bit on drugs, he was a little bit on alcohol. he felt he was a failure. he wanted to be a poet. he then attempted in a very minor way a political career in massachusetts. it didn't work out. he felt himself under the heavy burden and weight of the family history and inheritance and expectations. and there are also probably genetic factors that we can point to but we can't be sure about. >> he was 31 -- john quincy adams the second. how did he die. >> he was an alcoholic. there was an unfortunate history of alcoholism in the adams family. both sides, but especially on abigail adams'side. john quincy adams brother was an alcoholic, it was the shame of the family. the family always feared the potential for alcoholism and immorality. it showed up quite a bit. >> the third son, charles francis, lived to be 79. what is the story of the brothers going after the same cousin for mary? >> well, that story is an interesting story of competition between brothers, but also a very provocative and flirtatious young lady, who became, with the death of her parents, a resident of the john quincy adams household as a very young teenager. so she grew up into her middle teenage years enjoying her life in the adams household and flirting with the brothers. charles francis as an older adolescent sort of fell in love with her. he always had a bit of a crush on her. then, of course, his brother fell in love with her and fell out. that is george washington adams. they became engaged. then time went by and george washington adams got into more and more difficulty off in the distance in massachusetts while the young lady was in washington with the adams family. then the other brother appeared on the scene, if you will, that is john. john adams, that is john quincy's son, and the young lady became intimate and married. >> you write in your book, this is again a personal thing, about john quincy adams'daily walked onto the potomac river, swimming in the new? >> it is hard to say, because it seems likely that he was either in the neuter almost nude. -- in the nude or almost nude. he is an early riser. he came during the summer months when he was still here and he wasn't at home in massachusetts, he became -- he went to the potomac for regular early morning refreshment, often accompanied by someone, but sometimes alone. he would swim in the river and sometimes got into trouble, got swept away by the tide once and almost drowned. there is a wonderful episode in the memoir, the autobiography, that a make use of john quincy adams. in which for the last time he goes to swim in the river and there are some young men there who are also swimming who sort of recognize him. i wondered what an extraordinary experience for these young men, can you just imagine seeing our president swimming either naked or just in some small garment in the water and then stretching out and drying in the sun on the banks of the potomac river. >> you start off in your book, your first sentence is, john quincy adams adams is a president about whom most americans know very little. how long did it take you to compose that first sentence? >> not for long. it came to me almost instantaneously. i sat down to write this in the preface for the book, and before i got into the narrative of the first chapter, it begins when john quincy adams is president and he learns that his elderly father, the second president, is very ill. he wants to travel home. he wants to see his father before he dies. the book is -- it didn't take me long to think up that sentence because i am so aware of how underappreciated and undervalued john quincy adams is. i think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we live in what is predominantly, and i think somewhat unfortunately been semi-thoughtlessly it pro andrew jackson world. andrew jackson has been glorified as a great hero of that. period. he is a hero of the battle of new orleans. in my view, andrew jackson was a terrible president and a disaster for the country. he was proslavery, anti-american indian. he was against a modern economic structure for the country area he hated banks. he had volatile and nasty temperament. there were some great things about jackson that were totally anti-adams. the fact that jackson is somewhat thoughtlessly glorified in our contemporary world and our contemporary view of 19th century american history, has pushed john quincy adams into a sort of gloomy netherworld, in which we don't think of him as the extraordinary man that he was. >> how much of -- when you get into a biography like this and you sink your teeth into someone like john quincy adams, you like him because he reflects the way you think. >> there is a great deal of that. there's no doubt about that. in terms of -- the fact that i share certain views of the american commonwealth of what our basic values are and how they should be expressed through legislation, through law, through moral values of the culture as a whole, it does play a role, of course. but that doesn't mean that i could not be fair in presenting even andrew jackson. if i immersed myself in andrew jackson, i would be empathetically identifying with what makes him tick and what makes him tick is that he is like all of us a human being, with likes and dislikes, with inherited genetic structure, with values of come from his environment and his culture, and every human being is worth looking at and studying and being empathetic with. however, it helps when you're writing an autobiography applicable to use when you think that political figure had an important and valid vision for america's future. >> here's a minute and 10 seconds from the movie amistad. this movie is 1997. anthony hopkins is who we see playing john quincy adams. >> why are we here? how is it that simple issues should not find itself so noble that to be argued before the supreme court of the united states of america? do we fear the lower courts and somehow missed the truth? or is it our great consuming fear of civil war? it has allowed us to heap symbolism in a simple case of nebraska. even if it stands before us. truth has been driven from this case like a slave. from court to court, wretched and destitute. then, not by any great legal acumen, quite the opposite. but through the long powerful arm of the executive office, this is most important cases ever come to this court. >> the circumstances. >> a brilliant performance in spielberg's best film, for me. in 1839, a group of captured and enslaved africans on a ship called the amistad were being taken from africa to be sold in havana, cuba am a witch had a great legal slave market. they overpowered the captain and crew and took over the ship themselves. they attempted to return to africa, but none of them being sailors, they had to rely on the navigational skills of one of the captured members of the crew who sent them in the wrong direction in the hope that they would be captured and the ship would be returned to the rightful owners. the ship was indeed captured off the coast of long island, new york and taken to connecticut. then the united states is faced with the problem, what to do with these 50 odd black people whom the white people on board the ship claim are slaves and their property, but they are not sure? we are not sure. it is a long legal process that followed which led to eventually the supreme court. the van buren administration, the entire slaveocracy -- van buren was very much a colleague of and in sympathy with southern values and ideas. the administration and a good deal of the country would have been happy to have seen these amistad prisoners either returned to the white people who claimed that they belong to them and sent to havana, but of course the abolition movement, we're talking the late 1830's, this is 1839. the supreme court cases 1841. the abolition movement which is growing stronger and stronger, even though it is a small minority, and even though most of the north, even though it is uneasy about slavery, it is willing to tolerate it for the sake of the national harmony. certainly most of the north is racist. the whole issue, the whole problem is really causing tremendous concern. what will we do with these people who we have cap sure? how can we satisfy the supreme court? of course, it makes a decision after looking at all the evidence and after hearing john quincy adams. the decision written by justice joseph story, that indeed these africans stolen and taken illegally from africa, the do not have the legal status of slaves and they should be discharged is free. adams'argument is brilliant. at the end of his speech which i quote at length, there's a glorious paragraph about morality, truth and u.s. values, and a very personal statement of this old man and where he is come from and of all the supreme court justices he is known in the past is just a brilliant bit of writing. >> joseph story and john quincy adams are both from massachusetts. >> indeed. when john quincy adams as relatively young man was offered by james monroe a supreme court associate justice ship and turned it down, joseph story was appointed. >> he was the youngest ever, 32 years old. >> that is right. >> this is the last part of your book, this is the last art of john quincy adams'life after he had been in congress and after your dinner president. here is the historian of the house. in our special on the capital. this will close out a program. >> he suffered a slight stroke the year before his death. then, when he recovered, he came back to the house. it was his duty as he entered, the door opened. this one-man misspeaking and when he saw adams he stopped speaking. the entire membership started applauding, and they rose to welcome the great statesman. he was escorted to his seat. not much later, the poor man got up and he was about to speak, and he toppled over. several people grabbed him before he hit the floor. somebody screamed, this mr. adams is dying. that he was moved to what was then the speaker's office. he lay there for two days and then died. that room where he did die is now the lindy boggs room. >> what was most successful. and john quincy adams life, in your opinion? >> for american history, the most successful. is the. and the treaty of ghent in 1814 and the adams treaty of 1819-1821. to transform the country in interesting ways. emotionally and intellectually, the. in which he served in congress and then became the most controversial and outspoken national voice against what was called the gag rule than, and against slavery, and the amistad trial, all of those, those instances together resonate most for us today, when we are so aware of what happened between adams'death in february 1848 and 1861. the president in 1861 who swore the oath of office, a bible held in the hands of the chief justice of the supreme court, roger tawny who was proslavery, dred scott decision, appointed by andrew jackson, that man was abraham lincoln, who was in the hall, the chamber of the house of representatives when john quincy adams had that fatal and last heart attack. their tenure in the house of representatives overlapped by three months. december, 1847, january and february, 1848, and they voted the same way on every issue. lincoln was very aware of that great man sitting in a seat close to the speaker. >> this new john quincy adams, about 600 pages long, this follows gore vidal, henry james, charles dickens, thomas carl icahn a mark twain, and abraham lincoln biographies in the past. does fred kaplan have a next book is going to write? >> yes, i do. it is a book that starts with abraham lincoln and john quincy adams in the same house together, voting in the same way against the american war, against slavery and in favor of ring strong national government which is responsible for infrastructure in the country. it is not a dual portrait of the two men, but it is a comparison between the two of them and the differences and similarities. especially, their attitudes toward slavery and how those work out. the crucial question is, why did john quincy adams say that the notion of colorization, of exporting all of our free blacks and free negroes and slaves to africa and getting rid of them that way, why is that a ridiculous idea and fantasy. why did abraham lincoln right up until late 1862, right up to late 1862, still believed in and work for colonization. >> fred kaplan, moved from new york city to maine where he is now -- how many years did you teach? wisconsin atn appleton college. then at cal state. hen i returned to new i returned to new york. until 2005 i was a distinguished professor at queens college and the graduate center. >> the name of the book is "john quincy adams." thank you, fred kaplan. 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Transcripts For CSPAN Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20140722

the department's relationship with small businesses that can take part in the sbirsttr program and it encourages the secretary to enter into agreements with the program at the national science foundation. our national labs have been at the cutting edge of technological development and we must always ensure that development is in the national interest. a discovery lost in the labs is a discovery wasted. that's why i'd like to thank my good friend, mr. kilmer, for partnering with me in this effort, as well as mr. fattah and mr. nunnelee, who were sfounding -- founding members with me. chairman smith and chairman lummis as well as ranking members johnson and swalwell were also key in this legislation coming together and bringing it to the floor. this is a true bipartisan, bicameral effort and senators have a similar companion bill on the other side of the hill. i encourage my colleagues to support this bill and i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves the balance of his time. the gentleman from washington. mr. kilmer: thank you, mr. speaker. i rise today to support h.r. 5120, the department of energy laboratory modernization and technology transfer act of 2014. in the report rising above the gathering storm, the former c.e.o. of intel, challenged congress and challenged the nation to step up to the innovation challenge to grow our economy. without a change in u.s. government policy, he wrote, the next big thing will not be invented here. jobs will not be created here. and wealth will not accrue here. i'd like to thank mr. hultgren and my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for working together to produce a bipartisan bill, targeted at stepping up to that challenge. our national labs are currently doing innovative research that can hit roadblocks on the path to commercialization, on the path to helping small business run with those innovations. so that bill provides important tools to spur and accelerate the transfer of new technologies, developed at our national laboratories and help transfer those to the plight of sector. it's significant -- private sector. it significantly broadens the range of companies who can participate in the pilot program with our labs and 'loy -- allows for more plecksability -- more flexible partnership agreement terms between the public and private sectors. the bill also allows labs to use their technology transfer funds for activities that identify and demonstrate potential commercial opportunities for their research and technologies. these partnerships between our national labs and the business community will help eliminate gaps in funding by facilitating a path for innovative ideas from basic research to have commercial application. let me tell you why this matters to me. the region that i represent is home to the pacific northwest national lab facility. and i've seen firsthand the innovative research being done there. i've also worked closely with our premier research universities to find ways to enable exciting new partnership opportunities. so going beyond just the labs, this bill removes burdens that currently prevent many universities and other nonprofit research institutions from working with the department of energy. this bill streamlines management and coordination of d.o.e.'s full spectrum of energy activities, from basic research through commercial application, by establishing a single undersecretary for science and energy. and the bill authorizes d.o.e. to partner with the national science foundation, so that its researchers can participate in n.s.f.'s groundbreaking innovation corps program, which matches grant recipients with entrepreneurs, to help get their ideas out of the lab and into the marketplace. lastly, the bill includes important reporting and accountability measures so that we'll be able to evaluate the effectiveness of each of these new tools and determine any additional steps that we should be taking down the road. d.o.e.'s national laboratories have been the birth place of some of our most revolutionary technologies. when this research is harnessed by entrepreneurs and business leaders, startups with only one or two employees can grow into companies that can create hundreds of quality jobs. we want to make sure that our national labs, our universities and all federally funded institutions and initiatives remain an important foundation of our knowledge-based economy. that's why i was proud to co-sponsor this bipartisan legislation, to give scientists and researchers in both the public and private sector the tools and the freedom that they need to unlock a new wave of great discoveries. let's close by noting that this is the kind of bipartisan cooperative work congress needs to do if we're going to bolster our global competitiveness. countries around the world are working to recruit and develop the next generation of innovators. we have to make research and development a top priority. i am hopeful that we can renew the bipartisan spirit and commitment to making sure tomorrow's cutting-edge technology is developed here, not someplace else. thank you, again, and i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from washington reserves. the gentleman from illinois. mr. hultgren: thank you, mr. speaker. our national labs have been a primary driver of american innovation since the manhattan project but many of their most important discoveries have been made informant past decade. research produce there had has enormous economic potential, but many times their discoveries remain stuck in the labs. it's essential that we update cold war era policies, acknowledge technological change and improve the lab's capacity to partner with private enterprise and convert their cutting-edge research into marketplace innovation. this bill does that. so grateful again for co-sponsors, especially mr. kilmer and his work on this, and i have no further speakers on this bill and i'm prepared to yield back if my colleague is prepared to yield back as well. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves the balance of his time. the gentleman from washington. mr. kilmer: thank you. i just once again would like to thank mr. hultgren and our chairman, mr. smith, and ranking member ms. johnson, and i have no further speakers and so i'm happy to yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. the gentleman from illinois. mr. hultgren: mr. speaker, i have no further requests for time either and i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. the question is, will the house suspend the rules and pass the bill, h.r. 5120, as amended. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. in the opinion of the chair, 2/3 of those voting having responded in the affirmative, the rules are suspended, the bill is passed and, without objection, the motion to reconsider is laid on the table. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from south carolina seek recognition? >> mr. speaker, i move that the house suspend the rules and pass h.r. 4803 as amended. the speaker pro tempore: the clerk will report the title of he bill. the clerk: union calendar number 385, h.r. 4803, a bill to require the transportation security administration to conform to existing federal law and regulations regarding criminal investigator positions and for other purposes. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from south carolina, mr. sanford, and the gentleman from louisiana, mr. richmond, each will control 20 minutes. the chair now recognizes the gentleman from south carolina. san francisco 49ers mr. speaker, i ask -- ms. sanchez: mr. speaker, i ask -- mr. sanford: mr. speaker, i ask unanimous consent that all members have five legislative days to include material. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. sanford: i see my chairman right here. should i yield to you, sir? the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from north carolina is recognized. >> i thank the gentleman and i thank him for his work on this bipartisan piece of legislation. i rise in strong support of h.r. 4803, the t.s.a. office of inspector accountability act of 2014. again i'd like to commend the gentleman from south carolina, mr. sanford, for developing this commonsense bill. which increases accountability within t.s.a. and saves precious taxpayer dollars by requiring the agency to correctly designate criminal investigators within the office of inspection. mr. hudson: according to the department of homeland security inspector general, t.s.a. does not ensure that its criminal investigators in the office of inspection are meeting the federal work load requirements for law enforcement officers. even though they're considered law enforcement officers and are receiving premium pay and other benefits. if nothing's done to correct this problem, the misclalfication will cost taxpayers roughly $17 million over the next five years. this type of waste is simply unacceptable. as chairman of the subcommittee on transportation security, i held a hearing on this topic and was surprised and encouraged to hear the head of the office of inspection admit that his office would reduce the number of criminal investigator positions based on the office's work load. although an acknowledgment is a step in the right direction, t.s.a. needs to go one step further. it's time for them to take real action on this issue and achieve tangible results which is precisely what this legislation requires. in addition to ensuring that the proper classification of criminal investigators, the committee on homeland security agreed to an amendment offered by the ranking member of the full committee, mr. thompson, that would require t.s.a. to submit to congress any materials associated with the office of inspection's review of the use of federal licenses by the officials. to obtain discounted or free firearms for their own personal use, as well as specific en to reduce air marshals for exploiting their positions. i've been concerned with t.s.a.'s failure to notify congress of the ongoing office of inspection investigations into potential unethical activity related to the acceptance of free and discounted firearms by personal use among employees, including senior fofingses -- officials. i'm pleepsed this bill will ensure the committee receives access to information that's necessary to carry out its important oversight role. i encourage my colleagues to support the bill and i yield back my time to the gentleman from south carolina. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from north carolina yields back. the gentleman from south carolina reserves? mr. sanford: i do. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from louisiana. mr. richmond: thank you, mr. speaker. i rise in strong support of h.r. 4803, the t.s.a. office of inspection accountability act of 2014, and i yield myself as much time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. richmond: again, thank you, mr. speaker. the committee on homeland security is tasked with conducting oversight over the various components within department of homeland security. as a ranking member of the subcommittee on transportation security, i have a particular interest in ensuring that the transportation security administration is operating both effectively and efficiently. thanks to the department of homeland security inspector general, we learned late last year that the office of inspect -- inspection is not operating efficiently. specifically, we learned that this office was designating some personnel as criminal investigators who did not perform investigative duties to justify such a classification. or the salary and benefits conferred a person with that title. h.r. 4803 seeks to address this problem by requiring t.s.a. to certify that all persons designated as criminal investigators are working on criminal investigations at least 50% of their time. there's no justification for providing personnel the enhanced benefits and pay associated with criminal investigators when they are not doing the job of a criminal investigator. this legislation is not intended to punish the entire office of inspection. it recognizes that there are legitimate criminal investigaters -- investigators within the office that have undoubtedly helped to thwart plots and other criminal enterprises that put our nation at risk. this legislation simply encourages good government and the careful stewardship of taxpayer dollars. we need to ensure that the resources are used effectively to so that we can keep citizens safe while operating at maximum efficiency. this legislation is a step in the right direction with that, mr. speaker, i reserve the balance of my time -- direction. with that, mr. speaker, i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from louisiana reserves. the gentleman from south carolina. mr. sanford: i yield myself as much time as i may consume. and i would thank the gentleman from north carolina for his leadership on the subcommittee. i would say the same to my colleague from louisiana for their respective pieces of work on this important bill. as has already been noted by both of my colleagues, 4803 calls for i guess the institution of the fairly simple premise and that is that we pay for what we get in government. that's what they do in the private sector, what's it the individual dozen in the household and if you stop and think about it, you know, you wouldn't pay somebody who could run a bulldozer, heavy equipment, if you will, if all you needed was somebody who could run a shovel. you wouldn't pay a technical engineer to come and clean your pool or mix the chemicals in the pool. you wouldn't hire a wolfgang puck to come over and fix your piece of grilled cheese -- fix you a piece of grilled cheese. it might be the greatest piece of grilled cheese you can find, but it isn't what you'd be paying for. so this bill incorporates that commonsense notion of in government we ought to get what we pay for and as has already been noted, criminal investigators in this case do not meet federal standards with regard to the 50% threshold, this bill does a couple of very, very simple things. it sets in place a standard by which to track whether or not they're doing so, and for the work that isn't to that standard, it eliminates this additional pay, so the called leave pay. it's been noted, again, there's a 25% premium but in many cases this is the tip of the iceberg, because if you look at additional benefits in terms of early retirement or enhanced training, there's a real cost to the taxpayer that goes with continuing on the road we've been on. this bill attempts to change that. it has teeth and it freezes any hiring in the office of inspection going forward if these changes aren't made and as my colleague from north carolina just noted, there are real savings. $17 million. it's small by federal standards, but you think about how many neighborhoods it takes to accumulate $17 million in taxes, it's a step in the right direction in saving taxpayer money. and for all those reasons, i urge additional support of this bill, i reserve the balance of my time. . the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from louisiana. mr. richmond: i have no more speakers and i'm prepared to close. i suppose i would yield to my chairman from north carolina fee has any additional comment. mr. hudson: we are prepared to close if the gentleman from louisiana would like to close first. the chair: the gentleman from louisiana. mr. richmond: i yield myself such time as i may consume. in closing, i would like to thank the gentleman from south carolina for introducing this piece of legislation and the chairman of the subcommittee, chairman hudson and our ranking member mr. thompson for the bipartisan work on this bill and this bill stands for is a commonsense approach to government and making sure we pay for what we get and it's that very simple premise and i'm honored to stand here to do something that makes common sense and with that, i urge my colleagues to support it. and i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. the gentleman from south carolina. mr. sanford: i yield to my chairman. mr. hudson: thank the gentleman carolina and ranking member of the committee, for not only his work on this bill but in the way we have worked together to make a difference for the american people. the american people sent us to congress to get things done and make their lives better and make sure we are scrutinizing every dollar. and this piece of legislation is a commonsense piece of legislation that does just that. and so, i'm proud to stand here in support of it. i'm proud of the work that mr. sanford put into this bill and i urge my colleagues to vote for this legislation. and i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from south carolina. mr. sanford: with that, i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the question is, will the house suspend the rules and pass the bill h.r. 4803 as amended. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. in the opinion of the chair 2/3 being in the affirmative, the rules are suspended and bill is passed and without objection, the motion to reconsider is laid on the table. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from north carolina seek recognition? >> i move the house suspend the rules and pass h.r. 4802 as amended. the clerk: union calendar number 384, a bill to improve intergovernmental planning for and communications during security incidents at domestic airports and for other purposes. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from north carolina, mr. hudson and a member opposed each will control 20 minutes. mr. hudson: i ask unanimous consent that all members have five legislative days to include any extraneous material on the bill under consideration. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. hudson: i yield myself such time as i may consume. i rise in strong support of h.r. 480. as chairman of the committee on homeland security's subcommittee on transportation security, i introduced this bipartisan bill to improve the state of preparedness at our nation's airports in response to the shooting that occurred at los angeles international airport in november of last year. the shooting that occurred at l.a.x. which took the life of a transportation security officer and wounded three other people served as a tragic wakeup call to the ease with which someone can wreak havoc. in march of this year, the subcommittee on transportation security conducted a site visit and field hearing to examine the response to the incident and better understand the actions that have been taken to improve incident response in the wake of this this tragedy. my subcommittee held a follow-up hearing to receive testimony from additional representatives of the law enforcement and airport communities on security incident response. over the course of these activities through this process, the subcommittee found that while the federal, state and local response at l.a.x. shooting was heroic and swiftly executed, there is room to improve in how airport operators, t.s.a. and other stakeholders coordinate the response and communicate in crucial moments after a major security incident like this. based on months of review by the subcommittee as well as detailed after-accident reports h.r. 4802 would require the transportation security administration to provide assistance to all airports where t.s.a. performs or oversees screening to make sure every airport details practice plans to respond to security incidents, this includes evacuating travelers, testing radio equipment and conducting joint exercises among responding agencies. this legislation would make t.s.a. a clearinghouse for security response and communications and best practices which was the key recommendation from testimony the subcommittee received in may. in addition, the bill would require t.s.a. to certify to congress ta all screening personnel have participated in active shooter training which t.s.a. appropriately instituted following the l.a.x. shooting. it needs to assess whether operable tion inter communications exists. it is an ongoing challenge among many first responders despite billions being spent to achieve better communications since 9/11. at this point, no one has done an overall assessment to determine what weaknesses exist. the bill requires t.s.a. to examine how it can increase its law enforcement officers who protect the screening check points. these men and women are the front line in protecting the traveling public. while the funding has decreased in recent years, the critical role our officers play has never been more important. this bill is the necessary step towards countering the threats facing our nation's airports without placing undue burdens on law enforcement or the taxpayers. in fact, according to t.s.a. the cost of providing assistance to airports will be incidental and would not require additional appropriations. this bill makes it clear to t.s.a. that no new funding is being authorized to carry out any of the provisions of this bill and existing appropriations should be used to carry out this act. i thank the chairman of the full committee for his support of this bill and moving it through the full committee as well as the ranking member of the full committee, mr. thompson, and ranking member of the subcommittee, mr. richmond, for co-sponsoring this legislation for working with us to produce this important legislation. i urge my colleagues to support this commonsense bill and reserve. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves the balance of his time. the gentleman from louisiana. mr. richmond: i rise in support of h.r. 4802 and i yield myself uch time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. richmond: an armed gunman entered the los angeles airport with an attempt to kill transportation security officers. tragically on that officer hernandez for whom the bill is named became the first t.s.a. employee to die in the line of duty. the gunman proceeded past the check point and into the terminal where he shot and wounded two other transportation security officers and one passenger. the two t.s.a. employees who were shot and wounded selflessly remaped at the check point after the shooting began helping passengers escape to safety. despite communication challenges, the men and women of the police department responded to the incident taking the shooter down. through our committee, oversight work, we have identified some commonsense steps that could be taken to mitigate any similar incidents in the future. h.r. 4802 embodies these commonsense steps. it requires airports to have plans in place for responding to active shooter scenarios and t.s.a. to provide information to airports on best practices for responding to a security incident at checkpoints, provide transportation security officers practical training for responding to active shooter scenarios and conduct a nationwide assessment of the interoperable communications capabilities of the law enforcement, fire and medical personnel responsible for responding to an active shooter event at an airport. the requirements contained in h.r. 4802 were informed by post-incident reviews of the l.a.x. shooting conducted by t.s.a. and the airport itself along with the oversight work of the committee of homeland security subcommittee on transportation security. in march, the subcommittee on transportation security held a site visit and field hearing at l.a.x. to see firsthand how the tragedy unfolded and hear from airport officials and american federation of government employees about how the response to a similar incident could improve going forward. in may, the subcommittee held a follow-up hearing on the shooting here in washington and heard from a diverse array of airport operators and law enforcement to inform us how a preparedness and response at airports could be most effectively crafted. i'm proud of the product before the house today. it is a result of intense review of the tragic l.a.x. shooting and if enacted, would result in airports across the nation being more prepared to respond to a similar incident in the future. with that, mr. speaker. i reserve. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves the balance of his time. the gentleman from north carolina. mr. hudson: i have no more speakers if the gentleman from louisiana has no further speakers, i'm prepared to close once he does. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from louisiana. mr. richmond: i have no other speakers and i yield myself the balance of the time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. richmond: in closing, i would like to commend subcommittee chairman hudson for the bipartisan and inclusive manner in which he has led the subcommittee on transportation security oversight and legislative efforts in response to the shooting at l.a.x. i was pleased to join ranking member thompson and chairman mccaul as a co-sponsor of h.r. 4802. i would like to acknowledge congresswoman waters, whose attrict l.a.x. is in and was the subcommittee hearing in california to provide oversight and give their input to how we prevent these incidents from happening and give support to the ranking member, mr. hudson. and with that, i urge all of my colleagues to support this very important bill. and i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. the gentleman from north carolina. mr. hudson: mr. speaker, i yield myself as much time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. hudson: i thank the ranking member, mr. richmond, for his kind comments and the great working relationship we enjoy on this committee. it's a privilege to work with him. mr. speaker, with the threats to our nation's transportation systems constantly evolving we must ensure that airports can respond efficiently. the shooting at the los angeles airport is a tragedy that will not be forgotten to those who are committed to enhancing security at our nation's airports. this bill will provide for more extensive collaboration and coordination between airports, law enforcement, first responders and t.s.a., which will result in safer airports across the country. i ask my colleagues to support this important bipartisan legislation. i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. the question is, will the house suspend the rules and pass the bill h.r. 4802 as amended. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. in the opinion of the chair 2/3 being in the affirmative, the rules are suspended, the bill is passed and without objection, the motion to reconsider is laid on the table. for what purpose does the gentleman from north carolina seek recognition? >> mr. speaker, i move that the house suspend the rules and pass h.r. 4812, as amended. the speaker pro tempore: the clerk will report the title of the bill. the clerk: a bill to amend title 49, united states code, to require the administrator of the transportation security administration to establish a process providing expedited and dignified passenger screening services for veterans traveling to visit war memorials built and dedicated to honor their service and for other purposes. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from north carolina, mr. hudson, and the gentleman from louisiana, mr. richmond, each will control 20 minutes. the chair now recognizes the gentleman from north carolina. mr. hudson: thank you, mr. speaker. i ask unanimous consent that all members have five legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include any extraneous material on the bill under consideration. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. hudson: mr. speaker, i yield myself as much time as i may consume. mr. speaker, i rise in strong support of h.r. 4812, the honor flight act. this bill would improve the airport screening processes for veterans traveling to visit our war memorials by providing expedited and dignified passenger screening services. i'm pleased that t.s.a. is currently implementing the requirements outlined in this bill by working with the honor flight network to expedite the screening process for veterans visiting their war memorials here in washington, d.c. codifying this commonsense policy will ease airport access for our nation's heroes who made the incredible sacrifices and deserve our utmost respect. not only will legislation help to simplify their passage through airports, it will also improve efficiencies by freeing up t.s.a. screeners to focus on real threats. this is a positive step for our veterans and ultimately our transportation and national security. i'd like to commend the gentleman from louisiana, mr. richmond, for his work on this issue as well as chairman mccaul for moving this bill through the committee. the committee on homeland security has long advocated for less burdensome airport screening for four -- for our men and women in uniform and our veterans. this bill builds upon previous bipartisan legislation promoted by the committee and signed into law requiring t.s.a. to provide expedited screening to active duty military traveling on official orders, as well as severely injured or disabled veterans and members of the armed forces. each and every day we're humbled and inspired by the incredible sacrifices of all our veterans. this should serve as a powerful reminder of our duty to do all we can to honor the sacrifices they have made for our freedoms and treat them with the dignity and respect they deserve. i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from north carolina reserves. the gentleman from louisiana. mr. richmond: mr. speaker, i rise in strong support of h.r. 4812, the honor flight act, and i yield myself as much time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. richmond: thank you, mr. speaker. i would like to begin by thanking chairman mccaul, ranking member thompson, and the chairman of the subcommittee on transportation, security -- transportation security, mr. hudson, for co-sponsoring and supporting this bipartisan legislation. the honor flight deck is a measure that -- act is a measure that seeks to pay a debt of gratitude to those who made sacrifices. although we may never be able to fully repay our veterans for their bravery, sites such as the national world war ii museum, which we are proud to have in the city of new orleans, bring into focus their lasting contribution and their impact on american history. the honor flight network is a nonprofit organization that works with airplane -- airlines and other nonprofits to transport veterans to washington, d.c., to visit memorials dedicated to honoring their service and their sacrifice. the organization was created in 2005 by a former physicians -- physician's assistant with the department of veterans affairs and a private pilot who saw his patients' desire to visit the newly built world war ii memorial and realized that many of them lacked the resources or support to make the trip on their own. by the end of 2013, the honor flight networks had had transported approximately 117,000 of our nation's heroes to visit their memorials. estimates from the honor flight network show that number to be well over 120,000 people today. the honor flight network currently prioritizes transporting world war ii veterans and veterans who are terminaly ill but intend to expand the program to transport veterans of subsequent wars in the future. presently the transportation security administration, under the leadership of administrative pistol, expedites the screening process for veterans visiting their memorials in d.c. via the honor flight network private charter flights, saving them time and showing them the due respect and appreciation they deserve. this legislation will authorize the collaboration between t.s.a. and the honor flight network in law, thereby ensuring that it becomes a permanent practice. with that, mr. speaker, i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from louisiana reserves. the gentleman from north carolina. mr. hudson: mr. speaker, i have no more speakers. if the gentleman from louisiana has no further speakers, i'm prepared to close once he does. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves the balance of his time. the gentleman from louisiana. mr. richmond: mr. speaker, i'm prepared to close so i will yield myself the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. richmond: before yielding back, i would note that i'm especially proud of the bipartisan manner in which this legislation has come to the floor, from its inception to the handling in the subcommittee, to today and i am especially proud that this legislation received unanimous support in committee. and i'm sure it received unanimous support because it wasn't a political thing to do, it was the right thing to do. and truly bestowing the honor on members in this country and people who truly deserve that hopper, but for them we would not be -- honor, but for them we would not be here today in the capacity that we are. so we have to understand and we recognize their sacrifice and it's their shoulders we stand upon as a nation. with that i urge all of my colleagues to support this legislation and i would yield back the balance of my time. thank you. the eaker pro tempore: gentleman from louisiana yields back. the gentleman from north carolina. mr. hudson: mr. speaker, i yield myself as much time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. hudson: mr. speaker, as we walk around our nation's capitol and visit the numerous doctor capital and visit the numerous war -- capital and visit the numerous war memorials, we're remindsed of the sacrifices of our veterans. this is a simple and commonsense way to recognize and honor those sacrifices. mr. speaker, i'd again want to commend the gentleman from louisiana, mr. richmond, for his work authoring this legislation. i'm proud that we moved this forward in a bipartisan way, as the gentleman said earlier. this is not a political issue, this is not a partisan issue, this is an issue of right or wrong and it is right for us to honor our veterans, it's right for us to expedite their travel when they visit washington, d.c., and i urge my colleagues to support this legislation and with that, mr. speaker, i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from north carolina yields back. the question is, will the house suspend the rules and pass the bill, h.r. 4812, as amended. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. in the opinion of the chair, 2/3 of those voting having responded in the affirmative, the rules are suspended, the bill is passed and, without objection, the motion to reconsider is laid upon the table. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from montana seek recognition? mr. daines: i move to suspend 4508. es and pass h.r. the clerk: a bill to amend the east bench irrigation district water contract extension act, to extends the contract for certain water services. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from montana, mr. daines, and the gentleman from new jersey, mr. holt, each will control 20 minutes. the chair now recognizes the gentleman from montana. mr. daines: i ask unanimous consent that all members may have five legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials on the bill under consideration. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. daines: i yield myself such time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. daines: hearing that water services delivery could be in jeopardy for 60,000 acres of some of the most productive farm land in my home state of montana, i was happy to introduce this legislation that ensures that irrigation in southwest montana is protected. h.r. 4508 protects irrigation and water supplies in the beaver head valley by extending the district's contract while an updated contract is pending approval by the montana water court. this contract extension is necessary since the montana court system is in the middle of conducting a necessary state-required review of the new contract between the irrigation district and the united states. this bill does not prejudice the outcome of that examination, but keeps in place existing 1958 contract so area farmers and ranchers in the beaver head valley of montana have water supply certainty for nearly 60,000 acres. the legislation has no costs to the federal government and is based on congressional precedence. in fact, congress has extended this 1958 contract a number of times, since an extension provides an irrigation district with an absolute right under federal law to negotiate a new contract with the bureau of reclamation. this bill simply adds six additional years to the last extension, thereby extending the 1958 contract until december 31, 2019, or until a new contract is executed. in this bill, there's hard work that's being done in montana. i especially want too thank mr. o -- want to thank mr. horitzko for working with me on this legislation to provide montana farmers and montana ranchers with much-needed certainty about their water supply. the dylan, montana,-based attorney provided expert testimony on this bill before the house natural resources committee earlier this year. the irrigation district's work with me on this bill represents how manzielans can roll up their sleeves and get -- how montanaans can roll up their sleeves -- montanans can roll up their sleeves and get work done. i urge adoption of the bill. i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from montana reserves. the gentleman from new jersey. mr. holt: mr. speaker, i ask unanimous consent to revise and extend my remarks. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. holt: i yield myself such time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. holt: h.r. 4508, introduced by mr. daines, would extend the east bench irrigation district's water contract as he has said for six years pending a judicial ruling. the extension will allow the water to continue to be delivered to nearly 60,000 acres in the beaver head valley of montana, will protect the right for contract renewal and will be useful to the residents of the area while the court confirmation process is given time for completion. i support this legislation, i ask my colleagues to support it as well and i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves the balance of his time. the gentleman from montana. mr. daines: mr. speaker, i have no further speakers on this bill. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves the balance of his time. the gentleman from new jersey. mr. holt: i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. the gentleman from montana. mr. daines: i urge adoption of this bill and i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. the question is, will the house suspend the rules and pass the bill, h.r. 4508. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. in the opinion of the chair, 2/3 of those voting having responded in the affirmative, the rules are suspended, the bill is passed and, without objection the motion, the -- and, without objection, the motion to reconsider is laid on the table. for what purpose does the gentleman from montana seek recognition? mr. daines: mr. speaker, i move to suspend the rules and pass h.r. 4562. the speaker pro tempore: the clerk will report the title of the bill. the clerk: union calendar number 402, hrment r. 4562, a bill to authorize early repayment of obligations to the bureau of reclamation within the northport irrigation district in the state of nebraska. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from montana, mr. darningse and the gentleman from new jersey, mr. holt, -- daines, and the gentleman from new jersey, mr. holt, each will control 20 minutes. the chair now recognizes the gentleman from montana. mr. daines: i ask unanimous consent that all members may have five legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials on the bill under consideration. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. daines: i yield myself such time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. daines: h.r. 4562, sponsored by congressman smith of nebraska, allows farmers to repay lump sums of capital debt owed to about the -- owed to the bureau of reclamation. in many cases throughout the west, current federal law does not allow landowners to make such early repayments on federal irrigation projects. these outdated federal hurdles are similar to a bank prohibiting a homeowner from paying his or her mortgage early. congressman smith's bill removes the federal bureau of reclamation repayment prohibition for individual landowners within the northport irrigation district. in return for such payments, these farmers will no longer be subject to the acreage limitations and the paperwork requirements in the reclamation reform act. according to the congressional budget office, this bill could generate up to $440,000 in federal revenue. the bill is based on two recent precedents that passed in both republican and democratic controlled houses and today we should continue those efforts by adopting this bill. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves the balance of his time. the gentleman from new jersey. mr. holt: i ask unanimous onsent to revise and extend my remarks and yield myself such time as i may consume. this would authorize land owners served by the northport irrigation to prepay costs allocated to them. in exchange, the land owners who pay will no longer be subject to federal acreage limitations and other requirements associated with the act. i believe no one from the minority intends to oppose this legislation. and with that, i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves the balance of his time. the gentleman from montana. mr. daines: i yield three minutes to the gentleman from nebraska, mr. smith. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for three minutes. mr. smith: thank you to the natural resources committee for moving this bill and to the gentleman from montana for his remarks. irrigation districts which receive water must repay their portion of the capital costs of the water project typically under long-term contracts. i introduced this bill to provide members of the northport irrigation district eerily prepayment authority. the contract in question is more than 60 years old and continues to subject land owners to burdensome reporting requirements and acreage limitations without generating revenue to the federal government. allowing producers within the district to pay off their portion of the contract means the government will receive funds perhaps otherwise uncollected and the land owners will be relieved of costly constraints. for example, at a natural resources water and power subcommittee hearing, one member of the irrigation district testified the acreage limitation will prohibit parents who own land in the district from passing down or selling farmland to sons and daughters. similar legislation has passed under bipartisan majorities and could generate as much as $440,000 in federal revenue. this is a straightforward bill that would make a big difference to family farmers in nebraska. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. the gentleman from new jersey. mr. holt: i continue to reserve. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves the balance of his time. the gentleman from montana. mr. holt: if the gentleman is ready to close, i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. the gentleman from montana. mr. daines: i urge adoption of this bill. the speaker pro tempore: the question is will the house pass the bill. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. in the opinion of the chair 2/3 being in the affirmative, the rules are suspended, bill is passed and without objection, the motion to reconsider is laid on the table. for what purpose does the gentleman from montana seek recognition? mr. daines: i move to suspend the rules and pass h.r. 3716. the clerk: union calendar number 398, h.r. 3716, a bill to ratify a water settlement agreement affecting the paiute tribe and for other purposes. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from montana, mr. daines and the gentleman from new jersey, mr. holt, each will control 20 minutes. mr. daines: i ask unanimous consent that all members may include extraneous material on the bill under consideration. i yield myself such time as i may consume. h.r. 3716 is a bipartisan bill sponsored by the gentleman from nevada. it rat fisa water rights agreement between the paiute tribe and the fish springs ranch. although the bill does not authorize the ex pen ti did your of american taxpayer dollars, it is necessary due to the federal trust responsibility of the tribe and decreases the federal government's potential liabilities related to those trust duties. h.r. 3716 allows a water pipeline project to go forward while codifying an agreement that allows non-fd payments to mitigate the damages associated with the pipeline. this is a win for the american taxpayer. this is a win for the tribe and this is a win for water users. i commend the congressman for his leadership and urge adoption of the legislation and i reserve. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves the balance of his time. the gentleman from new jersey. mr. holt: i yield myself such time as i may consume. h.r. 3716 would ratify a water settlement agreement between the paiute tribe and a subsidiary of the water company. it allows the company to continue operating a water project that provides water to the north reno area and fairly compensates the paiute tribe for any actual or potential water losses. as i understand the situation, the legislation is supported by all affected parties and will settle claims against the united tates at no cost to american taxpayers. i support this legislation and happy to see it come to the floor. and i believe my colleagues from the minority of the committee on natural resources concur. i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves the balance of his time. the gentleman from montana. mr. daines: i yield three minutes to the gentleman from from nevada. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for three minutes. mr. amodei: thank you, mr. speaker. thank you, mr. chairman, and my colleague from big sky country. this legislation would authorize he pyramid lake pi out tribe the provisions would take effect after the tribe signs the waivers and fish springs pays the tribe. the amount in payment for those of you keeping track is $3.6 million. the tribe would dismiss pending legislation against b.l.m. for violations in nepa and potential trust responsibilities related to the groundwater project. at that point any potential federal liability would be eliminated. this is a settlement reached between the two parties as a result of a lawsuit filed in 2005, settlement was reached in 2007. the damage amount of $3.6 million would include interest and would have added to it interest from 2007. the approach is simple, straightforward, no federal dollars involved and i recommend passage of the bill. thank you and i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. the gentleman from new jersey. mr. holt: is the gentleman from montana ready to close, i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. the gentleman from montana. mr. daines: i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from montana yields back. the question is will the house pass the bill. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. in the opinion of the chair, 2/3 being in the affirmative, the rules are suspended, the bill is passed and without objection, the motion to reconsider is laid on the table. for what purpose does the gentleman from montana seek recognition? mr. daines: i move to suspend the rules and pass h.r. 2430 as amended. the speaker pro tempore: the clerk will report the title of the bill. the clerk: union calendar number 326, h.r. 2430, a bill to adjust the boundaries of patterson great falls national historical park to include hinchliffe stadium and for other purposes. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from montana and the gentleman from new jersey each will control 20 minutes. mr. daines: i ask unanimous consent that all members have five legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration. i yield myself such time as i may consume. himp cliff is a stadium in patterson, new jersey, built between 1931 and 1932, surrounded by the city's historic district. only a handful of stadiums surviving nationally that once played host to negro league baseball. it adds the stadium into the boundaries of the patter son national historic park. this amends the park's boundary to include the stadium but an amendment prohibits federal ownership. the stadium will remain as it is today owned by local government. i reserve. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves the balance of his time. the gentleman from new jersey. r. holt: mr. speaker i yield myself such time as i may consume. mr. speaker, i would like to start commending my friend from new jersey, mr. pascrell, for his work, his persistent diligent work on h.r. 2430 and the preceding legislation that created this important park site. the act that we are looking at now of which i'm pleased to be a co-sponsor, enjoys the support of every member of the new jersey congressional delegation. i should say the enthusiastic support of every member of the new jersey congressional delegation. will place within the great falls national historic park, which is one of the newest park service units in the country, this historic stadium. i would say by mistake or oversight or because of difficulties in the first drafting of the original legislation, the park boundaries did not include this historic stadium. this will correct that. h.r. 2430 would adjust the boundaries of the current great falls national historic site to include the 10,000-seat stadium which is currently listed by the national trust for historic preservation as one of the most endangered historic places in the country. as we have heard, this is one of the last remaining stadiums in the nation where negro league baseball games were played and it was home to the new york black yankees and new york cubans and even though the names of these teams include new york, this area is very much new jersey. and has tremendous importance to the people of new jersey and to the history of new jersey. and it is of interest to the entire country. in preserving this historic stadium will be preserving a visual reminder of an unfortunate but not forgotten era of racial segregation. segregation in america extended beyond the buses of alabama in the deep south. it was engrained throughout american society even into our national pasttime, baseball. the stadium will serve as an educational opportunity for future generations. to learn about this unfortunate past so we can continue to move forward collectively as a nation. his historic site brings memories and history of industrial revolution, of the political and patriotic origins of our nation, of art and culture and the american industry. and now it will also include this historic sports site. so again i applaud my colleague, mr. pascrell for his efforts. and i urge support of this bill and reserve. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves the balance of his time. the gentleman from montana. mr. daines: reserve. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves the balance of his time. the gentleman from new jersey. mr. holt: i'm pleased to yield as much time as he may consume , my colleague from pater son new jersey. mr. pascrell. mr. pascrell: the stadium overlooks the great falls of pat erson, new jersey, one of the largest water falls in the united states. it was built by the citizens of paterson as a public works project during a difficult situation in the united states, 1932, and it was named for the mayor at that time. the stadium sits adjacent to the great falls national historical park. and new york black yankees played there and new york cubans, these games featured pat erson and other greats such as gibson and charleston and johnson made their appearances here. besides baseball, the stadium hosted events in professional football, boxing, wrestling, soccer, even auto racing throughout its long and storied history. it also was the home of the panthers, a professional football team and the great concerts that went on there. recently, it played host to all high school sports under the stewardship of the public school system, but sadly, the stadium has sat in a state disuse since 1997 when the school system can no longer keep up with the maintainance. this would place the restoration on the national park service. this bill would spur private donations as well as state and local investments to make the necessary improvements in the stadium. the stewardship of the national park service will simply provide certainty of the stadium's future. mr. speaker, we are not talking about putting purple ropes around an edifice. we want this we want this stadium to be functional again. i think therefore that hinchcliffe stadium provides a golden opportunity for the park service to meet its goal of reaching out to urban communities, minorities, and immigrant groups. this legislation would vastly enhance the significance of the great falls national historical park which this body voted on a few years ago. lthough the great falls parks' current historic assets focus on patterson's role as the birth place of american industry, hinchcliffe shows us the human side of our workers, the blue collar worker. who came to this country, who came to patterson to work in mills through waves of immigration and migration. their descendants are the pattersonians and new jerseyans in america today. new immigrants continue to shape the american dream. as it was originally introduced, the legislation establishing the patterson great falls national park included hinchcliffe stadium within the park boundy -- woundries. the stadium's historic significance was found to be in need of further study, the study was completed last year, reaching a conclusion that the people of new jersey have long known, that hinchcliffe stadium has played a vital role in our history. as a result, hinchcliffe stadium was designated a a national historic landmark. the importance of this effort to the people of new jersey is evidenced by the fact that the entire new jersey delegation has joined together as original co-sponsors and of course in a bipartisan way. we have the support of the -- of a broad group of stake holders from local community organizations to a large national advocacy organization. i would ask permission to enter into the record the letters of support from the national baseball hall of fame, the national trust for historic preservation, the national parks conservation association, the new jersey community development corporation, the hamilton partnership of patterson, the friends of hinchcliffe stadium, our former past mayor, mayor cramer and current chair of the great falls advisory commission and the current property owner, the patterson board of education. mr. speaker, our nation has recognized the significance of hinchcliffe stadium's contributions to our country and our history. this is a vital part of the history of our state and our nation. now is the time to ensure that the story has a place in our national park system. for generations to come. i would urge my colleagues to join in supporting this legislation. i thank you for this time and i yield back and i thank again both managers. the speaker pro tempore: without objection the gentleman yields back. the gentleman from montana. mr. daines: i reserve. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves. e gentleman -- >> do we have unanimous consent to include in the record what our colleague, mr. pascrell, has asked? the speaker pro tempore: yes, without objection. mr. holt: this is a national his tore -- of national historic importance and i urge support of this legislation to expand the boundary of the national historic site. i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. the gentleman from montana is recognized. mr. daines: i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. the question is will the house suspend the rules and pass the bill h.r. 2430? those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. in the opinion of the chair, 2/3 being in the affirmative, the rules are suspended and the bill is passed and without objection the motion to reconsider is laid on the table. for what purpose does the gentleman from montana seek recognition? mr. daines: i move to suspend the rules and pass h.r. 3802 as amended. the speaker pro tempore: the clerk will report the title of the bill. the clerk: union calendar number 377, h.r. 3802, a bill to extend the legislative authority of the adams memorial fundation to establish a commemorative work in honor of former president john adams and his legacy. and for other purposes. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from montana, mr. daines, and the gentleman from new jersey, mr. holt, each will control 20 minutes. the chair recognizes the gentleman from montana. mr. daines: i ask unanimous consent that all members may have five legislative tais to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials on the bill under consideration. the speaker pro tempore: without objection sms 6. -- without objection. mr. daines: i yield myself such time as i may consume. in 2001, president george bush signed public law 107-62 which authorized the adams memorial foundation to create commemorative work on federal land in the district of columbia. when completed, the memorial will honor former president john adams along with his wife, abigail adams, former president john quincy adams, and their legacy of public service. the foundation has been working toward securing a location for the memorial but a previous extension to their authority expired in 2013. h.r. 3802 authorizes an extension to this authority so that the foundation may continue development and planning until december 2, 2020. no federal funds are involved in the creation of this memorial. this extension has no impact on the federal budget. i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves. the gentleman from new jersey is recognized. mr. holt: mr. speaker, i yield myself such time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. holt: as many of us know, finding a location for a memorial in washington, d.c. is not always easy. in 2001, congress authorized the adams memorial foundation to establish a memorial in washington to honor the public service and leg sthoif adams family. -- legacy of the adams family. planning sometimes takes longer than the initial authorization allows. in this case, the foundation was granted an extension which expired in 2013. h.r. 380 grants another xtension until 2020. i'm happy to provide more time to make sure that president john adams and his wife, abigail adams, and president john quincy adams all receive the commemoration in our nation's capital that their sacrifice and service deserve. i would particularly like to thank my colleague from massachusetts, mr. lynch, for sponsoring this bill and for navigating it through the legislative process. i think without his hard work, this memorial may have been mired in the planning process and might never be built. but i now believe that with this extension, we will see a worthy and fitting commemoration of the adamses. with that, i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves. the gentleman from montana is recognized. mr. daines: i reserve. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves. the gentleman from new jersey is recognized. mr. holt: i'm pleased to yield such time as he may consume to my colleague from massachusetts, mr. lynch. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. lynch: thank you, mr. speaker. i want to thank the gentleman for yielding the time and also for his kind words. mr. speaker, i rise in support of this bill, h.r. 3802, to extend the legislative authority of the john adams memorial foundation to establish a commemorative work in honor of former president john adams and his legacy and for other purposes. i'd like to thank the full committee chairman, doc hastings, and ranking member peter defazio, as well as the gentleman from utah, subcommittee chairman rob bishop and ranking member raul grijalva for helping get this very important bill to the floor. this bill simply extends the authorization of the john adams memorial foundation for seven years. it is supported by the entire massachusetts delegation as well as chairman bishop, as i said, and will allow the adams memorial foundation, the national park service, the national capital memorial advisory commission and all the stake holders to continue to work toward finding a site and building a commemorative memorial hon norg president john adams and his family and the role they played in the shaping of our great nation. i have the great and good fortune to represent the massachusetts' eighth -- the massachusetts eighth congressional district, a district rich in history that includes the city of quincy, the city of presidents. quincy is home to the adams national historic park, birth ea -- birth place of john adams and the home at which his family lived inle 1927. i am proud to hold the house seat associated with our nation's sixth president and dedicated public servant, john quincy adams. john adams was a defender of due process, champion of independence, diplomat, vice president, president and founding father he authored the massachusetts constitution, which is the oldest continually functioning written constitution in the world, and the document after which the united states constitution preektly referenced on this very -- frequently -- united states constitution, frequently referenced on this very floor, was modeled. he was the first president to occupy the white house. yet there's no memorial to one of our most influential founding fathers a man thomas jefferson called a colossus of independence. that's a tragic omission that must be corrected. our former colleague and my dear friend, congressman bill delahunt acted to correct this eversight when he introduced the bill authorizing the creation of the adams memorial foundation. the adams foundation was established to commemorate not only john adams, but the leg sthoif adams family who for generations embraced his ideals, including his wife abactually, his son and sixth president, congressman john quincy adams, his wife, louisa katherine, their sons, charles francis adams and his sons henry adams and brooks adams. as the enabling legislation states, both individually and collectively, the members of this ill lust res you family have enriched the nation through their profound civic consciousness, abiding belief in the perfect blingt of the nation's democksained commitment to service and sacrifice for the common good. the adams historical foundation and others have been committed to realizing its goal of creating a commemorative memorial. however, siting a commemorative memorial in the nation's capital is an arduous undertaking, maize colleagues have pointed out. despite broad support and the best efforts of the adams memorial foundation, we remain without an agreed upon location, but we're getting much closer, for this important memorial. i know all the stake holders firmly believe the adams' legacy is worthy of memorializing in the nation's capital. this bill if passed, will give all parties time to reach an agreement on an appropriation he case that honors president adams' legacy. for those of who grew up in massachusetts, the john and abigail adams memorial, their family, and our nation's service is a beacon on which to focus our own efforts. george washington, thomas jefferson and john adams, the sword, the voice of our independence. yet he continues to go unrecognized. i look forward to working with the adams memorial foundation, the national capital memorial advisory commission and others to help correct this oversightism thank chairman bishop of utah for his courtesy and support of this legislation. i want to thank both the chairman and ranking member, mr. holt, for yielding me this time and i urge my colleagues to support this very important bill and i yield back he the -- yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. the gentleman from montana is recognized. mr. daines: i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves the balance of his time. the gentleman from new jersey is recognized. mr. holt feather if the gentleman from montana is ready to close -- i yield back the balance of my time with the strong recommendation that we pass this bill. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. the gentleman from montana. mr. daines: i too strongly support passage of this bill and yield back my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. the question is, will the house suspend the rules and pass the bill h.r. 3802 as amended? those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. in the opinion of the chair, 2/3 being in the affirmative, the rules are suspended, the bill is passed and without objection the motion to reconsider is laid on he table. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from california seek recognition? >> mr. speaker, i move that the house suspend the rules and pass h.r. 4411, as amended. the speaker pro tempore: the clerk will report the title of the bill. the clerk: h.r. 4411, a bill to prevent hezbollah and associated entities from gaining access to international financial and other institutions, and for other purposes. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from california, mr. royce, and the gentleman from new york, mr. engel, each will control 20 minutes. the chair recognizes the gentleman from california. mr. royce: mr. speaker, i'm going to ask unanimous consent that all members may have five legislative days to revise and and make ir remarks -- put any extraneous material on this measure into the record. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. royce: i thank you, mr. speaker. i'm going to yield myself such time as i may consume. i rise in very strong support of this measure, and i want to thank the gentleman from north carolina, mr. mark meadows, who's the author of this legislation, along with mr. schneider and ranking member eliot engel of new york, for their bipartisan leadership on this critically important subject. today israel is at war with hamas and thousands of rockets, over 2,000 so far, including advanced iranian-supplied rockets have been fired indiscriminantly to civilians from tel aviv to jerusalem all across israel for the past two weeks and at the outset hamas was estimated to have 10,000 missiles. well, hamas, which has been attacking israeli civilians, is also using a sophisticated tunneling network, it's a sophisticated terrorist organization. but my friends, it peals in comparison with -- it pales in comparison with hezbollah and they have over 10,000 sophisticated missiles right now in southern lebanon, nearly all of which were supplied by iran. hezbollah has carried out a number of terrorist attacks across the globe, from bulgaria to cyprus to india to thailand. also here in the western hemisphere. now, i have seen firsthand in 2006 the work of hezbollah. i was in haifa as they were targeting civilian neighborhoods and those rockets, iranian made and syrian-made rockets were slamming into people's homes, were being targeted on the hospital itself. every one of these had 90,000 ball bearings. the only intent was to create mass casualties, and in that trauma hospital there were over 600 victims. that is the work of hezbollah. hezbollah has actively targeted the united states now for 30 years, and i ask my colleagues to reflect on their history. prior to the attacks of subject 11, 2001, frankly hezbollah was responsible for the largest number of american deaths by terrorist organizations up until that point when al qaeda carried out that attack. and by the way, these include the 1983 bombing of the united states embassy in berute, the bombing of the united states marine -- beirut, the bombing of the united states marine corps that same year. they were behind the kidnaps in beirut as well as international airline hijackings and targets to united states personnel in saudi arabia. hezbollah provided the funding and provided the weapons to iraqi militias to do what, to target american personnel and kill them in iraq. lethal, yes, but hezbollah is also vulnerable. it is vulnerable to steps we can take. severe international sanctions against its patron, iran, have reportedly led to a decrease in the funding to hezbollah and as a result this organization's been forced to turn increasingly to its transnational organized criminal enterprises in order to expand its operational capabilities. in 2011 we saw the tip of the iceberg when a massive drug and money laundering operation for hezbollah's benefit in weapons, logistics and training was uncovered. we must remember that any sanctions relief that we provide to iran for a nuclear agreement will have an impact on iran's ability to further support hezbollah. and in response the hezbollah international financing prevention act of 2014, this bill, written by mark meadows, builds on the existing sanctions regime by placing hezbollah's sources of financing under additional scrutiny, particularly those resources outside of lebanon. in addition to targeting the terrorist organization's diverse financial network, the legislation also requires the u.s. government to report on hezbollah's global logistics network and its transnational criminal organized enterprises, including all of its drug smuggling operations. the goal is to improve coordination and cooperation with allies and other responsible countries in confronting the increasing threat posed by hezbollah. and i strongly urge my colleagues to support this critical measure. i will reserve the balance of my time, mr. speaker. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves. the gentleman from new york is recognized. mr. engel: mr. speaker, i yield myself such time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. engel: thank you, mr. speaker. let me just say before i begin that once again the foreign affairs committee is acting in a bipartisan way, by speaking with one voice, to say no to terrorism, and i want to thank chairman royce for the bipartisan way that he's conducted this committee. we believe that foreign policy is best when it's bipartisan, and there is no difference here between members. we all condemn terrorist organizations, like hezbollah. so i rise in strong support of h.r. 4411, the hezbollah international financing prevention act. this legislation will greatly enhance our ability to confront hezbollah as they continue to sew terror around the gloib. as the chairman pointed out, hezbollah is a terrorist organization, just like its cousin hamas, and terrorism must be confronted whenever it raises its ugly head, be it here in israel, be it here in the united states of america, everywhere around the globe we must confront hezbollah and say with one voin we will not accept it ever. 10 years ago i work the syria accountability act, which congress passed and was signed into law by president bush. at that point syria was already working closely with iran by strengthening hezbollah by shipping thousands of iranian rockets and missiles to the group. a decade later hezbollah has become a more sophisticated terrorist organization, but their goal remains the same, supporting iran's nefarious agenda. once dependent on assad in syria, hezbollah is now returning the favor. the intervention on the syrian war on the side of assad has provided a new leaf on lice on the assad regime. in fact, it's the reason why assad believes he's winning this war and can continue to kill his own people, continue to use starvation as an act of war and continue to do horrific things to hundreds of thousands of its citizens. hezbollah has also had a corrosive effect on lebanese politics, holding the lebanese people hostage to its demand that they must accept its legal armed forces. a terrorist army which is perptually at war with lebanon's southern neighbor, israel. mr. speaker, claims that hezbollah is just a political organization or some kind of a social services agency is simply naive, untrue, just plain lies. this bill exposes the group for what it is, a vicious terrorist organization with a global reach, including an operational capacity in the united states. the united states is responding to this threat, and last week the treasury department sanctioned companies for procuring engines, communications, electronics and navigation equipment for hezbollah. it's time to impose even stronger sanctions on hezbollah. it's time to focus on their evolving efforts to raise money all over the world, whether through kidnapping and ransom, conflict diamonds, narco trafficking and other criminal enterprises. this would sanction foreign banks for knowingly facilitating actions with hezbollah and noting them as a narcotics association. we are currently in negotiation with iran. iran didn't come to the table because they're good government or nice people. they came to the table because our sanctions, passed by congress, is crippling their economy. we must do the same thing and cripple hezbollah. this bill shines a bright light on hezbollah's television station which is itself especially designated terrorist group. hezbollah uses the station for propagating and fundraising purposes. it's shocking this station is still carried by satellite providers all over the world. it's just an outrage. by passing this legislation, congress is seeking to give the administration every tool it needs to confront hezbollah in this dangerous world. i want to thank representative meadows for the extraordinary work he's put into this legislation. i want to thank representative schneider for also doing yeoman's work in making sure that this legislation is here and, again, it is another example of the bipartisan cooperation we have on the foreign affairs committee so this congress will speak with one voice and say we will never accept the scourge of terrorism, be it hezbollah or be it hamas. mr. meadows and mr. schneider has made sure this is a responsible and targeted bill focused on cutting off hezbollah's financial lifeline without unintended consequences. so mr. speaker, let me say as hezbollah doubles down to defend the assad regime and expands its political presence in europe and elsewhere, now is the time for us to ramp up our efforts, to disrupt its global logistics and financial network. and let me say it is a disgrace that the european union, while designating hezbollah's armed wing as a terrorist organization, tries to separate it from its social services wing and pretend that somehow hezbollah's social services aren't a terrorist organization. they are a terrorist organization and that is an umbrella group and it confronts everything and they must be boycotted and we're doing that today. so i urge my colleagues to support this important legislation and i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves. the gentleman from california is recognized. mr. royce: well, mr. speaker, i yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from north carolina, mr. mark meadows, although a new member to the committee, a very active member on foreign affairs and the author of this important legislation. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from north carolina is recognized. mr. meadows: thank you, mr. speaker. and i would like to thank the chairman of the full committee, chairman royce, for his leadership, his kind words but really for bringing forth this bill so that the american people can once again unify against what we all know is a blight on our country, a blight on our world when terrorism prevails, we must stand firm. and i want to thank the chairman for his leadership on that. also want to echo the comments of the ranking member where he talked about this being a bipartisan effort. indeed, we have the chairman, the ranking member taking a lead. my colleague, mr. schneider from illinois, working with us on this. and today we have an opportunity to place a critical blow to hezbollah. the committee staff, our staff has worked very hard for many, many months to make sure that this is a targeted bill and so i rise today in support of h.r. 4411, the hezbollah international financing prevention act. but really what it's about, mr. speaker, is about making sure that those that are innocent are protected, because as the chairman so eloquently put earlier, over 2,000 rockets have gone into israel in the last few days. but today some 20,000 to 30,000 rockets are aimed at israel, and the trigger person, the trigger organization is hezbollah. so we must pass this legislation to make sure that what we can do is cripple their ability to finance and put people out of harm's way. you know, hezbollah has many different faces, mr. speaker. in some areas they're called a charitable organization. in some areas they're talked about as a political organization in latin america, they're talked about as ones who would traffic narcotics. in the north america, they are money launderers and counterfeit ring producers and yet what we have is many faces for hezbollah but one soul and that soul is dedicated to really eliminating a people off the face of this world. and so today i rise in support of this, asking my colleagues to join me to make sure that we send a clear message, not only to the united states but to the world as a whole. some people would say, well, why should we be doing this? this may only deal with europe or israel or syria. it doesn't really affect me, but i'm going to close with this, mr. speaker. these words are not my words. they're the words of the u.s. attorney from the western district of north carolina, ann thompkins, and she was talking about mohammed hamoud, who was a member and student of hezbollah as a youth in his home country and he came to the united states on a hezbollah-driven mission, one that he loyally carried out, creating millions of dollars to nd back for terrorism in a faraway place but it wasn't just a faraway place because when he was in jail he ordered the death of a prosecutor who was prosecutoring him, ordered the bombing of a courthouse in charlotte, north carolina. so if it's not for israel and if it's not for syria and not for europe or latin america, maybe it's for the united states of america. let's come together and make sure that we pass this critical piece of legislation, and i yield back. . the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. the gentleman from new york is recognized. mr. engel: i yield five minutes to my friend and colleague from illinois, mr. brad schneider, co-author of this bill. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for five minutes. mr. schneider: thank you, mr. speaker. i rise in strong support of h.r. 4411, the hezbollah international financing prevention act. i would particularly like to thank the ranking member for the time this afternoon and for the tremendous bipartisan support shown in the foreign affairs committee to atrezz one of our most critical national security challenges. the way this committee is run, both by the ranking member and chairman, making a difference and taking the chacks of our world in a bipartisan way is most remarkable and worthy of our nation. i want to thank my friend, mark meadow, along with the chairman and ranking member, for their tireless efforts on this important piece of legislation. i would also like to thank the outstanding effort of the majority and minority staff, along with many me des' staff and my own team that put so much time and effort into perfecting this bill. the united states has designated hezbollah as a terrorist organization since 1995. as earlier noted work the sole exception of al qaeda, hezbollah is responsible for more american deaths abroad than any other terrorist organization. the legislation we are considering today would give the administration the means necessary to combat hezbollah's global financial network. the bill not only broadens treasury department's ability to sanction hezbollah finances and gives the administration another tool to go after hezbollah for its narcotics and counterfeit goods trafficking. further more, the bill cripples a television station that broadcasts pro-hezbollah propaganda around the area. we have known for years that the international terrorist organization hezbollah has planned, funded and executed terrorist attacks in the middle east, europe and the western hemisphere. it continues to use underground networks and ill list materials to fundraise its global instability efforts. it has used u.s. and european banks along with their subsidiaries to hide and launder money out of the south american and european finance arenas, financing thousands of hezbollah operatives around the globe. one need only look at some of hezbollah's attacks to understand the true threat they pose to national security. in 1983, hezbollah bombed the u.s. baraks in beirut, lebanon, killing 248 marines. in 1992 they bombed the embassy in mexico killing 49. in 1994, they tpwhomed jewish cultural center can killing 95. in 1996, they conducted cross border raids into israel, kidnapping soldier which is led to a 34-day military conflict between israel and lebanon. in 2011, reports indicated that hezbollah was behind a bombing in istanbul that wounded eight turkish citizens. in 2012, authorities apprehended hezbollah operative planning terrorist activity against civil an airlines. speaker, these are just a scarce few of the activities of hezbollah that have targeted u.s. interests our our allies around the world. in particular over the last two weeks, we have seen the incredible destabilizing force iran continues to play in the middle east. stockpiles of iranian made rockets have aloud hamas and islamic jihad to put all of israel's major population centers under threat of indiscriminate attack on civilians. in the last two weeks alone, over ,000 rockets have rained down over israel. in lebanon, the threat is even greater. hezbollah maintains a massive stockpile of iranian arms with greater range and far greater lethality than those launched from gaza. tens of thousands of rockets are aimed at israel and could be unleashed at any moment. that is why today it is such a critical first step toward thwarting the unrelenting force. the sanctions included in this legislation will stem the ability of hezbollah to purchase arms and ememployee -- employ operatives throughout the mideast and around the globe. we can and must do more to stem these activeties. today we have that opportunity and i hope you'll join us in combating this pressing threat to u.s. national security. the hezbollah international financing prevention act provides the administration with vital tools to go after financial institutions and satellite providers that deliver material support and propaganda tools to hezbollah. this important effort will result in fewer resources falling into the hands of terrorist who was shown great resilience in attacking western targets, in addition to the destabilizing efforts in the middle east. i want to thank the chairman and ranking member again, along with my friend, mark meadows, for working with us to introduce this important legislation. with more than 319 co-sponsors in the house -- mr. engel: i yield the gentleman another minute. mr. schneider: i hope that this body will support passage thend the senate will move swiftly to pass the legislation as well. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from california is recognized. >> i'm going to reserve the right to close, should there be any more speakers that mr. engel has on his side. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves. the gentleman from new york is recognized. mr. engel: i now yield three minutes to my colleague, the gentlewoman from my home state of new york, ms. mention. .- ms. meng well then, mr. speaker, let me close. let me close by saying this legislation comes at a very, very critical time. anyone can turn on the tv or go online and know the region seem tbs falling further into chaos. as we seek greater stability, cutting hezbollah off from its financial lifeline is an important step to that end. we did this before with iran and the naysayers said what congress did wouldn't wouldn't be important because it wouldn't have that much affect. we proved them wrong. again, as i mentioned, there are negotiations now going on between the united states and iran to end their nuclear program. they're at the negotiating table only because we slapped tough sanctions on them, brought their economy to its knees this can be done with hezbollah. this is what we're trying to do today. so i urge pass odge of this important legislation and i want to thank chairman royce again, mr. meadows and mr. schneider and i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. the gentleman from california is ecognized. >> i ask unanimous consent -- mr. royce: i ask unanimous consent to place into the record letters from other committees with jurisdiction in this bill, financial services would be one, judiciary, and in closing, let me agree with mr. engel's observation. that this is a critical time in the mideast and also with our frustration that during this time, iran should continue to increase its support for its patron, hezbollah, because for those of us with a longer memory, we remember how much they have increased their capability to do harm as a result of that funding that's come from iran. hezbollah initiated killings and bombings have occurred to the frustration of our european allies, to those in asia, those in latin america, today on virtually every continent. in 2012, hezbollah carried out a bus bombing in bulgaria, many of us remember that. plotted an attack in cyprus, leading to the european union's designation of hezbollah's military wing as a terrorist organization. furthermore, hezbollah continues to fight on behalf of the assad regime in syria's brutal civil war. one of the things we have seen is missiles being brought over the border from syria into southern lebanon, by hezbollah. we have seen the deaths in syria at the hands of hezbollah ghters, it's resulted in the deaths of thousands and thousands of people. and most importantly, hezbollah has been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of americans. that's a third reason why we are focused on this terrorist organization. we must do everything in our power to target hezbollah's lifeline, target their financing, and i urge all members to support this legislation, thank you, mr. speaker. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. without objection, the gentleman's materials will be entered into the record. the question is, will the house suspend the rules and pass the bill h.r. 4411 as amended? those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. in the opinion of the chair, 2/3 being in the affirmative -- mr. royce: on that, mr. speaker, i would request a recorded vote on this measure. i would request the yeas and nays. the speaker pro tempore: the yeas and nays are requested. those in favor of taking this vote by the yeas and nays will rise and remain standing until counted. a sufficient number having risen, the yeas and nays are ordered. pursuant to clause 8 of rule 20, further proceedings on this otion will be postponed. for what purpose does the gentleman from nebraska seek recognition? >> mr. speaker, i move that the house suspend the rules and pass the bill h.r. 4450 as amended. the speaker pro tempore: the clerk will report the title of the bill. the clerk: h.r. 4450, a bill to extend the travel promotion act of 2009 and for other purposes. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from nebraska, mr. terry, and the gentlewoman from illinois, ms. schakowsky, each will control 20 minutes. the chair recognizes the gentleman from nebraska. mr. terry: i ask unanimous consent that all members may have five legislate i days in which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous materials in the record on this bill and i would like to include an exchange of letters between the committee on energy and commerce and the committee of homeland security. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, so ordered. mr. tery -- mr. terry: mr. speaker, i yield myself such time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. terry: i rise in support of h.r. 4450, the travel promotion and enhancement modernization act, reported out of the committee on commerce, manufacturing and trade on july 9, 22-0. h.r. 4450 sailed through the full committee on energy and commerce on july 15, by voice vote. i thank congressman bilirakis for his hard work not only in crafting a very smart bill with the appropriate reforms but also gaining strong bipartisan support along the way. i also thank his co-sponsor, mr. welch, of vermont, for being the lead democratic sponsor. the travel promotion act matches $100 million in fees from foreign travelers with $100 million in contributions, voluntary contributions, from the industry to invest in advertising abroad. in 2013 alone, brand u.s.a. generated $1.-- generated 1.1 million visitors to the united states who spent $3.4 billion and support -- and supported 53,181 u.s. jobs. now, we always think of orlando, california, miami, disneyland, hollywood, disney world as the tourist spots that are known worldwide. but thanks to t.p.a. and brand u.s.a., travel agents from abroad can be educated and educate their cliventes on popular attractions all over america's heartland, not just new york city and los angeles. nebraska alone has seen $4.4 billion spent and 44,275 jobs supported throughout the life of brand u.s.a. and with h.r. 4450 we increase accountability as well as transparency to ensure that brand u.s.a. is run efficiently. i'm pleased that the legislation makes contributions to brand u.s.a. voluntarily compulsary. some recognize this to the travel promotion, enhancement and modernization act. supporters nk the so we can pass this under suspension of the rules. i was fortunate to report the bill out of my subcommittee so our economy can continue to benefit from brand u.s.a. i encourage a yea vote from all of the members on both sides of the aisle and i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves. the gentlewoman from illinois is recognized. ms. schakowsky: thank you, mr. speaker. i yield myself such time as i may consume. as the ranking member of the subcommittee on commerce, manufacturing and trade, i'm pleased that this bipartisan bill, h.r. 4450, the travel promotion, enhancement and modernization act of 2014 was reported out of the full energy and commerce committee last week. the bill, which authorizes the brand u.s.a. program through fiscal year 2020, is an important achievement for our committee. i appreciate mr. upton and mr. terry, the chairman of our -- the chairmen of our committee and subcommittee, and mr. waxman, the full committee ranking member for helping bring this legislation to the floor. i strongly support brand u.s.a.'s mission of promoting international travel to the united states, and i have heard from travel and tourism professionals across my district about the need to re-authorize this program. but it's not just the chicago area that benefits. brand u.s.a. supports 350,000 jobs and $3.4 billion in visitors' spending each year from coast to coast, according to the u.s. travel association. i would like to thank mr. bilirakis and mr. welch, the sponsors of h.r. 4450, for their continued commitment to the promotion of international tourism. the sponsors worked with me to make some important improvements to this legislation during the committee markup process. the amendments we made to the bill will make brand u.s.a. even more accountable and economically viable moving forward. due to our efforts, the bill incorporates several recommendations that the government accountability office made in a 2013 report. the department of commerce is now required to establish specific publicly available time frames and conditions for how brand u.s.a. revises and resolves disagreements related to its contribution policy. having a set policy will not only promote greater transparency, it will also, in the words of g.a.o., quote, enable productive interactions and facilitate collaboration, end quote. g.a.o. has also suggested that brand u.s.a. be directed to develop a plan that specifies time frames, methodologies and data sources for measuring its performance and the campaign's impact. by explicitly requiring those criteria, the bill now gives the organization more direction on the type of information it should collect and establishes metrics that can more effectively determine the success of the program. i was glad that the bill's sponsors proposed lowering the cap on in-kind contributions in the underlying bill, and i'm thankful that mr. bilirakis joined me to offer an amendment to lower the cap even further during the full committee markup last week. every contribution to brand u.s.a., whether public or private, cash or in-kind is important to the organization's ongoing success, but i believe that the program is in the best possible position to maintain and build on its success through robust cash contributions by the private sector. brand u.s.a.'s continued long-term success is essential to communities, like my district, realize the economic and cultural benefits of tourism and travel. brand u.s.a. has been successful in its first few years, and i firmly believe that this legislation improves the program even more. again, i applaud brand u.s.a. for its ongoing efforts to encourage people from all over the world to enjoy everything our country has to offer, and i am sure the chairman of our subcommittee, not only coast by coast, but also the center of the country as well, and i thank the sponsors for their continued efforts to ensure the longevity of this valuable program and strongly encourage my colleagues to support this important bill. right now i reserve the balance f my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlewoman from. the gentleman from nebraska is recognized. mr. terry: thank you. i recognize the full committee chair, the gentleman from michigan, mr. upton, for as much time as he may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from michigan is recognized for as much time as he may consume. mr. upton: well, thank you, mr. speaker. thank you very much. a very , yes, it is important bill that will increase jobs in the economy by producing, by promoting the u.s. as a world-class travel destination. the bill re-authorizes brand u.s.a. and increases program accountability and transparency thanks in large part to the endments and the regular process we went through in committee. in 2013, brand u.s.a. generated an additional 1.1 million visitors to the u.s. and as mr. terry said, $3.4 billion, billion in additional spending at u.s. businesses. the increased triggered spending -- that spending triggered the creation of more than 53,000 american jobs and $2.2 billion in payroll. so this brand u.s.a. delivers all those benefits to the u.s. economy at no cost to the american taxpayers. no cost. earlier this month in my district i held a roundtable to discuss the benefits of tourism and how this program contributes to southwest michigan's economy. we had local legislators, we had chambers of commerce, we had tourism organizations and we had state officials and it was noted that in my district in southwest michigan we had nearly $1 billion in spending in 2012 supporting over 9,300 jobs and $200 million in payroll annually just for tourists. $1 billion spent in southwest michigan by tourists. it was also noted that the re-authorization -- that the re-authorization of this bill was their number one priority. it expires next year and one of the commitments i made was to sigh if we could move it in an expeditious manner, to give the senate a little time, so it doesn't get caught off later, knowing it was bipartisan from the git-go. i applaud particularly mr. bilirakis, who's going to speak a little bit later, his colleague, mr. welch, both very, very good members on our committee for their working together and their leadership to spear head this bipartisan bill. i was glad to see it passed on recorded vote that was unanimous in subcommittee and full committee as well. i want to thank the leadership of ms. schakowsky and mr. waxman as we worked through this bill and really get it to the floor as quickly as we can. this is jobs. this is not a cost to the american taxpayer. it ought to be something that we could pass on a pretty good vote this afternoon. i yield back my time to the gentleman from nebraska. mr. terry: continue to reserve. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves. the gentlewoman from illinois is recognized. ms. schakowsky: yes. i'd like to yield right now three minutes to the gentlelady from nevada, a place that ertainly benefits -- i don't know if we've benefited but we've had fun in her district, dina titus. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlewoman from nevada is recognized for three minutes. ms. titus: thank you. i thank my friend from illinois for yielding and for visiting my district whenever she can. i rise in strong support of r. 4450, the travel, promotion, enhancement modernization act of 2014. i'm an orge co-sponsor of this legislation and i thank my friend, mr. bilirakis, for his leadership on this issue. during the 111th congress i was proud to be an original co-sponsor of the first travel promotion act which actually established brand u.s.a. prior to the passage of that act, the united states was one of the only countries in the world that did not promote its unique destination to foreign visitors. since its creation, brand u.s.a. has played a critical role in bringing foreign visitors to destinations throughout the united states, including my district of las vegas. through innovative, targeted and effective marketing campaigns, brand u.s.a. has directly connected foreign visitors with world-famous destinations in district one, including the fabulous strip, the new arts district and the hip, edgy downtown section of las vegas. foreign visitors to the united ates are critical to the travel and tourism industry. people spend $4,500 during their visit. this certainly creates jobs in las vegas and around the country. brand u.s.a. has been very effective in bringing more of these visitors to the united states. for example, as you heard in 2013 brand u.s.a. was directly responsible for a million new visits, generating $3.4 billion in new visitor spending and supporting 53,000 u.s. jobs. and this was all without spending a dime of taxpayer dollars. today, we have a chance to re-authorize the work that began with the travel promotion act and remain so critical to our economy today. i look forward to continuing my work with brand u.s.a., to support the travel and tourism industry, to bring more visitors to las vegas and to other destinations around the world, from grand canyon to niagara falls, including chicago and even nebraska. so i urge my colleagues to support h.r. 4450 and i yield the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady yields. the gentleman from nebraska is recognized. mr. terry: thank you, mr. speaker. i'm going to recognize the gentleman from florida, the author of this bill, chief negotiator that worked on -- in a very bipartisan way in this committee and allowed it to come out of our committee in a unanimous way, recognize the gentleman from florida for four minutes. mr. bilirakis: thank you, mr. speaker. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from florida is recognized for four minutes. mr. bilirakis: thank you, mr. chairman. i appreciate all your good work on this bill as well, your leadership on this very important subcommittee, and i appreciate it very much. mr. speaker, h.r. 4450, the travel promotion, enhancement and modernization act, which would re-authorize brand u.s.a. numerous ted time has accountability measures and strengthens the transparency of the public-private partnerships that promotes increased tourism to the united states. passage of h.r. 4450 will be good for the economy. it's a jobs bill, mr. speaker. a recent analysis performed by the independent firm oxford economics estimated that in fiscal year 2013 brand u.s.a. generated 1.1 million additional international visitors who spent an estimated $3.4 billion, generating economic revenue and supporting job creation in communities across america. brand u.s.a. does not impose a cost upon the federal government. it has helped to reduce the deficit during the last two fiscal years and is expected to continue to do so. in fact, the respected and nonpartisan congressional budget office estimates that h.r. 4450 will reduce the deficit by $231 million over 10 years. it's a win-win, mr. speaker. it's important to note that federal taxpayer dollars are not used to fund brand u.s.a. brand u.s.a. is supported by international visitors and voluntary private sector contributors. after it receives contribution from the private sector, brand u.s.a. can only collect up to $100 million in matching funds from fees paid by foreign travelers. amounts collected in excess of that cap are returned to the treasury for deficit reduction. finally, given the benefits to the economy across state lines as well as the competitive nature of foreign competitors and travel promotion, congress is well within its authority under the commerce clause to extend the travel promotion act. small state and local tourism offices and local small businesses across america are some of the strongest supporters of the travel promotion act and benefit greatly from international tourism. brand u.s.a. helps bridge these communities and opens up new markets to american competition. i appreciate that this legislation includes important reforms this bill improves an already existing partnership, mr. speaker. i thank chairman upton for his leadership, again, subcommittee chair, chairman terry, doing an outstanding job, all those who have contributed to this bill. our lead co-sponsor, mr. peter welch, and my co-chair of the tourism caucus, mr. farr, who i believe will speak in a few minutes, for their work on this legislatn

Transcripts For CSPAN3 The Presidency 20150215

he is talking about -- let's make peace with everybody else and go after these guys. let's attack the apaches and end these raids on new mexico and other spanish settlements. what makes it so difficult to defend new mexico and other spanish settlements? what is the strategic difficulty? sam? it is a big place. it is a large colony. it is thinly settled, so it is not densely populated. you have a large area with a lot of outlying ranches and small villages. what is the great danger for a spanish ranch in the 1750's? yeah. go ahead. >> the apaches could burn your house, do a little dance, and leave before anyone realized what was happening. >> exactly. the spanish cannot keep a military force at every ranch in new mexico. they have all these dispersed settlements. all of these are highly vulnerable. the apaches are mobile. they can attack in outlying settlement and the spanish cannot do much about it. on page 308, he talks about the people of new mexico. because of extreme poverty, they are worthy of compassion. their cattle and sheep are exposed to the attacks of the barbarians. the enemy never comes in large numbers but in small parties to hide their trailing prevent discovery. he goes on to talk about albuquerque later. they wish to have a soldier for every cow and horse they pasture. i've tried to accustom them to the idea that each one should take care of the defense of his own hacienda. what is the solution? yes. >> you are on your own. >> [laughter] the solution is you have flying parties to guard the access routes to the settlements. that does not always work. the other thing is -- good luck, you know. just imagine hypothetically for some reason you are in mexico city and it comes into your mind i need to immigrate, go someplace else, what about new mexico? it does not seem like it would be that appealing. you see the dangers of new mexico. now i am going to hand back the papers. >> tonight, on the presidency, hugh howard talks about portraits of george washington painted during his lifetime. the author explores the work of john trumbull, focusing on how these artists captured the spirit of the first president and what modern audiences can learn about washington through these portraits. mr. howard is the author of "the painter's chair." that is tonight at 8:00 p.m. and midnight here on american history tv. >> each week american history tv's american artifacts visits museums and historic places. established by congress in 1820 the united states botanic garden is the oldest botanic garden in north america. we will take the tour of the glass and stone conservancy at the foot of capitol hill and learn about the collections in this plant museum, originally proposed by president washington in 1796. >> welcome to the united states botanic garden. the u.s. botanic garden is a wonderful place to come and learn about plants. our motto could be plants plants, plants. our official mission is to demonstrate to the public the importance of plants and their value to humankind. today we are going to take some time, and i'm going to show you about the u.s. botanic gardens, and introduce you to the stars of the conservancy. right now we are standing in a room called the garden court. i always like to orient people to the garden court initially when we come in. one of the most important elements are the two you see here in the front prominently displayed. they are incredibly important for us, because they represent a part of our historical collection. the u.s. botanic garden came into existence in some ways is a permanent institution in 1842 when the united states exploring expedition, also sometimes called the wilkes expedition, returned from a four-year voyage in the pacific ocean at the behest of congress, mainly doing some surveying, but also picking up a whole bunch of natural science artifacts, including living plant specimens. in 1842, with the expedition returned, they had 150 fascinating tropical plant species, many of which had never before been on the american continent. this was deemed very valuable. this collection of plants was immediately recognized as important by congress. funds were appropriated for a temporary greenhouse structure to house them while a permanent garden could be built. we still have to this day a couple of plants that are direct descendents of those plants. the cycads we just looked at, the one on the left is one of the original plants. subsequent to its introduction to the united states, it has become a relatively important tree species in terms of ornamental tree in the tropical parts of the united states, and specifically in southern florida. as with most things in life it's often quite instructive to change one's perspective. to achieve that here, we have made sure to include a canopy walk in the higher levels of the jungle. it is wonderful to get up amongst the top of the trees and see the wonderful and interesting plants that grow at this level, and also see a different perspective grade looked down on the trunks, look straight ahead at the leaves and the flowers and seeds. it provides a fantastic and interesting environment. i want to thank you for taking time to visit with us at the u.s. botanic garden. the u.s. botanic garden is a wonderful resource. we are open 365 days a year. we are always free from 10:00 to 5:00 every day. if you come to washington, d.c. it's a wonderful place to step on in. there's always something in bloom. hopefully there is something you have not seen before. >> author and professor edith gelles explores the marriage between john and abigail adams. the professor spoke at a celebration of john and abigail adams' 250th wedding anniversary. this 45 minute event was cohosted by the massachusetts historical society and the abigail adams historical society. >> and i am thrilled and honored to present our keynote speaker edith gelles, she is a stanford university historian and the scholar at clayman institute for gender research. she is the author of numerous articles, reviews, and books among them are "portia: the world of abigail adams," which won the award from the american historical association, also " abigail adams writing life," and also "abigail and john: portrait of a marriage." edith has appeared widely in the media talking about the adamses. among her appearances has been "c-span's" first ladies series. i would like you to welcome edith gelles. [applause] >> according to adams family lore, when abigail adams married -- abigail smith married john adams on october 25, 1764, the reverend smith, abigail's father, preached a sermon from the text of matthew. "for john came, neither drinking wine or eating bread." charles francis adams records the story in his memoir, and explains the choice of text as a response to the congregation. he suggests that a portion of the parishioners thought that the son of a small farmer in the middle class of braintree was scarcely good enough to match the minister's daughter. the reverend smith's cryptic message may have included his more personal reflections, which charles francis preferred to disregard. for many reasons, the reverend smith and his wife elizabeth may have disapproved of the marriage of their daughter. abigail was not yet 20 years old when she married. young for the middle of the 18th century, where on average women married at the age of 22. further, she appears to not have had previous suitors to john adams, whom she met which he was 16. adams was a full 10 years her senior, and may have been an advantage, if he had not been a lawyer. but abigail's roots went deep into the colonial elite. was the solid bedrock of massachusetts society. the smith family for more recently arrived represented the other respectable strain of new england society. the merchant class. adams's father was a farmer and a shoemaker. it is clear that abigail smith acted on her own will when it came to marriage. she chose to marry john adams because she loved him and because she believed they were compatible. during their more than three years of courtship, she had measured his character, tested his own intuition, as he had in return, and in the end, abigail believed that she could live her lifetime in partnership from which there was no escape. the adams's marriage has become historic. it calls forth an image of an ideal marriage, one founded on love, loyalty, friendship, and courage, and in many respects, it was. but the adams's marriage is his work for other reasons. it appears modern. in fact, it possesses many of the attributes of a modern marriage. it was a love match that endured. it produced at least one famous son and established a dynasty of great citizens. it overcame adversity and tact. it was a match of intellectual equals, lending legitimacy to the claim of women's more egalitarian status. above all, the adams -- marriage was idealized because abigail is visible. probably the most visible first lady until the mid-20th century, because her correspondences have survived. no other correspondence of this magnitude by a woman of her era exists, which makes her our best chronicler from a woman's point of view. this is what makes the adams's marriage appear more modern than it was. the deal, as we read it into the letters, survives as a testimony to an ideal correspondence, if not an ideal marriage. in fact, scholarship and history and anthropology makes it clear that all human institutions are functions of the culture in which they exist. marriage, as much as anything else. 18th century new england was no exception to this rule, and the prevailing culture of the world into which john and abigail married was that of their puritan forbearers. while puritanism had transformed and modified over time into a more liberalized and secular social beliefs and practices, it conventions were maintained. and these protocols became the foundation upon which all marriage in mid-18th century new england was premised. it's salient characteristic in terms of marriage was patriarchy -- its salient characteristic in terms of marriage was patriarchy. when abigail chose to marry john, it was the most spectacular act of will available to her for the remainder of her years. never again would she make a decision of that magnitude to control the direction of her life. there existed no easy exit clause from her decision once the vows were taken. she had little control over the kind of work she performed or her reproductive life. marriage with its obligations became her destiny in that world. the rules that followed from the existing patriarchy also had clear male and female spheres, and these spheres were not equally, but were hierarchically organized. in her statement requesting john to remember the ladies, she closed her remarks by writing "regardeth then as being placed under your protection and make use of that power only for our happiness." the lens through which abigail viewed her world revealed a divinely prescribed patriarchy in which it was her destiny to live in the domestic sphere under the terms of john adams's work and his choice of place manner, and style. abigail accepted that world. she wrote "i believe nature has assigned each sex its particular duties and sphere of actions and to act well your part." at the same time, abigail was neither slave nor servant, and she knew that as well. she had leverage within the marriage bond, both with her character and john's. because the patriarchy existed in new england, it was flexible. the physical magnetism that charged their early relationship remained and mellowed into tender familiarity and a deep, loving commitment. and rather than contracting under the weight of domestic drudgery, the scope of her knowledge developed over her lifetime so that she became wise and erodite. their companionship overflowed from life into letters once they were parted. in addition to patriarchy, hierarchy, and separate spheres, two additional aspects in a puritanism marked the adams's marriage. they were the concepts of contractualism and duty. all of puritanism was contractual, and marriage had no easy exit clause. finally, there is the theme of duty, which of all qualities, we can discern as primary to the adams's sense of themselves within the human community. duty refers to the principles of sacrifice and governing rules of human behavior. in the best sense, then, the adamses with their puritan background represent what historic and -- what historians call a companionate marriage. enduring friendship and respect. it is that reason why there are marriage was idealized. at its best, it represents the ideal accommodation of woman to man in western culture. we know this because they wrote all of this to each other, and one can read quite intimate letters that provide amazing insights into their private lives. as they lived apart for a large portion of their married years letters became their way of maintaining their relationship and sustaining their bond. when they married in 1764, both adamses expected their lives to repeat the lives of their parents, family, and friends. and for a decade, this was more or less the case. after their marriage, they moved to their braintree home that john had inherited from his father. their first child arrived within the year, and she was followed at approximate two-year intervals by john quincy susanna, who died after a year charles, and thomas, and a last child was stillborn in 1777. all the while, john practiced law and traveled the circuit when courts were in session, and therefore was frequently away from home. abigail remained at home with children and servants. she visited or was visited by her parents, sisters, and friends, but often she was lonely. after eight years she wrote to him, "alas, how many snowbanks divide me and thee? my warmest wishes will not melt one of them." they moved twice to boston returning to braintree in 1770 after john -- braintree in 1770 after john apparently had a breakdown. this was the pattern for their first decade of marriage. john built his law practice and his reputation, and he wrote "i had more business at the bar than any lawyer in boston." abigail gave birth and ran her household. all of this occurred within the context of the closely knit extended family, and among many friends, and it was during this time also that abigail met her indomitable friend and mentor, the great historian and patriot, . during the same decade of marriage, however, public events were taking place and taking an increasingly dangerous course. the quarrel with great britain was growing that would lead to breach and war. the contest was begun over taxes and went to rebellion of the tea party and included the intolerable acts. in 1764, john was elected to the congress of philadelphia, and for that occasion abigail sewed him a new vest. he rode off with thomas cushing for an undetermined amount of time and they did not know what the duration would be or what would be his role in congress. it is important to acknowledge at this point he was not famous, and he went off to philadelphia, and he wondered how he would measure up to the other delegates, and it was very quickly that he discovered that he could speak, and that he could project, and that he was one of the big shakers and movers of the first continental congress. and in the end, congress lasted for more than two months, and john had discovered his power among the delegates. he returned home in november to practice law, but the momentum to hostilities was relentless and he was elected once again to the continental congress in philadelphia. by this time, lexington and concorde had begun -- had occurred and the revolutionary war and it had begun. except for a few visits home in in 1776, 1777, and 1779, and between men the abigail -- the adamses were separated for a decade. at no point during this long period was abigail or john able to predict the duration of their separation. what may we conclude about the adamses during this decade? abigail became the manager of the farm and director of family finances, which she did for the rest of her marriage. after two years of wrestling with labor and labor shortages and other responsibilities, she rented out the farm to tenants. with her uncle as advisor at first, she purchased property and interested in securities. -- invested in securities. she also began a business, merchandising items that john had sent to her. she managed her children's lives, including their education, which is very difficult. schools had closed down, she tried to tutor them, and she had reached the limit of her own abilities to teach them, the end of her knowledge, and she had hired various tutors. she also decided to take the smallpox inoculation in 1776. she said she would not have done it for herself but she wanted to do it for her children. she educated herself, reading in john's library. she famously read the great ancient history which he was helping john quincy with his history lessons. but the great correspondence between them had begun. the war ended and john did not return from france. so she finally traveled to europe in 1784 with her daughter to join him. it was an immense challenge for her. she was rightly fearful of ocean travel, and she was also concerned about her lacking manners and cultures to move in the same circles as john was now accustomed to moving, she wrote "near as american as i am, i do not know how i will fit in." each had hugely different experiences that changed who they were in many ways. john became worldly. moving into the high ranks of european society and fanatic states -- and diplomatic states. abigail remained a diplomatic new england matron. however, she was not how she was in 1774, but because of her experience as a single mother in wartime, she had matured strengthened, and became erodite. so she went to europe, and they got together again, and this is the most remarkable thing about their marriage, that marriage came together again when they met after really a decade of separation. with all of the passion, interest, caring, sympathy, and the and generosity of their early marriage. separation had altered who they were, but not altered their relationship. so the adamses now became public figures. after 10 months in france, they moved to england for two years. and then they returned to america and the constitution had been adopted. john had been mentioned for various offices in government, even fleetingly mentioned as president, but that went to george washington. john accepted the vice presidency. abigail would have preferred retirement. she would have preferred it because she wanted it, because it was her style, her personal style, to live in a much more local and personal community. but her health was not good, and one of the remarkable things about her life was the declining health and the illness that they all lived in, all of the time. but she wanted also to be with her family and live among her children and her grandchildren. but john could not resist the call of duty. and probably ambition. he had expected a role and he settled on the vice presidency. abigail, as always, overcame her reservations and went along. she lived, after all, in a patriarchy, where men's decisions became women's destinies. she understood him completely and she believed the nation needed him specifically. she had long rationalized his leaving the family as destiny. the war and the new nation would not survive without john's active participation. it was her way of thinking, with her it was an article of faith that grew out of her religious convictions. it was his duty to serve, and thus it became her duty to sacrifice. john served two terms as vice president, abigail was with him in new york city, which was the first capital, and then in philadelphia, for three years, and then returned home for the following five years of his vice presidency. he served one term as president, she was there as often as health and her home care commitments permitted. and then the presidency ended in 1801, and the retired. -- they retired. we often hear that retirement and old age is not for the fainthearted, and that is certainly the case with the adamses. what would his life be like without politics, and he returned to the ground and to farming. she returned to her domestic household and friends. there were always people living with them. family members, tom and his family lived there for a while john quincy and his family came and went, the widow of charles francis lived with them, and charles their third son, their second son, lived there for long periods of time, they always had grandchildren with them, and they had visitors. they were celebrities, after all, and people liked to drop in to say hello to the ex-president and the first lady. they also had financial problems. the collapse in 1803 wiped out their securities in england that they had purchased in england through john quincy, so they were not like the other founders. they had immense family difficulties. charles died in 1801, 1800 there was the mastectomy and death of abigail adams smith, their daughter. abigail herself nearly died several times. there was the absence of john quincy, they longed for him, he was in st. petersburg, and then family members began to die. they stayed together for those last 18 years, and when people would request that abigail would go and visit, she would say, no, i won't leave john. there were no long separations again for the last 18 years of their marriage, until abigail died at the age of 76. so what can we say about the marriage? in the end, they had each other. it was a remarkable marriage. what made it work? theirs was a love match that grew into deep commitment over their lifetimes. i love speculating about what made marriage work. i was asked this question earlier, which was the better marriage? we all have our ideas and our opinions about it, and here are mine. it was a love match that endured, and they stayed in love. was it as a jim suggested to me earlier, because they were separated? did the separation make the heart grow fonder? there was compatibility, of legacy, of common culture that they came from, of religion, of intellect, they were both immensely religious, but abigail especially, abigail's letters throughout quotes from the bible, and she particularly would become more religious in times of an emergency, and she almost back to the original calvinist belief that a disease happened because we had done something sinful or an epidemic or a smallpox epidemic had been caused by something sinful. they shared values. they knew the difference between right and wrong's, and they shared a belief system about right and wrong and how to do right. humor is a method of relating that de-escalates potential hotspots. at critical times, both of them used humor. remember the ladies. a new tribe has arisen to protest. so in the end, the adamses provide us with more than insights about their personal lives and more than a window into an era. they are more than their letters, more than their portraits, more than their artifacts. they're very famous marriage offers us a moral compass -- their there he famous marriage offers us a moral compass. they obeyed a set of values that were biblical, that were tempered by history and philosophy, that said some things are right and some things are wrong. the understood that the highest human calling was that of duty. the idea that individual virtue entailed service and sacrifice for the larger community. they were citizens who sacrifice personal happiness for a lifetime for the greater good. on october 23, 1814, abigail summed up her assessment of marriage to her beloved granddaughter caroline, and she wrote "yesterday completed a half-century since i entered into the married state, then it -- then just your age. i have a great cause for thankfulness that i have lived so long and enjoyed such a large portion of happiness that has been my lot. the great source of unhappiness that i have known in that period has arisen from the long and cruel separation which was called on in a time of war and with a young family around me to submit to, that you and the rest of why posterity may enjoy -- my posterity may enjoy the fullest -- felicity that has befallen to me, is my sincere wish and prayer of your affectionate grandmother." when she was dying, john wrote to a friend "i wish i could lie down and die beside her." he lived for eight more years, stunningly dying on july 4 1826, the 50th anniversary of the declaration of independence. their marriage had lasted 54 years. in most respects, it was an ideal marriage. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, if anyone has questions for edith, we have our mics in action. >> i have the first question, it is specifically [indiscernible] about john's opinion of his own mother, and how that colored his relationship with abigail? we don't know much about that. >> there are references here and there in his diary and so forth, and so people read into these very few references, what the relationship had been about. if you are a historian you can read into that little evidence and that is what has happened. i'm sure he had a fine relationship with his mother. everyone tends to blame mothers for whatever goes wrong with kids whatsoever. [laughter] and that is an easy route to travel in our post-freudian age. so in deed, i think his relationship with his mother was just fine, and she lived a very long life, to his presidency and he wrote letters at her death about how much he would miss his mother, that she had been a very kind and warm and generous mother. so that's what. [applause] >> [indiscernible] >> that was her son john quincy who had many, many languages. john adams -- no, he was great at english. [laughter] he was really fluid. -- fluent. reading john adams is a real pleasure. i think of all the founders, i think he was the greatest of the -- and i think, of course we don't have recordings, but his spoken language -- when he is responsible for the acceptance of the declaration of independence, he spoke, and they say between 2-4 hours, i don't know, it's just extemporaneous -- he had good english. he learned french when he went to france, and he probably played around with dutch when he was in holland, but i don't think he was a very great linguist. she had a little bit of french but she -- and she studied it when she went to france, she read moliere, she read the plays, she went to the theater in an attempt to learn french, but i don't think either of them became as fluid as their son did. >> i had a question about happiness. how did abigail make that transition from braintree to europe and to london? did she enjoy herself over there? >> she was very nervous about it. she was extremely anxious about going to europe, and she was concerned about what she wore, she was concerned about the manners, and what kind of a figure she would strike, she was a quick study. she learned quickly. and she adapted very well. and she was soon entertaining and being entertained, and did she enjoy it? i suppose so, the way one enjoys travel, it is work, and it is different, it is not at home. she certainly made a lot of observations, she studied, she went to museums, she went to various places and took little side trips and so forth, and always recorded for her sisters back at home and for members of the family. i think she was interested in it, i think she loved being at home, and probably like many of us, are very happy to travel and go and see different places, and like being at home. does that answer your question? >> i was wondering, there was a letter and i know you are working closely with the letters now, and i cannot remember the date of it, that was abigail to her youngest son thomas, in which she says she is commiserating with him at some level because he is afraid he is going to be an old bachelor, he has not married yet. and in commiserating she says, you know i married too young. now, waste she really meaning that she married too young, or was it just trying to make him feel better? >> she possibly was reflecting. that is a good one, jim. you know, she was concerned about all of her children's marriages, and she did lots of meddling, and she did lots of meddling, and it is to her credit that she meddled, because she was trying to protect them and she was looking for ways to ensure that they would have good lives. she knew very well that who you married was her destiny, and how your life would unfold, and happiness in life very much depended on what marriage would be like. nevertheless, she was always

Transcripts For CSPAN Washington Journal 20131130

talking about the entertainment in the street and american values. while he was in california, president obama told members of the industry there that they play a part in transferring culture and values and giving us a sense of what america is like for the world. we want to know if you agree or disagree with that statement. here is how you can call in this morning -- about 25 of you posting on our facebook page. some of you, especially on the twitter pages, you may remember it was all in california for several days that mr. obama spoke at the dreamworks studio, talking to members of the entertainment industry and talking about the culture and of the entertainment industry. the headline -- again, we are kind of using that question, what he spoke about in the industry, that is the larger question about the entertainment industry. you may agree or disagree but here is how you can reach out to us this morning. feel free to tell us yes or no and feel free to tell us why. at theesident spoke dreamworks studio, here is his expanded comments about the entertainment industry and how it reflects american culture -- [video clip] >> hundreds of millions of people may never set foot in the united states but thanks to you have experienced a small part of what makes our country special. they have learned something about our values. we have shaped a world culture through you. the stories that we tell transmit values and ideals about diversity and overcoming adversity and creativity. as a consequence of what you've done, you helped shape the world culture in a way that has made the world better. they may not know the gettysburg address, but if they are watching some old movie, maybe "guess who is coming to dinner," or "will and grace," they have had a front-row seat to our march toward progress. young people in countries all around the world are suddenly making a connection and have an affinity to people who don't look like them. originally they may have been fearful now they say this person is like me. that is one of the powers of art. that is what you transmit. it is a remarkable legacy. there are the president's statements. here's how you can reach us -- a couple of responses on our twitter page. you can send us a comment on facebook or send us an e-mail at journal@c-span.org. our first call is steve from our independent line in massachusetts. caller: it is interesting to hear the president's talk about progress. when i hear the word "progress," it reminds me that it is a philosophically loaded term. i am 60 years old and i see the transformation in the values in this country that are no doubt media driven. you can go back to the 70s and it is just shocking to look at shows like little house on the prairie. there was more talent and trauma ,n one hour, incredible writing then you see today. television especially today seems to be run by cools. it reflects the anti-values of media moguls. we see murderers, serial killers all over the place, as if they are next door, left and right, although at the beginning of the programs they say this is fictional. at the same time you see a glorification of the cia, the fbi, and the militarization of the police. this philosophical transformation seems to be a form of social engineering. where it all began, i do not know. think the restu of the world perceives us through the media and entertainment we send out? one of the things that is underestimated -- when we go back to 9/11 we think these people hate our way of life, they hate our freedom. i think what we are seeing is an up use of freedom. i am in a irish-american, i have nothing to do with the middle east. what they worry about is precisely these anti-values intruding where women and young degraded, where sex is sex is exalted and violence is glorified. i think that contribute to what happened. call,s is our second george for miami, florida on the democrats line. kind of agree with the gentleman who just spoke. i would not say that they do not agree. i think they should have more of a for i.t. of different cultures we have in america, not just one side. also on the same side, i think america needs to accept its responsibility in showing the truth. we are not perfect and we have done a lot of wrong. we would be hypocrites to say we are not -- to say we are the greatest country in the world and not except our own fault. >> what you are saying is the industry should reflect the cultures. give an example. what do you think needs to be seen that is not being seen currently? the history of america the white man stealing from the indians, stealing from africa, that is in the history. it is a fact. we should accept that as a fact and embrace it he e my father is black and my mother is white. i don't love my black father more than i love my white mother, i love them equally. people here should embrace that and step off our differences and accept the fact that we are all the same and the world should know that we accept each other and them and their culture. >> we will leave it there. industry, doesnt it portray american values? republican line, san jose, california. you are on. you are listening on the phone go ahead and stop listening to the tv. why don't we put her on hold and try chuck from florida. caller: good morning, america. that is quite the concept and question you have here this morning. on one hand i think the media and entertainment industry groups, values of the the homosexuals, the different groups out there, which america has become nothing but a different batch of groups in my opinion. portray the stuff at nausea him until everybody does accept it, going back to the last caller. whether that is good or bad is really the question. is it an erosion of a basic set of values? media doing that deliberately? are all kinds of questions that come out of the base question, which is a convoluted and contemplated -- and competent in question. watch a lot of entertainment, shows, movies, etc.? used to. i don't anymore. i am a c-span junkie, that is my form of entertainment. i did at one time. i watched on the family, three's company, but nowadays we have two gay men raising a boy. you notice that our society has gotten to that point only because it was presented to us through sitcom. the entertainment industry knows the powers they have. and they use it. edlund from twitter says if our american values are green -- rhea is on our democrats line. -- maria is on our democrats line. i am not happy with the way immediate or trays americans. i was not born in this country and i think in a very different way. i don't understand why -- [indiscernible] it is really not what americans stand for. i just don't understand how specific people are still in the when they have news on tv -- i have lived in four countries, two different have never and i seen such a seen in my entire life. they believe in the very very nasty way. i don't think it is right. isouhost: our question about the entertainment industry. president obama was in california recently. jim follows up and expands on what we are talking about. "-- ons a piece from twitter -- you can add to that if you will. give us your thoughts on the line that better presents you on this cream. if you call us in the last 30 days, hold off on doing so today. when you call and get on the line to come in, turn down your television so we do not get feedback. jeffrey from fort lauderdale, florida, republican line. caller: thank you for taking my call. i feel the entertainment industry absolutely does not portray american values in particular. to speak to the concept of american exceptionalism. i feel that concept is a myth because it suggests that america is better than other nations. the united states of america was based onborn oppression of peoples. we committed a systematic based on native americans. then we enslaved africans. now we are struggling to consider whether gays and lesbians are entitled to write. how does the entertainment industry play into that? maybe it's not all of the american industry that a lot of the stereotypical depictions tend to portray this godon as one nation under and so forth. do follow what i am saying? host: we will move on to terrance in maryland. do i think gimmick -- do i think the entertainment industry countries american values? history andmerican even the depictions in the early century, werly 19th have always had a violent culture. when you get up to this time you see the different sexualization's of the causes -- of the people you see on reality tv. as long as we participate in the -- the sad part is the people who make the decisions, the executives, they have control over what you see and what your children see. they knowingly put the stuff on -- they put the stuff on tv and they know that pop culture, if that is what you want to call it, they know people observe all the stuff and this becomes their reality. so the concerns you have, how does that consume -- how does that affect the way you consume media? i like to look for the alternative sources. american i i am an have earthly values. we won't mess because our values are going to be different. if i portray myself as earthly first and the u.s. government or any other entity, then i can deal with you as an earthling. these are really matters that are spurred. this is then a saying that field of dreams the movie does reflect our value. from facebook this morning, a couple of comments. you can add your conversation on facebook. charles is next on delaware. hello. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] caller: thank you for taking my call. america being portray does not do us any service overs -- overseas. i would talk to people about what americans were. it wasn't just the movies but it is how the news per trade americans. he see miley cyrus, you see baldwin, you see actors getting away with doing drugs and drunk theing and all this read way we are portrayed in the movie tv industry and even print is just not the way most americans are. that is the way many people outside of our country see us and have for the past 50 years or so. i think one previous caller said something about old movies. songs and youold hear things that are just so different. how much is that dog in the window, compared to the stuff you hear from the rappers and what is supposedly current america. stories, thef news numbers are on the screen. a couple of stories to point you to. "the new york times this morning. it was supposed to accommodate 50,000 simultaneous users. the new york times saying -- adding fat, the administration has spent over $9 million beefing up the system with additional servers and other hardware. from the washington post this morning on the status of healthcare.gov, the start on the first page and continues inside come a saying -- our next call is been joining us from atlanta georgia. caller: i listened to all the callers and all their points are valid. that theme to believe entertainment industry is a micheline and it means many things to many people. it is a role and shape in american values. .e begin to see a difference it drastically changed with the and showing just the opposite type of family values. of thisget out conversation is even though it is a machine, it is an industry ,nd has structure, organization so there is somebody or something or some group that is directing it. maybe it is the organizations that run hollywood. it definitely has structure. somebody is determining the type i think that is something we should consider. it scares me. how does that affect your entertainment consumption? my entertainment is in technology and i do not watch tv that much unless it is a show where i am learning something, like maybe a nature show or how the earth is formed. pop stars is a reality show but you learn. most of the shows, you are just consuming types of morals that are really degrading. it scares me where this is actually heading in when you watch the local news, wherever get a lot of you news stories about people getting shot and all of the naked of things. that, when ilot of -- it is peaceful. is a diametrically opposed picture. the parents watchdog council put out some statistics. taking a look specifically at that twon, saying thirds of children in the united states have television sets in their bedroom. children spend more time watching television than they do in school. television reaches children at a younger age. it goes to statistics about the internet, saying 31% of children surveyed report having seen a pornographic site on the internet. 18 of teens ages three to frequently communicates online was someone they have never met in person and 37% have received a link to ask -- and link to sexually explicit content. familiestely 40% of with preschoolers own videogame government. and 90% play peter that play computer and other games. this is from the pew research center. american entertainment industry and if it reflects american values, that is the question we want to take on today. you can look online. there is a story in the los angeles times. we are talking to give you a sense of where we are going. we will talk about what the president said, especially when it comes the entertainment industry. there is the website. doug is from virginia, good morning. caller: how are you doing? span.lly enjoy c- is entertainment, that is what it is, it is fantasy for the most part. shows they show and discuss reality. i get a kick out of listening to you guys in the morning and andening to people call-in seeing just how far-fetched people really are. host: what you think about the idea that television or any other media delivers values? i don't think it is about values. it is about what catches your attention and what holds your attention. the police would never get by with shooting as many people as they should on television. or i would hope they don't. i live in a small town in the middle of nowhere. we don't have that problem here. host: john is next on the republican line from california. caller: thank you for c-span. i wanted to say to america that i do think in a form american entertainment has bigger dated family values. bigger dated a family values. i think it continues to gun violence and contributes to what our enemies would call us as "the great satan. we have some immoral type programming the people are allowed to view. altogether wehat have become a nation that is financially bankrupt and morally ankara. i want us to really rethink. independents,o democrats, and republicans. i really discourage you from democrats, republicans, and independents. why don't you put us into one group of americans and try to find out what is it that our american value -- our american family values? next caller, hello. hello. i wanted to make a comment in relation to the president's comments, especially with the popularity of the television drama scandal, i believe his comments were largely positive. it was positive what he was saying in the entertainment industry. i would love to hear my fellow point of view on how that particular program portrays the presidency. of corruption. i'll would be interested to hear his comments on that. do you watch the program? caller: i do, i enjoy it. why do you make the connection? his comments were specifically regarding how it person may never have set foot in the united states yet they can know quite a bit about our values from the entertainment industry. i don't think that would be a very positive the picture of our government and the way things currently work. host: let's read a couple of tweets -- you can make comments off of twitter, facebook, and on the phones. here is becky from clearwater, florida on the democrats line. caller: hello. i did not get a chance to look , but i worked at nelson. be viewing it as a value and delivery system. think when we quote all these watchdog groups on our job programs, it is their to get people to stop consuming entertainment. were you in charge of gathering ratings and nielsen? -- host: were you in charge of gathering ratings at nielsen? caller: yes. expand on communicating values. caller: unfortunately people consume more entertainment than they should, that is my opinion. they are getting their values from entertainment and not from -- unfortunately everybody has a stable home life. they might beginning their values from entertainment, which is not a good thing. this is why we should be putting our money into things like big brother and big sister and stuff like that. unfortunately there is more money in entertainment than some of these programs. would call people working and nielsen, what kind of things did you want to figure out from them? you basically just find that demographic and ages and stuff like that. you just find out what they're watching. a make you fill out a booklet. i'm sure that many of your viewers have been called and have actually participated. are you impressed by the amount of television we consume as a culture? caller: yes. people have such different opinions and such different age groups. i forget what they would always say. but it was westerns. my parents won't let me watch -- there are certain ones where you are supposed -- --posed to talk to a certain i have a pretty strong opinion about it. the parents should be determining what their kids are watching. host: has it affected how much you watch television? caller: i don't watch as much. we appreciate the perspective. republican line is next. caller: good morning. slope to theppery way hollywood does things. i like how the catchphrase "the new normal oh -- "the new normal" it is my ear. i use the channel slippery whole lot. -- channel flipper a whole lot. i have a satellite dish and i use only eight or 10 channels. if you go to the financial times today, there is an interview that has been done with iran's president. it talks about a lot of things but particularly this agreement that iran and other countries have. to give you a little sense of the interview, here's the writeup. pennsylvania, independent line, hello. i believe the industry does not portray morals, not my morals, anyway. i don't watch that much tv. what it really comes down to is that parents -- it's these it up to them -- it is up to them to be active in their children's lives. people have problems between .eality and fantasy host: i assume you have children. i'm you have different perceptions of what television cells or what it communicates to them? growing up in the age bracket i did, you did not have so much sex and violence on tv. the games they have out for kids, very impressionable. they are really impressionable. it comes back to the parents. host: a correlation game,. troy is up next. caller: good morning. question should be our values as american. watching -- my mom would not let me watch all in the family. that was on prime time, which came on at 9:00. now you have people using profane words at 6:00 in the morning. i think we have just gone downhill. the wall street journal has the latest on this. china raises stakes and air standoff. spokesman -- china grab some of the most advanced fighter jets. on friday -- here is "the wall street journal" headline. this is merry for mississippi, thank you for waiting. i believe the hollywood celebrities need to remember where they came from. just because they are meantaining us does not that they absolutely know anything about politics or that they are smart. anything lci co -- anything else? caller: my favorite shows are like the old shows that we used to watch that center around family. television and all of the electronics, like smart and everything like that, is responsible for the breakdown of the family and friends and socialization. it is sad what is happening to america. entertainment is controlling our politics. and that is a sad thing. it is a joke. responsible for a lot of the votes and who gets voted. ofhink they should put a lot thought into that. host: when you want to watch shows that you give examples of, how do you find that on television the? caller: you have to constantly go through all the channels. most of the time there is nothing fitting to watch on tv. another thing is we are paying for these products and it is a big joke when you think about it. we are having to pay a monthly payment. we are turning into a bunch of fools. it is really sad. tv is mostly responsible for it. independent line, illinois. it amazing that every channel obama has, he runs out to his liberal friends in hollywood. there is no value to it. there's a bunch of trash coming out of hollywood. destructing, really -- really disgusting stuff. think. for c-span, history channel, discovery, things you learn something from. the rest of it is garbage. it is sad the young people are exposed this kind of junk. host: this is kevin on the democrats line. i would say setting aside the reality shows and talk , i think hollywood does reflect our values. can you give an example? caller: i watch a lot of hbo. ande is so much reality tv the production values are going down. the stations can broadcast the stuff for so cheap that they don't want to put high-quality shows up. they're really trying to dumb down the american public. it is ridiculous. thank god for c-span. on the news shows they have been talking about these tax loopholes but they never list individual once to inform the public. is the loophole that companies can write off if they pay their ceos a certain amount of salary and the rest is in stock options, 10 million in stock options. that is a 100% right off for that company. we finish off this segment and continue on our program, our first guest will talk about efforts in congress, taking on the larger issue of changing the tax code. outof the legislators put specific ideas when dealing with corporate taxes. you'll talk about what is being done on the corporate that on the personal front. later on in the program, there it federall print -- prison sentencing guideline. later on ine bit this program, talking about that topic. i want to let you know about our newspaper -- are newsmakers program. ben nelson is now the ceo of the national association of insurance commissions. during the interview, he talks about the states decision and -- her it onthis information we have whether or not states are going to go along with the president's -- int or his suggestion think 17 states have decided to do this. 18 states have decided not to go along with that recommendation and have chosen to go in other way. a third, a third, a third. i'me that haven't decided still looking to do what they can under their law. it isn't surprising there are different approaches when you have a state-based system. is, aboutoncern having the policies extended into the next year, some people will decide to do that, some people will choose not to. there is always a concern that people with health conditions are the ones who will want to extend the coverage and others will choose to opt for other coverage elsewhere. -- and we are is just finding out -- now there will be two different pools of individuals. the pool those that are having their coverage extended and the other pool, which is larger, of people who will be buying policies and going into the affordable care act as a result. this is a challenge because actuarial,aw approaches are based on the law of large numbers. pool so want is a large you do not end up with people who simply have health conditions, or that will skew the rates and make them much higher. journal"ngton continues. our first guest is a resident scholar at the american enterprise institute. we are talking about the tax code and our efforts to change it. in "the washington post" this senator max baucus and representative dave camp. says both are trying to make changes. who are these guys and what are they doing? oft: they are the chairman the two tax-writing committees in congress. all the tax bills originate in the ways and means committee before it moves through the house of representatives. were taxhe committee bills go through in the senate before they reach the senate floor. legislatures -- legislators are interested in trying to change the corporate tax system and eventually the individual tax system. >> what are they promoting? is it a specific idea he e what are they trying to do? baucus came out with some specific proposal this week. languagelegislative that can pass congress what he wants to do with the corporate income tax. congressman camp has put out some partial proposals. some similare ideas and yet they are approaching this from different perspectives. they both want to bring the corporate tax rate down from the 35% it is at now. they both want to rod and the corporate tax they scum a which is often described as closing tasks loopholes. a lot of that comes down to slowing down the depreciation schedule. legislaturesthese wants to change how we attack the overseas earnings of the company's. they actually have it friend ideas about how they wanted to change in that area. host: as far senator baucus is concerned, why start on the corporate side? guest: it is viewed as the easier of the two between the corporate and individual. neither of these things are easy to undertake. all is a consensus that the rate needs to come down. the united states has a higher corporate tax rate than any country in the developed world. it is roughly third-highest in the entire world. that is a trend that has emerged in the last few decades. there is consensus on that starting point. and there is a consensus in trying to get rid of corporate tax preferences. it is less explosive than the individual side. if you talk about changing the individual tax code, you are talking about changing the deduction, first changing the state and local tax eduction, nothing quite as politically explosive as that. it is a natural place to start. >> some of the highlights from the language that came out this week. it says -- what is important as far as specifics he e what are -- as far -- as far as specifics he e --as far as specifics? today we don't tax most of that in, when the income is actually generated or earned overseas. instead we wait until that income is brought back to the united states, usually in the form of a dividend payment. and onlyomes back, then, do we slap on a u.s. tax. we get a credit for foreign income taxes we are paid. do is,e proposal would there would be no tax on the money comes back. imposed when the income is earned overseas. for many of the income, it would be taxed at a rate lower than the rate that applies to income here in the united states. be ared to today, it would heavier tax burden overseas because it will be paid upfront, right away, when the income is earned. come buddies no longer have the ability to delay the tax by keep in the money parked overseas. makes sense that whatever text you want to impose -- it should not matter when the money comes back. there is no reason you should have an artificial penalty on bring the money back. concernhe grounds for is whether the tax you want to impose on the income earned is too high. i think there are some problems there. by saying whatever tax it is is we want to do, we're going to put on. lower than a 35% threshold? caller: he wants to get it down below 30. let's say 20. he is going to do that by slowing down the depreciation deductions. that will bring the rate down. under one of the two options he the he would say let's tax earnings at 80% of the rate that applies. if he gets the domestic rate down to 20%, and the foreign earnings would have a 22% foreign earnings rating. if the foreign country taxes less than 22.4%, u.s. taxes make up the difference. that a seniorter democrat is making this kind proposal, especially to the corporate world? > guest: most of them are not crazy about the particular proposal he's putting forward. most would like a rate lower. host: such as? guest: most would prefer a rate close to zero. somewhere in the vicinity of zero. tax these overseas earnings? it just creates an incentive to drive jobs overseas. income can be earned overseas through a u.s. charter company or a foreign charter company. the only difference is where you get the piece of paper from. if one government gave you this piece of paper. if you have a foreign company that has money overseas, there is no tax at all. what about jurisdiction? it is a foreign corporation operating abroad. try to impose high taxes on u.s. charter companies when they operate abroad, people will think that will discourage them from operating abroad. i don't think that is the long- run response you're going to get. the investments overseas are still going to happen. they're going to be done for foreign charter companies. a residentuest is scholar talk about efforts on changing the tax code. if you want to ask him questions, here is your chance to do so. you can make your thoughts known on twitter -- on twitter and you can also send us an e-mail. efforts, how do they compare the white house philosophy of corporate taxes? host guest: president obama wants to bring down the corporate rate and broaden the base. it has been similar to what the president has been talking about. he put out a framework document in february 2012 that layouts mikey is about corporate tax reform. i think it was a correct candid labeling. wasn't a full-fledged clan but it some general concepts. they are very similar to what senator baucus is proposing. center campus would pose a much lower rate. you have the baucus plan and administration framework on the other. host: could we see an agreement between the two? guest: i don't expect to see anything past and 2014. at some point you can imagine them coming together. we have a rate of 22%. conversely campus is talking about a rate of one percent. there is obviously a range between 21 and 22 we can imagine them agreeing on a number. i still think at this point there is a number they could agree on. could, there are a couple of obstacles that would have to be addressed before you really could make a corporate tax reform work. we can discuss those if you want. is how you treat businesses that are not corporations. there are a lot of businesses that are set up as partnerships or limited liability companies or just so proprietorships one by one person. there are also small corporations that are not taxed the same. here's the problem. under the baucus plan and camp plan, all of these plants would take away corporate tax preferences, slow down depreciation, and things like that. that would raise taxes. the corporations would be compensated by getting a lower corporate tax rate. if you slow down and make those other changes, those have to apply as a practical matter. the partnerships and llc, they get a depreciation schedule as well. their taxes would go up. how do you compensate them? lowering the corporate tax rate does not help them. then you think, what are the options? carve out ay to special lower individual tax rate for those businesses, keep the regular individual rates the lowerut give rate. that creates all kinds of problems. from here is michael longmont, colorado. independent line. you are on with alan viard. hi, thanks to c-span. it seems like the 35% rate is , afterng on paper subsidies, write off everything. it is one of the lowest in the world. you are talking about s corporations, and it seems like an s corporation will end up paying way more taxes, they will just lower the tax rate of larger companies. i guess i do not understand why we are paying personal income on s corporations. it seems that a normal person should pay personal income, but onwant, like, 0% corporations. guest: the zero tax rate would be for the overseas earnings of u.s. charter companies. again, we already have a zero of rate on overseas earnings four and chartered companies, so trying to have a substantial tax rate on the overseas earnings based on the fact that the company have a piece of paper from the u.s. and front -- instead from a foreign country, that is not going to be something that is very viable in the long run. i think the governments around the world of early recognized that. it is not matter whether they are right wing, left-wing, socialist governments, nearly every country has worked toward a system where they do not try to tax the business income that their companies on outside the country's borders. so really governments around the world have a figure that out. regardless of what their ideology is. also the mention question about what the effective tax rate is. is notective tax rate one of the lowest in the world. it is probably above average, but it is not the highest the witty official tax rate is. the average effective tax rate here on income in the u.s. is around 25%. pension -- some countries playing more, close to the official rate, others paying less. we try to even that out a bit and try to bring everybody to a more similar rate and have a rate on paper that is closer to a rate the companies are paying directly. orps are what we were just talking about, if you do make the changes that senator or presidentp obama were talking about, then you do raise taxes on the llc's, on the partnerships, on the sole proprietorships, and that is a real challenge that any of these reforms lance going to have to deal with. plans are going to have to deal with. ofiously there is a lot appeal to try to revamp the tax code, but then you just made the problem a lot more challenging. you bring in all that's political explosive stuff from the individual side. host: from twitter -- if we removed corporation taxes, when it our products sell better overseas without the tax, and when it corporate headquarters flock here as tax haven? guest: the u.s. benefits would become a tax haven if we lowered our corporate tax rate to zero or anything close to appeared we have to distinguish again there are two reforms. one was just to say we would have a zero rate on the overseas earnings, and that would really just put us and the line with what the rest of the world is doing. the other thing is to dominate the corporate tax rate altogether. if you look 15 years ahead, that is probably what is going to happen not just in the u.s. but other countries as well. he will say how do you do that because obviously there is income earned by corporations. if you have an income tax system, you have to tax that income, especially since it goes to those who are well off and have the ability to pay. all that income goes to stockholders, so stockholders can pay tax. what we will end up doing in the long run is saying we are not going to have a tax that the corporation level, but we're going to tax be stockholders in full on the income they get. we are going to tax their dividend, their regular rate, gains.apital we will have to tax the capital gains each year as they accrue, at the price of the stock goes up, even if they have not pulled the stock, even if it not turned again into cash. that is a big change from what we do today. i would make a lot more sense than trying to keep the corporate income tax because corporate income taxes flaw the multiple ways. it is really arbitrary distortions and distinctions that are not make sense. why are we taxing corporations differ from businesses that are not set up as corporations? that are set up as a partnership or an llc? why are we allowing corporations to deduct the interest they pay on death but not the dividends they pay on stocks? ont is a much heavier tax investments that are financed by issuing stock instead of that issue bonds. i want to tax stop by to not want to tax the bond pared whatever goal you have in mind for the corporate income tax, the rich pay their fair share or something, it is not a cobbler said to have this arbitrary distinction between stocks and bonds. -- it does not accomplish that do have this arbitrary decision between stocks and bonds. measure which country the income is actually earned in, and we have seen the complexity of trying to tax all different transactions that corporations engage in -- mergers and spinoffs and such not. ofhink there is some kind historical path that has led us to this point, but it is inconceivable that if you are starting a value system from scratch, it would not look remotely like this. body fore is massachusetts, democrats line. you are on. go ahead. caller: ok. i wanted to know why taxes seem to increase when people marry, and also why can't we just have a flat tax where everybody just pays the same amount of tax on whatever? making the of this code is so difficult for common people to understand and making it easy for people who are smart to get out of their taxes. on the marriage question, when two people get married, it is possible for their taxes to either go up or to go down. actually come under the tax rules that we have had since 2001, and is actually more likely that the tax bill will go down for the couple when a married man for it to go up. depending on the circumstances, it could change in either direction. a two income couple is likely to pay more as a married couple been as singles, but if you have a one earner couple, then the tax rates would be less. it is archery either way, why should taxes go up or down? question, the other not having a flat tax because we do have tax records. if you tax the married couple as -- as a single unit and you have a tax schedule for them, would have to people earning income, that is when to put them into a higher tax bracket, and that is where the marriage penalty, as people call it, comes from. we try to offer some relief from that, but then that actually creates a marriage bonus for couples where one person is earning most of the income. don't we have a flat tax e i think the main reason is because first of all just making the rate schedule flat does not give you that much simplicity. if you think about why the tax system is so complicated, why 1040 is so formidable when we deal with it, it is really not because of the rate schedule. most people do not confront it at all. you really just look up the tax right ability and tables. all of the complexity comes from what income do you include, which do you exclude, what deductions could you take, what tax credits are certain kinds of income measured? so does having the rate schedule become flat would not really change any of that stuff. instead, you have to really change the rules about what kind of things are taxable and what kind of deductions and credits you get. that again gets you into that stuff. robert, arlington heights, illinois, independent line. caller: yes, sir. i really enjoy the program. my main prop -- my main comment would be this. ridiculous that companies are able to manipulate the tax policy in order to save more money overseas and here. are all the oil companies. they're making a lot of money. they have been since bush, obama, it is not really matter. a free loant from the government. chinese $17 trillion. the banks were taken care of really good up by obama and bush, the republicans and democrats, to provide that trillion dollars to make sure everybody is taking care of. and the working class pay taxes here. guest: the big oil companies do not get a ridiculously favorable tax payment. we do have a number of tax breaks for oil and gas but most of them are restricted to or and available in full to the independent producers. so little oil is who is paying low taxes rather than big oil. but there is a more general point which is that our current tax system is riddled with special provisions, a lot of them are for her noble energy in various forms, but there are all kinds of rates for various different industries. one thing that any good tax reform would do is try to get rid of some of those. i think the baucus plan does that in many cases. i think the cap plan is going to do that. will asident's plan well. getting rid of the so-called special interest loopholes is like really good policy, but they are actually not nearly as big as people think they are. so it actually does not bring in as much money as you might hope, it is not really let you bring on the 35% corporate rate as much as you want or raise as much money as you want for deficit eduction or as 24 new spending or whatever it is your to do with that money. there.s just not as much you do want to get rid of the industry-specific things. host: taxpayers for common sense wrote him op-ed about tax reform efforts. he said in part one common debate about tax reform is guest: absolutely. that is exactly right. host: give examples. guest: the renewable energy tax raiser one example. you could have one people whether they may or may not want to tackle those. we had a provision that was adopted in 2004, which is sometimes called the manufacturing deduction. it applies to any industry that produces goods instead of services, and so you have the most unbelievable distinctions there about whether serving coffee, whether that is a service, and roasting coffee beans that is like producing goods, and regulations to distinguish what gets this and what does not. areou get the break, you effectively being taxed at 32%, but if you do not, you are paying a 35% rate. so those kinds of things he certainly could go through and address some of those. host: our guest currently serves as a senior economist from the federal reserve bank of dallas from 1990 82 2006. was the senior economist for the president's council of economic advisers from 2002 until 2004. how does it differ under this administration and under this current -- under president bush's amateurish and? --st: he did one thing in president bush's administration? isst: he did one thing -- it wrong to do it twice, we have the stockholders paying dividends and capital gains as well. we wanted to try to alleviate this double tax burden. was totake they made decide to reduce the burden on the stockholders. and leave the burden at the corporate level unchanged. and that is the wrong priority, dead wrong. the exact opposite of what we should do. we should lower the board and of the or print level and increase lower the at the -- burden of the corporate level and increase the burden that the stock level. we should tax all the income in full at the stockholder level. if i am based -- host: if i am a stockholder, i will be looking at that differently. guest: you might be, but you should not be. it is attached to being skimmed off the top before the money comes to you. if anything, you should what the tax burden to be more visible. the problem with taxing at the corporate level is that you tax corporations when they invest here, and that drives investment out of the u.s. then if you try to fix that by saying i will tax the overseas investment of u.s.-chartered companies, then they just get foreign charters. if you tax american stockholders on where they get that money, you don't have to worry about where the income is earned, where the charter is, here is un-american that has the ability to pay, he is getting income, and he is going to pay tax on the income. host: you are now waiting for its return into cash. guest: right. i think you would eventually have to do that to make the system really works, but at least the large stockholders would have to date on the income as a cruise each year when the stock goes up. host: jones, ohio, democrat line. caller: thank you for taking my call. i have been very anxious to ask a conservative scholar as yourself what your response 'suld be to the pope remarks recently reverting all these maneuvers, not helping the middle class at all raise their standards for the last 30 or so years. i will take my answer off the air. thank you. i think the -- every economic system has to confront a trade-off between efficiency and equity. we all want the pie to be as big as possible, but we also wanted to be fairly allocated. we do not want people to be starving, we do not want people to be destitute, we want to safetythere is a minimum net available for everyone, we want all sectors of society to advance over time. so there is a always a struggle to find trade-off. make taxes, how progressive do we make the taxes some? i do not think anybody, economist or not economist or any other public figure, has some kind of magical right answer to how that trade-off should be resolved. there is an economic cost trying to redistribute income. when you try to slice the pie more evenly, there is usually a tendency to make the pie somewhat smaller. that is not and you should not do it, it just means you have to look at the trade-offs. the u.s. has a quite progressive tax system but it is also low compared to other countries. it is an interesting choice. we do not redistribute as much income as the european governments do, even though our thai system is more progressive, because they are -- our tax system is more progressive, just because it is smaller. it will be interesting to see how it evolves in the upcoming decades. a cut of the rising health-care costs, because of the retirement age, because of the rights and life expectancy, we are already looking at a future in which our government is going to get bigger, in which government spending is going to be rising, and which are bigger share of our economy is going to be devoted to paying health care and retirement benefits and making those transfer payments. thinkhink we need to carefully about whether we want to increase those further. host: john from twitter says -- some corporations get act more money than they pay in. that is not really fair now, is it? is one of thethat problems. the uneven distribution of the tax burden. fors actually quite rare companies to skates taxes altogether, but there is -- again, the average effective rate 25% on domestic income, but you have some companies paying more than that, some host: 88 less. host:we get people -- some of paying less. int: we get people calling saying apple does not pay tax. is that true or not? andt: on foreign earnings, some do not pay taxes. i do not know how you could change that. you could try to make it more rational. as long as we do not pass the overseas earnings of a foreign- chartered company, how much can we realistically get by taxing overseas earnings of a u.s.- chartered company? host: if a company is paying overseas, did they have to pay any taxes to the country that they are located in? guest: yes. a few countries are tax havens where they do not impose taxes on companies operating there, but the overwhelming pattern is that yes, a u.s. company operated overseas will pay taxes there just as a foreign company operating here will pay a u.s. taxpayer we do give a credit to a u.s. company for the foreign taxes that they have paid on their income. host: michael from florida, republican line. caller: thank you for taking my call. he is a numbers guy and i have to agree with them, but maybe the nation should be taxed philosophically. people tend to refer to corporations mainly bigger corporations or the corporations , they think of them as monoliths like there some child's toy building that springs arms and legs and have minds of their own spirited but really corporations are just large collections, a large , and it is successful, producing the fine products at a final price, competitive society and consumers are buying it. so the idea of taxing it as a punishment, saying that they are making to my 20th a wrong way to go about it. if we do get the message -- making too much money is the wrong way to about it. we get the message that it is like a spigot connecting a reservoir, if we tap into that spigot, the water -- less water gets to the field. corporations do let the money to employees, new products, new services. i had an economics teacher who said you -- if you could shrink yourself down to the molecular size and ride on the back of a dollar as it passes from a consumer to a corporation, you find yourself very and that frequently in the hands of a middle-class person again. guest: yes, there is a common view that a corporation is a distinct entity that is not owned by or benefiting any people, so when you tax the corporation, then somehow that is free money. of course that is not right. a conduit ison is what many economists say that is channeling the activities of people. so when you tax a corporation, your taxing people. does that mean you should not pack the corporation? maybe, maybe not. of course all taxes fall on people. what you want to do is to have the burden on people who do things through corporations to be fairly imposed in relationship to the tax on people who do things in other ways. so i think one ideal way to do that again would be to say let's actually not put in tax on the such,ation at son's -- as but let's tax the income to the stockholders and fully to your because it is the stockholders who are the people who are really getting that income. . off of e-mail says: america provided tax-free environment if those businesses pay much higher wages? when a that help our government by simulating cuts -- consumer purchases and result in more taxes for government? 1 determines wages in the long run and that is the productivity of labor. you could have a various things that can push wages off a little but above that, you could have things that push wages below that point, but it can never vary much from what the productivity was of those workers. the only way to keep wage growth going is to have productive the rise of her time. lots of things i into that. make sure the workers are agitated, making sure there is cap finance, factories -- making sure that workers are educated, making sure there is capital on hand, factories, infrastructure, having a stable society governed by laws were people can actually produce and go about their lives. all of those things matter for making workers productive and keeping their wages up. you cannot just wave -- raise wages by decree. host: jim is from washington state and he is on our independent line. caller: hi. r taking me. he's doing a great job explaining a lot of it. oversease things that businesses have not really explained it's a lot of it is run through licensing were company will have a product, say logo,, theyicensing say of license to a company overseas, then they go around and say well, we charge this much for the licenses, we are keeping a money overseas. anst: a licenses just example of an intangible asset. the biggest challenge a faces is where it is being heard. the baucus plan as proposals to try to tighten up the rules on where the income is attributed, and the camp proposal have some options to do that as well. it is also in the president's framework. it is a common strategy to try to really pin down more precisely where that income is truly earned so that is not arbitrarily shifted into a jurisdiction. as long as we're dealing with the current tax system, you do have to try to do that, but i think it is a very challenging endeavor. we are never going to be fully successful at doing that. again, if you decide at some point to stop trying to do the tax at the corporate level is just tax the stockholders, every year on the full income that they get, then you automatically are able to sidestep that problem because every american stockholder will be paying tax on all of the income from their holdings regardless of where that income is earned. gameplaying to move intangible assets around is no longer going to do anything. that income is going to be taxed through the stockholder regardless. host: we talk about mr. baucus, i want to give mr. kamp is due. he is pressing forward on tax reform. despite resistance from gop leaders. why is he getting that resistant ? .uest: that is interesting political parties are driven by political considerations that we may not prefer to see them governed by. the republican leadership did tell congressman camp to go a bit slower on his proposal, to not really marketing thing up in his committee, getting a bill together until early 2014. he had been thinking of doing it this year. host: for more on the personal side -- guest: personal and corporate, really. the reason is that they want the american people's attention to be focused as much as possible on the issues with health care reform, the problems with the website, the issues with policies being canceled. the republican party feel that those are political winners for them. they do not want to distract people's attention from that by putting forward some tax proposal, which to be realistic is unlikely to move forward anyway in the near future. so their perspective is that he should hold off. so it is a political maneuver, but that is what political parties do. host: how would it affect consumers day in and day out if these were to be made? less detailed thinking about that in congress. there has been a lot of thinking by the tax policy community, but they give very explosive very quickly because people say well, we ought to get rid of the loopholes and bring the rates down. then when you look at the " loopholes," where the money really is that, these are not the things most people think of as loopholes. these collusion from employer- provided health insurance, the state and local tax deductions, those are not loopholes in the sense of being some unintended tax break that some clever person managed to engineer against the wishes of congress. those were tax preferences that congress deliberately adopted. in my opinion, it would make good public policy sense to curtail a lot of those tax practices. not eliminate those cases, but curtail them, target them on the people who need them, and that would make perfect sense. but that is really a different thing than saying oh, let's go close loopholes, some obscure loopholes that nobody really uses or cares about. point, he to make the often talked about the mortgage reduction, -- the mortgage deduction. is more than $100 billion just from the individual income tax not being collected on it, and then when you consider the social security and medicare payroll taxes are also not connected -- collected on employer-provided health insurance. that is another big pot of money as well. so, yes, when you talk about where is the money really going to that you could actually change things in order to be able to bring the rates down, you are talking about the provisions that people really use. it almost has to be, right? if there is going to be big money therefore changing it, by definition it has to be a big provision that millions of people are using. if nobody without they're really using it, if it was only a couple of people, it would not be enough money to really compass anything on the right side. host: one more call for our guest. pixie from washington say, democrats lied heard caller: -- line. you are on, go ahead. caller: 20 years ago, i worked for a japanese plant that move there, and they said for the first five years, they did not have to pay taxes. yet they boasted that the first like, $5 billion on their product. come -- if they're going to set up shop there, why can't they pay taxes, too ? guest: foreign company that operated in the u.s. to pay taxes here. i do not know what special arrangement that company might have had 30 said it was a long time ago. it could conceivably be a provision from a bilateral treaty that the u.s. has with japan on tax matters. i am not aware of any tax break like that being given today. if one company today operating in the u.s. is subject to same rules of the u.s. chartered company that operates here. haveif it actually does revenue from the foreign- chartered companies that are operating in the u.s. host: is there something we can learn about tax reform any house over a budget, the deadline due sometime in mid- december? guest: this tax effort is going to stretch beyond a doubt -- that budget deadline. if they reach an agreement, it will be a small agreement. they will agree on some levels for annually appropriated spending, and they will leave the tax system and the entitlement program basically unchanged because there is not the time or the well oriental -- will or the inclination to tackle that have a step in the next two weeks. deadline, you know, i think there is a reasonable chance that they would reach an agreement, maybe not by mid-december, but by mid- january when another shutdown potentially happens. nobody wants it should appear it will be a small agreement that is not really touch any of those big issues. with americanrd enterprise institute talking about tax reform. thank you for your time. guest: thank you. host: coming up on our program, the crowding of state and prison mauer of the sentencing project will join us with that. and the influence of a bramley concurred one thing to consider how america grew as a world power under his presidency. you will learn more when author kevin peraino joined us later in the program as "washington journal" continues after this. ♪ >> on many campuses, young women are taught that they live in a patriarchal society where girls are shortchanged in the school, robert their self-esteem and adolescents, and then channeled into low-paying fields. once in the workplace, they are cheated out of 25% of their salaries, they face invisible barriers and all sorts of forces that hold them down to keep them back, keep them out of the high echelons of power. now, this picture just does not fit reality. it is distorted. the claims that supported happened repeatedly time they have taken on this or of truth. >> her critics of late 20th century feminism and feminist amended to bury culture have led critics to label her as anti- feminist. sunday on "in-depth," your questions for author christina hoff sommers live for three -- booktv'sing at "in-depth," the first sunday of every month on c-span2. a middle or high school student, c-span posies noting cam competition was what should congress addressed this year. be sure to include c-span programming for your chance to -- to win the grand prize of $5,000. get more income at student cam.org. >> c-span, we bring evidence from washington directly to you, putting you in the room for congressional hearings, and offering complete gavel-to-gavel coverage of the u.s. house, all as a public service of rugged industry. we are c-span -- created by the cable tv industry 34 years ago and flooded by your local cable or satellite provider. now, you can watch us in hd. >> "washington journal" continues. host: our guest joining us now is marc mauer. he is with the sentencing project. a recent op-ed of yours has the headline -- reducing crime by reducing incarceration. what is the connection? puttingasically, we are to the fuel in prison for far too long. i think it is really now pretty much well put that whatever income incarceration has on crime it is really one of diminishing returns at the scale that we have today, more than 2 million people behind bars, the u.s. has become a world leader in using imprisonment. so if we could reduce the incarceration, people who do not need to be there or who are there for john, we can reinvest with early intervention, prevention, treatment. been any there connection with the length of prison sentences and the reduction of crime in the u.s.? guest: prison population has gone up for four decades now, crime has gone up during some of those periods, got down during some of those periods as well. the best we know is that the reduction crime since the 1990's some say it is as little as 10%, it is not a function putting .ore people in prison host: walk us through the process about sentences are determined. guest: we have the impression from old tv shows and things like that. the jury trial, evidence being presented in court and things like that. more than 90% of the cases are plea bargains. so the prosecutor really has a videotape with a slamdunk evidence about who committed the crime, so it the question of the prosecution and defense laying off against each other, strength of the evidence, more or less determining the sense that way. host: so what the determination is made of tilt and the sentence is received, what standards go into place as far as determining the length of the sentence? guest: it depends on the state, the judge, the jewish fiction -- the jurisdiction and the like. mandatory sentences are in place these days, so judges have very little discretion in determining what the sentence will be. crimes, crimes, other often it is a mandatory 5, 10, 20 year sentence with bury little discretion involved. host: our guest is with us for a period of time to talk to us of the thing in the u.s. when it comes to prison and prison populace. he is marc mauer of the sentencing project. you can reach us at these numbers, (202) 585-3880 for democrats, (202) 585-3881 for republicans, (202) 585-3882 for independents. if you want to send us a tweet, you can do so @cspanwj, and if you want to send this e-mail, that is journal@c-span.org. some statistics from the bureau of justice statistics talks a little but about the prison population, currently more than 218,000 prisoners in 2012, compared to 2011 to 2012, that increase by 1500, and from 2002 until 2012, increase by 54,000. marc mauer, what do we get from those numbers? hast: very little attention been paid to alternatives, particularly with the drug war. happy people are victims of a drug offense, relative handful of those are the so-called kingpins of the drug trade. by far, most of the people are in the lower, middle level ranges of the drug trade. they are the street corner sellers, mules and careers, people like that. the problem there is that those people are easily replaced on the street if they are arrested and sent off to prison, so you a sweep, you pick up kids on a street corner, they may receive a mandatory prison term, they get out of prison, go back to that corner. most of the time it would take about 20 minutes before they are replaced on a street corner. as long as we have a demand for drugs into that corner, in a neighborhood, there is almost an endless supply of people ready to rise up and meet that demand. is, as we have expanded the number of people in prison, we are having relatively little impact on crime. we are sentencing people to terms of 20, 30, 40 years, well past the point at which their prime rates would be declining. we're spending them on -- enormous rates on people who are declining. host: the justice department back in august make decisions on how they will approach this. what did they decide? guest: attorney general holder said we have too many people in to me prisons for far too long. pretty remarkable statement for the attorney general. now, the attorney general himself cannot do anything about the mandatory penalties that govern so much of federal sentencing now, but what he did require is that his u.s. attorneys now use their discretion to make reasonable decisions as to how they prosecute cases. so essentially in a lower-level drug cases where there is no direct connection to violence or he isdrug activity, essentially suggesting that the attorneys bring charges, that they will require the judge to impose a mandatory prison term. sorry -- and far too many cases, people get 5, 10, 20 years for cases that you could ask anybody on the street does this person need to be imprisoned for 20 years and they would say no, yet our one-size-fits-all sentencing policy has pushed backers of the attorney general is essentially saying prosecutors have a lot of discretion, they should use that discretion wisely. the former attorney general had a response to that action by the current one thing that the system simply sweep aside the activity enacted by congress one -- guest: yeah, the not so hidden secret is the -- please officers deciding when to make an arrest or when to give full warning, prosecutors deciding what kind of charges to bring, please negotiations, all through the line and with parole decisions and the like. so the question is -- we can eliminate the discretion, but how can we got it, how can we use it wisely to take advantage of what the law says or requires, but also understand that justice requires doing the right thing essentially and excessive incarceration does not help anybody, particularly, so how do you use that general guidance? host: marc mauer is our guest. first call, charlie, democrats line. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. i did experience a state prison, and i found out that my crime nonviolent nor dealt with drugs. the only thing i can say basically as we do need to be careful when we go through the court system and sentencing these so-called criminals. could've been handled by probation or some other. i do understand that the calls prisoners would be much higher than if we put them on a preventative program. i'm very interested in listening to what you have to say on that. host: how long was your sentence? caller: seven months. host: charlie, thank you. guest: without knowing the circumstances of your case, and for to many cases, what we do places peoplemany are sentenced to prison because there are too few options available. enough drug treatment slots, you have enough mental health cap does, far too many jurisdictions that is just not available. in prisonthe person for some time, we do not have to worry about that decision. of course we should worry about that. as taxpayers. the challenges as we pour more money into the prison system, we have less and less available in the front end, less available in the community, in other parts of the court system that might help people like the caller be able to be supervised in a community rather than inside a prison cell. prisonersmillion currently in state prison populations. that was 2012. they declined by 29,000 from 2011 to 2012. california accounting for 51% of the decrease. with anna had the largest increase with over 1000 more prisoners heard what happened in california that cause that decreased? guest: the california decision intriguing. basically the question was did the overcrowding in california produce unconstitutional conditions of confinement, particularly in access to health care. the court ruled essentially it was far too overcrowded, ordered the state to reduce its population by more than 30,000 people, a fairly substantial number from the height from about 60,000 before that. the state had a very aggressive campaign to do that, essentially trying to keep people convicted of nonviolent property and drug offenders, they might be in local jails come under local probation supervision. reconsidering some of the parole violators, whether they need to get sent back to prison if they test positive for drug tests or things like that. can you still supervise them in different ways? their undertaking what we might consider a grand experiment. so far, dramatic reduction of prison population. to date, there has been no adverse affect on public safety. it is not as if they are all andng out of prison engaging in massive crimes. in fact, the people coming out of prison only account for a relatively modest proportion of all crime in any given year. so i think we have a lot to learn. we will see more over the next several years about whether substantial reductions like this can be achieved, no adverse effect on public safety. hopefully tax savings for the taxpayers in reducing some of the negative harms of prison. host: michael up next trumpet the many, republican mike, good morning. caller: good morning. i think crime is a major problem in this country. we all have friends and family who have been victims of crime, murder, etc., and whole neighborhoods are -- you are unable to go into whole neighborhoods because the crime rate is so high. i think if we had less people going to prison, we would have more crime. i think it is a major problem, and i don't think we should be putting less people in prison. in fact, probably more people should go to prison because there are too many criminals on the street now. crime is certainly a serious problem. have beenght, many victimized themselves or friends and loved ones who have been feared for 40 years, we tried the strategy of putting more people in resin and we have seven times as many people behind bars today as we did in the early 1970's. we lead the world in that department. so if that is the best way to deal with crime, we certainly have given that a striker and -- that a try. most parents recognize that how do you prevent your kids from getting in trouble? well, you provide them with good education, you provide them with a loving family, you give them good opportunities to get summer jobs and things like that. criminal justice is not the primary way most of us try to get our kids to obey the law to do the right thing. so what we think about how do we deal with the problem of crime, there is a whole range of institutions, families, community, society, including the criminal justice system. we have him to rely far too heavily on criminal justice i think over the last four decades. we need to rebalance that so we can intervene earlier on with the 13, 14, 15-year-old who might be getting into trouble. if we can invest and work with those kids, i think we would get a much better pay off then it nearly waiting until they are 25 or 30, putting them in prison for long periods of time. host: athens, georgia, caroline, and line. caller: thank you, mr. mauer. i wonder if you know about the law that has changed in georgia. at the beginning of this year but the mandatory minimum system -- and sentencing. said if theyner earned their way into prison, they can earn their way out. i had a love one who is in for 10 years, it was her first offense, no one was hurt, she was addicted to heroin. .hat was never addressed her interaction -- her addiction was never addressed. the judge said that she did not daughter thaty much time, but her hands were tied by the law. there was so much pointing to where, you know, things should change just to my daughter's case, but there is a new law that has often the mandatory minimums. i was wondering if you knew about that. guest: it is similar to what we are starting to see around the country and many other areas as well. two things in particular. one is that as in georgia, far too many people, far too many cases, judges saying -- my hands were tied in this particular .ase 10 years in prison should not have been the penalty yet they have no choice but to do so. we saw a few years ago in new york, the infamous rockefeller drug laws had been on the books for nearly 40 years imposing 15, 20 year citizens, often on people who were very low-level dealers, players and the drug trade. the other part of it is basically when we send people to prison, 95% of them are coming home sunday, so how do we want them coming back? incentives fore them to be engaged in prison education, vocational training, substance abuse programming, that can reduce the prospect that some of them may come back to prison, may cycle through over and over again. so it should be in everybody's interest to provide the services, provide incentives in terms of their sentence life to get them to engage in that kind of programming. host: on the federal level, who determines sentencing laws? guest: it all comes from congress initially. congress has set up the u.s. sentencing commission, were set up a guy like that went into effect in 1987 that essentially look at the crime and the person's prior record to determine the generals in his that should be imposed, but then on top of that, congress has a mandatory penalties, so whatever discretion judges might have had through the guideline, at least in those ieses where the mandatoro apply, there is absolutely no discretion. i think it is common in those cases, we are seeing far too much time in prison for not the most serious kind of crimes. host: has there been an effort to give a judge more flexibility even if there are standard laws on the books? guest: there have been a number of challenges to the u.s. supreme court. a case called booker several years ago could basically maybe sentencing guidelines advisory rather than mandatory. it does open up the degree of discretion judges can use in those cases. again, when a mandatory sentences are applied, only congress can change those. air is now some efforts underway to try to rise the legislation pending in the senate as we beak, so the challenge will -- can lawmakers come together to recognize some of the injustices taking place through that? host: how often are laws revisited for consideration as far as revamping them, taking them? guest: there is no obligation to look at them, they could be on the books for 100 years. it is only a question of when there is sufficient hours, tension, criticism to them that this can take place. what we're seeing now, actually bipartisan efforts in congress, in the senate, we have leading liberal democrats like senator leahy of vermont, senator durbin of illinois, and leading tea party republicans, cerner rand paul of kentucky, senator mike lee of kentucky, coming together to cosponsor bipartisan legislation to scale back the severity of the mandatory sentencing. so it is intriguing that is coming from both sides of the political spectrum, somewhat for different reasons, perhaps. but a growing recognition that this is got to far and needs to uch toohis has gone m far. on ourext caller democrat line. caller: this is really crazy to me that you guys are not talking about racism. in this criminal justice system. now, i am 50 years old, i remember back in the 1980's when all of this proliferation of th is came into being. drugs going into the black community is -- black communities and whole generations just being victimized -- systemize into the prison system. we created the system. and now you have 2, 3 generations that are not being productive members of society. now, we have got to get these people into society, or we have a lot of baby boomers, me for one, that are going to be retiring, and we have a whole 2, 3 generations that are not going to be productive, are not going to be giving into the social security system. this is not a sustainable system, but we did created. createyou are absolutely your prison system, laws come from congress, we elect the members of congress, in the 1980's, you refer to, that was really the inception of the war on drugs. it is not the only reason we have a massive resistance am today, but it was a very significant one. certainly back then. among the most notorious laws of the times with the mandatory something laws for crack cocaine passed by congress in 1986, which punished crack cocaine sentenced for more harshly than powder cocaine, and it was subsequently realized 80% of the people convicted of crack cocaine offenses were african- american. these laws were viewed by many people as unjust and unfair and not very good drug policy. it was not until 2010, 24 years later, that congress finally came together to reduce the scale of that disparity. they did not allow maybe disparity, but there was a very significant reduction. i think it illustrates that we can pass tough sentencing laws, it seemed like it took 20 minutes back in 1986, and it takes more than 20 years to recognize the harm that has been done and change that. should be a lesson to us, i think, and sort of rush to judgment or making policy based on what has often been sensationalized accounts of crimes and problem and what we can do about that. host: according to the sentencing project in 2011, but half of those serving in federal prisons are serving because of drug-related matters. -- would you call for changes not only for sentencing but for possession of wealth? -- as well? guest: mozilla prison were not there for smoking a joint or something. they were involved in the drug trade is some level. roughly half the people convicted in federal court of drug crimes are in the lower .evels the question is -- what are we accomplishing in terms of the drug problem? if one believes that law enforcement should be part of lockinger to that, does up street corner sellers and people who are getting on a bus with a packet of drugs for the big kingpin that they are delivering, does that really get us very far? i think the answer after 25 years of this is no way does not make for a much difference at all. states likee c colorado and washington changing possession laws for marijuana, and how ultimately it leads to send the thing you got them a note there is this -- to the sentencing. i do not know if there's a connection, but maybe there is. not many people are in prison for small positions, although in local jails you will see quite a few people arrested for those offenses. the question as to what extent will it contribute to opening up the debate about drug policies. will not mean that drugs be legalized tomorrow, but the question is -- how do we determine the degree of harm that is cost to the individual, to the community, and what is the best way to approach it? preventative treatment, law enforcement and get us where we need to be. the imbalance we've seen far too much in law enforcement, incarceration at the expense of other approaches, that has been a rough problem. host: this is bobby from maryland, republican line. caller: good morning. in my state, there is a methadone lytic on every corner. the governor did away with the death penalty. there is a killing every night in baltimore due to drugs. we just had 27 prison guards prosecuted for taking drugs into the jail. it sounds to me like you are saying we don't want to prosecute them, send them to the methadone clinic, put them in a house, pay for everything. well, one day, somebody is going to stand up and say we have had enough, put them all in jail, put them out of rikers, put them somewhere. very killing each other. and the kids are seeing this, and they are thinking it is wonderful, we are going to make big bucks. unfortunately, the evidence of the hands about the failures of some of those policies. it was only this year maryland abolished the death penalty. all those years of the 80's -- 1980's and 1990's, where there were very serious problems it with the drug trade that only in maryland but in the country, apparently was not terribly effective if one believes that as a way to solve some of the drug-related violence. what we do know about the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980's in 1990's, we had a very deadly mix of young people, easy access to guns, and this new -- turfch created a new battles and a light -- and the like. for a variety of reasons that diminished. it is still a problem in many neighborhoods, but we should not be making policy that is going to affect us for generations as we did with harsh sentencing long locking people up after they are any kind of threat to the community. and again, without dealing with the problems of substance abuse, without dealing with the easy access to weapons in far too many cases. all those kinds of things have not gotten much attention. host: armando, pennsylvania, democrats line. caller: yes, good morning. the reason why i am speaking is because i have been in the street since the 1950's, and -- and the system is messed up. the system got a be -- do the things the right way. because right now, if you look out at the guys that come out of jail, to find a job, they cannot find a job because when they go to look for work and may find an application for a job, the first thing they ask you -- do you have a criminal record? if you put on you have a criminal record, they do not hire you. so what happens? when he comes out of jail and look for job, he cannot find a job, so he has to go back to the street and commit a crime. the system has got to change. they have got brand-new log back. -- law back. he served his time, now it is time for them, the state to give that person a job so he could get out of the street. and a person that goes to jail for smoking drugs or using thosee or using heroin, people should be in treatment not in jail because jill is not the solution because right now in jail, the population of jail in the 50 states, you have more drugs in the jail than in the street, and i can prove that and demonstrate that to all these people. host: armando, let our guest response. guest: you are absolutely right. coming out of prison, the most important thing is to get up -- to get a job and have a place to live. it is very difficult with people with criminal records to get a there are some things we can do in terms of public policy. just last year, the equal opportunity employment commission sent a new guidance out for employers. wereple of problems identified. many employers as on applications getting arrested for crimes even if it did not lead to a conviction. certainly that would be inappropriate to most people. if you are convicted to a crime -- of a crime event to the job, that is one thing. secondly, there is often no indication given of when the conviction took lace. you can have somebody who had a conviction of stealing a car -- took place. you can have somebody who had a atviction for stealing a car the age of 18. that was 30 years ago and many employers will not higher them as a result. you need to take into account how long it has been and the like. we know from all sorts of research that if the person has 6, 7, eightree years, their chances of being rearrested are not that different from you or -- from yours or mine. host: european inmates do not face the punitive consequences due,american ex-person is prisoners do.- ex- guest van -- there are restrictions on the right to vote. you think about people coming out of prison. they need to rejoin the community and be treated as first class citizens again. when we erect barriers, it maketh -- makes it difficult and that does not help anybody. it puts them at a high risk level of getting involved with crime. host: on twitter, are there to reducegrams involvement in crime? guest: they can take college courses. there is mental health counseling. some of that takes place. in some states there are incentive programs to an -- to participate in drug treatment. if you complete it successfully, you may get your sentence reduced six or 12 months. that should be a win-win situation. we need to be experimenting with more of those kinds of incentives. brooklyn, newom york. good morning. caller: good morning. in my opinion, we have 2 governments in this country. one that sells drugs and one that does not. i am finally getting my day in court 40 years later. states should stop making drugs legal and the federal government telling us it is illegal. it is either legal or illegal. have it where the state says yes and the federal government says no. on tv, they show you that neighbors are getting arrested for growing marijuana. the reason the next-door neighbor doesn't get raided his because he works for the government. seen legal issues and practical issues coming out of the marijuana issue in washington and colorado. you are right. we have federal laws and state laws. the citizens of those 2 states said that marijuana is action is not going to be consider a crime anymore. government ineral a tricky position. it seems like they are taking a hands off policy. that is what the citizens of those states want to do. the federal government is saying we have better things to do with our resources. there is room for growth. there are changes at the state level that can influence the national climate and congress and how they approach these issues. we are seeing is beyond personal marijuana session, but some of the sentencing reforms taking marijuanaersonal possession, but in some of the sentencing reforms taking place. -- what shoulds incarceration look like. we need to take a look at that. crimes are serious. we all take it seriously. what should the scale of punishment be? at all levelsle of crime, including violent crimes, far more harshly than other democratic nations do. one in every nine people in prison is serving a life sentence with no opportunity for parole. we are taking the 18-year-old that was hanging around with the wrong kind of people and they go out in a car and they rob a gas station. now they are all charged with armed robbery. 20 years later, we see that person in prison. he has become an adult. he is not necessarily the same person he was and he was 18. the question is, how much punishment is enough? should there be a second chance in life? it does not mean we do not take the crimes seriously. years accomplish that 10 or 20 years does not accomplish? host: crystal from tennessee. you are on. i was not arrested. i was let go. two years later, they came and get me -- and got me and took me to jail. i was in there for five days. it was all a misunderstanding. i felt that i was punished because of this. you have so much criminal activity going on in the prison system that these people are teaching each other these kinds of things that they can do when they go out. you have the stigmatism of people when they do get out of prison and you cannot get a job. sheriff's down here who are absolutely criminals. i could have sued the county that did arrest me. himself lost his job because of criminal activity. your: i cannot speak to particular situation, but there is far too much day to day missed behavior. we have government documentation of the rate of sexual assaults in prison and the like. there are many reasons this has developed this way. resumesush to build over the last 40 years, many were happy todies provide the funding to build prisons. they were not generous about providing programs that take place in those prisons. you end up with warehouses being set up around the country. that is not a recipe for success for anyone. it is not good for the guards or for the administration. they have people packed in with very little going on. host: from pennsylvania on the democrats' line. caller: i would like to address the issue of poverty in this country. that is the problem and why we have so much crime. we have so much inequality, so much corruption. i travel is -- travel extensively. i have been places like iceland where you can leave a baby carriage and go shop in the mall and no one steals your child. i believe what this man was talking about. our priorities are totally wrong in this country. need to get god, family, caring for our fellow man. we have nothing but greed and no one cares whether anyone else is educated. to jail or go whether you do not go to jail is all because of how good your lawyer is, how much money you make. if you have enough money, you can commit any crime in this country. guest: you cannot commit any crime. we do see people convicted. you are correct. the level of justice one receives is related to the quality of the defense and what you have available to you. far too many jurisdictions, particularly rural ones, the ofyer comes in the day having his client have to make a plea in court and the lawyer does not know whose client is sitting in the courtroom. the level of support for things like indigent defense where people cannot afford their own attorney is awful in many cases. the broader questions raised about social inequality have to do with the ability of people to get the job come to support themselves. none of that suggests that poor people are going to automatically go out and commit crimes. if we are concerned about public safety, we have to recognize the risk level of people who do not have good jobs and do not have the support system. somethingt to do about crime, you have to look at those issues. host: the five states with the highest incarceration rates. the wheezy anna, mississippi, louisiana,lahoma -- oklahoma.i, alabama, why is louisiana at the top of that list? guest: they lock up people who would not be locked up in other cases. several thousand people serving life without parole. graveyard in the prison because so many people die at the prison. they have a whole system whereby local sheriffs make money by renting out their jail sales -- from otherople prisons. no one has taken a look and said, what should we do with our prison system? they made a decision by instinct over many years. it is over control -- out of control right now. have does governor jindal control in louisiana? to review thed actions of the police. there is discussion going on right now about how they can reduce that high level of incarceration and save some money and reduce imprisonment and do the right thing in terms of public safety. lowest, in case you are interested. tops the list followed by minnesota and rhode island. caller: i do not see how we can use crack or cocaine as a typical crime. that takes lives. whether you have a gun in your socket or not, there are od' and there are things that go along with it. that is not my question that was a -- that is not my question. that was a comment. here is my question. the police tells you that is criminal. if you do this, you will be punished. what is wrong with actually punishing them? i live in nashville in the inner-city. on my way to work, there are ride 4 corners that i will every morning because it saves me 10 minutes because of traffic . on those four corners, you they arepeople who, if not working, they are there for their own reasons. i have seen police sent a few yards away from them. do what theyg to want to do regardless. i do not think the punishment is strong enough. >> thank you. -- host: thank you. guest: our prison population is at world record levels. it is not as if we have not paid attention to that part of the way senator dole. punishment has been very -- it is not as if we have not paid attention to that part of the equation. is, we need to figure out why those people are hanging around the street corners not looking to work and not being able to work. is it a lack of opportunity? is it a lack of education? value for thef value of work and the like? how do we get some of those people off of corners and not into prison cells and into something reductive? chance thats the you would see major changes in the way prison sentences are done at the federal level? guest: legislation has been through the senate. there is a bipartisan movement in the house. days, bipartisanship is not a popular word. the criminal justice policy should be one of the few areas where there should be some possibility. that was not the case 10 or 20 years ago. they are recognizing that problems have been created. difficult to predict what may happen on the hill. we areree by which seeing people at both ends of the political spectrum come together suggests that we could see some substantial changes in the coming year. has president obama at dressed to the issue directly? guest: not directly. cocaineencing for crack has been injured -- has been addressed to radically. host: the sentencing project website is on your screen. marc mauer, thank you. not many people think of the lincolnt -- think of for -- we will talk about lincoln when we come back. >> every weekend since 1998, booktv has taught -- brought you the top fiction authors. >> women are tied to their work in a way that we may not like. when i look at someone like the woman who was chosen to be the ceo of yahoo! when she was visibly pregnant and was asked how much maternity leave she wanted to take, she said none. existct that such women -- it is not the way i would do it. i took lindsay of maternity leave. is the kind of woman that there can be space for. there are some stay-at-home guys who can be happy stay-at-home guys who do not live entirely in portland, oregon. >> the only national television network devoted exclusively to nonfiction books. it was shocking. i saw it, that look he had on his face. i could close my eyes and i could see him on the stretcher. i could see him putting his hand up. i could close my eyes and i could see it. i will never forget that first case, that's bringing me to reality of what was going on here -- that bringing me to reality of what was going on here. after he got into the tent, there was that initial triage. the team starts to work. in, myself and my colleague who wrote the forward. we both got pulled in because the other team wanted us to begin right away. they did not want us to be bystanders. they said, you guys have to get involved right away. once they did that and they pulled us in, it was like, wake up. now you have to act. you have to be a doctor. you have to be a surgeon. you have to be a care provider. you have to dismiss your ,motions and talk that away what you are feeling, and just work. you have one of justice. you have to say this guy's life. -- you have one of jet if -- objective. his own experience as a physician working with soldiers in afghanistan. >> "washington journal" continues. host: our guest is kevin peraino . he is the author of "lincoln in the world." guest: we think of lincoln as a because theredent was a war raging on american soil. in ken had to deal with a series of crises. to deal with a series of crises. he was a foreign policy president, in my opinion. one of the reasons there has not been a book about this, a holistic human account of foreign policyin is because he had a strong, competent secretary of state. when you put him in the middle of his own foreign policy, you come up with a hagiography. i wanted to look at the things lincoln did do in foreign affairs. seward'sk about influence. potentiallyln was provincial. he grew up in kentucky and illinois. he had never been overseas. he spoke no foreign languages except a little german that he used to woo voters in illinois. had traveled overseas a couple of times. lincoln looked to him for his expertise in foreign affairs. was also an incredibly vain and pompous person. he had an incredibly high estimation of himself. lincoln had to dial him back a little bit when he thought he was wrong. how england,out france, and spain were viewed. guest: the biggest thing was the crisis he had to defuse. they did not want to see the united states go to pieces. some of the statesmen in britain and france -- there was a gleeful this -- gleefulness about watching the united states go to pieces. they liked seeing what was going on there. did also.ii it was not in the european power 's interest in seeing the united states fall apart. there were commercial and potential ties between britain and the united states. the united states' largest creditor at the time. there were good reasons for avoiding war. britain was france's historical enemy after the napoleonic wars. the french did not want to see the united states go to pieces. a strong united states could be a counterweight to britain. wanted to keep from doing something that would lead to war when the interests of the powers were not necessarily productive. host: how did he achieve that? incrediblyoln was an patient person. cabinet secretary said patients was an incredibly in port part of his -- said patienc e was an incredibly important part of his character. that is really important in foreign affairs. theoitable changes in international power grid do not happen every day. thingsre the kinds of that change glacially. knowing what you can change in international affairs and what you cannot change is an important skill. lincoln was good at that. host: did that cause tension between him and his secretary of state? cases, seward was no one saying patience. the emancipation proclamation would win hearts and minds in europe. by the summer of 1862, he was eager to and -- to issue some kind of proclamation. said, now is not the right time. battles onwin some the battlefield. sometimes lincoln was right. was right.eward together, they made really good foreign policy. host: our guest is kevin peraino , the author of "lincoln in the world." you can ask them questions on one of our three lines. 202-585-3880 four democrats. , for republicans. for 202-585-3882 independents. what do you do when you are not writing books? -- writeworry articles. i was working as a foreign correspondent in the middle east. i was reporting from places like yemen, libya, syria. i went through this time when i wanted to step back and take a look at the broader framework of american foreign policy, traditions of american foreign policy. i was so used to covering it from the street level. this time sucked me in. the characters are amazing. it is something out of a novel. you have clay, lincoln's minister in russia. he walks around with knives dangling from his waistband and picking fights. johnave the grandson of adams, who is in london, a pretty competent diplomat. you have lincoln's minister in paris, who ended up dying in what the lincoln biographer referred to as the apartment of a woman not his wife. his body had to be smuggled back . this is an incredible cast of characters. and you have lincoln at the center of it all, a figure of enduring interest. close bank -- grew in the position as far as foreign policy was concerned. guest: his first term in congress a one-sided with almost the end of the mexican war, america's first full-scale conflict on foreign sale -- soil. lincoln's first public act was to oppose the mexican war. he stood up and gave this speech in congress challenging president polk. this was his foreign affairs awakening. tois a pretty good prelude his civil war diplomacy later on. call here is our first from michigan on our republican line. caller: good morning. about a month ago on c-span on the history channel, you had a man who talked about how russia helped president lincoln. they sent [indiscernible] fleet to the other new england area. in the event that some other country would participate in a war against the united states, he gave permission to the fleets to assist president lincoln. also, lincoln had many contacts with the russian court. clay --ioned cash is you mentioned clay, was he the one in st. petersburg? quite a lot of participation with russia. the name was webster tarpley. guest: it is a great question. i heard about the west are tarpley segment. tarpley segment. webster was a -- rot -- russia was a rising power. they had the largest standing army. i think it was 900,000 soldiers. they were increasingly a player. in the fall of 1863, russian ships showed up off the atlantic coast and the pacific coast. they were there for some time. a little toast was giving to the czar. the russians were friendly to the union. russiansays, the showing up was a godsend for lincoln. he was dealing with some serious problems. mexico andinvaded conquered mexico city in 1863. one of lincoln's biggest foreign policy challenges was to decide how to deal with france. of 1863, here come the russians. the union had friends in the international arena. it ended up eating something that was important. host: on the independent line, this is tyler. about whatm curious his opinions would be on american superpower status and also the massive role the federal government now plays in state affairs. guest: it is a great question. it is impossible to answer, obviously. lincoln scholars have been debating this for decades, what lincoln would inc. of the u.s. government today. think ofincoln would the u.s. government today. that lincolnote would have been saved from having to deal with the gilded age. his economic values would have destroyed his moral values. workpeople say the 2 compatible. other people say they were not. that is one of the essential tensions you look at when you look at lincoln. bookan epilogue in this that i call lincoln versus lincoln where we look at lincoln's moral view of america's place in the world. we know the lines about the last best hope that lincoln talks about. but how that moral view of america's place in the world would have been recognized -- reconciled with economic expansion that we saw in the gilded age. host: from new jersey on the republican line. caller: i wanted to follow-up on the comment on lincoln's foreign policy reasons of issuing the emancipation proclamation. that is a first i have ever heard of that. most people say it was his view to keep the union together at whatever cost. to what degree does the author had --he reason lincoln to what degree does the author think the reason was foreign- policy or to keep the union together? guest: there was a complicated cocktail of reasons. domestic policy was one, to create ideological consistency to help when the war at home. -- win the war at home. he said this a couple of times leading up to the emancipation. he said it explicitly. at it into look context. he was getting letters from his diplomats in europe who were saying, if you would only shift the war aim. there is so much anti-slavery sentiment in europe if you shift the war aims to anti-slavery. lincoln knew and was being told over and over again. lincoln was reluctant to do it he cuts he did not want to alienate the border states. if he made the emancipation proclamation right away, it would alienate the border states. he was getting input from europe. one other interesting thing about that. there was a series of points on the road to emancipation where military commanders, general fremont in the west, diderot hunter, and others -- general hunter and others, issued military proclamations. lincoln overruled them because he thought these were in support and danes. lincoln thought that if you did a piecemeal approach to -- he thought these were insubordination. columbia, missouri . turner, good morning. -- go ahead. i appreciate how you open the phone lines to other folks. i called because i strongly object that lincoln did not care about the future of the slaves. i guess we live in a time where it is popular to denigrate our past or find rings wrong with our past leaders or establishments. things wrong with our past leaders or establishments. the southern states had no question that this was about slavery. almost all of them withdrew from and completed that act before he was even inaugurated. things that he went through, some of the things he experienced growing up, it becomes less hard to imagine a human being having that kind of compassion. one of the things he did to win the election -- can you imagine a president winning an election today where that many states in a nation that small were withdrawing? that could not occur. up some german newspapers. these were more like newsletters. he bought these german circulars and using those, he could get around the traditional press. germans were not big on plantations. host: we have to leave in there and let our guests respond. by germancoln did language newspapers. he saw them as important. lincoln thought newspapers in general were important. this is something i try to bring out in the book. age of lived in an globalization a lot like our own. distances were shrinking. the years before the civil war saw the advent of the telegraph. there is a huge explosion in newspaper publication. of ways, this resembles our globalizing world. there were upsides and downsides. theoln could speak across atlantic to ordinary europeans. on the other hand, it was an age where nothing was arrived at anymore. lincoln had to deal with diplomatic leaks like the current administration. es was,my favorite quot "diplomacy has sold few secrets these days." equivalent his own of a twitter mole. he was working in the state department at the time. he published his diary right in the middle of the war. he called lincoln pigheaded lincoln and his job was to keep seward from making a fool of himself. link and had to deal with these upsides and downsides in the information age. host: from twitter, how many an ongoing serious relationship with the u.s. north during the war? what were the major negotiations? guest: one of my favorite letters during the civil war is the king of siam rights lincoln a letter and offers to send him elephants. lincoln has this great response. in this country, elephants are not so big. we use carriages. --re was a lot of diplomatic there were a lot of diplomatic powers. there was a lot going on at home and lincoln could focus on every one of them. -- of the things lincoln what lincoln really focus on was france, england, spain. host: a call on our democratic line. i was wondering about your opinion of lincoln's maturation as far as dealing his minister to great britain. it is my understanding that he did not have a whole lot of respect for him initially. he came to rely on him and depend on him after that trent and the question of recognition of the confederacy. guest: it is a good question. seward francis adams was ward's guy.e long line ofa diplomats and was kind of a snob . he looked at it as european statesmen did. they looked down on lincoln and did not respect that this guy has not traveled abroad. not pay him much heat. was,f the things lincoln he was not cosmopolitan, but he was diplomatic. he was diplomatic in his bones. it came naturally to him. the british journalist at the time said a lot of diplomats would shrug their shoulders to get out of a difficult position. lincoln would tell a story or a joke and cracked everyone up. his laugh was inscribed as the the nay of a wild horse. mitch on the republican line. caller: how were diplomats appointed back in those days? were they political appointees? guest: a lot of patronage. the diplomatic corps at that time was not professional. a rows francis adams was and some others were pros -- was and some others were pros . any kind of inconvenient radical abolitionists was sent abroad during that time. it is also considered a place for extended vacations. there is a great thing in the book where herman melville, the author of moby dick, comes to the white house. you do not get the sense that he wants to hone his diplomatic skills. he wants a vacation. he wants to have a good time in italy. there is a great scene where a group of men show up at the white house to try to get their diplomat ind as a the sandwich islands, modern-day hawaii. they say, our guy is really sick. the change of climate would do him good. lincoln has this redline. he says, i have 8 -- lincoln has this great line. he says, i have eight other applicants who are all sicker then your guy. host: we are talking about president lincoln's foreign policy approach. on're on with kevin peraino the independent line. go ahead. let's move on to william. from rhode island on the democrats' line. i came in late. i was wondering if you covered the exchange between karl marx and abraham lincoln. a congratulatory message when lincoln was elected. lincoln responded, they did that to the ambassador. commented on free labor. guest: i devoted an entire chapter to it. it is one of my favorites. did not knowarx each other personally. i do not think they had a lot of influence on each other. they traded letters indirectly. congratulated lincoln at one point on his reelection. and ken wrote a letter to the workers of britain. wrote a- and lincoln letter to the workers of britain . what i wanted to do is look at them side-by-side. it is easy to forget that they lived at the same time. the 1850sriting in and writing for newspapers. he was writing for the new york tribune, which had a huge circulation in the united states, about 200,000 at the time. we do not know if lincoln read marx's articles. lincoln read the tribune pretty religiously. what was interesting to me about this chapter and marx in particular is that the rules of foreign affairs were changing. ordinary people, because of this time of globalization, were having a greater and greater role in international relations. tox and lincoln were trying find ways to take advantage of what we would call soft power. it was not a term that was in use then. they are wrestling with this new world. we talked about some of the ways did,incoln -- ways lincoln speaking to ordinary workers to put pressure on european statesmen. marx tried to rally workers during this time. works wanted the union to win the war for different reasons than lincoln. he thought if the union could triumph over the aristocratic south, it was one more step toward the workers triumphing over both. he had different reasons. he wanted the union to win just as lincoln did. host: matt from nebraska on our republican line. caller: the book is absolutely fascinating. what countries during the civil war provided monetary support for the lincoln administration and what opened the doors after the north won? thank you very much for c-span. it was one of the things that was important, particularly to the treasury secretary at the time. they tried hard. both the union and the confederacy tried hard to secure loans from the european powers. what is more interesting than is the wayestion lincoln was able to ask boeing the economic resources of the united states. theas able to exploit economic resources of the united states. the issuance of greenbacks for the first time, a national paper currency, helped unite the united states in a monetary union. the first national income taxed at leis during this time -- income tax took place during this time. host: carol from maine, democrats' line. caller: good morning. you mentioned that the diplomatic corps was a way to get rid of annoying people. my question is, what were the circumstances that caused president lincoln to appoint clay? guest: he was an abolitionist, a troublemaker, and a firebrand. that was part of it. he was also a childhood friend of mary lincoln. they grew up in lexington. i do not inc. that was necessarily a factor in this particular instance. that wasot think necessarily a factor in this particular instance. she was more cosmopolitan than lincoln in a lot of ways. she went to a school where the students spoke french when she was growing up. she was pretty cosmopolitan. she and her family, the todds over lincoln. lincoln used to say, one d was good enough for god, but not the todds. mary tried to get her candidate appointed in the sandwich items -- sandwich islands, modern-day hawaii. i am forgetting whether it is in the letters or diaries of clay where he is recalling a conversation he had with mary. he hated seward. mary said, don't worry about seward. no one pays any attention to what he says. can you imagine? was it the resulting unified and more powerful federal government that secured war?.s.' in the civil absolutely the increasing ties that centralized was important. the crucible of the war bringing the nation together was something that was really important and had a lasting effect. you put lincoln versus napoleon. guest: this is not napoleon bonaparte. emperor ofoleon iii, france, a nephew of bonaparte. late 1861, he, along with british and french troops, invaded mexico to try to recover some debts. frenchtish left, but the stained and conquered mexico city in 1963. yedy installed -- french sta and conquered mexico city in 1863. lincoln had to deal with this in norman's challenge to the munro --cument -- this is nor ms. t the enormous challenge to munro doctrine -- monroe doctrine. was a serious proposal. lincoln resisted. seward resisted it. they were in lockstep on this issue. they decided it would be better to let napoleon undo himself. it was a foolish move or napoleon to extend himself this way. napoleon had a lot of problems closer to home in europe. lincoln took no action. after lincoln's death, a puppet napoleon installed was executed and napoleon had to withdraw his troops. host: a call on our independent line for kevin peraino. question fore a you. i frequently note that when people are addressing lincoln, forget to ignore or [indiscernible] and the effect they had. i wonder why. host: one more time again? guest: the moral terrorist. europeans hated it. britain said, we dislike the moral terrorist. we want cotton. the cotton thing was a bigger issue. at the beginning of the war, lincoln issued a blockade on the atlantic coast. less and less cotton was making its way to europe. toanything, it was going spur intervention on the part of the british. cotton mills in liverpool and manchester and the british manufacturing heartland was not getting the raw materials they needed from the southern states. thousands of british workers were thrown out of work. there was a risk that the european powers would intervene to open up the cotton trade. that was an economic factor that was important. hoax had notf written about the foreign policy aspect. where did you get that source folksial from -- a lot of folk had not written about the foreign-policy aspect. guest: i started this when i was overseas. i was based in the middle east should i started the background reading in some of the libraries there. i will tell you something i find really interesting about this. there are 15,000 books about lincoln. my friends say how can you possibly turn up anything new? donelincoln scholars have in recent years -- and i think this is amazing. i do not think scholars do this for other presidents. some of the past biographers of lincoln have themselves have have themselves become historic figures. scholarsnt lincoln have done, they have gone back through these papers looking for things that ended up on the cutting room floor. the greatest is michael burling game. ame.urling the papers ofh past historians and biographers and looks for newspaper clippings. you have to fact check them. that was a useful technique. i could go to some of these papers and look through the lens of foreign-policy that other people did not care about. there are some papers in the library of commerce. mary lincoln biographers. you can find a lot of newspaper clippings about the role she played in international affairs, trying to get her diplomats appointed and this sort of thing. it was a useful technique for a book like this. host: joseph from kentucky. go ahead. caller: good morning. thanks for taking my call. right after the civil war, there was a confederate general, the only one who had a statute made after him in washington, by the name of albert pike. him tor was sent by europe. that letter was found on a dead courier and it read about the protocol of the elders of zion and they're wanting to take over the world. if you look at that letter, everything in that letter has come to pass. guest: absurd. an absurd question. when did lincoln travel abroad? guest: he never traveled overseas. he went to the canadian side of niagara falls. he had no friends in europe and he had never been abroad. life, ite end of his was something he was talking about with mary. he wanted to visit the middle east and europe. he admired byron and burns and wanted to see their birth laces in europe. it was something he wanted to do and he never got the chance to do. host: kevin peraino, the author of "lincoln in the world." coming up on the program gordon., commander jd we will talk about sequestration in the armed forces. , we willin the program have a discussion about voting laws in the united states. we will have that and we will take a look at the papers and take your phone calls. comes your journal" way at 7:00 a.m. tomorrow. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] >> good evening. i am speaking to you tonight at a very serious moment in our history. the cabinet is convening and the leaders are meeting with the president. the state department and navy officials are meeting with the president all afternoon. in fact, the japanese ambassador was talking to the president at the time that japan was bombing our citizens in the philippines and sinking one of our transports. by tomorrow morning, the members of congress will have a report and be ready for action. ♪ ♪ >> you've been listening to some of eleanor roosevelt's address hours after the attack at pearl harbor. she gave that address before her husband even spoke to the nation. for the next two hours, we are going to get to know this transformational first lady. she's consistently ranked first in historians polls on first ladies. we will look at her life, her relationships and the time in the white house from 1933 to 1945. well good evening and welcome to "first ladies: influence and image" series.

Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book TV 20131202

he had a child, the person he was with had several children, say he was a stepdad, and he seemed if not happy but in a better place than when i met him. so you know, time heals sometimes and people move on. >> if one could assume that if thithishappens in other places,- speeto. >> one thing i found while reporting this book -- there was so much i didn't know. writing a book is like getting a phd. one thing i found out is [inaudible] a hate crime against latinos lately historically. we have a pretty -- it's in the book. there is a chapter on that. we have a history in terms of hate crimes and we just don't know about it. there's some pretty horrific hate crimes that have taken place in other cities and states. not necessarily the hunting beaners situation but equally gruesome and the groups tend to be young males. as a mother of three latino boys, i was horrified when i heard about the case. my oldest at that time was the age of geoffre jeffrey conroy as friends and i couldn't look at him across the table and think someone like him committed this crime. but i also look at him and think they could be victims, too. no one stopped to ask if marcelo lucero spoke english or if he had papers or if he was mexican or not, which he wasn't. in fact just a few minutes before the attack on marcelo, they attacked another immigrant who was a naturalized u.s. citizen from columbia who have been here for more than 30 years, hector. he was working in a restaurant and was walking home and they attacked him. he ran to a house called the lights went on and he was saved. they went on and be found and killed the lucero. no one asked him where are you from, what language do you speak. it was just based on appearance. it's a very, very complicated thing and very scary issue. but i think i'm going to stop. i am all talked out. thank you so much and we can keep this conversation going. thanks so much for being here. [applause] here's a look at some of the best-selling nonfiction books according to "the wall street journal." this reflects sales as of november 17. the author you may not have heard of but you might have seen his work is kevin kallaugher, the editorial cartoonist for the economist. how did you come up with the idea of putting all of your work into a book? >> this year celebrated my 35th year with the economist magazine. i thought this would be a great opportunity to pull everything together. and i did an unconventional way that is becoming more and more available and i use kickstart her as a way to use raise money for the book and i raised $100,000 presold 1800 copies of 46 different countries and published this book myself and i'm having a great time traveling the country and selling it. >> it's self published quick. >> i have done books before but self-publishing when you are an artist is you can then make it exactly the way you want. you can get at the paper quality you want, designed the way you want him to choose the cartoons you want and get your best friends to be the editor said it was a great experience. a. >> on the cover is this an original drawing just for the quick. >> it is. this puts together all of the kooky characters that i've covered over the 35 years and i've probably drawn every nature head of state and covered every major issue during that time. and many of these people of course saw the cartoons as well. >> you can see george bush and margaret thatcher, rock obama candidacy is you sending them all off? >> the pen is mightier than the sword i say. >> here is a cover that you did. think big mr. president and also something on the debate. where do you come up with the concept of drawing like this quick. >> i've done 140 covers for the economy seemed about 4,000 cartoons, so there is a little different process for those. the cover i'm working with the editors because they believe the story of the day they often call me on a monday and say we think we are doing something like this. and then when we sign off i have 36 hours to complete the whole project. when i do my political cartoons that iit is more like a column e it's my own idea on a story of the week ended the ninth coming in with the idea and i will present it to them. one of the things about being a political cartoonist, which i would like to think is different than all of my other journalistic colleagues is that i had to cover local cartoons, local and international. the world is my oyster. so keeping up with everything is the hardest part of the job. of course the web is fantastic. if you read all the time, watching c-span you are doing all this great stuff its never-ending keeping up with the news. >> host: how long did it take you to draw the cover of "daggers drawn"? >> there were a lot of different caricatures. this took about three days. much longer than it would normally take. the original was actually much larger than they would even show on the cover so it was a great undertaking. >> where do you do your work quick. >> i started working 11 years in the uk and came back to become the columnist for the "baltimore sun" where i am today and the artist resident at the university just outside so i do my daily cartoons, but also on behalf of the economist i do a lot of traveling and i'm about ready to do a tour wherever i am i will do more cartoons. >> where can people find "daggers drawn"? >> you can get it from my website which is daggersdrawn.net and you will see it at the economist bookstore soon. i recommend coming to visit and i hope that you enjoy the book. a. >> kevin kallaugher, editorial cartoonist for the economist. >> here's a look at books being published this week. president obama dropped into the washington dc bookstore saturday with his daughters malia and sasha to do some holiday shopping. when asked by a reporter what he thought he said he had a long list of books for readers five to 52. press reports say purchases included the kite runner and the heralbyharold and the purple crd the sports gene. earlier in the day president obama said something about the importance of supporting small businesses. saturday after thanksgiving has become known as small-business saturday. >> we haven't shopped here in a while. >> [inaudible] >> what did you buy? >> it is a long list, but some outstanding books i got a book for every age group from the five to 52. all sat? >> you are all set. thank you so much. >> okay. have a great holiday. [applause] [cheering] now joining us on booktv is kevin peraino, the author of lincoln in the world of the making of a statesman and the don of american power. mr. kevin peraino, what is the catch that you are taking with abraham lincoln? >> books about abraham lincoln but the policy is never treated as though my book is about lincoln and u.s. foreign policy. part of the reason is there hasn't been a policy in nearly 70 years, a kind of holistic human narrative about it and that is before the lincoln papers were released in congress in 1947, so there is a lot of water under the bridge, but i think that one of the reasons there hasn't been a book about the foreign policy is that there's a strong and competent secretary of state. he delegated a lot and so lincoln didn't do everything in foreign affairs. but the things he did do are really important, so i sliced it a little differently. i've taken a look at the things lincoln did do in the foreign relations but without saying he did everything right by the way. he made some mistakes, too. >> was the foreign policy all tied into the civil war? >> we treat the civil war appeared to in this book and i also have a chapter early on about the mexican war. lincoln was a freshman congressman in the house of representatives during the end of the mexican war in the 1840s. so lincoln was opposed to the origins of the war and one of his first speeches in the house of representatives was his very strident speech opposing the origins of the war and president polk. he became known for that speech and political opponents by the way he used it against him in later campaigns. stephen douglas used in the 1850s when he was running against lincoln in the presidential campaign as well. >> but during his presidency, what is an issue that he worked on or had the secretary of state work on, what has necessarily tied to the civil war? >> it was all tied to the civil war. the primary thing was keeping the european powers from recognizing the confederacy which could have changed the course of the war if they recognized the confederacy so that was the biggest thing that lincoln also had to deal with a series of crises with britain and france and spain and the russians were friends at the time, friendly power but they showed up in the middle of the war on the atlantic and pacific coast so that was an issue on the russian ships to play off of the fringe a little bit. so there's a lot going on but ii think people don't realize on the global stage. >> one of the things that interested me in this period is there are similarities to our own time. the parallels are not perfect but the world sort of economic superpower at that time, but lincoln was living in an age of globalization. it was the dawn of photography and steamships and the boom in the newspaper publishing so the world is shrinking kind of like our own world, the age of globalization and at the same time it was an age of nationalism. they take cover as prime investor in 1862 and in britain they have no eternal friends only national interest. on the one hand you have a national conflict going on against the backdrop of the shrinking world coming into toomey there's a lot of similarities when it comes to that dynamic. >> kevin peraino, did abraham lincoln ever leave u.s. soil during his presidency come and get any world leaders come to visit him? >> t. didn't leave the u.s. soil during his presidency. he once went to the canadian side of niagara falls. that is the closest he ever got. he spoke no foreign language come in no friends in europe. he studied a little bit of german to charm the voters in illinois but you're right that he depended on the secretary of state. what he did have enough foreign affairs that was very useful was his very good judgment. he had an amazing sense of patience and timing to compare his decision-making process to watching the pair right in on the tree. he would wait and wait and then make his decision. that kind of patience and sense of timing of knowing when you can make a change to the international power grid and when it's not possible is an important skill in the international relations. >> what is your professional background? >> journalism. i was a foreign correspondent for many years in the middle east. i was based in jerusalem. i worked in baghdad and reported on the ground in this area, and lebanon striking to this from the foreign policy side where i was very interested in the traditions of american foreign policy on the trying to step back and take a 30,000-foot view of the foreign policy and kind of step into this period. you have cash s. clay walking upon st. petersburg with knives dangling from his waistband and getting in fights. charles francis adams in london, the grandson of john adams, lincoln blank minister in london. he had amazing characters. and you have lincoln who is always interesting and was an aspect of the presidency under cover. >> we have been talking with kevin peraino, whose new book blink in and the portal but the making of a statesman and the dawn of american power. you're watching book tv on c-span2. >> social media is a very old idea. we think it is recent and the only people today but really what i'd argue that there's a long rich tradition of social media that goes back to the era of cicero, the late roman republic that is the first century bc. the point is you don't need a digital network to social media. if you have wanted was faster but you could do it in the old days. cicero did it with messengers running to afro and other members of the elite and they all spoke to him and it was very much a social environment that there've been many other examples throughout history. martin luther and his use of poetry and thomas paine and the common sense and the way that they would use more broadly the run-up to the american and french revolution. ..

Transcripts For CSPAN2 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20131224

>> is hard to underestimate the human capacity for self-delusion. for example there is a wonderful film made in japan in 1942 they came out in december 1942 commissioned by the japanese navy to celebrate pearl harbor. they re-created the attack so well, it was one of the first films where they use special effects so skillfully that they still sometimes use it in documentaries because there's very little actual documentary footage of it. it shows pilots and aircraft carriers on their way to pearl harbor and they listen to the american radio and they hear jazz music. somebody conduct in you dance. they all giggle and say what this is the americans, the decadent weak-kneed americans. all i can do is dance and listen to this absurd sort of music. once they get a taste of the real japanese martial spirit they will cave in. it's a very common misperception of democracy held and not purchased by the japanese at the time but authoritarian regimes and there were more idiotic misperceptions too on both sides i think on the japanese side some people really believed americans shouldn't -- couldn't shoot straight because their noses were too big and they couldn't look past their noses. at the same time an american ideas what the japanese because of their oriental eyes couldn't shoot straight and so on. the stupidity of people is boundless. >> i'm sure japan 1941 was maybe not the topic of your breakfast conversation but you will probably talk a lot of bout it now at dinner and i want to thank you both for being with us. [applause] >> in our schools there is a bennett declined in education and the move to things to replace it like self-esteem programs or various their approaches. we have a tried and true method of civilizing boys for good sportsmanship, and moral guidance certainly from parents, most of all from parents but reinforcement from teachers. i just think we have kind of moved away from that. the second problem with boys and there are problems with girls too that i'm not talking about the boys, is that i believe now that boys have become second-class citizens in our schools and their problems are severely neglected. a young man today is far less likely to go to college than his sister. if you look at all ethnic and racial groups and socioeconomic groups and you will find that boys are behind their female counterparts. they are far less literate. the average 15-year-old toy has the writing skills of a 13-year-old girl. he is reading about a year and a half behind her and most importantly boys like school a lot less than girls. they are more disengaged. now there may have been a time when this was the big problem. we had an economy where he could get a high school degree and go out there and work hard and make it into the middle class and some educators at the harvard school of education said a passport to the middle classes to be the high school diploma. not anymore. there is a new economy and the new passport in the middle class is education beyond high school. girls seem to be getting it and boys less and less. i feel that problem, i can't find major organizations or government groups. the department of education is still talking about the shortchanged girl because they were deeply i think influenced by the early research that said girls were shortchanged in the 1990s. so they haven't adjusted or adapted to the "times." we have a white house counsel on women and girls concerned about the education of girls and girls don't fall behind and when it's boys almost every significant -- significantly behind girls. >> christina hoff sommers in the u.s. women earn 62% of associates degrees, 57% of bachelors degrees, 60% of masters degrees, 52% of doctorates college admissions officers. a half old concerned in and panicked over the dearth of male applicants. if male enrollment falls below 40% or below female students began to flee. officials at schools at or near the tipping point are helplessly watching as their campuses become like retirement with women competing for a handful. >> their campuses that the admissions officers are looking at 2% female, 62%, it seems to get worse each year and yes they are obviously panicked. there was an administrator at the college of william and mary who said you know we have to do something about attracting more women. we are the college of william and mary, not the college of mary and mary. there is one educational statistician who said if current trends continue by the year 2068 the last mail will graduate from college. he was just being facetious but there is a grain of truth. it's quite a mystery why the girls would be so much more aware of the importance of education and girls with higher aspirations creates some people say oh no, this is only manifest in the working class. it has passed classes to see the girls outperforming the boys. just this year there's a study showing among the highest performers the girls are not only getting far more a's and a pluses and take far more dance placement classes but they are more ambitious. a higher percentage of aspire to go to graduate school in law school. now again i celebrate what has happened with girls. it is inspiring and some of it may be because of the initiative of the shortchanged girl movement. i don't say everything we did is wrong. i just wish when they discovered that there were gender differences in education i wish it happened instead of becoming a girl partisan movement it would become a movement to improve the educational prospects of all children and help girls where they were behind and help voice where they were falling behind the girls. that would have been yes more support for girls in math and science because they were not doing as well as boys at one time and we have managed to close that gap but now a in everything else reading, writing, school engagement just in general. classroom comportment. we have pretty good research that shows and i don't blame the teachers for this but teachers have a bias against unruly students. it's understandable that the students can be five or six years old so i don't know if it's something we want to blame the boys for or punish them for it. i think you want to find a way to make the classroom a happy place for them and room for their personalities and their high spiritedness. i just feel that we haven't done a good enough job of it. >> is there a shortage of male teachers and does this have an effect if there is? >> there were very few in elementary school. we have slightly more in high school. this may be a slight exaggeration but one critic of the current school system said is that this schools are run by women for girls. again it's an overstatement but not by much. a lot of boys feel that way. one of the saddest comments i ever read was i think researchers interviewing boys about why you hate school and why did you drop out? one little boy said i just that nobody wanted me there. there are a lot of boys that field that way. it's heartbreaking. someone should make it clear to him that they wanted their. there so much going on at our schools even at the level of what is assigned that is girl friendly and not so friendly towards boys. a. >> joining us on book tv is kevin peraino who is the author of "lincoln in the world" the making of a statesman and the dawn of american power. mr. peraino what is the tack you are taking with abraham lincoln? >> are 15,000 books about abraham lincoln but his foreign policy is almost never treated so my book is about lincoln and u.s. foreign policy. part of the reason that there hasn't been a book on his foreign policy in nearly 70 years kind of a holistic human narrative about it, that's before the lincoln papers were released in the library of congress in 1947. so there's a lot of water under the bridge since then but i think one of the reasons there hasn't been a book about lincoln lincoln's foreign policies he had a very strong incompetent secretary of state in william henry seward. he dedicated a lot to seward. he didn't do a lot in foreign affairs but the things he did do were really important. i sliced a little differently. i have taken a look at the things that lincoln do and foreign relations. without saying he did everything or without saying everything right, he made some mistakes too >> was his foreign policy all tied in to the civil war? >> we treat the civil war period in this book but i also have a chapter early on about the mexican war. it was a freshman congressman in the house of representatives during the end of the mexican war in the 1840s. lincoln was supposed to the mexican war and one of his first speeches in the house of representatives was this very strident speech opposing the origins of the war and president hope. he became known for that speech and political opponents by the way use it against him. steven douglas used it in the late 18 50's when he was running against lincoln and it came up in the presidential campaign as well. >> during his presidency, what is an issue that he worked on or had secretary of state seward work on that wasn't necessarily tied to his presidency? the civil war? >> was all tied to the civil war. the primary thing was keep in the european powers from recognizing the confederacy which could have changed the course of the war and could have changed the course of american history. that was the biggest thing that lincoln had to deal with a series of crises with britain, with france, with. the russians were friends of the time, friendly power but russian ships showed up in the middle of the atlantic and pacific coasts of that was an issue. he used the russian ships to kind of play off the french a little bit so there was a lot going on that i think people don't realize on the global stage. one of the things that really insures did me about this period was there are some similarities to our own times. the parallels aren't perfect. britain was the world's economic superpower at that time that lincoln was living in an age of globalization, the dawn don of the telegraph and steamships and the boom in newspaper publishing so the world is shrinking kind of like our own world in an age of globalization. at the same time it was an age of nationalism. ottawa and bismarck prime minister in 1862 lord palmerston in britain says britain has no internal friends, only national interests on the one hand you have this national conflict going on against the backdrop of the shrinking world and to me there are a lot of similarities with their own times when it comes to that dynamic. >> kevin peraino did abraham lincoln ever leave u.s. soil during his presidency and did any world leaders come to visit him? >> he didn't leave u.s. soil during his presidency. he once went to the canadian side of niagara falls. that's the closest he ever got. he spoke no foreign languages and had no friends in europe. he studied a little bit of german to charm voters in illinois but you are right he depended on his secretary of state in some sense. what he did have in foreign affairs which was useful was very good judgment. he had an amazing sense of patience. he used to compare his decision-making process to watching a pair ripening on the tree. he would wait and wait and make his decision. that kind patience and sense of timing of knowing when you can make a change to international power grid is a really important skill in international relations. >> what is your professional background? >> my background is in journalism. i was a foreign correspondent for many years in the middle east. i was based in jerusalem and i worked in fact that. i reported on the ground from places like syria and libya and yemen so i came to this from a foreign-policy side. i went through this period where i was very interested in traditions of american foreign-policy, trying to step back and take a 30,000-foot view of foreign-policy and was kind of into this period. you have lincoln's minister to russia walking around st. petersburg with lowly knives dangling from his waistband getting into fistfights and charles francis adams in london the grandson of john adams lincoln's minister in london. so you have these amazing cast of characters and then you have lincoln who was always interesting. i think was an aspect of his presidency that he had been under cover. >> we have been talking with kevin peraino whose new book "lincoln in the world" the making of a statesman and the dawn of american power. you are watching booktv on c-span2. >> what we know of the founders of 30-second version is the guys that were against the constitution or the religious conservatives of the day, the anti-federalist who very much -- henry at the time wanted to have religious tests for office and so forth. the founders were the cosmopolitans and yet less of them were bible believing christians. why did they take the approach they did? what are the ultimate come down where madison came down? they believed also no faith including their own was beyond faction. madison's prescription was essentially a multiplicity of sects. that is sects. >> there've been important developments in the law over the past couple of decades in terms of government funding and religious institutions. i would say that there were some real issues to work through and to figure out the rules that govern this area during the clinton years were in the early clinton years were different. they changed over time and some people think that was a good time and some people think that was a bad thing. there are some really important issues that people fight about and fight about with legitimate disagreement. a. ..

Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion 20131228