For a complete schedule, visit our website, booktv. Org. Dr. Jeanne safer, who is the politics doctor . I am the politics doctor. I became the politics doctor because people started writing to me as soon as trump was elected and said what can we do . We had been written about this topic that we were married, and we had to do with our different politics. We had written about it a lot. It was published in various places and as soon as trump was elected i started getting letters, dear dr. Safer, we dont know what to do, were about to get divorced. Shall i tell you my favorite . Dear dr. Safer, im writing you this letter. I saw that you would written something and i know you are a liberal and my girlfriend is a a liberal. Were having a terrible problem. We met several months ago. I really love her. Its a great relationship and everything was fine until she happened to see my car was parked next to hers and she saw that i had a decal on the back of my car of trump urinating on hillary. Now, its a joke. Its a joke that she was outraged and shes insisting a take it off. I think its funny. It wouldnt bother me if she had something similar. What do i do . I would not expect my debut of the politics doctor to be this way. I thought this is very interesting. This guy is asking the question. Hes not just saying to hell with you. Im leaving it on. I wrote him back and i said, civility counts and you should take the decal off. Then his group and wrote me and said thank you. This is wonderful, and he did take it off and thats how i know that i really love it and this is going to workout. We are talking with you about your new book, i love you, but i hate your politics. I hate her politics. What are your politics. Im a kind of gardenvariety liberal democrat. I am not a progressive. I am middle of the road. Middle of the left. Left leaning. You are right weaning. Little of the left of center. Primer on social issues. Im not a fan of identity politics. I am a fan of womens rights in every possible way. If we go to the thinks rick and i disagree about, i think theres pretty much note the important issue at the moment that we dont disagree about, except when one thing we agree about. We believe people who use cell phones a lot in public should be considered for the death penalty. Other than that we have nothing but guncontrol, certainly abortionrights, global warming. What else. Before we get into some of those issues, you have referenced your husband a few times and this of course is richard brookhiser, the historian and National Review editor. How long have you been married . Since 1980. How long have you known about her politics . We met in the summer of 1977, so like immediately. But its important how thate met because i think this makes our relationship possible. We met in a group that sings renaissance religious music on the street corners of new york city for free. We dont take money. I had been in the group a number of years at the time after i got my doctorate here i wanted to do something other than sit and read psychology books. Rick juuling. Hed run a group at yale and he just had a wonderful voice and he had wonderful blue eyes, and he was really smart and i was really interested in this guy and i thought she had a wonderful voice, too. I remember what you do . He said im a writer. This is good. Who do you work for . He said william f. Buckley, jr. All right, one out of 28 bad. That was the beginning. One added to eight bad. Are waiting was quite an experience. Bill buckley was there and the publisher was there. Of course rush was one of the people was an enforcer for mccarthy and the man who gave me away was one of the first people who lost his tenured position to mccarthyite politics in new york state. He was a communist also. I knew this was her mentor. And you became delightful guy. He was a communist all his life. If he had lived in an actual communist country he wouldve been killed on day two back unless he been in the position of stalin. The most important thing at this party was everybody behaved and one of our friend said, bedfellows makes strange politics. So thats how it started. I had an idea because i was so naive, that i could probably convince rick of my positions. I convince people for a living. I convinced the decal guy. I could convince anybody. I started a very subtle campaign to enlighten my husband. Did he ever try to enlighten you . No. Were you already enlightened. As i dont think he thought i was enlightened but he was much wiser and more sophisticated about this than i. I really made efforts. I explained to things to him. Im not embarrassed anymore about it because i was rather foolish. There was built in asymmetry because i was a political journalist and ive been doing it for years. I was used to people encounter people who disagreed with me. I was used to the dating them in public forums. I knew that politics with the world the disagreement and contention. I already knew this, and i had been through an Ivy League School and im living in the biggest compliment city and he grew up under the date of congress. My first girlfriend tried to register as a communist. I had been just by circumstance, not where i grew up, but after, ive been in a liberal world and he knew what that was like and he knew how to navigate that. And for you it was a new or experienced both politics and different politics. It was a totally new experience. I grew up in cincinnati, ohio. My father was a conservative cities of. Yes. My father was an eisenhower republican. My mother was democrat but he was pretty liberal social issues and hes the only republican i consciously have ever met. I went to the university of chicago which is not exactly a rightwing institution, and then suddenly im in the world of william f. Buckley and people who didnt agree with me about anything. It was really an education that the world was a lot bigger than i thought. One of the reasons that i think National Review in my book in the acknowledgments and several other places is it enlightened me to realize and it also showed me that the other side with whom i disagreed pretty seriously about an awful lot of things, extremely decent people and a lot of circumstances which we dont tend to think of people who disagree with us so profoundly as being true friends which i think is a real prejudice, real prejudice. I learned a lot. Over the years what was your relationship with william f. Buckley . He came to dinner here with his wife. It was like living in the corner of a little kingdom. I thought, i didnt think i wanted to turn the hospitality so i had them today and they came. We got very good service from a dormant after that. I i made a very elegant dinner d pat said let me see her closets. I want to look around. She suggested to me, this was in the early 80s, she suggested to me how to redo things and then rick suggested that i shall show bill the speakers it come up in conversation and they wanted they were curious about them because the dips in the cards. I pick a card. Everybody knows rorschach but how often have you seen the cards. Jeannie has a set of them. I used to teach psychological testing in graduate school so i picked a card and i thought of the interesting to bill, and he saw the particular thing on it and what was interesting to me is the use of whitespace. The cards are black, this would at some red in it but whitespace is oppositional because you are not using whats on he completely avoided the emotional part which is the red part and he saw oil strike. I think i told him a little bit about what i thought he saw. Because his father was an oilman. Like his personality really fit exactly into this model of being different from what you were supposed to be, and also shutting down emotion. , intellectually. That was a neat experience. You within married for newly 40 years . This this is a 39, this last. Its hard to imagine. Did politics ever threatened that relationship . It never threatened us but speedy we had some bad fights. And had have to say i was te instigator. Im not the instigating type particularly, but around abortion i am, and something it happened, i think it was, it was the webster decision something and this was my first and last real misstep. I said to rick, this is terrible. This is the end here come going to have to join a protest march. Im not a protest march person. And rick said, famously if you march, i will march. On the other side. Yes. And this was scary. I didnt want to go there. He did want to go there. We didnt talk i think for a date which is a onetime that is happen and we decided that we were going to people that discussion for the rest of time. And we did okay. It took me about ten years to really learn not to do it. So as husband and wife, you can talk about that issue here or you dont talk about that issue. We dont. Because you disagree 100 . Right. I started out with the fantasy, as i said i change peoples minds for for a livin, that i would show rick the truth and, of course, he would understand because he understood everything else. He understood me in every way. Rick is one of the reasons that i became a professional writer. He has encouraged me in every way, reads every word i write, edits some of them. Very few. Over the years though it didnt, it became an important for me to have to every time they came up Say Something to rick about. It just didnt matter. I knew what he thought. I knew we were not going anywhere. But then there was a wild change, and this happen recently. Yes. I write about in this book. Before we get to the wild change, is that the advice you give to people in your new book, i love you, but i hate your politics . If you cant talk about it, dont talk about it. Some people can talk about. They can find some way philosophically, but this issue i was too passionate about, it was too essential to me and we couldnt talk about it. Its the only thing i think in the whole world that we cant talk about. You also make a point there are other people who can talk with about. Thats very important, that it doesnt i cant talk about this with anybody. It means that in my own home i give up freedom of speech. I can say get. That your psychotherapeutic advice to people . Yes. Although it has to be conscious, it has to be mutual and jeff to stick to it. I couldnt say with this last thing in, what, georgia, i couldnt take an article and at the breakfast table six rick, read this, read this. Which i call article thrusting. Its a word i made that. It fits perfectly, doesnt it, what people do. Everybody doesnt this. It doesnt work. Read this. Or send it to my inbox. I realized this wasnt the way to go. I contribute where i want to contribute, but the wild thing was that the last you want to tell the story . No, you tell the story. One of the most precious things that ever happened in my marriage, and this happen when the book was done. You were editing. I was editing. Final edit. Yes. I said rick, you know, its so hard to edit like this. Just like Mary Mccarthy said, the famous think about writers, you have to kill your babies. Rick said speedy finally, you are prolife. We are having a laugh, not about abortion that were laugg about our differences about this. Right. Thats a very important distinction. Its not a laugh about the issue. Its a laugh about the contingent over the issue. And i thought, you know what i did . I kissed him. She kisses me other times. I know but this was a very important i was astonished that he said this. I was astonished we both thought it was as fun as we did and i thought, weve grown up. Im going to be 72 next week. Its about time. But we have grown up. Mr. Brookhiser, are the other topics that you dont bring into your home . Well, thats the one we dont talk about. We disagree about many other things and you can talk about them. Thats another strategy that she writes about. One way is to do as a horse race. You know, your side really bungled that issue, or my side really got in on goal on this one. You can do that, you can to the politics, you can to the horse race of it. If people are more intellectually and the heads they can maybe talk about the background of these species of why people take positions they take, the sociology or the history of it was Something Like that. So there are ways to talk about things that are talking around them without going head to head on the merits of the case. Asked rick about the meaning of various things and have to tell you those wonderful thing our marriage has been the election of trump. I mean, it may be terrible for the country but its been fibers for us because rick is a Conscientious Objector to trump. Hes a right wing person who does not believe in trump. Ive been reading the New York Post since 1977. I followed this mans entire public career, so sue me but i understand how wonderful it is to actually be able to agree about something political. Hopefully we will not be able to do this all the time. We stood in line at the polling station in 2016, it was jammed up. It took an hour to cope so stood in line for one hour in order to not vote for anybody. Who are your political heroes, mr. Brookhiser . These days very few. Ronald reagan of course. He won a world war without a stalingrad. Thats pretty good. George h. W. Bush just passed. He had i think many limitations as a politician but he also had some positive qualities. I needed a little bit. I wrote speeches for him when he was Vice President for about six months, which meant that i would get congenial notes from them over the years. The spin must have had an address list a mile long, ande took it very seriously, writing all the people that he knew. Even if he knew them just a little bit. It was important to keep the context, contact up. Rudy giuliani was a great mayor of new york. I even thought that he might be a a president. I was wrong about that. What is it about donald trump that does not excite you . It does excite him. All right, let me answer that backwards. He has what he is brilliant at is selfpromotion. Now, thats what made him a success before he even ran for office. Hes not a Good Real Estate guy. I mean, hes terrible. He just ran through a fortune. When was the last time you on the trump show or when to the trump taj mahal or took a course that Trump University . Its just a string of like recta airplanes on a runway, but, but he wrote the book, or he signed the book, about art of the deal. He made himself a personality. Thats what he did, he made himself a brand. Hes a builder. Thats what he is. Hes a developer rather than a real estate builder. So he helped build projects that he didnt offers his name to and then a return for which he gets a cut of it and that was a very successful strategy, and then he got the tv show. So all that, brilliant. His other brilliant quality is demeaning his enemies. Hes a genius at that, and he knows how to use media. The media of the moment. People joke about the tweets storms and all that kind of stuff. No, its brilliant. This is a 70 plusyearold man whos doing what teenagers do. But you know speeders. [inaudible] he sucks the air out of the room, makes it all about him. The third thing he does is he demeans his supporters. Im not talking about the people who vote for him. Im not talking about them. But the people who become his advocates have to make themselves small. He requires them to be small. He cant have large allies or large advocates a because they might take attention away from him. So if they of elements of importance or greatness themselves, they have to shed them. I mean, giuliani is an example. Great mayor of new york and now hes like trumps its a very sad thing but thats the kind of ally, close ally that donald trump needs. Im not talking about someone like nikki haley with the u. N. Ambassador. She had a job or members of the cabinet and so on, a lot of them have maintain their independence and the distance, but if youre in their close, you have to be small. Hes a very good at achieving that. Historically, is the country in good shape . Look, this race is a very interesting question is raises a very important question. We dont have an answer to it yet. How important is the president to the presidency . Youre the author of 13 books. You tell us. I know. George washington but nobody is, except for lincoln in a different way. How do we judge president s . Obviously we judge them based on the president himself come his ideas, his character. But its also circumstance. Would James Buchanan have been the worst president in history if he had served at some other time . Maybe not. Maybe he wouldve been sort of okay, mediocre, fine. Say lincoln had come along at some dolorous time, would he have been the figure that he now is . Would he have risen to the occasion . You have to balance all that stuff. Were still only three years in to this mans first term. Is that all . He may well get reelected. So that will be time to make judgments. Jeanne safer, we interviewed you over a year ago kind of a praetor interview for this new book. Has the temperature abated a little bit when it comes to donald trump . Its gotten much worse. Every day it gets worse. When the have not confirmation hearings were going on, i got another risk of emails. My brother unfriended me on facebook over cavanagh. My sisterinlaw broker engagement over cavanagh. You dont believe me. I do believe you. Ive read your book. It has gotten more insane i either day. And come from both sides. Absolutely. Within maybe even more from a the antitrump side and the protrump side. But i read a statistic that people are truncating their thanksgiving to an hour or two less so they will not fight with each other. There was a piece in the times on 17 things to talk but at thanksgiving other than politics. We need somebody to write an article so we could do something to talk about at thanksgiving. It has gotten worse and worse and worse. Did you see this as a psychotherapist, did you see this during the george w. Bush administration, during the Ronald Reagan administration . That was the beginning during the Obama Administration . All this was true but it was under control to certain degree. I dont think youre getting parents saying that they would rather their child marry someone of a different race or religion than different political party. This has become too worlds. Two worlds. One of the people who wrote me one of those letters was a guy, a lovely guy, sounded really nice, who lived on the west coast. He was a trump supporter. He had to take the fact that use trump supporter off his dating profile because no woman would go out with him. He had been in the military. He was a very intelligent, thoughtful guy and he met a lovely woman. He really liked her and they had a lot in common. She went on one date, all her friends and said, we will kill him, we will strangle him. How could you do this . She walked out in one date, and he said i read some of the things you wrote. I think we had a chance. Will you talk to her . Will you be my gobetween . He sounds like a great guy and she was very tho