Do you still write your songs down with paper and pencil . Yes, i do. I have always carried a little recording device of some sort. They used to be pretty big, but now they are quite small, and i always carry a pen and paper, and i am ready if something occurs to me. You mentioned merle travis. What other musicians . Ry cooder is my favorite guitar player, but there are many others to choose from. There was an album that was a formative for me. Paradise and lunch. There was a guy coming up called tom rush who played here at the cellar door, and he played in boston at the 47. I really pattern myself after, just a guy with a guitar, full position, unapologetic. Falcon musician. Unapologetic folk musician. And i would say wouldtwo and the beatles. What do you think of current pop music . You know, i guess i do not like it a whole lot. [laughter] [applause] i guess i dont like it a whole lot. What would we find i sound just like my dad. There are great people out there, i know it. And i dont mean to condemn it but i think its passed me by a little bit. I still have a wonderful career and a beautiful audience that i really love but the spotlight is elsewhere now and im a known quantity now. And thats fine with me to play out this hand. But i dont pay a whole lot of attention to i never did listen much to the radio. When i was a kid, i did. I dont listen to music much. Kim works with the boston symphony and we get a lot of classic cal music in the house. We have 11yearold twin boys and they have their preferences, maybe its because theyre playing most of the popular music im hearing in the house i have such a negative take on it. Do you have an ipod . No, an ipad. Do you listen to music on there . No, i listen on cd and vinyl. They have said taylor swift is named after you. What do you think of her music . I like her music. And i like the name too. I do think she is a creative singer song writer. Shes a remarkable marketing phenomenon and if she can survive that. And its a hard thing to survive i think. But she seems to have a very clear head on her shoulders and i think if anyone can, she can make it through and continue to evolve as an artist because its sort of the marketing hit is if youre lucky enough to be successful, that particular passage that an artist has to make, if hes lucky enough or shes lucky enough can be a real jarring life changing event. It can really shake you up, going from being very private to very public. Many people have said Daniel Day Lewis portrayal of lincoln in the current film remind them of you. Do you have any comment on that . Ive seen the movie and it doesnt look like me to me but i live in here. John williams who is a dear friend and this generations remarkable musician and composer, john wanted me to play that part. He actually stood up for me there and suggested me at one point. That was never going to happen. I dont know. Im flattered. Of course, Everybody Loves lincoln, i do. But i dont see other than the fact that were both tall and somewhat skinny, he speaks much better in public than i do. Is there a role you would like to play . No, this is fine. It is very unusual. [laughter] ive spent my life being myself for a living and i think more than really more than anyone else i think i know. I think there are performers who develop and assume a character that they then play for the public. But i dont know anyone who is as much themselves publicly for a living as i am. So its been an interesting ride. But i dont think im qualified to really understand it well, no. Several people sent this question up so i feel obligated to ask, do you know who carly simon was singing about in youre so vain and will you share that with us . I think its warren beatty. And he says not. Thats what my information was but again that information has not been updated for 40 years. [applause] now that that the turnpike extends past the city to the airport, any thoughts about revising the song . You mean the turnpike no longer ends in boston, it goes all the way to summer set, no. What town is the airport in . Stockridge to chelsea. Thats got a ring to it but it doesnt rhyme. Thats the thing is the internal rhyme. That song has four rhyming schemes going at once. Its got to be boston unless they take it to austin, texas. [applause] i want to thank all of you for joining us this afternoon. I want to remind you of our next lunch on december 18, we have leon panetta, im sure if you have some advice on how to solve the fiscal cliff, im sure hed like to hear that. While you are writing your next song, id like to present you with your coffee mug. It might give you some inspiration. Thank you so much. [applause] i want to thank the National Press club staff including the journalism Broadcast Center for organizing todays event. And i was wondering if you had one last song youd like to sing us out on. [applause] do you want to sing . Come on up. Can she borrow your stool . This is my wife kim and here is the song we sing to our twin boys. Actually about two years ago, we went in to sing them to sleep with this lullaby and we got the guitar out and sat down on the side of the bed and we were about to play the opening chords and rough fuss looked up at me and said you know dad, we dont have to do this anymore. [laughter] sonny, sure youre thinking now but the morning is slowly r ising so sober must be spinning round and i still love you would you close your eyes you can close your eyes its all right ooh i dont know love songs i cant sing em true anymore but i can sing this song for when you can sing this song when im gone be longont before another day have an were going to good time and non one is going to take that time away you can stay as long as you like on these close your eyes you can close your eyes its all right and i dont know no love song anymoresing the blues sure, but i can sing this song and you can sing this song en im gone shes a game gal. [laughter] [applause] goodbye and thank you very much. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2012] coming up on cspan, two staffers for the late senator robert byrd told about his career in politics. Then the congressional Gold Medal Ceremony for Arnold Palmer and a discussion about women in leadership with nbc newss andrea mitchell. The taping was topsecret. That means the only people who knew for certain of its existence it was my father, his secretary, and the secret Service Agent who installed it. That is until president nixon made white house taping it famous and infamous and other president ial recording systems were revealed. Against the backdrop of watergate, the concept of taping can seem problematic, but it is beyond doubt that this is a unique and invaluable historical resources. On these tapes, history unfolds in real time in the most dramatic, possible way. We hear the confrontations of the Civil Rights Movement and the life and death decisions being made during the cuban missile crisis. Caroline kennedy on the 1962 recordings of the late president in the oval office. That this tonight as we continue through the holiday on cspan2. The West Virginia state society honored senator robert byrd last month. The longest living senator in history, robert died in robert byrd died in 2010. We will hear from two of his staffers. The first speaker is ira shapiro. Author of the last great senate. He played Important Roles in foreign Intelligence Surveillance and the completing of the metrorail system. During the clinton administration, he served as a leading u. S. Trader and earned the rank of staffman. Ambassador. He was described as an antidote and he promised to deliver. He practiced International Trade law and washington. On behalf of the West Virginia state society, i would like to introduce ira shapiro. Thank you. [applause] thank you for the kind introduction. Thank you to the society for giving me the chance to be here. Thanks to mike who did so much to organize the event. He is an old friend. Thank you, mike. Im delighted to be here today with corbin. David corbin. We have two books that talk about robert byrd from different perspectives. My book is basically about the senate and the last great senate as i refer to it. Senator byrd was the majority leader during the period of time i wrote about. It gives you an ensemble sense of how the senate works. The book originated in 2008. I had been in the senate in the 1970s and 1980s. By 2008, i decided the senate had become utterly unrecognizable to me. Polarized and paralyzed, really quite dysfunctional. I decided to write a book about the senate when it was great, specifically when i was there. [laughter] when you do Something Like that, you have a certain risk factor. Was it really great . Was it only seem great because i was there or because i was young . Fortunately, the answer turned out to be, no. I discovered something that was there in plain sight, but had not been noticed. If you googled the words great senate youll find nothing other than my book. [laughter] nobody had ever noticed a great senate. Certainly there are great senators and great filibusters, but a great senate had never been thought about. The reader reviews said of the book said todays senate is not a very good, but in 1960s and 1970s, we had a great senate. Im delighted they agreed with me. From about 1963 to 1980, we had a great senate in america that was in the forefront of everything. From Holding President nixon accountable and watergate, every a congressman of the senate. In the middle of that senate was robert c. Byrd. By the way, for those of you who want to write a book, having a publisher is a good thing. Writing a book looking for a publisher later is not a good thing. I was very fortunate. I publisher said to me, all right, we will let you write the book. It cannot be a memoir. All right. Can i pop up in the book occasionally . Yeah, twice. The publisher said, it is narrated history. You need to tell a story. Ok. I can tell stories. You cannot walk through this whole 18 year period. Find a way to tell it. I said, all right. I decided to tell a story from the late 1970s leading up to that 1980s. America is beginning its third century. We have a new president , jimmy carter. We also have two new Senate Leaders, robert byrd and howard baker. By the way, im an honorary member of the West Virginia state society. I have worked for robert byrd and rockefeller. I came face to face with byrd in writing this book. As many of you know, senator byrd was truly a remarkable story. The senate has always had its share of wealthy people, but it has also had people that have come from ordinary circumstances or from poverty. No one ever can further than robert byrd. He was born in North Carolina. His mother died shortly after his birth. He was raised by his mothers sister. He was renamed Robert Carlyle byrd. He grew up on the edge of poverty. His rise was astonishing. He was driven primarily by this incredible will that he had and thirst for education. He was embarrassed to did not finish college, so he finished law school instead. He went on and on. The idea of senator byrd as majority leader of the senate is quite remarkable. He came into the senate with the great class of 1958. They set the foundation for what i call the great senate that came later, the progressive senate. It was a democratic landslide that year. He was undeniably the most conservative of senators elected. Philip hart, a whole whole flood of liberal senators and then there was robert byrd. It was not his youthful membership that was the issue. In later years, he remained against civil rights, which was essential thing the senate was about in the 1960s. He opposes Civil Rights Act in 1964 and 1965. He opposed Thurgood Marshall when he was nominated. Senator byrd was so conservative on some of these issues that in 1971,richard nixon toyed with putting him on the Supreme Court just to show the senate what he could do. Senator byrd moderated his views all the time. He got lucky. Issues got resolved on civil rights. Legislatively. Things moved on. Senator byrd gets on the leadership ladder and he rises. He becomes the whip in a stealth campaign. The idea of robert byrd as leader goes from being inconceivable to virtually inevitable. He has earned his way up to be leader. At the beginning of my book, he becomes leader and replaces Mike Mansfield, who is sort of an icon. No one thinks byrd can replace Mike Mansfield. But the truth is, no one thought that Mike Mansfield could replace Lyndon Johnson. That is certain the way things work. As my book starts, the first chapter is about byrd. It is entitled the grind. He is hardworking. Senate mechanic, etc. Robert byrd has a concept of what a Senate Leader should be. He immediately moves on the concept. He hates to be referred as the senate mechanic. It got him to the leaders role, but he wants to get into Foreign Policy. One of the first things he does is he reaches out to one of the senator fulbrights. He gets a call from senator byrds office. They ask him to come in interview. He is stunned. He does not think senator byrd cares about Foreign Policy. Senator byrd convinces him he wants to be involved in Foreign Policy. As the book unfolds and as i learned about it, it is amazing to see how strong he is on Foreign Policy almost from the beginning. He plays this phenomenally Important Role. In the panama canal treaties. It is not just who has the votes, but he understands the substance better than anyone else. They all went down to panama, but he leads one of the first trips. He goes down there and he learns the panama issues. He brought the same dedication to every issue. One thing i say in the book is he knew that just being leader did not make you a great senator automatically. Whoever heard of scott lucas and william nolan, Senate Majority leaders before Lyndon Johnson. You never heard of them because they did not do anything. Robert byrd brought that extra dimension to it, the Foreign Policy knowledge. The second thing about him as leader was he really understood the importance of a relationship with the president of the United States. Byrd was ambivalent about jimmy carter. There were some problems with him. Carter was an outsider. He did not really like politics or the hill. Senator byrd regarded his role as leader of the senate, but also a person who basically was an advisor to the president , helped the president , he improved his programs. The book shows senator byrd helping carter through virtually every issue from the panama canal treaties to the Energy Legislation where byrd worked tirelessly on it to get it done without a filibuster. He had the sense that the Senate Leader should have a special relationship with the president and that is the way the system was supposed to work. Of course, the most important in for the Senate Leader is to make the senate work. Byrd knew the senate rules better than any person that ever lived. He lived in dealing with the notion of the fear of a paralyzed senate. He wanted to think that the rules worked, but he knew that in fact jim allen of alabama had cracked the code. He had figured out how to have this filibuster so the senate could be tied up in paralyzed. Robert byrd like to think you have to be an expert to do this, but it turned out you do not need to be an expert at all. A couple of senators did not know the rules and they tied the senate up. Byrd struggled with the notion of how to keep the unique character of the Senate Without having a paralyzed . In that regard, he championed rules change. He got some done in 1979. He knew that the senate rules do not work. If they were not fixed, eventually the senate would become paralyzed. He dealt with it through his own skill and through rule changes. The last thing i will say about senator byrd as a leader, and it is very important about the senate and the late senates dysfunction, he was fundamentally not a partisan. He was a democrat, no question about it. The senate was not partisan. He treated people evenhandedly. The dealings he had with baker are quite extraordinary to read. Howard baker, both of byrd and baker are on the cover of my book because theyre both great senators. It is not just symbolic. They really worked together. They never surprised each other, but they did more than that. They Work Together to make the senate work. That there was a filibuster, they Work Together to work around it. There were not many filibusters, but they fundamentally were not partisans. There are many stories about senator byrd in the book that i will not go into. I would rather you read the book. Chrysler, the senate is trying to bail out chrysler. There is a hot tempered effort from connecticut, a republican. He is really against it and threatening to filibuster. They cannot talk him out of it. Robert byrd all of a sudden leaves the senate floor unannounced. He startles everybody there. He goes in to talk to him. He comes on the filibuster is over. Ryker is satisfied and has had enough time to talk. That is the way they did things. I had the opportunity to speak at a lot of places. I have to say it is a a lot nicer here. You do not have to get on an airplane. It is nice to be here. Recently i had a special occasion. I was in knoxville, tennessee. Senator baker was not in good health. He is 87. He came to the program. It was a wonderful occasion. For me, it is impossible to think about se