Statewide numbers add up. If youre philly and your vote this is like some guy living in the suburbs where the vote is more important. You live in a big city never lived in a state that really was a close call. I guess the saying about florida . Only three kind of people down here, those who vote, those who count and those who cant count. Stupid joke. [laughter] always had a different number. Always say, this thing called im sorry. Gore. Hi, chris. Quick question, i guess, the last one. Im a big fan of worldwide government, and what . Worldwide government. Federal recallism. Just a different government in Different Countries around the world, whether it be in israel, china, different places, watching their government work. I always think of that my career, ending gold to travel around the worldful see how democracy is doing in different cubs. The thing that confuses me about america is the twoparty system. Do you think well get to the place without a twoparty system . It will be like in israel, one bloc has whole number of people that participate. Libby is part of the government now. I like her. And you have lieberman, far right. So, you britain, you have the new democrats, you got two parties there. They have the torres and the middle of the road party. If you had three parties ubs one would gradually replace the other, just like the republicans replaced the whigs and the laborites replaced liberals in britain. 270 electoral votes to win the presidency, and i you dont it goes to the house. Nobody wants to house picking the next president. Thats gotten scary. So, we want the voters to pick the president so take 218 to pass the house. I dont want do sound like yesterday but thats the system we got for our lives two parties, but the Republican Party could change a lot one way or the other. It could change radically. It could go hard right or go back, and of course i want tote go back to the center so i can have a choice. I love having choices, and its i like this guy, christie. Well see. I like him. Something about him that seems real. But i will root for him until he proves to me he is not worth rooting for, because i got root for something on that side, and ill push him until he blows it, and i just think the country really wants a choice. They dont want hari d hash harry to get a cake walk. The only thing we like about the last election, most of us i went crazy. He said to me, at the president , he bumped into me and said, im going to mention you in my speech. Boy, he did. And when he said chris matthews, and then nearly gave me a stroke. The stroke was the first debate last year. I have no idea what was going on there. But hes not perfect. Accomplish he is trying, and he has the right values, and its going to be tough. I wish he had more of a negotiating partner on the other side that were balancing this thing out. If boehner had the cajon questions to do it. He seems like a nice guy but a weak guy. I dont get it. I dont know why he wants that job. You know . Why want to be married to Marilyn Monroe if youre not married to Marilyn Monroe . Why say it if it aint sew. That what i meant. What do you mean . What do you mean . Have to spell it out for you . I want to thank were at the end of our program, ladies and gentlemen. The voice of god. A big round of applause. For chris matthews. Thank you. Thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] this program was part of the 30th annual Miami Book Fair international. For more information, visit Miami Book Fair. Com. Jeffrey frank recounts the personal and working relationship between president Dwight Eisenhower and Vice PresidentRichard Nixon. Mr. Frank reports that Vice President nixon constantly south eisenhowers approval and president eisenhower was unsure of nixons a ability to assume the presidency. This is an hour and ten minutes. [applause] thank you. Welcome to all of you, and to insomniacs throughout the united states. I have a its my pleasure to introduce jeff frank. Jeff frank is an accomplish it writer, those of you who buy the book today will be blessed in reading the prose. Jeff spent 13 years at the Washington Post. Im not sure thats where you learned how to write well but that where is you learned how to get a good story, and by the end he was winning the outlook section, and then he went to the new yorker, and was a senior edit for 30 years, and thats where you learn to write well and help others write well. Besides writing nonfiction, jeff has written four works of fiction. So this is someone who understands the importance of narrative and a good story and he brought those talents for some reason to the relationship between eisenhower and nixon, and i want to begin by asking you, jeff, why did you choose that particular marriage . Toe be the focus . Because it was a great story. It began with two people who really didnt know each other. One was an American Hero of the sort we dont have anymore, fivestar general. The man given credit for leading the allies to victory in europe. 62 years old, and a 39yearold Orange County congressman who was eisenhower ran with nixon but didnt even really choose him as Vice President. He wasnt even aware that a president ial candidate gets to choose his Vice President. So he later was asked by james ruston, what really happened the night when nixon was chosen, and eisenhower said i had my advisor and six or seven people on the list and nixon was on the list. So so they got together some they had a very strange relationship that went on and on during eisenhowers presidency. It became closer when in the which nixon calls his Wilderness Years and then around 1966, eisenhowers grandson, david, who is going to amherst, began to date julie nixon, who was going to smith, seven miles away, and they completely were crazy about each other. A year later, when they were 20, they were married. And so they became one family in november of 1968, they had thanksgiving together, the nixons and eisenhowers, and julie was an eisenhower and that was a great store from beginning to end. The topic of tonights discuss is rethinking nixon. Did this experience of writing about this relationship cause you to rethink nixon . Guest i thought about nix job a lot. I saw nixon never im not sure i saw him i wasnt doing the nixon presidency. I have an epilogue which deals with what came after but i really only deal in the book with two months of the nixon presidency when he was nag rated and two months later eisenhower was dead. Host what sense of the man did you get, nixon . Guest he before baffled me and complicated. I was rift vet by the different sides of him. He could be really vindictive and sort of vicious, even long before all the tapes we have all heard, he would refer to at one time he referred to his 1960 running mate, henry cabot lodge, youre a knuckleheaded gutless wonder, and yet he could be so kind to people. And so generous. And in ways he didnt have to be. Always had a thing about the kens but when he was president , he invited mrs. Kennedy and her can two children to see him in the white house. And he spent time with them. They played with the dog and they all wrote him the letters and he wrote personal thank you letters to the two children. They were so touched mrs. Kennedy she wrote back, such a sweet thing. She had that side of him and then he had this other side. He completely baffled me. Host what struck me is how mean Dwight Eisenhower was to richmond nixon. Its amazingly amazing how mean. You should give us some examples. Guest i think a lot of it eisenhower wasnt aware of it. He regarded almost everybody who worked for him as staff, and nix wonas Lieutenant Commander in the navy and eisenhower was a fivestar general. To try to get a sense of that today, we dont have any. We have four stars, like david petraeus, but its a different sort between sort of leading the expeditioner in force in the invasion of normandy or running the surge in iraq. Its a different magnitude. And eisenhower was so big, both parties wanted him to run. Jimmy roosevelt, fdrs son, wanted him to run as a democrat. And was talk he could run for both parties and have different Vice President s. He was so beloved. And i eisenhower was oblivious to his effect on people, and in some cases there was some deliberate cruelty, and start off in a very bad way. Im sure you know the story of the crisis which began with his story in the New York Post saying that nixon was supported bay group of millionaires, secret group of millionaires, and a lot of pressure to get nixan off the ticket, and eisenhower wanted him off the ticket. The long story short, nixon went on television, explained himself for the revealed all of this finances, talked about the dog named checkers he wasnt going to give back, and defied eisenhowers order to resign. He side right to the Republican National committee, basically circumventing eisenhowers right to remove him from the ticket and won. From that point on in some ways things were never the same. Even though they did become closer and worked together. Eisenhower when eisenhower did to him, nixon wrote was a scar that never healed. Julie nixon said september 23rd, the anniversary of the clerks speech, her father was into, what day is this . The anniversary of the speech and never forgot. Many episodes of cruelty. Trying to get him off the ticket in 1956. He would do things like when nixon was finally given a vacation in the summer of 58. He was off with his family in west virginia. I thought dick, i want you to come back to washington and fire sherman adams. Never any respite. He was not a really kind boss. He wanted his own way. I dont some of it was just sort of casual, casual indifference to the feelings of other people. Were seeing tonight for some reason all of you decided not to watch the state of the union. But somebody in the country, some people are watching the state of the union, and were watching now, of course, a dialogue between a resurgent reelected president and a divided Republican Party. You wrote about quite a different Republican Party. It was different party. There were sort of there were the party was totally different. When nixon was and eisenhower, it was the civil rights party, the party of lincoln, and the democrats jackie robinson. Guest and so did Martin Luther king was a big mixon supporter until they had a bad moment in 1950 when nixon didnt come to his aid. And nixon the Eisenhower Administration and with nixon in the senate, lobbied for a stronger version of the 1957 civil rights bill, considered a landmark bill at the time. And the two wings of the Republican Party, a liberal wing and a conservative wing, but the liberal the conservative wing were people like oft robert taft. An isolationist but supported old age pensions and there were outliers. And senator mccarthy but they were outliers. They didnt speak for the party and in fact eisenhower was eluck tenant to take reluctant to get anything on directly, he wanted to get mccarthy excised from the party and put nixon occupy it to. Host one of the challenges for somebody writing about Richard Nixon is that we have an ocean of information about him as president. Largely because he decided to leave it for himself. He didnt expect the public to have access to it. Dont have as much about him as Vice President. How easy or hard was it for you to get to the inner nixon . I give a lot of credit to timothy, who was the director of the Nixon Library. A lot of stuff was open and you could go down there and go through the go in the archives and find the more time you spend the more thing outside discovered. I became fascinated by the notes that nixon wrote on the famous yellow pads. He would write down he was like an astudent. Everything he did and saw he would take notes. Eisenhower did him a big favor in the fall of 1953 of sending him through asia, and you into see his notes in vietnam he met the emperor and said the only ones that would run commies can run a country. He saw the future. Didnt like it, but he could see it. And you can see nixon reflecting on being resentful when he saw that eisenhower was trying to get rid of him in 1956. He was writing down things like, its the president s choice, for the good of the party. Writing his own sort of death speech. He never said it but you could find all these things, and its all there but you have to keep looking. The other thing that is so important and tim can talk about this theres a barrier between the Nixon Library, which is run by the national eye cifs, and the nixon foundation, far more celebratory part, and i had to wife, them, too, and they were terrific to me. They were they decided they were going trust me to be fair, and i hope i was fair, and they put me the touch with one person in particular i was talking to tim about it earlier, woman named marriage acker, the says stance to Rose Rosemary woods, and she was with him when the crisis we spoke about came in the news and nixon was under great pressure. On a train going from Northern California to oregon, and major was marge and from the foundation side, and the library while tim was there was terrific, open, hopeful. Professional archivists. I made eight or nine trips to yorba linda. I saw enough of the olive garden. There are other places. Guest there were. Actually theres a very good Sandwich Shop nearby. Host ive spent a lot of time there. For a celebration of Richard Nixons career, historians are problematic and you did a very good job of navigating the shoals and talking to everybody. You interviewed a number of folks who would have been interviewed by the library in the first year or two, but after a while, decided they didnt really want to talk to us. But they talked to you and that important. I would have to say that standing back, the darker side of Richard Nixon we know from the tapes, do you see hints of that in the 50s or are you among those who believe there was a change, this man actually was traumatized . Guest i thought of that a lot. I think i believe there was a change. I dont know where it dates from but probably dates from the very beginning of his relationship with eisenhower. I think he was under constant strain. Very much like any employee hired by a sort of really top Level Corporation and really didnt know whether he has whether his job is safe. It wasnt until the 1956 election when nixon realized he had what you would call tenure. Except there was still eisenhower still had a thumb on him because eisenhower needed eisenhowers support to run for president , and after eisenhowers heart aknack 1955, which heart attack in 1955, the first time people talked about nixon as an heir to the presidency. This was unusual. Vice president s were not considered heirs to the presidency. No one thought of John Nance Garner or harry truman. Vice president s did not have an office in the white house. Guest eisenhower did nixon a great favor trying to keep him informed. He attended cabinet meetings, when eisenhower was there he ran them. The same thing with the National Security council, and eisenhower sent him abroad on trips insuring asia. And nixon became close to John Foster Dulles after eisenhowers heart attack, and dulles suggest nixon should visit africa. So tried to get mixon up to speed. I dont want someone who is just going to bang a gavel in the senate. Host you think that there are people who will argue that with the experience, the searing experience, of losing such a close election to john f. Kennedy in 1960, that was the trauma. Youre laying the foundation for an argument its ikes fault. Guest no. No. Host ike was father figure and he couldnt please him. Guest im not getting into psycho analysis. Host but its fun. I dont think Richard Nixon painted himself in the bathroom. Guest no. We were talking about that. Wonderful line that we thought he was under the influence of dick cheney but it was actually freud. I agree with tim. 1960 election was hugely traumatic on all kinds of levels. One, i think nixon, who had always regarded kennedy as a friend. He liked kennedy. One of the things that i found after nixons nastiest campaign, his california race against helen douglas, and democrats would forever turn game them. After that kennedy spoke to students at harvard and said im glad she lost, wouldnt want to have to work with her. Kennedy supported his membership in a country club, and jackie invited the nixons to their wedding, when jack kennedy was laid up with a bad back, nixon helped in the reorganization of the senate and protected him. I wont call them friends. They were politics. No one is really friends in this business host tip opeel and Ronald Reagan were friends. Guest right. They were friendly. Colleagues, roughly the same age, and suddenly kennedy was playing rough. Nothing was held back. And he felt he was really being roughed up by the ken kennedys. A really rough campaign and furthermore, the thought when it was over it had been stolen. He thought he actually on it and people still argue about that. If he had won illinois and texas, johnson he would have won. He always felt that he was really got royally stiffed in that election. Host there was a interest in Richard Nixon and i caught some of this when i was in at the library, because of george w. Bush, because people were looking back to Richard Nixon and saying, you can have a Good Government republic