however, representative cantor did not mention afghanistan in his initial speech here today. does that suggest that the republicans are generally happy with the president's plan in afghanistan? one. and two, is there a prediction that there will be success this year in the campaign? military campaign? . >> how do you see this debate to? >> i think there is every reason to be skeptical. i question everything, every statement, every position, every note of optimism about this war. i think all americans should. i think your partners around the world should. somehow, that the karzai government will create a standard security force that has enough space to break the momentum of the taliban, if that is brought to bear in a reasonable time frame, but the other big issue is whether it becomes another country. the real bad guys are in pakistan. that is the problem. what is pakistan prepared to do? the challenge for this president is that [unintelligible] they will argue a but articulating an exit strategy or some sort of timeline. i think the secretary of defense was clear yesterday in that there is a time horizon. that is just the goal of a handoff to karzai in five years. that assumes that everything works. all of that is in place -- you have to see what the conditions are for the president down the line to say, hey, we are not winning, but it is time to come home. >> it did maybe seems like a sideshow in this city. but it was a very lively issue for british politics as well. as you mentioned, the war has become increasingly unpopular. how has this decision by president obama play into the debate in prison? -- in britain? >> there has been a modest increase in the troops. prime minister gordon is talking about bringing down next year. but i think the reality of the situation is that it is obama possible strategy but is supported by all of mainstream. next year is going to be an intense time of pressure. we're the main driver for reform for pakistan and afghanistan. if you do not establish ourselves known as a potential government, we are going to withdraw and you will be get -- and you will get killed. the problem is that that will be borne and paid for by the troops on the ground. that is a sober moment. that is before you get into the issue on how stable in iraq is. >> next question. >> my question is for the panel at large. given the opening of copenhagen today, what is the panel's view on president obama's strategy going to copenhagen, and emissions target that has not been drafted by domestic legislation? i am interestininterested to hee republican view is what the american responsibility will be if there is a definitive agreement at copenhagen when the president comes back? >> we spent about 50 minutes talking about politics and we have not talk yet about the environment. >> from the larger sense, the question of climate change comes down to, if there has been in constant in human history, it has been climate change. the real question is the severity of that and the involvement of human causes in all that. that is from the larger sense. i think our party will approach it as such, with the the notion that all of us wants to make sure that we leave this planet a cleaner place. how we strike that balance, given the priority of getting this economy back on track, i think that will be central to any republican response. there is much reticence right now, obviously, from the capt. trade finance. -- from the cap and trade finance. it is an ill-conceived plan that will kill jobs. it is a huge detriment to the number one priority, which is getting americans back to work. >> would you like to comment on that? >> is hard to believe. i think it is going to be a test of american leadership because the rest of the world is going. if we educate our role as a leader in the world, as an economic leader, while we are fighting about the politics of our congress and the u.s., then it will be a step back for our country. we have been out of this debate for too long. i do not hear from the party opposite any good ideas on how to solve this. cap and trade came from industry. it is supported by lots of american corporations. there are certainly losers here and they do not support it, but, more importantly, this is an international issue, a global issue. if we want to continue our slide from influence in world leadership, this would be a way to do it. >> you talked a lot about jobs. we have seen the unemployment rate drop. then you talk about the set -- your thanksgiving table. i was just wondering if it was representative of the whole country. i feel like maybe it is not giving thank you. maybe the republican party, are we going to be able to see the republican party come together with the democratic party in 2010 and worked together on soe issues? >> any bipartisanship in 2010? >> first of all, i think all of us wants to get this economy back on track. going back to the stimulus discussion, we continue to profit are alternatives. there are discussions surrounding the health care bill right now. it is taking place behind closed doors. there needs to be a mutual cooperation. it is in the minorities interest, especially when you have the majority holding power in the house and the senate and in the white house. it is certainly in our interest to work together to produce results. it is about jobs. it really is. there has been a constant drumbeat away from the priority of trying to say, look, we want to provide to small businesses access to credit. we want to promote investment again. it is the private sector that will be which brings the economy back. >> i believe it is going to be the private sector. but can you imagine? no one can predict how much worse it would be if the government did not take the strong actions it did. in the great depression, unemployment was at 25%. 10% is way too high. people are suffering. it is very real. people who have jobs are afraid of losing them. but very bold steps were taken. people want to ignore that right now. they want to score points and that is what politics is about. some of those very real steps were taken by a republican president. >> the follow-up to that is that the steps that were taken in 2008 under the bush administration and those of us who supported that effort and tarp, that tried to arrest what was believed to be a potential collapse in the market, that was meant to be an emergency temporary step. are we going to live up to the initial promise, saying that it was tempered, that they were taxpayer dollars and need to be paid back, or are you going to allow that to be some kind of permanent slush fund in this town to go where the political whim is? i would take the position that we need to go ahead and deliver the promise that it was a temporary emergency steps. >> we will have to break that particular conversation. let's go to our final predictions. allowed each of you to give a particular production -- i want each of you to give a particular prediction for 2010. >> i think we face a very real question about the overall direction of the economy, whether recovery is more stagnant and there's always the potential of a double-dip recession. it is primarily a jobless recovery. that will be the big trend in politics next year. the question will be to say whether this is a zero suming game -- a zero sum game. right now, the big prediction is anti-incumbency. >> i think there will be a watershed. we're clearly going in a different direction next year than where we are now. for the first time, we will have leaders' debate during the election. >> i think 2010 will be the year that the politics of the middle will be empowered. if not, yes to the extremes -- >> tell me what that means. >> that means moderate republicans and conservative democrats having a stronger voice in the debate, which i think you saw in the 1990's. the corollary is that, if that is not true, you will see that a third party will be sown and we will see it as early as the next election. >> the elections in 2010 will bring about the fact that the democrats will lose their majority in the u.s. house. i think that will happen because americans like a check and a balance on federal power. that is what we got right now. it is administered it through an agenda that is far out of mainstream from where people see this country. >> we will be here in a year's time to see how that came about. in the meantime, thank all of our panelists. [applause] >> coming up on c-span's christmas lineup, the life of william f. buckley. after that, at 12:15 pm eastern, colleagues of the late senator ted kennedy discuss his legacy. at 1:25 a.m., eric cantor and joe lockhart are part of a panel discussing the political events and trends that will shape 2010. >> in the mid-1990's, he was named one of the 50 most influential people to watch in cyberspace. sunday night, he talks about his current study at harvard and what is ahead. >> up next, this is a discussion of the life and career of william f. buckley, jr. he passed away in figure it 2008 at the age of 82. we will hear from richard brookhiser. it is about an hour. >> it is a pleasure for me to be invited to this event. as a guy who works in this liberal city i am sincere because it is a pleasure for me to be invited anywhere. it does not happen very often. [laughter] [applause] to give you an idea of the strange existence a conservative has in the city, for the longest time, the offices of "national review" was located above a rap music studio. the most interesting part of this juxtaposition is when the weather would get warmer and we would open up the windows, this unmistakable odor would waft up and i regret to tell you that " national review" has been produced in a haze of marijuana smoke. thank you for being here tonight. bill buckley said it was a remarkable stylistic performance. pretty much everything he does is a remarkable stylistic performance. he can knock your socks off with a one line e-mail. please look forward to an extremely elucidating and entertaining evening. thanks for being with us. let's start off and go through the narrative flow of the book. >> my family discovered him in the late 1960's. the first means of it was television. he hosted a tv show called firelin"firing line." through most of its life it was an hour of political talk. it was a very simple format. two chairs and a table. it was a simpler day of television, no bells and whistles. now top 10 lists or anything. it was just him and one guest and he would give them applied introduction and it would go at it. we first watched it as a sporting event without attending to the content so much. we also got drawn into that as a result of seeing the -- we also got into that. as a result of seeing the television show, we subscribe to the magazine. we bought a copy of his third book. every issue. it had come out in 1959 so this was a reissued paperback. we have seen him and read his book. -- before 1969 before the idea came to me. i had written a letter to my brother about an interesting day in my high-school and what this was, there were vietnam war protests in 1969. it was called the moratorium against the vietnam war. this was mostly a college thing. there were going to be teach- ins' and kids would cut classes and so on. we decided to imitate this and -- some kids decided to imitate this and i thought it was wrong. i wrote him a letter every weekend, mostly what happened during the week. it was mostly high-school plays and basketball games. this time i wrote about moratorium day. he said that was a funny one. my father said why don't you send that to the national review? i changed the letter a little bit and i sent it off. we were completely uninformed about journalism. we knew note journalists or anything about journalism except we concerned it -- we consumed it. i assumed they did not like it. they did not -- teacher it away and this is what magazines do. i got a letter from a man who was the managing editor. i just cleaned off my desk and found your magazine and i learned that is what magazines do. >> nothing changes. i read it and i like it, he said. we would like to publish it. that was great. it was like a rush, you know. who would have thought -- i must have thought because i sent it off. i did not think, what really happened, it was like, my god. >> when it entered your mind that you might become a journalist? >> i think i always wanted to be a writer. i thought i would write fiction. that is what i read. we all read fiction in school. we read the traditional novels that are assigned to kids in high school like "david copperfield." i also read on my own and most of it was fiction. i thought i would be a novelist. instead of doing that, here was something else that i had actually finished. it was a completed thing. someone said i like this and they published it and they paid me for it. so then, i guess maybe -- >> but not much. >> $180 is what i was paid. i did think to myself for many years that "national review" was in violation of the 19th amendment which prevents indentured servitude. it is $180 better than nothing. i was 14 or 15 years old when it came out. i never got paid for anything apart from mowing the lawn or selling lemonade. $180, that was cool. that certainly was the beginning of thinking maybe this is the real thing to do. not writing novels. >> how did you stay in touch after that? >take us to the next step. >> everybody at "national review" i dealt with was very encouraging. i got a letter from one of his older sisters and she was the managing editor. i got a postcard which was a three by five postcard. it had scrawled on it hardly legible something like nice job. as you know, everybody who wrote anything for any issued -- and the issue got those cards but they were very nice to get. it was a nice courtesy. that encouraged me. i sent other pieces when i was in high school. some were rejected but some are published. there was one occasion when i sent a letter when i was in college. i sent him this letter describing some [unintelligible] i got a call from my brother who was in high school. what he had done was writwrote a column and said i want you to read a letter i got from someone in college. >> if you would write me a letter of 650 words it would make my job easier. >> as i had gone on in life i see the self-interest in that generosity. it was -- this was a surprise attack of approval. then i learned there was a young woman at yale a couple older -- couple years older than i was. she told me about that program and she said you really ought to apply for that. i know national review announces that every year. you do not absorb everything in the magazine so was her telling me that got me engaged. i applied to be an intern. i was accepted and this was the summer before my senior year. when i was graduating, this was 1977 graduating from college and this is a near where every humanity's major thought of going to law school. it was the defaulting. we would all go to law school. i took the law boards and i have no gift for law. none at all. now interest. i was on that track. i was corresponding with priscilla. she said what are you put off law for year and come to the "national review". and that summer has gone on longer. >> what was national review like at that time? >> among the causes was the defense of capitalism. which we did very intelligently. the bill was very savvy about economics. about to as well as a layman can. we were a pre capitalist institution. it was like buckleyland and the ruler was bill buckley. that was clear to everybody. he was a benign ruler. he was certainly an unchecked one. there were no checks and balances there. he ruled that by charisma. and by generosity and geniality. he made it fun to work there. he did not rule it by paying people a lot of money. i do not want to poor mouth it. it was a little magazine. it was not like working for conde nast. the offices then, you remember them. there were at 150 east 35th street and the polite word to describe them was dickensian. they were kind of ratty. it was billed as an apartment building. i do not know of had been used as an apartment building but it had small rooms, lots of bathrooms. little rooms. >> it was like working in an escher painting. >> one shortcut which bill and priscilla made use of, there was a dumb waiter that ran between her office and bill's office on the third. they used this to send manuscripts and notes to each other. i remember priscilla had a bell on her desk that was shaped like a turtle. when she had something for bill she pressed the head and it rang. she would send this thing up in the dumb waiter. >> you cannot make this stuff up. >> he would send it back. there was something very honey about it -- homey about it. bill was a star. he was a celebrity. that is something that happens. one thing that happens when celebrities died [unintelligible] and bring them back. if they exist on film as bill does, the television shows, you does, the television shows, you can also, memoirs are coming out. mine is not the only one in. there will probably be several shells of buckley books in the coming years. you have to remember that he was just a start. comics imitated him. they do not imitate people who are not stars or personalities. but robin williams had a buckley impersonation. you also got the door of that just by being in his presence. if you were walking along the street with him or getting out of his car with him, there was a little ever-present sense that people are looking in our direction. they were not looking at me. there were looking at him. it was that, yes, i am walking with him, sort of feeling. >> you said there were no checks and balances on his benign dictatorship. who were the of the key players at the time? >> two people he relied on to make his career go where his sister, priscilla who was the managing editor, and his secretary and assistant francis bronson. francis was like the wrangler of his life. france's bronson was the regular of his life. she made sure that everything there was supposed to happen happened. at the peak, there was hundreds of things. the tv shows he did, all the writing assignments he had, the speeches he gave, the appearances, the parties, this, that, and the other thing. she told the story many times that there was one phone call from bill fenty have a list of things she should do. it was 13 things and then when he got to the 13 he went back to number one and said has that been done yet, not realizing they had not high up the phone and given her the chance to do it. she made that happen. he relied -- priscilla had real world journalistic experience because she worked for united press in new york and paris. a lot less intellectual types that the magazine had not really had. she knew some nitty gritty things that maybe bill did not. she also shared his views and his tastes. he could safely go to europe every winter to ski and write the book and leave the magazine in her hands. he knew she would not do something crazy. he could trust her. >> in terms of the political context of that time, how would you characterize the general tenor of things at "national review"? was it joyously in battle or optimistically embattled or we are doomed? >> the mid to late 1970's were horrible. i think they were a horrible time. >> we know the feeling, unfortunately. >> worse. it was really worse. nixon, who we had never wholeheartedly supported but supported to an extent had come to the ending that he had come to. ford we felt was weak. carter we felt was weak and bad. the soviet union seemed to be picking up, they were getting park place here and hotels and assets, it was like monopoly. cuban troops were running the portuguese empire in africa. that is so weird to say that now. it is likely colonization. cuban troops took over the portuguese empire when the portuguese gave it up i