But the more i worked on this project that i became more and more convinced that as the war came to an end, that it was the americans who were not the good guys. It was instead the british and the spanish who were the good guys. The british and the spanish offered freedom to their slaves. The man who served with them and took them away from this land of bondage and for the americans, well, the americans will keep slaves and bondage until 1865. Next encore booknotes on booktv. Nina easton discussed her book gang of five in 2000 on cspans booknotes. Hourlong interview with ryan lamb ms. Easton offers interlocking portraits of many conservative figures including bill kristol and ralph reid. Cspan nina j. Easton, who isor who are the gang of five . Guest the gang of five arebill kristol, ralph reed, David Mcintosh, Grover Norquist and Clint Bullock comprise my gang of five. Cspan and who are they . Guest well, what i tried to do in this book was look at what i call the flip side of the baby boom generation. These are folks who aremerged on campus in the 1970ssocial pariahs, really, on campus, to be a conservative at that timecame to washington with Ronald Reagan, came to washington behind a victor. But they were part of the baby boom generation, and so they have the same qualitiespersonality qualities that you find among 60s leftists, that sort of contrarianism. They were rebels, they were insurgents. And they remain so today. Who they are specificallybill kristol, im sure, most of your viewers know. He is frequently giving opinions on major networks. Hes the publisher of the Weekly Standard, which is a quite influential conservative magazine. Grover norquist is an antitax lobbyist, but thats only one piece of his claim to fame because really if you think of this mythical rightwing conspiracy we hear about so much fromfrom Hillary Clinton and others, it would probably be taking place every week in Grover Norquists Conference Room, every wednesday morning when he gathers dozens of activists from the righttoplot strategy. David mcintosh, congressman from indiana, who graduated the university of chicago law school. Very smart. Came to congress with the socalled republican revolution in 1995 and was a coleader of that freshman class, who we all remember was quiteraised quite aquite a ruckus in washington. Clint bullock is a constitutional lawyer. Hes at the institute for justice here in washington, which he cofounded. He is a leader of the School Choice movement inthroughout the country, really; is also famous for sinking the nomination of lani guinier forduring the early years of the clinton administration, a civil rights appointee. So hes ahes an antiaffirmative action activist as well. Ralph reed is also very familiar to your viewers, im sure. He wasbuilt the Christian Coalition into a Major Political powerhouse in the 1990s. Cspan whered you get this idea . Guest i got this ideai was with the sunday magazine of the Los Angeles Times and i had written a number of pieces about the conservative movement. In fact, id written about bill kristol and bill bennett and Charles Murray at one point, sort of the early stream, really, of the compassionate conservatism we hear so much today. They were using a lot of those same ideas in the welfare reform debate. But ii wrote about libertarians, and i wrotewrote about pieces of the movement. And i found, brian, that it wasnt being covered in depth. It was fresh territory. And i found it quite interesting. I think there is a lot of working pressthere isdoes tend to be a liberal bias. And there doesand certainly among liberal political people theres ignorance, frankly, ofthey know far less about conservatives than conservatives know about them. So i found it fresh territory. I call it a Hidden History of american politics because the influence and the rise to influence of this particular generation of conservatives has tremendously inflinfluenced the political debate when you look at everything from political muckraking to abortion politics to the budget battles of the 90s. And these guys were very key in helping shape those debates. Cspan what kind of cooperation did you get out of the five . Guest it wasit varied. But mostly, given the fact that i was from the, quote, establishnestablishment media and there was probably some reason to distrust somebody coming from there, they were pretty cooperative. I sat fortheythey sat for anywhere between six and a dozen interviews themselves, long interviews, taped interviews. I interviewed all of their families. I interviewed their friends, their fellow students. I went back to their hometowns. So they didnt put any blockades in my way, and that was quite helpful. Cspan did Grover Norquist let you in his wednesday meeting . Guest yeah, he did. Cspan how often . Guest i was there mostly during the 96 election, when i started the book. And it was very interesting at the time because he wasor this orhis group, the leave us alone coalition, was looking at how to impeach bill clinton even then, when we were just talking about whitewater and so on. And there was a lot of talk in the Conference Room then. There was a lot of presumption that clinton was going to pardon key whitewater figures and, if he pardons them, can we impeach him . We should get it out in the election dialogue, suggesting to voters that wethat this is a possibility . well, of course, it diddidnt happen, and it would take Monica Lewinsky to bring the impeachment business to fore. Cspan how manyitsits one of those parts of washington that the public doesnt see, these meetings. Guest right. Cspan i mean, you talk about paul weyrichs kingston meetings. Guest right. Cspan . Whichare they the forerunner to these . Guest they are. Theyre very much the forerunner. I think grover tried to be both more inclusive amongbecausebelieve it or not, despite this notion of the vast rightwing conspiracy, theres a lot of divisions and rivalries within the movement. Grover tried to make it a more diverse, a more inclusive, a big room kind of meeting. And i think it was generationally different. Hes inhes a different generation. This generation cameand this is really important to rememberthey play to win. They think theyre going to win, as opposed to the Barry Goldwater generation, who played really on the fringe of politics for so long. Or you saw paul weyrich after the last election and the impeachment battle and the public not being on their side during that. He wrote that memo basically saying he was going to check out of politics. He was through with it. These guys dont play like that theythey want to return to the days of Ronald Reagan, and they think they will. And theres a sense ofeven though theres a sense of beingtheres somewhat a sense of being an underdog and that they feel like thetheyve battled a liberal press, they feel like theyve battled liberal groups that are wellfunded and have a better standing with the press in washington, they also believe themselves part of the process, winners. Theyretheyre partitits not an accident that they really became an important part of the Republican Party. Cspan well, lets talk abouta little bit about them. GroGrover Norquist comes from what erawhathow old is he . Whats he like . Is he married . Does he have kids . Guest right. Grover is actually famous for his bachelorhood. He hahas a group house on capitol hill that has served as a kind of nesting ground and Party Central for his fellow comrades, as he calls them. Hehe useshe borrows a lot of leninistmarxist rhetoric to make his point. Grovers interesting because hes the son of an engineer, and he looks athe looks at politics as systems. When he waswhen he was fighting the Clinton Healthcare plan, for example, he viewed that ahe said, clintons Healthcare Plan was an attempt to put more democrats on the payroll, because government workers vote democratic and its going to expand the government. Thats how he views politics, like systems. And hes got a lot of that thinking himself. He went to harvard. He came down to washington, started with the National Taxpayers union, went back to harvard to finish his hahis mba, really just to satisfy his father. He grew up in a very, very tony suburb of boston, beautiful area, where ias i point out in the book, its the kind of regulation that grover hateszoning and everything. Actually, its a lot of very nice suburbs withwithout the trash you usually see with suburbs. Its a lot of strict zoning, twoacre plots. Cspan did you go there . Guest yeah, i went there. I went to his parents home and its beautiful. Cspan what did his parents think when you showed up . Guest well, i had made an appointment with them beforehand. Cspan but i meanbut what did they think of the idea of talking about theirtheir son . Guest they werethey were very happy to talk about their son and themselves. They were shy, though. Theres a shyness and discomfort with people that i think we also see with grover. Grover norquist is very good at dealing with groups of peoplegroups of people, asas somebody in the book said. Groups of gun owners, groups of tax activists. But hes not really good ononeonone. And it kind of has led him into someas some of his Friends Point out, led him to misjudge people along the way. But his parents were quite forthcoming, and pulled out theirtheir own college yearbooks. His father told me the story of how he picked out his wife. He pulled out hishe pulled out the yearbook. He was interested in a wife with these qualities, 15 qualities, the angular face and republican and a nonsmoker. And he looked at the Honor Society at the university of michigan, and he picked out who he would be interested in dating and called her. And that was it. Cspan how long have they been married . Guest a long time. I mean, theytheybackdating back to the 50s. Theyve been married a long time, and had a nice family life. Hishis father is a polaroid executive. Cspan now David Mcintosh, the congressman running for governor of indiana. Guest thats right. Cspan republican against frank obannon. Guest right. Cspan . Whos the incumbent whatswhats his story . Guest he iscomes from a small town in indiana. He lost his father when he was five years old. Actually, they were living in San Francisco at the time. His mothers a nurse. And this is interesting, too, because i think a lot of liberals think that republicans and conservatives just come from elite backgrounds, and most of these guyswell, nothalf of them dont. And hes a good example. His mother struggled. She had four children. He was the oldest, and he was kind of in charge of them. Very unathletic boy, but brilliant. Would sit in thein his room reading math books while the kids outside were playing. And theyd say, david, come out, and he wouldntyou know, he wouldnt come out. Hehis family was known forhis mother expected hisher children to be able to debate, to build a fine argument, a reasoned argument, and theythis was a trait handed down from her side of the family, known as theslows was her last name. And they called the slows slayers, the peoplethethe folks in the family who could really argue the best. And if you couldnt make a good argument at the table and stand up and reason your way out of an issue that you wanted to defend, you could be laughed off the table. So thatthat trait is part of his family and led to him being quite articulate, but also, this led to him being a bit combative and moving in towards debate. Cspan where did he go to school . Guest he went to the yalehe went to yale. And what i started to say, hehelike a lot of conservatives on campus in the 70s, he moved into the Debate Society because on campus in the 70s, liberalism really did hold sway. It wasitit held the moral high ground, if you will, and a lot of conservatives were written off asthis idea of Political Correctness that we talked about in the 80s and 90s, a term that wasnt even invented in the 70sthe most striking thing about my research was to what extent liberal orthodoxy held sway on particularly elite campuses. If you had conservative views, you could be dismissed, ignored, laughed at. David actually started as a democrat, but because of the liberal orthodoxy on thehe and likeminded colleagues felt at yale, they moved in the direction of what was known as the party of the right in the yale political union, which was willing to debate really fundamental issues, wawas willing to have adventurous debates, was willing to risk being called even antidemocratic or racist, for example, if they challenged affirmative action policies. And this appealed to david, this challenging of conventional wisdom. And he took that and he went to that great school, the university of chicago law school, wherewhere great minds do challenge conventional wisdom, particularly in the 70s. Very free marketoriented school. Graduated from there and went on to become a foe of regulation. He worked for Vice President quayle on the Competitiveness Council and so on. So itdoing away with the regulation became his kind of forte. Cspan one of the things we learn in your book, thatbothall of these fourfive men have people in their past, writers, that they admire. But also, there are all kind of groups. You mentioned Grover Norquists wednesday meetings. Then also around David Mcintosh, the Federalist Society. Guest thats right. That. Cspan you cover a lot of the Federalist Society. What are they, who started it . Guest yeah. David was a cofounder of the Federalist Society, actually, with some of his colleagues from yale; Steven Calabresi and lee liberman. Theyit started as a student group, but it soon got funding from bill simons organization. Cspan former secretary of the treasury. Guest former secretary of treasury, which was athe olin foundation, a very big conservative funder. By the way, Irving Kristol was also involved in this and getting funding into this group early on. And in the 80s, it became a real clearinghouse for anybody who was conservative, who wanted to work for the Reagan Administration as a judge, as a clerk and so on. It became much more of a professional society as well as a campus society. And today, it still, as you know, is ais an important fixture on the washington scene and elsewhere, andand and ana very important fixture inin the conservative legal movement. Cspan where did Clinton Bullock grow up, and where did he go to school . Guest Clint Bullock grew up in new jersey, the son of a welder. His father died when he was 12, and his family also struggled financially. Interestingly, clint went to ucdavis law school the year after the famed bakke decision. Cspan california. Guest in california. Andso that at the timethe bakke decision, of course, waswas athe socalled angry white male challenging affirmative Action Programs. And the Supreme Court eventually said the ucdavis medical School Program went too far, but generally, affirmative Action Programstaking race into consideraation is ok. Clint went to davis at a time when the campus was very prickly and sensitive about issues of race, and really wanting to prove its commitment to diversity. He got caught up in a very interesting subplot going on at the davis law school, where he was the lone opponent of the affirmative Action Program there. It was a very lonely, very bitter battle for him. Cspan whats he like . Guest hes actually a very idealistic person. I know were not supposed to find idealists on the right, but he is. Hes somebody who tends to wear his heart on his sleeve, and he tends to not let these kind of battles roll off him, thatthey hurt. Cspan you said hes a libertarian and a follower of tom paine . Guest thats right. Hes a libertarian, who, of course, we need to distinguish. Iit was difficultthethe terms in this book because libertarians dont always like to be called conservative. Libertarians believe in aas we knowa limited government, people should be left alone. And sometimes, especially in the 70s, when clint ran for a state Assembly Seat as a libertarian in 1980, they would veer left on issues, like drug legalization, for example, or carters draft registration, and theyd veer right on budget issues. So he is a libertarian, although hes come to call himself a Big Government libertarian in that he does view more of a role for government than a lot of the libertarian purists, and often he gets in trouble with them for that reason. Cspan take tom paine for a moment. A lot of conservatives didntdont like him. Guest thats right. Cspan how does hewhy does he like him . Why does he follow him . Guest he likes him because hehe coined aaan important antigovernment sentiment that hethat clint has latched onto he was willing to stand up to the king. He was willing to stand against slavery. He was also, however, a proponent of the french revolution. He was this rootless guy. Hehehe was hardly ahardly a symbol of traditional family values. And i think thats why a lot of conservatives keep saying to clint, dont use thomas paine, really, you know. But clint loves thatthat phrase, that sort of revolutionary phrase.