Cspan denny hastert, author of, speaker, what`s the granby roll . Guest the granby roll is a move in wrestling that you can score from the bottom. Not many people do it. And it`s good in wrestling, it`s probably good in politics, too. If you can score when you`re on the bottom and keep winning, that`s what it`s all about. Cspan where does the name granby come from . Guest Granby High School in norfolk, virginia. They were the instigator coach by the name of bill martin was instigated it and taught it. And it kind of passed through the east coast. I picked it up in the midwest, and it was one of our trademarks. Cspan when was the last time you were in a high school classroom, teaching . Guest probably was about a year or two ago. I try to go back to my district and talk in a classroom from time to time. Actually, teaching as a teacher, the last time i did it was 1981 cspan and what were you teaching . Guest i was teaching economics, history, government. I taught a business course over the years. I taught a speech course. And in a Small High School you did everything. I even drove the school bus from time to time. Cspan where`s this picture from, the one on top . Guest Yorkville High School cspan how old were you there . Guest i was probably 24 years old. Cspan i`m going to jump way ahead and show you a clip, and i`ll have you first, it`s a clip of Bob Livingston on the floor. Just so when people are watching it, they`ll know. Where were you in the chamber at that time . Guest i was sitting in the back row of the chamber, right near the door where folks come in off the elevator. That`s where i was chief deputy whip. That`s usually where i sat, and i kind of knew where everybody was on the house floor. That was kind of my position. Cspan what was the timeframe . Guest well, the timeframe was december 19. It was a saturday. We were back because of the impeachment of bill clinton. It was a house vote on the floor. I remember getting up that morning and thinking to myself you know, i taught history for years, and we went through the impeachment of andrew johnson, and it changed president ial history for years. And i`m thinking, what`s going to happen after we get done with this vote today . How`s history going to change . Little did i know that what would happen. Cspan so when Bob Livingston began to talk, you did not know what was going to happen . Guest well, we knew that bob had some problems, but we didn`t know what was going to happen. Cspan let`s watch the tape and then we`ll ask you about it. [video clip december 19, 1998] rep. Bob livingston, House Speaker nominee to the president , i would say, sir, you have done great damage to this nation over this past year. And while your defenders are contending that further impeachment proceedings would only protract and exacerbate the damage to this country, i say that you have the power to terminate that damage and heal the wounds that you have created. You, sir, may resign your post. [boos] unidentified male the house will be in order. Livingston and and. [boos] unidentified male the house will be in order. Livingston and i can only challenge you in such fashion if i am willing to heed my own words. To my colleagues, my friends and most especially, my wife and family, i have hurt you all deeply and i beg your forgiveness. I was prepared to lead our narrow majority as speaker, and i believe i had it in me to do a fine job. But i cannot do that job or be the kind of leader that i would like to be under current circumstances. So i must set the example that i hope president clinton will follow. I will not stand for speaker of the house on january 6. But rather, i shall remain as a backbencher in this congress that i so dearly love for approximately six months into the 106th congress, whereupon i shall vacate my seat and ask my governor to call a special election to take my place. [end video clip] cspan what was going through your head . Guest well, we were kind of stunned about the halfway after he had made his announcement, there was a page that came up, or one of our floor it wasn`t a page, one of our floor people came up, tapped me on the shoulder i was in the back row and said, the speaker wants to talk to you. He`s on the phone in the cloakroom. Cspan who was speaker . Guest it Newt Gingrich. And i went to the phone, newt says, you just heard what happened. You`re the only guy that can pull this conference together and lead it. And i was kind of dumbstruck at that point. Then people started to come up to me and said, you`re going to be the next speaker. And for somebody who hadn`t planned on, you know, being a speaker of the house and just doing his work, as i unintelligible a backbencher, that was really an astounding situation. Cspan you said you called your wife at some point. Guest right. I had called jean after people said, you know, you`re going to be the speaker. And i said, i give me a couple minutes to think about this. I need to talk to my wife. Bill paxon, who is a good friend of mine, anticipated i was going to say that. He called my wife first and said, you know, denny`s going to have to do this and you know so i called her. I thought jean would say you know, she doesn`t live in washington. We didn`t keep our home in washington. She didn`t necessarily want to get involved in everything. She was Teaching School at the time. And i would think i had thought that she`d say, well, you know, just for our life, we can`t really can`t do this. And so i called. It was the first day of christmas vacation, and i was anticipating you know, she was home. It`s was the first day home. It was a saturday morning. And i called her up and said what are you doing . And i thought she well, i`m baking cookies or fixing the tree or doing Something Like that. And she said, well, i`m watching tv. And i said, well, you know what`s going on here. And she said yes, i know. I said, well, what do you think . They want me to be speaker. Said, well, you have to do what you think`s right. And so i thought about it and contemplated and prayed a little bit and decided to do it. Cspan i wrote down two things that jean is quoted as saying why your book, or you say about her. You say she didn`t like politicians at one point, and then later you said, not thrilled with your current job which is speaker. Guest well, she she wasn`t thrilled when i became speaker. It was just a lot more intense. You know, i had been home i work my district every weekend. I didn`t have the National Responsibilities that i have today. I didn`t have to campaign all over the country, you know almost every week. And i was home. I was home on a thursday night or a friday morning, and we worked the weekend. And we also you know, i had at least a day or a dayandahalf off at home. And for me, going back to the district and getting my feet on the ground, being with real people, going to the Hardware Store or the grocery store, is a good way for me to unwind. And i needed to be back home. So i wasn`t sure what this job had entailed and how we`d handle it. Cspan in your book, you discuss the differences between you and Newt Gingrich. I have a question for you. When you retire some day, what will you do . Will you stay in washington, will you go back home . Guest well, i don`t live in washington now, so i really doubt that i`d stay in washington. I`ve thought about that a lot. And i guess that when i`m ready to retire, i`m going to have to face up to it. But you know, i think there`s opportunities out there. There`s a lot of things that you maybe would like to do. You know, there`s some ambassadorships maybe i would like to do. And i have a great interest in japan. I got some interest in europe. But you know, that`s down the road. I have never set my, you know, flag that way that i want to do it, and probably, it`s the first time i`ve ever said it publicly but so there`s some opportunities in the future that i think. But you know, i always said if you do the job that you`re doing now and do it well, you don`t have to worry about the next step. And i think i still could continue. I`m running for speaker again. And lord willing, if that happens, then i got another two years to do my job. And we`ll assess things from that point. Cspan the reason i ask you is that so many people who come to congress now, in the house in particular, do not stay there. They go to the senate or they go downtown and lobby. Guest right. Cspan and whether or not that was in your veins. Guest well, i you know, i`d never say never to anything i`m not going to run for the senate. I had an opportunity to run for the senate and decided i like the house. I like what we do in the house. We get things done. I think the senate is not my turf. But you know, in a way, you bring up an interesting thing because we`re facing six open seats across the country right now. So in a sense, we`re a victim of our own success. These people have run. They`ve been successful, and now they`re moving on to other careers. We have to fill those open seats. So in a sense, it`s something that we have to constantly keep up with. Cspan i was struck when i read your book that so many of the characters in your book aren`t there anymore. And i just wrote them all down as i was reading about it. Bob livingston, Newt Gingrich. Dick armey, bill paxon, steve largent, saxby chambliss, john sununu, lindsey graham, tom coburn, susan molinari, john kasich, bill zellef, and i know i`ve missed some. Guest right. Cspan almost other than tom delay and a couple of others the team that you started out with are gone. Guest well, you know, that happens in congress today. People used to say, well, you know, you go to congress, those people are there forever. The term limit you know, the term limit issue and all those things that we talked about you know, the average i don`t know what exactly the average term of a congressman, but it used to be for a long time. Today, it`s probably eight years or ten years is the average time that a person stays here. And they cycle off and do something else. A lot of those folks that you mentioned are either in the senate or headed for the senate so i mean, they step up and do other things. Saxby chambliss and lindsey graham, and coburn`s running for the senate, and others. So you know, there`s other careers, too. Cspan tom coburn did this show once, and it was i think i can say without exaggerating, it was a the book was a real criticism of the house in this town. Did you read the book . Guest i read excerpts from the book. Cspan if you were going to criticize your own institution over there, after you`ve now been there for how many years . Guest this is my 18th year that i`ve been in the congress. Cspan what would you tell those kids out there in civics class . Guest well, you know, i always said you know, i taught government for 16 years. And when i first went to the illinois general assembly, i said, you know, the real difference here is the difference between theory and practice, that this place is a people business. It`s how you treat people. It`s how you deal with people is really how you get things done not necessarily if you`re a great orator or if you`re a great attorney or, you know, a great writer. It`s how you can relate to people, bring them together and move them in a direction to get real legislation or real things accomplished. And i would say that probably the most the biggest hindrance in that today that, you know, this the congress was partisan when i came. I saw the huge difference in partisanship between the house of representatives and the Illinois Legislature that i was in. The Illinois Legislature we were on the floor together hours and hours and hours every day, and to go through the process. And we weren`t in as long, so things were compressed. Here you went across the aisle you talked to people, you shared a joke with somebody or a story with somebody from time to time and there was a collegiality there, even across the aisle. You know, one of the things in Congress Everybody goes back to their little own office and they watch a lot of the proceedings on tv. You come to the floor and vote. The people that you do get to know across the aisle might be people that you serve on a committee with or from time to time or have the opportunity to travel with. But there isn`t this really crosscultivization you know, crosspollinization, in a sense, that you don`t really get to spend time with people. I have some friends on the other side of the aisle, but they`re people that i`ve known for a long, long time and people that i respect. But you know, so the incivility that people talk about in the Congress Comes from two things. First, not spending a lot of time with people. You don`t you know, you`re off on your own thing. You`re in your office. You have constituents. You have, you know, your whole agenda, that your staff is driving you, that you`re busy all the time. And you don`t take enough time to deal with people on the floor. The second part of that is when i first came to congress, there were democrats over had a plurality of over 100, i think. It was a huge plurality. And you know, i remember stories about their discipline within their caucus at that time. If somebody didn`t vote with the party or, you know, didn`t go with tip o`neill or didn`t go with jim wright, they might have lost their parking place or their locks were changed in their office or they lost their telephone or you know, things like that, little subtle differences and disciplines that they had, saying that, you know, that`s a time past, that`s a generation past. And probably, they could get away with that. We can`t get away with that. I mean, we have such a tight margin that you know, sometimes when i first started it was a 5vote margin. Today we`re close to a 10vote margin. Depends on who`s here and who`s sick. But you have to deal with your own party all the time and keep people on board. You know, they call me a speaker, but i really they ought to call me the listener because i spend so much time listening to people`s problems trying to work through those problems, trying to make change possible for these people. And you have to pull your we`re so closely divided that you have to pull your Team Together all the time to get something done. And you just don`t reach across the aisle it`s impossible because they`re pulling their Team Together all the time, too, on a partisan basis. And you don`t get, you know, 20 boll weevils anymore to come over and cross and vote for a bill. Cspan you periodically in this book tell us how you feel about some other people. For instance, you say in the book that trent lott is not a good listener. Guest well, i mean, trent, i think, in his own way is a pretty dynamic leader. And he got things done, and he is a gotoit guy. But he doesn`t at least in my experience, he didn`t sit down and listen to what you had to say very well. I mean, you got his information first. Cspan how much listening do you do . Guest i do a lot of listening. I i would you know, i watch other people in government. For instance, i watch dick cheney operate. Dick cheney`ll come into a room, there`s a problem, he`ll sit and look over the top of his glasses and put his, you know, fingers on his cheek and listen maybe for 20 or 30 or maybe minutes or maybe an hour, and then finally say, well, we need to do this. I kind of do the same thing, not because i`m copying him, it`s just my nature. But i will listen to both sides of a story, both if there`s two people in conflict or two Committee Chairmen that you have to deal with or a person who wants to has a difficult time to vote for something, he needs to make sure that that bill can he can sell that bill back home or be represented back home in doing the right thing. And so if we have to make a change in the bill or an adjustment, i`ll sit and listen and or if somebody feels that they`ve been shortchanged by the leadership, you know, one way or another, the whole spectrum of leadership, i`ll sit down there and listen. I have to do that, and then try to solve those problems. Cspan you called mark shields and john mclaughlin, the two radio i mean, the Television Talk show hosts, loudmouths on television. Guest well, i did at one time. You know, if you watch john, john doesn`t give much credence to any other person`s opinion, and shields is just in your face all the time. So if you have those interviews, you don`t get much time to express. You maybe get banged on, but you never really get to express your opinion or your opinion is never really taken into focus. Cspan you give us an insider`s view of what happened around Newt Gingrich and the attempted coup. Start that story. Guest well, i was whipping. I was chief deputy whip. We had an appropriations bill on the house floor, and i couldn`t find tom, tom delay, anywhere, because we had a problem. We had the coal folks that wanted to keep coal gasification funds in place, and we there was an amendment out there for to do away with the fire roads into the National Forests environmentalists tried to do that. The people who were montana and the western folks that needed to keep their forests and try to keep fires down were fighting that amendment. So i thought there was a possibility to tie up an agreement with the coal people and the forest people to, you know, hold down, and they would, you know, help each other defeat those amendments. But before i did that, i wanted to check with delay and see that, you know, if that was ok and that would go along with what his plan for this bill. I went to look for him, couldn`t find him. And finally some you know called his office, said, oh, he`s not around. This was, you know, 8 00 or 9 00 o`clock at night, so he`s got to be around someplace. And finally, somebody said well, he`s down in paxon`s office, which was a hideaway down on the first floor, right across the hall from where tom delay`s office. Cspan congressman bill paxon of new york. Guest bill paxon`s office. And bill was the chairman of the leadership at that time. So i went down there and kind of knocked on the door and walked in. They`re having dinner. And boy, just you know, both of these guys were very, very Close Friends of mine. The conversation just stopped. And i knew that there was something going on, something wrong. And so i said to tom ,oh, yes, go do whatever you want to do, which isn`t natural for tom. So i did. I figured if they wanted to talk about what they had to talk about, that`s fine. And so later that night, i go