Now were live with author and former active lady, lynne chaney. Nowl be from now until 3 00 eastern. Shes written several books easr yncluding the most recent a biography of James Madison. Lynne cheney, what was your name when you were secretary . Guest they picked a letter of the alphabet and every one who has unrelated to detail has a code name that starts with a letter they choose and ours was [inaudible] also offer seemed like a natural and i has been close angle or because his fishing habits. Host did your writing style change while you were in all their . Guest know that my subject matter did. Id been working on a book for education when suddenly he was chosen to be Vice President and it wasnt as though the book i was working on really contradicted anything that president bush was saying out on the campaign trail. E it just seems to just seemed seems to me inappropriate and o confusing to put out a book sitting setting forth my ideas on education since it was a hotc topic for president bush. Booan so i started writing Childrens Books, and that was an amazing gratifying thing to do. Host you are a history buff is that fair to say . Guest yes. Host in the book telling the truth which came out in theu late 90s, you wrote it issaid a sometimes cited the negative slant we are teaching now is overreaction to this land in th to the past and its true that in the past we sometimes presented as a laboratory history in our schools. Guest we did. T w there is no question about itk but i think the reaction has been extreme and i think learn sometimes they dont learn about the greatness of this country. H t host the beginning of tellingel the truth youre the ch chairman of the National Endowment for the humanities. Hav guest i had gone through a l great siege of the moral relativism. Othin theres nothing true, thereshi nothing false is just an area ss that was the point of the title d the book and that we areobge obliged to do what is close tosi it. We can host here is the opening of telling the truth as ones witness reported at the scene orw when the citizens are required to rise to the pictures of a man known only as goldstein the oy s great enemy of the state and oe of the enemies whose name he joked tears from the assembly. Y. What h what happened . Guest i dont remember if an it was anything in particular but i did as a conservative chairman of the agency that is clearly connected to the Academic Community find my name names was used in that way and also eminem did it. Tuall i felt quite cool. My children and grandchildrenea. Have no idea what i knew eminem, which i dont. But there was a sort of outraget and its amazing to think ane t outrage i think there was such a thing that was true or that ind believe theres such a thing as right and wrong. Im not sure how thats alle played out over the years. Im not so closely connected to it it now as i was then that i ound it outrageous. R viw host what in your view wasoe not being taught in college andw scasses that was taught when you gut hen you were in school . Guest the good side of thefe story as i freely admit i onlydi got the good side of the storyfs growing up and its when i went to college and afterwards i began to understand that this country has made many mistakes that we have not been always perfect but what we dont tell our children as we have comeclr closer to perfection than any other faith on the earth that wp have saved more peoples lives than any other nation. That we have been a force for good and it felt as though thato was being left out of theou st narrative. T before i suppose i started just before w got into school. I do remember learning to write while i was in grade school tha i didnt start writing books until i couldnt get a job as ab phd. I have a i had a phd in english and that is when it started. I think it was 1970 that i got my phd. And i think that there were it 30,000. Y those were the days when it wase a great disadvantage to theervie female. I remember interviewing at one English Department come actually George Mason University and they asked me are you married or are you really interested in the job . [laughter] that might have been a legalobrr then that there was no fervor to take people to account for such an amazing statement. Host and or congressman husband was a congressman at the or a. Point . As an guest i think that he was to an aide to donald rumsfeld. At to host and went on to thetre chief of staff so you wonent ont shington. Guest guest until president ford sadly lost in 1976 and then wetn host home. Host what was the goal after you got your phd and in which . Guest to teach 19thentury century literature in the romantic. Though and victorian. Host in host in blue skies nonces fences you talk aboutout discovering at the local library and casper. Gue guest stindeed what a shocking thing. I was reading in the fictionficn section being very systematicatd and it didnt take me long tolo get toto the jays. And t id never heard of a book likel. That. Host you talk about how you hit it in a camper at home. Guest i dont think that my parents would have picked iti up and read it from beginning tt end but i didnt want him toen open it. . You host what was so shocking g u . Guest we didnt use those words with company. Ompa now i think we over use those words but it was the vocabularyr host in your view is this . A masterpiece . Guest no, i dont think dont so. At i dont regard it as a great classic. I had my own favorite. I think jane austen pride and prejudice is it classic. , great poetry. Try john its a great classic. 20t certainly 20th century writersl are fine. O et but i still think to get yourself a classic you have to hang around for a while and see the work. Est host from the newest book in life we considered the best jame seller, you write it as ayou wri promising time to clear away the misconceptions about madison, brush off the cobwebs that have accumulated around ande to seekt deeper understanding of commande who did more than any other toot concede and estaablish the natin we know. Host guest its been claimed but i think its true. Thnk the misconceptions are that hehe was shy and sickly. Nception those words appear time andut again when people write about madison. And it seems to me that you u coul couldnt be fundamentally shye and accomplish what he did in the public arena, nor could your be sickly and that implies that you are never well and as in began to look at his career, there were indeed times when hes was second out of action for d three or four days. But the rest of the time he was taking these amazing trips across the country with jefferson or with monro. To the energy that it took to travel from his home inmontpetoi montpelier and then he was the e main impetus behind the constitution. He spoke at the s convention an. Almost more than anyone else. I think morris spoke more times than he did at the combinationvh and he kept going. The fe the federalist papers wrote itse think it was 22 federalist papers and 40 days. I like to say to the collegehe w audiences i could probably write 22 essays in four days. They wouldnt be masterpieces. O they wouldnt stand the test of time orey the brilliant. I like to think of the energy and brilliance. I think that he was rather send the brilliance and energy. Hos host who were his parents . Guest he was born in g virginia. Believe i believe that it was in wh Westmoreland County not where he co grew up which was in orange county. All of his ancestors worked ther land. Sme they came from england, they came to virginia and they wereea essentially farmers. They thats what the open source evey though be like elect out as a plantation. T they didnt think like that. Father was a farmer, his motherl was a perfectly nice person but it was his grandmother that really influenced his life as dach as any. R host how so . Guest she ordered a spectator for him. Getting books wasnt an easyor matter and i do think that hea v was a book loving boy from thete beginning. The thi but one of the things she ordered for him was the spectator i think in eight volumes. Eally you can see the influence of the spectator inluen his life. Theri theres a lot of wisdom. His i think it also opened his eyes to urban life. Ad i if you are living on a virginia plantation or farm you have no c idea what cities are like or what the theater is like where bookstores ora coffee shops and think for a boy and young man ii virginia that would have been an amazing world was opening up. Host how did he become James Madison . Guest through a lot of hard work. Cided itust his father decided there was too much scandal going on at williad and mary. People were drinking and playing cards and he wanted james to got somewhere else and princeton wac a choice. Its also tritue that they felth princeton was a healthier climate about whether, not just about the moral climate and the salad was also cheaper. James madison, father, was very tight with a dollar. He went to princeton and ad finished i think with two and a half years because he was ablehe tosh scrape his freshman year b then the effort of trying to do the last two years and one year led to a collapse of some kind a and i believe it was one of the first manifestations was epilepsy. Host when did that h epilepsyos should itself . Guest there is evidence not conclusive but enough to show me that he had seizures as a young child. They go away off and theres also a pattern where a young child might have seizures and then as a madisons case had seizures again as an adult so maybe its kind of you a foretelling of epilepsy. Im sure doctors right now are very nervous that im connecting these two but his grandmother sent him them off from the suffering of policy epilepsy. I could figure out what are the things on the list and what was his grandmother trying to treat. Host did it manifest itself at all during his presidency . Guest i dont have any evidence of that. There are indications for example theres an instance when they are traveling to philadelphia from washington but i cant remember if its when he was the secretary of state or president but its very clear that something happened. They are going along and suddenly this thing happens and later she writes i couldnt fly to him as i used to do. Go, help him and he did right at the end of his life that the attacks became less frequent as equals or. Host how did James Madison get himself involved in the revolution what a revolution what was the role in the lead up . Guest he was caught up as College Students have been forever in the politics of the time and people at princeton were demonstrating against the british but when he tried to enlist, he was practicing to be part of the militia. He talks about a thing that happened to him in training that convinced him he couldnt be a soldier and that would be unlikely at all. So he did not become a soldier. He wasnt involved until the revolution began and he got involved in politics. Host what was his relationship with George Washington have any . Guest it was good enough in the beginning but he wrote washingtons inaugural address. They tried somebody else but it hasnt worked. Sometimes the speechwriter just doesnt get it right and washington do that so he knew that so he called on madison to come right to the address. Once washington was elected he called him again and again and said ive just imagined this conversation. I need to thank everybody for the inaugural. Madison also wrote the response of the house back to washington so i like to think of this as his voice echoing off the walls. Later on he and washington became not exactly estranged. They were in opposition. Host why . Guest its such a long story but basically Alexander Hamilton came into the government and took washington in the direction that neither madison or jefferson thought was appropriate. He was a Big Government man and both jefferson and madison were concerned that the point about the Central Government becoming over powerful. Host relationship with Tom Jefferson . Guest they were great friends. Its one of the great friendships in American History. Jefferson could be a very exasperating friend. Always interfering, get things lined up. Jefferson was often fooling around with madisons plans and madison was very forbearing but a wonderful history and wrote of the two the account balanced. Jefferson was a dreamer and madison was attached to the earth and understood practicalities and politics of the situation so it was a very beneficial friendship for the both of them. Host way learned in the first series that we did on cspan last year was that Dolly Madison had a role in washington and politics beyond just James Madisons lifetime. What did you discover that Dolly Madison . Guest one of the interesting things about the virginia founders is that they ended up poor. Jefferson had to have a lottery at the end of his life. The same was true in the Madison Dolly brought this onto their marriage and John Payne Todd was his name. At one point he was taking stuff out of montpelier and serving on the street corners. I actually have a friend in maryland on the Eastern Shore who said to me i have to madison letters. When people say that you are a little skeptical, but he does. They are short but they are very important for the winding up stories that we dont know the end of ended occurred to me if somebody tells you they have a madison letter you should Pay Attention because of all that stuff out there in any of it still hasnt been captured by scholars. But any case, there was great Financial Stress in the dolly as a widow was poor. It showed her depending on a loan of 75 cents. 75 cents is more than now but not that much more. She started wearing the same clothes all the time she worry black dress and white turban. Theres one photograph of her and she has that outfit on that people didnt care. They helped her put her poverty didnt mean she wasnt thoroughly entertaining and fun to be around. She was quite a citizen. And i read her funeral was the largest up until that time as they had been seen in the federal city. Host this was published in may of 2014. When did you start your research and working on this book . Guest at least five years before. Its a luxury to have that much time to work to be at host where did you start . Guest i research and write the same time. So you start, right preface and keep going then go back and rewrite and get yourself burrowing into these stories or situations like madisons epilepsy. So it takes a very long time. Host where did you do the research . Guest i did most of it at home. I have to work from real books sometimes. There are many books important that havent been digitized so i usually end up with a big pile of books on the floor of my study theres an amazing amount of information online. All of madisons papers are online. The university of virginia has a Digital Program thats just amazing. Jefferson is online, hamilton, washington, madison, munro. People upload google stuff a lot. Theres something called archives that thats done a lot. Kind of the most. Welcome to our monthly in depth program. One author and his or her body of work. This month it is lynne cheney the author of 13 books, beginning in 1979 in novel came out, executive privilege. A mother began in 81, the report of educational practices was published in 1990, telling the truth while the culture and the country have stopped making sense. It came out also in 1996 and then the second lady several Childrens Books. The family adventure in 2006 and about memoir of childhood and family in 2007. We the people, the story of the constitution. Seven to 88201 for those in the mountain and pacific time zones. Cant get through on the phone there are. 202 4656842. We also have social media. Theres a lot of ways to reach you today. I want to go back to James Madison. This is what youve written. Scraping his club across the page madison recorded what seemed to him the essence of the strongest and sound mind possessed with the most sickly bodies. The knife we found this with john locke when he was reading and it was a comfort. Epilepsy was such a misunderstood comment the 18th century and it was thought to be the result of demonic possession we thought it would be the result of sin. And that made having seizures even more dramatic than the offense themselves. I dont think madisons seizures were always of the kind that made him fall to the ground. What he described seemed to fit very well with a partial complex epilepsy. As he described it the intellectual senses are suspended which is exactly what people say that partial complex seizures so nevertheless i think sometimes these seizures that werent were not quite as dramatic manifest themselves in a dramatic way and he had a complete seizure. Any kind and he recognized of attacks representing the books he said he knew that it was linked in having that happen to you is all the more dramatic when theres this overlay that somehow dangerous and full of for him it was a comfort to read this idea that often the strongest minds have some physical ailment and the metaphor is like a sharp knife that she she cant hold. Is the path to the presidency inevitable at the time . Is a he certainly had many has many advantages. He was from the largest state and as you know the first president was from virginia but being from virginia was in and of itself a great advantage. Being brilliant also helped quite a lot. I think that as you were saying earlier she had a role she wasnt an adviser. She didnt tell them about what to do with the Louisiana Purchase but what she did do didnt do is bring people back together so that they not only admire him for his until it that they had a chance to see his personality to know that he was a warm fellow. It made them feel warm and happy and fixed Southern Comfort food so people would walk by and learn there were other parts. There was a senator who wrote home to his wife that mr. Madison has a great advantage in the upcoming caucuses to choose a candidate. Was the war of 1812, what was that about . Guest sometimes i think the best explanation is that its a second war for independence. Weve managed to b