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Constituents. and pretty soon, they're taking orders from the swamp rather than the people. so if we want to end the corruption, and move legislation on capitol hill, we need the old timers to do the decent thing and begin to retire! john conyers is the most potent example. the congressman who has just been charged this week with sexual harassment by two women so far in two days is 88 years old. he has held his congressional seat for 52 years! so l.b.j. was president and the film "mary poppins" was released the year was elected. now, it's time for john to go fly a kite, too, and he's not alone...

It mean the only attracted to it are superegos? i've always had a theory, if we lined up all of our presidents they would have some odd chromosome that the rest of us don't have? >> without question. >> in order to seek that office you have to have a massive ego. you have to have a need to be loved, a need for attention, and a need for power. so it is elevated, but you're hoping that your leaders have that plus -- >> a filter? >> not just a filter, but a knowledge of how to govern. a knowledge of how policy intertwines with people's lives, and how politics works. you have to have somebody who ...

Seats makes it very difficult for people to say well politically we're going to make deals with people in the house or things are kind of structurally gridlocked. i think this is more a symptom of that than anything else. but the other thing, too, is when we look at lbj, we tend to think about two things with him, which is '64 and '65, the civil rights act and the voting rights act. but this is really about the arc of his career because he does this in '57 and does it again in 1960, like the little remembered 1960 civil rights act, and then the 1964 and then '65. >> yet this was a guy who had ...

Working on a new book about lbj. and raul reyes, nbc latino contributor and columnist for "usa today." thanks for being here. >> thank you. >> julian, i want to start with you. in this moment, do you think that lbj facing the constraints that reid is facing would have made the same decision, that he would have gone ahead and changed the senate rules and seen that as a power play or would he have tried to negotiate in his very johnson time of way? >> i think he would have looked favorably at what he did. during the 1950s when lbj was in the senate, it wasn't just the civil rights bill he worked...

Must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. and we shall overcome. [ applause ] in this country, civil rights and voting rights have been purchased with the precious cost of blood and the fearlessness of a leader willing to spend the moral capital those martyrs provided. but today that legacy is in jeopardy. just this week the republican-controlled state senate in ohio passed the bill to shorten early voting, a move that limits the ability of poor people, black people, the eld ler i to cast their votes. that bill goes to the republican-controlled statehouse and presumably to r...