former first lady barbara bush. what role did barbara bush play during the george h w bush presidency? caller: it is interesting. i think barbara bush took pains to not make it clear how much influence she had. she had a divisional approach that he was the president and she was not. in that way, a great contrast to the equal partnership that we so publicly with the clintons. behind the scenes, she was enormously influential. she was influential in ways that we knew. her focus on adult illiteracy. the cause that she pushed for most of her adult life. she was also influential on things like pushing the president to do more to address the hiv aids. that was something she was doing behind the scenes. she was also an important sounding board for him during those difficult days before the iraq war. we know that only with the benefit of history and some reporting that i've done for the book that he relied on her common sense and her judgment about what was right and he had her in some important secret meetings that were very closely held because he wanted her sense of what should

afternoon by the burial ceremony at the george bush presidential library and museum in college station, texas. back in washington, d.c. and some of the funeral yesterday at the national if they drawn later, george w. bush gives his eulogy. first, we'll hear from historian john meacham. >> the story was almost over even before it almost began. shortly after dawn saturday, september 2, 1944 lieutenant george herbert walker bush joined by two crewmates took off from the uss to attack a radio tower. as they approached the target the air was heavy with flat. smoke filled the cockpit, flames raced across the wings. my god, lieutenant bush thought, this will go down. he kept the plane and its dive, dropped his bombs and roared out to sea. telling his crewmates. lieutenant bush turned the plane -- telling his crewmates to hit the silk. lieutenant bush turned the plane so they could bailout. only then did he parachute from the cockpit. the wind propelled him backward anti-gashed his head on the tail -- and he gashed his head on the tail of the plane. as he flew through the sky. the ocean,deep into bob's to the surface and flopped onto a tiny raft. his head bleeding, his eyes burning, his mouth and throat raw fr

statement from president bush's son, president george w. bush. let's hear from ken calling from free mount, -- fremont, california. caller: i think president george h.w. bush did a great job as our 45th -- 41st commander in chief. he organized operation desert storm and desert seal. he signed the most comprehensive clean air act into law and sign the americans with disabilities act into law. as a disabled american, my hat goes off to him. 1997,e him a letter in during the lewinsky scandal, and he wrote me back a very nice response. i love president bush very much and i'm going to miss him very much. host: we have a tweet that just came in from former governor jeb bush from florida which says -- i already miss the greatest human being that i ever will know. love you, dad. here is a story sent out this morning by "the associated press." "he was the man who sought a kinder, gentler nation, and who sternly invited americans to read his lips, he would not raise taxes. he was the popular leader of a mighty coalition that dislodged iraq from kuwait and was turned out of the presidency after

donald trump this morning a couple of hours ago. president george h w bush led a long, successful, a beautiful life. whenever i was with him i saw his absolute joy for life and true pride in his family. his accomplishments were great from beginning to end. he was a truly wonderful man and will be missed by all. i would also like to read you one more statement from president bush's son, president george w. bush. let's hear from ken calling from free mount, -- fremont, california. caller: i think president george h.w. bush did a great job as our 45th -- 41st commander in chief. he organized operation desert storm and desert seal. he signed the most comprehensive clean air act into law and sign the americans with disabilities act into law. as a disabled american, my hat goes off to him. 1997,e him a letter in during the lewinsky scandal, and he wrote me back a very nice response. i love president bush very much and i'm going to miss him very much. host: we have a tweet that just came in from former governor jeb bush from florida which says -- i already miss the greatest human being that

the fire and smoke george w. bush stayed steady at the controls. only once he accomplished his mission did he parachute out over the pacific, a steady hand staying the course. that is what george bush gave us for decades. decorated aviator, congressman, ambassador to the united nations, envoy to china, c.i.a. director, eight years as vice president and our commander in chief. through the cold war and soviet union collapse he kept us on course course. when the rule of law needed defending in the persian gulf, he kept us on course. with his on temperament and hard work work, hard won expertise, george herbert walker bush steered this country as straight as he steered that airplane. he kept us flying high and challenged us to fly higher still. and he did it with modesty and kindness that would have been surprising in someone one 10th as tough and accomplished as he was. the patriot who lies before us was blessed with many gifts, but there was no doubt which he prize prized most of all. a great love story again at that christmas dance when george w. bush met barbara pierce and the

lady will attend along with many world leaders. president george w. bush will speak. on c-span 2, a forum on the country's aging infrastructure, including remarks from peter defazio, the ranking member of the house transportation and infrastructure committee, and the senate returns to consider bernard mcnamee to be a member of the energy regulatory commission. coming up on today's "washington journal" a look at the life and legacy of former president george h.w. bush on this national day of mourning. we'll speak with former congressman dingell, clarence page, and peter from the ethics and public policy center. we give you a chance to share your thoughts on the 41st president. "washington journal" is next. host: it is wednesday, december 5, 2018. flags over the capital at half staff as the remains of late president george h. w. bush continue to lie in state. at 10:00 a.m. they will be taken to national cathedral where a state funeral will be held. we will talk about the life and legacy of america's 41st president later on "washington journal." we begin with a different event that too

george h w bush, who died at age 94. this is one hour. peaker, few americans will ever rival the depth and breadth of the service to our nation exhibited by george herbert walker bush. today i join the bush family, my colleagues, fellow texans and a grateful nation in remembering and honoring the life of president george h.w. bush. he was a courageous war hero a key member of the committee on ways and means, while he was here in congress, an ambassador, director of the c.i.a., vice president and president of the united states. that is remarkable and historic level of service to america but i still think his favorite title was that of husband to his beloved bar and i believe his greatest accomplishment was in raising children and grandchildren who served their nation with dedication and patriotism. i believe our country and our state can agree we've lost a man of honor and character. who leaves a legacy and las vegas of service to his nation and family. so today we all want to share with you a little bit about our relationship with the beloved president bush. i consider myself a proud part of the bush legacy, on the ways and means committee i hold the se

, as a national day of mourning in honor of the late president george h w bush who died friday night in texas area executive departments and federal agencies will be close on wednesday and flags on all public buildings will be at half staff for a month as a mark of respect. stateent bush will lie in in state inside the capitol rotunda starting tomorrow evening. funeral services set for wednesday at the washington national cathedral. for this first hour of this edition of the washington journal, we thought we would get more of your thoughts on the life and legacy of president george h w bush. here's how to take part in the conversation. republicans call (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. independent, (202) 748-8002. if not by phone, you are welcome to check in by social media. again, on the life and legacy of former president george h w of your call. here's the front page of the new york times. it's a portrait of george bush, the late president, on this photo says in 1990, james a baker the third, who was his personal friend and secretary of state describes and is the best one

she has been tough with george w. bush when she was tough with barack obama, she caucus, her house is the institution she defends and she is very tough in doing that. i never heard her advocate the idea of lying or promoting lying. contextwant to see that . our guest john lawrence is the author of the book read what are you writing and compare it to present-day situations were smart --? john: it is at the end of watergate, president and has resigned. team of progressive democrats are elected and they come to washington with a significant group of performers who have been in washington but never had the numbers to overcome the seniority system and coalition of conservative democrats and republicans who had run most of congress for decades. they are able to affect significant change in the way congress operates, to disseminate power to make leadership more responsible to the caucus. to give copper -- powered not just to the caucus chair, but make the chairman responsive to the caucus. because your members choose to have you represent them. because it wasnt able to facilitate the movemen

then worked with president george h w bush, bill clinton, george w. bush, barack obama, and now donald trump. if you have a particularly close relationship with any of the presidents? rep. duncan: all of them were very nice to me. forident reagan did an ad me when i was first running. i don't think they would even do that now. i got to go because i was sworn in on november 9, i presdient reagan's final reception for the congress. with a man whog later became our governor, yes me how it was going and i said it was great i am up to 75% of the vote now. i got to fly on air force one several times. i guess a lot of stories about that. i remember one time flying with george w. bush. i told him that when i was in aw school they said the students made the professors, b cudents made the judges, and students made the money. he laughed and said or they became president. time, he just thrown out the first to the nationals game a few days before. i told him that one of my first cousins from indiana had married the catcher for the nationals. i told george bush about that connection, the fami

resource study of the george w. bush childhood home located at 1412 west ohio avenue, midland, texas, and for other purposes. the speaker pro tempore: the question is will the house suspend the rules and pass the bill. members will record their votes by electronic device. this is a five-minute vote. [captioning made possible by the national captioning institute, inc., in cooperation with the united states house of representatives. any use of the closed-captioned coverage of the house proceedings for political or commercial purposes is expressly prohibited by the u.s. house of representatives.] the speaker pro tempore: the yeas are 382, the nays are 4. two are recorded as present. 2/3 being in the affirmative, the rules are suspended, the bill is passed and without objection, the motion to reconsider is laid on the table. the speaker pro tempore: the house will be in order. embers, please clear the well. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from new york seek recognition? >> mr. speaker, i ask unanimous consent that the committees on homeland security and energ

final months of the reagan presidency and then worked with president george h w bush, bill clinton, george w. bush, barack obama, and now donald trump. if you have a particularly close relationship with any of the presidents? rep. duncan: all of them were very nice to me. president reagan did an ad for me when i was first running. we did it at the white house. i don't think they would even do that now. i went to -- i got to go because i was sworn in on november 9, i got to go to presdient reagan's final reception for the congress. i remember walking away with congressman don sundquist, and he asked me how it was going, and i said it was great i am up to 75% of the vote now. i got to fly on air force one several times. i have, i guess, a lot of stories about that. i remember one time flying with george w. bush. i told him that when i was in law school, they said the a students made the professors, b students made the judges, and c students made the money. when i said c students made the money, he laughed and said or they became president. another time, i was flying with him and he just thrown

. continually receiving bipartisan support. both former presidents george w. bush and barack obama supported the program's authorization and subsequent re-authorizations respectfully, and i'm very proud to say this bill has continued in that rich tradition of bipartisan support here in the 115th congress. with the 150th anniversary of our nation's founding fast approaching, there's no better time to protect our battlefields for the influx of visitors that are expected during that time. so i'd like to thank chairman bishop, the minority, our hardworking natural resources committee staff and the american battlefield trust all for helping us get this bill across the finish line. with that, mr. speaker, i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields. the gentleman from arizona is recognized. mr. gallego: mr. speaker, i yield myself such time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. gallego: thank you, mr. speaker. i rise in support of h.r. 6108, which authorizes additional funding for the battlefield acquisition grant program. this program has a lo

territories like puerto rico and guam. and the national park service to study whether george w. bush's boy hood home should become a part of the national park system. later in the week a resolution condemning russian aggression against ukraine aggressiveness. when the house returns to session we'll have live coverage here on c-span. >> when the new congress takes office in january, it will have the youngest, most diverse, freshmen class in recent history. new congress, new leaders. watch it live on c-span. starting january 3. trump. i worked firsthand with all four of them. i did tip o'neill's memoirs. i am just publishing right now at this moment. my public affairs is publishing paul volcker's memoirs. tip and paul are two of the most splendid human beings alive. one of the things that's most fascinating to me is the opportunity to work with these folks, not as an employee, but a partner. i've been able to really engage them in ways that i wouldn't if i was a reporter, which i once was. or as i was an employee which i am not. i'm trying to make something happen for them. there's an elemen

at the national cathedral he and washington, d.c., former president george w. bush eulogized his father. our familiesnd thank you for being here. i once heard it said of man the idea is to die young as late as possible. [laughter] 85, a favorite pastime of george h.w. bush, was firing up his boat and opening up the horsepower engines to fly across the atlantic with the secret service boats straining to keep up. at age 90, george h.w. bush parachuted out of an aircraft and landed in maine. the church where his mom was married and where he worshiped often. liked to say he chose a vocation just in case the chute did not open. delight0's, he took when his closest pal james baker smuggled a bottle of grey goose vodka into his hospital room. [laughter] it paired well with the state delivered from morton's. dad's life was, instructive. he taught us how to grow with humor and kindness. when the good lord finally have courage and joy with the promise of what lies ahead. one reason dad knew how to die young is you most did twice. aen he was a teenager staph infection almost took his life.

wrapped up in the eulogy delivered by former president and son george w. bush. >> distinguished guests including our presidents and first ladies, government officials, foreign dignitaries and friends. we and our families thank you all for being here. man thatard it said of the idea is to die young as late as possible. at age 85 a favorite pastime of george h.w. bush was firing of his boat, the fidelity, and opening up the three 300 horsepower engines to fly, joyfully fly across the atlantic with the secret service folks straining to keep up. at age 90, george h.w. bush parachuted out of an aircraft and landed on the grounds of saint anne's by the sea in kennebunkport, maine. the church where his mom was married and where he worshiped often. mother liked to say that he chose the location just in case the chute didn't open. [laughter] in his 90's, he took great delight when his closest pal, james a. baker, smuggled a bottle of grey goose vodka into his hospital room. apparently it paired well with the steak that baker had delivered from morton's. to his very last days, dad's life was ins

say that he and his wife barbara were two of the brightest. our hearts >> the remains of george w. bush made its way. bush to the capital to lie in state.

speeches from members. on today's agenda offshore wind farms and considering whether to mark george w. bush's birth place as a part of the national park system. live to the floor of the house. the speaker pro tempore: the house will come to order. the prayer will be offered by the chaplain, father conroy. chaplain conroy: let us pray. dear lord, we give you thanks for giving us another day. at the beginning of a new workweek, we use this moment to be reminded of your presence, to tap the resources needed by the members of this people's house to do their work as well as it can be done. may they be led by your spirit in the decisions they make. may they possess your power as they steady themselves amid the pressures of persistent problems. may their faith in you deliver them from tensions that make fruitful legislative work difficult and from worries that might wear them out. all this day and through the week, may they do their best to find solutions to pressing issues facing our nation. may all that is done this day be for your greater honor and glory, amen. the speaker pro tempore: the chair has ex

neighbor. honor our 41st .resident, george h w bush president bush dedicated his entire life to public service. as a vocation first in the military, then as a member of congress, a diplomat, director of the cia, vice president and finally, president. it is a record of service reminiscent of john quincy adams and unmatched in nearly a century. we thank you oh god for having endowed president bush with hisesse oblige and ask that service to others might be an inspiration to all americans, indeed to all the world. as we continue this celebration of honor, grant that all who attend to these proceedings might be desirous of being our best selves in service to all of our brothers and sisters as you might call us to be. dear lord, thank you for inspiring such greatness in president george h.w. bush and continue to bless the united states of america. amen. >> 30 years ago, on the west front of this capital, george herbert walker bush addressed the nation for the first time as our president. meet on the front porch of democracy come a good place to talk as neighbors and as friends. servants of

legislation directing the national park service to study whether george w. bush's boy hood home in midland, texas, should become part of the national park system. later in the week, a resolution condemning russian aggression against ukrainian ships last month. also possible the house could vote this week on the farm bill and a government spending bill. when the house returns to session, we'll have live coverage here on c-span. 40eu7 thank you for being our guest this week. it's a busy week. your part of the world with stock market that's within dwiffing people lots of heartache -- giving people lots of heartache and also we have new job numbers this morning that suggest that unemployment is holding steady at near decades low rates, 3.7%. the job picture seems to be slowing. lots to talk this week. let me introduce the two reporters asking questions first time on newsmakers, kate davidson covers the fed for the "wall street journal" and jeff stein, "washington post." thanks for being here. we'll start with you, kate, and follow up on the job numbers. kate: neal, i would love to know

committee, we worked on clear skies legislation. president george bush, george w. bush, the son of george herbert walker bush, he had proposed clear skies legislation. as i recall, senator alexander and i, maybe along with senator voinovich of ohio, worked on something i call really clear skies. and much has been made of the -- of late of the environmental record of richard nixon. and i never thought i would be extolling the virtues of richard unemployment compensation as our president, but i have quite a bit in the last several years as the senior democrat on the environment and public works committee. i'm the only democrat i know who quotes richard nixon. nixon said, among other things, he used to say -- what did he used to say -- the only people who don't make mistakes are people who don't do anything. isn't that good? the only people who don't make mistakes are people who don't do anything. and we all make mistakes. i have probably learned more from my mistakes than the things i have done right. but the environmental legacy -- people talk about the environmental legacy of richa

went through it with the george w. bush administration and the obama administration, when congress changed hands and it was the opposite party, they learned a lot of lessons of things they should do. hire more staff is the number one thing. the white house is already understaffed. they needed to higher more staff -- they needed to hire more staff and staff who would be separate from everyone else that are just dealing with the investigations. you heard some people say that they wished that emmett flood who worked in the george w bush administration would be the , white house counsel. he was not chosen but some were lobbying president trump to choose him. just because he knew about this. he will still be at the white house dealing with the russian investigation, but the investigations will be far greater than the russian investigation. telling staff to hire their own attorneys as opposed to someone in the white house doing that for them. or being their attorney. they would have to hire their own attorney. and then people were saying that they should have had a list and doing their o

that. [laughter] in a letter to barbara and the said iung george w. bush love you with all my heart and to know you love me means my life. how lucky our children will be to have a mother like you. as they will tell you, they surely were. president, bush once visited a children's leukemia ward. 35 years before he and barbara had lost a daughter, robin to the disease. in krakow, a young boy wanted to meet the american vice president. sick,ng the child was bush began to cry. to his diary, later that day, the vice president said this: my eyes flooded with tears and behind me were television cameras, i thought i cannot turn around, i cannot dissolve because of personal tragedy in the face of nurses that give of themselves every day. so i stood there looking at this little guy, tears running down my cheek, hoping he would not see, but if he did hoping he would feel that i loved him. that was the real george w. bush . big,ing man with a vibrant, all enveloping hearts. so we asked as we commit his did, whyod, and as he him, why was he spared? the workings of providence are mysterious. this

congress, distinguished guests, but most of all, president george w. bush, governor jeb bush, neil, marvin, doro and the entire bush family, it is deeply humbling to stand before you today at the beginning of a week when we will commemorate and celebrate the lifetime of service and leadership of the 41st president of the united states, president george herbert walker bush. the bible tells us to mourn with those who mourn and grieve with those who grieve. on behalf of the first family, my family, and the american people, we offer our deepest sympathies and respects to your family. we thank you for sharing this special man with this nation and the world. today, president bush becomes the 32nd american to lie in state in the united states capitol rotunda. soon, americans from every corner of the country and walk of life will make their way to this rotunda to pay respects. on the death of abner, it was written that king david said to you not realize that a great commander and man has fallen in israel this day? george herbert walker bush was such a man. he was known as the quiet man, bu

what they have now. who haveg to people gone through this in the past, with the george w. bush administration and the obama administration, when congress changed hands, they learned a lot of lessons of things they should do. hire more staff is the number one things. the white house is already understaffed. staffeeded more staff and who were separate from everyone else that are just dealing with the investigation. you heard some people say that they wished that emmett flood would be the white house counsel. he was not chosen but some were lobbying president trump to choose him. he will still be at the white house dealing with the russian investigation, but the investigations will be far greater than the russian investigation. telling staff to hire their own attorneys as opposed to someone in the white house doing that for them. thatpeople were saying they were doing their own research on themselves, what are the areas of vulnerability for them. one in the news was how ivanka trump was using private email to do government business, things they could have started to research and get their ducks

by george h. w. bush since the national governor's summit in 1989, and that includes charter schools. in 1991 and 1992, president bush encouraged every community to create start from scratch schools, he called them. and many did. he created new american schools development corporation with the help of deputy education secretary david kearns, raised about $70 million and gave grants to that. my last act as education secretary for president bush was to try one these new charter schools at the minnesota democratic labor party created, there were only ten at the time. that was 1992. those start from scratch schools suggested by president george h.w. bush are about 5,000 or about 5% of all the public schools in america. and then school choice. i began with a story of his walking across the south lawn to nouns the g.i. bill for kids to give money for states an districts for school -- and districts for schools. they didn't appropriate the money for school choice, but his advocacy, his persistent advocacy using the bully pulpit gave us school choice, charity schools, all of that and the diff

. president george w. bush, former senator alan simpson, and former canadian prime minister brian mulroney gave eulogies. ♪ ♪ ♪ [music playing] [drumming] >> present arms. ♪ ["hail to the chief" playing] ♪ [music playing] ♪ >> with faith in jesus christ, we receive the body of our brother, george, for burial. let us pray with confidence to god, the giver of life, that he will raise him to the perfection in the company of the saints. deliver your servant, george, o sovereign lord christ, from all evil and set him free from every bond, that he may rest with all your saints in the eternal habitation where with the father and the holy spirit you live and reign, one god forever and ever, amen. >> let us also pray for all who mourn, that they may cast their care on god and know the consolation of his love. almighty god, look with pity upon the sorrows of your servants for whom we pray. remember them, gracious god in , mercy, nourish them with patience, comfort them with a sense of your goodness, lift up your countenance upon them and give them peace through jesus christ our lord. ame

thereafter. thank you all. thank you. >> and the family of george h w bush. he was a great friend of canada. i like to also begin by congratulating president of argentina for his leadership and stewardship of the g20 over the past 12 months. it has been a very productive year. argentina focused on priorities, which are priorities for us all. the future of work, infrastructure developing. and sustainable food. these priorities aligned well with those of the g-7 summit in quebec last june where we worked hard to create economic systems that benefit everyone and strengthen the middle class. i would like to congratulate argentina for bringing a perspective of gender equality to our talks. we know that our economies and society are stronger when women are full and equal participants. over our today's here, i have reiterated canada's commit bits to multilateralism, on trade, on climate, and other challenges we share. indeed, no country can solve global problems on its own. we need to work together. offers us a critically important forum for doing so. as you may know, canada played a leadin

. >> i would like to start by offering a tribute to president george h w bush. today we remember a great statesman and a true friend of britain. we send our deepest condolences to the american people and to his family. congratulate the president on the hosting of the summit. but i minister to visit the summit, i'm grateful for the welcome i have received paid this is an important milestone in the relationship between the you can't argentina. yesterday president macron and i held productive talks on the way .orward in our partnership agreement oned an an air link, a move that shows what you can achieve when we work together. has been clear about to importance of g20 international economic cooperation's. the g20 brings together countries that collectively constitute 85% of gross products. it is a vital form in which we can work together to achieve strong sustainable and balanced growth. this has been a productive summit. we make strong commitments to work together on a range of areas, including reform of the wto and making a global economy that works for everyone. we also discussed k

across the finish line. president george w. bush learned the hard way because nancy pelosi blocked several free-trade agreements until barack obama was elected. they added some things that she wanted, she has shown in the past that she has been able to get things that republicans don't want attached to things that they do. in 2007, when george bush needed iraq, shee surgeon ultimate the cave but she added a two dollar minimal wage increase. she understands leverage, i have covered her before. she is probably going to look at this as a leverage opportunity when it comes to the floor. d.c.,in washington, independent, go ahead. caller: i'm calling because there is a couple of calls i want to respond to. we are talking about kentucky and alabama, these are all states that receive more in federal government handouts. welfare, medicare, medicaid, government programs. our deep red conservatives, the ones that love to tout that it is the immigrants that are taking -- takers and not givers. these are the states that receive more from the federal government in terms of medicare, that they do

q&a, allman jenkins talks about his work and politics during the truck era. >> i think he wants to be the attention. i don't think he is a racist. he sees everyone as either a friend or enemy. you can change categories very easy. because no grudges. the america first thing is an idea that i think he holds dear. that our country has been shortchanged and is doing with the rest of the world and not reflecting trade policy and integration house a. hurt peoplehat have in middle america. tonight, at 8:00 eastern on c-span's q&a. ally view of the u.s. capitol from the mall here in washington dc as the partial government shutdown continues. day two, affecting an estimated 800,000 federal workers. this is new york magazine, think you for being with us. this is about john kelly. this is the impossible job. kelly. "johnite the following -- kelly -- host: explain. after the first chief of staff was fired, who were close a lot of people advisers to the president, like a ivanka trump, jared kushner, felt like they needed someone would bedvise, and he able to instill a sense of order, get rid of the chaos, stop the leak in, giving way to the sense of chaos and paranoia. look backhink you can a couple months from now and say he has been successful. there are too many people for their to be powerful entries about. think a couple of the chaotic news cycles, a couple of the stories circle around him, and you have to wonder about mick mulvaney. why would anyone take this job? host: he appeared on nbc this morning, telling jonathan karl chief of staff daley white house staff, he is not going to change the president. guest: right. there is an old saying from the campaign folks "let trump be tru mp," that is the way to manage keep him is the way to happy. people who abide by vacuu that survived longer. at the same time, i do not think it will protect mick mulvaney. when there is a negative news cycle, the president can get things done, which is usually the case. outside to view people a havingst wing inherentlys more value to him, he makes more phone calls to the outside kitchen cabinet and seeks their advice, because when you are around him, you can be blamed. host: let us put this in perspective, a piece you wrote back in october is titled "my private oval office press conference with donald trump, mike pence, john kelly, and mike pompeo." explain what happened. guest: [laughs] i was interviewing john kelly -- host: when he was going to stay in chief of staff. guest: why hasn't he been fired yet? there were stories constantly about how the president and him heads, theng president offered the job to gary cohen, to steve mnuchin, the treasury secretary, to the chief of staff of mike pence. so why hasn't he been replaced yet? how has he managed to hang on? that was the question i was trying to answer. i was in the white house during the interviews, and i was on my way out, i got called back and by sarah huckabee sanders, the and she had ay, veritable clown all of officials from the administration coming to talk to me, to try to talk me at of the story, that it is andly oiled machine, everything is going well, they would not be replacing john kelly, he was not looking for a replacement, he confirmed what the white house had previously said that he was staying on until 2020. you know that is not the case. and they made other statements which is not true, based on what i know. host: our guest is olivia nuzzi, washington correspondent for "new york magazine." you will be working on the 2020 campaign? guest: yes, myself and my co-author will be on the trail. host: the government shutdown, the president said he will take the mantle for the shutdown. he is now blaming the democrats. how is this resolved? guest: i thinkguest: that is what everyone would like to know. it does not look very positive for the president. it looks like an exercise under which a lot of people will be affected, government workers over the holidays not being paid, working without pay, tsa agents, other necessary personnel. everyone being sort of where they were before this started. this is bush third shutdown since he has taken office. he has not going -- this is the third shutdown since yet taken office. $5is not going to get billion for the border wall. nancy pelosi said democrats will not help him get whatever he wants. now he says it is a democrats shutdown. look what they did. host: you think this could go until january 3? guest: i don't know. i think it is possible. i try not to make productions about trump washington. i have not fared very well in the past doing that. [laughs] host: let's get to the phone lines. caller: hi. thank you for taking my call. fast it is a strong, decision. the border wall is a harmful idea. . on thelook up "idiot" computer, a picture of donald trump comes up. it is because of his actions and policies. i saw that on twitter a lot of people asked about this issue. please answer it if it is possible. host: the question if the border wall is necessary. mitch mcconnell said democrats supported a type of border wall back in 2006, and senator chuck schumer said that is not the case. guest: half of this finding that the president is requesting thed be going to repairing border wall that is already there. would go toit constructing new portions of the wall. i think that the reason why democrats cannot support this, even if they didn't support some sort of barrier in the past, is because it has just become associated with this sort of hateful worldview that the president has been perpetuating since he started running for office. it is an impossible position for any democrat right now to support funding border wall. host: this is the headline from your colleague, jonathan chait made theox news white house shutdown the government." guest: the right-wing talkshow host, radio host, have been encouraging this for four democrats take over and control the house. i think what is different now rather than the past is that they came together to criticize the president. previously, some alike and culture, who wrote -- previously, someone like and coulter, who wrote above, criticize, he sat with her on her own. rushs different because limbaugh, jon hamm -- sean hannity. host: we should point out that was a part of the initial negotiation, a deal on daca. let's go back to your phone calls. jeffrey is joining us from michigan. good morning. you are on the air. caller: i was wondering if this lady is saying that donald trump has gotten nothing done. reform, record low unemployment for a lot of people, a lot of people getting more money in their pockets, and i think this country is safer now. i mean, i'm not know where this lady is coming from. thank you very much host: thank you. know quite how to respond to this, but i would say the caller is correct, he did get tax reform through. other legislative items he has tried to get through, like trumpcare, has stalled. he has a cloud by the mueller investigation, the other investigations in new york, a news story that is just devastating about the mueller michael:tion, the c.h.i.p.tion, and reform should have been what the focus should have been on, the border wall, not the government shutdown, and i think it has been a negative for the president. when you were in the oval office, and you have president, the vice president, the secretary of state, the white house chief of staff coming in and out, what was going through your head? because you had not planned on that, correct? guest: no. the oval i walked into office originally, they were not and then the president came in, and then everybody else came in. point, i joked "should i be expecting my mother to come in next?" it felt a bit like an intervention of sorts. i wanted to get him talking. i wanted to get him on the record on as many different subjects as i possibly could, so i tried to be strategic about when i interjected with , i mades and follow-ups sure to speak with a very consciousness sort of way, and i wanted him to talk to me. they try to stop the interview from continuing. host: let's get back to phone calls. john is next from columbus, indiana. good morning. caller: good morning. how are you guys doing this morning? host: we are great. merry christmas. caller: i have a couple of comments. my family used to be lifeline democrats, but people like chuck schumer and nancy pelosi have just destroyed the party, and it even aims like this young lady here, she is damning the president, and it seems like the first person who has ever even tried to help the people. if the democrats would get back somebody decent instead, they want to fight, they want to downgrade you really, ma'am, need to think about what you say. y'all have a good evening. should point out senator bob corker says he has some doubts as to whether or not the president will run for reelection in 2020. we should point out he is stepping down in 2020. . spot to the caller's comments? guest: i suppose whether or not robert mueller files this report, that could change things, but you cannot imagine assessing this race in front of him and looking at on theld, which is vast other side and does not seem to have a clear front runner or who the obvious nomination should be. i cannot imagine looking at that and saying "i am not even in the race," but i just want to say it is not partisan to note that the president has had tremendous difficulty getting things done. it is not partisan to criticize the president for the way he speaks. that is a problem with that since the election, since before the election, where people think any sort of criticism of the president is partisan somehow. it is not. host: you can assume the outgoing and incoming chief of staff will have a conversation, in terms of john kelly giving mick mulvaney some advice. based on your reporting in your interviews, what do you think he is telling him? guest: i think about that a lot. i thought about it the other day when he was photographed shaking his hand in the driveway of the white house, these two men, and i wondered -- what could they be talking about? i imagine he would caution him about leaks. one of the ways john kelly tried to change the west wing was to try to lessen the number of leaks, something that i think contributed to this environment of paranoia. assuming that everything you say will be distributed to the press, maybe before the interview is even over. that does not really create a happy, healthy work environment. john kelly was not ultimately successful in stopping those leaks, even though many people were fired who were suspected of leaking. i assumed that he would caution him about that, perhaps caution him about how best to speak to the president early on. reporting, kelly did not understand the way that the president speaks. he suggests a of things and he complains about a lot of things, but that does not mean he wants to do anything. kushner,ump and jared maybe they should just go home to new york. is not necessarily mean that he wants to send them home to new york. understanding that. takes some time. . host: let me share a tweet with the president, brett mcgurk announced he would step down early. the president writing "brad miller, who i did not know, was inointed by president obama 2015," calling him a grandstand such a big deal about this nothing event. why wouldn't he have known him? guest: right, that was the question, and this happens a lot with the president on twitter, that he is making it look like he has nothing to do with a decision, and in doing so, he raises more questions about his level of awareness in his administration. i do not know why he would send or why helike that would admit to not knowing something like that, but i think the way he thinks about how we all perceive him is very different than the way people in washington and journalists tend to think. host: "the only way to stop drugs, gangs, human trafficking from coming into the united states is a barrier. fun, but it is only a good old-fashioned wall that works." good morning. caller: good morning. want to say it seems like that lady does not like donald trump. i lived by the order, and i can ,ee all the things going wrong people coming into the united illegal, and by the time they come over here, they go to get all of the benefits. here dopeople who live not get them. there is something wrong with this picture. i am sorry, but i do not, this lady, she seems to not like donald trump. apparently she is a democrat. i used to be a democrat, too. i left them, because they are not doing anything for the people. host: we will get a response. thank you for the call. guest: as i said before, i do not think it is partisan to criticize the president, and i do not think it is a serious argument that anyone who disagrees with the president or has any negative assessments of the way he behaves or speaks is a democrat. says andt true that he does a lot of unprofessional, unusual, sometimes objectionable things, and that is not a liberal view. it is just a reality-based view. host: to a radio audience, our guest is olivia nuzzi, the washington correspondent for "new york magazine." you can check out her work online. randy is next from alabama. good morning. caller: hi. ask thejust like to lady in question. host: you are on the air. go ahead. caller: everything is wrong in washington has to do with the news reporters. they can't tell the truth. why should people listen to this lady sitting up here talking? thank you. that is all i have to say. guest: have a good day. "this lady" is like my new legal name after this show. [laughs] guest: my writing is about the people in the white house. i tried to write insightful he about the people who work in the administration, the president. and it is not motivated by an ideology. it is motivated by a worldview, but it is very clear i am not a partisan person. host: in one of the pieces that you wrote, "donald trump hates christmas parties." guest: [laughs] you are not helping me out here with your viewers. he said to several white house officials over the last weeks who told me about the president complaining about having to stand in these long lines, shake hands, and take photos with supporters. in his defense, he does to christmas parties on two days each week with 600 guests. juoked that this is the most relatable thing i have heard about donald trump, that he does not like to suffer through christmas parties and make small talk with people he barely knows. they cut down on the photo lines , those for secret service and law enforcement, to try to a him, and iease heard he was much happier last year. --t: the first secretary in the first defense secretary in the history of our country to resign in protest. what does this mean? guest: the security team has to do with the president's stated worldview. he talked about how critical he was on interventions on foreign affairs. he criticized barack obama, he criticized even george w. bush, and he talked about isolationist foreign policy. then people under him, jim bolto, or john there is a split between what the president says and seems to believe and the people who surround him, more establishment, washington background. at this point, who knows who mattis, and he will be looking for someone like john bolton, certainly, based on what differences you had with the president as well. he is a more interventionist. more he will be looking for someone like rand paul or if he is just looking for someone to say yes to him, even if they do not believe him. you think this town is going to look like in january, with the democrats in control of the house? speaker of the house nancy pelosi under a lot of pressure to begin impeachment proceedings. she is trying to resist that. we have the molar report coming out, reportedly, in mid-february. point these, including -- withrior and the cabinet appointees, including the interior and defense department. guest: i think going forward is contentious, he will be fighting a lot with congress, fighting a lot with nancy pelosi, and fighting off a lot of inquiries. they will try to get his tax returns. they will be looking at the numbers of administration cabinet officials. i think it will be a very contentious environment here. host: finally, with your reporting, when you were talking to folks in the white house, do you find them to be open? how are you able to get your sources? a source in this white house is a bit like adopting a terminally ill dog. the second you get it to trust you, it dies. everybody has been fired or resigned so far . it is difficult. to build acult relationship, establish trust, wonder if anyone who tells you the truth, and you find someone, you wonder if they are going to stick around. certain people, it is not always telling the truth or at least not actively lying to you, but it is difficult, and you have to really be careful with whose words you have taken, who you check it with, and my old rule about having two different sources and confirming does not really fly here. you need more like a dozen sources. "an irony of the kelly era is that even though those around the president who had been desperate for help supervising him, like jared kushner trump, whenever able to get over difficulties with kelly. it just moved further and further out of view." guest: early on, there were concerns about reince priebus, sean spicer, advisors for the president, things like that, fighting with each other. conventional republicans, even some democrats who worked there, and more breitbart type of worldview that people like steve bannon have. it is less clear how the divide still a lothere is of testimony there. bunkerink there is a mentality that has taken hold, especially over the last 8, 10 months. that makes it less likely that speak againstll each other and want their drama spelling out in the press. >> soon to be at with a book after the campaign. when do you think it will be out? >> >> this week, join washington journal for authors week, featuring one live segment with a new author, beginning at a: 30 in eastern, monday, the author, or in cap. -- orren. it'sdnesday, allender show derschowitz talks about his book. the book " sex matters." chris.ay, the author, eek",us for "author's w each morning on washington journal. >> president trump i melania trump take part in the national christmas tree lighting. ornaments fromre in theate, territory country. calvin coolidge lit the first tree back in 1943. president trump: merry christmas everyone. merry christmas. it is great to be with you. let's like the tree. the first lady will do the -- let's light the tree. we will do it in reverse. 10, 9, 8,

a republican, and he autographed a poster for me, which we auction off at my first or second fundraiser in san antonio . i had a friend pay $1000 for that poster, it was the biggest contribution we have had so far. and he had the autographed from jimmy stewart, and has the poster at his house today. so that brings back happy memories, too. >> representatives. >> lamarr smith and michael capuano, on c-span and c-span.org, and listen on the free c-span app. >> michael still very is at our table, he is a senior fellow and director of the house and is that you'd center for middle east strategy, and also farmers rush assistant for middle eastern affairs during the george w. bush administration. thank you for being here, mr. pillsbury. -- george h.w. bush administration. president trump has called you the leading authority on china. what is your background? guest: i was born in california, that is why i am naturally friendly. i went to stanford and got a phd from columbia university, and was sent to study chinese were a couple of years. in those days, everyone thought that was insane. that china was poor, backward, angry, and seen as the cause of the vietnam war. there is a secretary of state when i was an undergraduate that said we are fighting in vietnam because a billion chinese will be coming south into the rice bowl of asia, so why not study chinese, is what i thought. this is the great enemy of our time. everything changed beginning with president nixon and pushed further by president h w bush. now we are shifting back towards seeing china as wary. knowing mandarin chinese and having this expensive education has been helpful. i'm no longer thought of as being completely insane. host: would you describe china as the great enemy today? not.: certainly our cooperation outweighs our competition. president trump has a different vision of china. he first wrote about it in a book 18 years ago. you can still buy his book called "the america we deserve." he says china is the greatest challenge our country will face. he is not angry and hostile in a military manner. he is talking about trade, the economy being ripped off by technology. it is prophetic. have you spoken to him? guest: i would not say spoken to. he questions me. he has tough questions and will basically want to know how the chinese think about various subjects. many times talked about the chinese saying to me they are afraid of him because of the tariffs. they have translated these discussions of china in his past books. one. is more than in one book he says to get leverage on the world's best, negotiators what he calls the chinese, i need to be unpredictable and put them off balance. he has succeeded. they often say, "he is the smartest president we have ever had to deal with." they give the reasons why.i tend to see this phase of president trump's relationship with china as unique. it is different than the original opening with president nixon and dr. kissinger. period.n a new there has been a lot of national security cooperation with china and the 2 economies are close together. the american side is feeling a little exploited. if you do an overly inflammatory metaphor, one person said to me, "this is like going on a date with a known rapist." this is all being covered on the front page of our newspapers. the strong bipartisan support for what trump is doing, nancy pelosi was one of the early critics of china, especially over the tiananmen incident. her relationship with the dalai lama. she took the lead to get him a congressional medal of honor and brought him to washington many times. chuck schumer, senator schumer, endorsed the tariffs the same day the president trump put them on. in this period of harmony and andor, the relationship policy towards china is a very example of bipartisan cooperation. you even saw this yesterday with senator warner saying huawei is an arm of the government. senator marco rubio said the same thing. this is a change from the china i have observed over the last 40 years. these conversations with the president, where are they, how do they come about, and what questions does he ask? guest: in the white house in his office and he has his advisors. i am not allowed to talk about the discussions or this would be my last visit to the oval office, but he is a sophisticated student of china. he has 12 to 14 hours with president xi jinping. he has a great deal of phone calls back and forth. sometimes president xi calls him, sometimes he calls president xi. the calls, according to the people present, are often an hour-long. this is a very rich relationship. i think it will easily manage an event like concerned everyone yesterday, the arrest of mrs. meng. host: let's talk about that. is thethis company, what fallout? guest: you are like president trump. [laughter] that 100 yearook marathon i have a discussion of the national champions system. in violation of their agreements with a joined the world trade organization, the chinese government and communist party will pick out a sector or company and nurturing with what for international norms would be illegal. they will spy for the company around therets from world. they will provide illegal subsidies to the company. 's case, the founder is a military officer. a couple of senators yesterday used the term "arm of the chinese government." they have roughly 100 companies called national champions. companya 35-year-old that was nothing when it began. they claim by their hard work espionage orith no subsidies. they have surpassed apple in sales of smartphones and turned into the world's second-largest telecom company. isn't that nice? that is no longer what experts think about huawei. the arrest, the request for extradition and presenting the evidence to the canadian authorities by the department of justice was providing the details, which could be revealed today. mrs. meng, according to canadians, will have a bail today. the judge will have to decide how bad it is. what is the bail? will he take her passport? will he leave her in jail? will he let her simply go back to china? the story tomorrow will be with a canadian judge decides on the evidence. the chinese do not see it that way. they have been on the phone with me and are very angry. "this is a human rights violation," the spokesperson said. she does not know what the charge is. a wonderful newspaper in china called "globalist times." attacking america all the time. the head of it is a friend of mine. he is territorial that this is an american plot to damage huawei because of huawei's growth. huawei is totally innocent and likeed the term that means hooligan behavior by the united states and canada. you can expect pressure on canada, too. you violated her human rights and let her go today. of the canadians will implement the rule of law in their agreements as well. host: what are they charging her with? guest: no one knows. one senator thought it was violation of the iran sanctions. was that thentator u.s. provided technology along the way. we used to say the national champion thing was good, why not? if they have technology mrs. men g may have signed an agreement "we will not transmit this to iran or north korea." this is pure speculation, but if she violated that that would justify the canadians detaining her. summit with the chinese president, the tariff truce. guest: it is a test of the relationship between president trump and president xi. the white house has made it clear that president trump did not know about this in advance. host: the arrest? guest: the arrest. this opens a challenge for the chinese side. they have conspiratorially thinking. this cannot be. he must have known as we sat down for dinner this arrest was taking place. i call that giving red meat to the conspiratorially thinkers in beijing. president trump has a lot of critics. they tend to jump on any little thing that goes wrong. i have noticed a cackle funnier voices, he has ruined the trade talks. how good he arrest mrs. meng. she is so prominent in china and this is terrible. the trade talks, according to a chinese statement yesterday, that the president tweeted last night, he says i agree with the statement, the chinese commerce ministry is saying we are confident there will be a good outcome of the talks within 90 days. the teams are working together already. it took some time for president xi and his team to get home. they stopped important goal. they stayed in argentina. they stayed in panama. there has not been immediate results since the dinner last saturday for good reason. i am quite confident this is not going to affect the trade talks. the criticism of president trump seems to be whenever there is an opportunity everyone has to attack can. him. host: the markets don't seem to like the back and forth either. is anotherpowell factor, but the huge drop began to as the market realize it is not as bad as it sounds and the president did not know, and in the chinese statement last night, stunning. president trump's reelection to some degree will hang on his promises. this is one of his biggest promises. he will fix the u.s.-china trade issue and he is well on his way to doing so. china, "theent from teams of both sides are having with eachmunication other. we are in full confidence an agreement can be reached in 90 ." s "i agree," says the president. says this ison inexcusable and executives should not travel. cis who sayss at if i was an american high-tech executive i would not be traveling to china now because they will take a hostage and try to have hostage negotiations.there is a one in 10,000 chance , but i would not advise american high-tech executives to not visit china. the prime minister of china two weeks ago announced, we will open our market wider than the last 40 years. they have been reducing the negative list. you cannot invest in the negative list sectors. that has been reduced so there are more investment possibilities and china. caution is needed. steal, they still break agreements. i am optimistic about the u.s.-china agreement, and so is president trump. host: hi, matthew. caller: good morning, c-span. hurting ournow, economy by starting a war with china. this war is an obvious mistake. think [indiscernible] guest: i just finished explaining my optimism. i don't think there is any declaration of economic war against china. we have to be careful that people want to refight the election. if you know a commentator or expert supporting hillary clinton or bernie sanders and they make a harsh comment, "president trump is starting an economic war with china," you have to correct. that is not a trump campaign supporter. the chinese will be able to do this. there are three chinese experts on american politics i know well . they are quite sophisticated about the nature of our debates, the supreme court. don'tof americans i meet have the sophistication of these high-level analysts in beijing who advise president xi. he is not an ignoramus who does not know much about what is going on in our politics. host: are you a trump supporter? guest: i was on the transition team. i supported a different candidate in the beginning. on the transition team in trump towers when i came to realize that he had a long list of campaign promises and was quite them.s about implementing i cannot claim to be a trump supporter from the beginning, but i am an admirer now, especially when the chinese express such admiration for him. good morning. i won't ask how you are because you are on live tv and you have probably answer that already. what do we do to influence china to be a moral influence in the world, and has that improved with this president of china? what is his attitude towards being a moral leader as a global power, and is it improving, or do we see it getting worse with him? guest: excellent question. i don't know the answer. i can tell you in my book i tried to calculate how much money and effort to we put into making china think more about democracy, following the rule, what you refer to as being a moral leader. this is the second biggest economy in the world. it looks like our democracy budget, democracy, human rights, freedom of religion, is very small. under $50 million a year. very few people are involved. there are very few programs. for example, the department of justice administers to strengthen a chinese bar association. they have a journal in china "alled "the rule of law journal to invite our judges to me chinese judges. impact.bably has some it seemed to have an impact in the environmental area. they did not have an environmental protection agency at all going back to the 1980's. with american funding they created an environmental protection agency and raised its higher.gher and they had none of this in the 1980's. these programs have some positive effect. i suspect that ought to be much bigger, even double. we have radio broadcasts in mandarin, voice of america and a radio free mandarin service. this has some influence, but frankly they also watch "house of cards." this feeds the conspiratorial thinking. cards" they are doing each other in, even murders. how the speaker of the house rises to become president. the chinese enjoy the show but think this is how things work in america. meng is arrested in vancouver and the americans say this is a minor law enforcement matter, nothing to do with the president, is not credible to the conspiracy thinkers watching "house of cards." 90-day care of truce, what happens? guest: the truce is not the goal. the goal, this is why the president has named ambassador lighthizer to be the negotiator -- he enjoyed great success in the 1980's in japan under president reagan, who i also worked for -- the idea is to convert the verbal commitments from president xi into a document that would be legally binding. somewhat to call it a treaty, somewhat to call it an agreement -- some want to call it a treaty, some want to call it an agreement. that is the idea. to come up with a written agreement negotiated by our trade attorney, ambassador lighthizer. they have a team. what they were saying in a statement last night at 8:00 p.m. at the president is quoting is that they are confident they can reach an agreement with us within the 90 days. after that, there could be wrangling and bickering if the agreement is being implemented. can get back to cooperation in some areas. there are other issues. the south china sea, human rights violations, the one million islamic leaders, you might call them, in these concentration camps. a long list of issues. the trade deficit can be solved. there has already been discussion of this. we can ask them to double their purchases of american exports. liquefied natural gas, or soybeans, airliners. long way too a helping president trump implement his campaign promise. host: the biggest demand of us. from them on us? we don't have to go through all 10, but what are the big ones? guest: they have complaints against the united states. story.s a very amusing president trump sent a delegation to beijing. everyone was concerned. the secretary of commerce, navarro, theer american side presented the chinese side with a document points subdivided into 24 under each 8. the 142 an annex called points. the chinese promptly leaked this . the american side somehow had the chinese 10 points and made them public. bloomberg ran the whole thing. online you could google the negotiating positions in the list would come up. the phase we are in now is more confidential. there has not been any significant leak of the three-our dinner. host: roger in virginia, democrat. good morning. caller: good morning. my question, you're talking about the deficit -- can you hear me? host: yes. caller: donald trump was part of the trade deficit. guest: how so? caller: look at the jobs he has in china. why not bring some of that back and do away with some of that deficit? host: let's talk about that. guest: i don't think there is a trump hotel in china. host: trump ties being made in china. things made in china. guest: his critics have pointed out when you go into trump tower there is a gift shop to buy souvenirs. you turn them over and of this tie is made in china. products like that are more efficient and inexpensive to manufacture. that is part of the issue of the 2 economies. the economies are so inter-blended. the so-called global production chain. it is difficult to re -source. many companies are doing it now, going to indonesia and india, for manufacturing. a couple went into ivanka t rump's boutique in beijing. ivanka is very popular in china. with's a biography of her her smiling face looking very beautiful on the front cover. positive.book is the idea has been raised in american politics chelsea clinton will someday run against ivanka trump for president. who will win? they think ivanka will defeat chelsea. this is the image we have. the supply chain is part of it. they are very proud so many american products are made in china. host: grand rapids, michigan. caller: good morning, greta. i think you, mr. pillsbury. one comment i have is that i think america has a sanitized is. of who china when i was in school in the 1950's and 1960's it was called red china and it is still a communist country. and think of the chinese as another economic partner, which they are not. they are not our friends. instituteconfucius attached to various universities around the country. those things are very dangerous. thanks for your help to mr. trump. host: we were showing the book while you were talking. go ahead. guest: we are much more wary about china now than the last 40 years. it is what i, with good intentions and my heart, blame this on henry kissinger. he has not changed his mind. kissinger, tory whom i was an advisor, he never backed off the country's enthusiasm for china that began in 1971. that is what the chinese are worried about. they know some of their oldest friends have doubts. they have not yet publicly expressed concerns. on the other hand, you can go too far. there are a number of super hawks, more hawkish than i am. they ignore the cooperation, they ignore the benefits, they ignore the possibility of negotiating with the chinese to get them to reduce their worst abuses. it is good of you to bring up these concerns. i hope you buy "the 100 year marathon." you will find more to raise your concerns about china. the optimism about changing china is still with a lot of people, including me. i think that is one of president trump's goals he. s china to stop the theft and abuse. there is a long list. the chinese are very aware of this list. they are always checking, how much pressure do you have? how much of the congress supports you? how about dr. kissinger, did he see you and explain why you shouldn't do this? we have a policy debate about what to do about china. independent.an caller: good morning. i'm watching with great interest and i will get the book from the library. yes, sir, with respect to you and your years, the japanese in the late 1980's and 1990's were the first group that clued in to the veiled deceptive nature of china. there is a deep antipathy between the 2 nations, but they have clued me in and i have remained resolute that the business of pox -- 1 -- of hawks . one could be forgiven that at times you sound a bit like neville chamberlain. -- aism is a night nice thing. guest: i've never heard that before. there is always a first. the genocide in the 1950's. i want to focus on taiwan and trump. he used taiwan as a bargaining chip to taunt the chinese with no real -- he has thrown them under the bus. declared that the trump administration is going along with the one china policy. taiwan represents something spiritual, financial, and strategic. we have thrown them under the bus again. i reject this. i would like you to respond to taiwan. guest: it is a delight for me to find someone who out hawks me. i get a lot of criticism for washington. in i do not think you are right about throwing taiwan under the bus. president trump has done a number of things the taiwan government has expressed appreciation for. existence depends on having roughly 20 nations recognize their existence as a nation, down from 190 total. less than 20. some of the central american countries, when they began to change sides, president trump sent an envoy and raised objections to the trend. that is not throwing taiwan under the bus. there has been arms sales offered meeting taiwan's requirements which we have to do under the taiwan relations act, but not really. very vague that we would provide weapons to taiwan for self-defense. an aggressive arms sale package to taiwan to insight criticism -- to incite criticism from china. been instances where taiwan has been treated well by president trump. i would not say that i reject your criticism of him, i would just say it is not as bad as you think. the one china policy is not the way that we express it. when president trump made his first official comment as president -- he is very careful -- he said president xi has asked me, at president xi's by our onewill abide china policy. that phrase is different than what china says is the one china principle. the difference is to not accept that the sovereignty of china extends over taiwan. taiwan is in an undetermined category. the united states is following bill clinton, the first to say this, that whatever happens with the final solution on taiwan it has to have the consent of the people of taiwan. that to me implies a referendum. i do not agree with you on throwing taiwan under the bus. he has made it a crusade and tried to tell the chinese you need to be more like taiwan. some presidents have done that. host: what are you watching for over the coming days and weeks on this relationship and negotiations? guest: there are a number of things and play. whether or not the u.s. navy does patrols in the south china sea. that maneuver to keep their weapons radar turned on and launch helicopters during they chinese 12 mile limit. president trump has not done that. innocent passage, it is called. no harm go through in chinese. that has been done since president obama in 2012. challenging the chinese in the south china sea is one area. second, how quickly there are meetings between the delegations. third, when they set another round of visits. visitill president trump beijing and president xi jinping here. here's never made an official state visit. ae mar-a-lago trip was personal session. these are the three to watch. i suspect there will be progress on all three. you can tell that i am an optimist and receiving criticism from the super-hawks. host: >> president trump signed a short-term federal spending bill today funding certain agencies through december 21. the house, senate, an white house have two weeks to work on a package covering homeland security, agriculture and other agencies. watch live coverage of the u.s. house on c-span and see the senate on c-span . host: erik wasson is with us, he's a congressional reporter. now that the president signed a continuing resolution to continue funding, now there's two weeks for

presidents who have been in office sent you have been in the house. george w. bush. also bill clinton. rep. issa: i did have 17 days with bill clinton, but the reality is, he was the first president i got to know as an individual, asking me real questions and answers about issues that we were involved in. i don't want to overplay this, but one time i came back from a trip from the middle east and the white house called and wanted me over there. i went over there and they had specific questions. the president walked in to the situation room and joined in the questions directly. he wanted to know about some of the people i had met over there. that is a pretty profound thing as a lowly congressman who has just come back from a trip to be asked what do you really think because he's trying to develop a view of a couple of leaders in that region. those kind of opportunities, in addition to watching him nonalcoholic beer on the lawn on a non-workday they , create a recognition of the man, who i respect greatly, and of the patriot and commander-in-chief, who i also respect greatly. when i talk abo

george w. bush, president obama. they feltrstand why that way. they were eager to see results. and so they thought, let washington order texas teansd tennesseesin -- and texans and wisconsin to do it. that back fired. as we stepped back and used advocacy instead of as president george h.w. bush understood, we got a more lasting result. so he was well-prepared. gentleman. he was a pioneer in education. some people are suggesting he be the most effective one-term president in our history. he could very well be, if you add it all up. the gulf war, handled like it was. reunification of germany. the successful disintegration of the soviet union. the clean air laws. the americans with disabilities act. pioneering in education with america 2000. balancing the budget. lot to do in four years. james poke is the only one that might give him a run for his money in terms of that accolade. i wish i remember when the gulf war was over. speakesident bush came to to the congress. i'll close with this. i was the -- it was the first to sitd have a chance and listen to a presidential address, as a membe

george w. bush's boy hood home should become a part of the national park system. later in the week a resolution condemning russian aggression against ukraine aggressiveness. when the house returns to session we'll have live coverage here on c-span. >> when the new congress takes office in january, it will have the youngest, most diverse, freshmen class in recent history. new congress, new leaders. watch it live on c-span. starting january 3.

george h. w. bush who died this year and george w. powell,nde rice, colin clarence thomas -- all of these people, black conservatives who are part of the package and part of the intellectual brain trust. you come to this white house, you do not see it. andone exception, omarosa, she leaves in quite this taste, quite angry at the president and then she -- he calls her a dog. our history in this society, calling a black woman a dog has a particularly awful odor to it. to me, it is telling. you saw president george w. bush break records in terms of diversity in his. where is the diversity in this cabinet? acosta -- but in terms of a who is in the white house able to communicate with him at critical moments, there is a vacuum. there is a chapter talking about mention the and i work done by james baldwin and attentionn gets the of the attorney general, robert ase, you and makes the c feel so good, you are democrat, you think you are doing so much to help the civil rights movement along -- here is why, baldwin said, i think you are failing people. kennedy was offended that he would be tol

about the three presidents who have been in house since you have worked. george w. bush. i did have 17 days with bill clinton, but the reality is, he was the first president i got to know as an individual, asking me real questions and answers about issues that we were involved in. i don't want to overplay this, but one time, we came back from a trip and the white house called and wanted me over there. i went over there and they had specific questions. the president walked in to the situation room and joined in the questions directly. he wanted to know about some of the people i had met over there. things a pretty profound as a lowly congressman who has just come back from a trip to be asked what do you really think because he's trying to develop a view of a couple of leaders in that region. those kind of opportunities, in addition to watching him , theyng nonalcoholic beer create a recognition of the man, who i respect greatly, and of the patriot and commander-in-chief, who i also respect greatly. when i talk about tarp at the end and voting differently, that doesn't change the fact th

globalization that -- where you actually had a consensus between bill clinton, george h.w. bush, george w. bush, and certainly elements of my administration, we wanted to get the trans-pacific partnership done, for example. tpp. the consensus around things like free trade. it did not fully address the fact that although net-net, the whole world was doing better because of globalization and the internet and global supply chains, there were folks whose factories were being closed and suddenly found themselves to be redundant workers. you suddenly had a winner take all economy, where back in the 1960's, the ceo may be made 10 times more than the guy on the assembly-line, and now it is 200 times or 300 times. and the capacity of nationstates to regulate global capital so that at least they have some control where they say, let's speed things up, slow things down, let's ease the transition for communities that are being hurt by, whether it is automation or foreign competition, that becomes harder to do because everybody is worried about what their quarterly reports will look like on wall street. now

[captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> the government shutdown is now in its ninth day and congress is out for the weekend. the house and senate will return monday for what is expected to be brief pro forma sessions. the senate meets again wednesday before the start of the new congress, but no votes are scheduled for you to watch live coverage on c-span and of the senate on c-span2. >> are washington journal authors series concludes today with chris mcgreal. his new book, joining us by skype. good morning. you open this story of the american opioid crisis in williamson, west virginia. wyden and why there? guest: one of the things that was most striking to me and my book came out of my report for the guardian, and i talking to people in west virginia which is really a crucible of opioid epidemic and it has by far the highest overdose rates in the country, but one of the things that was really striking to me was that a number of people i spoke to the talked about how they were drawn into addiction through prescribing in the late 1990's and early 2000. i was really struck by the fact that this was an epidemic that had begun under bill clinton's presidency and had run through george bush, george w. bush, and here we were finally at the end of the obama presidency and into the trump presidency before it was able to get the kind of national attention that it needed. i decided to go back and look at where it began. reallyrginia of thelated a whole lot epidemic, but one of them was the beginning of the prescribing of these very powerful drugs for routine pain. which helped to draw people into addiction, but the other reason itlook at williamson was became not only an area in its own right where there were very -- a lot of people became hooked on these drugs, but it became a distribution center for a whole part of apple galati -- appalac hia and beyond. you see the establishment of one of the biggest pill mills in the country, and that came over individual, henry benson, who was an undertaker. he had come out of prison and he had been imprisoned serving four a gay escortning agency in washington dc busted by the secret service and federal government. he was sent back to williamson by his parole officer nbc's a business opportunity in setting up a group of doctors in an industrial warehouse as a technically pain clinic this -- prescribing drugs to just about anybody who wanted them provided they can slap down the cash. eou see williamson become r to forly the place to go a while, for a decade, doctors in this pill williamson medicine it was called, prescribing thousands of prescriptions a day. overdose" is the name of the book. you are a british reporter for "the guardian" newspaper. how is this a uniquely american crisis as you described it? guest: one, it is the scale. there is nowhere else in the world that we are seeing the scale of death that we have seen over the past 20 years. numbers, no one really knows the numbers because particularly opioids, deaths from were often not recorded because of stigma or because they were not recognized. says at least 350,000 people dead. the real figure is probably higher. you're not seeing that in any other country, but the other thing that makes this unique is how it became about. ans is not the result of accident, it was described by a former head of the fda is one of the greatest mistakes in modern american medicine. but it really is not the mistake. theas a strategy by pharmaceutical industry to up -- co-oped medical practice and ensure that these opioid pills became the first stop for treatment. they were very effective in that. ony actually managed to get board not only medical institutions, but they got on board regulators like the fda, they got on board the hospitals, state medical bodies, and the medical p in -- profession in a big way. that comes out in the fact that in the united states, medicine is an industry. in other countries, it is a service. run publicly are very strictly controlled by public bodies. in the united states, it is an industry and really, i think that is what this opioid epidemic was driven by. we are talking about the opioid crisis in america, we usually have phone lines and set up. if you have been impacted by the opioid crisis, (202) 748-8000 is a number, and all others, (202) 748-8001. we are talking with chris mcgreal about his new book "american overdose: the overdose -- opioid tragedy in three acts." this from the washington times, this chart showing the deaths from opioid overdoses since 2017. up from 2000. can you put the overall numbers in perspective over the decades that you study this crisis. guest: they run into the hundreds of thousands. and for most of that time at least for the first 15 years, the single largest numbers were from prescription opioids directly. in the past five or six years, we have seen that change with the rise of deaths from heroin and that has largely been driven by the fact that people have that out the awareness mass prescribing is filtered through the medical profession and there has been a great hesitation, and even some political control on prescribing in some states. towards seen a shift heroin simply because it was available and not because it was cheaper. time, prescription drugs were an easier option. and we have seen the rise of fentanyl and as been introduced but morethen heroin, recently, there is a lot of people using it directly at or without their knowledge. opioidbeen used to fake pills and prescription pills. about are in a situation -- it is estimated that in 2018, about 50,000 people would have died from opioids, and half of 15,000,ll be fentanyl, , and the thing about those numbers is although fentanyl has become a very large number, the number of people dying from prescription opioids has not dropped very specifically, a adjustment overtaken. to showe of their chart ,ou from "the washington times" this map showing the opioid epidemic across america. this is drug overdose rates in each state per hundred thousand residents and you can see the epicenter in west virginia. drug overdoses per 100,000 residents in that state. andsylvania with 44.3 elsewhere. taking your calls this morning as a talk about the opioid crisis in america. those impacted by opioid and all others. kevin is on the line from indiana. caller: hi, good morning. i just had three died throughout the years. soe are high school friends i've always kind of been impacted by and paying attention to it. and seen how old it affects people. i do not know if it is so much an epidemic or an enforcement issue. like i got involved with some local police officers and they went out and started arresting people in the sheriff tells them to slow down because they are all afraid of the gang members and ms-13 and the mexican mafia coming back and getting them for arresting people that are selling drugs. so i do not know if we will ever have a solution, but until we stop the supply and have the right stuff for our cops to do their job, i do not think this will ever go away. host: kevin, thank you for your call. chris mcgreal, your thoughts? guest: i think there are two things going on here. undoubtedly this has now taken on a criminal element, particularly with the rise of heroin and fentanyl. that is a lawn forstmann, that is true. but what has driven this and what has created this, and the reason it is an american instead of a global epidemic is the mass prescribing that has taken place in the united states. you have two things with that. you have the people, because they were prescribed these drugs for relatively low levels of pain or for long periods when they should not have been, or they were prescribed in large doses, you have seen significant numbers of people become dependent on these drugs, even hooked on them, and then they seek to top up because they cannot get everything from prescriptions, on the black market, or their doctors cut back because they are concerned about signs of addiction. you have the mass prescribing driving and although prescribing has fallen from about 20% from its peak, you still have very large numbers of prescriptions being written in this country, so you are still drawing more people into addiction. but then yes, you do have the criminal element, you do have the smuggling of heroin and fentanyl across the border. i just spent the month in huntington, west virginia, which has been of the worst hit cities one in the country, and they have been quite effective in bringing down overdose rates, in part through law enforcement. there are a lot of other elements to it, including on cutting back on the prescribing, but giving people who are addicted to these drugs access to treatment and breaking down the stigma around drug addiction. i think that is one of the biggest issues around getting help to people who really need it, many of whom don't become addicted because they began by experimenting with the drug. that is to say they took these drugs as they were prescribed for them. book, thetitle of the opioid tragedy in three acts, the fact that you went through those, is that the three acts that you talk about? guest: essentially, i look at the origins of this epidemic, which is as i described to you, but one of the things in the researching of the book and why this has gone on for two decades now is you wonder where the alarm bells are being rung. why was this allowed to drag on for so long? where were the early warnings about this? one of the things that became quite apparent, there were quite a lot of doctors out there who were deeply concerned in the -- disturbed in the very first years of this epidemic, they saw the signs. i will give you an example of one, dr. jane valentine, head of pain management at harvard university and its associated hospital. she bought into the idea that patients needed these drugs, the wereource -- the drugs safe, but they were not addictive, and that there was a stigma against them that needed to be broken down, and they can be used for all kinds of treatment and pain, and then she began to see over many years in her patients that many of them were becoming dependent, addicted, but above all, she was seeing long-term opioid prescribing was not working for many of her patients. they were still in pain, they just needed more and more drugs. and she was also hearing from their families that they were not the people that they were, that their personalities have changed, that they were constantly in pursuit of these drugs, they were spending a lot of time and money on them, and she wrote a study in the new england journal of medicine in 2003, which really should have caused the industry and the regulators to pause and say to themselves well maybe these , drugs are not what they are promised to be. and she expected that would have a real impact, and it did not. there were other doctors who found the same thing. a doctor called charles lucas who was a surgeon, a detroit general, and he was saying the same thing. patients after surgery who were given large dosages of pain killers were starting to die, and he wrote a study about that. what you see happen in the early years of the epidemic is instead of the conversation being about whether these drugs are the "right thing" to be prescribing for most people, even though there are definitely people who need them, the industry is able to shift the conversation to paint the people that become addicted as abusers, to blame the victims, in essence, and to say look, we have these abusers, they should not be allowed to take the drugs away from the innocent patients who need them, and these were the same people who had begun prescriptions and then become addicted, but the industry successfully termed these into the goodies and baddies. for many years, this is in essence to keep the doors open to mass prescribing and keep selling the drugs, and this keeps going until really about 2010, 2011, when finally the cdc stands up and says we have an epidemic on our hands. host: a lot of folks waiting to chat with you, especially those who have been impacted by the open your crisis. hayes is next. go ahead. caller: this is one of the biggest frauds that have been perpetrated on people, the opioid epidemic. i am in my 70's, suffering from colon cancer. i have to go to the doctor every month. you are subjected to urine tests, blood tests to see if you have them in your blood stream. i have never had a problem. i took less drugs before all of the laws took into effect because i have to keep them in may now or i will be cut off. i have a legitimate thing. we militarize our police force and everything, people are treated like animals, if you have to have a pain pill at all. you show these certainly areas like west virginia, but the reason that is the people have , been cut off, and they set up pain clinics and they draw and people from miles around. because they are done without it. i've seen drug addicts. they were the same people that i knew back in the 1960's that went out after every drug that they could get a hold of them. host: got your point. mr. mcgreal, your thoughts on that. exactly the kind of person that needs these kinds of drugs. they are designed for people who actually have cancer. the medical profession still is not really in charge of pain medicine management. it is still controlled by the the industry and the politics now because of this epidemic. if you look at how opioids came to kind of be mass prescribed in america, because there had previously been an epidemic after the civil war and into the early 20th century, there was a crackdown in this country on the use of opioids. that continues for 50 years until you see the hospice movement emerge in the u.k., and they use the end-of-life, and that comes to america. there is a group of doctors that say if you can use them at end-of-life care, why can't we use them for all pain patients? i think hayes is the exact person who should be given them and given them according to what his doctor thinks he needs. but i would disagree that this is just about the police. this epidemic has been rising for 15, 20 years long before the , police got involved. it is clear this was a pain management issue. it was driven by an industry that wanted to sell drugs. it has not been artificially created by law enforcement. host: alex is in virginia, also impacted by the opioid crisis. go ahead. caller: yeah, good morning. thank you for having this discussion on c-span. yeah, so about the opioid epidemic and everything, i have been personally affected. i am only 22 years old, and i have had a couple of friends passed away this year. they are my same age and everything. because of drug overdoses. i just kind of want people to understand that it is not only happening in these rural areas in america, but it is also happening in wealthier areas, too, like in fairfax county, one of the richest counties in the united states, there is an extreme drug problem here. and i think that the younger generations, like the one that i belong to, are moving more towards diazepam as well, like xanax, in terms of the actual clinical name. i just want people to kind of understand that it is not only happening in the room america -- rural america but also in wealthier areas. host: alex, got your point. chris mcgreal. guest: alex is exactly right. you see the cbc has a map, and you see the beginnings of the epidemic in the mid-1990's in the area of appalachia that i talked about, is virginia, kentucky, and it is a red dot. it grows and gets deeper and deeper and it spreads across that park, that region of the country, and then the red dots pop up everywhere else. by the mid-2000's, partly because mass prescribing meds -- meant very large numbers of pills going to people, whether they needed them or not, it is not just the number of people that were getting these drugs, it was also that when they were prescribed perhaps for two or three days worth of treatment, they got 30 days' worth of pills. they were left in the medicine cabinet. a couple of things that happen. one, they simply got passed around within the family. these are good pain pills, why don't you take one? or you have other people in the family, perhaps younger people, who start to experiment with their parents' drug supply. but the scale of the prescribing, not only the number of people, but the number of pills given out with each prescription, meant that a lot of these pills were floating around. alex is exactly right. you see that in a lot of communities in very well-to-do communities but pretty much across the country. and so by the mid-2000's, it really has become a national epidemic. host: fort worth, texas is next, james. caller: yes, good morning. i suffered a spinal cord injury that left me 100% disabled and in a wheelchair. i had been addicted to morphine while in the military and being treated for an injury there. i had a little experience with it. so i do not take opioids. and of course when i was in surgery, because i have a back full of titanium, a column full of titanium, under surgery i took it. but i found that i do not have to have opiates. i have not taken them in years. i found that herbal meditations, medicine, and a little will will do it. i think it is a scam. we pay the highest price for drugs in the free world, and we have pharmaceutical companies doing the same thing that tobacco campaigns are doing. thingk it is a horrible and it is an unpatriotic way to treat the american citizen. my answer is i have suffered as much pain as any human being can suffer, and i find that i can get by. i am not out of pain, but i am not a junkie walking around with my tongue hanging out. host: chris mcgreal. guest: yeah, i mean, it is interesting to hear that. one of the things, when you look at how the epidemic evolved, one of the things the drug companies do is they studiously avoid any in-depth study on whether these drugs are effective long-term and what the long-term consequences are. they do no clinical trials. they are not really interested in that. they push the idea of pain at -- as a fifth vital sign. the concept behind that is your heart rate, your blood pressure, and they can all be measured. pain -- the drug companies push the idea that you should also have to address pain, doctors should also have to address pain. to give you an example, one of the areas they pushed it, a body called the joint commission. in essence, it licenses the country's hospitals. the hospitals need those licenses in order to get federal funding, and the joint commission essentially got into a financial relationship with various drug companies that saw it heading up regulations that require doctors to treat pain as a priority issue. the drug companies end up writing the manuals for the doctors. it is one of the reasons that you see those smiley faces and hospitals and clinics. 10, those are result of the joint commission requiring doctors to address pain, and a right to manuals for the doctors, in effect. the makers of oxycontin wrote those manuals, the drug producers distributed them. they all pushed of opioids as the answer. there is not really talk about the alternatives other means of , dealing with pain, whether it is dealing with it through physical therapy, dealing with stress, or other kinds of medicine. that is partly about selling pain pills, but it is also because other parts of the industry have an interest in that as well. the insurance companies looked at the pills of a cheap alternative to, say, physical therapy. doctors came under enormous pressure to prescribe from the hospitals, which wanted to keep the joint commission happy patients, who saw this as a way , -- as an easy way to go, and insurance companies, which saw the opioid prescriptions as a cheap option. along with that, the medical industry also bear some responsibility because it pushed on the medical profession and pushed the idea that people can live pain-free. i think, as we just heard, particularly when you're older or your injured, a lot of doctors will tell you, you cannot live pain-free, you have to find ways to manage pain, but pills are promise of living pill-free, in a country which is now a "pill for every ill" mentality. host: in your book, "american overdose," you talk about a "lost decade, the years between the unequivocal warnings from those grappling with the early impact of mass prescribing of opioids and the cdc stepping up to the plate, in which the epidemic could have been contained and hundreds of thousands of lives saved." when was that lost decade? guest: from the early 2000's, when doctors like jane valentine were giving her warnings enter journal of medicine article appears, and the now former head or then head of the cdc, dr. tom friedman and -- in 2011. there is an epidemic in this country. those years, that decade of the 2000's really was the decade where the epidemic could have not only been reined in but actually prevented. if those early warnings had been heard and if the industry had not so effectively, by co-opting, not only congress, because it pays money in lobbying and campaign contributions, but also, to be honest, regulators like the fda, which essentially was compromised by its relationship with the industry. in that decade, i think you see a missed opportunity to assess the effect of these drugs and to rein in the sheer scale of the prescribing. host: let's go to bluefield, west virginia. kelly is waiting. good morning. caller: good morning. i know that prescription drugs are, as he stated, a smaller problem than the ones that drug dealers are pushing on people, but now there is a push in this country that the drug dealer gets the first time, a smack on the hands, because we do not want to put them in prison, but they are forgetting the lives that they may have killed or put people into situations that they cannot get out of, and instead of just giving them a smack on the hand, we really need to look at it and say hey, you push these drugs, you may have been doing it for years, even if it is the first time you got caught. to me, it should be, hey you are , going on trial for murder, because that is probably what you have done, you have probably killed people. to me, there should not be a push in this country to let people off with a smack on the hand. if you made it stiffer, maybe they would think twice before pushing those drugs on the american people. host: mr. mcgreal. guest: there are states now which are pushing the idea of a murder charge for people who distribute drugs, particularly fentanyl, where it can be shown that they knew it was fentanyl and it leads to an overdose death. there are law enforcement issues simply, and somewhere like west virginia, i was speaking to the police chief in huntington, they do not have the resources to lock everybody up. there is a distinction to be drawn between those people who are dealing because they are also users and they are addicted and they have been , driven down a path that perhaps they would not have chosen to go down, and those who are purely doing it for money. obviously i think the nature of prosecution would probably be different in those cases. also, doctors prescribing on a very grand scale. those doctors i talked about at the warehouse in the pill mill in williamson, west virginia. one of them, dr. katherine -- katherine hoover, was prescribing more pills in the 2000's in west virginia's biggest hospital. one of her fellow doctors, dr. diane shafer, was prescribing much less than that, and diane went to prison for only six months. is a feeling among law enforcement people that a lot of doctors of got offer really lightly as well as the street doctors. and there is some sympathy as well, actually, from some of the some of theses people did not have the opportunity, that they got dragged into this, whereas doctors who were involved in this had every opportunity and privilege in life, and yet they still chose to go down this path just out of pure greed. host: a few minutes left with chris mcgreal, author of "american overdose: the opioid tragedy in three acts." taking your calls this morning. sandra, eastpointe, michigan on the line for those who have been impacted by the opioid crisis. go ahead. caller: yes, hello. i now have -- 50 years, and she has severe osteoporosis of the spine, and she cannot even stand up straight anymore. breast implants that were hardened, and they wanted to do a double mastectomy, she had been taking pain medication for eight years. she takes the same amount that she did eight years ago. it does not take away all of the pain, but it makes it bearable so she can stand it. so people like this guest, they have no clue what real pain is like. no clue at all. my neighbor, she has a friend that was on pain medication. he had a problem, too, with his back, and he was taking pain medication for six years. the doctor was afraid to give them to him anymore, and he took him off of his pain medication. within a month, he committed suicide, because he could not stand the pain. there are millions of people that are taking pain medication. you should not have to have cancer -- by the way, my sister-in-law had cancer surgery four months ago. she was sent home with enough pain medication for 10 days. after that, she suffered terribly. so these people who are abusing drugs are hurting people who sincerely need to take them. host: andrea, thank you for telling your family's stories. chris mcgreal, give you a chance to respond. guest: yes, again, i go back to there are clearly people who need these drugs and there are clearly people that these drugs work for. and that is true in other countries as well. is againens here because the policy, the medical policy has been driven by essentially, greed, it is still not run by the medical profession. we are seeing an overcorrection, a swinging back and the dog seven -- and the doctors have become fearful of prescribing because of the consequences, because of the political climate, because they feel like there might be some sort of sanction against them. many primary health care doctors in this country, the vast majority, get very little training in pain management. they might get two or three days in four years of initial medical training, so actually they have very little information on which to base their decision, frequently. they do not know very much about how opioids work. they do not know very much about addiction. and frequently, they were getting their information from the drug company's salesperson who were coming in and telling them how these drugs work and how they should prescribe them. the medical profession through the american medical association for a very long time resisted that kind of training. they said it was an inconvenience to doctors. when two members of congress, hal rogers and mary bono, both republicans introduced an act to have trainings to to prescribe opioids the ama , opposed it. i feel very sorry for those people who do need these drugs and who are finding themselves now struggling to get them. profession is really making no decisions and i , think that is what needs to happen is the medical profession needs to take care of this rather than industry or politicians or anybody else. host: one last call for you, carl, waiting in kansas city, missouri. good morning. caller: good morning. i am calling because i had recently an operation on my hand for what they call trigger finger. and they cut a little slice in my palm, and then i was out of the hospital at the v.a. in a very short time, and they gave me 30 tramadol opioid hills, which i did not take a single one of them. i am fairly educated. i still have them still in the -- sealed in the package, and i talked to the v.a., who said they are good for a year, so if i get a headache or a severe toothache. i do not know what to do with the things. i took a wet wash rag and shaped it to my hand and put it in the freezer. then on my hands got stiff, i took the drag out and held it in my hand until the swelling went down and i put it back in the freezer until later. the pain is miniscule. this one thing about making pain a diagnostic tool, what they do, they ask me when i go in there for a routine check, do you have any pain? yes, i have pain i am 74 years , old. occasionally i work too much in the backyard and my back goes into a spasm for about a day and , then it goes away. the point i want to make was when they tell you to write your pain between 1 and they are 10, really giving the doctor's responsibility over to the patient, so if you are a drug addict, you are going to say 10, you will get a prescription. if you do not want them, you will say 1. most people can deal with a small amount of pain. i tell you what, they just made it way too easy to get these drugs. and i am surprised, because, don't get me wrong, the v.a. is great, but i am surprised with them giving me those pills, it really surprised me. host: carl, thank you for the call. mr. mcgreal. guest: the scale in prescribing like i was saying earlier, the people's thatf people get has been a big problem. the cdc came up with a recognition in 2016 saying that for acute pain, which is what you have after an injury or operation, really should not get more than three or five days worth of pills, as that is because after five days, there is a sharply increased risk of addiction. again, it is about the convenience not of the patient, it is of the doctors in this case. the ama had proposed a reduction in prescribing, because it said it would inconvenience the doctors having a new prescription. the insurance companies do not want the doctors having to deal with the paperwork. it comes back to money, convenience rather than good medical practice. host: final 60 seconds here, how did this book change you, through the process of researching, getting families to tell their stories of addiction? guest: getting people to tell their stories about addiction was not as difficult as i thought it might initially be. for a couple of reasons. one, the people in west virginia that i was talking about are angry. they are angry at what has happened to their communities. these drugs have devastated communities. they feel that they were duped into taking these drugs. doctors did not warn them, they were not protected. you have a lot of people in those communities who take the pain in middle-age, from labor, from down in the mines, from working in lumber, so i think their communities have been devastated, and they feel duped. the other group of people who have been very open with me are those trying to break down the stigma. their children have become addicted, and they see the stigma, particularly around heroin. their kids may have started taking these drugs because they had sports industry, they end up -- sports injury, they end up on heroin, and they end up dead, and they end up being blamed for the death, by the communities, and, to be honest, by the drug companies. a lot of people are keen to break down that stigma. it is one of, perhaps, the biggest changes over the last two years is the courage of people to come out and talk about what these drugs have done to their communities. host: the book is "american overdose: the opioid tragedy in three acts." the author is a journalist chris mcgreal. appreciate your time on this morning's "washington journal." guest: thank you. ♪ journal"'s "washington , live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. morning, monday we will open up your calls and take your reactions to the government shutdown in the top news stories of 2018. the sure to watch c-span's "washington journal" and join the discussion. following a lunch with president trump, south carolina senator lindsey graham spoke to reporters outside of the white house about the border wall funding, the government shutdown, and isis. lindsey graham: well, we had a two hour lunch and had a very enjoyable lunch. if anything, he is not a man under sieg

terms of housing, robert weaver. host: we would like to thank juan williams, the author of "what the hell do you have to lose? trump's war on civil rights." announcer: here is a look at our prime time schedule on christmas night. starting now, former president barack obama and former secretary of state james baker with presidential historian john meacham at rice university in their years inng office. women in the workplace. then, queen elizabeth ii delivers her christmas message. finally, combating loneliness and social isolation. president barack obama joins former secretary of state james baker and presidential historian john meacham to discuss their experiences in office, bipartisanship, and u.s. leadership in the world. e university in houston, texas, this is about an [applause] hour. [applause] mr. meacham: thank you. thank you. mr. president, welcome to texas. mr. obama: it is good to be back in houston. congratulations on the texas victory yesterday. mr. meacham: they beat the titans so no, sir, we don't want that. tennesseans say, if it weren't for us, you would be part of spain. i made that joke to george bush when he was governor and he went, that's pretty funny, asshole. mr. baker: if it weren't for us, you wouldn't be saying y'all. mr. meacham: president reagan whom secretary baker served so wonderfully and so well used to say that when he was in hollywood, he would get a call to come to dinner and speak and perform and reagan would say, but i don't sing or dance. and the organizer would say, we know, but you can introduce someone who can. so my job is to introduce to people who can. i wanted to start with secretary baker, and thank him for the remarkable institute. but even more important -- [applause] mr. meacham: the half-century of service to america and to the world. mr. baker: thank you. [applause] mr. meacham: it is -- as someone who spends most of his time thinking about the past and talking to dead people, it is when they talk back that you are in trouble. i must say, it is hard to imagine, and it is a great tribute to our country, that two such different people come to the pinnacle of power and are able to lead the nation and the world in such a remarkable way. we have a man from texas, and princeton, a marine, who served republican administrations. we have the 44th president of the united states from hawaii by way of the ivy league. and what brings them together is what i think brings the country together, which is a shared sense that we have to push forward to a more perfect union. and so the subject of a more perfect union is what i would like to talk about tonight. [applause] mr. secretary, ordinarily the president would go first, but in an age before beauty moment, i would like to ask -- mr. baker: you got that right. mr. meacham: what i would first like us to talk about is how the world worked on your watches, how washington worked on your watches, and how they didn't work, and what we can learn from both those positive and negative experiences. and so for narrative purposes, sir, when you went to washington in 1981 as chief of staff, what was the ambient reality of washington for you? it wasn't perfect. it wasn't a great bipartisan valhalla. there were tough fights. but what did it feel like and what did it feel like and but what did it feel like and how hard was it to get things done? mr. baker: thank you. before i answer that question, let me simply say, mr. president, you honor us by being here tonight and we are very -- [applause] mr. baker: we are very appreciative and very grateful for your being here. we were having dinner and when ed was announcing all those big dollar numbers, i looked at the president and said, mr. president, 10% of that is yours. he said, the hell it is, i'm not letting you off that cheap. [laughter] i want the rolodex. mr. obama: jim still uses a rolodex, by the way. [laughter] [applause] mr. baker: john, what was it like. i think it is fair to say, considerably different than it is today. it was not, as you pointed out, a big kumbaya moment. i worked for a president who was considered to be an ideologue. he was considered such a hard-line conservative that he used to joke, he used to tell people, do you know, our administration is so conservative that the right wing never knows what the far right wing is doing. but we were able, he was able, to reach across the aisle. people forget this, but president reagan had a democratic house for his entire presidency. all eight years. tip o'neill was the speaker of the house. he and president reagan really didn't see anything hardly eye to eye on policy, but they both , i think, arrived at washington wanting to get something done for the country. and they would fight like hell during the day, and at night, they would retire somewhere at 5:00, start making irish jokes and drinking bourbon, and find a and found ways to cooperate found ways to get the nation's business done. in foreign policy, i think it was an easier time, perhaps. having said that, nobody should have any nostalgia for the cold war. i am old enough to remember those days when we had drills as schoolkids hiding under desks, because nuclear annihilation was a distinct threat. so in foreign policy, perhaps we had it a little bit easier in formulating the policy because we knew what we were for. we were for whatever the soviets were against, and we were against whatever the soviets r, but the implementation of the policy was extremely difficult, even back in those days, just as it is today. so things were different. i think that perhaps a few more things got done on a bipartisan basis. i am reminded on domestic policy of how president reagan's 1986 tax reform act was passed with democratic votes. and it was a tax reform, by the way, that was a true tax reform. it didn't jack up the budget deficit or the debt of the united states. it was revenue neutral. and how, also, he and tip o'neill were able to come together to protect for 30 years, at least, the financial solvency of social security by republicans giving a little bit more in contributions and taxes, democrats giving a little bit more in jacking up the retirement age. and it worked. it worked for 30 years. i believe it was from the standpoint of bipartisanship, which i know is an issue that is dear to president obama's heart, more to seeerhaps some of that happen. it didn't happen totally in foreign policy. when we decided, when president bush 41 decided he was going to address iraqi aggression in kuwait, both the house and the senate were controlled by democrats and both said, no you are not. this is not something we ought to do. how many lives is it worth, mr. secretary, to do what you want to do? that sort of thing. but president bush was wise enough and adroit enough to go out and get the rest of the world on board first and then he was able to bring the congress alone. he wanted the congress, not that he thought he needed it, because he thought he could do it under his commander-in-chief powers, but he wanted the congress to be in order to be able to say he had the support of the american people. [applause] mr. meacham: mr. president, you took power in, 16 years after the reagan-bush 41 era. pretty clearly, something happened in the 1990-1994 period, the rise of gingrichism and the revolt against 41 in 1990. how much of secretary baker's description of washington was true for you when you came to power and how much does it sound like we are describing thermopylae? mr. obama: not much. but first, let me complement jim, not only for the extraordinary work being done that is being done here at the institute -- [applause] mr. obama: as well as the ambassador and all those who support what you are doing. i had a chance to meet some of the young people who are interning here, the excitement that they have about the prospect of serving their country in various ways got me excited and inspired. jimalso, let me complement for the extraordinary service he rendered the country. i had the pleasure of visiting my buddy, 41, briefly this afternoon. jim, oraid this to you, john, in the book that you wrote, and i continue to believe it, when it comes to foreign policy, the work that president george hw bush did with jim at his side was as important and as deft, and as effective a set of foreign policy initiatives as we saw in recent years. and deserve enormous credit for navigating the end of the cold war. [applause] in a way that could have gone sideways in all kinds of ways. one of the challenges when you are president or working for a president is you don't get credit when nothing happens. and nothing happening is good a lot of times. [laughter] [applause] so, now, what i would say is, and what i'm saying here is not particularly original, but i think it's accurate, by the time i took office, there were a number of trends that had started to advance what some commentators are calling the great sorting. and what i mean by that is, when jim arrives in washington in 1981, you still had a whole bunch of conservative democrats, many of them from the south. you had republicans, many from the north, who were extraordinarily liberal on environmental issues or civil rights issues, on a whole range of topics. and, you know, political scientists used to get angry about the fact that american parties don't make any sense. there's just this hodgepodge of various interest groups that are all kind of stuck together. there's not always any rhyme or reason for it. but the advantage of that was that you had overlapping , and overlapping ideological spectrum in each party, so there would be some democrats who you would have a conversation with , who in turn were going to put pressure on tip o'neill and say, doggone it, if i'm trying to keep my seat in tennessee, you are going to have to give a little bit because reagan is really popular down there. and conversely, democrats would have to deal with the fact that there were going to be some republicans they could reach across out to because eventually they were going to have the same view on certain issues. change there are a range of res why that changed. some of it had to do with, frankly, the shift in the media, because in 1981, your new cycle beycle were still going to governed by the stories that were going to be filed by ap, washington post, maybe new york times, and the three broadcast stations. : right. whether it was cronkite, brinkley, what have you, there was a common set of facts, a baseline around which both parties had to adapt and respond to. and by the time i take office, what you increasingly have is a media environment in which, if you are a fox news viewer, you have an entirely different reality than if you are a new york times reader. it means the basis of each respective party had become more ideological. it means that, because of gerrymandering, members of congress now are entirely sure secure they will win their seat if they get the nomination. what they have to worry about is, do i have somebody from farther to my right or farther to my left who is going to run against me in a primary? they then are not willing to stray from whatever the party line has become. you have got folks like limbaugh and others who are enforcing what they consider to be ideological purity of some sort. and when you combine that with the perpetual campaign that is fueled by highly ideological, very wealthy donors, what you had by the time i arrived was a is a congress that has difficulty getting out of campaign mode and into governance mode. and we saw that even when we were in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the great depression. you know, i still feel bad for charlie crist down in florida, the governor, hugely popular, but hadn't gotten the memo that he wasn't supposed to cooperate with me, and supported the recovery act at a time when the economy was contracting faster than it did right after the crash in 1929. and the poor guy, you know, he is looking at it saying, this is good for florida. our housing market is tanking. i need to make sure we shore things up. our budget has imploded. we need federal help. this makes sense. i think the fact that i gave him a little bro hug, that was it. [laughter] mr. meacham: typhoid mary. mr. obama: i felt bad for the guy because he became a cause re inside the republican, the limbaugh, fox news media world, which is how marco got elected, essentially saying you are not a true believer. and i think the challenges we continue to have -- it has gotten worse, not better with the internet and all these .hings taking place is one of the things you discover as president is that the post-world war ii order that was constructed by fdr, truman, and eisenhower, and george marshall, that that basic notion of liberal -- not liberal in , you know, partisan terms, but a pluralistic, liberal, market-based, rule of law-based democracy and those sets of universal principles, democratic and republican leaders believed in those things. and that is the running thread basically from 1945 all the way through reagan. there were certain ideas that jim, regardless of how it was viewed, whether it was far right or right, there were certain ideals that you assumed you had to follow because that was part of american leadership in the world and it was part of what made us a great country. those are now being contested, in part because of the fact that we don't have this common base of information, and i think the that the biggest challenge we are going to have over the next 10, 15, 20 years is to return to a civic conversation in which if i say this is a chair, we agree that it is a chair. [laughter] [applause] we can disagree on -- whether it is a nice chair, whether you would like to replace the chair, move it over there, but we cannot say it is an elephant. >> i thought we were against obama chair. [laughter] [applause] >> that was a good chair, by the way. [laughter] the folks that tried to remove it this last election did not have a good time. [applause] [laughter] president obama: anyway. but i do -- one thing i realized when i got to congress, which is part of the reason i didn't stay very long -- [laughter] is that, and i am making a great generalization. there are some wonderful people in congress, but the fact is, members of congress are from early motivated around keeping their seat. >> and it is getting worse and worse. >> i cannot tell you how many times during my presidency i would have former colleagues of mine in the senate who are good people and sensible people, come up and say, mr. president, i would love to help you, but i would get killed doing this. and i think that kind of pressure, jim, i may be mistaken, wasn't as those >> no. that it did not exist, at least not on every vote. once in a while get an ideological vote where the leader would come in and say, look, we are -- you have to toe the line here. but that was not on every single item, in the way it is today. >> i totally agree with that, mr. president. i think another way to say it is, perhaps, that the responsible center in american politics has disappeared. and that is because of the -- [applause] jim: it is due to a lot of things. first of all, we are a pretty evenly divided country, red state, blue state. we do have a constitutional requirements to redistrict. if you live in a state dominated by republicans, they are going to draw more and more safe districts on the right. and for democrats, more and more safe districts on the left. people who go to washington today to represent us in congress no longer take their families up there. there is no longer any social interaction in washington among, between the two parties. and lastly, the last thing, maybe not the last thing, but next to the last, you have the advent of the internet. and that makes it really easy to be divisive. divisiveness sells. comity does not sell. if you can get somebody to say something outrageous, that person can get on tv, right? you istly, i got to tell think part of this problem is the responsibility of the media. our media today are no longer objective reporters of the facts the way they were when i was there. [applause] jim: they are, as you pointed out, they are players. they are players. you tune into fox news, you think you are listening to the house organ of the republican party. tune into msnbc, you would know you are listening to the house organ of the democratic party. fmr. president obama: those kind of slick moves are what made baker so effective as a -- [laughter] >> that is why we are here. fmr. president obama: that is exactly right. jim: trying to say cnn, not msnbc. >> well, it is -- the observation you made about not moving families there, look, when i was senator, i did not move my family there, in part is a healthy reason, which lot of spouses now have careers. michelle was like, yo, i got a job. but part of it, jim, i think is also that there is a -- the there is the perpetual campaign that takes place, which puts enormous pressure on every member of congress. they know they were being watched every minute. they are being scorecarded and graded by whatever ideological group is there every single minute. >> right. >> they don't feel like they can afford to be away from -- if you they move their families, someone will say, the guy has gone to washington and he doesn't believe that we are important anymore. and so you create this hothouse atmosphere in which folks are running scared all the time. and the ability to step back and islect, to compromise, reduced. now, i will say that the gerrymandering issue is a solvable problem, jim, unlike some of these issues. i mean, there are larger forces at work that are also creating this great sorting. we have an economy that has created differences of opportunity in urban versus rural areas, for example. >> right. >> those trends, because of globalization, a whole bunch of forces will probably not reverse themselves anytime soon, and that has created divides in the country. but gerrymandering is one thing that you can actually solve. california shifted to a nonpartisan, independent commission that carries out gerrymandering. i am actually a strong proponent and have been supportive of eric holder's efforts to try to get more states to adopt a, you know, a nonpartisan way to do that. and i say that as -- when it comes to gerrymandering, it is absolutely true that democrats do the same thing republicans do. if they are in control, they will try to maximize the number of seats they have, and vice versa. we are in texas, by the way, which is a champion of some gerrymandering. [laughter] >> it is a fundamentally nondemocratic approach, because essentially what happens, the elected official chooses the voters, rather than the other way around. and i, i actually -- when people ask me what are a few things that can be done to improve the functioning of government, this is an area where you can actually have an impact, and in some states, you are seeing referendums in which the average voter gets it. any think this is an important thing. [applause] jim: i agree with you. i think if we could get -- i agree with you that if we could get to the point that independent commissions would draw our district lines, it would be wonderful. the problem with that, mr. president, is it means taking power out of the hands of the politicians. i don't know where it is going to work. i know it is beginning to work in california. fmr. president obama: you just had a referendum in michigan passing this. so you are seeing citizen initiatives around this, in part, because they recognize what is currently in place is not working. one thing i will say, my observations during the time i was in the white house, sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that the problem has to do with the people who are there. and if we just kick all the bums out, it will get fixed. there are some bums, don't get me wrong, who need to get kicked out. we will not mention names. i am sure you have a list, i have a list. some of them overlap. mr. meacham: some just got reelected. [laughter] mr. obama: but i will tell you this, if you don't change of the incentive structures and the underlying dynamics, then we will continue to see these problems. good people will burn out and get discouraged. and voters will continue to be frustrated. what it does is leave a vacuum for those who garner attention through the most divisive, controversial, outlandish statements to win. people ask me often, what surprised me most about the presidency? it is the degree to which the united states underwrites the international order. it is not always in the obvious ways. but if there is a problem around the world, people do not call moscow, they do not call beijing. they call washington. even our adversaries expect us to solve problems and expect us to keep things running. when you start getting dysfunction in washington, which is difficult for decisions to get made, and policy making to run in an orderly process. what is one of our greatest assets, which is an extraordinary civil service, right, career staff, say at the state department, when that begins to get undermined, that does not just weaken our influence, it provides the opportunities for disorder to start ramping up all around the world, and ultimately makes us less safe and less prosperous. so we have a stake in making sure we have our act together enough. everybody else, whether they admit it or not, tends to follow our lead. mr. meacham: and there is a line between dean acheson, george marshall, jim baker, to secretary clinton and secretary kerry. that was a coherent conversation among secretaries of state. you would be here on the specter more over here, but -- spectrum or over here, but it was a coherent conversation. were you surprised in the past 24 or 28 months or so, to see the attack -- he is voldemort, i am not going to say his name. mr. baker: who is that? mr. meacham: voldermort. mr. obama: you have to read harry potter to your kids. mr. meacham: with baker, it is grandkids. the institutions the president is talking about and that you drew on, the united nations, the 12 resolutions during the gulf war, an extraordinary coalition madrid itself, the peace conference, those institutions were pretty effective through this man's presidency. now, and i am not just being clever, over the last two years, we have begun to fear the breakdown of those institutions. did you see that coming? mr. baker: i did not see that coming. i tend to agree with you. i certainly agree with you, and i know president obama would agree with you on this, american leadership in the world is absolutely imperative. no other country can do it. everybody expects us to lead. [applause] mr. baker: everybody expects us to lead and we won the cold war because every president, from harry truman through george h.w. bush was steadfast, whether they were democrats or republicans. we won the cold war, because we had alliances that leveraged our power and that we could rely on. and those alliances were evidenced by by nato of course, but by our security agreements with japan and korea, in the economic sphere, the world bank, the imf, so on and so forth. those institutions were created by americans in order for us to do what the rest of the world needed to have done, and what was good for america. and i think it is still good for america. i don't think we ought to be denigrating those institutions, or attacking them. do they need some of them, reformation? absolutely. as someone who spent a lot of time working with the imf -- there is a good one -- the u.n., there is another good one. even nato, this president is right in one respect, for sure. nato -- our european allies need to pay their way. what they have agreed to pay. we should not be required forever to pick up the tab on that. but these institutions make america stronger and we ought not to be running them down. [applause] mr. meacham: mr. president, you first. here is an exam question they would have at rice. assess the validity of this statement, if you would. american politics between 1933 and 2017 can be understood as a kind of figurative conversation between franklin roosevelt and ronald reagan. that the field on which we made most of our domestic and foreign policy decisions was regarding the relative role of the market in the state and the relative use of force between commonly agreed-upon rivals and foes. the moment between your leaving the white house and now, feels like an incoherent part of that story. do you agree that you govern in a world that was basically shaped by those american traditions? and if you agree, how does one go about recovering and restoring the conversation? mr. obama: i think it is correct that despite all the differences -- i was listening to jim talk about tip o'neill and ronald reagan going at it. the truth is, during that period you described, the ideological band of american politics was pretty narrow compared to most other countries. there was a broad consensus around a number of core issues and principles. and there is a reason why i was comfortable asking, for example, bob gates to stay on as my secretary of defense when we were still in the middle of two wars. there was a reason why i could consult with a jim baker about a particular issue comfortably. it wasn't a strain. it was because we had a common baseline of assumptions and values around certain issues. i think what is also true is that that consensus was hugely beneficial to the united states, and that over the course of the post-world war ii era, it was hugely beneficial to the world. it didn't mean we did not screw up or make mistakes, were not hypocritical or self-interested. we are a nationstate governed by politicians, and so the world had all kinds of opportunities at various junctures to say, oh, the united states doesn't believe what it preaches, it is supporting folks who are not democrats, they are doing things for convenience, all those things. but at the end of this period, let's call it 60, 70 years, the world was wealthier, less violent, healthier, more tolerant, more democratic. the average person's life chances were improved across the board. and yet, billions of people -- look, the chinese, essentially, were free riders on the system we built and lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. it is justifiable for us now to want them to stop riding for free, you have got to carry your weight now that your status has changed. but we did something very valuable there. here is what is also true. what is also true is that, and this is true for any political system, any consensus that over time, contradictions appear, and there are things that were not tended to. in the united states, one of the major fault lines in america was always race. we made halting leaps towards changing our laws and our customs and our culture so that we were more likely, at least, to live up to the ideals of the declaration of independence and the notion that we are all created equal, despite not getting there. now, as we started doing that, the consensus starts weakening. that is why when lyndon johnson when he signed the civil rights act of 1964, the first thing he says is, we just lost the south for the rest of my lifetime, maybe more. because he understood that part of that old consensus had tamped down this big contradiction which is, we talk a lot about democracy, but we are not treating everybody the same. gender. part of the reason everybody could get along pretty good in congress in a 1957 or 1965 was that there weren't any women there to say, "what you guys are doing is stupid!" [laughter] [applause] mr. obama: suddenly women show up and they start questioning things, and suddenly men are kind of uncomfortable. it changes consensus. same with lgbt issues. right? so within the united dates, we -- within the united states, we had a whole range of issues that were not being addressed as they come up, which is a healthy thing. they could not be buried. suddenly, that consensus felt less uncomfortable. when it comes to the economy, part of what happens is that the globalization -- where you actually had a consensus between bill clinton, george h.w. bush, george w. bush, and certainly elements of my administration, we wanted to get the trans-pacific partnership done, for example. the consensus around things like free trade. it did not fully address the fact that although net-net, the whole world was doing better because of globalization and the internet and global supply chains, there were folks whose factories were being closed and suddenly found themselves to be redundant workers. you suddenly had a winner take all economy, where back in the 1960's, the ceo may be made 10 times more than the guy on the assembly-line, and now it is 200 times or 300 times. and the capacity of nationstates to regulate global capital so that at least they have some control where they say, let's speed things up, slow things down, let's ease the transition for communities that are being hurt by whether it is automation or foreign competition, that becomes harder to do because everybody is worried about what their quarterly reports will look like on wall street. that creates frustrations and contradictions. i think a legitimate critique of that consensus, you know, i consider myself to be a part of and still believe in, is that we did not adapt quickly enough to the fact that there were people being left behind. and that frustrations were going to flare up. that all of these changes that were happening were happening really quick, and you had to address them and speak to them. in those environments, you start getting a different kind of politics. you start getting politics based on, that person is not like me. it must be their fault. you start getting the politics based on a nationalism that is not pride and country, but hatred for somebody on the other side of the border. and you start getting -- [applause] mr. obama: the kind of politics that does not allow for compromise because it is based on passions and emotions. mr. baker: identity politics. mr. obama: which is why, by the way, when i hear people say they don't like identity politics, i think it is important to remember that identity politics does not just apply when it is black people, gay people, women, no. the folks who really originated identity politics were the folks who said, 3/5 clause, all that stuff. that was identity politics. that is still out there. maybe that was a little too controversial for houston, but -- [laughter] mr. obama: jim crow was identity politics. that is where it started. so part of what is happened is that when people feel their status is being threatened, they react. what i would agree with is that the washington consensus, whatever you want to call it, got a little too comfortable with -- they are only looking at gdp numbers and looking at the internet, and everything is looking pretty great, particularly after the cold war. after what you guys engineered, jim, you had this period of great smugness on the part of america and american elites thinking, we have this figured out. you remember the book that came out, the end of history. mr. baker: the end of history. francis fukuyama. mr. obama: that came to bite us in the back. that was kind of a long lecture. i'm sorry. we are trying to have i not -- trying to have an after dinner conversation. i should have thrown a joke in there or something. [laughter] mr. meacham: mr. secretary, what do you want us most to remember about your public service legacy? mr. baker: you mean what are my -- what am i most proud of about my public service legacy? i suppose, jon, i am most proud of the fact that i had the privilege of serving two presidents of the united states as chief of staff. i had the privilege of being secretary of the treasury. i had the privilege of being secretary of state. i had the privilege of running five presidential campaigns for three republican presidents and spending 12 years in washington, and leaving washington unindicted. [laughter] [applause] mr. obama: that was something there. good job, sir. i give you credit. mr. meacham: i think susan gets the credit for that, sir. mr. president, what about you? mr. obama: he stole my answer! no i'm a, -- look -- mr. meacham: of your eight years, what do you want us to think about, in terms of your presidency? mr. obama: there are obviously accomplishments that i am extraordinarily proud of and believe deeply in. i think the affordable care act was important. it was incomplete, but it was a starter house on the path to a smarter, more rational health care system where we are not spending 6%, 8%, 10% more than , other countries for worse outcomes. i was extraordinarily proud of the paris accords. look, i know we are an oil -- we are in oil country and we need american energy. and by the way, american energy production, you would not always know it, but it went up every year i was president. and that whole -- suddenly america is the biggest oil producer -- that was me, people. [laughter] [applause] mr. obama: sometimes you go to wall street and folks be grumbling about antibusiness. i said, have you checked where your stocks were when i came into office and where they are now? what are you talking about? what are you complaining about? just say thank you, please. [applause] mr. obama: because i want to raise your taxes a couple percent to make sure kids have a chance to go to school? but all those things -- i really would put a secondary to what jim said, which is, michelle and i and our girls, we came out in tact. what i mean by that, the core values we brought into the office, pretty homespun values , tell the truth and try to see the other person's point of view, treat people kindly and with respect, work hard, think things through. you know, we were able to sustain that in a difficult environment for that to sustain. not only did i not get indicted, nobody in my administration got indicted. [laughter] [applause] mr. obama: which by the way, was the only administration in modern history that that can be said about. in fact, nobody came close to being indicted. partly because the people who joined us were there for the right reasons. we were there to serve. but i guess there is a larger point to that, and i am in the process of writing right now. the first time i was in the oval office was actually after had been elected. i had been to the white house but i hadn't been to the oval office. i had been there for several meetings. but the tradition is, shortly after the election, the current president invites his successor in. so 43 has me over. laura was with michelle. they could not be more gracious. and i have to make the point that they had set up a transition process that was flawless and generous and thoughtful so that every member of 43's staff had made themselves available to the person who was going to be taking their place and had prepared manuals and books about how things work. because, despite the political differences, which were real and significant, they recognized there was a value above those differences. when i walked into the oval office, there was a reverence there for that office. it is independent of you. and if you don't feel that, then you should not be there. because -- [applause] mr. obama: because a lot of fights, a lot of sacrifices, a lot of bloodshed is represented in that office. not just soldiers at iwo jima, it is maids in selma, it is workers in a coal mine, it is farmers in the dust bowl. and you are carrying that vessel. and i never lost that reverence for that office. every day i would come and i would say, i am going to make mistakes, there will be decisions that are compromises. jim knows this, when you are in that office, there is never such a thing as 100% solution, because by definition, if it was easy to solve, somebody else would have solved it. it only comes to you when there is no good answer. through all of those ups and downs, you had to have a part of you. the bushes had that. ronald reagan had that. bill clinton had that. that sense of man, this is sacred. this is important. and there is a civic religion and a set of ideals and principles that we will not get perfect, but we should strive to perfect. and that, i think, is something i never lost throughout the time i was there. my staff, we used to put stickers on people's binders and folders saying, guard against cynicism because you have to be realistic, but you cannot be nihilistic. whether you are president, secretary of state, or a young staffer who is there for the first time. mr. meacham: i would like to close, if i may, by giving ronald reagan the last word. which is always safe. mr. obama: well, in this crowd anyway. mr. meacham: not far from here in secretary baker's office, there is a picture of that chief of staff -- secretary of treasury of the time, baker, sitting next to reagan. the picture was taken by david hume kennerly, the great political photographer in 1987. reagan looks a little puzzled and in reagan's wonderful handwriting, these fiction reads -- the inscription follows -- "dear jim, i look like i am lost, but not worried. you will straighten it out like you always do. ronald reagan." i think i speak for all of us when i think secretary baker and president obama, because they have strayed out a hell of a lot for us. thank you. mr. obama: thank you, very much. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2018] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [applause] >> coming up on c-span, a look at women in the workplace. elizabethtain's queen ii delivers her annual christmas message. after that, a program on combating loneliness and social isolation. then, constitutional law experts and attorneys discuss freedom of speech. >> washington journal is live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. coming up wednesday morning, we will look back at key developments in this year's trade policy and what to expect in 2019 with a bloomberg trade reporter. harvard law school professor alan dershowitz joins us to discuss his latest book, "the case against impeaching donald trump." join the discussion. day fourstmas day is of a partial government shutdown. the house and senate returned thursday as negotiations continued on a spending bill to reopen the federal government. you can watch live coverage of the house on c-span and the senate on c-span 2. ♪ >> the united states senate, a uniquely american institution, legislating and carrying out constitutional duties since 1789. on wednesday, january 2, c-span takes you inside the senate, learning about the legislative body and its informal workings. we will learn about a history of conflict and compromise with original interviews. >> arguing about things, kicking them around, having great debates is a thoroughly american thing. moments in history and unprecedented access, allowing us to bring cameras in to the senate chamber. follow the evil lucian of the senate into the modern era, from advice and consent to their role in impeachment proceedings and investigations. the senate, conflict and compromise. a c-span original production exploring the history, traditions, and roles of this uniquely american institution. 2 on c-span.nuary c-span.org/senate to learn more and watch original full-length interviews with senators, here farewell speeches, and take a tour inside the senate chamber and other exclusive locations. now, sarah lacy holds a discussion on women in the workplace. a discussion hosted by leanin.org and mckinsey & company. sarah: i'm sarah lacy, founder of chairman mom. it is my pleasure to tonight host a discussion about women in the workplace. welcoming our in speakers tonight, alexis, managing partner at mckinsey & company and co-author of the report, along with sue, president of stubhub.

clinton's presidency and had run through george bush, george w. bush and barack obama. here we are -- here we are, finally at the end of the obama presidency and into the trump presidency before it was getting the kind of national attention it needed. to kind of go back and look at where it began, and west virginia really calculated a whole lot of elements of the epidemic but one of them was the prescribing, the beginning of the prescribing of these very powerful drugs for routine pain which helped draw people in to addiction, but the other reason in particular williamson was it he came not only an area in its own right where there -- were a lot of people became hooked on these drugs but it became a distribution center for a whole part of appalachia and beyond as you see the establishment of one of the biggest pill mills in the anntry, and that came out of individual named henry vincent who was appropriately and undertaker. he had just come out of prison, arving four years are running gay escort agency in washington, d.c. that was busted by the secret service. he was sent back to w

-- george h. w. bush. his body will lie is state until wednesday pre-political putting -- reporting that melania trump will attend the funeral at the national cathedral. happy hanukkah for those who are celebrating. your thoughts on the trump administration's handling of international trade. a newly side trade deal with trade deal-- signed with mexico and canada. also announcing a short-term pause on new tariffs against china. it comes to the trump's administration -- trump administration's handling of trade. if you support with the white house is doing, 202-748-8000 is the number to call and tell us why. if you oppose, it is 202-748-8001. you can post on our twitter feed @cspanwj. about 60 people posting already on facebook.com/cspan. business insider highlights some of the details of the newly signed trade deal done at the g20 for it at some of those details include this, there is a review clause saying the u.s. mca includes an expiration date -- there is a close for dispute settlement saying nafta's willte settlement system remain the same, a key win for the canadians. investors

loss of a great american. george h w bush. the rotunda right now there are hundreds of people crowded around his casket paying tribute to this great man. they will be here all day. all night. friends of mine from ohio are here in town who never met him but knew of him and were inspired by him. we are all inspired by him. george bush did it all. he was a war hero. youngest naval pilot at age 18. shot down over the pacific. he was the last president to serve and can't -- and more time -- in war time. he was a representative. he was the head of the cia. he was vice president. and he was the president that one of the most momentous times and our country's history. what a life. he was the embodiment of the very best of america. for me, president bush was also my mentor. i was very blessed early in my career to have been able to work for him. he brought me into his white house when i was a young man trying to figure out my way in life. i would not be in this crazy business of politics if not for him. not just because he gave me opportunities to work for him, but he does he showed me that yo

of george w. bush as well. i think that is part of the equation. at the same time, we don't know what the alternative universe would look like where the u.s. wasn't engaged and what the numbers would be, and how much of the numbers of jihadists would be out beyond the bounds of the middle east and into that regions of the world today, their presence is smaller. part of it is a containment challenge. point,ink to your basic we should be thinking about what that careful line of strategic overwatch versus negligence, and what is strategic overwatch versus overinvestment that can drive the snowball effect toward getting less rather than more out of our presence. jennifer: and what do you think of the most destabilizing influence in the middle east right now? where is it coming from? >> iran. jennifer: what makes you say erin? -- iran? >> i think their continued associations with violent extremist organizations. we just saw a missile launched by a ran -- iran. they will do whatever they can to destabilize the middle east. it puts them in a position of power. they will continue to meda

, you were the press secretary to george w. bush. what yunnan about public affairs ? -- what do you know about publicaffairs books? all of our books have a dedication page to three people considered my mentors. -- of them was i at stone stone, certainly not somebody george w would have found politically sympathetic. robert bernstein, who was the chairman at random house. i said these are the people whose principal values we are trying to reflect. do you want to be here? he said yes. we came upon the fact that he beenhis sense of having basically put out to drive -- dry, put out to say things at the white house that were not true. it offended him, and he wants to say that. -- wanted to say that. we got the book done, it was supposed to be published on a tuesday. -- on not supposed to be a thursday night, a young fellow named mike allen starting out writing washington stuff bought a copy of the book -- it was not supposed to be on sale -- put a little blog notice saying -- and by 9:00 that night it was taking off. over that weekend there were 80,000 owners of the book. it exploded. at

getting worse. but there trying to talk down the economy. i can rub when george w. bush first took office in march of 2001. he made mention of the fact that it like the economy was shaky and all of these folks jumped on him and said don't talk down the economy, for heaven sake, you'll spook investors and the market will come down. it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. i cannot turn on the television that without hearing some smart the economicbout expansion. nonsense. that shouldson happen is if we turn our attention away from things that have actually delivered this economic revival to his country and rebuild the middle class, and we should be rejoicing. where is the congressional budget office of figure on the number of people who are covered by employer-sponsored insurance that were not covered two years ago? if the economy has added 2.5 million jobs, in my limited way of thinking about things, those are 2.5 million who may have the availability for employer-sponsored insurance. and if they're family, whether it a spouse or child, that the 2.5 two 5 million people who did not have