An hour with Journalist Bill Moyers: Part Two

this month journalism legend bill moyers stuff down from the world of public broadcasting i'm kate mcintyre and today on k pr presents bill moyers from his recent talk in kansas city it's part two of the truman library institute's bennett for him an annual event focusing on the presidency bill moyers has reported on and worked inside government for more than six decades serving as president lyndon b johnson's press secretary in the nineteen sixties before returning to journalism first as publisher of newsday then at cbs and later in public broadcasting he's won more than thirty emmy awards nine peabody awards and was elected to the television hall of fame this month marked his formal retirement from broadcasting actually his third such retirement his previous retirement in two thousand ten and two thousand thirteen were short lived that it eighty years old lawyer says this time he's retiring for good today and kbr present part two of the

bennett forum on the presidency if you missed last week's program parr one of moyers top it's now archived at our website he pr that k u die edu last week's program was called a tale of two presidents in which lawyers talked about his time in the johnson administration and how that presidency compared to that of president harry truman again you can listen to that program on our website k pr that kay you got edu on today's program bill moyers talks about his life and career the johnson administration and civil rights and politics today he's joined by former us senator bob kerrey of nebraska who introduces lawyers by his full legal name of her so i did not know that year leo name is billy dawn i was born in the south and a mother's love to give their sons continued if they like the lead on a little more i like it i get to the toilet to work at a

sixteenth of the orphans messenger the managing editor spencer jones said the war of words better in the effect that would you have the city at the g twenty begin in turn johnson's office it wasn't calling in turn then but in april of nineteen fifty four as a journalism student and working full time in journalism at a college when he was running for reelection in nineteen fifty four he won the disputed election in forty eight he was running i had never met him but i sat down one april morning afternoon saturday afternoon and here's senator johnson i think i can help you in texas the young people he didn't have a contest you didn't have a position that i think i get up and takes it and you could have your political terms of the cold war has been some review and he the letter summer got to his desk and he called the publisher of the newspaper or in a little town in east texas where i don't work at the age of sixteen and ask how a sunni doesn't use a good

reporter given that jackie needs advice on broadway up and i work in is of course no social media noah facebook just old fashioned way so that when you type that when you get a letter to secretary replied bit of the original letter the department under lbj colon bt elderly van morrison and the secretary of the day and he liked my letters e like them they go over to the senate he had an office in the senate as well as the silver spring and they would go over to yemen and he wouldn't raise the paper and look at the carbon cycle had written this letter and i don't want to use teachers reform law six wheeled through the twelfth grade and i didn't really wrote letters and he likens we probably over their allotted twenty writing letters to draw as margaret and the senate president now but it always taken

to his own young people because he got older men are taking chances or him you literary mentor to work when he took part in an unsuccessful campaign for congress working in someone else's assistant the man often recommended lbj too congressman richard play the object to sell porches the rest of cleveland and johnson did so well played hurt a contortionist his administrative assistant johnson started the club colker at oracle a caucus a congressional page became very wrong on the network and then he decided to run for congress and so that's how i want to work through it and he always john connelly was there was a young man to reform and a whole variety of others for you come back to duty an ordained baptist minister you honestly and still preaching analysis of minutes ago was that was at a close call no it was a time i grew up in a very conservative group of very conservative culture in east

texas with a bad discharge like harry truman and what was conservative though segregated it was biblical and i thought a lot about the militias milton lyndon johnson said to me once that there are three way for poor border get ahead in texas one in politics when i'm preaching one in teaching his grandfather had been a preacher and found a better university which is was a long time where the most prominent baptist school i wanted to teach there and i am in the summer of fifty four and a kind of emotional crisis i was in washington joseph mccarthy was holding forth i went to some of the hearing shows this made a depressed i saw one sunday afternoon i was working on the letters to be alone in a small office on the second floor of what's now the russell senate office building and i heard a report like that

i'd pay much attention until i heard the steps on the marble corridors outside and i look out and there are capital police lining up to the office of the body where it turns out senator lester hunt of wyoming had killed himself with a pistol we later learned that he had done so because the very next week his son was going to be out and when he was up for reelection in what in wyoming as gay i wouldn't call it maybe as queer as it was called and the fact that a man would kill himself politically it know about i was dismayed and it ice ice all aspects of politics that summer that that made me down and i went back home and said to my fiance truth i think i'd rather go teach and at baylor university quite frankly and i had an invitation to teach their even as a continuing education and i thought that was

what was going on with the rest of them are going to be greater study in theology traditionally relations that was my inspiration came back of the definitive southwestern feel of this and it was just that we were packing right after christmas my computer hacking in fort worth texas to move to austin where was beginning a phd in america solution and the phone rang and it was lyndon johnson when i hadn't heard from film the senate bill would be doing as an unpacking books read your interest in texas literally said like around here which is jenny were this is the silver lighting of fifty nine he's going to make it try the press sensei the nomination of democratic party and he was looking for a boy friday and he worked with me with some of bonded workers radio tv station in austin a solemn from time to time and he just said i want you at my side so i went

up on the way we packed but we started driving the worst images of what is he offering we knew we wouldn't have him at a six month old child the world have another one or two soon i said i didn't ask you as she said he didn't tell you that's it i don't think he does that sort of thing that a basque us towards a loss for everybody stores complicated one door opens another close as you think this new then discover that every experience create a new reality and you order more about exactly what you are today because the new reality changes your perception if not appear so to the after news that antonio comes up and ask ewen you advise them to take a job in washington as a in terms of staff through dubai's people the young people don't fall i still do even though it's

changed so much so much in what sixty years since our listeners on a different cut is not a difference it is a different city it's a different craft city for game talk and if it's a lot of today that i think it's very hard for young people want to find the really and it's the relationship with the principle that i had with lyndon johnson we never were in the sixty campaign when he was running for vice president was his only companion most i was his only companion the snow that's rare today also they don't do the campaign and they used to they spend for you know bob for five six hours a day dialing for dollars raising money but still i cannot give up on politics because for the moment it still is as you said the politics of the speed that we road to

democracy i don't think that anymore but i still believe idealistic colin young people people who young people feel they want to try to change our dysfunctional system should give it a try so what they don't teach you and i got young people oh your political opponents grew it mean girls robots rather about twenty in the senate there may be more than two well you will you know euro you will be given responsibility way beyond which are having to actually get at that age you you you're good example here secondly you know like friends that and they already have a more important friends become and thirdly it would put a first course your beer or your fight because you're learning things about you know how democracy works in even if you lose that other sectors of the technicians

bend over and to do it the discipline of loss and still continue on this one quite impressive to continue to be optimistic in spite of the fact that you've seen the good bad and the ugly so what one thing to think is not ruin appreciate it if you listen to an unfortunate do listen to the criticism of the approach obama the difficultly making decisions and so the white house is even more pressure oh the secret service than president johnson was but talk a little bit about that the difficulties he's reviewed the decision making inside of that while mindful that in nineteen sixty four sixty five and sixty six there's a wholly different time we had a special assistant in the white house we didn't have a chief of staff johnson was his own chief of staff at that he was free he was video of the actual center of the spokes of ten and though we had easy access to him we were in

him into meetings there was a lot to do much to do too much to do for men ben and it's impossible to vacuum and legend what it would be like it's like you know i will say that in nineteen even though i was committed to journalism even in nineteen ninety two bill clip clip and asked me to join his white house staff two years later asked me to become his chief of staff yeah i didn't want to do it didn't do it god jimmy carter had asked the same thing in nineteen seventy eight but each time i started talking clark clifford about the nineteen seventy eight all firms should've said yes because we have a different world the day sam on the but it was right after israel a speech on a band he reached out to me real vacation in colorado the thing singing like an eerie on that visit any call those industries was in trouble are always looking for somebody who has experience lakers in the white house i would know what to drive for obama to play

ball because this is an impossible job you start it six during morning with exercise use of apart read a briefing paper prepared by a nasa security step over overnight from all over the world if you were to follow up you need to call the person who's heading out of the state department the pentagon the national security council there are more people working omen that has secured accounts of the day i think that there are almost working in the state department that matters because at the white house and there were the state department when i was there you know abraham lincoln had two assistants johnson had another hundred hundred in the white house at ten o'clock the president's dose of the rose garden and greets the owner of the boy scouts in kansas city at a ten thirty is meeting with his cabinet room on one issue or another it just goes out there is no human being who can process the amount of information the libertarian love to reach the

considered judgment in the united states today i don't believe bill gates good match for witnesses it's an outlet that system in another control world and i'm whatever his almost died there is more that lyndon johnson that there is more than rock obama can process in the course of a day and you've seen a topic he looks pretty disparate life in just eight years of security it's an impossible job we our whole constitutional system needs restructured it just needs restructuring that that non human beings on the court can handle all of the cases that come to them and they consider a deliberate judgment that are not ideological i'm even if there are if there are biases creep can see if they'd been programmed by their party the great thing about harry truman when i was at the interest of edinburgh learned about the mold of concerts in the british

parliament where both parties the tories and labor would allow on certain votes members of parliament to exercise or cartons liberating them from the dictate of the party's message at parties you have to sort of weigh in new york you know almost can't really the judges are you know democrat republican but a member of the british parliament allowed occasional votes on the kona blue moon of members against the party if they wouldn't call a moment of conscience and learn that tech considered consideration and deliberation and i don't think presidents have that time they so i can't believe you'd just change so what's this note somebody simply tonight that was you that no modern ceo would organize his office the way the white house and you couldn't keep it

going and that's a rick krug your crisis is no less serious for being invisible and the crisis of the presidency is that there's no one had been too focused on no modern ceo other people don't like their board of directors alone five and thirty five members of the generation that i capture it if you can bid so the mood of that time in sixty four sixty five sixty six and there's a and in the proceedings a second book the nixon lawyer he talks about in nineteen seventy one the only the blm seven defendants who had protested and the democratic convention in nineteen sixty eight in chicago on trial one woman there said that she's training them on their training in violent activities because she said i normally the non violent political life will produce the change that this country needs a

striking seventy right so in just just run for them or run through the debates in the senate i think it's yet it tells a challenge that that johnson head so in your he defines himself in and in february of nineteen sixty three you got to you that this does mr seventy k mart want the first marker for so mark rye and then the fourteenth of the files on him at an pettus bridge he sees a violent march fourteenth about whether nbc broke away from judgment nuremberg code go to the edmund pettus bridge them are sick fourteen second march and he goes to congress on the fifteenth this is nineteen sixty five and he goes man in him and he's we use technology goes out as in as in lisa's brain if you think it's bad now with electricity as what the riverside and he gets a fax

and so he'd be signed so he signed the voting rights act and six of august nineteen sixty five and the london august nineteen sixty five is once an end and a backlash against the voting today and about that moment but i don't try to capture the mood of the tigers won and where they set off in time to shake i have to think of politics or worse in their everyday i said i cannot people were dying on both sides of the vietnam war or today they were dying and both sides in the civil rights today vincent was nowhere near as contentious today as it was back then can you talk a little bit about the mood of the time for school i don't think anything we face today that are possibly climate changes greater challenge than what my grandparents face or harry truman's parents left arm here which you i just dont were or

warren i was born a depression pours church mice lived through the depression were a war two korean war the vietnam war the atomic bomb raging inflation in the seventies i just think we don't ever perspective it looks back about to see that it's always tough life as a tough our day and running and a democracy is to that that maybe there was optimism in nineteen sixty three and the country's economy was roaring six percent i believe gdp each year but unemployment was day unemployment was up seven percent in nineteen sixty four the money from more war to that had been transferred from the military to domestic were producing jobs seventy five percent of the american people and sixty four said they believe government did before they could do the right thing

that's known that in a fifteen percent there was a lot of opera set aside for the moment that the grief ants stunning disbelieve at the assassination of john kennedy and in it was a while before congress were recovered it's it's it's very and lyndon johnson was never better never really was in the period between the shooting in dallas and the end of sixty four he was in control he knew what he was doing a minute there really there are three speeches in here i didn't get any of that and i only got to one of the cyclists about truman and his detail and then johnson but sixty fours appeared a great optimism just saw the biggest karate in the history of the present present selections you read he had control of congress by incredible barge in the nineteen fifty eight election

was really the turning point in congressional policy because it's in fifteen new senators eight of whom i think were fifteen fifteen democrats eighty of whom are liberal but in london johnson because as i would say in the second part of the speech and johnson throughout his current congress would that help civil rights and so they were distrustful of black leaders and but it was teddy white was the requirements are a presidential election forum he wrote in his book the making of the president nineteen sixty four united states as a whole is only entered the great new age and that's what we felt in their work to the writer of nature writer william tobias recently the great speech about how it sixty four was a revolutionary year in social policy in america because of johnson's championing of all of all that have been pent up and the eisenhower administration that had been part of the new deal under franklin

roosevelt and thirty on the harry truman but had been bottled up when the republicans could to control the white house and all of a sudden with kennedy's election in the johnson nichols family didn't get hurt forgiven opposition congress everything opened up and we ended by for a recent post revolutionary in which congress actually address the people's business and he did reminded me because i was so in the midst of it and that my memory is blurred i don't really have to work on a tall black denied because mommy agree with borat i want you to open phone calls a day thousands of meetings have your stick of people so you know no more than you do the boss reminding me of something i've probably forgotten that within minutes of each other in nineteen sixty four lbj had son two of the most important bills of the century one was the wilderness act and one was a while life and something at which really were revolutionary

in the sense of compassion and justice for the earth that sustains us that was revolution and add your sign one bill and then he took a set of kansas on the next bill and off we went to the next room a blitzkrieg of legislation affecting every aspect of american life went through what we what we didn't puzzle over a nerve is exactly what you said that summer in rochester summer of sixty four there was a riot in the ghetto or the bed they actually get seventeen eighteen to and remember exactly and we thought at the white house that it was a passing phenomenon and then the next year that you just said afterwards voting rights act which was an i think be the epiphany of johnson's administration wants and maybe it's because all that we had promised in the constitution the declaration and the

new deal and harry truman incredible job incredible crusade for human rights really practical not just beaches are deprived of their were so what promises in the bottle that when relief and change an opportunity didn't come to these ghettos which as i indicated you you're just a little bit about what has been happening in this country in the middle of the last century you just pick up and exploded and was exploded policy deal itself and he just accelerated and even though we made the civil rights act of sixty four and the voting rights act of sixty five we and by the end he had escalating escalate he made the decision to escalate vietnam in april of nineteen sixty five right after the voting rights act and of course that escalated until the administration was concerned about even as he set about

harry truman heard from a lot of his new deal a fair deal in the mode of korea the same thing happen to us and intestines of the opposition silent majority do you regret anything the book get it he went in his day after he left the white house and so even and then we always have had a very distinguished career commenting on what's going on american bird i think you deserve an individual watching was going on the country so and sixty for those incentives a great sense of optimism about the possibility of them johnson has as big landslide victory in the nose sixty one percent of pop or voting for jerry lee electoral college votes but that same year california prof working rubio for housing and two years later ron reagan wins the

governorship in part my guest pat brown part with a long order agenda and overgrown have been as it seems to me yeah the fake watches five days after voting rights rather than being celebrated of a sudden people are actually arguing in this intimate their aria the time you see this is what happens the passover it pass voting rights and then you get violent for children that doesn't make things better they say is worse and as benefits engine a fairly steady argument against doris at the liberal agenda became of the great society i am a liberal and love new ford said we all experience the present night even though i certainly didn't have every stage of my life but having lived this law oh i just turned eight is a live long enough to see though that the slope behind me and for a long time i felt the liberal dispensation was the norm in this country about the colonial period of recruiter appeared was a liberal dispensation in large part that i

mean enlarging the franchise as for liberal essentially means you enlarge the franchise of democracy so that more more people can participate in that happen to but when politics fail in the fifties eighteen fifty three of the war i decided the liberal dispensation may have it may be an interregnum this is a very culturally the narco theme of its a very conservative society one third of the columnist for the richmond tea party supporter of mission one third supported the tories one third stood on the sidelines waiting to see would win so they can monetize the results yeah i think that's essentially the united states although i think in my lifetime didn't see it it didn't see that the conservative dispensation was the norm we were the exception and even though we have these great victories in sixty four and sixty five little did we know what rick

perlstein says in his three incredible book rise of the conservative movement set barry goldwater little did we know that they were organizing they were orchestrating and they were funding in ways to bill the ongoing political apparatus that would eventually as in more or less has done today boarded the liberal dispensation so i'm beginning to think that the gains we made in the progressive era but against a great opposition and only because william mckinley was assassinated and theodore roosevelt succeeded an accidental presidents have more often brought liberal all activity been elected president that may tell you something but what we face today we being anyone's not own that we face in thirty or been brilliantly

strategy was an enormously financial laws our conservative apparatus and it is out there's no question moment it is out every game of the new deal a fair deal and the great societies of call lawyers from his recent top fifth halo five to presidents history takes time it's the bennett forum on the presidency sponsored by the truman library institute and recorded at unity tumble on the plaza in kansas city on november first two thousand fourteen if you missed the first part of bill moyers top which aired on tape your present on january eighteenth you can now listen to it on our website k pr that played you that edu i'm kay mcintyre you're listening to kbr present on kansas public radio

today's programme features a question an answer period moderated by former senator bob kerrey coming up bill moyers turns the tables on senator kerry with a few questions of his own you you have to be a lot of what you are nineteen sixty nine what did you think of the ground that wobble hogwarts well no i remember i watched a lot of what i'm into georgia and early part of nineteen sixty eight their vote on hearing this morning on school an ashen it like back then and saw johnson's announcement that he was known for ordering the governorship yeah and i mean i knew the war was over at that point and i said you're the event at ibm if i knew what i know today and twenty five years old and intimate johnson in nineteen sixty eight don't negotiate

you've you've made of the safest no need to remain there perhaps there will be enough to get a reluctant because of the infidel nicholas lamar mckay says government and violence spreads across nine states and undercut his tobacco about in addition rubio is really solid evidence of nixon's people went to paris and undercut those negotiations you know the movie grease as it might survive the sows a it was clear maybe watching that speech i was a measured often facilitate want and talk to what the hospitals and talk to people and again back and wrote up a number of the wards were given and it was a button saying that they were also banned it was on one of all your viewers a young soldier think he had made it much worse to go in or had no idea you know might in any number

not in any i get older but after a certain that their first term as governor raskin went back to the private sector a man who came to my office in nineteen eighty six for caps and later ran for congress as his widow was still in the congress asked me to come out to santa barbara to work or and ninety to class on the impact of the war on america's every visitor the department of religious studies at uc astray and they'll full disclosure voted the interest between a law january february march in santa barbara and i was forty three single year now some of the shows as an easy decision that is the first time that i'd really look at that michigan's governor don't do much for boston so i really hadn't i really had an examined but i can understand why you know why he did what he did it was it was a consensus view at the time and that would very highly recommend a book called the brothers about john foster now and also

and it was a presbyterian safely reserve their belief that women got was our side and economists were at the comets end of an anti religion who knows what to do about the economic team disagreements over that and debates are going on what would happen to him but he gets it soon in their their totalitarian dictatorship and our guest religion and were religious and therefore were writing and the dulles brothers not the most of that and a democratically elected leader in iran and they knocked off our bands a democratically elected leader and in guatemala and they basically say a deputy atlas go to vietnam a knockout blow to a man it also didn't work out that well i'd say so the idea i didn't really your eyes it was an internet that his office as john j made a fundamental mistake imagine jimmy and jimmy the fundamental mistake because you i've been in politics a

twenty something a misperception a mistake a blunder misperception because he thought of human was george meany george meany was the head of hbo ceo and he thought that if he made the work that the right market on the table of human would take it it may leave you listen to beschloss love alaska region vergara the second one of the tapes and johnson stunned that this is it seamless the tulane the way to dealing with congress in a way of doing that you know because the expectation is the same thing that a great speech in baltimore and sixty six vinnie propose a tv ad the government were project for the mekong valley in vietnam and indonesia and he said this'll bring myself am easily or communities together to work on this project it was really well constructed a thoughtful speech to look we really got that he kept the exit poll who

truly can't turn the time that that was i miss shepherd the back to something you said it it's another award at a really takes an enormous parisian duo to go against the consensus in this is forty all in admiration for harry truman there was no mandate popular mandate for what he did in forty five and forty six no polls were in favor of the human rights campaign there were no streets of protests in the streets so selma to march on washington he did it for two reasons because he thought it was morally right and also because he was a savvy politician and he knew that the way the self would react in the administrative to the majors he was proposing and the steps he was

arbitrary taking by executive order which is where my criticism iraq yes but he would it ended and he knew that he would bring the african he was the first president i think too see the potential of the african american vote roosevelt had not give roosevelt was really buffeted by the segregationist and the races in the south and the compromise all of his measures of the deal including social security really provided a four four of them poised to get so people though that they only give them to the domestic out and for workers were excluded because the southerners in congress say it will never let that pairs if you include domestic workers and farmers for the gripper white supremacist from the south

have had on this country are to have even some might use is the single greatest obstacle to fulfilling the decoration in the constitution that we've ever faced and they still are it's brutal a map of the united states showing where medicaid has been expanded where obamacare is taking hold it's in the old confederacy that medicaid is not expanding and affordable health care is not taking place so i knew ray center shredder so much better country for african americans and women and days and it never has been but in many respects in terms of social services we're rapidly retreating and if you listen to mitch mcconnell's secret conversation a few weeks ago we was telling a group of wealthy donors what he was go to

do the minimum wage is center this is what this is what not just after this election but for the next budget but anyway it takes something to protect businesses and lbj could not do it because the consensus is another thing mr patrick even though he admired the people roosevelt he immediately began to replace them with his own people hairy ball park to others lyndon johnson pleaded with the kennedy staff and the kennedy cabinet the stale because he knew he needed them as a southerner and he knew he needed them to get them to provide continuity and even though that that they were good friends of both within the counties that because of our own nineteen sixty campaign as the liaison between the two planes that kennedy's caroline in johnson's swoosh two named after the region's recovers as officer in the pacific i knew these people and i really like these

people but you always need to bring your team and particular foreign policy because they were walking with a saying gridlock of imagination that would hopefully bring us down bring the nation though it would have helped to have had some fresh thinking you know when you mentioned fifty eight of the big swing and there's no question fifty eight without the fifty eight election loss of what occurred in the great society of the time johnson finishes sixty four campaign maybe it's a seven democrats in the senate that number of supporters agenda but the fourteen campaign has enormous import as well because not only did the truman landy and he went after it and so forth a democratic congress in may have ever a concrete agendas greatest piece of the campaign in forty eight was the one her tonight in harlem a few days before the election thousands of people mostly black the

novel thousands of people they're heard him speak it was an extraordinary statement of american aspirations inequality and it was just a few days before forty eight when everybody had said he's finished doing is we're honoring the famous picture it was a lot of iranian oil and i will listen to be given i wore to a group of farmers in which she says this is where you were nineteen thirty two and as we are today in nineteen forty eight and they said so the farmers that while both the republican ticket the most ungrateful people or so what ordinary germans save us citizens united and mccutcheon in this flood of money has come in and protect i think the marshall project a vested economic interest i don't know what they would think about it or you're just would think about it i don't know much about how money referees in the truman campaigned in the labour was a contributor and i know that but it was not anywhere near

the same army that it would become in johnson's time we need money and it was and i remember sitting at the cheapest actually always liked him a morning his first chief of staff had to leave and humanely temporary chief of staff in nineteen ninety eight october of nineteen sixty four number of the next day someone was coming to see for jesus' death came in office representing the textile industry in north carolina and unlimited power station but i think it will be let alone though she lived briefly john ashton out after a while i had one of fifty years former secretaries my sector greece italy and the us increase the isis or so left his freakish and she had a renewed recently so we opened it and there were hundred dollar bills i've never seen that

before close to the head and then apparently that was done from time to time somebody there was an illegal hard day but it was never very much to make the body that it completely and today i don't know what they think but the biggest american politics today is the politician from a puppy so that they've raised money over time they spend their time with donors this has been calibrated qualify for hours every day on the campaign trail they going to make stops beaches that in polling as danny ocean a few real parentage but most the tonnage raising money i think that would have crippled truman and crippled johnson did you ever want to see again you gotta go with johnson the campaign tour when he took his civil rights message to the heart of a rebellious place in atlanta in nineteen sixty four stop traffic stop traffic and he

got out and press the flesh as he said move among people harry truman was settled about reversing that to get the new bike trains barnstorming across the country and he'd look at the forest and look at them are to say to look at the little fortune and he would talk to them that doesn't happen again please give us your thoughts on the liberal media bias well i've watched fox news and to see much of that there and i listen to rush limbaugh go see your much of it there i read right word on the way out the other side to live i don't see much of it there is of course their liberal journalists on the liberal than that certainly affects my choice of subjects in my perception of a subject i'd never whitaker some of the journalists i know to let their politics shake their reporting it might shape your analysis not they are reporting i find that most of that

criticism over the issues in their bids go scholarly studies of this most of what they call the liberal bias over the many years before we have to pulverize msnbc and fox news was because they didn't think their story was being told the way it would be told if they had a functioning as a journalist and i return deliberative in journalism after being seven years later and the concentration and i said the closer you get your you discover as a journalist that's what matters is how close you get to the truth about how close you get the power unlike most of the people i knew in the end of the eighties and nineties in jerusalem was at cbs for a number of years they were trying to get close to the truth whatever the truth is they were not trying to spin a story we were more conservative and conservatives don't like it if the truth pages that ideology they don't want to give the search for the truth comes to

conclusions differ from their ideology and of art's about liberalism and there were little girls edward p morgan and others of their word liberal journalist but it accounts convince effort to just to take that vote mainstream media was an effort to discredit the message for a long time they would have to meet with a vindictive and his representatives and distorted view because they were trying to seek their people from watching me because if you watch me you get a different perspective from bill o'reilly are from archambault and so if they fear were real reporting is about than they will do what they can to discredit you in the years and i was of the followers now i say that without offending the press itself is

political would you it were to attacked personally for dancing or us and this is this is interesting issue about empathy and about the mindset of the government in nineteen sixty five i grew up in a culture rejects that i was a baptist like your true of the center and i grew up in a baptist church and dancing sunday movies drinking smoking their were all they rolled verboten a rule forbidding and you know what we didn't i didn't miss it every two hours twenty seven the average though and ever danced when i got to worship in a different kind of dance was of course emerging that want to see all of that and you get to know a lot of this debate and i would answer that i didn't know how i have learned and i would start all over the feet of a girl i was dancing with including the fiance he was a great dancer but was sacrificed

her aesthetic tell us because of our merits you add that but nineteen sixty five is a big smithsonian gallo raising money for the smithsonian institute and i was present were the president brought him in and he just mainly press secretary which i didn't want to do it i said no the first time i said no the second time and i'm still hurting from the fort lewis i was invited to the smithsonian i went over and didn't want to see was a bit you made up as you went all i made your love who knows what do you see in her life and it was a michigan bake it and i was holding forth around the best or the woman in a very very beautiful slick spare dress and a photographer for the wars and post took that picture and it was on the front page of over two hundred pages the next morning sunday morning

including the martian was messed over our grip and my mother saw and a reporter from the associated press to come down the marshall to see whatever but i thought about there vegas fair board of one of those hours and what you think about the other read a victory educational smarter software certainly was one to do that they had to try to make it rain that's what i thought but the concert about the conservatives that the rotting dressed modestly was been seized on that to criticize us for having a good time while we were sending them in vietnam and you know what that was for christmas because it made me say that we knew order other participating ordering young man now when you go in there lies in the unified of no return you should

change your brain you should check i mean the best thing we could do today would be to we are a year or two you need to put forward oh an endless war for more expensive than vietnam except in laws for more expensive for the captain of them were too we're in awards every president george w bush and for obama share that conviction we are in a war whatever you want to call it and yet in the midst of the war within days of planning at the bush administration asked for a tax cut for the wealthiest people and said this is this chain is on the record saying we won the election we deserve it so if you call if you provided national service for every eighteen year

old and you they put a more profits tax on wealthy people to pay you do more to connect this back to the realities are government issue and bridges to other people and that unfortunately but fortunate episode you'll meet an understatement you know i grew up will love will toll voters in this little town in east texas and totally unaware of the live experience of ten thousand and twenty thousand people more black on the other side of the tracks wasn't until very calm wasp remote english teacher sydney king lear and pointed out that we're only he's says to go sister how do you see the world and glasses

answers i see it the feeling the way i see it the thing even if you have it in the president's event a sort of possible to connect even if you're the senate majority leader it's hard to connect the world out there were real people are affected by your decisions the choices your policy my concern about that begins with an episode so the question a specific question is why can't we win the war on poverty and i connected to it has said well why why they're so hard to get people become more sympathetic to they can like conditions of people are working to still living in poverty visit them and that was a great deal that those years in for wood johnson is proposing that we're for less income inequality in nineteen sixty four the media today o'hara we're at the greatest rate of inequality in the nation's history including the nineteen twenties roaring twenties

and gilded age we didn't really fight the war poverty the budget for the world of it was much more than sixty five and sixty six and sixty seven <unk> cabinet positions lyndon johnson did he didn't intend to both the presiding spirit in vietnam i remember going over to see we were all planning a budget for sixty six saying to him we have to have a tax increase we can't pay for these programs unless we increase taxes and secure nightmares and if we do a bill that conservatives on the hill will not follow the party or remade the job of creating inflation cause we did but we haven't won the world partly because its intrinsic it's deep and it takes calls from the very beginning one party have been opposed to it and one of the divide in this country the conservative divide doesn't believe in it and we made a lot of

mistakes in the beginning we haven't recovered from those mistakes and we don't get it we don't get behind the way we get and the royals or the jet early eighties we don't think that it's a success as a society that week help people achieve financial things successively methadone they're almost as a star player for any any of those came along it is because we are not permitted to have as a society when we committed to medicare are part of something like there's a specific way to make a specific and sixty five the so security act is a man with two big health care provisions medicare then a muscle that must make you feel good to watch newt gingrich and his political career by china and medicare and medicaid and that the difference between the two

is stark and i personally believe it reveals a challenging you've got with a warm part of curious if it was ever at that moment discussion saying that medicaid is in a debate a popular drug is an enemy means tested is one too much and means tested it really becomes some and maybe some of the bank to buy a big debate in the water at the vehicle coalition with the shooting to test it and the consensus was no don't worry about making the federal program of them are federal state program is all something that's also part of them in the president didn't think we could get it hess through all of those senators and members of congress who did believe in states' rights and also pickles and it took away power from the southern segregationists and so we made the government mean everything we did was compromise of them develop good omar is a rebel cause

after all feel more years and former us senator bob kerrey from their recent talk in kansas city if the truman library institute's bennett forum an annual event focusing on the presidency held november first two thousand fourteen at unity temple on the plaza thanks to recording engineer chubby smith for help with today's program if you missed part one of this program it's now archived at our website k pr that k u die edu there you can also hear last week's show president obama's speech at the university of kansas plus a look at other presidents who have visited k you over the years again that on our website k pr that pay you that edu i'm kate mcintyre kbr present is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas