[DOUGLAS BRINKLEY] Anybody
have any questions?
[EVAN SMITH] Yes, Steve
will get the microphone set.
Okay, so if you have questions,
you're welcome to come down
and we'll take as many
as time permits. Dan.
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
Before to go on,
Molly Ivins would
also be a great,
along with Hunter.
There's a great documentary
on her at South By.
[SMITH] Yes. [AUDIENCE
MEMBER] Anyway, what about
the Democratic
field. Your thoughts?
[SMITH] Do you have a view
on the Democrats' prospects
in the next election?
[BRINKLEY] I do,
I think it's all
about whether Joe
Biden runs or not.
And it looks like--
[SMITH] Looks like
he's going to, right?
[BRINKLEY] And if Biden runs,
I think he'll be a front runner
for almost the whole time
and it would really
take somebody
to turn the apple cart over
in Iowa or New Hampshire.
Beto O'Rourke from
Texas has a shot at it
if he could win Iowa.
That's a demographic that
should be good for him.
And if he could be
the darling of Iowa
and suddenly wins there,
he could be on a
great trajectory.
But it he loses Iowa,
Biden's gonna do well
in New Hampshire.
[SMITH] And especially
South Carolina.
He'll do very well
in South Carolina.
[BRINKLEY] --South Carolina.
And then he gets to California
and you have Kamala Harris there
and she's gonna grab
a bunch of delegates.
Where would a Beto
O'Rourke start gathering
all those delegates?
But the Bernie Sanders vote
has been deeply
underappreciated.
I don't think Bernie's going
to shrink in appeal.
He is proven
to have a lot of loyalty.
So you're looking
at Biden and Bernie.
And then there's oxygen for
a third major player,
maybe four.
Cory Booker still has a chance.
I thought Senator Klobuchar,
Amy Klobuchar in
Minnesota is terrific
but her fundraising is anemic.
So she would have
to find a way to
get a little more zip in her.
But the bottom line is,
as a historian speaking,
2020 is a hundred years
of women getting
the right to vote.
And the Democratic party
cannot have a non-woman,
there has to be a woman
on the ticket.
[SMITH] I agree with you.
The rocket booster
of that last election
for the Democrats
in which they were,
they had pretty
good election cycle,
were young people,
women and people of color.
To not acknowledge
that in some way
is really to snatch
potential victory from
or defeat rather from the
jaws of potential victory.
[BRINKLEY] I agree completely,
I mean, what I'm suggesting
if Bernie or Biden
or O'Rourke happen to get
the nomination they
would have to pick
a person of color or a woman.
Kamala Harris would be very
good choice at that point.
You couldn't do
Biden-Klobuchar in my view.
Maybe but I think you have to
show diversity as a Democrat.
[SMITH] You would
agree Doug, also,
in view of the resolution
of the Mueller investigation
the President may very
well get re-elected.
[BRINKLEY] Yes.
[SMITH] Right? Don't
you think you have
to go into it assuming.
[BRINKLEY] There is no question,
Donald Trump is a lot stronger
than the Democratic
Party likes to admit.
I mean if we,
we're divided.
People watch Fox News,
people watch CNN, MSNBC.
You know, people pull
off in different areas.
But Donald Trump now has some,
has some wind in
his sail even with
all the scandals and it's
the most scandal
plagued president.
There are more ugly
scandals surrounding him
than Warren Harding in
the Teapot Dome era.
I mean, this is a
scandal plagued president
but nevertheless when you
don't see Republicans breaking
from him.
I mean, when Nixon
went down it's when Barry
Goldwater and Howard Baker
and leading lights
said you lied,
you're toast.
You don't see Lindsey
Graham doing that.
You know, we're not seeing
the Republicans showing that
'cause they're very
afraid to be nuked
by the Trump machine.
To be ridiculed on Sean
Hannity and Rush Limbaugh.
To be, you know,
people were primaried
from the right
and so they're being very mute.
[SMITH] Ma'am?
[AUDIENCE MEMBER] Thank
you for being here.
Well, with Trump,
he doesn't read,
he doesn't read
any of the reports
that are given to him
and he just tweets.
And I got to recently
at South By they had,
they had a fake,
faux presidential
library of tweets
of his and to go back and read
what these real things are,
I was wondering how
do things really work
in the White House so quickly
and all the things that
he's changed and he's packed
the court system.
Who is the,
does he have a Carl Rove
type person behind him doing
these things and
making it all happen
because he just doesn't
seem capable of it.
And I remember what about
a year and a half ago
something came out
in the New York Times
and it was this group
of people that kept,
they said we're here
in the White House
and we're really
saving the America,
we're keeping his
finger off the button.
[SMITH] That was the
opinion piece, right?
[BRINKLEY] Right.
[SMITH] There was
the opinion piece
that was signed anonymous.
So what about that? How do you--
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
How is it working?
[BRINKLEY] Well, I think
different presidents use media
in different ways.
FDR with radio, John F. Kennedy,
the press conference.
You know, Obama was like the
first Blackberry president.
Twitter and Donald Trump,
the marriage of them has been,
is grotesque in my
mind, quite disastrous.
Instead of having
thoughtful policy,
the president jumps
over everybody
and puts out inflammatory things
to be talked about.
He is of the school that it's
better to be talked about
than not and be in
the front and center
of every news cycle
no matter what it is.
And I thought the
recklessness of his Twitter,
I knew it was great
for the campaign,
it didn't surprise me
that that would track
but I thought that as
president you would have
to tone it down and he hasn't.
And I still think if
he's ever indicted
for something there may be a
Twitter that's going to get him
into trouble but alas
people now find it just
part of the new normal.
Ah, Trump did a
crazy Tweet today
and he's down some
just crazy wacko things
and it creates a
sense of instability
but it makes him talked about.
[AUDIENCE MEMBER] Thank you.
[SMITH] Miss Lava.
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
Good afternoon.
I'm interested from your point
of view as a historian and a
writer who looks at history,
how future historians are going
to deal with technology
and deal with people
erasing things.
And just having the
record that you rely on
these last decades
and centuries.
How are people in
the future going
to keep an accurate or
try to keep an accurate
evaluation of what's going on?
[SMITH] Do you have confidence
in the archiving of
electronic documents
and communications?
[BRINKLEY] Excellent question.
And I think about it a lot.
I'm afraid it's not gonna
be very satisfactory
I do think there are gonna be
a lot of deletes.
Everything's gonna
be digitalization.
There are,
we're not,
what historians
traditionally do is read
other people's
mail for a living.
The leavings of the past
but now the deletions are
going to be just gigantic.
Where we pick up some capitol
is in the visual world.
You know how many speeches,
you know we don't have taped
speeches of Abraham Lincoln,
but anybody who's
not just president,
but senators being on C-SPAN.
Or they're people taping
every campaign stop.
There's film footage
of everywhere,
all the Democrats running,
every day every speech
is being filmed.
So in some ways the
visual components
and the transcripts
that are emanated
from those are gonna go up.
But the real inside
baseball kind
of personal and professional
documentation I think
is going to get sanitized
or deleted or hidden.
[SMITH] Don't you think
also the campaigns
and candidates and
people in public life,
are on to all of us now?
[BRINKLEY] Yes.
[SMITH] In a way that
they weren't before
so they're much more
conscious of the fact
that anything that they say--
[BRINKLEY] Yes.
[SMITH] --may be
saved for posterity.
That the E in email
stands for everybody.
[BRINKLEY] Exactly.
[SMITH] Right, and so they
no longer will say things
that may have value
to future historians for
fear that what will happen
to them is what happened
to people previously.
[BRINKLEY] Completely.
That's exactly what it is.
And yeah, I tell my students
at Rice University where I teach
you know email is permanent.
This idea, yes it's a good idea
to delete it if
you put something
that you don't like so you
don't have to remind yourself
that you wrote it.
But try not to be reckless
on using something like email.
But here we have the president
of the United States
recklessly using Twitter.
If Donald Trump
had been an emailer
I think he'd be in deep,
criminal problems for the way
that he's dealt with monies.
But he's never done an
email in his entire life.
And that's one of the problems,
Mueller doesn't have
an email record of him.
[SMITH] Right.
[BRINKLEY] And he's learned
to be as well he's reckless
of being a fake person
representing himself
on a phone call,
he's careful on his business
transactions not to put it
in writing and to
be dodgy about it.
So it's hard to get that they--
Everybody says how can
he be president with
all the things he did?
But nobody's been
able to bust him,
a whole career of this.
Building buildings
that he didn't build
and putting his name on 'em
and he's not done jail time.
Jared Kushner is the maestro
of the internet.
He is deeply facile at
bank wires and monies.
[SMITH] Secure apps. [BRINKLEY]
Secure apps and all of that.
And I think
to answer an earlier question,
he's probably will be,
end up to have been more
seminal keeping an eye
on President Trump
than we think.
[SMITH] How's our time?
Take these last
two? Very good. Sir.
We'll do these
quickly. Yes, sir.
[AUDIENCE MEMBER] I've
never read any of your books
but now I'm a fan of yours.
I'm a big space junkie,
and also Hunter S.
Thompson fellow alumnae
of the Air Force
public affairs field.
[BRINKLEY] Oh my goodness!
[AUDIENCE MEMBER] Yeah,
you ever read his articles
when he was--
[BRINKLEY] Oh, I've
read everything Hunter,
I mean, I became
quite friends with him
and that's why I'm
Literary Executor
but he was in the Air Force
for a while and would
write incredible articles,
the Bart Star ones and
all. It's amazing stuff.
[SMITH] Question?
[AUDIENCE MEMBER] My
question, I'm sorry,
it's gonna be about space.
[SMITH] Sure, of course.
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
Is that all right?
It's a little off topic.
[SMITH] Please, please.
It's on topic.
[AUDIENCE MEMBER] But um,
about 2009 we sort of,
NASA had to come away from
the whole space exploration
program, sort of.
You know the budget
was cut drastically.
I'm just wondering how you
feel where we'd be right now
if we didn't lose all
that time you know
almost 10 years now
plus we lost time
with disasters.
Do you think we'd
be further along?
Do you also believe we'd
be allowing civilians
to go ahead and start
working out on the moon.
Or even on the asteroid,
yeah asteroids.
[SMITH] Where would we be
if we hadn't lost that time?
[BRINKLEY] We would
have been to Mars.
We would have been
aiming to go to Mars,
we would have been
back to the moon
and perhaps built some
sort of facility there.
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
A gateway project.
[BRINKLEY] A gateway project.
And, you know,
NASA still has a relevance
with meteorological
forecasting when you deal
with climate change,
it's a lot of,
the GPS of today grew
a lot out of NASA
anti-icing devices,
you know, the
satellites we put up
to look at planet earth
and all of that have
been incredibly useful
for the modern world
but you can't just
keep defunding
something like NASA
and expect the results.
And we just are,
it's become an easy slash item
for people looking to do cuts
in government expenditure.
Which is ironic because it's one
of the government agencies
most Americans adore.
[SMITH] Love it,
right that's exactly
right, good question.
Thank you.
Last question here. Ma'am. Hi.
[AUDIENCE MEMBER] Hello.
In your career of research
and writing books have
you noticed your mode
of research change as
technology changed?
And then if you could speak on,
what is your favorite
part of what you do?
[BRINKLEY] My favorite
part on the first part
is I love traveling
to places in the United States.
So I actually love
going to unusual places
to do research,
to going to Huntsville, Alabama
to research NASA. To go
to the jet propulsion
laboratory in Pasadena.
You know, these
kind of trips to me
are really fun.
The research part
I love the most.
The part I don't like is having
to whittle down all your
research into something
that's not too fat.
Contrary--
[SMITH] So this is the
whittled down version?
[BRINKLEY] That is whittled.
That's as whittled
down as I can do, guys,
without because there's
such large topics.
And that's why Robert Caro
of Lyndon Johnson has it right
doing LBJ in a lot of volumes.
You can really do it,
but it's hard to do FDR
in 300 pages.
[SMITH] Yeah, right.
[BRINKLEY] And so lately I've
been trying to do aspects,
Kennedy and the moon,
or Theodore Roosevelt
and conservation.
Because then you can do a part
of their legacy but doing it all
in one volume is a
little bit tricky.
But I'm old fashioned.
Well, let me just
say it's I came out
of the book culture.
I still read my
books in this form.
I don't read Kindle.
Nothing against Kindle.
Please use Kindle for my book.
But I went to graduate school
and worked my way
through working
the used book business,
antiquarian books.
I was the night manager
in Washington, D.C.
at Second Story Books,
at Dupont Circle.
And then I managed Idle Times
in Adams Morgan.
I then got sent buying
rare antiquarian books.
I used to see Larry McMurtry
all the time up in DC constantly
because he was in the
same book world up there--
[SMITH] Yep.
[BRINKLEY] --when I was young.
And so I'm a book collector,
I like signed books.
I liked first editions,
I like the dust jackets,
I'm a book person.
[SMITH] It's not gonna change.
[BRINKLEY] And that's,
I will continue to like books
more than anything online.
[SMITH] Good. Give Doug
Brinkley a big hand.
Thank you so much
for being with us.
[BRINKLEY] Thank you.
[SMITH] Thank you all.
We'll see you again.
(audience applauding)