he'll come in, sign it. we'll call you and you can come pick it up at the. so thank you all very for coming and thank you for being here this afternoon

good evening. i'm jason kelly. i'm interim director of the galvin in journalism ethics and democracy. and i'm excited to welcome you all to the 2023 red smith lecture. it's great. see everybody here tonight. i want to start by thanking our speaker carlos lozada and, the notre dame institute for advanced study, which is the reason why this event is possible tonight. carlos is here this year as a faculty fellow and they very generously made this event possible as part of his very

busy schedule. so very grateful for that. so that the lecture tonight had a timely element. this morning when i woke up this morning, there was a notification, my phone from the new york times that said carlos lozada latest. and so i don't normally click through the notifications but i went to that one right away and the headline said this is his new column just today in the new york times i the mueller ukraine and jan six reports as though they were one long book that didn't have to say so. you don't have to. so carlos lozada has been doing reading on our behalf since 2015, when he became nonfiction book critic for the washington post. that was right around the time that donald trump's first presidential campaign started when carlos the new york times last year, the paper celebrated his arrival by saying he had

revolutionized the form of nonfiction book criticism, bringing ambition, rigor and brilliant writing to his consideration. the ideas, arguments, dynamic mix and politics that animates societies and shape human condition. a few years before that, the pulitzer prize committee lauded much the same characteristics they presented him with journalism's highest. much of his work up to and including today's column has necessarily focused donald trump and all volumes written about him and his presidency. carlos even wrote his own book about all the trump books. it's called what we were thinking and you're invited to pick up a copy afterwards tonight. and he will be there to sign copies as well. among the things that make his approach so revolutionary are that he doesn't read and review

only books as today's column showed. he also reads government reports supreme court decisions, and he also treats them all not as standard works, but in conversation with each other, providing his readers a more complete picture of our time and the public figures who shape it carlos lozada his career is a testament to the value of deep and wide reading. sometimes a mind numbing amount of reading as today's column also showed, and putting his own assumptions to the test by engaging in good with the full spectrum of ideas and points of view before drawing his own conclusions. so that's a great example, not only for journalists, but also for all of us citizens. and we're fortunate be able to learn from him tonight. so join me in welcoming our 2023 red smiths lecture carlos lozada.

i want to just play that on repeat and i that was a thank you, jason. it is an to be back in notre dame to deliver the 2023 read smith lecture thank you to the gallivan program for inviting me here tonight to the notre dame institute for advanced study for hosting me this week. any notre graduate who dares enter journalism is laboring under the legacy and the shadow and the exquisite or choices of red smith. and when i look back on the luminaries of my profession who have given this lecture over the decades, starting scotty reston 40 years ago. i feel that same combination of exhilaration, insecurity that i often felt in class at notre dame, i was not active in student journalism at notre dame. i not even thought of journalism as a career option for me, but it was a professor here who told me that i might have some ability to write and it here that i first began to truly read

with a purpose and and that's what i want to talk about when i talk about reading and writing. that's the sort of journalism that i do. i don't cover wars. i don't interview politicians, i don't dig up classified documents or meet, you know, sources and parking garages in arlington, virginia i've edited great teams of reporters, but i've never been a reporter myself. instead, i read i read histories and memoirs and manifestos. i read, you know, centuries old and decades old, commission reports and supreme court decisions and congressional investigations. i read many books about politics, and i have to i read many books by polity since i read tell us by former white house aides. i read those campaign biographies that every politician writes when they, you know, aspire to high office. and then i read, you know, revisionist memoir. they write when they leave

office trying to justify that they did. i read books by presidents and vice presidents and senators and fbi director and chiefs of staff. there's lots of books by chiefs of staff the way because everyone in washington either to be a chief of staff or have a chief of staff. i spent a decade or so doing this first as a book critic for the post and now as a columnist for, the new york times. and sometimes when hear that i've spent all these years a book critic reading political rather than, you know, discovering the next great american novel, right? i get a few recurring reactions. there's something like this, wow you read that book so we don't have to. aw, man, you really took one for the team there. you know, i've also gotten better. you than me, and that was from a fellow critic who couldn't believe the book i had reviewed for the washington post. now, why do i get those responses? i get those responses. these books are generally assumed to be bad, right they're

self-serving, they're ghostwritten they're propaganda. write the book by politicians. why should you believe them? and reading them is thought to be bore and a chore. in fact, when i wrote my own book about the books of the trump presidency, i read about 150 political books about about that period when the new york times reviewed my book, they fortunately give it a very nice review. they liked it, but even the reviewers felt compelled to that. my reading all those other books was, quote, an act, transcendent masochism, transcendent. so so that's what that's what even the times thinks about reading political books. some people say this book shouldn't exist the washington post, my former employer published an op ed a few weeks ago titled does anyone actually read presidential campaign books? the question totally rhetorical, of course, because columnist

said that these books were ranged from mediocre, spectacularly bad, and that no one should buy them, let alone them a years ago, the political pundit chris matthews wrote a piece admitting that a lot of washingtonians even don't really read these books. i mean, they have them on their but but they don't they don't actually read them instead they give this these books what he calls the washington read there are a few versions of the washington read right. one is to actually read the book right from beginning to end, like most humans. but why would you do that when can just go through the book? right. which means skim it and hopefully absorb some of that way. another option is to read the opening and then pretend you've read the full book. and if were a real washington power player, you start in the back with the index, you look for your own name, you go to those pages, see how well you're treated, and depending on that, you may or may not continue reading the book.

about a decade ago, the journalist leibovich wrote a really insider read dc washington book called this town and. he purposely published it without an index because wanted to force people to at least go through the book to find their names, to see they were treated. so i was an editor at post at the time and i tasked all interns to like, you know, divide up the book. you know the chapters and construct an index. we then published online with all the boldface names. now i heard that the author not pleased. so yes, of course there are some real duds among political books. right. but that's the case with any any genre of of of fiction or nonfiction i i'm here to make the case for the washington book believe in the washington. and i think that the relentlessly negative perception of washington misses the point completely of reading them.

first, this disdain for washington books pretty hypocritical after all, even those very serious readers would never pick up, you know, memoir by trump. second secretary of state or his third press secretary. they still want to know what's in those books, right? they want to know who these people criticize, who they suck up to, what scores they settle. when people ask me about these books, they don't say it good. they say, what's the news right. they're giving it the washington read. worse yet, they want me to do the washington beat for them. i also they love nothing than seeing someone like me give a really harsh takedown of a book by a politician. they hate or to you bestow rapturous praise upon the book of a politician they admire. these books only matter them as sources of political ammunition. they rarely come to them with an open mind. but here's the real reason to read these books. and that is that no matter how

carefully the politicians sanitize experiences and their positions and their no matter how diligently they present themselves in the best and the safest, the most electable light, they almost always end up revealing themselves in. these books, whether they to or not. they tell us who they really are. they can help it. politicians love talking about themselves and eventually in these books they will share something, say something, or do something that is -- or enlightening or. surprising something that helps us understand in a new way. they on themselves and when they tell them themselves, they often end up telling us something else about the state of our politics or the state of our civic life. it's rarely the sort of sexy, newsy material that is most revelatory. it might be a throwaway line here, a recurring phrase that they always use maybe something they randomly said to a low level aide who then wrote about

it in their book book. it's sometimes the acknowledgment sections of these books. it's somewhere in there. and that means even these supposedly bad books can be enormously enlightening and illuminate and therefore exciting to read. despite themselves. you don't need to do the washington read except to know how to read the washington book. now i'll start with the books by a politician who probably could have made his living as a writer. in fact, now he kind of does make his living as a writer. and that's barack obama, his 1995 memoir, dreams from my father is in my a wonderful written book and so much so that i think all the subsequent books kind of suffer and of obama's books have been vastly overanalyzed and discussed length, including by me. and so i just want to focus on a few specific lines. there's a moment in dreams for my father when obama, in his

early post-college years, talks his aspirations for community organizing in chicago and he writes, because this community imagined was still in the making, built on the promise that the larger american community, black and brown, could somehow redefine. i believe that it might over time admit the uniqueness of my life. he's writing about the challenge of fitting in in america and how america might change so that he who combines like hawaii and kansas, kenya and indonesia and chicago, you know, could feel a greater sense of belonging right now. you might about that line until you reread or rewatch his. famous 2004 keynoted dress at the democratic invention in boston, where he held the promise of an america that not, you know, red or blue but united. and when he said that in no other country on earth is my even possible.

all right. so now is less about fitting in than about embracing an america that made his life a reality. right? it's a celebratory line and a celebratory speech. you might forget about that line into. your read his 2006 campaign book, the audacity of hope, where obama writes that as a black man in america with what he calls mixed heritage, sometimes he feels like, quote, a prisoner. my own biography. so now obama's view of his life story changed again. it's not celebratory. it's confining. when i think about these three disparate lines in these three disparate texts, i start to understand why obama throughout, his presidency, constantly defaulted to discussing his own life as a symbol, a symbol of national aspiration, a symbol of national self-improvement, a symbol of a nation's unfulfilled promise. it was there, in his own words, before he ever got to the oval office. now, if you happen, read the

memoir by reggie love, who was obama's personal aide, his man during that eight campaign and during his first term. you'll see how obama tries to sort of refine public perceptions of his story. reggie love recalls the timing. obama's briefcase when were getting on a flight to go to a primary debate. and i mean, that's a big no no for the man. and so was going was get fired. but obama forgave and it was just a nice of little anecdote. but reggie love mentions one thing that obama said to him about why he was so kind of annoyed at the missing bag. obama liked to be seen carrying things off the plane, he said to reggie, jfk carried his own bags. now that one moment, that one little line, jfk carried his own bags is the thing i will ever

remember from reading reggie love's memoir. but it says so much about how carefully obama cultivated, his self-image, how wanted people to think about him in his story how maybe he thought about it himself. you'd never know that unless you were there, which i gather none of us, you know, had the chance to be there or unless you read. reggie memoir. now some politicians are a little less subtle when they when tell them themselves. when donald trump launched his 2016 his his campaign for the presidency in 2015. i decided read his various books or at least sampling of them. if read along with me, if you read the art of the deal and at the top and the art of the comeback and so many more. you would not have surprised by his presidency. you would've been shocked, but you would not have been that surprised. here's what i wrote in july of

2015, and i, for the sort of self-referential nature. sitting down with the collected of donald j. trump is unlike any literary experience i've ever had. over the course of 2212 pages, i encountered. a world where bragging is breathing and insulting is talking, where repetition and contradiction come standard. where vengefulness and insecurity erupt at random. elsewhere such qualities might get in the way of the story. with trump, they are the story. now, i'm not myself for like seeing it all coming. you know, i didn't i didn't think he would win. but i did read the books. and even though they're not particularly truthful, even the ghostwriter of the art of the deal has disowned it in public now. you know, these books still reveal trump. for all his unpredictability he's nothing if not consistent. trump wrote another book published another book in 2004 called how to get rich, which i also read. and there he drops one sort of bizarre passage that i think

says a lot about him. weirdly, it's about his hair. the reason my looks so neat all the time is because i don't have to deal with elements. i live in building where i work. i take an elevator from my bedroom to my. the rest of the time, either my stretch limousine, my private jet, my helicopter, or my private club in, palm beach. if i happen to be outside, i'm probably one of my golf courses where i protect my hair from overexposure. wearing a golf hat. now, what does that passage tell us? aside donald trump's sort of vanity about his main, they say that the white puts presidents in a bubble. but judging from that passage, donald lived in the bubble of his own making long before he ever got to washington. and those words, trump reveals his his and very deliberately constructed isolation. and it's the kind of isolation lets you spin and believe whatever story create about

yourself. sometimes a book reveals the central tension of, a politician's ambitions. and here i'm thinking of hillary clinton's 1996 manifesto. it takes a village. in this book, which is published right in the middle of her eight year tenure as as first lady, you see to hillary clinton's doing battle with each other. she combines very progressive tendencies, big social policy issues such as health care with surprising moderate or even conservative views on on cultural and family issues. this was a time, remember, when bill clinton was declaring the area era of big government to be over. and you see hillary clinton tracing her own line through the center in the book declares that she says, let us stop stereotype government or individuals as absolute or absolute saviors and recognize each must be part of the solution. she even writes that, quote of us would describe ourselves as

middle of the road liberal some areas conservative, conservative in others, moderate in most. this was a tension clinton never seemed to fully resolve. some of you may remember the 2016 democratic primary in a debate with bernie sanders, anderson cooper asked her so, are you a progressive or a moderate? right. and what was her answer? i'm a progressive, but a progressive likes to get things done right. there are many reasons hillary clinton did not become president of the united states, which some of which have nothing to do with their values or her qualifications. but that combination of and expediency of this kind of semi reluctance, perhaps the weight of unreasonable expectations, they help explain why she was always perceived as being too cautious and centrist for the left and is being too much of a big government progressive for the right. if you want to see that tension in her own words, you just have

to read. it takes a village now, sometimes these books are notable not for the words that politicians write, but for the ones they omit. in his recent memoir, help me god, mike pence covers his life, his political career, especially his time in the trump white house. now, i feel compelled to note for this particular audience that there are two notre dame references in. so help me god. first, it turns out that mike pence listened to the soundtrack of rudy to psych himself up when he was writing his 2016 republican convention speech. i guess it's inspiring. here's a second thing. mike pence, the former governor, indiana, commits the mortal sin of referring to this school as notre dame university. i know i. know who, mike now? his book covers the drama of january six when pence stood his

ground as the presiding of the senate and did not attempt to decertify the results of the election. and if you saw any of his book tour appearances, you saw how pence has been creating distance himself and trump maybe with an eye 2024. yet when describes the events of that day of january six, a day when rioters calling for his hanging, a day when trump did very little to protect him and still runs interference for trump in his book still minimizes his transgressions in book, pence quotes trump's video message that afternoon of january six. the video in which the president called on the rioters to the capitol. and here's how pence quotes trump's message i know your pain. i know you're hurt. dot, dot, dot. but you have to home now. we have to have peace. right? trump did say that. that's accurate. but it's not all said. i was wondering what pence cut

out when he put in that ellipses. so i went to the video and i watched. here's what trump said in the middle of that passage. we had an election that was stolen from us. it was a landslide election. and everyone knows it, especially the other. then he goes on to say, but you have to go home. we have to have peace. right. so even telling his supporters to stand down, he was still affirming the lie about the election. and in his memoir, which is written for pence, is still covering for him right. so much of pence's vice presidency captured in those three little dots. when you're reading a washington book, it's useful to look out for what they omit. yes. also, the recurring go to lines, the rhetorical crutches that politicians use in a 2019 memoir, the truths hold. these titles are all wretched, by the way. kamala harris repeatedly brings

up the idea of false choices. for instance, she writes, quote, it is a false choice that you must either be for the police or for police accountability. i am for both. and she recalls a town hall meeting in sacramento where a constituent complains that she cares more about undocumented immigrants than about american citizens. and she said that was another false choice. i care deeply about both now. it's very thoughtful, sage, to say that, you know, you don't believe false choices, but politics is in all about making difficult choices, about picking among priorities. harris's eagerness to sort of stay on to side of a difficult question is captured in that use of false which she has continued use as as vice president. and i think that may say something about how she's had difficulty carving out a very distinctive role as vice president. her memoir helps me understand that she rejects zero sum

choices so she says they aren't real right now. speaking of zero sum choices when joe biden had to pick a vice presidential nominee, it was reported the two finalists were kamala harris and susan rice, who used to be president obama's national security adviser. i had harris's ready and. i had susan rice's book ready, and i promised my editor that as soon as he picked one, i would read the book really quickly and a piece about it right away. susan rice memoir was 544 pages as kamala harris's memoir was 336 pages. so i have to confess, on that day. i was seriously rooting for kamala harris to get the job, and she did. now, as i mentioned, when you're reading the washington book, you always always, always read the acknowledgments section. that is, politicians, their debts they engage in back, sometimes snubbing sucking up in

snubbing department. mike pence does not mention his boss, donald trump, in the acknowledgments his white house memoir. and i think maybe that's a little sign that he's trying to kind of show he is his own man. but my favorite acknowledgments moment in a political book is in florida. senator marco rubio's memoir american dreams. another another sort of lousy title, which he published in 2015. now, the first person that rubio thinks by name in the acknowledgments of his book is, is is a big deal. and many of you hear it in early in particular will recognize the name. he says, i think my lord jesus christ, whose willingness to suffer and die for my sins will allow me to enjoy eternal. it's a wonderful sentiment. a person of faith. who's the second person? marco rubio. thanks my very wise lawyer. bob barnett. now that's even funnier if you

know that bob barnett is, a seriously big time lawyer in d.c., he helps candidates prepare for presidential. his clients are like major and media figures for whom really lucrative book deals. it does not get more establishment than bob barnett and i just love so much that rubio wrote this. i'm so grateful to him because it tells you so much about the inside outside the game that politicians play right like you know beating your chest about jesus in one sentence and hiring like the biggest power lawyer in town in the next. right. like it's like the washington of pascal's wager for like the philosophy majors here. it's like believe in god, but like a good lawyer, you know, just in case. now there's another kind of washington, or at least a kind of washington text that often becomes a book. and these are not written by individuals, but by institutions, by committee. congressional blue ribbon commissions, special counsel investigations, even supreme

court decisions reading washington also means reading these documents. there's been much debate lately, for instance, about whether the supreme court has become too politicized. right. people are trying to figure out who leaked the dobbs decision to the press. the new york times has done stories about how donors to the supreme court society kind of gain access to justices. and those are very legitimate journalistic avenues to to pursue. now, if you if you want to know, and see how the court has grown politicized, you can also just read their decisions. so last year, when the dobbs ruling was formally issued, i read it including the dissent in the concurrences. and i also went back and read roe versus wade and planned parenthood. casey, the two biggest abortion decisions of of the last 50 years before dobbs the recrimination and accusations that the justices at each other and these documents reveals

institution that was politicized long before anyone handed anything to political. you can see that the trends you can see the transformation across the decades in these different decisions. for example in roe v wade, william rehnquist who had yet yet to become the chief justice, acknowledged even though he disagreed with that, with the decision. he acknowledged the you know, the deep historical inquiry and legal scholarship of the majority's. despite his agreement he said quote the opinion commands my respect. that kind of politeness gone from subsequent. from the subsequent two cases. casey and dobbs the opinion that decided casey warned that overruling roe would constitute quote a surrender to pressure. one of the justices even wrote of his fear for, the darkness. if his four colleagues opposing ever found one more vote. of course, one of those four justices, you know, disparaged

other side's what he called almost tsarist arrogance in the dobbs case. even those characterizations seem just genteel. different factions of the court accused each other of incompetence of duplicity, of hypocrisy. the majority opinion overturning, roe said roe had been an elaborate scheme concocted to make up a constitutional right. the dissenters in dobbs denounced the majority for letting their personal get in the way of their duty. they say that with dobbs the court departments obligation to faithfully and impartially apply the law. basically the justices are all accusing each of giving in to insidious political impulses and pressures while they alone remain uncorrupted. it sounds a lot like the rest of our political class. this notion that the court was immune. these kind of of of impulses is is is gone. and you can glimpse court's politicization in news coverage. you can also just roe casey and

dobbs. finally love reading commission reports or reports by special of congress. i know that sounds weird, but these reports are often of america in moments of enormous stress and trauma. think about it. the 911 commission report, the warren commission report on kennedy on the kennedy assassination, the kerner report in 68 on on the riots, the january six committee report and the assault on our capitol together they form an unofficial historical of america in its most broken moments. and they deserve scrutiny. they deserve to be read not just discussed. so i recently read the house's january six report, for example. it's almost journalistic in its style, unlike the very dry, sort of legalistic of, say, the mueller report, it's more than

hundred pages in length. if you include the executive summary, which showed and it offers a very -- assessment of president trump's actions, not just on january six, but in the weeks leading up to it. but there's one particular passage that i just can't stop thinking about. you may recall if watched any of the hearings, the testimony by cassidy hutchinson, this young former white house aide who described the president's behavior on the morning of january six before his big speech at the ellipse in washington. she said that trump was annoyed that the magnetometers the weapons detectors were inhibiting some of his supporters who who were armed from entering the area where he was giving the speech. as always, we know trump wanted a big crowd. he the space to be full. and hutchinson says in her testimony, she said that she heard the president say something like this pardon, the

language, i don't care that they have weapons. they're not here to hurt me. take the f-ing mags away. the maximum examiners. let my people in. i want you to think about one of those sentences. they're not here. hurt me. i. i kept wondering which word did the president emphasize when he said out loud. if it's the verb hurt, then the sentiment is somewhat benign. i'm not here to hurt me. i could be saying they're here to me to support me, to cheer for me. if the stress falls on the word me. it is far more sinister. turn out here to hurt me. the is. they're here to hurt somebody else. mike pence. nancy pelosi, the capitol police. any member of congress voting to certify the election. so which was it? the january report confuses matters by citing that quote twice in the report in the final

chapter, the me is italicized. they're not here to hurt me. and the executive summary. it's not not. so you go to the videotape, right? i watched the video. hutchinson. hutchinson. many, many times. and she says line quickly, sort of neutrally with maybe a tiny emphasis on hurt rather than me. but you can watch and listen for yourself now with a document that surpasses 100 pages, it might seem bit much to linger on, like the typeface of a single to were to letter pronoun you know but i linger. in fact i wrote it in the new york times today. now, these purport to serve as historical records. so every word, every quote, every framing every implication is a choice that merits

scrutiny. and as the result is sometimes ambiguous, like this particular case, sometimes unclear. that's okay, because history and reality, they're ambiguous to. now, i know i know this kind of journalism, you know, like journalism by reading is a unconventional like i said, i don't interview politicians or follow them through every every step of the news cycle. but their books, i think i, hope that i can still help explain and help reveal them. i have not found next great american novel, but i think that reading these texts helps me fill in a tiny little bit of. the great american story. after all, what have we covered tonight? right. we talked about personal identity and self-invention. we talked about isolation, about expectations, about subservience, about posturing, about ambiguity, about the conflict, stripping washington and america. these are the great themes of literature, the great struggles of life, whether in the life of

individuals, in the life of nations. so for reading is an act of journalism. but i also kind of think of it as a civic. when people tell me, oh, you read these books so we don't have to. i just sort of smiled to myself little bit. they're missing out on so much. it would be a real loss if these books went away. the more i read washington, the more we read washington, the thicker the connections we can between different volumes and different ideas different battlefields, different visions of our politics. i embarked on this path almost accidentally, and now i can't bring myself to stop. there is so much more to lead. i invite you to read along with me and i assure you the experi is rarely masochistic and is occasionally transcendent. thank so much.

yeah. i have been told that we can take questions is sort of terrifying. anybody, sir. when i was in college heard a lecture like this, but i have stone. oh, well, and i have you just stressed me out. i don't explained that when he went down he had to cover part. externally. oh he had to read and none of his colleagues. so he covered congress by reading the congressional congressional record read the documents. and i wonder if can what what you think about my students i mean there's a wonderful biography i've i've studied i'm blanking on on the author i apologize i didn't know what just told me and i love i love that story because it didn't

diminish the power of his journalism. right. it's a it's we fall in love with like the thing that we do and the way that we do it. i, i have revealed that myself tonight. i wouldn't know how to start interviewing any. of these people that i read about, but that's actually very inspiring because. he was exemplary as a journalist in many different forms and and i just that's all i'll say. i'll just say thank you. thank you for for for that. because it also it's a reminder to kind of get out of, you know, always your particular comfort zone as a as a journalist or as a professional. yeah, i hadn't thought about this. so you tell to your time. thank you. thank you. there was someone over there. yes. oh, in that crowd are also for

self-defense. any guns? crowd at the capitol. jane six. the answer is no. no. hillary book came out in 1995. six. now, bill clinton started out with monica in 1995 and went for 18 months until 1997. do you think she knew she about that in so she wrote two books or actually three books subsequent to it takes village and in her book called living history she talks about what it was like to find out about i don't recall when exactly. she knew even. and it takes a village she hints at how she knew that bill was a sort of force of nature and i think she writes that i didn't know i'd be able to withstand his seasons and so i think she knew whether she knew specifics that's that's beyond me. yes track the political

polarization and a growing partizan partizan divide in reading these texts as they've been developed. time yeah, that's a good the i think the the court decisions is an example of how you know seeing way the supreme court talks about abortion over the course of 50 years there are political books in cycles. you know there were like you know the whole death of democracy books were really hot for a while and and then it was the polarization books. and like, you know, as ezra klein wrote, one are very people to judge wrote one, you know, called trust while here at the irs plug and and and now there, you know, there's. there's always kind of new new versions those so there was like a oh, now there's like the coming civil war, right. are the super hot books right now.

and so i think that a lot of people have have studied that. one thing that is useful to consider is that like we talk about polarization and partizanship like like their dirty words. some of polarization is actually really useful in in a democracy because you need have competing perspectives. you need to have, you know, clashing views on on issues. you it would be sort of bizarre. there were none, right. and so know polarization is some degree it is is healthy. and i think the challenge is to sort of get to a sort of healthy as opposed to a paralyzing polarization. it's easy think it started with trump but it absolutely did not some of the best works on on the growing polarization and what they call asymmetric polarization like. yes both parties are moving to extremes. that one is moving much further than the other. as he asymmetry. you know some of the best books on that were published years before donald trump even when he

was still on the apprentice apprentice. sir, i know you mentioned the washington read methods, you know, skimming or whatever. and i mean, to suggest that you do that, i just have to think the amount of self-serve garbage that is. and so many of these books i just picture it is overwhelming. and so i'm just kind. wondering if you, you know, have you kind of have techniques or if you're just, you know, you've just got a tell. i was like, okay, that's that's wrong. that's false. you know, all kind of as you're coming down. yes. and i have very. non-family acronyms that use in the margins of books, which i am not going to share tonight, that one is. a paper white afghan.

and i can tell you what it is. it'll be culturally it's a moment of exasperate. it's almost like so. yes, that happens a lot. right. but but as i said, it's it's in those moments when you. you know, when there's on this draft, you're kind of swimming or, suddenly you find something very revealing and it's worth it. i wish could have been reading a lot pardon memoirs lately and he talks about how when he came to the white house that was in which papers were starting to read that he and roslyn and all the staff took like seed reading courses because you had to read everything and to a fault and and so i've seen slowly it's a real curse and read everything multiple times before i feel writing about it that i've been sort of absorbed it so much by that point that then writing doesn't take all that long. it's the reading and the note

taking and like putting ideas together like a file before i ever start writing piece. that part is the painful part, arduous part. but then it's done and. so i'm thinking about the hutch in testimony where you know you want to know where gm decides and or which word truck and sized and i'm wondering if you often come to of impasses in the text that you wish you could ask a real person about and then you actually tip off a reporter and say, hey, can you figure this out for me? like, does that happen to you? it will now. i usually try to find like, you know, i, i on c-span again. no, no but yeah, a lot i you i, i check i check original video of things when it's ambiguous like that or unclear it it's

hard to reporters, obviously. it's hard to ask them to do work for me, it was easier for the washington post would often rely on reporters to post to help me out to know to i had a vague idea but like i don't cover that. and so is space. that's right. now that's because at the post i was technically on the news of things now the times i'm an opinion and there's, you know, a church state of mind. so i can't like go chatter of all the other the news reporters and give them ideas stuff. but but yeah, i mean there's about i realized that you know i sit here i'll say as you say i did mine on call things by reading but it's you know it's sort of just one lens right? it's one you and i'm not all like i have stolen from can both right but but but reporters have much immediacy in what they're able to to filter out so i think if they're trying to. catch you into journalism, if

you did study that that the other day, how what spurred you to want to get into. yeah, yeah. so most journalists that i've ever worked with, i think that's all they can do. they came out the womb with like a notebook, you know, and they broke news on their middle school principal, just like they all came out of the newsroom and they shrivel up in the dark like this is when. they were meant to be. i didn't do that. i didn't comes with that way. i had a whole other kind of career aspiration, wanted to be an economist and used to work with a reserve. and i was just really unhappy, you know, in that life, you can go, how could it be? it's what i wanted to do, right? so got a midlife crisis out of the way early in my in my mid-to-late teens and basically begged for a job in journalism. i figured that would be exciting

interesting to me. and the nice thing is even though i wanted to get away from economics, i used it to get jobs in journalism. first job of the washington post was as economics. and i don't know why. i didn't know why, how it's it was desperation. and i believed foolishly that like you know the writer i could write you know and i was fortunate enough that my very first job as a journalist was a place where they they time i spent five years foreign policy magazine, wonderful editors who taught me about and the way i persuaded my parents like i was doing the right thing by leaving this comfortable in the federal reserve to go a journalist was that if it didn't work out, i could always go back that kind of work and that's still the case. it doesn't work. i'm going to go back to banking, but so far i'm i'm hanging on

maybe one more. i was wondering in the next few months if there are any books out that you're really eagerly anticipate. it's it's amazing at time especially as well eagerly anticipating kind of the eye of the beholder. but there are books coming out by republican wannabe presidential and the being? i think ron desantis coming out well, not the first like my campaign already had one of them haley already had one. ron desantis coming out soon and what i think i might do is not tackle them one at a time, but sort of just grab a bunch, read them all together and see what it says about the field are. the process may be arduous and painful, but i, i can't. i'm excited. i am eagerly anticipating kind

of like what little things i will be able to pull out of those books because as i said, they always they always reveal themselves. so hopefully i'll be there to catch those revelations. thanks everybody, for coming. i'll just remind you that there are copies of what we were thinking what were we what were we thinking. yeah, i messed that up available outside and i will plug it with a line from your talk that if you think you know everything about the trump era, if you've read some trump books, books about the presidency, all that kind of stuff. i've read this book and it's revealing and, informative and fascinating. read where you learn a lot about what in this time that we all experienced and like you said,

it deserves to be. i'll say this about book you wouldn't it deserves to be read not just discussed so he'll be out there with the books to sell and sign with anybody who's interested. thank you, charlotte.

good evening, everyone. my name is not in on behalf of romans bookstore, i want to welcome you to our event featuring nathan masters in conversatiit