BRIAN LAMB: Carlos Lozada of The Washington Post. A while back, you went through a whole bunch of books written by presidential candidates.
CARLOS LOZADA: That's right.
BRIAN LAMB: Why?
CARLOS LOZADA: Well, it started with Donald Trump. When he launched his campaign this summer, he kept talking about his 1987 book, The Art of the Deal, and he kept saying, you know, we need a president who can write a book like this. You know, and he held it up and sort of embodying who he was. So I figured I would read it. I'd never read Art of the Deal and I thought I'm going to write something about it for The Post. And of course when I read it, I realized that he'd written many, many books. Three memoirs, a lot of sort of business advice books, even a golf book. And so I decided to pick a few of them and see what I could learn about the guy through his own writing.
BRIAN LAMB: Why did he particularly of all the candidates interest you, I mean, other than the obvious?
CARLOS LOZADA: Well, a lot of the--a lot politicians' memoirs tend to be sort of formulaic, you know. They're very--they're prescreened and scrubbed and, you know, they project sort of this kind of bland wholesomeness and all-Americanness. Trump wrote his really before he, I assume, intended to run for president ever, you know? His first one was when he was 41 years old. And so I thought they might tell me something about him. And I thought he would be more interesting than, you know, reading all the other sort of long-term politicians, which is the same reason I ended up reading Ben Carson's books too.
BRIAN LAMB: What's the number one reason that actual candidates write these books in your opinion? Put a number one, and number two, and number three.
CARLOS LOZADA: Yes. You know, I mean, there's probably a lot of reasons. I think that they--they're a part of their campaign propaganda in some ways. I just read a book by McKay Coppins, the Buzzfeed political reporter, about the GOP race for 2016. And he says upfront that he consulted the candidates' memoirs but he treats them as the campaign propaganda that they are.
And so I think they write them because they want to put out a statement of their general beliefs. They want to appeal to particular audiences. I don't think they sell very well for the most part. Publishers, I think, go with them because it's sort of a sweepstakes. Maybe this guy will end up being president in which case the book will sell big.
BRIAN LAMB: I have here Hilary Rodham Clinton, Hard Choices back in 2014. It was actually published a year after she left the State Department.
CARLOS LOZADA: Right.
BRIAN LAMB: And there's--you write about, not about this book but you write a lot about the acknowledgements and the introduction and things. What have you learned from that that this, you know, she wasn't a candidate here but do you think she was thinking about being a candidate when this book came out?
CARLOS LOZADA: I suspect Hillary Clinton's been thinking about being a candidate for a long, long time and what I--what I like about--what I find interesting about Hillary Clinton's memoirs is that she wrote one after the White House, right, after her years as first lady and then she wrote this one after her period as secretary of state. What we don't have of hers that I would love to read is a memoir that really includes her 2008 campaign, the failed campaign. I think that would be the most--the story that we haven't heard yet from her.
BRIAN LAMB: A couple of things, and I'll go to the acknowledgements. She starts out--I just want to get your reaction if you're going to write about this. This is how she starts the acknowledgements, The motto of the Clinton Foundation is, We're all in this together.
CARLOS LOZADA: It feels--I have not read this book yet and I hadn't read the acknowledgements yet but reaction to it right now, you know, that feels like sort of fairly typical politician speak, you know, the sense of the American family, We're all in this together, you know, connecting to readers, but strikes me as a bit bland.
BRIAN LAMB: She was paid $14 million for this book, and in her earlier book though, she had done several, five I believe with Simon & Schuster. She was paid $8 million. And her husband--
CARLOS LOZADA: First for living history. Right.
BRIAN LAMB: And her last husband's--her husband's last book was $10 million. I think that adds up to about $32 million. When did this happen? When did that kind of money come to these authors over the years?
CARLOS LOZADA: You know, President Obama supposedly for the memoir that he'll be writing when he leaves, the estimates are that he'll get between $18 and $20 million as the advance for the book, so it really better sell.
You know, I think that's a fairly recent phenomenon. You know, presidential memoirs, like, probably the ones that are considered the best memoir is that of President Grant. And he wrote it because he was broke. He wrote it because he actually needed the money and it ended up being a terrific book. I think this is only in the last few decades, a couple of decades that the advances for politicians' books, for political memoirs have gotten so out of control.
BRIAN LAMB: And she didn't come close to earning the money back on this because she only sold about 250,000 copies.
CARLOS LOZADA: I didn't think it was that much. This book, from what I understand, has not sold enormously well.
BRIAN LAMB: I'm going to read another line and then I'm going to show you some video of a guy named Bob Barnett who you have written about. And it says in Hillary Clinton's acknowledgements, Once again, I'm grateful to the incomparable Bob Barnett, my attorney and guide through the publishing world, who was ably assisted by a contract attorney, Michael O'Connor. Anyway, here's so people can see what Bob Barnett looks like.
[video clip]
Bob Barnett: A lot of people from political life come to me and I just don't think there is a book there. I don't think I can get the book published and if I do, it'll be for a very small amount. It won't sell anything and they'll just be angry at me even though I didn't have anything to do with it. Also, a lot of people come to me long after their career is over. People who would have an excellent book but they wait 10 years too long. And by the time they come to me, they're out of the public eye and people are less likely to remember them and it's too much of a hard sell and I don't like to disappoint.
[End of video]
BRIAN LAMB: Now, he is-acts as an agent and one of the articles in your newspaper said he has like 375 journalists and political people that he's represented and he doesn't take a percent of the commission. He takes--just charges it by the hour supposedly. What's he do?
CARLOS LOZADA: You know, I've never met Bob Barnett. I've only--I've only read about him. He appears in virtually every acknowledgements section of every book by any notable politician. It's comforting to hear that he--that he turned some of them down because it doesn't seem that way. It's not--it's not a surprise at all that Hillary Clinton thanks him. In Marco Rubio's acknowledgement section of his latest campaign book, American Dreams, the first person he thanks is his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. The second person he thanks is my Washington lawyer, Bob Barnett. That tells you something about the standing he has.
What he mentioned about how some people come to him too late about books, you know, I might disagree with him a little bit. I think that we're seeing some books that are coming out way too early before people have a chance to really be reflective about their experience. And when it feels like there's a little bit of maybe too much score settling going on, that sort of thing sells books but it doesn't make for terrific reading. Sometimes I think a little bit more time would help even if it doesn't help sales.
BRIAN LAMB: What is your memory of what's in the Marco Rubio book?
CARLOS LOZADA: The Marco Rubio book. Well, he wrote a more personal memoir called American Son I believe and then his latest book is called American Dreams. And it's a fairly straightforward book of policy interspersed with, you know, personal experience in which he uses a lot of case studies in Florida, where he's from. He's the senator from Florida. To talk about his various policy issues, the things he cares about whether education or tax policy. In the--in the acknowledgements of the book, he thanks Barnett, he thanks his--one of his major donors, though he doesn't mention--identify him as such. He just thanks him for his--for his help and advice throughout the years.
BRIAN LAMB: And you say that he was--he's an 83-year-old man? I think his name is Braman, B-R-A-M-A-N?
CARLOS LOZADA: Yes. Yes.
BRIAN LAMB: How much of that goes on in the books that you've read?
CARLOS LOZADA: Oh, I mean, they--in the--in the substance of the book themselves, you know, not at all. I mean, people aren't thrilled to mention their funders and their donors but they--but they thank them sort of in subtle ways, in acknowledgements and forwards and that sort of thing.
BRIAN LAMB: One of the people that Hillary Clinton thanks in her book is a woman named Lissa Muscatine who, along with her husband Bradley Graham owned the Politics & Prose Bookstore. Here's a--she interviewed her. Even though she wrote part of the book, she interviewed her in a forum and here's what that looked like.
[video clip]
Lissa Muscatine: And so I'm wondering as I've watched you just in these first four days and you've had some tough interviews, you seem like you're having a really good time.
Hillary Clinton: Well, Lissa, I am having a good time. And I think that's in part due to the enthusiasm that I have experienced as I've traveled around in these last couple of days. It's a great feeling to have written a book about four years that were consequential in my view, and we could talk about that more, but which for me were both a personal journey and a very heavy responsibility. And what I try to do in the book was to write it so that I could give you, the readers, a bit of a peek behind the curtain because the headlines certainly tell some of the story but not all of the story.
[video ends]
BRIAN LAMB: Who writes these books and how often is it somebody like Lissa Muscatine that's involved in--she didn't say she wrote it. She just read the chapters but she has written speeches for her.
CARLOS LOZADA: I think on many occasions the politicians write them themselves. I think often they--and they state this clearly in their, you know, forwards or acknowledgements. They have a lot of help. They have people who serve as ghost writers or people who just serve as readers of various chapters. On occasion, they will, you know, put the name of the co-author or ghost writer, you know, right on the cover sort of usually with a--with a with, you know. Not an and but a with. And I find that sort of honest and refreshing. But usually, you don't really care that so much that other individual, and I find it a little unusual to have that person sort of interviewing you.
I'm a huge fan of Politics & Prose but that was sort of--a bit of a softball question, right? Like, are you--are you having fun?
BRIAN LAMB: Well, here's another question about this particular book, and we've got a lot of other books to talk about. I counted at least 157 names that are in the acknowledgements or the introduction of this book. But the interesting thing that I found is there's one name that's missing both from the index and from the book and from the acknowledgement, Sidney Blumenthal. What are the chances that Sidney Blumenthal would not be mentioned in this book?
CARLOS LOZADA: I mean, he played a more significant role I guess during her White House years and if, I seem to recall, there was a conversation about him maybe having a role in the State Department but it didn't happen. I don't--I don't remember that exactly. I should talk to my political reporters at the Washington Post.
BRIAN LAMB: Well, he's been deeply involved with the emails back and forth when she was secretary of state.
CARLOS LOZADA: Yes. Yes. Yes. That's been--that's been a huge--and sometimes, you know, on consequential matters, sometimes on deeply inane matters, you know, I think I would subscribe to the McKay Coppins' rule of thumb on political memoirs. These are--these are not meant to be or should not be interpreted as a true record of what took place.
BRIAN LAMB: One of the articles you wrote--and you've written several on Donald Trump. You talked about--he doesn't seem to be a huge fan of the Gipper. Although on another article, you say in one of his books he's starting to talk favorably about the Gipper. But you say after he lost the election to Ronald Reagan, talking about Jimmy Carter. Carter came to see me in my office. This is Donald Trump.
CARLOS LOZADA: This is Trump. Right.
BRIAN LAMB: Donald Trump. He told me he was seeking contributions to the Jimmy Carter Library. I asked how much he had in mind and he said, Donald, I would very much appreciate if you would contribute $5 million.
CARLOS LOZADA: Yes. And the Donald turned him down. Donald turned him down but he said that that impressed him, that Carter had guts for something big, that he hadn't been impressed by Carter as president, but the--just walking up and asking the Donald for $5 mil made him seem like a gutsy guy.
BRIAN LAMB: Later, you said Ronald Reagan is another example. This comes from his book. He is so smooth and so effective a performer that he completely won over the American people. Only now, nearly seven years later are people beginning to question whether there's anything beneath that smile.
CARLOS LOZADA: Yes. So Trump--and this is I believe in one of his earliest books where he--
BRIAN LAMB: The Art of the Deal?
CARLOS LOZADA: In his very first book then. When he is critical of President Reagan which leads me to believe, you know, that he probably wasn't planning a huge career in Republican politics at the time. Later on, in subsequent books, he speaks glowingly of Ronald Reagan. He seemed to get religion on Reagan.
BRIAN LAMB: And you say also that he spoke glowingly of Hillary Rodham Clinton and there's a picture of the two of them in the book.
CARLOS LOZADA: Yes. And he--and as we all know, from one of the Republican debates, Hillary Clinton attended Donald Trump's wedding and he, you know, he doesn't--he's an interesting mix because he holds these deep grudges, you know, and it can be famous people, you know, journalists who he feels wronged him, or obscure real estate executives and bankers who he thought gave him a raw deal and he'll just call them out, you know, viciously in these books, people that you may have never heard of.
But he also is a man who cultivates relationships long-term, including it seems with the Clintons. One of the--one of the best moments in the Republican and one of the--I think the first or second Republican debate is when they asked him, you know, Why do you give money to Democrats? Why do you give money to so many politicians? You know, what did you get from Hillary Clinton? And what he said is, she came into my wedding, you know, and that tells you so much. It's those kind of personal touch things that matter to people and that's why he kept up the relationship with the Clintons.
BRIAN LAMB: You write something called Book Party?
CARLOS LOZADA: Book Party is the name of the--of the blog or the perks, the Washington Post has given me on the site to write reviews and to write just things about books that I find interesting.
BRIAN LAMB: And how often do you write?
CARLOS LOZADA: There is a review that runs every week in the print Washington Post on Sunday in the--in the Outlook section. And so I read or write--I read a book and write a review on it at least every week, and then a few times during the course of the week, I'm writing online. Sometimes, you know, I'm taking sort of a deep dive into a subject and I'm going to read sort of eight Trump books. I didn't--I don't think I wrote anything for two weeks while I was just working on that and then I wrote that piece.
BRIAN LAMB: A couple of weeks ago, I saw a Twitter from you saying it's been a strange year to become an American citizen.
CARLOS LOZADA: Yes.
BRIAN LAMB: Is this your--it is 19, I mean, 2015 your year to become an American citizen?
CARLOS LOZADA: I became an American citizen in late 2014, so 2015 is my first--my first year as an American citizen and I'm sort of thinking about that a little bit because I've just been reading, for the first time, it's embarrassing. It's a book I should have read a long time ago but I'm reading Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville as sort of an introduction to sort of advanced civics I hope of the United States. And what's made, I mean, when I look back on 2015 which is my first year as a U.S. citizen--and I lived here for decades. My kids are American, my wife's from Ohio, you know. You can't get more American than that, and maybe Indiana.
And so I didn't think a lot would change about the way I felt but, you know, you sort of--once you take the oath, you really feel like you're all in and everything that's going on sort of you feel invested in, you feel kind of responsible for, you know, and seeing everything that's happened in American politics this year, you know, the rise of Donald Trump, you know, Hillary Clinton and the email obsessions, the sort of extraordinary Republican race, has made it--made it interesting. I have to figure out who I'm going to vote for. I have to, you know, I pay even more attention that I did even all these years working at the Washington Post.
So it's a challenge every day to be an American. It's this, like, glorious burden.
BRIAN LAMB: When did you come to United States? Where did you come from? And what's been your career path, in other words, the schools you went to and all that?
CARLOS LOZADA: Sure. I first came to United States when I was three years old and my family, we moved to Northern California where we had some relatives. And I lived there--
BRIAN LAMB: From where by the way?
CARLOS LOZADA: Oh, sorry. From Peru. From Lima. My family is from Peru. And I lived there. I lived in California for seven years and then we went back to Peru when I was 10 years old and I stayed there until I finished high school. Then I returned to the U.S. and went to the University of Notre Dame for college, and I've pretty much stayed here since. I did a graduate program at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, the maybe soon to be name changed, Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton.
And worked for the Federal Reserve for a couple of years because I thought I wanted to be an economist but I found it sort of dull, and I'm sure my colleagues from there are going to see this now and complain to me. They were terrific but it was--it was the late '90s and at the time we thought the economy was great, we thought the Fed was doing perfectly and it was an exciting time to be there, only later that we learned that everything was going to go wrong. So I moved to Washington and I started working at a magazine here, at Foreign Policy, and I was there for about five years.
I had a great time, learned a lot, learned from a lot of smart journalists. And then took a fellowship year at Columbia University at the journalism school there, business journalism fellowship, and then went to the Post and I've been there for 10 years. And at the Post, I've gotten the chance to do a lot of different things. I was their economics editor at first, I was national security editor. And for five years, I was editor of our Sunday Outlook section which is the greatest job in journalism. You get to sort of, you know, dial up anyone you want to write about anything.
I did that for five years and then I figured I should try something new, and I saw that our old long-time book critic, Jon Yardley, was going to retire, so I figured maybe that's something to try and maybe I can try to do it a little differently. And really, the experience I had at the Post, getting a chance to, you know, edit so many different times of coverage is sort of the perfect training to then be a non-fiction book critic because we cover politics, and history, and economics, and culture writ large. So this is my first year doing that.
BRIAN LAMB: Going back to some of your reviews on the presidential candidates' books, here's a video clip of Ben Carson talking about his book.
[video clip]
Ben Carson: When I give a speech, you know, I don't have a written text. I just go up there and, you know, I survey the situation, I ascertain what kind of audience we have. And, you know, I'll have a few points that I want to make sure that I make, which I might have written on a card and I just start speaking. Basically, I write the same way. You know, I'll have a chapter title and I'll write down some bullet points about what I want to say and I'll order them and I just start dictating. And so it's very much, you know, what's on my heart. You know, I always pray and I ask God to guide me in my writing, to give me wisdom in terms of what points need to be brought out. And I think it does a pretty good job at that.
[video ends]
BRIAN LAMB: You do cite--you cited with Marco Rubio and the reference to God and what did you find in his book?
CARLOS LOZADA: You know, what he just said is--it fits perfectly with the way his books read. You know, he talked about how when he goes to speak before an audience, he doesn't really prepare a lot. He just kind of goes and that's enormous confidence, you know. Like, politicians are usually so scripted and Ben Carson is not, and he has enormous self confidence in his intellectual abilities. And what comes across strongly in the book as well, as he said here, is he has enormous faith that God will help him whenever he needs it. It can be, you know, in giving him the wisdom to write that book chapter in just the way it needs to be written, it can be helping him during surgery.
He attributes a lot of his success as a neurosurgeon to his faith and to--and to God's very specific interventions in those moments of carrying out a complicated operation. Even in one case he mentions in Gifted Hands, in his first book, that when he was a student at Yale, you know, he hadn't really studied hard in his chemistry exam or over his chemistry class and he was afraid he was going to fail the final, and the night before the final, you know, in a dream, God sent him the questions and answers. And so he has this sort of deep, abiding faith instilled in him by his mother that God will step in and help him, not in sort of just a general sense in his life but in very specific moments.
BRIAN LAMB: You write in your analysis of these books, He repeatedly plagiarizes in college but when he is finally caught, he minimizes the transgression as ignorance rather than malice. Frankly, I had never even heard the term plagiarism, he writes. Fortunately for me, the professor was very compassionate, realized that I was naïve, and gave me a chance to rewrite the paper. Does anybody ever follow up with the candidate and ask them questions about these books and what they say?
CARLOS LOZADA: That happened in a very intense way recently with Ben Carson, because when he was--he's sort of fading a little bit in the polls now, but when it looked like he was, you know, getting really close up there with Donald Trump, there was a lot of attention paid to very specific incidents in his books and that he couldn't really substantiate.
For example, he, you know, talks about how when he was young he had this very intense temper and at one point, he even tried to stab a friend of his. You know, people have gone back and tried to find, you know, who that was, when that happened, there's--no one really has any memory of it. He said, well, it was a relative. I don't want to embarrass this person now, you know. Or he says that he had the opportunity to go to West Point on a--on a scholarship that he turned down. We learned later that he never really applied and West Point doesn't sort of handout specific scholarships. Everyone, you know, goes tuition free. I mean, the thing is getting accepted into West Point.
And so there is, you know, the way I--what I came away with from Ben Carson's books is that there are--I almost think we should treat them, I mean, you can't do this with normal politician's books because you sort of expect those to be kind of carefully vetted and fact based and at least checkable in some way. Ben Carson's book feel more like--they feel more like parables. They feel more like kind of these nice inspirational stories about a guy who came from very difficult circumstances to achieve extraordinary success in his profession but, you know, and they were--they were a big hit--they were published the early ones by a Christian publishing houses and it was that kind of intent.
It wasn't, you know, sort of like, This is a carefully vetted material. I mean, the way he talks about it in the clip you showed, you know, I just sort of have a title for a chapter and then I kind of write from the heart. The heart isn't always sort of fact based.
BRIAN LAMB: Do you ever listen to the audio books?
CARLOS LOZADA: I do not. The only times I do is when we're road tripping to--with my wife and kids to see my in-laws in Ohio we'll--I might pop a book, you know, pop a CD in the car and listen. But often with the children, I have--I have three young kids, you know, that might be, you know, the Polar Express or something like that.
BRIAN LAMB: And I asked that for a reason. I'm going to show you some video from 2006 of Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois on the floor of the senate talking about Grammy Awards primarily for audio books.
CARLOS LOZADA: For audio books.
BRIAN LAMB: Yes.
[video clip]
Dick Durbin: In the history of the United States of America, only two United States senators have ever won a Grammy Award. The first was United States Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen from Pekin, Illinois for his album Gallant Men. And now, once again, another Senator from Illinois became the second senator in history to win a Grammy Award in the Best Spoken Word Category at Wednesday's Grammy Award Ceremony.
Senator Obama won his Grammy for recording his autobiographical book, Dreams from My Father. I understand that Senator Hillary Clinton won a Grammy when she was a First Lady, now of course, she's a distinguished senator from New York but she won one for recording It Takes a Village. And her husband of course, former President Bill Clinton won a Grammy as well for the reading of his autobiography Of My Life.
[video ends]
BRIAN LAMB: Recently, Jimmy Carter was nominated for a Grammy and one of the things that came ((inaudible)) is they're all, except for Everett McKinley Dirksen back in 1969, they're all Democrats. None of the Republican's, the Ronal Reagan book, the George W. Bush, the HW Bush, all those never got a nominee. Wonder--do you--do you see this as being conscious on the part of the Grammy nominees?
CARLOS LOZADA: I have no idea. The--you know, the thing about the Reagan memoir, the one authored by him is there were a lot of question about how much he actually wrote and I think he even joked at one point like, I hear it's a great book. So I don't know. You know, I've not occasioned to listen to audio books. It seems like a small sample size though if, you know, only three of them have won. But, you know, with--sometimes you get outsiders to read--to read books, you know, but obviously with a memoir, it's such a notable figure, it's sort of impossible to imagine anyone else.
And I think President Obama has a certain sort of rhythm in cadence to his speeches that personally I think could be more appealing for an audio book than perhaps Senator Clinton but--
BRIAN LAMB: He read it himself.
CARLOS LOZADA: Yes. But I haven't--I haven't--I haven't listened to them.
BRIAN LAMB: So as you look at the presidential campaign right now from your perspective, and take all the candidates into account, will they--in the case of President Obama, they always go back to the books and say that's what started it all. Will they do that in this campaign?
CARLOS LOZADA: I don't think so because they were, you know, they were politicians before they were authors, right? President Obama, I mean, his first book is I think terrific. His second book, you know, and he wrote that, you know, maybe he had political aspirations but he, in fact, he certainly did, but he wrote that before he was, you know, Barack Obama.
The Audacity of Hope is not a great book, you know, it's a far more conventional political book. And I think it tells you that's the kind of book a politician writes, Dreams from My Father is not. So, I don't think that any of the current crop, at least from what I've read, really have books that they've written so far that will stand out in some sort of, you know, lasting historical manner.
BRIAN LAMB: Ted Cruz published a book, did you write about that one?
CARLOS LOZADA: I did. I think that was part of when I looked at the acknowledgement sections of all the candidates' books.
BRIAN LAMB: It's called A Time for Truce, it appeared on the Mark Levin radio show.
[audio]
Male: You know, the book, what I really try to do is shine a light on what's happening in Washington, in the Washington cartel, what happens behind closed doors, you know, if your listeners, if you've ever wondered what happens in the Republican senate lunches, in the closed doors meetings, what leadership is doing, this book really tries to shine a light on it on how the Washington cartel, career politicians, Republicans and Democrats get in bed with Washington lobbyist and giant corporations and conspire to grow government to favor cronyism and corporate welfare at the expense of hard working taxpayers.
[audio ends]
BRIAN LAMB: Ben Carson was on the best seller lists for a long time. I don't think that Ted Cruz was for very long, but conservatives are much more successful today than they've ever been on say the -- your competitive newspaper, the New York Times, what is it about the -- what's selling these conservative books now?
CARLOS LOZADA: The interesting thing with Ted Cruz is that the New York Times did not put him on their best seller list initially and there was a huge sort of spat about this where people felt including the -- the Cruz supporters felt that they were, you know, blackballing him from the list. They didn't want to have him there. Even though they put a lot of, you know, Bill O'Reilly's books are constantly on those lists.
You know, I don't -- right now, the -- what's going on in the conservative movement of the Republican Party, I think it's just more interesting, you know, there is -- there's a real fight about what the party is going to be, about who the standard bearer is, like, as I've been watching the campaign this year, it's far more interesting to look at the Republicans than it is to look at the Democratic side.
And that may have some -- that may have something to do with why there's more interest in these candidates and their books.
BRIAN LAMB: What's your reaction, you mentioned Bill O'Reilly, what's your reaction to the reaction of the Republicans to basically Reagan Republicans to the Killing Reagan book? George Will got into a spat with Bill O'Reilly and George Schultz just recently wrote in the New York Times, another retort for that book. What's going on there?
CARLOS LOZADA: It's selling books for Bill O'Reilly. You know, this is only helping the sort of Bill O'Reilly publishing industrial complex. Killing Reagan is part of his series of killing sort of historical fiction books and a lot of people who were in the Reagan administration or Reagan biographers have said, have contested the central contention of the book that O'Reilly says basically after the assassination attempt, you know, Reagan was never the same and mentally he started deteriorating much more rapidly than people think.
That's been, that's been questioned by people who were there. You know, O'Reilly doesn't back down. O'Reilly says that, you know, he didn't consult those people for the book because they have too much skin the game, they had, you know, vested interests in preserving the mythologies of Ronald Reagan. I think this doesn't stop the book from selling and I think it only helps it.
BRIAN LAMB: God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy.
CARLOS LOZADA: Mike Huckabee.
BRIAN LAMB: Here is Mike Huckabee talking about his book.
[video clip]
Mike Huckabee: Here's the point of the book, there are three major cultural bubbles in America, New York, Washington, we're in two of those, and the other one is Hollywood. And from those three cultural bubbles emanate fashion, finance, government politics, music, entertainment, movies, television, pretty much all the things that set the American cultural table.
But my point of the book is that there's a big disconnect between the people, the values, the attitudes, the lifestyles of people living in those three bubbles and the people who live out in what we often called the flyover country.
[video ends]
BRIAN LAMB: How did he do?
CARLOS LOZADA: The book? It's sort of, you know, as a -- what does he say, it's, you know, it drips over you like sawmill gravy on biscuits, you know, it's a -- the -- Huckabee as cultural warrior is sort of the theme of a lot of his books and this is, you know, God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy is one of many.
And, you know, as critical as he is of the, you know, New York, Washington, LA cultural bubbles as he calls him, he's been very skilled at, you know, making his presence felt in all of them, you know, on cable television, through his books and the -- in some ways his campaigns feel in part like efforts to solidify that brand. He's the folksy cultural warrior, you know, from the title of his book to comments such as these.
BRIAN LAMB: So Lindsey Graham for president, runs for president.
CARLOS LOZADA: Still.
BRIAN LAMB: Yes. And he did something unusual. He wrote an e-book only and gave it away. Did you read it?
CARLOS LOZADA: I did not. I did not read Lindsey Graham's e-book and I feel, I feel bad, I probably should have. Part of what made it hard is that he didn't really even seem to want to write it. He says right up-front that, you know, this is something you kind of have to do when you're applying for this job, you know, not everyone needs to write a book but I guess I have to. And so, you know, it's -- if he's not selling it himself it's a -- it's hard to pick it up.
BRIAN LAMB: He actually said everyone has a story, not everyone has to tell, of course, and most people have the good sense not to, but if you're in my line of work and the time arrives when you start imagining a big promotion and you let your imagination get the better of you, you are by custom expected to give a general account of your life.
CARLOS LOZADA: That's, you know, I'm not his publicist, that's not the most engaging way to begin your book.
BRIAN LAMB: What would -- based on your experience of reviewing all these books and I know this isn't the business you're in, but what would you advise somebody that is a politician that's going to write a book to do to get people's interest? A lot of these books didn't sell at all.
CARLOS LOZADA: I mean, you know, I poke a little bit of fun at Senator Graham but he -- he does have -- he does have a very good point, not everyone needs to write a book, you know, and what may be politically expedient may not make for the most interesting reading.
So if you're hell-bent on writing a book, what I would really encourage is to be honest, to tell real stories about your life because so many of them, everyone I think does have interesting stories in their lives, and politicians, you know, who are so single-minded in this pursuit of power and ideology, could have particularly interesting ones, but when they put out these memoirs, you know, they're just -- they're sanitized, they're vetted, you know, they're there for sort of minimum controversy.
You know, when Ted Cruz described what was in his book, you know, it's what in every speech he gives, you know, the Washington cartel and, you know, the politicians in bed with the lobbyists, like people have heard that a thousand times, you know.
You know, a real story about Ted Cruz that could be interesting, like what his life was really like, you know, that would be good, but they rarely produce those kinds of books.
BRIAN LAMB: Near the end of 2015 you wrote the funniest, scariest and whiniest books of 2015, you start off by saying the funniest book I read this year, How to Catch a Russian Spy. The second book that you wrote is called the whiniest book I read this year, Return to Sender: Unanswered Letters to the President, 2001 to 2015 by Ralph Nader. How do you sift through all this stuff? I mean do you read, do you like to read?
CARLOS LOZADA: I love to read. I've always enjoyed reading, you know, since I was a little kid I was just a very kind of bookwormy boy. I used to read more fiction. In fact, I don't read nay fiction now, which is kind of the occupational hazard of a job like this.
But, you know, we get deluged with books at the Washington Post, you know, every publisher, you know, from major publishing houses and obscure ones, everyone is trying to get us to review their books, you know, authors, self-published authors, you know, reach out, publicists reach out. And so, it's this embarrassment of riches. Every day is Christmas, you know, I get to read anything I want.
So I try to find books that, where I can learn something in the process of reading, you know, sometimes I may pick a book because I already know something about the subject and I think I can bring some insight for readers, but more often than not it's just something that I'm curious about, something that sounds like a good story.
BRIAN LAMB: Let me ask you about a couple of these you write about in this piece, the most instant classic book I read this year, The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics by Barton Swaim. Why?
CARLOS LOZADA: I love that book. Barton Swaim was speechwriter. First of all, there's so many speechwriter memoirs and, you know, there's -- life is too short, right, to read a bunch of memoirs by speechwriters.
And the reason I picked this up is because he was a speechwriter to Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina, who most of the world came to know when he gave this extraordinary rambling speech confessing that he have not been hiking the Appalachian Trail but was in Argentina with his girlfriend and, of course, he was a married man.
And so, I thought, oh, that's interesting, it would be interesting to know what it was like to write speeches for Mark Sanford, and Barton Swaim writes just what I think is a terrific book telling you what it's like to be in charge of communication for a politician who's not really a gifted, you know, writer or speaker, he has to learn to write poorly, train himself to use sort of the clichés that the governor loved. And, you know, the governor was always wanting to mention Rosa Parks in his speeches, like even if it was apropos of nothing.
You know, he just likes the idea of mentioning Rosa Parks. And so you see Barton Swaim like trying to work in Rosa Parks in just, you know, completely contrived ways into speeches. Also, he really opens up about what the governor was like communicating internally to his staff and he could be fairly brutal. So it was just -- it was a book that I think is, you know, people romanticize the role of the speechwriter, you know, like you're whispering into the ears of the powerful, giving them words to sound like Kennedy, you know, or Reagan.
And this is just such a day-to-day painful experience for this guy, and his successes, you know, that he revels in are, you know, exciting but also just sad. And the one speech everyone is going to remember Sanford for which is his confession, you know, he was just in the crowd watching, he didn't get to write it.
BRIAN LAMB: You also write when you -- write about the Marco Rubio book that people often mention connections they have to people that they admire, like you mentioned Democracy in America, a lot of people mention that in their books. But here's a man that you say Marco Rubio admires a guy named Yuval Levin who is an intellectual conservative. Let's watch a little bit of what he has to say.
[video clip]
Yuval Levin: Certainly not everything about Burke is shared by American conservatives. The American context has always been a different context. In fact Burke himself in speaking about the Americans around the time with the revolution, one of his great speeches in Parliament opposing the policy of the government, offers a kind of character description of the Americans and it's a wonderful thing to read.
It used to be read a lot in American schools, it's really not anymore. What he says first is that the Americans are obsessed with personal liberty, they're utterly obsessed with it and he says they smell threats to their liberty in the air. They constantly see them coming.
And in this way, they are different from their British cousins. And his argument against the British government was that this has to be understood about them, that if you're going to govern the Americans you have to understand their character. And their character is an obsession with personal liberty and he says they translate that obsession into tax policy.
[video ends]
BRIAN LAMB: And how often do you see that where they connect to somebody like this in their books?
CARLOS LOZADA: You know, it doesn't happen a lot. They with -- one of the things I really appreciated about Marco Rubio's book is that he's very transparent about his sort of intellectual and political influences, and he has a list of like 40-plus people in the back of his book that, you know, inspired him on matters of, and advised him on matters of policy.
Yuval Levin is the -- sort of one of the leaders of what they're calling the Reformed Conservative Movement or ReformaCon, which is a great, great term. And should Rubio, you know, win the nomination and potentially win the White House, I suspect Yuval Levin has going to be a significant player in whether directly in an administration or as an advisor to him.
He was referring to a book that he published a year or two ago. I believe looking at Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine as the -- I think it was Burke and Paine, as these two competing strands in American political thought. And I find that, you know, whether you subscribe to Yuval Levin's politics and policy, I find that really refreshing that a politician will, (a), try to engage on an intellectual level but also be transparent about what those influences are.
BRIAN LAMB: You pointed out that he -- when he talks about the 45 individuals, 44 of them are men and one is a woman.
CARLOS LOZADA: Yes, I did mention that. Yes, it's very much a boys club. I think an education policy specialist named Nina Rees I think was the one, was the one woman.
BRIAN LAMB: President of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
CARLOS LOZADA: There, congrats, Nina, you made the cut.
BRIAN LAMB: Speaking of women, there is one woman that has written a book for, besides Hilary Clinton, which is about two years ago, but here is Carly Fiorina on her book.
[video clip]
Male: Carly, in your new book Rising to the Challenge, an excellent book, you make a distinction between people with political experience and expertise and people who have business experience and expertise.
Carly Fiorina: I think to do the job requires an understanding of how the economy actually works. I started out as a secretary, so I do understand the economy from multiple angles. I think it requires an understanding of how the world works.
The truth is I have more experience with more world leaders on the stage today than anyone else running with maybe possible exception of Hilary Clinton, but I didn't photo ops. I…
[video ends]
BRIAN LAMB: Did you read her book?
CARLOS LOZADA: I read portions of Carly Fiorina's latest book, yes.
BRIAN LAMB: Any reaction? Small book, isn't it?
CARLOS LOZADA: Yes, both her books are sort of thin, thin volumes. You know, she does emphasize the -- kind of the outsider business experience, right, which is this kind of recurring mantra in American politics, every once in a while, you know, you want the outsider, you want someone who can run America like a corporation.
Her tenure at Hewlett Packard was controversial and so it's not always the easiest sell for her probably, but, you know, the in the race, she had kind of this moment, right, you know, after the first debate when it seemed like she was going to be, you know, a bigger player and elevated.
So, you know, I don't think that that hasn't really materialized, so I don't know that her play for the outsider role, you know, at a time when you've had Trump and Carson has really been effective. Her first book was more about her time as an executive. Her second book is more personal and starts actually with a really sort of searing description of when she lost her daughter.
BRIAN LAMB: Do all of the candidates put their picture on the cover?
CARLOS LOZADA: I'm trying to think if there's anyone that does not. Yes, I think they do. I think, I think they all do, I'm trying to…
BRIAN LAMB: The interesting thing…
CARLOS LOZADA: Cruz, Rubio, Carson, yes, I think they all do.
BRIAN LAMB: When the Hilary Clinton paperback came out and they switched the picture, but it's very subtle, from a straight on shot in the hardback to a little bit of a side, distant side glance on the other one.
CARLOS LOZADA: Of Hard Choices or…
BRIAN LAMB: Of Hilary Clinton.
CARLOS LOZADA: …of Living History?
BRIAN LAMB: Of Hard Choices.
CARLOS LOZADA: You know, maybe they got a better side.
BRIAN LAMB: What -- if you had to name a book about politics, not, I mean, by one of the candidates that you would find the most refreshing or the most interesting, which one would that have been?
CARLOS LOZADA: Of the current crop?
BRIAN LAMB: Yes.
CARLOS LOZADA: I guess there's refreshing for different reasons, right. There's -- is something refreshing to read or is something refreshing because it's a departure, right. Jeb Bush wrote a book about immigration policy, you know, it's a slog, right, but he actually tried to lay out a vision on a contentious policy issue, you know, which is something that they don't do a lot. So it was refreshing in that particular sense.
I'm trying to think of, you know, Donald Trump, his second -- he wrote three memoirs, Art of the Deal, Surviving at the Top and Art of the Comeback and the second book, Surviving at the Top, could be refreshing in a sense, I found it to be only book where he was a little bit more self-reflective where he -- things weren't going particularly, you know, wonderfully in his business at the time or in his personal life and so it's the only book where you see Trump sort of struggling a little bit and admitting it.
And so for Trump, I think that was -- I would call that refreshing. Of course, when he wrote the next one, he totally disowned the second book. You know, he's like, oh, my heart wasn't in that book. Don't pay attention. This third book is going to be really awesome, you know. So even he realized that he'd maybe shown a little bit more than he intended to in the second book.
BRIAN LAMB: Well, here's Donald Trump on the stump and it shows, I mean, and anybody that's watched him, the books come up all the time, but here he is talking about his first one back in 1990.
[video clip]
Donald Trump: Our country needs, our country needs a truly great leader and we need a truly great leader now. We need a leader that wrote the Art of the Deal.
[video ends]
CARLOS LOZADA: That's what inspired me to start this exercise of reading the candidates' books. That he would so overtly, you know, stake part of his credentials to the presidency on this book. And, you know, it's, you know, when I -- when people see that I read, you know, sort of eight Donald Trump books in a row, they make jokes, like, oh, condolences, you know, better you than me kind of thing.
You know, whatever you think of Donald Trump his books are far more entertaining than the vast majority of political memoirs. You know, they're self-indulgent, they're bombastic, they're, you know, duplicitous in some ways which he admits freely, but they're not -- they're not boring to read.
BRIAN LAMB: Back in June of 2015, you wrote about Donald Trump plays the press in his words and you took from the book, one of the books and I want to read it and see what you think about the technique he's used all year.
One thing I've learned about the press is that they're always hungry for a good story, and the more sensational the better. It is in the nature of the job and I understand that. The point is that if you are a little different or a little outrageous or if you do things that are bold and controversial or controversial, the press is going to write about you.
I've always done things a little differently. I don't mind controversy and my deals tend to make, to be somewhat ambitious. Also, I achieved a lot when I was very young and I chose to live in a certain style, the result is that the press has always wanted to write about me.
CARLOS LOZADA: Trump has been famous longer than any business leader we can think of, you know, alive now, longer than Bill Clinton. You know, he was, he was, you know, publishing a bestselling memoir in 1987.
And part of that is his ability to generate media interest. You know, he's always sort of, you know, dallied with this idea of maybe I'll run for president, you know, multiple times and now that he's finally done it, now, that he's, you know, that he completely jumped into the race, you know, the coverage has been extraordinary and I think he understands that and he knows that even something else he writes, that even bad press is good press for him because it means they're talking about you.
BRIAN LAMB: You quote further, you say the final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people's fantasies. Now, this is the thought that he's written some time ago. People might not always think big themselves but they can still get very excited by those who do, that's why a little hyperbole never hurts, people who want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular.
But what I do want to ask you though is why has the television medium allowed this, first time I can't even remember in history, allowed him to call it in? He doesn't go to the studios. He just calls it in and all of the networks take it.
CARLOS LOZADA: I would imagine because having Donald Trump on your show is sort of irresistible right now because…
BRIAN LAMB: Is that good journalism, though, if you don't have to look him in the eye and he doesn't have to...
CARLOS LOZADA: You know, I think that you'll get much better interviews when you have the chance to look at a candidate in the eye. Chuck Todd had a -- had a much better interview when he was able sit down with him.
You know, Trump right now, you know, he keeps doubling down on kind of the outrageous things that he says to the point that it makes the look -- the book seem pretty muted by comparison.
And, you know, I think there's been maybe an excess of coverage and an excess of sort of lenience in kind of letting him do this. But one thing he write about on the books is he actually doesn't like to leave from Tower, you know, he doesn't like to leave where he lives.
I mean he, you know, he says he's, you know, he's talking in this context about his hair and how the reason his hair sort of stays perfectly the way it is because he never, he limits the extent to which he can subject it to the elements, you know, he, you know, he lives, you know, there, he takes the elevator up to his office from his bedroom, you know, The Apprentice was shot there, you know, he didn't have to leave.
And he says whenever I go out I, you know, I'm either in a limo, in a helicopter or in a private jet, you know. And so he's completely and people talk about the presidential bubble, I mean the Trump bubble is, you know, is far more encompassing. And he doesn't even like to travel, you know, like, candidates have to sort of go everywhere, you know, and go to the swing states and do that.
He's basically -- one of my colleagues at the Post wrote a story, he's basically running his campaign from Manhattan, you know, and sometimes that's the only way to get him.
BRIAN LAMB: Last question to you, if you had to write a book today, what would you write about?
CARLOS LOZADA: You know, this is -- this is a book that only I would…
BRIAN LAMB: How would you do it?
CARLOS LOZADA: It's a book that only I would care to read, right, but it's something I've had in my mind for a long time. One of my favourite books of all time is called The Worldly Philosophers by Robert Heilbroner. It's this book of like intellectual history. He looks at the great economists over time throughout the centuries and writes these incredible stories about them as people.
So a book that I've had in my mind a long time and which I'll never write because you don't have time and literally I could never get an agent because no one would read it, is about the thinkers who have defined kind of the big ideas for Americas role in the world after the cold war, you know, Frank Fukuyama and The End of History, Sam Huntington and The Cost of Civilizations, you know, John Williamson and The Washington Consensus, you know, Robert Kagan, you know, David Petraeus in Counter Insurgency Doctrine, you know.
And look at each of them and, you know, their lives and also how their ideas influenced America's sense of itself.
BRIAN LAMB: If somebody wants to read Book Party on the web, how do they get there?
CARLOS LOZADA: You can go to the washingtonpost.com site or you can just Google, Book Party Washington Post and that's the first thing that will pop up.
BRIAN LAMB: Carlos Lozada, thank you very much for joining us.
CARLOS LOZADA: Thank you for having me.