Here are the links:
Cspan video: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/...
Transcription of Cspan video: http://solutionsearch-tbug.blogspot.com/
Bill Moyer's Journal: http://www.pbs.org/...
Books:
Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues
Moyers on Democracy
Bill Moyers conversation with Garrison Keillor on Cspan part V
GK: I'm afraid you've done it now. (laughter) I want to ask you two more questions and then we're going to open this up to the people here in the house. This is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Hubert Humphrey and we are observing this (applause) here in Minnesota. Our great Progressive who came out of the Depression and who people under the age of 40 don't remember, maybe 50. But people my age do. And we remember Hubert Humphrey in several ways. First of all we remember his ebullience and how much he loved to be in a crowd of people. How much he loved to shake hands and the joyfulness of the man out in public was genuine. And so my Republican in-laws had a sort of grudging fondness for Hubert Humphrey. Really crossed party lines. The other thing we really remember for is that he was a teacher. Died-in-the-wool teacher. He loved to explain things to you and would at whatever lengths you were willing to sit and listen (laughter) He just really did. He loved to explain an issue to you in a certainty that if he could just explain to you and you understood it you would agree with him.
BM: He once gave a press conference in California that went on one hour during which he answered three questions. (laughter)
GK: All right. Bless his heart. He was unlike Minnesota men in that respect. (laughter) But then he came from South Dakota. So he had that challenge to deal with. Most historians now looking back at Hubert Humphrey's career, I think, would agree that the great tragedy of his life was accepting the vice presidential nomination offered to him by Lyndon B Johnson. And that this was his downfall. Course who can say, who can say. Can read history backwards. But. Do you agree with that?
BM: Yes, he got caught in a war that he had no influence over, but which he had to defend. Hubert Humphrey was a greater mentor, believe or not, than John F. Kennedy , whom I served, and then Lyndon Johnson with whom I was very close. Because he took the time to teach. You know he was the youngest man ever elected mayor in Minneapolis. One of the great things he did, was to commission the first canvas, door to door canvas, to explore discrimination in this city. He did that in no small part because he went to Tulane University to do his masters and discovered the great persecution of the blacks. But he proposed the Peace Corp., the Youth Corp. he called it, in the late '50s. And I was writing a speech for Senator Johnson proposing a Youth Corp. So when Kennedy came out to say he was going to start a Peace Corp., Hubert and I were joined by our glee, our joy over the fact that the incoming President was committed to the Peace Corp.. And when John Kennedy nominated me (chuckles) to be the deputy director of the Peace Corp., a job requiring Senate confirmation, I was opposed by several Republican Senators who said I was too young. By then I had reaped the ripe age of 27, 27 and a half. Something like that. And Hubert Humphrey came running to the floor when they were attacking me for being too young, and he delivered an impassioned speech about young men who had served the public starting with Thomas Jefferson and coming right on through. (laughter) And it turned the tide, only two people voted against me. He was, I torn between Sargeant Shriver, for vice president, Kennedy's brother-inlaw, and my boss, as director of the Peace Corp. and Hubert Humphrey. But I urged, I urged President Johnson to , I was one of many, urged him to support to take Hubert Humphrey as his running mate. Because Humphrey was liberal and Johnson was seen more as conservative from the, from Texas. Because Hubert was such a man of compassion. He was the most proliferate legislator of the twentieth century. More Acts, more bills contained his fingerprints than any other single man in the course of the Senate's history in that. He was a great, great man. And because he went along with, as everyone else in the White House administration did, the President's escalation of the war. He got trapped. He didn't believe in that war even though he had been a cold warrior a decade earlier. And he was way behind until, and we had talked about this. He called me after I came back from the Paris Peace Talks. I was then pushing paper. And he said he had to come out. He had to come out against the war. And he did five days before the election. And the gap between Nixon and Humphrey closed just like that. Another day demographers, statisticians say, another day and his switching opinion on the war would have carried him into the White House. And the whole history of our times would have been different. You're right. A tragedy.
GK: I just have one more question and tell me a little bit more about the 20 year old Bill Moyers. Tell me what he looked like and what he wore as he was heading off to Washington and imagine if you can what he would have thought had he run into the 76 year old veteran broadcaster, news analyst, documentarian Bill Moyers.
BM: Well I would like to think he would say how do I get that job.? (laughter) I do. At 20, I was conflicted. I wanted to be everything. I wanted to be a minister. I wanted to be a journalist. I wanted to be a broadcaster. I had grown up listening to Edward R Murrow. On the roof tops of the buildings in London during the Blitz, "This is London" and the authenticity and the power of his words to take me to London. And bring London to me, changed my sensory perception. I wanted to be a teacher. I was accepted to do my Phd at the University, when Johnson called me and asked me to come to Washington. I wanted to be a politician like most 20 year olds, I thought the world, despite then being poor, of infinite possibilities. And of the human experience of infinite possibilities. I got that, its no mystery. If you read a little book I did some years ago called Fooling with Words about the English teachers I had from the ninth grade of high school through the second year of college. All of them were gifted in the teaching of English and poetry. Poetry is about the all the possibilities of life, the tragedies and triumphs of life. . But I came at age 21 wanting to be everything. I was a protean figure in my head. And I committed to one way and it lead to another that lead to another. But I think I would say it if I was 20 years old, in fact 20 year olds come up to me today and say " I want to be a journalist. What should I do?" My answer is don't. (laughter) No, I don't say that, really I say if you got a fire in your belly do it. Because you will signify if your lucky. But its harder and harder to be a journalist today because of the shrinking opportunities in newspapers. Because corporate broadcasting as gone Hollywood. And there's still class journalism being done today, but its good journalist on the internet and other places. But its not the promising field, large field that it was when I growing up. Buts that how I was at 20. I was thin, looked like a hayseed. Had horn rimmed glasses. Was awkward, shy, really I was shy. And mostly I was unsure of the right path to take.
GK: You and I have a lot in common. (laughter) And neither of us could dance. (laughter)
BM: Great loss. Someone asked me the other day, "What's your greatest regret?" And I said that I never learned to dance. I never learned to dance. I would have loved to have been Arthur Murray or Fred Astaire. Nobody knows who they were anymore. (laughter) But they were. You know why I couldn't dance?
GK: Because you were brought up fundamentalist.
BM: That's right. That's exactly right. We weren't suppose to. It was too sinfully sexually attractive.
GK: It would awaken carnal impulses. (laughter) All right, lets ask this question. Lets ask the audience for their questions now. I'll turn this over to our friends. Lets take this one from, well since we're all Democrats here, lets take from the people in the back. Lets find a question in the balcony. Just stand up if you'd like to ask of Mr. Moyers here.
Audience member: Talk about Elizabeth Warren.
GK: Elizabeth Warren.
BM: I had Elizabeth Warren when she was at Harvard on my series with Bill Moyers some seven or eight years ago. I never heard anyone since the young Ralph Nadar who spoke so powerfully and truthfully for the consumer in America. For the transparency in corporate and government life. I was so impressed with her. And I have not been surprised that she as has risen as the progressives have fought back to some extent. And she was one of the voices that gave progressives a new sense of responsibility to consumers and the public. She should be the new head of the new Consumer Agency. (applause) The Republicans have said they will not let that happen. And I don't know why he doesn't do it, I wish Barrack Obama would give her a recess appointment. (applause). She would be our Joan of Arc.
Audience member: Mr Moyers, thank you very much. I worked for public television for 30 years and you have been the voice of truth and honesty for all those years and thank you so much for giving to public television everything you have.
BM: You're very generous. Thank you. (applause)