Episode 154, with guests Michael Waldman and Geoff Dyer

Michael Waldman and Geoff Dyer are our guests this week.
Show produced by Katherine Caperton.
Original Air Date: June 7, 2014 on SiriusXM “POTUS” Channel 124.
PoliOptics airs on POTUS on Saturdays at 8 am & 6 pm, Sundays at 4 am & 5 pm and Mondays at 2 am.
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This week, it’s Another Great Day At Sea.

Twenty years ago this week, I was at sea, aboard the USS George Washington, somewhere in the English Channel, about to embark with President Clinton for the commemoration of the 50 anniversary of D-Day. During my years as a presidential advance man, there was nothing cooler than spending a night on an aircraft carrier, nor few things more welcome than getting off!

The commemoration of June 6, 1944, occurred again this week, now 70 years after D-Day, with President Obama this year the American Commander-in-Chief paying tribute to the sacrifice that saved the world.

The boys of Point du Hoc, of Omaha, of Juno and Sword, are twenty years older than when I was with them in 1994 and, while it was wonderful to see to many eyewitness accounts of D-Day from veterans this week, its also true that many I met two decades ago have passed into eternity. But wherever they are, we are eternally grateful for what they did, now 70 years ago.

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A more recent appreciation of what our men and women in uniform do to project power, keep the peace and defend U.S. interests overseas comes courtesy of Geoff Dyer, the great celebrated author of such works as Jeff in Venice and Yoga For People Who Can’t Be Bothered To Do It, who’s just out with Another Great Day At Sea: Life Aboard The USS George H.W. Bush. 

Goeff spent two weeks aboard CVN-77 (as opposed to my one night about CVN-73). In this episode of PoliOptics, we talk with Geoff about his observations from his fortnight aboard America’s mightiest warship.

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Also on the show, with the shootings this week at Seattle Pacific University, and in May in Santa Barbara, we’ve gone numb to the shock reported in the media from violence perpetrated at the intersection of handgun possession and mental illness.

But not Michael Waldman, the former chief speechwriter to President Clinton and president of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU’s School of Law (and my old friend from the White House days). Michael is out with his latest book: The Second Amendment: A Biography, that brings us back to Lexington and Concord, when the Minutemen “kept and bared arms” to Sandy Hook, when, tragically, Adam Lanza did the same.

But the lifetime journey of that one sentence in our Bill of Rights — A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed – has been long and consequential, clearly worthy of a biography. It’s biographer, Michael Waldman, joins us on this show.

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