Q: That "broken windows" theory of policing was a neoconservative idea?

A: "Neoconservative" has become such a tarnished word, but it's such common sense. There was a small group of people in America, the radicals, who said "law and order" is a code word for racism. It's not a code war for racism; it's a code word for civilization. We've cut the crime rate because we've gotten tough.

Q: Who do you want to read "Fighting Words"?

A: Everybody. There was a very good review in the American Spectator magazine. It's a good read. It's not a book about neoconservatism, the way Norman Podhoretz or Jim Wilson or Jeane Kirkpatrick - people I admire -- might write one. It's a book about how I came to understand things; it's a story. There are a lot of interesting anecdotes in it.

On the foreign policy side, Geopolitics 101 says that democracies don't go to war against one another. Parents don't want to send their kids to war to be killed. All the great massacres came about from totalitarianists - Stalin and Hitler and the Imperial Japanese and Cuba. I think there was one little soccer war between two democracies in Central America. So when we went into Iraq to try to establish a democracy in the most dangerous region of the world - under a U.N. mandate, by the way, with 20 allies - it wasn't just saying we want everyone to be like America. We were trying to ensure some stability in the world.

Q: Of all the Washington stories you tell in the book, what's your favorite?

A: Well, when I came to work for President Johnson, Bill Moyers, who was then his chief of staff, and I had lunch in the White House mess. The vice president (Hubert Humphrey) came up and said, "I loved your book." I had written this book with Dick Scammon, "This USA," which was very optimistic. And then Moyers said, "Come on, there's someone I want you to meet." We go through this labyrinth of the White House and he takes me into LBJ's bedroom. LBJ is meeting there with Henry Ford II, having a late lunch. Johnson was in his pajamas. He used to take a nap in the afternoon; he'd work eight hours, then take a nap for three hours and work another eight hours. I was not used to talking to presidents, but I had told Bill Moyers what I was thinking about -- that everything was gloom and doom coming out of the White House and it shouldn't be because we were making great progress. Johnson went on and on and on, and then Bill said, "Why don't you tell the president what you were telling me?" I did. And Bill hired me on the spot and I stayed for just about the end of the Johnson presidency.

Q: Of all the smart and powerful people you met in Washington, who do you think is the most underrated or underappreciated today?

A: Well, I think Scoop Jackson (Sen. Henry Jackson, anti-Communist Democrat from Washington who died in 1983). He never got to be president. He ran twice. But even today if you talk to the people who run foreign policy, they break out into two groups -- they say they are pro-Scoop or anti-Scoop. Now he was one representative out of 535 in Congress. But he really left an imprint. What it was that (he thought) the United States can be both idealistic and realistic. Those are the two poles. He sort of blended the two. He said we have to have a strong defense but we have to do things like Radio Free Europe and the National Endowment for Democracy and Radio Free Asia and spread the word to the peoples of the world that democracy is OK.

Q: Scoop Jackson's ideas -- that blend of idealism and realism -- is that the definition of neoconservative foreign policy?

A: I think so. But you can't call it "neoconservative." You have to call it "cantaloupe" or "banana."