Our discussion, let me introduce the men to my left. Jim banner to edited the book president ial misconduct which is the kickoff for our discussion tonight is a visiting scholar in history at George Washington university. Having spent most of his career teaching at princeton, he is the founding director of the history news service. His most recent book is being a historian being a historian and he hasory edited and written numerous books including the one we are featuring tonight. He also was one of the creators of the National History center. Editorinchief of the quarterly review. Let me tell you how i know jackson. So, i was a graduate student at yale and people would always say there is this great historian, hes going to be so great, you are a few years older. He was one of the historians who proceeded to define a field which is basically how to think about culture in a way that spoke to many different parts of our political life. That might not be how the describes himself, but thats how im describing them. So, we are very happy to have them. His most recent book is rebirth of a nation the making of modern america. He writes constantly for the new york review of books and the london review of books, very much worth reading. Is a journalist known for many things. Tonight, i would like to introduce in any number of ways. First, as being a speechwriter for jimmy carter, and we are going to talk a little bit about jimmy carter. Hes known as one of the preeminent editors in the United States who has worked twice at the new republic. Magazinenew yorker which he was executive editor of and also has given a lot of credit for refashioning it during the tina brown years. He has been a finalist for the National Magazine award six times and he has won that award once for his comment in the new yorker. To his left is eric alterman. The categories at once, a historian, a journalist, a critic. It depends on what day he wakes up and where he is. Right now he is a professor for english and journalism at brooklyn college. He has written 10 books, going on his 11th. That is coming out in june and is titled lying in state i president s lie and white from his worst. And why trump is worse. [applause] [laughter] he has written about politicians from bill de blasio to george bush and many others. Im hoping that among these panelists tonight, we can get some sense of proportionality about what is happening in the country today, what it means, and where we are headed. To kick off the discussion, im going to turn to jim banner. What i would like you to tell us briefly is why the reissue of this took which originally came out in 1974, why are we seeing it again . Im happy to do that. I was a first, i do have some news about the Trump Presidency but im going to keep it rather dry until we get into a general discussion. Capturings a way of even historians by surprise and i was caught up in a project 45 years ago to present to the impeachment inquiry of the House Judiciary Committee at the request of its special counsel. The contextual survey of president ial misconduct from George Washington to the administration of Lyndon Johnson. With about 14 other historians under the general membership of management, celebrity historian of the south, in eight weeks, we. Repared a report, submitted it he accepted it. He was getting ready to present the report to the members of the Judiciary Committee and the president resigned. I always hoped that would give me some license to say that i had had something to do with nixons resignation. But it didnt, because it turns out that the report never got into the hands of the members of the impeachment inquiry. But the text was in the public domain. By dellrapped up publishing house, published in cloth and paper editions. But after nixon have resigned. In the book fell dead in the marketplace. It is scarcely known among historians and it was reviewed only once by me. [laughter] regular, butrely a i raised it because i wanted to report on a footnote to the impeachment inquiry and to get some matters about the state of administrative and political history off my chest. That was the end of it. And then i went on about my life as a historian. September,this past i was sitting in my Office Working on another book on a completely different subject and the phone rang and a voice said jim . Was a fellow historian on the harvard faculty and a lot of you know her as an author and writer for the new yorker. I said nice to hear from you. She said what the hell is this book . And she just stumbled upon it in a footnote and found out that in 45 years it had been taken out three times. So if she did not know about it, it had to have been an insignificant book. Well, she had brought it back into significance because she wrote about it for the new and i eventually turn it over to my agent and the result is this updated version of the report that was first written and submitted to congress 45 years ago, and im still alive to tell the tale. Book goes from the presidency of barack obama. The original one did not cover the nixon presidency. This one does not touch upon donald trump for two very strong reasons. One, previously, the administrations that occasioned a report like this are not complete. Second of all, most of the documentation about the history of the Nixon Administration was not available then, certainly of Trump Administration now, and its only fair that we leave now the sitting president. Things about two the nature of the report contained in this book. Three things. First of all, it is not the kind of history that i and my colleagues would think of producing, it is very much against the grain, it is an interpretive. Chronicle, the kind of history written through the middle ages and well beyond. President ofisode, president. No connective tissue, just what happened about certain aspects of the presidencies going back to George Washington. Second place, a report about president ial misconduct over 230 years. Introductionin the to the addition of that report, unprecedented. Report, this book is only slightly precedented because there really is no scholarly, serious Academic Field of president ial misconduct. Ad it is in many respects very narrow way to interpret and to try to evaluate the strength of presidencies. If we are going to look at a presidency, we are going to try visionuate it on the with which it takes office, success in implementing that vision, the political skills of the administration, the president and his official family bring to the job. The obstacles they faced, the crises that beset them. To evaluate presidencies on the grounds of misconduct does not make great, strong sense. Take the presidency of warren harding. It lasted for two and a half years and was one of the most corrupt. But it turns out that president harding was as unblemished as the driven snow. He was not corrupt, it was all the people around him that took advantage of him. He was naive, he did not set he was a sex maniac. Was he . You and i will have to talk about that later. [laughter] by the way, my colleagues and i for these reports have not gotten into private life or life before or after the presidency. But take harry truman. It was really quite corrupt in many ways. The president wasnt, but those around him did a lot of you legal and corrupt things. But who would chart that on the grounds of misconduct . The second world war, integration of the armed forces, it was on his watch a Marshall Plan came into being. The truman doctrine and things like that. It was an administration of extraordinary achievement. The second point i would like to make before falling silent is the following. That is that when i think of what we have brought, i think of that old lame joke, how is your wife . Compared to whom . It is hard to know what to make of the records that we have or at least, it is hard because we dont have any imperative time posts. It seems to me that we need to know more about our representative democracy, written in france, germany, scandinavia, japan, south korea, the records that we have amassed with the records of misconduct or Good Behavior on the part of governments elsewhere. Im not even certain that should be the comparison that we should want. Maybe we should compare the record that we have amassed against the records of states in cities. And then it seems to me if you prepare this record against a chicagoland, louisiana, it may look pretty good. So, i come away from my own account not certain as to whether i should feel depressed or whether i should feel confident that somehow, we have modeled through with the defective institutions that we have, with institutions such as congressional investigations, courts, a robust press, nonprofit organizations, womens march, and so on, that keep the system more or less in check, and with only occasional breakthroughs, interruptions such as we are experiencing today. Confident in making some comparisons later on, but i want to hear what my fellows have to say before i do so. To hear your reflections on what president ial misconduct is. Maybe we can get eric to talk about lying. The range of things touched on in the book but even beyond this book, what actually misconduct means in how we should think about it. Both in the long perspective and in the short perspective of what is in front of our eyes. I think im the only one of here who has done time in the white house. So, thats really when i got my copy of president ial misconduct that turned to the jimmy carter section. I have to say, it could have been replaced with a oneliner. It could have just said nothing to see here, move on. Were,andals, such as they facted partly from the that he had never served. The only time he had ever served in the federal government was when he was in the navy. He didnt know anybody to speak of outside of georgia. And so, the scandals, such as derived partly or maybe mostly from the fact that he brought with him the people that he trusted in georgia and not all of them were by washington standards trustworthy. But i think the real problem with president carter was that he was inexperienced. Thei would say that mistakes he made, particularly at the beginning, could be largely explained in that way. He put a cousin of his in charge of the white house housekeeping operations. As a result, the pennypinching kind of ethics that he brought with him from georgia resulted in some mistakes that were more damaging than any of the socalled scandals. For example, the newspaper subscriptions were all canceled. Just to save a few bucks. Think,the worst one, i was that he sold the sequoia. That was a president ial got, and that turned out to be a mistake of the First Quarter because he was trying to do while the white house, so he gave up hail to the chief. And he thought the president should not have a yacht, he and so heed a yacht sold it and it was a very costly mistake because it was a real money saver. He could take half a dozen senators out for a nice trip up and down the potomac, serve them some bourbon and water and of course he had also banned alcohol from the premises of the white house. Hard alcohol. Beer and wine, occasionally. Yes. Hard liquor works better when you are trying to make a deal. So when he compromised, he had to give up something of real those and a lot of concessions could have been bylaced much more cheaply trips on the potomac. I think that was a scandal of sorts. Its scandal that derives from being too good, tomorrow too moral. Maybe someone will point out things i overlooked about the carter administration. I think the book, which is really full of revelations, narrowly,andal rather it does not really include policy scandals, it doesnt include the Lyndon Johnson section, if i were member correctly. Doesnt include the vietnam war. Which, i suppose you could call a scandal, it was certainly a horrible mistake, perhaps even worse was the invasion of the Dominican Republic. Under johnson, the Dominican Republic had come into the hands of essentially a social democratic. As limitations were set for us by john doerr. Yes. Recall, correct me if im wrong. Trust. My carters i just want one followup question. Did it or did it not become evident inside the white house, that the lack of insiders was a problem . Boss and later i became chief speechwriter. It became evident before we had even come to the office. Clear to atpretty least our little cabal. Jackson, give us some reflection before we get into individual president s just on how you think about the word misconduct and what it means in terms of how we should think about ideology, policy, sexual scandal, whatever it is. Im in favor of a much broader definition of misconduct than much of what weve been talking about so far. You start to get into policy and you are beginning to speak my language. Because i feel like the most serious president ial misconduct, the sort of misconduct that has been most destructive, to human lives and liberties, both at home and abroad, has occurred at a specific historical moment, the last 70 years. And particularly, the intelligence agencies. Remains largely invisible to the American Population at large. I think its really interesting book,n the reissue of the the two president s whose administrations do more and broader do warrant coverage of misconduct or Richard Nixon and george w. Bush and both of them were engaged in i think serious abuse of power through the institution of domestic spying by the cia which is clearly against the cia and directed at protesters against the vietnam war and nicks and expanded that program considerably. Was finally chaos exposed by the journalist Seymour Hersh in the early 1970s when he had a brief his exposures provoked the hearings that were conducted by Senator Frank Church into the misdeeds of the cia. The committee discovered all sorts of evidence of disturbing misdeeds. Not only the spying on u. S. Citizens who happened to oppose nixons policies but also the successful and president ially authorized cia coup in chile. The overthrow of the democratically elected salvador allende. What was interesting to me was there is this fusion most of the time between the executive branch and the rest of the National Security state, in particular the intelligence agencies. But sometimes there was tension. There was tension under the kennedys for a variety of complicated reasons. There was very little tension under nixon. That was when the government and the presidency committed the most egregious misdeeds. And was i think guilty of the most extraordinary misconduct. I would say the same thing was true of the george w. Bush administration. Which provided a new lease on life for the National Security state after the very brief moment of public skepticism spawned by the Church Committee and the failures of the vietnam war. The global war on terror really brought it back. It really brought back the possibilities for the most serious kinds of misconduct. Warrantless electronic surveillance, which is a clear violation of the fourth amendment. Torture and the torturous legal memos devised to justify them, which is a clear violation of the eighth amendment. The geneva convention. These were the conventions that dick cheney labeled as quaint. There were various levels of misconduct ranging from Warren Hardings encounter with a chambermaid at the palace hotel in San Francisco to other more serious matters involving public policy. I want to broaden the scope of our discussion to include these other issues. Karen let me talk to you about this quaint. Al gonzalez said this. One of the things i would like to hear you, and then i will turn to eric, think about is are we living in a different paradigm . I know this book lays out president ial misconduct. Almost like we normalize it whether it is about policy or personal life. Yeah there is misconduct in all of these different administrations. Eric will tell us how trumps lying is worse than any other president. Before that, i want to ask you, i agree with you, the war on terror, it changed the presidency and the executive in ways, it is quaint now. Do you agree with that . Are we really any different or are we just going to, in 10 years, issue another book, president ial misconduct, updated once again . Or are we living in a different place . Because of the National Security state . I fear that we are living in a different place. I am deeply suspicious of pronouncements of new paradigms. It reminds me of bill gates and other futureologists predicting the utopian future that awaits us after the bumpy transition. The transition is where people live. This is not something we can escape that easily. This is everyday life. Our everyday lives, and this is partly due to technology, as you know, and the capacity of the nsa and other agencies, the kinds of revelations that eric snowden made about the dragnet that encompasses all americans. And lists google and facebook and the rest to monitor our conversations. Internet visits. We all know about this. It makes me worry that if there is not a new paradigm, there is a new public mentality. Not only younger people, but often younger people, who say, why should i care if all of my data is out there i have done nothing wrong . Secondly, i cannot do anything about it anyway. If the phone company knows, why should i care if the government knows . The problem with you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear approach is no one ever says that about the snowden revelations who lived under a dictatorship. No one from germany, or the former soviet union, chile says it. You could continue the list. That is people in the u. S. Yes, we have a government who has abused powers previously but we have not yet reached conditions that the germans were in under nazism or communism. There is a naivete as well as a belief that technology has brought us into this new era and we have to adjust. There is a technological determinism. The train is left the station and we better be on. Before we get to trump, talk a little bit about how you see the role of lying in terms of the presidency, the contract between the president and the citizenry and where you think it fits into this discussion about misconduct overall. Its a big topic obviously. I just turned in my second book about president ial lying. Out in 2004 icame think. In the first book i concluded the president shouldnt lie. And now i dont feel that way anymore. I really dont. Of life. Ying is a part i think everybody lies. Just about everybody lies. And just about all politicians lie. The lies are not any less popular or successful than the ones who didnt lie. John kennedy light all the time. Franklin roosevelt lied a tremendous amount and he saved totern civilization by lying be president of the United States, you almost have to lie. Because people cant handle the truth. For the First Century and a half of American History i would say president lied for two reasons. They lied about slavery. They lied about the nature of human beings. But they lied because america endlessitted to expansion. Every president who was sort of responsible for expanding the country, and yet people didnt , centralcans americans, American Indians or free blacks to have the same rights they had. In order for these things to happen, they had to continuously lie about what was actually happening and how these people were being treated and that went on and on as the country expanded. The most consequential liar of the First American century is james polk, who increased the withof the country by 25 a war that he lied to get into. The hero of the truth of that story was abraham lincoln, who tried to hold him to account as a firstterm congressman and lost his seat over it. Empire, empires demand lies because they are very ugly business and people dont want to hear the truth about that so president s by and large lied about it. Woodrow wilson didnt lie personally. Teddy roosevelt did live. Live. Hoover, i couldnt find a single lie that hoover told. Lied abouting only his sex life. He didnt lie about the scandals he was personally involved. Once you get into the modern postwar period, we become an empire and we define our National Security and such a way that anyone who does anything we might not like has to be stopped. And we cant admit to that. A part of being president. Actually the United States didnt overthrow chile. But we did under eisenhower overthrow guatemala and iran. Directly. And congo. Donesia all of those things happened under eisenhower and yet he is considered a wonderful guy. Everybody wants him to be their grandfather. All those president s lied a lot. Kennedy lied about the cuban missile crisis. Its a terrific live. Im really glad he did it. You cant really generalize about lies. Nixon was a terrible person and his lies were incredibly damaging. I dont think for the same reasons that jackson says. I think they were damaging because they killed millions and millions of people. Could have ended the vietnam war repeatedly, but he didnt want to because he thought it would be bad politics. Discussionse actual where kissinger and he say these things. Isrge w. Bush of course also responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of people and the creation of millions of refugees on the basis of lies. , trump you get to trump is not in their leak in terms of the number of People Killed and the chaos caused in the world approximatelyold 14,000 falsehoods. Not all of them are lies, but most of them are. And we are in a new era with trump because these other president s as horrible as what , george w. Bush and ronald reagan. We havent mentioned, but he was a terrible liar. He gave the impression of believing his lies. Were, they as they were lying for a purpose that we understood that they were lying for. We kind of knew that they were lying. They ran basically competent governments that had individual obsessions of the president himself that went too far. And they were trained in overtime. Johnson, two. Destroyed anyhas distinction between truth and lies. And he just doesnt care. All hes done his whole life is live. And he lied when he ran for president. He lied in the debates. It was amazing to me what he was getting away with. And he didnt stop as president. The very first day of his presidency he went to the cia and started lying before the cameras. Way of attacking our life. Hes attacking our government. Quitepreparing its consistent incident consistent incidentally with what Hannah Arendt wrote. To destroy the ability to resist, you have to destroy the distinction between truth and lies. If they cant believe anything, they cant act. I dont want to compare the United States to nazi germany or stalinist russia. I reject those comparisons in every way. But theres an awful lot of similarity to the way those dictators treated truth. And the way trumps supporters go along with it as happened in both of those places. And i think there are elements of totalitarianism in trumps presidency and the movement that derives specifically from his ability to keep lying and i think if he were to be reelected im not sure our form of government would survive it. I like to think im a historian so i dont make predictions. Its a new situation and we dont even have the words for it. Think about fox news. Theres never been anything like fox news. We know what state tv and independent tv is. We dont really know what fox is. Its something brandnew and it reinforces the lies. If you want to tell the truth you would have to contend with them defining this truth as lies. And they are very powerful. So my new book started out as a history of president ial lying. But it became about a cultural lag and have the president as part of that culture and hes the most important symbol of it and may be most important liar. But its a much bigger problem than just trump. Accepting what you said, can i share categories for a minute regarding President Trump . I think that the crisis that we than mostaver politicians, most of us, most journalists understand. If i read the record correctly, and id like to know whether all five of us read it the same way. Departuregregious from normal corruption using Public Office for private gain. Telling lies. Up occurred under Richard Nixon. He read an account of richard and thepresidency account is really dizzying of what was going on. Previouseparture from embodiments of corruption and miscreants and wrongdoing was the fact that nixon and his advisors were orchestrating misconduct, illegality, corruption, from the white house. It had never been done in that fashion before. Then was a party to misconduct for which he eventually had to resign because he probably would have been voted out of office by the senate. After nixon, it seems to me that the next most serious moment of president ial misconduct came ofing the iran contra affair ronald reagan. Who went to his death saying that he knew nothing about it. And i think that he probably did know something about it, but the evidence as i read it is not entirely clear. Whichre was a case in policy was being made out of the white house in contravention to congressional act. From one being taken pocket for which it was authorized and appropriated and used for other purposes. Or awas a shadow cabinet shadow group of officers working against the law. With the Trump Presidency has done is to combine both. Thep and the people in white house are orchestrating illegal behavior, and they are doing it now with a shadow abalrnment, a shadow c that operates outside the white house. Weve never had that before. This is a step up or step down in the nature of president ial and administrative misbehavior. Understandve got to it structurally that way. It is certainly true that the president lies all the time, but ive always thought that was gestational. Thats the way he came out of the womb. The same way he came out of the womb probably add, borderline personality disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder and so on. There are certain things that i just, i believe now are not intentional. He cannot help himself. Hes a man of low character and he lies and hes incompetent and hes ignorant. We sort of know those things. But how do we make sense of this presidency in the long history of president ial behavior . And i think you can see unfortunately an increase in misconduct and in this case it structurally different and more grave than any weve ever had. You talked about bringing in the people who are inexperienced , which is a comparison thats often made with the Trump Administration. Bringing people and who are not experts in what they are doing and have never worked in whatever field they are in before. You see it throughout various different departments. Is sayinge what jim which is basically this kind of shadow government is combining this with whats going on coming out of the white house, is sort of a new marriage or do you really see this as weve seen corruption before, we are going to see it again. Weve seen a grab for power before. Weve seen interference in Foreign Affairs done behind the scenes before. How do you assess the difference in this administration or not . Well, im not sure how to do that. But there is something new and different about the trump experience. He doesnt have any he doesnt have politics. He doesnt have any policy preferences. Weve never had a president , i think your diagnosis of several wellrecognized mental disorders is on the money. He is it could be worse. Us into anytten wars. He doesnt want to have a war. To the extent that he has any thoughts about that at all. Its astounding that he uses the office to enrich himself in such an obvious and unmistakable way. And i think what eric said about and the growth of a of state television, the kind of thing which you see in a lot of much less morally developed countries then you see here. Im not sure that trump would have been possible without that. Roomnk everybody in this probably watches cnn or msnbc. Anybody in this room who gets their news from fox news . Now hands are raised. All pariahs. With so many of the things, im not sure that im on topic with your question. Now in a norm is part of the interested public, the people who watch fox are also interested in the news. Who simply dont know and cannot know whats going on. They are living in a completely different reality than the rest of us. We like to think. And i think accurately. That what we know, the news that we get is pretty much true. And we are astounded day after day that he hasnt just been hustled out of there. Because the things that outrage us day after day are unknown to a large part of the public. That is certainly a new development. Id like you to weigh in here. I get the National Security state part. Its sort of what eric was saying. Its more than that. About not caring about your privacy and this kind of new point in time. Whats the cultural ramifications you think . I dont mean that you have to predict. If you were going to write the history of the next 10 years, what would you be looking at culturally to understand the presidency whether its the result of the war on terror or . Ow had fundamentally changed what would you look at other than fox news . Im glad you didnt ask me to predict anything. The last political prediction i made was that jimmy carter was going to save american capitalism. I guess that happened but i dont know whether he did it or not. Capitalism modeled through. It always does. It was a hopeful time. Im very discouraged and distressed about the state of our public life and the prospects for the next 10 years. I have to tell you its not just who is af trump dangerous man, a genuine menace. I agree with all of that. With respect to the culture of lying, i still feel like we have to get beyond personal characteristics and even personal pathologies. One can find pathologies almost anywhere. Trumps are just more flagrant than most. It seems to me in terms of a political culture of lying, i have to go back. Im sorry, i dont want to sound like a broken record here. But to the creation of the National Security state. In particular the creation of an agency, the cia, that was explicitly designed to produce disinformation. The original fake news. There are a lot of i think fox news is equally dangerous. Certainly as dangerous in its own way as trump in terms of twisting our discourse. Cnn, and i believe dont believe msnbc either. And i think they are about as close to state media as you can get. They are just a different part of the state. The New York Times, the Washington Post. They will conjure up, they will produce unnamed officials, unnamed official sources without tracking them down. Journalism is in such a bad condition here and its not just because of the internet and the concentration of power in a handful of media companies, although thats crucial. Those are both crucial. But i think the practice of journalism has suffered terribly. Early 2000, the maybe longer. Moment is intical 1978 when richard helms, the head of the cia, has been convicted of lying to congress about his role in the cia coup against allende. He cops up leanne pays a 2000 fine. Pays a 2000 fine. The times runs an editorial praising this plea and says yes, tos rebalances the need enforce the laws against lying with the continuing need to keep secrets. Forward, anyday cia official who took the oath of secrecy that is required of that organization could get up before congress and lie his head off and they have done it. Since then. Repeatedly. Including a good many of the ones who are now serving as commentators for cnn and msnbc. As professional wisemen. Angry that jackson keeps putting me in the position of having to send nixon and kissinger and the cia defendant nixon and kissinger and the cia. The cia wanted to overthrow in day. They didnt do it. They try to couple times and then gave up. In day was overthrown by his own generals. When the coop came, nixon turned to kissinger and said, did we do this. He wanted to take credit for it. He was so over impressed with the way eisenhower had overthrown these governments. Kissinger said, we didnt. He said, maybe we crated the conditions for it. Allende was overthrown by his own generals. They would have liked to have overthrown him, they tried, but it never worked out. In terms of the culture that we are living in now. The point about helms remains. Involvement. It may have been ineffectual involvement. People were killed with cia weaponry and so forth. I dont think we need to quibble about who ultimately thats why im mad at you. You are making me quibble. I think the important point is that the cia got permission at that point to lie to congress. You mean from the New York Times editorial page . Thats an example of what im talking about. Im going to differ with you in a big way here. I wrote a book called what liberal media. I still get little checks for it. Book, first page of that partially because im a professor of english even though my degree is in history but for some reason im a professor of english, i always make the point that the word media is a plural noun. So thats grammatically incorrect to say the media is. You have to say the media are. Therefore it doesnt make any sense to talk about the media. Whatever you say about the media is going to be true about one part of the media and false about one other part of the media. Its even true when you get down to institutions like the New York Times which right now has over 1300 editorial employees. In some of them are great and some of them are terrible. I find it indefensible to say that its a state media. And the same is true if the Washington Post. There are a lot of people there who are working very hard to tell very uncomfortable truths about our government and our country and there are a lot of people who are uncomfortable with those truths being told and its a constant battle. And sometimes the truth wins and sometimes it doesnt. And thats true in a lot of institutions. The New York Times as a special institution because its the most important and the most and i write about it more than i write about anything else and i write about it critically more than 90 of the time. Its i would say the most important private institution we have in terms of maintaining our democracy. , weout the New York Times wouldnt be as democratic a country as we are. And we could do this all day. You could say, they did this. But then they did this. Go back and forth. Media are athat the very complicated institution. Its a hydra headed beast. Thathe part of the media tells us the truth requires our support. And yet people talk about it as if its a monolith. And i think thats dangerous because you could say anything you want about it as a monolith. Sameuld you make the comment about government written large . That there is as much good as it is bad and you just have to be tolerant that its an institution in progress . Or would you distinguish between the Political Institution and the Cultural Institution . Things is one of the thats so dangerous about trump. This fish is rotting from the head down. And hes set an example of contempt for all the functions of government. And culture. Lyndon johnson lied about vietnam every time he spoke. Under this government, every single policy in vietnam. No matter where you look. They dont care about the truth. I think there are a lot of good people in government, in the Nixon Administration and the Reagan Administration trying to do a good job. This is the first time weve had a president who has contempt for the job that government does. Reagan talked that way, but he didnt act that way. Again, this is something new. He has contempt for the truth. He has contempt for the job he does. Hes got no politics at all except for his own ego. And we are in uncharted territory of disrespect. In this respect. We are going to turn the are sort ofause we out of our time. When we are done with this presidency, however it ends, do you think there will be sort of energy towards rethinking the presidency or the executive . Or do you think we will go on like, i hope that doesnt happen again. Do you think there are lessons to be learned that need to be addressed . Legislatively, policy wise . I dont think you can go back in time very easily. I expected, barack obama is wonderful in a lot of ways and a disappointment in a number of ways. One way i was disappointed in him is that hes a constitutional law professor and yet he didnt rain in the imperial presidency at all. Once he got the power, he liked having it. Situation. Ent the other thing that worries me, we are attacking fox news and the presidency. But the American People have a role here, too. Barack obama literally according to the count of the people who keep count of these things, he told fewer falsehoods in eight years than trump tells in 10 minutes quite frequently. Im not exaggerating. He told a grand total of 12 falsehoods in eight years. There was one conversation where trump was talking to hannity on the phone and he told 45 falsehoods in 45 minutes. Yet, our most honest president was replaced by our most dishonest president. For the second time in a row. Jimmy carter was our other most honest president and he was replaced. The American People dont care about this. They care if the lies are consistent with their beliefs and hatreds and resentments. So people are not demanding the truth. They are demanding comfort. They are demanding reinforcement. And thats what politicians respond to. So the Republican Party is terrible because the people who vote for it are terrible. They would be better if the people who vote for it were better. Its complicated because they get lied to and so forth, but i dont see us going back. I see us living with this in a way that i cant really imagine the future. Rik, give us some hope. What can be done to make it better . It cant just be, oh, its going to be bad forever. Since i gave up the practice of commenting on the weekly developments, ive devoted most of my Mental Energy to what i think is the big problem, and that is you should excuse the expression the constitution. Ive heard of it. [laughter] usually it is right out of the box. The religion of the constitution is not a good thing. The constant invocation of the framers, the idea that the federalist papers is holy writ when even the authors of the federalist papers didnt agree with them. They reached a compromise and they were out to sell it. They were right that it was a better deal. So i think we need to rethink the constitution. The way the easiest fix that we can make is to elect a president by popular vote. That can be done without touching the constitution. You may have all heard of the National Popular vote interstate compact, so i wont go into the details of that. But it is wrong to blame the American People for trump. It was wrong to blame the American People for bush junior. The American People did not choose the American People chose otherwise. In the case of bush, that could be a planetary catastrophe if the winner of the popular, the socalled popular vote if the winner of the election the way we understand elections had taken office, we would be in a very different place now with respect to socalled climate change, global heating. And the same of course is the case for trump. Trump seems aware of this. Thats why he crazily says that 3 million more votes were stolen in california. Thats why hillary won the vote of the American People. The American People are doing their best, but the machine is rusty and faulty and broken. It can be fixed. It can be fixed, but its not going to be easy and the odds are against it. At least weve got maybe a 25 chance of national survival. Thats not too bad. Jackson . I appreciate that eric and i both resort from time to time to the historians trope, which is complexity. I thoroughly agree that the New York Times is a huge and complex organization, as is the u. S. State department. As is the freaking cia. There are good cia agents. This is how sy hersh did his best work, was that he found military officers and people in the Intelligence Community who believed they had taken an oath to the constitution rather than to their bosses and to their immediate superiors. They became the whistleblowers of their day who supplied him with the material he used to uncover misdeeds by government. I thoroughly agree that media are plural and there are plural possibilities from within each media institution. The drift of things at this particular moment is discouraging to me. Im perfectly willing to do away with the Electoral College. I agree that would be a good thing. Im less willing to toss the baby of the constitution out with the bathwater of the Electoral College. Im more devoted to the bill of rights, i am, than to the constitution. The constitution is full of a lot of ingenious 18thcentury mechanisms for balancing and reducing the concentration of power, which have more or less worked for a long time. Im not sure we necessarily want to dismantle those mechanisms, but i do think that what is precious to me in the constitution is the bill of rights. By the way, its what was precious to edward snowden, too. Thats what got him involved in his career of revelations. I think were going to need i think its going to take a lot of ingenuity, more ingenuity than the Current Democratic Party is demonstrating, to redirect Public Discourse in a way that it needs to be redirected. What i hear among the dnc and the democratic establishment, as well as among most of the major media, is a longing for the status quo antitrump. I dont think thats enough. I think the reason trump was elected was because there was serious shortcomings in that status quo and in that way that basically neoliberal, promarket forces had taken over the Democratic Party to a large extent, almost as much as they had already taken over the Republican Party with not quite the same fundamentalist tinge, with more of a technocratic tinge. But they were not satisfying popular needs. I think we need a reorientation of the Democratic Party in a way that would satisfy toward what i would call a social democratic direction. That would involve a couple years ago, i and a number of historians and political scientists who had written about the reform tradition, the progressive tradition in american political history, had been invited by the Rockefeller Brothers foundation at the rockefeller estate in terry town. There was a lot of talk about philanthropy and good intentions until at one point, one of my colleagues said, there really is going to have to be some people will have to lose and some people will have to get more. There is going to have to be a certain amount of redistribution here. We cannot just keep growing. I think thats the really hard challenge that i think the democrats or anyone who claims to be an egalitarian faces, that some people are going to have to pay more than they do now to create a decent society. I think it could happen. I think theres enough goodwill out there, enough intelligence. I think theres a native brightness in a lot of American People, even if they are not highly educated. I believe in the vernacular intelligence and decency of a lot of people. Maybe they were misled by trump. Maybe they really do have a mean streak that he tapped into. In any case, i dont think that we are stuck with expecting that same group of voters to keep voting for the likes of trump. The likes of trump are not likely to one hopes come along again anytime soon. Im far from being optimistic, im sorry to say. Im cautiously hopeful, cautiously hopeful. We will leave the optimism to you, jim. You are more optimistic than you sounded earlier in the discussion. When someone talks about rethinking the constitution, my heart turns to ice. Over 30 states have passed resolutions calling for an Article Five Convention to rewrite the constitution. If any of you can convince me that we will find a George Washington, a ben franklin, a james madison, alexander hamilton, james wilson, so on in this day and age who will be elected to a Constitutional Convention whether its in philadelphia or kansas city i dont much care you are more optimistic than i am. Instrumental changes in the instrument, such as the interstate compact that tries to circumvent the impossibility of changing the Electoral College by main force by amending the constitution is a very promising approach. I also think that instrumentally and practically and institutionally, which is the way i usually end up thinking about these things, our first order of business and one incumbent on all of us to enforce upon the Democratic Candidates in the plural and then certainly upon the one who gets the nod at the end of the primaries, is to force them to tell us what we are going to do specifically to clear out the wreckage of this administration. Im not thinking here about Campaign Finance reform and things that have been on the agenda of liberal, well thinking, smart people for decades now, for well over 50 years. Im not talking about that. I mean very specifically, whats going to be done on day 1, 2, and 3 . What are the first actions going to be taken in what sequence to redraw the boundaries of political action, political behavior, to get us back in the paris accords and so on . I want to hear that from our candidates. These are not constitutional issues, necessarily. They are political and they are administrative issues. I have yet to hear any of the Democratic Candidates speaking in those terms. I think its incumbent upon all us the citizens sitting in this room and elsewhere to get hold of our candidates somehow, through other people, through people we know, through members of congress, to try to bring that to bear upon them. They have to tell us what theyre planning to do. We have to know what they mean to do as soon as one of them takes office, if were lucky enough. It is time for your questions. Wait for the microphone. Remember that this is being recorded. Questions . Over here. To what extent would you say that a lot of the problem has to do with, shall we say, the triumph of emotionality over rationality in the society at whole, on the whole . And this kind of corporate consumer thing thats going on about what somebody wants is more important than what somebody else needs . Just as an example, i had a discussion with somebody about obamacare. We all agreed that our health care went up, but then millions of children who were not insured were then insured. This is more an attitude that is more the exception than the rule these days. After the with the generation that went through world war ii and the depression, there was at least an agreement that to make some sacrifices on what you yourself wanted for what somebody else needed. To what extent is that a factor . And also the triumph of emotionality a factor. Want to take that, eric . Two points about that. Your greatest generation who made those sacrifices, they made them for white people. Once you brought in people of color, people who were different, things got a lot more complicated. People were much less willing to make sacrifices for people who didnt look like them and share what they understood to be their values and religion, etc. Countries that are monocultural are much easier to govern than countries that are not. Secondly, up until recently, we had a pretty narrowly defined elite to who people largely deferred. We had gatekeepers, we had a group of people, the protestant ethic, who felt a sense of larger commitment. They did all right for themselves, but they were serious about serving the larger public and the ideals they were raised to serve at places like these private schools that instilled these values in them. Harvard and yale and princeton, etc. That elite collapsed for a lot of reasons. Part of it was their own greed and all the money that became available in the 1980s. Part of it was that it was not sustainable anymore. The most important element of its destruction is the internet. It democratized information. It gave everybody it used to be that people would argue in very broad terms. Now they know every little thing about every little issue if they want to. They can create boxes around politicians that politicians cant get out of. They will face some sort of reaction. Its why fewer than 10 of people support our actual guncontrol laws. And yet, we have these lack of guncontrol laws. The 10 of people will make your life hell if you try to oppose them. Otherwise, in the past, they wouldnt have known. You could have passed laws about it and they would never have known. The fact that weve democratized information and that the elite has stepped away from its role as a gatekeeper has increased the emotionality of these issues and decreased the ability for gentlemen to get together over brandy and cigars and settle things. That has made Congress Much less fun for everybody and much less effective. They dont have the freedom and the president doesnt have the freedom to make the kinds of deals that rick wanted to see made on the sequoia anymore. Theres too many people involved. They are not the same kinds of people. They hate each other. [laughter] more questions . Thank you for that. Right here. Im a psychohistorian. We have an International Center of multi generational legacies of trauma. The question i have president s are the ultimate Decision Makers in terms of future traumas. They always start by invoking future generations, right . The hope for future generations. In fact, many of the decisions are very immediate for the next four or eight years. They dont give a damn about the impact of those decisions on next generations. I would like your views on that. Its not only president s. Its many decisionmakers. Thats because of the political system. I would like your views on that. Dont you remember, when hitler ran, he was considered an idiot by some and not taken seriously. His country went totally behind him. We know the multi generational effect of that. Jackson . Thats a tricky one. Thats a serious and difficult question. I agree with you that president s always talk about future generations. I think reagan is a good example of a kind of genial demagogue who is talking the kind of game that gets everybody feeling good. About america is back and what he meant by america was let er rip turbo capitalism. I guess what i think you are getting at is the whole problem of leadership. This has to do with the balance between emotion and rationality. Leaders have to be able to inspire emotions as well as make convincing logical arguments. I fear im not trying to shift the ground away from the generational issue. I think its critical. On the other hand, i think generational conflict is often worked up as an excuse for a way to distract people from other, more fundamental kinds of conflict. I was suspicious about it in the dont trust anyone over 30 days. Im suspicious of the same kind of crossgenerational suspicion now. I do think we have a problem of leadership in this country and what it means to be a leader is a very tricky business. I agree entirely with eric about how much easier it was for white americans to care about other white americans when the face of poverty was white and when affirmative action was white. One of the things we are looking at here that makes it difficult to govern is we are more genuinely multicultural democracy than we used to be. More so all the time as more immigrants arrive. I teach at rutgers, which is one of the most diverse schools in the u. S. Probably. Ive been there for 30 years. It has changed dramatically. 30 years ago, it was mostly the white sons and daughters of the american new jersey middle class. Its much more complicated than that. Its harder to be a leader who will address a multicultural audience. I think obama did it briefly. During his campaign. As soon as he was nominated, he turned around and accepted the existing order of the National Security state, the political establishment, whatever label you want to put on it. I think its very difficult. There was a moment there in hyde park, the night of his election, a small d democratic triumph. It was the end of a coup, the end of the bush administration. The end of that neoconservative coup. I think that was the great disappointment. I dont know. I dont know whether he could have stepped up or not. Im sure he feared threats to his family. Anyone that tries to change things in this country is going to be violently threatened. I think its a real challenge to get to press politicians. We have the opportunity to press them and say, lets talk about what your policies mean for the next generation and the generation after that. We have the obvious example with climate heating. I like that phrase. It is a little more straightforward. We believe in plain speech here, right . Rhetoric is important. There is no such thing as mere rhetoric. Rhetoric shapes how people feel and think about their own possibilities and the countrys possibilities. I just note that trump never talks about future generations. Trump never talks about future generations, never. Several people in his administration have talked about how they dont care about the legacy because they will be dead anyway. That is one of the memes that has come out of it. Thats the wall street mentality. Thats the wall stt mentality. Youll be gone, ill be gone. I think you are a little hard on obama. He had to deal with this constitutional structure, excuse me. We are running up against this in the current campaign. Arguing over medicare for all versus building on obamacare. There aint gonna be medicare for all. Thats a nonstarter. We are setting ourselves up for disappointment and cynicism by pretending that by electing a democratic president who believes in turning us into norway, which i would love to see, that would be wonderful, we are setting ourselves up for cynicism. By not recognizing that we have to do these things through a very rusty machine. That machine is not going to give us the kind of change that bernie, for example, is talking about. It just aint going to happen. We have time for one more question, a quick question and a quick answer. Hi. I want to mention the extraconstitutional impulse or metaconstitutional and a very quick example i would say bush v. Gore was a constitutional travesty. But iight not be popular, think the decapitation of the liberal leadership in the 60s, covered over by the lone gunman phenomenon embraced by the media and comforting the public, is the second thing. The historical consensus rejected out of hand. The third thing, under your boy truman, i am very taken by what Carl Bernstein revealed about clifford telling him in an interview. Truman and i werent afraid of the red scare and the red menace. To me, these are anticonstitutional and extraconstitutional points that one could try to digest but not explain away by saying the constitution has no real order. I think we got to start living up to the constitution and get better. To sort of dismiss it when you see these kinds of extraconstitutional monstrosities. Theres many more than this. I picked three just to pepper the stew here. Ok. Were out of time. That was more of a comment than a question. I thank you for it. A couple things before i make any concluding remarks. The first is vital interests. On thursdays, the center has a new online publication meant to inform the public about Foreign Policy just in case your leaders dont want to. It runs the gamut from tariffs and china to afghanistan and climate change. It is the wonkiest, most deep dive into things you should know and you might want to know about. It comes out on thursdays or you can link to it in the morning brief any day. You should read it. Its fantastic. I just wanted to mention that. Thats the first thing. The second thing is we have two more events this semester. I dont know how that happened. We have two in december. One is on november 12. I mean december 12. Its about highpower cyber, cyber and geopolitics. Cyber offensive, cyber attacks. It is an eyeopener by andy greenberg, who wrote the book sandworm, and you really should come. Hes just phenomenal. Peter bergen has a new book on trump and his generals about National Security and the National Security state and how it morphed via the generals who were so powerful in the first years of the Trump Administration. That is on december 17. I invite you back for both of those. My concluding remarks are a couple things that werent mentioned tonight. One is the issue of the constitution. I think that is going to become a really important point of debate. Not a point of lets have the religion of the constitution. But a point of debate. I think something that wasnt mentioned balance of powers. This was seen as a discussion within the executive. I think that we didnt have enough time. I think thinking about the balance of powers is the next thing we have to talk about and what that means. Whether that means we revise the constitution or we dont revise the constitution. A third thing is, in terms of Going Forward i think you all touched on these cultural discomforts, whether its that we accept lying, that we the culture accept a lack of privacy, that these things have changed since our childhood. I think that what we need to do is have this same panel with 30yearolds. Seriously. And see how they think about these issues and whether they think about these issues. If they dont think about these issues, then what are they thinking about . Believe me, they are not like this administration. They are thinking about the future and the fact that they want to be here for the future and are going to be here for the future. I think i had a lot of other things to say but i will leave it at that. We will reconvene with younger folks at some point. Thank you very much. Thank you for coming. [applause] one more thing. Theres a book signing out in the hall. Jim will be signing the president ial misconduct book, which you should all read. Ok. [applause] thank you for reminding me. [laughter] cspans washington journal come alive every day with news and policy issues that affect you. Coming up on a morning, president of the National Constitution center will join us to talk about the mp trip process and the constitution impeachment process and the constitution. A reporter from the Washington Post will preview the week ahead in washington. We should watch washington be suree at 7 00 to watch washington journal live at 7 00. Ahead of this weeks impeachment inquiry hearings, the Ranking Member doug collins and democratic many member Akeem Jeffries hakeem appeared on fox news. All republicans on the Committee Call for subpoena witnesses to testify. Who are you going to ask . The first person and that needs to testify is adam schiff. Adam schiff has been the author of many things, a lot of them found to be false over the last couple years. He has compared himself in the past to a special counsel. , ken go back to Clinton Starr presented a report. He testified under oath and took