Steering us through this confrontation that could have ended up in a terrible nuclear war. Later it was revealed we had actually traded outmoded missiles in turkey and a promise not to invade cuba for removal of the soviet missiles but that wasnt disclosed at the time. It was a deft communication strategy. My concluding point, kennedy, unflappable, the guy, completely misread, failing in his own defining moment that kennedy really understood the stakes involved in the risks that were taken but he pursued in the end a crude and sensible way of dealing with this and is given credit for that. Lyndon johnson takes over after kennedy is assassinated. This is the vietnam war photograph from the tet offensive in 1968, a surprise move, the north vietnamese and the vietcong, basically the United States and south vietnamese won most of the battles. The problem was we were a long way from winning in vietnam but even though president johnson said they were there was light at the end of the tunnel. Theres a Public Relations victory if not a military one and this led to more intense antiwar feeling. The protest johnson had to deal with, people in vietnam in these protests, veterans and others protesting. I was in college in these days. Johnson could not speak out of the white house because of these often violent protests. He had to speak in military bases where he had the respect of the soldiers as commanderinchief and conservative College Campuses was otherwise he was a prisoner of the white house for much of this time and remember the chat that would go up, hey lbj, how many kids did you kill today, we talked about how harsh politics is today but that is pretty harsh. Lyndon johnson has to decide what to do about this. There are a lot of interpretations but this is a political crisis and in the end he handled well because he goes on television talking about a bombing pars and he announces hes not going to run again. He says i will not seek nor will i accept the nomination of my party. This caught the country by surprise, a tremendous shock, people were stunned that johnson would do this because he had started this office all his life. In reconstructing this as one of his defining moments that ended his presidency he really did the right thing because even though he knew he would face a real struggle being reelected and he could have been reelected because he was still strong figure and a lot of people had doubts about other people running for president but he didnt want to polarize the country and new it would rip the country apart so in the end it was the right thing for him to do and historians would agree with that these days. President nixon, the tough, firm leader, when he was faced with the watergate scandal which is the issue i chose to deal with next and he violates virtually all the standards i have come up with for the president under crisis conditions. He doesnt adjust to changing circumstances, he perseveres in trying to save his presidency but not in dealing with the fundamental problems and abuses that the watergate scandal showed. He didnt take action until too late. He stole the house is moving to impeach him, he resigns. Remember those scenes, the pain in his face as he is announcing he is leaving the white house, the famous photograph of nixon as he gets on the helicopter as he flies away to go to california but this is another case where the president does not do well. Initially if nixon had owned up to what happened in the watergate burglary and not tried to cover it all up he probably could have survived it because the democrats were not offering alternatives to what he was doing if the country was going to accept so i think this is a case where he was his own worst enemy in many ways in handling his definitive crisis as president. Gerald ford takes over as Vice President , he pardons nixon and that is the case i use for gerald ford. We often talk about this great deal, ford d sides, if he does not end the nixon controversy somehow he will be be doubled by it, the news media will ask him about it, nixon is going to be this figure casting a shadow, he does pardon Richard Nixon another big gamble he took probably cost him his own bid for the presidency in 1976 when jimmy carter won because people wanted nixon to pay more of a price but ford felt that nixon had paid a price in general humiliation in leaving office, all the findings made about things that went on in that administration, at the time a very unpopular decision but took a lot of political courage for him to do this. He was exonerated by history and even the kennedy family, ted kennedy was very critical of pardoning nixon later gave order profiling courage award saying i was wrong, senator kennedy said ford was right in pardoning nixon. There has been a historic redemption here. This is the iranian hostage crisis, still have iran in the headlines today, case where the shah of iran, and american ally left the country, the religious zealots took over, america was widely despised iran for supporting the shah who was very brutal, guilty of oppressing his people so one day when the shah had left, he went to treatment for terrible physical problems, were we going to let him in the United States and stir up opposition in iran that we were supporting this hated figure after he had been deposed. Carter said it is the humane thing to do, let him have the treatment and he was a good ally of the United States for a long time. If they take over the embassy and capture our people, im going to come back to you and ask you what we say now and that is what happened. Students and other radicals to cover the embassy, captured 60 of our people and held them for a year, carter was unable this is a case he was derided for instead of taking actions in defining moments, we pray for our captive americans in the National Cathedral ceremony, almost froze his presidency for that whole year and finally after pressure was growing on him he did launch a mission and this is at the center of my critique of carter in the iranian hostage situation, launched the mission to get the hostages and it was an utter failure. What happened was the military later said they told carter this but everything had to go perfectly for this mission to have any chance of succeeding. Helicopters had to go into the desert, meet up with other helicopters, find people from the country who knew how to get into the embassy, fly them to tehran, a hostile city, not a small place, get to the embassy, fight your way through the embassy, find the hostages, get them back on the helicopters, get the helicopters back on the ships so at every phase something could go wrong and what happened is it went wrong on the first phase, the helicopters ran into each other and eight americans were initially killed and it got worse from there. It was a terrible blow to carters presidency and president reagan got them out but the day he took office, how much was it reagan, how much were the iranians afraid of him . Nevertheless the hostage situation is a blow to carters presidency he never recovered from because he handles it in a rather hamhanded way. Now we get to president reagan. This is him when he was shot, the case i use, the personal crisis, he almost died from this. He was doing a speech in washington a few weeks after he took office in 1981 and as he reached the limousine John Hinckley junior, a starstruck deranged young man who wanted to impress the Actress Jodie Foster shot the president and ended up hitting dc police and secret Service Agents and one of the rounds bounced off the side of the limousine and hit the reagan in the side. He was hit in the moment he was hit by the piece of the bullet. You can see the 8 and secret service guys looking over at the shooter. This picture won a pulitzer prize. What happens is they push reagan into the limousine and he feels tremendous pain and he thinks the secret Service Agent who pushed him into the limousine had broken one of his ribs so he cussed him. By this time he was bleeding from the mouth and frothing so the agent said we are not taking you back to the white house, we are taking you to the emergency room. If they had not done that he surely would have died. What youve got in this situation is the personal courage and grace under pressure of the president under this tremendous burden of being a shot. He gets to the hospital and always felt the president should act like the president. This happened by instinct because he had been a movie actor. Not thing was critically, he understood there was a role to play so he gets out of the limousine, but as of the suit jacket, walks into the emergency room on his own power and collapses, doesnt want people to see vulnerability but he does almost die and doctors do their best to save him. He benefits from amazing good fortune. The day he was at the hospital was a conference with prestigious specialists, and they were all there when he was shot so they could help him. They left the conference to help with the surgery, so then came the postoperative part of it. Reagan understood the spotlight he was on. You have two president ial candidates in the 70s stuff, three if you consider Bernie Sanders but he understands what the country needs to see, carefully orchestrated, and see if the president was so weak that they could take advantage, conveyed the idea that he was up to this and could rise to the occasion and could recover in an almost miraculous way, arranged him to meet at the hospital with senior advisers which he does here, he looks frail to me, looks like he has obviously had a trauma here but it works and the country is respectful of him, and the president has grace under pressure. He perseveres and passes all the standards i talk about in dealing with a crisis. He also shows he has support around the country, the staff arranged to be sent to him with white house staffers, get welcome aboard to the president and he does other things that were very clever to show he could recover, an elderly man pumping iron and so on soon after being shot. It was an amazing tour they force in the personal calamity he was going through and it helped his agenda. I was covering congress at this time, a lot of americans felt they were going to give him the benefit of the doubt because of how he dealt with his personal crisis. I like to talk to cabdrivers, to get a sense of what everyday people think and i cant tell you how many said he took a bullet to the chest and kept coming. I didnt like him at first but i like him now and thats the way a lot of people felt. This is the image he is left with, never had another calamity like that. He did have skin cancer and colon cancer and such but he did end up with this image as the leader charging ahead with his agenda which is the image he wanted all along. President bush takes over. President bush wins the 1988 election, launches the persian gulf war. President bush was a master at Coalition Building and if you apply my standards to this, he does live up to all the standards, taking action combining principle with reality, persevering and so on. This is him when he visits the troops after organizing this Massive International coalition to drive iraq out of kuwait which they invaded together oil for other reasons and he waved, he could be awkward and so on but he handled the situation very well. When we went to the war it was a massive success for the americans and our allies so this is when i saw the white house operate better than i had ever seen before, the National Security staff and so on in the persian gulf war. This, we all know what this is. The big crisis from bill clinton. Monica lewinsky sex and lies scandal was he had an affair with his young intern, lied about it under oath. He handles it very badly. If he had admitted it he probably would have been okay but he did not. He lied about it. This is the famous press conference he had with hillary there and he is saying i did not have sexual relations with that woman, miss the wednesday is what he said but that was a lie, he did and he was caught and there were all kinds, that year, with impeachment proceedings, i never dreamed i would cover the president of the United States and his behavior with this young woman, just unbelievable and so many felt betrayed, that he had taken this fundamental risk to his presidency, the job he wanted all his life was something as salacious and dangerous as what he did. He was impeached, impeachment is a charge the house levees in the senate acquitted him and that is what has happened. The blemish remained on clintons record of the impeachment, it will remain on Donald Trumps record even though you could argue it was partisan, certainly it was but it is still in the history books. What happens with clinton is by the end of his presidency he has persuaded the country that his public leadership as president was more important in evaluating him than his private behavior which a lot of people thought he was a scoundrel. He is impeached and acquitted come his popularity goes up. He becomes a popular president again because people feel we cant have the president as a role model anymore. The outcome of his big crisis is a difference of perception in the presidency. We separate public president from the private president and that is a big change for us. Americans always wanted the president to be a role model through most of history. Lots of president s did what clinton did. Now it is different. That is a big change. The other point about clinton is if we had the me too movement that we have today back then i dont think he would have survived. If we had that then i dont see that he would have made it through. 9 11, the destruction of the world trade towers with hijacked aircraft, the pentagon was hit. This is president bushs he was initially offbalance when he first handled this, people wondered at his ability to be strong and resolute in a crisis. This is when he was first told of the second plane hitting the second tower. I was covering the presidency at this time. He was at an Elementary School in sarasota, florida. One of his aides said a plane hit one of the trade towers in new york and nobody knew why. The president told me later i thought the pilot had a heart attack, unrealistic initial impression but then he goes out and is on camera and the chief of staff whispers in his ear a second plane has had the second tower. America is under attack. That starts the global war on terrorism that he launches. He is offbalance, he doesnt come back right away to washington, i think he was right about that because there was such chaos. On air force one the pilot of the plane was so unsure what was happening that he asked the secret Service Agent who was a friend of his to stand guard at the cockpit so no one would take over the plane. I always thought that was amazing, the pilot air force one asking the secret service guy to protect the pilot from being taken over while the plane is flying, i always thought that was amazing but that is what happened. We had initial period of chaos and uncertainty then president bush settles in and this was the most memorable moment of his presidency. He goes to the site where the trade towers had been, smoldering in the background, he is on a burnedout firetruck, starts to truck in the First Responders say we cant hear you so he grabs a bullhorn, pools and guy up from the crowd of First Responders, turned out to be a retired fireman who volunteered to help, and he says i hear you and the people who knocked down these buildings will hear all of us very soon. That is what the country wanted to hear so he does past the initial test of handling 9 11. As time goes on, you can reassess how he handled the longterm crisis. The war in afghanistan, the war in iraq, occupying the country which his father did not do, too much of an obligation as a burden for the United States and too divisive, bush the sun does that and we are still living with the consequences today but the initial reaction to the attacks i think he handles very well. President obama, the crisis when he took over, this is a clever Time Magazine cover, Franklin Roosevelt had to deal with depression which i talked about a while ago and president obama had to deal with a pretty awesome melt down. It was a fundamental economic crisis. Major Banking Institutions and lending houses going under and so on, he had to decide if it was best to just get it over with as soon as possible and alienate some people who thought he was going too far or was he going far enough in punishing the bankers . A lot of liberals in the Democratic Party felt he did not go far enough, he should punish the banks, put these people in jail, he didnt do that but he does get past the initial meltdown and the economy doesnt recover. He does persevere, he balances principle with pragmatism and understands taking action was important and he has an instinct for success in this. One of the things he did which is particularly controversial is rescues the Auto Industry. He gives the Auto Industry loans and Financial Aid which was tremendously controversial because a lot of americans felt it was the Auto Industrys own fault, they were going bankrupt, not making cars americans wanted, now it is turning out to be true that they are not as fuelefficient and so on but decides to bail out the Auto Industry, he does save the Auto Industry in some fundamental ways and so i think you have to look on that is a case where he took a risky and unpopular decision and ran with it. We can quarrel about my conclusions but laying out the parameters of the discussion, interesting how he dealt with this fundamental defining moment. We are up to donald trump. Donald trump has made a presidency of crisis. We have had a perpetual series of crises. We can argue whether he handled it well or badly but he seems to thrive in a crisis atmosphere. A lot of president s would think the Government Shutdown would be enough of a crisis for a firstterm. We had a Government Shutdown, confrontations with north korea, iran, iraq, terrorist incidents, the wall, the border, one thing after another. The wall is one thing i talk about in the book as one of the crises that he dealt with. He promised he was going to build the wall between the United States and mexico and have the Mexican Government pay for to stop illegal immigration and criminals coming into the United States and so on. Congress, when congress realized it was not going to pay for the wall after the Mexican Government decided it was not going to pay for the wall then donald trump declared a national emergency, a crisis at the border so he could move money from other accounts to pay for the wall. That is being tested in court. He is taking action here against a very resistant congress but he is still fighting for the wall. He stayed with it and a lot of his people feel it is the right thing to do but it is a crisis that he is still dealing with, finish the wall instead of build the wall, his argument is it is started and this got wrapped up in the him. Trump controversy. Another when i talk about in the book as a fundamental crisis, he deals with robert mueller, the special counsel who investigated him. His report in some ways was inconclusive but democrats ran with it anyway and nancy pelosi did not want to impeach initially but decided to do it after this famous phone call with trump talking to the leader of ukraine about an investigation of joe biden, the leading president ial candidate and corruption involving bidens son hunter. That is still floating around out there but a lot of republicans dont want to let go of that and wants to investigate hunter biden, joe bidens son. This is the issue that caused the impeachment. The argument from democrat is it is abuse of power, the president tried to corner an ally, an adversary by forcing an ally to investigate this guy. The other part of this is trump says biden was trying, joe biden was trying to remove a prosecutor from ukraine, the prosecutor might have been trying to investigate hunter biden, joes son. Both sides were not giving up on their interpretation of what joe biden was trying to do as Vice President. Fight corruption or get his son off but nevertheless what happens, house leaders adam schiff in california and others push impeachment, trump is impeached as clinton was but also acquitted. He has the impeachment on his record but the acquittal, that is still going on. How did this come about . I tend to think, the atmosphere we have in washington, might have softened the blow a little bit if he had not been as resistant as nixon was to cooperating with the investigation, not allowing testimony and so on but his conclusion was it was never going to be fair and he was never going to be treated decently so i will you decide what was the proper interpretation of that. One thing i wanted to end with is what we started talking about earlier in this discussion, the coronavirus discussion, that could be the biggest crisis of his pregnancy because it affects so many people. I people panicking . Is it worth panicking over . That is the question and we have this kind of story floating around the country, how are you treated . Do you have enough tests . That is something the president needs to be careful of because a lot of people in Public Health service, braynon a partisan people say we do have a problem getting cash for this. We need, the government needs to get on the ball and get the test out there so we know who has visited has taken a very long time for that to happen. Donald trump can still recover from this by from the initial missteps or slowness of the response because he said it is like any other flu initially. It turns out people are really scared about it. It is a real problem in peoples minds. Donald trump has to deal with this and this is him announcing some of his programs and he is taking action which is what americans want to see most of all and recognizing the severity of the problem in peoples minds. That is a step in the right direction. This is the case, i couldnt account in my book which had already been published but this coronavirus is an example of a crisis that could undermine or propel the president , right in play right now and that is what we are looking at this moment. With that i thank you for coming and hope it was helpful in understanding this notion of president s defining moments, thank you. [applause] we have time for just a few questions. We are going to ask because this is being recorded you do not ask the question is a staff member brings the microphone to you. Hello, excellent presentation. What would you recommend donald trump to next to make this crisis something that he comes out as handling well . Two things which recognize reality. Tell people what is really happening, not minimize the this is something nobody has to worry about which is the impression he gave initially but he gave the impression it is going to go away, wait until the warmer weather, it is the flu but people are worried about it and that is part of the changing circumstances he has to address. He has to recognize and see signs that hes doing this, that this is a big deal for people, they are really worried about it. Putting up information people really want about what is happening in second working with the Public Health service and Health Professionals and the second is taking action, people in a crisis want the president to do something and he is starting to do that. Is it too late to create a different impression that he is on the case . I dont think so. He could still do that but he has got to stay with it, this is something people looking to him, this is defining moment, he is capable of leading this through the crisis whether people are exaggerating or not. He has to recognize the public wants the president to be decisive in either calling our fears or showing us the way out and that is the key to what he needs to do. Could you tell us a little bit about the korean war, you talked about vietnam. We talk a little bit about that. Im one of the few journalists left in washington who was in the army. I wasnt in the korean war but i was in the vietnam era but the korean war was in one of these interventions the United States has gone into including vietnam and other places which americans didnt like because it did not have a clean resolution. What happened was the North Koreans before this the peninsula was divided between north and south, there was a demarcation line, the dmz in the middle of the country. The North Koreans feel they can finally take over the south so they invaded the south, they push the american troops, allies and south korea almost off the peninsula. We were in a little compartment at the bottom of south korea where we had been stuck, pushed by the North Koreans, then we pushed troops and supplies in and started to push the North Koreans back with very clear a strategy by General Macarthur and other generals is very difficult fighting and we saw that picture, the cold weather, desperate fighting, americans were outnumbered in many cases, it was difficult and we had just had world war ii in 1945. We are nearly 50s and back at war again, difficult situation. Our government, dont understand how perilous it is to get close to the chinese border. Our troops move close to the yalu river, we get to the yalu river and hundreds of thousands of chinese, pushing back again and then becomes more desperate. Many soldiers dying under terrible conditions. It becomes a tough slog and a stalemate, americans hated the korean war because we were stuck and still dont have a peace treaty, we are dealing with that fool situation. That is it in a nutshell. How do you feel president obama handled benghazi and what was his relationship with Valerie Jarrett . That was more of Hillary Clinton thing. President obama could have stepped in. This was a situation where did Hillary Clinton allow our diplomats americans in this benghazi situation to be stranded and killed without trying to rescue them . Didnt move quickly enough . It was a fastmoving situation, maybe obama should have jumped and personally but he deferred to Hillary Clinton as secretary of state a better handle it. A big criticism of Hillary Clinton, she didnt take action to save our people when they were under attack in benghazi. There is a lot more to say about it but in the interest of time, president obama decided to let Hillary Clinton handle that and he didnt intervene, he let Hillary Clinton deal with this. Still a big criticism of her among conservatives and republicans. President obamas relations with Valerie Jarrett very close, they were very close in chicago, came up as a political figure, became a friend of his, became a senior white house advisor, didnt get the attention she should have gotten as a real player. We knew she was close to president obama but she was there for many decisions, right at his elbow. We havent got to the bottom of what role she played in a lot of this but she was certainly one of the fundamental players, should have paid more attention to that, but by and large, very few people in the Obama Administration more important than Valerie Jarrett. One more question. Thanks again for an important talk. President eisenhower mentioned his big mistake, theres another story when he was leaving office somebody asked has he made any mistakes as president and he said i made two and they are both sitting on the supreme court. Ive heard that story too but i think later on, might have written this in memoirs and subsequent interviews that the single mistake he made was handling the youtube. He prided himself on being a truth teller and he wasnt in that case and it hurt him that he made that mistake, personally troubled he was put in that position. Your comment, president clintons words a few days ago, sexual escapades were a way of relieving the stress of the presidency. You picked up on that. A lot of people did. President clinton, sad case in some ways because he was considered the best politician of his generation initially. He was the best he could talk his way out of everything. He was proud of that. There were many stories are clinton, the person who hates me most, i want to convert them, persuade them to support me. He would go to that notion. The me too movements, that doesnt work, i need to pray on this in turn. She was less willing to criticize president clinton and now saying hes the most powerful man in the world. He handled that the worst way he could. Those times were different. I am sure that kind of thing will be floating around. Thank you for braving the weather. It is fascinating. He will be in there and answer any questions. Just a side note, we did announced today that because of the coronavirus we are closing our doors. We are glad your with us tonight. Thank you very much. [applause] television has changed since cspan began but our Mission Continues to provide an unfiltered view of government. The president ial impeachment process and the response of the coronavirus, you can watch all of this on television, online or on the free radio apps. Through our social media scene. As a public service, brought to you by your television provider. Accidental president , jared, looks at the a face president who became president due to the death of their predecessors. He shared their true life stories at politics and prose bookstore in washington dc. What i want to do is juxtapose what i think is the biggest catastrophe with the biggest Success Story of an accidental president. Im almost him to to say that despite the fact that we more or less wings president ial succession and the fact that the Founding Fathers gave us a guide but nothing close to a
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