Transcripts For CSPAN2 John Dickerson The Hardest Job In The World 20240712

But i will never know. Simon and schuster is the publisher for mary trumps book, you can watch for her in the near future on booktv. Hi everyone, im Heather Moran and im the ceo of sixth and i. On behalf of our entire team, thank you so much for being here tonight. Sixth and i is a nonprofit and by joining us or supporting us at a time when we been deeply impacted by the loss of income from canceled events. You are helping to lift up authors during a challenging time to write a book. On both accounts, we are very grateful to you. John dickerson has been a longtime friend to sixth and i. We hosted the first live taping of abof which john is cohost during 2009 on weekend of president obamas first inauguration. Since then, john has returned to our stage many times to support our programming. Tonight we are so excited to celebrate him and his fantastic new book which came out today the hardest job in the world. I think its safe to say the office of the president looks a lot different now than it did back in 2009. Not only has the party of power changed but the tone of the position shifted. In his new book john searches that the american presidency has become in him almost impossible job between trying to fulfill Campaign Promises and solving every surprising and urgent crisis that arises. As we prepare for the 2020 election it couldnt be more timely to reevaluate how we view the presidency, how we choose our president and what we should expect from them once they are in office. John dickersons impressive reporting resume includes serving in chief political correspondent, anchor of cbs face the nation, coanchor of cbs this morning, and his current role as a 60 minutes correspondent. He may have been born with the journalism gene, his mother Nancy Dickerson was a pioneer in journalist and cbs first female correspondent. John will be joined in conversation tonight by another esteemed authority on the subject of the presidency, susan page, the Washington Bureau chief of usa today, we are so excited to have her here. In addition to covering six white house at the ministrations and 10 president ial elections, susan has won multiple journalism awards for her coverage of the white house. She is the New York Times bestselling author of the matriarch, barbara bush and the making of american dynasty. I dont think we could be in more capable hands for this conversation. Later on i will take some of your questions. You can submit them throughout the Program Using the q a button at the bottom of your zoom screen. We are also including a link to purchase the book in the chat box. These copies will include an autographed book way and you absolutely positively should buy them. Thanks again for joining us and please help me welcome John Dickerson and susan page into your homes. Hey. Hey, we did it. It worked. We managed to turn back on our video cameras. For those who have just joined us we actually practice this previously. Such a pleasure, thank you to all the people joining us. Thank you for inviting us to your home. We are first inviting you to our home, my home in washington dc, john is at his home in new york. Its very intimate occasion. In such an honor to do this on the publication date of johns wonderful new book. John dickerson, such a wonderful author, such a great thinker, a good friend. John, its great to join you here today. Susan, thank you. Im thrilled that its you because weve talked over so many years about the presidency and im usually the one asking you questions on tv. But thats okay i will see if i can settle down and handle it here. Im trying not to look at all the books on your bookshelf. Also i want to thank sixth and i because we started this ab its a wonderful place to start this book tour. Im thrilled. Is a beautiful and historic venue too. We look forward to the day we can actually physically be together, not just virtually. John communicative get questions just from me over the next hour, also from other people who have joined us in the audience, youre welcome to submit your question. Id be delighted to pose your question to this hour. But first lets start, i cannot stop looking at the photo on the cover of your wonderful new book. It is a remarkable picture. Tell us what it shows and why you chose it. What it shows is Lyndon Johnson be in the summer of 1968 and its one of those, what are you doing in the picture . You cant see it in the picture but the outside of the picture is a tape recorder, reel to reel tape recorder and its on the table at the white house and hes listening to a report from his soninlaw who went on to be governor of virginia and senator from virginia. He is giving him a report. His marine fighting in vietnam who is giving a report to his fatherinlaw about whats happening in the fighting. Lbj was concerned he wasnt getting the straight story from the general so he wanted his soninlaw to send back dispatches and thats what that is. We dont know whether johnson was particularly overwhelmed by the reports, although, they werent good. You can imagine he was. Think about what else is going on by that time in his presidency Martin Luther king had been assassinated, Robert Kennedy had been assassinated. It was a time of woe in america and carl longley wrote a book about 1968 and johnson has that picture on the cover also. We chose it because, first of all, we want people to know right away this is a historical book although we have a president at the moment who is fascinating and interesting and obviously i write about him, this is a book about the office, the burdens of the office and that picture pretty quickly gets you right to the burdens and also johnson is the author of my favorite quote about the presidency. So that also was nice to have him teed up there as well. Whats your favorite quote about the presidency . Johnson said come he had a lot of great quotes, as you know, you could basically just keep writing books about johnson because he was so colorful and so much character. Both good and bad. He said about the presidency sometimes its like being a jackass in a hailstorm. Sometimes you just have to sit there and take it. Thats a colorful r b johnson quote but its also transfer me one of the central questions about the office. When i was trying to do in this book is good on the basic blueprint of the office look like. Johnsons view was, their obligation in the presidency is unfair. Sometimes you just gotta sit there and take it. Your job is to sit there and take it. I think as i wrote in the book i think donald trump looks at some of those obligations and instead of saying, ill sit here and take it come he punches those obligations in the nose and says, i dont have to take it. That represents a change in our conception of the presidency and we can talk about whether thats good or bad thing. Lets go back to the founders. You described the presidency of the hardest job in the world overburdened with ab misunderstood, most impossible to do. Is this the same job the founders thought they were describing in the constitution . No. Far more powerful than anything we worry about. Presence of always complained about the job. John hanson, the first president , before washington come he was the president of the congress assembled, it was really there wasnt much to do unless Congress Told him to do something. Yet he said the job was tremendously irksome. They president s have been complaining about the job since it existed. Its always been hard but its gotten harder because the founders wanted a limited job where you could have a president who could act in moments of crisis who could keep secrets because that was necessary for National Security but basically where congress had a man throw in the creation of legislation and the handling of public business and a lot of the duties that were supposed to be with congress moved over into the presidency and everything from Second World War to the cold war to nuclear war to the war on terror has put a power inside the white house because we are in a constant state of emergency where is the founders would have an apostolic emergency where you need an executive. We are now in a permanent state of that. And then obviously we could get into whether the president should have all the power he does through the agencies which they never would have that wouldve terrified them. They thought you described them as thinking of the presidency the founders thinking of the presidency as a risky bet. One of my favorite, your book is full historical tidbits. In one of my favorites is the book that George Washington bought as he was leaving the Constitutional Convention to go back to mount vernon what did he buy for his reading literature . Four volumes of awhich was the game of thrones half the time it was the hottest thing going so formants in philadelphia and a room where they nailed the windows shut to keep it secret, to keep the deliberation secret, it was a particularly hot summer, can you imagine, all these men and their heavy clothing in a room with no air, four months in there at the end of it he signs the document, goes and stops by a tavern but buys the books and hes on his way back to mount vernon it was quite an extraordinary thing they were doing. They were so fearful of the monarchy and yet they were creating essentially something who had an executive with all of his power and it was such a gamble. I found it was basically washington believed in this dream and it couldve turned out like abdreams sort of not possible to be fulfilled but unfortunately for washington he picked the right dream and we still have a presidency molded on what they built that summer. Thats the origin story of the presidency. Lets talk about the origin story for this book. When did you first get the idea of this topic . I think this is true. A preface by saying this. Part of what we do is you do a lot of reporting on writing and then you think, how might it enter into the story to help people get a handle on this . You pick a lead that is you pick one that really set the stage. Sometimes you wonder after you start writing, am i being a little too much on the story and making it more than it is . Thats why i started by saying i think through because i remember very clearly in the driveway of george w. Bush Vacation Home in crawford in 2004 nancy gibson and i were working for Time Magazine at the time. Going down to interview president bush. In advance of the Republican Convention and we did the interview that day and we are standing in the driveway waiting for the car and he said, if you want to ask somebody whether they be a good president or not, ask them how they make decisions. The job is only about making decisions. What crystal wanted from me in the moment was thinking about the job as it is. Then the difference between the job as it is and what you do all day which is making decisions and investigating what that means and how you do that and what structure you build relative to what we talked about a lot of times and campaigns which tends to be all over the map. Even when we are talking about issues we talk about them sort of in the abstract not in the way they really come before president when the president has to make decisions. Thats in 2004. I wrote a series of articles in 2010 about the presidency kind of on this theme of how would you do a Job Interview for the presidency and three years ago i wrote a cover story for the atlantic and touched on some of these things. For the last two years ive been basically writing this. I cant believe its done. You been writing this also with your day job to be fair. What the story tells us is that you been thinking about this for a long time. From well before the time donald trump was elected president or even a serious candidate to be president. But its impossible to talk about the president in 2020 without thinking about donald trump. Did his presidency change any of the conclusions or assumptions that went into your thinking about looking at the american presidency . Yes. The challenge you put your finger on was the central one. Part of the argument, part of one of the things i discovered absaid we become a presidency of assassination and thats always stuck in my head on these political scientists scientific professor. The obsession with the presidency is one of the problems. The founders would be terrified we turn our presidency into the celebrities. Because if you look at the celebrities of their day both franklin and washington had at the Constitutional Convention are these towering figures of humility. They werent always humble, for sure. They have quite a sense of themselves. There was a public virtue and being humble. And restraining yourself for the purposes of the republic. It all seemed very foreign in the way we treat our president s as celebrities today. That has been the way ive been thinking about the presidency. When you get donald trump whos a celebrity and became president and sees the office its very hard to measure the Office Without thinking about donald trump. To your question though, hes basically hes a president to be analyzed and he basically touches every part of the presidency and shines light on it. And helps us decide what we think about telling the truth, what we think about responsibility, the phrase the buck stops here. They use the conflict of being head of the party and head of the government for the country he basically touches on everything in the office the notion of delegating, the notion of staff and how important they are. Every time i came to something i would have to think in the abstract and then russell with donald trump in where he was worth telling his story to help eliminate that were worth telling his story as a way to eliminate abexcuse me, to illuminate his presidency and not the office itself. Heres a question i struggle with myself which is, donald trump has challenged, as you just said, just about every norm we had from american president. At some point donald trump will no longer be president either next year or four years after that. Does the presidency then snapped back to the predonald trump era order is the presidency fundamentally changed because the tenure of donald trump . Great question. Theres things that changed beforehand that invited donald trump to the office . In other words, they were going to change because the vote doesnt have anything to do with donald trump. One of the questions i wrestled with, you know this so well, how many times have you heard, Ronald Reagan and tip oneill and got together and sold Social Security. You hear it all the time. The barista at starbucks told the story. Its a story, supposedly, about the two tiring people. Not supposedly, it is this, two towering representatives with two very different visions of government and Work Together in a bipartisan fashion to keep Social Security around for much longer time. Thats true, all true, but the structure in which that took place was a structure in which there was a lot of conservative democrats who would work with Ronald Reagan because it helped them get reelected in their district. When he won he won 1980 with 144 democrats who won in districts that reagan also carried, those democrats knew that they had voters in their district who really like to Ronald Reagan. Donald trump won in 2016 and there were 14 democratic districts who voted for donald trump. Those working democrats are not working with donald trump. Unless you have the structure of congress that has incentives to work with the president of the opposite party, youre not going to have this fairytale story of leaders of both parties working together. That has nothing to do with donald trump. On the other hand, he was elected because they come to a partisan time where you can win is a kind of full throated partisan without even sounding some of the normal conciliatory unifying teams. Anyway, this goes to your question, whats abstract and what doesnt and how much does donald trump have to do with any of that . Sorry, i want to make sure i didnt lose you. A window popped open on my screen. The nsa has control of my computer. [laughter] i think what you can imagine is that what say a democratic president comes in, you can imagine all kinds of executive behavior done in the name of we have to fix everything that went awry during donald trump that would be just the same kind of power grab for the executive trampling on the prerogatives of congress that would send the founders into a tailspin that democrats complain about with donald trump today. In terms of overstepping the powers of the office. That would be not snapping back. That would be essentially using Donald Trumps means for their end and you saw that in the president ial campaign at some of the Democratic Candidates were basically saying, ill do all the things we want using the tools he so elegantly showed us can be used. Finally, sorry to go on so long, really this depends on congress becoming a different kind of body if the presidency is going to turn to Something Else because Congress Needs to reassert itself. We have Great Questions from people who are joining us on zoom. Heres one from rebecca. Rebecca asks, how do you think residents like Theodore Roosevelt largely successful in his time, would fair in the modern presidency . First of all, this is gonna sound flip and its not flip, you be the judge, his voice was very high. I think roosevelt, he was a kind of a jumpy, excitable fellow. I wonder how that would play on the tiny cable screens. He would come across as too hot, too intemperate. On the other hand, you can immediately say, wait a minute, donald trump is by the standards of the presidency for him, quite intemperate in his personal behavior. But i think the way roosevelt behaves in a presidency that is not dictated so much by how how you appear on tv is one thing. Also, tr took on his party in a way that was much different than anybody would do today. But he still operated in the system, i think he would probably in the donald trump mold assuming he didnt take on his party. The problem he took on some parties he would lost support we did not get the nomination which ultimately happened to him as well when he ran against taft. His party, he tried to make an appeal in the primaries of his party to the republicans and they wouldnt have it from him. If they wouldnt have it in 1912 the might not have it today. The woman thing that struck me in this book, i dont know that much about Theodore Roosevelt emma but i think diego roosevelt as a trump figure in his time. Bigger than life, doing adventures stop getting shot and carrying on with his speech he was delivering. I think that might be, that story might actually be in your book. But great question. Heres a question from jeff, jeff says, you expressed skepticism about whether the campaign and its tradition, namely debate, are reflective of the demands of the office. When he moderate a debate later this year, how will you make it more useful for voters still a athats a great question. What can journalists, you talk about you write at length in the book a big part of your book is about how the job search does not match the job for the presidency. What could reporters, what could journalists in this form of debate when the maximum number of americans tune in to watch, what could journalists do to make the whole system work better. Its something i thought a great deal about. Its not easy. Debates happen in a kind of narrow lane. For example, one of the attributes i was surprised by that came up in so many interviews is the president s teambuilding tablet, putting together an organization, the job is so big you have to have a good team around you and have to keep them there for a while and develop an operating tempo so you can manage the job and manage emergencies. If you ask questions about management and teambuilding, a lot of people in the audience are going to go, why is he asking about that . You have to create a predicate for the question first and then the actual candidate has to answer the question. We ended up getting a lot of responses, which are different from actual answers so you can ask a question and try to get their theory for leadership and their theory for management but they might answer any old question they want, which is often the case. So then the question is, which one qt up that would eliminate something . I think what you want to do is, ive always felt in debate you want to get them to think out loud, which is in their answer tell you something about what to the bedrock of their views because everything is getting it stripped away when they get into the job. Its good be so much different than they think and they will go back to their bedrock views on things and he could do ask questions to eliminate ab illuminate those and i would try to ask questions to form around the attributes. But having moderated debate, it is so hard to get candidates to answer the question and you dont have all day. You cant say, you cant waste the clock trying to chase them around the mulberry bush to get them to answer the question. Its very hard and i think we need a concerted effort throughout the campaign rather than just during the debates. You write about, the book is not all about the media but theres some things about the media and you talk about some things you criticize or criticize and how you have done some things in the past. One of them that i thought was interesting you talk about how you think you spend too much time looking for hypocrisy in candidates, thats not necessarily the key thing to look for. Talk about that. Hypocrisy is important. You want to just throw it out the window. But a couple things happen in this as donald trump is added to particular challenges here. Hypocrisy is a part of politics and lying is a part of politics. Some of our best president s were really good liars. If we have too fragile of you of not telling the truth and hypocrisy can we spend all this time with that very fragile version of it and it doesnt give us a realistic picture of of the office but also this person in the office. Dont get me wrong, there is when you abwhat im trying to do in the book essay, we know that telling the truth is important but what exactly is important about this . Or the hiding of the true motivations . Its all part of the selfish making of governing thats one thing, consistent lies for the purpose of undermining the very notion of truth, thats undermining the office in a democracy in america that has placed in the world. I dont mean to suggest my point in the book is often on these things theres a continuum and we shouldnt set the gauge at zero but just because i think we should set it at two or three is not an excuse for somebody who operates at the number 10 for thinking of a scale of 1 to 10. I think in some of my own coverage the hypocrisy is easily understood it gets people riled up but it might not be about the very most important thing that the president will face order we should be thinking about in public debate. When i thought a lot about is the opportunity of the work i do i also have the opportunity cost of what the president acts. Every minute i spend on a story is a minute and not spending on Something Else and sometimes your assignment editor has told you what to do. You have to do what you got to do. But just try to think of the tradeoff is a story about hypocrisy not that important, worth spending the time on, when theres other stories you should be thinking about . Every campaign i think, why wasnt i smarter . Why didnt i see this more . Why didnt i do this better . Covering campaigns is a humbling experience, i have to say. In your book you list 17 key president ial attributes and i appreciated the fact that you listed them in alphabetical order from adaptability to vision. I wanted to ask you a modern president s, president since fdr since world war ii, which president do you think has the attributes that made him best suited to the job . The attributes that make best suited to the job and attributes that made him best suited to the job that they encountered. Because thats the tricky thing. That list, we stopped at 17, john . 17 attributes, i didnt even know they were 17 attributes. What i was trying to do is take a look at, one of the things i think is been a challenge in the way we think about president s as we on one hand we say, we look at Something Like a political instinct and we say, he only cares about politics. We use that to dismiss our president or candidate. Thats not right. It happens on a continuum. Its very important for president ial candidates to think purely about politics is the way you get power empowers what using office to get things done. If someone shows a political instinct it shouldnt be immediately disqualifying. We should look at are the only political, did the only care about their political selfinterest . But if they show some political skill, that might be a reason to vote. What i was trying to do with the 17 is figure out where you set the gauge on each one. Who was good . You wouldnt want to say fdr. Because he had a lot of those skills. Also what i dont think i came down with us trying to do is give people a sense of how to make their own determinations about these things and sometimes i was really happy about that because i dont know i can come down with the final voice of wisdom on any president or particular attribute. I think the idea that fdr had the firstclass temperament, that temperament went a long way. It really helped him in dealing with the uncertainty of the job, in dealing with the crazy presidency he inherited. If you have 17 attributes, that one has a lot more weight to than the others. I think president bush, George Herbert walker bush restraint in office, which i write about because i found it so fascinating that he showed such skillful restraint in office and his campaign until the 2016 campaign was considered one of the restraint Free Campaign in terms of the really successful attack on a his restraint i thought was notable for him. I think of it more as a certain residents who had a bundle of these but certainly nobody who has all 17. The thing about retiring president s, which is what we do through campaigns, what are you hiring them to do . You make the point that you are hiring them to do something that either you nor they know they are going to have to do. You call it when you talk about recommendations for looking at the presidency, higher or black swan . What is that mean . That comes from a conversation i had with secretary Condoleezza Rice what i was talking to her i started almost every interview by saying if we talk about the presidency as a Job Interview from a job what would you want to know from any of these candidates. Doctor rice said, i want to know what they thought the black swan event was going to be up there presidency and how they would solve it . In the course of doing a number of interviews around this time i became fixated on cyber warfare and cyber attacks. This book was finished before covid19 was on our radar screen and frankly, i thought the next big surprise that we would face as a country was likely to be from a cyber attack. The idea behind that question, which by the way, would be a question i would ask in a debate to go back to the great earlier question, the problem is, ive asked versions of that i asked one particular candidate and they dont answer. Because they know its too dangerous. Because once they get it they dont have a good answer for how to handle it, they parked themselves. Theyre willing to give soft soap answer doesnt hurt anybody and they move on. The notion of hiring for black swan is this, the job is going to surprise every president george w. Bush in three debates with al gore in 2000, the word terrorism only came up once and in passing. No major polling organization told about it during the campaign word for the first section of his presidency. That defined his presidency. Woodrow wilson when he was elected said wouldnt it be funny if i had to concern myself with Foreign Affairs during my presidency because i spent so much time documenting Domestic Affairs he had to wrestle with world war i. It happens, everybody gets a big surprise and thats why these black swans, thats what tests you and whether you got the organization whether you understand the job and whether you can act in a moment of crisis. Thats why you hire for president ial traits, not really so much for ideological purity, at least in a Perfect World. Right. Heres a question from ira emma these questions have been great, if you have a question click on the q a at the bottom of the zoom screen. We will take as many questions as we can. Heres what ira is asking, do think its possible for congress to reassert itself in this era of president ial obsession . If so, how . You are talking about if you want to make the presidency a more manageable job, Congress Needs to step up. Is that possible . I dont see how it happens and you hear this all the time too im sure. Interviewing senators of both parties who say, i just want to vote. I came here to vote. There are some who dont because theyre in tough races and just want to be safe and get reelected but theres a lot that say i came here debate the issues, talk about the issues and vote and they dont take vote on or deal with Authority Issues because parties are now all connected and the future of candidates is tied for the president and the president of their party and we seen it in polling even off year elections a lot of times people say my vote for senator x or y is a direct memorandum on the president whos in office they all raise money from the same Interest Groups which means whereas we used to have a situation which is senator from ohio and senator from new mexico had very different interests and their voters cared and raise money based on the very different interests. Now interests are raising money from the same Interest Groups which makes the candidate a lot more alike. The candidates are more alike and tied to the presidency which means Congress Needs the president to do well, republicans in Congress Need a republican president to do well because their fortunes are tied to him. They are unlikely to push back against the president to do anything to diminish its political family because its in a bounce back and hurt them in their races. Because races are dominated by primaries commits to hurt them particularly with the people with the most varying in the party. ab you hurt the president and he got a primary challenge. Or you got to worry about a primary challenge which means you got to raise 12 million just to fend off a challenge. You have to be very careful and you can also see senators get braver once their primary date has expired about a president of their own party. Heres a question from a hello peter. He writes, please reflect on how president s have harnessed the media of their era. Id be interested particularly in how, this is not part of peters question but how trump has harnessed the media during his era because i think in ways, i think trumps relationship with the news media, especially during the 2016 campaign, would surprise a lot of americans and that during mac Kings Campaign he had pretty good relations. Although some of his embedded reporters had a really tough go of it. I mean it this way, he talked to questions when he was in trouble as well as things going well. He was accessible in a way that Hillary Clinton was not. For someone who bashes the press, the enemy of the people, it doesnt tell the full story of trumps relationship with the news media. Thats 100 true. People say set off about 2016, the press always put donald trump on tv or interviewed him, thats because the other candidate was not anxious to be interviewed. In a Perfect World both candidates will be accessible all the time, explaining themselves. One thing that was true of donald trump in the campaign, i interviewed him 19 times, which i only say, not to give you the total number for any reason other than this, we have very contentious interviews. You had a particularly contentious interview did he kick you out of the oval office for getting excited . Yes, thats what happened. Not only when he was president but when he was candidate we had some in which that were quite contentious. He would get very angry but then he would come back. Youre quite right about that. Whats fascinating, we all know fdr in the fireside chats, one of things i discovered writing the book in the way in which fdrs mastery of radio change the way, a study of acceptance speeches that democratic and political conventions fdr to the president. It became a lot shorter in lot less sensitive because of the effect of radio and fdrs mastery of it. So fdrs fireside chats have become a fundamental part of understanding his success. He didnt give a whole lot of them. What is essential to them is something thats almost entirely entirely escape the presidency he felt his job was to explain thoroughly everything that was going on. He talked to psychologists about the benefit of that and people in a fearful state like to have things explained even if the explanation is not great, in other words, the explanation is, things are good be bad for a little while. The facts give them a sense of comfort. Fdr found a way to harness that. John kennedy, one of the things i started working on the book that i loved, kennedys article in tv guide in which he said, television is going to become the new thing in figuring out how to pick president s. He was basically trying to spin everybody before his campaign in 1960 on the sort of special Talent Television would have for telling you the inside truths about a candidate. In other words, it turns out that worked really well for him. Kennedy begins a huge change in our politics along with the debate that makes it of course then the other big changes, clinton uses talkshows in a way nobody had used them before. Even though kennedy had gone on jack parr and obama use the internet very well for the fundraising piece as well as the outreach piece, twitter interests me because donald trump has not been able to use the persuasive powers of twitter at all for any of the programs he promotes, whether dismantling of obamacare, the building of the border wall or his tax cut. Those are all more unpopular after he pushed for them then before. Twitter is a persuasive tool of the country is not successful. As unifying tool of his base it successful. But it doesnt have the power that fdr fireside chats did. He is, to control the media and through distraction up hes been singular in success in doing that. To distract us from one story that follows another story, yes, and to use twitter as a communication device that doesnt count on any reporter writing what you are saying. Heres a question from ab rates, which president surprised you the most better than you expected or worse than either one . Can one thing that happens when president s write speeches, you have to figure out what they say. Often they start off writing a speech not knowing what they think and by the time they get to the president we figured it out. Writing a book in a way is like that. Start out maybe you think you know what the book is about by the end of the book maybe its really about Something Else. Talk about surprises in your process and abwants to know particularly about president s. Susan orlean the fantastic writer has a quote that basically says if you write something and you dont discover something along the way that really kind of turned your head and makes you go in a different direction, thats a warning sign. By the way, thats not the reason abthats one of the reasons we get into the business is the joy of surprise and the joy of figuring out whether its true or not. Thats what made this working on this book such as a light and made it feel so strange that its in a book now and not still writing it because as you know, and good luck on the final stretch of the one you are ready now but as you know, it lives in your head and you cant just say, doors closed, im sure you still have thoughts about barbara bush the matriarch because it becomes a filter in the way you see the world. Eisenhower really interested me and surprise me, not surprise me because i knew susan and i were talking earlier, i considered bundling caretaker president slogan to the office and greenstein wrote a book on the hidden hand of eisenhower. Which i love and the Republican National committee and headquarters in washington theres a picture of eisenhower and his hand is inside his jacket and i wondered if the artist had done the hidden hand of eisenhower in the portrait. What i found is that eisenhower is much more engaged in his presidency than people thought but he thought he gained power by not being seen all the time and his power came from that restraint. As i spent more time thinking about eisenhower i just really became fascinated with the way he thought about the way he did things. Since the book is an exploration of why president s do and dont do things, i found him compelling in that way. I also found carter really interesting as a president who did abthis is a real challenge to a lot of my theories. Carter had a lot of good theories about how to build an organization, how to do things that are presidency and they all didnt work out. He had built a team for governing before he even won the nomination and they went all the way through the campaign so he could be ready on day one hit the ground running abthere was a huge crack open the governing team had it conflicts with the campaign team. You know its an ageold challenge for president s. I was struck in the way in which carter thought about the job. If one of the arguments of the book as we should think more about the job while we are campaigning for what hed really done that. That was all you need obviously because it didnt work out for him in the office. There are moments of presidencies bush, George Herbert walker bush chart restraint i really became much more familiar with wilson respect to the fall and communism. It also a lot of the ways he behaved in office. He was accused of not having a vision come as you quite well know. I think a sense of restraint in the budget deal in 1990 as part of this too, that was his vision. I think those are some of the ones that surprised me along the way. For both george w. Bush and eisenhower, president s who turned out to be the right person for their moment, we were lucky abi think he was the right person to be president for the fall of communism in the class of the soviet union. We are a fortunate nation in so many ways. He described your abwe are actually in the room where you wrote the book behind you are some of the many books you cite as resources in your book. Talk to me about the process you followed, did you get up at 3 00 a. M. And right . Tell us a little bit about how you managed to do the book . As i was saying, it was in my head all this time. I remember talking to you over breakfast at one point about these ideas and the challenges to the office and in the conversation we were talking about the Trump Presidency and you are talking about the kind of responses to it that i think you might have mentioned a number of women candidates who had decided to run as a reaction to President Trump. It was one of the times that i kept trying to in working on the book i kept trying to open the average sure if that makes any sense of the way cameras work and get a decided but i kept trying to make bigger and bigger and looking at anything i was looking at and point you made is, for me was to think about the president does x and y but it has effect over here the change the political future or the change the political dynamic and always be alive to those of their effects. I scribbled it down on a piece of paper and back i kept that with me and hopefully it made it into an outline i kept which ended up being about 300 pages long which was basically my thoughts and how they would work. One of the ways i force myself to go through some of the stories part of the book is a podcast i did the whistle snap podcast which was originally about campaign and ben became about president ial moments. I love doing it because its basically storytelling, which i love, but also forced me to look at the individual moments and try to say, why are these important . Thats essentially what i do throughout the book. I gave myself little tests along the way. I got up early in the morning when i was at cvs this morning i would get up at 3 30 a. M. Or 4 00 a. M. And right. After i left cbs this morning i basically wrote constantly and nonstop for about a year or more on the book all day long and reading and doing interviews and also when i was at face the nation working on this and when i worked on the atlantic piece i was running lees idea through a realtime filter. We have two questions that have to do with transitions. The first one came from, let me find it. Came from voyeur, now i cant find it. The second question about transitions came from jonathan it said are transitions too short . How would you do it better . abalso a question about whether we should put more ab i think his question is should we put more emphasis on transitions in the way for president s do a better job with aaron office . Maxis tire is my guru on this. The reason i was turning around is about four books on president ial transitions. Its an incredibly important question. Matt stier has tried to make and in fact got put into law there is now an obligation for president ial campaigns to start working on their transitions, actually about right now. Which means dividing campaign, trump administration. I became obsessed with transitions because think about in the private sector. If you have a merger which is essentially what happens in the campaign, although mergers are much more orderly. You have a 4 trillion merger you would spend years with teams of lawyers and be able to take over the new company some of the people already in place to understand the organizational chart you would have had experience in Similar Companies that would have some up to speed a little bit because done similar things. The presidency would get basically two minutes between victory and stepping into the job but theres no real organizational chart. The institutional memory is it very hard to come up with. Congress has tried to get them to start earlier but you really need a president is committed to the transition. Committed to the idea that you cant just add water to a presidency. You need to get the right soil, tell the field and then continue your gardening metaphor for they are. But you have to do careful preparations in the job President Trump told governor chris christie, i dont want to hear about the transition. Its bad karma. That does not put you in a position, as you mentioned, mitt romney ran what was kind of the stateoftheart conversion where it had hundreds of staffers working through pass laws working with agencies and doing all those things. I would make it so not only the candidates took it seriously but also as a part of our questioning to try to get them to talk about their transitions and looped the old idea that you know so well of measuring the drapes. The idea that if you talk about your presidency come your measuring the drapes which is what president s used to do when they would move in to change the decor of the white house. The idea is if you think too early about your presidency then you are being excessively prideful. Of course romney came up this with the business background. He worked on mergers accustomed to trying to work with these big systems and figure out how to take them over. Thats well suited for him. Heres a question mary beth asks is it too early to judge barack obama against the standards of the office of outline . If so, how would you say he measures that . I think its too early. One of the ways i think about that is, and this is preliminary. Give me some space here. George w. Bush, id be fascinated to read drapers book in july about the iraq war. ab he thinks george w. Bush should be impeached for it. People who abhe is not and probably never will recover from the iraq war. The summer of 2005 he came into the white house after reading paul berrys book on the spanish flu of 1918 and said to Fran Townsend Online Security advisor, i want to plan for dealing with the pandemic and i want it soon, comprehensive and then he gave a speech about it. Lets imagine the pandemic had hit. He wouldve been prepared. He then, by the way, gave the plan to the Obama Administration built on it ended there pandemic work. My point is, sometimes friends that do smart thing thinking about the future being longterm oriented camacho sort shortterm oriented, they get no credit because the disaster never happened. How do we way that . Obviously thats not in the same category as going to war in iraq. One would think about presidencies we talked earlier about president s and their times. So you evaluate a presidency what he did in africa with taskbar helping to with an extraordinary and very successful humanitarian gesture. Im still coming to a theory of how you look at all presidency and weigh the various elements we have such a big thing is the iraq war. Thats a way of talking about barack obama. Bring the economy back from where it was when he took over was a big achievement. How big . Id have to spend time thinking about it. You dont want to just measure it relative to economic numbers. You have to measure it against the weight that was on him, the series of choices he faced. It was early in his administration. He made some of the same mistakes in military National Security affairs particularly to respect to isis mac. They recognized in bushes learning on the job with respect to how to handle the war on terrorism basically coming in saying not going to pick bombing targets in the decide over time he needed to be more involved and more rigorous. In libya has to be wrestled with president obama. And then you measure president obama and the Race Relations in america and his attempts to unify america in the abstract or relative to what happened to donald trump. I dont have a preliminary view. I dont think you can start for another 20 years or so. Thats actually a point george w. Bush makes all the time. That history, he says, this may or may not be true that he doesnt talk about his legacy, he has not dealt with some of the questions about stewardship of the iraq war because it history takes a long time to come to its conclusion. And we are not there yet. That is certainly a fair point to make. The place we are at this moment in this country is an example of what you write about in your book the hardest job in the world. President trump is dealing with the pandemic for which we now discuss in the campaign and this incredible protest against Police Brutality and Racial Injustice that have just erupted may be his presidency had some role in the fact that there are these protests on Race Relations but both are huge events that it could not have been foreseen and that we expect our president to deal with. Yes. And particularly the question, hes got the economy, covid, Race Relations in america, three huge challenges. There is different ways to deal with lets pick the race question. These are complicated intractable problems that require maintaining as a president who represents the whole country he has obligations to a variety of different constituencies. But he also had an obligation to hear the agony of people who are not in his political base. James q. Wilson has a definition of character i really found compelling as i was thinking about what does it mean to have president ial character . Something that gets defined quite differently in different campaigns. His argument is basically that selfcontrol and efficacy. abempathy is taken seriously the views and rights of people who are not in your camp. I think the president whether lets start the clock two weeks ago, a president has an obligation to respond with that empathetic response the agony of a portion of the electorate and particularly blacks in america who are a part of americas original aba part of questions of policing in america. Responding to the agony is very much a part of the president s job. Thats not where hes decided to spend his political capital. Hes decided to spend his political and symbolic capital on the law and order message. That is something he could do today and obviously on covid, he could do today he could speak to the agony which he still is being talked about justice for George Floyds family hes not really come up with an answer yet. Its extraordinary remember the criticism he got for not solving the bp oil spill. He did it serve the bp oil spill nor did he have capacity to manage the oil spill. It wasnt in their core competency. Managing a pandemic is what the federal government is supposed to do yet the president doesnt see it as severely as people saw Barack Obamas obligation to solve the bp oil spill. We are just running out of time and im going to ask one final question. A lot of americans feel pretty battered. Maybe by being confined at home with your children or looking at developments in the nation that concern you. Having finished this book in thinking about heading into another president ial election, unlike any other weve had, do you feel fundamentally like optimistic this is another problem or do you feel more pessimistic, a greater sense of concern about whether weve somehow got fundamentally off track . Not as quick to judge, who tend to there have been great experiment in deliberative democracy, when you put people together in a room and present them with issues they become less fixated on their original positions and behave the way we were taught to behave when we were growing up and when you look at the response to George Floyds death which has been an outcry from a huge portion of america at the injustice and a feeling that something has changed in a fundamental way with how humans are treated in American Culture that represents an instinct and a feeling that is a source of anguish but also a feeling that people are moved because they feel something is wrong and they have a better vision of america and if you look at what people have done with respect to the covid19 response the majority of americans did what they were told because they believed it was worth doing for fellow americans. There are places of hope that you can find which you are put in a mood to seek when you spend a lot of time in the political field because it has become so much more contentious, point scoring is a part of the political debate. When you covered your First Campaign there would be long political debates, now it is just theatrical sniping which can get depressing. Your wonderful new book, such a pleasure to talk about it. The hardest job in the world, everybody should read it. Thank you for writing it. Thank you for your wonderful questions and your example. It has been great to talk to you tonight and thank you and thanks, everybody out there. Thank you so much. Such a pleasure to have you, thank you to John Dickerson and susan page. I encourage you to buy a copy of the book if you havent already. Links to purchase in the chat box and we are emailing everyone the link as well. We have more Virtual Events without is coming up including tomorrow night, check our calendar and when the time comes we really look forward to welcoming you back into our historic sanctuary, take care and good night. Bins watch booktv this summer, every saturday evening at 8 00 pm eastern watch several hours of your favorite authors. Tonight we are featuring New York Times bestselling author and journalist malcolm gladwell, author of several books including talking to strangers, the tipping point, outliers and david and goliath. Watch next saturday, july 20 fifth where we feature books by donald trump, barack obama, george w. Bush, bill clinton and george h w bush. Bins watch booktv all summer on cspan2. Heres a look at some books being published this week. Find these titles this coming week wherever books are sold and watch for many authors in the near future in booktv on cspan2. Joining us now on booktv is senator joni ernst, republican from iowa. Shes written a new memoir called daughter of the heartland. What prompted you to write this book at this time . Guest thank you so much. This is been a journey of love for me. I grew up in southwest iowa in a rural part of the state and the perseverance, dedication, the hard work my parents