Contributed to the book. Next they talk about the president s rankings at a forum recorded last spring at George Washingtons mount vernon. Kevin good evening. Welcome to mount vernon. My name is kevin butterfield, i am the director of the fred w. Swift National Library for the study of George Washington at mount vernon. It is my pleasure to welcome you back here tonight on behalf of the Mount Vernons ladys association and the ford motor company. Each month sponsors a free book talk like this one. An opportunity for the community to come and learn from the greatest historians in the field. Thank you for being here tonight. We are thrilled to have you. We will hear a brief hesitation from susan swain, copresident and chief executive officer of cspan, and coauthor of the president s. She will be joined by brian lam, the founder and executive chairman of cspan and moderating an esteemed group of historians discussing the american presidency. The american presidency is, as you know, a fascinating subject of inquiry in every possible way. [laughter] in the constitution, there is not as much said about it as you would imagine. Article one is quite long. Article two is quite shorter. As you can imagine, the executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States of america, full stop. That is the first sentence and the key phrase in the second article of the constitution which describes the presidency. Much of what we know today as the american presidency has come from experience, from precedent, from action. We are thrilled to have an opportunity to learn about that experience, that action. Tonight from a Wonderful Group of historians that we will tell you about tonight. We will be joined by Douglas Brinkley, Edna Greene Medford, nd Richard Norton smith. Dr. Brinkley, a president ial historian for cnn. I heard him talk and i am thrilled to read american john f. Kennedy and the great space race. On the panel, dr. Medford is the professor of history into dean at howard university. She is the author most recently of lincoln an emancipation. Richard norton smith, and acclaimed author of a wonderful book on George Washington called patriarch George Washington and the new american nation. He has written many other books, including one on Herbert Hoover, and has served as the director of five different president ial libraries. Tonight, these individuals will discuss their new book, the residents noted historians on the best and worst chief executives. Please join me in welcoming them tonight. [applause] susan good evening, everybody. Nice to see you. And thank you very much, kevin butterfield. I cant think of a more appropriate place to talk about president ial leadership than mount vernon. It is a delight to be back here tonight. We talked about this book for the first time about a year and a half ago. Our motivation was cspans 40th anniversary, but what a week we picked for this book to come out on president ial leadership. A terrific time for us to be hearing from historians to get their perspectives on what makes a good chief executive for the country. And also to put some Current Events into context, and we hope to do that tonight. In putting this book together, brian and i have actually worked on nine of these, which are collective works of his interviews. And this one we decided to actually bring two resources into play. First of all, brian has been doing a sunday night Interview Program for 30 years now. And we have an archive that is ull of his interviews. In fact, the odometer in the archives is about to hit 250,000 hours later on this month. Not all brian, but [applause] but among the people brian has interviewed are these three people who have become great friends of ours over the last quarter century. And some of the countrys leading contemporary president ial historians. In addition to having the vast archive of collective works, about 20 years ago exactly 20 years ago in 1999, we did this year long project, which these three folks were involved in. American president s life portraits. I have some cspan colleagues nodding, thinking about what a big job this was. We took it upon ourselves to go to a president ial history site associated with almost every president and do a two hourlong program on their lives. It almost killed us but we made it through. At the end of it, we thought we needed to put some kind of capper on it. So we talked to the three of them and decided, lets do a survey of historians and take all of this biographical material that is more anecdotal in nature and put a little data and Science Behind it. So we gathered them together, along with dr. Robert browning, who is the head of our archives. Professor john swain is a teacher at the university of maryland. We got into a wonderful debate. You all would have loved to be there, about what should the 10 qualities of leadership be . And in order to do a survey of 100 president ial historians. The idea for the book was to merge the survey work that we have done three times now with the president ial historians with the collective content of president ial biographers. And so the book you will learn more about tonight is actually organized not chronologically but where the president s fell in line with that survey. You are jumping through history but you are also going through a continuum from the very best to the very worst rated leaders in our country. And you learn more about some of the characteristics and qualities that perhaps put them in that ranking. Let me so you about the 10 qualities we finally agreed on. The first is public ersuasion. The second, crisis leadership. And that can come in all sorts of forms. The third, Economic Management. The fourth quality was moral authority. The fifth, international relations, which includes not only diplomacy but also war. The next administrative skills, which includes the assembly of a cabinet and the advisors who surround you. The next, the allimportant relations with congress. You can have that and not get a program done. This reminds me of george h w bush, vision and setting an agenda. The next one, pursued equal justice for all. And the 10th was performance within the context of their times. So what we did was send a survey out to 100 historians. This is three times now. And we worked very hard to get people of different demographics and people of different political points on the spectrum so that we could represent lots of different points of view. This survey, the first one was so successful that we now do it every time a president leaves office. To answer your question, President Trump has not been rated and we will not formally rate him until he leaves office. It certainly does engender lots of discussion about the current occupant of the office. I will give you a quick overview on the best and the worst and who moved the most, just so you have some context of what you will be hearing from the historians. Lets look at the top five. First of all, in fifth place from the top, William Hitchcock is the biography we chose, but historians rated eisenhower in fifth place. He has actually moved a bit, which speaks to the hidden hands theory that has been developing about his presidency. His lowest score was public persuasion. The next is the number four place, t. R. And we have our biographer on set tonight, and we chose his wonderful biography called wilderness warrior. Im sure we will learn more from Douglas Brinkley about why he chose that particular aspect of t. R. s agenda to focus on. He scored very well or he would not have been in fourth place, but his lowest score was equal justice, pursuing equal justice for all. In third place, Franklin Delano roosevelt. In the book, you will find that we chose goodwins really terrific biography on the white house years when they had all those interesting people, including Winston Churchill living on the second floor of the white house to help them get through the war years. His lowest scores, number fifth in Economic Management and eighth, which are both high scores, in pursuing equal justice for all. The next, here we are at his home, in second place was George Washington, scoring 1s and 2s across the board by the historians. But his single lowest score, and the folks in mount vernon have been working hard to help us all understand this, 13th in equal justice for all. And the top winner in not only our survey but every survey done for president s is Abraham Lincoln. The top score was 1000 and Abraham Lincoln won a score of 907 among historians. And he had a terrific rating on every single one, except for relations with congress where he scored a 9. [laughter] ok, so who are the bottom five . Who is at the other end of the spectrum . John tyler is at number 39, virginia native. Our biographer does argue that he has some redeeming qualities, so i invite you to read that chapter. [laughter] the man who ended up not having party, but he did manage to establish the president ial succession because it was not written into the constitution. Ok, you wont be surprised at number 40. Warren harding. He scored 360 out of 1000. We know so much about the scandals that plagued his presidency. You will be interested to know the biographer we selected was john dean. Yes, that john dean of watergate fame, who knows a thing or two about president ial scandals. He uncovered papers of Warren Harding that were previously unknown to biographers, and he argues that he deserves a little bit better than the place the historians have given him. It is up for you to decide. Next, franklin pierce. Poor franklin pierce. New hampshires only president. 41st place. The kansasnebraska act did him in. He also had a bit of a drinking problem. You might remember that he came into office with tremendous tragedy. They had three sons. They had already lost two of them. And the third died in front of his wife and himself as their train capsized on their way to washington. He carried his sons dead body up from the accident. His wife had a hard time recovering from that. She spent much of the first couple of years in the white house on the second floor in the residence writing letters to her dead son. It is a very tragic story. In pierces case, he had a hard time focusing and assembling his cabinet, understandably. It put him behind the curve. Next up, Andrew Johnson. 42nd place. And David Stewart is the biographer we chose for him. The tennessee governor who was loyal to the union, but impeached by the republicans using the tenure of office act. Guess who is dead last . James buchanan. I am a pennsylvanian so this one hurts a little bit. I love the biographer we chose for this chapter. Obert strauss. It is a really fun book. It is called worst. President. Ever. [laughter] how bad is he . He is a full 30 points below Andrew Johnson. And all of these people this is something to think about. All of them are below William Henry harrison, who was only in office for one month. [laughter] i think richard called them the net negative presidencies. Lets take a quick look at how the modern president s fared. Ronald reagan was the only one that made it into the top 10. Lou cannon, the terrific biographer who covered him as a journalist in california, is the chapter that he did. He had a lot to say about reagans command of storytelling while he was in office. Next, george h. W. Bush in 20th place. It will be interesting to see what happens to him now that he has passed, now that more records are available, and there is a bit of a halo effect when president s leave office. We will see if he remains there. Interestingly, he is also book ended by the two adams president s. Bill clinton came in at 15. We had david marinus seminal biography as his chapter. He was the Washington Post reporter who writes about bill clintons duality, that he could be both good and bad at the sing same time and that kind of impacted everything that happened throughout his public career. How about george w . Just out of the bottom 10, his highest score was pursuing equal justice for all. And again, that is his first entry into it, so it will be interesting to see as time progresses how he will do. But he has some difficult problems to overcome. Hurricane katrina, the economic crisis, and certainly the ongoing wars. We will be seeing what the historians have to say is more time goes by. How did our most recent president do . Barack obama . The historians rated him at number 12. A pretty good showing for first entry. He got 24th in international relations, and 39th in relations with congress. I found it was really interesting to look at these scores as i was reading the chapters, which we hope you will do, to see what the biographers had to say about how the historians rated them. This is my last set of slides for you. This is kind of fun. Who is up and down . Andrew jackson. Which way do you think he went . Down. Over the course of the surveys, he went from 13th place down to 18th. Woodrow wilson, down. Six to 11. You folks are going to have to explain this because i have a soft spot in my heart for rutherford b. Hayes. He actually dropped six points over the survey from 26 to 32. And grover cleveland, our only two term nonconsecutive president , went from number 17 in the survey to 23. Who are the ones that went up . Dwight eisenhower. He made it from the number nine spot into the top five. Bill clinton. I told you he was in the number 15 position. But when he first came into the survey, he was 21st. That was in 1999, right after the impeachment process. He moved to 15 by the second time we did it and he stays there in the 2017 survey. And finally, u. S. Grant. And edna, you are a specialist in this one. You will have to help me understand this one. Grant is the president to changed the most, going up 11 points over the course of the three surveys. I would love to hear your perspective about why historians are looking more favorably on him. That is a bit of an overview of how the president s were rated by 100 historians. Now you have three fabulous historians that have been so much a part of cspans programming over the years that will add some context to that. Thanks for your attention. [applause] brian this book is what it is because of susans fabulous editing capabilities. Thank you, susan. [applause] Richard Norton smith comes to us today from grand rapids. Doug brinkley from austin texas, and Edna Greene Medford from howard university. I would like to start off by asking doug, because lincolns number one, he got back from the Lincoln Library in springfield and richard opened it for us all. Hat year was that, 2006 . What did you find there . Why do we think everybody should go . Douglas everyone should go visit springfield, illinois, if you can. They have built an incredible new library and museum for Abraham Lincoln. He is always number one, as susan pointed out, largely because no matter how bad other president s think they had it, lincoln had it worse. The fact of the matter was he was not on seven states ballots to vote for him. He comes to washington dc having to have a body double. The executive mansion it wasnt called the white house until Theodore Roosevelt dubbed it that. So the executive mansion had lacked security. Lincoln is sitting there so vulnerable. I came in at austin and landed at dulles airport, which is very close to the battle of bull run. The confederates won the first battle of bull run, and there is Abraham Lincoln sitting in the white house with half the country putting up confederate flags and trying to find a way to keep america cobbled together. He did it miraculously. I am always amazed we were able in our country to hold an election in 1864, and lincoln is able to get reelected. But when you think about it, the gettysburg address, the first and second inaugurals, are almost foundational text. They are like the bill of rights or the declaration of independence or the constitution. We are not a full nation without addressing lincolns accomplishments, and of course, the emancipation proclamation, the original sin of the United States with slavery. Here, lincoln gets to be the person that leads the abolitionist crusade from the white house and put america on a new and better course. And then finally, his assassination. John wilkes booth. School kids go and study it. You realize when lincolns body moved back to springfield, he is buried there at the cement terry in springfield. But the train arrived with this casket. It went across the country at the exact same moment that the Union Soldiers were laying down their arms and coming home as a kind of homecoming. So lincoln is kind of in a category unto his own. Also, if you are a book lover, go to the lincoln bookshop in chicago. They sell nothing but books about Abraham Lincoln. All scholars want to write a book about lincoln. I never have. If i could write one, i would write about lincoln going down the mississippi river, two trips, and discovering slavery markets in new orleans. Brian lets pick up what susan asked about u. S. Grant. And you can throw in your comments if you would like. Can you explain why general grant has done so well in these surveys . Edna i think every generation decides how they are going to rank the president s, how they are going to interpret the president s. At this time in our history, things that really matter to us are integrity. I know this is a scandal filled administration, supposedly. He has surrounded himself with some people who are not always behaving properly. But i dont think there is any real criticism of him personally. But it is also about the fact that during the reconstruction period, he is trying to make sure that the violence that is developing, especially in the south, is quelled. So he is willing to enforce those enforcement acts. From todays sensibilities, we really recognize how important that was. I think that is one of the major things with it. Brian we asked each historian if they would write a special piece for this book. He also have one of the chapters. Richard norton smith writes the opening chapter and calls it a magnificent lion. Would you like to explain hat . Richard along with arthur schlesinger, there was a preeminent political scientist in the mid 20th century named clayton rossiter. In 1951, rossiter wrote an essay on the presidency in which he described the president as a kind of magnificent lion who was more or less free to roam around the reservation at will, as long as he did not egregiously offend congress or the public. That was an essay perfectly attuned to the times, written in the shadow of both roosevelts, wilson, truman, president s that were very assertive, who some would say imaginative in interpreting the range of executive power. But of course, they had also governed in times of crisis. Any reader of this book is going to take away just how evolutionary the office of the presidency is. One of the real challenges that confronts anyone ranking the president s for example, we all agree that Economic Management in the modern context is a determining factor. In the 19th century, president s were not expected in any way. James monroe presided over the first Great Depression in American History, and he was reelected with all but one electoral vote. 100 years later, Herbert Hoover by contrast became indelibly, personally associated with the Great Depression. In a way that made a second term impossible. What changed . The nature of government. During that century, beginning with lincoln and certainly with t. R. , the notion of what the federal government was responsible for and t. R. In particular, the bully pulpit, the idea that the Administrative Office had become one of advocacy, moral advocacy. Conservation, protecting consumers against tainted meat. Then Woodrow Wilson had an enormous concentration of power during the war. By the time hoover became president , people expected vastly more from the federal government. So how do you weigh apples and oranges, monroes performance as president and hoovers . That is one of the eternal what ifs that anyone who plays this game has to grapple with. Douglas luckily, james monroe, everyone would know the monroe doctrine. What does hoover have . Hoovervilles. Sometimes people only remember a couple of things about a president. He was part of the virginia dynasty and having that great connection with washington and the other founders. Brian you all are to know that there will be cards on the side for those of you that want to ask questions. We will go to that before too long. This will be a 90 minute evening that we have together. So we have some time. I would like to go back to these three historians and ask why the three of you have devoted your life to history and to the study of president s . I will start with edna. Edna mine is a long story. [laughter] i will try to make it short. I grew up in charles city county, virginia. The birthplace of john tyler. [laughter] it was a county that was 82 africanamerican when i was growing up. And i noticed that we didnt really have a lot of authority over the county. We could vote, but that was about all we could do. And as a child, i wondered where i fit into all of that. And so when i went off to college, i decided let me be honest. I started as a biology major and realized that i did not want to spend the rest of my life in a lab. So i switched to history because it was something that i truly loved. But i think growing up in that kind of environment and not knowing where i fit into the history is what really propelled me into this. And in terms of the lincoln scholarship because i front as a president ial historian. I really am not. I studied lincoln, but i do not study all the president s like these two gentlemen do. I think i became very interested in lincoln because of cspan, actually. Because of your filming of the reenactment of the lincolndouglas debate. That was when i really started becoming very much interested in president ial history in general, and Abraham Lincoln specifically. Brian richard smith, your story . Richard it is rather bizarre and knowing near as inspiring as edna. I was a strange child. Some would say it was a preview of coming attractions. [laughter] but i was 7 years old on Election Night 1960. Watching as the returns came in. And i was that rare massachusetts republican. It is rarer now than it was then. About the same time, i had been given a book called abe lincoln log cabin to white ouse. Which actually, played into a preexisting interest. Three years later, 1964, an author of no relation published a book called when the caring stopped. It was a book about the last years of Woodrow Wilson. And whatever you think about Woodrow Wilson, and i know he slipped a few notches you ought to read this because it humanizes wilson, which wilson was not always very good at himself. And it is a model of smart, scholarly, readable president ial history. In any event, it lit a match. And so i am, among other things, a lifelong wilsonian. But also, i was drawn to the biographical aspect of the presidency. There are a lot of different ways of approaching president ial performance. But as a biographer, i find every single one of these men maybe more interesting than most people do. And we also have to say, the late David Herbert donald, a Great Lincoln scholar, tells the story about when he went to the Kennedy White house. And jfk was obviously not happy with the days news coverage, and he said to david, nobody should pass judgment on a president. Ot even poor james buchanan, who has not sat at this desk and looked at the papers that come across. I think there was a little bit of special pleading there. There is only so much you can do for james buchanan. [laughter] but it is true. The study of every single president is useful, and i think will deepen your understanding and appreciation of American History. And of this broad but immensely admirable experiment of which we are all embarked. Susan we cant leave you without you telling the story of the trips you used to take with your parents as a young man. Richard the Station Wagon from hell. [laughter] people dont do this anymore. They dont have Station Wagons, for one thing. I must have been about eight. I told you, i was the polite word is precocious. I had four longsuffering siblings. We used to go for a month every summer, we would get in the Station Wagon and do a section of the country. The deep south, the midwest. Guess who got to set the itinerary . It was all organized around president ial gravesites, civil war battlefields. We found out where wilkie was buried in indiana, so we had to pay our respects. That sort of thing. The only concession that we made to the others was they got a Swimming Pool in the evening. And that was a form of study. There is no excuse there is nothing quite like being there. I dont know how you feel, but andrew jackson, who is not on my hit parade of president s, goes to hermitage and you will walk away from there with a much more vivid sense of who he was, including his limitations. Brian how did you get into this . Douglas i was born in atlanta, georgia. When i was very young, my mom and dad would go to callaway gardens. And near the gardens was the little white house of fdr, state park. I couldnt believe that the president had lived in such a small Little Cottage house. And that he died while somebody was painting his portrait only half done, and that the pools there, i understood polio, not being able to walk. And he actually considered himself handicapped, but yet he never acted that way. Then we moved to ohio, and i lived not just down the road from fremont, ohio, where you have the Rutherford B Hayes home. It is a big deal. We call the state the mother of residents. We claim seven of them. Grant being born in north bend in ohio. There was a great bit of pride that ohio produced that many president s and a little bit like what richard was saying, my mom was a teacher and all of that in high school. But we would take our car, a Station Wagon actually, and we had a 24 foot coachman trailer and we would go all over the country visiting president ial sites and civil war battlefields, national parks. So i have a lot of photos when i am young at the graves of president s i visited in mount vernon in virginia when i was very young. Got really into it. So when i was going into college at the Ohio State University undergrad, i knew i wanted to be a history major because it was never work for me. I would read a biography of great people, and i think the biographies matter. My editor was mentioning grant. Ron chernow wrote a biography of grant after his success with hamilton so there became a new wave of people talking about it and reassessing grant. My friend rutherford b. Hayes has not had that biography. [laughter] grant also, when president obama liked to say i am a writer, he was a bestselling writer and he is writing his memoir now, he would look at all of the other president ial writings and the one that stood out was grants memoir, which grant wrote with the help of mark twain. It is not about his presidency but nevertheless, it is an enduring book, the memoirs of grant, that live on forever. The stocks of these president s rise and fall. I was once director of the eisenhower center. We always thought ike was going to go up, up, up because the fiscal conservatives like him, and the liberals like him because the industrial military complex speech, and brown decision with earl warren, and the fact of like ike. He is fifth. It was always Truman Holding that spot. Now you see eisenhower coming straight up. And also part of it is because we have a new appreciation of ike as a person, being the Supreme Commander in world war ii. Dday. Just as grant was president of the civil war. Susan while we were talking about lincoln, i would like to hear your thoughts on why it is that Abraham Lincoln at number one is book ended by the two worst . Is that a circumstance of history . Character . What contributed to that distinction between those three men . Edna i think that we tend to judge these president s based on how they dealt with adversity. So there has to be something extraordinary that is happening during their administration. And with lincoln, it does not get any more extraordinary than the civil war. This is a man who could have done what buchanan did and simply sat there as the country was falling apart. He chose not to do that. He came into office and decided that he was not going to allow the south to secede without challenging that. And so, we judge him much higher than we would someone who just decided to leave it alone and sort of let things take their course. It really does matter how one responds. It has got to be a person who is decisive, a person who is etermined, someone who can communicate well, who can set a vision and pursue it and persuade people that this is the right way to go. And i think lincoln more than any other president was able to do that. Brian richard . Ichard is it the times or the man . If you look at this context, lincoln could not have been the greatest president if his immediate predecessors had not been among the worst president s. [laughter] on the other hand, lincoln can be criticized because for rank politics, he decided to broaden his political appeal in 1864 and put a war democrat they renamed the Republican Party to the union party. And they picked a man named Andrew Johnson, who did not lack for courage. He was the only southern senator who had not left at the time the states seceded. As wartime governor of tennessee, he certainly defended the union. But he arguably turned out to be, after the best president , you can make the case for him as the worst president. In so many ways, he is the nlincoln. Here are both men reared amongst incredible hardship. And who both overcame that in their own way economically. But Andrew Johnson is defined by his resentment. His childhood inflicted psychic wounds on him. Resentment against aristocrats. But also against blacks. He simply failed to comprehend what the civil war was all about. All you need to know is one word. We talk about reconstruction. Andrew johnson preferred to use the word restoration. The civil war was not fought to restore the prewar status quo. Lincoln was radical enough lincoln outgrew the racist society that produced him. Andrew johnson was incapable of that kind of growth. Douglas you never want to have the word impeachment swirl about you too much when you are president either. You saw that impeachment had hurt bill clinton. But he was able to shake it off a little bit as we went on further polls. But Andrew Johnson always has the big i on him. Yet he tried to redeem himself. He ran for the senate and became a u. S. Senator from tennessee after he was president to try to build himself back into good graces. But an argument can be made for George Washington to be number one. I am playing to my home audience here. [laughter] we see how low washington got because of slavery and because of the time he was in. It is hard on that ranking to be rated high so it brings your number down. Lincoln being a child of illinois, never having slaves, that the brings his number up quite a bit. But the one thing i mean, i do not think there is a presidency without George Washington because and it is important to not just be a one ermer. People who said when George Walker bush died, he is the best one term president. And polk was a one term president who was ranked high. John f. Kennedy was a one term high. But it is a good sign to be reelected. Like richard talked about james monroe. He did get reelected. So he is a twotermer. Herbert hoover did not. It can make a difference. With washington, one of the big things he did was step down to say, i do not want to hold power. There is something more powerful than being president , and that is being an american citizen and coming back here to mount vernon and allowing democracy to take root. That is an irreplaceable quality that washington had. He set the tone and tenor of what it meant to be president. Lincoln has become the favorite of all recent president s. Barack obama launches his campaign from springfield. It is all about Abraham Lincoln and the team of rivals. George w. Bush will tell you, my favorite president is lincoln. All he does is read lincoln books. Nixon during the hype of watergate would drink gin and talk to a lincoln portrait in the white house. [laughter] Theodore Roosevelt, who i wrote about in his love of charles darwin, our great science president. He just has a real cast on the imagination, lincoln, because the civil war in the end is the crucible time in our countrys history. But really, washington can be tied with lincoln. Those are the big two. Edna to what extent, though, does his assassination factor into his popularity . Because he was assassinated, he did not have that opportunity during the second term to make mistakes. What would have happened had he lived . Would we think of him in the ame way . Brian as you know, barack obama finished 12 out of the 44. He is the first president since eisenhower, i believe, to get 50 of the vote twice. Two terms. What is your assessment of why he was able to do that when everybody else from eisenhower up to barack obama had trouble getting over 50 of the popular vote in each election . Edna i think as a nation, we like to think of ourselves as very inclusive. I think with obamas first election, we showed that a black person could win. In the second election, we attempted to show it was not a fluke. I believe that the kind of response he got from americans was the result of how we see ourselves in terms of our national identity. Richard again, not to take anything away from obama, but it was clear he was an extraordinary candidate. But in 2008, he also rode a wave of antibush sentiment. There was no doubt that after eight years people were eager for something different. Nd in some ways, obama was the unbush. Just as the current incumbent could be said to be the unobama. And in fact, perhaps george w. Bush was the unclinton. We have developed this curious habit, which i dont really associate with early stages in our history. Irst of all, not since jefferson, madison, monroe have we had three president s, successive president s elected to two terms. Only once before. But the paradox is we elect this person to a second term, and then we look for someone who is the diametric opposed lternative to take their place. I dont know if there is logic to that. Susan how much do you think it might be due to overexposure . Richard oh, god. [laughter] you know, it is true. The cult of personality, even those who do not have any personality. [laughter] victims of a cult of personality, the white house is ringed, figuratively, by satellite trucks. We have 24 hours. There is not enough news to fill 24 hours. In fact, if you watch it, you are not seeing news, you are hearing analysis. Hich is another word for opinion, depending on which station you tune into. The fact is that the assumption is everything a president says or his wife says, or his children say, there is an element. I do not think schlessinger had that in mind when he talked about the imperial presidency. He was talking about a president s excessive powers. There is no doubt that chronic overexposure produces on a bipartisan basis, we had bush fatigue, clinton fatigue, obama fatigue, and dare i say, we have trumped fatigue. Susan when did that start . Douglas i dont know when it started. Because eisenhower could have won a third term in 1960. He was a twotermer and i think he could have beaten jack kennedy or Richard Nixon in 1960. Maybe vietnam or when you started seeing the collapse of yndon johnson with the vietnam war, and then there was gerald ford who had pardoned nixon, and nixon did not finish his second term. There was some churning going on. But i always find incumbency is a great benefit in modern times, just to have air force one take you around and have that much infrastructure around you. I think obama has benefited as being the first nonwhite person as president. All of these white president s and then barack obama, and then inheriting a Great Recession which we worked our way out of, started seeing signs of it by the time he ran for reelection. But also the killing of Osama Bin Laden was a big deal. He was outlaw number one. We all wanted to get him. And obama was able to say he did it on his watch. Things that are forgotten now, the bailout of general motors. That helps in michigan, in oledo, ohio. Some of the moves he made in his first term ended up helping him get reelected. But he did not have coattails. Hillary clinton was his secretary of state, but she did not have the gas in her tank because of the fatigue factor. By about six to seven years, people start tiring of a president , for sure. Even Ronald Reagan with all of his great breakthroughs with gorbachev and diplomacy started trailing off. People had their reagan quota. Brian do we have cards . Do you know where they are . We want to make sure you have a chance to ask questions. You can fill out some questions on these cards if you have them, pass them down the row. Let me go to people that are here in the audience and also watching at home. Maybe some young people. What would you advise them to do if they get interested in history . I know it sounds simple, but we at cspan, we would not be doing history if it was not for these terrific historians. 44 of them in this book. And over the years, all of the interviews they have given us. But what would you advise a younger person to do or someone that is not so young if they want to get started in all of this . Edna other than come talk to e . Enter my class. [laughter] i would tell them to read, read, read. Read everything. Not just the kind of history that you are personally interested in, but all history. If i live long enough, some day i am going to write a book on stuart tudor england. Because i am fascinated by that. But it has got to be beyond just the present. What you are interested in at the moment. You need to look broadly at history. I would tell them first and foremost, do that. And also, dont necessarily start with the historians. Dont start with the secondary sources. Look at the primary sources. That is what will really get you excited. Because you get to interpret what happened in the past. You are not looking through the eyes of someone else who is bringing certain baggage to the table. You get to interpret. So look at those primary sources first. Douglas in addition to all of that, major in history in college. It is a great major. Having a humanities education is tremendous. A lot of people are worried about jobs, what will i do with a history degree . My answer is if you love history, go for it. Just get as in college, and then after your four years as a history major, springboard into other fields. You can go to a masters, doctorate, be a lawyer, go into business. It is a fine undergraduate major. And you will have. History with you the rest of your life. But you dont have to go to history to go to college. Harry truman never went to college and he is one of the most well read president s on American History we know of. He would read books and biographies all the time, getting back to your read, read, read point. Im just picking u. S. History, but it applies to the globe. If you can afford it and get out there, go see places, come to mount vernon, tour the museums. They are always changing displays at historical sites. Get engaged with the local history site. Whether it is a fort, a cemetery, whether it is the home of somebody. Become a friend of one of those Historic Sites that is in your neighborhood, or county, or whatever. So that you can start feeling like you can learn from experts and share your ideas with people. Brian richard, would you tell us where you are at this moment in your research and your writing on gerald r. Ford . Richard the research and writing are at different places. Writing, i finished a chapter on mccarthy, which was the longest chapter. It took me an obscene amount of time because i kept rewriting it. I have a lot of new material. I have written 600 pages thus far, and i have 400 to go. I figure i have about another year and a half or so, and the book will appear in 2021. Brian why should we care about a biography on gerald r. Ford . Richard that is a fair uestion. One, gerald ford, rather like Ronald Reagan, has made a career very shrewdly on his part on being underestimated. To most people for example, historically, he is a coda to the nixon administration, an accident of history who had to finish off whatever nixon didnt finish. I discovered his presidency is much more about the future than it is about completing a nixonian agenda. For example, economic deregulation. Something that we take for granted. E may be argue about it. But nevertheless, it is part of our lives. It started under ford. Because ford asked the question, do we need an interstate Commerce Commission . In 1974. And that led to other questions being asked. And ultimately, they deregulated the Financial Services and they tried to deregulate airlines. And it is interesting because jimmy carter fixed it up, better than anyone. It became bipartisan and then global. Margaret thatcher gave it a new name, privatization. But it started very modestly. And that is typical. The bottom line is there is a lot of unknown History Associated with the ford presidency. And the nice thing is he turns out to be a more interesting, much more complicated person. And i thought i knew him pretty well. And i have learned a lot of things. But i have learned some things that i suspect he did not know about himself. [laughter] brian tomorrow morning if you are watching this live at 9 00, these three folks will be on our cspan call in show to take calls from the audience at large. Susan we can stay here for a while. Ive got some great ones. John asks, and we talked about kennedy and nixon. They are the two seminal president s in my lifetime. How do you rank them and why . Ouglas i rank john f. Kennedy quite high. I say that after really understanding his incredible leadership. When he came in the youngest elected president ever, that idea of Public Service that is put in his inaugural, he created the peace corps and the seals and green beret, and he was trying to inspire young people to work in government. But also, his interest in science. In 1960, scientists were chosen as times people of the year. Science was in the air. John f. Kennedy, not just said lets go to the moon by the end of the decade and we did it with our Apollo Program under nasa, and you had six successful mercury astronauts with john f. Kennedy. But he was starting to pursue ocean mapping of our ocean floors. And he embraced people like rachel carson, 1962, silence spring which gave birth to the modern environmental movement. He did moves with civil rights, at the time of the freedom rides and the assassination of medgar evers. Nixon had some successes. I added in the nixon tapes. There is one tape, late 1972, nixon just beat mcgovern in the biggest landslide in American History. On tape, you can hear nixon aying, somebody has got to write a book about 1972, i am the best president ever. I just won the biggest landslide. I did the breakthrough to china. He went on on all of the things that he did. And the next month, watergate is hounding him and his reputation has been destroyed by the combination of those tapes with antisemitic slurs and the atergate fiasco. So nixon has not been able to track. You will not see him ranked so high. And the tapes killed his presidency because they were the smoking gun. And they also are hurting him from rising in history, whereas kennedy because of the assassination in dallas will always be the great young man gunned down in his prime. We will never see an old john f. Kennedy. He is in our mind fixed at the prime of his life. Like was mentioned, the lincoln assassination and the drama, it is a lot of, if kennedy had lived, would we have gone into vietnam . What would our country have een . There is almost a mythological underpinning to both lincoln and kennedy because of those untimely and ugly premature deaths. Brian lets go to richard and we will come back to edna. No, seriously. We talk about overexposure. T started in 1960. John f. Kennedy was a Brilliant Television performer. And the first celebrity in many ways shofse skillful, he was so good that he set the barterbly high and very true of his predecessors