Transcripts For CSPAN3 The 20240703

Are last panel, this is his book and you see it up on on the screens as well. And we really thought that dr. Troy would be excellent for our final panel of the day because if youre not familiar with his book, it is an overview of everything weve been talking about today, about the intersection of Popular Culture, the white house and the presidency. So its going to be a terrific synopsis. If youve been wondering about it, to get a big picture of everything, weve kind of dove into some of the details with television and movies. Were going to take a little bit of a step back because in terrys book, he gives a great historic overview of the history of Popular Culture and the white house and the presidency. So ill tell you a little bit about our guest today. Our panelists. Tevi troy is a senior fellow at the bipartisan policy center. Hes a former deputy secretary of health and human services, and hes also a bestselling president ial historian. He is the author of the bestselling book what jefferson read. I watched and obama tweeted 200 years of Popular Culture in the white house. His most recent book is white house rival rivalry rooms in the white house from truman to trump, which was named as one of 2020 top political books by the white power by the wall street journal. Dr. Terry has a b. S. From Cornell University and m. A. And ph. D. In American Civilization from the universe ity of texas at austin. So tell me when we have people that work and worked in the white house like you did. Tell us a little bit about your time in the white house. How you got there. What did you do and tell us about do you have a favorite memory from the white house or a favorite place within the white house complex . Great. Well, first, thank you for having me for doing this event, for reaching out to me 20 years ago. The first book, intellects from american president s. She wrote great reviews for like nine years of millions. Your. Hair. I was just singing colleens praises for all those who didnt hear it. So just because i assume that shes been praised and thanked. I went to work in the white house in early 2002. I had been a political appointee at the department of labor previously, and i came to the Bush Administration from the hill. But i had a scholarly background having gotten a ph. D. , as you said, from the university of texas with a great interest in the presidency. I wrote my dissertation, and then later my first book on intellectual. Was in the american press. So i had that kind of historical training background. Id actually been in the archives, multiple archives, and seen president ial memos with the president s writing on the margins. So that really gave me the bug, the jones, to see what was going on and how it worked in the white house. And it gave me an understanding of white house operations that most people really dont have when they get there. And so having worked in the white house, i have that combination of understanding the white house from a scholarly perspective, but also having the day to day experience of having worked there. I had a number of jobs in the white house, including i was Deputy Assistant to the president for domestic policy, which is the job running the domestic policy council. So that was the job. In terms of favorite memories, i really want to do too, and i think they both relate to this book as one as a pop culture and pop culture interested in the other is as a historian from a pop culture perspective, the white house is a great place to be. All these people wander in and out of the white house that you never know who youre going to see on a given day. I remember Peyton Manning came by and he autographed something for my son. Dr. Phil came by and wanted to talk to us about policy towards families, and then bono would come by frequently. And he always wanted to talk to president bush about africa policy. And my my assistant was a woman who got to harvard, and he would always come by and call her harvard girl and all the other assistants with swoon over him. So those are some of the favorite pop culture memories. But from a historical perspective, there is a spot in the white house at the base of the white house. Nobody ever goes there. Its between where the kitchen is and the floor. And the white house florist is. And you could see if you look up at the arch where there are scorch marks from when the british burned the white house during the war of 1812. And i just thought that was such a great connective moment of heres this American Institution thats been around for so long. It was burned by the british when our greatest ally and we are in that house working in that house, doing the peoples business to to centuries later. And it was a powerful moment for me. Well, tell us, why did you decide to write this book . I find president s fascinating. I think there are a lot of people who find president s fascinating. Hence all the people in this room and watching on cspan today and i worry that we dont have enough connective tissue in this nation. When you and i are growing up. If there was an episode of happy days, everybody watched and everybody talk about it. Everybody knew about it. Today, i dont know what are the unifying parts of our national culture. The president is one unifier sometimes is he or she can be divisive. But Everybody Knows who the president is. Everybody knows the latest thing. The president said. If it was big enough or famous enough, and i just start looking at our countrys culture through the lens of the presidency could give you a good sense of where the presidency was at various times, and also, as the title is supposed to convey, show the evolution of culture as technology improved. So jefferson read, which is still the best way of getting information. From my perspective, but its an inert form of information. It sits there on the page. If you read a book and i read a book, its the exact same words on the same page at the same time. But then you start to have motion pictures, more fluid things that are in moving. You can see a movie at different places at different times, and then theres the interactive level. Theodore roosevelt when in by around 1920, he was the most filled person in the world. So its not just the president takes in culture, but the president becomes part of the culture. And then obama tweeted, i obviously wrote that before trump tweeted even more. But here you had a situation where the president , the United States thinks something puts it out there. And then 80 million followers immediately see it. Its a hugely powerful tool and can shape our national consciousness. So i just thought the intersection of all those things is very interesting and indicative of where we are as a society at different times. And thats why i jumped into the book. So in the book you chronicle the history really of president s and their connection and really the political utility or the strategic connection between Popular Culture and and the white house. Tell us what president s utilize this relationship to their political benefit and which ones were not quite as successful . Yeah, its a its a good question because its just boring. If you say, oh, i watch this show or watch that movie, the book is more than that. And its about how they become part of pop culture and how they can utilize pop culture to convey them themself and their administrations goals to the world, to the nation. And so when i think of president s who are successful in their interactions with culture, one i think of is Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt was a huge reader. He would read three books a day, even as president. If you came into the oval office and you bored Teddy Roosevelt, he would take out a book and start reading. I dont think that our current president or our previous president would do that. But roosevelt read with purpose. He would find social critics. He would read their work, and he would get to know those people. Famous examples with jacob reese, the photographer and social reformer. He talked to him about the social ills of new york when he was commissioner of police in new york and then later governor of new york up. He read Booker T Washingtons up from slavery and invited him to the white house just to get to know the person of the book was quite a sensation and he wanted to talk about americas policy towards africanamericans. What he didnt realize at the time was that this was the first time a black man had been invited to dine at the white house. And that caused another sensation. Roosevelt leaned in. He was proud of it, but there were people in that, and there was much more racist times who were outraged by it. So it was a really important moment, and it was based on roosevelt use of culture. And there are other examples. He read Upton Sinclairs the jungle, and, you know, he was instrumental in creating the food and drug administration. He read ida tarbell series in mcclures on john de rockefeller, and he went hard after standard oil and the trusts. So he embraced the culture and used it to advance his political ends. Other examples of using culture wisely are eisenhower. The song i like ike was actually written by Irving Berlin and the Disney Company produced a commercial for eisenhower. And then you also think of bill clinton in the 1992 campaign. Hes kind of an unknown. Hes young. Hes the pictures of him as a hippie. But he goes on the on the arsenio hall show. Right. And he plays the saxophone wearing sunglasses to kind of show that hes hip and cool. But he also has that song, the Fleetwood Mac song that makes him kind of approachable and safe from the perspective of the baby boomers. So i think those people are examples of people who used it well. One person who i dont think took good advantage of culture at all was jimmy carter. Jimmy carter watched. 480 movies while he was president. Thats 120 a year. He only had one term. So 2 to 3 movies a week. While hes serving the president in a very difficult time for this country. And he didnt find any way to connect to the people based on all of his movie watching. He just sat there and watched the movies and took them in. But there was nothing broader about it. And he has not been his presidency at least has not been portrayed well through history, in part as a result. This year at the White House Historical Association Nation our ornament this year is highlighting the ford white house. Gerald ford white house. Of course, theres a new book out about gerald ford from Richard Norton smith to a lot of people thinking about ford this year. I went to the ford library last week. Is lucky enough to be able to go there and see the exhibits and and hear a very excellent presentation. But when i read your book, i mean really. Ford its political culture is not kind to gerald ford. Talk to us a little bit about that. Well, theres two things going on with gerry ford. Number one is that he has a couple of wellpublicized stumbles where he falls and one of them was they werent really his fault. One of them, he was trying to help betty. And a slippery floor. But regardless, these stumbles led to this impress of him as a klutz. Now, mind you, gerald ford was probably the best athlete ever to become president. He was expert skier. He was a good tennis player. He was a Football Player in college and was drafted into the nfl. He didnt play, but he was drafted and so ford was a tremendous athlete. But there was this perception of him as a klutz and because people didnt know his history. So thats one aspect. But the second thing is the culture was changing at the time, and thats really what im trying to get out in the book is the way that the whats happening to the president and the evolution of the culture are both important factors in whats going on. And so the culture is changing in that ten, 15 years before, you couldnt make fun of a president on tv, there was an attempt to do a sketch show about lbj in the 1960s, and that was kiboshed by the Network Censors in kennedys era. They never made fun of the president on tv, although there was this guy named Vaughn Meader who did a record about the kennedys, and he basically just did different accents for the different kennedy brothers and really wasnt that funny, but it was seen as very transgressive. And theres a legendary moment about him. Half the book, the let the records he puts out are a sensation. Huge big sellers. But kennedy was assassinated in 1963, as we all know, tragically and right after kennedy is assassinated, lenny bruce, the comedian, gets up on stage. The audience is shell shocked. Everybodys upset. And bruce just sits there for a long, long, silent period looking at the audience. And he finally breaks the silence by saying, boy von meter is screwed. And it was true that was the end of von meters career. But it was a big deal that he even was able to make fun of the president on a record. But now lets fast forward ten years and suddenly saturday night live comes on and that show is really transgressive. And it is the first show to make fun of a president on tv. And it does it in a pretty blistering way with chevy chases infamous impersonation of gerald ford. Now look at the president ial impersonations on on senate live today. Famously, the alec baldwin impersonation of trump. There was a special wig that he wore and there was all this makeup that they put on him. They made him look kind of like trump, just like the ones with biden in the sunglasses. There was no attempt to make chevy chase look like gerald ford. The only way that he conveyed that he was supposed to be gerald ford was the way he stumbled clumsily around the white house. He dropped stuff. He fell. And thats how you knew he was gerald ford. But this was a big, big deal that the president is made fun of on tv. And that perception of ford, the great athlete as a stumble bum, is just something that really stuck with him. And i think it was unfortunate tagging, but thats how it worked out. Talk to us about technology. Of course, theres the advent of radio and then the advent of television. How does this change the relationship between Popular Culture and our president s . These technologies allow president s to go over the heads of whatever gatekeepers there are some of the Mainstream Media and go directly to the people. Franklin roosevelt, when he was governor of new york, he regularly used radio because he feared that the editors of the major newspapers in new york were all republicans and biased against him. Kind of different to how we view mainstream newspapers today. And then he famously used the fireside chats when he was in the white house to give over moments of great import to the nation. He didnt actually overuse them. He used them relatively infrequently because he didnt want to wear out his welcome with the American People. You go forward another two decades and John F Kennedy uses television brilliantly in his 1960 campaign. So well and so effectively that after the election, he walks by a tv with one of his aides. And he looks at it. He says, you know, we wouldnt have had a prayer without that gadget. I love that. 1960, he still calling television a gadget. And so television allows president s to get in your living room and people would still talk. Decades later, Donald Rumsfeld talked about this, about hearing the fireside chats from fdr around their dinner table. Roosevelt was in peoples homes in a way that president s had never been able to do before. And its these technologic tribal changes that make the president part of the National Conversation in a way they couldnt have been previously. Because we know that culture influences president s and how they act. Meacham some of the choices they make do president s ever influence Popular Culture . Does it ever go the other way . Oh, absolutely. You think about things like when george h. W. Bush says, read my lips, no new taxes, read my lips becomes a thing. People would say, read my lips. Youre not going to win this game or whatever. And then you think about obama and the famous shepherd fairey iconic photograph of him or a representation of him, and that becomes something thats thats a repeated and reused many times for many different figures. Obamas use of yes we can. Theres something that enters the lexicon. So these president s, they can do things that shape the culture. Another famous thing and one thing i like to track is when president s read a book, how that book goes up in the bestseller. One of the most famous examples of this is Ronald Reagan reads tom clancys novel, the hunt for red october. Now, tom clancy was an unknown insurance salesman, and this book becomes sensation in part because Ronald Reagan mentioned it and people knew that reagan had read that book. And then tom clancy not only became a bestselling author, but hes now that hes dead. But now theres this whole tom clancy franchise. There is jack ryan has been portrayed by about half a dozen Different Actors on various tv shows and movies. So that was all in some ways launched by Ronald Reagan and him reading this relatively obscure book. Lets talk a little bit about the movies we just had, the panel on president s and the movies. You write in the book that president like to present an idealized version of themselves that makes sense from a political perspective. And you also say that movies help them do this. So give us some examples of what you mean by that. Well, we all know that Franklin Delano roosevelt was paralyzed as a result of polio. He was in a wheelchair throughout his entire presidency. He was depicted in movies, perhaps more than any other president in part because the hollywood moguls, people like harry warner, wanted to ingratiate themselves with the roosevelt administration. So they kept depicting roosevelt on screen. But in no hollywood movie was roosevelt as president ever depicted in a wheelchair until the movie pearl harbor in 2001, about 55 years after roosevelts death. So they did present this guy, roosevelt, but never the roosevelt in a wheelchair. So thats one idealized version. You think about the show, the west wing, the martin sheen character or president , was specifically designed to be some kind of mix between bill clinton and John F Kennedy without the sexual foibles. That was what they were trying to present. And so theres an idealized version right there. So you have these people on screen who are celebrated either as fictionalized versions or as actual versions of themselves in a very positive way. I also think another good example of this is John F Kennedy in the movie p. T. 109, which presents a very glossy view of kennedy as a war hero. And he did do some heroic things after his boat was cut in half. But he also stumbled in getting the boat kind of to begin with. But the movie sort of overlooks that and just talks about his heroism in rescuing the crew afterwards. And that movie helps kennedy become president. And kennedy, in fact, complains when the movie is shown on tv and is shown along with commercials, sometimes for antiperspirant and other body products or pharmaceutical products, not actual pharmaceutical products, because they could be either hasnt, but, you know, houseware products. And he complains to newton minow, who is the head of the fcc, and the guy who famously coined the phrase the vast wasteland about that. His great movie is showed on tv with all these, i guess, unimpressive ads. But those movies do present idealized versions of president s. Now, its also interesting that in the president s i mentioned, fdr or kennedy, clinton, none of those i mentioned are republicans. So hollywood rarely presents those idealized depictions of republicans on screen. It tends to be democrats more often, right . I think we saw some of that today and some of the discussions. What about reagan, the reagans, the movie actor . Right. He actually appears in films. How does he use that to his advantage as president . Well, i think reagans long history of being on multiple screens, multiple platforms, because he starts as a radio announcer, then he becomes a movie star, then becomes a television star. Then when hes doing work with g, he goes out and speaks to large audiences. So first of all, those trained reagan how to speak on multiple platforms. He knew how to speak on the radio. He knew how to convey himself on the silver screen. He knew what to do on television. So i think that helped him train himself as a good communicator. But it also introduced him to the American People. And when the democrats would say reagan likes acid rain or he wants to get rid of medicare, reagan with reagans people would say, look, you know, Ronald Reagan, youve seen him on tv shows and movies for 60 years. And the American People, they also just thought, hey, i know this guy. Hes not the mean guy theyre depicting. And i think it presented reagan in a positive light because he was known to the American People. And i think that that helped him get to the presidency. Do you think it helped them tell stories in a way that was effective to the American People because he understood the arc of a story by being someone who had acted in films. He was absolutely a great storyteller, and he also would refer to movies when he was president , when he saw the movie rambo, which was about the time that a flight had been hijacked. An American Service members had been murdered by terrorists. He said, i just saw the movie rambo and i know what to do next time this happens and he sees the movie war games with Matthew Broderick about a cyber hack of noor et and he says, we better look into this and make sure that this thing cant happen in real life. So he did use the movies as a way to not only inform his thinking, but also to convey his ideas to the American People. Lets talk a little bit. I mentioned this earlier in the discussion. Lets talk a little bit about books and reading. You argue in the book that reading is one way that president s can engage in Popular Culture in a way that showcases intellectual pursuits. But theres a theres another side of that coin, which is that they can appear, you know, a little bit too intellectualized and not relatable to the American People. So how do president s approach what to read . Is that something thats strategic . What they choose to read and how do they do it in a way so that they appear relatable enough . But they also have to appear smart enough. So whats the politics of that . And if you can give some examples. Yeah, its not only what they choose to read, what they choose to let us know that theyre reading. Theres this one story about reagan that he was reading a fairly serious nonfiction book. And he did do that fairly regularly. And marlin fitzwater, whos his press aide, says, maybe i can let the public know or the press know about this book youre reading. So they dont just think youre reading that latest louis lamour novel. In fact, youre right. He wrote. And reagan says very interestingly, no, marlin, i dont think we need to do that. So he didnt necessarily want people to know that hes reading serious nonfiction. He wants it to be relatable to the American People. But he also wanted to be reading those books to get policy ideas and refresh his own political thinking. So i think reagan was interesting in that regard. Bill clinton was just known as a vacuum cleaner. He he he watched everything, but he also read everything. And he would read multiple mysteries a week. But he also read serious policy tomes. And people were often surprised at what he read. And then but George W Bush is a good example. And so bush is a guy who goes to yale and Harvard Business school, but then he goes to texas in the middle and he loses a race. In the late 1970s where hes depicted as this pointy headed Northeastern Ivy League intellectual. George w bush. Thats how kent hance i amazing to watch some of the videos if you watch and you can find them on youtube of that campaign. And bush is almost unrecognized able as a candidate from what you see later on. And thats why because of that race, because after bush loses to kent hance, he says, im never going to be out country to get. And he puts on the hat and the Leather Jacket and the boots, and hes reading books all the time. Hes a huge reader. Karl rove said in the 35 years that he knew George W Bush, he never saw him without a book in his hand, but he didnt put it in the hands of the book in his hand on the campaign trail. And he presents himself as this cowboy with the twang and it works. He gets elected governor of texas twice. He becomes elected president , United States. But it also changed his image. And when he was president and wanted to show that he was a serious, thoughtful, intellectual person, it was too late in the news media. It just didnt seem that way to the American People, didnt see him that way. So sometimes you play with your image at your own peril. Do you think that had i mean, they had positive and negative benefits for him . Absolutely. Yeah. Made him president. Wouldnt have been president if he hadnt made the turnaround. But as president and i can attest this because i was there in the white house, he wrote 60 to 90 books a year serious books and biography, history. He was reading that kind of stuff all the time. He had a reading contest with karl rove, and he would have authors into the white house. And these historians would just marvel at how much hed read. But you wouldnt know that from watching tv in the bush days or watching will ferrells impersonation of him on saturday night live, or from reading the newspapers. Thats not how he was depicted. In fact, he was asked in a debate, what is the thing that you hate the most or you dislike the most . And he said, reading a Public Policy book or Something Like that, i mean, he actually offered that as something that he did not like to do. When youre saying he actually did it all the time. Right. But possibly if i think he was kind of being clever there, he did like to read biography and history. He didnt really necessarily like to read the latest tome from the American Enterprise institute. Okay. Okay. So that would be is that distinction conveyed . Okay, great. Now, one thing in your book, which i thought was interesting, you read across time in the book, one recurring genre, which of of interest to me because thats what i like to read and write is mysteries. A lot of president s like to read mysteries. Why is that . Do you think . Why is mysteries such a popular genre for president s . First of all, its important to know that mysteries havent been around forever. They really started the beginning of the 20th century. And mysteries are diverting. They let you get your mind off things that are troublesome or worrying. One great example of this is woodrow wilson. Wilson obviously and famously has the stroke late in his second term and hes bedridden for months at a time. And the standard baker comes to visit him in the white house. And he says that by wilsons book, there were two things i wasnt said. There were two things a bible. And the latest mystery. So wilson like to read mysteries. Bill clinton, i mentioned read multiple mysteries. So mysteries were something that multiple president s have read and they just found it diverting, i think it was. Youre still your mind is still active. Youre thinking of who the killer is, what the killer might be, or whats going to happen next. So its not mindless like watching tv in the 1950s was. But it is something that can get your mind off your problem is for a brief period. Right. When i worked on capitol hill, i would i watched a lot of reruns of murder, she wrote. And my husband finally said, why do you watch murder . She wrote so much . I said, because in one hour theres somebody killed. And she always finds who who did it in one hour. And real life on capitol hill. You never saw problems in one hour and you certainly dont solve them in one year. You dont solve them in ten years. But at least i found something where in one hour the solution was presented for itself because really relieving in that way, i just i just felt like i needed it. It was comforting. Yes. Okay. So our last question before we go to the audience, im sure theres going to be a lot of questions for you about the breadth of your book and both historically and the number of different media that you cover in the book. You say in the book that the presidency is one of the last institutions often in the country to embrace you know, cultural shifts or Popular Culture shifts that are taking place. Do you think this latency really do you think thats beneficial or harmful to a large republican democracy . Is this a good thing or is this a bad thing . Should the presidency be more responsive or is it good that its sometimes a step behind the presidency . The white house, the president , whoever they may be, they are the establishment. I dont care if youre a radical leftist. The presidency is the establishment, and the establishment is always slow to pick up on new trends. But i dont think thats necessarily a bad thing. You dont necessarily want the president out there citing the latest tick tock video or being on twitter, all the time. The president is supposed to be about elevated things and there are certain things that become cultural phenomena but then fade away. I mean, these are these fads happen all the time. So the presidency should be about more timeless. Things are Great Institution ones. And so i dont think the presidency needs to be focused on every new cultural trend. That said, president doesnt want to be so out of touch. So something is sweeping the nation concern or movie or something. Sometimes they can refer to it in a gentle way, but you dont want them to be slaves to the pop culture. You want them to deploy the pop culture to their advantage. Okay, great. Do we have some questions for dr. Troy from our audience . What. Hi. Thank you. This was so interesting. One question i have is one thing you didnt mention is inviting celebrities to the white house. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about president s who have done this well and whove chosen not to invite celebrities and how that plays into pop culture . Its a great question, and im glad you like the panel. I did mention a little bit the celebrities when i was in the George W Bush white house. And celebrities do show up in the white house. Sometimes its done in a more strategic way. John f kennedy had this famous dinner with pablo casals where he brought all this great talent and writers and thinkers to the white house and he famously joked that this is the greatest collection of intellectual thought in the white house since Thomas Jefferson dined here alone. Its a very, very famous line here, but youve also got to be careful. So Lyndon Johnson has a festival for the arts in the mid 1960s, while vietnam is raging. And there are multiple people there who object to the vietnam policy and they want to pass around a petition criticizing the president s vietnam policy at his own event. Hmm. Charlton heston, whos there, objected strenuously to this and says, i dont think its polite to be circulating a petition against your host when youre in his own home. Good for moses there, but you really have to be careful who you invite to the white house is not going to reflect poorly on you later on. And i think its i think its a challenge. So you want the celebrities because they can bring what i call the reflected glory, but they also bring whatever challenges they have with them. If theyre if they write a song thats inappropriate or if they get involved in a scandal that can make the president look bad as well. Do they jump the line up . So theres a great story about grace slick from Jefferson Airplane was invited to a College Reunion because she and one of nixons daughters had gone to the same college. Im forgetting which colleges. And she joked about how she wanted to come to the white house and put acid in nixons tea. Oh, but interestingly, the secret service and she was bring Abbie Hoffman as her date, which i think was awesome. But the secret service vetted her and took her out of line and she didnt even get to come in. So sometimes they can skip the line, but sometimes they get booted off the line. The questions. Yes, right here. Could you take the microphone just so we can get the for the viewing audience as bill clintons pop pop culture moment was when he appeared on the arsenio hall show. Do you equate that for barak obama . When oprah endorsed him and she had never really endorsed anybody before . I think oprah was very big for the Obama Campaign in 2008. And so, yes, i think they think that was a big moment. The difference with clinton was president s didnt go on the late night tv talk shows at the time. It just wasnt a thing. And hes really changed that. And subsequently now we do see president s and president ial candidates go on these shows. And i think it gets back to the point that colin was making about should president s be embracing every new trend or they, i guess, a little standoffish and maybe a little more elevated and maybe now the late night shows and the oprah show and those other shows are such a part of the culture and there really are institutions now that maybe they werent 50 years ago that president s, i think, can embrace them. So i think gets to your point about being slow to embrace and change, but when its appropriate, i think its instructive. But but i do agree that the oprah moment was a big one. The questions were there right in the middle. Mm hmm. Thanks for coming. I really enjoyed fight club read it a couple of years ago. A great book. Thank you. I wanted to ask you about did you have the experience, but then also what youve learned through your study about the correlation between this, you know, basically intellectual consumption and how they then use it in management and manage it. I mean, theyre politicians. They want to win. You know, they they all think theyre correct. And then the job is to persuade the American People. And so a true intellectual, you want to understand your opponents position. And so theres always more to learn. What did you see almost on the practical intellect side of how George W Bush or others that you studied manage that in terms of even their day to day, week to week schedule . President theyre supposed to be managing an administration, imagining so many different issues. And yet you always know theres more to learn, more to read to. They just have to schedule at least 2 hours every night. I mean, i heard George W Bush did an interview with brian lamb on cspan that didnt get a lot of attention where brian asked him about this and his answer was pretty interesting. Im just curious what you observed and what youve learned. Well, president s surprisingly, have a lot of time on their hands. You dont think so . But they have no commute, right . They walk down the west colonnade. Theyre off to take out the garbage or cook dinner or walk the dog. I mean, they really their needs are taken care of. So when their schedule is done for the day and some president s want to work until five or six and some president s want to work late to the night like bill clinton. But most president s can call it a day at some time because they they all claim that they want their aides to have family time, which is not really true, because it was never home when i worked in the white house. But so that period when they leave the oval office after their last meeting, theyre pretty clear. So they have time to read if they choose to watch movies. And i said, carter, watch 480 movies in one term, which is still astounding to me. I eisenhower fine, famously watched tv while having tv dinners and those little trays with. Maybe he would just watch tv. He loved westerns and in fact, the white house usher complained that it was hard to find westerns that ike had watched. And this was back then when westerns were the most frequent genre of hollywood films, not today, where the western is relatively infrequent. So the president s do have some time to do it and they choose their own thing. In terms of kind of watching your opponents, i think i saw this most clearly perhaps when i worked on the Bush Campaign in 2004. I worked on the debate prep. And youve got to prepare for your opponent. What is he going to say . You know, john kerry was a pretty good debater, but theres also thousands of hours of tape of him. And so seeing what kerry had said over the years helps you prepare for what he might do. And i think that could be interesting in this Upcoming Campaign of trump obviously was very effective in the debates in 2016. But if there are multiple opponents, they all will have watched trump and we have thousands of hours of trump now. Will they be able anticipate what trump says, like christie did to marco rubio in the 16 debates . And then if you anticipate can, you take advantage of it . So i think the fact that these politicians so frequently filmed and so frequently recorded gives their opponents a lot of material to work with in order to prepare how to deal with them. Question right up front here. Oh, okay. Thank you. You mentioned we talk lot about the pop culture of the 20th century and 21st century president s. And i know pop culture looked different the 19th century, but are there any interesting stories or any thoughts about pop culture and their either their influence on or influenced by 19th century president s . Im so glad you asked that, because i spent a lot of time on it in the book and usually when i have these kind of panel discussions, its mostly people asking about the 20th and 20, 21st century. So the interesting thing is that in the 19th century, so many of these options that were empowered by technology dont exist. You dont have tv, you dont have radio, you dont have popular music to the same degree, you dont have movies, you have twitter, etc. But you have two things. You have theater, you have reading. Some of the president s were huge readers. Adams had a library of thousands of volumes. Jefferson famously said, i cannot live without books. So they read a lot. And reading was something that really engage them. Madison was also a huge reader. In fact, jefferson sent madison a whole trunk of books from europe of ideas about governance that madison read in preparation for the constitutional convention. So reading was very important to a lot of them. But we also saw that theater was a big deal. Abe lincoln loved to go to the theater. Obviously, we all know about the his tragic end at the theater, but he saw many, many plays before that. He loved shakespeare. He would quote shakespeare all the time and shakespeare back then. Now, in some ways its seen as kind of an elevated thing. Maybe youre pretentious if you quote shakespeare, although people cite shakespeare all the time and not dont know it because so many of his phrases have become the lingua franca, if you will. But when lincoln would cite shakespeare, he would do it, knowing that the literate American People were aware of it. The literacy rates in america were very high compared to europe and people read shakespeare. They knew the bible when when lincoln says fourscore. And seven years ago, they know thats a biblical allusion. And so the culture in the 19th century was different, but it was still had these unified lying aspects to it. And you had multiple president s who both embraced the culture but also took advantage of it. Great question. Over here. Okay, great. So continuing with the 19th century, i know that during the white house, the early years or the president s palace, as i like to call it, we had the mammoth cheese. And as Vice President , jefferson visited some amusing ants, such as men, frida and sunday. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about some of the the popular among easements that, you know of the earlier president s taking advantage of. Yeah, a lot of them played cards whist he was it was a popular game back then that some of the founders played but but different types of theater i think were where interesting to multiple president s and up and they would go to to the theater as a way not just to enjoy the spectacle but this is where people gathered together. If you want to go Campaign Today you see people can generate a rally. Youll be on tv. People see it that way. But back then, if you go on a tour, which president monroe did in the south while he was president , he went to charleston, which is the theater capital of america at the time, not broadway by the way. And by going to the theater that was the largest collection of people you could find. And so you go and you are seen and youre seen and be seen by doing that. And so its kind of like in college when you go to the Student Union because youre face time with the largest number of people. So the theater was a great way to find different people. Another good example of this is lincoln would read a popular humor. Purists like petroleum b naseby, which obviously is a pseudonym, but he would read them and he would read them out loud to his visitors and he would laugh about them in the white house. So these popular amusements were also things that appealed to multiple president s here. I have a two part question about maybe ten years ago, the Smithsonian National Postal Museum had a an exhibit on fdr and stamps and said that back then, stamps were like the internet, where fdr would push his agenda and to get support. Are you familiar with that other mediums of of pushing out ideas to the public thats one part. The second part is the moderator had asked about idealized views of president , and you said it was mostly democrats. While lincoln today, especially when it comes to slavery and what his thoughts about slavery do you feel that has that has been idealized and you also think that some of the president s, especially some of the republicans like like jackson and others, that squashed reconstruction, do you think that there were just a committed and that is part of idealization, which is one of many reasons why a lot of folks do not fully understand slavery and things like that. Thank you. Well, theres a lot to unpack there. I assume you mean Andrew Johnson in terms of reconstruction of. Yeah, i mean, pretty reprehensible what he did and not what lincoln would have done. Lincoln is has been idealized in some films. These days, but obviously film is a medium that comes about 50 years after, 40 years after his death. So i was talking more about modern president s who how theyre conveyed by hollywood in their lifetimes, how the stamp thing is. It is an interesting point, because stamps were much more widely part of the Popular Culture of Franklin Roosevelt, was also a stamp collector and he found stamps very interesting and you can get ideas out there in the culture. Now, who talks about the latest . Ive never heard that happen today. Well, we were just talking about it at lunch or was was kevin still here . We were talking about the fact that theres a citizen Stamp Commission actually listens to the ideas who should be on a stamp. So thats the commission. But do we know stamps . Is it widely known who who is on the latest stamp . Not, i guess, until you go to the post, unless you got the post office, who does who sends letters today. So i tell you, my kids are all terrific kids, but they dont know where each thing goes on a letter like the return, right . The upper right corner is the stamp on the upper left and its just so concept to them. So as the mail becomes less important in our everyday lives, stamps become less of a unifying aspect. In the culture. Thats a good point. Great questions that was was there a question over, go over here and then over here. Okay. Hi. That was great. Thank you. I have a question about actually it came out of a class in an art history professor and i was Teaching Firm Security Administration photographs a lot of interiors with photos of fdr and i think i was showing my class at gordon parks photo of a woman in d. C. In her bedroom with fdr in the wall and so this was 2014. Im still thinking about it, though. One of my students said my my dad gave me a portrait of obama for my apartment. And, you know, i wouldnt even necessarily thought to do that myself, but im now that he gave it to me, im going to put it in my apartment. And of course, obama was like the first president in a long time where people did that. You know, they they put his portrait in their home. So i started thinking about it, thinking about jfk, which is mostly maybe like a posthumous thing. And i started thinking about it a little bit in relation to media too, like fdr and radio and jfk and tv. Are there other is that and i, i know this is a 19 century phenomenon to, but thinking of photography in particular and what does that mean is it a kind of civic religion is it i know it happens in other places, other nations and other kinds of governments. But for us in the u. S. Like how im just thinking about how this connects to everything weve been talking about. Yes. The two interesting stories in this regard in the 1860, Abraham Lincoln goes to new york and gives a famous address at cooper union. And while hes there, the famous photographer, matthew brady, who became famous from taking pictures of the civil war. He takes a picture of lincoln and that picture becomes v view of lincoln that the American People have. And its sent around to newspapers all around the country. And its a really big deal. People dont know what this guy, Abraham Lincoln, who was congressman for one term and then he loses a i guess he wins the Senate Debate but loses the senate race, too, to douglass in 1858. And so that photo was credited in large degree to making lincoln president. Theres another story i heard that i just thought was terrific, that in the 1930s, roosevelt was so popular in the Jewish Community that when a boy would be bar mitzvahed at a synagogue, you would have the rabbi would walk the cantor word walk. The torah would be carried around the bar mitzvah boy would be there, and then thered be somebody holding up picture of Franklin Roosevelt while. Yeah, so yeah, i mean, the photos in iconography mean i mentioned the Shepard Fairey picture of obama i think those pictures are hugely important in conveying an image of the president who we want to and what what that an image can tell you so much about the president and what theyre trying to accomplish even its like the famous thing, a picture is worth a thousand words. So yeah, i think iconography has been incredibly important for president s. The question of here looking, i think you said that someone was the first black man to have dinner in the white house. Lincoln used to have conversations with Frederick Douglass a lot. He not allowed to eat at the white house or anything. Or do you know its not that he wasnt allowed to eat, he wasnt invited to dinner. What happened was booker right. I think at receptions, Frederick Douglass but i dont think like a dinner and meetings. I mean, lincoln would meet with people all the time, but, but, you know, having a person at dinner sitting down to eat was a really, really big deal. And i think we should celebrate Teddy Roosevelt for for doing it with booker t washington. And i think its extra cool that he did it after reading his book. Thats great right here. I just have to i think fdr was an exceptional president and i just wanted to ask if there were any others that made the impact after the that following the stock market crash, fdr was over the wpa, which was the works project and it it employed a lot of musicians and artists and things that you dont even hear about today. And are there any other president s that have come close to that kind of a platform that he presented back in the 1930s . Yeah, its about fdr, because sometimes you go in these government buildings, i believe theres one at the justice department, youll see these murals that came from artists, wpa artists. So i think he did have a big impact on the artistic life of this nation. I also think about kennedy and the pablo casals dinner i mentioned kind of a raised awareness of of of of Classical Music. So i think president can have an impact on, i guess, higher forms of culture, but its not their main goal, i would say. But it does happen, i think, today, because we have so many other avenues. But that was for artists, non working artists, musicians, and they went around the country. To in action guys this the oral histories thats are slaves its correct to get a perspective on slavery and those were at the library of congress our partner for this theres an article in the wall street journal this week by joseph epstein, and he writes about our current president or previous president and said, can you imagine either of these people reading a serious book or going to Classical Music performance . And i. Took that snippet. I tweeted out and i said, boy, going to have a tough time writing a sequel to that person right. We have our last question in the back. Apologies is if you got apologies if this is a bit out of your scope. But can you talk about how first ladies have shaped and been shaped by Popular Culture . Mm, absolutely. So you think about nancy reagan and shes famous for three words, just say no. And she puts she goes all out on that. She famously goes on the show diffrent strokes and uses that catch phrase. So i think first ladies can be an important part of the culture. Mrs. Obama had the lets move campaign. Shes trying to get people to go and exercise more and make america less obese. Didnt quite work, but good idea. And so i think the first ladies can have a big deal. Laura bush started that reading festival thats on the mall every september, and that continues to this day. So i think first ladies have a great capacity to advance culture and they usually aim for more elevated time types of culture and theyre trying to convey messages that are trying to make us better as nation, like get off drugs. So i think many of the first ladies appeared on sesame street and pat nixon certainly appeared on sesame street. Dr. Biden recently appeared on sesame street. So you see them popping up in things. And like you said, usually always trying to, you know, for geared to kids to make us better as a nation. Hopefully things that we can all agree on. First lady and the first ladys not the president. You go. And sesame street was the first ladys for the most part or less partizan, right . Theyre not seen as partizan actors. Theyre seen as someone who represents the interests of everybody. Great. Well, thank you so much tv for this conversation. And thishere