Grandfather. Host looking at all those childhood pictures. Adorable children that were all well behaved. Guest exactly. Host im most interested because you have managed to do in a readable length what many other authors have tried to fit into many many pages and im curious about your interest in eisenhower. How familiar were you with his record when you developed an interest in the subject . Guest i covered the pentagon for six years and had a healthy appreciation of general eisenhower, but i didnt really have an appreciation of the eisenhower presidency. I may college golfer, still golfer and i got the holy grail of golf invites down to Augustine National and i was on cloud nine and went down there and was driving down magnolia lane. Such a spectacular place and for golfers, as you know, its the place to be, so i went and and they told me you are staying in the eisenhower cabin and they couldnt believe it. I couldnt go to sleep and i poured myself a glass of wine and walked around the eisenhower cabin, which is spectacular and me thats a little white house really and the memorabilia on the walls, the books and statues and arts that your grandfather painted , i was kind of overcome in the midst of getting ready for my round the next date i realized i did not know and i covered politics a lot about the presidency of eisenhower because our generation and younger seemed like history as the focus started with kennedy going to forward and i thought to myself, is there a way to breathe life into that share that experience with younger people, so soon after their i traveled to abilene, kansas, to his library and boyhood home and thats where i talk to folks there and they said this transition well a lot of books have been written about your grandfather, that had not been focused on and his Farewell Speech i went to the library and those great folks they are brought out the box and i put on the gloves and they pulled out the plastic sheath and actuals beach he held in red in 1961 with his scribbles and markings and i got goosebumps and said this is it. Thats what im going to do. Host its so exciting to study someone whos predigital age because of this fantastic experience of the tactile experience of that. So, how long did you actually work on this book . Guest roughly three and a half years from the start to the birthing of the book and had a lot of help as far as researching and it was a labor of love in the end of. I discovered a lot and i think really, susan, its relevant to today and thats one of the things i love about the book is that it really can translate your fathers grandfathers messages. He could read that speech president obama could have read that speech the other day in his farewell address. Host in the course a most fascinated by this, where there any surprises for you, i mean, did you have a feeling by the end of this but there were some misconceptions about the way he ran the white house, the way he brought his leadership skills to public life . Guest completely. My perception of his presidency changed dramatically, i mean, i thought it was going in was always perceived in the press as this quiet time and he was a little disconnected and played a lot of golf. Host nothing wrong with that. Guest im a big proponent. I looked at it and he got us out of the korean war and hit a booming economy. First civil rights legislation since reconstruction. That Massive National highway built, the interstates we drive on today. Put, under god in the pledge of allegiance, in god we trust on the National Currency and had this amazing ability to keep us out of foreign war where we didnt need to be, yet be Strong Enough to hold off in expanding an ominous. The stat after the korean war that it really wasnt a single combat soldier killed or covert operations actually, but through the rest of your grandfathers presidency is really stunning if you think in retrospect and finally, the bipartisan nature really was something that drove me to him because the meetings he had with sam rayburn, the House Speaker or Senate Majority leader Lyndon Johnson once a week and sometimes, i mean, that is stunning if you think about recent recent president. Host i was surprised to read that myself. I knew he made a big priority of reaching out to members of congress and i knew that he had a drink with sam rayburn and Lyndon Johnson on a regular basis, but your wonderful detail about that. Guest history, really something that give us a lot. Jem haggerty press secretary. A lot of folks, his secretary and chocked full of stories. Host she is. Guest we found it documents and things that had not beens any other reason i did it was because hes the First Television president s, so for a tv agree it was a big deal. I was surprised and i did not know that before your grandfather no transcripts of News Conferences were put on the record. You could go to the News Conference and asked the president a question, but you could not quote directly from the president of the United States and you would paraphrase, so they would always have that out to say the president did not say it that way. When your grandfather came in he said forget that. Everyone had a camera. Put the transcripts on the record and that quickly evolved it to record the News Conferences with me in tv and radio and then he did the first live News Conference. The first time the American People saw their president being a was with president eisenhower and that is important to me. Host i was quite amused by the story of having makeup applied to his shiny bald head and how he founded deeply uncomfortable. How would you compare him to other president s today in terms of his comfort with the media and television in particular. Id know he was the First Television president. Guest i think he had a Good Relationship with a lot of the people who cover him, but they did like to cover that his style in answering was stilted sometimes and kind of stop and start in the kind of made fun of the way he talked about some things in a kansas rightofway kind of a way, but i think he is transparent. For example, when he had a heart attack in 1955, and hes considering whether to run again or not he says to jem haggerty put everything out. Put everything out about my health and there is this note about a week later that says dear jim, this is all fine. But, i could do without the once a day update on my bowel movements. [laughter] guest those little nuggets of humor. Host that little note is a keeper, dont you think we to exactly right. Host thats most interesting. I was also turned it to read one of his last dinners before he left office for the press corps. Guest exactly. They really loved him as a person. I dont think they fully appreciated all of the things happening behind the scenes nor did we after that as a nation until we look back and thats why this look at these three days and this speech enabled us to look through the narrative and then get back to his life. You know he was a humble leader and he, i think, got that from his tieback joe drew. Macarthur in montgomery and de gaulle in these huge figures he had to figure out how to get on the same page for dday. Host im wondering how you see the leadership, his leadership during world war ii and his leadership during the presidency were you able to connect those dots . Do you think he brought the same set of skills or did he have to learn new ones as president . Guest he had to learn new ones, but he tapped into those skills. For example the dissenting views in erring out things, he set up the National Security apparatus in the white house much like what he had is his military ability for dissenting views to happen in the buildup to dday. I think he was someone who had a steady hand on the pill and lifted people up here can empower them to do their best and gave them credit. He kind of let them have the spotlight, which is what interesting story about the Nixon Eisenhower relationship is that nixon when your grandfather says, you know, you may want to go from a cabinet position to own issues issues to be credited with changing some things knowing he was run for president and nixon sees that as he wants to just kicking off the ticket and that wasnt what we found. There was this skepticism, i think, that drew at that moment and maybe thats one of the reasons he was kept off the trail in dick nixons campaign. Nixon said it was about your grandfathers health, but i think when your grandfather gets on the trail at the end for dick nixon it turns the tide of that campaign to the point we found that kennedy talking about it and he says every day that eisenhower is on the trail i feel like im standing on a pile of sand and a wave is coming in and im sinking and im thinking and im sinking and they believe that if he was out a few more days that nixon might have won that election. Host thats the big controversies is that . Guest it is. Host about linux and did not use eisenhower. In the eisenhower family there was some discussion whether or not i can was ever asked her whether health was the issue. Guest exactly. Host its unusual for the common Vice President to be elected as it . Guest it is. I mean, Vice President gore did something similar with bill clinton obviously different circumstances that he was tried to distance himself from all that clinton controversy, but at the same time clinton was a great campaigner. He did not use him and then kind of deal if you look back at history perhaps might have been better for Richard Nixon to own an issue and jump from something. Host of all of our next relationship with other great men which do you think was the most intriguing . I almost wrote the book on the relationship between your grandfather and churchill and the letters that they some backandforth and i think there is a lot to explore that i just did not go down, but its there at the library and they really valued each other in the world and i thought that was most intriguing. I do think the relationship with kennedys rec complex. We talk about it here, you know, this book stars with president elect kennedy meeting president eisenhower at the election and are they are talking the oval office and ends with president elect tromp meeting president obama in the oval office, so the relevance is there. Eisenhower from what we found didnt think there was a lot to kennedy, that he was kind of hollow, young and might have a lot of experience and what he said on the trail specifically the us missile gap charge that the soviets were turning out missiles like sausages and the us was not injured grandfather knew that not to be true and yet he still used it and that made your grandfather very upset. He finally meet him and in this meeting we have great to tell from both sides. Eisenhowers wearing preston said to himself, you know, maybe the American People got this right there is a lot to this guy, but what concerned is him most is that he didnt like kennedy the National Secure apparatus that was set up for dissenting views and that comes back about a month later in the cuba situation. Host obviously, campaigns were not ike favorite National Pastime in the sense that he found politicking and what politicians are forced are willing to do, not so inspiring sometimes. Were you surprised by that . He had some natural charm and ability to connect with people. Guest he did i mean obviously he had that huge smile, megawatt smile. He did not like to campaign clearly, but he was good at it because he was relatable i talk about him as a humble leader and i love this story after world war ii comes back for the tickertape parade in new york and back to abilene and hes in the car waiting and everyone is cheering and someone turns to your greatgrandmother and says you must be so proud of your son and she says which one. [laughter] guest which one of the six, so that can view a sense of grounding growing up as an eisenhower as he did and i think that reflected itself later on in how he conducted himself. Host in your book you made the comment that Mimi Eisenhower did not want to know what party people came from when they came to the white house. You might say nonpartisan streak in his governance. Guest really, nonideological, more practical. Figured out you have to deal with the other party no matter what they said about you on the campaign trail, which is the beauty of how he deals with sam rayburn and Lyndon Johnson and in the absence of passing the national highway bill that was so amazing he had a temper and he tried to deal with it. I love and whitmans story, the secretary where she says he went in the back in the south lawn to swing the club and he did that a lot to clear his mind and he came back and he was so angry because there were squirrels in his back screen every time he went back there were squirrels everywhere so she said mr. President , they have every right to be there just like you do end one day he tells the secret service to take all the squirrels off the white house lawn and transfer them to rock creek park. Thats what the little gem stories. Host sure helps to be in charge not everyone else can have the squirrels sent into exile. I think you very artfully talk about some of the principles that guided his presidency from the decisionmaking and his view of the situation about domestically and internationally. What struck you most in terms of being a contemporary way of looking at this challenge . Guest he articulated this in the Farewell Speech, this caution, this balance, this want and need to not jump two things, to really act when you have to, that paperweight on his desk, silent in manner strong in deed. I think it was all about getting things done and not dealing with personalities, not being personal and i think thats related throughout. I found a lot of examples of leadership style that he didnt steer it. He said you dont have to hit people over the head to be a leader, you have to empower them to do their job and thats how he looked at it. To go back to the cuban missile crisis, another controversial thing that we really dug into to try to find how that played out, so he tells kennedy about the National Security apparatus and how important it is. There is a operation in planning stages but your grandfather says theres a stipulations that have to be met and he makes it clear to kennedy on the first meeting he says one, there has to be a cuban exile government ready to go off site. To number two, there has to be a leader thats able to take over for castro and three there needs to be significant air power to support these operators operatives we are training. It was in its infancy when he leaves and kennedy moves forward, the whole thing moves forward anything is a disaster, obviously. The first person kennedy calls as your grandfather and gets him out to camp david and its this iconic thing going up the path and this quote as confirmed by both is kennedy turns to eisenhower and said, you know, you never really know how tough this job is until you are in it and your grandfather turns with his kansas smile and says, mr. President , with all due respect i think i told you that three months ago and in retrospect the kennedy folks understandably look back at that time differently and say that operation was already going and he just moved it forward, but there were very specific things your grandfather said that had to happen that did not happen and in the fact that air cover was called off the last minute by president kennedy because he did not want the world to know the us was involved and your grandfather said the world will know host you hosted a wonderful documentary last night with the same title of your book and Doug Brinkley made the point that the green knight had not been given by the eisenhower administration. Actually, use rose in the planning process. Do you think part of that is misunderstanding between the military mind at work and civilian mind in other words you would have any number of contingencies ready to go so that the president always had options . Guest zero course and i think that is lost in time. That is lost in the years that have gone by, so its kind of molded into this storyline that obviously fit the kennedy folks to be able to talk about this as an operation that he moved forward, but there were clear stipulations at your grandfather made that he did not follow. Host and had not actually decided to go ahead. So, im curious about there are other wonderful speeches he gives, one of them was called, it was the one to the press club, cross of iron thats often referred to in a way it sort of a book into the farewell address. What was it about the farewell address aside from the balance . You duo very well job of handling the industrial complex, but well is about the speech that you thought particularly relevant today . Guest first, i too, was two years it to the most two years for him thinking about his ending message. Thats a long time and 21 drafts. He worked it and worked it and worked it you know it was your grandfather who wrote for macarthur. People dont know that. They think his style and News Conferences was halting, but he was eloquent writer and editor, so his ability to be a wordsmith perhaps was better than his ability to proliferate, but he could craft it and he really took his time to craft this, which tells you how significant he thought that moment was, so it was not home about his listed compliment a commerce reds or him. It was about a blueprint for america, his concerns and warnings about not only that militaryindustrial complex and foreign intervention, but says we cant mortgage our grandchildrens future, i mean, how relevant is that today . Host i love that line, by the way. Guest i mean, if you look at that, again could deliver that today, bipartisanship. Figure out what you can get done together before you argue about what you cant and i think there were a lot of messages that were not about him. If i may, one thing we do not include in the book was bob, his speechwriter Just Brilliant and we talked to him the documentary and he said at the time i was in technology thats where was in every draft had to retype spice eisenhowers secretary at your grandfather was editing all the time and so she tried to preempt things by getting out to the speechwriters ahead of time. Baba gave us this letter which was from her to bob. First, do not use the word marriage as a verb. Use it only as a noun. Second, never use the pronoun i at the beginning of two consecutive paragraphs. Third, this morning a mild grumble from the boss on you using to adjectives, warm, best wages wishes. Bob, clearly you can make wishes warm or you can make them best, but you should not make them warm best. Number four, never take it for granted that president know something about a national organization. Sam happy to learn or i understand that. Said, the construction of not only, but also is fine bob in its place, but please bob not in every message, please. Six the common this is the one i love she had to retype a lot of these drafts on this one particular thing. Look bob, every time you use the word appreciation you follow it with the word for, havent you noticed the boss consistently changes that to be appreciation of, so, please, for my sake for god sake, bob when you use the word appreciation never follow it with four use the word of. Ego speck of what makes arguments to heard she said i just looked at the president spoke and i see he has free time it 2 30 p. M. This afternoon, would you like to come over next line this to him and he said no. Bob is leaving the white house and he gets his picture signed by your grandfather. To robert, with best wishes and with lasting appreciation of valuable service in the white house, dwight d eisenhower. Host thats hysterical. Guest those kind of things are just precious and thats why i love it. Host will it be so easy to write a book about future president s so much as done by email now and little bits of paper and all those things . Guest no. It will be more tough and probably not as rich as what we were able to find it after all of these years, but i really do think breathing life into that time is important. Dedication of the book as you saw, the first pages to our son paul and daniel and their generation. Please allow history to inform your decisions in the future. Host thats an interesting question. I have a group of students at college, i have a yearlong seminar and i was trying to think of how you might talk to the undergraduate population. What would you say is ike is greatest legacy or his key legacy . Guest he has a lot of them, but i think the ability to work with others, the ability to keep the country safe and the fact that hes underappreciated after all of these years. It suggests we have more to learn, so that gives you a sense that we need to learn more about our history because if you look at that speech and you replace radical islamic terrorism for the expanding soviet union and you could talk deficits now, now the dentist 20 trillion and that it was in the billions. In all partisanship arguably this past president could have done a lot of different if he had met even once a month with leaders from the hill, so i would tell them look backwards. Always look forward, but dont forget to look backwards at where we have been. Host do you have any predictions of how some of these principles might be brought to bear in the next four years . Obviously its not just the president who has to adopt a certain key ways of operating, but congress is a huge factor here as is our supreme court, divided system, after all. Guest there are some similarities here and mean obviously your grandfather was really popular figure, but it was outside politics, so he had name recognition, not a politician. Donald trump is someone that fits that bill. Your father was nonideological, more practical. People say that is exactly donald a trumpet is. Your father valued businessman, his cabinet was called 8 million errors and eight plumber because he had businessman from the outside, co ngm and others in the labor secretary was head of the Plumbers Association in his first term, but a similar appreciation obviously different that he kept general thought of his cabinet because he himself a great a general in the talented project that, but the practical nature of getting things across the finish line no matter party, some of his biggest fights were with his own party and i think that thats possible that we will see that going forward. I think on the National Security side and a russia and the appreciation for the geopolitical sense of things your father was obviously much different and much more cautious and i think he would offer President Trump the same advice he gave incoming two incoming president kennedy and that is what the dissenting views and experts fight it out in front of you. Learn everything you can. Take every briefings and then make a decision was asked the other day what your grandfather would say about twitter and i said first of all he would say what is twitter and then he would say get off of it probably because he believed less is more and the words that come out of the oval office particularly carry such weight and importance. Thats why he did all of the scribbling and editing and a changing. Speechwriters called and said it looked like a dozen chickens with dirty feet had gone over the script or their transcripts. Thats what he believed everything that came out of that office was important. Host did that strike you as micromanaging or did you think he was try to get something bigger . Guest i think he was bigger and mean hand in his mind what he wanted to do it ultimately his job was to determine how he would deliver that message. Best speechwriters can be the mind of the president and he was showing them what that was eventually there were fewer drops at the end. Host thats interesting. Even bob demonstrated that he learned a few things about how the president likes to end. Guest with his secretarys guidance. Host thats right. You have focus now on this book, actually very interesting times, so i think this book has more residents than ever, but the militaryindustrial complex as you pointed out last night on television has been quoted by many people for many decades. What you think it is about that speech by keeps bringing people back to it . Guest well, a lot of people have taken that line and adopted it as their own and they dont pick it was really fully appreciated the line and context in the speech. Host exactly. Guest your grandfather was concerned about this, obviously the world war ii industry that had turned its efforts to produce for the war and continued and continued to produce and lobbyists and money that flowed into lawmakers that impacted policy on capitol hill. People who were in government left their positions and to those companies and it was a circle. A batch of circle is still turning today even more furiously, perhaps. I thought it was really telling that your grandfather was so upset when he saw ads in life magazine for missiles, you know, things that go to the home that were advertising and hell get so angry and the fact that he wanted to call it the militaryindustrial scientific congressional complex tows you that there were multiple concerns in his mind that it was this thing that was separate of government, but churning its own policy continually. I think those messages are really valid today, drain the swamp is essentially what the militaryindustrial complex is. Dont have this establishment that is not working for the mac of people. That has this own policy agenda with money behind it and i think that is a message that resonates not only with voters, but inside washington i think you will see currently the trump people say there is an intelligence industrial complex, i mean, thats their talking point now about what they believe is a polarization i mean, a partisanship with the leaders of intelligence. Intel people obviously push back pretty hard, but we are dealing with the same kind of broad issues, the complex if you will. Host well, we already period where we are all for ourselves try to identify exactly what piece of the system is not working at optimum levels because the public is concerned about the direction of the country, i mean, this is one of the reasons it was such a close election. What you think eisenhower would say about the difficulties we are facing today . Guest i think he would take the ball, you know . I think he would be the one who would try to unify. I think just judging by his past, i mean, i asked a couple of the people we interviewed would you think eisenhower would do today and all of them said he would solve it. You know, he would get you would figure how to get there, unify and move on, i mean, he doesnt get credited for a lot of the civil rights things that obviously later president s took that baton and went forward. The fact that he got that legislation across the line and the fact he had the action he did i think is worth noting. He was a doer and i dont think hes credited in the history books of being a doer president. I think most people look back at his time in general and i think it could be a part some of your grandfathers wishes, i mean, when he leads leads to tell president kennedy who was struck, he said why do you want to become a general again and he said his wishes were kennedy to get congress to pass a bill reinstating him as a fivestar general as his title and kennedy says why would you want that and he said i want to die as a military man and they do. They pass the bill, kennedy signs and he becomes general eisenhower and as you know is it buried in his uniform. Host did i tell you that was the only document he had it in his office that was hanging on the wall in his retirement . Guest is that right . Host the letter that kennedy signed with the reestablishment of his commission. Guest i mean, the importance of that and that kind of value and patriotism is sometimes missing in todays environment. Host you said one thing on your documentary and i hope everyone has an opportunity to see the documentary again as its very well done, but i was interested in you hit the nail on the head about doing things for a longer period of time, playing for the long game. In civil rights, for instance, his judicial appointments would be an example where you would necessarily see the fruits of it immediately, but putting a judges who against segregation into districts in the south played out over a longer period of time. Having said that, what you think are the parts of his president ial policies that have lasted the longest . Guest first of all i think that is exactly right, which is why it was so right on when goldstein, political scientist said your grandfathers leadership style was the hidden hand, you know is a bridge player the hidden hand no one knows what cards he has until the game is over. You know, and he puts them out there. You are right, the long game was a huge part of his leadership style. I think the longest lasting thing was the bipartisanship to get that Infrastructure Project through, set the table for the ability to realize the big things can get done with both parties and i think that was a big deal and i think his interaction with the soviet union and how he did it opened at the ball door to a lot of the diplomacy that changed and not political structure in europe. Host can you imagine inviting Vladimir Putin to the United States for 10 days . Guest i think we should imagine it. You never know. [laughter] guest thats also relevant because obviously that comes into focus right now. I think he was a lot like bloody rip them in the he acts in the way hes nice and not nice and everyone at the beginning of their administration either wants a reset or look into their eyes and i see the soul of the man, i mean, president bush, president obama with Hillary Clinton and now, we are on our third reset. There is this want to do that. Eisenhower seemed to do it the best up until the u2 spy plane that kind of changed everything. Host it did. Interestingly, apparently creature christophe tried to mend fences and the following 1960, but it was new to lay. New administration was coming in. Guest and his grandson. Host yes he has added so much to American Life as a resident of rhode island. Guest it was great to have his voice in the mix. If i may, im humbled by some historians that have weighed in on this and this is jay winnick, magnificently rendered bret baier three days in january is destined to take its place as one of the masterworks on ike, but a classic of president ial history. This is too littleknown, but remarkable story with drama, power and enduring lessons of leadership today, impeccably researched and the book is nothing short of extraordinary. When these people weigh in. Host congratulations. Guest im honored, but i really think it mean something bigger like it means that there is some lasting thing in here. Michael said, as general and president wide eisenhower as one of the greatest leaders in American History and bret baier book is a valuable contribution to our appreciation of ike, describing some of his most important qualities, which are so needed in the public figures of our own era and finally douglas brinkley, bret baier three days in january brilliantly illuminates the genius and intrigue behind eisenhowers historic barrel address deeply researched he dissects back from myth, a landmark achievement in us president ial history. Host you are being way too modest because i thought the book was terrific myself and when i say you are being too modest, you really did a way very long career into a very readable book, so i think thats all well deserved. Having said that, im fascinated by your comment that it may mean something bigger and what you think the bigger thing is . Guest well, i just think that if the next generation could read Something Like this and be intrigued by it in the form that it is, the kind of narrative and it brings to life a president that i just know people havent focused on, i think that that enables us to learn the lessons from that time and maybe the next leader who is in his teens right now or her teens i should point out may be those things stick with someone to the point where they think about it when they are are a person with their hand on the bible and will lead this country down the road and thats really the reason. Host it strikes me that a lot of what people havent done characteristically in the book is put the war and the presidency together, but guest i should talk about, it was him. It was who he was, i mean, host what influences do you think the war had on his presidency . Guest here is a man who ran the war effort who most craved peace. Strived for it. It goes to show you that for all of the people who say that military men would be warmongers or we have to be careful about a general in a civilian clothes, the real issue is the other way, someone that doesnt see the front lines of war and i was struck by when he goes to meet with the 101st airborne before dday and each individual shoulder Army Paratrooper he meets with and it talks to them and asks them questions about their hometown and he was impressed with the size and scope of the military, but he said its the size of the fight in the dog, not the dog and he believed that america was about the spirit inside and i think it drove who he was. Military was a big part of his life. Host certainly was. He had a special fondness for the 121st and 82nd, disney . Guest he sure did. If i may ask you one question and thank you for your quite on the book as well. It means a lot to have the family way in and we didnt talk before i started this. Host not at all. Guest i kind of discovered it and im honored to have you question me here. What is your thought looking back . Host well, i think the war did have a very big impact on me it was devastating really when you think about it. Its hard to tell the Younger Generation how transformative world war ii was in the mind of the generation that fought it, the immediate generation after that. May be my generation, we come up with it and not necessarily coming from him. It was everywhere, so this deep desire not to get into fights all of the world, you know, that might not end up the way they started. He didnt believe in in a manageable war, things that started out as small things could get the big things really fast and in the atomic age that meant Something Else altogether. You deal with the atomic question quite a lot in your book. I guess in generations can have a hard time understanding the duck and cover drill. Guest shelters. Host bomb shelters and all of that, but was there anything about the nuclear part of your book that surprised you or well, you were a pentagon correspondent so you already know a lot about weapons. Guest i guess surprise what surprised we was how much it was on your grandfathers shoulders at all times, ever present because he saw the scope and power and deadliness of that weapon and he knew if the world didnt get control of it that it was going to be devastating and the world potentially. I think that the story about him meeting with bipartisan leaders and they are talking about homing missiles they will make that year and back and forth for five minutes in your grandfather comes in and slams his hand on the table and says how many times do we have to kill a man because he knew we had many times more missiles needed to destroy the world, so it drove him for the peace speech at the United Nations and drove him to reach out to the soviets and thats what made him give the warning he did to his successor, president kennedy. Host maybe thats the thing thats hardest to convey to Younger Generations. I once gave a speech to a group of women from ages 18 to 70 and i had spent a fair amount of my career on arms control policy, focused on Nuclear Issues and i described the number of reductions and now, we will only blow up the worlds seven times instead of a 15 and this little girl in the back room raised her hand and she said i have a question, why wasnt once enough and so there was a kind of ideological part in a way to the cold war. How do you think we are going to explain this in the future to young people . Guest it will take some work because its not easy to explain. Its a something that doesnt happen and thats not easy to put on a chart or a video or something. So, thats the brilliance of your grandfathers presidency is that in one of the most dangerous times no one knew it was a dangerous time. It was a happy time for someone in middle america, i mean, the show happy days goes back to the 50s and it was a dangerous time. We were on the precipice of not knowing what was that happen. As i go around the country its unbelievable in these book signings, people come up who have had personal experiences with your grandfather. This is president eisenhowers guard who brought me pictures from all different that i had not seen, state dinners. Host what fun. Guest and i met someone who landed on the beach at normandy. Host is that right . Guest just the other day and hit wanted to come up and he had read the book and to someone else who dealt with your families finances after he had put them in a trust. Host blinded trust. Guest yes. He came up and said it was a real honor every time i contracted with them. It is also a pleasure for me to meet those folks that had a connection. Host i went to tell you a quick story. One gentleman came up to me and he had been on granddads Cardiology Team at walter reed in the last years of his life and they discovered every time Arnold Palmer played golf that ike Blood Pressure went up so they had a big conference as to whether or not they should continue to allow him to watch Arnold Palmer and i guess the doctors reluctant reluctantly concluded that his life was going to an end anyway, so they would allow him to continue to follow his friend on the golf course. Of that was a good one. Guest classic. Host it is. Guest as a golfer and love that connection as well. He clearly had a love them for the and i have a friend at some auction somewhere there was a plank of wood from the oval office and it had cleats marks from your grandfather. Host between the squirrels in the cleats marks. What you think off did for him because we are always critical when president obama goes on a golfing trip or president take some time off . Guest this news anchor never was. Host thats good. Guest there was a lot of criticism about how much he played golf. I dont begrudge any president for playing golf because i know it frees the mind and enabled her grandfather, you talked about it, to focus, to be outside and appreciate nature, but to be able to clear his mind of what was going on. President obama speaks of it saying i havent looked at the number of rounds host we will have to keep a tally. Guest President Trump to be is a golfer, hes a good golfer, but he will probably call as well and i think its interesting that president s play golf. Host did ike use golfing much to bond or interact with his colleagues . Guest he did. Host was he a quiet golfer . Guest no, no, he called, told stories on the course and played over burning tree here locally. The joke on capitol hill was that if eisenhower was golfing the world is in a good place and i think he was always connected, but he had those moments that he got away and augusta was his very special friend of. Host yes, it was. Guest had you been there . Host i took my first golfing was sent out a gust as i could go out on the go course with him and after one short round i thought golfing is probably not my future, so i tried Something Else after that. Guest my wife says on the six hole she will say do you ever get bored playing golf and i say never. Host thats right. You have had a great experience of meeting people who come up at your various events and you have had this tremendous feedback from the Historic Community and congratulations again. I love asking people about surprises, so i cant help myself. Has there been any surprise while you but on the book tour . Guest yeah, im surprised at how many people didnt know anything about eisenhower, i mean, im talking anything. They knew he was a general, i mean, very low bar and after reading it had this renaissance of his role, so im surprised about that. Im surprised at how much attention its getting because i think history books sometimes they can get lumped into this will be a chore to read, this is kind of the narrative page turner that i think will be fun to read. You could read it on the beach, but learn something and im surprised about that. Im happy. Im really excited about going back out to abilene. I will be there february 2. People there have been really spectacular. They are the reason that i ended up with this topic and theyve been tremendously supportive. Of the researcher i worked with, Catherine Whitney worked with me, tremendous. Host it certainly helps understand his origins and his worldview and again, its a treasure trove isnt it, that library . Guest its amazing, i mean, you could find something you all the time i mean if like i said of some aspiring author out there with churchill letters sitting there and its ripe for someone to dig into that relationship. Host so, you have actually both the war years in president ial years at this library, so its really a wonderful focus on both world war ii and the cold war. Guest hard to believe that there is still stuff thats classified that you have to go through the channels to get it the classified. Host did they ask you to file a freedom of information act request . Guest i had to go through all of the chains, through the process, but we found some Amazing Things and people talking even your grandfather talking that had not been really mind before. Host that was one of his request to his family as he neared the end of his life he said please try to get those archives open and get them declassified as quickly as possible. Guest he was about transparency , i mean, clearly he made from the time he started in office and obviously afterwards, so from a journalist we welcome that. Host exactly. Well, this is an amazing opportunity to have the chance to talk to someone who has read as so many accounts and gone through these files i hope you saw the Queen Elizabeth file where she actually gives him her gives him some of her cooking recipes because of course, he was the cook, which really sort of rearrange your brain doesnt . But, its a wonderful book you have written here. We have a little more time and i would like to just ask you to see if you can summarize, if you will, what i should say the research did for your better understanding of the eisenhower years, but also what is added to the way you look at our challenges today. Guest i think with the research what he told me is that we have a lot we can learn from the past. I think that our current leaders can look back and say this happened before. This is a dangerous time. This handover is in very dangerous time. The world is watching at this moment as we hand over to the next president , but the world was watching as the 34th tended to the 35th as well and i think that, i think what eisenhower would say on a number of fronts is that the steady hand on the till, not to be over the top, not to be, let all the use work inside the white house. It sounds cliche, but he did do it. He enabled those people to speak out about various views on any issue. He had this opendoor policy. He said, if some congressman or senator once and make sure they get time i mean think about that. I dont know if that is possible today with all of the things we deal with, but he had an open door policy. You know, i think there are differences, obviously with technology has gone to a much different place, but there are truths that come through from the 34th to the 45th host thank you very much. Guest thank you. Host a really has been a pleasure. Guest thank you. This weekend on American History tv on cspan3, this morning at 9 30 a. M. We are lie from the library of virginia in richmond for an allday symposium on civil war monuments, the history of their construction in the north and south and how Public Perception of confederate monuments has a change. At 8 00 a. M. Lectures in history Hampton Sydney College professor on how the rise of tobacco consolidated the power of wealthy virginia planters and london merchants in the 17th century. Instead of accepting the price that this random ship captain might have to offer i will then send this tobacco to england on my own account and im going to pay a commission to someone to market there for me. This a developing consignment trade ties larger planters in virginia and maryland to these english merchants, both in london. Sunday at noon on oral history, we continue with our series of interviews with prominent africanamerican women from explorations in black leadership oral history collection, Dorothy Height served as president of the National Council of negro women from 8057 to 1968 and received the president ial medal of freedom. I grew up and even in my religious experiences working with people of different religious backgrounds with a feeling of importance of openness and how much each one of us contributes to the other and their spouse appear your order. At 8 00 p. M. On the presidency Catherine Clinton talks about what happened to president lincolns family after his assassination. The morning of may 19, convinced his mother might do herself harm and prodded by a team of medical and legal experts Robert Lincoln filed an affidavit to have his mother tried on charges of mental and competence. She could be held against her will do to quote insanity. For our complete American History tv schedule go to cspan. Org. You are watching book tv on cspan2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. Book tv, television for serious readers. This weekend on the tv on cspan2 we have 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books. On afterwards the late Trayvon Martins appearance remember their sons life. This weekend marks the fifth anniversary of his death. Also, David Horwitz weighs in on what should be President Trumps Top Priorities and Harvard History professor provides a history of civil wars from around the world. Plus, university of delaware history of
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