Transcripts For CSPAN3 Writing Presidential Biographies 20160824

100 years ago, president Woodrow Wilson signed the bill creating the National Park service and thursday we look back on the past century of these caretakers of americas natural and historic treasures. Beginning at 10 00 eastern and throughout the day we take you to National Park Service Sites across the country as recorded by cspan. At 7 00 p. M. Eastern, were live from the National Park services most visited historic home, arlington house, the robert e. Lee memorial at Arlington National cemetery. Join us with your phone calls as we talk with robert stanton, former National Park service director, and brandon buys, the former arlington house site manager who will oversee the upcoming yearlong restoration of the matching, slave quarters and grounds. Thursday, the 100th anniversary of the National Park service live from arlington house at 7 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv on cspan 3. Up next on the presidency, historians jon meacham, Annette Gordon reid and ron chernow talk about the process of writing a president ial biography. Theyve written about George Washington, Andrew Jackson, ulysses s. Grant, Franklin Roosevelt and george h. W. Bush. This was part of a centennial symposium hosted by the george w. Bush president ial center. Its just over an hour. Thank you. Okay, thats enough. Laura and i want to welcome you, ken and his wife julie whos the new president of the boosh center and all of us who work here are thrilled youre here. I must confess ive got mixed emotions. One im thrilled to be a part of this, two im very disappointed that youre not here to give me the pulitzer for the book i wrote. [ laughter ] by the way, every Good Organization needs a Pulitzer Prize recipient on their staff. And here at the bush center we have one in Bill Mckenzie and were fortunate that bill is a part of our team. [ applause ] thank you very much, kevin, for convincing us to join you in hosting this. Its very exciting for the bush center that youre here and all the members of the Pulitzer Prize board as well as representatives from 41s library and i forgot lbjs number. [ laughter ] looking forward to the performances that will take place here in a little bit and as a history buff im thrilled that Annette Gordon reid, ron chernow and jon meacham are here to be interviewed. [ applause ] at any rate, in order to get my book reconsidered [ laughter ] i thought i would share an anecdote with you. So i was tasked to it didnt require much tasks iing, by the way, to talk about Vladimir Putin about the necessities to have a free press in order for this society to be a wholesome and vibrant society. He adjust suspended the independent press. And informs slovakia. I couldnt identify it during the debates. [ laughter ] so i said vladimir, really important that if you want to join those of us who realize the benefits of a free society that you have a vibrant press and he looked at me and said youre a hypocrite, you fired the famous news man z. That kind of took me a i back and i said what the hell are you talking about, man . He said you know what im talking about, you fired the news man. I said are you talking about dan rather . He said yeah. I said well, you dont understand, vladimir. In our society the press is independent from the politicians, as it should be. The job of the press in a froe society is to hold people whove got power to account and youre going to need that if youre going to have a vibrant society and i said whatever you do at the press conference were about to have, make sure you dont say that, that i fired the famous news man, because the people in our country are going to think youre ignorant, that you dont know what youre talking about. So sure enough we have the press conference. First question, moscow times, mr. President putin, did president bush talk to you about a free press in russia . And, if so, did you bring up the fact that he fired the famous news man . [ laughter ] at any rate, i want to thank the press for what you do and my relationship with the press was cordial because i understand the similymbiotic relationship. You need me and i needed you and it was a you know, i dont miss much about washington but i will tell you that the intellectual stimulation from dealing with a vibrant and free press was a very important part of the job. At any rate, thank you for coming and i hope you enjoy the evening. [ applause ] now, in a moment im going ask all the Pulitzer Prize winners with us tonight to stand and be recognized for their great work. But first id like to recognize one winner in particular whose work has special relevance to the theme of this twoday marquee, the people, the presidency, and the press. Think back to 1963 and a remarkably composed photographer that crystalized a historic moment. Actually, there were two remarkable photos. The one by Dallas Times Herald photographer bob jackson was snapped a fraction of a second later than the one by the Dallas Morning News photographer and as a result it captured the grimace on Lee Harvey Oswalds face as the bullet from jack rubys gun penetrated oswalds gut. To quote the denver post in a story about the prize winning photograph, jacksons photo has maintained the command that photojournalism always has and still does the capability of telling a full story by freezing time. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Pulitzer Prize winning photographer bob jackson who flew in from his home in colorado to be with us here tonight. [ applause ] and now id like to ask all the Pulitzer Prize winners who with with us here tonight to stand and be recognized for their great work. [ applause ] steve benson, please remain standing for a moment. [ laughter ] steve is a prizewinning editorial cartoonist for the Arizona Republic in phoenix and a witty and prolific spot cartoonist who will be covering these events over the next couple of days and some of you as well. Littleknown fact about steve, hes a graduate of Richardson High School right here in north texas. [ applause ] so please taken a opportunity to introduce yourself to steve during the intermissions tonight and tomorrow and at lunch tomorrow and take a look at the cache of sketches he will be developing through the the program. [ laughter [ laughter ] now its my pleasure to invite the president and ceo of the george w. Bush president ial center to the podium to introduce our first panel discussion. Mr. Ken hirsch. [ applause ] thank you very much, kevin. The performance of from the dallas theater center, i want to thank joel farrell who is the associate artistic director of the center, all the performers for that treat. I also have to thank the beautiful woman julie hersh who had nothing to do with the performance but we have to recognize her for her attendance this evening. [ applause ] i was born at night but not last night. So the bush center is a special place. This is my first week on the job so its a little bit humbling to present tonight a very, very humbling panel. But before i do i want to thank even more than the Pulitzer Prize or as much as the Pulitzer Prize winners who are with us tonight the absolute wonderful Public Servants who have helped and served this country in so many different capacities. I want to welcome and thank for being here haley barbour, the former governor of mississippi, general michael hayden, the former director of the nsa and cia under president bush, secretary leon panetta, former director of the cia and secretary of defense and ambassador mark lang dale who is also on the board of the bush president ial center. Thank you for being here tonight and thank you for your service. [ applause ] through this event, the Pulitzer Prizes mark historical significant work and recognize great contributions that helped tell the past and shape the future. Here at the puch sebush center k about that everyday. The mission is the motivate, develop leaders, foster policy and take action and we do that around key areas like economic growth, education reform, human freedom and democracy, womens empowerment, military service and wellness and transition and understand that what our job here is to use the power of this platform to convene, to amplify and make an impact on very, very important issues of the day. And it served that purpose and my role is to help build connections between that mission and the broader communities. The communities of dallas, of smu, of texas, of the United States and the world. It is a humbling task but in the first week its an absolutely fantastic one so thank you all for helping me start this journey. Of course when we study the p t past, the president s have a lot to do with it and were honored to have some of the most esteemed voices join in telling and describing the history of what the presidency and the press are all about. And as president bush said, the strong press is not and a free press is not something that we talk about only in emerging economies. Its something thats very, very vital to the very foundation of our democracy. So to have this great panel is a real, real pleasure and id invite them out on the stage now as i introduce them. Ron chernow is one of the most distinguished commentators of history, politics, business, and finance in america today. His book washington, a life won the Pulitzer Prize in biography in 2011. In 2009, mr. Chernows work with Linmanuel Miranda on the Pulitzer Prize winning Broadway Musical hamilton which was inspired by his biography of alexander hamilton. Annette gordon reid is the Charles Warren professor of american legal history at Harvard Law School and a professor of history in the faculty of arts and sciences at harvard university. She won the Pulitzer Prize in history in 2009 for the hemmings of monticello, an american family. Her fourth coming back the most blessed of patriarch, Thomas Jefferson we all look forward to. Jon meacham is a president ial historian, contributing editor at time and executive Vice President and executive editor at random house. His book american lion, Andrew Jackson and the white house won the Pulitzer Prize in biography in twine. Most significant to this audience may be his justpublished book destiny in power, the american oodsy of George Herbert walker bush. And our moderator is the director of the lbj president ial library in austin and author of four books on the presidency, hes an analyst for abc news on matters relating to politics and the presidency and hes written for countless publications. Thanks to each of you in attendance for making this a special evening and a special event today and tomorrow and please welcome our panelists to discuss president ial biographies, the challenge then and now. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you,. Its a pleasure to moderate this panel. Lets start with president ial icons Like Washington and jefferson and lincoln, its pretty welltrodden territory for biographers. For washington alone there are 900 biography, fullpledged biographies so ill ask each of you, when youre tackling a mammoth subject like a George Washington or a Thomas Jefferson or an andrew jack so, where do you start . Jon, lets start with you. Oh, sure, thanks, pick on me. Well, i was misinformed, like casablanca, i didnt know there was other books. [ laughter ] so i called annette, she didnt tell me. So that was kind of upsetting. Lau i have two tests. Someone do i feel that there is a place in the scholarly and popular conversation for an argument about that person. And, in fact, this is wonderful that were here with ron because one of the reasons i wrote about jefferson was that ron had kind of surrounded jefferson both from hamilton and washingtons perspective, our friend David Mccullough had done john adams and i think jefr son was sort of had been more of a foil and supporting character in the broad historiography of the last decade or so so i thought there was a place to talk about jefferson on his own terms. Then i always try, as we all do, to make as much use of archives and new archives as you can so you can justify a new look. What about you, annette . Where do you start . Every generation of historians asks different questions about the subject and jefferson, i think, is the most interesting man in the world. I mean, there are so many aspects of his life and weve learned so much more about him. Slavery at monticello, his political life and so forth. So there was a life to be rediscovered from a lot of the information that had always been present but had never been looked at so there are always new things about jefferson because there were so many aspects to his life. Its not just the politics, it could be music, art, all kinds of things and because of the declaration of independence its a continuing story in the american saga, every generation, every group of people who tries to make their base in the american nation uses the declaration. People around the world do it so its a font of information, font of questions so theres just it was no question for me about whether or not theres something to say about him because we ask different questions depending upon the answers that we want to have today. What about you . You mentioned 900 fullscale biographies of George Washington. Do you read them . Where did you start . Well, i have to say, mark, a lot of my socalled friends kept asking me why i wanted to perpetrate number 901 on the world and was that necessary . I think you do a biography either because you have new information or you feel you can do a fresh portrait of the important and i have this epiphany when i was working on hamilton that came during the revolutionary war wenham ill on the, who is washingtons aidedecamp had a feud with washington and hamilton realized that he had just justify this decision to quit washingtons staff. He had to justify this decision to his fatherinlaw who was a close friend of washington so he sat down and wrote a letter to his fatherinlaw that said the great man and i have come to an open rupture. She sha he shall for once at least repent of his ill humor. And i remember that line, he shall for once at least repent of his ill humor kept reverberating in my mind. I had this image of the saintly George Washington and suddenly hamilton is giving me the sense of this volatile powder keg of boss and hamilton tended to pen perceptive portraits of people. Hed been working with washington everyday for several years at that time and so i thought to myself washington seemingly the most familiar person in our history, could bit he was the most unfamiliar in some way . And that was my opening wedge and it kind of pried hope for me a whole world into his inner emotion which is were intense and volatile because he was only seen as this kind of man of marble, a stolid phlegmatic person and he wasnt at all. Ron. We talked you said something that stuck with me. You said great figures in history can carry the weight of their flaws. How do you ensure when youre writing about those figures that youre presenting a balanced portrait . I find as i go on with the biograp biography, particularly if i feel this is going to be an admiring biography i go out of my way to put every unpleasant fact about the character in the book. My greatest fear is either a reader of viewer saying of course chernow came up with an admiring portrait of hamilton, he didnt mention a, b, c, and d. I want to make sure a, b, c, and d are in there and if its a great figure he or she will carry the weight of their defects and one thing that happened with the hamilton show. There were a lot of producers that say the protagonist has to be sympathetic. Hamilton really tests the sympathy of the audience, hes involved in a sex scandal, he encourages his son to go off on a duel in which his son dies so all sorts of flaws but what i discovered watching the audiences reaction is that they ended per doxally having more admiration for him because we had humanized him. And i have the same experience. When i finished the washington biography i sent a copy to jim reese who was then the president of mount vernon and i said jim, before you read this i want to tell you that 150 page into this you may feel this is a negative portrait of George Washington when he was young. He was often rather crass and pushy and money conscious and status conscious. And i tried to have all of that in there. And jim wrote back a very thoughtful letter to me and he said ron, im so glad you were completely unsparing in this portrait of washington. He said the main problem with have with a million plus people who come to mount vernon every year, he seems like a plaster saint and hence unreal and boring. The most important thing to humanize him and when you humanize someone then their accomplishments seem that much greater because the reader can identify that this khark sister a person that has the same sorts of problems they did. And if you care about the person. I became interested in jefferson when i was in the third grade in texas. Im a texan, i should say. [ applause ] shameless. Shameless, shameless, and shameless. If you care about the person theres no reason to write for me to write something thats not realistic and if you care about the individual and you think that that persons life says something to an audience and its worth spending your time working on, theres no point in doing an unrealistic picture. You want everything there in order to take the measure of the person. You have to have the necessary sirp think. That doesnt mean that you gloss over anything but it does mean you try to see the world through that persons perspective and to bring that perspective to your readers so if youre really serious about it and you really care about the person and the readers and thats the thing that has motivated me to write about jefferson and study about jefferson and to put it out there in a realistic way, you have to have warts and all. So as a jackson biographer i dont have this problem. [ laughter ] were just trying to get to the skin next to the wart. [ laughter ] my guy had a tough couple of months. Tough few years, actually. Chernow gets the musical and the 10 bill. My guy didnt even get the 20 bill anymore. I think the reason i did jackson to some extent was i do think in the popular imagination people tend to go from the founding to lincoln pretty quickly and theres kind of a big period there. And then right to t. R. And he did have an age there was an age of jackson. The only president who had better or worse, the only president who has an era named for him. And i think one of the well, washington. [ laughter ] just because, you know, youre the most honored person in the world i carried a sedan chair for annette. At monticello theres a whole room devoted. Its embarrassing for all of us. [ laughter ] but not since Annette Gordonreed dined alone. But jackson embodied, i think, some of our best instincts and our worst and if you dont deal with jackson you cant deal with antebellum america. Because he may have been on the extreme edge of the mainstream on the two central sins of american life, africanamerican slavery and native american removal but he was within the mainstream and that may be uncomfortable to talk about but it is true. Nobody ever went back and reopened the question of native american removal. Congress never revisited it. And his dweegs, i believe, to the union in putting down john c. Calhoun, south carolina, as ever causing problems early in order to keep the union together, it give us 30 more years to form those mystic cords of memory. So if you dont deal with jackson i dont think you can deal with the american soul both in its light and dark elements. The other thing ill say in general is my own sense is we learn more from the past if we look in the the eye than if we look up at it adoringly or down on it condescendingly. Let me relate a quote from mark twain who said what a wee part of a persons life is his acts and his words. All day long the mill of his brain is grinding and his thoughts, not those of other things, are his history. So when youre tack ago biographical subject you have to make inferences about their mindset and motivation. How does one responsibly introduce psychology into biography . Well, i think its necessary. I mean, there was a biographer who got into trouble for writing a biography of jefferson and calling him a psycho. But all biographers are doing that. Youre getting into the mindset of the person, the book most blessed of the patriarchs is out now and throughout in the hallway and what were trying to do, my coauthor and i, is to be responsible in reading jeffersons words, looking at his actions and as you say make inferences about that and patterns that you discern. Help you see what the person was attempting to do in the world. But you cant i dont think its possible to present a picture of a subject without trying to get in their mind. Thats all biographers do. Whether theyre say theyre doing psychology or not, they are psychoanalyzing people. Emerson said theres properly no history, only biography. So, yes, if you theres no reason ron had the image of painting a portrait and rons wonderful Washington Book leads with gilbert stewarts impression of painting washington but if you dont practice sky tri without a license you should find another line of work i think. You know, i think that there has to be psychological understanding at the center of any biographical portrait but i think whats very important in general in biography is not to introduce an akronism. Because i think what we love about biography, biography should cast a special. There should be an enchantment as were transported back into the past and yes creating this world and i think to introduce modern psychological jargon has a way of breaking that spell. Its kind of like the present suddenly invades the past. And i think that theres another problem with introducing modern psychological terminology which is very often if the word didnt exist the phenomenon that its describing may not have existed. So for instance Sigmund Freud wrote about hysteria in victorian women, i dont want to introduce the term hysteria because the term is foreign but the phenomenon was foreign. It didnt even happen in freuds vienna. So i think you have to use the insights but without the paraphernalia of modern day history. Jargon is typically wrong. Defiene paraphernalia. Well, if i start saying George Washington had an oedipus complex that not only shatters the mood but you have to figure out a way of analyzing the character thats true to the period. One of the things that makes it difficult to write about the 18th century is that people were not intro spective in the way they became starting in the mid19th century. People were not onlysing their own psyches. Well, john adams did. Adams, yes. Adams is in many ways the most interesting mind in that way but having spent 11 or 12 years with George Washington and alexander hamilton, wtwo men who were extraordinarily bright never seemed to turn the search light of their intelligence on themselves and so when they reveal themselves they have a way of inadvertently revealing themselves. Ill give one small examle with with George Washington. Washington, everyone noticed washington had this poker face, it was very, very difficult to read his emotions and i find myself wondering if this was accidental or deliberate and during the second term, as he was approaching the send end of the second term the British Ambassador saidgenic see in your face your happiness that you are approaching the end of your second term and washington shot back and said sir, my face never reveal misemotions. It was interesting he corrected someone for suggesting he had revealed his emotions. And we almost pride ourselves on showing emotion and in the 18th century we would consider silence, like if you had a troubled chide hooldhood and yor want to talk about it, thats a sign of Mental Health whereas in the 18th century that was considered a sign of strength that you were not constantly stewing about what your mother did to you when you were five years old. I have a theory which ive never been able to prove which is the best kind, thats why its a theory. Not only on the psychological detail in letters but the narrative details. You can see a shift from the founding from the jackson era into the lincoln area where suddenly people start narrating scenes the distinction between the jefferson era and doing this and the jackson era is fascinating and i think its partly attributable to the rise of the novel. People started reading novels and seeing themselves in more marive the terms. And women began to keep diaries in ways they had not before. So that is for the female side of it story telling and narrative becomes much more important. Its a very good point. I found when i started doing washington we probably have at least a thousand firsthand descriptions of washington and i found them frustrating because someone would say i had dinner with the general last night, i never felt such awe and veneration in the presence of men. As the biographer, youre looking for the small change of everyday life, youre looking for the details that will make the person come alive. And you can see this if you read alexander pope, it was part of English Literature in the 18th century. The language by our standards is very abstract and as the 19th century goes on not only is there more of this psychological awareness but theres more of this sensory detail distributive detail. Ive gone from writing hamilton, washington, now im doing eul s ulyss ulysses s. Grant and i feel like i died and went to heaven because when people describe grant, describe the way he looked, the way he moved, the way that he sounded, i find that compared to writing and i did the best i could with washington and hamilton but i feel with grant that ill be able to evoke this personality in a way that would have been almost impossible with an 18th century figure. The reminiscences are so much more colorful and detailed and anecdotal. Now, there were some you mentioned john adams who john adams did have almost kind of novelists mind and all sorts of things would pop out of his not just conscious but unconscious mind but the others were very washington, hamilton, jefferson, madison, very controlled. Its much better. It was wonderful that jefferson had grand children from the 19th century. Then you began to get monticello, the papers of Thomas Jefferson have something called the family letters project so theyre collecting letters from his grandchildren so many of the thing that happened in the 1790s when hes in france you get descriptions of him from his children. And you get one instance where his man servant falls ill and hes frantic and he writes a letter to his daughter saying we almost lost him and hes fine now. But his granddaughters are writing to their mother and theyre talking about him pacing, being frantic, waiting for the doctor so if you read jefferson lets letter you would say this is a nonepisode but his grandchildren writing to their mother depict this person undone by the possibility saying i dont know what will happen if berle dies. You never get that from him, that is understatement, that was the goal, the presentation youre supposed to have. I w i was talking to Doris Kearns Goodwin talking about the subjects she takes on and she says i think about the person i want to live with for the next several years. And when youre looking back in time you have to immerse yourself in their times. You do have to in so many ways live with them. So is it important that you like the subject youre tackling or at least that you relate to them . I think so. I wouldnt want to spend five, six, seven, eight years with someone i disliked. Despite relationships that ive had over the last seven years which is nothing, just thought id throw that out there. There are biographers who have an advantage in the multivolume world. You can disapprove but redeem the character. I wont mention who that is but you work closely, just to pick an example at random. The line is trying to be honest and what i have is i have this gut check toward the end of each project where i think is this as true as i can make it . Not that its true but as true as i can do . I feel a moral obligation not to get too gooey but a a moral obligation to say despite what critics say is too positive, some may say its too lard, but do i believe this . And i went through this with president bush senior who i believe honestly most political figures are kind of 60 40 light versus dark. Thats the nature of the game. I believe george h. W. Bush is more like 80 20. Thats my view after having spent depending on how you count on it, 17 years thinking about doing the books, six years of interviewing him deal iing wh a diary he kept weekly as president. He was not perfect. He will admit that but taken all in all i think there was more light than dark so that was as true as i could make it. And i think theres if youre writing with the critic on your shoulder that way madness lies. I really do. I if youre always worried about what the toughest critic is going to say, i dont know how you finish. The hemmings are different because thats a family biography and there are people in the family that you like more than the others and there are some things that theyre doing or not doing that you can get exasperated with but i had a great amount of sympathy for the totality of the family, the slave family and the circumstances they were in. This has been a big part of my life, looking at jefferson and slavery at monticello and his life as a political figure. I like him as a subject. I dont think he was a malicious person. I think he was an interesting person and a life worth studying but i think i was going to say one of the impetus of doing most blessed of the patriarchs that we got tired of jefferson writing where people are basically youre saying yours is not like that but its basically im going to show him how much better i am than he is. He doesnt understand all of that ch that. And its about what hes doing in the world not what we thought they should be doing in the world. And if you keep this running catalog of i know this and you dont, i know this and you dont and im better than in your opinion this instead of what did you think you were doing . Theres a person who injected himself on the public stage and had the confidence, arrogance, to think that he could be a lead leader and had conflicts about that. Did not like controversy or conflict but nevertheless entered a confrontational and conflictridden profession. Is what was this about . Who was thissern . So if you keep that in mind instead of the hammer of the vengeance that you think youre going to wreak havoc on this person. Thats the problem. I did do a tiny biography of Andrew Johnson which i didnt like him. [ laughter ] arthur schlesinger, jr. , asked me to do the president , the american president series, 40,000 words. But i didnt like him. I would not want to spend seven minutes with him. More or less seven years. It was a short book . It was a short book but he was an enormously important person, a pivotal president there you have to step back from the like and dislike and think about why every american should know about him. This was an era of missed opportunities. Things were dealing about now we might not have dealt with if he had been a different man so its not about who your best bff, your best friend, its, you know, who and how did they affect the progress of the american nation. So hes worth knowing about whether he was the pleasant person or not. I find that i spend more time thinking about who will be the subject of a book than any other question i spent months agonizing over that. Wherever i speak to writing students about this i feel that writing biography is like marriage. You pick the right person, nothing can go wrong, you pick the wrong person, nothing can go right. You are trapped with this person for many years. I think if someone writes a biography and this often happens because theyve always loved this person you run the risk of it being a valentine, which is not good also if someone writes a biography because they want to get someone, they dont like, very often it can end up with an ugly tone. Its unfair to start out with the presumption this is going to be a hostile portrait of the person but im sure that john and annette have the identical experience. The most frequently asked question by readers is do so do you like grant . Im not sitting there thinking would i like to have a beer with grant . He would have liked to have a beer. Well, that could have been an interesting experience is but for me i always loved the portraits of the old masters and when i look at a portrait by rembrandt or vessalasquez of a g or a queen, a great merchant or a pope, they werent sitting there thinking do i like this person . They were, one, trying to capture this person adds vividly as they can and trying to bring this person so vividly to life that the viewer would that all sorts of feelings would be evoked and the viewer in the same way that in real life we dont have one view of a friend or family member, you have kind of many different views and i think if the portrait of the persons biography is real enough, i think the readers should end up having a complicated feeling about the person. Can i ask a question . You two are different in a sense that you play the role of well, i wrote a biography of johnson as a oneoff but im not interested in writing about anybody else other than jefferson and monticellorelated things. What is it like writing about wildly different people in different eras . A im fairly sure i wont write another biography thats not related to jefferson or hemmings. So you guys play around. [ laughter ] youre promiscuous biographies. I protest. [ laughter ] ron may not protest. Well, thats whats fun. Im sure monogamy is great. [ laughter ] is this taped . [ laughter ] jesus. To me its whats fascinating. What draws me to subjects is their complexity. Again, im not trying to write books to build statues to people. Most books i write theyre taking them down for christs sake. So thats not my goal. To me the perennial human drama is the people i write about are flawed human beings who have soft power over the lives of others and to what extent what drove them to seek that power and how did they wield it and to what effect . Whoa, i got the monogamy question . I think its an excellent question. I think the most difficult aspect of jumping around its more difficult to jump around periods than different personalities. Im doing u. S. Grant and ive had the mexican war, the civil war, reconstruction civil war and reconstruction, the literature is so vast i feel like im on the north atlantic on a stormy day in a tiny row boat sometimes. Thats the difficulty that youre creating the foundation from the ground up. Indescribebly difficult. But what is easier that the way that youre in a new country and your senses come alive . In a way suddenly being in a new period with new characters that youre very, very responsive so i think that maybe if id spent my entire career not just with grant but sherman and sheridan, Andrew Johnson, Abraham Lincoln, robert e. Lee, all these different characters, i think my reactions would not be as strong as they are because not that i was unfamiliar with these people before but im learning them on an entirely different level writing a biography about grant and i sometimes feel people will say well, how many years are you spending on the book . And i often say that i find a lot of my best insights coming from the first year or two. Theres a point of diminishing returns. The longest i spent was washington, six years because i feel you reach a point of diminishing returns. Is that because you here in an exploratory phase where youre open to new interpretations abiliti s about individual . Is that the reason the first two years are so critical . Yeah, its kind of like meeting a new friend. Samuel beckett said habit is a great and its something that youve found ways to counter that that youve mentioned to come up over a sustained period of time with fresh insights about, you know, jefferson. But i dont know that i could do that. So theres something to johns very funny. Playing the field has its advantages. So youve played the field with i think we can drop the metaphor. [ laughter ] roosevelt. Well, i said promiscuous. Yes, sir. Jackson, jefferson. Youve covered president s who have passed on to the ages and ken mentioned your biography of president bush, power and destiny. So youve covered those figures and a living figure who was very much alive and not only know. I have worked with john very briefly at newsweek years ago, and he had a bust of george h. W. Bush in his office. It was the only bust of george h. W. Bush. Thats the reason i had it. Then you came to know him. Yeah, yeah. What are the challenges in doing a portrait of a living person . Well, distance, obviously. The kind of critical distance were talking about. To me the most fascinating overall lesson of doing it was i wondered how much i missed in books where i have written, where i havent known the person because, you know, i have never had dinner with Thomas Jefferson, i have never had dinner with Andrew Jackson. Having had dinner with george bush, i would try to write what he was like as a literary matter, and i would know what i was missing. Right. And that raised the literary bar rather higher than i would have expected. If if you seems to me if you spent time with someone, you are able to judge what you have written and your conclusions by a different standard than what you have gotten out of the papers or the archives. To me that was a surprise. I expected it to be somewhat easier, frankly, as a literary matter. I mean, go have lunch, write it up. You know, how hard can that be . Well, turns out its pretty hard because if your literary skills arent firing on all pistons at that particular moment, then youre not capturing what he was like. He was a particular challenge as some people in the audience know well. He is a man who became president of the United States because of a private quiet charisma. Charisma is not a word thats often associated with him. Trying to explain how this man through a very unconventional path came to hold ultimate authority in a nuclear age was tricky. The other tricky thing was he is so encrusted with all the popular cultural images about h him. Sometimes this was like writing a biography of dana carvey. Not going to do it. You know . He said once that the key to doing george h. W. Bush was mr. Rogers trying to be john wayne. Absolutely. Thats where so you had to get past through that and you had to get past the supermarket scanner, you had to get past the wimp scanner. You had all this stuff, and i had found that it was i was out talking about it for three or four months, and it is interesting. People are at once very nostalgic. We have, if i may, just quickly we have in 25 years moved from a republican president who could not talk about himself to a republican so its sort of like what henry adams said about the movement from washington to grant. It disproved darwin. So thats kind of a critical thing. People have lived through it. People think they know what they think about him, and so i had to sort of fight against that, and make a historical case for him. The rule was sort of 25 years in my mind, the line between journalism and history. It took that long to i think, to get a view of him, which i happen to think is at least the truest view i could write. I think he is an underrated president who did remarkable things and had enormous political faults, failed in the fundamental political test of a presidency, which is being realized, but i do believe, and this is an interesting lesson, it seems to me, for this era, is that he did a lot of things wrong on the way to power, but once he had power, he did the right thing at his own political cost. Whether it was being he opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act when he ran for the senate down here in 1964, but in 1968 he votes for open housing. He runs, as you will recall, a not particularly gentle campaign, kinder or gentler, in 1988, but he became the last great kind of compromise president and read my lips, for which he paid enormously, and were still living with many of the much of the impact of that split in the Republican Party at that time. Is it more difficult to critically assess somebody you know, somebody whose family you know, somebody who you have come to call a friend . Sure, its harder. Absolutely. In my view you call them as you see them. He made that possible in many ways. This doesnt really you all will appreciate this. This doesnt really happen very much. I cant think of another president ial family that would hand over the president ial diary, the Vice President ial diaries and mrs. Bushs diary. Mrs. Bush kept a diary, still does, from 1948 forward. When . Is he gone . Yeah. We are being taped. I know he is not going to watch it, so thats okay. When president bush 43 found out that his mother had given me her diary, he went, she gave you what . Thats not good for me. It was totally fine. So they it was it was a great deal of trust, and i tried to be worthy of it. You know, i think he lied about irancontra. I think he was wrong on some of the tactics in 1988. I think his fundamental political failure was that he drew a bright line between what you say on the campaign trail and what you do in governance. That was a mistake. He picked up a phrase when he was in china from mao about firing the empty canons of rhetoric. He saw he was like the admiral in mary poppins on the campaign trail. He would fire the canon full of powder but just expect the noise to carry it. He didnt expect it to carry over. Is that am i in the tank for him for that . It doesnt seem like that to me, but readers have to judge. I mean, i the hemmings, i didnt have the original members of the family around, but you have descendants of the family, and its you have to many of whom im friendly with and so forth, but as you said, you really do have to call it as you see it and families have their understandings about their familys motivations, their ancestors. They have an interest in all of that. As a historian, you really do have to keep your distance in that way and call it as see it. Let me ask, you have volumous letters from Thomas Jefferson which give you a glimpse into his mind. You have no letters from Sally Hemmings. No. Where do you start there in that place . Well, you start you have to write around it. You have to be tans parerans with the audience. As long as you are clear about what you have and what you dont have. People come along with you in that way, but you cant make stuff up. Its much harder, and thats why it was easier to do the hemmings of monticello rather than Sally Hemmings it because there are enough family members, enough things that you could pull together that was known about them that you could actually create a portrait of the family, but not any individual could with stand an entire biography. The power of annettes work is that with such a pausety of sources, you feel you are right there. Its an amazing achievement. Thank you, but its really around it. You write around it. The era, the time period and try to evoke as much of it as you can, and you use the little bits you have. There are some things we know about her, but no letters, and that is sort of the lifeblood of history. If you remember, recall, that letters are not always right, so if you think that you have this is a volumous amount of material about jefferson, but he is still to many people mysterious because theres still a job to be done even when you have things on the paper, but its much better to have it than not. You know, its a real problem because i think any biography would say theres a tyranny of words when you are writing a history. You tend to follow the paper trail and the paper trails you devote the most space. Particularly i think for me the greatest frustration. In the 19th century if there are holes in the story, usually you can show them. In the 18th century, there are these kind of, you know, black holes. I think of hamiltons boyhood. Even washingtons boyhood. George washingtons father dies when he is 11. Theres exactly one sentence in all of his papers, you know, referring to his father. Hamilton, the entire first onethird of his life is played out in the caribbean where there is scarcely any paper trail at all. Obviously, had a tremendous impact on him and so, you know, theres a temptation to do less about those places just because the paper trail is so thin. I think that it comes especially incumbent on you to do whatever you can, whatever sources you can to at least build the context and the circumstances for what happens. Its a little smoke and mirrors because you are doing a particular period in the persons life without the person, you know, being always in the foreground of it. Otherwise, you get this situation where particularly this is a big problem with president ial all of us when we hit the presidency, we suddenly hit, you know, like the mother load of all time in terms of paperwork. Martha was telling me before this i asked how many documents there were in the lbj rieb lear, how many pieces of paper, and you went i think 45 million. You know, even going back with George Washington in the most recent give you some sense of just how abundantly documented president ial lives are. With George Washington we have 135,000 documents. They are now published about 70 volumes or projected 90 plus volumes. Now, says doing grant at something called the grand president ial library in starkville, mississippi, there are a quarter of a million documents, and even with that, even with 135,000 of washington or 250,000 with grant, i feel like im swimming in material, but i really dont know what i would do if i had the resources of one of the modern president ial libraries. Im friends with bob karen. I know bob when he was working as a newspaper reporter in the early days of an editor told him always turn the next page. Well, he has been turning the next page for 40 years. You know . And its kind of neverending. I think that thats a real problem that we have done such an extraordinary job at preserving these presidencies that we threaten to overwhelm rather than inspire all future biographe biographers. It becomes more difficult to sort of make sense of it, and ill just say one last thing. I think whats happened because in the earlier period where you have these, you know, gigantic editions of papers that can be anywhere from 50 to 90 volumes, and then with the modern president ial libraries starting was hoover or f. D. R. Yes. Hoover. Where you get tens of millions of documents. I think what has happened is its had a perverse affect that biographers become less ambitious because to do an oldfashioned cradle to grave biography, people look at the already 70 volumes of George Washington and say i need to do an authori an authoratative of these volumes. Can i ask you a question . Youre the moderator. Youre the one who is close to this problem. What should biographers do when there is such an immensity of material and well cataloged and classified available . One of the challenges that you have with the modern presidency is the freedom of information act where people can file requests so that you have after reagan you have libraries processing records not through a proactive agenda, but reactively to the requests that they get, so its very difficult sometimes to get the material you really want as a biographer. Sometimes thats not a problem. You know, you have so many aspects of that presidency that are still germane today. Covering johnson as a biographer and johnson is living i think youre right. I think whats happened faced with the immensity of material that people ought to do a moment in the life, you know, a theme or an episode, and thats fine. Of course, the resources are tremendous, but theres also something about, you know, seeing an entire life between two covers in terms of, you know, rendering an assessment of this person that is kind of lovely to read if not to write. I would also argue that perhaps Current Events suggest that history may have a great deal to say to us about how to move forward, if not as a gps, at least, as a diagnostic guide. I would argue that the enterprise itself has rarely been more important. Well take questions in one moment, so if you would start cueing up for the mikes. Let me ask ron. Has the phenomenal success of hamilton made you approach biography any differently than you had prior to getting involved . Im not writing in rhyme cuplets. When they performed the opening number of the show, i have repeatedly told them Manuel Miranda that i would like to perform once the opening number. For some reason he has not taken me up on that. I was thinking tonight was really my chance. I mean, the Pulitzer Committee really blew it. They could have asked me to do it, and i would have been thrilled. I could have died a happy man, you know, having done the opening theres still time. You know, its been interesting working with lynn because i remember when i started working with him, he came over to my house just a few months after i met him. We were on the living room couch, and he start snapping his fingers, and he said does a in the middle of a forgotten spot in the caribbean. I didnt say to them i certainly was thinking either you right write very tight or i write very long, and so its been interesting. His powers of compression are absolutely fantastic. There is an epilogue in the show thats similar to my epilogue in the book where you jump forward in time, and you have eliza as a widow because lynn didnt do that until the very end. He wrote that scene, and i always figured how do you even fast forward that way in the show so many years . He has eliza that comes out, and she has this beautiful cuplet. I stopped wasting time on tears. I have another 50 years. Its perfect. Like, that quickly he manages to not only establish the passage of time, but establish her attitude towards the passage of time. I actually kind of learned a lot watching him in terms of he has an absolutely uncanny ability to pluck the essence out of a character or relationship or it a situation, so i find sometimes weve been writing grant, and i think what would lynn pull out of this particular episode . He seems to be encourageable about the length. It was a very, very useful exercise quick question for each of you. You have somebody ready to carve another portrait on Mount Rushmore. Who should it be . Annette. Why start with me . This means, annette, youre going to have to leave monticello. Thats a tough one. I dont know about carving people on Mount Rushmore. Good point. I put f. D. R. And eleanor. Twofer. Creative modern america. I think that that would if i had to pick people, yeah, that makes sense. I think jackson would be more cant do that. What about you, ron . Im tempted to say grant. I know, you know, prepebbublican of the book thats going to seem like a stretch to most of the people in the audience, but i will say this. You know, americans are probably the single most written about and read about period of American History is the civil war, but americans are shockingly ignorant of reconstruction and what happened in reconstruction, and you cant understand the civil war without understanding reconstruction, and you cant understand modern american politics without understanding what happened, you know, with reconstruction, and grant was the figure really he was the figure after lincoln died who really kind of straddled those two worlds. The civil war and reconstruction, and i remember when i started the book, sean willin said that between Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson was the most important figure of the Africanamerican Community was use l ulysses s. Grant. Its been overwhelmingly vindicated. It seems like president ial biographies are so much more important and better received and better sold than biographies of any other americans. The people on Mount Rushmore have obviously been well covered and people who are on our money, Franklin Roosevelt, Andrew Jackson, are well covered. As you think about your next book and, of course, you have thought about grant and john, youre thinking about your next book, is there a temptation to pull a john adams and pull a harry truman or a carol pull an l. B. J. , pull a cooledidge an try to elevate them and be advocates to give them proof that theres all kinds of reasons that they belong up there . Is there that temptation as you evaluate your next book . To talk about your next book, if you will. Theres a temptation to find to circle all the way back, to find is there somewhere in the conversation who should who is not there who should be is the way i would put it . Its not my job i dont think its part of my task to get people on rushmore or get them memorialized. As i say, if i write about you, you tend to get thrown off the currency. Maybe bad news may not be good news for anybody that im writing about them. Im pretty close to deciding to write about dolly and James Madison, and part of it is that madison is one of the most important americans of the early republic who honestly i still have a hard time imaging what it would be like to sit down and have dinner with him, and what are the points of biography is to bring a life back into being. Mrs. Madison helps enormously there, obviously, because you can sort of imagine that. To me its an interesting mountain to climb because he had to i believe this. Even in the democratic, lower case d, politics of the early republic, you had to be able to impress your personality on enough people in a significant enough way that James Madison had to do that, says and to be a twoterm president , to have been secretary of state, to have been such a critical figure of the constitutional convention, if you read ron alluded to when you read contemporary descriptions of someone like madison, you know, you dont come away thinking thats the guy i want to go fishing with. But i think part of the mission, if i do this, is going to be figuring out what was it about him . This is true of the bush book. What was it about him that put him in ultimate authority . Then, what did he do with it . Yes, i mean, it is you do want to find someone it seems to me you want to find someone. I think grant i think im not being presumptiuous. Lincoln gets a lot of folks wrrks kennedy gets a lot of folks. Less to figure out a way to celebrate them, but i do believe in recovering them. You put it so well. Yes, maam. Actually, i have a whole bunch of questions, but ill ask one little one to ron. I love the George Washington book. I know how Much Research you did on that, says and i was reading a henry cabbot lodge twopart biography and it begins with the funeral and the affect it was having in france and england and how he was honored in those two countries. Is that true . You know, its interesting that George Washington has really had a tremendous worldwide reputation. It was very swg to me when the book was published in england. I didnt know what the reception was, and the gist of so many of the reviews was, number one, extraordinary admiration that they have for washington. Two, that they had terribly mismanaged the relationship. Here washington was a raging aglophile. Coveted commission in the regular army. He could have been coopted into this Global Military machine that the british had and they didnt. I think that George Washington, like Abraham Lincoln, is a figure who has become kind of universal figure. I think that is true. Yes, sir. You guys write biographies for president s. In the last few decades the president themselves sometimes they write their own autobiographies, including bill clinton. In these days all the president ial candidates, they tend to write their own autobiographies, and some of them would become president. My question is how would you compare your works to the they write for themselves . Let me say one thing. At least on the candidates books. We know were pretty sure they havent written them, and were not even sure theyve read them. In some cases. When i started working on grant, grant, of course, published very famous memoirs, and a couple months after i was working on the book, i ran into a friend on the street who said to me, ron, how do you write a great biography for somebody thats written a great autobiography, and i have to say the question stopped me dead in my tracks . Just haunted me for weeks afterwards. Of course, there are some small omissions in grants memoirs. For instance, no mention of his twoterm presidency. Small things like that were omitted. I realized it made me go back to his memoirs and read them differently. I realized that what my job was as biographer was to talk about everything he didnt want to talk so that, you know, in the 1850s he failed at one Business Venture at another to the point that he was reduced to selling firewood on the street corners of st. Louis. Well, that kind of miserable fouryear period of his life is skipped over in his memoirs in if two sentences. It was actually kind of useful to go back and to realize that, of course, when people write their memoirs, no matter how candid they appear to be, kind of covering a whole world of, you know, failure and misery and emphasizing quite understandably, you know, what they want history to remember them about. Thats different than a more objective biographer studying their life. Jefferson starts an autobiography, and he ends it when he comes back from france. He says he is bored talking about himself. It was strictly a statement about his public life because he didnt think that people should talk about your private. Someone asked for the names of his grandchildren . They would be bored by that kind of thing. You want to tell the stories of the things that people didnt want to say. Our vision of ourselves is not the only thing. Remember, i talked about his sort of terse rendition. It was the people around him who give a picture of the person he was. We dont see ourselves in the same light as the people around us. Thats what biographers bring to the mix. Everything. Not just the individuals perspective. Were about to timeout, but annette, well give you the last word. Weve heard about rons next book. Ulysses s. Grant, and weve heard about johns next book dolly and James Madison. After the thematic biography im going back to the then im going to did a twovolume of jefferson. He says three. Its going to be three. Two. We look forward to that as we look forward to ron and johns book, and i want to thank you all for being here tonight and mostly to thank our panel for a wonderful and delight of the night. Thank you very much. [ applause ] well done, as always. Thank you. Well done, annette. Pleasure. Nicely done, ron. Thanks. Thank you so much. Wonderful. Thank you very much. Coming up next on American History tv a look at the books collected and read by George Washington throughout his life. Thats followed by a discussion about franklin road e roosevelts mother, sarah, and her relationship with members of her family. And, later, two historians discs