Public service and brought to you by your television provider. Welcome to the Commonwealth Club. Im george hammond, chair of the vanity form, i am happy to welcome back a. J. Baime. We had him here i urine to have a go for the accidental president , his last book and this time we have him here virtually from his home and we will talk about his new book about the 1948 election going back 72 years and you will be amazed how similar it sounds in some ways, in other ways very different. Politicians were all younger than they are today. Take it away, the overview of the book, a very good review. Guest thanks for having me. The Commonwealth Club is a wonderful place to be. A lot of people going to pain and suffering, i am reminded why i fell in love with reading, books can transport you to another time and place and it has been a blessing. Regarding my last time with you i started this book in 2017 to talk about the accidental president. This book came out in the 2020 election cycle. This is
Professor of lauper he served in all three branches of the federal government to the Justice Department office of legal counsel, and the Senate Judiciary committee and Justice Clarence thomas prayed the previous books include crisis and command a history of executive power from George Washington to george w. Bush. His newest book the subject of todays discussion is titled defend her in chief, Donald Trumps fight for president ial power. John thanks for joining us today. Spivey entrance. Guest thanks adam and thank you its hard to believe ive been a scholar here for almost 20 years. I think im one of the oldest people on the staff. Its great to be here again to talk about a book and it would not be possible without having relationships like those i have aei. So terrific lets jump into the book. The end of the books introduction you summarize the overall argument and theme of the book. You say that President Trump has returned to the framers original vision of the presidency as an office
All these whites have it in for you and that is why you are doing badly. I had done badly in harlem and i overcame it. Reporter what happened there . I graduated. I thought you said you went to howard. I was going to howard in the evening while working fulltime during the day so at harvard i was a fulltime feature first time in 10 years so that was what years did you go to harvard . I graduated in 1968 so you can understand, talking about recently a black man in law school was told professor x never takes black students and he got a b plus but there was great consternation but it is truly criminal what goes on in terms of using and manipulating students to serve all kinds of external things. Host give us an example of what you are talking about. Guest political purposes, the investment campaign. The administration, the whole thing. They are threatened with violence. At stanford the hispanic students have complained the hispanic establishment has threatened them with what is said and do
I will start by introducing our guests to give us an overview of the book and then with some comments and me will take it from there to get as many of your questions as possible and then to submit those to the event page or through twitter or facebook or youtube using cato events james monroe distinguished professor at the university of virginia as well as the senior fellow for the study of presidency and one of the nations leading constitutional scholars especially with regard to president ial powers and the author of the constitution of the original executive. Jack goldsmith is professor of law at harvard and someone who has executive branch from the inside during the high profile extremely tense tenure in the Bush Administration of Legal Counsel during a key early. On the war on terror he is one of the most thoughtful commentators on the modern presidency it looks like the terror presidency and his latest book highly recommended is in hafez shadow on the last inperson Public Events
Turn your cell phones off because you wont need them, you can look your cell phone for the next hour i guarantee it. It was good to be completely mesmerized by our author, that we are so proud to bring you today. Thank you for supporting book passage. We are an independent bookstore one of the very few remaining independent bookstores. [applause] thank you. We are very proud of that fact. Thanks for coming to our core the madeira location we have a beautiful store in the siri building in San Francisco. If youve never been there, its a beautiful store, go in, by a few books and have dinner in the city. Its a wonderful way to spend your evening. Remember, book passage is so much more than just a bookstore, we bring to you probably a thousand author readings every year, if you can believe that. In addition we also have all kinds of classes, language classes, writing classes, we have book groups, childrens classes and finally, and proud to say we are going green. We have put in producing a