[applause] good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the newseums night tv studio and another addition of inside media. I am the director of programs here at the museum. As the 2020 residential election rapidly starts to invade our daily newspaper, and with joe bidens announcement fueling the fire this week, what better time to look back at the history of the presidency and to examine the character and dignity of the men who has held office . We dive in deep to that topic today as we discussed the new cspan book, the president s, ranking americas best and worst chief executives. The title tells it all and just a moment, you will hear from susan swain, the coceo of cspan who will discuss how the book came together. Based on its historians survey of president ial leadership. Following susans presentation, i have the distinct privilege of speaking with brian lamb, founding ceo and chairman of cspan, who over the course of many years conducted the interviews with president ial historians that make up the content of the book. In addition, we are joined today by historians ackerman and stewart, who both contribute to the book. So at this time, please welcome susan swain. [applause] susan good saturday afternoon. Nice to see you. We have a long, long friendship and relationship with the newseum and freedom for journalists who run it, who is almost as old as cspan. Its a delight to be here with them and you this afternoon to talk about the project cspan took on about a year and a half ago. This year is cspans 40th anniversary. We started in 1979 with live coverage of the house of representatives. Thank you. [applause] susan so about a year end a half ago, i went to brian lambs office and said, i have this great idea for our 40th anniversary. We have done already the nine books of collected works of interviews and the most recent actually in 2015, a collection of biographies of the first ladies, and it felt like if we were going to do anything special for our 40th anniversary, we ought to at add the president s to our bookshelf and collection. The idea was to use two resources when we were putting this together. So we took the idea to our longtime publishers at Public Affairs press in new york, who specialize in nonfiction books, started by a journalist from the washington post. The idea was to merge two significant resources. First, one collection of brian lambs 30 years of interviews for his sunday night programs. And among those hundreds and hundreds of hours are some of the top president ial historians alive today, and the books they have done, spending often years of their lives. That was one idea, to use the basis of his interviews for the collection. The second was to merge that with the resource for the past 20 years. And that is history and survey historians survey of the president ial leadership. Back in 1999, we spent an entire year on the road visiting Historic Sites associated with every single president. It was an enormous project. We were live on location from almost 39 sites at that time. Doing a production, sometimes indoors, sometimes in houses that were over 200 years old, to tell the stories of the president s. These three historians who had become dear friends over the years, douglas brinkley, Richard Norton smith, who has been on cbs and frequently cspan. He started five president ial libraries over the course of his career and is currently currently living in grand rapids, michigan working on the biography of gerald r. Ford. And edna green medford, who is here in washington d. C. , howard university, she is currently the dean of the department and shes a specialist in reconstruction era of american history. We went to them at the end of our yearlong project and we said, we spent all this time amassing all of these really anecdotal stories about the president s. It would be nice to put a capper on all of this with something a little more scientific. We devised the idea of doing a survey of historians. Then the question was, how would we measure them . Lots of really interesting and intellectual debates ensued and we decided on 10 qualities of president ial leadership that would be the metrics for the the president s. And here they are. First is public persuasion. The next one, crisis leadership. Third, economic management. The fourth, moral authority. The next, International Relations. The next, administrative skills, which would include the selection of your candidate, the excuse me, your cabinet, the running of the departments, etc. The next is relations with congress. The next, vision, setting an agenda. Somehow i always remembered george h. W. Bush talking about that vision thing when he was in office. The next and ninth is pursued equal justice for all. A category that really did a number of our Founding Fathers in. And the final was performance within the context of their times. The idea with this is its very difficult for us to take our 21st century eyes and judge back, but we were asking the historians that did the rating to say take into account the circumstances of society at that time and try to give them some credit for doing the best they might have been able to do in the circumstances surrounding them. So those 10 metrics went out to 100 historians and professional observers of the presidency. We really tried to mix demographically and politically the people who took the survey, so it could be as broad as possible. As i mentioned, we did the first one in 2000 and it was such a success, we decided that would be the time bill clinton was leaving the presidency, that when george w. Bush left, we would do it again. Did it again in 2017 when barack obama left office. We now have three very extensive surveys of historians. So, over the course of that time, who was up and who is down . This is over 20 years. First is andrew jackson. Guess what . He is down. Maybe our historians can tell us a little bit more about why that has happened. Woodrow wilson also down, from six to 11th place. Another one down, Rutherford B Hayes. I keep telling people i have a bit of a soft spot in my heart for Rutherford B Hayes and lucy hayes. Id like to hear more about why the historians are bringing him down as the years go by. Grover cleveland, the only president to be elected in a popular vote three times and actually served two nonconsecutive terms, went from 17th place over 20 years to 23rd. But there were also some that went up. Dwight eisenhower made it into the top five. He started out 20 years ago in ninth place and interesting to think about what we are observing about the presidency and what work we have learned over 20 years about how we conducted an people are rating him higher. Bill clinton started out as 21st place. Remember, it was in 2000, right after the impeachment. Then by the time he did the survey, eight years later, he moved to 15 and he has stayed in 15th in this last survey as well. Ulysses s grant. This is an interesting one. 33rd place to 22nd. Im sure we will learn more from our historians perspectives about why he is rising up in their estimation. You might also remember there has been a big grant biography published. There is an interesting impact of successful biographies on the view we have of president s. Think about harry truman and the on theof that biography Public Perception of harry truman. Ok, so now were going to go to the 2017 survey, which is the organizing principles for our book of collected reviews. Collected interviews. What we did, rather than arranging them chronologically, we put them in order of how they fared in our survey. So, lets look at the top five. As we mentioned sorry, first , the modern president s. Ronald reagan is the only one in 2017 that made it into the top 10. Next up, george w. Bush. 20th spot. It will be interesting when we do the next survey at the end of the Trump Presidency if whether george w. Bush moves up at all. He passed away. We had three days of celebration in this country of presidency and reminders of the things he accomplished. That has an impact on our historians, too. Bill clinton we just talked about in 15th place. George w. Bush, 33rd. The first time we had him right after he left office, he was one point lower. We added another president so he moved up one. But he is pretty close to the bottom 10. Not only certainly the reaction to 9 11 is an important part, but the economic crisis, the wars that ensued, his response to hurricane katrina, are all things that over time, we will see how historians rate his presidency. Finally, barack obama, his debut in the survey, he came in 12th place. Not a bad place to start. Just a couple more of these. Here are the top five in 2017. Dwight eisenhower, as we talked topre, making it into the five for the first time. Theodore roosevelt in fourth place in this survey. Thats fairly common throughout not only ours, but also other surveys that are done. You will not be surprised to know the next one in line is franklin roosevelt, who is frequently number one, two, or three. The fdr biography we chose to highlight in our book is good ones no ordinary time. Anybody read that . Terrific. The one on Theodore Roosevelt is wilderness warriors. Its all about his role as a conservation president. For george washington, we chose s biography. He won a Pulitzer Prize for it. George washington came in second place and 868 points out of a possible 1000. His lowest score and i referenced this before, 13th place among the president s for pursued equal justice for all. We were down on our publication date at mount vernon and im sure many of you have been down there. Theyve been doing a really terrific job over the past couple of decades of telling the whole story of this place that of the slaves that contributed to the operations at mount vernon as people worked their way through the museum. And finally, number one in our survey, no surprise because it seems to be number one in every survey everyone does is Abraham Lincoln. He received 907 points out of a possible 1000. He is ranked one or two in all most every single one of them. His lowest score is fourthplace and that is relations with congress. Our featured biographer, hes written is it 52 books . 53 books about our 16th president. The one we chose is a snapshot in time, chapter that which you will find about what Abraham Lincoln did between election day and watch when he was sworn in, how he organized himself to get to washington, which he had only been in a short time as a one term congressman, how he went through the process of selecting his cabinet. There is a wonderful human story in this book. We did nothing to help president s financially, so he had to finance his way to washington, and we tell this story. He had a yard sale in springfield, illinois. He could not bear to sell the family dog, so he gave it away. Let us do the fun ones, the bottom five. [laughter] an 39th place, john tyler from tidewater, virginia. Our featured biographer does argue that john tylers contribution is he established president ial succession. He declared himself president and therefore, everyone treated him as such even though it was not established at the time. He got some pretty low scores. His highest score, 28 in International Relationships. That is his highest. Next one, Warren Harding. We have learned a lot about Warren Harding in the last few years. He was quite an ardent letter writer to women he fancied. Our biographer featured in the book, john dean, the very same john dean of watergate fame, he knows a thing or two about president ial scandals. He argues because he had access to more of hardings papers that he deserves a second look. Well let you decide. The historians in the survey gave him only 360 points altogether out of 1000. His highest, 33, was in equal justice for all. That category keeps coming back and i was talking with jack farrell before about how we look at president s and were having an important conversation in this country about demographics and racial relations so it certainly appears in these president ial ratings. Alright, next up, one of our featured president s today, Andrew Johnson. Oh, i skipped pearce. Sorry, new hampshire. 41, pierce. Peter wallner, he got 315 points, and terrific story in there about the difficulty of him coming to washington. If you have never heard it, they had lost two of their three sons already at a very young age. Their third son was on the train with them as they were making their way after winning the election to washington. The train actually had a horrific accident and the son was thrown from the train and killed. And the president elect carried his dead sons body back to the train. His wife barely ever recovered from that and spent much of the administration on the residence floor of the white house writing letters to her dead son. It certainly occupied the president s own psyche and he had a difficult time organizing his cabinet in the beginning. Plus, we were on the march to war. So, it was a challenging time. Ok, there is Andrew Johnson now in place. 42nd out of the three we measured. His highest points was 37thplace in economic management. 275 points out of a possible 1000. But here we go, dead last, guess who it is. Yep, james buchanan. Im a pennsylvanian so this one pains me a little bit. Hes so bad that he is 30 points below Andrew Johnson, and all of these folks are below harrison, who died after one month in office. So, think about that. [laughter] its a bit of a negative net negative presidency if you think about it. The buchanan biography, i love the name of it. Worst. President. Ever. So, theres lots, lots more about these ratings on our site we created, which is cspan. Org thepresident s. You will find a complete video and all the books. We also have links to historic facts, so if youre reading the book and you dont know about a particular war or economic panic, weve got a link there. And if you want to learn more, you have an easy opportunity to do that. So please do find it. One last note, we did not break the rate to the incumbent. I want to make that clear. We hope all of you, as youre thinking about what we want out of a leader will look to these attributes, judging the democrats going for it and the incumbent in office. They are a great conversation starter and a great way for you to think, what do i expect about the person who leads this country . I will turn it over to the terrific panel. Here are the two president s being featured today. Andrew johnson, who we mentioned before. His highest category, number 37 in economic management. His lowest category, not surprising, impeached president. Relations with congress. Hes in 43rd spot. And as i mentioned, 275 out of 1000. James garfield, and this is so interesting because he was in office for six and a half months. Rates high by comparison. His highest is pursuit to equal pursued equal justice for all. 20th place among president s. So right in the middle. Lowest category in International Relations, which he came into office with virtually no experience in. 36th. In 481 out of 1000, nearly double what Andrew Johnson got. And again, he was only in office for six and half months. So, lots and lots to talk about about why these ratings have happened. With that, thank you for learning more about our book and i will turn it over to our panel. [applause] thank you for the presentation. My role is just to get the conversation rolling. We want to hear from all of you. We have two microphones set up midway back in the studio. When im ready to go to questions, i will ask you to stand. Let me introduce our panel again. To my right, ken ackerman has been a writer and attorney in washington, d. C. Since the 1970s. He is a longtime veteran of senior positions in both government and private law. As a writer, kenneth authored five books. Including the political murder of james a garfield. Garfield ranks 29th on the survey. When not writing, ken practices law in washington. David stewart, to his right, spent many years as a trial and appellate lawyer, arguing before juries, the u. S. Senate, and the u. S. Supreme court before becoming bestselling writing history and historical fiction. His writings have explored the constitution, james madison, and the western expedition and treason trial of aaron burr. He is also the author of impeached trial of president Andrew Johnson. And the fight for lincolns legacy. Andrew johnson, second to last in the list. Finally we are joined by brian lamb, cspans founding ceo and chairman and longtime on camera interviewer. His 40 years of cspan has been the basis for nine books with Public Affairs including the president s. I should note brian has visited every president ial brave site gravesite as well as every Vice President ial gravesite. I think we will have to ask him about that in the course of this interview. Please join me in welcoming our panel. [applause] first, a question for our historians. Ken, along with your biography of garfield, you have written about Abraham Lincoln. You have a day job as a practicing lawyer. What draws you to chronicling president s and history in general . Ive been writing history since the 1980s. What drew me to James Garfield was when i was a young lawyer, i was working for the Senate GovernmentalAffairs Committee in the 1970s. I was working for senator chuck percy from illinois. And as a junior lawyer, i was assigned to work on a bill that became the Civil Service reform act of 1970. That was the project that was put on my desk. During the course of the year, writing that, working on that bill, every speech, every memo, every report started with almost the exact same sentence. This is the most important update of the Civil Service law since president James Garfield was shot by a disappointed Office Seeker in 1881 salting in the pendleton act. I mustve written that sentence at least 100 times. I always assumed it was true. Then some years later, i started researching. I had an idea for a book to write about a <