And the nice thing is that it turns out to be that he is a much more interesting and complicated person. And i thought i knew him pretty well and i learned a lot of things. There was a lot that he didnt even know about himself. Tomorrow morning if youre watching this live at 9 00. He said so much and he meant them to be public. He may have been doing it privately but he knew they would come out. I think there is no other president able to communicate like he was, he was able to just lift the world. Sometimes very complex, but still very extraordinary. The at the front of the look is a picture of peter drummy. I took this picture so im very proud of this. He is looking closely at the John Quincy Adams diary. If you have not seen it or red it it is just magnificent. We know he has been a White House Reporter for 11 years and he is distressed with the attacks on the press that is happening right now. I fear the anger and disstress will entour long after the trump administration. How do we restore trust. One thing that is clear is every president has had a problem with the press. You talked about that in the pod cast we did about how these are not new things were going through. Is the relationship with the press now worse than it has been at any point in history . I dont think it has been quite the way it is now. Americans have learned to distrust what theyre reading and that is not necessarily a bad thing. But when you believe the press is out to get someone because that is what you hear all of the time that becomes problematic. I dont know that we will ever be back to the point where the American People believe that the president is working for them as opposed to against them. I was just going to say about nixon, not just enemies of the people, but reporters that he wanted to put away and do away with, but they got nixon in the end. It is not usually smart to be working against the press. Jack kennedy wanted to be a journalist. He went after him. They say he should not be writing about me. Reagan did it very well. He floated above it. You cant read all of the press or listen to cable news and respond to it because you start getti getting hatred in you. Nixon and trump both do that and it puts them on a bottom ranking. They needed cartoonists. They have opponents and fireside chats in fdr and the heated calls. And it is better to interact in a positive way and have respect for the first amendment. Trump and nixon are not alone in hating a certain journalist, its just the way, it is just their destructive way. A former newspaper editor named warren harding. President ford, he is an anomaly. He liked reporters. He liked them. One was jimmy carter, it surprised a lot of people and they didnt realize they became very good friends and sectly he wanted a journalist. And in particular someone from new york times. And the president called up tom brokaw and said will you do this as a favor. Tom started out his career as a white house correspondent. He was one of the speakers. But you know, fords when he lived in alexandria. His home was in his phone number was in the book. His private number, every reporter in town had it. So there was a late great reporter for the Chicago Daily news that said the role of the reporter is akin to that of a man on horseback who rides down the middle of the street breaking an equal number of windows on each side. Change the tone a little bit here, someone asked was a sense of humor an important president ial attribute and with that in mind where did Calvin Coolidge rank . He didnt say much, but what he said was funny. Grover cleveland, true story, he was on capitol hill, particularly in the talk, late in the middle of the night mrs. Cleveland wakes the president and says there are thieves in the house, grover. And he said no, my dear, the achie thieves are in the senate. And harry truman said without a sense or hu of humor a man woul crazy in the white house. Ronald reagan had an elaborate notecard system of jokes. He would pull the card and put the jokes in his speech. Reagan was all about humor and it is a key quality to being a successful president. There are exceptions, but overall they have to show a robust sense of humor. If you take yourself too seriously you become a bore in the end. Was lincoln funny . Yes, but he sometimes overdid it, so his he was purported to have said if i could not laugh, i would have cried. How when your values can get distorted, it is proof that you are grounded. Two people want to know who is the most overrated and under rated president. Most overrated president. I will just say we mentioned james monroe. I think he is under rarated. Monroe has not had that big seminole biography. The way he wrote a book on john adams. And i think there is an opening for monroe to be understood more as a Foreign Policy president. The most overrated that is just, i dont think our top group are overrated. It might be that we overinflate modern president s because theyre part of our own time and we lose tight sight of some of president s from the 19th century because we dont know them as well. In this chapter on leonard philmore thank goodness you did or we would not have it. He could have done more in that period. He is in an era where there is so much happening they are supposed to take the lead. They are supposed to let them know where they lead in the best direction. At least until fairly recently, it is Lyndon Johnson. The yet for all of the civil rights legislation. But it was Lyndon Johnson that pushed that and we should give him a lot more credit for that. That is due, but how he managed to get that is really amazing. I would say the most overrated president , and i am very he imposed something called the em boar go. It blew up in his face. Can i ask did they really tie down all american ships . In effect they did. New england was the maritime heart of the country. And it was already suspicious of jefferson. But it actually contributed to divisions in the union. And the most underestimated in some ways i would say the least known who deserves to be better known i would say is William Mckinley who before tr in many ways could be said to be the first modern president , sort of straddles the 20th century. Somewhat against his will. Took america on to the world stage and not only in the spanish american war, but also is the first president without congressional approval to send troops in this case to the boxer rebellion in china. And also remember, mckinley was elected in the midst of a depression. He was sold as the advanced prosperity. And so mckinley has a lot going for him. Im going to defend Thomas Jefferson. Because i think that the Louisiana Purchase alone 1803, doubling the size of our country and the westward expansion idea of jefferson of lewis and clark, i think that that act is so large and also you talked about lincolns writing, but man, you read Thomas Jefferson on religious freedom, i once read a letter he wrote to a nun that will give you chills on how advanced his thinking was on the importance of religious freedom. So i get some of the problems with jeffersons presidency, but i would still rank him quite high. And i have two very similar on lincoln and the emancipation proclamation. Because it freed only slaves in territory that he did not control, and didnt free those in areas that he did, is it correct to call him the great ]n emancipator or was it just for his time and times afterwards . I think that one can be tied to emancipation without taking all of the credit for it. There were many people and groups who were bothered [ inaudible ] and the freedom of enslaved people. And lincoln freed those folks in the confederacy. But that title implies that he is doing it alone. And he would never even have suggested that he was doing it line. Certainly the Union Military are a part of it and the africanamericans are part of it because they are walking away from slavery long before the proclamation. The proclamation does give people the license to leave, but they are leaving because he does that. But to suggest that he is the only person involved in emancipation is unfortunate. And you did a book on jimmy carter. And on this list, he has gone down a couple, but 26th, fair . Fair. A great american. Won the nobel prize. Habitat for humanity. But when he passes, he is in his 90s and he is confronting brain cancer right now, people will look at the camp david, peace accord, human rights, recognizing peoples republic of china, panama canal, he is the president who officially recognizes china. I mean, there is a group of things that carter did that are quite significant. But alas one term president and for generations no such thing really as a carter democrat. So he doesnt have the political legs of even Something Like bill clinton did with hillary and projecting decades down the line. You did a book on Herbert Hoover and he is 36. Favor . I would say hoover and will yard howard taft are unique. Men who were fabulously successful as Everything Else they did. And that is significant. Hoover saved more live, fed more hungry people during and after two world wars than hitler, stalin combined. He didnt have a political bone in his body. He acknowledged it he should not have run for an office that is political. On the other hand, we can play games. Roosevelt wrote a letter saying that they wished that they could nominate hoover for president. Both were interested because of his record in world war 1. If hoover had been elected instead of warren harding, if Franklin Roosevelt had been elected in 1928, you know, it is a game. But i mean, it just illustrates the element of chance. But in the sense of hoover, he would always have been burdened by the fact that his dna was just absolutely lacking in the political instinct. We have seven minutes left. How would you like to use them . Do you have anymore questions . Jonathan wants to know would nonincumbent parties have as many primary candidates in previous times as we seem to have had the last two cycles. So getting close 20. And dems. I think 17 republican candidates. Primaries are relatively recent. It is part of the progressive era. And it really i would say the late 40s, 50s, that primaries so let me ask did we select better candidates in the smoke filled rooms than we do through the primary process . Sure, except for harding. Would you like to go back to that . As opposed to primaries . Yes. The problem with the electoral process today, it is so stylized, so scripted, it frankly performed with that camera in mind. And that has distorted our democracy arguably any other single factor. I think that is the big point. It is television. In 1952, they started covering the conventions and then there became the birth of a candidate and now it is about brand building and name recognition. And they are building their branding, their twitter followers, their book advances and all of that. And it is unfortunate. Also we seem to be running these president ial elections like two and a half years long. Its just become a very long drawnout process, which i think is unfortunate, but i dont know how its going to stop. Can i follow up . How do you feel about multiple millionaire president s . What do you think its doing to the presidency . Its almost inevitable. Again, its that camera. You want us to turn that off . I dont care. He doesnt either. Youve given up your life for four years or eight years. Youve compromised your health. You have angered half of the population most of the time. Dont you deserve something after all of that is over . Youve given up your youth. Look how these people age during the presidency. Dont they deserve something at the end of that . Not necessarily the millions and millions of dollars they get for speeches. They deserve something i think other than the pension. Jimmy carter refuses to sit on corporate boards. There are examples of president s not wanting to cash in so to speak on the presidency. The amount of money you get for a memoire now youre talking over 10 million. In your research have you found out why its fairly obvious. Why did jerry ford start getting money for speeches . Because he went broke. Why did harry truman go home and stay home . Thats a fair question. Theres a myth that the presidency changes people. You knew that Richard Nixon would leave office and as soon as he could would spend every breath trying to rebuild his reputation, particularly through foreign affairs. He would do everything he did. You knew when jerry ford left office he would play as much golf as he could. And he would sit on boards because he happened to believe in the private sector. What people didnt pay much attention to, he did 200 College Campuses free of charge. I mean, he enjoyed that. No, theres no doubt the first week he was president he asked someone he said when do i get my first check because he was literally living from check to check. In the last couple minutes we have talking about this same thing mt. Vernon is paid for entirely by private money run by the mt. Vernon ladys foundation. Rutherford b. Hays has a statefunded library. Every other library is funded by tax dollars. What is it about George Washington that its paid for by private money . Because hes George Washington. Its as simple as that. We wouldnt be here, we wouldnt be having this discussion. I think you could make a good case there would not be an American Republic if not for George Washington. Certainly his presidency is about restraint. Theres assertiveness, but ultimately its about restraint. Its about walking away from power. Its about not confusing yourself with the office or the country of which you are a temporary steward. That example alone, it seems to me, is likely to generation the kind of Financial Support that mt. Vernon has earned over the years. Why is this the single most successful president ial site in the United States . Because of the mt. Vernon ladys association. [ applause ] it really is. I think we have to give them credit for all theyve done over the years and ive seen this place evolve over the last couple of decades. Theyve done a terrific job. They can go a little further. We would like to push them in that direction, but i think theyve done an incredible job. Part of the fundraising is because of them and their dedication. Final comment . Virginians do and all they do for the state. Its a great state to do president ial history, tourism. Whether youre studying the American Revolution or the civil war, you can go to Woodrow Wilsons home in virginia. Its an extraordinary state. This is the anchor, the flag ship. Its the crown jewel of what virginia does. You want to wrap it up, susan . I would love to. I want to thank you. You have been a terrific audience. Special thanks to the staff and management here at mt. Vernon and the mt. Vernon ladys association. What better place to start a conversation about president s than here at George Washingtons home. Thanks these three folks for all they do. [ applause ] while i cannot invite all the people watching live tonight on cspan, im delighted to vote all of you here for a coffee and Dessert Reception in the lobby. See you out there. 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