participated in many programs and projects, as well as on book tv, c-span sat down with him for nearly eight hours to get his insights on american history, popular culture, good books, and more. up next, the last part of that conversation which focuses on bob dole, the catholic church and the abraham lincoln presidential library. >> how did you get introduced to bob dole and how long did you work for him and what was he doing at the time? >> well i can tell you exactly. i remember it vividly. i was working for ed brooke in boston, former senator, writing speeches and i mean, you didn't have to be a genius, i knew we were not going to win in '78. he had been elected originally in '66, overwhelmingly oh elected in '72, first of all the republican party was changing even in massachusetts. you know, the conservative up rising if you will at the grassroots was making itself felt. brooke was held to be suspect, for example, he had a primary challenger, a talk show radio host named avi nelson. and the cutting-edge issue was the panama canal treaties and in many ways this was a fore runner of things to come in the republican party, including the republican party of donald trump anyway in 1978, september, we barely won the primary, 53% and, you know, we're going to lose, because, what had happened, well he had gone through a messy divorce. and his daughters sided with their mother and became sources for the boston globe, i mean it was ugly. and in retrospect, there was a senate ethics probe, in question about medicaid funds, you know, pooling -- anyway, a bunch of sort of financial issues and you have to remember the thing about ed brooke is he was not an ordinary politician. you know in 1964 when lyndon johnson carried massachusetts by a million votes and ed brooke was elected attorney general by like 700,000 votes, i mean the biggest ticket splitting in the history of the state and brooke made people feel good about the process and about themselves for electing an african american to the senate, the first since reconstruction. the first popularly elected african american in the senate. and yet, to me, brooke's integrity, he didn't want to be "the black senator." he chose to be in the housing committee, which is not a high visibility, but it's something you really care about and in fact, something called the brooke amendment is historic. it imposed a 25% limit on the income of those who were living in public housing, they could not be charged more than 25% of their income, whatever it was. he was a constructive legislature. he understood that he also was a symbol. i don't think even he appreciated -- the fact, the plain fact is people expected more of brooke. and so that, the slightest scandal, even if in retrospect the senate ethics committee cleared him but, you know, the damage had been done. so i -- i knew, i remember saying on the primary night, when it was 55-45, to paul songous, who was a very decent, admirable congressman from lowell who won, about 55-45 in november. so i was, without a job or about to be without a job. that's what you don't want to be when you're young. the irony is you learn later on that you have sufficient whatever it is to get through things like that, but you don't know it at the time. all you know is my god, i'm going to be, you know, without a job. i don't have any money, what am i going to do? and, you know, we're all going to be tossed out of this office in seven weeks so, you know, it was a test, i remember saying, because we had to keep buck up on spirits and i was sort of the jester and i said look, we have to go find someone who is more depressed than we are so the idea was to go find murder trials in the nearby courthouse for lunch and go sit, and feel better, you know, than, that there were people worse off than us. and there were lots of people worse off than us but you didn't know that at the time. well, i was very lucky. ed brooke, to his eternal credit, i will certainly always be grateful to him made some calls, and one figure we called was bob dole. it's interesting, something ed brooke, bob dole, well there's a spectrum, stylistically, what do they have in common? both live at the watergate but good friends and that was the first hint to me that bob dole was not necessarily the bob dole of the '76 campaign that got him the '76 campaign, the caricature, the democrat war, whatever. any way, beggars can't be choosers. i got a call coming out of washington and meet with the senator. and he was looking for his speech writer. and the aa was -- who would go on to bigger and better things in a certain notarity in this town. >> state department among other things. >> state department, exactly. anyway, i had never met bob dole, and i didn't know much about him except -- but anyway, i remember, i went in his office and we talked 20 minutes. it was -- it was not a searching examination on either side. you know? and he was busy. so i wasn't surprised. so anyway, i left and i went downstairs, and i remember i went down to the cafeteria, and 20 minutes after i left, rick showed up and says, he wants to hire you. and i don't know -- to this day, i have no idea, you know -- but in any event, talk about chance. so i was actually one of the lucky ones. within two weeks of election day, i had a job. so it meant moving lock, sock, and barrel. i didn't have much. but moving to washington, d.c., which i did, with the help of you all. >> but you did not drive. >> i did not drive. hi oldest sister was good enough to drive. anyway, so january 1979 and then before the month, i had tickets for a show at ford's theater on the 26th-27th, the weekend, and that's when rockefeller died. and i remember it was odd. it was the position of i had left massachusetts, which was home and a place that i felt -- and still feel -- attachment to. i think massachusetts is unlike any other place. and it's -- you know, it's home. and i had left that for this kind of -- i didn't know what. and my god, i was so green, you know, and i had so much to learn. i was very lucky because in their own way both brook and dole were wonderful teachers, and that's not universal i have found in political figures. you know, you're expected to, on day one, you know, to be up to their standards and meet their expectations. it's not up to them to adapt to you. it's quite the opposite. but in fact, it's not that they adapted to me, but they were willing to take the time. they didn't dismiss, they didn't throw away. and very gently with -- you know, and class act. two, i mean, very different in many ways, but i consider myself really incredibly fortunate. >> but teaching what? >> what works in a speech. when a speech is too long. when a speech is too discursive. >> what's the optimum length for a speech? >> they were both, as a rule, they were more comfortable speaking off the cuff. but that didn't matter. in some cases, you wrote a text as a security blanket. and they both learned -- i will say this. we evolved together. they both -- because i got better. they got more comfortable sticking to the script, and it became almost a -- even after i left full-time employment of it all, i would get called back on the emotional speeches, the eulogies, the sort of what you need to sound like a statesman sort of thing, and 20 minutes is -- you certainly don't want to. and again, remember, thanks to television, now the internet, the attention span, it's the amazing swringing attention span. so now television covers -- to an extent, it covers -- you look at how the sound byte has shrunk over the years. so speeches and the content of speeches. and dole had this marvelous sense of humor. if you weren't prepared for an audience, he could always get away with he could entertain them. he could make them laugh. i'm from the -- older school. i should have written for -- stevenson. i think a speech is an educational opportunity. and yes, you want to push the buttons. you want to move people. but you want to move them to some effect. you want them to leave obviously thinking of the speaker, thinking better of the speaker than when they went in, but also hopefully motivated to do something, to support a bill, to vote against a candidate. you know, whatever. it's exercising motivational speaking. but anyway, there are all kinds of speeches. >> let me interject this. you talk about the attention span being shorter and shorter. president trump will speak for an hour, an hour and ten minutes. >> but that's entertainment. that's not a speech. >> why do you say that? >> two different things. >> wouldn't the average person rather be entertained? >> yes, the average person would rather be entertained. >> i don't mean that you and i wouldn't. i don't know what average is, but -- >> and there's nothing new about this. adlai stevenson was for ever being cut off -- >> you're sainting him. >> yes. he was for ever being cut off in the middle of a television speech. and it wasn't that he was inept or amateur. it was that he made the mistake of believing that people who were serious about democracy would want to listen for 30 minutes or 40 minutes to say candidate for president telling them honestly substantively what he would do. and that's a long time ago. i mean, television from its infancy -- forgive me -- has distorted and redefined american democracy. and on balance, i would say not for the better. and what we are living through now is inevitable. donald trump didn't create this situation. he simply exploited it. and rather skillfully, i must say. but the fact is the oldest -- now becoming the oldest cliche in town, the reality show that is this presidency extends to public appearances where he plays a role. it's the equivalent of, i suppose, you know the old friday night wrestling where you knew it was fake, you knew everything you were seeing was not authentic, but that was part of the entertainment. and donald trump is filling the role of the wrestler who's fixed the match. >> go back to the dole experience. how many years did you work for him? >> there's a beginning, but there's no easy end because -- i had only been there a year and a half before i went to ro chester to write the duey book, so even when i was in ro chester, i would write occasional speeches. then i came back -- and as you know, i got up there in mid '80. came back mid-81. came back, resumed writing for him, but also had some other -- i wrote for olympia snow. someone for whom i had great admiration. i wrote for pete wilson, who was a moderate republican from california before he ran for governor. but all the time, i was still on call. plus, remember, mrs. dole had become a public figure. she worked in the reagan white house first as a public liaison. so throughout the 80s, i was writing for her as well. so i was -- i had no formal contractual attachment, but the fact was i was on call to either one of them. and that, in turn, went to their request that i work with them on their auto biography. >> how did you get involved in building the dole center? >> well -- >> and what year was that? >> well, let me pause for a minute because give you an example of how what i was doing late. richard nixon died in april of '94. mrs. nixon had passed away the previous june. bob dole was a yule gist at both services. i was pressed to service on both speeches. as long as dole gave speeches, actually, and it's not, i think, letting the cat out of the bag. recently, when he received the gold medal from congress and he asked mrs. dole to read a statement, well i, you know, had a hand in that. so i guess you could say i keep my hand in. but in between, i was approached -- the dole institute was just in the concept chul stage. remember. he left the senate in '96 to run his campaign for president, and afterwards, he had been approached by the university of kansas about donating his papers. anyway, one thing led to another, and in a very prominent political scientist by the name of brunette lumas. well-known, prolific, and a good guy who happened to be democrat, but that was irrelevant, who was the initial director during this concept actual phase. but i think there was a sense dole would want his person to carry it forward to build a building to be in the program and so forth and so on. so anyway, i -- they asked me, the university asked me, he asked me, and i said yes. and that was 2001, late in 2001. i had finished five and a half years at the ford library and felt, you know, pretty much that i had done what i was -- at least what was creative. i could never be a care-taker. and i'm not putting down care takers. they serve very important functions. but one reason people look at the resume and say, you know, i ran six institutions in 19 years. >> reagan, ford, dole. >> hoover,izen hower, reagan, ford -- >> lincoln. >> dole, lincoln. and you know, i look back and i say -- you know, i don't look back a lot, but, you know, of course you -- where did the time go? i can't believe i -- i can't believe i ate the whole thing. and i learned a lot, and i'm glad i did it. and there's certainly no value in even if i had regrets in pining away for a different course. it's funny. i look back now. it's funny how your life does come part meant liez. there was this speech-writing phase which kind of morphed into the libraries, and after -- when i left lincoln in 2006, came back here, and as you know, sort of cobbled together teaching at george mason and some work here at c-span on some long series and worked and worked and worked on the rockefeller. so i can't complain. >> let me go to a completely different subject because it happens to be in the news as we're talking, when we're recording this. but i've heard you over the years talk about the popes. >> oh, yeah. i tell you, i have catholic friends who tell me i'm a better catholic than they are. i think they're mistaking an interest in the history of the church with the ability to conform to the they logic demands of the faith. it's fascinated me. >> let me ask you this and this may be too personal. how religious are you? >> i would say by most standards, not particularly observant. and i'm not going to take refuge in that whole, well, i don't go to church, but i'm spiritual routine. fine. if that's what you want, fine. >> what does that mean? >> it doesn't mean a damn thing. well, i'm sure there are people it does mean something to, so i don't dismiss, but to me -- >> well, what do you think it means when somebody says i'm spiritual? >> what it means is i don't agree -- or i can't accept the discipline of the institutional -- i kind of accept institutional religion, whatever that is, the dictates of a church. but -- and i don't want -- it's the old notion of catholicism. you know, you take this from plate a and this from plate b, and you make up your own. that's what it means. it means i've withdrawn from the institutional church because for whatever reason, i find it -- >> well, where are you in -- >> i'm a religion of one. i am intellectually -- i'm not, by nature -- well, the -- in me, you know, is drawn to kind of the religion of the individual, if you will. unitarianism is appealing. >> do you expect -- >> because it's rational. and i mean, i have a problem with miracles, i must say. and of course, all you need is faith to accept miracles. so i guess, you know -- >> where do you think you'll go when you die? >> into the ground. >> is it over? >> i think so. and i -- and i -- you know, i'm -- i'm reluctant to say that, not just because we're having a public conversation but because, you know, that's not an issue that you like to confront. but if you are honest -- i mean, honesty is hard. you know, truth is -- and everyone -- again, i'm not saying i'm monopolied on truth. everyone has their own truth. the truth is hard. it's clean but it's hard. and there are few things harder than coming to terms with one's own mortality and the fact that -- not only that. in a curious way, the down side of being historically-minded and even bio graphically inclined is the perspective that you get. and i don't mean to sound a doubter, but when you realize in the larger scheme of things how utterly insignificant most lives are, including your own, and how short we'll be the shelf life of memory. and that i suppose it's easy to say that if you don't have children to carry on your name, although, frankly, i think -- and it's a kind of vanity to believe otherwise, to think that people are going to go to the cemetery and visit your grave. i mean, this is -- >> you did. >> i know. but i'm not like most people. you know. but to believe that you have an -- either an afterlife as traditional religion defines or the secular replacement, which is the kind of fame or celebrity or notoriety or something that will draw people to an awareness of your existence after you exist. i find very little evidence to support either picture. >> all right. back to the popes. >> but wait. so the closest thing -- and this is a form of vanity, but i mean, the closest thing to not immortality because that doesn't exist, but a book. there are some books that live on that have a youthful life span, which is longer than that of their authors. so. >> the popes. >> yeah. well. i remember pius xii right between douglas mcarthur and raffle -- i remember vividly, actually, john xxiii, who died in 1963. i was 9, and i remember being caught up in the conclave. talk about romance. this was -- this was a fascinating process where all of these people gathered in this sealed room and you waited for the smoke. and i didn't know much more than that. i was handicapping the -- and then of course in '78, the famous year of three popes, i actually had guessed on luciani, the greatest pope we never got to experience beyond 33 days. in many ways, he was a fore taste of francis. very, very much so in terms of style and temperament and even smile, he was a smiling pope. and then the long -- of john paul ii, who was immediately recognized as john paul the great. and i understand historically certainly his role in the geopolitics at the time. and i do think -- and now we're on thin ice, but i do think there may be some at least who believe that the church was a bit hasty in declaring him a saint given what we don't know at this point about the scandals in the church. and i -- and i -- let me put that in context. the tragedy, i think, just as an outside observer, was that the pope, john paul ii was an old man, a sick man, during the last years. and i think, you know, while my theology might differ a bit from benedict's, i have great admiration for the courage it took for him to, in effect, book half a millennium of a church century and say that i don't think i'm up to this job, physically up to this job, and turn it over to someone else. >> jump back from this, though. what has drawn you to even a -- as a noncatholic being interested in the church, and how far back do you go? >> the church interests me. i think the medieval church. i think the saving grace of the middle ages. the only claims to organize civilization were because of the church, and after all, maimously, it was mopgs and the european abbis who preserved civilization by jotting it down. you know, we -- i mean, civilization, the light almost went out during hundreds of years, and the fact that it didn't at all was because of the church. now, on the other hand, that came at a price. the church dictated one's belief. it dictated the -- in many ways, the shape of one's life. it -- stain glass is gorgeous to look at, but it was designed for an illiterate. it told stories. it had never been subjected to modern science. but we go to cathedrals and we marvel at the artistry. so the thing i find so sympathetic with the modern pope, with the current pope is his willing to criticize from within the sin of -- which i think is a fancy word for careerism. unfortunately, i mean, the famous ax yum of power corrupting, think about adding to the normal temptations, the presumption of divinity, the presumption that you are god's instrument. that is a lot for anyone to handle it seems to me. and this pope is not only aware of it and of the dangers that results. i mean, you know, he appoints cardinals, and he tells them, you are not princes of the church. you know, that's -- seems to me -- that seems to me much closer to the -- the thing i find christian science very attractive intellectually in some ways. it's a term -- it recognizes that when men build institutions, whatever they are, with the best of intentions, spiritual energy or be squaunderred. it will be squaunderred in building the institution. it will be squandered in status in the institution. what mary baker eddy was very reluctant to establish a church because of this fear that spiritual energy would be -- away in worldly pursuits. that to me is what this pope is talking about when he warns us of the danger of -- some very clearly have not. >> what do you think the impact of this whole -- actually, you can combine the two, a sexual harassment world going on in this country, women/men, and the sex scandals going on inside the church. what's the impact from a historical standpoint? >> leerily, we're at a cross roads. there's no doubt that for millions of people, including nominal catholics, the church has lost its claim to moral authority. it's forfeited that claim, not only by the original sin of sexual abuse, but by the subsequent coverup. i mean, the old cliche in politics holds true in ecclesiastic politics in some ways. even worse in some ways is the coverup. the fact in the matter is if you look at the numbers statistically, the church in the united states has done an admirable job beginning with reforms in the 2002 and thereabouts. they've certainly diminished the number of incidents that are being reported while at the same time, they've turned up the spotlight, if you will. and it's also -- it's really important that we not single out the church. i mean, the fact of the matter is this is a cancer that exists in many institutions, certainly in many faiths and many cultures. the problem is, you know, a movie studio or a bank does not purport to issue moral commands. it does not claim any particular monopoly on moral wisdom. and -- well, you know, where it goes, i don't know. i think the more immediate problem is -- and it's inseparable from a looming schism within the catholic church for those who believe in some way this pope is abandoning traditional catholic theology and others who find him the ultimate breath of fresh air. i mean, he's not paul vi who i have great admiration for. he had an almost-impossible assignment, which was to bring vatican to a successful completion and implement reforms. it's one thing to stand at a window and announce when you're going to open the window to the world and in some ways bask in the praise of theoretical reformer. it's another to live with the consequences of a church that in many ways divided and yet, you know, to walk the tight rope between modernists and traditionists. and he was facing a time when authority over the world was breaking down, the late 60s, early 70s. so anyway, but -- so there's been this thread through the tapestry of the faith for as long as i've been interested in the church between, for lack of a better word, modernists, those who would take cognizance of and to some degree, adapt to a contemporary culture. if only because you don't want to lose your influence. and those who insist that they can be no compromise with evil, however they define it. >> go back to your 19 years working for those six different institutions. >> yeah. >> when you look back on the presidential libraries that you've worked for and also the dole center and lincoln library, which experience had you the most difficult time and why? >> well, i guess, you know, the obvious answer to that would be the last one in springfield. and there are a number of reasons for that. some of which, by the way, i regularly own up to as my own shortcomings. >> talking about the lincolnly brar and museum. >> yeah, the lincoln library and museum. i was recruited, gosh, in 2001. and the real people, the real visionaries, and they were visionaries. i mean, you want evidence of what one person with an idea can do. i've said this before in springfield. there's a woman who dreamed of -- she had been involved with the historical state library as a trustee of sorts. but her dream was to create a low-class lincoln library/museum. and against all odds, she succeeded. now, you know, in retrospect, there might have been different ways to go about it. but that, in no way, diminishes from the extraordinary accomplishment. and she obviously had a lot of help, and obviously a lot of people gave a lot of money, and the state gave a lot and the federal government got involved. i mean, you know. but if she had not stepped forward, there would not be a lincoln library/museum. that's speaking very frankly here. what i was naive about when i said, yes, i'll do this, i did not realize that i was stepping into kind of a hot bed. springfield is -- all places are unique i guess in their own way. but springfield is -- and particularly then -- was a place ridden by different camps, individual feuds -- >> capital of illinois. >> capital of illinois. it's a very political town. and -- for example, i did not know that i was inheriting, along with what was seen as the seleny support, you know, they had their critics. there were folks at the university of illinois at springfield who had their own view of what this project should be. perfectly, you know, entitled to that. and there had been some bad blood over the years. and i was naive enough to think that it wouldn't spill off on me or that i could avoid the institutional and individual disagreements that had taken place over time. anyway. i've said -- you know, it's funny. i've said every job, even difficult ones, they all presented challenges. i was seen as an agent of change. which means you know from day one that to some people you're perceived as a threat. you know without in any way intending to be such that you are cast as a polarizing figure. you know that there are people who want to impute bad motives or just, quite frankly, the more successful you are, the more visible you become, the oldest lesson in the world, the more likely there are people who resent you, either because your picture is in the paper and theirs isn't, or your vision of an institution, which is different from the status quo that they're accustomed to. i mean, all of that. people encounter this every day in their work, business, et cetera. and i, over time, because less naive. i don't think i ever became cynical or expected it, but i was prepared for it. but i was not fully prepared -- springfield is not a big town, but it has big emotions and big resentments and big rivalries, and at that stage in the -- you know, i've said in other forms there's no job with less job security than to be the first director of a presidential library. and there are exceptions to the rule, but not many. and that's something you think about. and it's really not hard to figure out why because there are so many constituents. constituencies. if you have a living president, the family, they certainly feel they have a claim on the institution or the foundation that built it, that paid for it, they certainly feel. but at the same time, you're working for the government. it has its own standards, its own expectations. you have the press, frankly, that wants instant access and researchers who would like -- i mean, there are a lot of people perfectly understandable expectations, and they count all the accommodated. and plus, you know, just the wear and tear. hoover wilson famously said, if you want to make enemies, change something. well, you know, i spent most of those 19 years changing things. i don't think i made enemies. but i probably made fewer friends than i might have if i had been in another line of work. >> you actually haven't said what went wrong, if anything went wrong, in springfield. >> that's because i'm being discrete. it was a combination of -- no one thing went wrong. i think -- and in fact, i don't need to leave the impression. i don't look upon that as a failure, and i don't think the people in springfield look upon it as a failure. that sounds offensive. i don't look upon -- i don't harbor regrets about that. i think i was probably -- you know what? i wasn't conscious of it. i wasn't burned out. but you know, i had done five institutions, and i just left a startup, the dole institute, in a difficult environment, a university full of political scientists who i think in some cases resented my vision of the dole institute. i mean, there are a lot of sparks struck in lawrence. now, there were also wonderful friendships made. i go back to lawrence every year and speak at the institute, and we have a full house, and it's a very happy experience. but again, you're swimming upstream, you're challenging the status quo. i've never found an institutional environment more resistant to change than a university. and so i had all of that and the scars that went with it, and i don't think i was really -- you know, what i should have done if i had had the luxury was take a year off. but i plunged right into the lincoln. and i mean, practically, this was a project behind schedule, over budget. the only thing most people knew was, you know, john simon down in carbon dale who was firing volleys of ridicule at rubber lincolns, and the media beating a path to his door. the place was being branded as a kind of disney-esk treatment devoid of -- and i thought -- you know, i was naive. i didn't think hard enough about i was inheriting this. i was inheriting all of this, and quite frankly -- and there were people there who subsequently told me this. you know, i was more than willing to put whatever credibility i had, academic and otherwise, behind this project. and it wasn't just because i was drawing a pay check. i believed in it. and i think time has proven -- not me, but the people that conceived this place, i think it's proven their vision prevailed. the example i use is this world war ii memorial out here. there are all sorts of reasons that you could find to criticize it. once it was built -- whatever people may think of the architecture, it's surprising how quickly it came to be accepted and indeed became, for many people, a place of pilgrimage. well, it's interesting. the day we opened -- and you were there. c-span was there for that very complicated logistical program we did -- once people -- there was always a line between frankly john -- and a few people who thought like him. and frankly, some reporters who were looking for a story and the general public. and i knew that. the first thing i did when i got to springfield -- this was a great, big, empty construction site, which no one should have been allowed in. and i decided, no, we're opening in eight months. i said, right now, this is just an abstraction. these people are paying for this. so we're going to take one day and open up, and everyone who wants to go through, i will give them a tour. and we had over 4,000 people show up. and we took them through, and people -- actually, the locals who i think in retrospect had some doubts about whether this was a good idea, came to see the value of doing it. but 4,000 people went away that day as evangelists for the -- to be opened abraham lincoln presidential library. that was the best response that i could come up with. so there was a -- i spent a lot of my time there trying to wiggle away at this, i think, kind of cynical, kind of superficial, you know, attempt to throw cold water on a pretty remarkable project. but then, once it opened, it was pretty clear to me. i had decided the year before i left that i had the obligation to get both the library and the museum built, opened, programmed, staffed -- we hired over 100 people without politicians being involved. and i have to say, i said to the governor, i'll do this on one condition, you keep the politicians at bay, and whatever else you say about the governor, there's one thing that can be said, he kept his word. and but it became clear to me once the place opened and once the politicians got their pictures taken and got whatever they were going to get out of the creation establishment of this institution that logic told me -- since the state was broke also -- that the level of support would be very difficult to sustain, and that proved to be the case. >> at that probably halfway point, where is the gerald r. ford biography? >> i suppose they say it's bad luck to talk about a project in gestation. i am pleasantly surprised. gerald ford turns out to be much more interesting than i thought. and i thought i knew him pretty well. i think i knew him pretty well. one of the things i've learned is -- and i don't mean to make this sound sensational or a tease -- there are things we didn't know, things that he, i think, probably didn't want us to know. and i don't mean that in a negative sense. he was much more ambitious. and he cloaked that. william ham lton said something very interesting to me, the congressman from indiana who served as a democrat. he said, ford cloaked his ambition pleasingly, which is a nice way of putting it. i mean, and i don't think -- there are parallels with ronald reagan. there are worse things in politics than being underestimated. if you're secure enough about yourself, not to make an issue out of that, good old jerry was in some quarters, a putdown. turned out, good old jerry got himself into the viet presidency. and i'm not suggesting aspire to the higher office. he didn't. but he was ready when it came. and the interesting thing -- i mean, one of the interesting things about ford is -- and this is what a biographer sort of dreams of is that there are rooms in that mansion, rooms in that house that we haven't visited yet, and -- it's made for a much more interesting process. process of discovery. >> at this point, the expected date of publishing? >> we really want to get it out in 2020, just before the election. and i think -- i don't have the say to draw a contrast. i mean, a dull president but a competent one, may have all sorts of unexpected appeal in certain circumstances. and i say dull. i mean that the caricature of ford. again, good old jerry. turns out he was a lot more -- i think to myself, for example, i wrote a chapter about the warren commission, which upends much of what we thought we knew, at least about ford's -- the fact of the matter is ford, very late in the game, was the member of the commission most inclined to believe that there could be a foreign conspiracy. and that, of course, runs counter to what we know in his later years when he was the last surviving member and therefore the defender of the commission. but i found his questions, page after page after page of questions that he directed to witnesses, to the staff, to other investigators. and i thought to myself, you know, this guy would have been a really good courtroom lawyer. and of course, and there's -- it turns -- that's why when he was a very young like third-term congressman, the old bowls asked him to sit on the seat of the oversight committee because a, they trusted him, he wouldn't shoot off his mouth, no staff, no notes. but most important, they had taken his measure. this is a workhorse, not a show horse. >> and that was the eighth and last part of our eight-hour conversation with historian and author richard norton smith. you can watch the entire conversation online at c-span.org/history. all this month, watch the top 21 videos from our documentary competition. every morning before c-span's washington journal, you can watch all the winning student cam documentaries any time online at student cam.org. at least six presidents recorded conversations while in office. hear many of the those conversations on c-span's new podcast, presidential recordings. >> season one, you'll hear about the 1964 civil rights act, the gulf of konkin incident and the war in vietnam. not everyone knew they were being recorded. >> certainly, johnson's secretaries knew because they were tasked with transcribing many of those conversations. in fact, they were the ones who made sure the conversations were taped as johnson would signal to them through an open door between his office and theirs. >> you'll also hear some blunt talk. >> gym? >> yes, sir. >> i want a report of the number of people assigned to kennedy the day he died and the number assigned to me now, and if mine are not less, i want them less right quick. >> yes, sir. >> and if i can't ever go together bathroom, i won't go. i promise i won't go anywhere. i'll just stay behind these black gates. >> find it wherever you get your podcasts. >> since c-span was founded in 179, historian and author richard norton smith has taken part in many projebts as well as on book tv and american history tv. c-span sat down with him for nearly eight hours to get his insights. up next, part one of that conversation, which focuses on