the tv is on twitter and facebook and we want to hear from you. tweeters or paste a comment on our facebook page. [inaudible conversation] >> hello and welcome to the 21st annual texas book festival. thank you for coming out today in support of our author, the festival and celebrating great literature. as you may know, the texas book festival is a nonprofit organization that works year-round to strengthen literacy in texas by awarding library grants and with reading rock stars program sending nationally recognized authors and illustrators into title i schools and donating books to those students. by being here today and buying books to you are funding these important initiatives. thank you. now may i ask you all to please silence your cell phone. clinton hill and i will be signing the books. the books are available in the sale ten and we will be signing in the main author ten., clint, before we begin, did you want to say something clint. >> hello austin. [applause] it is great to be here where i have spent a great deal of time. >> a great deal of time with lbj. we will tell you, we will give you a glimpse into our book, five presidents, as much as wep can in about 35 minutes and then we will open it to questions and answers for the left portion. >> first i have to figure out how to make this thing work clint hill was born in 1932, the middle of the great depression, and his mother realized she couldn't care for him so she had him baptized and dropped him off at the north dakota children'smt home in fargo north dakota. fortunately, when he was about three months old, he was adopted by a wonderful family, chris and jenny hill and their daughter janice.nn he grew up in this home in washburn north dakota, population 912. ll growing up in that tiny town in north dakota, did you always want to be a secret service agent or how did that come about? >> no, not at all. my intention when he when i went to college was to become a history teacher and coach athletics, but the korean war interceded and i had to go into the military. i went through basic training for the u.s. army and they selected me out and sent me toli the army intelligence center where they trained me to be a special agent in counter intelligence. i did that the united states government for a number of years and when it was time to get out, i looked around to find what i wanted to do the rest my life, and i wanted to continue that same type of activity.ly i found the secret service was an extremely small organization. it had a great history of investigations, so i applied. unfortunately there were only 269 agents in the entire organization at that time, worldwide. it was almost impossible to gets in unless somebody died or retired. in my case, the gentleman retired and i got his slot. that's how he became a secret service agent. >> that was in 1958? e twenty hours eisenhower was president. within a year of entering the secret service, he was promoted to the elite white house detail and clint, what was it like working for president eisenhower? what kind of man was he. >> he was a wonderful personable individual but had spent most his entire life in the military and he brought that with him right into the oval office, including some members of the former staff of his who were military officers. he was one of those individuals who, if we told him we had to leave at 930 in the morning, at 929.30 he 9.30 he was in the car ready to go. we never had to worry about his schedule with eisenhower. he referred to as mostly as his troops. heating caused by name, he would just say agent and we would respond. one of those nice things about it is he loved to play golf and that gave us a chance to be on the golf course with him. we would have agents paralleling him. i would be one in the trees outside the fairway carrying my bag with about three golf clubs in it and a 30 caliber rifle. down the fairway we would go, but we had the opportunity to see some of the best golf players in the world, including arnie palmer who got to be a friend and he was a joy to watch. he hit that ball off the tv and it would go down about 200 yards, 3 feet off the grouna and zoom skyward and landed right on the green, almost almost every time. so is really a pleasure to work with president eisenhower. >> in december 1959, you got to go on a fantastic journey with president eisenhower, visiting 11 countries in 19 days. >> yes, the air force that acquired three big commercial 707 that made them available to the white house. president eisenhower took advantage of it and we took off one day and flew to rome and then we went to ankara and then karachi and then to kabul and new delhi anna side trip to see the taj mahal. then we went back to new delhi and flew over to tehran and down to athens to see the king, we got on board a big ship in theoo mediterranean. it was the uss des moines and we took that over to tunis and tunisia, and then we got back on the ship and went to france and got on an express train to paris and went to madrid, flew down to casablanca to meet with the king and finally we got to come home. >> and that was your first trip outside the u.s. >> my first overseas trip. >> not bad for a kid from north dakota. >> no, pretty special. >> you can see the crowd, this is a photo in new delhi, the crowds that surrounded president eisenhower. he was tremendously popular around the world. you were also involved in the election of 1960 during the campaign. >> yes, president eisenhower hadn't done much to help vp nixon in that election in 1960, but he finally decided he would and we went to new york, we went outside a new york to long island and up to manhattan and my job was to secure the parade route down through what we called the canyons of new york city up to herald square.ca i had both the president and the vice president in an open car and there were millions of people on the street, looking out of windows, hanging out of windows, it was a very dangerous situation.dy >> in 1960, jfk won the election and there was a transition now from a 70-year-old general to this young man from massachusetts. what was that transition like for you? >> we went from a 7-year-old grandfather to a 43-year-old father of a 3-year-old child and a wife who is only 31 who was pregnant at the time. we knew was going to be a real different activity level once the kennedys moved into the white house.the >> you weren't assigned to president kennedy as you had thought you were going to be. what happened? >> i was down in the golf course with eisenhower in augusta georgia the day after the election in 1960, and kennedy one and i finally got a call from my boss telling me to get on the first plane back to washington, they wanted to talk to me. i flew back to washington went into his office and i was met by the chief, the deputy chief, to inspectors and they began to interrogate me and they did so for about 90 minutes.nn they asked me questions, i knew they already had the answers to because my background investigation. you speak languages, can use swim, do you play tennis, all kinds of things. finally they went to a corner and corner and confirmed and came back and said we made a decision, you are assigned to mrs. john f. kennedy. >> how did you feel about that? >> i was devastated, angered, i didn't want that job. i knew what the agents did withy truman and eisenhower. they went to parties and fashion shows. they watched games and i wasr] about it. >> you don't want any part of that. >> no thank you. i wanted to be where the action was. >> but as it turned out, you had the best job in the secret service protecting jacqueline kennedy. one of the things you found immediately was that she was so popular that the people surrounded her all the time, wanted to get close to her. >> that was one of her pig's problems, crowd crowd control.wa everybody wanted to touch them or see them, get an autograph or something so it became a very difficult situation. >> he spent a lot of time with them in. what was that like? >> they had a regular schedule. they would go to hyannisport for the schedule and summer and labor day and back on thanksgiving. then christmas and new year'sas they would spend in palm beach. up on the cape, they spent almost all the time on the water. the president would come up the there on fridays from the white house, he would fly on air force one, get in there a helicopter and they'd fly fight him over to the kennedy compound.s, would set a golf cart out there for him to use when he got off the helicopter. he'd get into the golf cart and he'd yelled loud, anybody fry screamed and that was the signa for all of his nephews and nieces to come running, get ono the golf cart and he was going to take them two blocks away to the ice cream store and he'd have to foot the bill. >> when he was up there, do do people think he was on vacation but really a president is never on vacation, as you stop close. >> there is no such thing as the presidential vacation. >> believe me. >> the press says there is, butr there's not. this photo is rather indicative. this is mrs. kennedy and the children and their dogs in key card, but you see the president back in the corner, he's on the telephone. that's what one on constantly. the president either on the phone being briefed by an aide, going over material that has to be acted on immediately orha trying to solve some problems in some foreign country that has just developed. it is 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 30665 days a year. there is no downtime. >> it is because you are assigned to mrs. kennedy that you ended up going on that trip> to texas. >> yes mrs. kennedy talk to me and said she was going to make this trip to texas in 1963. she said, in 1960, she was not able to do as much as she should have to help president kennedyss to get elected because she was pregnant at the time. and so this time she said she was going to do everything possible to help him get reelected.d. >> this is a great photo of clint with president and mrs. kennedy and this was taken on november 22, 1963. >> the trip began on the 21st and we flew down to san antonio where the president would make a speech and dedicated hospital and then we flew over to houston for a meeting with a group of hispanic people and then to pay tribute to congressman albert thomas who was at the space center and then over to fort worth to spend the night, got up the next morning, the president had a breakfast to go to, we finally got to the cars and went out to air force one at the air force base and flew over from fort worth to dallas. now that sounds kind of ridiculous, i'm sure to everyone in this entire audience because you just don't fly from dallas to fort worth or fort worth to dallas. you drive. well, we would've preferred driving but the political peopl wanted a photograph of presidena and mrs. kennedy coming off air force one in dallas and so that's what we got. >> tell us what were saying here >> this is after we got everybody in the car, ready to begin the milk motor cage going to dallas where he was going to make a speech. we started out in love fielderan went down through the town of dallas down toward main street. the crowds began to build and get larger and larger and we went down to main street, they were so large that the driver of the car was keeping the car to the left-hand side of the street to keep the president, who was in the right rear, away from the crowd on the right side of that put mrs. kennedy right up next to the crowd on the left-hand side of the street. i would get up on the back of the car periodically to be as close to her as i could so that nothing could happen to her.nd e we got down at the end of ancient street, we had a turn right on houston in order to get over to elm street and goo underneath the triple underpass to get on the freeway going to the trademark. after we made the left turn on elm, we were going downtownwe street, where about maybefe 150 feet down m street, i was standing there to my left foot the grassy area and then the trademark of the tripless underpass is right in front of us and all of a sudden i heard this explosive noise over my right shoulder.. it came from the rear. so i started to turn toward that noise.fa i only got as far as the back of the presidential vehicle because i saw what happened and how the president responded. i saw the president grab at his throat like this and then he started to fall to his left. i realized then this had been a gunshot and i jumped from my position on the follow-up car which is the car immediately behind the president's car and started to run toward the presidential vehicle with the intent of getting on the back to form a barrier or a shield to protect the president and his wife and all the occupants of the car. when i jumped, i had to get between a motorcycle officer who was on the left-hand side andth the car i was riding on, they were both making considerable engine noise. they told me later there was a shot that came during that running time of mine. i didn't even hear that, but as i approach the presidential vehicle, just as i got there, i heard and i felt a third shot. the president, at that point he had his head way down to his left. the shot hit the president in the back of the head here and exited above the right year. it took with it the scalp andth the bones from the skull and as he flapped forward, but it erupted blood and brain matter, brain fragments all over mrs. kennedy and myself. as i got up on the back of the r car, she was trying to grab that material that came out of the president had and she did get a hold of some of it. i got her and i put her in the back seat. when i got on the backseat the presidents body fell to its left with his head in her lap. i could see his eyes were fixed. there was a hole in the skull.l. i could see there wasn't any more brain material in the- entire area so i assumed it wasn a fatal wound and i turned and gave a thumbs down to the follow-up crew. i turned and screamed at the driver to get us to the hospital and we raced down the freeway being led by the chief from the dallas police department. >> you are on the back of the car for about four minutes racing to the hospital. what was going through your mini at that time? >> all i could think about is can we get there fast enough to do any good. i was quite sure that the wound was fatal. i couldn't see how he could survive. it was just a matter of gettingn there.s >> you can see the position clint is on the back of the car here. there were going up to speeds of 80 miles per hour hour right now there were only three shots fired that day, but he didn't know that only three shots were coming. you fully expected more and were in the position to protect the occupants of the car. you were there when the transition took place to the nes president aboard air force one. >> yes i was on board air force one. vice president johnson took the oath of office and asked president kennedy wife to stand beside him while he did so. she willingly did that so people could see there was an orderly transfer of government but also that she refused to clean up or change close because she wanted people to see what had been donf and so we took off from love field and we flew to the air force base in maryland and transfer the body out to the bethesda naval base where an autopsy was performed. >> you are assigned to stay with her for one more year. >> they decided they should have somebody with her. they asked her who she wanted and she asked for some of thehe agents to be with the children to remain what the children and she asked if i could stay with her for that year, and i did. >> and so, this is a photo photo taken in october 1964. it was a photo that we found in clint's collection and was not published before our latest book came out. what was going on here that they? >> johnson was running for the presidency for the first time in his own right. it was 19624. bobby kennedy was running for the senate seat in new york and so mrs. kennedy had moved to new york.. i was living up there myself and the carlyle hotel and president johnson wanted to see mrs. kennedy while he was campaigning in new york so he came to her residence at 1045th avenue to pay his respects and that's what you see in this photo as they are saying goodbye. it's mrs. kenney, president johnson, robert kennedy and myself. >> in november 19 624, clint was transferred back to the white house the tail under president johnson. what was. what was that transition like going from jaclyn kennedy to lbj >> well it was quite a transition, going from the banks of cape cod to the banks of personnel us, from clam chowder to chile. but it's one of those things, it's part of the job.. >> from what you told me, president johnson was not nearly as predictable as president eisenhower had been or kennedy. >> he was not predictable at all. c he had his opinion that if he didn't tell anybody what his plans were, nobody could do him harm and that included us. so often times what we would see as we would be on post and we would see the valet come out of the kitchen door with a little satchel and a hangup bag. we knew the valet wasn't going anywhere, but that meant the president was. we didn't know where. we get on a cart and head for the parking zone where we had jet star and helicopter in the we had cars so he had one choice on the three. he was either going to fly to st. louis or detroit or houston, take a helicopter and austin or get another car and go to a neighboring ranch. we didn't know until he got there and then we have to quickly respond and react and let everybody know. >> he loved that ranch and you and spent a lot of time down there and the president would bring all kinds of people there. >> he brought heads of state, members of congress, members of cabinet. this photograph is a group of the joint chiefs of staff, secretary of defense and the assistant secretary.thde they they are sitting on the one of the lbj ranch. there deciding the budget for the defense department next year end how best to do things in vietnam. >> then you were there for the inauguration of 1964. >> yes i was. i was seated in the stands. >> i'm sorry this is in 1965. having to use the same car. >> yes we did. the car that was used in dallas was the secret service car 100 acts. that was the car that president kennedy was assassinated in. it was specially fabricated prior to that event, but it was not armored and did not have any armor on it at all. it had a plastic top that we call the bubble, but immediately after the assassination the car was taken back by ford motor company and reconfigured completely. it was was completely enclosed and completely armored. in 1965, when the inauguration took place, that is me on the right rear fender as we went down pennsylvania avenue. >> same car, same position as he had been november 22, 1963. so now you have an armored car, but president johnson found ways around that. >> yes he would stop the motorcade, he get out of the car and crawl up on top or get up high enough so everyone could see him. it made it really a wonderful target if anybody wanted to taka a shot. we really didn't like it, but there was not much we could do.d >> so this is during the time of the vietnam war and you had a real hard time with protesters that entire administration. >> no matter where we went, they were there. the protesters and demonstrators , there they are on the sidewalk outside the northern portion of the white house, across the street, down around the reflecting pool between the lincoln memorial and the washington mommy monument or at the pentagon. they were everywhere. no matter where they went we had to contend with large demonstration. antiwar and anti-johnson demonstration demonstration. >> by the end of 1967, you had risen through the ranks, still working under president johnson and now you were in charge of special protection. you are the number one guy in charge of protecting him. >> yes and it was rather strange because in 1964 when i first appeared at the ranch, having left mrs. kennedy, he spotted me and he knew that had been with the kennedys.ca he called my supervisor and said he didn't want me there because he didn't think he could trust me. he didn't think i could be loyal. three years later, they made me the agent in charge so there was quite a transformation. >> this is a photo on air force one. this actually was during an impromptu around the world tripe that happened about a month after you got this assignment. tell us what happened. >> the prime minister from australia had drowned. it was december 1967. he flew down from. [inaudible] only took off and we headed for thailand. we flew over to vietnam he wanted to be with the troops. then you see him behind me andr he wanted to fly to rome in the italy and pop in on the pope so that's what we did. so now we get them back on the airplane, were in rome but we have to stop to refuel. it's christmas eve 1967. johnson gets on the plane, he puts on his pajamas, he gets into a sweet and goes to bed and go sound to sleep. the pilot realized nobody on the airplane had had a chance to buy anything for any other family for christmas.ir we were going to have to refille it refuel so he radioed ahead to the commanding officer and asked him to keep the px open so the people on the plane could always buy something something for their family members. we arrive and all the people start getting off the plane and i tell them you go on, i'll stay here with johnson, he sound asleep, don't worry. so i'm going, walking back andh forth down by the foot of the ramp and a turnaround and i hear hey clint, where the hell is everybody. i turned around and i say mr. pres., they've all gone to the post exchange. it is christmas eve. i want to do some christmas shopping. they haven't had a a chance to do that. he said hell i haven't had a chance to do it either, let's go. now he is standing there in his pajamas. he is at the foot top of the ramp, he reaches in a closet, pulls out a trenchcoat, puts it on, down the ramp and stairs he comes, i grab a car and we go to the post exchange and the place absolutely froze. nobody could believe that the commander-in-chief, the leader of the free world was walking around in his pajamas. [laughter]ute, so unfortunately the press had taken a different route so there was no one there to take a photo of that. now we go to 1968. that was quite a year. >> it was kind of a bad year. it just started out wrong. on march 31, 1968, president johnson decided he was going to address me, the people people of the country and talk about the vietnam war. i was sitting at home what everybody else and i had gone home knowing that's what he was going to do and i was watching television. i knew pretty much what he was going to say until he got to the last line of the speech and heoe said i will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president. i just about passed out. i almost fell off the chair. here's this man who had been a leader in the senate, he had been the vice president of the united states, he had now obtained that high office of president, and he was going to give it all up. but, what people people didn't realize is that vietnam had taken its toll. usually about 2:00 o'clock in the morning,. he told them how many were killed and how many were wounded and then he'd go back to hisis bedroom, or he would call us and he would sit down with some priest and talk and release some of that emotional baggage. it was really taking an emotional toll on president johnson and he just decided he couldn't resolve the situation, and so he let the presidency go. >> that was march 31. four four days later martin luther king was assassinated and clint, you were with him at the memorial service the very nexte morning and just a few months after that, bobby kennedy was assassinated. what did it feel like as all of that was going on? >> he got more tense as time went by it was very hard to predict any of this from kin happening.d of g things had just gone awry. we had to do the best we could with the limited number of people we had. that was one of our biggest problems. there were only 40 of us at the white house at that time. three agents were with the two children with the kennedy and two of them were with mrs.th mrs. kennedy. the rest of us were with the president.t. it was extremely limited as to the number of people we hadn't made it very difficult for us during that time. >> so in august, richard nixon got his party's nomination and president johnson invited him and his half down to the ranch. you were there that day when they all came down. >> yes he decided to have them down to the ranch to brief them on the presidency. there you see the director of caa, nixon's press secretary, nixon, johnson, assistant secretary cyrus and one of nixon's top staff, jim jones, tom johnson and secretary of state. they were there to infer about the presidency. >> this is kind of like president obama inviting donald trump over to have a little chat to prefilled in case he won the presidency. they spend some time together, but i want you to notice what president johnson is wearing. those were his ranch close. >> that's what we called them, his ranch clothes. that morning, as i came to work and went into the security trailer, the agents on duty said hey clint, there's a package from the president. i took the package into the back room and opened it and it was a set of ranch close like his. i put them back in the package and went through the day not thinking too much about it.afte after nixon and agnew left, i went back to the security trailer and the phone rang and it was johnson. he wanted me to put on those ranch close, by the swimming pool where he was at, and he wanted me to show him he they fit. he wanted me to model them for him. i did. you will see here, that's his valet in the yellow shirt laughing at me. >> i understand you still have those ranch close. >> i still have them. they are a memory of the 1960s with the johnsons down at them w ranch.rd m. ni >> in 1968 nixon won the election, but you, but you are not assigned to the president. >> they came to me after the election in 1968 and said clint, we have, we have a problem. you know, nixon has won the presidency. he didn't like johnson and he didn't like kennedy, and you are with both of them and he knows it. we don't think you and he are going to get along. i said you probably got that right. so they said would like to make a switch, a change. we will make you the special agent in charge of vice presidential production and will move bob taylor into the presidents protection. so they made some promises to me about personnel staffing and equipment and i agreed and soge that change was made.he >> and so you were there witnessing yet another presidential transition, and once again, in the inaugural parade you were with that same car. >> but this time we were using the same car but it was being used for the vice president.nt this time them inside the car in the right front seat and the other agents you see there, because of their positions, they are ducking things that have been thrown at the motorcade from the crowd on the inaugural day. rocks, bottles and cans. >> what kind of president was richard nixon? what kind of man was he from your perspective. >> he was a different type of individual. we knew him as a vice president and he seemed to change a lot when he came into the presidency.. he had become much more of an introvert. so much so that he, at the oval office, he established a set separate office in the executive building and that's where he spent a considerable amount of his time alone, rip questing people to come there on occasion, but he was much more of an introvert than people realize.me >> then came a phone call in the middle of the night that you received. >> yes, i was home in my bed sound asleep, and i had a phone next my bed. it was a direct line to the white house and it rang. it was the intelligence division telling me there had been a break-in at the dnc national headquarters. somebody had broke into larryie o'brien's office. i said what does that have to do with the secret service and he said were not so sure, but let me give you the names of the five men who been arrested. they listed the five guys and one, two, three, three, four and the fifth name, james mccord, i thought i recognized it, i wasn't sure. i wrote them down and i thought thought well i better call my boss. he's really in tight with the nixon staff. i call him and i told him what had happened and i started reading the name and i got down to jim accord and all i could hear on the other end of the phone was a whole bunch of swearing. i knew i had really struck a chord. then i realized and remembered i did know jim accord. he was a retired cia agent. he was a specialist in eavesdropping, bugging, bugging, listening devices. that's what he was doing at the democratic national committee headquarters.lswa at the time he was also employed by an organization that wed called to creep, the committee to reelect the president, president nixon. we knew there was a direct line between what had happened at the democratic national committee headquarters in the white house staff. >> at the same time, as watergate was unfolding, there, there was an investigation into vice president agnew, and eventually he ended up resigning. >> yes he did.p the they took him over to baltimore and he gave up the office of vice president. >> and so, nixon had to appoint a vice president president. he appointed gerald ford who was sworn in in december 1973.t to h >> that was a big surprise to not only gerald ford but to his wife betty and their four children because they had planned to retire in 1976 and go back to michigan where he was going to practice law. that all been interrupted. >> just a few months later, nixon resigned and gerald ford became president, becoming the fifth president that clintonhi clint had worked for in less than 17 years. clint, you were there when nixon resigned. >> yes i was there. i was on the soft ground ashe nixon had briefed or talk to his staff and then he and his wife pat, accompanied by then vice president jerry ford and his wife betty walked out of the southport code with the two nixon daughters and their husbands or they were boarding a helicopter to fly to the air force base to fly to california. pat got on the helicopter and nixon turned and walked up the steps to the helicopter, but at the top he turned any face the audience of people that were his close friends, staff, allies and they were mostly weeping and he threw his arms forward in the v for victory sign that he used to do and i stood there saying to myself ,-comma what the hellis does he think he has one, leaving in disgrace.e reacte it was kind of a mystery to me the way he reacted the way hee did. >> clint was there when gerald ford took office. >> he made that famous speech where he declared the nationalar nightmare is over, and for most intents and purposes, it was. it was really to have someone that most people trusted, most people liked, but it was a big was a big change from what had been. >> and so clint was there during the ford administration for one year end then he retired in 1975 at the age of 43. clint, you've told us that when you are a young boy growing up in north dakota that you always wanted to be a history teacher. well, i think you've turned ou to be a very good history teacher. [applause] >> thank you. it's been nice. thank you. [applause] thank you ladies and gentleman. >> thank you. >> we would like to give it a chance to ask some questions. >> just a few minutes if anybody has some questions. there's a microphone there. >> good afternoon. very nice to meet you. my question is, being that jfk spent so much time away from his children, can you tell me how did that affect them and mrs. kennedy, x especially after his death. >> the children were extremely close to the president. i can show you teachers of caroline sitting on his lap on the back of a yacht.is he would get out on the ocean to swim and she would dive off thet vote into his arms. they were just really close. that was when he really appeared to be the happiest i had ever seen him was when he was all around mrs. kennedy and the children. she was very dedicated to the children and to her husband. she tried her best to give him some relaxing times. in the evenings they would have small dinner parties at the white house with just friends and for maybe an hour and a half , or two hours he could getth away from the oval office and the pressures. it was after the assassination that of course she went into a state of deep depression. john was a little bit too young to really realize what had happened, although taking him to a park one day a photographer tried to take his picture and he said why are you taking my picture, my my daddy's dead. it was really difficult for the agents that worked with them to try to bolster their spirits and try to keep them up. it was difficult time. >> mr. hill, based on your comments a while ago about the day of the assassination, in their memoir, dave powers and kenny o'donnell said they saw an assassin firing from the grassy knoll ahead of the motorcade and you indicate you heard a shot or fell to shop behind you. did you see anyone in the grassy knoll that day. >> i did not see it because nobody did. there were only three shots fired in all three shots came from the 64 window of the texas school book depository. no other shots were fired. that fact. >> a feature film will soon be released, lbj and jackie. have you had any input or a chance to see them?se >> i have not seen him but i am looking forward to seeing both of them. thank you. >> what would you say about the situation that gerald ford came into, vice president, then president, does he get enough credit for coming in and doing what he did such as it was. >> no he didn't. he was a wonderful man placed in an extremely difficult positiona and he did the best he could.t y [applause] >> one of the things you like to point out about jerry ford is chevy chase made a lot of fun of him and it really wasn't accurate. >> not at all. at one point president ford stumbled coming down the front steps of air force one. saturday night live and chevy chase grabbed that and ran with it. they made him appear like a stumbling, bumbling idiot. jerry jerry ford was captain of the university football team. he was a good snow skier. he was a really great swimmer. he had been a lifeguard since he was a kid. he was an eagle scout, he and a lot law degree from yale, he practiced law, he played tennis and golf, he was exactly thed opposite of what chevy chase and the people on saturday night live live try to depict him as being. >> first-hand experience with so many presidents and seeing the temperament needed for the job. i was wondering if you had any thoughts on the upcoming election and the two options w that we are facing. >> i know the way your goal with the question, but if you think i'm going to answer it you are crazy. [laughter] [applause] >> this is our last question. >> who is your favorite other presidents to work with and for. >> i didn't have a favorite. they were also different in some ways. the only thing they really had similar was a large ego. some larger than others. jerry for ford didn't have a real large ego but he had enough