Americas contemporary leading authority on the 1960 election, and hes the first historian to truly use mounds of material from the archives to tell a more complete account of the 1960 election including unused sources. Such as the fbi surveillance logs of then candidate John F Kennedy and the papers of Leon Jaworski and Henry Cabot Lodge, jr. Gilman is a scholar of 20th century president ial history whose two prior books have documented the congressional and Vice President ial periods of Richard Nixons life. And his third entitled the campaign of the century Kennedy Nixon and the election of 1960 does not disappoint. Gilman is joined in conversation this evening with another renowned 20th century president ial historian, dr. Luke nichter who holds the James H Cavanaugh endowed chair in president ial studies at Chapman University dr. Nichter is a New York Times bestselling author whos credits include two volumes of the nixon tapes with historian, doug, brinkley. A biography of Henry Cabot Lodge jr. And nectar is now at work on a history of the 1968 president ial election. Ladies and gentlemen, would you please join me in welcoming irv gelman and dr. Luke nichter. Here. Thank you. Now first of all, id like to thank you all for coming. I appreciate it. I hope you enjoy the evening, but id like to spend. Two minutes maybe and thanking my wife gloria gay for tricking me to come to the Nixon Library. I had absolutely no intention to write a book on Richard Nixon. Let alone now three books on Richard Nixon. But nobody else will do it. Is a project the most historians especially academics wont do you just can have tenure promotions. Or anything when you write about darth vader and to many academics nixon is darth vader. Which is unfair untrue etc. But i was married to gloria gay for 29 years until she passed away. She was a wonderful wonderful person. And i just want to let you know that i wouldnt be here. If it wasnt for her tricking me into coming. A couple of other things some of you have i know have been friends for years john and ruth ann. Evans have been incredibly kind. Paul and candy took me out for dinner and more importantly and most importantly theres two people sitting over there. One has gotten a haircut and trimmed his beard as name is joe dimalowski. Drink the other is susan nolte who was the chief archivist for years and years and years and is not only brilliant but as a sweetheart. And the reason why i wanted to point it out was my beginning of my book has acknowledgments. And these arent just names to me. Theyre important people they make me better than what i am. They helped me more than i deserve to be helped and its a great kindness that theyve done. So when you read my knowledgements, youll find out that there are a truckload of people like susan and like joe that have helped me and i really appreciate it, but i wanted to give you a picture of what these people look like at how kind people can be to research historians. So again, susan joe. Thank you. Here well, thanks very much for that that welcome and in particular to the Nixon Library and the Richard Dixon foundation and also to cspan viewers who are joining us virtually. As starting a little bit. More personal before we dive into the book. It welcome back to the west coast. You know, i think for for many years. This was probably a second home or a home for you. How many years did you spend here . And do you miss it . I spent with susan nolte. Seven years going through documents day by day week by week year by year. This volume here is a mere two and a half million pages of research and thats what i do. And since you asked that question, i have a plot another plug that i forgot to give a year from now luke victor will be sitting in this seat. He is finished a study of the election of 1968 and well show that the anish adult incident had virtually nothing to do with the election of 1968. So if youre here now come back for luke a year from now and find out what really did happen in 1968 and we can just be an opposite seats at that point, but but juxtapose that experience of turning president ial for seven years. With the fact that with with sort of where you came from, i think i once heard you talk about or describe yourself as a slum kid from baltimore. And so how does someone in that situation go on to get a phd in American History from Indiana University and ultimately come to write not a book but a series on the subject. I was very lucky. I didnt spend my life in jail. I have a 19inch knife scar on my shoulder. The guy was kind enough to crack a building building brick over my head. And walking home from school. It was always a kindness if i had less than four people beat me up. How in the world i got out of it . Im guessing it was sheer luck. And how i ended up getting a doctorate writing books. I still have to pinch myself. I i guarantee you. If any of you think that im not good. Truly, im not that good. So were here to talk about a book, but some know and some may not know that its also part of a larger series. And so you when youre doing show and tell of nixon books, its never easy to carry them around, but ill sort of briefly introduce each book and maybe have you say a word or a line or two about each one to sort of just properly tease them for the audience. So the first book in the series Richard Nixon the contender the congress here is 1946 to 1952. The basis of the book is that nobody ever really seriously did the research that susan nolte helped me with and the remarkable thing that i found about it was the charges of nixon beating Jerry Voorhees for his first congustial election in 1946. That nixon smeared voorhees as a communist never happened. It was all made up. And the real story was not here at the Nixon Library. It was and the jerry vorhees papers and pomona and the second thing that i found remarkable. Was that nixon smeared helena hagin douglas as a pink pink lady in the 1950, california senatorial contest. The problem was the only time he ever referred to her as pink was in a private conversation between him and his political relations person. But as far as the reason why she lost can be found in norma, oklahoma and her archives at the university of oklahoma. So the whole nature of how nixon was darth vader in these two elections are fundamentally flawed. And moving forward in time and nixons career the second the biggest thickest of the series the president and the apprentice eisenhower and nixon 1952 to 1961. That one is basically nixons vice presidency and how he ran for the vice presidency. And again once more the story is so flawed. One of the stories came from an oral history interview. Where Dwight Eisenhower was watching nixon give what was known as the funds speech of the checker speech and slammed his hand into what he was writing on and talked tore the paper. The only problem was is i found a copy of the speech. And there was no tearing there was nothing. It was just a normal piece of paper. And then even better than that was that nixon and eisenhower didnt get along that really eisenhower didnt like nixon. And im saying to myself self. How in the world can Dwight Eisenhower . Be president for eight years and have nixon has his Vice President for eight years and they didnt get along. Quite frankly they get along fine. And once i wrote the corrective, i know this is going to shock you. But people stop talking about that. Is it an amazing that you can lie . Just so much until you get caught and then you just stop you dont apologize. Youre basically intellectual cowards. And so then the with the latest installment of the series, which well dive into here in a Moment Campaign of the century Kennedy Nixon and election of 1960. How many years would you say youve been formally or informally working on this collection of works . 25 years and how many pieces of paper pages of records do you think youve examined red turned or investigated . I read about 800 pages a day. Thats why. And i could do that with comprehension. The fact is i didnt think it was a book. I dont i was a fan of Theodore White the making the president 1960. I thought he told everything. I know i started to do the research. And again the surprise you i was wrong. There was and has been up until i wrote this. Nobody had ever read archival research. When the great debates of 1960 of kennedys catholicism of 1960 the fraud in 1960 all of that stuff had never been done. And had been mentioned maybe but not have had ever been done in a serious archival way. So i looked at all this material and i discovered. But rather the theater white who by the way in his memoirs claimed that im writing or i wrote. The making the president 1960 purposely purposely in his memoirs. Making kennedy the hero and nixon a villain. Well, thats not the way you write history. And so this is basically not only a corrective fear or white but to basically say that the entire story of the 1960 election has been seriously flawed. So having that is background, lets take a look at what the critics say in reviews of these books. All three of these books have been reviewed in the New York Times as well as many other places. I think that alone signaling that these are books worth paying attention to but i think the critics in the reviews have no shortage of things to talk about. And i i went through in preparation. I read all three of the reviews in the time times these three books. And id like to go through so just sort of the very top 20 outtakes. From these reviews and get your thoughts. And these are comments direct quotes either about the author his the work in question being reviewed or about the works characterization of Richard Nixon. Refers to the works as a forgiving judgment Richard Nixon he acquits nixon of all charges. He takes one side. More polemical than persuasive he distorts the views of those he would rebut. There he says the rancor the rancor filled prejudices against his own cleareyed distillations. Your naive youre not persuasive. Theyre a feast that leaves one hungry. Simplistic bland im not done. A sympathetic glow in no way substantiated nixon friendly spin adds nothing here, but fresh outrage. A hit job lacking nothing new and circumstantial so my old boss at cspan was brian lamb and so to sort of channel brian lamb he would say. Urban off galman, what you doing wrong . I keep on telling you. I am a lot less than you think i am and even with these people im even lesser than you think i am. The the one review i got in the New York Times for this book said nothing new everything ive written is. Well, he didnt say , but he meant and that quite frankly if you read the book youre an idiot and that appeared online in the New York Times and my sales went up four times. It then made the sunday edition of the New York Times and my sales went up three times. And then the week after it appeared in the New York Times sunday edition. To show you how crazy the New York Times is i became an editors choice. So the the editors of the New York Times repudiated their own reviewer. So it just goes to show you if any of you are familiar out here with fairhaven. I probably am a reject from fair haven. And im not sure where to go with a question after that. But i think what i would ask is. What . Why is writing about Richard Nixon still so controversial . There are several reasons, but i think the main reason is one of the reviews that i received which was a nice review. It wasnt bad it. It said i cant see it. I mean dixon was so bad and kennedy was so good. Theres no way that this book that is written as well as it is written and the arguments that are made are so reasonable. It just it just it just cant be. And one of the reviews i got from a syndicate in canada was an important book in your water read it, but 60 years theyve gotten it wrong gilmans narrative is like swimming upstream. So the general tenor of nixon being a despicable individual one of the the greatest things that i remember as i was writing. The second volume was that just about every liberal commentator. Hold the speech maudlin. And maudlin is not a good term. I found in the Adley Stevenson papers. At princeton about a hundred and twenty letters. That were favorable to stevenson and unfavorable to the chucker. Speech. The only thing i left out was there were about three million pieces of paper that went into the Republican National committee saying how wonderful the speech was. And yet to this day many people believe that the checker speech was modeling when in fact, it was a great speech that was considered by an overwhelming number of people just imagine three Million People wrote in to say how good the speech was and yet you remember a hundred and twenty or a hundred and thirty letters. By people probably who didnt even listen to the speech on how awful it was. Now something seems to be a little out of balance there when a hundred plus people can say its he was awful and three Million People can say he was great. I think that we have become generally speaking so conditioned to things that never been challenged. People dont challenge what they dont think about in many cases. And what i did was not so much to record what i personally thought. But what the record showed and the record showed something quite different than whats been published and i think that for one of a better. Rationalization or reasoning that the fact the people have accepted this nonsense so easily is because they just want to well, i think that theme of sort of the many myths and misunderstandings in the nixon era is a theme that resonates throughout the book here. And so ive highlighted i call them myths or misunderstanding about seven of them that come to me reading the book and i have some photos that will help to illustrate the myths that well click through here, but for each one, i think what id like to do is sort of state the conventional wisdom or the myth and misunderstanding just as its existed in the literature over the decades and allow you to respond to each one. So i think number one the role of eisenhower that nixon perhaps lost in 1960 because eisenhower didnt do enough. That sort of nixon was on this illfated ticket that didnt have eisenhowers support. He might not have been eisenhowers choice to run and theres lots of mythology about exactly what eisenhowers role was during this year and its something that you address in the book. Once more you you write what you think people want to read rather than write what really happened . Just imagine for a second. That nick that eisenhower absolutely hated nixon. Can any of you seriously hear believe that eisenhower would want . A senator with no legislative experience with no legislative record to beep his incumbent Vice President who would carry on his role . The whole idea that eisenhower and nixon did not get along or to not have a Good Relationship. Is is flawed by the very nature of all the things eisenhower had nixon doing going on foreign trips. Helping with legislation being invited to all of the various meetings that eisenhower and nixon chair together it makes no logical sense when you talk to people and you say how could all of this happen . And eisenhower in nixon not get along for eight years. They made faces and one another. Well, i couldnt choose just one eisenhower photo. I like this one because it gets in pat nixon. Could you say you know as we in 1960 election has been called kind of one of the first modern campaigns . Can you talk a little bit about even in 1960 the role that patent nixon played and the role of women in the campaign . Im sure all of you already know all the the numbers of voting but remember. How charismatic . Kennedy was and remember how women smoot. The election of 1960 for the first time in American History more women voted than men and youll never guess. What the breakdown was between this wonderful charismatic kennedy and women voting it was 51 49. Oh, i made one small error 51 for nixon 49 for kennedy. Pat nixon took the position that this is what her husbands was. She was very ambitious like her husband very very smart. A very attuned to what he was doing the the ultimate defender. And she and Mimi Eisenhower and Dwight Eisenhower. Had a very Good Relationship and if you look at the letters between Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon again, big surprise just about every one of them said say hello to pat. I really appreciate her help. Doesnt sound like the eisenhower and his wife mamie did not get along with impact. The second misunderstanding or myth of the campaign is that nixon and lodge were sort of illsuited together on the ticket and that lodge was the downfall for Richard Nixon that year. What do you say . On january 7th 1960 Dwight Eisenhower wrote a secret memo to his own file his president ial pick was Richard Nixon. His Vice President ial pick was <