thank you, thank you all very much. and i welcome all of you to our final forum of our lecture series this year. our theme as you all know is looking at 100 years since world war 1, 2014, 1914, an awful lot of history has occurred during that time. and to onanalyze the changes th have been made, we looked at war and peace and the changes in that arena, we have looked at government and we have also looked at the issue of freedom versus security. tonight we re going to look at the president of the united states and how presidents make decisions. and presidents very frankly influence all of those other areas that we just talked about. the president of the united states has today assumed incredible responsibilities in facing incredible pressures in that position. since 1914, we have had 17 presidents. of the united states, all of whom will have various places in history. we have gone from wilson to harding, truman to roosevelt, kennedy to carter and reagan, johnson to bush and
we wooel / weel we ll look at challenges of the presidency. four top aides, all of usveat sd presidents of the tooits united states and we ve seen the ities qualities of what takes for a r president to be able to govern. we ve seen qualities both good and bad. and i guess that s what i want to begin with. is looking at presidents that each of these individuals serve. what was their greatest strengtt and what was their greatest weakness? and how do you think history is going to look at them? we are talking about president reagan, president clent kbron, president bush and president le obama. let s start with president reagan. ken? leon, thank you very much. leave it to leon and sylvia to put together an alpha bet panbe. david axle rod, a. ber skin boels, b.rod, andy card, c. and duber steen, d. m aep p for pa netta.all of it is an absolutely joying to here with leon and ray and all of you. ronald reagan s greasest strengths. he knew why he ran for the presidency. and he kne
the most important strategic initiative of any president over the last 40, 50 years, it was the strategic triangle of nixon and kissinger to allow the united states to build better relations with both china and the soviet union than they had with each other. and it was cia intelligence that provided the impetus to suggest that we could do this and as a result the soviet union would have to engage us which they did in terms of the treaty of berlin and the arms control agreements and we would end up with very good bilateral relations with both of them. so, the cia can be effective as a support instrument in this area. in terms of what needs to be done, because i m running out of my time, i think we could do ourselves a lot of good by going back to that op-ed that president truman wrote in december of 1963. the warning about covert action, the warning that covert action is policy. and covert action, therefore, can taint clandestine collection and even taint intelligence analysis
weekend, on c-span 3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook at c-span history. next on the presidents how do make decisions, whether it is firing cabinet officials or going to war? we will hear from advisers to presidents ronald reagan, bill clinton, george w. bush, and barack obama. former secretary of defense leon panetta moderated the discussion. thank you. [applause] thank you very much, and i welcome all of you to the final forum of our lecture series this year. i think, as you all know, we are looking at 100 years since world war i, 2014 to 1914, an awful lot of history. the changes that have been made, we have looked at war and peace and the changes in that arena. we have looked at the role of government, and we have also looked at the issue of freedom versus security. to take ae are going look at the president of the united states and how presidents make decisions, and residents, frankly, influence all of those other areas that we just talked about. the pr
tonight, we are going to take a look at the president of the united states and how presidents make decisions, and residents, frankly, influence all of those other areas that we just talked about. the president of the united states has today assumed incredible responsibilities and facing incredible pressures in that position. since 1914, we have had 17 presidents of the united states, all of whom, you know, will have various places in history. we have gone from wilson to harding, truman to eisenhower and nixon, kennedy to carter and reagan, johnson to clinton, bush, and obama. what can we learn from all of those presidents? and how has the presidency changed in terms of the responsibilities that have to be confronted? we will look at the challenges of the modern presidency through the eyes of four top aides, all of whom who have served presidents of the united states, and we are looking at presidents that each of these individuals served. what was their greatest strength, and