The coronavirus and joining us tonight. We really appreciated. For those of you have not yet met my name is melissa giller. Under chief marketing officer for the Ronald Reagan president ial foundation and institute. You forget starred in honor of our men and women in uniform who defend our freedom around the world if i could ask you to please dan and join in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of america, and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. So we weve had the fortune of having Many Political journalist, both print and broadcast, speaker over the years, but the one we have with us tonight has covered six u. S. President beginning with president reagan. And speaking of president reagan, we were first introduced to ken back in 2002 when he and a handful of other experts came out to the Reagan Library libro share stories about president reagan and our air force one tail number 21,000 the stories weve stories weve been used to make our visitors experience and our air force one civilians that much more rich. Since then hes come to a the time to discuss and sign copies of the books, prisoners of the white house in 2013 and ultimate insiders white house photographers and how they shape history in 2017. Since been covering the white house since 1986, im sure he is no lack of material for many more books, especially since today he continues to provide insight into the white house of donald trump and the world of president ial campaigns. Perhaps it were lucky may feel share some insight in the upcoming election. But hes your tonight to discuss his latest book, president ial leadership in crisis, defining moments of the modern president s from franklin was up to donald trump. Speaking at the book, president ial historian wrote, ken walsh one of the nations shrewdest of service of president s and the presidency takes readers on a tour of our 14 president s resolve crises that came their way and now a 15th, donald trump, regards crises as the norm rather than the exception has incorporate them into his management style. I was just in San Francisco where my daughter lives and i did some programs up there and one thing is being canceled after another as you all know but i also report that all the lift drivers, the fellows who are out there making money as a taxi service are starting to get the surgical masks now and its hard to hear them and understand what theyre saying but all ive heard is that they dont help you. So its just sort of a precaution theyre taking but im glad theyre doing it. But in any case, i want to thank melissa for having me and thank you all for coming under these extraordinary circumstances. When youre a White House Correspondent and ive been one for more than 30 years over six president s, youre looking for different ways to see the president s and get insights into them and to find out what they are like as people, personalities, their characters, their policies, their agenda and i found a number of ways to do that through my books. I wrote a book about air force one, i came out here and help in putting together the exhibits, at least in some small way and nancy reagan was nice enough to write a note to see what the president s were like on air force one. I did a book about celebrity culture, how president s behave in our celebrity culture, how they participate in Popular Culture and another things and it also occurred to me every president ive covered and every modern president had to deal with a major crisis of some kind. Maybe this wasnt so true earlier in our history when we didnt have mass media, nasty medications and were a world power but now we are, all those things are true so president s always have to deal with some kind of crisis. President trump is particularly interesting because he seems to thrive on the idea of crisis. Some crisis he generates himself and then he settles the crisis and then he likes the idea that hes emerged victorious in a crisis. Now hes dealing with a crisis unlike any hes ever had todeal with before which is completely out of his control to start with. This virus that were talking about. He has never dealt with this sort of thing in his private life as a businessman. Hes got some experience with a lot of other things but not this so i think ill talk about this in a few minutes but basically its up in the air how we evaluate President Trump in dealing with the coronavirus and he still can correct some of the problems weve had initially, some of the confusion and some of the lack of understanding of what the country wants from the president in this situation but he can recover and thats what were going to talk about in a little bit but i cant resist showing the cover of my book but we cant go in much detail on all the president s but i wanted to give you a sense of some of the things that i discovered in looking at this whole concept of president s in crisis as defining moments for these different presidencies and i did come up with a series of standards that i developed as sort of a historian in my own right and how president s deal with crisis and basically i think what the public wants andwhat historians expect from president s in crisis action. Secondly adopting to changing circumstances, balancing principle with what works, persevering and having an instinct for achieving success and thats all wrapped up inwhat im about to talk to you about and in evaluating different president s. This is a summary of those standards that i just gaveyou. But ill be talking aboutthem in the next few minutes as we go through the presentation. You cant talk about president s in crisis without talking about abraham lincoln. The ultimate calamity weve ever had in the United States is civil war and lincoln got us through this through a combination of adhering to the standards i talk about and being someone who represented the values and embodied the values that he was trying to convey through the civil war and win the civil war. Of course he did not start out being a particular critic of slavery. He felt he had to keep slavery to save the union, he would do that but changed his mind as time goes on and it became a moralissue with him but during the waging of the war the union had terrible setbacks. Lincoln realizing he had been in the military earlier in his life briefly but he had a lot to learn and thats one important thing about president s in crisis, are they willing to listen and learn and lincoln was willing to do that. This is him visiting general mcclellan known as little mac at the time and talk about adapting to changing circumstances and doing what works, balanced with principle, he hired mcclellan, fired him, hired him again, fired him again because he wasnt chasing down the confederate armies the way lincoln wanted him to do so you see that perseverance with lincoln as well and you saw that very clearly in his dealing with the civil war. Of course he won the civil war and ended up abolishing slavery. I wanted to show you, i always like to show these pictures where i discussed lincoln and this is before he took office. Before he grew his beard , he was giving a famous speech at cooper union to outline his agenda and just keep this in your mind. This is the way he looked when he took over as president before he grew his beard. Three weeks before he was killed the ravages of the war had taken such a toll on him that he became to embody the suffering the country was going through in the civil war and that was very important, even in the south he became known among the free and enslaved people as father abraham. Because he had gone through such trauma with all the death that he was ordering himself and he also lost a son during the civil war, not because of the war but because of a fever he had but just amazing how the toll it took on him. He looked like a spectral president here so he came to really embody for Many Americans in the history, sort of the best crisis manager weve had but now more recently this is really the focus of the book. This is the depression, a soup kitchen. During the early 1930s and through the 30s we had a terrible economic calamity. Unemployment today is four percent, less than four percent. We dont like it when it gets up to eight, nine, 10 percent. It was 35 percent during the depression. One out of every three people looking forwork, men at the time, at the way the culture was couldnt find it so they had to go to soup kitchens and this is the picture of what they had to go through. This wasconsidered humiliation to ask for charity and help. People thought it was their fault they couldnt find work so people were tremendously upset by the whole circumstance. I have a couple of images here but i wanted to get to this one ofpeople lined up , just to get a cup of coffee and doughnuts and this, they would get dressed up to do this even though they had no work but what was happening his people wereclamoring for some help, they were just so desperate. This was a calamity for so many people and Franklin Roosevelt stepped in to do that and one thing roosevelt did in addition to the standards im talking about , he persevered in a specific way and thats reflecting optimism. That was what he was known for and every president since roosevelt has adopted this technique including president reagan by the way admired president roosevelt all his life and he had been a democrat and became a republican of course reagan did but he admired roosevelt because of this optimism he could convey to the country. This is a picture of Franklin Roosevelt giving a fireside chat. He used the media of his time, radio which basically every american could have access to either their own radio or a neighbors or whatever and he scheduled what he called fireside chats talking directly to the country about the depression and the problems we were having and what he was doing. This is a particular example of him talking about the banks and he had a very clever way of doing what he was doing, having the federal Government Act to improve the economy and instead of talking about shutting down banks or making sure banks were solvent by terminating the operations he called it a bank holiday which is a pretty clever term. So much lighter and sort of a nonthreatening idea but he was closing banks though he went out and he gave the fireside chats throughout his administration and you could walk through the city or the town or a hamlet all around the country and if people had their windows open you could hear flank roosevelts words because he had such incredible Market Penetration as they call it now where people wanted to listen to the president and you could hear him just about whatever you went. He was a tremendouslyeffective thing he did with these fireside chats and this is an example of the roosevelt optimism , the jaunty thing that so many people ofa certain age remember and i cant talk too long about each one but they are all in the book. Of course president roosevelt dies in april 1945. Harry truman becomes president. Truman had a lotto prove. A lot of people didnt think he was up to thejob. A lot of people felt we had president roosevelt for 4 terms, he was elected to a fourth term before he died and how are we going to survive without Franklin Roosevelt so during the truman. We had the korean war, this was an example of what those soldiers had to go through. Very terrible conditions , initially the war did not go well and then the war started to get better partly because we had a general who so Many Americans admired from world war ii in the pacific, Douglas Macarthur so what i suggested to illustrate harry truman was firing General Macarthur. Obviously a lot of historians will do defining moments of president s in terms of military confidence or war and peace but our president had to deal with so many things that ive chosen to illustrate this with examples that are not just war and peace but are otherthings that were defining moments for the president and this was firing macarthur. This took a great deal of political courage for truman to fire macarthur. It was one of the most popular people in the country. During the pacific he promised to return to the philippines and he became the Supreme Leader of japan as the American General who was in command and the occupied forces and he launched a brilliant move to do an invasion of the north at a place called inchan, a very risky but Successful Operation so he started off after the war was going badly he started off the war was going well. Your might remember the history, the American Forces and South Koreans started moving further north pushing the americans back and they got to check close to the chinese border and the chinese entered hundreds of thousands of chinese troops pushing the americans back again almost forcing them off the korean peninsula. Then the americans and allied forces had to push their way back up again. During this period when the chinese entered, macarthur started to say this is a different war now. I need to do things differently. He was talking about using nuclear weaponsand bombing the chinese mainland, talking about bringing the nationalist chinese in to help which was an outrage to the chinese and harry truman kept telling him publicly , were not doing that. Where we might bring the soviets into this. This is a cold war, we dont have a wider war so for truman it became a concept of civilian control of the military. Is he going to let this popular general run the war the way he wanted or is the president whos supposed to be our commanderinchief run the war so truman went and met macarthur on wake island in the pacific to get a sense of what the general was up to rid the meeting went okay, they didnt get along very well but macarthur started to make these very aggressive bellicose comments and again and truman fired him and it caused a huge firestorm. Historians basically feel it was the right thing to do. He was defending the constitution principle of civilian control of the military and it was on the popular at the time and cost truman a lot of support but he always defended and now in revisionist history people who write the history books feel it was the right thing to do but at the time it was a tremendous gamble for truman. But this is an example of sort of a political military related defining moment that i think this president did in the retrospective do very well in dealing with. President eisenhower. We have to go rapidly here because i want to be respectful of your time. President eisenhower is considered not only a popular president but a successful one. He had two terms, a lot of americans felt we wantedto return to normalcy and eisenhower delivered that. He initially got along well with Nikita Khrushchev but was still worried during the cold war about what the soviets were up to so he authorized the u2 flights, the were these were spy planes over the soviet union. These planes flew at tremendously high altitudes beyond the soviet technology of being able to shoot them down until the soviets improved their technology and then he authorized several of these spy planes before an International Conference which was in 1960 which he felt was going to be the capstone of his presidency and cause a thought in the cold war, it was going to be germany, france, the uk and so on in paris but he wants this spy mission about three months before this International Conference is supposed to happen and the soviets shot that one down. It was a tremendous blow to the prestige of the americans. It looked like we were the warmongers and all this sort of thing and initially president eisenhower authorized a lieabout it. He said it wasnt a spy flight, it was a Weather Mission and he made a bad judgment. He admitted later it was the worst mistake of his presidency and set both sides back in the cold war but his feeling from his advisers that he got was that the u2 planes could not survive an attack first of all because they were rather fragile and secondly the pilot would not survive the tremendous altitude being shot down and landing on the ground and the pilot also had a poison needle to inject himself with so he would kill himself. Well, the soviets not only found the debris, they captured the pilot read Francis Gary Powers and chris jeff showed the debris in a very wellpublicized demonstration and exhibit in moscow and said not only are the americans the warmongers flying over our country, the soviet union but eisenhower is a liar and itwas a tremendous blow because eisenhower priced himself on being a honest politician so it did hurt his reputation. The soviets laid this, the Public Relations much better than the americans thought they would because they canceled the paris meeting which chris jeff went initially and said he demanded eisenhower call off any future u2 missions and eisenhower didnt want to seem like he was being bullied so he sort of waffled on that. So it was a real Public Relations disaster in the United States so this is a case where the defining moment did not go well for an american president is and even though the eisenhower years were considered a success. Heres president kennedy with chris jeff. He is still in office, president kennedy is elected, takes office and 61 and only a few weeks after he takes office, we have the bay of pigs invasion where American Forces are trying to retake cuba from fidel castro. It was an utter failure. A lot of people in the Exile Community but we would give them air support. Kennedy adopted the plans that the Eisenhower Administration had come up with for the invasion but it didnt work so it was a tremendous setback so he goes ahead and meets with chris jeff and in combination with the bay of pigs in vienna, chris jeff concludes that kennedy is weak and callow and inexperienced and he can get the better of him so what happens denmark we would have one of the most dramatic and dangerous moments in the cold war which was the cuban missile crisis petting president kennedy against fidel castro and Nikita Khrushchev. You seehow close cuba is to florida. The soviets were installing defensive missiles that could have reached much of the United States mainland and wiped out millions of americans. So president kennedy felt he had reconnaissance, the u2 again getting pictures of these sites , he felt he couldnt let this go so you might have seen 13 days and a lot of the reiterations that have been done on television and the movies. Some of them are very good including the movie 13 days so he goes through many, many arguments within his administration on what to do. Invading cuba, bombing cuba, one thing after another so he comes up with an announcement to the country of quarantine. He calls it a quarantine rather than a blockade. The language is important. A blockade is considered an act of war, it was a blockade. It softened the impression for the World Community so kennedy gives a speech and a lot of people, i was just a boy and then but you can see this illustration how riveted everybody was. In the Department Store and in the Television Section watching president kennedy on tv. It got tremendous coverage when he decided to blockade cuba. And it was very dangerous because we didnt know how the soviets were going to respond. A couple of things that kennedy demonstrated here in his own crisis management, not only perseverance, learning from experience. That notion of him changing with circumstances. When he felt that there were openings for a peaceful resolution of this and he took them rather thankeep pushing khrushchev into a corner so hes learning from experience. Also, he had learned from the cuban missile crisis, before the cuban missile crisis he had learned from the bay of pigs that some of his military advisors including curtis lemay, a general who was very warlike in many fundamental ways, that the military was pushing him towards a confrontation he didnt want to have to so he didnt listen to his generals as much as he had earlier and this was actually most historians would agree a good thing for him to do because he didnt want to be pushed into being so bellicose so the confrontation ends and kennedy gets a lot of credit for this. For steering us through this confrontation that couldhave ended up in a terrible nuclear war. Later it was revealed we had traded outmoded missiles in turkey and a promise not to invade cuba for the removal of the soviet missiles. This wasnt disclosed at the time so there was deft communication strategy that went on here as well and this is sort of by concluding the point that with kennedy it was unflappable. The guy who khrushchev completely misread talking about failing in his own defining moment that kennedy really understood the stakes involved and the risks we were taking but he pursued in the end a very prudent and sensible way of dealing with this and is given credit for that in history in his definingmoment. Lyndon johnson takes over after kennedy is assassinated. This is the vietnam war. A photograph from the tet offensive in 1968, january. Its a surprise move. The north vietnamese and viacom, the communist forces and South Vietnam, theyve launched attacks all over the country of South Vietnam that took the americans and South Vietnamese by surprise. Then its basically the United States and South Vietnam one most of the battles. The problem was that it made clear that we were a long way from winning. That the enemy was not going to give up even though president johnson said they were. There was light at the end of the tunnel so it was a Public Relations victory for the communist forces if not a military one and this led to even more intense antiwar feeling. Remember the protests johnson had to deal with, painting him as a war criminal, you have people in vietnam in these protests, veterans and others protesting it. I can remember i was in college these days. Johnson could not speak outside of the white house because you have these often violent protests. Hed have to speak in military bases where you would have to respect the soldiers and in conservative college campuses, otherwise he was basically a prisoner of the white house or much of this time and remember the hand would go up , hey hey lbj, how many kids did you kill today . We talk about how harsh politics is todaybut thats pretty harsh. Lyndon johnson to decide what hes going to do about it and i think theres a lot of interpretations of what he does but this is a political crisis but in the end he handled it well because he goes on television talking about a bombing cause and he is not going to runagain. He says i will not seek nor will i accept the nomination of my party. This caught the country by surprise. It was atremendous shock. People were stunned that johnson would do this because he saw this all his life, he loved being president but in reconstructing this, he really did the right thing because even though he knew he was going to face a formal being reelected and he could have been reelected actually because he still was a very strong figure and a lot of people and doubts about other people running for president but he didnt want to polarize the country and he knew it would the country apart so in the end i think it was the right thing for him to do and i think most historianswould agree with that these days. Moving quickly president nixon. Next always wanted to be a top firm leader and when he was faced with the watergate scandal which is my issue that i chose to deal with next and, he violates virtually all of the standards ive come up with to look at president s under crisis conditions. He doesnt adjust to changing circumstances. He perseveres in trying to save his presidency but not in dealing with fundamental problems and abuses that the watergate scandal showed. He didnt take action until too late, it goes on and on. So he Stonewalls Congress and houses moving to impeach him, he resigns. So hes not impeached but remember those scenes, you can see the pain in nixons face there, his wife and hes announcing hes leaving the white house and the famous photograph of nixon as he gets on helicopter just as he fliesaway to go to california but i think this is another case where a president does not dowell in a crisis situation and i think initially , if nixon had owned up to what happened in the water burglary and not try to cover it all up , he probably could have survived because the democrats were not offering alternatives to what he was doing at the country was going to accept so i think that this is a case where he was his own worst enemy in many ways. In handling his definitive crisis as president. Gerald ford takes over, he was Vice President and he pardoned nixon, the case i used for general ford. We dont have to talk about this a great deal but i explain it encumbrancein detail in the book. For decides that if he does not and the nixon controversy somehow, hes going to be the devil by for the rest of his presidency. The news media will ask him about it, nixon is going to be this figure casting a shadow over his presidency so he does pardon richard nixon, another biggamble he took. And this probably cost him his own bid for the presidency in 1976 with jimmy carter because people really wanted nixon to pay more of a price. But for that nixon had paid a price and terrible humiliation in leaving office and in all the findings that were made about the things that went on in that it ministration. So they pardon nixon at the time unpopular decision but it took a lot of political courage for him to do this. I think he was sort of exonerated by history by this and even the kennedy family, ted kennedy was verycritical of ford for pardoning nixon later. They profiled in courage award, saying i was wrong editor kennedy said and ford was right in part nixon so there has been sort of a historic redemption here of jerry ford. This is jimmy carter, this is the iranian hostage crisis. We still have around in the headlines today. This was a case where the shot left the country, the religious zealots took over and took control of iran. America was widely despised in iranfor supporting the shop. Who was very brutal, who was guilty of oppressing his people. So one day, the when the shop had left, he wanted to have treatment for some terrible physical problems he was having in the United States. The question was where we going to let him in the United States and maybe store up opposition in iran we were supporting this figure there. This is after he had been deposed. Carter said okay, its probably the humane thing to do, let him have the treatment here and he was a good ally for a long time but if these people go in and take over our embassy and capture our people im going to come back to you advisors and ask you what dowe say now and thats exactly what happened. Humans and other radicals took over our embassy. They took over, captured about 60 of our people. And they held themfor a year. Carter was unable to get them out. Tried everything he could possibly do. This was the case where he was derided for instead of taking action which is one of the standard i have four president s in defining moments, he called for prayer. He said we pray for our captive americans and this is the case if you were in the National Cathedral ceremony he was really stricken by almost froze his presidency for that whole year and finally, after the pressure was going on him he did launch a mission and this is at the center of my critique of carter for the iranian hostagesituation , he launched the mission to save, to get the hostages in the course it was an utter failure. What happened was the military later said that he told carter this. But everything had to go perfectly for this mission to have any chance of succeeding. You had helicopters who had to go into the desert , meet up with other helicopters. Find people from the country who knew how to go and get into the embassy. Fly themto tehran , a hospital city is not a small place. Get to the embassy, fight your way through the embassy, find the hostages, get them out, get them back on helicopter, helicopters back into ships so every phase, something could go wrong and what happened is it went wrong on the first phase. The helicopters ran into each other and eight americans were initially killed. And then it got worse from there. So it was a terrible blow to carters presidency and of course president reagan got an out the day he took office. How much was it reagan, how much was it the iranians were afraid of him but nevertheless the hostage situation was a terrible blow to carters presidency that he never recovered from the coast he handled things in a rather hamhanded way. Now we got to president reagan. President reagan, this is him when he was shot and this is the case i raise in the book where it was the ultimate personal because he almost died from this. He was giving a speech in washington only a few weeks after he took office in 1981 and getting into his limousine and as he reached the limousine John Hinckley junior, a start the young man who wanted to impress jodie foster shot the president and his press secretary, adc policeman and secret Service Agent and one of the rounds bounced off the side of the limousine andhit reagan in the side. This is reagan here when he was hit by the peace of the bullet. You can see the secret service guys looking over at the shooter and this sure won a Pulitzer Prize sowhat happens is they push reagan into the limousine. And he feels tremendous pain and he thinks the secret Service Agent who pushed him into the limousine named jerry parr had broken one of his lives so he cost him and by this time he was bleeding from the mouth and frothing so the agent said were not taking you back to the white house mister president , were taking you to the emergency room and had a not done that he surely would have died but what you got in the situation is the personal courage and the personal grace under pressure of the president , of an individual person under this amended burden of being shot. He gets the hospital and he always felt like the president should act like the president so this happened by instinct with president reagan because he had been a moving actor and im not saying this critically but he understood there was a role to play so he gets out of the limousine, buttons of his suit jacket, walks into the emergency room and then he collapses. He didnt want people to see vulnerability but he does almost die and the doctors do their best to save him. He benefits from amazing fortune. It turned out that the day he was at the hospital was a conference for some of the most prestigious specialists in many types of surgery were there for a conference and they were all there when he was shot though they can all help him so they left the conference to help with the surgery. So then came the postoperative part of which was also a brilliant in many ways because reagan understood the importance of the spotlight he was on and he had to show the country he was capable of handling this and recovering. He was a man in his 70s at that time, we have two president ial candidates who are going to be in their 70s now. Actually three if you consider bernie sanders. But he understands the country needs to see him so he handled it very well and is advisors to him, it was carefully orchestrated but i put this as a plus because it was an important time for the country. For the soviet union to see if our president was so weak that they could take advantage of him so he conveyed the idea that he was up to this and he could rise to the occasion and he could recover in an almost miraculous way. The he had arranged for them to meet at the hospital senior advisers which he does here. You can see whats real to me he looks like he obviously has had a trauma here but it works and the country is very respectful of him and believes that the president does have his personal courage this grace under pressure to rise so much. He persevered and he passes all the standard i talked about in dealing with acrisis. And he also shows hes got the sport around the country, this is a card at the staff arranged to be sent to him with the whitehouse staffers. Being photographed as a get well card to the president and he does otherthings that were very clever. To show he can recover. An elderly man, pumping iron and so on rather soon after his being shot. So i think it was an amazing Tour De Force for president reagan in this personal calamity he was going through and helped his agenda. I was covering congress at the time just before i could cover the white house and a lot of americans felt that they were going to give him the benefit of the doubt because of how the with this personal crisis. And i can remember i always like to talk to cabdrivers whenever im somewhere to get a sense of what everyday people think and i cant tell you the number of cabdrivers who said he took a bullet to the chest and he kept coming and he said i didnt like him at first but i like him now and i think thats the way a lot of people felt real this is the image of course he left with, he never had another calamity like that. He did have skin cancer and colon cancer and such but he did end up with this image as the leader charging ahead with his agenda which is the image you wanted all along. President bush takes over. President bush had his Vice President the comedy wins the election. He launches the persian gulf war, president bush was a master Coalition Building and in again, if you apply my standards he does live up to all the standards. Taking action, combining principle with reality, persevering and so on. This is him when he visits the troops after he has organized this Massive International coalition to drive iraq out of kuwait so he had invaded to get the oil or other reasons. And he was, he waved. It could be awkward and so on but he handled the situation very well. When we finallywent to the war , was a massive success for the americans. And for our allies. Though this in all the years ive covered lighthouse this is when i saw the white house operate better ever before, the National Security staff and so on in the persian gulf war. This is we all know what this is. This is the big crisis for bill clinton. Monica lewinsky, sex and live scandal. He had an affair with his youngintern. Write about it under oath so he had handled it very badly. If he had admitted it, he probably could have been okay but he did not. He liedabout it. This is the case, that famous press conference he had. With hillary there. And hes saying i did not have sexual relations with that woman missed lewinsky. Thats exactly what he said but that was a lie, he did and he was caught and there were all kinds of whole year that he was investigated and under impeachment proceedings, as a journalist i was covering things i never dreamed that i would be covering ever in my career about the president of the United States and his behavior with this young woman. Just unbelievable and so many of his advisers felt betrayed you a felt he had taken this fundamental risk and he was so selfindulgent to risk his presidency, the job he had wanted all his life for something that ended up being as salacious and dangerous as what he did. He was impeached. Of course impeachment is a chart the house levies and then the senate acquitted him. And thats just what has happened to president reagan, by the way. But the blemish remained on clintons record of the impeachment and i think that blemish will remain on President Trumps record to even though you could argue it was partisanbut its still in the history books. But what happens with clinton is that by the end of his presidency he has persuaded the country that his public leadership as president was more important in evaluating him and his private behavior which a lot of people thought he was a scoundrel so by the end of his presidency is impeached and acquitted. His popularity goes up. He becomes a popular president again because people felt feel well, i guess we cant have a president as a role model anymore so the outcome of his big crisis is a fundamental difference of reception weve had in the presidency. We separate the public president from the private president and thats a big change for us because americans wanted the president to be a role model for most of our history was residence done what clinton did but it was quiet and now its different. Thats a big change to the other point about clinton is if we had the Metoo Movement i dont think he would have survived. Those charges were not taken as seriously as they are now. If we had that then i dont think he would have made it through. Of course, 9 11. The destruction of the world trade towers with hijacked aircraft. This is president bush son. President bush was initially offbalance when he first handled this. A lot of people wondered about his ability to be strong and resolute in a crisis this is what he was first told of the second plane hitting the second tower. Ive course was covering the presidency at this time. He was at an elementaryschool in sarasota florida. One of his aides said plane has the first, one of the trade towers innew york. And nobody knew why. Though the president told me later he said i thought maybe the pilot had a hard 30 unrealistic initial impression i think but nevertheless, then he goes out and hes on camera and his chief of staff andy part whispers in his ear a second plane as the secondtower , america is under attack. And that starts the global war on terrorism that he launches. Hes offbalance, before the first day doesnt come back right away towashington. The job is critical initially but i think he was right about that because there was such chaos. As an example, on air force one, the pilot of the plane was so unsure what was happening he asked a secret Service Agent who was a friend of his to stand guard at the cockpit so no one would take over the plane. Ive always thought that was amazing the pilot of air force one asking a secret service the pilot from being taken over while the plane is flying, i always thought that was amazing but thats what happened. So we have initial period where chaos and uncertainty and president bush was in this was probably the most memorable moments of his presidency. He goes to the site where the world trade towers and then smoldering in the background. Hes on the burnedout fire truck. He starts to talk and the First Responder say we cant hear you, we cant hear you so he grabbed the bullhorn and he pulled the guy out from the crowd of First Responders, turned out to be a retired fireman who volunteered to help with that day. And he says i hear you and the people who knockdown these buildings will hear all of us recently. Thats exactly what the country wanted to hear from the president so he does i think past the initial test of handling 9 11. As time goes on i think you can reassess how he handled the longterm crisis. The war in afghanistan, the war on iraq occupying the country with his father did not do. He thought it would be too much of an obligation for the United States and two devices. President bushs son does that and were still living with the consequences today of the initial reaction to the attacks i think he handled himself very well. President obama and the financial crisis. This is a clever Time Magazine cover comparing him to franklinroosevelt. Who had to deal with the depression which i talk about a little while ago. And President Trump, president obama had to deal with a real meltdown. It was a fundamental economic crisis. You might remember that era. It was major Banking Institutions and lending houses were going under the salon. He had to decide whether it was best to just get it over with as soon as possible and alienate some people who thought he was going to far with the federal government or was going far enough in punishing the bankers and so on and a lot of liberals in the Democratic Party felt he did not go far enough, that he should have punished the banks and put these people in jail but he didnt do that he does get past the initial meltdown and the economy does recover. We have to give him credit for that. He does persevere, he balances principle with pragmatism. He understands that taking action was important and he does have an instinct for success in this. One of the things he did which is particularly controversial was he rescues the Auto Industry area he gets the Auto Industry loans and Financial Aid which was tremendously controversial. Because a lot of americans felt it was the Auto Industrys own fault. They were on going bankrupt but they werent making cards that americans wanted and that was turning out to be true. They werent as fuelefficient as they should have been but he decides to bailout the Auto Industry. He does say the Auto Industry in fundamental ways and so i think you have to look on that as a case where he took a very risky and unpopular decision and ran with it. I think that was probably a good judgment on his part area we can quarrel about my conclusions but i think just laying out the parameters of the discussion is interesting and how he dealt with this fundamental defining moment and now were on the President Trump. President trump has made a presidency of crisis. We had a perpetual series of crisis. We can argue whether he handled them well or badly but he seems to thrive in a crisis atmosphere. A lot of president s like maybe a Government Shutdown thought it would be enough of a crisis for a first term we had a Government Shutdown and publications with north korea, publications with iran and problems in iraq. We had terrorism incidents, we had the wall, the border along with, one thing after another. The wall is one thing i talk about in the book as one of the crises that he got with. He promised during the campaign he was going to build a wall between the United States and mexico and have the Mexican Government pay for it to stop illegal immigration and the criminal coming into the United States and so on. Congress , when congress realized we were not going to pay for the wall, after the mexicangovernment decided it was not going to pay , then President Trump declared a national emergency, a crisis at the border so he could move money from other accounts to pay for the wall. Thats still being tested in court by the way so hes taking action here but its against the very Resident Congress democrats at least in the house are resistant to it but he still fighting for the wall so hes doing with it and a lot of his people feel that this is the right thing to do but it is a crisis that hes still dealing with now. Finish the law instead of build the wall, his argument is that it started. And then that got wrapped up in the hole in peach trump controversy, this is another one i talk about in the book as a fundamental crisis that hes dealing with. It is impeached, he deals with Robert Mueller the special counsel who investigated him. His report in some way was inconclusive but the democrats ran with it anyway athe policy did not want to envision initially but decided to do it after this famous phone call came about with trump talking to the leader of ukraine about an investigation of joe biden the leading democratic president ial candidate and corruption involving bidens son hunter. Thats still floating around out there by the way you a lot of republicans dont want to let go of that and they want to investigate hunter biden, bidens son but nevertheless this is the issue that caused the impeachment of the arguments of the democrats is theres an abuse of power, the president tried to corner adversary by forcing an ally to investigate the sky read the other part of this is that trump says that biden was trying to, joe biden was trying to remove a prosecutor from eight you the ukraine, a skis from, the prosecutor might have been trying to investigate hunter biden, joseph son. Obligated but basically both sides were not giving up on their interpretation of what joe biden was trying to do while he was Vice President by corruption or get his son off, that sort of thing but nevertheless this is and his son. What happens is the house leader, adam shipped from california and others push impeachment and trump is impeached as clinton was but hes also acquitted. So hes got the impeachment on his record of the acquittal so thats still going on. How did this come about . I tend to think that trump would have been very hard to avoid impeaching because of the partisan atmosphere we have in washington but he might have softened the blow a little bit if he had not been as resistant as next and was to cooperating with the investigations. Not allowing testimony and so on but his conclusion was that it was never going to be fair and he was never going to be treated decently and so ill let you decide what was the proper interpretation of that. One thing that i wanted to end with is that we have now right now going on what we started talking about some early in this discussion, the coronavirusdiscussion. Could be the biggest crisis of his presidency because it affects so many people. Are people panicking marks work panicking over . Thats the question but we have this kind of story floating around the country how are you treated . Do we have enough tests, that by the way is something that i think the president needs to be careful of this in particular because a lot of people in the Public Health service are very nonpartisan people say we really do have a problem getting tests for this. We need to get the government needs to get on the ball here and get thetests out there so we know who has this. And itstaken a very long time for that to happen. President trump can recover from this, from the initial missteps or slowness of the response because he said its just like any other flu initially. Now it turns out people are really scared about this. Maybe theyre overdoing it but nevertheless its a real problem in peoples minds so President Trump has to deal with this now and this is him announcing some of his programs and hes now taking action which is probably what americans want to see most of all and hes recognizing the severity of the problem in peoples minds so that is i think a step in the right direction so this is a case where of course i couldnt have found that in my book which has already been published but this coronavirus is an example of a crisis that could really undermine or propel the president and its right in play right now and thats what were all looking at at this moment. So anyway, with that i want to thank you for coming and i hope that was helpful in understanding this notion of president s defining moments. Thank you. [applause] we have time for just a few questions. We are going to ask because this is being recorded you do not ask thequestion until our staff member brings the microphone. Hello. And thank you for the excellent presentation area what would you recommend the President Trump to do next. To make this crisis something that he comes out as handling well . I think theres two things. Recognize reality that, tell people what is happening here and not minimize this is something nobody should worry about which is the impression i think he gave initially but it was there i he gave the impression its going to go away. Wait until the warmer weather. Its the flu but people are so worried about and i think thats part ofthe changing circumstances that he has to address. Hes not recognize and you do see signs that between us. Thatthis is a big deal for people. They are really worried about it. One is putting up information that people really want about whatshappening. And second, that means working with the Public Service and other Public Health professionals the second is taking action. People in a crisis the president to do something and hes now starting to dothat. Now, is it too late to create a different impression that hes on the case i dont think so, i think he can still do that but hes not to stay with it now. This is something you are looking to him, this is a defining moment for him and hes got to show that hes capable of leading us through this crisis, whether people are exaggerating or not. His got to recognize i think that the public wants the president to be decisive in either calling our fears for showing us the way out. And i think thats the key to what needs to do. Could you tell us about the corian war . You talk about the vietcong but tell us a little bit. The question about the korean war and we talk about that but im by the way one of the few journalists left in washington who was in the army so i wasnt in the korean war but i was in the vietnam era the korean war was a, one of these immersions and interventions that the United States has gotten into including vietnam and some other places which americans didnt like because it did not have a clean resolution. What happened was the north vietnamese, North Koreans before this, peninsula of korea was divided between north and south, thats a whole other story so there divided demarcation line ,the dmz. The middle of the country. The North Koreans feel they finally can take over south so they invade the south read a push the american troops are allies of the south korea almost off the peninsula. We were in a little compartment there at the bottom of south korea area where we had been stuck, pushed by the North Koreans. Then we pushed troops and supplies in and we started to push the North Koreans back so with very clever strategy by General Macarthur and other generals read very difficult fighting, you saw that picture of the conditions, the cold weather. Very desperate fighting the americans were outnumbered in many cases. We had the technology it was a very, very difficult long we just had world war ii. In 1945, now were in the early 50s back at work again. Very difficult situation so we, our government and our allies and the South Koreans dont understand how perilous it is to get close to that chinese border. So as our troops are moving across the river which was a key place of demarcation we get to the river and hundreds of thousands of chinese storm across the river and push us back again. Then it becomes even more desperate. We have many soldiers dying in terrible conditions so that it becomes a real tough slog and it becomes a stalemate and thats why so Many Americans hated the korean war because we didnt win it. Because we were stuck and we still dont have a peace treaty, but we have an armistice. And we are still dealing with that situation now. Anyway, thats it in a nutshell. I hope that was helpful. How do you feel that president obama and ben ghazi what was his relationship with Valerie Jarrett. On ben david, i think that was more of a Hillary Clinton thing area i think president obama could have stepped in. This was a situation where did Hillary Clinton allow our diplomats and our americans in this bend of the situation hubris be stranded and killed without trying to rescue them . She didnt move quickly enough. I think it was such a fastmoving situation obama, maybe should have jumped him personally but he deferred Hillary Clinton as secretary of state and let her handle it. Its still a big criticism of Hillary Clinton that she didnt take action to save our people when they were under attack and ben ghazi so that the, theres a lot more to say about it but thats just in the interest of time. I think president obama just decided he was going to let Hillary Clinton and he didnt intervene. He let Hillary Clinton as secretary of state the only this area a big criticism of her among conservatives and republicans. President s obamas relations with Valerie Jarrett were very close they had been close in chicago where he came up as a political figure. She was actually initially a friend of michelle obama, his wife became a friend of his area and she became a senior white house advisor, didnt get actually the attention she should have gotten as a real player. We all knew she was close to president obama but she was there for many, many decisions right at his elbow. We still dont have the bottom of exactly what role she played in a lot of this but she was certainly one of the fundamental players in that government. And thats a case where maybe they should have paid more attention to that but by and large, she was, there were very few people in the obama administrationmore important. And Valerie Jarrett area. One more question, thank you. Thanks again for a very important discussion. Theres two things, you mentioned president eisenhower mentioning that his state of the state wasthe you to. And i think there was another story, when he was leaving, have you made any mistakes as president and he said yes, ive made 2 and they are both sitting on the supreme court. So maybe theres another one. Ive heard that story to what i think later on, i think we might have written this in memoirs and in subsequent. The single mister made was handling the u2. He really prided himself on being a truth teller and he was knocked in that case and it hurt him that he made that mistake. I think thats part of it. He was personally trouble that he was put in that position. My real question is your comment if you have any on president clinton where a few days ago his sexual escapades were a way of relieving the stress of his presidency. When i am in a room full of people i find out who hates me the most and i want to convert them and persuade them to support me he would go right for that notion. But thats what im getting at talking about the Metoo Movement. That doesnt work. Under this great anxiety and stress so i need to pray on this in turn and Monica Lewinsky has changed her views on this. Initially she was much less willing to criticize president clinton now she says hes most powerful man in the world i am enthralled he pays attention to me im 22 years old. So he handled that about the worst way that you could. He was impeached over it. But as i say those times were different i think that would work today. But i did see that comment and im sure that will be floating around the politics of our country for a long time. Thank you again for joining us tonight at work and being here it is fascinating we will keep you indoors the bookstore is right behind us you can answer questions and buy your books and we did announce today because of coronavirus tomorrow the last day the Reagan Library and museum will be open through further notice. We are glad youve been with us tonight. Thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] now there is a couple of strategies if you are a tech startup do you go to facebook or google so that warps the innovators in Silicon Valley to innovate according to market needs and ideas instead everybody says how can i develop something that facebook or google will buy . That isnt necessarily how we want to run the economy on the Innovation Sector to function