Transcripts For CSPAN2 Kenneth Walsh Presidential Leadership In Crisis 20240713

Justice for all. Thank you. We have had the fortune of having Many Political journalists, both print and broadcast, speak here over the years. The one we have with us tonight has covered six u. S. President s beginning with president reagan. Speaking of president reagan, we were first introduced to canada back in 2002 when he and a handful of other experts came out to the Reagan Library to share stories about president reagan and our air force one tail number 27000. Stories we then used to make our visitors experience and our air force one pavilion that much more rich. Since then hes come to other times to discuss and find copies of his book, prisoners of the white house in 2013, and ultimate insiders white house photographers and how they shape history in 2017. Since he has been covering the white house since 1986 i am 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 in the world of president ial campaigns. Perhaps, if were lucky, he will share insight in the upcoming elections. But he is here tonight to discuss his latest book, president ial leadership in crisis defining moments of the modern president from Franklin Roosevelt to donald trump. Speaking of the book, president ial historian alvin wrote ken walsh, one of the nations shrewdest observers of president s and the presidency takes readers on a tour of how 14 president s resolved crises that came their way and how a 15th, donald trump, regards crises is the norm rather than the exception has incorporated them in whois management style. Anyone interested in how power is exercised will come away enriched by the tales walsh tells of success and failure of the highest level of american government. Lets hear tales, shall we connect ladies and jumped him in, its to introduce kind walsh. [applause] great. Thank you all for coming. I will be talking about challenging times president s have faced so we have a challenging times getting here tonight, including me. [laughter] i was just in San Francisco where my daughter lives and i did programs up there for the book and one thing is being canceled after the other so as you well know. But i can also report that all the lift drivers are out there making money from our getting the surgical masks now and its hard to hear them and understand what they are saying but all ive heard is that they dont help you. So its a precaution they are taking but im glad they are 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 you are a White House Correspondent and i have been one for more than 30 years and covered six president s you are always looking for different ways to see the president s and to get insights into them and to find out what they are like as people, personalities, character, policies and agenda and so on. I have found a number of ways to do that through my books. One i wrote a book about air force one and it came out here and helped put together the exhibit and in some small way and nancy reagan was nice to write notes about me for that and i did a book about celebrities and how president s behave in celebrity culture and participate in Popular Culture and a number of other things. It also occurred to me since i covered the white house for so long that every president ive covered in every modern president had to deal with a major crisis from some kind. Maybe this wasnt so true early in our history when we did not have mass media and Mass Communications and world war power but now we are and all those things are true and president s have to deal with crisis. Ill come back to the slaver but President Trump is particularly interesting because he seems to thrive on the idea of crisis and some of the crises he generates himself and then he settles the crisis and likes the idea that he has emerged victorious in a crisis. Now hes dealing with a crisis unlike any he has had to deal with before because hes completely out of his control to start with. He has never dealt with this sort of thing in his private life and as a businessman and he has had some experience with other things hes out with but not this. I think and i will talk about this in a few minutes but basically its up in the air how we evaluate President Trump and how he deals with this coronavirus would he can still correct problems he had initially and some of the confusion and lack of understanding and what the country wants from the president in this situation but he can recover and thats what we will talk about a little bit. Because we cant resist showing the cover of my book but we cant go into much detail on all the president s but i want to give you a sense of some of the things 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 a historian in my own right and how president s deal with crises and basically i think the People Public wants and historians expect from the present crisis is taking action and secondly adapting to the changing circumstances and balancing principle with what works and persevering and having an instinct for achieving success and that is all wrapped up in what i am about to talk to you and evaluate the different president s and this is a summary of those standards that i just gave you but i will talk about them in the next few minutes as we go through the presentation. You cant talk about president s in crisis without talking abraham lincoln. The ultimate crisis and calamity weve ever had in the United States is the civil war and lincoln got us through this to accommodation of adhering to those 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 but felt that he had to keep slavery to save the union he would do that but he changed his mind as time went on and became a moral issue with him. During the waging of the war the union had terrible setbacks initially and lincoln realizing he been in a military earlier in his life briefly but he had a lot to learn and that is one important thing about president s in crisis but are they willing to listen and learn and lincoln was willing to do that. This is him talking with general mcclellan known as little mac at the time and talk about adapting to changing circumstances and doing what works but he hired mcclellan, fired him, hired him again, fired him again because he wasnt chasing down the confederate armies the weight lincoln wanted him to do so you can see the perseverance again with lincoln as well and you saw that very clearly in his dealing with the civil war. Of course one the civil war ended up abolishing slavery and i want to show you one other i like to show these pictures were i discussed lincolns before he took office and shirley before he grew his beard and he was given a famous speech at cooper union in new york and it outlined his agenda but keep this in your mind. This is what 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 of the country was going through in the civil war and that was very important to people, even in the south he became known as among the three enslaved people as father abraham largely because he had been gone through such trauma with all the debts that he was ordering himself and also lost a son during the civil, not because of the war but because of a fever he had, but just amazing how the toll took on lincoln. He looked like a spectral presence here. He came to really embody, for many, Many Americans in history the best crisis manager we had as president. But now more recently this is the focus of the book and this is the depression, soup kitchen. During the early 1930s we had a terrible terrible economic calamity and unemployment today is about 4 and its a little less than 4 we dont when he gets up to eight, nine, 10 but it was 35 during the great depression. One out of every three people looking for work basically meant at the time and that is away the culture was and cannot find it so they had to go to soup kitchens and this is an evocative picture of what they had to go through. This was considered humiliation to ask for charity and help. People felt it was their fault that they couldnt find work and so people were tremendously upset by the whole circumstance and have a couple images here and wanted to get to this one here of people lined up to just get a cup of coffee and donuts. This is dressed pretty well. They would get dressed up to do this even though they had no work but what was happening is people were asking for help and so desperate and this is a terrible economic calamity for so many people in Franklin Roosevelt stepped in to do that in one think that roosevelt did in addition to the standards and talking about, he persevered in a specific way and that reflects optimism. That was what he is known for in every president since roosevelt has adopted this technique, including president reagan, by the way, who admired roosevelt all his life and had been a democrat but became a republican of course but reagan did but he admired roosevelt particularly because of this optimism that he could convey to the country. This is a picture of Franklin Roosevelt giving a fireside chat. This is what he did refuse the media of his time, radio which basically every american could have access to either with 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 have and what he was doing and 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 in to include the economy but instead of talking about shutting down banks or you know making sure things were solid by terminating their operations he called a bank holiday and its a pretty color term so much lighter and nonthreatening idea but he was closing banks and so he went out and gave the fireside chats and throughout his administration and you could walk to the city or the town or a hamlet or around the country and people had their windows open and you can hear Franklin 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 wherever he went and it was a tremendously effective thing he did with these fireside chats and this is an example of roosevelt optimism and the positive president s that so many people of a certain age remember and again i cant talk too long about each want but they were all in the book. President roosevelt died in 189a lot to prove. A lot of people did not think he was up to the job and people felt we had present roosevelt for four terms and he was elected to just before he died so hot will be survive without drinking roosevelt but during the truman time we had the korean war and this is a little example of what those soldiers had to go through during the korean war, terrible, difficult conditions in initially the war to not go well and then the war started to get better and partly because we had general that so Many Americans admired from world war ii in the pacific, douglas macarthur. 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 conflicts of war and peace but president s have to deal with so many things now that ive chosen to illustrate this book with examples that are not just war and peace but other things that would defining moments for the president did this was firing macarthur. This was or took a great allele of political courage for truman to fire macarthur one of most popular people in the country and during the pacific he promised to return to the philippines and became the Supreme Leader of japan as the American General in command and occupy forces and launched a brilliant move to do an invasion of the north and very risky but Successful Operation so he started off after the war was going badly and he started off the war was going well and you might remember the history of it in the American Forces in south korea started to move farther and farther north pushing the North Koreans back and they got too close to the chinese border and the chinese entered hundreds of thousands of chinese troops pushing the allies and 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 time when the chinese entered macarthur started to say this is a different war now but i need to do things differently. He was talking about using Nuclear Weapons and about bombing the chinese mainland and bringing the nationalist chinese from taiwan into help which was out rage to the chinese. Harry truman kept telling him publicly we are not doing at and we might bring the soviets into this but this is a cold war and we dont want to have a wider war so for truman it became a concept of civilian control of the military. Will he let this very popular general run of the war the way he wanted or is the president who supposed to be our commanderinchief going to 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 in the meeting went okay and did not get along very well but then macarthur started to make these very aggressive comments again and truman fired him and of course, a huge firestorm. Now, historians basically feel it was the right thing to do and he was defending the constitution and principal of civilian control military and it was popular at the time and it cost truman a lot of support but he always defended it and now in reading the history people who write the history books feel it was the right thing to do but at the time it was a tremendous gavel for truman but this is an example of a political military related defining moment that i think this president did in the retrospective do very well in dealing with it. President eisenhower again, we have to go rapidly here because i want to be respectful of your time but president eisenhower generally is not just considered a popular present but successful 100 he had to terms and americans return to normalcy and eisenhower delivered that. Initially he got along pretty well with the soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev but he was still worried of course during the cold war about what the soviets were up to so he authorized these spy planes over the soviet union and these planes flew a 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 flights before International Conference in 1960 which he thought would be the capstone of his presidency because he would meet with khrushchev and germany, france and the uk and so on in paris but he wants the speight mission about three weeks before this International Conference was supposed to happen and wouldnt you know it, the soviets shot went down. It was a tremendous blow to the prestige of the americans but it looked like we were the more mongers and initially president eisenhower authorized a lie about it. He said it wasnt a spy flights but a weather mission. He made a bad judgment here and admitted later that it was the worst mistake of his presidency and set both sides back in the cold war but his feeling from his advisors but the u2 planes cannot survive of an attack because they were fragile and the pilot would not survive, they were being shot down and landing on the ground and the pilot also had poisoned needles to inject himself with so he could kill himself. Well, the soviets not only found the debris but captured the pilot. Francis gary powers. Khrushchev showed the debris in very wellpublicized menstruation and exhibits in moscow and said not only are the americans the warmongers flying over our country the soviet union but eisenhower is a liar. It was a tremendous blow because eisenhower prided himself on being an honest politician and so it did hurt his reputation. The soviets played this the Public Relations of it much better than the americans thought they would because they canceled the paris meeting with but khrushchev went initially and said he demanded that eisenhower call off any future you two 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 mass for the United States but this is a case where the defining moment did not go well for american president by large the eisenhower years were considered a success. Here is president kennedy with khrushchev. Chris jeff is still in office and president kennedy was elected in 1960, takes office in 61 and shortly or a few weeks after he takes office we have the bay of pigs invasion where america forces supported cuban exiles trying to retake cuba from fidel castro and it was an utter failure. A lot of people in the Exile Community that we did not give them air support or do what we would want to do but kennedy adopted the plans that the Eisenhower Administration had come up with for the invasion but it did not work so it was a tremendous setback and goes ahead and meet with khrushchev and the accommodation with bay of pigs and this meeting in vienna and chris jeff concludes kennedy is weak and callow and inexperienced that he can get the better of him so what happens, we have one of the most dramatic and dangerous moments in the cold war which was the cuban missile crisis pitting kennedy against castro and khrushchev. You see how close cuba is to florida. The soviets were installing offensive missiles and that couldve reached much of the United States trade mainland and wiped out millions of americans. President kennedy felt had reconnaissance and they got pictures on their sites and felt we cannot let this go so he had 13 days and the recreations of this that have been done on television and the movies and some were good, by the way, including the movie 13 days. He goes to many, many arguments within the administration and what to do in invading cuba in bombing cuba and one thing after the other so he comes up with an announcement to the country a quarantine. He calls it a quarantines rather than a blockade. Again, killing which is important. Blockade is considered an act of war and calling it a quarantine was basically a blockade but softened the impression of it for the World Committee so kennedy gives the speech and a lot of people and i was just a boy then but just this little illustration how riveted everybody was with this. People in the department store, they watched on the tv and it got trumans coverage and when he decided to blockade cuba. It was dangerous because we do not know how the soviets would respond in one thing after the other. Couple of things that kennedy demonstrated here in crisis management, not only just for perseverance but learning from experience and that notion of him changing with circumstances and when he felt that they were opening for a peaceful resolution of this and he took them rather than keep pushing khrushchev into a corner but he is on from experience and also he had learned from the cuban missile crisis for the cuban missile crisis and he 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 and they were pushing him toward the competition he did not want to have so he did not listen to his generals as much as he had earlier and this was most historians would agree a good thing for him to do because he did not want to be pushed into being so bellicose. Anyway, the competition ends and kennedy gets credit for this for steering us through this confrontation that could have ended up in a terrible nuclear war and later it was revealed that we had to we had traded outmoded missiles in turkey and promised not to invade cuba for the removal of the soviet missiles but that was not disclosed at the time so there was some deft communication strategy that went on here as well. This is my concluding point here that kennedy unflappable and the guy who chris jeff completely misread talking about failing in his own defining moment that kennedy really understood the stakes involved in the risk it was taking but he pursued in the end very prudent and sensible way of dealing with this and has given credit for that in his defining moments. Lyndon johnson takes over after entity is assassinated and this is the vietnam war. This is a photograph from the tet offensive, 1968, january. Its a surprise move and the north vietnamese and the vietcong in the communist forces in South Vietnam launched attacks all over the country of South Vietnam and took the americans and South Vietnamese by surprise. Basically the United States and the South Vietnamese one most of the battles but the problem was it made clear that we were a long way from winning vietnam that the enemy was not going to give up even though president johnson said they were and there was light at the end of the tunnel so it was a Public Relationship victory for the communist forces. If not, a military one. This led to even more intense antiwar feelings and remember the protests that johnson had to deal with and you had Vietnam Veterans and people in vietnam and these protests veterans and protesting it and i can member that and i was in college these days. Johnson could not speak outside of the white house because he would have these often violent protests and he often had the respect of the soldiers and commanderinchief and conservative College Campuses but otherwise he was basically a prisoner of the white house for much of his time and remember the chant that would go up, heh, heh, lbj, how many kids did you kill today . Thats pretty harsh. Lyndon johnson then has to decide what he will do about this and theres a lot of interpretation about what he does but this is a political crisis that i think in the and he handled well because he goes on television and talking about a bombing pause and announces he will not run again. I will not or he says i will not seek nor will i accept the nomination of my party for another term as their president. This caught the country by surprise and there was a tremendous shock, people were stunned, johnson would do this because he sought this office all his life and loved being president but i think in reconstructing this as a defining moment that ended his presidency that he did the right thing because even though he knew he would face a real struggle being reelected and he could have been reelected actually because he still was a very strong figure and people had doubts about people running for president but he knew it would rip the country apart so in the end it was the right thing for him to do and i think most historians would agree with that these days. Again, moving quickly but president nixon paid nixon always wanted to be a tough, firm leader. When he was faced with the watergate scandal which is why i chose to deal with nixon he violates virtually all the standards ive come up with to look at president s under crisis conditions. He doesnt adjust to changing circumstances but perseveres in trying to save his presidency but not in dealing with the fundamental problems and abuses that the watergate scandal showed. He did not take action until too late, goes on and on. He Stonewalls Congress and as the house moves to impeach him he resigns. Hes not impeach but you remember those scenes and this is the scene the pain in his face and his wifes face and its a famous photograph of nixon as he gets on the helicopter just as he flies away to go to california but i think that this is another case where a president does not do well in a crisis situation. Initially if nixon had owned up what to happen in the watergate burglary and not try to cover it all up he probably could have survived it. The democrats were not offering alternatives to what he was doing the country would accept so i think that this is a case where he was his own worst enemy in many ways and handling his definitive crisis as president. General ford takes over and he was Vice President and pardons nixon and that is the case i use for gerald ford. Again we dont have to talk about the great deal although i explain it incomprehensible detail in the book but ford decides that if he does not end the nixon controversy somehow he will be [inaudible] in the news media will ask him about it and nixon will be this figure casting a shadow on his whole presidency so he does pardon Richard Nixon paid another big gavel he took and this probably cost him his own bid for the presidency in 1976 when jimmy carter won because people really wanted nixon to pay more of a price but ford felt that nixon had paid a price in terrible humiliation and leaving office and in all the findings made about the things that went on in that administration so he pardoned nixon at the time and it is very unpopular decision but 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 critical of ford for pardoning nixon later and gave ford a profiling courage award saying i was wrong, senator kennedy said. He was right in pardoning nixon so there has been a historical redemption here for jerry ford. Now, we remember this but this is jimmy carter and the iranian hostage crisis. We still had iran in the headlines today. This is a case where the american ally left the country and the religious zealots took over and took control of iran. America was widely despised in iran for supporting the shah who was very brutal and guilty of oppressing his people so one day when the shah had left he wanted to have a treatment for physical problems that he was having in the United States and the question was will be let him in the United States and maybe stir up a position in iran that we were supporting this hated figure there and this is after he had been deposed. Carter said well, okay, its probably the humane thing to do and let him have the treatment here and he was a good ally for the United States for a long time but if these people go and take over our embassy and capture our people i will come back to you advisors and ask you what do we say now and thats exactly what happened. Students and other radical took over the embassy and took over and captured about 60 of our people and held them for a year. Carter was unable to get them out and tried everything he could possibly do and this is a case where he was derided for instead of taking action which is one of the standards i have for president s in defining moments he called for prayer and said lets pray for our captive americans and this is a case of National Cathedral ceremony and what he was stricken by it and it almost froze his presidency for that whole year and finally after the pressure was growing on him he did launch a mission and this is at the center of my critique of carter for the iranian hostage situation. Launched a mission to save the hostages and it was an utter failure. What happened was the military later said that they told carter this but everything had to go perfectly for this mission to have any chance of succeeding. With helicopters who had to go into the desert and meet up with other helicopters and find people from the country who knew how to go and get into the embassy and fly them to to ron and a hostile city, not a small place and get to the embassy, fight your way through the embassy, find the hostages and get them out and get them back on the helicopters and get the back helicopters back to the ships so at every phase something could go wrong and what happened is it went wrong on the first phase. Helicopters ran into each other and eight americans were initially killed and then it got worse from there. It was a terrible blow to carters presidency and of course, president reagan got them out in the day he took office, now, how much was it reagan and how much was it the iranians were afraid of him or whatever but nevertheless, a hostage situation was a terrible part of carters presidency that he never recovered from. He handled things rather a hamhanded way. Now we get to president reagan. President reagan of course this is him when he was shot and this is the case i use the book, the ultimate personal crisis because he almost died from this. He was giving his speech in washington a few weeks after he took office in 1981 and getting into his limousine and as he reached the limousine John Hinckley junior a starstruck arranged young man wanted to repress the Actress Jodie Foster shot the president and ended up hitting his press secretary, dc policemen and a secret Service Agent and one of his rounds bounced off the side of the limousine and hit reagan in the side but this is reagan when he was hit exactly the moment he was hit by the piece of the bullet. You can see the secret service guys looking over at the shooter. This picture won a Pulitzer Prize by the way. What happens is they push reagan into the limousine and he feels tremendous pain and thanks the secret Service Agent who pushed him into the limousine named jerry parr had broken one of his ribs so he cost him. By this time he was bleeding from the mouth and frothing and so the agent said we are not taking you back to the white house, mr. President , were taking you to the emergency room with if they had not done it he almost surely would have died. When you got in this situation is the personal courage and the personal grace under pressure of the president , of an individual person under this tremendous burden of being shot. He gets to the hospital and he always felt that he should act like the president so this happened and he had been a movie actor and im not saying he was critical he but he understood that there was a role to play so we get out of the limousine, buttons up his suit jacket, walks into the emergency room under his own power and then collapses. He did not want people to see vulnerability but he does almost die and the doctors do their best to save him and he benefits from amazing good fortune and it turned out that the day he was at the hospital was a conference with some of the most prestigious specialists in many types of surgery where they are for a conference and they were all there when he was shot so they could all help them so they left the conference to help with the surgery. So then came the postoperative part of it which was also a brilliant in many ways because reagan understood the importance in the spotlight he was on and had to show the country that he was capable of handling this and recovering. Its a man in his 70s and at that time but we have two president ial candidates who will be in their 70s now and actually three if you consider bernie sanders. But he understands the country needs to see him so he handled that very well, his advisers handled it well. It was carefully orchestrated. I put this as a plus because its an important time for the country and 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 could rise to the occasion and could recover in almost a miraculous way. They arranged for him to meet at the hospital with senior advisers which he does here. You can see he looks frail to me, doesnt he . Obviously he is had a trauma here but it works in the country is very respectful of him and believes the president does have this personal courage and grace under pressure that we prize so much but he perseveres and has all the standards i talk about in dealing with a crisis and he also shows he has support around the country and this is a card that the staff arranged to be sent to him with white house staffers and its a get well card to the president and he does other things that were clever to show he could recover and an elderly man pumping iron and so on rather soon after his being shot and it was an amazing Tour De Force for reagan in this personal calamity he went through and it helped his agenda. I was covering congress at this time just before i got to 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 he dealt with this personal crisis and i can remember he talked to cabdrivers to get a sense of everyday people and i cant tell you how many cab driver said he took a bullet to the chest but he kept coming. I didnt like him at first but i like him now. I think that is the way a lot of people felt. This is the image might leave you with. He never had another calamity like that but did not have skin cancer and colon cancer but he did end up with this image as the leader charging ahead with his agenda which he wanted all along. President bush takes over and president bush had been Vice President wins in the 1988 election and he launches the persian gulf war but president bush was a master at Coalition Building and again if you apply my standards to this he does live up to all the standards taking action in principle with reality, perseverance and so on and this is him when he visited the troops after he has organized the Massive International coalition to drive the iraq out of kuwait which they had invaded to get their oil for other reasons. He waved and could be awkward and so on but he handled the situation very well and we finally went to the war and it was a massive success for the americans and for our allies and so in all the years i covered the white house this is how i saw the operate white house operate better as a National Security staff as during the persian gulf war. We all know what this is and this is the big crisis for bill clinton, Monica Lewinsky sex and lies affair. He had an affair with this young intern and lied about it under oath and he handled it very badly. If he had admitted it he probably could have been okay but he did not and lied about it and this is the case a famous press conference he had with hilary there and he is saying i did not have sexual relations with that woman, ms. Lewinsky. Thats what he said but that was a lie, he did. He was caught and there were that 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, unbelievable and so many of his providers they felt that he had been betrayed in taking this fundamental risk and so selfindulgent to risk his presidency and the job hed wanted all his life that ended up being as salacious and dangerous as what he did. He was impeached and of course impeachment is a charge and house levees and then the senate acquitted him and that is just what happened to President Trump, by the way. But the blemish remained on clintons record of the impeachment and by the way i think that blemish will remain on President Trumps record even though you could argue it was partisan and certainly it was but its still in the history books. What happens with clinton is that by the end of his presidency he is persuaded the country that his public leadership as president was more important in evaluating him that his private behavior which a lot of people thought he was a scoundrel. By the end have his presidency he is impeached and acquitted but his popularity goes up. He remains and becomes a popular president again because people feel well, i guess we cant have the president as a role model anymore so the outcome of his big crisis is a fundamental difference of reception we have had in the presidency and we separate the public president from the private president and that is the big change for us because americans have wanted the president to be a role model for most of our history and lots of president s have done what clinton did but it was kept quiet. Now its different. Thats a big change. Either way, the other point about clinton is if we had the made to movement that we have today back then i dont think he would have survived. Women were not there and they were not there charges were not taken seriously as they are now or at least much more intensely great if we had that then i dont think he would have made it through. Of course, 911. The destruction of the world trade towers with hijacked aircraft and terrorists and depending [inaudible] this is president bushs. Here originally was off balance when he first handled this and people wondered about how his visibility to be strong and resolute in a crisis and this is when he was first told of the second plane hitting the second tower and he was at an Elementary School in Sarasota Florida but his plane hit the tree tower in new york and no one knew why in the president will be later i thought maybe someone had a heart attack but unrealistic initial impression but nevertheless, then he goes out on camera and his chief of staff whispers in his year a second plane hit the second tower, america is under attack. And that starts the global war on terrorism that he launches and hes offbalance and for the first day he doesnt come back to washington which i was critical of initially but i think he was right about that because it was such chaos and as an example on air force one the pilot of the plane was so unsure of what was happening that he asked a secret Service Agent whos a friend of his to stand guard at the cockpit so no one would take over the plain brit i always thought that was amazing but the pilot of air force one asking a secret service guy to protect the pilot from being taken over while the plane is flying, i thought that was amazing. So we had initial time where chaos and uncertainty but then president bush settled in and this was probably the most memorable moment of his presidency. He goes to the site where the trade towers had been smoldering in the background and hes on the burnedout fire truck and starts to talk in the First Responders say we cant hear you, we cant hear you so he grabs a bullhorn, pulls a guy up from the crowd of First Responders and turns out to be a retired fireman who volunteered to help with that day and he says i hear you and the people who knocked down these buildings will hear all of us very soon. Thats exactly what the country wanted to hear from the president. He does pass the initial test of 911 but as time goes on i think you can reassess how he handled the longterm crisis with the war in afghanistan, the war in iraq, occupying the countries which his father did not do because he thought would be too much of a burden for the United States and divisive but the sun does that were still living with the consequences today but the initial reaction to the attacks i think he handled himself very well. President obama and the financial crisis took over and this is a Time Magazine cover and started comparing him to Franklin Roosevelt who had to deal with the depression which i talk about a while ago and President Trump and president obama had to deal with a real meltdown. It was a fundamental economic crisis and you remember that era with major Banking Institutions and lending houses were going under and so on and 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 too far but the federal government was not 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 and that he shouldve punished the banks and put of these people in jail but he did not do that. He does get past the initial meltdown and the economy does recover so we have to give him credit for that. He does persevere and bounces principal with pragmatism and understands that taking action with support and does have an instinct for success in this. One of the things he did which was particularly controversial is rescues the Auto Industry and gives the Auto Industry loans and Financial Aid which was tremendously controversial because americans felt the Auto Industry was their own fault that they were going bankrupt but they werent making cars that americans wanted now is turning out to be true. They werent as fuelefficient but they decided to bail out the Auto Industry and does save the Auto Industry in fundamental ways and so i thank you have to look on and that is a case where he took a very risky and unpopular decision and ran with it and i think that was a good judgment on his part. We can quarrel about my conclusions but i think its laying out the parameters of the discussion here and its interesting in how he dealt with this fundamental defining mome moment. Now onto President Trump. President trump has made a presidency of crisis and we had a perpetual series of crisis and we can argue whether he has handled it well or badly but seems to thrive in a crisis atmosphere. A lot of president s, maybe they would think a Government Shutdown would be enough of a crisis but weve had a government crisis in competition with korea and iran and problems in iraq and had terrorist institutes in the wall in the border and getting along with congress and one thing after the other. The wall is one thing that i talk about in the book has one of the crises that he dealt with. He promised during the campaign he would build a wall to the United States in mexico and of the Mexican Government pay for it, stop illegal immigration and criminals committed to the United States and so on. Congress when congress realized it was not going to pay for the wall after the Mexican Government decided it would not pay for the wall then President Trump declared a national emergency, crisis at the border, so he can move money from other accounts to pay for the wall. That is still being tested in a court by the way but he is taking action here but its against a very resistant congress, at least democrats in the house are resistant to it but he still fighting for the wall and staying with it and people feel this is the right thing to do but it is a crisis that he is still dealing with now and his argument is that it started. This got wrapped up in the whole impeach controversies so this is another i took about or talk about in the book as a fundamental crisis dealing with. He is impeached and deals with robert mueller, special counsel who investigated him and his report in some ways is inconclusive but the democrats ran with it anyway and then nancy pelosi House Speaker did not want to impeach him initially but decided to do it and after the famous phone call came about with trump talking to the leader of ukraine the linsky about an investigation of joe biden the leading democratic president ial candidates and corruption involving biden son, hunter. Now, that is still floating around out there by the way. A lot of repugnance and dont want to let go of that and want to investigate hunter biden, biden son joe biden but nevertheless this is the issue that caused the impeachments because the arguments of the democrats say its an abuse of power and the president tried to corner an ally or an adversary by forcing an ally to investigate this guy. The other part of this is that trump says biden was trying to, joe biden, was trying to remove a prosecutor from ukraine and the prosecutor might have been trying to investigate hunter biden joes son. It gets complicated but basically both sides are not giving up on their interpretation of what joe biden was trying to do while he was Vice President. Fight corruption or get his son off but nevertheless this is joe biden son and what he happens is is house leaders, adam schiff, california and others push impeachment and trump is impeached as clinton was but is also acquitted. Hes got impeachment on his record but acquittal. So how did this come about . I tend to think trump would have been hard to avoid impeachment because of the partisan atmosphere in washington but he might have softened the blow if he had not been as resistant as nixon was to cooperating with the investigations and 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 peacefully and so i will 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 to talk about just earlier in this discussion the coronavirus discussion. That could be the biggest crisis of his presidency because it affects so many people. Are people panicking, is it worth panicking over . That is the question and we have this kind of story floating around the country how you are treated and we have enough tests and that, by the way, is something that the president needs to be careful of this to kill her lot of people in the Public Health service, 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 the tests out there so we know who has this and its taken a long time for that to happen. President trump can still recover from this, i think, from the initial missteps or slowness of the response because he said its just like any other flu initially but now it turns out that people are just really, really scared about it. Maybe they are overdoing it but i will the less its a real problem in peoples minds. President trump has to deal with us now and this is him announcing some of his programs and he is now taking action which is what americans want to see most of all and he is recognizing the severity of the problem in peoples minds and that is, i think, a step in right direction so this is a case where of course i cannot accommodate it in my book that had already been published but this coronavirus is an example of a crisis that could really undermine or propel the president right into plate right now and that is what we are all looking at at this moment. Anyway, with that i want to thank you for coming and hope that was helpful in understanding this notion of the president defining moments. Thank you. [applause] we have time for just a few questions and we are going to ask that because its been recorded you do not ask the questions until our Staff Members brings the microphone to you. I think i saw [inaudible] hello. Thank you for the excellent presentation. What would you recommend President Trump to do next to make this crisis something that he comes out and is handling while . I think two things. Recognize reality that and tell people what is really happening here and not minimize that this is something nobody should worry about which is the impression i think he gave initially. He gave the impression that it will go away, wait till the warmer weather and its the flu. But people are so worried about it and i think that is part of the changing circumstances he had asked to address but hes got to recognize and you do see signs hes doing this that this is a big deal for people and there are really worried about it. One is putting up information that people really want about what is happening and second means working with the Public Health service or Public Health professionals and the second is taking action, people in a crisis want the president to do something and hes now starting to do that. Is it too late to create a different impression that he is on the case . I dont think so. I think he could still do that but hes got to stay with it now and this is something that people are looking to him and its a defining moment for him. Hes got to show that hes capable of leading us through this crisis, whether people are exaggerating it or not, hes got to reckon eyes, i i think, that the public wants the president to be decisive in either calming our fears or showing us the way out and i think that is the key of what he needs to do. Could you tell us a bit about the korean war . You talked about being on but tell us we talk about that but basically by the way, i am one of the few journalists left in the army. I wasnt in the korean war but the korean war was one of these immersions and interventions the United States has gone into, including vietnam and other places which americans did not like because it did not have a clean resolution. What happened was the North Koreans, well, before this the peninsula of korea was divided between north and south and thats a whole other story but they are divided and theres a demarcation line, the tmz and its in the middle of the country but North Koreans feel that they finally can take over the south so they invade the south. They push the american troops allies of south korea almost off the peninsula and we were in a little compartment they are at the bottom of south korea where we had been stuck and pushed by North Koreans and then we pushed troops and supplies in and pushed the North Koreans back with very clever strategy by General Macarthur and other generals. Very difficult situation, so our government and river and pushed us back again. Then it becomes even more desperate. We have many soldiers dying under terrible conditions and so then it becomes a real stalemate and thats why so many hated the korean war because we didnt win it, we were stuck and we still dont have a peace treaty that we have an armistice and we are still dealing with that whole situation now. So anyway that is it as a nutshell and i hope that is it. Yes. How do you feel president obama handled it and what was his relationship . On benghazi, that was more of a Hillary Clinton thing. He could have stepped in. This was the situation where did Hillary Clinton allowed our diplomats and americans in this situation to be stranded and killed without trying to rescue them she didnt move quickly enough. Enough. It is a fastmoving situation. Maybe obama should have jumped him personally but he differed very clinton as secretary of state and let her handle it. It was still a criticism she didnt sort of take action to save our people when they were under attack and benghazi so there is a lot more to say about it but president obama decided he was going to let Hillary Clinton handled that and he didnt intervene, he went for the clinton deal with it. Still a big criticism of her among the conservatives and republicans. Now president obama is relationship, they had been very close in chicago when he came up as a political figure she was initially a friend of michelle obama, his wife and became a friend of his and a senior white house adviser, didnt get the intention to veto attention she should have gotten. We all knew she was close to president obama but she was there for many decisions. Now we still havent gotten to the bottom of the role she played in this, but she was certainly one of the fundamental players in a government and thats the case maybe we need to pay more attention to that but by and large they were very few people in the administration more important than the valerie gigot. One more question. Thanks again for a very important talk. You mentioned president eisenhower. I think theres another story when he was leaving office somebody asked him have you made any mistakes as president and he said yes, ive made it to and they are both sitting on the supreme court. [laughter] i think later on in the subsequent interviews the single mistake he made he really prided himself on being a truth teller and it really hurt him that he made that mistake. I think thats part of it, he was troubled that he was put in the position. My last question is a comment if you have any on president clintons work a few days ago in the escapades relieving the stress of the presidency. You picked up on that. A lot of people did. President clinton, it is a sad case in some ways because he was considered the best politician of his generation initially. Not the least of reasons because he could talk his way out of everything and he was proud of that. Thereve been many stories about how he would say when im in a room full of people i will go to the person i think hed be the most and i want to convert them. I want to persuade them to support me so he would go right for that notion. That doesnt work. Now shes saying shes the most powerful in the world and i was enthralled he is paying attention to me. Im 22yearsold. He was impeached but as i say those times were different and i dont think that it would work today. So anyway, but i did see that comment coming and im sure that kind of thing is going to be floating around the politics in the country for a long time. Thank you again for braving the weather and joining us tonight. And i want to thank you for being here. Its fascinating. Right behind you the bookstore is behind us. Sign your books and a little side note we did announce because of the virus we are closing our doors fo so tomorros the last day the museum will be open until further notice and we are glad you are with us tonight. [applause] up next on booktv, former second lady, lynne cheney and president ial adviser karl rove reflect on the george w. Bush administration