Funding comes from these Television Companies, and more. Including media calm, at media calm, we believe that when you live here, or here, or way out in the middle or anywhere, you should have access to fast and reliable internet. Media, along with these Television Companies supports c span tooted as a public service. Well, weve made it to. This is our last panel of theto. Day. I think its been a terrific symposium. Im sure everybody here will agree and i thought it was very fitting. We are oi we made it to the end. This is our last panel. It has been a terrific symposium. I thought it was very fitting we will hear from dr. Troy today and if there this is his book. And you can see on the screen as well. And we really thought that dr. Troy would be excellent for our final panel of the day because if you are not familiar with his book it is an overview of everything we have been talking about today about the intersection, Popular Culture, the white house and the presidency so it will be a terrific synopsis if youve been wondering to get a big picture of everything and diving into the details with television and movies we will take a step back because in his book its a great historical overview. The history of Popular Culture in the white house and the presidency so i will tell you about our guest today. Our panelist, tabby troll is a senior panelist and he is also a bestselling president ial historian. He is the author of the best selling book his most recent book is fight house rivalries in the white house from truman to trump. Which was named one of 2020 top political books by the wall street journal. Dr. Troy visits us from Cornell University and he also has an m. A. In American Civilization from the university of texas at austin. So tevvy when we have people who worked in the white house like you did. Tell us about your time in the white house. Do you have a favorite memory or place within the white house . First, thank you, colleen for having me in doing this event and reaching out to me 20 years ago when i did my first book. [ indiscernible ] i was just singing colleens praises i went to work in the white house in early 2002. I had been a political appointee of the department of labor previously and i came to the Bush Administration from the hill but i had a scholarly background having gotten a phd as you said from the university of texas. With a great interest in the presidency i wrote my dissertation and then my first book. I had that kind of historical Training Background i actually had been in the archives and multiple archives and i had seen president ial memos with the president s writing on the margin so that really gave me the bog and the jones to see what was going on and how it worked in the white house. Most people really dont have that understanding when they get there so having worked there i have that combination of understanding from a scholarly perspective. I had a number of jobs in the white house including Deputy Assistant to the president , in terms of favorite memories i really want to do two and i think it relates to this book. One is popculture and the other, from a popculture perspective white house is a great place to be. All of these people wander in and out and you never knew who you would see. I remember Peyton Manning came by. Dr. Phil came by and wanted to talk to us about policy towards families and then bono would come by frequently and he always wanted to talk to president bush about africa policy, my assistant was there when we got to harvard and he would always call her harvard girl and the other assistance would swoon over him so theres some favorite popculture moments, but from a Historical Perspective there is a spot in the white house between where the kitchen and the white house florist is and you can see if you look up at the arch where there are scorch marks from when the british burned the white house during the war of 1812 and i hope that was such a great connective moment. Here is this American Institution been around for so long. And we are in that house working in that house doing the peoples business two centuries later and that was a powerful moment for me. Tell us why you decided to write this book. I find president s fascinating and i think a lot of people do hence all the people in this room and watching on cspan today. I worry that we dont have enough connect of tissue in this situation. When we grew up if there was an episode of happy days everybody knew about it today i dont know what the unifying parts of our National Culture are. The president is one unifier. Sometimes he or she can be divisive but Everybody Knows who the president is in the latest thing the president said and i just thought looking at our countrys culture through the lens of the presidency could give you a good sense of where the presidency was at various times and also as the title conveys, show the evolution of culture as Technology Improves so jefferson read is still the way to get information in my perspective, but its an inert form of information. Then you start to have motion pictures. More fluid and things that are moving. You can see a movie at different places and then there is the interactive level. Roosevelt, around 1920 he was the most filled person in the world. Its not just the president takes in culture but the president becomes a part of culture and then obama tweeted, i obviously wrote that before 20 trump tweeted even more but here we have the situation where the president thinks something and puts it out in 80 Million People immediately see it. Its an amazing full. I felt the intersection of all those things was interesting and indicative of where we are as a society. Okay. In the book you chronicle the history of president s and their connection. Tell us what president s utilize this relationship to their political benefit and which ones were not quite as successful . Thats a good question because its boring if you say i watched this show and i watched this morning. The book is a part of that and its about how they become a part of pop culture to convey themselves and their administrations goals to the world, to the nation. And so when i think of president s that are successful in their interactions with success one is teddy roosevelt. He would read three books a day even as president. Roosevelt read with purpose. He was later governor of new york. He read booker t. Washington up from slavery and invited him to the white house just to get to know the person in the book was a sensation and he wanted to talk about americas policy toward africanamericans. What he didnt realize what this was the first time a black man had been invited to dine at the white house not cause another sensation. Roosevelt didnt. There were people in much more recent times who were outraged. It was a really important moment and it was based on roosevelts use of culture and he also read sinclairs the jungle and we know he was instrumental in creating the fda. He read a series on John Rockefeller and he went hard after standard oil and the trust. He embraced the culture and used it to advance his political edge. Other examples of using culture widely are eisenhower, the son, like ike actually written by Irving Berlin in the Disney Company produced a commercial for eisenhower and then you also think of bill clinton in the 1992 campaign. Hes kind of unknown. Hes young and there are pictures of him as a hippie he goes on the arsenio hall show and he plays the saxophone with his sunglasses to show he kept it cool but he also has the Fleetwood Mac song that makes him approachable and safe from the perspective of the baby boomers. I think those people are examples of people who used it well. One person who i dont think took good advantage of culture at all was jimmy carter. Jimmy carter watched 480 movies while he was president. At the 120 per year. Two to three movies per week while he served as president in a difficult time and he didnt find any way to connect to the people based on all of his movie watching. He just sat there and watch the movies and took them in but there was nothing broader about it and he has not his presidency has not been portrayed well through history. This year at the White House Historical association our ornament this year is highlighting the Ford White House and of course there is a new book out about gerald ford from Richard Norton smith so a lot of people thinking i was lucky enough to be able to go there and see the exhibits and they were excellent. When i read your book, political culture is not kind to gerald ford. Tell us about that. Number one is he has well publicized stumbles where he falls and they were not really his fault but he was trying to help but regardless, these stumbles led to an impression as a class. Remind you ford was probably the best athlete to become president. He was a Football Player in college and was drafted into the nfl. Ford was a tremendous athlete but there was a perception of him as a klutz. That is one aspect. The second thing is the culture was changing. Whats happening to the president is there and the culture is there and theyre both important factors so the culture is changing 10 or 15 years before. You cannot make fun of the president on tv. There is a sketch show in the 1960s and it was kebab by the sensors. In kennedys era they never made fun of the president although there was a guy who did a record about the kennedys and he basically just did different accents for the different kennedy brothers and really wasnt funny but it was seen as very transgressive and theres a legendary moment the records he puts out are sensational. Huge big sellers but kennedy is assassinated in 1963 tragically and right after kennedy is assassinated lenny bruce the comedian gets up on stage. The audience is shellshocked and everyones upset and bruce just sits there for a long silent period looking at the audience and he finally breaks the silence and says boy, von meador is screwed and that was the end of his career but it was a big deal that he was even able to make fun of the president on record but now lets fast forward 10 years. Now saturday night live is very transgression transgressive and they make fun of a president on tv with chevy chase is infamous impersonation of gerald ford. Look at the president ial impersonations on saturday night live today. Famously alec baldwin and trump. There is a special wig that he wore. They made him look kind of like trump. Just like with biden and the sunglasses. There was no attempt to make chevy chase look like gerald ford the only way he conveyed that he was him was the way that he drop stuff and thats how you knew he was gerald ford but this is a big deal that the president was made on tv and that percentage of him as a stumble bomb stuck with him. Unfortunate tagging. Talk to us about technology. Of course the advent of radio and television. How does this change the relationship between Popular Culture and our president s. These technologies allow president s to go over the heads of whatever gatekeepers there are. And go directly to people. Franklin roosevelt when he was governor of new york he regularly use radio because he feared that the editors of the major newspapers in new york were all republicans and biased against him. And then he famously used the fireside chat when he was in the white house to give over moments of great importance to the nation. Didnt actually overuse them. Use them infrequently because he did not want to wear out his welcome. He would go forward another two decades and John F Kennedy who used television brilliantly so well and so effectively that after the election he walks by atv and he looks and says, you know we wouldnt have a prayer without that gadget. I love in 60s he still calling it a gadget and so television allows president s to get in your living room. Donald rumsfeld talk about this about hearing the fireside chance from fdr around the dinner table. It these technological changes that make the president part of a national conversation. We know that culture influences president s and how they act. We have seen some of the choices they make. Do president s ever influence Popular Culture. Does it ever go the other way . Think about when george says read my lips. People would say read my lips. Then you think about obama and the famous sheppard ferry iconic photograph of him and that becomes something that is repeated and reused many times for many different figures. Obamas use of yes we can is something that enters the lexicon so these president s can do things to shape the culture. Another famous thing is when president s read a book how that book goes up in the best seller charts. One of the most famous examples is Ronald Reagan reads tom clancys novel the hunt for red october. Tom clancy was an unknown insurance agent. This became a success because reagan read the book. Tom clancy not only became a bestselling author but now there is a whole franchise. Jack ryan has been portrayed by about half a dozen Different Actors on various tv shows though that was all in some ways launched by Ronald Reagan and him reading this book. Lets talk a little bit about the movies. We just have the panel on president s and the movies. You write in the book that president s like to present an idealized version of themselves if that makes sense from a political perspective. Also say that movies help them do this to give us some examples of what you mean by that. We all know that roosevelt was paralyzed. He was in a wheelchair throughout his entire presidency. He was depicted in movies perhaps more than any other president in part because the holiday moguls like harry warner wanted to ingratiate himself with the administration so they kept depicting him on screen but in no hollywood movie was roosevelt as president ever depicted in a wheelchair until the movie pearl harbor 2001 about 55 years after his death so they did present this guy roosevelt but never the roosevelt in a wheelchair thats one idealized version. You think about the show, west wing. The martin sheen was specifically designed to be some kind of mixed between bill clinton and john f. Kennedy without the. That was what they were trying to present theres an idealized version right there. You have these people on screen who are celebrated either as fictionalized versions or other versions and alfabank another good example is John F Kennedy in the movie pt 109 which presents a glossy view of kennedy as a war hero and he did do some heroic things after his boat was cut in half but he also stumbled. The movie overlooks that and talks about heroism. That movie helps kennedy become president and kennedy complains when the movie is shown on tv and its shown along with a commercial sometimes for antiperspirants and other body products. Complains to new minnow who is the head of the s. E. C. And the guy who famously coined the phrase the vast wasteland that his movie is on with all these i have add but these do present idealized versions of prent. Its also interesting that in the president s mention none of those are republican so hollywood rarely presents those depictions of republicans on the screen. I think we sauce them of that today in some of the discussions. What about reagan . He is the movie actor. He appears in films. How to use that to his advantage as president . I think his long history of being on multiple screens and multiple platforms [ indiscernible ] he goes out and speaks to a large audience is so first of all they trained him how to speak on multiple platforms. He knew how to speak on the radio and silver screen. He knew what to do on television so i think that trained himself as a good communicator but it also introduced him to the American People and when the democrats would say that reagan likes acid rain or want to get rid of medicare reagans people would say you know Ronald Reagan, youve seen him on tv shows in the American People just thought i know this guy. He is not the mean guy they are to pick the and i think it presented reagan in a positive light because he was known to the American People and i think that helped him. Do you think it helped tell stories in a way that was a feckless to the American People . He was a great storyteller. He was refer to movies when he was president. He said i just saw the movie rambo and i know what to do next time this happens. He did use the movies as a way to inform his thinking but convey his ideas. Lets talk about this, i mention this earlier. Lets talk about books and reading. You argue in the book that reading is one way that president s can engage in Popular Culture in a way that showcases intellectual pursuits but there is another side of that coin which is if they can appear a little bit and not relatable to the American People so how do president s approach what to read . If thats something that is strategic and how do they do it in a way so that they appear relatable enough but they also have to appear smart enough . What is the politics of that if you can give some examples . What they choose to let us know. One story about reagan that he was reading good example. And so bush is a guy who goes to yale and Harvard Business school, but then he goes to texas in the middle and he loses a race. In the george w. Bush is a good example. Bush is a guy that and he goes to texas and he loses a race in the late 1970s where he is depicted as a pointyheaded ivy league person. Is amazing to watch the videos of that campaign and bush is almost unrecognizable as a candidate see later on. And thats because after he loses to ken hames he says i will never be out country again. He puts on the hat and the Leather Jacket and the boot and he is reading books all the time. He is a huge reader. Carlos said when he saw him he never was without a book. He presents himself as this cowboy with a twang and it works. He gets elected governor of texas twice. It also changed his image and when he was president he wanted to show that he was a serious thoughtful intellectual person. It was too late. People did not see him that way. Sometimes you play with your image at your own peril. Do you think that had positive and negative benefits . Absolutely. As president and i can attest, he read 60 to 90 books per year. Serious books. He had a reading contest with karl rove and he would have authors into the white house and these historians who would marvel at how much he read you would not know that from watching tv in the bush days or watching will ferrells impersonation of him or from reading the newspapers. He was asked what is the thing he hates the most. I think he was kind of being clever there. He did like to read biography and history. Again, one thing in your book that was interesting, we read across time in the book. One recurring genre interest me read mysteries. Why are mysteries so popular for president s . Is important to know that mysteries have not in around forever. And mysteries are diverted. They lightly get your mind off things that are troublesome or worrying. One great example is woodrow wilson. He had a stroke in his second term and he is bedridden for a month at a time and ray baker comes to visit him in the white house and he says that by wilsons bed there were two things. A bible and the latest mystery so wilson liked to read mysteries. Bill clinton read alterable mysteries so mysteries were something that multiple president s read and they found it diverting. Your mind is still active thinking who the killer is or what will happen next so its not mindless like watching tv in the 1950s, it is something that can get your mind off of your problems. When i worked on capitol hill i watched a lot of reruns of murder she wrote and my husband finally said why do you want that and i said because in one hour somebody is killed and she always finds who did it in one hour and in real life on capitol hill you never saw problems being sold in one hour, not in one year and not in 10 years but at least i found something where in one hour the solution was presented. It was a relief. It was comforting. Our last question before we go to the audience and im sure there will be a lot of questions about the breath of your book and both historically the number of media that you cover in the book, you say in the book that the presidency is one of the last is off and in the current to embrace cultural shifts or Popular Culture shift taken place. Do you think this latency is beneficial or harmful to a large republican democracy . Is this a good or bad thing . The presidency be morris monson or is it good that its sometimes a step behind . So the presidency of the white house, they are the establishment. I dont care if you are a radical leftist. The establishment is always snow slow to pick up a new trend. You dont necessarily want the president out there citing the latest ticktock video. The president is supposed to be about elevating things and there are certain things that become cultural phenomenon but fade away. These fads happen all away. So the presidency should be about more timeless things. I dont the presidency needs to be focused on every new cultural change. And that said, the president doesnt want to be so out of touch so if something is sweeping the nation and there is a concern sometimes they can refer to it in a gentle way you dont want them to be slaves to pop culture. You want them to use the pop culture to their advantage. Do we have questions from doc or troy from our audience . Okay. Hello. This was interesting. One thing you did mention was inviting celebrities to the wet white house i did mention celebrities and they do show up at the white house. Sometimes its done in a strategic way. John f. Kennedy had this famous dinner where he had all this great talent and writers to the white house and he famously joked this is the greatest collection of intellectual thought in the white house Thomas Jefferson died here alone. There are multiple people object to the policy and want to pass around a petition criticizing the president s policy at his own event. Charlton heston, who is there, objects strenuously to this and says i dont think its polite circulating a petition against your host when you are in your his own home. No good for moses there. You really have to be careful of who you in right to the white house and that they wont reflect poorly on you later on. And i its a challenge. You want the celebrities because they can bring reflective glory but they also bring whatever challenges they have them if they write a song thats inappropriate they get involved in eighth handle that can make the president look bad as well area but interestinglye secret service and she was bring Abbie Hoffman as her date, which i think was awesome. But the secret service vetted her and took her out of line and she didnt even get to come in. So sometimes they can skip the line, but sometimes they get booted off the line. The questions. Yes, right here. Could you take the microphone just so we can get the for the viewing audience as bill clintons pop pop culture moment was when he appeared on the arsenio hall show. Do you equate that for barak obama . When oprah endorsed him and she had never really endorsed anybody before . I think oprah was very big for the Obama Campaign in 2008. And so, yes, i think they think that was a big moment. The difference with clinton was president s didnt go on the late night tv talk shows at the time. It just wasnt a thing. And hes really changed that. And subsequently now we do see president s and president ial candidates go on these shows. And i think it gets back to the point that colin was making about should president s be embracing every new trend or they, i guess, a little standoffish and maybe a little more elevated and maybe now the late night shows and the oprah show and those other shows are such a part of the culture and there really are institutions now that maybe they werent 50 years ago that president s, i think, can embrace them. So i think gets to your point about being slow to embrace and change, but when its appropriate, i think its instructive. But but i do agree that the oprah moment was a big one. The questions were there right in the middle. Mm hmm. Thanks for coming. I really enjoyed fight club read it a couple of years ago. A great book. Thank you. I wanted to ask you about did you have the experience, but then also what youve learned through your study about the correlation between this, you know, basically intellectual consumption and how they then use it in management and manage it. I mean, theyre politicians. They want to win. You know, they they all think theyre correct. And then the job is to persuade the American People. And their politicians and they want to win. The job is to persuade the American People and so if you are a true intellectual you want to understand your opponents position and so there is always more to learn. What did you see on the practical intellectual side on how george w. Bush or others manage that in terms of even their day to day or week to week schedule, the president is supposed to be managing administration and managing so many different issues and yet you always know there is more to learn and more to read. Do they just have to schedule at least two hours every night . I heard george w. Bush did an interview and brian asked about this and it was interesting. I am just curious what you observed and learned. President s surprisingly have a lot of time on their hands. You dont think so but they have no commute. They just walk down the west colonnade. They dont have to take out the garbage or cook dinner or walk the dog. Really there needs are taken care of so when their schedule is done for the day and some want to work late, most president s call it a day as they claim they want their family time which is not really true because i was never home when i worked in the white house. That. When they leave the oval office they are pretty clear so they have time to read if they choose. Like i said carter watched 480 movies. Eisenhower famously watched tv while having tv dinners in those little trays with his wife. He loved westerns in fact white house usher complains that it was hard to find westerns that he hadnt watched and this was back then were westerns were the most frequent genre. So president s do have some time to do it they choose their own thing. In terms of watching your opponents i think i saw this most clearly when i worked on the bush campaign. You have to prepare for your opponent. What is he going to say . John kerry was a good debater but there is also thousands of hours of paint tape which helped him prepare anything that could be interesting in this Upcoming Campaign trump obviously was very effective in the debate but if there are multiple opponents we will have watched him and they have thousands of hours now. Will they be able to anticipate what he says . And if you anticipate can you take advantage. I think the fact that these politicians are so frequently filmed and recorded it gives their opponents a lot of material to work with in order to prepare how to deal with them. A question up front. Okay. Thank you. We talk a lot about the pop culture of the 20th century and 21stcentury president s and i know popculture looked different in the 19th century but are there any interesting stories or any thoughts about popculture and either the influence on or influence by 19th century president s . Im glad you asked that because i spent a lot of time on the in the book usually when i have these Panel Discussions people ask about the 20th and 21st section so the interesting thing was that in the 19th century some of these options dont exist. Dont have tv or radio you dont have popular music to the same degree. You dont have movies or twitter. You have two things. You have theater and you have reading. Some of the president s were huge readers. Jefferson famously said i cannot live without books. They read a lot and reading was something that really engage them. Madison was also a huge reader. In fact madison sent jefferson a whole trunk of books from europe with ideas about governance that he read in preparation for the constitutional convention. Reading was important. We also saw that theater was a big deal. Abe lincoln loved to go to the theater. Obviously we know about his tragic end but he saw many plays and before that he love shakespeare and would quote him. Shakespeare back then now as we have seen an elevated you are pretentious if you quote shakespeare. When lincoln would cite shakespeare he would do it knowing that the American People were not aware. The literacy rates in america were high compared to europe and people read shakespeare and the bible. The culture in the 19th century was different but it still had these unifying aspects and you have multiple president s who embrace the culture. Over here. So continuing with the 19th century, i know that during the white house early years of the president s palace i like to call it we had the mammoth cheese and as Vice President truman visit theme parks. Could you talk about some of the popular amusement that you know the early president s had taken advantage of . Cards with whisk, that was a popular game. Different types of theater though i think were interesting to multiple president s they would go to the theater to enjoy the spectacle. Back then if you go on a tour which president munro did in the south while he was president , he went to charleston which was the theater capital of the world at the time. Not broadway. By going to the theater that was the largest collection of people you could find. So you go and you see and you are seen. The theater was a great way to find different people and another example is lincoln would read popular humorous like petroleum be nasty. He would read them he would read them out loud to his visitors and we would laugh. Popular amusement were also things that to multiple president s. Over here. Hi, i have a twopart question. 10 years ago the smithsonian had an exhibit on fdr and stamps and they said he would use stamps to push his agenda to get support. Are you familiar with that or with other meetings of pushing out ideas to the public that is one part in the second part is the moderator had asked about idolized views of president and use that it was mostly democrats. Well, lincoln today, especially when it comes to slavery and his thoughts about slavery, do you feel that has been idolized and do you also think that some of the president s especially some of the republicans like jackson and others that squash reconstruction, do you think that they were omitted and that is part of idealization which is one of many reasons why a lot of people do not fully understand reconstruction, slavery and things like that . Thank you. There is lot to unpack there. Im assuming you mean Andrew Johnson in terms of reconstruction. Pretty reprehensible what he did and not what lincoln would have done. Lincoln has been idolized in some films but obviously film is a medium that comes about 40 years after his death. So i was talking more about modern president s and how they are conveyed by hollywood in their lifetimes. The stamp thing is an interesting point because stamps were much more widely part of Popular Culture. Franklin roosevelt was also a stamp collector. He found stamps interesting. Now who talks about the latest stamp . I never heard that happened today. We were talking about it at lunch. We were talking about the fact that theres a citizen Stamp Commission that actually listens to the ideas of who should be on a stamp. Its a widely noticed they dont know where each thing goes on the letter. Its a foreign concept. As the male becomes less important in our everyday lives stamps become less of a unifying asked back. A great question. Was there a question here . Hello, that was great. I have a question it came out of a class and i was teaching Security Administration photographs i was showing gave me a portrait of obama for my apartment and i wouldnt have it to me i am going to put it in my apartment and of course obama was like the first president in a long time where people did that so i started thinking about jfk which is maybe like a posthumous thing and i started thinking in relation to media. Fdr and radio and are there others i know this is a 19th century thing but thinng i know it happens in other places and nations. For us in the new u. S. , i am thinking about how this connects to everything we have been talking about. While he is there the famous photographer Matthew Brady he takes a picture of lincoln and that picture becomes the view of lincoln that the American People have and it sent newspapers around the country. People dont know about this guy who was congressman for one term and then he loses the senate race to douglas. It was terrific in the 1930s. When a boy would be bar mitzvah at a synagogue the rabbi would walk, the cancer would walk, the bar mitzvah would be there and then there would be someone holding up a picture of franklin roosevelt. The photos and iconography, i remember that. I think those pictures are hugely important in conveying an image of who we want to see an image can tell you so much about the president and what they are trying to accomplish. I think iconography has been incredibly important. A question appear . I think you said that someone was the first black man to have dinner in the white house. Lincoln used to have conversations with Frederick Douglass a lot. He was not allowed to eat at the white house . Its not that he wasnt allowed to eat, but he wasnt invited to dinner. Having a person to dinner was a big deal. I think its extra cool that he did it after reading his book. I think fdr was an exceptional president and i just wanted to ask if there were any others that made the impact following the stock market crash fdr was over the wpa which was the works project and it employed a lot of musicians and artists and things you dont even hear about today and are there any other president s that have come close to that kind of a platform like the 1930s . Sometimes see these murals that came from wp i think he did have a big impact on the artistic life of this nation. I also think about kennedy. He raised awareness of classical music. I think president s can have an impact i guess higher forms of culture but its not their main goal i would say, but it does happen. We have so many other avenues but that was geared for artists and musicians and they went around the country on the last slaves and they interviewed them and got a perspective. And those were up the library congress. There is in an article by Joseph Epstein and he writes about our current and previous president and he said could you ever think of these people reading a serious look and i took that step it and i said i will have a tough time writing a seek will to our last question in the back. Apologies if this is out of your scope but can you talk about how first ladies have been shaped by pop culture . Absolutely. You think about nancy reagan she is famous for three words. Just say no. She famously goes on the show different strokes and uses that catchphrase so i think first ladies can be an important part and Michelle Obama had the lets move campaign. And i think the first ladies can have a big deal. Laura bush started the reading festival. And that continues to this day. I think first ladies have a great capacity to advance culture. They usually aim for elevated types of culture and they are trying to convey messages that try to make us better as a nation. I think many of the ladies appeared on sesame street. Dr. Biden only appeared so you see them popping up. And usually they get better as a nation. Hopefully things we can all agree on. First ladies for the most part are less partisan. Thank you so much for this conversation. If you are enjoying American History tv sign up for our newsletter using the qr code on your screen to receive the weekly schedule of upcoming programs like lectures in history, the presidency and more. Sign up for the American History tv newsletter and be sure to watch American History tv every saturday or every time online at cspan. Org history