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break into the courthouse, storm the first two floors, but while fred lockhart is escaped from the lynch mob he didn't escapes from justice. on may 18th, 1934 he was hanged, and he is buried in a grave in greenwood cemetery here in shreveport. and not presidential historian steven hayward prisons whose rankings of america's presidents based on their efforts to preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the united states. this is just under an hour. >> good afternoon and welcome to the heritage foundation to our douglas and sarah allyson auditorium. we of course welcome those that joined on the heritage website on all of these occasions and would ask everyone here in the house if you will be so kind to make that last courtesy check that your cell phones have been turned off as we recorded the program. we will post the program within 24 hours on the website for everyone's future reference as well. and as you noticed, we do have copies of the politically incorrect diet to the president's, part of them at least, available in the lobby if he would like to purchase them. of course this is part of a longstanding series the publishers have done on various aspects of issues and interest to all of us so we do encourage you to consider the book. hosting our discussion and introducing the discussion will be edwin meese, mr. meese serves in the ralf reagan policy and is the chairman of what is now the edwin meese center for legal and judicial studies here at the heritage foundation. please join me in welcoming the 75th attorney general of the united states. [applause] >> thank you, john and the ladies and gentlemen it is a pleasure for me to be here today particularly to introduce today's special guest and our speaker. steve hayward i consider one of the greatest writers in the conservative movement. he has done some outstanding work. he is the senior fellow at the american enterprise institute. as you know, one of our companion institutions in washington, d.c. with whom we do a lot of work including recently cosponsoring one of the presidential debates. he contributes to a e.r.a.'s energy and environmental outlook series and is the author of a book entitled the almanac of an ira will trends, and he also and i think one of his greatest works has been in to biographies, two phases of ronald reagan's political career as the governor of california, and ronald reagan as president of the united states. he's also done biographies of jimmy carter and winston churchill. he has a distinguished background. he's acted in a number of organizations including the pacific research institute and the ashbrock center at ashlawn university. he's had a great deal of experience as a bradley fellow, henry saw the tory fellow here at the heritage foundation, and also has done a number of things including being a member of the california citizens compensation commission and in various other academic pursuits. but today for our purposes, he has done a particularly important thing and that is looked at the modern presidency, that is from woodrow wilson through the presidency of barack obama. and one of the things he has done is look at it from a different angle than most people writing about presidents. he has looked at it from the standpoint of how have president's done particularly in the modern era in regard to what the constitution and the founders had in mind for the presidency of the united states, and this distinguishes him from a number of the people who've done biographies of presidents or who have looked at presidency and evaluated them as he has in this particular book. it's not only an excellent book from the standpoint of it's scholarship, but it's a very entertaining book, and i urge any of you that haven't purchased before, you have that opportunity as john pointed out at the conclusion of the session here. so please come join me in welcoming a good friend of heritage, and a very important part of the conservative movement, steve hayward. [applause] >> thank you, general meese. general meese tried to persuade me from this but it's unlikely in possible i will be able to get through this whole talk without referring to my favorite theme mainly that it means was the greatest attorney general ever. talking about setting up for that job in the right circumstances if we could. well, it's been a delight to contribute the latest title and the line of iconoclastic politically incorrect guides or pigs for short. i really like that. it gives a new meaning to picking out. but there's a couple of obvious threshold questions which he suggested in his introduction. what could be a politically incorrect perspective about the presidency. one of the great american institutions. how could that possibly in the politically incorrect and then why start with woodrow wilson and not to all of the presidents from george washington on? we are glad you asked. there are two main arguments that are closely connected and a couple of important ancillary parts of the argument. the first axis of the argument is that there are two presidencies to think of. there's the presidency as the founders conceive of it and as most of our presidents practice the institutions throughout the 19th century and then there's the modern presidency that i argued against decisively with woodrow wilson. you can make a theodore roosevelt and some aspects of the modern presidency and i comment on that briefly in the early entry to a chapter's but it's woodrow wilson who defined i seek the modern presidency in its most important respects and in the second access of the book is that most common of all but most of the leading books and treatments of the presidency, either the people that served in the office or the institution is all for growth are defective in some profound and the consequential ways. if you get most of the modern textbooks used in colleges and universities or the leading trade books that are crossover books between college books and for the general reading audience if you look at most of the leading books, you will see that most of them tend to treat the presidency and its occupants as the we were just another ceo position, albeit with a corporation, the u.s. government that so little bit more complicated and van byzantine van ibm or apple i suppose. and the leading aspect of the prison see and most of the modern books is on the idea of leadership with a capital l along with some personality traits of the president. so, for example, to two of the leading bookstore still in print and widely used read the presidential character, the book has gone through for additions since it was published in 1972. it's full of insight about different presidents and a different character traits they had and how we would serve them for ill or for good in office, and there is a lot to learn from the book. i don't want to say that it's a bad book. it's not, it's a good one but there is something missing. if you open to the index of the presidential character, you will not find a single entry for constitution or any of its correlates like the constitution or constitutionalism. you know, sort of startling if you think about it for a moment, or take the widely used the presidential power, modern presidents, again another interesting books with lots of good material, it's also gone through many editions since it was published in the 60's. also it has no index entry for constitution and it's not just the index if you go through the text of those books defined no discussion of the article to be on the couple of instrumental things. but no substantive discussion of the constitutional dimensions of the president, so you don't really get a discussion of the statesmanship from the books. they make the presidency and to another executive office all with fancy bells and whistles. i can go on down list. the presidential difference from a leadership style from fdr to clinton. again, another good book. green's team is an interesting author also no discussion to the constitution. and what this approach reflects is the modern dhaka you free social side of the approach to political things that has largely ruined the academic discipline of political science and is well on its way to ruben in the academic discipline of history as well. there are some exceptions to this. a couple i mentioned in the book the presidential greatness is a pretty good book on some of these questions, and i think the very best book one is now almost 20-years-old but still very much worth reading is the forest mcdonald put the american presidency and intellectual history. it's probably the best book written by one of the great conservative scholars of modern times, and then there is the carries out later in all this and that is oddly enough the famous book from the 70's the imperial presidency. we need to bring the president back inside the constitution. he talks about reinvigorating the separation of powers but of course schlesinger the level was up to mischief. he wanted to buttress having them chanting and of the imperial presidency beyond that suddenly schlesinger was shocked to learn people like lyndon johnson and richard nixon could use the presidency in ways he disapproved so he thought his time lead to congress which he thought would be dominated by the congress to become the preeminent branch again so even a book that is on the right track was on the right track for the wrong reasons and for the wrong objects. now it's possible to judge president's purely on an illogical scale. we have the rankings and polls that come out from time to time from academics and they put presidents in categories of great and near great and average and so forth. you can do that and mostly that reflects the preferences of the people are responding to the surveys for most part. there is a more direct method that allows you to abstract able but from policy choices and is more useful and relevant, and that simple method is to take article 2, the article that defines the office of the president, and in particular, look at the oath of office that presidents take the lead article to is vague in some respects and in a lot of terms to be defined in practice but the occupants of the office starting with george washington, but one part is -- one act is specified in article 2 that all presidents take the oath of office, to preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the united states. i had a simple idea. i'm not sure that i would call it to raise hour or not but the idea was to say how they live up to that oath of office and i divide a three part test to this. the first part was did the president has a well-developed constitutional philosophy that informed our choices and policies and especially the public rhetoric in other words they are teaching the americans about the constitution. one thing i observed in the book is that all the presidents from the soundings through the end of the 19th century, and a couple of the 20th century going back and reading their inaugural address about half of the inaugural address from most presidents talk about the constitution, reminding citizens of the constitutional heritage and the principle behind it. they thought was the best thing to put in their inaugural addresses and that ceased in modern times with the notable exceptions of harding, coolidge and ronald reagan, the constitution seems almost like an afterthought or the present dree mention one another's speeches presidents give, so that's the first one is to the of the constitutional philosophy and did they share it with their citizens? second is that the actions support or undermine the constitution and especially the mets on centralized power and third i decided to judge the president's according to the supreme court picks. something no one ever does. but president the tissue and the judiciary almost exclusively with the advice and consent of the senate, but that is also the most concrete and long lasting effect president's half after they leave office. to still have a couple of franklin roosevelt appointees serving on the court in the 1970's. almost none of the books on the presidencies of talk about this very much for talk about their constitutional legacy and how it lives their presidency. so i thought let's forget their court appointments as well. and then one of the important -- there are several aspects but one of the important ones that is completely political incorrect as the president today and in modern times simply talk too much to get the president's talk to us constantly almost daily either directly or through their spokespersons in the daily briefings and so forth or statements the president issued almost every day. and someday it may occur to a president that won a secret preserving public support would be to talk less to embrace the less is more principal. among modern presidents there was only one who really understood this. i think ronald reagan understood it but known as the great communicator and me at the pivotal time i will see talked too much but he talked a lot. he would like to have talked less but it's important and general meese can fill in some details about this. he often turned ways of adjusting from the stuff that he give another speech from golan tv again for this project. i think he understood there were limits to how often he could go to that well, the president who really got it was dwight eisenhower. dwight eisenhower didn't like giving speeches, and when he did give them he wanted to keep them short. one of the quotes i have in my book is eisenhower telling his advisers, quote, i keep telling you i don't like to do this sort of thing. i can think of nothing more boring for the american public than to have to sit in your living room for half hour looking at my face on their television screens. another time he said what is it that needs to be set? i'm not another just to listen to light on the quarter and then he said fine but not over 20 minutes. if you go back and compare all the modern presidents with our earlier ones, the great bulk of this is jeffrey's but the rhetorical presidency that really covers the transition in great detail. george washington averaged three public speeches a year. john adams one. thomas jefferson, he was positively the ghost of giving five speeches a year as president. james madison, zero. george will has a great book about this he says the british sacked washington board on the white house and he still didn't give a speech. [laughter] and even andrew jackson who was fought with good reason to introduce an element of populism to the presidency, even he didn't make a lot of speeches, a lot of public speeches, he gave one a year. so, and then the third point is this idea that our presidents should be leaders with a capital l taking americans to new and undefined places they didn't even know they wanted to go. that was the teaching of what will wilson. the president as a leader with a capital l ought to anticipate and think ahead of the people and pull them along and steer them to where the future would take us. and for very long you start getting the premium placed on charisma and our presidents, right, most famously with kennedy of course some of the presidency is this institution that we think of as the apex of american politics even though i think the presidency should be thought of as a coequal branch of government and inject one story there was controversy about this but if you go back to the late 19th century, thomas reed, the legendary republican speaker of the house who thought about running for president, was urged to run for president and he said we thought the president was a lesser office and speaker of the house. i sometimes have a thought experiment suggesting that two new gingrich from time to time. well, so then i go on and give letter grades to all the president and i would go on much longer because interested in questions and discussions so i read all of the presidents will send to obama and that is a nice 100 year or. willson gets an f comegys the first president to criticize the constitution openly to say it's obsolete, ought to be replaced or understood in radically different ways, and of giving five f's, willson, fdr, lyndon johnson, jimmy carter, bill clinton and obama. that might be six actually, i might have miscounted. i didn't agree on a curve, reverse curfew might say. barack obama turns out to be the perfect the baton of woodrow wilson of simply that he's the academic president sort of, but like wilson he doesn't have much regard for the of original principal of the constitution. i almost feel like any to a second edition already because the last couple of weeks, last week matt lauer of nbc news asked obama how come you haven't succeeded in getting us this grant hope and change he promised? and obama's answer, quote, it turns out our founders designed a system that makes it more difficult to bring about change that i would like. it turns out? peace just discovering it now? yousaf through some of professor obama's class is a the university of chicago. i point out in the book is ostensible scholar of constitutional law at to the elite of the equal protection clause. his favorite clause of course in the constitution that is their license to everything he seems to have just skipped over the separation of powers and all the institutional design questions of the constitution so i and the book by saying that the modern presidency can really be set to begin with the results of the 1912 election which saw the party splintered in the short progressive party that facilitated willson's election, and that marked a new chapter in american political thought that the liberals a specially built on that too many republicans unfortunately followed in the slipstream, and in the best of all worlds the election of 2012 could mark the end of this chapter and i return to an older son were constitutional order if american voters would take to heart the wisdom of the founders. so i will stop there in i will look forward to questions and comments, and i held back but i can still do that. thank you very much. [applause] that is a great start in show will provoke a number of questions here i want to ask a first question while others are thinking and that is it seems there's a certain parallel between the size of the white house staff and what you might call the institutional aspects of the presidency and the so-called modern presidency. would you comment on that and what happened with what will send and where did everything grow in my own reading it seemed to me the ideas growth will send it was roosevelt who really put the institutional mechanism into place. would you comment on that? >> that's a pretty good place to start the problem of the couple l. leadership of the presidency using a little of this with wilson, the federal trade commission started under wilson, the federal reserve and others is my independent agency of course what happens in this model is the president is expected to be at the apex of solving all these problems so what happens in the white house now and you really see what obama with all of the czars, the special white house special system for the problem the white house is now implicated in chongging, the president is implicated in solving all of our problems so whenever a new problem comes along you start the new white house task force, and or propose legislation to congress to set up an independent agency or expand an existing independent agency with a new mission. dodd-frank expanding the security exchange commission as long as the new agency set in motion. the problem here from the organizational point of view it seems to me, and this is where the standard textbook model for the presidency could shed more light than they do is, you know, you are expecting too much of a president in an executive agency. talk to anybody in any white house of either party and what they will tell you is the modern white house is just chaos three. it's one thing after another. there's not much time to think about things to read a lot of things fall by the wayside or did have done and so we are expecting our president to have his hand of every problem and i will say this is why the most successful presidents are the ones to concentrate on what is essential. while ronald reagan concentrate on three or four things and to the fast exclusion or the partial exclusion of other things and letting the government about its business instead of trying to be at the center of everything whereas the president's who are in every problem, jimmy carter most spectacularly with 300 pages of light from his staff until two or three in the morning, the presidents who can set priorities or try to be in the middle of everything tend to be less successful. bill clinton had that problem unless congress forced him to be more disciplined and focused, so this is a problem in the scale of government but it's also the executive model that's seen in the white house staff from a total of five under president grant and i think 27 under mckinley to now it's over with the white house staff has several hundred people plus 3,000 people you a point to the senior ranks of the executive branch so we did the math on that one if you appoint three people an hour, 24 hours a day from election day it takes you to june or july to fill all those jobs. but also practical if by the way there is no confirmation problem with any of them and this is why we now convinced that the government is very well anymore we are simply asking presidents to wait too much. >> let's open up to questions from the audience. >> academia. one of the president's you cover, bill clinton, said on more than one occasion that the american people are rhetorically conservative but operational the progressive. is their anything to this? >> he wasn't the first person to say that. i think -- i'm not sure if george will increase to that. he passed it along, and this goes beyond the presidency, this is a profound modern political problem in that of the theory that you divide people and special-interest groups and the minister of their needs mix them client of the state and supporters of the state i want to refuse all "the new york times" yesterday had a terrific front-page story, terrific in one respect and defective on the other this interesting story about how more and more middle class people are relying on the scene that even as they disliked, and it's obviously deploring the saying why don't all of them to do for their hostility and the government and get with the program and that is the subtext of the article, the article as the sea in journalistic circles bury the lead and have wonderful charts but the graphics department is really good at this, and it shows the growth in entitlement spending from 1960 to today in real terms the entitlements are taking off like a rocket and everything else being pretty much flat with the exception of education which has steadily gone up and is now the second most amount of money spent by all levels of government. i thought was interesting in that the article goes on to explore the fact that a lot of people, a lot of again, the better clinkers as the current president would have said dislike the entitlement state are critical of it or of the government but if you ask them should these programs be cut the are a little more hesitant about that. for a variety of reasons. some are in fact taking advantage of the progress right now in the bad econ mechem and others for the superficially decent reasons that you worry about what effect it might have on people who really do need them. so that is where there is a cognitive dissidence of the old keeping it conflicting ideas and are headed the same time and still functioning. there is cosmo's among americans about this and that's why, you know, you see a brave person like paul ryan come out with a plan to try to turn this around and is a big fire fight that has a long way to play out that everything does depend on the answer to that eventually. >> my question is just one of the things you say the president's speak too much deutsch and the social media that we all live and. what do you suggest they do to scale back on that and would that then cut into transparency which is also an issue? >> that is a great question. it would take considerable discipline, the discipline of general eisenhower to say i am going to speak less. except remember the eisenhower modern presidents are the one who are the most popular all the way through office and coming out of office. only ronald reagan comes close to it and it's probably not an accident that he was not in our face every day in promising as the moon. said it would take on a year and a disciplined. the other thing and this is the challenge for conservatives, a thought experiment you could envision mitt romney winning the election but nobody is enthusiastic about the guy. the good side of that would be of conservatives put more attention on congress as a place we get our national leadership from rather than the white house, our model of the last 30 or 40 years has been great if you get a conservative president or semi conservative president under the white house to have a meeting with something going on and you want the president -- that is the liberal model it would be a good thing if instead of expecting our help to come from the white house we spend more of our time and attention on congress. that used to be the conservative view if you go back to 1950's and the conservative political science and historians of they were all saying there is a reason that article 1 is about congress and the longest article in the constitution that was supposed to be the preeminent of the branches for moving the country along and the most the lubber this branch, and so this would be a return. what i'm suggesting would be a return for the old conservative attitude about how you should regard the relative priority in the branches of government. so, i don't know. it's almost irresistible for a president with all the tools available you got the tv networks, the internet now which is almost irresistible to want to comment every day on things so it would take iron discipline and i don't expect that from anybody fortunately. you might expect it from romney if he is really smart, but we will see. john? >> following on that, is it not the context in which they are seeking so much has now become a stage presentation that there isn't a back-and-forth, which is more the transparency issue say like question time. is it a matter of the venue that they are using as opposed to being effective communicator some of the issues may be or just some of that setting might affect it, too. >> that's an interesting question because it would be very hard to ask the president today willing suggesting here in a wholesale way because nowadays we do expect better or worse our presidents to rally the country in times of trouble or to address certain problems where even if there isn't a political solution we like hearing from our top person. so, you think of ronald reagan giving his speech around the country on the reaganite seems and there's a certain amount is always going to happen. the dividing line between what is that role, the genuine national leader, and the sort of political role which i think if you criticize president obama for bringing to david is a little harder to make out. again i think maybe ronald reagan is a good model and gives lots of speeches but there are also say to beat the speeches that stand out in ways that it's hard to think of many speeches since then standing out in the same way. you think of the evil empire speech followed by the strategic defense desha def speech. along with a speech in the parlance with reagan that look back now as important in the cold war stories and finally the berlin wall in 1987 the really stand out as a president who is concentrating on something and saying if something new, that's really how you make the news is you make something new. president bush, the second president bush in 2004 tried to go around the country giving speeches on the social security issue it was already in deep trouble and donning before hurricane katrina from its course. there are limits to what you can do but if you are given the same kind of speech and this is a problem for president bush that wasn't catching on this was a campaign strategy showed the limitations of all that and it's hard to draw bright lines on the scene to see what will work and what won't but the reagan model was probably one of the better ones. if you go further back you can look at some of truman's key speeches, especially in regard to the cold war stories for the marshall plan, the doctrine, those and a blasting the test of time and changing the country's policy. >> i'm just curious to set the modern presidency has become more like a ceo position in the 20th century. i'm curious what background is best for the modern presidency? is a ceo background like for instance mitt romney, is it a lawyer, a soldier, diverse background, is it an ivy league school or perhaps more? what you think is the best background for the modern presidency? >> that's a wonderful question. i'm having fun right now pointing out that our last president had a harvard mba, our current president has a law degree and if mitt romney is elected, he will have both. [laughter] there isn't sort of one -- the media's partially one answer to that question, but there isn't a clear answer to it. because some soldiers have made good presidents. eisenhower mentioned. i generally think people with a business background are not well-suited to being president. i think the best presidents are ones that happen executive experience on the state level, governors, and generals of executive experience that is why eisenhower looks like a governor in certain ways, and the poorest residents are often wonder senators are house members because they do is to make speeches, they don't make the decisions and are not responsible for -- solely responsible for things that have been under their purview. i think the most interesting president's come and you can extend this to foreign leaders, too are not the ones with a conventional ied legal education. they are the ones that of the unconventional education and the ones that are largely self educated. i would like to point out that if you start with theodore roosevelt, virtually all of our presidents had ivy league educations or equipment others elected in their own right, truman and johnson are accidents of being vice president, it? but you know, but roosevelt went to harvard and yale, herbert hoover is from stanford, calvin coolidge is from and hearst. even jimmy carter that is an outside figure attended annapolis, and richard nixon, but he does penance why that by going to do call school and becoming a wall street lawyer as his path back to the white house. and this is why if ronald reagan is interesting. he goes to eureka college, tiny little place and if you study closely what you can see it's like harry truman who didn't finish college, only modern president didn't have a college degree, they both of their particular political the machinations or their own self education. in ronald reagan's defense case it is the years in hollywood and traveling around the country when he's reading of the early modern classics of the american conservative movement whitaker chambers witness, the economics and one was in his reading and the speeches, he's doing all of that on his island. i think it's possible but ronald reagan could have been ruined by the conventional ivy league education. and, so that would be the most interesting. harry truman read history from a very early age and one of the things he says, and i quote in my book, something like a person sits here at this desk in the oval office ought to know his american history. good for him. contrast sharply, i can't resist, contrast sharply with the current executive who speaks of the 57 states connected by the intercontinental real road which we have even passed to the historical republican state of texas when it was and occupied by the marine courts minn. i could go on on that subject. the whole subject. [laughter] >> el -- al miliken. i'm wondering how presidents have used religious imagery and language particularly the bible. what would you find significant? >> great question. i don't write a lot about that in the book with a couple exceptions. one is harry truman, a devout baptist. but you don't think truman because of his salty language, right? by the way, you won't find in most of the big biographies of troutman people get there will be david mccullough, the year both doorstops, and they tread very lightly on his religious sensibilities to find out a great story about truman -- and i mention this in the book who wrote a terrific book about harry truman's foreign policy and the development of with the use to call the liberal internationalism but she's fleshed out much better than anybody come and i never noticed this, the fact that he regards the soviet union as an evil one player and evil because of their atheism coming and talking about his disappointment that he couldn't get our church organizations involved in talking about the process and principles of american foreign policy and the catholic church in all the major the nominations in the semi formal at jugs to american foreign policy and the education of the american public and overseas so it is overlooked by the standard biography so it's quite astonishing and he read the bible pretty well. >> [inaudible] he was for of the first president to name representatives to the vatican. >> that's right. i had forgotten that part of the stories. i think part of the reason harry truman overruled his own state department in recognizing israel was his religious beliefs. he said no, we are going to do this. i think one of the -- george w. bush expressing the religious sentiment i always had fun quoting franklin roosevelt. an episcopalian has public statements always very strong. he gave an election eve radio talk one of the things he said was a terrific statement was freedom of religion has no meaning to a man that has lost his god. i can't find a liberal today that would say something like this. if you do you get pounded. it's easy to quote the old liberal presidents against the liberals that get the wheatleys when you mention god but it's important with a number of our presidents. >> the mika furnace coming to you. >> slightly different. all of your books are wonderful so i can't wait to read this one but i will sort of ask you about your point about conservatives to direct some of their attention to congress. in my view, there is an even bigger hurdle to get them to care about the constitution so particularly to that a slight uptick with rand paul and mike lee but by and large my experience is they are quick to abandon and it's not like the half as well thought up hatred of the constitution. the kind of like it privately, and they will let you know that but that we have got to federalize this crime and that crime and we've got to do all these things that violate. is it an institutional problem? what can we do if we want to restore their concern for the constitution >> they take that. >> that's a hard question to answer because it is a complicated problem with lots of parts to it. let me answer it this way to beat people have been allowed asking the classic question of what ronald reagan do if he were running this year? and i've been saying that a little bit more of the background but the "washington post" calls the of the year and a half ago or something and asks me blood of ronald reagan approved of the tea party? and my first thought was to answer back you wonder why you are losing it leaders? really? so i wrote a whole piece of why he would approve of the tea party because the tea party reminds me a little bit like the tax revolt in the 1970's and that's the acronym, taxed enough already except the difference is it was just about high taxes and the tea party even though it is confused through all the things suggested in the question, it has a constitutional dimension to it. it's sort of a i call it as best a populace constitutional movement. populace constitutionalism, james madison would have thought was an oxymoron also on reflection he might have thought there's something hopeful about this. so, how would someone like ronald reagan or congressional leaders to get in touch of this sentiment that's out there that needs shaken so i thought to myself what with a reagan speech be like about the subject? and i think that he or the leaders of congress ought to be doing speeches and start something like this i think ronald reagan would say our founders' design the constitution with two things in the engine to make the country go and a set of brakes and safety equipment like seat belts to get from keeping in control and the liberals have ripped off the bricks and torn off the seat belts and pressed the gas pedal to the floor and were about to crash and then i think he would add meanwhile the liberals have taken all of their air bags and send them to congress instead of putting them in cars is the joke he would throw in, something like that and then he would go on in a series of plays and talk about particular aspects of the constitution and to reinforce the idea this is still limited government. you do need to start with something like that. so it's not just enough for us to tell members of congress you need to follow the constitution better and understand it more deeply that they need to reciprocate and the things they have to say, and i think they made some starts on that, but that is a hard problem because you know, this is likelier busy on the mark of the transportation bill and under the details. this is a very deep problem but it is the thing that is most needed for doing it seems to me. schenectady fed has his hand up. >> shortly before you start on writing the book you had a pretty good idea of who you would like and you didn't like. were you surprised by one of the president's been doing research either for good or for bad? >> let me think about that. truman was a sort of complicated case for the reasons already suggested. he was pretty good in some ways. on the other hand there is the seizure problem using executive power i'm going to seize the industry. it got swatted down by the liberal supreme court. it wasn't unfriendly to the extensions of executive power so he gets a black mark for that. they were just pure patronage like he used to do in those days and were sort of average or below average and lanning to the liberal direction. land up giving him -- he didn't have a distinct constitutional philosophy. but certain other virtues that he had in some ways i already suggested let me to get a c plus when he might have done worse i think. eisenhower is also a problem. i think he was a pretty good president. but then to his credit he admitted his mistakes on the supreme court. yell, brennan and warren. that knocked him down to a c plus because you can't make mistakes like that. their precious for that to happen. george h. w. bush was a real problem. from the one hand he appoints david souter and clarence thomas, this is a problem with the the exam how are you going to grade this? she ended up with a b, other reasons he does differently. so no great surprises i don't think those are three that are undetermined i will say. i didn't set out to find truman as a c plus or d or f. roosevelt would have gotten three f's or lubber if there were one for each term, with wilson and obama is heading that way, too. >> give them time. [laughter] >> okay, other questions. >> you argue that they are kind of -- with the heritage foundation -- to offer there are the two presidency's we see, the early presidency and in the modern presidency and focus your attention the book on the modern presidency. the standards that you use seem to be applied to the early presidents as well so that would make a kind of more uninteresting but if since maybe the early president has a better philosophy of the constitution than their actions are a little bit more positive does that mean we wouldn't get as more f's and more b's and c's, can you comment on that? >> a couple simple writing problems. the book would either have to be a lot longer, or the chapters a lot shorter. and more perfunctory. also i didn't think there was a lot of people but wanted to read much on john tyler. you can if you want to, but the politically incorrect guides are meant to be relevant to current controversy and things that really matter, and i thought about talking a lot more about andrew jackson and lincoln of course, grover cleveland i mentioned for degette pre-constitutional president. so i do mention a few of those presidents in passing with a couple of lessons drawn in the introductory chapters but i decided as a practical writing matter it made sense to concentrate on the modern presidency in the last 100 your compass. it really is as simple as that. you could do the whole thing. maybe a second volume, i don't know. and then the other thing was even just looking at the modern presidents and we won the chapters to be bought for 5,000 words, not more than that, even at that you can't say a lot about them so i don't go into their childhoods and i don't give sort of the brief lines which are contemplated for a while. instead, focusing in on the constitutional dimension also along the way i talk about some of their other things we think about in terms of the president and try to give some of the fun facts like to many new gerald ford's real name was leslie king, he took his adoptive father sang or jimmy carter was not only the first president born in a hospital, as late as 1976 in the first he elected a president born in the hospital also was the only president to ever file an official ufo sighting report with the air force. [laughter] explains a few things may be. [laughter] so, i wanted to have chapters that allow room for that kind of thing to talk about, whereas if you get all the presidents would be much shorter and less time to develop some of those things that i think people will enjoy reading about more than john tyler. >> one more question. >> with regnery publishing. my last question since it is an election year and we are in the middle of the gop primary if you had to agree right now on the campaign who -- how would they rate? >> yeah, lots of income pleats and provisional fadel unfortunately. newt gingrich is probably the best in some ways but the typical newt, he to get too far. some of the talk about in teaching judges and reducing, that scares people, so it is imprudent. he has the right instincts about this but my guess is -- and i don't followed the day to day campaigns may be as closely as i should. rick santorum suspect has a sound grasp on things. the big problem is that the candidates don't -- i mean, ron paul, he has things right, and to get the foreign policy and other stuff and scratch your head. one of the problems is our candidates are out of the habit and no one is making them get into the habit of talking about these things in a serious way. so, you know, i thought -- by the way i thought the best of the presidential debate is the one that the heritage did together because even will splits are couldn't get in the way of good questions and serious people. and there actually was one partially in south carolina where george asked questions on the 13th amendment. that was good. but for example, here is what i would love to see happen and the debate this fall. so you had last week justice ginsberg say to egypt i don't think you should look in the u.s. constitution as a model for a new constitution in egypt. by the way, the incorrect guide to the supreme court justice, i don't know. [laughter] and the permits were really quite astonishing. i have it written down here. the constitution he says he likes so i went out and looked up the self constitution on the the constitutionalism and sure enough, there is formal language in the constitution at the end of the long bill of rights which has all kinds of positive rights like the right to edge of a health care and housing and so forth, where it says judges or tribunals and forcing this bill of rights may -- must look to the international law and may look to the foreign law. no wonder justice ginsburg's like the constitution so much. so, that is a roundabout way for saying question from jim lehrer or something to the two candidates. should the supreme court looked to the law in making its rulings? why or why not come and watch obama score around that question and hopefully mitt romney can do something sensible about that, which i kind of doubt. but that kind of question should have been asked the six instead of the questions to get from george stephanopoulos on contraception, which to look strange like like battle operation that happened the last few days, doesn't it? anyway, so again, a complicated question that there are things that can start turning this in a different direction the would-be journalists and questioners and the dates and party leaders asking the candidates to talk about these things at more length, and they don't do that much. thank you all very much. [applause] callamore from shreveport weekend here on book tv. >> i am laura, and arc of this year at the library. we are in archives and special collections at noel at lsu st part. we are specializing in the history, dhaka and entering history in northwest regions. we have here today some of the things that we consider the stars in our collection. one that we are proudest of that kind of is the opening of what one would consider modernist northwest louisiana i think is the clearing of the rest of the red river 1873. this volume is a collection of 107 photographs that were taken r.b. to document the progression of the clearing of the rest in the red river in 1873 between shreveport. it was particularly important. it was the last and most successful clearing of the red river raft, and it enabled st. part -- shreveport to become important for the rest of the 19th century. unfortunately for some of the crew, the aide, the army corps of engineers, their visit to shreveport coincided with the yellow fever epidemic of 73, which just decimated the population. the lt. eugene woodruff who was in charge of the raft clearing project the votes were caught up in the academic and decided to stay and incest. as a result he contract yellow fever himself and within two weeks she died and his brother george took over the project and completed. we have the papers of eugene and george woodruff here. they go with the album. this is one from george's mother in march of 1873. he says this week has not been a very eventful. the raft of draft number seven at which we were working last week has been removed, and after pulling some snags we proceeded to number eight. this is in a place where the river is narrowed and decided by the island and is shallow at least in that part chosen for the channel. this makes it slower and more difficult to remove the rest which is much the longest we have had though composed almost entirely as cut adrift. these photographs have been used extensively for books on the red river region and particularly for louisiana history textbooks from eighth grade students, so we are very pleased to have its, and there were to actually produced, one that accompanied the army corps of engineer report to congress which is now with the library of congress, and this one which appropriately - presides here in the northwest louisianan region where the rest existed. a couple of these other photographs that had many photographs of the steamboats said this was the outcome of the clearing of the raft meant commerce for shreveport and this particular photograph is of a steamboat, the washington that is pulled up to commerce street which is the street bordering the river in shreveport. it looks quite a bit different than it does today. another area of our history that people are quite familiar with one way or another is all business and we got a lot of attention recently because of the shale, but all in louisiana is the story of the 20 as well as the 21st century. the first well was drilled in 1901 in parish, and in 1904 and caddo parish, so we have a very large collection of photographs documenting the history of all exploration and production in the north louisiana. one of the interesting historical facts about drilling in this area is the first wells were driven over a body of water or through a body of water as early as 1908 in caddo lake here in caddo parish and we have pictures documented the very primitive now steam engines that were used as the drivers for these, and one of the interesting things that we always note is that it's not just men and at the wells, oftentimes a photograph of the crew will include women and even children. when the oil business began in north louisiana, equipment was taken to the field, and they were usually a large contingent pulling wagons through the very muddy streets, often they were up. the wagon wheels were sunk in the mud and the mules were sunk in up to their knees. it wasn't uncommon. our photographs also document that the dangerous nature of drilling for oil and the wells back in the day when there was no regulation of any kind. we have pictures as early as 1905 and 1907 of a huge oil well fires. these i think demonstrate just how regular and the occurrence they were. this photograph here is from 1911, and it says that it was the largest oil well fire in the united states up until that time and i think it represented a loss of a million dollars, which was a lot in 1911. but two years later in 1913, we have another picture predominantly the same picture, the largest oil well fire in the united states at that time. so it was a very regular occurrence commesso regular that there's even a man posing here in front of the fire in a very casual stance with his arm propped against the

Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book TV 20120304

the special monthly lunch. i'm greg cahill class of 1981. thank you for all being here as we celebrate the publication of fraternity with author diane brady. an exceptional and accomplished journalist, diane has done all of it and it's a great gift in telling the story of father brooks as well as an extraordinary group of black students and how their time together at holy cross during the late 1960s has helped shape their lives and change the changed the course of history. as one reviewer commented, "fraternity" brings to our attention for the first time an unsung hero of the civil rights movement. another called the book incredibly inspiring, noting that diane had captured the story not just of a group of amazing black men and their mentor, but of an era. a senior editor at bloomberg "businessweek," diane first wrote about this time in holy cross history in the 2007 article for "businessweek" and his work since then to expand the story into a book. we are delighted she is here with us today to share her experiences, researching, interviewing and writing "fraternity." and we are equally delighted to welcome eddie jenkins, class of 1972 who is right over here to my right. who is naturally one of the prominent men featured in the book. i have to also kid eddie. addie of course played both for the patriots and the giants. [laughter] i don't think he has the super bowl ring on. he had it on in new york last night. [laughter] he also you know, we were kidding him as to who he might be rooting for this weekend. he remarked that he was cut by the giants. [laughter] surely after he was designated the team's player rep, so i think he learned leadership skills at holy cross as we all know and carried them onto the nfl. it's my pleasure to welcome diane brady to offer remarks before moving to open the floor for questions. welcome diane. [applause] >> thank you everybody in thank you so much for coming to this. i want to see, where is mr. cahill senior? he purchased by the way 250 books and distributed them to the entire class of 1949. [applause] thank you very much for that and i think eddie got tired of showing off his super bowl ring last night and is officially in fact rooting for the feature is. i don't think we established that. i am a very timid giants fan and so i will quickly move on to the book itself. i thought i would just talk a little bit briefly about why this story intrigues me so much, a little bit about the reporting process and bring it forward to today because i think that this what -- open the floor to questions. i will admit first of all sadly i'm not a holy cross grad which somebody thought naturally that i must be in an alumnus of the school. the way i came across the story was sam grayson one of the men in the book. we were just having a lunch and it was the same day that ted wells was a front-page story in "the new york times" representing scooter libby at the time, so going way back. he started to talk about his classmates, the other black classmates and started to talk about father brooks. i was partly intrigued because clarence thomas was one of those classmates and i had not read much about the interaction between clarence thomas and father brooks so that got me intrigued. i might as a journalist and it's not a classic business story but i might interested in leadership and always interested in mentoring. it took quite a while to get justice thomas to speak with me i think in part because he didn't necessarily trust to the agenda that i had, which was i would like in fact to talk about 1968, 69, 70 in those years. what amazed me was when i did go in to see him, the depth of passion he had for holy cross, the feelings and emotions he had about father brooks. i'm not sure who was at his presentation last week when he got an honorary degree, but that came up again. i think when you contrast how he feels about holy cross versus what he has said about his experiences at yale, there is a profound difference and i think one of the big differences was his classmates and it was the way he felt treated at the college and the way he felt treated by father brooks. so i basically just set out to do an article. i decided that it was in fact grounds for a book and i have to say seeing my first book project i went in all sorts of directions that ultimately didn't work. one of which was lots of history of the jesuits and the publisher said no. a lot of it is the history of worcester which took me a while to pronounce. it's not worchester, it's worcester and ultimately came down to the story of these five men and father brooks. one thing it meant was unfortunately a lot of the people i talk to i had to diminish their roles in the book. i had to take names out because again my editor said it's getting confusing keeping track of all these people. focus on these men and focus on the fraternity they formed a new set as a microcosm for what they experienced at holy cross and what was being experienced across the country at that time. i think that there were a couple of things that i tried to be careful not to do. one was heighten the drama too much. i think the main thing that was important to me was that holy cross was special and unique that it was a microcosm of what was happening in the country at that time. i'm not american. actually grew up in scotland. i am half catholic that brady is a handy name to have when you are reporting at holy cross. i was always intrigued at this period. i was born in the late 60s and never really fully understood kind of the emotions of the times. the book opens right after dark there martin luther king has been killed and also father brooks intrigued me as somebody who was a pioneer, who went out there basically circumvented the admissions process. he was very controversial and those of you who've read the book and those of you that know him know he is a very strong-willed men and basically went out with tim gallagher, drove to the school and personally interviewed a lot of these men, not the men who came through other means such as eddie who came in through an athletic scholarship, and i think -- can everybody still hear me? and then sat in a coffee shop one night and decided who was going to get in. and then he presented a bill to father sword who was the present at the time. it was $80,000 which for college that had $1 million endowment at the time was quite a cross to bear. by what he was looking for, i asked him you know how do you decide? anybody who is apparent in the room knows that intelligence is not necessarily something that is a hallmark of success. it doesn't necessarily lead to success and when he talked of father brooks he was looking for leadership qualities. he was looking for a drive. he was looking for people who had a work ethic, people who were hoping to reach beyond their grasp, black and white and as you may or may not know he was fighting at the time to get women into the college. sadly for the class of 72 i think they did not arrive until the fall of that year and that was after father brooks became president and said he managed to shake up the trustee board a little bit and get the people on there that did finally pass a resolution to let women into the college. so i think that when i look at this story, and i will take your questions, i think what really struck me as when i look at today. first of all the network and its the it's the network of these men. it's called "fraternity" because this is not about one man, a theology professor, later a president who went out to save a group of men. these were men who were highly motivated, highly accomplished who have been given an opportunity they would not have had probably two or three years earlier. there were african-american students at holy cross but they tended to be one or two a year. in some cases one and one might come in on an athletic scholarship and one would come into the catholic school network and that was pretty much it. this was the first major group they came in, 20 men, clarence thomas transferred after dropping out of the seminary and so it was the first time they had critical numbers on campus. and what i think happened was father brooks and the college never veered on academic standards. all of them had to work as hard, harder in many cases. i think ted wells, clarence thomas tended to close down the library at night according to everybody i talked to. but i think where he did make concessions was socially and he understood how difficult it was. he gave them a psu fan. the college paid for station wagon for them to get off campus as often as they could. he paid for them to have a you. he allowed them to live together on it but corridor which is very controversial. i know we have one of the editors of the crusaders and i remember reading a lot of the articles that were basically, students were very upset about this almost resegregation they called it. that he understood that it was difficult and he made concessions. when i talk to the men i think it was the idea that the very highest levels of the college, they understood people cared about their success. they understood that with father brooks there was always an open door. he had that philosophy i think for the 2000 students who were there. many people here feel very close to father brooks and i'm sorry he is not with us today. he was with us last night and it was the last week for clarence thomas' event. when i talked to father brooks today he just wants leaders and he felt the calling -- college was missing out and being the best institution in this country by not reaching out and getting leaders from all parts of society, women, blacks, whites, asians. i know holy cross has made great strides in diversity. certainly there has been a very strong generation of leaders in women. i met jane robertson from the the first class of many women who are pioneers there. but when i look today, think one thing that is interesting is there has been great success, great faith in terms of what has happened with african-americans. ted wells i know went on to harvard and some of his classmates include ken can although american express, ken frazier, lot of highly accomplished men from that generation. i think there's also a lot of disappointment and a lot of disappointment at what happened with the black underclass in this country, what has happened with education and the erosion of opportunity. frankly i think what also happened in terms of some the decision some of which have been made at justice thomas in terms of opportunities, affirmative action and such, and the next way this generation is going to be financial. it's going to be encouraging entrepreneurship. it's going to be basically giving people the tools to start their own businesses, and to inspire the same generation of leaders that came out there. i think in closing before we take any questions, one thing i want to say is, another thanks to the holy cross community because one thing that this reporting process has really reinforced in me is a strong fraternity and the power that the school has had about one of the highest levels of giving, which is amazing especially for people added -- university. we just don't give. the government will do it. [laughter] the holy cross, when i look at the networks that are foreign, the friendship, the power of the cross as they call it, and the the way that people support each other and love each other across the generations, think it's very inspiring and it's also to me a testament of how leadership really happens. in this country it happens everywhere else and i think the support and love people have shown for father brooks through the process, that they have shown for these men and an appreciation for how difficult it was to be pioneers on that campus. i hope it's a story that we will continue to come back to again and again. as a reporter have to say given the support i've gotten from holy cross, i want every story to be based on the holy cross campus. so thank you very much. thank you again for supporting the book. i don't think it does justice for the period but i hope at least it's a start and others will come forward and continue to tell the story. so thanks again. [applause] and i guess i will now take questions. and you know eddie is here, who is a very busy man not gypsies because you are going to the super bowl but if you have questions for eddie before you leads, you can, but feel free to ask questions of him. it is their story, not mine. does anybody have any questions they would like to ask? >> i did want to mention c-span is here today and filming and it will be shown at a future date. we will pass the microphone around is what i'm trying to say and if everyone was would speak into the microphone. >> give your name. look at the camera. >> that would be great. in the jesuits we don't have fraternity's. >> that's true, that stroup. >> we do feel like we are fraternity in many ways. who is first? eddie? good. >> first of all i would like to thank diane for the chronicle of this very special experience for the people who lived through it but before it began to tell me -- tell you about my assessment is like to recognize a pioneer who was one of those african-americans that holy cross, rob cretul could you stand up police? amazing track star, great scholar and continues to do great community service working with me at irvine edge. i'm a board member there and bob does great work in the area of affordable housing. [applause] last night while we all got together, we finished everything. ted wells, you know ted. ted loves to be close to a job which is on fifth avenue above st. patrick's cathedral. we have we were looking at st. patrick's cathedral and looking back and he says, 40 years later. what did we do that was so special? not only the people that remember us but put on the cover of the book? and so you know we thought about it and we said, i know i gave you that quote last night. >> it was a good quote. >> it was in a book that someone took home. i had a book that someone actually took it. the holy cross community would never do anything like that. [laughter] but in the book i had a quote for martin luther king. martin luther king said you look at the measure of a person not at the times when they stand in comfort and convenience but you look at them when they stand in a moment of crisis. and that was our moment of crisis. it was basically the civil rights movement and if you remember yourself those times, do you remember what you did? many of you watch those reports on television and you figured that you know, the ripper -- the reports were enough. some of you had read the current commission report where they talk about two societies developing, one white and one black and one rich and one poor and they were coming further apart. some of you even put your toe in and and then maybe did a little something but for those of you who actually took the plunge and lost the sense of security, you actually jumped into the river. when we walked out, we jumped in the river and we did not know where we would end up in those turbulent currents of racism and cynicism pulling addis. the community would say just let them leave. we don't need them any more. we continue to swim and more importantly followed father brooks who continued to swim. he said it's not important that they jumped out, he said it's important that we get them to the other side in because we got to the other side the river of love overcame racism. that is the part that i challenge each and everyone of you that there are additional rivers that you must plunge into today. diane talked about the economic crisis and i would add to that the incredible number of african-americans that are in jail today, more in jail than in college and we have an extraordinary problem in america we have to address. don't just look at us as some memorial, some old guys that did something great 40 years ago. that was our river, this is your river and now is your chance to jump in. thank you very much. [applause] >> i can't top that. you know the other thing i think was interesting which came up last night and has come up with clarence thomas as well is what has happened to the catholic school network, the high school network, the elementary school network especially in the city. people say the charter schools have come in to perhaps fill the void they are but i think there is a real sense of loss. certainly i think these men feel a lot of people feel as if this was a real steppingstone for a lot of urban families to get their kids the type of education, the type of discipline and the type of values that would help make them leaders in society and i think there's a certain wistfulness that network is not as strong as it was perhaps when they were students and a feeling of maybe would there be some way to make it stronger again? so that certainly is, but as well. does anybody have any questions? go ahead. i guess we have to wait for the microphone, is that right? the raise your hand high. >> hi. i was a student at the time of the book. i have not read the book yet, yet but a couple of questions. is there anything in the book about the impact of what was going on with a white students and i say that because -- i remember playing cards in the cafeteria with clarence and i remember working on a program with eddie jones and i remember drinking beer with joe wilson and the friendship to develop and how it impacted later on. also, i would like to mention that what father brooks did was not just for the black students. i was from a low-income family in brooklyn and he did the same for me. and that changed my life. after that -- though i would like to say the combination of those experiences gave me that direction. >> yeah and i think that came up as a theme. >> i have another comment or question. it was something that came up when we were freshmen which annoyed us and bothered us. it was the "sports illustrated" article about -- >> about jack donahue coax it does come up in the book because sam grayson is one of the men and obviously was deeply affected. this was a "sports illustrated" article where basically jack donahue who was the basketball coach at the time that holy cross, i believe -- >> he recruited holy cross. >> yeah, karim abdul-jabbar and you know he had made some racist comments and so that does come up in the book and certainly stand talked about the interaction he had with coach donnie you over that incident, but i know your time is tight eddie but do you want to talk about that? i think certainly one of the themes that is, is that you know father brooks understood that this was not something that was simply just good for the students. he felt it was good for the college. he felt it was good for the other students there and i think it's telling, the books who wears -- there were assigned to the students who were there this time. the autobiography of malcolm x was one. poverty in america by one of your fellow alumnus, michael harrington so i think that was very much a theme but i'm going to let eddie address it because he knows better than me. >> what is your first name? >> dean in my opinion not only jumped in but he swam the nile. is brian canal here? brian -- come on. ryan was one of the white students that walked out with us and i would like trying to tell his own story. >> also the black corridor points out it was three-quarters black because there were not enough lack students to fill the black corridor. yes, yes. >> thank you. i think dean's point is that we all gained a great deal from being at holy cross during this time of change, meeting people from different backgrounds, and i played football for one weekend busted my helmet. jeff dickerson was my roommate, so we got along. sophomore year, we decided to run together and we were up on healy for, healy for. and i recall one interesting story. i shared this with father mcdonnell. jeff dickerson's data think was an architect and i didn't know that architects carried marbles. next door was a jesuit priest, father o'connor. i think he was the president manager of the building as an architect. he had marbles. and i remember a day they were both kneeling down on the floor in our room and ruling the marbles. and i thought, this is pretty cool. my mother was a marble champion in like 1935. [laughter] so i could relate to this but i didn't realize, that is the kind of thing that we were exposed to. [inaudible] >> that's right and that is a happy memory. >> it was very difficult. we felt that there had been to many, all the black students had unidentified and only a fraction of the white students to part and the demonstration so we felt that there was overt racism and we were going to support all the students. i remember very tumultuous thinking, what am i going to do? how will i explain this to my parents? you know, what is going to go on? but then, over that weekend, the people realized how important it was and father brooks and ted and clarence -- >> not clarence, bart. >> they all got together and discuss this and talk to the trustees and eventually they work everything out. but it was just a dramatic time, a powerful time. we all learned from it. and i happen to be on the college judicial board in my senior year and there was a demonstration on campus. students could have other students represent them in the disciplinary hearing. and so we had several great students, john parr bocci zero representative someone and ted wells representative a student who got in trouble. all i could think of afterwards was, i hope that i never have to face ted on the other side. he representative this fellow who was very intense. years later i saw so many different venues. >> and he said that was the start of all his pro bono work. [laughter] he never quite recovered from that. i think there was another question over here. >> eddie, don't go away. my question was for the students who were like eddie. i have a freshman in college. you go through the process in u.s. father brooks who was an intense guy, making the pitch to come to holy cross. what was it like for your parents having to contemplate something that was probably very difficult to even think of in 1968? >> i think it would be interesting, because you had several options eddie as well so you talk to ed jones and was the only school that would let him in and gave him money and i think eddie was mulling over several choices. holy cross not being your top. >> so i go down south. this is cathy vance. >> this is pg rated tv here. >> her husband was not only one of the finest bass cobra all players at holy cross but -- he is a great man, a great man. glad to have you here. [applause] if any of you have relatives like the executive program at the harvard business school. so i thought i was really good and really fast. coming from new new new york, af berrigan and so on. bayer insures today me so we all line up. the first three or four players that win this race they are going to get scholarships so we line up and we are running around and i take off the first dirty for and killing everybody, right? people started passing me and i end up, my god, finishing last. i said god, who were those last four or five people? they said, those were the people in the band. [laughter] .. >> he will wave to us from the super bowl if you're watching on sunday. so with ted. ted will be there, too, on the opposite side. so go ahead. >> my name's jim, i'm in the class of 1970, i'm home with bernie kelly and jim. i was one of the two students on the college judicial board for the walkout, and so i sort of saw it from the other side. and, of course, the first thing i did when i bought your book was look in the index, and i wasn't in there. [laughter] >> you were one of the names taken out. you're in the archives. like who's that? wait, develop his character more. i can't. >> but the process that went through it, there was a serious hearing, we cross-examined mr. shea, i think his name was, and he was out there, he was in the open, and we went at him x. then when we got into deliberations, it was really the two students against the administration and the faculty, and the decision was made over the two objections of the two students. i think we wrote a dissent, but the drama was just so intense, and then as you said, that ended at 3:00 in the morning. we went home, came back and this had happened which was just such a brilliant move, but it was incredibly intense in the book. i haven't gotten through the whole book yet, but it was great in bringing out that, so -- >> well, and i think what was interesting is, you know, father sword that this was, in fact, what they had done was a clear violation of college policy. and so technically, according to a policy that had just been passed even days before, i think specifically to avoid this type of situation they had broken the laws x so it's interesting -- and so it's interesting, you know, what it was that really bothered these men was the fact that it was the organizers, specifically the organizers of the sds or the rsu i think it was called at the time -- >> right. >> -- and these random black students who happened to be with the same kind of, you know, hey, there's a demonstration, i'll show up crowd that would probably go to a lot of demonstrations, cared about the war. so father brooks clearly saw it as racism. you know, you protested. but i think just getting people to understand that, you know, the difference between the letter of the law and sort of the spirit of what was happening. i think one thing that comes through, i hope, in the book was this wasn't a tactical move where they thought, you know, well, we'll just get them to come back. these men thought they were, essentially, abandoning their education and knew full well that many of them would not have other options. clarence thomas, for one, knew he couldn't go home because he'd been kicked out for having left the seminary, so -- >> the other focus in that hearing was the fact that not only was it the four black students who were chosen, but it was also the leaders of all of the political groups in the school. and clearly what the dean's office, and i think the dean admitted that at the hearing, was that they picked out the people that they knew, the leaders. and there were many people this that corridor, but they picked out the ones who were the leaders and was the sense that --? >> opportunity to get them off campus. >> exactly. exactly. >> no, i think it's a very dramatic time, and i think it was, you know, it just crystallized, certainly, i think, was what made the relationship with father brooks so strong because he personally fought very hard to bring them back and to get the college to reverse its decision. >> great book, thank you. >> thanks for sharing. thank you. >> i've got a question, diane. what was it like interviewing the, um, the gentlemen? were they all cooperative? did everybody buy into this right away? what was it -- >> you know, i think, um, well, interesting, obviously, justice thomas l was challenging, and when we first met the first thing he said to me was, um, the problem with your industry is that, you know, journalists lie. [laughter] i said, oh, thank you for having me. [laughter] but you know what? i think i did not come in with any strong agenda about clarence thomas. i don't, again, have the history. he then proceeded to give me three and a half hours of his time, had met with me since then, and the warmth that he showed, the sense of humor that i had not seen necessarily in public settings took me by surprise, and also i think the, um, like very specific memories of holy cross and very warm memories. what was surprising is those of you who read his book, he wrote memoirs, his grandfather's son, he spend very little time on holy cross. i think it's four pages. very little time and dismisses out of hand the way he was then, you know, considers himself a radical who has, you know, changed and can transformed. i think what became clear through this process, and i'll move to the other men, was that he, i think, actually shares many of the views that he did, in fact, have at that time and feels a closeness to these men that continues to the. today. he and ed jones were very close through gil hardy who died, those of you who knew gil, and i think that i, i think part of this process in recent years is he has reconnected with the college. and i'm hopeful that the book was part of that. but i think it shows a more kind of nuanced side of to what formed clarence thomas, and i think that he understands and appreciates holy cross at this point in his life much more deeply than he might have even several years ago. the other men were generally cooperative, you know? ed jones is not a wild extrovert, and is a brilliant writer, so writing about somebody who's won a pulitzer prize for literature is intimidating, to say the least, but very deep memories, and i think in many ways many of the issues he fought for then he thinks continue unabated today. ted wells is a lawyer through and through and was very -- there's a difference between writing an article and writing a book. and so there was some discussion with him and stan when i suggested the idea of a book, it was like, well, that -- all of a sudden a book, you know, you start getting into girlfriends and relationships and, you know, problems with mother and everything else. and which he didn't have, by the way. ma wells was wonderful. but i think that he was, he wanted to make sure it was accurate. and so i did, you know, make sure that whatever, that everything was accurate. one thing i did was i had, i didn't really go heavy on the dialogue because there were disputes over what people said, and i think it's just natural that there's revisionist history, so you try to get multiple, you know, multiple points of view on what happened at a certain time, how people behaved. at the same time, you can't give them complete approval to just, you know, go through and take out whatever they don't like because that, essentially, strips the book of a lot of the interesting details. so all of them were cooperative. i think they were very generous, and i think the reason, um, was father brooks. certainly for clarence thomas, the reason he did this, the reason he came back to the college was because of how strongly he feels about father brooks. so -- >> [inaudible] >> hi. >> hi. >> just a couple of comments. i was class of '77 at holy cross -- >> all women. yes with, you get to see the women all the way through. [laughter] >> that's right, that's right. which was an interesting addition, it really helped us grow significantly. but, i guess, a couple observations with regard to the black corridor. i was struck by the fact that how few both black and white students had very little interaction coming from places like d.c., philly, some of the, you know, heavy inner city areas. a lot of the black folks had very limited interaction, and a lot of the white folks had very little interaction. and i think it created an awkwardness that really, you know, i think the schools attempt to navigate through that, but there was still, you know, a fair amount of work to do because i think there was a general sense among black students that the burden was on them to reach out -- >> yeah. >> and not necessarily in the other direction. the second point, i guess, that i would make is with regard to an emerging black middle class at the time that a lot of this stuff was happening. um, i think the world looked very different from an industry standpoint. there's the general motors of the world, you know, i grew up in western new york, and that was a big part of our lives there, and it helped, you know, promote unskilled workers into the professional ranks, and people were sending their kids to college. but given what's going on right now economically, i guess i'm more concerned as my kids head to college and some are saying what happens with the diversity objectives and what's the way forward, i guess. >> well, it's interesting, and i think it's an excellent point because i actually wrote an article about this recently, and it was looking at the fact that this generation, you know, your generation that the fight was for integration. and, in fact, there had been a lot of entrepreneurship in the black community in part because it was necessary, you know, under jim crow. you had the black dentist, the black hair dresser, you were served, black businesses serving black consumers. and i think one of the things that's interesting to me right now is that, um, as a group -- of the new businesses that have been started in the united states, 25% of them have been started by hispanics, latino entrepreneurs. as a group, african-americans have lagged. and i think one reason is because of integration, um, there are some cultural issues as to starting businesses, access to capital and a lot of, um, you know, with the unemployment rate, i think a lot of very, you know, highly accomplished african-american college graduates went into the public sector. and we know the public sector is shrinking even as the private sector hires, will continue to shrink this year, and one reason they went to the public sectors, those were jobs that are posted. they're transparent. it's not the way the private sector hires this sort of byzantine how did that guy get that job. these are jobs they could compete for on an open basis, and it's wreaked incredible havoc on the middle class. but it's an issue that i know reverend jesse jackson has made priority, and there's a lot of focus right now on how do you sort of bring back where the jobs are going to be which is small business, entrepreneurship and, you know, frankly, silicon valley? there's been a lot of attention on venture capital and what's happening in silicon valley, too, so it's a different world. thank you. i think that might be it. >> who else is here from the late '60s perhaps or mid '60s that wants to reminisce a little bit? >> i don't know if we want to reminisce. [laughter] quick, reminisce. >> ed joyce. hi, i'm ed joyce, class of '71. and one of the interesting things of this, to me, having been there and a couple of other people have mentioned that they were on the college judicial board. i think i was on in between you. and i think part of what came out of this was, was the college took the position that if an incident happened and, um, there was a racist civil rights element to it, it would be considered as a defense in future, in future judicial proceedings. and i was on the board in the first one of those, and it was very difficult to deal with, this issue. it was an issue where i think most of the white students on campus didn't think it was a racial issue, but most of the black students didn't. and you're on this college judicial board as one of the two student representatives with some faculty members and administrators, and you're trying to deal with this because you know that the black student involved clearly thought that there was a racist issue. and you knew that almost everybody else on the campus didn't think it was. ask is you had to deal with that -- and you had to deal with that. we got through that. the most interesting part of that to me was that was actually the first situation where, um, ted wells was the, was the defense counsel. and, um, i'm a lawyer now and sort of looked back at that being the judge, seeing ted wells handle the situation. and one of the defense witnesses was clarence thomas. so you're sitting there, now i'm looking back 40 years, and for those who don't know, ted wells is one of the most prominent litigators in the country. >> he is. he was lawyer of the year, i think, a couple years ago. >> yeah, really a very prominent person and, obviously, know about clarence. so to be in a situation where you're observing this, even then ted was incredibly impressive. i mean, he really was impressive. i think he was a year behind me, so he was maybe a sophomore or a junior at this time. but just to deal with, i won't call it a repercussion, but what came out of the blacks leaving campus and the rest of the community trying to deal with it, and, you know, we got through it, and it worked out okay but it was a difficult time. >> yeah, and you forget how passionate people were. i think we tend to put ourselves back in our college days and forget that, you know, these were kids. they were 18-year-olds, 19-year-old kids, and the judgments that you make at 18 and 19 are quite different, the emotions you feel, and, all, some of the things they asked for bordered on ridiculous, frankly. you know, especially when the muslim students came to look at the grocery lists of what they expected the college to buy right down to the particular brands of tea that couldn't be purchased in the boston area. that's kind of what kids, that's what they do. you push, push, push, see how far you can get. so, you know, there were, in fact, i think the black students took over another building, um, in their senior year and ran into another group that was protesting, and they had to divide up who got to do their sit-in where. so it was just the times and, um, i think it was difficult, and i think that not in every case can you say that they were always on the right side. in this case i think they were, and father brooks -- and i think history shows they were, but there were many incidents where they did things that, frankly, the college should have fought back and said, okay, enough already. but i think, you know, when i look back at this time, i'm -- i, first of all, it's such an amazing moment in history. um, everything from even the fact that the entire football team came down with hepatitis, a case that ended up being written in the new england journal of medicine. you had the vietnam war, you had women, many different groups that were fighting to get an equal slice of the pie and to get the chance to see this microcosm with this group of men who happened to do very well. there were men who did not do very well. those of you in the class know that there were men who dropped out. african-american men, white men, not everybody makes it as college, and that was a particularly tough time to go to college, and many of them were coming to a white college for the first time and discovered that they were, in fact, not prepared. bob deshea i mention in the book, those of you who know him, was the top student by far at his school in savannah, came and discovered he was not prepared for chemistry. wasn't anything to do with intelligence. he had simply not gotten a curriculum that prepared him for the curriculum he had to face at holy cross. and that sort of thing happened again and again. but i think a chance to look at that period and to look at father brooks and to look at the network that's been formed at the college again and again, i think is a story right now that i hope is inspiring to this generation who might not necessarily remember that period in history, and i hope the future holy cross generations as well. so thank you so much for having me here. thank you for your support of the book. and, um, you know, i look forward to, i hope, hearing more stories as i go on and meet more of you. so thanks again. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> thanks very much, diane. that was, um, really terrific. and certainly puts it all in perspective as we reflect as a community on an important era in time in the holy cross history. and certainly, the determination of father brooks, certainly his leadership has meant an awful lot. not only to those talked about in the book, but many of us here in the room. and i can't help but just tell this one little vignette that perhaps the last time father brooks was here, um, a young woman asked, well, father, what was the talk down in the jesuit residence when the college, when the vote was taken to go coed? and he paused very, very briefly, and without hesitation replied, well, we thought we'd all died and gone to heaven. [laughter] so mideast -- he's meant an awful lot to a lot of people, and just as recently as yesterday there was an op-ed piece in "the boston globe", and it's a great piece particularly about father brooks in yesterday's globe. so i'd certainly like to thank the harvard club for everything they did today, mike shanahan, my assistant who's over against the wall, appreciate everything you did very much. tom, kristin, christine maloney, thank you very much for coming down from the college and being so, so helpful and c-span for everything you've done as well. and finally, books will be available for purchase, and diane's here to sign the books. once again, that'll be back in the room where we had the buffet. and there's lots of things going on at the local club level, so check the holy cross web site in particular there's a great raffle right now, i think, for a big trip, a major trip. so it's a great opportunity to support the club. and we'll look forward to seeing you again in march. thanks very much. [applause] >> is there a nonfiction author or book you'd like to see featured on booktv? send us an e-mail at booktv@cspan.org or tweet us at twitter.com/booktv. >> and now more from shreveport weekend here on book the. booktv. >> i'm laura mclemore, around conservativist here at noel memorial library, and we're in archives and special collections at noel at lsu shreveport. we're specializing in the history of documenting the history of northwest louisiana and the red river region. we have here today some of the, um, things that we consider the stars in our collection, one that we're proudest of that kind of is the opening of what one would consider northwest louisiana, i think, is the clearing of the raft of the red river in 87 p 3. this volume is a collection of 107 photographic plates that were taken by r.b. talfort to document the aggression of the clearing of the raft in the red river in 1873 between natchitoches and just about shreveport. it was particularly important, it was the last, most successful clearing of the red river raft, and it enabled shreveport to become a really important trading port for the rest of the 19th century. unfortunately for some of the crew of the aid with the army corps of engineers, their visit to shreveport coincided with the yellow fever epidemic of 1873 which just decimated the population. lieutenant eugene woodruff who was in charge of the raft-clearing project came into town to reprovision his boats and was caught up in the epidemic and decided to stay and assist. as a result, he contracted yellow fever himself, and within two weeks died, and his brother george then took over the project and completed it. and we have the papers of eugene and george woodruff here. they go with the album. this is one from george to his mother in march of 1873. he says: this week has not been very eventful. the raft of drift number seven at which we were working last week has been removed, and after pulling some snags, we proceeded to number eight. this lies in a place where the river is narrowed and divided by towhead islands and is shallow, at least in that part chosen for the channel. this makes it slower and more difficult to remove the raft which is much the longest we have had. though composed almost entirely of cut drift. these photographs have been used extensively for books on the red river region and marley for louisiana history textbooks -- particularly for louisiana history textbooks for eighth grade students. so we're very, very pleased to have it. and there were two, actually, produced. one that accompanied the army corps of engineers' report to congress which is now in the library of congress and this one which, i think, appropriately lies here in the region of louisiana where the raft existed. a couple of these other photographs, we have many, many photographs of steamboats since this was the outcome of the clearing of the raft meant commerce for shreveport. and this, this particular photograph is of a steamboat, the washita, which is pulled up to commerce street which is the street bordering the live in shreveport. it looks quite a bit different than it does today. another area of our history that people are quite familiar with one way or other is the oil business, and we've gotten a lot of anticipation recently because of the haynesville shale. but oil in louisiana is really the story of the 20th as well as the 21st century. the first well was drilled in 1901 in desoto parish, and in this 1904 in caddo parish. so we have a very large collection of photographs documenting the history of oil exploration and production in north louisiana. one of the interesting historical facts about drilling in this area is that the first oil wells were drilled over a body of water, through a body of water in as early as 1908 in caddo lake here in caddo parish. and, um, we have pictures documenting the very primitive now steam engines that were used as piledrivers for these. and one of the interesting things that we always note is that it's not just men at the, at the oil wells. oftentimes a photograph of the crew will include women and even children. when the oil business began in north louisiana, equipment was taken to the oil field with mule teams. and, um, they were usually a large contingent of mules pulling wagons through very muddy streets, often wagon hubs were up -- the wagon wheels were sunk in the mud up to their hubs, and the mules were sunk up to their knees. it was not uncommon. our photographs also document the dangerous nature of drilling for oil and wildcat wells back in the day when there was no regulation of any kind. um, we have pictures as early as 1905 and 1907 of huge oil well fires. these two, i think, demonstrate just how regular an occurrence, um, catastrophic fires were. this photograph here is from 1911, and it says that it was the largest oil well fire in the united states up until that time, and i think represented a loss of a million dollars which was a lot in 1911. but the very -- and two years later in 1913 we have another picture, it could almost be the same picture. largest oil well fire in the united states as of that time. so it was a very regular occurrence. so regular that there's even a man posing here in front of the, um, in front of the fire in a very casual stance with his arm propped against the fence post. finish here in our archives we've been here since 1974 and have done, um, a great deal of work in documenting the history of our region. we are the only institution in this area that fulfills this mission. >> for more information on shreveport weekend on booktv, visit c-span.org/localcontent. >> visit booktv.org to watch