Character, a documentary that aired on National Geographic last year. After that the ambassador will come up and give remarks about why he felt the need to initiate this series. Thank you for being here and lets roll the clip. [applause] even as president ford was growing in assurance in popularity, he knew he could not truly heal the country until the situation with Richard Nixon was resolved. The former president had resigned, but would he be prosecuted for his actions . At fords first Major Press Conference a month into his presidency, journalists world grilled him if he would use his power to pardon nixon. Are you saying that it is an option you will still consider . Every day was a different issue. It was serious times. He needed to and wanted to attack those problems, but you cant attack those problems when you have a press conference and 90 of the questions are asked about watergate. So you are not ruling it out . President ford i am not ruling it out. It is an option, and a proper option for any president. Over the labor day weekend, ford gathered his closest legal advisors and considered the options before him. He knew that if nixon did face trial, the country would be mired in watergate for years to come. But if he steered america clear of that fate by pardoning nixon before a trial, public anger would most likely cost him election to his own term of office in 1976. The following sunday, ford went to the oval office to deliver a special announcement to the nation. President ford i have learned already in this office that the difficult decisions always come to this desk. I must admit that many of them do not look at all the same as the hypothetical questions that i have answered freely, and perhaps too fast on previous occasions. Now therefore i, gerald r ford, do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States from july 20, 1969, through august 9, 1974. He ended his remarks and he immediately signed the pardon document right then and there. I remember catching the eye of Vice President fords naval aide, wonderful guy who was positioned somewhere between the Briefing Room and the cabinet room, and he caught my eye, and i caught his eye, and i just shook my head. And he said, why are you shaking your head . He just cost himself the 1976 election. Al haig, president fords chief of staff, said no, you are wrong. He just made his first president ial decision. Truth is, i think we were both right. Been some angry reaction to the next in part. Phone calls are heavy now, running about 5050. But telegrams are 61 against the president s decision, 600 to 700 telegrams an hour. People were stunned and there was a visceral reaction to what had happened. Brace yourself for the liberals in the media. From new mexico, another telegram said, roosevelt had his new dear deal, truman had his deal, now ford has his crooked deal. People on the left in the Democratic Party said kennedy and others were hearing screams from constituents and allies. You cannot let this s. O. B. Get off. He has been hustled by al haig and others, and we have got to strike back. Back. Back. Almost losing his footing at one point. The crowd outside grew to about 600 people, and gerald ford heard himself booed for the first time during his presidency. It was such a surprise to everybody that he dropped 20, 30 points in the polls overnight. I felt very good about the future of the country and all of a sudden in one fell swoop that is gone. With the 1976 president ial elections looming, democrats sensed an opportunity to weaken ford. The president has resigned. He was not tried for the impeachment process, now is being pardoned by the man the appointed to the office of the presidency. I think it is a disturbing precedent for the country. On october 17, ford volunteered to testify before congress, the first president ever to do so. Suspicions created by the circumstances of the pardon which you issued, the secrecys with which it was issued, and the reasons for which it was issued, make people question whether or not in fact it was a deal. President ford i want to assure you, members of the subcommittee, members of the congress, and the American People, there was no deal, period. Under no circumstances. Ford said, look, the pardon wasnt for nixon, it wasnt for me. It was for what he called the national interest. President ford i was absolutely convinced then, that if we had had this, and indictment, trial, conviction, anything else that transpired after that, that the attention of the president , the congress and the American People would be diverted from the problems we have to solve. To pardon, i think, showed his moral courage. It showed he was going to do something that he knew was going to cost him. You dont often see a lot of moral courage in washington, but that was a clear moment. [applause] this afternoon, we had the opportunity to have some short conversations with our 2 guests, and they referred to this character and presidency and him ethics of the man many of you knew and many of us shared private moments with. And it was that that motivated me to produce this film, after watching on Public Television a short synopsis of the president s of the last two decades, we came to a point where they talked about nixon and jumped right to jimmy carter. I jumped up and threw something at the Television Set and said, damn it, weve got to find a way. At the ford foundation, hank and i have been cochairing a Legacy Committee for a couple of years, but i started this film three or four years ago, and when i got into it with producers from new york and interviewing people who do documentaries in california, they werent interested in doing a film on character and ethics in president s. Then i watched the debates of the 19 2016 election, and i watched 17 republicans calling each other names and i watched democrats not knowing what to call each other. There was just no principle involved on any side of it. Nobody like jerry ford, and the quality that we knew he had, as Oprah Winfrey called last week, his west michigan nice, was built into jerry ford. It wasnt the water he drank, it wasnt the religion he had, it wasnt just his wonderful parents. It was the fact that he grew up in a community that cares, and judging by the numbers here, people still care in our generation. We have to look at it generations that are still out there. I watched elizabeth holtzman. Some things never change. Makes you want to drain the swamp even more, you think back on those days. What you have here is a man who meant something to all of us, and the principles, and it might have cost him the 1976 election. I was asked by ron wyden to tell you this quick story of when ford was in pittsburgh. The riots were beginning. Demonstrations at the white house. Betty was home alone. He was in pittsburgh on a monday. I got a phone call from the white house doctor, who said, can i talk to you . Yes, sir. The president wants you to do him a favor. I want you to fly to washington and spend the evening with mrs. Ford. She is alone at the white house. There is a lot going on, shes not feeling well, and you remember those days. You had to change plans to planes to pittsburgh to get a flight to d. C. Twice a day. I spent the evening talking to her. The chants outside, the beeping of horns, the booing, all the tension was built. When he came home, he went upstairs pretty late, i was waiting for him to have dinner, and she decided not to have dinner. Just the two of us. He sat down. I dont want to break your image of jerry ford, put in his early years he drank martinis. [laughter] he pressed a little button on his chair and in came this little steward, filipino. I will have one. What are you going to do, turn down the president . [laughter] we have that one martini, and he said to me, peter, nixon blanked up. I had to do it, and it will probably cost me the 1976 election. He knew it that night. I was in deep trepidation that somebody might have been listening. Dont tell anyone, dont tell anyone, only because i was over my head. A 34yearold lumber salesman who came out and did things for him when he needed me to do them. But i knew it was a man of strong ethical character. I had to do the film. I hope you will support what we are doing at the ford foundation, because his legacy is very important to hank and i. We created this program. I want it to go on and i wanted want it to be done regularly and i want you to enjoy tonight speakers, because they are dynamite. So thank you all. [applause] thank you, ambassador. Now it is my pleasure to invite our three guests to the stage. First up is dr. Ronald c. White. A graduate of ucla in princeton, dr. White is a leading historian of the 19thcentury United States he is a fellow at the Huntington Library in california and is the author of numerous awardwinning biographies of president S Abraham Lincoln and ulysses s. Grant. Please help me welcome dr. White to the stage. [applause] he is joined this evening by david brooks, columnist at the New York Times and frequent contributor to pbs. He is the author of bobos in paradise and the road to character. Please welcome david brooks. [applause] and of course, tonights conversation will be moderated by our very own director of the Hauenstein Center since 2003. Since the third edition of his book religion and the american presidency was released today, perfect timing. Lets turn it over. [applause] thank you very much, scott, for that great introduction. I am so pleased that we brought this conversation together. We have been talking about this for a year, and it is a topic we had no idea at this time last year that had become really a pertinent topic for every part of our public discourse. Lets jump right in. I would like to ask you all, what is character and where does it come from . David i wrote a book called the road to character, and writing a book on character i learned that writing a book on character does not give you character. [laughter] david even reading a book on character does not give you good character. But buying a book on character does. [laughter] david i would recommend that. I get the big print edition here. Small print is in ohio state. [laughter] david the basic theory of the book is that the way you build character is to identify your core sin and you fight it. We all have weakness, and for one of my characters, dwight eisenhower, it was his temper. The story i told of ike as a little boy, age eight or nine, and he wanted to go trickortreating, and they wouldnt let him. He punched of the tree and rubbed the skin off of his fingers. His mom sent in to his room and let him cry for an hour and then came to his room and recited a verse from proverbs, he who conquered his own soul is greater than he who taketh a city. He said it was the most important memoir of his life. It taught him that he had a problem, which was his temper, and if you want to be a leader of any kind, you have to conquer it. He spent the next 60 years working on his own weakness. For me, the key to character, the way i wrote it to the books , the key is humility, and it is not thinking lowly of yourself. It is radical selfawareness from a position of centeredness, and to view yourself honestly and work on yourself. Since the book came out, the one thing from the scene that should have occurred to me is his mom. All the characters in my book had amazing moms. And i thought eisenhower was an amazing, amazing woman. Their dads were eh, but their moms were amazing. [laughter] david i came across a study where these guys were drafted into world war ii and some rose to colonels and majors and some stayed private. It wanted to know what correlated with success may army with iq. Was it iq . No correlation. Was it physical bravery . No correlation. The number one correlation was relationship with their mother. The guys who received a flood of love from their mom gave it to their men. One thing that forged his character was that they had amazing moms who poured love into them. I have come to think of this idea of characters built by fighting against yourself, this hydraulic notion all these temptations, you have got to beat it. That is part of character, but the most important part this is Saint Augustine speaking is loving the right things and knowing how to love really well. We have a lot of things we love, and some are low, like loving money, and some are high, like loving truth. Putting your higherlevel above your lower level. I think character building is a lot more fun than i used to. Ron . Ronald i have had the privilege of speaking here in the past on my biography of lincoln and grant, and i spoke from the inside out. It wasnt what lincoln did, the signing of the emancipation proclamation, and what granted, leading the union army. It is who they were. The same kinds of qualities it is interesting how the commentator uses the term moral courage. That is grants term. He is the one who invented that term. Echoing what david said, not only would it be mothers, it would be wives. From me, the forgotten person in the grand story is julia, this remarkable person they had this incredible marriage. People would come upon them in the white house years, years, years after their marriage, Holding Hands like bashful lovers. At the base of character is the question of who is the mentor. Im impressed with the program at the Hauenstein Center, the people who are mentors, not since the academics, but people within the community. I wanted to find out who are the mentors of lincoln and grant sometimes biographies they are popular in bookstores, but we skip over the formative periods of life. Grant himself said i do not read biographies because they dont tell enough about the formative period of life. What i want to know is what a boy did as a man, what a woman did as a girl. So who are those formative figures . Each one of these figures seems to have a conflicted relationship with father. You may remember that lincolns stepmother came into his life and she brought this love and nurture. Grants mother was a quiet person. His father was outspoken. She was the one who shaped him. Formativenk that the influence in our lives certainly our spouses, our mentors. Who are these people . If you look back at 18, 24 years of age were there not people who men toward you to be men ored you to become the person you are in your life . David i read a study of so many great men and women had their dads die when they were 12. My kids are over 12 and i told them, i failed you, im sorry. [laughter] david one of the guys ive been reading about recently is a great scientist named e. O. Wilson. When he was seven, his folks split up and they sent him to this beach, paradise, florida. He was from central mississippi and he saw a jellyfish he had never seen it before. He was stunned. Then he had his feet dangling over top and he saw stingray go beneath. At that point a naturalist was born. He was seized by the beauty of nature. I call it the enunciation moment when we all are called to something, we find out what we will do with our lives, often very young. He had 2 other things happen to him. He was enraptured by the ocean all of a sudden. Hugh and fishing all summer, all by himself. One day he was fishing for a pinfish and he took it off the hook and flipped it into his face and the dorsal fin pierced his pupil, and it ended up blinding him in that eye. He was a naturalist and he fish,t study birds or but he found ants and he spent 80 years studying ants. He had a very good professor in mississippi, but then he went to harvard, and there was a professor there named salisbury, who told him, you collect your samples. Dont collect on the path. That is too easy. Collect across the jungle. One day he was in a pond in the amazon and a crocodile grabbed the guy and pulled him down and he escaped. He is bleeding, his whole body is crushed. He drags himself away, dragged himself to the hospital, gets a cast. Wilson says, that is no proof of character getting away from a crocodile. What happened next was, he is stuck in this cast in the amazon and he spends months dragging himself through the jungle planning to collect bugs with his left hand. I think that is what we want from mentors. First, support, but we want to be told it is hard and it is worthy of being hard, and that sense of importance, the toughness i remember my teachers and the ones i dont remember are the ones that liked me. We want that hardness in a mentor. Gleaves you are both getting at the idea of character and leadership now. That is where i want to go next. When i had the privilege of interviewing president ford in a 2005, there came a point in our conversation when i said, mr. President , what is it boiled down to for you . What is the character trait that is the essence of leadership . Without hesitation, he looked at me and said, trust. People have to know that you will do what you say you are going to do, and if you Say Something to somebody in a private meeting, you will not go out into public and Say Something different that contradicts what you said. I want you to address this idea of character and leadership. Ron, do you want to start . Ronald david reminded us in his wonderful book the road to character of this Big Personality in politics, entertainment, whatever it is, and im struck by this 19thcentury term of the self effacement of these figures. Ulysses s. Grant elected president and rights to his best friend, William Tecumseh sherman, a person so opposite in personality, i was forced into it in spite of myself. I cannot give up the task, and then i would leave it to the trading politicians. I wanted this office not for myself, but so that we could preserve the great victories of this war. One of the traits is pointing beyond yourself. Certainly there is ambition in any leader, but when i saw that movie, i saw him pointing beyond himself. The vietnamese refugees again and again pointing beyond himself to goals that were important for the whole nation, not just his own selfaggrandizement. David when i watched the movie, i was struck by being here. In fords case, there was not only his family, although that was important, but the culture of this area and the culture of the midwest. I am a new yorker, so i am a snob. [laughter] david very deficient character. But i remember coming to midwest, i we