Our situation now is a critical one. A study that provides a sort of general metric for historians, citizens, anybody who wants to learn about the history of this particular topic, which is president ial misdoings, it is a way of getting into the subject. I have to point out that historians themselves dont study misconduct as a discrete topic. They dont consider this a subject about which they give courses or lead graduate students to do research and in preparation for dissertation and so on. It has bubbled up twice in the last 45 years but doesnt seem to have any academic or any other consequences. Host before we get into the why, you suggested this is a valuable time to do Something Like this, and obviously your publisher agreed and others involved agreed. What are you saying about the times we are in . James i think since the Nixon Administration, this is the second constitutional crisis we have had, and one of this depth. Susan the Trump Presidency . James the Trump Presidency, which is not in this book. We stopped with the Lyndon Johnson administration. We did not venture into the Nixon Administration. And for very good reason. The full record of the administration could not be known, the archives are unavailable to us. We prudently, i think, stopped. Both of these reports, the expanded version of the older one, were to provide a general groundwork for people like you and me to make comparisons on their own. Susan tell me the story of how the first one got put together. James i will be brief. John doerr, thought the utility of a report like this, and turned to his friend woodward, and asked woodward to be the commanderinchief of a project of preparing such a report, which was unprecedented. As was said in the introduction to the original volume. He asked three people to be his generals. They recruited about 12 historians to write 1, 2 or three sketches of that many presidencies. I was chosen to be one. We had eight weeks to do it. It was a day before fax, email, digitization. It was done by telephone and mail them and we did it in eight weeks. Professor woodward submitted it to john doerr and that was the last we heard of it. Six weeks later, the president resigned. What was done with the report is not entirely clear. John doerr was going to give it to the members of the impeachment inquiry. I corresponded with some of those members in 1974 and 1975, they did not even know of the report. Members of the committee did not see it so it was of no use to the committee. It was in the public domain, dell publishing published it and it dropped from sight. We were exhausted then, as we are now, no one wanted to think about president ial misconduct. They wanted to put it behind them. Most historians have not heard of the book. Susan how did it come to be published again in 2019 . James another set of coincidences. The phone rang and it was a fellow historian, known as a writer for the new yorker as well as a well published historian. She said, i just spotted a citation for this book that i have never heard of. I told her about it and in the course of the conversation such as we are having here, because i had been involved in another project, i said now that i think about it, now that you are pressing me for information, it occurs to me that an updated version of the 1974 report would be very timely. About two days later i started getting inquiries from editors at the new yorker, so i knew she had written something. The last sentence of her article in the talk of the town was james banner says perhaps it is time for another version of this book. Then my phone started ringing. I turned it over to my agent and said you handle this. It was an offthecuff remark that i made, this new project fell into my lap. Susan what did you do to update the book from the 1974 version . James i identified, included seven other historians. They had 12 weeks, one month longer than we had 45 years ago. They did their job so i had a full text in hand, edited, everybody read each others contributions, and submitted it to press in january of this year. Five months later, the book came out. Susan were the prior chapters revisited . James they were not, were published word for word except for a few typos. There were a few terms that did not seem suitable for our age, maybe two or three of those changed, but no change. We added sketches of the seven presidencies from Richard Nixon through the presidency of barack obama. Then we stopped. Susan how many of the original historian groups are still around . James about half of the 14 who worked with me. Susan do they know the project has been revisited . James oh yes, they have copies of the book and i called upon them for information from their files. I am very pleased, i wish they were all alive to see this. If someone had asked me 45 years ago if i would be alive and 45 years, i probably would have giggled. If someone asked me if i thought we would be in the same constitutional and political soup 45 years from then, i think i probably would have laughed, and here we are. Susan what other parameters the historians worked under originally and this time . James they were given an assignment, i was given an assignment and i kept the same assignment for the new authors for the updated version. That was, factual accounting only, no interpretations. No connective tissue between episodes, between presidencies, between episodes within presidencies. In some respects, and this is an unusual history for the 20th and 21st century, its more like a medieval chronicle where youre putting facts on the paper and not interpreting them. It is against the historians grain but everybody did their job. I tell you one other sure thing about this, when i was writing my introduction, i was well aware of the fact that i had to keep hands off. I could indicate our current problem inspired the book but nothing else. I submitted it to the others and said i wanted a reading from you. All of the authors, most of whom i would guess are on the centerleft side of the spectrum said dilate back more. Dial it back even more. Everybody realized it had to be devoid of interpretation, as partisanly neutral as possible. I think we brought that off and i am very satisfied. Susan picking up on that, people right of center, they are saying this is not a fair accounting for our guys. How do you respond . James i would urge them to read the book before charges are leveled. And then try to make of the accounting what you will. This is a book that is really written as a Civic Project for our fellow citizens, yours and mine, to make of the record what they can and wish to make of it. I am having trouble making something of it. It seems to me that it suggests many things and no doubt we will talk about that in this conversation. I think they would be wrong if they charged any of us with any partisan views. Susan what constitutes misconduct . James two things. One is illegal actions, actions contrary to law. The other is corruption, which i suppose can best be defined as the use of Public Office for private gain. Now, there is nothing set in stone about what you and i would agree is corruption and there may be instances left out of this book that we have overlooked. We did not change anything from Lyndon Johnson back to george washington. It could be there are things in here that people would say dont belong here. That would be a fair argument. I dont think there are because all of us in both versions of this manuscript oversaw each other and discuss with each other what should go in and what should not. If there is omissions, they are few. Susan you explain in the introduction that personal misconduct is not on the table in your study. James that is correct. Actions that you and i would consider to be chargeable against president s or members of their official families are not in here. For example, Grover Cleveland fathered a child out of wedlock. We know that jack kennedy was not exactly an obedient husband. But except those that came to public light, which they did starting with president clinton, those find their way into the book because they affected our understanding of the presidency and his ability to govern. Susan is moral turpitude covered . For example, slaveholding. James no. Susan why not . James those were not considered to be corrupt at the time and president s were not charged with slaveholding publicly. In other words, by political opponents. The slaveholding question did not come up to the level where they were chargeable and held personally accountable for the fact that slavery was legal in the u. S. Susan now that we understand that parameters, what are the major times that the public understanding of misconduct changed during the presidency . James thats a very good question. The original understanding of corruption and misconduct had to do with attacks on the body politic. This country was born in a concern for overweening executive power out of great britain. So corruption, the notion of corruption was the misuse of Public Office for illegal purposes. So the question of power, excessive power and the overuse of power by president s or members of congress and the courts was very much in the minds of the early president s. The first instance of a president being charged with personal misconduct while in office was james monroe, in the 1820s. Thats when we begin to see a shift in the standards of conduct that are going to be pressed on president s and official families. It was then that the size of the government began to grow. It was then that the gentry began to lose hold of the government and more of the people, adult white males, the democracy began to take place, particular John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jacksons presidencies. Then of course the chances for taking advantage of office, gaining money because of service and so on, grew. The standards by the 40s had become the standards of right and good conduct, they had come to involve personal conduct. Susan you observe how we do compared to other countries in terms of corruption. What do you think . James it is impossible to tell. As far as i know, they not standards of misconduct in any of the countries that are representative democracies in the western world or others. We dont really have any comparisons between the federal government and the state and urban governments. I would wager the fact, i am willing to venture as a working hypothesis that the record of the federal government is certainly no worse than state or local governments, and perhaps battle. Susan van woodward wrote, more or less are not able to establish a correlation between the state of the nation and the presidency. James that is correct. Susan we could have a bad president and the country could still be in a good situation, correct . James oh yes. An example of this is the presidencies of Grover Cleveland, and harrison. Right in the middle of the gilded age, which was terribly corrupt at the corporate level, the urban level, everything else. Those three administrations were absolutely clean of corruption. There doesnt seem to be any fit, nor is there a fit between the moral rectitude of the president and the record of his presidency. Warren harding was completely free of personal corruption but his 2. 5 years in office were some of the dirtiest and corrupt in because he did not oversee his administration, did not set firm rules of conduct, did not fire miscreants and so on. He was incapable of doing that. But he went out of office with clean hands. Susan there are two characteristics, one is the personal integrity of the officeholder and the other his leadership skills. James exactly. Susan another quote from the introduction, a dogged and misplaced loyalty to subordinates under fire. James that happens time and again. We see it today, we saw it starting with thomas jefferson. Jefferson and madison and even john adams, they could not get rid of james wilkinson, one of the greatest scandals in u. S. History. He engaged himself in at least one plot to dismember the union. Neither jefferson nor madison could find a way to bring him to book and throw him out. Madison finally found a way to do so during the war of 1812 because wilkinson messed up a command in battle. There are some circumstances where you cant. President s are political officers. They govern the United States and the United States has always been a complex nationstate and has only gotten more so. It is hard for a president to discipline ill conducting people without looking over his shoulder as to who will criticize him for having disciplined that cabinet officer. Political constituencies, the president has to answer to them and keep them in mind. It is a complex situation. That doesnt mean you when i should not demand of a president that somebody be fired or want someone fired, but it is more difficult in the sociology of the presidency to get rid of a subordinate man we think it is. Susan you tell us that the Founding Fathers anticipated the limitations of mankind, and our constitution and a Supreme Court limitations, do offer avenues. I want to read the list. The ban on emoluments in the constitution, the weapon of impeachment, congress with the power to declare war, the veto override in congress, later, the two term limit on the presidency, and congressional oversight. How have these instruments worked in keeping a line on the people and highest office . James i think we should all be worried that they dont work well enough. The rule of law is that the law has dominion over men. But James Madison was worried that everything he had helped put in the constitution were mere parchment barriers, as he famously called them. I think it is proven, if you look at the record, it is proven that a lot of misconduct that has provably taken place has not been punished. Indictments fail, once the presidency is over, they dont lead to anything. The Congress Wont act. The courts declare certain actions to be unpunishable. This is where things differ from presidency to presidency. The situation with the congress, the press, and the citizens. The citizens may not be vigilant. It is up to people like you and me to bring a presidency up short and make it act under law. If the citizens do not manned that, it is hard for the organs of government to do so. Susan you wrote specifically about that in your introduction. Most worrisome is that long expands has thrown down on the founders conviction of an informed citizenship backed by Robust Free Press and represented a by responsible congress will always or easily prevail against corruption of the highest reaches of government. James i still believe that. They are not guaranteed to work. They work in certain situations, presidency to presidency. The Supreme Court composition changes, congress changes. The press sometimes does not do its job. I think we have to be wary of the failure of our institutions and ourselves. Susan im going to invite people who are interested to find the volume and look up the earlier version. What we felt we would do for this interview is concentrate on the new set of president s you have added and demonstrate some of the president ial responses to the actions described. We will start with Richard Nixon, who was the genesis of the book. The two historians, what do we know about them and their analysis . James they were husband and wife at the university of california davis. They are experts on the presidency, they study the modern presidencies, as do all of the authors i recruited for this expanded volume. When i was reading their text and when i had read it over and it was published, i must say i found the accounting of nixons presidency, which i lived through, to be dizzying. It represented a departure in the history of president ial misconduct on two grounds, and they are important to keep in mind today. Previous to nixons administration, president s had been caught up in miss doing of subordinates and occasionally acted illegally. But never before had misconduct been orchestrated out of the oval office until the 1970s. So the Nixon Administration represented a really large break with the previous history of misconduct to the degree that can be pulled out from the histories of all administrations. Susan i am betting our listeners and viewers are well aware of the contours of the watergate scenario. Have we learned anything important since the years it happened . James i would ask who is we . I think those people who know the history of the country into the history of the american presidency would say it ought to have made us more vigilant and certainly some laws were passed in consequence of watergate. The nixon presidency, however, did not give us an example of an effective impeachment trial and conviction of a president and the president being forced from office. Nixon resigned on his own. He was never impeached by the house of representatives and never stood trial before the senate. I dont think one has to be cynical to be worried as to whether we have learned a lesson. If we think of we as the members of congress and of the courts as representing us, i am not certain you can count on either of those branches at any particular time to do a job you and i might want them to do or might want them not to do. They are also working in a political context. They also have to realize they have to maintain the integrity of their institutions, do the voters bidding, maintain the process of law through time. Those are not easy jobs. You cant assume that just because a president has acted illegally that he is going to be brought to book by the congress or courts. Susan in addition to the discussion of watergate, there were also two other scandals highlighted i want to very briefly get on the table. One is the chennault affair, which we learned about recently in a biography of nixon. Can you tell us what that was about. James it surprised me because the rules of the book were that the book would only deal with the presidencies and nothing before, if somebody had been a governor or a member of the house, nothing like that. Just the presidency. But it turned out that the affair in which nixon, through madam chennault, in the Johnson Administration brought to the vietnam war to a halt. The johnson act prevents citizens from working on behalf of the government. It was so egregious, without a had to be in the sketch of nixon. It was leading up