Cspan, your unfiltered view of government. Susan historian james banner, you have been involved in editing a story of the american presidency through a single lens, president ial misconduct. What is the value of that . James i think it is narrow, it is circumscribed and it remains useful. 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. 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 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 in 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. The 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. Let me relay one other short tale 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 butlem occasioned the book, 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 left, centerleft side of the spectrum said 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 here, the new yorker when people hear the new yorker, yale university, they are going to think this is not a fair accounting for guys on our side of the spectrum. How do you respond . James i would urge them to read the book before charges are leveled. Left, right, and center. 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 kind of manuscript oversaw each other and discussed 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 because 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 the 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 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 was james monroe in the 1820s. That is when we begin to see a shift in the standards of conduct that are going to be pressed on president s and their official families. It was then that the size of government began to grow, that the gentry began to lose hold of the government and more of the people, which would be adult white males, the democracy began to take place, particularly 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. 1840s hadds by the become the standards of right and good conduct, had come to be, come to involve personal conduct. Susan you observe about how we compare to other countries in terms of corruption. What is the answer . James that i dont know. It is impossible to tell. I have had additional thoughts since writing that introduction. Notar as i know, there are standards of corruption in countries standards of misconduct in any of the countries that are comparable to our own, representative democracies in the western world or others. We dont really have any comparisons between the federal government and 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 and local government state and local governments, and perhaps better. Woodward road, 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. The most striking example of this, the presidencies of Grover Cleveland and the intervening one with benjamin harrison. 12 years right in the middle of the gilded age, terribly corrupt at the corporate level, the urban level, everything else. 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 so far, 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 American History because he did not oversee his administration, did not set firm rules of conduct, did not fire the 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 is there 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 really with thomas jefferson. Jefferson and madison, and some degree even john adams, couldnt get rid of james wilkinson. He was one of the greatest scoundrels in u. S. History. He was in the pay of spain. 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. But, there are some circumstances where you cant. Of course, president s are political officers. They govern the United States. The United States has always been a complex nation state and has only gotten more so. It is hard for the president to discipline ill conducting cabinet officers or others without looking over his shoulder as to who will criticize him for having disciplined that cabinet officer. There are political constituencies that the president has to answer to and govern and keep in mind. It is a complex situation. That doesnt mean that you and i should not demand of a president that someone be fired, or want someone fired, but it is a more difficult but it is more difficult in the presidency to get rid of a subordinate then we think it is. Susan you tell us that the Founding Fathers anticipated the limitations of mankind, and our constitution and further Supreme Court limitations do offer avenues. I want to read the list. The ban on emoluments in the constitution, the weapon of impeachment, giving congress the power to declare war, the veto override the congress has. Later, the twoterm limit on the presidency, and congressional oversight. How have these instruments worked in keeping a line on the People Holding highest office . James i think we should all be worried they dont work well enough. The rule of law is that 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 called them famously. 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. And sosidency is over the hearings and indictments dont lead to anything. The press isnt vigilant enough. A Congress Wont act. The courts declare certain to be one either unishable and to be punishable. This is where things differ from presidency to presidency. The situation with the congress, the press, and the citizens. The citizens may be unvigilant. It is up for citizens like you and me to bring a presidency up short and make it act under law. Dont demandns 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 experience has thrown doubt on the founders conviction that informed and active citizenry, backed by a Robust Free Press and represented by a responsible congress so there is a triad 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 situations which change from year to year. Presidency to presidency. The Supreme Courts 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. James susan im going to invite people who are interested to find the volume and look up the earlier 1974 version. What i 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 this book. Historians were Kathryn Olmsted and eric rauchway. 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 the missed ofngs in the misdoings their subordinates and occasionally acted illegally, but never before had misconduct been orchestrated out of the oval office until the 1970s. That was an extraordinary departure. The president was caught breaking the law and urging others to break the law, both constitutional and criminal law. That had never happened before. Nor had a president ever before been named in a case as an unindicted coconspirator. 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 that ministrations. Of allministration 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 and 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 that president being forced from office. Nixon resigned on his own. He was never impeached by the house of representatives and never stood trial in the senate. But, i dont think one has to be cynical to be worried as to whether we have learned a lesson. As members of we 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 that you and i might want them to do or might want them not to do. Remember, they too are working i