Good evening. Welcome to mt. Vernon. My name is kevin butterfield. And it is my pleasure to welcome you here tonight on behalf of the Mount Vernons lady associations and Ford Motor Company which sponsors a free monthly book talk to learn from the greatest historians. Thank you for being here tonight. Were thrilled to have you. To begin the Program Shortly well hear a brief presentation from susan swain, copresident and executive officer of cspan and coauthors of the president s. Shell be joined by brian lamb, the founder and executive chairman of cspan and moderating and esteemed group of historians in discussing the american presidency. The american presidency is as you know a fascinating subject of inquiry in every possible way. In the constitution, theres not as much said about it as you might imagine. Article i is quite long, ii much shorter and the key phrase is about as short as you can imagine. The executive power should be vested in a president of the United States of america. Full stop. Thats the first sentence and the key phrase in the second article of the constitution which describes the presidency. Much of what we know today as the american presidency has come from experience, from precedent, from action and we are thrilled to have an opportunity to learn about that experience, that action. Tonight, from a group of wonderful historians that i would like to tell you about tonight, joining mr. Lamb and ms. William well be joined by dr. Brinkley and edna greene medford. Dr. Brinkley is a president ial historian for cnn and an author of a book im excited about, american moonshot, john f. Kennedy and the great space race. Also on the panel, dr. Medford, president of history, dean at Howard University. Shes the author of of lincoln and emancipation. Richard norton smith, a historian, the author of a wonderful book on George Washington called patriarch and hes served as the director of five different president ial libraries. Tonight these individuals will discuss their new book, the president s noted historians on the lives and the leadership of the best and the worst chief executives. Please join me in welcoming them tonight. [ applause ] are we supposed okay. Good evening, everybody. Nice to see you. Thank you very much, kevin butterfield. I cant think of a more appropriate place to talk about president ial leadership than mt. Vernon. Brian and i talked about this book about a year and a half ago. Our motivation was cspans 40th anniversary but what a week we picked for this book to come out on president ial leadership. Terrific time for us to be hearing from historians to get their perspectives on what makes a good chief executive for this country and also to put some Current Events into some context. We hope to do that tonight. And putting this book together, brian and i have worked on nine of these which are collected works of his interviews and this one we decided to actually bring two resources in to play. First of all, brian has been doing the sunday night Interview Program for 30 years now and we have an archive thats full of his interviews. In fact, the odometer on our archives is about to hit 250,000 hours later on this month. Not all brians, but [ applause ] but among the people that brian had interviewed are these three people who have become great friends of ours over the past quarter century and some of the countrys leading contemporary president ial historians. In addition to having this vast archive of this collected works, about 20 years ago in fact, exactly 20 years ago in 1999 we had done this year long project which each of these three folks who are involved in american president s life portraits. I have some cspan colleagues who are nodding thinking about what a big job this was. We took it upon ourselves to go to a live on location, associated with every president and do a twohour live program on their lives. Almost killed us, but we made it through. At the end of it, we thought we need to put a capper on it. So we talked to the three of them and decided to do a survey of historians and take all of this biographical material that is more anecdotal in nature and try to put data and Science Behind it. So we gathered them together along with from Robert Browning the head of archives, president John Spillane and we got into a wonderful debate you would have all loved to have been there about what should the ten qualities of leadership be and in order to do a survey of 100 president ial historians. So the idea for this book was actually to merge the survey work that we have done three times now of the president ial historians with the collected content of president ial biographers. So the book that youre going to learn more about tonight is actually organized not chronological chronologically, but where they fell in the survey. Youre going through a continuum from the very best to the very worst rated leaders in our country. And you learn more about some of the characteristics and qualities that perhaps put them in that ranking. So let me tell you about the ten qualities that we finally agreed on. The first is public persuasion. The second, crisis leadership and that can come in all sorts of forms and the third, Economic Management. The fourth quality was moral authority. The fifth, international relations, which includes not only diplomacy but also war. The next administrative skills which includes the assembling of a cabinet and the advisers around you. The next is the relations with congress. You can have that and still not a program done. This one reminds of george hw bush, setting an agenda. The next one, pursued equal justice for all and the tenth was the performance within the context of their times. So what we did was send a survey out to 100 historians and we worked very hard to get people of different demographics and people of different political points on the spectrum. So that we could represent lots of different points of view. And this survey is now the first one was so successful that we now do it the president leaves office. So to answer your question, President Trump has not been rated and we will not formally rate him until he leaves office, but certainly it does engender a lot of conversation about the current occupant of the office. So im going to give you a quick overview on the best and the worst and who moved the most so you have some context. So lets look at the top five. First of all, in fifth place from the top, William Hitchcock is the biographer but the historians rated eisenhower in fifth place and he has moved a bit, which maybe speaks to the hidden hand theory thats developing about his presidency. His lowest score is in public persuasion. The next is number fourth place is tr and we have our tr biographer and we chose his wonderful biography called wilderness warrior and well learn more from David Brinkley about why he chose that agenda to focus on. He scored very well but his lowest score was 11th in equal justice pursuing equal justice for all. In third place, Franklin Delano roosevelt. In our book we chose Doris Kearns Goodwins terrific biography on the white house years when they had all of those interesting people including churchill living on the second floor of the white house to help him get through the war years. His lowest scores, number fifth in Economic Management. And eighth which theyre both high scores and pursuing equal justice for all. The next, here we are his home in second place was George Washington, scoring ones and twos by the historians but his single lowest score and im sure the folks in mt. Vernon have been working so hard to help us all understand this, 13 in equal justice for all. And the top winner in not only our survey, but in every survey ever done of president s really is Abraham Lincoln. The top score was 1,000, he won 907 among the historians and he had a terrific rating on every single one and except for relations with congress where he scored a 9. Okay. So who are the bottom five, at the other end of the spectrum . John tyler is at number 39. Tide water, virginia, native. Our historian did argue he has some redeeming qualities so i invite you to read that chapter. The man who ended up not having a party, but he did manage to establish the president ial succession because it wasnt written into the constitution. Okay. You wont be surprised at in number 40, Warren Harding. He scored 360 points out of 1,000. We know so much about the scandals that plagued his presidency. Youll be interested to know the biographer is john dean, yes, that john dean of water gate fame. Actually, he uncovered papers of Warren Harding that were previously unknown to biographers and he argues he deserves better in the place than the historians have given him. Its up to you to decide. Next, franklin pierce. New hampshires only president. 41st place. The kansas, nebraska, enacted him in and he had a drinking problem. If you have known anything about him, he came in with a tremendous tragedy. He had lost two sons and the third one died in front of his wife and himself as their train capsized on their way to washington. He carried his sons dead body up from the accident. His wife really had a very hard time recovering from that and spent much of the first couple of years in the white house on the second floor in the residents writing letters to her dead son. Very tragic song and in pieces case he had a hard time understanding and assembling the cabinet. Next up, Andrew Johnson, 42nd place. David stewart is the biographer we chose for him. The tennessee governor who was loyal to the union, but of course impeached by the republicans using the tenure of office act. Okay, guess who is dead last . James buchanan. Im a pennsylvanian so this hurts a little bit. I love the biographer that we chose for this chapter, named robert strauss. A fun book its called worst period, president period. How bad is he . Hes 30 points below johnson. And all of these people this is something to think about. This is a Point Richard made. All of them are below William Harry harrison who was in office for a month. So lets just take a quick look at how the modern president s fared. Ronald reagan was the only one that made it into the top ten. Lou cannon who covered him as a journalist in california is the chapter that we did. He had a lot to say about reagans command of storytelling as he was in the office. Next, george h. W. Bush, in 20th place. Interesting to see what happens to him now that hes passed, now that more records are available and theres a bit of a halo effect once they leave office. Interestingly hes book ended by the two adams president s. Bill clinton came in at 15. We had david maraniss, really the biography of the chapter. The Washington Post reporter, youre familiar with his work, he writes about bill clintons duality. He could be both good and bad at the same time and that kind of impacted everything that happened throughout his public career. Okay. How about george w. . Just out of the bottom ten i have to tell you. He has his highest score was actually he pursued equal justice for all. Again, thats his first entry into it so it will be interesting to see as time progresses how he will do, but hes got some difficult problems to overcome. Hurricane katrina, the economic crisis and certainly the ongoing wars. So well be seeing what the historians have to see as a little more time goes by. Then how did our most recent president do, barack obama . The historians rated him at number 12. A pretty good showing for a first entry. He got 24th in international relations. And 39th in relations with congress. So i found it was really interesting to look at the scores. What youre hoping that youre going to do to see what the biographers had to say. This is kind of fun, whos up, whos down. All right, Andrew Jackson, which way do you think he went . Down. He in fact went over the course of the surveys from 13th place down to 18th. Woodrow wilson, down. Sixth to 11th. And you folks are going the have to explain this to me, because i have a soft spot in my heart for rutherford b. Hayes. He dropped six points over the survey, from 26th to 32nd spot. And grover cleveland, our only twoterm nonconsecutive president went from number 17 in the survey to 23. So who are the ones that went up . Well, dwight eisenhower. Made it from number nine into the top five. Bill clinton, i told you that he was in the number 15th position but when he first came into the survey he was in 21st. That was in 1999 right after the impeachment process. He moved to 15th by the second time we did it and there he stays in our 2017 survey. And finally, u. S. Grant. Youre a specialist on this, edna, you have to help me understand this one. Grant is the president who changed the most going up 11 points over the course of our three surveys. Id love to hear your perspective on why historians are looking more favorably upon him. Thats an overview and now you have three fabulous historians who have been so much a part of cspans programming over the years who are going to add some context to that. Thanks for your attention. [ applause ] this book is what it is because of susans fabulous editing capability and thank you, susan, for this presentation. [ applause ] Richard Norton smith comes to us today from grand rapids. Doug brinkley from austin, texas and edna medford from Howard University and i would like to ask doug because lincoln is never one, he just got back from the Lincoln Library and in springfield and richard owned it for us all. What was that, 2006 . Yeah. Started off with what did you find there . Why do we think that everybody should go . Everybody should go to visit springfie springfield, illinois, if you can. But hes always number one, lincoln, as susan pointed out, largely because, you know, no matter how bad other president s think they had it, lincoln had it worse. The fact of the matter was he wasnt on seventh states on the ballot to vote for him in 1860. He comes to washington, d. C. Essentially having to have a body double. The executive mansion it wasnt called the white house till roosevelt dubbed it that. So they had very lax security. People could graze animals on the front lawn and lincoln is sitting there so vulnerable. I flew in today from austin and landed in Dulles Airport which is very, very close to the battle of bull run where the confederates won the first battle of bull run and theres Abraham Lincoln sitting in the white house with half the country putting up confederate flags and trying to find a way to keep america cobbled together. He did it in a miraculous way. Im always amazed we were able to hold an election in 1864 and lincolns able to get reelected. But when you think about it, the gettysburg address, lincolns first and second inaugurals are foundational text. Meaning theyre like the declaration of independence, and we arent a full nation without addressing lincolns accomplishment and of course the emancipation proclamation that the original sin of the United States is slavery and lincoln leads the abolitionists crusade from the white house into the and put america on a new and a better course. And then finally, the assassination. John wilkes booth, school kids go to fords theatre and you stu dit. But you realize that when lincolns body originally moved back to springfield, buried there in springfield, the train ride with his casket went across the country at the same moment that the soldiers were laying down their arms and coming home as a kind of homecoming. So lincoln is kind of in a category unto his own. And if you want to also if youre a book lover go to the lincoln book shop, that sells nothing but books about lincoln. All scholars want to write a book about lincoln, i never have, but if i could id write about him going two trips down the mississippi river. Lets pickn c up from what sn asked about u. S. Grant and you can throw in your comments on mr. Lincoln if youd like, but can you explain why general grant has done so well in the survey . I think every generation decides how theyre going to rate and interpret president s and at this time in our history, things that really matter to us are integrity. I know this is a scandal filled administration supposedly. He has surrounded himself with some people that are not always behaving properly, but he always did. I dont think theres any real criticism of him personally, but its also about the fact that during the reconstruction period, hes trying to make sure that the violence thats developing especially in the south is quelled and so hes willing to enforce those enforcement acts against the klan. I think from todays sensibilities, we really recognize how important that was. So i think thats one of the major things with him. We asked each historian if theyd write a special piece for this book and they have one of the chapters from one of the president s. Richard norton smith writes the opening chapter and he calls it the magnificent lion. Would you like to explain that, sir . Along with arthur schlesinger, there was a preeminent Political Science named Clinton Roz Aer the. In 1951, he wrote an essay on the presidency in which he described the president as a kind of magnificent lion who was more or less free to roam around the reservation at will as long as it was it did not egregiously offend congress or the public. That was an essay written in the shadow of president s who were very assertive. Who were some would say imaginative in interpreting the range of executive power but also they had governed in times of crisis. I mean, any reader of this book is going to take away is just how evolutionary an office the presidency is. One of the real challenges that confronts anyone ranking the president , for example, we all agree that Economic Management in the modern context is a determining factor. I