Recording, if you could just come to the microphone by the white pillar so we can hear your questions and engage in a nice discussion, and lastly, once everything is done if you could please fold up your chairs and place them against the pillar. Our staff, as in me, would greatly appreciate that. [laughter] tonight im pleased to introduce jared cohen, the founder and ceo of jigsaw alphabet inc. As well as an adjunct senior fellow at the council on foreign relations. The New York Times best selling author with eric schmidt of the new digital age and has written the children of jihad. One of the great lessons of american politics that ive learned is tale of two brothers. One went off to sea and one became Vice President. Neither was heard from ever again. [laughter] however, in rare case the Vice President is not relegated to obscurity. Namely, when the president dies. And his newest, best New York Times best selling book, accidental president s, cohen investigates these men. Who ascended to the presidency because of these unfortunate circumstances. Becoming president under the circumstances is often a thankless task and many of these men have disappointed rather than reassured, although several exceeded expectations. Cohen delves into the implications the system of argues this may not be the only way to handle succession. What at the, author of lee understands dough divein should writes jared cohen treats to us colorful and momentous episodeness our history. He reveals the historic importance of some lesser known leaders and highlights the greatness of tr, truman and lyndon johnson. We learn why america is a resilient nation and our constitution a living document. Lessons very powerful for today. Please join me in welcoming jared cohen. [applause] jared thank you all very much for having me. I cant think of a better place to give a talk about this book than this incredible book store. When i lived in d. C. It was my absolute favorite place to be and i have not been here in some time. I love the backdrop of all these books. The place i want to start is why i wrote this book. I think it is important context for somebody who spent the last eight years every single day as a technology ceo and before that four years working in Foreign Policy. So people ask me when i tell people i am writing a book, over the past there and years, the ask is it a book about cyber war . No. Is about Foreign Policy . No. They say what it is that, and about dead president s. And its confusing to them. Its confusing to anybody unless you grew up with me. When is was eight my parents bought in the a Childrens Book called the buck stops here. It was one of these wonderful rhyming books, with different page for each president. Me, tryingts read to to transform me into a precocious child, they did not realize they would have to have eight different conversations about death. And my poor parents, it was bad enough they dont know mckinley was, they had to explain to me why mckinley was keeled over in this cartoonlike picture. [laughter] when you are an eightyearold and you have to deal with topics like death and assassination, my parents not figure out what they had gotten themselves into. The interest sustained over time and when oliver stone came out with the film about kennedys assassination i decided to solve the kennedy assassination. So i annexed a room in our house and turned into it the kennedy room. And i put pictures and xerox copies of the zapruder footage all across the walls, with yarn and thumbtacks from one picture to another. And i had wild conspiracy theories, none of which i remember and thats deliberate. So the obsession and fascination got into president ial collecting and memorabilia and i have a strange subcollection of president ial locks of hair which , is weird until you see it. Its quite fascinating. This really has been a passion of mine and trust me, it really is something. This has been an interest my entire life so i spend all day thinking about innovation and the future but i have this sort of growing itch to dig into the past. When my wife was pregnant with a our eldest daughter, who is now five years old, i needed a nesting project because i was annoying everybody. And i decided to resurrect this child interest and write a book about the eight times in history that a u. S. President died in office and how history was , transformed by a heartbeat. And this history in addition to being something im deeply passionate about it resonates on , so many Different Levels because were in a time where everybody is look agent Leadership Qualities and we have a fascination with politics, and a fascination with history but our history is also anchored around transitions that used to happen every ten to 20 years. Most people are familiar with one or two president s who died in office, most people are surprised there were eight. So, what im going to do today, not going through every single one of them because i have to leave you with some incentive to buy the book. But i will talk to you but the first time it happened and what i think was the biggest catastrophe of the accidental transition. I will share who i think was the biggest and the most unexpected success and why. And then i will talk you through close calls because in addition , to eight president s who died in office you had another 19 who nearly died in office. See of eight president s who die so you have six of the eight eight president s who die in office six of the eight presents , who ascended to the presidency also nearly died in office, mostly through assassination attempts. So we will get into that, but i want to whet your appetite a little bit. Lets go back to the framers of the constitution who didnt want a Vice President. They do not think much about the vice presidency. They viewed it as an electoral mechanism. And so naturally its not something that they had thought about. They had given a little thought to president ial succession but if you look at article 2 in the constitution, what it says is in the event of the resignation of the president , death, or inability to discharge the duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on the vicepresident. The constitution is completely clear that in the case of a vacancy of the presidency, the Vice President acts as president and discharges those duties. The constitution is not clear about whether the Vice President becomes the president. So, 1840, the famous catch phrase, tippy canoe and tyler too propels William Henry on, the famous whig general into the white house. The whigs are so happy they finally got a president. He dies 30 days later, and despite the fact that history tells us he died of pneumonia it was later proven that bad sewer systems around the white house was likely responsible for his death. Later, James Polk Seth and Zachary Tyler staff, but well save that for another gruesome lecture. So, john tyler, who was thrown even though he was basically a on the ticket democrat because , the whigs needed to win virginia and needed somebody would good woo give a nod to states rights, skips town after the inaguration. He skips town because of how irrelevant the Vice President is. So when a messenger shows up at his house deliver the telegram the president is dead, john tyler who has in fact studied the constitution, understands the fight thats about to ensue because he enter threats the he interprets the constitution as he is now the president and he knows the cabinet will disagree and he knows that congress will disagree. So he races back in very dramatic fashion, combination of horse and carriage, boat and train, and he proceeds to get into a fight with the cabinet. He then spends the first 30 months of his presidency arguing with congress whether he his is whether he is the acting president or the president. Ultimately, he wins that battle even though people send him mail for the rest of the presidency addressed to him as Vice President which he returns unopened, or at acting president , which he also returns enopened. But he sets that precedent. What is interesting is you dont have a mechanism for replacing the Vice President of the United States until the 25th 25th until the 25th amendment does ratified in so, you have john 1967. Tyler as the nations first accidental president. He set a precedent that he is now president. Now that precedent carries through until lbj. Lby becomes president upon the death of john f. Kennedy based on a precedent set by john tyler in 1841. So we have never had a situation where president has died in office and the 25th amendment has formally made them president. That only happens with nixon and ford and i am sure somebody will ask me why i didnt include nixon, ford as a separate chapter and at some point i will be into the punch and answer the question. The reason that the vacancy of the Vice President is important is that john tyler is a disaster for the whig party because again he is basically a democrat. He doesnt subscribe to the whig agenda at all. Like most of the accidental president s that came after him he has a completely different , set of policy views than his predecessor and he takes the country in a completely different direction. Like all of the eight accidental president s he was ostracized , from the administration, had no relationship with the predecessor, i did not have a good sense of what was happening in the administration he was part of. At least for him the information , was only 30 days. So, tyler, as he subverts the whig agenda with the veto are of vetoing of two national banks, ends up adding formally excommunicated from the whig party. So henry clay leads the charge to kick john tyler out of the party. So john tyler, the first accidental president , becomes the president without a party. He, like all accidental president s, becomes obsessed with the idea of im determined not to be an accident. I need to win election in my own right. So the only path for him to win since hein 1844, cannot run as a wake and the democrats do not want him because they are mad at him running as a way, is to change the legal discourse and covertly annex texas. So we look at the impulsiveness and erratic behavior of our current approximate, i remind of john tyler in a moment political rage decided to annex texas which precipitated war with mexico which brought us one step closer to the civil war. Going back to the vacancy in the vicepresidency, this is important because on february 28, 1844, john tyler is sailing on the potomac, on board the uss princeton and a gala on the potomac, this stateoftheart nautical wonder designed to celebrate American Naval prowess and the fact he was on the verge of texas annexation. So they fire of the state of the art gun called the peacemaker as they go by mount vernon as a tribute to George Washington and the gun explodes, kills the secretary of state, the secretary of the navy, multiple ambassadors and ministers, kills john tylers favorite slave whose mother was compensated 200. It kills a number of senators, members of congress and would , have killed john tyler had he not been downstairs flirting with a woman half his age who he was desperately in love with as a woodwork president who was more interested in the captains son. So as they heard the explosion they came up to the deck and her name was julia gardner, and she saw that among the dead was her father. New york state senator. Laying on the ground. She faints into john tylers arms. He picks her up, carries her down the gangplank. She is startled and wakes up and does not realize it is the president carrying her. And you read about this in a letter that she later writes, tyler writes that had she not them off the gangplank they both would have died. So he almost ends up dying a second time. And he marries her and they have eight children. In addition to the seven he had. During the administration of John Washington and has two grandsons who are still alive. Child 15 fathered a child in his 7s and that child fathered two children in his 70s, who arenow in their midand late 90s so thats the israel of john tylers offspring. Fun fact, use it at a cocktail party. Had tyler died in that explosion or had he died falling off the gangplank, the nations first accidental president would have been dead. And i believe very strongly that the tyler precedent which was already controversial, and already hotly contested, would have been very unlikely to hold. What that means is millard fillmore, who im sure you think about, Andrew Johnson, Chester Arthur, Teddy Roosevelt, callan kugel harry truman and lyndon , johnson could have ascended to the role of acting president instead of president. ,so thats the story of the first accidental president and what happened. Now, what i want to do is juxtapose what i think is the biggest catastrophe with what i think is the biggest Success Story of an accidental president. Im almost tempted to say despite the fact that we more or less winged president ial succession, and despite the fact that the Founding Fathers gave us a guide but nothing close a blueprint, im tempted to say we navigated through pretty well and got pretty lucky. Its a remarkable story and i can almost say that except for the fact that when Abraham Lincoln died we got Andrew Johnson. And we are supposed to get Abraham Lincolns vision of reconstruction, instead the bullet of John Wilkes Booth gives us Andrew Johnson, man born a racist who died a racist, the last president to own slaves. A man who did not emancipate his own slaves until seven months after the emancipation proclamation. And a man who ended up resurrecting almost every old element of the confederacy which paved the way for black codes which paved the way for jim crow laws which gave us segregation. If i look at the story of civil rights and postcivil war america to me it can be described in some respects as to story of two president ial assassination, beginning with Abraham Lincoln, and ending with James Garfield. So, when i set to write the chapter about lincoln and Andrew Johnson, you think what can i write the great scholars have not written about the seminal moment in history . I decided i wanted to mitigate vindicate the one stain on lincolns record which is putting Andrew Johnson a heartbeat away from the president. Back then, president s did not choose running mates. But this was such an important moment and lincoln was so certain he would lose in 1864, that he engaged in a massive intrigue outside his circle to move Hannibal Hamlin off the ticket and replace him with Andrew Johnson. Now, if you look at who Andrew Johnson was in 1864 versus later as president its a remarkable , contrast and you feel some degree of empathy for lincoln having made such a bad decision. Because Andrew Johnson at the time, he was one of the poorest men ever to rise to the presidency owed everything he , had to the union and despite his racist sentiments and beliefs, he cared more but the he cared more about the union than anything else. So, when the first shots were fired on fort sumpter, all he cared about was breaking the confederacy and the best we to break everyo traitor in brutal fashion and to force civil rights upon them. So, johnson is the only southern senator to stay loyal to the union. He gives up a bombproof seat in the senate to take dangerous job as military governor of tess 1864, hisessee in rhetoric on some rides is more for leaning than Abraham Lincoln. He seemed like such a radical republic aside from being a border contribution, the south is more terrified about the idea of Andrew Johnson as president than ever have lincoln. And when Jefferson Davis is accused of plotting to kill Abraham Lincoln, he reminds people that would be insane because anybody who hears or listens to Andrew Johnson knows that would be a far worse situation for the south. Now, Andrew Johnson has the worst debut of any rights in history. He is completely hammered while being sworn in and giving his inaugural address. He is supposed to speak for 30 seconds or a minute, then put his hand on the bible and be sworn in. Instead it turns into a 70 minute drunken tirade in which he criticizes every member of the cabinet and pauses when he cannot room ever the name of the secretary of the navy. Poor lincolns head is buried in his hands in shame and then he proceeds to slobber all over the bible and he is too drunk to swear in the new senators so he asked some poor intern to do it. And im not sure legally you can do that. [laughter] then Abraham Lincoln walks side by side with him outside right before lincoln gives arguably one of the best speeches of his career and lincoln points out frederick douglass. Describes a man whose eyes are glazed over, stumbling with hatred and he is describing it wrong person but he does not realize Andrew Johnson is drunk. But he draws the conclusion that man is no friend of my race and we should thank the heavens is not president of the United States. Six weeks later lincoln is killed and Andrew Johnson