And answer portion, in the interest of video and audio reporting, if you could just come to our 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 something solid. Our staff, as in me, would greatly appreciate that. Tonight im pleased to introduce jared cohen, to politics and prose the founder and ceo of jigsaw alphabet inc. As well as an adjuncrt senior fellow at the council on foreign relations. He is 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 the tale of two brothers. One went off to sea and one became Vice President. Neither was heard from ever again. However in rare cases, the Vice President is not relegated to obscurity. Namely when the president the previous president dies. And his newest, best New York Times best selling back, accidental president s, cohen examines the legacies of these men, millard film, or chester arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, calvin coolidge, harry truman, and Lyndon Johnson, who ascended to the presidency because of these unfortunate circumstances. Becoming president under these circumstances is often a thankless task and many hoover this men have disappointed rather than reassured, although several have exceeded expectations. Cohen delves into the implications the system of seeings and argues that this limited reading to the constitution, one of which Many Americans take for granted, may not the be only way to handle succession. Walter isaacson writes this out, jared cohen treats to us colorful and momentous episodes of our history. He reveals the historic importance of some lesser known leaders and highlights the greatness of t. R. , truman and Lyndon Johnson. We learn why america is a resilient nation and our constitution a living document. Lessons very powerful for today. Now please join me in walking welcoming jared cohen. 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 bookstore. When i lived in d. C. , it was my absolute favorite miss to be some i love the backdrop of all these books here tonight. The place i want to start is why i wrote this book. Because think its 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 why, when when i tell people im writing a book they say is its book but cyber war . No, Foreign Policy . No. Whats it about . I say, its 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, a different page for each president. As my parents read to me, trying to transform me into a child they didnt realize they would have to have eight different conversations about death. And my poor parents, it was bad enough they dont know who mckinley was, they had to explain to me why mckinley was keeled over in this cartoonlike picture. When youre an eightyearold you have to deal with these heavy topics like death and assassination my parents didnt figure outer what they had gotten themselves into. The interest sustained over time and when oliver stone came out with his film in 1992 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 sort of xerox copies of the zapruder footage with yarn and thumb tacks and i had wild conspiracy theories, none of which i remember and thats quite 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 my trust me, really is something. This has been an interest my entire life so i spend all day thinking about innovation and the future but i had this sort of growing itch to want to dig into the past. When my wife was pregnant with a our eldest daughter who is five years e nears old i needed a nesting project because i was annoying everybody and i decided to 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 park not but, it resonates with me on so many Different Levels because were in a time where everybody is look agent leadership qualities. We have a fascination with politics, we have 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 that 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 im going to talk to you but the first time it happened and ill share what the biggest catastrophe of the accidental transition who is think was the biggest and the most unexpected success and why and then im gonna talk to you through some of the close calls because in addition to eight president s who died in office you had another 19 who nearly died in office. And of those 19 you have 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 well get into that as well but want to whet your appetite a little bit. So going back to the framers of the constitution who didnt want a Vice President or think much about it. They viewed as an electoral mechanism. So naturally its not something that they had thought about. Theyd given a little thought to president ial succession but if you look at article 2 in the constitution, what it says is that in the event of the resignation of the president , death, or inability to discharge 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, tippecanoe and tyler too propels William Henry harrison, 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 and later james polks dater and later Zachary Taylors death but well save that for another gruesome lecture. So, john tyler, who was thrown on the ticket, even though he was basically a democrat, because the whigs needed to win virginia and needed somebody whod give a nod to states rights, skips town after the inaguration. So, when a messenger shows up at his house in the night delivering the telegram the president is dead, john tyler who has in fact studied the constitution, understands the fight thats about to ensue because he interprets the constitution as he is now the president and he knows the cabinet will disagree and congress will disagree. So he races back and very dramatic fashion, a combination of horse and carriage, boat and train, and he proceeds to get into a fight with the cabinet. He then spends the first three months of his presidency arguing with congress whether he his is he acting president or president. Ultimatesly he wins the battle even though people send him mail dressed to him as Vice President which he returns unopened, or as acting president , which he also returns unopened. But he sets the precedent. What is interesting is you dont have a mechanism for replacing the Vice President of the United States until the 25th amendments is ratified in 1967. So, you have john tyler as the nations first accidental president. He set a precedent that he is now president. Now that precedent carries through lbj. Lbj becomes president upon the death of john f. Kennedy based on a precedent set by john tyler in 1841. So weve never had a situation where a president has died in office and the 25th amendment has formally made them president. That only happens with nixon and ford and im sure somebody will ask me why i didnt include nixon and ford as a separate chapter, and at some point ill beat you to the punch and answer the question. Recent to the vacancy of the Vice President is on the other hand, john tyler is a disaster for the whig party because again, hes 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 takes the country in a completely different direction. Like all eight, he was ostracized from the administration, had no relationship with the predecessor and didnt have a good sense of what was happening in the administration he was part of. Enough at least the information was only 30 days. So, tyler, as he subverts the whig agenda, most prominently with the veto are of two National Banks get 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 this 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 the election in 1844, since he cant run as a whig and the democrats dont want him because theyre mad as running him as whig is to change the politics discourse and annex texas. So looking at the impulsive and erratic behavior of our current approximate, i remind you john tyler decided to covertly annex texas which precipitated war with mexico and brought is 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 u. S. S. Princeton and a gala on the nautical wonder designed to celebrate American Naval prowess and the fact that he was on the verge of texass annexation. So they fire of the state of the art gun cause peacemaker going by mt. Vernon and the gun explodes, kills the secretary of state, the secretary of the navy, multiple ambassadors and ministers, kills john tylers favorite slave whose more was compensatessed 200. Kill as number of senators senators and a members of congress and would have killed john tyler had he not been downstairs flirting with a woman who was have his age but 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 wake up and doesnt realize its the president carrying her and you read about this in a letter that she later writes, john tyler writes had she knocked them off the gangplank they would have died or almost died a second time. And he marries her and they have eight children with her on tom over the seven he had, and john tyler been during the administration of George Washington has two grandsons 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. I believe strongly the tyler precedent which was already controversial, and already hotly contested, would have been very unlikely to hold. It means fillmore, adrew johnson, chester arthur, teddy involved, calvin cool usage, harry truman and Lyndon Johnson could have ascended to the role offing president instead of president. 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 if 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 it 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 were supposed to get lincolns vision of reconstruction, instead the bullet of John Wilkes Booth gives us Andrew Johnson, man born a racistest died a racist, the last president who didnt emancipate his slaves until seven months later and a man as president resurrect almost every old almost of the con fed was circumstance paving way the at the black codes and the jim crow laws and gave is 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 assassinations beginning with Abraham Lincoln and ending with James Garfield. So, when i set out to write the chapter about lincoln and you think what can i write that all the great scholars have not written about. I decided what i wanted to do is vindicated the one stain on lincolns record which is putting Andrew Johnson a heartbeat away from the president. The president didnt choose the running mate but such an important moment and lincoln was so certain he would lose in 1864, that he engage inside a massive intrigue outside of 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 at president , its a remarkable contrast and you feel some degree of empathy for lincoln having made such a bad addition but Andrew Johnson at the time he was the poorest men ever to rise to president si, owed everything he had to the union and despite his racist extentment and his beliefs he cared more but 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 way to punch every trader 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 bomb proof seat in the senate to take a dangerous job as military governor in 1864 his rhetoric on civil right is more forward leaning than even Abraham Lincoln him he is so fielder by the south because he seemed like such a radical republic aside from being a border contribution, the south irmore tired buts the idea of an dry johnson as president than Abraham Lincoln and when Jefferson Davis is accused open lots offing to kill Abraham Lincoln he reminds people that would be insane because anybody who hears or hiss to be Andrew Johnson knows that would be a far worse situation for the south. Now, Andrew Johnson has the wore debut of any Vice President. Completely hammered while being sworn in and giving his inaugural address remember he. He is supposed to speak for 30 second and then be sworn in, instead its a 17 minute drunken tirade in which hthe cabinet and pauses when hey cant remember 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 to drunk to swear in the new senators so he asks some poor intern to do it. And im not sure legally you can do that. So then Abraham Lincoln walks side by side with hill outside right before lincoln gives arguably one of the best speeches of his career and lincoln opinion otherwise Frederick Douglas he describes a mans eyes glazed over, stumbling with hatreds and he is describing a drunk person but doesnt realize that Andrew Jobson is drunk but draws 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 becomes president and his views are not transformed when he becomes president s. Himself views transform when the civil wars over. And all of a sudden the best thing from his perspective for the union is to get the southern elected officials reintegrated back into congress and let the states dealing with civil rights rights and. What is interesting is he is a mott to kill not just lincoln put johnson, sowards and others. Whats interesting is interesting about johnson, this is just not a plot to about killing him but the first time that the cabinet sees Andr