My name is Katie Willard and im part of the event staff here at politics and prose. Before we begin, i would like to go over a few quick announcements. First, please silence your cellphones and other noise making devices. Not only is it courteous to the author, but we are also on cspan tonight. So you do not want to be the person whose phone goes off on cspan. Secondly, during our question and answer portion, in the interest of our video and audio recording, if you could come up to the microphone right here by the white pillar. That wave, we can hear your questions and engage in a nice discussion afterwards. And lastly, once everything is done, if you could please pull up your chairs and place them against something solid. Our staff, as in me, would greatly appreciate that. Tonight, i am pleased to introduce jared cohen to politics and prose. Cohen is the founder and ceo of jigsaw alphabet ink as well as an adjunct senior fellow at the council of foreign relations. He has written several books on his own including, 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. In his newest New York Times bestselling book, accidental president s, cohen examines legacies of these eight men, john tyler, millard fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester Arthur, theodore roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, harry truman and Lyndon Johnson, who descended to the presidency because of these unfortunate circumstances. Becoming president under these circumstances is often a thankless task, and many of these men have disappointed rather than reassured. Although several have exceeded expectations. Cohen delves into the implications of this system of succession and argues this limited reading of the constitution, one of which Many Americans take for granted, may not be the only way to handle succession. Walter isaacson, author of leonardo da vinci, among other books, writes Jarrett Cohen treats us to some of the most colorful and momentous episodes in 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. Please join me in welcoming jared cohen. [applause] thank you all very much for having me. I cant think of a better place to talk about this book than this incredible bookstore. When i lived in d. C. It was my absolute favorite place to be and i have not been here in sometime. I just love the backdrop of all of these books here tonight. I think the place that i want to start is why i wrote this book. I think its really important context for somebody who spent the last eight years every single day as a technology ceo. Before that, for years working in Foreign Policy. So people ask me, when i tell people im writing a book, they ask if its a book about cyber war. No. Is it a book about Foreign Policy . No. They say what is it about . I said its about that president s and its confusing to them. Its confusing to anybody unless you grew up with me. When i was eight years old, my parents brought me 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 at night trying to transform me into a precocious child, they did not realize they would have to have eight different conversations with me about death. My poor parents, it was bad enough that they did not know who mckinley was, they now had to explain why mckinley was killed over in this cartoon like picture. When you are an eight year old and have to deal with these very heavy topics like death and assassination, my parents did not just quite figure out what they had gotten themselves into. The interest sustained overtime and, when oliver stone came with his movie in 1992 about kennedys assassination, i decided i was going to solve the kennedy assassination. I annexed one of the rooms in our house and turned it into the committee room. I put pictures and xerox copies of the zapper footage across the halls with yarn anthem tack from one picture to another. I had all sorts of wild conspiracy theories, none of which i remember, and that is quite deliberate. So the obsession and fascination got into president ial collecting and memorabilia. I have a strange sub collection of president ial locks of hair, which is weird until you see it. Its quite fascinating. But this really has been a passion of mine, trust me, it really is something. This has been in interest my tire life. I spend all day thinking about innovation in the future, but i had this growing itch to sort of dig in to the past. When my wife is pregnant with our eldest daughter, who is now five years old, i needed a nesting project because i was kind of annoying everybody. I decided im finally going to resurrect this childhood interest. Im going 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. This history, in addition to being something im deeply passionate about, it really resonates with me on so many Different Levels because we are in a time where everybody is looking at leadership qualities. We have a fascination with politics. We have 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 that there were eight. What im going to do today, im not going to go through every single one of them because i have to leave you with some incentive to by the book. But im going to talk to you about the very first time it happened. Im going to share with you what i think was the biggest catastrophe of the accidental transitions. Im going to share with you who i think was the biggest and most unexpected success and why. And then, im going to talk you through some of the close calls. In addition to the eight president s who died in office, you had another 19 who nearly died in office. And of those 19 who nearly died in office, i should remind you that there are eight that die in office, six of those eight president s who send it to the presidency upon the death of their predecessor also nearly died in office. Mostly through assassination attempts. We will get into that as well, but i just want to whet your appetite a little bit. Lets go back to the framers of the constitution who did not want a Vice President , who did not think much about the vice presidency, they viewed it as an electoral mechanism. Naturally, it was not something they had thought about. They thought a bit about president ial succession, but if you look at article two in the constitution, what it says is in the event of the death of a president or inability to discharge duties of the set office, the same shell devolve on the Vice President. The constitution is completely clear that in the case of the vacancy of a presidency, the Vice President acts as president and discharges those duties. The constitution is not clear about whether the Vice President becomes the president. 1840, the famous catchphrase, tipping canoe and tyler to, propels William Harris into the white house. The wigs are so happy that they finally got a president , but he dies 30 days later. Despite the fact that history tells us he died of pneumonia, it was later proven that bed sewer systems around the white house was likely responsible for his death. By the way, james pokes death and zachary taylors death later. We will save that for a more gruesome lecture. John tyler, who was thrown on the ticket even though he was basically a democrat, because the wage needed to win virginia and needed somebody who would give a knot to states rights, he skips town after inauguration because he is prepared to accept the realities of how irrelevant the Vice President is. When a messenger shows up at his house in the middle of the night delivering the telegram that the president is bid, john tyler, who has infect studied the constitution, understands the fight that is about to ensue. He interprets the constitution as he is now the president and he knows the cabinet is going to disagree and he Knows Congress is going to disagree. So he races back in very dramatic fashion, a combination of horse and carriage, boat and train, and he proceeds receipts to get into a fight with the cabinet. He then spends the first three months of his presidency arguing with congress about whether hes the acting president or the president. Ultimately, he wins that battle even though people sent him mail for the rest of his presidency addressed to him as Vice President , which he returns on opened. Or as acting president , which he also returns an open, but he sets that president. Whats interesting is you dont have a mechanism for replacing the Vice President of the United States until the 25th amendment is ratified in 1967. So you have john tyler as the nations first accidental president. He set a precedent that he is now president. That precedent carries all the way through lbj. Lbj becomes precedent upon the death of john f. Kennedy based on a precedent in 1841 by john tyler. Weve never had a situation where a president has died in office and the 25th amendment has formally made the president. That only happens with nixon and ford. Im sure during the q as session, someone will ask me why i did not include nixon and ford as a separate chapter. At some point, i will beat you to the punch and answer that question. The reason the vacancy of the vice presidency is important is john taylor is a disaster for the week party because, again, hes basically a democrat. He does not subscribe to the whip 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. He takes the country in a completely different direction. He was completely ostracized from the administration. He had no relationship with the predecessor. He did not have a good sense of whats happening in the administration that he was part of. At least for him, the administration was only 30 days. So tyler, as he sort of subverts the whig, most notably with the vetoing of to national banks, he gets ex communicated from the whig party. John tyler, the nations first accidental president , becomes a 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 the election in 1844, since he cannot run as a whig and the democrats dont want him anyway because they are mad at him for running as a whig, is to change the political discourse and covertly annex texas. If we look at the impulsiveness and erratic behavior of our current president , i remind you that john tyler, in a moment of political rage and impulsiveness, decided to covertly annex texas which precipitated war with mexico which brought us one step closer to the civil war. Going back to the vacancy in the vice presidency, this is important because on february 28th, 1844, john tyler is sailing on the potomac aboard the uss princeton. Its a gala on the potomac aboard this one nautical wonder to celebrate American Naval prowess and that he was on the verge of texas annexation. They fire this gun called the peacemaker toward mount vernon in tribute to the great George Washington and the gun explodes. It kills the secretary of state. It kills the secretary of the navy. It kills multiple ambassadors and ministers. It kills john tylers favorite slave whose mother was compensated 200 dollars. It kills a number of senators and members of congress. It 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 way toward president , but who was more interested in the captain son. As they heard the explosion, they came up to the deck. Her name was julia garner. 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 and carries her down the gang plight. She is startled and wakes up and does not realize that its the president carrying her. You read about this in a letter that she later writes. John tyler writes that had she not them off the gangplank, they both would have died. He almost died a second time. He ends up marrying her and they have a Children Together on top of the seven that he already had. And fun fact, john tyler, who was born during the administration of George Washington, has two grandsons who are still alive. How is that possible . Todd 15 fathered a child in his seventies and then that child fathered two children in his seventies who are now in their mid and late 90s. That is the story of john tylers offspring. Fun fact, use another 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 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 Andrew Johnson, Chester Arthur, Teddy Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, harry truman and Lyndon Johnson very well could have descended to the role of acting president instead of president. Thats the story of our first accidental president and what happened. Now, what i want to do is juxtaposed 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 that, 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 to a blueprint, im tempted to say we navigated through pretty well and we got pretty lucky. Its a remarkable story. I could almost say that except for the fact that, when Abraham Lincoln died, we got Andrew Johnson. We were supposed to get Abraham Lincolns vision of reconstruction. Instead, the bullet of john wilts bluetooth gives us Andrew Johnson. A man born racist. A man died racist. The last president to own slaves. A man who did not emancipated own slaves until seven months after the emancipation proclamation. A man who, as president , ended up resurrecting almost every old element of the confederacy, paving the way for the black codes, which paved the way for the jim crow laws, which of course gave us segregation. Now, if i look at the story of post of civil rights and post civil war america, to me it can be described, in some respects, as a 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 Andrew Johnson, you think to yourself what can i write that all the great scholars have been written about this sort of summit moment in history. I decided what i wanted to do was vindicate the one state on lincolns record, which is putting Andrew Johnson a heartbeat away from the presidency. Back then, the president did not choose their running mate. This was such an important moment and lincoln was so sure he was going to lose the election in 1864, that he engaged in a massive intrigue outside of his circle to move sanibel hamilton off the ticket and replace him with Andrew Johnson. If you look at who Andrew Johnson was in 1864 versus who he was 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. He owed everything he had to the union. Despite his racist sentiments and beliefs, he cared more about the union than anything else. When the first shots were fired on fort some dirt, all he cared about was breaking the confederacy so he could reunite the union. The best way to break the confederacy was to punish every trader in a brutal fashion and to force civil rights upon them. Johnson is the only southern senator to stay loyal to the union. He gives up abram proof seat in the senate to take a very dangerous job as military governor of tennessee. And in 1864, his rhetoric on civil rights is more forward leaning than even Abraham Lincoln. His rhetoric on punishment of traders is even more forward leaning and aggressive than Abraham Lincoln. He is so feared by the south because he seems like such a radical republican, despite being a war democrat from a border state, that the south is so much more terrified about the idea of Andrew Johnson as president than Abraham Lincoln. When Jefferson Davis is accused of plotting to kill