Transcripts For CSPAN2 The American Spirit 20170618 : vimars

[inaudible conversations] i was about to say how special this night is but you all beat me to it which is great. Welcome, my name is steve, executive director of John F Kennedy Library Foundation and on behalf of all the colleagues in the library, we are thrilled you can be here. All of our forums are great but tonight is really a treat because the speakers who are here, its also the beginning of the John F Kennedy centennial weekend and we planned this months ago and we literally thought who would be the best pair above speaker and moderator we could get for this historic time and this is what weve gotten so we are thrill that had they are both here. [applause] before i introduce them, a few brief announcements. First i want to thank underwriters and responsors, the lead sponsor, bank of america, bill and andrea low that with here tonight and media responsor for centennial bbc t we are kicking off cep centennial and theres information and over the next few days opportunity of seeing new exhibit with 100 items including 40 that have never been seen, on saturday in this room we will be doing a peace corps day and on sunday we have astronaut as part of tribute to nasa and monday we are having bands and music and the navy to honor president kennedys service in the navy and at 3 00 p. M. , a hundred years to the minute that president kennedy was born, two f18s flying overhead to honor president kennedy and then and then we will be eating a cake, we need help doing this. The cake that will serve a thousand people designed by the same company that did the cake for their engagement many years ago. So i hope you will join us for some of those activities. But tonight, tonight we have a literally standing in this auditorium and we have overflow in our other auditorium, we are also thrill that had we are streaming this and there are watching parties in places including the John F Kennedy and cspan is here and we appreciate those that are here and those participating online. We have many distinguished guests. Ii am not going to list them. There are many members of our board here and appreciate their leadership throughout the year in what they do and this is we invited colleagues all over the country. We have representatives tonight either from president ial library or their Accompanying Foundation from the franklin roosevelt, harry truman, jimmy carter, george h. W. Bush and bill clinton library, again, the library or the foundation. We also have former United States senator and his wife paul kirk here tonight and former embassadors alan solomon, nicklaus burns and several members of the new england course. Join me in welcoming them for all their troubles. [applause] so after the first hour of dialogue, there will be a chance for question and there are microphones on either aisle as you get up and ask those. If you dont want to get up or in the other room or if youre streaming, you can also just tweet us at jfklibrary. We will do the best to answer as many as we can. After the event, agreed to sign books. You have them, great, if not the bookstore has them. If youre interested in having a book signed, go out at the end, my left, your right. If you already have that are not interesting in line go out my right, your left just to help the traffic flow to go to go smoothly for that. If you havent read this yet, this is a treasure. This just the american spirit who we are and what we stand for, there are so many features here. If i had an hour i would just ask the questions for an hour but i do want to introduce before i get to mr. Mccollough charlie gibson. [applause] based on the applause i think i speak for most people here who feel we know him even though we may have just met him and that for much of what i know i learned from listening to him on the news for 31 years that both anchors abc world news and cohosting good morning america. He interviewed everybody including nine u. S. President s. So its just a remarkable history and honor that had he and his lovely wife are here tonight and then david mccullough. He hasnt been recognized very much in his life. [laughter] i mean, you know, everyone pretty much has two for Pulitzer Prizes and medal of freedom, nations highest civilian honor. Everyone i know has been recognized by 54 honorary degrees, right, actually no one else i know. Join me in welcoming this amazing panel. Thank you very much. [applause] so we are going to do just a colloquy for about an hour and steve mentioned you can come and ask questions and if people are going to tweet questions from outside the room, those are pretty concise questions, i must say. But the most famous twitter in the world probably isnt watching. [laughter] i doubt we will get one of those and i shutter to think what it might be. [laughter] but we do look forward to this and it is a treat for me as somebody who was a very undistinguished history major in college to have a chance to talk to david which is something as a legend as steven mentioned and so im so please that had there are representatives here from so many president ial libraries and we do gather in the Kennedy Library which means makes me wonder and i ask you, how many books do you think theyll be in the trump president ial library . [laughter] [applause] well, he is in an interview with the Washington Post said that he never read a book about a president either a biography or a book about the presidency and that he might some day, he said. He doesnt read books because his mind reaches beyond that. [laughter] and i began to think about the great president s down the years who have been advent readers of history. Many of them wrote history including john kennedy and even those who didnt have the benefit of a College Education like harry truman read history all of their lives and realized that its essential to the role of a leader whether its the presidency or leadership of any kind. A cause and effect. History matters. If i have one message that i would like to get across in my work and in gatherings like this is history matters, a lot. [applause] and we are slipping in our responsibility of teaching history to our children and grandchildren and its been going on a good long time. A number of us are in a sense become evangelical preachers of the importance of history and ive lectured colleges and universities a great deal and im astonished at how much these wonderful young people dont know about our country in a story. I had one young lady come up to me after i gave a talk in midwest and she said that she we wanted to thank me for coming to the campus because it shows she heard my talk that day, she had no idea that all of the original 13 colonies were on the east coast. [laughter] well, they may not another one asking in the question and answer period which maybe my favorite, this was a university in california, aside from harry truman and john adams how many other president s have you interviewed. [laughter] well, there may not be many books in the trump president ial library but one hell of yeah. Actually leads me to a second question. As a historian, what specific steps could Andrew Jackson have taken to prevent the civil war . [laughter] we could go all night on this. [laughter] if we are not going to stick on questions on that, i dont have anymore. You could be interviewing president douglas tonight. [laughter] oh, my, oh, my. Can you believe it . [laughter] really, its well, im a i want to restore our recognition of who we are and why we are the way we are and what we stand for and i think more and more that as important as grade school, high school, college, university, advanced degrees all of that is an essential that maybe is as important as anybody is how we were brought up at home, how were we raised to behave. [applause] treating people can kindness, tolerance, empathy and hard work. I grew up in pittsburgh, pennsylvania where people probable you worked hard but if you were a hardgood worker that counted high in how you were appreciated by other people. I remember my father used to say, oh, charlie, he drinks too much but hes a good worker or fred, hes a terrible exaggerator and tells stories that i dont quite believe but hes a good worker and if you were a good worker, that forgave all other failings in effect and thats what we how we got to where we are by working very, very hard. I was doing my Wright Brothers book, two young men who never had the chance to go to college, never even finished high school and they were brought up to have purpose in life, they were brought up with values at home to learn to use the english language on your feet and on paper so that you read their letters that have survived and the library of congress and theyre humbling in the quality of their have vocabulary and never to boost about yourself, never to get too big for your bridges. One of the things that impressed me at the time and impresses me the most given the situation now is that john kennedy almost never talked about himself. Imagine. Didnt use the firstperson singular . No, no, almost never used firstperson singular about anything. A man who could have gone on and onto say the least with justification and pride of what he had accomplished. You mention that actually in the book. You say, im searching now for the quote talking about jfk, the firstperson singular never entered in contrast to so many others since . You want to name names . Theres a good lineup. [laughter] its become sort of what you become in public life. And in many cases thaws justified. Let me turn to the book, for 50 years since the analysis of 50 you have been giving a lot of speeches but you must have voluminous records and you chose 15 for that. Im curious why you wanted to do a book of speeches now and why you chose these 15. I thought maybe i should try that as a way of tuning up your head not necessarily your body and you start thinking in a way that you dont if youre not walking and so last summer when the comments being made for the republican candidate by the presidency were to me not only appalling but unimaginably out of place, i thought, what could i do to provide some kind of Counter Point of view to this and i started thinking about some of the speeches that i gave at National Occasions such as the 200th anniversary of the congress, the anniversary of the white house, kennedys Memorial Service at thras dallas which i was asked to be the speaker and commencement speeches and speeches that i had given at particular occasions of importance in the history of other organizations and or universities and found that they were great many where i was voicing what really matters to me and why i think history is fascinating and how essential i think it is as a means to enlarging the experience of being alive. Why should we live lives with little time that biological clocks provide while we can have access to the whole realm of the human story going back hundreds of thousands of years and so i said to take a look at which of these speeches might be appropriate and had the help of my daughter who arranged all of these talks that i gave and who kept the records of what i said. Well, when i read the first time, when i finished it and put it down, i thought, oh, hes writing in the times or hes picking up the speeches because they might be to current times and while and i heard you say before, historians basically dont really have a role in talking about current politics but hes talking about current politics with these speeches. But i was talking before current politics came on the scene. None of these speeches were written i went back and read them a second time thinking whats the sentence, whats the paragraph, whats the point hes trying to make here that might be taken to heart by people who are in politics right now. So i went back and read it a second time and each time i was looking in the speech, whats the one point hes trying to make here that might be taken to heart by somebody who, i dont know, might be elected president , who knows. Yeah. So let me pick out a few of them. Wonderful. I wont do each one but i think 12 out of 15i found pertinent. Example one, first speech, in the book from 1989 you put Margaret Smith of maine who had the guts to rebuke joe mccarthy. She said, i dont want to see the Republican Party and she was a republican from maine ride to political victory on the four horseman of fear, ignorance and smear. Smear is the interesting word here. Why did you think perhaps that had applications of current time . [laughter] sean, youd be perfect if you only had a sense of humor. [laughter] could you imagine somebody reading that in the current Political Climate and what they might think . Wouldnt it be wonderful . A republican that stood up like she did and rare in women at the senate at that point in history and many dont know who Margaret Smith was, bravest, admirable political figures weve ever had. And not any republicans are standing up now . Not enough. 1998 speech quoting Benjamin Rush, not perhaps as well known as some other patriots of that time, one of the original signers of the declaration, speaking of good nature that mattered most in human relations, he said and you quote him in the book, he said, this is his quote,i include candor and speak and listen with attention to everybody and you added in speech words to the wise then but perhaps in our own day or the never. Indeed, Benjamin Rush is one of my favorite characters from our past and absolutely remarkable man, 1,800th century of polymath somebody interested in everything and he was an accomplished physician and one of the first people to encourage the fair and humane treatment of people with Mental Illness and not to just stuck them away in a cell as if they were animals. He was extremely courageous in his ability to go into places where playing, it was ramped. He risked his life over and over and he was one of the signers of the declaration of inence and independence. When he signed the declaration of independence he was all by 30 years old. We forget how young those people were. Jefferson when he wrote the declaration of independence was 33. Imagine. Washington when he took command of the Continental Army was 44 years old. We see them later on with white hair and wigs and elderly statures and so forth, they werent that way then. They were very, very young. And i think that thats the encouraging fact of of that part of our story. I dont think we can ever know enough about the American Revolution and by the way, the new museum of the American Revolution has just opened in philadelphia, its a must for all of us. It is marvelous and particularly as a place to take your children, your grandchildren to get them hooked up on history and its brilliantly organized, spectacular building by Robert Robert stern, excuse me. Right in the center of where all the historic neighborhood is. Its only a few steps down the street from independence hall, but we lived in the boston area sort of take the responsibility of the miracle of that era as part of our environment, part of our world and thats good, thats great, but i love kennedys profiles of courage, i read that when i was still young and not really aware yet of what i wanted to do with my life. I love his regard for john quincy adams. What i like in that quote and im not here to comment on anything, what i like from that quote is the word civility which is a lost art in the Public Discourse of America Today and the sense that existed among people who share a common goal and a common and know that there needs to be a common end, its gone, its gone, and you write that we we have in many instances had deep division in the country but weve come out of it. Yes. Whats going to bring us out of this one . The two sides seem opposed. When politics trumps policy, when the sense of a National National goals is gone and party goals matter more than national goals, what brings leadership, leadership of the best kind. Leadership to have the courage to stand up for their convictions, who have the backbone to do whats right irrespective of what it means to their political future or their chance of being reelected and it has to come mainly from the people. Segments of government judicial and executive but theres a fourth factor and when we stand up and say, no more of this, we dont take this anymore, when we stand up and say, theres a person right there who is saying the right thing and doing the right thing and we are going the get behind her or him and make sure that that attitude becomes potent and maybe even decisive, margaret j. Smith. Somebody in the government right now it will happen out of necessity to to survive. We are going to expect that. David, we are, i believe, and youre actually right that we are a centrist nation. We are basically a country, 30, 40, 50 of the people are in the middle and want government to get things done and we aint doing it. That doesnt mean we wont. We have come through very hard times, baffling times, very pessimistic times and and inappropriate behavior times to the part of our leadership but weve come through them all and very often when we do come through them, these difficult times, clouded sky times, when we do come through we are better off, better for having done it. People talk about that was a simpler time back then, no it wasnt. There never was a simpler time or things have never been so bad for voting, yes, they have. If you dont understand that, you dont understand the reality of our story. I like to point out that the influenza epidemic which my parents and your parents probably went through, 191819, 500,000 americans died of that disease, a disease they didnt know where it came from, didnt know it it would ever go away, if at all or how to cure it. If that were to happen today given the size of our population, proportionate to our population, a million 500,000 people would die in less than a year. Now, imagine if that were on the nightly news every night and we are more terrified, who would be next in our family to die and just as the depression and the civil war, horrible, horrible times but we came through them because among other things we had the faith that we would and could and because we understood that nothin