Moments here on cspan2, a conference with urban School Superintendents. We will hear about educational equity, and the socalled, school to prison pipeline. Well bring you that live shortly. Until then, a conversation from this mornings washington journal. Host joining us from austini texas, professor jeremy suri. Teaches at lbj school of public affairs, university of texas. Out with a new book entitled the impossible presidency. Rise and fall of americas highest office. Thank you for being with us. Guest thanks for having me on, steve. Host let me get your reaction. Our inherited assumptions and practices no longer serve the nation and the world as they once did. The presidency always in flux. Its genius its ability to change, imagining a new presidency is necessary for a country remains the last best hope of earth. Can you explain . Guest one of the problems, steve, we have old great, president ial figures i write about and revere. Abraham lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. T. Were expecting our modern president to do everything they did and more. At same time were expecting a president to do it at no cost to us, no sacrifice to the american people. Those set of assumptions we have, based upon a reading of history backwards. They dont see as i argue in the book all the changes, all sacrifices, all the adjustments that had to occur through everyone of these great presidencies. Our rigid view is ahistorical. It lead us to under state opportunities for reform and change for an office so important to us in such crisis. Host another excerpt from the book, the president has too many people to please, too many issues to address. A scholar made the point more than 50 years ago when he observed leaders even those with popularity of Franklin Roosevelt and john of the f kennedy, are forced to bargain for their put power and often bargaining from weaknesses. One the things you hear about, lament after deep state. It is not problem of a deep state, problem of very, very big country with incredible global role we play. With every successive generation president s take on more and more global domestic responsibility. E including things Like Health Care today and antiterrorism in the middle east elsewhere. President s are pulled in too many directions at once. They can not keep up. Expectations and responsibility far exceed the office. I think part of the modern condition. What executives and professorsfe feel sometimes too. Host our guest is graduate of stanford university. Doctorate from yale. Teaching at university of texas at austin. The book is called the impossible presidency. You make a number of references to Thomas Jefferson. Ef did he in many ways predict the modern presidency . Guest Thomas Jefferson predicted, steve, United States is a world power because of its size and resources. Because of model it provided as city upon a hill. Test test. At same time he saw because of his reading of history, dangers of being so big and powerful. He famously said, i quote this in the book. We will be great with lots of power, know when to use it and when not to use it. The modern e ask president s to overuse of the excessive power they have which undermines the purposes of that power. Host our current president , donald trump, makes a number of references to Andrew Jackson. How did he change the presidency . Guest Andrew Jackson was really the first presidency president who was not in the mold of our original founding fathers. He was not from massachusetts or virginia as all his predecessors has been, he was a frontiersman. He made changes. He brought the presidency closer to citizens on the frontier. Saw ased against what he more elite control of the American Economy and american society. Third, he created a more charismatic model. George washington wanted to be a dispassionate figure separate from the people. Andrew jackson created our modern assumption of the president as a charismatic figure that everyone refers to, a heroic president. Host what motivated you to write the book . Guest ive been motivated to write it for a long time because as a historian i written about and watched great leaders fail. Time and again, people with so much opportunity and skill. Not just at the president ial level. I work with people in the Business Community and the intellectual community and social communities and to see how difficult it is for the most talented figures to have the effect they want to have, that is the modern problem that we face today. That motivated me to use the presidency is a case study for understanding this challenge of leadership in the modern world. Host we will get your phone calls and him moment and you can send your tweets to http twitter. Com cspanwj. M the book the present the presidency is in constant crisis mode. A president will have to respond to a mass shooting, the may of a major financial firm, an attack on American Forces abroad. We are seeing at today as the president deals with the situation not far from you in texas as Hurricane Harvey prepares to move in but also afghanistan and the return of congress and the debt limit. Of the real surprises in doing research, that is why it is so important, is you learn things you didnt know before. Its amazing as you follow the days of a president as i did in my research, it is all crisis and reaction. Test test. The president is most powerful plan man in the world, he is waking up doing other peoples business. Crisis of the moment takes him off his priorities. Nt that was as true for Ronald Reagan and barack obama as it is for donald trump today. Host from your standpoint which president had the best ability to sit back, to think, to look ahead set an agenda . Guest i think the last president really did that was Franklin Roosevelt. He in some ways hero of the book. For a society that is dealing with so many domestic problems and challenges. Franklin roosevelt had an amazing capacity to sit back and bring together people who had different points of view and to listen. One of the biggest problems leaders have since Franklin Roosevelt is they are under pressure to act. They do not of time or they dont make time to think or see the bigger picture. Ahistorical perspective allows you space to think and to see the bigger picture. Teach at the lyndon b. Johnson school. Lets talk about president johnson. Looking at the domestic agenda, the great society, and his foreign policy, most notably, vietnam. How do you deal with the conflicting issues . Guest Lyndon Johnson is the best evidence for my argument. Here is a man of enormous capacity, energy, and ambition. He does some extraordinary things. No president has passed so much legislation and has such a positive impact from civil rights to poverty on other hand he is doing so much. That he gets himself into a lot of trouble, particularly in vietnam, also with some of his programs at home. What happens is consequence, he undermines his larger agenda. Vietnam was never his priority but vietnam comes to define his presidency, to undermine so many of the good things he was doingm at home. Host talk about two more recent president s. First, Ronald Reagan, where do you put him as you look back at his presidency from 1981 to 1989 . Gues i have to say, steve, writing a chapter on Ronald Reagan, doing a research on Ronald Reagan was one of the most eyeopening parts of the book for me. I didnt predict where i would come out. Ronald reagan was really first president to recognize this problem. He understood president s were doing too much. He tried to step back. In a sense he made progress with the soviet union. Shifted american policy, ended cold war. He was able to see the big picture. Not allow the crisis of the moment to drive him. But he did not show the same discipline i argue, did not show the same perspective when he dealt with many other issues from terrorism to problems in the middle east, to the aids epidemic at home and inequality in the u. S. Even reagan, who understood in problem of overcommitment and overstretch found himself sinking into the mud that other president s sunk into. Host let me read another excerpt from your book, based on the obama presidency, how you would assess his eight years in office. You wrote the following. No recent american president has been prepared for overwhelming power of the office and responsiblities and challenges that define it. The american president is closer to a myth logical figure expected to rise above the human limitations and manage a constant barrage of local and international problems. The pace is breathless even on the quietest days and stakes are enormous, even for the smallest decisions. Guest absolutely. This is another thing that struck me doing research. I see the presidency different as consequence of this. En the office destroys people in it. It is inhuman. The responsibility is too greato pressure is too great. President s feel it from first day in office. Weve seen that even with donald trump. Commented a few days after he became president , it is a lot harder than he thought. Nothing prepares for this. We have this myth being particular business person or maybe different kind of intellectual will prepare you for this office. Its a totally different animal. Why we perhaps should consider whether too much for one person. Host with regard too president obama where would you put him in that category . Guest i think president obama has enormous capacity to think and enormous capacity to really deliberate between difficult positions and he as enormous energy, but as president from beginning he lost control of his agenda, he lost control of his message because he wasnt prepared to take an Effective Campaign message apply it to the much more complex, intensive and fragmented world being president. From the beginning he was on a slide in the wrong direction. It took him a long time to deal with these problems. He did better in his second term but it was very difficult for him. Host our guest, jeremy suri, rise and fall of americas highest office. The impossible presidency is title of the book. Well get it to your phone calls. Tony in illinois, line for independents. Good morning. Caller good morning. Mr. Suri [inaudible]. Im a veteran of fifth infantry division, im not a supporter of donald trump but he is the commander of the chief in United States. He was voted into office. Let me step back a little bit. We have some problems in this country, serious problems. You know what . I personally feel even though the civil war is over 160 years ago, there should have been reparations given to black folk that were haul over here and used. The nobility of the south, that was only nobility this country ever had because they came with princes and kings and sons in europe. Going a little bit forward, you know, we really need to you night our nation, and anybody who is talking racism all this other stuff on both sides of the fence, you got to really sit back and look. I am as black as your white phones. You have to consider the fact i live here in chicago on the south side. I grew up in a white ghetto. It was impossible, impossible to see the gangs and blood and bloodshed there. If you go back to rwanda in find three, one Million People were chopped death by machete. Okay. I just hope we dont get the other and work this out because this is pretty important that we as americans stand strong, stand firm, and guard the world against this insanity. Host thank you for the call from illinois. Professor suri, did you want to respond . Guest absolutely. Tony raises good points. I grew up in similar background as one he described as a child of immigrants. One point i try to make in the book, tony, the roll the president played in the book from George Washington on, to be unifying figure. It is president s responsibility. This is what founders wanted, someone above party. Someone brought people together. Our most successful president s jackson, lincoln, theodore roosevelt. Franklin roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, brought the country together. They were unified priorities. Franklin roosevelt, Unemployed People when unemployment was 25 , get people jobs. Donald trump was elected to bring people back he fallen into same problem predecessors has what he is not doing. Where is the major proposal . Where is major legislation to give people opportunity who are left behind . In fact it seems to me, what were doing, weve been doing this before he was president , cutting more and more people,is leaving them out of the American Dream and doing that, that contributes to the very dividing forces that law meant, tony, i lament as well. We need a unifying president who offers opportunity to citizens of all kind. That is what lincoln said. What we need today. Host from the book, quote, our poor understanding of the presidency has prevented us from addressing structural impediments in office. Candidates talk about out comes they want to achieve from robust Economic Growth to impregnable National Security without any serious discussions about how the presidency can make those outcomes reality. Few reporters ask about simply mentation. Most candidates do not really know how they will generate the promised results. Morni go to debra from belleville, illinois. Caller good morning. Thanks for cspan bringing topic from this book. Excited about buying the bookad and reading the information. Ca host thank you. Caller i was excited, talking about Andrew Jackson, highlighting some of the heroic things that he did when i think based on facts he was one of thn most horrific, unethical president s we had. T you know the reason why. I wont get into that. Ou when you say that, think about young people watching. If we dont tell the total character of the people youre going to be talking about, they will walk away thinking he was a heroic character. Ro that happened when he was in school in history, im in my 60s, we didnt know that side of old hickory. Because i like history, i read investigated myself about our president s and i found out the true character of this man. So brings me to ask, what parts do you think ethics plays in a president , being effective because, ethics to me is extremely important. Host thanks for the call. Jeremy suri. Guest debra raises an absolutely Crucial Point of the as you know, steve, as other readers will see, my chapter on Andrew Jackson is quite critical. I make a large point about the again sidal activities that jackson supported againstha american indians. He supported slavery. Andrew jackson was far from a hero. He had major problems of racism and again genocidal tendencies. I dont want to make him a model for presidencies today. The point i make out all our president s are deeply flawed. We shouldnt make them heroes. It is about to manage our i society better. Seems ethics and integrity are at core of leadership. What i try to show in the book, debra, even most ethical individual, Andrew Jackson was not one of them, but George Washington who was deeply ethical person, the power of the office can pull you into things might look like in the short term they serve your interests but actually undermine yourte principles and if particular your ethical framework as you behave. This is true for washington and slavery. It is true for lincoln at certain moments as well. True for every president i try to show. Most important element of leadership protecting our ethics is humility. President s must recognize as powerful as they are, they are still very limited what they can do. We can not change the world in afghanistan tomorrow. Nor does any president have allknowing none what should be done in the society. My big worry, debra, the point i make in the second half of the book, as we created all of this power aarp the presidency, president s get caught up in the ego of the office. T when youre president you never stop at a red light. When youre president youre told all the time you have all the power in the world. Many president s get intoxicated with that power, overuse it. Someone as committed to civil rights as Lyndon Johnson fell into that just as much as someone who was not committed to civil rights like andrewewnot co jackson. Host can you be president of the United States and also humble . E guest its hard, steve, but i think what we need to look for. There was a core humility, steve about Ronald Reagan, for example. He really didnt think he had all the answers. He believed in a few things. As i point out in my chapter, he made a lot of mistakes. He had ethical problems. He refused to acknowledge the aids epidemic in our society. Thousands of people died because of that nonetheless he had a certain humility that led him to believe, for example, that he had to compromise with the soviet leadership. That he had to work with gorbachev. That he couldnt tell Mikhail Gorbachev you are going to pay for my wall. He wanted Mikhail Gorbachev wanted to get a deal that would be good for Mikhail Gorbachev. That humility comes from within the individual and something we should search for within leaders, exactly opposite what we chose last 20 years or so. Host karen in hayesville, north carolina. Good morning. Caller i used to be a democrat. I voted for barack obama twice. And i think that barack obama has done so much damage to this country. Y. He has turned the Democratic Party into an antiwhite people party. Especially, antiwhite christian people party. I think were seeing the results, the fruits of his labor to turn this country against white people. Host how would you respond to that . Guest well i understand t