Meeting. And i had the luxury of time, two fulltime assistants. We looked at all the contemporary coverage of the pardon, got all the memoirs, got the legal memos from the ford library. I kept going back to interview ford. And to try to piece together what happened. I interviewed him in colorado a number of times, where he had a home, and many times at his main home at rancho mirage, california. I remember the last interview asking him, why did you pardon nixon . He said, you keep asking that question. I said, but i dont think youve answered it. And then he said, astonishingly, ok, im going to tell you. And he then said what happened is that al haig, nixons chief of staff, came and offered me a deal. He said, if you guarantee that the president will get a pardon, he will resign and you get the presidency. And ford said, however, i rejected that deal. I knew i was going to become president. Nixon was finished. So theres no way he could work that deal in the way haig described. And passionately, ford said, look, let me tell you what happened. At that time, he ford had a letter from the watergate prosecutors saying that nixon is going to be investigated as a citizen. Likely will be indicted, tried, probably be convicted and go to jail. So ford said were going to have two more years of watergate. The country could not stand it. And there was this plaintive tone that he had of i needed my own presidency. The cold war was still going on. The economy was in great danger. And then he said he acted preemptively to get nixon off the front page and out of our lives. And i remember writing shadow and this part about the pardon and realizing ford was right. What he did was quite gutsy. And this is in the book. After the book came out, caroline kennedy, the daughter of john f. Kennedy, called me up and said, you know, ive read your book. My uncle Teddy Kennedy has read it. We agree and were going to give gerald ford the profiles in courage award thats given out by the Kennedy Library once a year. And it is not going to be an award for being president or for being gerald ford. Its going to be for the single act of pardoning richard nixon. And she said the tradition of her late fathers book, about politicians who do things that are contrary to their own interest in the national interest. And i did not go to the ceremony, but i watched it and it was a cold shower for me. Because Teddy Kennedy got up and said, look, at the time of the pardon, i denounced it almost as a criminal act. And now, 25 or so years later, you look at it and you realize it was exactly in the tradition of my brothers book profiles in courage. And then gerald ford got up and talked about partial vindication. I remember watching this and thinking here i was convinced it was an act of maximum corruption, that the pardon was. And then it is examined many years later, dispassionately. And what looked like corruption actually is an act of courage. And that is sobering for somebody in my business. You can say, oh, yeah, this is the following this war made no sense. This was a good war and so forth. And the decades go by and it may look quite differently. Jimmy carter, as somebody using lincoln in december 1979, as he was gearing up to run for relection, in one of his speeches, carter said, at the height of the civil war, lincoln said, i have but one task and that is to save the union. Then carter went on to compare his responsibility in getting the 50 iranian hostages out as the same problem. He said he would devote his concerted efforts to that. And you look again at the histories of this and jimmy carter became obsessed with 50 americans. And to compare it to lincolns effort in the civil war to save the union doesnt quite parse. But at the same time, in 1978, carter is president , any of you remember what he did at camp david when he invited menachem bacon and the egyptian president to the United States. Took them up to camp david for a couple of weeks. And they reached an agreement, a kind of peace treaty. It did not solve the problems in the middle east, but it was a big step forward. I remember i was amazed at what carter did and the persistence of doing this. And i asked one of carters aides, well, how did he pull this off . And the aide who was very close to carter said, look, if you had been locked away at camp david with jimmy carter for 13 days, you, too, would have signed anything. [ laughter ] persistence can sometimes achieve great things. Ronald reagan, whats interesting about reagan and lincoln is that reagan used lincoln politically. But in an interesting way also, reagan understood Abraham Lincoln. July 17th, 1980 at the republican convention, reagan accepts the nomination. And he quotes lincoln. Said, so president lincoln said no administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can seriously injure the government in the short space of four years. Quoting lincoln. Then reagan said, if mr. Lincoln could see whats happened in this country in the last three and a half years, he might hedge on that statement. In other words, the carter years. Reagan also said in his inaugural, in 1981, whoever would understand in his heart the meaning of america will find it in the life of Abraham Lincoln. True. True. And i think he got it. In 1984, when reagan was running for reelection, he said, i want to quote president lincoln. Lincoln said, we must disenthrall ourselves from the past and then we will save our country. And reagan went on to say, well, four years ago, thats what we did. We saved the country. Reagan had he said that he shared many points of philosophy with lincoln. A couple of times, called him father abraham. President george bush sr. , in some of his comments about lincoln, seemed to understand the duality of lincoln. He said, if you look at some of the paintings of lincoln, you see his agony and his greatness. And he equates the two. And he then also says, bush sr. , lincoln was at once a hard and gentle person, a man of grief and yet of humor. President clinton used lincoln to argue that and said lincoln saw that the clear duty was to revive the American Dream and then clinton said now the responsibility is to revive the american economy. One thing my assistant found in the research, in january 1998 president clinton was here at the university of illinois talking about the landgrant colleges. And it was not a particularly memorable speech. But at one point, and its hard to believe this happened, but it did. Clinton said, oh, i think lincoln would have liked the pep band. [ laughter ] i did a little checking and someone said he spotted someone he liked in the pep band. [ laughter ] well never know. George w. Bush, as president , talked about lincoln quite a bit. I did four books on george w. Bushs wars in afghanistan and iraq. And in one interview in the oval office with bush, hes trying to explain what his plan was after 9 11. And he said the following. I am product of the vietnam era. I remember president s trying to wage wars that were very unpopular and the nation split. He then, sitting there, and he points to a portrait of Abraham Lincoln that hung in the oval office. He said, he is on the wall because the job of the president is to unite the nation. Thats the job of the president. President obama on lincoln, a month after obamas inaugural, he just said he said, lincoln made my own story possible. And thats exactly true. I remember interviewing president obama about the afghan war for a book i did called obamas wars in 2010 about the decisions obama made. And in a case like this i had sent him a 15page memo saying this is what i would like to ask about obama. Because every president now lives in an environment where there are two questions. There are the press conferences, the shouted questions and there is a kind of gotcha environment. So when you send a long memo saying ive worked for a year on this and i would really like to talk to you and here are the questions, president s tend to respond. So when im interviewing him about afghanistan and what his decisions were, you may recall in his first year he sent ordered 30,000 more american troops to the afghan war. But at the end and i wanted to try to ascertain how he looked at war. Because i am convinced its very important that president s be tough in their articulation of what the United States will do and what it will do to preserve its interests. So at the end of the interview, i handed president obama a quote from a book called day of battle from a former colleague at the Washington Post rick atkinson. In the middle of the book, rick pulls back and says im going to tell you about war. And this is the quote that i handed obama which was typed out. It said essentially that war corrupts everyone. That no heart leaves war unstained because it is the business even in a necessary cause of killing other people. And obama said im sympathetic to this. And he said go read my nobel prize acceptance speech. Well, i had seen the nobel prize acceptance speech. Id read it. Ever seen something and read it and not understood it . Well, it happens to me too often. So i went home and got out the speech. And there, in plain english, obama says, yeah, war is sometimes necessary, but then he said it is always an expression and manifestation of human folly. And i realized at that point he just does not like war. And the problem is, when you are involved in a war as commander in chief, youve got to really be tough. A couple of years ago, i was having breakfast with a world leader, head of government of one of our closest allies. And i asked about obama. And he said, obama is so smart and i like him. But then he said, but no one is afraid of him. And my heart sank because i realized that the distaste, the disgust for war looms so large with obama that he has not conveyed the message of fear. Which is what a leader must do. What is interesting is lincoln was the master of this. Lincoln was the one who knew that general shermans march through georgia was necessary to win the war. The other interesting thing about lincoln is that he was a fatalist. This idea that events are inevitable and kind of predetermined. There was a kind of mystique about it. It was 2005. I was giving a talk like this in washington. And hillary clinton, then senator from new york, was there and also giving a speech. And after the speeches, we chatted and she said, oh, i quote from one of your books on bush so often that i think i should pay you royalties. I stupidly said, no, rather than how much . [ laughter ] i said, what do you quote. Said its the end of plan of attack about george w. Bushs decision to invade iraq. Its the last line of the book. I sent questions to bush. We had done hours of specific interviews. And he was standing in the oval office with his hands in his pockets and i just asked im not quite sure how the question came to mind because it was not on the list of questions i had. And it was, how do you think history will judge your iraq war . And bush, as only i think the mention of history caused him to think about those exams in history at yale that he did not do that well on. [ laughter ] he kind of flinched. But he takes his hands out of his pockets and says history . We wont know. Well all be dead. [ laughter ] a less than comforting thought. [ laughter ] but if you think about it, its true. The point about gerald ford. It looks one way and then, in history, it may look the opposite. So i asked senator clinton, why do you quote that . And she said, oh, well, you cant think and talk like that and be president of the United States. I said, what do you mean . She said, you just cant. Youve got to take charge. You got to do things. You cant leave it to the historians. And i thought if she ever became president and made a big decision and someone was in the the oval Office Asking how history might look at it. Her answer will be ill write it. She said, you just cannot think and talk like that. She got quite exercised. I was pushing back a little bit. She said, you just cant. You cant give yourself over to those events. And to make her point she said, George Washington would never talk like that. And, you know, really pounded her fist again, said, you know, jefferson would never talk like that, and bill would never talk like that, and i envisioned the new mount rushmore. [ laughter ] washington, jefferson, bill and maybe hillary. [ laughter ] and i was going to Say Something, and but i caught myself and thought, we wont know. Well all be dead. [ laughter ] i am going to stop there. Thank you so much. You did me a big favor by inviting me. Thank you. [ applause ] that was terrific, bob. On behalf of the college of law and this Great University of which its a part, i want to thank you for that elegant and profound essay. We have a small gift that you may remember your visit here this evening. And before we depart, i just also want to thank a lot of people who worked very hard to make this very worthwhile event come off so smoothly. The communications and event folks in the college of law. Especially dean Carrie Turner put in a lot of time. She worked closely with all the people on this great campus. I want to thank everybody and wish you a wonderful night. [ applause ] coming up this weekend on American History tv on cspan 3, saturday night at 8 00 eastern on lectures in history virginia compete University Professor karen rader on student instructional films during the cold war. On sunday morning at 10 00 on road to the white house rewind 1952 and 1948 national conventions. In 1952 Dwight Eisenhower accepted the republican nomination and adelaide stevenson accepted the nomination. In 1948 the first televised conventions where president harry truman accepted his partys nomination. The failure to do anything about high prices and failure to do anything about housing, my duty as president requires that i use every means within my power to get the laws people need in matters of such urgency. At 6 00 on american artifacts well take a look at the new sm Smithsonian Museum of africanAmerican History. It opens in september of this year. We were get amazing collection of movie posters such as the ones behind you. Thats an early movie poster from the 1920s and this is part of our job to tell people, help them relearn history. That movie post certificate from spencer williams. Hes known for playing amos and andy. On the presidency, they talk about the process of writing a president ial biography. For our complete schedule go to cspan. Org. Coming up next, the second part of a series of lectures on Abrahams Lincoln legacy hosted by the university of Illinois College of law. Last week we heard from the Washington PostJournalist Bob Woodward who reflected on bray ham lincoln and 16th president s influence on his successors pup up next george will looks at judicial review and the constitution. He argues as he put it that majority rule is inevitable but not reasonable. A concept he believes lincoln supported. This is an hour. On behalf of the college of law at the university of illinois, a splendid institution where i am honored to serve as dean. Im pleased to welcome you here to the beautiful auditorium where the second lecture in a series, hosted by the college of law entitled the new lincoln lectures what lincoln means to the 21st century. In this series, we are privileged to be hearing from a remarkably accomplished and ideologically diverse set of national thought leaders on lincolns legacy and his continuing relevance 150 years after his passing. As i said when i introduced our inaugural lecturer bob woodward in january, the law school has chosen to focus these lectures on Abraham Lincoln in part because lincoln is undeniably among the greatest lawyers in americas history. The fact that he assumed many other important roles, president , legislator, military strategist, newspaper owner, et cetera, merely adds to his legacy and legend. As we know, many of the themes of lincolns life and his lifes work, the treatment of race and noncitizenship, the relationship between the National Government and the states, the scope of executive power, the interplay between the president and the Supreme Court, the conduct of a president ial Election Campaign in a time of bitter partisanship, among others, dominate discourse today nearly as much as in lincolns era. This remains the right time for all americans to reflect on lincolns meaning to each of us and all of us. This is especially true for those of us here at illinois. In a real sense, the university of illinois, located between springfield and chicago is mr. Lincolns university. As we and champagne prepare to celebrate our own sesquicentennial next year, we must never forget that we were among the first of the landgrant universities created in 1867 by the act signed into law by president lincoln five years earlier and the only one in that original group founded in lincolns home state. And who better to help us at this time and in this place, think about what we can learn from lincoln as a country and as individuals than george will, one of the finest minds this region has ever produced. He was born and raised in champaign where his father was on the faculty here. He attended the Child DevelopmentLaboratory Program in town and went on to graduate from the University Laboratory high school. He worked for the now defunct newspaper where i understand he had a friendly rivalry with roger ebert who worked summers in champaign. From champaign, mr. Will went on to Trinity College and Oxford University and then on to princeton where he earned his ph. D. And the rest as they say is history. He is undeniably one of americas most prolific and influential thinkers and writers. His 12 books include one mans america, statecraft. And men at work, the craft of baseball. His regular column has been syndicated by the Washington Post