you here as well as several members of our national council on white house history, which we're always grateful to have well this evening. it is my honor and privilege to introduce a really terrific friend of mine and as a friend of the white house historical association mark up to grove serves as the president and the ceo of the lbj. foundation in austin, texas, he is a presidential historian for abc news and also an accomplished author. mark is actually authored five books on the presidency including this book that we're celebrating this evening in comparable grace jfk in the presidency. and i had the privilege of recording a podcast this afternoon with mark which will release later in the month when the book is officially released and it was a fascinating conversation. i really enjoyed my time with mark and i think you're going to enjoy the time with him here this evening. he is also written for the new york times politico national geographic time the daily beast usa today and most recently he has been the executive producer for cnn's original series, lbj triumph and tragedy and if that is not enough mark has had the the privilege to be the envy of every journalist and historian who has interviewed exclusively seven american presidents throughout his career. well, it was 61 years ago that a young john f. kennedy was sworn into the office up at the capitol and by his side was jacqueline kennedy who would become our first lady and she herself would go down in history as being one of our most influential of first ladies. we have a particular reverence for here here at the white house historical association. but it was later that day on inauguration day that president and mrs. kennedy ended up at the white house and mrs. kennedy realized this was a home the people's house as she would call it. it was in badly badly in need of historic restoration. she believed that the white house should represent the very best of america artisans craftsmen. decorative arts fine arts furnishings. and so she took that on as her project over the course of the next three years. cut short tragically by the assassination of president kennedy, but what she put in place then is still the legacy of her influence of historic preservation at the white house acquisitions for the collection and actually education. it's a key part of our mission and we are mrs. kennedy's living legacy at the white house today. well, it was those 61 years ago that we were founded at by her and today we continue to undertake that work my colleague my colleague colleen shogun leads our david and rubenstein national center for white house history, which is really the educational part of our work and we published books. we publish a quarterly magazine. we have conferences symposia book events like this. so publishing and storytelling is a vital part of what we do and encouraging friends who can unpack these stories i ask mark earlier you another book on john kennedy did we really need another book on john kennedy, but then when i read it i read the book myself and it reads like a novel and i'm it's insightful and inspiring and i'm fighting myself. reoriented in a really special way to the kennedy presidency and i think we can thank mark for that and i know you'll all enjoy reading the book well. it was in 1792 that the cornerstone for the white house was laid just about 200 yards from where we're sitting tonight and a whole lot of white house history has taken place in those years since 1792 and tonight. we're going to focus on three years of that history a very important three years interviewing mark this evening is amananawas. she serves as the pbs. newshours chief correspondent and primary substitute. anchor she's been honored with an emmy award for her nbc news special inside the obama white house. a society for features journalism award she's a recipient of the international reporting project fellowship. and in 2019 received a peabody award for her newshour series on the global plastic problem tonight. she's going to discuss with mark this terrific new book, which remarkably reexamines the kennedy presidency for us and that has so often been trapped behind the myth of camelot if you will and this will be a portrait of the kennedy presidency its visions flaws charm. it's triumphs failures, and certainly it's grace so bringing those stories to life for us the this evening, please welcome, amna and mark to the stage. thank you all. everyone how nice to be in person with people and especially with you mark so much for having me here. well good. thanks for doing this. wow, god. i'm not. options i can to the kennedy's my family had not even set foot on these shores at the time that he was president and yet i was fascinated by this book stewart is right it absolutely reads like a novel and and i can't wait for everyone else to get a chance to read it too. but let's go through some of my burning questions first. here's the way this is gonna work. i've got about 20 minutes with you and then we'd love to open it up to the room for any questions. you might have as well. so if you see me checking my phone, it's not because i have somewhere to be it's because i want to make sure sure i'm respectful of everyone. um, so as stuart mentioned there are a few about jfk out there. right. thank you series some films some i've watched all of them. why jfk? why did you decide to do this? you know, and it's a wonderful question before i answer it. i'm the lineages. thank you again for doing this you have as i understand it. you have an evening job. at the pbs newshour, so it's so good of you to make time for this and i'm a huge admirer of the work you do. so, thank you so much. thank you to my friend stuart mclaren and to all the people at the white house historical association for running this marvelous institution. thank you to my friend lauren leader for helping to organize this with our mutual friend kimball stroud and thank you friends old and new for for coming tonight. i'm so grateful for you being here. there are so many people i would like to recognize but one in particular if i may and and it really leads to your question and answer your question anxiety is here anxiety is the widow of hugh society. it was the legendary president watcher for time magazine. i had the great privilege of working with with hugh and got to know anne and hue through the years and i will tell you hugh was actually the president of the white house historical association some 20 years ago. so this place means a great deal men a great deal to you, but you spent time with john f kennedy and and during crucial hours of his presidency and i heard from you who john f. kennedy was beyond the camelot myth and that got me very intrigued about john f kennedy. he and i worked on a joint project together called time in the presidency and he started that project in talking about john f kennedy and and who he was and what he meant to this country, but while there have been many books that have been written. the well, there's an old expression write the you want to read. and this is the book that i wanted to read about john f kennedy. it's i tried to make it a very brisk narrative that makes you feel as though you're going through these very tumultuous. very triumphant in many ways, very tragic and others days of the kennedy presidency. and that you're here there with them day in and day out as he wrestles with one issue or another and so it's episodic in a way that i didn't see the other kennedy treatments, and i also wanted to wrestle with the camelot myth which overshadows kennedy and so many respects it. it deprives him in so many ways of his humanity so that was important to me too. and there's there's so many books with an agenda. my only agenda was to capture this this indelible president and what he meant to the country and and the momentous decisions that came across this desk. i mean the country is still so fascinated by him and by the family this myth of camelot, right? it's still really grips americans to this day. why do you think that is you and i were just talking about this it is figured out. oh, i i get that. i think royals down to this. john f. kennedy was and continues to be how we want to see our in the world youthful ambitious elegant intelligent compassionate and instilling the notion or embodying the notion of service over self. that is the the image that he diffused abroad at a time when i think we were the envy of the world in many respects and i think that's the way we want to see ourselves. he's the personification in many ways and so is to an extent as the vivacious kennedy family of how we want to be seen. did you learn something new about him in writing this i learned a lot new and one of the things you know, i thought i knew this this history pretty well and you and i talked about talking about civil rights as being a very important aspect of the kennedy presidency, but one of the things i found out, why did he move on civil rights as he did in 1963? he's wrestling with civil rights in in many ways. there was the the free there with the freedom rides in 1961. there's the integration of ole miss with a matriculation of james meredith in 1962. the same thing happens at the university of alabama in 63, and then there's the civil rights movements direct action campaign. birmingham and during the course of that campaign when martin luther king is taken to jail and writes the famous letter from the birmingham jail the the weight of the civil rights cause is coming down on kennedy in this presidency, and it looks like he's going to have to act he's very reluctant to act to do anything except for protect civil rights marchers. and i want i've always wondered why he did it at that moment. and it turns out that bobby kennedy who was his his brother's chief aide most trusted and close advisor goes down south to alabama and meets with george wallace and meets with just horrific resistance down there. you know, people are hurling episode him and and treating him certainly not like he's the attorney general of the united states, but interestingly enough a more. poignant episode for bobby kennedy comes when he meets with with james baldwin the novelist and a group of african-american entertainers and artists at bobby. kennedy's father's penthouse. in manhattan and it is a very uncomfortable situation where they're confronting bobby kennedy with the racism that the kennedy administration has not addressed. and they are they they're unrelenting in their criticism of him. and it has the searing impression on him. and he goes back to the white house and at first he criticizes those who are at the party. you know, he talked talks about baldwin and how horrible he is and that he's gay and oh my god, how what a horrendous thing. this is another time obviously. and then he says you know what? if i were in those shoes, i'd be saying the same things. and i think he had a marked impression on his brother as well and finally his brother decides when george wallace the segregationist governor of alabama blocks the auditorium stewart went to the university of alabama. so he knows this well blocks an administrative building so that two african americans can't matriculate into the institution. kennedy says, you know, i'm not going to let him have the stage here. i'm gonna go on television tonight tonight and talk about civil rights. and bobby encourages him to do that. and he does it and he elevates. civil rights to a moral issue and the interesting thing is they don't have enough time to make an address ted. sorensen said i just don't have enough time to give you a proper address, but bobby tells his brother speak extemporaneously speak from your heart. so that speech which is one of his rhetorical high points. most of it is extemporaneous. and that was something that really surprised me how that came to fruition how he came to embrace the civil rights movement as a moral issue that's fascinating. he actually listened to his brother over the advice of most of his advisors, right? that's exactly right his advisors. tell them not to do it. bobby says no you feel it go out and tell the american people how you feel. so one of the things that fascinated me about the book is the way you've broken it up. you've got four parts. basically you call the torch the fire the brink and the peak. so why explain that a little bit why break it up that way what to each of those mean each i think take you through the kennedy presidency the torch we all know is the torch has been passed that that famous passage of from his inauguration speech the torch was passed to a brand new generation of americans. the oldest president in that in history to that point dwight eisenhower is leaving in the youngest president-elect in our histories coming in. that's a generational shifts of the torch has been passed passed and at that point. kennedy is captured the imagination of the american people bear in mind john f. kennedy only wins the presidency by two tenths of a percentage point. right, but by the time is inaugurated and gives that soaring eloquence at his inauguration. the american people are all in on john f kennedy. um so much so that when he meets the fire of his presidency, so the torch has been passed but then the fire has yet to come. and the fire comes with the bay of pigs and a number of other things that john f kennedy simply can't anticipate. but it says something about kennedy and the american people at that time and our country in another era that when kennedy suffers this huge black guy in his presidency. with the bay of pigs quagmire where a hundred and over a hundred cuban nationalists are killed in the incursion of cuban and 1200 are taken captive. and the american people approve of john f kennedy to the tune of 83% only 5% of americans disapprove of john f. kennedy's job approval at that time. we rallied around our young president at a time when we were fighting for hearts and minds with the soviet union. we know how important it was to put all we had behind this young and in many ways inexperienced callow president. so that's the fire the peak or sorry the the brink comes in 1962 with the cuban missile crisis where we find ourselves on the brink of possible nuclear holocaust where we stare eye to eye with the soviet union as they're bringing missiles into cuba largely as a result of the the failed incursion of cuba with the bay of pigs that emboldens nikita. khrush jeff kennedy's counterpart in the soviet union and we come as close as we've ever come to the brink of nuclear disaster. he's 13 harrowing days. i was talking about my friend you he and husband and q talk to me about meeting with john f kennedy at the height. the cuban missile crisis and it was at night and they ended up the kennedy and hugh had a long conversation in the oval office and then kennedy decides. he wants to go skinny dipping and hugh says well, i don't have a suit. he says you don't need one, but he leaves he leaves the white house that night goes through those black gates. not knowing whether there's going to be a tomorrow. that's how dark those days were so that was the brink and then the peak comes after that in 1963 where kennedy stands at the peak of his presidency. he has resolved the cuban missile crisis. peacefully against all odds. and he gains the esteem of the world and he's standing at his peak when he has cut down in his prime. that slim margin of victory. i don't think it's talked about enough. it's amazing. you try to imagine what that would look like if it happened today and it would be a very different reaction. i think so. why how did he maintain that kind of popularity that sort of approval was it him? was it where the country was at the time a combination of the two? i think it's part of it, you know people ask me all the time why joe biden can't be another lbj and the answer is because the world has changed that our nation has changed fundamentally john f. kennedy has two thirds majority in in the house in the senate. he's battling on civil rights at least. he's battling his own party in the south but nonetheless, they're pretty handsome majorities. the media landscape was far more narrow, even though this is as much as many as much as any it's there wasn't a proliferation and fragmentation of media that we had today. we had three networks nbc abc cbs pbs would come along much later in 1967. we had just a few newspapers there. and so there was a more centrist view of the world. and again, it says something major that kennedy was would be as popular as he was just shortly into his presidency when he wasn't doing so well in the world stage. you know a thing or two about lbj, it's fair to say. talk to me about their relationship. what was that like well, you know people talk about the kennedy's and and lbj and and the kennedys were not monolithic there were different kennedys and they had different relationships but the relationship between jack kennedy and lyndon johnson was very amicable. there was mutual respect begrudging at times but mutual respect john kennedy remembered when he wanted to get something done as a senator for massachusetts largely a back bencher who didn't achieve a whole lot relative to the the peers that he had in the upper chamber, but he remembers he had to go through linda johnson the all-powerful senate majority leader his father, joe kennedy the kennedy patriarch had enormous respect for lyndon johnson. in fact, he told his son don't take the second spot on the 1956-56 democratic ticket. unless lyndon johnson is the presidential nominee and even offers to to fund the campaign if lyndon johnson chooses to run so there was great respect there. i think the confusion about this comes where bobby kennedy comes in bobby kennedy despised lyndon johnson and lyndon johnson didn't feel any differently about bobby kennedy. they were just fundamentally different people. but but i think john f kennedy realized he picked linda johnson to go on the ticket for two reasons want jesus reasons rather one was political. he needed southern balance on the ticket and what better balance the lyndon johnson from austin, texas again who had so much power, but the second one was that he picked a vice president because he was the the person who was most capable in his view of operating in president in the presidency should something happen to him and then that that was the case. i mean when you look back on it now, obviously there's been so much reflection on his abbreviated presidency, right, but it was an incredibly eventful presidency too. just that short tenure. so you mentioned the cuban missile crisis, of course, what was what we were actually facing at that time was that it's a fair to say that was sort of the darkest hour. was that the worst that it got it was there the greatest triumph too for him. yes. there's no question in my mind. that is the darkest moment. not only in the kennedy presidency, but maybe the darkest moment in human kind. to come that close to nuclear annihilation bear in mind the majority of the american people at that point in time believe that there is going to be a nuclear exchange imminently. that's how tense the relationship was between the soviet union and the united states of america. it's interesting because there's there's a transition meeting between eisenhower and kennedy the second of two meetings that they have and this when it takes place on january 19th 1961 the day before kennedy is inaugurated as president. and they talk about the troubled spots in the world all the trouble spots of which there are many and you can see eisenhower's almost relief and relinquishing in these problems and giving them over to jack kennedy. and kennedy leaves the the white house and as the limousine is is departing. he looks at an aid in the backseat and says of eisenhower, how can he stare