Delighted to be at the convention. My first convention. Ive been working for hillary for eight years. To get her in the white house. Thats why im here. It is my passion. Im from ohio. Im a delegate for bernie and i 21. Am this is my first convention. I am the state director of College Students for bernie and im really excited to be here. My generation and the millennials, we are about the same size of the baby boomers and it is really important for us to show up. We are having a great time at the convention and looking forward to the rest of it. Voices from the road on cspan. Talk next, historians about the process of writing a president ial biography. This event was part of a Pulitzer Prize centennial the george w. Bush president ial center. It is just over an hour. [applause] thank you. Laura and i want to welcome you. Of the president and ceo bush center and all of us who work here are thrilled you are here. I must confess i have mixed emotions. I am thrilled to be part of this, and im disappointed you are not here to give me the pulitzer for the book i wrote. Organizationd needs a Pulitzer Prize recipient on the staff. Here at the bush center, we have bill mckenzie. [applause] thank you for convincing us to join you in hosting this. It is very exciting for the bush center that you are here. All the members of the Pulitzer Prize board as well as the representatives from 41s library and i forgot lbjs number. [laughter] as a history buff, i aim thrilled that jon and annette and ron chernow are here to be interviewed. [applause] in order to get my book reconsidered, i thought i would share an anecdote with you. I was tasked to talk to Vladimir Putin about the necessity to have a free press in order for the society to be a wholesome and vibrant society. He had just suspended the independent press. This was in slovakia. I couldnt identify it during the debates. [laughter] i said, vladimir it is very important that you have a vibrant press. He said, you are a hypocrite. You fired the famous newsman. I said what the hell are you talking about . [laughter] he said you fired the newsman. I said, are you talking about dan rather . In our society, the press is independent from the politicians. As it should be. The job of the press in a free society is to hold people who got power to account. You are going to need that to have a vibrant society. Make sure you dont say that, that i fired the famous newsman. People in our country going to think the you are ignorant. Sure enough, we have the press conference. First question, moscow times. Mr. President putin, president bush talked to about a free press in russia . Did you bring up the fact that he fired the famous newsman . I want to thank the press for what you do. My relationship with the press, it was cordial, because i understand its a symbiotic relationship. You need me and i needed you. I really dont miss much about washington. But i will tell you that the intellectual stimulation from dealing with a vibrant free press was a very important part of the job. Thank you for coming and i hope you enjoy the evening. [applause] in a moment i will ask all of the Pulitzer Prize winners with us tonight to stand and be recognized for their great work. I would like to recognize one winner in particular. His work has special relevance. Think back to 1963. A remarkably composed photograph that crystallized a historic moment. Actually, there were two remarkable photos. The one by bob jackson was snapped a fraction of a second and later than the one by the Dallas Morning News photographer and as a result they captured the grimace on lee harvey on his worlds face as the bullet from jack rubys gun penetrated his gut. To quote the denver post, jacksons photo has maintained the command that photojournalism always had and still does. It can tell a full story by freezing time. Please welcome bob jackson who flew in from his home in colorado to be with us tonight. [applause] i would like to ask all the Pulitzer Prize winners who are with us here tonight to stand and be recognized for the great work. [applause] steve benson, please remain standing. Steve is a prizewinning editorial cartoonist for the Arizona Republic in phoenix. He is a witty and prolific spot cartoonist who will be covering these events over the next couple of days. He is a graduate of Richardson High School right here in north texas. [applause] please think an opportunity to introduce yourself to steve during the intermission. Is my pleasure to invite the president and ceo of the george w. Bush president ial center to the podium. He will introduce our first panel discussion. Mr. Ken hirsch. [applause] ken hirsch thank you very much. The performance from the dallas theater center, i want to thank joel farrell. And all the great performers for that treat. Also the charming and witty chair, julie hirsch. [applause] i was born at night but not last night. The bush center is a special place. This is my first week on the job. It is a little bit humbling to present tonight is very humbling panel. I want to thank even more than the fuel to prizewinners, the absolute wonderful Public Servants who have helped and served this country in summary capacities. I want to thank haley barbour, the former governor of mississippi. General Michael Hayden the former director of the cia. Leon panetta, the former secretary of defense. Ambassador mark langdale. Thank you for your service. [applause] it is important to recognize great contributions that help tell the past and shape the future. Heres the bush center, we think about that every day. The mission of the bush center is to motivate and develop leaders. We try to foster policy and take action. We do that around key areas like Economic Growth and human freedom and democracy. We understand that our job here is to use the power of this platform to convene and amplify and make an impact on very important issues of the day. You serve that purpose in my role is to help build connections between those communities. Dallas, smu, the United States and the world. It is a fantastic task. When we study the past, the president s have a lot to do with it. We are honored to have some of the most esteemed voices join in telling and describing the history of what the presidency and the press are all about. As president bush said, a strong press is not something that we talk about only in emerging economies. It is something that is very vital to the foundation of our democracy. To have this great panel is a real pleasure. Ron chernow is one of the most distinguished commentators on history today. In 2009 his work with Linmanuel Miranda on the Pulitzer Prize winning Broadway Musical hamilton was inspired by his biography of Alexander Hamilton. Annette gordonreed is the professor of legal history at harvard law school. She won the Pulitzer Prize in history in 2009 for the hemingses of monticello, an american family. Her forthcoming book on Thomas Jefferson, well look forward to that. Jon meacham is a president ial historian and executive Vice President at random house. His book american lion, Andrew Jackson in the white house, won the prize in 2009. He just wrote a book on George Herbert walker bush. Our moderator is the director of the lbj president ial library in austin. Hes an analyst for abc news on matters relating to politics in the presidency. Thanks to each of you in attendance for making this a very special evening. Please welcome our panelists. [applause] mark it is a pleasure to moderate this panel. We will start with president ial icons Like Washington and jefferson and lincoln. That is well trodden territory for biographies. For George Washington alone, there are 900 biographies. I will ask each of you, when you are tackling a mammoth subject like a George Washington or Thomas Jefferson or an Andrew Jackson, where do you start . Jon i was misinformed. I didnt know there were other books. I have two tests. One is, do i feel there is a place in the scholarly and popular conversation for argument about that person. It is wonderful that we are here with ron because one of the interesting things about jefferson is that he surrounded jefferson both from hamiltons and washingtons perspective. Our friends David Mccullough had done john adams. Jefferson had been more of a foil and a supporting character in the broad historiography of the last decade or so. I thought there was a place to talk about jefferson on his own terms. I always try to make as much use of archives as i can. See can justify a new look. Annette every generation asks new questions. Thomas jefferson is the most interesting man in the world. There are so many aspects of his life. Weve learned so much more about him. Slavery at monticello and so forth. There was a life to be rediscovered. It has always been present but it never been looked at. There are always new things about jefferson. There were some aspects to his life. Its not just the politics. It could be music and art and all kinds of things. Because of the declaration of independence, it is a continuing story in the american saga. Every generation who tries to make their place in the american nation uses the declaration. People around the world do it. Is a fountain of information and questions. There was no question for me at all whether there was anything to say about them. Theyre different questions depending on the answers we want to have today. Ron a lot of my socalled friends kept asking me why i wanted to perpetrate number 901. You do a biography because you have new information or you can take a fresh look at a person. I had an epiphany when i was working on hamilton. He was George Washingtons aidedecamp during the war. He had to justify this decision to quit washingtons staff. He had to justify this decision to his fatherinlaw, philip schuyler. He said that the great man and i have come to an open rupture. He shall for once repent of his ill humor. That line kept reverberating in my mind. Hamilton is giving me the sense that he was a volatile boss. He tended to hand that very perceptive word portraits of people. Even working with George Washington for several years. Washington is seemingly the most familiar person in our history but in some ways he was the most unfamiliar. That was my opening wedge. I could pry open a whole world of emotions that were very intense and volatile. He was seen as a man of marble. He wasnt that at all. Mark you say to great figures in history can carry the weight of their flaws. How do you ensure that you are present in a balanced view . Ron if i feel it is going to be an admiring biography i go out of my way to find every unpleasant fact about the character. My greatest fear is that people will say he did not mention all these things. I find he is a great figure that he or she will be able to carry the weight of those flaws. One of the interesting things that happened with the hamilton show. A lot of broadway producers said the protagonist of her Broadway Musical has to be sympathetic throughout the show. Hamilton in the second act really loses the sympathy of the audience. He is involved in a sex scandal. He encourages his son to go off on a dual in which his son dies. There were all sorts of flaws. As i watch the audiences reaction, i found them having even more admiration for him. We had humanized him. I had the same experience. I finished the washington biography i sent a copy to jim reese, the president of mount vernon. I said 150 pages into this you may think this is a very negative portrait. He was often rather crass as a young man. Very money conscious and status conscious. I tried to have all of that in there. Jim wrote back and said i am so glad that you were completely unsparing in this portrait of washington. The main problem they have with the million plus people who come is that he seems like a plaster saint. And perhaps boring. When you humanized someone, their compliments actually seem that much greater because the reader can identify with them. He has the same source of problems that they do. Annette i became interested in Thomas Jefferson when i was in the third grade. In texas. [applause] if you really care about the person, there is no reason to write something that is not real or not realistic. If you care about the individual and you think that individuals life says something to audience as worth spending your time working on it this no point in doing an unrealistic picture. You want everything there. You want to take the measure of the person. That doesnt mean that you gloss over anything. You try to see the world through that persons perspective and bring that perspective to your readers. If you are serious about it, that is the thing that is motivated me to write about jefferson. You have to have warts and all. Jon as a jackson biographer i dont have this problem. [laughter] my guy has had a tough couple of months. Annette a tough couple of decades. Jon ron has a broadway show and the 10 bill. My guy isnt even on the 20 anymore. He is the link from the founding to lincoln. He was the only president who who has an era named for him. For better or worse. Just because you are the most honored person in the world. Not since annette gordonreed dined alone has there been such a gathering. Jackson embodied some of our best instincts and our worst. If you dont deal with jackson, you cant deal with antebellum america. He made been on the extreme edge of the mainstream on the two central sins of american life, slavery and native american removal. But he was within the mainstream. That may be uncomfortable to talk about but it is true. Nobody ever went back and reopen to the question of native american removal. Congress never revisited that. He put down John C Calhoun to keep the union together. He gave the union 30 more years to form those mystic chords of memory. If you dont deal with jackson, you cant deal with the american soul in its light and dark elements. We learned more from the past if we look at in the eye that if we look out at it adoringly or down on it condescendingly. Mark mark twain said a small part of a persons life is his acts and his words. When you are tackling a biographical subject, you have to make inferences about their mindset and their motivations. How does one responsibly introduce psychology into biography . Annette i think it is necessary. There was a biographer, fawn brodie, who got into trouble writing about Thomas Jefferson and calling it a psychohistory. The book most blessed of the patriarchs is out now. What my coauthor and i tried to do is to be responsible in reading jeffersons words and looking at his actions and making inferences about that. You can look at the patterns you discern. You hope you see what the person was attempting to do in the world. I dont think its possible to present a picture of a subject without trying to get into their mind. That is what all biographers do. Whether they are doing psychology or not they are psychoanalyzing. Jon Ralph Waldo Emerson said there is no history only biography. If you dont practice psychiatry without a license, you should find another line of work. Ron there has to be psychological understanding. What is very important in general is not to introduce anachronism. We love about biography is that it casts a spell, it transports you into the past. To introduce modern psychological jargon has a way of breaking that spell. The present suddenly invades the past. Another problem is that if the word did not exist as of phenomenon it describes also may not. Sigmund freud wrote about hysteria. I dont want to write about that for the 18thcentury but the phenomenon was foreign. Maybe it wasnt even happening in freuds vienna. One has to use psychological insight but without the whole paraphernalia of modern psychology. If i suddenly start saying the George Washington had an oedipus complex, you have to find a way to analyze the character that is true to the period. People were not introspective in the way that they are today. Starting perhaps in the mid19th century. People were not analyzing their own psyches. Annette john adams did. Ron George Washington and Alexander Hamilton were so extraordinarily bright and they never seemed to turn that searchlight of their intelligence on themselves. When they reveal themselves inadvertently, i could give one small example with George Washington. Everyone noticed he had this poker face. It was very difficult to read his emotions. I found myself wondering was this accidental or deliberate. During the second term, as he was approaching the end, the British Ambassador said, i can see the happiness on your face. Washington said my face never reveals my emotions. He directed someone for suggesting that it could reveal his emotions. We are so different because we all pride ourselves now im showing emotion. In the 18th century, we would consider silence if you had a troubled childhood. We see that as a lack of mental health. In the 18th century that was a strength. You are not constantly stewing about what your mother did to you when you were five. It was a very different world. Jon i have a theory i have never been able to prove which is the best kind. Not only in this talk psychological detail, but the narrative details. You can see a shift from the founding to the jackson era into the lincoln era where suddenly, people start narrating scenes. The distinction between the jefferson air at in doing this and the jackson era is quite fascinating. It is partly attributable to the rise of the novel. People