[laughter] every Good Organization 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 wholesom and vibrant society. He had just suspended the independent press. This was in slovakia. I couldnt identify it during the debates. [laughter] mr. Bush 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] mr. Bush he said you fired the newsman. I said, are you talking about dan rather . In our society, the press is independent from the politicians. 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 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, its a symbiotic relationship. You need me and i needed you. I really dont miss much about washington. 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 Oswalds face as the bullet from jack rubys gun penetrated oswalds 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 tanding. Steve is a prizewinning editorial cartoonist for the Arizona Republic in phoenix. E 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 take an opportunity to introduce yourself to steve during the intermissions tonight and tomorrow and look at the carb of sketches that he will be developing throughout the program. [applause] is my pleasure to invite the president and ceo of the george w. Bush president ial center to the podium. Mr. Ken hersh. [applause] ken hersh thank you very much, keven. 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. She is also here tonight that had absolutely nothing to do with the performance, but we absolutely have to recognize her for her attendance this evening. [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 pew lis zer prize winner whos are with us tonight, the absolutelyly wonderful Public Servants who have helped and served this country in so many different 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 director of the c. I. A. And secretary of defense. Ambassador mark langdale. Thank you for your service. [applause] he Pulitzer Prizes recognize significant work and the 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. Womens empowerment, military Service Wellness and transition. 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. It served that purpose and my role is to help build connections between that connection and the grounder communities, the communities of dallas, of s. M. U. , of texas, the United States and the world. Its a humbling task and in the first week, it is an absolutely fantastic one. Thank you for helping me start this journey. 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 selling 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 merging 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. Ron is one of the most distinguished commentators in business and finance today. His book won the Pulitzer Prize in 2011. 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 Charles Warren 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. To discuss president ial biographies, the challenges, then and now. Thank you. [applause] mark thank you, ken, con gracesed on your point. It is a pleasure to moderate this panel with this illustrious group. 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, lets start with you. Jon oh, thanks, pick on me. First of all, i was misinformed like casablanca. I didnt know there were other books. I called annette, she didnt tell me. That was kind of upsetting. 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 reasons i wrote about jefferson is ron had surrounded Jefferson 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. So you 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. Its a font of information, a font of 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 ant to have today. Mark you mentioned 900 fullscale biographies of George Washington. Did you read them . Where did you start . Ron a lot of my socalled friends kept asking me why i wanted to perpetrate number 901. Was that really necessary. You do a biography because you have new information or you can do a fresh portrait of the person. I had an epiphany when i was working on hamilton during the revolutionary war. He was George Washingtons aidedecamp during the war. He had a feud with washington. He had to justify this decision to quit washingtons staff. He had to justify this decision to his fatherinlaw, philip schuyler. He was a very close friend of washington. He sat down and wrote a letter to his fatherinlaw and said 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. I had this image of a saintly George Washington and hamilton is giving me the sense of that volatile powder keg of a boss. He tended to hand that very perceptive word portraits of people. Even working with George Washington for several years. Washington is seemingly the ost 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 said great figures in history can carry the weight of their flaws. How do you ensure that you are presenting a balanced portrait . Ron i find it when i go on with the biography, particularly if i feel it is going to be an admiring biography, i go out of my way, mark, to put every up pleasant fact about the character in the book. Y 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 their defects. One of the interesting things that happened with the hamilton show. A lot of broadway producers said the protagonist of a Broadway Musical has to be sympathetic throughout the show. Hamilton in the second act really tests the sympathy of the audience. He is involved in a sex scandal. He encourages his son to go off on a duel 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, jim, before you read this, i want to tell you 150 pages into this, you may this this is a very negative portrait of George Washington, washington when he was young, he was often rather contracts and pushy and 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 to mount vernon every year, he seems like a plaster saint and hence unreal and hence boring. The important thing is human nicing him. When you humanized someone, their compliments actually seem that much greater because the reader can identify with this character as a person who has the same sorts of problems that they did. Annette if you care about the person. I became interested in Thomas Jefferson when i was in third grade in texas, im a texan i should say. [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 persons life says something to an an audience and worth spending your time working on, there is no point in doing an unrealistic picture. You want everything there. You want to take the measure of the person. You have to have the necessary sympathy. That doesnt mean that you gloss over anything. It does mean that you try to see the world through that persons perspective and to bring that perspective to your readers. If you are serious about it, you really care about the person and the reader, that is the thing that has motivated me to write about jefferson and to study about jefferson, to study jefferson and to put it out there in a realistic way. You have to have warts and all. Jon as a jackson biographer i dont have this problem. [laughter] were just trying to get to the skin next to the wart. My guy has had a tough couple of months. Annette a tough couple of years, actually, a tough couple decades. Jon ron has a broadway show and the 10 bill. My guy isnt even on the 20 anymore. The reason i did jackson to some extent was i do think in the popular imagination, people to tend to go from the founding to lincoln pretty quickly. There is sort of a big period there. Ron right to t. R. Annette there was an age named for him. Ron better or worse, he was the only president who has an airy named for him. For better or worse. Just because you are the most honored person in the world. At monticello there is a whole room devoted, its kind of embarrassing for all of us. Not since annette gordonreed dined alone has there been such a gathering. Jackson embodied some of our best instincts and our worst. F you dont deal with jackson, you cant deal with antebellum america. He may have been on the extreme edge of the mainstream on the two central since of american life, africanamerican 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 reopened the question of native american removal. Congress never revisited it. And his devotion to the union in putting down john c. Calhoun was causing problems early in order to keep the union together, it gave us 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. The other thing ill say just in general, my own seven is we learn more from the past if we look it in the eye than if we look up 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. All day long, the middle of his brain is grinding and his thoughts, not those of other things are his history. 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 for writing a biography about Thomas Jefferson and calling it a psychohistory. All biographers do that. The book most blessed of the patriarchs is out now. Its out in the hallway. 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 hat. You can look at the patterns you discern help 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 psycho analyzing person. 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 ork. Ron there has to be psychological understanding. Hat 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. Recreating this world. I think to introduce modern psychological jargon has a way of breaking that spell. The present suddenly invades he past. Another problem with introducing modern psychological terminology which is very often, if the word didnt exist, the phenomenon that its describing may not have existed. Sigmund freud wrote about hysteria in victorian women, i dont want to write hysteria in writing in the 18th century. Not only is the term foreign, ut 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. Annette jargon is typically wrong. Its problematic. Mark define that. Ron if i suddenly st