on "seinfeld." >> i'm taking on the entire van buren boys. >> van buren boys?uren? >> yeah, they are just as mean as he was. >> the secret sign briefly, that's the eight fingers for the eighth president. >> what does that mean? >> he was a former van b boy. >> i am not allowed to talk about it. it's a secretive society. >> reporter: but he says in office van buren was more than a punchline. >> van buren deserves credit for inventing our two-party system, which is nowhere in the founding documents. the founders said it would be a terrible thing if we had parties. and van buren comes along and says, no, these are a positive good. when one party gets too powerful, it's good to have the other party start to rise up again. >> reporter: although he may have seemed to the manor born, van buren was actually the son of a tavern keeper. a striver, he rose quickly through the ranks. senator, secretary of state, and then vice president to the original populist president andrew jackson. >> their personalities, their images could not be more different. >> that's right. van b

van buren. harrison. tyler polk. taylor johnson and grant and grant's probably a surprise that he married into a missouri slave owning family, and he was given some enslaved workers by his father in law that he worked side by side with them, and he did eventually give them their freedom at the white house. these enslaved workers performed a variety of jobs. they were chefs, gardeners, stable hands, maids, butlers, valets, ladies, ladies and. and did all sorts of other cleaning and other work around the white house. so we had this long history up until the lincolns of having a lot of enslaved workers in the white house itself. but things changed with first ladies, beginning with this with abigail adams, who had a very, very different opinion of slavery from her predecessor, martha washington. abigail was an abolitionist and shortly after john adams was inaugurated, and abigail wasn't there at the time. that was not a typical first lady. martha was not there for george's inauguration either. but martha had written a le

the home of fdr, eleanor roosevelt house, vanderbilt mansion and martin van buren and. i've been with the park service for about 16 years. i got my as a student conservation association intern as a interns interns and fell in love sharing learning but also sharing it with the public. i was the historian at mount rushmore for about six years. i moved on to a tiny park in virginia and and then became superintendent at saratoga national historical park before moving to hyde park, new york. wonderful. and as you heard in the introductions by tina, we have a unique perspective this morning with this on the panel. and that's the commerce secretary, barbara franklin. before you know, before you became the 29th commerce secretary, you were in the nixon administration, you had a very unique job and role assigned to you by the president. what was it. well, i should say first. thank you. i'm i was secretary of commerce for george president george h.w. bush. so that's the time frame. and now we go back 20 years before that. when i in the nixon white house and my job. well, let me b

buren.re is none of these other presidents i can see in the leadership of this man who goes after dictators -- he loves dictators. why would i want to be in a communist country under putin, under kim jong-un? why would i want to live in russia? why would i want to live in china? i want to live in this freedom loving country here where i can enjoy what i enjoy. my family has been here since before the inception of the state of alabama. matter-of-fact, they were included before the territory, because they were here before the war, revolutionary war. we been here a long time. and it behooves me when we got people who have not been here through turmoils of the country and come here and seek to destroy it and say how about this country is -- host: that call from alabama. talking about china, some comments mentioned china, the house of representatives is losing one of its most active voices when it comes to china, the issue of china and u.s. competition with china. mike gallagher, republican from