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[applause] [applause] [applause] >> president obama and the first lady in shanksville, pennsylvania at the flight 93 memorial. our coverage of katie's ceremonies continues live on our companion network, c-span, from the world trade center site in lower manhattan, and you will be able to what all of today's ceremonies online. we turn now to book tv here on c-span2. >> recently book tv visited george washington university to interview several professors who had written recent books. over the next few sundays he will be airing these interviews starting at 1:00 p.m. eastern.

this weekend we talked with the former spokesman for the 9/11 commission and author of the leaders we deserved and the few we didn't. and assistant professor of media and public affairs at gw and author of the myth of digital democracy. for a complete schedule and a list of other george russ bin university interviews cut to booktv.org. >> this is book tv on c-span2. we have been doing a college series on book tv where we visit colleges so that we can talk to professors who have also written books and expose you to a few more ideas. now joining us is a professor at george washington university. we are on site. here is his book, the leaders we deserved and a few we didn't about the american presidents. how do we typically rage president's? >> not well. every president stay or

july 4th or in the news we are told by the newspapers that yet another pow was sent to 5100 historians. here are the great presidents. the usually put them into five categories. great, near great, average, below average. and did not tell us what goes into the criteria. all the familiar faces. the ones we see on the currency, the ones that we build monuments to. they don't really tell you what distinguishes great from ordinary. and it was just over joining yesterday to see somebody is putting a bill in congress giving george washington back as birthday. you know, somebody decided that all great men were born on a weekend. every all of it was changed. veterans day and july 4th. july 4th chance to weekend.

and all presidents of the same. the result is students have a very hard time distinguishing. this study any history at all. i thought that i would try my own and i would actually tell the viewer what i think makes for a great president, and i invite the viewer to disagree with me. i don't really care how people come out, but i would like to know that they can defend their opinions with facts and stories and evidence. i came up with six categories. it seems like this because they all give grades in various courses, biology, french, whenever. i gave them grades and six categories. ethier personal components, presidential character. a lot about the character during the two impeachments in our lifetime. what i call vision. why do they want the job.

in retrospect the right or wrong for the country at the time. competence. i'll was up to save a don't want to pick on mr. carter because he gets picked on a great deal. i would say the point of having character and having a sense of vision, particularly on the environmental front will we look back on that, without the compliments and blunt it. so residents who were pushed around and made history. and then i play out these three components over a couple policy areas that no president can avoid. one is economic is. one is national defense, call it what you want, foreign-policy, national defense, national-security. they all have to deal with threats of the world in some way. the hard-won is how well they extended or preserve liberty.

the founding ideal of our nation. sometimes the mind of foreigners, we learn more about ourselves. well, when mrs. thatcher stepped down as british prime minister she said our's is the first nation deliberately formed on an idea, not on land, bloodlines, heredity, but an idea, freedom and liberty. and whether it shrunk under presidential terms or expanded not only comes, it's one of the criteria. >> what is the value? >> well, only 44 men in 230 something years became presidents of the ad states. a very, very small number. to get in it most of them fought very hard, all but george

washington. at some point. and to have done there they had to have had something going for them. it did not all succeed. this can be used hopefully for people who steady business, as ceo of a company. what makes for a good leader, what makes for good professor. university president. so, here are some of the best known americans in the world. all presidents are not equal. we should not celebrate the of this. as early as 1777 women started naming their children after george washington. without 24 / seven news, without the internet, and without television and heaven knows without c-span there was something in the man's character

and in a man's innate ability or sense of sacrifice and ordinary americans, we used to call them common man, ordinary americans, people that go about their business but the point. named their child george washington. and i don't want to offend any listeners. there aren't too many franklin pierce or warren harding's money around unless there a direct sense. i thought that matters a great deal. >> to american presidents benefit or suffer because of their predecessors? >> america is very interesting. people who have been married multiple times always tell me that wind up with the same spouse. well, and presidential elections it's always the opposite. we always want the opposite of what we have before. i like to tell students after

woodrow wilson, it certainly made a lot of noise, does there agree world war. fell to implement the league of nations. the country was exhausted. for constitutional amendments including the federal reserve. a good many senators. the income-tax. and one that he had mixed feelings about, probation. but other presser's, noble experiment. they were divided on that one. but more constitutional amendments. closing child labor a regulating. the slogan was back to normalcy. not the most intellectual of our presidents. not the most visionary of our presidents. after eight years of serenity and prudence bordering on borden

american wanted it. a very startling scenario. no one accused eisenhower of having around. not the great actors of his time. we all know what the kennedys. jackie after a great broadway production. after george w. bush, bill clinton, we have george bush. i tell my students, the two bookends. the war purchaser and all that brings to mind. what he did not inhale. and we have the ten civil war presidents. maybe eight. al generation got the two

bookends. a baby boomer. the tail end. >> alvin felzenberg, in your rating system you rate him in number 26. some of the presidents are tied to a loss of rage and not exactly. but he gets ready number 26. to for character. he gets for for preserving and takes the ending. >> first of all, let me tell you , harding is always rated next-to-last. when you get that early polls sent up to historians harding is at the bottom. watergate is good for them. but i went back and looked at mr. harding's record. extraordinary record.

he was very much in favor. he got it through the house. he could not get it passed the senate filibuster. he then went down to alabama and gave the startling address. an audience with african american listeners, and then you have all of a dazzling southern gentleman and lease. and he gives a startling address. he says, the south is never going to catch up with the rest of the world. carry this problem around. factories don't want to come in here. bad press. time we treat all men as equal. i should not have to tell you this. i read the new york times account of that, and have these seveners sitting on their hands. the african-american crowd on,

well, i should point out the anti lynching law, what it would have done is basically made lynching of federal crime. have different ways of jury selection and all that. it never passed. it did not pass later. a very enlightened gentleman he did very well. but that was the party of lincoln and many national republican candidates. same thing with mr. coolidge. now, he was also a very progressive. most analysts to my look back. in many ways he was the ronald reagan of the twenties. cut taxes. before we have the crash we have the roar, the roaring '20s. the cost of those tax cuts, money found its way into new

industries. aviation, automobile, radio, other forms of tradition. the other wall became very commonplace. as long as it is black we can do it mass-produced. the average man or woman, the average working man could afford a car. a good job, not a millionaire. becoming middle-class. radio becomes a universal item by the end of the coolidge time. aviation. the great secretary of commerce, river, was a great secretary of commerce. it was his job to hire the first air traffic controller and come up with federal policy. you had to have a stimulating the economy to do that. i look back. ronald reagan was out of there. when he moved into the white house he ordered his

predecessors. the "washington post", already losing his mind. and then six years later and reagan is in walter reed. he is recovering from one of his many surgery's. he is dozing. he has an army blanket on his lap. he has his book open face down. how long have you been here? not very long. we did not want to disturb your nap. just reading this book and calvin coolidge. he'd text that -- cut tax rates four times. how many times of light? one, sir. well, keep busy reagan, of course to went to school in the '20s. there were teaching economics,

the old school. he was an economic sociology major. something stock. something stock. >> and you rank calvin coolidge number 12 right after jfk. etf can you have tied for seventh place. straight force across the board except for character. >> a mix story. on the upside to things about kennedy, he was never a wiener. he never heard stories about the isolation of the presidency and, well, is me. the step at the altar. you never heard the warning. every day was a new beginning.

both very proud of their roots. and the fact that kennedy took responsibility for his mistakes. the fault for the bad things as mine. i am the president of the united states, the commanding authority of the government. are there any questions? the whole congress is going to be taken to the woodshed. the downside, of course, a lot has come out since those years that i'm not so sure we would recommend for his successors. i'm not even talking about the personal life. i'm talking about putting himself at risk, the kind of people being shepherded into the white house, being waved through without security clearance, questions about foreign government, questions about girlfriends who had ties to the underworld.

you wonder about that happening again. on the upside i . out, he also cut taxes. we call them the kennedy tax cuts. kennedy was at a time with the keynesian style, a different form of economics. ironically a felon in nixon. figure that one out. there was a split. what do you do to get the economy moving again. and the question was, you put it in public investment. or the affluent society, the argument that public squalor, private corey. your you cut marginal tax rates temporarily, in your short deficits, and grow. he took the latter path. it wasn't keynesian and this,

again, is what brought the aeronautics industry. the computer industry. many, many other things that give us the 60's. we baby boomers grew up. we'll have our own room, what to the wrong car, went to college. a lot of that was financed because our parents were it will to do those. he had the economy. i thought of him. paul ryan when he came up with his road map last winter. five, six, even 7 percent growth feasible. even he did not think so. but still up to the kennedy library. it happened. >> alvin felzenberg, you have president kennedy tied with

president truman. zachary taylor. >> yes. here is my theory. rough and ready, and the commanding officer of a fellow named u.s. grant. a lot like harry truman. the same category. sector retailer, and has sex retailer not died in 18 months into his presidency, the conspiracy theories, die of natural causes. well, we know two things about him. he insisted that california come into the union as a free state. here is a southern slave owner, louisiana. his entire life in the u.s. army. the only national institution that we had on the edge of civil war.

he is not going to let these people destroy his union. we talk about richard nixon. china. if a democrat had been the conservative republicans. if nixon goes to china, who can oppose it? if you have a southern plantation owner, war hero, a man who was the chief doctor in the mexican war, double the size of the united states and then, of course, with his death becomes the starting gun of these new states coming into the union. there was a proposal on board to divide california. and he said but california be a free state and tells his son in law at the time, a southerner from mississippi that we will hear from again in this generation that he will hang him from the highest treat if he keeps talking this recession stuff.

and had taylor lived in taken, he was the eisenhower of his time. one the most significant more of his time. he might have pulled it off. ranking very low. >> thirty-three. >> that's pretty low of 44. well, told by his wife you sign the fugitive slave law and you will end your career. so that was the compromise due to the california. the self-taught the fugitive slave law. if you harbored a slaving your home it was a federal offense. if you know of a neighbor who is doing it and don't report the neighbor you are guilty as easy. this is the era of the underground railroad. and uncle tom's cabin. we talk about our greatest

president, abraham lincoln. when he meets harriet beecher stowe, six, something like that. at least six. barely 5 feet tall. lincoln looked down at her and said, you all the little lady who started the big war. and in no way at is true, but it is all because of the fugitive slave law. zachary taylor might have pulled it off. might have pulled off. had more union states command in might have been able to abolish slavery constitutionally with a constitutional amendment. more states to more legislatures. okay. it might have been a lot different, i argue. >> along with kennedy, chairman, mckinley, taylor, all ranked above kulich. one other gentlemen, here with the pin on the front of your book.

>> that was the publishers idea. >> u.s. grand. >> well, let's talk about him. here is a gentleman who had a larger spin around and abraham lincoln. the american people adored him. historians did not. two elections after the civil war. let us have peace. on the other hand let us have peace, but the cost of the war was slavery. no question. the southerners said it was slavery. they wanted to extend. the north knew that it is slavery. even the young mr. lincoln knew that slave labor in illinois would drive down the price of free labor. you name it. economic tomorrow. crane had the idea that this could be a war of attrition.

he coined the phrase total war. ticket to the population. we're going to destroy the enemy's capacity. so when king got the idea that he could use his extraordinary power of commander-in-chief to destroy the enemy capacity to make war. okay. well, the proclamation. they knew between frederick douglass and his sandals in the south, run away now. the union lines, those blue uniforms. and what we put them in the army. fight this war of attrition. no end of manpower available. marching through the south, but in these men in uniform. that was of very interesting time. so he becomes president, and he has this basically impossible

situation. let us have peace. the famous coming together with they decide not to shoot the enemy officer car. they decide it will be benign. we will try to have a benign. you have johnson. a sevener, very racist. a very awful attitude. one of the reasons he was impeached. he was trying to delay. lincoln got the 13th through. the abolition of slavery. but the other two were not clear. well, grant says he is not try to be president. not point to accept the nomination. that allows african-americans. of course everybody said that

eisenhower passes the first civil rights bill. well, take 8457. grant was the last republican to send troops to the south. voting rights and civil rights. looking at extending freedom. not even counting time as general, the man who physically carried out lincoln's work, but he believed that the cause of the union, he would not sell out the troops. he said that many times. he was there commander in chief. he's not going to have an oppressed. they're going to have a right to vote. i quote from him directly in this. he did not let this happen we all know. well, very slowly we have an economic depression in the

1870's. the party gets slammed. the southern states are back. many are voting democrat. when they lose congress in 1874 by-election. we have just been through that, the democrats losing the house. and in 2006 both houses. 1874 the northern states, democratic cars begins to cut off grants-staffed. you can't send troops. of course they're not going to give consent so easily. by the time haze runs you have that fraudulent election. all but three states african-americans. that happened because of congress. they impeached one president.

and he tries to get a third term. imagine that. those of us agree appearing about scandals, hearing about his drinking and many other things. never hear of the glory. in fact, in his time he was. he got his memorial before lincoln. his tone, buried in grant's tomb well, that was the most visited site in america. an icon before the statue liberty, the lincoln memorial. and i urge readers to if you read nothing else. >> abraham lincoln according to alvin felzenberg, five all the

way across in all six categories. george washington comes in second with an overall rating of 467. roosevelt, tied with ronald reagan at four and a half. james k. polk, a couple of the biographies come out. you have him down at number 20 right below george h. w. bush. he gets a one in character. >> right. by himself he decided he was going to grab two-thirds of mexico. the was not clear that the other states wanted that. he dated and very -- to he was called opposed to the mendacious he did achieve his goals.

>> george w. bush you have in this book. came out recently. you have him ranked tied with jimmy carter. george w. bush, three in character. >> well, maybe as papers come out and we get into his files we will see a little more. the family saga, well, i won't call it palace. teheran the father's mantle. why did he want to be president's? this is all very unclear. i take him at his word that he became the new person after the

crisis in his time. but they're also take him at his word that he lost out on a lot. and there's a reason for seeking the presidency. we need to know more about it. a lot of things we don't know. we still don't know how afghanistan is going to turn out. we still don't know how iraq is going to turn out. i did give him credit for saying at the american enterprise association, formed an idea that all people are created equal in the eyes of the law and each other. how dare we accept the notion that everyone but arabs and muslims. that was his speech. no one ever said that before.

now, it does not mean that you do it with a tank. it doesn't mean for going to get the freedom what you wanted and not. but that needed to be said. american dream. the american life, it doesn't mean white people, anglo-saxons. i give them credit for that. on the character question it will come up in a new edition. i didn't get a sense of the great intellectual curiosity. i got it when i looked at reagan i'm sure he reads. i don't get a sense that is president would get up in the middle of the night and start

asking questions. go read the telegram to myself. he gets the signal to go out there and talked to this fellow. going out to see mcclellan. why isn't this army moving at think bush was more inclined to say i guess he had this, perhaps, a false impression of reagan as a great delegates. reagan checked up on people. how was it going. okay. i get this sense that bush got the best people around. let's go ahead and do it. there is the story about a colonel coming in at actually saw the vice-president and why things weren't working out the way that they thought. this really is an insurrection

low, you have to tell the story of the president. apparently bush said to his aide so the story about tax cuts. he could not find anyone in the treasury department. eight or 9:00. sitting of the desk. he gets some lowly clerk. jack kennedy was to ask you about the budget. the guy didn't believe him. the next day, midnight. did not hear any stories. so -- >> one incompetents. >> for the best of motives, no one can say iraq was toward well

when he left off -- office. we had seven years with not so wonderful economic growth. then we have the crash of the end. in know, you have to say that they were in office for some time. this whole society, where we are going to entice the government and underwrite banks, send money to people who can't afford it and probably should not of their homes. p he gave many speeches. incentives were given to banks to lend to people who cannot afford to pay them back. i paid ten or call% commodity 20%. but the idea of 5%, 2 percent, nothing down, no sense of

responsibility, and this is government policy that started in the clinton era. this came along and it was put on steroids. >> and finally, one more president to ask you about. tied with george w. bush, and jimmy carter, rutherford b. hayes, james madison. a one incompetence, one in economic policy, and no one in defense. >> i would urge people in the current administration to read about this. he was an intellectual. he carried around his own library. go down to montpellier and assure you with the bookcases were. he lined them up vertically.

he was an ideologue. kent jefferson in geology. jefferson would say, he read the constitution did you tell me. we can only do with the constitution tells us. does not say that we can buy territory. the constitutional amendment to make it okay. we don't have that. the british are knocking the hell out of him. either way if he wins or loses is not going to want it. so he says, okay. madison believes. the legislature should be in the dominant branch. congress wants this war.

they want a war with the largest superpower of the era, great britain. and there is no money to fight the war. he does not like national banks. and so he lets the charter for banks expire. he won't veto the war. i have to do what they say. i will carry out there wish. i don't have any money to implement. bottom-line, the british burned down the white house and the capital. the hero of that administration has enough sense to get the declaration out of there. out of there. not a happy story. a smart man, honest man, a tremendous integrity. i will say he did a great deal to heal the country great