this is book tv on c-span2. we have been doing a college series on book tv where we visit colleges so we can talk to professors who have also written books and expose you to a few more ideas. now joining us is alvin felzenberg, a professor of george washington university, we are on site here. and here is his book, "the leaders we deserved and a few we didn't," about the american presidents. how long do we typically rate presidents? ..

and i was just overjoyed yesterday to see that somebody is putting a bill of congress, giving church question him back his birthday. somebody decided in the 70s that all great men were worn on a weekend. so every holiday was changed except veterans day in july for the. and all presidents are the same end result is students at it very hard time distinguishing them. so 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 feel. i like when i'm teaching students that they can back their opinions. students all good all good grades and discourses, biology, french whatever. so i gave them grade of three come personal components, presidential kerry or. we had a lot of kerry are during the two impeachments in our lifetime and what i called this should. why did they want the job? in retrospect, was it the right mission for the country at the time? confidence. i would love to say -- i don't want to come mr. carter because he gets picked in a great deal, but i see the point of having exemplary carriage or and having

an environmental firm for remote back on that, without the confidence implemented. and so, presidents who were pushed around change defense. and then i play up these three components over a couple of policies that no president can avoid. when this economic leadership. one is national defense. call it what you want. national governments, national security all have to do with the rest of the world in some way. and then the hard wonders how well they preserve liberty. this is the founding idea of our nation. sometimes the mind is more better felt. when mrs. thatcher stepped down as reddish prime minister, she said ours is the first nation deliberately formed on an idea. not on land, not a well-defined,

not on heredity. an idea, an idea of freedom and liberty. and whether it shotgunned a presidential terms or expanded, not only home but abroad, the six components. >> host: what is the value? >> guest: well, i think it's a story of leadership. only 44 men and 200 thirtysomething years became president of the united states. that's a very, very small club. to get in it, most of them fought very hard to get there. all that george washington. at some point, they asked for the job. and to have gotten there, they had to have some thing going for them in their time. and this can be used, hopefully people who study business will make it next pantsuit ceo of a

hotel company at a time the nation is going to attend sessions or it makes for a good labor leader. it makes for a good professor, university president. so here are some of the best-known americans in the world and they were not people. we shouldn't celebrate the office of presidents' day. unfairly as 1777, people started naming their kids after george washington. without 20 for seven years, without the internet, without television and heaven knows there was something in the man scared to eminence in the nobility that ordinary americans , we call them, and men, but there were no common, ordinary americans, and many people go about their business and don't spend most of the trades name their child george washington and there weren't too many. i don't want to offend any

listeners. worn hardiness running around. but i thought that matter. it matters a great deal. >> two american benefits unchain presidents benefit or suffer because of their predecessors? >> america is very interesting. people have been married multiple times i would say they wind up with the same status airflow coming presidential selection it's always the opposite. we always want the opposite of what we had before. so i like to tell students afterwards he welcomed. great cerebral men certainly made a lot of noise, broke a lot of dishes to implement the league of nations. we have four constitutional amendments for the federal reserve. a good many senators -- didn't

conduct, which were still talking about and one that he had mixed feelings about, prohibition. but other progressives that what herbert hoover called an experiment divided on that one. constitutional amendment of the federal reserve abolishing child labor, regulating the child's, they had enough of this slogan goes back to normalcy. not the most intellectual of our president, not the most visionary of our president. after eight years of serenity and prudence, bordering on board on, america wanted camelot. so i suggest i do not really know what they choose. of course, we all know about the kennedys and the arts in hollywood in camelot and the fact that god jackie after great

broadway pizzazz. after george w. bush and bill clinton, we have george bush. we have the war protester and all that brings to mind with what he did not inhale and the scrapbook. i mean, dare i say we had 10 civil war presidents, maybe eight world war ii presidents in our generation got the two bookends and that's it. he claims to be a baby boomer. he's really at the tail end. >> host: alvin felzenberg, in your rating system for warren g harding county reaching a 26, but he gets rating number 26. he gets a twofer carried her. he gets a four for preserving

and extending. >> guest: first of all, harding has always rated next-to-last. i have to say that i was grant. i want to talk about grant as well. when you get the early paul arthur sessions are sent out an msa watergate has been very good but i went back and looked at mr. hardin's record on race. they are extraordinary record. he was very much in favor and put in the state of the union message is. he got it through the house and he could not get a filibuster. he then went down to alabama and gave me a startling address, where you have african-americans can it change away once night

and then you have all the come out you know, dazzling gentlemen and ladies coming out to your to the president. and he gives a startling address about race relations. he said they will not carry this world is on his bad press will happen. all men are equal in a shouldn't have to tell you this 50 years after the civil war, this kind of speech. i read "the new york times" account of that. you have the stonefaced southerners sitting on their hands in the african-american around. i should point out the anti-lynching mob, what it would have done basically they've lynching a federal crime and southern juries were convicted in the ear would have different days and all of that. it never passed in his time.

it didn't pass in later times, but a very enlightened gentleman did very, very well in the african-american community. that was the party of lincoln and many national republican candidates. now, mr. coolidge was also a very progressed the phrase. most analysts give him low grades. i look back a coolidge. he cuts taxes four times. before we have the crash, with iraq because of the cuts, money founded light into new industries, aviation, automobiles, radio, other forms of communication. he had a mobile became very commonplace at the time when henry ford decided and the average working man could afford a car at this point. it was becoming middle class.

radio. radio becomes a universal figure, a universal item at the end of the coolidge. the great secretary of commerce in those days, herbert hoover and it was his job to higher the first air traffic controllers outside the airport and come up with better policies. well, you have to you have to have a stipulating economy to do that. i look back and up ronald reagan was out of this. when he moved into the white house company ordered some favorite predecessors portrait for the cabinet room. the man was already losing its mind is recovering from one of his many surgeries.

he's got an army blanket on his lap. and where they need to be, he has his book open space sound with his glasses on and he says how long have you boys been here? not long, mr. president. we didn't want to disturb your nap. i was just leaving this vote uncounted coolidge. he cuts tax rates four times. how many times have i? they said one, sir. well, get busy. reagan went to school in the 20s. reagan was the president. they were teaching laissez-faire economics. they were really teaching deals school economics sociology major. something stuck. some instead. >> and you rank calvin coolidge number 12, right after jfk. jfk you have tied for seventh

place and he gets straight fours across the board in the six categories, except for kerry there. >> well, character is a mixed story. on the upside, he was never a whiner. he never worried about the isolation of the presidency, which we heard from our current leader a few days ago instead of being an author and not getting the speaker to return his calls. every day with a new beginning, very much like reagan. they were both very proud of their irish roots. and the fact that kennedy took responsibility for his mistakes and that the problem is mine of the united states. cannot have any questions.

the whole conference will be taken to the woodshed. on the downside, of course, a lot has come out since the kennedy here is, unless they are sure we would recommend for his successors. i'm not even talking about her personal life. i'm talking about putting oneself that one knows risk, the kind of people be shuffled into the white house, questions about foreign government, questions about girlfriends who had ties to the underworld. you wonder about that happening again. period on the upside coming was not a whiner. i point out like mr. coolidge he was a tax cutter. kennedy was at a time where the keynesians now had a different form of economics.

ironically as economic professor at harvard was mixing. professor nixon used to talk and there was a split in the keynesian view. what do you do to get the economy moving again? nothing like that. on the question was, do you put it in public investment or, you know, the affluent society of the private glory, or do you cut tax rates temporarily come into her a short deficit and grow? this again is is what side of aeronautics industry and many other things that gave us the moral of the 60s. we baby boomers grow at very pressed. we all want our own room, we all

its college, we all wanted to travel through europe. a lot of that was financed because her parents were able to do this basically because of kennedy tax cuts and if the economy growing at about 5%. i asked when they asked paul ryan when they come up with this roadmap is the 5% or 6% growth of the economy feasible? and even he did think so. at the door to the kennedy library. it happened. it happened in our time. >> host: alvin felzenberg communist president kennedy tied with truman, zachary taylor? >> guest: yes, old rough and ready, by the way, he was the commanding officer of a fellow named u.s. grant. he was a lot like harry truman. they belong in the same

category. he knew where zachary taylor stood. had zachary taylor not died 18 months into his presidency, and that's of course one of the first conspiracy theories that he died of natural causes. he insisted california come into the union as a free state. and here's a southern slaveowner, sugar plantation. spent his entire life of the u.s. army. the only nationalists in addition we had on the edge of the civil war. and he's not going to let these people destroy his union. so we talk about richard nixon, only nixon would go to china because a democrat had been to china. the conservative republicans would have attacked him. who could oppose them? well, if you have a southern plantation, the war hero, the

man who is chief of staff during the mexican war, double the size of the united states and then of course with his death becomes the starting gun but will the new state come into three and he said no, would california be a free state? he told his son on -- son-in-law. he tells jefferson davis he will hang from the highest tree if he keeps talking he was the eisenhower of this time. you might have pulled it off. mr. fillmore ranks very low. i forgot where he put in, but it's pretty low. postcode 33. >> guest: well, selmer was

told by his wife, and you signed fugitive slave. you'll not only end your career, but you'll destroy the union. that is a compromise in the south got the fugitive slave life which meant very much like the anne frank story, that if you harbor displays in your home, you're committing a federal offense. if you know a neighbor who is doing it and don't report the neighbor, you are guilty of the underground railroad. and "uncle tom's cabin." we talked about our greatest president, abraham lincoln. when he meets harriet beecher stowe, lincoln was 66, something like that, at least 64. and harriet beecher stowe was nearly five feet tall. lincoln looked down at her and said you're the little lady who started the paperwork. in any way that's true, but this

is the all because of the slave law and the colorization grows. zachary taylor might have pulled it off, had more union states come in. they might've been able to abolish slavery constitutionally with the constitutional amendment. more states, my legislature. history might have been a lot different. postcode truman, kennedy, taylor all ranked above coolidge. one other gentleman, the that jenna meant here the pin on the front of your book. >> guest: that was the publisher's idea. postcode u.s. grant. why? >> guest: that's talk about him, too. as a gentleman who had a larger funeral. the american people ignored him. two elections after the civil

war, his first slogan was let us have peace. on the other hand, let us have peace, but because of the war, everybody i.q. slavery. no question. they wanted to extend the system. the north knew it was slavery. even the young mr. lincoln knew that slave labor in illinois which i found the price of weight free labor. you name it, whether it's economic class, moral cause is the same. grant had the idea that this could be a war of attrition. he coined the phrase total war. take it to the population. we're going to destroy the enemy's capacity. so when lincoln got the idea that he could use his extraordinary power to destroy the enemies, for your slaves. some people say the proclamation

freed no one appeared frederick douglass told people, run away now. went to the union lines. run to the blue uniform. we can now could fight this war of attrition. no kind of manpower available as for marching to the south. by putting these men in uniform. all of that night. but that was a very interesting. so he becomes president and he has this basically impossible situation. let us have peace, the famous coming together at the nymex, where they decide not to shoot the enemy off of the car. and they decide not to hang liam davis and they decide to have a benign reconstruction.

and of course curt johnson and between. there is a southerner pro union, but very, very sensitive can have very awful attitudes. it's one of the reasons he was impeached because he was trying to delay the passage of the amendment. lincoln got the 13th term. that was the abolition of slavery. but the other two were not clear. he said he's not going to be president. this allows african-americans to register to vote. and of course, everybody said when eisenhower passes and you take 80 from 57 near the grant administration. u.s. grant was the last president until eisenhower to send troops to the south to enforce, another counting as he

was really a good man who is physically carried out lincoln's work. he said that many times that he was the commander-in-chief. you brought them in uniform and he was not going to have them impress at the former masters again and they're going to have a right to vote. aye from him directly doneness from letters to people that he could not let this happen. we all know that because very, very slowly we have an economic depression in the 1870s. all the southern states are now back, many voted democrats. in 1874 by elections, we just did that. we've been through the democrats in the house last fall.

in 2006, both houses. so we have the same elections. 1874, the northern states also a democratic legislature. democratic congress and you can't send troops to south anymore. of course they're not going to give up so easily. at the time hayes runs against tilden, you have the fraudulent election because at this point, in all but three states, it was one of the great things that happen. it happened because the congress. they've impeached one president. and he tries to get a third term. imagine not. those of us who grew up hearing about scandal, hearing about his drinking, which he was doing you a new trick in the white house. take their word for it. then the other day, we never hear about the glory of greens.

in an offense, this time he was. grant at his memorial before lincoln and grant's tomb became more. the great other parks was buried in grant's tune. the answer was generally miss it. well, that was the most visited state in america. grant's tomb was an icon before the statue of liberty. i urge you are here. please pay attention. postcode abraham lincoln according to alvin felzenberg gets five all the way across all six categories. george washington comes in second. teddy roosevelt comes in third place at 4.5. a couple of new biographies,

recently. you have been down at 20 right below george w. bush. he gets a one character and a five incompetence. >> james polk are themselves decided he was going to grab two thirds in mexico, all by himself. and it wasn't clear if they wanted that, or slave states. he did it -- let's say he was called open mendacious by his opponents for pretty good reasons. but he did achieve his goal, so he got the confidence. postcode george w. bush you have in this book. this book came out obviously just very recently, that you have him trained, tied with jimmy carter. george w. bush, three and carried her. why? >> guest: well, now maybe his

papers come out in bbs beginning to his bio, we will see a little more. the family saga, i won't call it tallis, but who's going to carry the father's mantle? by doesn't he want to be president? this is all very unclear. i take him at his word that he became a new person after his authority in the crisis at this time. they also taken at his word that he left lost out on a lot, when he was going and going other places. and his reason for seeking the president be, we need to know more about.

now i say he gets a couple of incompletes. we still don't know how afghanistan is going to turn out. we still know how iraq is going to turn out. i do give him credit for his stay at the american enterprise association. maggie thatcher was ray. this was a nation formed an idea that all people are created equal in the eyes of each other. how dare he accept the notion that everyone was a speech. no one ever said that before. now, it doesn't mean you do it with a tank. it doesn't mean, you know, will give them freedom whether they wanted or not. you can argue that. but this american dream on this american world does that mean

white people, anglo-saxon people, christians, jewish or given credit. and the character question, i didn't find. i didn't get a sense of great intellectual curiosity, which i got when i look at kennedy, when you look at rick and. i'm sure he reads its closest literacy. i don't get a sense that this president would get up in the middle of the night and start asking questions and reading the telegrams themselves. and must be something we can do to go out. or he has his own spice to see mcclellan, like why isn't this army moving? i think bush -- i inclined to say he had this all suppression

of reagan because reagan was a great delegator commit that he didn't check up on anything. reagan checked up on people. how's it going, charlie? good to hear that. i got a sense that bush got its eyes and got the best people around. let's go ahead and do it. and before he found petraeus and the search, there is a story about a kernel coming in who it actually seen the president and decides to tell cheney white wings were working out the way he had that. he says well, you're still the story of the president and apparently bush says, well i'm wasting my time talking to the kernel. so i mean, where's kennedy's famous story about the tax cuts, he couldn't find anyone in the treasury department, so he

called the department at 8:00, 9:00 come in time for the white house dinner. and you get some lowly clerks. he has as jack kennedy asking about the budget because i didn't believe them. so the next day of course i got off the building and midnight, we're waiting for a phone call. i didn't hear any stories about bush doing that. >> host: one and competence for george w. >> guest: well, for the best of motives, no one could say that iraq was going well when he left office. we had seven years with not so wonderful economic growth. and then we have the crash again. you have to say that they were in office for some time.

you have a society where we are going to entice. they probably should know their home, but he gave many, many speeches that this is an ownership society. if you look, instead of giving banks to lend to people who couldn't afford to pay them back, we hear about, you know, i think i paid 10%, 12%, maybe 20% down from a home. i can remember back that far, but the idea of 5%, 2%, no%, nothing down? no sense of responsibility. it started in the clinton era, a fellow named andrew cuomo. when bush came around us but on steroids. postcode from your book, the leaders we deserve -- "the leaders we deserved (and a few

we didn't)" tied with george w. bush, jimmy carter, rutherford e. hayes' james madison. he gets a one and competence, a1 and economic policy and a1 and defense. >> guest: i would urge people in the current administration to read medicine. he was an intellectual. somebody said he carried around his own library. he read the stuff so well. we got onto mc hillier, where the book is that he couldn't get all the books, three line them up vertically to get more in. he was an ideologue. he was jeffersons -- kept jefferson loyal to jeffersons own ideology. where, as jefferson would say, you read the constitution. you tell me we are strict constructionist. we can only do what the constitution tells us. it doesn't say we can buy

territory. madison said you have to get a constitutional amendment to make it okay. we don't have time for a constitutional amendment. he's giving me the money because the british are knocking the out of them and either way, if he wins or loses, he's not going to want it anymore. so this is okay, jefferson says to madison, now you have madison who believed the ideologue, dominant branch. congress wants this war. i want a war with the largest superpower by the era of great britain. and there's no money to fight the war, so he doesn't like national banks, so he let the charter that they expire. so he won't veto the war. congress mentioned the

resolution. i have to do what they say. they want a war, but i don't want the big. i will carry out their wish, fight the war. i don't have any money to implement a war. in the british burden on the white house in the capital and the hero of that administration has enough sense to get the declaration of independence out of their endocrine portrait of george washington that once i'm out of there. and not a happy story. smart man, honest man, integrity. i will say he did a great deal to heal the country after the war. he's a very, very popular figure. he and his wife over 9/11, went on for weeks. after 9/11, when james and ollie would go around and see various neighborhoodscountermanded me a lot about the king and the queen during the battle of written. when they saw them, and the crowds burst out into the fog.

so madison certainly have the heart of his countrymen. it's wasn't ideologue and he was a cop due to his own theory about higher the world should work any of great authority of that, having written, were jefferson being devious, being sneaky, found a way to make it look like he was being capable -- remember george leconte's attacking reagan for going gaga. even reagan could talk and say cool it. nixon, go to china. i contacted gorbachev. have madison couldn't. >> host: alvin felzenberg, what is your job to g w.? >> guest: well, i teach several courses. one is presidential rhetoric at its a very important part of the presidency, to persuade people,

it to change minds, to speak for 300 million people and be respected. some of them roast to great heights and others did not. we think of lincoln and the majesty of lincoln. it should be given in english courses as well. then, i teach a course on president's foreign policy. i'll tell you one story about that. i start by saying, okay, what happened the night and 45? they knew it was at the end of world war ii. 1965 as the antislavery. so what happened in 1763? not in. nothing, no reaction. 1763, and of the world where, the british get the french out of north america, master of.

two years later, stanback crisis although said. it was supposed to be eternal peace. were still waiting for a piece and for problems to be behind us. and yeah, not so easy. each of those men in their own way try to do with these situations. >> host: how long have you been teaching? >> guest: on and off for, good lord, about 30 years. i was in and out of government. my last government job was spokesman for the 9/11 commission. i worked in george herbert walker bush administration. i worked briefly in the second president bush's administration. i worked on the house side of the hill for five years. and i was assistant secretary of state of new jersey and i studied under tom kane.

so in between those stretches, i have been teaching and i find it exceptionally rewarding. and by the students here, exceptionally motivated and wanted to learn. >> host: how many books have you written? >> guest: let's see, three. i wrote another one with two colleagues, but three. >> host: what was your experience like on the 9/11 commission? we taking part in an activity? >> guest: thing in going to some of the events. there is still some time finished recommendations that the administration made here this may be a time to look at how well that's going. i should say the greatest -- the one that has not been good, congress needs to be more of a player at how they handled their own intelligence committees. there's two i have a turnover and low specialization.

it was a problem at the hill, by the way, our congress that instead of somebody to want to go on there, your head of the activity committee, you're doing something for farmers, food in the world, some in the local people know. but if you are protecting us all, the free rider problem, everybody benefits, but not one state over another. people sort of see the intelligence committee is jury duty, something they do to get out of something else. so we have to go into an extraordinary time. at the height of all of these partisan battles in washington, with bush and the democratic congress and all of those decisions, we had 10 commissioners, five republicans, five democrats and they wrote -- they came up with the report that anonymous consent.

without explaining to me differences, they got the attention of both congresses. they got the attention of the president in his component. unheard of. everybody thought we were going to fail. talking about another commission of congressmen and senators. again, an even number. how are they going to get together? well, they had a leadership of tom kean and lee hamilton post or not the moderates within their own party. those in the country ahead of any other motive. then they set the tone and they chimed in and said first, with look at the facts. a republican or democrat of the streets of new york. so what are the facts? and then we'll fight the politics. when we learned what the facts

were, we knew it became evident. there was the dots not connected? but messages from this? and then it kind of force to recommendations from that. and it was an extraordinary experience. most commissions failed. or they don't fail, they are worried. people thank them for their report. hundreds of commissions. only a couple we remember. i pray for the country but the one they are doing on the hill will be another one. >> host: we've been talking the george washington university professor, alvin felzenberg on his most recent vote, "the leaders we deserved (and a few we didn't)" it is published by basic books.