to a few more ideas. now joining us is al felzenberg, we are on site here and here is his book the leaders we deserve and if you we didn't about the american presidents. al felzenberg, how we typically wait presidents? >> not well. every president's day or july july 4th we are told by the newspapers that yet another has been undone and here are the great presidents in the category great, near great, average, below average's failure, and

then all the familiar faces come up, the one who built monuments to in this city and others and what distinguishes the great from the ordinary and it's just overjoyed yesterday to see somebody putting the bill in congress giving george washington back his birthday. somebody decided in the 70's every holiday was changed except veterans day and july 4th which you can't change to fly fourth to weekend and all presidents are the same and the result is that had a very hard time distinguishing them to the extent the study any history at all. so i thought i would try my own and i would actually tell the viewer what i think made for a great president and invite the viewer to disagree with me. i don't care how people come out

but i would like them to defend their opinions with facts and stories so i came up with six categories and they all get the grades in various courses sigell para three our personal components, presidential character we hear a lot of that character during the impeachment of a lifetime. okay. and what i call visiones and whether they want the job in retrospect was it the right vision for the country the time or the wrong vision, and i don't want to pick on mr. carter but i would say having a sense of vision on the environmental front where we look back on that

but not the confidence to implement it so presidents pushed a around in the changed a bit and then i play out these components over a couple of policy areas that no president can avoid. one is economic leadership, one is national defence, call it what you want, foreign policy, national defense, national security, they all have to deal with the rest of the world in some way. and then the hard one is how well the extend of liberty. the founding ideal of the nation sometimes the mind of the forerunners. well, when she stepped down as the british prime minister she said ours is the first nation deliberately formed in an idea, not on land or bloodline or heredity, with the idea of

freedom and liberty and whether it shrunk under the presidential terms or expanded are not home and abroad. >> what is the value? >> i think it is a story of leadership. only 44 men in the 230 something years became president of the united states. that's a very small club. to get in at most of them fought very hard to get there all but george washington. at some point they had asked for the job, and to have gotten there they have to have had something going for them and their time. they didn't all succeed in this can be used hopefully people who study business which makes for inexpensive and creative ceo of a company that time the nation is going through the transition.

what makes for a good leader, what makes for a good professor of coming university president, here are some of the best known americans in the world, and they are not equal. all presidents are equal. we shouldn't submit the office of presidency. as early as 1777, the women started naming their children after george washington. without 24/7 news, without the internet, without television there was something in the man's character or sacrifice that ordinary americans we used to call ordinary americans that don't spend most of their days worrying have got the point and named their child george washington jones and i don't want to offend any listeners there weren't that many franklin

pearson's running around or warren harding unless they are direct descendants, so i thought that mattered a great deal. >> to american presidents benefit or suffer because of their predecessors? >> well, americans are very interesting. people had been married multiple times welcome in the presidential selection is always the opposite. we always on the opposite of what we had before so i tell students afterwards agreed cerebrum man certainly made a lot of noise, broke a lot of dishes, got us through a great world war, failed to implement the league of nations, the country was exhausted and the constitutional amendments passed in putting the federal reserve. a good number of senators, the income tax talked about, and the

mixed feelings against the provisions, but herbert hoover called it the four constitutions of the world were the federal reserve abolishing child labor regulating the trust had enough so the slogan was back to normalcy, not the most intellectual but the most visionary. after eight years bordering on boredom so from like to jack, a sterling inaugural just hanging around hollywood but not the great actors of his time and of course we all know about the kennedy and hollywood and after the great broadway and julie

andrews and all this. after bill clinton we have george bush but i tell my students these are the toucans of the 1950's. we have the war per tester and all that brings to mind what he did not do and we did what, ten civil war presidents mediate world war two presidents and our generation got to. obama claims to be a baby boomer >> al felzenberg in your rating system for foreign g. harding you rate him number 26 and some of them are tied so the ratings are not exactly 1326 but he gets number 26 he gets a number 24 character and number four for preserving and extending.

>> yes. >> let me tell you the scam. it was always rated next-to-last and so was granted as well. when you get the early sent out to historians and watergate has been good for them because nixon comes along and i went back and i looked at his efforts, the extraordinary record she was very much in favor and he got it through the house but he couldn't get it passed without a filibuster. he then went down to alabama and gave a startling evidence to the audience where you have african american listeners and then of

the dazzling gentlemen and ladies coming out and he gives a startling address and says the south is never going to catch up with a rest of the world, the factories don't want to come in, and i shouldn't have to tell you this speech. i read "the new york times" account of them and you have the stonefaced southerners sitting on their hands and going wild down there. i should point out the antilynching wall what it would have done is made lynching a federal crime and to the ayittey we tried them in federal court it never passed, very enlightened the gentleman did

very well in the community but i would say that is the party of lincoln and many national republican candidates. the same thing with mr. coolidge. mr. coolidge was also very progressive. most analysts i look back on coolidge and many think he was the ronald reagan of the twenties. he cut taxes four times and before we had the crash if we had of the roaring 20's and because of this when the money found its way into the new industries, aviation, automobiles, radios other forms of communication, the automobile became very commonplace this is the time when henry ford decided as long as it's black we can mass produce and the average working man can afford the cost at this point good job, not a millionaire but there was a coming the fact.

radio becomes the universal item by the end of the coolidge period and the great secretary of commerce herbert hoover it was his job to hire the first air traffic controllers beside their part to come up with federal policies. i look back and ronald reagan was on to this when they moved into the white house he said the same thing of the predecessors for the cabinet room and the "washington post" opined that the old man was already losing his mind and reagan was at walter reed recovering from the many surgery's and he is dozing

and as an army blanket he has this book open face down and how long are you year, not very long, mr. president. the cut the marginal tax rates four times, how many and they said once. he of course went to school in the 20's and he was the president and this was pre-k and they were teaching the laws of economics and the old school economics in the old economic sociology major something stock. >> you bring calvin coolidge number 12 as right after jfk. jfk you have tied for seventh place and he gets straight force

across the board of the six categories except the character of three. two things about kennedy he was never a winner. you never heard stories about the isolation of the presidency which we've heard from the current leader you never heard the warning from kennedy and it was like reagan and the fact that kennedy took responsibility for his mistakes he said before the cameras the president of the commanding authority of the government and i don't want any questions. the first time that -- the whole

congress would be taken to the woodshed. the down is unless they are sure we would recommend for the successors i'm not even talking about the personal life and talking about perhaps putting oneself at risk and questions about the foreign government and about girlfriends who have ties to the underworld you wonder about that happening again on the upside he was not a weiner and i point out he also cut taxes and was at a time when the keynesian snell in his economic professor at harvard was telling

nixon professor nixon used to talk about him and there was a split in the keynesian view what do you do to get the economy moving again in a small recession? nothing like that, and the question was do you put it in public investment or the society has the argument of the public or to cut marginal tax rates temporarily and endorse the deficit and grow and it was the keynesian path and this again is the aeronautics industry, defense and many other things. baby boomers grew up in very prosperous times. we have our own car, went to

college, okay, and financed because our parents were able to do this and he had the economy growing at 5% and i'm telling him they ask paul ryan when he came up with five or six or even 7% growth of the economy feasible. and he didn't think so. go up to the kennedy library and ask. islamic al felzenberg, you have president kennedy tied with truman, president mckinley, zachary taylor? >> yes, yes. here is my theory about saturday. i wasn't a plan ready by the way he was a commander officer by the name u.s.s. grant and like harry truman in the same category.

had zachary taylor not died 18 months into his presidency she died of natural causes we know two things about him, he insisted california commended the union as a free state, and here is a southern slave owner, sugar plantation in louisiana, spent his entire life in the army, the only national institution that we had on the edge of the civil war and he's not going to let these people to decide his union. because of a democrat the conservative republican would have attacked temps. if nixon goes to china who could oppose it? well, if you have a southern plantation owner who is the war hero which is the man that is the chief of staff during the mexican war double the size of

the united states, and then of course his death becomes the starting gun of will the new states come in and there was a puzzle on the board to divide california, keep the ballot in the united states senate and he told his son-in-law of the time jefferson davis, we will hear from again. had he lived and take in that case to the country he was the eisenhower of his time and won the most significant war at that time and he might have pulled off. that's pretty low out of the 44. she was told by his wife you find the fugitive slave law and

of the union that was a compromise and the fugitive slave law very like the and frank's review harbored a slave in your home you could end up with a federal offense. if you know a neighbor that is doing it and don't report the neighbor, you are guilty as he of the underground railroad and which dhaka our greatest president, abraham lincoln that he needs harriet beecher stowe and he was at least 6-foot four, harriet beecher stowe was barely 5 feet tall. lincoln looked down at her you are a little lady that started a big block and in a way that is

true. zachary taylor might have pulled off had more union states come in the light abolish with more states, more legislature, and history might have been a lot different. >> along with kennedy, mckinley, truly, tayler, all ranked above coolidge. one other gentleman is here, u.s. grant. why? >> well, let's talk about him, larger than abraham lincoln had. a historian's didn't like him. to elections after the civil war

he went against them, on the other hand, let us have peace but the cause of the war of slavery where everybody argues against slavery no questions the southerners said it was slavery dillinger extent, the north knew it was slavery even the young of mr. lincoln knew the slave labor and ellinwood to drive down the price you name it whether it was an economic calls or morrill it was about slavery. grant had the idea that this could be a war patrician and the total war que ticket to the population and we're going to describe the enemy capacity. so lincoln got the idea to use his extraordinary powers as commander in chief to destroy the enemy's capacity to make the war to free your sleeves. okay, some people say the

proclamation freed no one. they knew frederick douglass had is sent along during the south telling people what to do now? run to the union lines, and he got the idea why don't we put them in the army? we magnified the war of attrition. no end of manpower available as we are marching through the south we put on the uniform which listeners may have seen no movie glory and all that meant. it was a very interesting period so he becomes president and she has this basically impossible situation the famous coming together of mathematics for the decide not to shoot and they decide he will have a very benign discussion which we have johnston in between.

there was a southerner pro union but a very, very racist and it had very awful attitudes about african-americans and this is why he was impeached for the 40 of them to 50 the amendment. lincoln got to 13. the was the abolition of slavery and that is sound in the constitution but the others are not clear. grant says it's not going to be president, which allows african-americans to get the vote, and course everybody said in 57 when eisenhower passes the first civil rights bill in 80 years you to 80 from 57 and grant was the last that sent troops to the south and if you're looking at extending

freedom, a mother is the general, basically carried out lincoln's work but he believed the cause he did not sell out the troops. he said that she was the commander-in-chief and the took off the uniform and she would have the right to vote, and i quote him indirectly in some letters to people that he did not let this happen. and we all know well because very, very slowly we have a economic depression in the 1870's, the end of party it's all the southern states are back and win the democrats lose congress which is significant in the hands 74 by election. we didn't think to do that. the democrats were losing the house in the fall and we have the swing elections.

1874 the union in a northern states also sent. democratic congress begins to cut off and you can't send troops to the south anymore without your consent, and by the time that he gets tallman, utah that fraudulent election because by this point in all but three states african-americans have been posed this is a franchise. one of the great things of the presidency is actually [inaudible] and he tries to get a third terminal. imagine that. u.s. grant those of most of those that grew up in about scandal hearing about the drinking which he wasn't the only one and we never hear about the glory of grant and he was.

grant got his memorial before lincoln and grant's tomb, the great marks and well, grant's tomb was an icon before the lincoln memorial even end and i urge the readers to grand story i was shocked. >> abraham lincoln according to al felzenberg gets a five all the way across all six categories. george washington comes in second overall rating of 4.67. teddy roosevelt comes in fourth place tie with ronald reagan at 4.5 reva james capel, a couple of new biographies interestingly to have him down at 20.

he gets a one in character and a five incompetence. >> guest: right. by himself he decided he was going to grab and wasn't clear the southern states wanted that and let's say he was called mendacious, by his but pretty good reason so he gets the confidence and is one of the characters. >> george w. bush, you have in this book -- this book came out obviously just very recently, but you have him tied with jimmy carter. george w. bush. why?

>> , maybe as papers come out and we get to his files we will see elmore. the family sagas whose grin to carry the father's metal with 30 wanted to be president, what goals he would achieve is all very unclear. i take him at his word that he became the new person after by to get the word that he lost out on a lot and was sent paying attention when he was going other places and this reason for seeking the presidency we need to know more about. there's a lot of things we don't

know, still don't know, we still don't know how iraq is going to turn out. i do give him credit for saying at the american enterprise association that margaret thatcher was right, this is a nation formed in an idea that people are created equal in the eyes of law and of each other and how dare we accept the notion everyone but arabs or muslims? that was the speech, okay. no one ever said that before it doesn't mean you do it with a tad we are going to give them freedom whether they want it or not you could argue it. okay. but that needed to be said that this american dream into this american like of the world

doesn't. i give them credit for that. on the character question back to that -- i may be wrong here, but i didn't get a sense of great intellectual curiosity which i got when i looked at ronald reagan, but i don't get a sense that the president would get in the middle of the night and start asking questions like lincoln did and read the telegrams themselves from the field it must be something we can do and he gets the sentinel to talk to this fellow grant and he has his spies why isn't this army moving? i think that he was more inclined to say he had this perhaps false impression because he was a real go getter that he

didn't check up on people. ronald reagan checked up with people. how is it going, charlie? good. i got a sense that bush got advice and got the best people around, let's go ahead and do it. but before he found petraeus there is the story about the colonel coming in who had seen the vice president and was trying to tell when things were not working out the way they thought it was an insurrection, this is and looting and its organized and you have to tell the story of the president's and apparently he says to his aid so whereas kevin has the famous story about the tax cuts he couldn't find anyone on the treasury department said he called the department at night, eight or 9:00 and he gets the

lonely clerk and then jack kennedy to ask about the budget believe him so the next day of course they got off to the building waiting for a phone call i didn't hear any stories about bush doing that. i heard stories about others. >> one incompetence for george w. bush. >> for the best of motive, no one can say that iraq was going well when he left office. we had seven years of not so wonderful economic growth. then we had the crash at the end and you know, you have to say he was in office for some time, and

then this whole ownership society where we're going to entice the government to loan money to people who can't afford it and probably shouldn't own their home but he gave many speeches this is his ownership society and if you looking they were lending to people who couldn't afford to pay them back and we are hearing about ips i think ten to 12% down, maybe 20% down with my home, i can't remember back that far, but the idea of the 5% or 2%, nothing down? no response of the and this was the government policy this started in the clinton era the saloon and andrew craughwell but when this came about. spec finally al felzenberg, one more president want to ask about from the leaders we deserve in the future it didn't, tied with george bush, jimmy carter, rutherford b. hayes is james

madison? one incompetence, one economic policy and a lot in defense. >> i would urge people in the current administration to read about this. he was an intellectual. somebody said he carried around his own home library. go down and show you for the bookcases are so they live in them up to get more. he was jefferson's -- kept jefferson and jefferson would say you are at the constitution, you tell me what strict discussion they don't say beaten by territory to make it okay we

don't have time but he's selling the money because the british and either way if he wins or he loses. so he says all right, jefferson system madison and later on madison who believes legislation sets on the supreme branch. the concourse left this war of great britain, and so she doesn't like national bank's or the word bank either and so he left the charter and the bank and shimon to veto the war. officious to do with what they say i want war but i don't want

a bank so i will carry out their pressure and fight the war and everybody giving money to implement the war. bottomline the white house, in the capitol. and the hero was nicer than i thought to get the declaration of independence out of there and the creation of george washington and another happy story. i will say we did a great job to heal the country after the war. he and his wife smoldering it went on for weeks and james and dolley would go around to see various neighborhoods about the king and queen and the battle of britain when they sold in the crowd burst out applause. so he certainly had the heart of the country but there was a

wooden bench and he was a captive to his own a theory of how the world should work, and he had a great authority on having written with jefferson being devious and sneaky and politician found a way to make it look like he was being loyal and even ronald reagan was capable of george collins attacking him. but even ronald reagan could talk to them and say trust me i can talk to barbara shaw. >> al felzenberg, what is your job here at gw? >> i teach several courses, and one is presidential rhetoric enslaved people to change mind to speak for god, 300 million

people as one voice to be respected. some of them rose to great height and others did not and we think of lincoln and the majesty of lincoln should be given in english as well. in the course on the president's politics. i start by saying a key what happened in 1945. will they knew that was the beginning of the atomic era. 1955 what happened in 1989 fallujah oh-la-la. so what happened in 63, nothing. no reaction. the end of the world war, the british get the french and america. what happens? adel blows up and that is the

class we are still rooting for the problems to be behind us and each of those tried to deal with those issues. >> how long have you been teaching? >> about 30 years. i was in and out of government. i worked in the administration i worked briefly in the second president bush's the administration. i worked on the house side of the hill for five years, and this was just from new jersey under tom kean, so to in this stretches it is exceptionally

boring and if you have -- >> how many books have you written? >> let's see. three. another one, too but i couldn't find the covers. >> what was your experience on the 9/11 commission and have you taken part in the activity? >> i'm going to some of these events, there's still on the of recommendations the commission met. this might be a time to look at how well that's going. i should say the greatest work the one that hasn't been enacted congress needs to be more of a player in its own oversight. there's high turnout for the specialization. the founder of the hill but we or congress in the sense that there's no incentive for someone

to want to go in there. if you're the head of our committee, you are doing something for a farmer, food, then people know that if you are protecting us all, the free ride problem, everyone benefits but not once a over another so people sort of see the intelligence committee has jury duty but we want to do it again. so i mean we have to go into a few. it was an extraordinary time at the height of all of these battles in washington with bush and the democratic congress we had ten commissioners, five republicans, five democrats, and they wrote a report that got unanimous consent all along the way without splitting too many differences, and they got the

attention of the caucasus and of the president and his opponent. unheard of. everybody thought we were in a deadlock and we are talking about another commission, again, an even number. how is it going to get together? they're seeing that and they have a leadership post tom kean and lee hamilton both moderates within their own party but in the country first ahead of any other motive, and the others chimed in and started saying let's look at the facts. as la guardia used to say in the streets of new york. >> so what are the facts, we are going to talk about the -- became evident with the recommendations might well be

for what messages were missed what agencies can't talk to what agencies and then to force the recommendations left and most of them fail but people think them for their report. hundreds of commissioners only a couple remember. i pray for the country that when or what we are doing on the hill. >> we've been talking with church washington university professor al felzenberg. his most recent book, "the leaders we deserve and if you didn't, quote published by basic books. up next an interview from