then he goes on to describe heavy contact judiciary for the murder scene. again, the report goes on. we conclude with a hand-drawn sketch of the crime scene. this is a fairly unique in that you have an actual red sketch from a well-known herder, a company's file. >> his nickname "the butterfly man" came from the fact that although he was not from here, he appeared to have no fixed income or employment. he would make small paper butterflies. this is a representation of one of them have a saw them on street corners for small fees. ..

break into the courthouse, storm the first two floors, but while fred lockhart is escaped from the lynch mob he didn't escapes from justice. on may 18th, 1934 he was hanged, and he is buried in a grave in greenwood cemetery here in shreveport.

and not presidential historian steven hayward prisons whose rankings of america's presidents based on their efforts to preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the united states. this is just under an hour. >> good afternoon and welcome to the heritage foundation to our douglas and sarah allyson auditorium. we of course welcome those that joined on the heritage website on all of these occasions and would ask everyone here in the house if you will be so kind to make that last courtesy check that your cell phones have been turned off as we recorded the program. we will post the program within 24 hours on the website for everyone's future reference as well. and as you noticed, we do have copies of the politically incorrect diet to the president's, part of them at least, available in the lobby if he would like to purchase them. of course this is part of a longstanding series the

publishers have done on various aspects of issues and interest to all of us so we do encourage you to consider the book. hosting our discussion and introducing the discussion will be edwin meese, mr. meese serves in the ralf reagan policy and is the chairman of what is now the edwin meese center for legal and judicial studies here at the heritage foundation. please join me in welcoming the 75th attorney general of the united states. [applause] >> thank you, john and the ladies and gentlemen it is a pleasure for me to be here today particularly to introduce today's special guest and our speaker. steve hayward i consider one of the greatest writers in the conservative movement. he has done some outstanding work. he is the senior fellow at the american enterprise institute. as you know, one of our companion institutions in washington, d.c. with whom we do a lot of work including recently

cosponsoring one of the presidential debates. he contributes to a e.r.a.'s energy and environmental outlook series and is the author of a book entitled the almanac of an ira will trends, and he also and i think one of his greatest works has been in to biographies, two phases of ronald reagan's political career as the governor of california, and ronald reagan as president of the united states. he's also done biographies of jimmy carter and winston churchill. he has a distinguished background. he's acted in a number of organizations including the pacific research institute and the ashbrock center at ashlawn university. he's had a great deal of experience as a bradley fellow, henry saw the tory fellow here at the heritage foundation, and also has done a number of things including being a member of the california citizens compensation commission and in various other

academic pursuits. but today for our purposes, he has done a particularly important thing and that is looked at the modern presidency, that is from woodrow wilson through the presidency of barack obama. and one of the things he has done is look at it from a different angle than most people writing about presidents. he has looked at it from the standpoint of how have president's done particularly in the modern era in regard to what the constitution and the founders had in mind for the presidency of the united states, and this distinguishes him from a number of the people who've done biographies of presidents or who have looked at presidency and evaluated them as he has in this particular book. it's not only an excellent book from the standpoint of it's scholarship, but it's a very entertaining book, and i urge any of you that haven't purchased before, you have that opportunity as john pointed out

at the conclusion of the session here. so please come join me in welcoming a good friend of heritage, and a very important part of the conservative movement, steve hayward. [applause] >> thank you, general meese. general meese tried to persuade me from this but it's unlikely in possible i will be able to get through this whole talk without referring to my favorite theme mainly that it means was the greatest attorney general ever. talking about setting up for that job in the right circumstances if we could. well, it's been a delight to contribute the latest title and the line of iconoclastic politically incorrect guides or pigs for short. i really like that. it gives a new meaning to picking out. but there's a couple of obvious threshold questions which he suggested in his introduction. what could be a politically incorrect perspective about the

presidency. one of the great american institutions. how could that possibly in the politically incorrect and then why start with woodrow wilson and not to all of the presidents from george washington on? we are glad you asked. there are two main arguments that are closely connected and a couple of important ancillary parts of the argument. the first axis of the argument is that there are two presidencies to think of. there's the presidency as the founders conceive of it and as most of our presidents practice the institutions throughout the 19th century and then there's the modern presidency that i argued against decisively with woodrow wilson. you can make a theodore roosevelt and some aspects of the modern presidency and i comment on that briefly in the early entry to a chapter's but it's woodrow wilson who defined i seek the modern presidency in its most important respects and in the second access of the book is that most common of all but most of the leading books and treatments of the presidency,

either the people that served in the office or the institution is all for growth are defective in some profound and the consequential ways. if you get most of the modern textbooks used in colleges and universities or the leading trade books that are crossover books between college books and for the general reading audience if you look at most of the leading books, you will see that most of them tend to treat the presidency and its occupants as the we were just another ceo position, albeit with a corporation, the u.s. government that so little bit more complicated and van byzantine van ibm or apple i suppose. and the leading aspect of the prison see and most of the modern books is on the idea of leadership with a capital l along with some personality traits of the president. so, for example, to two of the leading bookstore still in print and widely used read the presidential character, the book has gone through for additions since it was published in 1972.

it's full of insight about different presidents and a different character traits they had and how we would serve them for ill or for good in office, and there is a lot to learn from the book. i don't want to say that it's a bad book. it's not, it's a good one but there is something missing. if you open to the index of the presidential character, you will not find a single entry for constitution or any of its correlates like the constitution or constitutionalism. you know, sort of startling if you think about it for a moment, or take the widely used the presidential power, modern presidents, again another interesting books with lots of good material, it's also gone through many editions since it was published in the 60's. also it has no index entry for constitution and it's not just the index if you go through the text of those books defined no discussion of the article to be on the couple of instrumental things. but no substantive discussion of the constitutional dimensions of the president, so you don't

really get a discussion of the statesmanship from the books. they make the presidency and to another executive office all with fancy bells and whistles. i can go on down list. the presidential difference from a leadership style from fdr to clinton. again, another good book. green's team is an interesting author also no discussion to the constitution. and what this approach reflects is the modern dhaka you free social side of the approach to political things that has largely ruined the academic discipline of political science and is well on its way to ruben in the academic discipline of history as well. there are some exceptions to this. a couple i mentioned in the book the presidential greatness is a pretty good book on some of these questions, and i think the very best book one is now almost 20-years-old but still very much worth reading is the forest mcdonald put the american presidency and intellectual history. it's probably the best book written by one of the great conservative scholars of modern

times, and then there is the carries out later in all this and that is oddly enough the famous book from the 70's the imperial presidency. we need to bring the president back inside the constitution. he talks about reinvigorating the separation of powers but of course schlesinger the level was up to mischief. he wanted to buttress having them chanting and of the imperial presidency beyond that suddenly schlesinger was shocked to learn people like lyndon johnson and richard nixon could use the presidency in ways he disapproved so he thought his time lead to congress which he thought would be dominated by the congress to become the preeminent branch again so even a book that is on the right track was on the right track for the wrong reasons and for the wrong objects. now it's possible to judge president's purely on an illogical scale. we have the rankings and polls that come out from time to time from academics and they put presidents in categories of great and near great and average and so forth. you can do that and mostly that

reflects the preferences of the people are responding to the surveys for most part. there is a more direct method that allows you to abstract able but from policy choices and is more useful and relevant, and that simple method is to take article 2, the article that defines the office of the president, and in particular, look at the oath of office that presidents take the lead article to is vague in some respects and in a lot of terms to be defined in practice but the occupants of the office starting with george washington, but one part is -- one act is specified in article 2 that all presidents take the oath of office, to preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the united states. i had a simple idea. i'm not sure that i would call it to raise hour or not but the idea was to say how they live up to that oath of office and i divide a three part test to this. the first part was did the

president has a well-developed constitutional philosophy that informed our choices and policies and especially the public rhetoric in other words they are teaching the americans about the constitution. one thing i observed in the book is that all the presidents from the soundings through the end of the 19th century, and a couple of the 20th century going back and reading their inaugural address about half of the inaugural address from most presidents talk about the constitution, reminding citizens of the constitutional heritage and the principle behind it. they thought was the best thing to put in their inaugural addresses and that ceased in modern times with the notable exceptions of harding, coolidge and ronald reagan, the constitution seems almost like an afterthought or the present dree mention one another's speeches presidents give, so that's the first one is to the of the constitutional philosophy and did they share it with their citizens? second is that the actions support or undermine the constitution and especially the mets on centralized power and

third i decided to judge the president's according to the supreme court picks. something no one ever does. but president the tissue and the judiciary almost exclusively with the advice and consent of the senate, but that is also the most concrete and long lasting effect president's half after they leave office. to still have a couple of franklin roosevelt appointees serving on the court in the 1970's. almost none of the books on the presidencies of talk about this very much for talk about their constitutional legacy and how it lives their presidency. so i thought let's forget their court appointments as well. and then one of the important -- there are several aspects but one of the important ones that is completely political incorrect as the president today and in modern times simply talk too much to get the president's talk to us constantly almost daily either directly or through their spokespersons in the daily

briefings and so forth or statements the president issued almost every day. and someday it may occur to a president that won a secret preserving public support would be to talk less to embrace the less is more principal. among modern presidents there was only one who really understood this. i think ronald reagan understood it but known as the great communicator and me at the pivotal time i will see talked too much but he talked a lot. he would like to have talked less but it's important and general meese can fill in some details about this. he often turned ways of adjusting from the stuff that he give another speech from golan tv again for this project. i think he understood there were limits to how often he could go to that well, the president who really got it was dwight eisenhower. dwight eisenhower didn't like giving speeches, and when he did give them he wanted to keep them short. one of the quotes i have in my book is eisenhower telling his

advisers, quote, i keep telling you i don't like to do this sort of thing. i can think of nothing more boring for the american public than to have to sit in your living room for half hour looking at my face on their television screens. another time he said what is it that needs to be set? i'm not another just to listen to light on the quarter and then he said fine but not over 20 minutes. if you go back and compare all the modern presidents with our earlier ones, the great bulk of this is jeffrey's but the rhetorical presidency that really covers the transition in great detail. george washington averaged three public speeches a year. john adams one. thomas jefferson, he was positively the ghost of giving five speeches a year as president. james madison, zero. george will has a great book about this he says the british sacked washington board on the white house and he still didn't give a speech. [laughter] and even andrew jackson who was fought with good reason to

introduce an element of populism to the presidency, even he didn't make a lot of speeches, a lot of public speeches, he gave one a year. so, and then the third point is this idea that our presidents should be leaders with a capital l taking americans to new and undefined places they didn't even know they wanted to go. that was the teaching of what will wilson. the president as a leader with a capital l ought to anticipate and think ahead of the people and pull them along and steer them to where the future would take us. and for very long you start getting the premium placed on charisma and our presidents, right, most famously with kennedy of course some of the presidency is this institution that we think of as the apex of american politics even though i think the presidency should be thought of as a coequal branch of government and inject one story there was controversy about this but if you go back to the late 19th century, thomas

reed, the legendary republican speaker of the house who thought about running for president, was urged to run for president and he said we thought the president was a lesser office and speaker of the house. i sometimes have a thought experiment suggesting that two new gingrich from time to time. well, so then i go on and give letter grades to all the president and i would go on much longer because interested in questions and discussions so i read all of the presidents will send to obama and that is a nice 100 year or. willson gets an f comegys the first president to criticize the constitution openly to say it's obsolete, ought to be replaced or understood in radically different ways, and of giving five f's, willson, fdr, lyndon johnson, jimmy carter, bill clinton and obama. that might be six actually, i might have miscounted. i didn't agree on a curve, reverse curfew might say. barack obama turns out to be the perfect the baton of woodrow

wilson of simply that he's the academic president sort of, but like wilson he doesn't have much regard for the of original principal of the constitution. i almost feel like any to a second edition already because the last couple of weeks, last week matt lauer of nbc news asked obama how come you haven't succeeded in getting us this grant hope and change he promised? and obama's answer, quote, it turns out our founders designed a system that makes it more difficult to bring about change that i would like. it turns out? peace just discovering it now? yousaf through some of professor obama's class is a the university of chicago. i point out in the book is ostensible scholar of constitutional law at to the elite of the equal protection clause. his favorite clause of course in the constitution that is their license to everything he seems to have just skipped over the separation of powers and all the

institutional design questions of the constitution so i and the book by saying that the modern presidency can really be set to begin with the results of the 1912 election which saw the party splintered in the short progressive party that facilitated willson's election, and that marked a new chapter in american political thought that the liberals a specially built on that too many republicans unfortunately followed in the slipstream, and in the best of all worlds the election of 2012 could mark the end of this chapter and i return to an older son were constitutional order if american voters would take to heart the wisdom of the founders. so i will stop there in i will look forward to questions and comments, and i held back but i can still do that. thank you very much. [applause]

that is a great start in show will provoke a number of questions here i want to ask a first question while others are thinking and that is it seems there's a certain parallel between the size of the white house staff and what you might call the institutional aspects of the presidency and the so-called modern presidency. would you comment on that and what happened with what will send and where did everything grow in my own reading it seemed to me the ideas growth will send it was roosevelt who really put the institutional mechanism into place. would you comment on that? >> that's a pretty good place to start the problem of the couple l. leadership of the presidency using a little of this with wilson, the federal trade commission started under wilson, the federal reserve and others is my independent agency of

course what happens in this model is the president is expected to be at the apex of solving all these problems so what happens in the white house now and you really see what obama with all of the czars, the special white house special system for the problem the white house is now implicated in chongging, the president is implicated in solving all of our problems so whenever a new problem comes along you start the new white house task force, and or propose legislation to congress to set up an independent agency or expand an existing independent agency with a new mission. dodd-frank expanding the security exchange commission as long as the new agency set in motion. the problem here from the organizational point of view it seems to me, and this is where the standard textbook model for the presidency could shed more light than they do is, you know, you are expecting too much of a president in an executive

agency. talk to anybody in any white house of either party and what they will tell you is the modern white house is just chaos three. it's one thing after another. there's not much time to think about things to read a lot of things fall by the wayside or did have done and so we are expecting our president to have his hand of every problem and i will say this is why the most successful presidents are the ones to concentrate on what is essential. while ronald reagan concentrate on three or four things and to the fast exclusion or the partial exclusion of other things and letting the government about its business instead of trying to be at the center of everything whereas the president's who are in every problem, jimmy carter most spectacularly with 300 pages of light from his staff until two or three in the morning, the presidents who can set priorities or try to be in the middle of everything tend to be less successful. bill clinton had that problem unless congress forced him to be more disciplined and focused, so this is a problem in the scale

of government but it's also the executive model that's seen in the white house staff from a total of five under president grant and i think 27 under mckinley to now it's over with the white house staff has several hundred people plus 3,000 people you a point to the senior ranks of the executive branch so we did the math on that one if you appoint three people an hour, 24 hours a day from election day it takes you to june or july to fill all those jobs. but also practical if by the way there is no confirmation problem with any of them and this is why we now convinced that the government is very well anymore we are simply asking presidents to wait too much. >> let's open up to questions from the audience. >> academia. one of the president's you cover, bill clinton, said on more than one occasion that the american people are rhetorically

conservative but operational the progressive. is their anything to this? >> he wasn't the first person to say that. i think -- i'm not sure if george will increase to that. he passed it along, and this goes beyond the presidency, this is a profound modern political problem in that of the theory that you divide people and special-interest groups and the minister of their needs mix them client of the state and supporters of the state i want to refuse all "the new york times" yesterday had a terrific front-page story, terrific in one respect and defective on the other this interesting story about how more and more middle class people are relying on the scene that even as they disliked, and it's obviously deploring the saying why don't all of them to do for their hostility and the government and get with the program and that is the subtext of the article, the

article as the sea in journalistic circles bury the lead and have wonderful charts but the graphics department is really good at this, and it shows the growth in entitlement spending from 1960 to today in real terms the entitlements are taking off like a rocket and everything else being pretty much flat with the exception of education which has steadily gone up and is now the second most amount of money spent by all levels of government. i thought was interesting in that the article goes on to explore the fact that a lot of people, a lot of again, the better clinkers as the current president would have said dislike the entitlement state are critical of it or of the government but if you ask them should these programs be cut the are a little more hesitant about that. for a variety of reasons. some are in fact taking advantage of the progress right now in the bad econ mechem and others for the superficially decent reasons that you worry about what effect it might have on people who really do need them. so that is where there is a cognitive dissidence of the old

keeping it conflicting ideas and are headed the same time and still functioning. there is cosmo's among americans about this and that's why, you know, you see a brave person like paul ryan come out with a plan to try to turn this around and is a big fire fight that has a long way to play out that everything does depend on the answer to that eventually. >> my question is just one of the things you say the president's speak too much deutsch and the social media that we all live and. what do you suggest they do to scale back on that and would that then cut into transparency which is also an issue? >> that is a great question. it would take considerable discipline, the discipline of general eisenhower to say i am going to speak less. except remember the eisenhower modern presidents are the one who are the most popular all the way through office and coming out of office.

only ronald reagan comes close to it and it's probably not an accident that he was not in our face every day in promising as the moon. said it would take on a year and a disciplined. the other thing and this is the challenge for conservatives, a thought experiment you could envision mitt romney winning the election but nobody is enthusiastic about the guy. the good side of that would be of conservatives put more attention on congress as a place we get our national leadership from rather than the white house, our model of the last 30 or 40 years has been great if you get a conservative president or semi conservative president under the white house to have a meeting with something going on and you want the president -- that is the liberal model it would be a good thing if instead of expecting our help to come from the white house we spend more of our time and attention on congress. that used to be the conservative view if you go back to 1950's and the conservative political science and historians of they were all saying there is a

reason that article 1 is about congress and the longest article in the constitution that was supposed to be the preeminent of the branches for moving the country along and the most the lubber this branch, and so this would be a return. what i'm suggesting would be a return for the old conservative attitude about how you should regard the relative priority in the branches of government. so, i don't know. it's almost irresistible for a president with all the tools available you got the tv networks, the internet now which is almost irresistible to want to comment every day on things so it would take iron discipline and i don't expect that from anybody fortunately. you might expect it from romney if he is really smart, but we will see. john? >> following on that, is it not the context in which they are seeking so much has now become a stage presentation that there

isn't a back-and-forth, which is more the transparency issue say like question time. is it a matter of the venue that they are using as opposed to being effective communicator some of the issues may be or just some of that setting might affect it, too. >> that's an interesting question because it would be very hard to ask the president today willing suggesting here in a wholesale way because nowadays we do expect better or worse our presidents to rally the country in times of trouble or to address certain problems where even if there isn't a political solution we like hearing from our top person. so, you think of ronald reagan giving his speech around the country on the reaganite seems and there's a certain amount is always going to happen. the dividing line between what is that role, the genuine

national leader, and the sort of political role which i think if you criticize president obama for bringing to david is a little harder to make out. again i think maybe ronald reagan is a good model and gives lots of speeches but there are also say to beat the speeches that stand out in ways that it's hard to think of many speeches since then standing out in the same way. you think of the evil empire speech followed by the strategic defense desha def speech. along with a speech in the parlance with reagan that look back now as important in the cold war stories and finally the berlin wall in 1987 the really stand out as a president who is concentrating on something and saying if something new, that's really how you make the news is you make something new. president bush, the second president bush in 2004 tried to go around the country giving speeches on the social security

issue it was already in deep trouble and donning before hurricane katrina from its course. there are limits to what you can do but if you are given the same kind of speech and this is a problem for president bush that wasn't catching on this was a campaign strategy showed the limitations of all that and it's hard to draw bright lines on the scene to see what will work and what won't but the reagan model was probably one of the better ones. if you go further back you can look at some of truman's key speeches, especially in regard to the cold war stories for the marshall plan, the doctrine, those and a blasting the test of time and changing the country's policy. >> i'm just curious to set the modern presidency has become more like a ceo position in the 20th century. i'm curious what background is best for the modern presidency? is a ceo background like for instance mitt romney, is it a lawyer, a soldier, diverse

background, is it an ivy league school or perhaps more? what you think is the best background for the modern presidency? >> that's a wonderful question. i'm having fun right now pointing out that our last president had a harvard mba, our current president has a law degree and if mitt romney is elected, he will have both. [laughter] there isn't sort of one -- the media's partially one answer to that question, but there isn't a clear answer to it. because some soldiers have made good presidents. eisenhower mentioned. i generally think people with a business background are not well-suited to being president. i think the best presidents are ones that happen executive experience on the state level, governors, and generals of executive experience that is why eisenhower looks like a governor in certain ways, and the poorest residents are often wonder

senators are house members because they do is to make speeches, they don't make the decisions and are not responsible for -- solely responsible for things that have been under their purview. i think the most interesting president's come and you can extend this to foreign leaders, too are not the ones with a conventional ied legal education. they are the ones that of the unconventional education and the ones that are largely self educated. i would like to point out that if you start with theodore roosevelt, virtually all of our presidents had ivy league educations or equipment others elected in their own right, truman and johnson are accidents of being vice president, it? but you know, but roosevelt went to harvard and yale, herbert hoover is from stanford, calvin coolidge is from and hearst. even jimmy carter that is an outside figure attended annapolis, and richard nixon, but he does penance why that by going to do call school and becoming a wall street lawyer as

his path back to the white house. and this is why if ronald reagan is interesting. he goes to eureka college, tiny little place and if you study closely what you can see it's like harry truman who didn't finish college, only modern president didn't have a college degree, they both of their particular political the machinations or their own self education. in ronald reagan's defense case it is the years in hollywood and traveling around the country when he's reading of the early modern classics of the american conservative movement whitaker chambers witness, the economics and one was in his reading and the speeches, he's doing all of that on his island. i think it's possible but ronald reagan could have been ruined by the conventional ivy league education. and, so that would be the most interesting. harry truman read history from a very early age and one of the things he says, and i quote in my book, something like a person sits here at this desk in the

oval office ought to know his american history. good for him. contrast sharply, i can't resist, contrast sharply with the current executive who speaks of the 57 states connected by the intercontinental real road which we have even passed to the historical republican state of texas when it was and occupied by the marine courts minn. i could go on on that subject. the whole subject. [laughter] >> el -- al miliken. i'm wondering how presidents have used religious imagery and language particularly the bible. what would you find significant? >> great question. i don't write a lot about that in the book with a couple exceptions. one is harry truman, a devout baptist. but you don't think truman because of his salty language, right? by the way, you won't find in

most of the big biographies of troutman people get there will be david mccullough, the year both doorstops, and they tread very lightly on his religious sensibilities to find out a great story about truman -- and i mention this in the book who wrote a terrific book about harry truman's foreign policy and the development of with the use to call the liberal internationalism but she's fleshed out much better than anybody come and i never noticed this, the fact that he regards the soviet union as an evil one player and evil because of their atheism coming and talking about his disappointment that he couldn't get our church organizations involved in talking about the process and principles of american foreign policy and the catholic church in all the major the nominations in the semi formal at jugs to american foreign policy and the education of the american public and overseas so it is overlooked by the standard biography so it's quite astonishing and he read the bible pretty well.

>> [inaudible] he was for of the first president to name representatives to the vatican. >> that's right. i had forgotten that part of the stories. i think part of the reason harry truman overruled his own state department in recognizing israel was his religious beliefs. he said no, we are going to do this. i think one of the -- george w. bush expressing the religious sentiment i always had fun quoting franklin roosevelt. an episcopalian has public statements always very strong. he gave an election eve radio talk one of the things he said was a terrific statement was freedom of religion has no meaning to a man that has lost

his god. i can't find a liberal today that would say something like this. if you do you get pounded. it's easy to quote the old liberal presidents against the liberals that get the wheatleys when you mention god but it's important with a number of our presidents. >> the mika furnace coming to you. >> slightly different. all of your books are wonderful so i can't wait to read this one but i will sort of ask you about your point about conservatives to direct some of their attention to congress. in my view, there is an even bigger hurdle to get them to care about the constitution so particularly to that a slight uptick with rand paul and mike lee but by and large my experience is they are quick to abandon and it's not like the half as well thought up hatred of the constitution. the kind of like it privately, and they will let you know that

but that we have got to federalize this crime and that crime and we've got to do all these things that violate. is it an institutional problem? what can we do if we want to restore their concern for the constitution >> they take that. >> that's a hard question to answer because it is a complicated problem with lots of parts to it. let me answer it this way to beat people have been allowed asking the classic question of what ronald reagan do if he were running this year? and i've been saying that a little bit more of the background but the "washington post" calls the of the year and a half ago or something and asks me blood of ronald reagan approved of the tea party? and my first thought was to answer back you wonder why you are losing it leaders? really? so i wrote a whole piece of why he would approve of the tea party because the tea party

reminds me a little bit like the tax revolt in the 1970's and that's the acronym, taxed enough already except the difference is it was just about high taxes and the tea party even though it is confused through all the things suggested in the question, it has a constitutional dimension to it. it's sort of a i call it as best a populace constitutional movement. populace constitutionalism, james madison would have thought was an oxymoron also on reflection he might have thought there's something hopeful about this. so, how would someone like ronald reagan or congressional leaders to get in touch of this sentiment that's out there that needs shaken so i thought to myself what with a reagan speech be like about the subject? and i think that he or the leaders of congress ought to be doing speeches and start something like this i think ronald reagan would say our founders' design the constitution with two things in the engine to make the country go and a set of brakes and safety equipment like seat belts to get from keeping in control

and the liberals have ripped off the bricks and torn off the seat belts and pressed the gas pedal to the floor and were about to crash and then i think he would add meanwhile the liberals have taken all of their air bags and send them to congress instead of putting them in cars is the joke he would throw in, something like that and then he would go on in a series of plays and talk about particular aspects of the constitution and to reinforce the idea this is still limited government. you do need to start with something like that. so it's not just enough for us to tell members of congress you need to follow the constitution better and understand it more deeply that they need to reciprocate and the things they have to say, and i think they made some starts on that, but that is a hard problem because you know, this is likelier busy on the mark of the transportation bill and under the details. this is a very deep problem but it is the thing that is most needed for doing it seems to me. schenectady fed has his hand up.

>> shortly before you start on writing the book you had a pretty good idea of who you would like and you didn't like. were you surprised by one of the president's been doing research either for good or for bad? >> let me think about that. truman was a sort of complicated case for the reasons already suggested. he was pretty good in some ways. on the other hand there is the seizure problem using executive power i'm going to seize the industry. it got swatted down by the liberal supreme court. it wasn't unfriendly to the extensions of executive power so he gets a black mark for that. they were just pure patronage like he used to do in those days and were sort of average or below average and lanning to the liberal direction. land up giving him -- he didn't have a distinct constitutional philosophy. but certain other virtues that he had in some ways i already suggested let me to get a c plus when he might have done worse i

think. eisenhower is also a problem. i think he was a pretty good president. but then to his credit he admitted his mistakes on the supreme court. yell, brennan and warren. that knocked him down to a c plus because you can't make mistakes like that. their precious for that to happen. george h. w. bush was a real problem. from the one hand he appoints david souter and clarence thomas, this is a problem with the the exam how are you going to grade this? she ended up with a b, other reasons he does differently. so no great surprises i don't think those are three that are undetermined i will say. i didn't set out to find truman as a c plus or d or f. roosevelt would have gotten

three f's or lubber if there were one for each term, with wilson and obama is heading that way, too. >> give them time. [laughter] >> okay, other questions. >> you argue that they are kind of -- with the heritage foundation -- to offer there are the two presidency's we see, the early presidency and in the modern presidency and focus your attention the book on the modern presidency. the standards that you use seem to be applied to the early presidents as well so that would make a kind of more uninteresting but if since maybe the early president has a better philosophy of the constitution than their actions are a little bit more positive does that mean we wouldn't get as more f's and more b's and c's, can you comment on that? >> a couple simple writing problems. the book would either have to be a lot longer, or the chapters a

lot shorter. and more perfunctory. also i didn't think there was a lot of people but wanted to read much on john tyler. you can if you want to, but the politically incorrect guides are meant to be relevant to current controversy and things that really matter, and i thought about talking a lot more about andrew jackson and lincoln of course, grover cleveland i mentioned for degette pre-constitutional president. so i do mention a few of those presidents in passing with a couple of lessons drawn in the introductory chapters but i decided as a practical writing matter it made sense to concentrate on the modern presidency in the last 100 your compass. it really is as simple as that. you could do the whole thing. maybe a second volume, i don't know. and then the other thing was even just looking at the modern presidents and we won the chapters to be bought for 5,000 words, not more than that, even at that you can't say a lot about them so i don't go into their childhoods and i don't

give sort of the brief lines which are contemplated for a while. instead, focusing in on the constitutional dimension also along the way i talk about some of their other things we think about in terms of the president and try to give some of the fun facts like to many new gerald ford's real name was leslie king, he took his adoptive father sang or jimmy carter was not only the first president born in a hospital, as late as 1976 in the first he elected a president born in the hospital also was the only president to ever file an official ufo sighting report with the air force. [laughter] explains a few things may be. [laughter] so, i wanted to have chapters that allow room for that kind of thing to talk about, whereas if you get all the presidents would be much shorter and less time to develop some of those things that i think people will enjoy reading about more than john tyler. >> one more question.

>> with regnery publishing. my last question since it is an election year and we are in the middle of the gop primary if you had to agree right now on the campaign who -- how would they rate? >> yeah, lots of income pleats and provisional fadel unfortunately. newt gingrich is probably the best in some ways but the typical newt, he to get too far. some of the talk about in teaching judges and reducing, that scares people, so it is imprudent. he has the right instincts about this but my guess is -- and i don't followed the day to day campaigns may be as closely as i should. rick santorum suspect has a sound grasp on things. the big problem is that the candidates don't -- i mean, ron paul, he has things right, and

to get the foreign policy and other stuff and scratch your head. one of the problems is our candidates are out of the habit and no one is making them get into the habit of talking about these things in a serious way. so, you know, i thought -- by the way i thought the best of the presidential debate is the one that the heritage did together because even will splits are couldn't get in the way of good questions and serious people. and there actually was one partially in south carolina where george asked questions on the 13th amendment. that was good. but for example, here is what i would love to see happen and the debate this fall. so you had last week justice ginsberg say to egypt i don't think you should look in the u.s. constitution as a model for a new constitution in egypt. by the way, the incorrect guide to the supreme court justice, i don't know. [laughter] and the permits were really quite astonishing. i have it written down here.

the constitution he says he likes so i went out and looked up the self constitution on the the constitutionalism and sure enough, there is formal language in the constitution at the end of the long bill of rights which has all kinds of positive rights like the right to edge of a health care and housing and so forth, where it says judges or tribunals and forcing this bill of rights may -- must look to the international law and may look to the foreign law. no wonder justice ginsburg's like the constitution so much. so, that is a roundabout way for saying question from jim lehrer or something to the two candidates. should the supreme court looked to the law in making its rulings? why or why not come and watch obama score around that question and hopefully mitt romney can do something sensible about that, which i kind of doubt. but that kind of question should have been asked the six instead of the questions to get from george stephanopoulos on

contraception, which to look strange like like battle operation that happened the last few days, doesn't it? anyway, so again, a complicated question that there are things that can start turning this in a different direction the would-be journalists and questioners and the dates and party leaders asking the candidates to talk about these things at more length, and they don't do that much. thank you all very much. [applause] callamore from shreveport weekend here on book tv. >> i am laura, and arc of this year at the library. we are in archives and special

collections at noel at lsu st part. we are specializing in the history, dhaka and entering history in northwest regions. we have here today some of the things that we consider the stars in our collection. one that we are proudest of that kind of is the opening of what one would consider modernist northwest louisiana i think is the clearing of the rest of the red river 1873. this volume is a collection of 107 photographs that were taken r.b. to document the progression of the clearing of the rest in the red river in 1873 between

shreveport. it was particularly important. it was the last and most successful clearing of the red river raft, and it enabled st. part -- shreveport to become important for the rest of the 19th century. unfortunately for some of the crew, the aide, the army corps of engineers, their visit to shreveport coincided with the yellow fever epidemic of 73, which just decimated the population. the lt. eugene woodruff who was in charge of the raft clearing project the votes were caught up in the academic and decided to

stay and incest. as a result he contract yellow fever himself and within two weeks she died and his brother george took over the project and completed. we have the papers of eugene and george woodruff here. they go with the album. this is one from george's mother in march of 1873. he says this week has not been a very eventful. the raft of draft number seven at which we were working last week has been removed, and after pulling some snags we proceeded to number eight. this is in a place where the river is narrowed and decided by the island and is shallow at least in that part chosen for the channel. this makes it slower and more difficult to remove the rest

which is much the longest we have had though composed almost entirely as cut adrift. these photographs have been used extensively for books on the red river region and particularly for louisiana history textbooks from eighth grade students, so we are very pleased to have its, and there were to actually produced, one that accompanied the army corps of engineer report to congress which is now with the library of congress, and this one which appropriately - presides here in the northwest louisianan region where the rest existed. a couple of these other photographs that had many photographs of the steamboats said this was the outcome of the

clearing of the raft meant commerce for shreveport and this particular photograph is of a steamboat, the washington that is pulled up to commerce street which is the street bordering the river in shreveport. it looks quite a bit different than it does today. another area of our history that people are quite familiar with one way or another is all business and we got a lot of attention recently because of the shale, but all in louisiana is the story of the 20 as well as the 21st century. the first well was drilled in 1901 in parish, and in 1904 and caddo parish, so we have a very

large collection of photographs documenting the history of all exploration and production in the north louisiana. one of the interesting historical facts about drilling in this area is the first wells were driven over a body of water or through a body of water as early as 1908 in caddo lake here in caddo parish and we have pictures documented the very primitive now steam engines that were used as the drivers for these, and one of the interesting things that we always note is that it's not just men and at the wells,

oftentimes a photograph of the crew will include women and even children. when the oil business began in north louisiana, equipment was taken to the field, and they were usually a large contingent pulling wagons through the very muddy streets, often they were up. the wagon wheels were sunk in the mud and the mules were sunk in up to their knees. it wasn't uncommon. our photographs also document that the dangerous nature of drilling for oil and the wells back in the day when there was no regulation of any kind. we have pictures as early as 1905 and 1907 of a huge oil well

fires. these i think demonstrate just how regular and the occurrence they were. this photograph here is from 1911, and it says that it was the largest oil well fire in the united states up until that time and i think it represented a loss of a million dollars, which was a lot in 1911. but two years later in 1913, we have another picture predominantly the same picture, the largest oil well fire in the united states at that time. so it was a very regular occurrence commesso regular that there's even a man posing here in front of the fire in a very casual stance with his arm propped against the