>> next aaron david miller argues our preoccupation with presidential greatness over the dash over and waits judgments. he says we would be better off if we never had another great president. this is about an hour and a half. >> welcome back to the miller center. and doug blackman. 25 years ago when united states cold war with the soviet union came to an abrupt hault there was wide hope among americans that our country would soon enter a kind of golden era. our form of capitalism have

tramped and would be extended to hundreds of millions of people. new levels of prosperity would follow for all vindicating our economic system. peace dividends could be redirected in combating hunger and misery. the national budget would finally balance. the american presidents of the future from whatever political parties have the opportunity to engineer for the world and new hybrid of democracy and free enterprise. how differently things appear now. after the longest wars in our nations history against elusive and decipherable terrorists thousands of deaths and casualties, trillions of dollars spent without clear benefit the most better decision and hostility between our political leaders racial unrest mass incarceration and a series of presidents who have bored us and shocked us with more on discretion blundered unapologetically into war and according to our guest today disappointed us with empty rhetoric and incoherent

execution. aaron david miller says we live in a post-great era in which it is unlikely that america will ever have another occupant of the white house with achievements on the scale of washington, lincoln or fdr. and in fact americans don't even wants another great president. aaron mellor work side-by-side with american presence for the past 20 years serving as an adviser to the state department under ronald reagan, bill clinton and both bush administrations. he is the vice president and distinguished scholar at the woodrow wilson center in washington. his most recent book is "the end of greatness" why america can't have (and doesn't want) another great president. we are privileged to have an hour of your time. >> thank you. it's a pleasure to be here at the miller center in particular. >> thank you. let's start with the second president bush, bush 43. there was a president who's six years ago was deeply unpopular at the end of his presidency and

viewed widely as a poor president, a failed president and respect. you say almost as much bad in the book. approval ratings at the end had been in the high 20s to the low 30s yet today when americans are asked in polls in 2014 about president bush almost 50% say he was a good president. they give them a strong approval ratings or was he a failure six years ago but now he's a great president? >> well let's start this way. presidents like fine wines age with time and they age while the time. the reality is they are much more popular once they leave the political fray once they sever their relationships with the inner and people in contemporary political terms and they are remembered in ways that are driven by many factors including who succeeds them which is critically important. who comes before you and to comes after you is critically

important to shaping your presidential reputation. there is no question about it. any number of presidents, look at two of our greatest. lincoln and fdr. lincoln proceeded by james buchanan. >> viewed as the worst president ever. >> and fdr preceded by herbert hoover. precedent to follow great presidents are usually individuals for whom there are low expectations. harry truman had been exception is regarding that he left office with one of the lowest approval ratings in the modern history of the presidency. remember over time a much better present given the fact of what happened to the presidency after german left. it was a a good years of peace and prosperity with eisenhower and then we entered a very dramatic, but per for real fall, jack kennedy's assassination landed johnson although transformative for three civil rights bills there was vietnam

which dragged on his presidency. there was of course richard nixon who harry truman said may have read the constitution but didn't really understand it. and then you had gerald ford a transitional president and jimmy carter a one-term president and ronald reagan. again who you succeed has a lot to do with how you ultimately are judged. my argument here and i would not include george w. bush. he is not a failed president would not include george w. bush as a great president let alone an undeniably good president. this book is driven by simple proposition. greatness and a presidency is rare. greatness in any dimension of the human enterprise is rare. we use the term great. i used the term great maybe 15 times a day. it was a great movie, she's a great tennis player. have a great day but we don't really understand what it is.

we have emptied the notion of greatness of any meaningful kind and we have transferred our appreciation for greatness from our political class because we haven't seen it to our entertainers, to our athletes and to our actors. there are we appreciate greatness and there are we can easily have relationships. we buy tickets. they may be expensive. these people never disappoint. or rarely disappoint. it is in our political class however that we can't appreciate greatness because in many respects it's gone and it's gone because it's driven by three factors that have to align like the sun, the moon and the stars in the right astrological formation. you need crisis and by the way not just a garden-variety crisis. you need crisis in a nation encumbering character. unique character. you need the right individual

with the right internal makeup and the right orientation publicly and in any capacity. does this person actually know what they are doing and can they deal with a cabinet with congress with the media? can they make washington work? those three, crisis character and capacity are what has made our three undeniably greatest presidents great. washington, lincoln and fdr. a half dozen others, maybe five, including one of the favorites down here thomas jefferson, andrew jackson, teddy roosevelt, woodrow wilson arguably. i work at the woodrow wilson international center for scholars. our only ph.d. present and the only one in washington d.c. might be on the list. harry truman clearly consequential so you have a three and deny both the five

what i call close but no cigar president and three others. i choose to identify jack kennedy, the new johnson and ronald reagan as exhibiting traces of greatness real or perceived. but that's 11 presidents out of 44 but 43 different presidents because grover cleveland was president twice in nonconsecutive terms. we don't count them twice. we have had 43 different presidents 11 of them in my judgment have been truly consequential. the point of the book is in its provocative, we don't want another great president because the founders create a political system which was designed to disaggregate power. they fear the royal government. they fear the king. they may have feared the mob as well so they created a system of an energetic executive but an accountable one but highly constrained. the only thing that liberates presidents and liberates the

political system is a nation encumbering crisis and again when i talk about in nation encumbering crisis and not even talking about 9/11 which frankly might've been a moment to encourage the nation but it turned quite the other way. i'm talking about a crisis that is relentless, inescapable, hot in which everybody has to essentially participate. the three most, the three greatest presidents washington lincoln and fdr had confronted the three greatest crises the nation faced and they have the character in and the capacity to go along with it. i don't want to risk threatening the nation again was such a crisis or test the proposition that a great man and one-day woman will emerge to deal with the crisis. forget great. stop expecting these presidents

to be a cross between harrison ford in air force one and superman so that you can allow them to be good, good in the sense that the meaning of the word good, good in the sense that they can be in effective, good in the sense that they remain with the limits of the law with great moral sensibility and good in the sense that they understand themselves. they have emotional intelligence. they are not haunted are driven by demons or aspirations that force them into scandal are into self-created crises which causes overreach. give me presents like that and maybe we can begin to imagine what we haven't had in a long time which is a truly genuinely popular president. it's hard for me to imagine in our political culture right now the emergence of a generally popular president. i am not a presidential

historian but i m. an american and this conversation, i wrote this book to start the conversation. we all have a stake in this. i mentioned earlier that the founders used the word i twice in the constitution. why would the personal pronoun i being the constitution? it's because they embedded the inaugural oath in the document for an obvious reason, to demonstrate that the source of authority is not the president. it's not even the office. it is so this conversation is one we all should have and must have. >> let's break this down into some pieces. i wanted to ask you after george bush about barack obama celebs go back to that. he talked about the sense of expectations around the president and measuring americans, people finding their expectations to something more reasonable and that's an

important part i take it in your critique of president obama. you call him i think the great disappoint her. her chapter on obama come is that right? >> he's not the only president that the disappoint her in chief. >> this idea because we have in our general discourse today there's a lot of discussion on president obama is a disaster. i was sitting eating a hamburger and a restaurant a couple of nights ago and i started explaining something about and write off the bat he said so is the presidency of barack obama the greatest abortion in american political history? on the one hand we have all these voices saying we are being taken to catastrophe by president obama. on the other hand we have a lot of folks who supported in word disappointed that he was not as great or the great leader that they had expected him to be. but let's talk about that for a minute. this is a presidency that you

have a president who is at 40% approval rating. at the very beginning of his presidency he went along with an extended and economic approach strategy that arguably i think a lot of people believe averted a great economic catastrophe. he had successfully pushed had successfully push the legislation that's still not very popular but may well turn out to be the most significant domestic legislation in two generations. >> since johnson. >> since johnson for sure. but ben's 9/11 are deeply with the killing of osama bin laden and he's the first black president the first nonwhite male president historic by that definition alone. how was it that even with his unpopularity how was it that doesn't eventually add up to something that has a trace of greatness to its? >> it could and i think it takes a generation or more to accurately assess and who comes

after barack obama whether not the democrats maintain party control which is extremely important in judging the reputation of a president. only two presidents in the 20th century fdr and ronald reagan served two terms and literally maintain party contr control. it doesn't happen very often because we don't like dynasties. we are fascinated by them but our presidents are like computers or new cars. every four to eight years there may be a need for another one. look, let's be real about barack obama. he is not the catastrophic failure or satan's finger on earth as some of his detractors suggest but nor is he the great redeemer and savior that so many people expect. he is in fact the poster child for my whole lament here. when you set the bar the aspirational bar as high as you did you set yourself up for

profound disappointment and you can soften the edges of the critique all we want. we can claim that he averted the great depression. we can say that perhaps dodd-frank on financial reform will prove to be a critical piece of legislation. we could say that the affordable health care act perhaps although past without a single republican vote and it was jefferson said the transformative change cannot rest on slender majority. every other transformation of this country's history was pursued bipartisan president who then were able in the interest of the nation as a whole to bring along members of the opposing party which is why these pieces of legislation social security and medicare medicaid pre-civil rights bill became transported. because they were perceived to be legitimate. it is the fast sense of emptiness in my judgment between what was promised and what is

now perceived that in my view war and the tidal disappoint her in chief. when you ride into washington from philadelphia re-creating part of lincoln's journey from springfield, when you are sworn in on the lincoln bible when in fact the inaugural lunch that you consumed at your post and not grow male is served on replicas of mary todd lincoln's china, when you re-create the exact meal that lincoln consumed some could argue this is trivia right down to the cherry which is what what that first inaugural lunch was all about, when you promise post-partisanship and argue and you're not prove that this scale political arguments of the past no longer apply in an environment in which you know you are faced with a partisan polarized political system with extraordinary challenges that

you may not be able to actually unwind. you risk becoming the disappointer in chief and that in my judgment is what has happened. his crisis was nearly not as profound and i don't want to trivialize it. the fact is what fdr did in response to his crisis created a set of systems and safeguards that were inherently responsible for why we didn't end up in the great depression. this crisis was not as deep as fdr's. his character in my judgment was far too conflicted. he was not as fiery or as passionate. he is detached. i called them at one point, he is not the motor in chief and an analytical thinking president is extremely important that you have to also have one that is engaged and really involved. and finally the capacity.

there are simply too many stumbles to suggest to me that in fact the experience that is required to manage the presidency he actually had. now i am not an adversary of barack obama. i will say right here and now that i voted for him not once but twice but that vote was designed to achieve another purpose. this was to validate a system of governance that i think is more important frankly than any single individual. how history will ultimately judge him is still very much an open question and it was bill moyers to lbj who said there are go final reports on a president, only interim reports. that's where i think barack obama stands. i use him 20 pages out of the 280 page book to demonstrate the gap between aspiration and delivery in a politically

obsessed culture with our president in a way that has never been the case. part of that is because our 24/7 media culture which does many things. 535 legislators, nine supreme court justices. it's so much easier to personalize and create a relationship with one man and one day a woman who is an individual, who has a wife, ki kids, usually a presidential pad and follow him around in a way that essentially turns the presidency into a transparent fishbowl. and it tends to trivialize and strip away the detachment and mystique that in fact is required for greatness in the presidency. i think the media doesn't prevent the emergence of great president even though every white house complaints about it. but this media, one example.

on october 22 when jack kennedy addressed the nation in response to the cuban missile crisis that networks immediately went back. there was no 24-hour buildup to that speech. there was no post-speech analysis. there was no mediation. i was 12 and i don't even remember watching the speech for my parents watched it and that meant, think about it, that meant my parents had to sit there for an hour and relate to jack kennedy was no mediation from anyone. no talking head commentary. they had to come to terms with him. his wisdom, his prudence, his words in a way that we are somehow no longer denied, no longer able to do. we also end up trivializing them because they get so many speeches and they are now forced to play in the pop-culture game

in a way that could only strip away and in my view once you go on jon stewart or jay leno as the president did and in that famous stumble they got on the question of sports in the conversation turned to bowling and barack obama said i bowled a 129 but i think the quote was it was good enough for the special olympics. he then found himself the next day apologizing to tim shriver. that notion that somehow presidents have to compete. the president, the first presidential twitter conference in june of 2011. i argue with my kids about this. dad you are old and you don't understand it. it's smart politics. it all may be smart but in some respects it diminishes and degrades the kind of detachment that leads to what degaulle called this mystique of authority which is necessary for greatness in the presidency. >> but what do we do about back? how can that be changed?

and a free society when people get to say whatever they want to say and listen to whoever they want to listen to and can pursue and when we have free speech so attached to commercial activity people make money off of this and money is what decides the pennies continues and what doesn't. how can this be any different? >> i guess you are making my case. this is not about individuals. this is about what has happened to american politics and media culture in the last 40 years. my argument is essentially that greatness in the presidency is no longer possible because there are four factors which have conspired over time which are structural now. number one is what i call fdr's high bar. can you even imagine a president that will ever be perceived to be greater than fdr, for terms

than are republicans thought they were getting even with him in 1951 when i pass the 20 2nd amendment to the constitution. they must thought through it clearly because what they did was forever enshrined franklin roosevelt as an undeniably great president the only one that would ever be elected to four terms. combine fdr's high bar with the absence of a truly nation encumbered crisis which allows for heroic action in the presidency which we don't want an combine that with a 24/7 intrusive media which diminishes trivializes and forces the president to compete and to be exposed. think about it. our last all the president was dwight eisenhower. our last short president was harry truman. our last of these president was william howard taft. you look at the man and again one day with women who will inherit this office, they are

all truly physical specimens. i'm not even sure we can abide looking at presidents for somehow have physical flaws. so you add the intrusive media. fdr had the nation been aware of the extent of his disability, have they seen him carried through windows up and down stairs i'm not sure he would have been able to manage the image of the presidency. truly extraordinary. >> with the bosley medical clinics now it's not going to be an issue for future presidents. >> at two that are polarized politics and our mistrust of government. forget government big or small. what if there is so much mistrust about government as an agent of remedy and perform that presidents can no longer use it effectively and be appreciated for using it.

those four factors i think have conspired to make the odds not arguing in my judgment sure it may be possible but the trend lines in my view are not running in the right direction. frankly i think that's probably not a bad thing or a. >> let's back up to one of these interim reports as bill moyers called them. the ultimate interim report on great presidencies and that's mt. rushmore. we have the faces of -- two of those guys you put on your list of greats and the third, his cousin is there so why is it that in 1927 thomas jefferson and theater was another great enough to be carved into a mountain that don't make your list? >> no they are all on the list. >> none of the truly great. >> three and to three and tonight the great presidents. i identify in a section called

close but no cigar five additional presidents. two of whom are in fact on rushmore. the sculptor actually decided in this case who those four would be and they were picked for a specific reason. washington for obvious reasons. t.r. because of his work in conservation and lincoln are clearly greatest because he confronted the unimaginable horror that any nation confronts which is civil war. so no i think at the time those were quite appropriate and the historians basically would argue and playing the rating game is a fun national pastime. that is not what this book is about. it's not an effort to somehow reach a conclusive than all

meant on rating presidents but the rating game as the historians tell it shows a remarkable consistency since 1948 when arthur schlesinger jr. senior and his son later continued the game, with remarkable consistency in terms of the top seven or eight presidents. there has been very little movement in historians comments on this issue. truman and eisenhower no one has ever proven at the very little movement from the bottom-up or from a top-down. if you asked the historical community basically they would come out with a judgment of more or less along the lines that we argue here. it is the aspiration of greatness. in a president centric culture we have a presidential addiction. that would be okay if in fact the addiction could be satisfied. but i'm arguing that the supply

of truly great president has always exceeded the demand and now more than ever in our countries history we have a paucity of president who you might even attach the word great too. i briefed a number of military officers a couple of years ago and i tell the story in the book. i asked them, all combat vets roughly my age, who was the last political leader in their lifetime that they would attach the word great too. i gave them 10 minutes to answer the question. they couldn't. they couldn't identify one and they asked me, who do you think? it was a very easy answer to me. great political leader, i said martin luther king. one of them in an exasperated fashion shot back but he died. he was assassinated. he was murdered in 1968. i said that's exactly the point.

king with all of his imperfections still no leader like king has emerged. >> also king was not anointed in the universal fashion that he is now until 20 years after his death so the idea that greatness is something that can be registered either in the lifetimes of a president or close to the end of a leader's time on the stage is going to be faulty from the start. >> it takes time but and an assassination of course enshrined in a case of jack kennedy and the attempted assassination of ronald reagan. in real time washington like him were partisan, polarizing figures with the exception of washington not even with the exception in the last year or two of his presidency pilloried but there was an appreciation of the time even at the time that these leaders shepherded the nation through remarkable crises

come extracted out of that crisis some piece of transformative change and began to be appreciated and you are right, over time. it is true national figures it's really hard these days and if we continue to misunderstand that the greatest obstacle to greatness in the presidency may well be the nature of the office itself we are prone to continue to invest in individuals far more than they can actually produce. ..

in 1927, one presume, the -- was that he was true lay great president in the ranks of washington, jefferson and lincoln. why, then, was it as time went by, what is the clinical analysis that tells us that in the end he wasn't quite so great? >> my definition of greatness -- i lay out very clearly, you confront a nation encountering. >> you distract a change that is recognized at truly lit

transformative and changes the fundamental nature of the system, you're appreciated perhaps over time for that greatness, and you dominate your times. now, the close but no cigar president, jefferson, jackson, tr. wilson, and hari truman -- harry truman, all affected the temper of their times in a congresses sequential way but their crises war not nearly as severe, imperfections much greater, and that separates out what i call the dispensables or undeniables, from the next tier down. schlessinger and his son called them near greats. that's a very sort of loose term. but i think getting at the issue of, were there crises as threaten the nation in the case of this five? no. were their accomplishments as consistent my undeniably great? dithey'd get most of the big

decisions right? jefferson's second term was a disaster. it's very hard to see andrew jackson, one of our most controversial presidents -- 12 out of our first 18 presidents were slave holders. how do you deal with that? on a moral and ethical basis with respect to greatness? teddy roosevelt dominated his time but he himself lamented, the absence of the kind of cries that would have -- crisis that would have made him great by saying if there had been no civil wore, no one would have known lincoln's name. no one would have known lincoln's name. that's an extraordinary statement. lincoln came from nowhere but it may well be, clearly, without the secession, without civil war and lincoln extracting out of crisis a new moral foundation for the nation, with the 13th 13th amendment, first the enance pacing proclamation and then the 13th amendment and then the assassination? so, the undeniables to me are

contention, and i debate and argue with any professional historian, they agree. washington, who fathered the nation. lincoln, who saved it. through civil war, and fdr, crisis president who helped with confidence and experimentation, get american through its greatest economical lambty and made it through a war that was the last good war that america fought. the last war that left american stronger at home and abroad was world war 2. the others fall off and their greatness is, did they produce great acts in the presidency? absolutely. jefferson alone -- the louisiana purchase could be considered the greatest executive action in american history, given what did to the physical size of the nation. is it possible injurieser is is

possible the greatness -- i want to be devil's advocate that support yours book -- a society wants, wants to having myological figures. every civilization always has. is it possible that this universal edition mission of washington, lincoln, and fdr, while on the one handit's true that they were great leader in in their times, highly successful presidents be the def anythings of the moment, but at the same time, if king george backed off of boston in 1774 we might never have heard of george washington. lincoln is a gay who,ey, president, holds the nation together, insistent on keeping the union together. if he were president today there would be people saying, if he would just have a beer with the secessionists maybe we wouldn't have to have a civil war. lincoln by virtue of assassination doesn't have to deal with the fact that really, according to some people like

me, african-americans don't get fully freed from enslavement at the end of the civil war. doesn't have to live with the consequences, and one make the argue. the way the war was prosecuted was highly dubious. you to fdr, sim lay-s. leaves out of the equation the african-american. the deal is cut with white supremacists and death -- what kind of big government, how much of to the government look after the people who can't look after himself. he didn't have to reconcile those things. so by exclusion of this historical realities from the mythology we're able to offer these three up in such momentous terms. >> nations are like individual. they go through formative periods and if they survive the early years, as with did, against extraordinary challenges and threats, they no longer need -- this is exactly -- it's

music to my ears because your validating my whole case. >> i told you i was. i just want to argue with you. why validate it. >> it's not that the mission is permanently secure. we face slower bleeds now. i call them sick dead lee ds, death, dysfunctional politics, dependence on hydrocash bones. disastrous education and deficits. these are crises that over time will sap the economic and social power from the country. they just are to a large degree escapable and lead to political division, not to unity. so, along the way, as a nation goes through its formative years, it requires myths, it requires historic -- requires greatness in the presidency. we have grown up but what hasn't

happened is we haven't given up because we can't give up on ourself, and i find myself somewhat conflicted here, too. i'm not a declinist, but i have to be real. we are part of a post heroic leadership era that doesn't just affect the united states. i spend time in the book talking about the end of greatness as a global phenomenon. 193 nations sit -- are represented in the unites nations. i'm not sure there's one leader that we could all agree is transformational and good, too. that's why mandela's passing was so deeply felt by so many people. it is harder for the reasons i identify to acquire, maintain, and use power effectively. in a modern democracy, and even in an authoritarian state. the media there, too, exacts a price.

and the whole point is not to give up on the promise of america. it's to get real in our own expectations. i have no illusions that within a year from now -- this october 22nd. oh, yeah. within a year from now, the -- not a the search -- the effort to validate the one, quote-unquote, who is going to redeem and save us, will already be well underway, and that process of expectation, that infantallizes us. we can't wait around be rescued because there nor more franklin roosevelts coming. that creates a sense of obligation on all of us to invest in our own politics, to try to re-invest in our politics, not just in our entertainers and our athletes to believe once again in a functional political system, and that's really, really hard to do because i do not polarization in

american politics, which is not some media creation. we of genuinely divided in this country on many issues. the one that divides us the most is the essential instrument of greatness in the presidency, and that is, what is the role of government to be in rem diand re-do remedy and reform in this nation. forget small or big. the question is, oh to make it effective. if a president is denied that, as agency, how then does anything really change? can we really good back to the days of very small government? tea party rally in downtown washington, one of the most extraordinary signs was the one that said, barack obama, don't touch my medicare. this is representative -- manifestation of a current of opinion that wants to downsize

0, to go back to an older day, and yet the sign is, don't touch my met and they it's too late for that. government -- 75% of the country, if you include tax breaks, now benefits from some governmental program or largess. it's too late. the question is, how to make it effective and credible once again, and the fact is, it's very hard. we don't trust institutions. it's no coincidence that the tea party and "occupy" wall street, however diverse they are in terms of ideological approach, both target large institutions, whether it's government or corporations. we've lost a good deal of faith in our institutions, and by implication, we set ourselves up for a loss of faith and credibility in our presidents. >> i wonder about, though, this notion that -- if there's a straw man in your argument it might be that americans are in a

constant state of awaiting a great new president. that's not how i remember the last few elections. i don't think very men people -- enthose who supported mitt romney nationalled he would be an fdr. i think that some of that did in fact attach to barack obama because he was the first serious african-american candidate to become president, and there was a great deal of euphoria on the day of the gnawingation with a million people only on the mall. there was a sense of greatness. if you talked to individuals, even african-americans insuring the court of the campaign and after, there were actually a good bit of conversation about, we have to be careful about not to expect too much of him. there's only so much that can be done- >> exactly. >> is it true we desperately want a great president? >> the final section of the book, what is so great about being great, anyway? spends more than a few pains talking about -- few pages talking about the ambivalence americans have always felt toward the presidents.

we're not the europeans who appreciated they ever kings. peter the great, catherine the great, charlemagne, we don't do great in america. we don't. which is one of the reasons we in some respects set ourselves up for a fall. we hat great as commonly displayed. so jefferson answers the door of the white house in his slippers. much to the dismay of the british ambassador who complained. hari truman, when -- harry truman when he leavees the white house, gets a new york chrysler as a gift, and the president and bess drive 1200 miles up through new jersey and then over to michigan, he gets pulled over for speeding, they eat in diners. there is no security. there is no advance team. it was just the two of them. we fool and trick ourselves, doug. we say we don't want great, and yet we really do, except we wanted packaged in a way that is

consistent with our own aversion to the quote-unquote trappings of conventional power. we want great as humility, with great humbleness, but we do want our presidents to be quote-unquote, greater than we are. so, we in some respects are already conflicted, and i think that's a -- the crucial point in understanding and validating your point. there's a quote in that book by john steinbeck, i think on page 179, which i think is actually -- i don't want to use this as a prop -- >> you did this. >> i hope i'm right. here it is. in short we may be too ambivalent about greatness to appreciate it but certainly we are ambivalent enough to love and blast our presidents at the same time. write neglect early '60s john steinbeck captured: we give the

president more work than a man can do, more responsibility than man should take, more pressure than man can bear. we abuse him often and rarely praise him. we wear him out use, him up, eat him up, and with all this, americans have a love for the president that goes beyond loyalty or party nationality. he is ours and we exercise the right to destroy him. >> interestingly, let me did - ask you about that. i want to talk about media, we hold this power to destroy him. strangely enough, take on this paradox, if you would. on the one hand we are very willing to at least begin the process of destroying a president over things like sexual peccadilloes. our most recent impeachment. see a president who otherwise fairly popular figure, someone who many people would say, if he had been around four more years and had been the 9/11 president

would have faced the great crisis and we potentially would have seen a great president, bill clinton, but we're are very willing to destroy that president or attempted to destroy that president over things that with the distance of time seems strangely minor in the scheme of things. at the same time we then have a -- i don't -- not necessarily my view but many americans who say that we had a president who through a series of mistakes or lack of capacity, we ended up in a war that cost thousands and thousands of american lives and hundreds of thousands of other lives, and yet, there is an american inability to just say, wow, we really failed here. our system failed here. our country failed in a gigantic way here, and we're really enable to hold that president accountable. if ever there was a basis for the removal of a president from office, one would imagine that aside from gross corruption it would be causing loss of thousands and thousands of american lives in a mistaken war, and yet that is a topic

that remained at the very fringes of lunacy even in american conversation. why is that? >> look at the nature of american wars. only one, fascinating, failed to produce an american president. one war and i'll stop the argument at world war ii-which obviously did produce a president, dwight eisenhower, but if you argue back, only one war in history failed to produce a president of the united states, and that was world war i. that was world war i. now, part of this has to do with the nature and the appreciation of how america gets into wars, how they're perceived at the time, and the validation that we give to presidents who have been military figures. so that in some respects, particularly when you're fighting against an external enemy, the country is prepared to give you a margin of error

and transgression. i don't think -- it's rare you'll see -- you ever see a president removed from office or pilloried to the extent that he would be forced to resign. johnson, in vietnam, chose not to seek a second term. in large part because i think he knew he would be challenged. there would be a democratic challenge to him. and the criticism, the constant hammering he received was taking an emotional toll. wars are paradoxical. the image that a war helps a president aggrandize power and enhances a reputation is only partially true. the last good world was world war ii. i don't think there's a basis for removing a president from office -- you take a look at the two longest wars in american history.

iraq and afghanistan. why were they the two longest wars in american history? fought by 0.5% of the population 200 million people. that's one reason that criticism of these wars didn't lead to a much greater public movement to get out of them sooner. had there been a draft in this country do you think we would have been in iraq and afghanistan? we still are in afghanistan and will remain there probably for the next decade with some residual presence. do you think we would have given the nature of these wars, the asymmetrical nature of the loss of life. the fact that standard for victory, never could we win, but when could we believe i'm not sure if the public were truly engaged, that the result that you predicted wouldn't have occurred. that a president would have been -- would, like johnson, would have -- wouldn't have been hammered, perhaps even driven from office.

the loss of life clearly, 6,000 plus american dead in iraq andgs traumatic, although every life is a trauma and every injury from which people will never recover is a trauma. but the loss was not as profound at vietnam. we insulated ourselves, and we were told to insulate ourselves. 9/11 might have been a transformative experience. it might have b have been sometg that could have been used to pursue inclusion rather than exclusion. but this is one of my points. we are essentially engaged in looking at our politics and our military on a volunteer basis. we had 0.5% of the country fight the two longest wars in american history mitchell father went to war in 1941, 130 million people in the country. 16 million of them put on the uniform. there was a sense of shared sacrifice, shared obligation, shared responsibility.

that war literally, other than the personal lives, was the single most important factor in my father's life. my wife's father's life. and that sense of collusion inclusiveness doesn't exist miami, which reinforces the problem we have with investing something more on a national experience in our president. >> didn't ask the american people -- your notion of the limited range of sacrifice that americans were undertaking in these wars i exactly right. but also the case that when we make this comparison to to world war ii period we asked the american people to finance the war in explicit ways. we purchasedded war bands. we campaigned and projected to the american people the necessity that everyone sacrifice in those ways as well. here we finance the most expensive wars in our history by far when you look at a

day-by-day, man-by-man cost of a war, we have financed these extraordinary expensive war us but hidden the costs of it within the way we tax people, and in debt, and then we accuse the -- the parties accuse one another of gross overtaxation, without saying what it was for. >> the justifications that caused world war ii were so moral live explicit and clear and victory was so comprehensive and so final, never again, would we participate in such a war. and again, i think that's a good thing. who wants a war -- another war that kills 50 million people? so, in term0s our own politics, how can you invest greatness in someone else if you come to question the capacity to realize it in your own politics, and in your own lives? if you're not called upon to

participate in something greater than you, a larger enterprise, for my kids, jenny 34, andany, 32, this grates challenge for them. my daughter came to me a decade ago and said your parents had the depression and world war ii. you had vietnam, watergate. and the civil rights movement. and the '6s. what 0 do we have? what is the major nation enculp bering issue that creates a sense of shared, shared sacrifice, obligation, and commitment? i don't know the answer to that question. but i wonder whether or not it is intrinsically linked to the notion of how we look at our politics and how we look another ourselves as a nation. newtown, after the killings, i was absolutely persuaded that this would be a transformative moment in the nation's history.

9/11, fundamentally transformative moment, and there's so few of them that force us to come together as a people, and yet, what transformation? this is a serious problem, and i don't know how to resolve it or what it means, frankly. i offer three pieces of advice, and last chapter of books always disappoint, and i say the introduce, be forewarned if you're looking for a quick or easy fix to this, get over it. the constitution has been amendmented 27 times. the last time was in 1992. we are not going to somehow restructure our political system, and i'll spare you the civics less leston about extending the presidents' term, making it six years, term limits. none of this is real. none is going to happen. we will function within the political system we have. three pieces of advice. think good, not great and not good in the banal sense but good in the sense it actually has

manning. competency, moral sensibility. number two, read presidential history and understand why things happened the way they did. and again, think transaction. not transformation. we need people who understand what can be achieved. we need people who can build politics and who are prepared not to be detached but to be truly hands on and to do everything conceivably possible to position themselves to make sure the other side, whether it's an r or d, bears the ultimate responsibility for not engaging, and don't overpromise. neebor, very smite guy, wrote 50 years ago, even in me, with all our resources and suspect, which -- we're an exceptional people as along as it's starts at the water's edge. it's not for expert. we can't make the world the way we are.

but he nerd america the best you can do is come up with proximate solutions to insolvable problems and we need presidents, in my view, who practice what david brooks called in the "new york times," low idealism. they don't give up but they understand that life is about reconciling the way the world is, with the way you want it to be, and it is in that balance, i think, that presidents -- that zone, that hopefully we will have presidents that can lead us in. >> i want to take you back to the question your daughter asked you. what is the challenge of our time, the great crisis of our time? may turn another that president obama may be the president who either in the end brilliantly or incompetently handled the first great global pandemic in a century and maybe ebola becomes the great crisis. we'll see. there's two years yet.

but that's still looking for the great crisis. capital g, capital c, great wars, great military challenges, things we can imagine have some resolution and end to them. as opposed to the much soft examiner more complex challenges that face our country particular now in the absence of the soviet union and the absence of the great defined enemy. issues around income inequality and how do we balance out big vs. small in terms of government, how do we fulfill the ideals of the declaration of independence? but you read something -- let me read a couple lines to you. this is in response to a review of a biography of woodrow wilson this appeared in "the new york times." a letter from a -- it says, wilson deserves credit for his achievements in shaping modern international relations. but slavery and the failure to afford full citizenship to african-americans after its end represent the most fundamental tests of american principles and

domestic policy faced by every president between the adoption of the constitution and the civil rights movement in 1960s, on that count, wilson failed abjectly. he was a great white supremacist, and then it says, for too along, too much presidential scholarship has accepted that gross racial abuse was inevitable. another form of american manifest destiny. things could have turn out different limit our past leaders should be vigorously judged for why things did not. that's a kind of failure that you don't deal with much. you make some reference to the failure of reconstruction, but it's really just here and there. you make reverends to this -- that fundamental challenge of the last 100 years that is internal and not external. so, is it that the great crises that perhaps bring our next president will be internal, reconciliation of the failure of

the american promise? >> i spent most of my career in the middle east and i came back to where i started as american historian, because i really do believe that the promise and the future lies here, not in the broken angry dysfunctional middle east. i'm very much focused on the gap between what america is and what i hope it will be. but filling that gap also requires a realistic and sober assessment of how and under what circumstances we change in this country? we're not a revolutionary society. change in america is usually a question of evolutionary incremental change. it took us 150 years, i think i said this yesterday -- to reconcile the promise contained in the declaration of independence with the reality our own constitution, without using the word slavery, validated the greatest chatle slavery enterprise in the world. 150 years. and i don't think anyone, even

the most pro american, with sincability, would argue that we have finally dealt with the issue of race in this country. this is very much an evolutionary process, and i come back to the issue of our political system. our political system was not designed to promote transformative change. it was not constructed by the founders to make it possible for things to happen very quickly. and that remains, it seems to me structurally, a reality that we're going to have to deal with, whether it's climate change, whether it's reducing our dependence on hydrocarbon, whether it's redressing the race issue, we really are trapped. i mean, i argue that given the imperfections of the rest of the world, we are stuck with the -- we're not where we want to be

but we are -- we have the kinds of instruments, the three thing that are necessary to basically overcome our problems. we have a unique geographic position, nonpredator neighbors to the north and south and fish to the east and west, so-called liquid assets. no country in the world in history ever was privileged and fortunate to have such a sense of security. number two, we have an incredible issue of size in this country. and abundance. natural resource wes may not respect and waste but they're here. when i travel this country, i am amazeed at the expanse of the land that is still open, and that is not the case for many peoples in the world. certainly in the middle east. proximity is a problem. and small is a problem. we don't have nat. finally, we have a political

system, probably only one in history based on an idea. and the idea is that individuals still count, and according to circumstance, merit and luck, continue to rise. can rise. the fact that barack obama and sarah palin share the same political space, and i say this to neither to trivialize or diminish either of them -- is a testament to the reality of this system that people can literally come from nowhere and rise through the system. now, that is exceptionalism, and i'll defend it -- it can't be exported. we cannot export this because it is anchored in our hoyt, anchored in our reality, anchored in our location. but these three natural advantages, i think, position us quite well even to resolve the slow bleed, but it will require a degree of leadership, a degree

of bipartisanship, and a sense of civility. i say all the time and i'll say it again, work for rs and ds, i voted for rs and ds, and at the dividing line in this country can't be between left and right, liberal or conservative or republican and democrat. it has to be between dumb on one hand, and smart on the other. and which side of the line do you want america to be on? if you want america to be on the smart side, then then don't demonize your political eye opinion meant to. if you want america to be on the smart side, while you debate even the most emotional subjects, you don't, while they're speaking, think about how you're going to refute their arguments. you actually listen to what they have to say. its what a former speech writer for ronald reagan called civility. civility is not politeness only. it's the capacity to respect, appreciate, and listen to what somebody else is saying.

we don't have that in our 24/7 politics and i don't know -- i'm at a loss, frankly, to know, since i'm charged with talking be the world's problems cannot fixing them. i don't have an answer but the conversation has to start, and that's why i wrote the book. >> you've -- you make the assessment we won't have another great president in the end that's for a fair live simple reason, because you're kind of counting on that the illens -- aliens are not going invade or won't be another great war that we have to survive, that the crisis will not present itself. so that's why we wind hasn't another great president do we deserve to have a great president? do the american people deserve, given all you just said, deserve to have another great president? >> deserve. that gets into the issue of making moral or ethical judgments. look, my american identity is

the most meaningful piece of my life. i love this country. i fine it remarkable with all of its impesks. -- imperfections. the answer is yes. we could do so much better for ourselves, and we could be into much part and more effective in the way we deal with the rest of the world. so the answer is, sure. i'm simply arguing that in one line, greatness in the presidency is too rare to be relevant today, and it is tootoo dangerous to be desirable. because in our political system, you want a great president? fine. you got me. let's have another great president. but buckle your seatbelt. because the greatness will be in response to a kind of crisis that we have not had in this country, and that we do not want. we got over some extraordinary times.

we were blessed with leaders who got most of the big decisions during these crisis right, and they guided us through a period where we are now -- how long do countries last? i don't know. but we now have the potential to actually begin to address the less than nation enculp bering crises, the slower bleeds. just is going to require a different kind of sense of expectation, and our own conception of our own politics and how we participate in them and what we actually want. and bipartisanship is critically important to this enterprise. this is not the most polarized era in american history. press ton brooks, nearly killed charles sumner on the senate floor, nearly caned him to

death. there's a darker side to american politics. a violent said. a turbulent side. out of which greatness came. i'm trying to figure out a way that we could have really good but not great without some of these nation-enculp bering crieses and without the kind of trauma that has so shaped our country's history. >> let's the conversation begin. at the verymer. >> thank you. [applause] >> the book is "the end of greatness." aaron david miller. thank you. >> let's get you unclipped and -- well, actually, i almost did it again. we're going to take some questions. yesterday, forgot the q & a. so hang on one second.

>> let's everyone applaud again if you still think it was a good show. >> thank you. >> the book is "the end of greatness." aaron david miller. thank you. [applause] >> all right. let's have some questions. if you'd -- if you have a question, raise your hand and students will come around with a microphone, and ask your question and then give the microphone back to the student so they can get to in the next person. >> sounds like you read the book "collapse and complex societies." your next book should be on followership. seems to me you made an incredible analysis of american history like andrew beck and his work. followership is the problem, not -- we have leadership, one

after the other, but we're not following the capacity of those that we have elected. >> this is a really good point, and the old equip that a leader without followers is just a person out for a walk, is actually very instructive. one of jack kennedy's most famous lined came from richard iv, i can summon spirits from the vast deep and hotspurr says so can any man. the question is do they come when you call? and the fact is, that is absolutely essential. it's leadership with followership of quality, not blind unquestioning followership, but intelligent followership, and to a certain degree with hey disengaged. i'd clue myself here. we have a voluntary military. no compulsory form of national service. we frank my would prefer watching "west wing."

the conception of the presidency which is more entertaining than the real thing. we contract out our political key baits to talking heads on tv, and in some respect you're right. again, i argue with my daughter all the time about this because i see it as a generational problem, but she assures me that i'm wrong. that her generation fliss fact involved, and i believe that to be the case. the question is, how do you involve young people and imbue them, not with only a sense of global responsibility. how do you imbue them with some overarching sense of national responsibility where they feel a part of a group, and this is really, really hard. we no longer have a shared conception of our history, and maybe that's right. i mean, various groups have been ignored along the way, and the history of america, when i was at the university of michigan, was essentially history of a

tradition of dead white european males. that's broken down now, and identity politics have emerged. i think it's hurt us as well. there's no national narrative we share and no sense of national obligation. i don't see how you can function and expect greatness when in fact that cohesion isn't there. i don't want to go back to 1941. we -- i don't. i was born in '49. america sacrificed, it was -- it truly was great generation. but in many respects it was an exclusive generation as well, and i think so much of what has happened in this country is wonderful. we really are -- re have a big tent here, which is unlike almost any other country in the world, where we debate, we argue, we come from so many different traditions, and there's a measure of respect, or at least tolerance, all right?

how to imbue the future generation with the sense of collective national responsibility? i think that's really the key. and it may actually be worth thinking through in a serious way, making this the next conversation, because the politicians, nor the professional military, will tell you that they want a draft. war is too complicated. we have back to dissing a aggregated. some degree of followership. you're 100% right. a leader without follower ecesis just somebody out for a walk, and basically we have to figure out a way to correct that problem. maybe a more apt subject would be that one. >> amen. >> i have a suggestion. is this on? i think you should tell your daughter that the next crisis is

evolutionary and is going to be climate based. 90% of americans live within ten feet of water. a couple of centuries and they will be underwater. we have to start thinking instead of the next crisis lasting ten minutes or even ten years, it's going to last us a couple hundred years, and i think young people are going to get on the bandwagon to make that happen. >> i think these problems are generational, particularly climate change. i am at a loss to know how we begin to address this. it's a global problem. we have our national responsibility you can't do it by executive action alone, which is what this president tried to do. i don't have an answer on that. i mean, i agree with your point 100%, and these great nonpolitical challenges,

including epidemics, global warming, climate change, are in fact national security problems for us. and i think we have to find a way to address them. but we're dealing with such a dysfunctional political system and these slow bleeds don't serve to unite. they serve to polarize. in part because however imminent and self-evident climate change may be, unless you can produce something that is inescapable, something that a politician has to deal with now, something that is felt among beard aspects of the public -- governing is about choosing. fdr once said about lincoln he died a sad man because he couldn't have everything. and fdr was talking about the greatest president we ever had. focusing on where you want to spent your political capital in a country that is now only in a grudgingly in some respects, and

incrementally recovering from the worst economic recession since the great depression, which is not felt, becomes a huge priority, and i suspect it will depending on the state of the recovery for the next president. but i can't -- i agree with you. i do. >> i know you said you don't have an answer for how to have people cooperate civilly and get along, and i think one way we could begin to look at this -- i'm a clinical psychologist and marital therapist, and everything you said applies in a couple relationships, and it is possible to have them create a common vision and learn to work together as a team, and i'm not exactly sure how we can take this into the political arena. i mean, sometimes we've suggested off the cuff, what if there were couples who were

actually working politically? they had to learn how to get together and they could help other people learn how to communicate and cooperate. i think we do have to start at that very personal level. it's not 50% divorce rate. it's not happening very much there. and the conversation, if we can bring it to that level, to how we can personally be civil to each other as couples, on the internet, everywhere, that maybe then from the grassroots rather than just the top down, we'll begin to have some civility. and maybe that's a place to start. >> bring mary matlin and james car veil here. they have written about this subject a lot. i agree. it may well be that -- you need a transactional approach pursued

by government and also need a transformational proof and that has to do with changing the way individuals perceive their circumstances. my wife is on the board of seeds of peace, remarkable organization. brings young israelis and palestinians, indians and pakistanys, to a summer experience in maine and you watch the individual transformation that occurs. fear and suspicion on day one, and within three weeks, you see a remarkable transformation. they're in mourning, openly weeping because they know they're heading back from -- they saul the future. and now they're headed back to the past. this is extremely important. just hard to imagine how it -- it really is a question of politics beginning at home, frankly. >> try to squeeze in a couple more questions. >> david, that was terrific, thank you. let me tell you a story about a

president who lamented that he lived in the wrong time, and i was a consultant to the clinton administration, was in the roosevelt one afternoon with the president and his staff and he was lamenting the fact that he could not be a great president because he was a president in a period where there really were no great events going on that would catapult him to presidency. his -- one off his staff said, mr. president, when would you like to have been president in he said i would have loved to have been president at the end of the colored war when i could have -- at the hedge of the second world war and work with stall yip to prevent the cold war. so, your premise is also exists in the white house with presidents who understand that they cannot -- cannot allow them to become great presidents. >> that's a fascinating story. bill clinton revealed some of that in a comment he made

publicly. his lamenting that he didn't live in more tumultuous times. but your -- the story you tell about the staff inquiry, basically asked him, what period would you want to live in? is knew and that's really quite intriguing. but again, it comes down to the notion that circumstances really drive the opportunities that are available and without the world cooperating after a fashion, it's hard to imagine this. we briefed president clinton a couple times before the camp david summit in july of 2000. a submit which we all knew was doomed to fail, and clinton's -- clinton said to us -- i remember distinctly trying and failing is better than not trying at all, which is quintessentially american. he wanted it.

by then his -- the two middle eastern leaders with whom he was closest, king hussein and prime minister ran -- rabin, were both dead, and he felt a sense of obligation. so i appreciate that. and drives the fundamental point that even presidents understand, or come to understand, that in the times they inherit, that really -- it's that polled biblical expression, comeeth the hour, comeeth the man, and i think that right, the hour needs to be right for what i'm argue. but you don't want that kind of dramatic, traumatic hour to come. we need to learn how to succeed in nonheroic and noncrisis environments in an effort to

preempt them, and that's not going to be easy. >> one last question. >> listening to you, fascinated by everything you have said, and i appreciate your being here today. i want to ask about one aspect of this and that is the selection by the presidents of their cabinet ministers has a critical point whether or not they'll be great or not. and i look at people like lincoln, for example, was great because he had the capacity to hire general grant, who could win battles even though he was an alcoholic. and he is a good example of the other good cabinet leaders that people have had over the aims. kennedy, for example, win the cubon missile crisis came, he picked on a guy who had been a former ambassador to russia to give him the advice he needed to solve the crisis. why? now today we hear about the

russian ambassador talking, for example, about putin and the russian government, they have no understanding of the russian government, no understanding of the ambassador. and the ambassador made terrible comments, not understanding his component on the other side. it was essential in the case of khrushchev and with kennedy that khrushchev and the ambassador at that time were good friends, so he knew how that gee way speaking and how to respond. this is strive many things in our history. it's like business. you have to have people working under you who of capable for answering the problems you need. johnson, for example, he did great for civil rights, civil liberties but failed because he became a general in the army and it was one of his great failures. >> part of capacity is knowing who to pick and how to rely on them. it's no coincidence, you could

argue, that the three greatest presidents, washington, lincoln, and fdr, assembled three most remarkable cabinet you. can't top washington's cabinet. cannot. alexander hamilton was never president. but that is an extraordinary cabinet with jefferson. and hamilton, and madison and congress helping. lincoln's team of rivals, in the end served him well because he knew and understood, as goodwin opinions out, how to manage them and use them to the best of their abilities and his. and fdr assembled a brain trust and while he took at least to cope with some of the domestic problems. relied on eleanor for sure as an emissary and a barometer of what the country was feeling, and assumed an enormous degree of control during the war and took

many of these command decisions by himself, like lynn low of, which is extraordinary. it was fdr's idea, and -- but again, employed the right people, understood how to use people, and motivate them. so, part of capacity is one of the three crazys, crisis, character, capacity, knowing who to pick and how to use them. >> thank you, again. let's let him dash to the back. thank you very much. applause

>> in the clean chapter, basic idea of a clean glass of drinking water, central to ghost map as a book, that we live in a world for the most part here in the developed world where you go to the faucet and you get a glass of drinking party and drink and it you don't ever think about dying of cholera 48 hours later. and that is an incredible achievement. that you can live in a city of a million people or 10 million people and have that security. that took a whole history of invention and ingenuity and scientific breakthroughs and engineering projects to make that possible. and while we celebrate innovation in our society all the time. everybody wants to talk about silicon valley