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cusack preoccupation with presidential greatness of princely to expectations and causes presidents to miss judge their own capacity. we would be better off if we never had another great president. this is about an hour and a half. >> welcome to e miller center at american forum. i am douglas blackmon 11. when the united states's cold war with the president of which the soviet union came to a halt there was wide open at our country would enter a big golden era at. our form of capitalism and triumphs would be extended to hundreds of millions of people, new levels of prosperity would follow for all, vindicating our economic system, a peace dividend could be redirected to combat in hundred misery, the national budget would finally balance. the american presidents of the future from whatever political

parties had the opportunity to engineer for the world a new hybrid of democracy and free enterprise. how different these things appear now. longest wars in our nation's history against the minister that indecipherable terrorists, thousands of deaths and casualties, trillions of dollars spent without clear benefit, the most bitter dissension and hostility between our political leaders for racial unrest, mass incarceration and the series of presidents who board us, shocked us with more indiscretion, blundered and apologetically in to work, 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 america will never have another occupant of the white house with achievement on the scale of washington, lincoln nor fdr and americans don't even want another great president. aaron david miller worked

side-by-side with american presidents for the past 20 years serving as an adviser to state department under ronald reagan, bill clinton and both bush administration's. use vice president and distinguished hon. 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. >> pleasure to be here. >> let's start with the second president bush, bush xliii. there was a president who six years ago was deeply unpopular at the end of his presidency, viewed widely as the poor president, a failed president. approval ratings at the end had been in the high 20s to low 30s, yet today when americans are asked in polls about president bush almost 50% say he was a

good president, a strong approval rating. was he a failure six some years ago but now great president? >> let's start this way. presidents like fine wines age with time. the reality is they age well with time. they are much more popular once they leave the political fray, once they severed their relationships with the american people in contemporary political terms and are remembered in ways driven by many factors including to succeed them which is critically important. who comes before you and who comes after you is critically important to shaping your presidential reputation. no question about it. any number of presidents. look at two of our greatest. lincoln and fdr. lincoln preceded by james buchanan -- >> the worst president ever.

>> guest: fdr succeeded by herbert hoover. presidents who follow great presidents are you shall be individuals for whom there are no expectations. harry truman is the exception, he left office with one of the lowest approval ratings in the modern history of the presidency, remembered over time as a much better president than the fact of what happened to the presidency after truman left. there were eight good years of peace and prosperity with eisenhower and then we entered a very traumatic fall. jack kennedy's assassination, lyndon johnson all vote transform of civil rights bills, medicare, medicaid, there was vietnam which dragged on. there was richard nixon, who harry truman said read the constitution but didn't understand it. then you had gerald ford, a transitional president, jimmy carter, one term president, morning in america again with ronald reagan and 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. i would not include him as a great president alone and undeniably great president. the conceit of this book is driven by a simple proposition. greatness and the presidency is rare. greatness in any dimension of the human enterprise is rare. we use the term of -- i use the term may be 15 times a day. was a great movie, she's a great tennis player, have a great day but we don't understand what it is. we have emptied the notion of greatness of any meaningful content and transferred our appreciation for greatness from our political class because we haven't seen it, to our entertainers, our at least, and

our actors. you, we appreciate greatness and there we can have relationships. we buy tickets, they may be expensive. these people never disappoint or rarely disappointed. is in our political class, however, that we can't appreciate greatness because in many respects it is gone. it is gone because it is evan bayh three factors that have to all line, like the sun, the moon and the stars, in the right after a logical formation, you need crisis. and not just a garden variety crisis. you need crisis of that nation encumbering character. you need character. you need the right individual with the right internal makeup and the right orientation publicly and you need capacity. does this person actually know what they are doing? can't a deal with a cabinet, with congress, with the media, can they make washington work? those three, crisis, a character

and capacity, are what made our three greatest presidents great, washington, lincoln and fdr. half-dozen others, maybe 5, including one of the favorites down here, thomas jefferson, andrew jackson, teddy roosevelt, woodrow wilson, arguably, i worked at the woodrow wilson international center, the living memorial to our 28th president and our only ph.d. president and the only one buried in washington d.c. might be on the list, harry truman clearly consequential, three undeniables, five close but no cigar presidents and three at this. i choose to identify jack kennedy, lyndon johnson and ronald reagan as exhibiting traits of greatness, real or perceived but that is 11

presidents out of 44, 43 different presidents because grover cleveland was president twice in 9 consecutive terms. we have 23 different presidents, 11 of whom in my judgment have been truly consequential. the point of the book is provocative. we don't want another great president because the founders created a political system to disaggregate cover. they created a system of an energetic executive but an accountable one. and and 9/11 might have been a moment to encourage the nation

and it turned the other way, it is relentless, in exit -- inescapable and hot in which everybody has to essentially participate. the three greatest presidents, washington, when in and fdr confronted the greatest crises the nation faced at had a character and the capacity to go along with it. i don't want to risk threatening the nation again with such a crisis. to 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 1 and superman, so you can't allow them to be good, good in the sense -- the meaning of the word good, they know what they are doing, good in the sense that they remain within 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 driven by demand respirations that forced them into scandal or self created crises which causes overreach. give me presidents like that. and may be we can begin to imagine what we haven't had in a long time which is a truly, genuinely popular president. it is hard for me to imagine our political culture right now the emergence of a genuinely popular president. it is tough. i am not a presidential historian. but i am an american. this conversation, i rose this book, we all have at stake in this, i mentioned earlier that the founders used the word i twice in the constitution. why would the personal pronoun i

be in the constitution? they embedded the inaugural both in the document. for an obvious reason, to demonstrate the source of authority is not the president read in the office, it is us. this conversation is one we all should have and must have. >> let's break this into pieces. that wanted to ask you after george bush about barack obama. you talk about the sense of expectations around a president and measuring the people measuring limiting, confining their expectations and that is an important part in your critique of president obama. you call him the great disappoint her. disappointed in chief. >> guest: he is not the only president. >> host: this idea that we have in our general discourse today

it a lot of discussion of president obama as a disaster, eating a hamburger and a couple of nights ago and a person asked me what i did and i started explaining something and other than that he said is the presidency of barack obama the greatest abortion in political history? that was the terminology. we have all these voices saying we are being taken to catastrophe by president obama. on the other hand a lot of folks supported him are disappointed he was not as great, not the great leader they expected him to be. let's talk about that. this is the presidency who was around 40% approval rating. at the beginning of his presidency he went along with an extended an economic approach strategy to the debt arguably,

averted a great economic catastrophe. he has successfully pushed through legislation that is popular but was the most significant domestic legislation in two generation since johnson for sure. he avenged 9/11 with the killing of a osama bin laden. he is the first black president, the first non white male president, historic but that definition alone. even with his unpopularity how is it that doesn't eventually add up to something that is at least a trace of greatness? wikipedia it could. it takes a generation or more to accurately assess. who comes after barack obama when did 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 maintained party control, it

doesn't happen often because we get impatient, we don't like dynasties, we are fascinated by them but our presidents are like computers for new cars. every two to eight years there might be a need for another one. let's be real about barack obama. he is not a catastrophic failure or satan's finger on earth as some of his detractors suggest. nor is he the great redeemer and the view that so many people expected. he is the poster child for my whole lament here. when you set the bar, the aspiration omar as high as he did use that yourself up for profound disappointment. we can soften the edges all we want. we can claim he averted a great depression, perhaps dodd-frank on financial reform will prove to be the critical piece of

legislation. we could save the affordable health care act perhaps all passed without a single republican vote, jefferson said transform of change cannot rest on not majority. every other transformation in this country's history was pursued by partisan presidents who 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, medicare, medicaid, civil rights bill became transformed of. they were perceived to be legitimate. it is the vast sense of emptiness in my judgment between what was promised and what is now perceived that in my view warrants the title disappoint her in chief. when you ride into washington from philadelphia, you are creating part of lincoln's jenny from springfield, when your sworn in, when the inaugural

lunch is consumed at your post inaugural meal, served on replicas of mary todd lincoln's china. when you recreate the exact meal lincoln consumed, some could argue this is trivial, right down to the cheri jet the which is what that first inaugural lunch was about, when you promise postpartisanship and argue in your inaugural the stale political argument 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 you may not be able to unwind, you risk becoming the disappointing in chief and that in my judgment is what has happened. this crisis was not as profound.

i don't want to trivialize it. what fdr did created a set of systems and safeguards that were responsible for why we didn't end up in a great depression. it was not as deep as fdr. his character was far too conflicted. he was not as as fiery -- he is not the motor in chief. and analytical president is important but you have to have one that is engaged and really involved. finally, there are too many stumbles to suggest to me the experience that is required to manage the presidency he actually had. i am not adversary of barack obama. i will say right here and now live voted for him not once but

twice, but that vote was designed to achieve another purpose, to validate a system of governance that i think is more important frankly even any single individual. how history will judge him is still very much an open question. bill moyers and lbj said there are no final reports on the president, only interim reports. that is where i think barack obama is in. i use in 20 pages of a 28 page book to demonstrate the gap between aspiration and delivery. in a politically abscessed culture with our president and away and has never been the case, part of that is part of our 24/7 media culture which does many things. 535 legislators, 9 supreme court

justices, it is easier to personalize and create a relationship with a one man or one woman who is an individual, who has a wife, kids, usually a presidential, and follow him around in a way that the essentially turns the presidency into a transparent fishable. it tends to draw the allies it, strip away the detachment in the state this is required for greatness in the presidency. the media doesn't prevent the emergence of great presidents even though every white house complains about it but this media, just one example, october 22nd when jack kennedy addressed the nation in response to the cuban missile crisis, the networks immediately went back to normal programming. there was no 24/7 buildup to that speech, no post speech

analysis, no mediation. i was 12. i don't even remember watching the speech but my parents watched it and think about it. that meant my parents had to sit there for an hour and relate to jack kennedy with no mediation from any one. no talking head commentary. they had to come to terms with him, his wisdom, is prudence, his words. somewhere that we are no longer deny or able to do we traveled layoff as them. and their forced to play in a pop culture in a way that, only strip away, once you go on jon stewart, or jay leno as the president did and in the same scumble beyond the question of sports and the conversation turned to bullying and president obama said i bold 129 and was

good enough for the special will olympics, he then found himself 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, you are old, you don't understand, it is smart politics. it may be smart but in some respects it diminishes and degrades the kind of the attachment that leads to what did all called the mystique of authority that is necessary for greatness and the presidency. >> how can that be changed? in a free society when people get to say whatever they want to say, it listen to what they want to listen to and we have free-speech attached to commercial activity, and what

can be different in the world we live in? >> 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 and 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 hide bar. can you imagine a president that will never be perceived to be greater than fdr? four terms and the republicans thought they getting rid of him when they passed the 22 amendment? they must have not thought through clearly because what they did was forever enshrine franklin roosevelt as an undeniably great president, the only one that would ever be

elected to four terms. combine fdr's aba with the absence of a nation encumbering crisis which allows heroic action in the presidency which we don't want and combine that with a 24/7 intrusive media which diminishes, trivializes and forces the president to compete and be exposed. our last bald president was dwight eisenhower. our last short president was harry truman. our last obese president was william howard taft. look at the men, and when they win, who will inherit this office, they are all trudy physical specimens. we can't -- i am not sure we could abide looking at presidents that somehow have physical flaws. you add the intrusive media, had

the nation been aware of the extent of the disability, carried through windows. and image for the presidency, truly extraordinary. >> and forget government big or small. and appreciated for using it, and the trend lines,

>> >> thomas jefferson, george washington, two of those guys are the truly great, but the third on your list, thomas jefferson and don't make your list. >> they are all on the list. >> none of the truly great. three of the undeniably great presidents identified in a section called close but no cigar five additional presidents are in fact on mount rushmore. this culture action will be decided in this case to 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, our clearly greatest president because he confronted the most unimaginable horror any nation conference which is civil war. so no, those are at the time quite appropriate and the historians basically would argue and played and the ratings game is fun national pastime. that is not what this book is about. is not an effort to reach a conclusive development on raiding our presidents, but the waiting game, as the historians tell it, shows a remarkable consistency. and later continued the game, a

remarkable consistency in terms of the top 7 or 8 presidents and there has been varied little movement in historians. truman and eisenhower, very little movement from the bottom up or from the top down. you ask the historical community and they come out with a judgment of more or less along the lines, at the aspiration of greatness in a president centered culture, we have a presidential addiction. that would be ok if the addiction could be satisfied. i am arguing that the supply of truly great presidents has always exceeded the demand and now more than ever in our country's history we have a paucity of presidents you may detach the word great to. the number of military officers

a couple years ago, i asked them, all combat that's roughly my age who was the last political leader in their lifetimes that they would attach the word great to? i gave ten minutes to answer the question, they couldn't identify one and they asked me, who do you think? it was a very easy answer, great political figure, i said martin luther king. one of them in exasperated fashion shot back but he died, he was assassinated, he was murdered in 1968. that is exactly the point. king with all his imperfections, no leader like king has emerged. >> host: he was not anointed in the universal fashion, 20 years after his death and greatness can be registered in the lifetimes of a president or even

close to the end of a leader's time onstage. >> it takes time. assassination -- in the case of jack kennedy and attempted assassination of ronald reagan. lincoln and fdr were partisan, polarizing figures. the last year to his presidency pilloried. there was an appreciation at the time, even at the time that these leaders shepherded the nation through remarkable crisis, extracted from that some piece of transforming of change and continued to be appreciated and you are right, overtime, as a true national figures, really hard these days and if we continued to misunderstand that

the greatest obstacles to greatness and 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 and that is one of the lessons. read presidential history because what you see are individuals who inherit circumstances which they read accurately and correctly. they don't create -- they are already available. if they are good with the right character and capacity, they can exploit the crisis in some aspect of how we see ourselves, how we govern ourselves to make the country better forever and that is inherently and essentially what a greats of the. >> host: this is important, what is greatness question, in a more

granular way. "the end of greatness: why america can't have (and doesn't want) another great president," and not just talking about we are in not moment of no more greatness, we are not going to have it in the future but i am still interested in mount rushmore and teddy roosevelt but he is now incredibly popular again after a long period in which he wasn't but in 1927 the perception of the sculpture, was he was truly a great president in the ranks of washington, jefferson and lincoln. where was there at times that went by, what was the clinical analysis, >> you confront the nation encumbering crisis, social or political change, and changes the fundamental nature of the

system. and jackson, put it on the list, and their prices were not nearly as severe. the next tier down, it is a very loose term. were there crises as threatening to the nation in the case of these five. where their accomplishments consistently and undeniably. did they get most of the big decisions right, jefferson's second term was a disaster, hard

to see and rejection, their most controversial decision, we were it slaveholders, how do you deal with that on a moral and ethical basis with respect, and he himself lamented the absence of the crisis but would have made him undeniably great by saying that there had been no civil war roosevelt said no one would have no lincoln's name. no one would have no lincoln's name. that is an extraordinary statement. lincoln came from nowhere but it may well be clearly without the secession, without civil war, without lincoln refashioning the bases and structuring out of crisis a new moral foundation for the nation with the thirteenth amendment, for as the emancipation proclamation and then the thirteenth amendment and the assassination. the undeniables to me are beyond contention. i would debate and argue with any professional historian they

would agree these three, washington who fathered the nation, lincoln who saved it through civil war, and fdr, a great president who helped with confidence and experimentation to get america through its greatest economic calamity and led through a war that was the last good war that america has probably thought. the last war that left america stronger at home and abroad was world war ii. the others fall off, and their greatness is, i think, to date, 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 it did to the physical size of the nation. >> host: is it possible the great is we are talking about and i will be devil's advocate to some degree in a way that supports your book but

ultimately -- society wants, a human beings want to have mythological figures. every human civilization always has. is it possible is universal designation of washington, lincoln, fdr, while on one hand is true that they were great leaders in their time, 96 thus will presidents by the definitions that exist in that moment but at the same time it king george had backed off of boston we might never have heard of george washington. lincoln is a guy who holds the nation together, he is insisting on keeping the union together, if he were president today there would be people saying if he would just go 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 according to some people like me african-americans don't really get full be freed from their enslavement in the civil war. doesn't have to live with the consequences and one can make a

nice human the way the war was prosecuted -- go to fdr, similar issues, transformational president but leaves out of the equations african-americans lose the deal was cut with white supremacists. and actually reconcile the thing our country is arguing about today which is what -- how much he didn't have to reconcile those things. by exclusion of these historical realities from the methodology, and in those relentless terms. >> nations are like individuals, they go through formative periods and they survive the early years as we did, the extraordinary challenges and threats, is music to my ears because you are validating my

whole case. not just the nation is somehow permanently secure. we face lower bleed now. i called in six deadly beads, death, dysfunctional politics, dependence on hydrocarbons, a disaster as education will system and deficits. these us low lead. these are crises that over time will sap the economic and social power from the country. they just are to a large degree is capable and they lead to political division, not unity. as the nation goes through its formative years it requires myths, historic tropes, it requires great as in the presidency. what hasn't happened is we haven't given up because we can't give up on ourselves and i

find myself conflicted too. i have to be real. we are part of a post heroic leadership, i spent time in the book talking about the end of greatness as a global phenomenon. 193 nations are represented in the united nations. i am not sure there is one leader that we could all agree is transformational and good too. that is why nelson mandela's passing was so deeply felt by so many people. it is harder for the reasons identified to acquire, maintain and use power effectively. in a modern democracy and even in an authoritarian state. to exact a price, the whole point is not to give up on the promise of america, it is to get

real in our own expectations. i have no illusions that year from now, october 22nd, a year from now, not the search, the effort to validate the one who is going to redeem and save us will already beat well under way. that process of expectation, we can't wait around to be rescued, there are no more franklin roosevelts coming. that creates a sense of obligation on all of us to invest in politics to reinvest in our politics. not just in our entertainers and athletes, to believe once again in a functional political system and that is really hard to do because i do not see polarization of american politics which is not some media

creation. we are generally divided in this country on many issues but the one that divides us most is the essential instrument of greatness in the presidency and what is the role of government to be in remedy and reform in this nation. forget small or big. if the president is denied that, as agency, how then does anything really changed? can we really go back to the days of a very small government. a tea party rally in downtown washington, one of the most extraordinary science, that says barack obama, don't touch my medicare. this is the manifestation of a current of opinion that wants downside to go back to an older day and it is too late for that.

75% of of the country includes tax breaks, now benefits from some governmental program. it is too late. the question is how to make it effective and credible once again. we don't trust institutions. is no coincidence that tea party and occupy wall street, however divers they are in their ideological approach, both target large institutions whether it is government or corporations. we have lost a good deal of faith in our institutions and by implication we set ourselves up for a loss in faith and credibility. >> host: i wonder about 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 is not how i remember the

last few elections. even the people who most earnestly supported mitt romney i don't think they imagined he would be fdr, attached to barack obama because the first serious african-american candidate to become president, on the day of the inauguration on the mall there was a sense here. if you talk to african-americans in the course of the campaign and afterwards, there are a good of conversations, we have to be careful not to expect too much. is it really true that we desperately wanted great president? >> the final section of this book which is what is so great about being great anyway, spends more than a few pages talking about the ambivalence that americans have always felt for their presidents. we are not the europeans who appreciated their kings. peter the great, catherine the great, charlemagne, we don't do

great in america. which is one of the reasons we in some respects set ourselves up for a fall. we want great as commonly displayed. the door of the white house, much to the dismay of the british ambassador at the time who complained, harry truman when he leaves the white house invests getting the car, the new york chrysler, and the president drive 1200 miles up through new jersey endeavour to michigan, he gets pull over for speeding. they eat in diners, there is no security, there is no advanced team, it was just the two of them. we full and trek ourselves, we say we don't want great and yet we really do except we wanted packaged in a way that his consistent with our own of version 2, quote, trappings of

conventional power. as humility, great humble us, there greater than we are. we are already conflicted and i think that is a crucial debt that in understanding and validating your point. there's a quote in the book by john steinbeck on page 179 which i think is actually -- i don't want to use this as a prop. the we may be too ambivalent to appreciate but we are ambivalent enough to love and the last hour president at the same time. in the early 60s john steinbeck captured the contradiction quote that we give the president more work than a man can do, more responsibility than a man should take, more pressure than a man can bear.

we abuse the law and praise him often, we wear him out, use him up, eat him up and 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. >> host: i want to talk about media, the power to destroy him, strangely enough to take on this paradox if you would. on the one hand we are very willing to begin the process of destroying the president over things like sexual peccadilloes. are most recent impeachment, we see a president, very popular figure, and four more years, face the great crisis. and we are very willing to

destroy that president or attempt to destroy that president over things that seem strangely minor in the scheme of things. at the same time, i don't necessarily my view but many americans would say we had a president who through a series of mistakes or lack of capacity ended up in a war that cost thousands of american lives, hundreds of thousands of other lives, and yet there is an american in ability to just say we really failed here, our system failed here, our country fails in a gigantic way, we are unable to hold the president accountable. if ever there was the basis for removal of a president from office one would imagine aside from gross corruption, it would be causing thousands of american lives in the mistaken war. yet that is a topic that remained at the very fringes of lunacy in american conversation.

why is that? >> guest: look at the nature of american wars. only one failed to produce an american president. one war, and i will stop the argument that world war ii which obviously did produce a president, dwight eisenhower. only one war in our history before world war ii failed to produce a president of the united states. that was world war i. that was world war i. part of this has to do with the nature and appreciation of how america gets into wars, how to proceed at the time, and the validation we give to presidents who have been military figures. that in some respects particularly when you are struggling against an external enemy the country is prepared to give you a margin of error and transgression. i don't think it is rare that

you would 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 he knew he would be challenged, there would be a democratic challenge and the criticism hammering to take an emotional toll. wars are paradoxical, the image of a war that helps aggrandize power and enhances reputation is only partially true. of the last good war was world war ii. i don't think there is the basis for removing the president from office. take a look at the two longest wars in american history, iraq and afghanistan. why where they the two longest

wars in american history? fought by 0.5% of the population. that is one of the reasons that criticism of these wars didn't beat 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 for the next decade. do you think the asymmetrical nature of loss of life, the fact that the standard for victory in both these wars, never could we win but when could we leave, i am not sure the public will -- were truly engaged at the result that you predicted would have occurred, that a president would, like johnson, wouldn't have been hammered or even driven from office, the loss of life, 6,000 plus americans in iraq and afghanistan were not

nearly as traumatic although every life is the trauma and every injury from which people will never recover is a trauma. the loss is not as profound as vietnam. we insulated ourselves and we were told to insulate ourselves. 9/11 might have been transforming experience, could have been used to pursue a inclusion rather than exclusion but this is one of my points. we are essentials the 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, there were 130 million people in this country. 16 million of them put on a uniform. there was a sense of shared sacrifice, shared obligation, shared responsibility. that war other than their personal lives was the single

most important factor in my father's life. that sense of inclusiveness doesn't exist anymore which further reinforces the problem is that we have with investing more on a national experience. >> host: the american people on your notion of the limited range of sacrifice americans were undertaking a on a military front but it is also the case you make this comparison in the world war ii period we ask the american people to finance the war in explicit ways. we purchased war bonds, we can paint and projected to the american people the necessities that everyone sacrifice in those ways as well. here we finance the most expensive wars in history by far when you look at the day-by-day man by man cost of war, financed extraordinarily expensive wars but hidden the cost of it within

the way we tax people and we accuse one another of gross over taxation without saying what it was for. >> the justification that caused world war ii were so morally complex and so clear and victory so final, never again would we participate in such a war. and again, i think that is a good thing. who wants another war that kills 50 million people? in terms of 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, in your own lives if you are not called upon to participate in something greater than you, a larger

enterprise. for my kids, this is the great challenge. my daughter came to me indicated go and set your parents had the depression, world war ii, you had vietnam, watergate and the civil rights movement in the 60s, what is the larger issue that creates a sense of shared sacrifice, obligation, 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 at ourselves as a nation. newtown, after the killings, i would absolutely persuade you that this would be a trans formative moment in the nation's history. 9/11, fundamentally transformative moment and there are so few of them that force us

to come together as a people, and yet what transformation? this is a serious problem. i don't know how to resolve it or what it means. i offered three pieces of advice and last chapters of books always disappoint. i say be forewarned, if you are looking for a quick or easy fix to this get over it. the constitution has been amended 27 times, the last time in 1992. we are not going to restructure our political system. i will spare you the civics lesson about extending the president's term, making a six year term, term limits, none of this is real, none of it is going to happen. we will function within the political system have. think good, not great, not good in the banal sense but in the sense that it actually has meaning, competency, moral sensibility, moral sensibility, and understand why things happen

the way they did. and fink 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 truly hands-on and do everything conceivable to position themselves to make sure the others side bears the ultimate responsibility for not engaging and don't overpromise. a very smart guy wrote 50 years ago that even in america and out with all our resources and special character, we are an exceptional people as long as that stops at the water's edge. we can't make the world the way we are but even in america the best you can do is come up with

a proximate solutions to insoluble problems and we need presidents who practice what david brooks called in the new york times low idealism. they don't give up but they understand 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 zone that hopefully we will have presidents that can beat us again. >> host: back to the question your daughter asked you, what the challenge of our time, the great crisis of our time. it may turn out president obama maybe the president who in the end either brilliantly or incompetently handles the first great global pandemic in a century, that ebola becomes the great crisis of our time. that is still looking for the great crisis, great wars, great

military challenges the week and imagine have some resolution into them as opposed to the much softer and more complex challenges that face our country in part to demand our in the absence of the soviet union or the greedy find any, issues around income inequality and how do we balance big vs. small in terms of government, how do we fulfil the ideals of the declaration of independence? that me read a couple lines to you, this is in response to a review of a biography of woodrow wilson. this was in the new york times of years ago. this is a letter from a letter critical of the review that 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 it end represents the most fundamental test of american principles and domestic policy faced by every president between the adoption of the constitution and the civil rights movement in the

1960s. on that count wilson failed abjectly. wilson was a white supremacist, uncomfortable thing to admit. for too long too much presidential scholarship has accepted gross racial abuse in the 19 food and 20th centuries was inevitable. another form of american manifest destiny. things could have turned out differently. our leadership vigorously judged for why it did not. that is a kind of failure that you don't deal with much. you referred to the failure of reconstruction but it is just here and there that you make references to this, that fundamental challenge of the last hundred years that is internally and not external. is it that the great challenges for the next great president will be fundamentally internal reconciliations of these failures of the american promise? >> i do believe -- spent most of my career in believe that i came back to where i started as an

american historian. the future lies here, not in the broken english dysfunction. i am very much focused bond the gap between what america is and what i hope it will be. .. >> even the most pro-american with sensibility would argue that we

have finally dealt with the issue of race in this country. no, this is very much an evolutionary process, and we have -- and, again, 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 are going to have to deal with whether it's climate change, whether it's reducing our dependence on hydrocarbons, whether it's addressing the race issue. we, 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 things that are necessary to basically overcome our problems.

we have, as i said yesterday, a unique geographic position in this country. we have nonpredatory neighbors to our north and south and fish to our east and west, so-called liquid assets. no country in the world, in history, ever was privileged or fortunate to have such a sense of security. number two, we have an incredible issue of size in this country and abundance. natural resources we may not respect and continue to waste, but they are here. when i travel this country, we've got a house in maine, i'm amazed at the the expanse of 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 that. and 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's exceptionalism. and i'll defend it. it can't be exported. we cannot export this because it is anchored in our history, it is anchored in our real estate, it is anchored in our location. but these three natural advantages, i think, position us quite well even no resolve the slow bleeds. 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, i work for rs and

ds, i've voted for rs and ds, and 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 you don't demonize your political opponents. if you want america to be on the smart side, then while you debate even the most emotional subjects with your interlocutors, 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. it's 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 argue-culture and in our polarized politics. and i'm at a loss, frankly, the

know since i am charged these days with just talking about the world's problems, not fixing them, i don't know, and i don't have an answer. but the conversation, doug, the conversation has to start. and that's why i wrote the book. >> you might be -- make the assessment that we won't have another great president because you're kind of counting on that the aliens are not going to invade, or les not going to be another -- there's not going to be another great war that we have to survive through, that the crisis will not present itself. so that's why we're not going to have another great president. do we deserve to have a great president? do the american people e deserve, given all that you've just said, do we deserve to have another great president? >> deserve, that gets into the issue of making moral or ethical judgments. i, look, my american identity is the most meaningful piece of my life. i love this country. i find it remarkable with all of its imperfections. the answer is, yes, because with

a great president -- deserve? sure. because we could do so much better for ourselves, and we could be so much smarter 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, in one line greatness in the presidency is too rare to be relevant today, and it's too dangerous to be desirable. because in our political system -- you want a great president? fine. you got me. let's have another great president. like buckle your seat belt. 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 crises right, and they've 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-encumbering crises, the ones, the slower bleeds. it 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 period in american history, as you know from your own pulitzer prize-winning book. i mean, preston brooks nearly killed charles sumner on the senate floor, nearly caned him to death. there's a darker side to american politics, a violent side, 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-encumbering crisis and without the kind of trauma that has so shaped our country's history. >> so let's let the conversation begin. thank you very much. >> thank you. [applause] >> the book is "the end of greatness." aaron david miller. [applause] all right. let's get you unclipped and -- well, actually, i almost did it again. we're going the take some questions. yesterday i forgot to do q&a, so hang on one sec. [inaudible conversations] >> do the book one more time? with or without applause? [laughter] with applause. all right, on cue. let's everyone applaud again if you still think it was a good show.

[laughter] [applause] 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 like -- if you've got a question, raise your hand, and there are a couple of students in the room who will come around with a microphone, and then ask your question and then give the microphone back to the student so they can give it to the next person. >> it sounds like you read the book "collapse of complex societies." your next book should be on followship. seems to me you've made an incredible analysis of american history like andrew beck vick and his work. >> right. >> now, followship is the problem, not -- leadership one after the other, but we're not following the capacity of those that we have elected. >> this is, this is a really good point. and the old quip that a leader without followers is just a

person out for a walk. [laughter] that's actually very instructive. you know, one of jack kennedy's most famous lines came from richard iv. glendower says, you know, i can summon spirits from the vast deep, and the question is, do they come when you call. that is absolutely essential. it's leadership with followship of quality, not blind, unquestioning followship, but intelligent followingership. and to a certain degree, we've disengaged. i'd include myself here. we have a voluntary military. there's no compulsory form of national service. we, frankly, would prefer watching "west wing" which, you know, aaron sorkin's brilliant perception of the presidency which, frankly, is more entertaining than the real thing. we contract out our political debates to talking heads on tv, and in some respects you're

right. and, 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 is, in 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 impew them with -- imbue them with some overarching sense of national responsibility where they feel part of a group? and this is really, really hard because we no longer have a shared conception of our history, and maybe that's, 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 a history of, you know, a tradition of dead, white european males. now, that's broken down, and identity politics have emerged.

i think it's hurt us as well. there's no national narrative that 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 mean, i was born in '49. i mean, america sacrificed. it was, it truly was a 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, we 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? if not respect, then it's tolerance. how to imbue the future generation with a sense of collective national responsibility, that's really

the key. and it may actually be worthying through in a -- worth thinking new in a serious way, making this the next conversation. the politicians, nor the professional military will tell you that they want a draft. war's too complicated, it's become, we've become too disaggregated. but some sense of followership, i think you're 100% right. a leader without followers is just somebody out for a walk. and, basically, we have to to figure out a way to correct that problem. i mean, maybe you're more apt -- a more apt subject would be that one. >> amen. [laughter] >> i have a suggestion. is this on? yeah, i guess it is. i think you should tell your daughter that the next crisis is evolutionary, and it's going to be climate based. 90% of americans live within 10 feet of water.

a couple of centuries, and they will be underwater. we've got to start thinking instead of the next crisis lasting ten minutes or even ten years, it's going to last us a couple of hundred years, and i think young people are going to get on the bandwagon to make that happen. >> i mean, i think these problems are generational, particularly climate change. but i have to say i really am at a loss to know how we begin to address this. i mean, a global problem. we have our national responsibilities. you can't do it by executive action alone, which is what this president has tried to do. i don't have an answer on that. i mean, i agree with your point 100%. and these, 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 disfunctional 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 broader aspects of the public -- and, remember, governing is about choosing. fdr once said about lincoln that he died a sad man because he couldn't have everything. and fdr was talking about the greatest president we've ever had. focusing on where you want to spend your political capital in a country that is now only, 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 sate of the recovery, for the -- on the state of the recovery for the next president. but i agree with you, i do. >> right here. >> i know, i know you've said that 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 a marital therapist, and everything you've said applies in a couple relationship. 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 a little bit, you know, 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 the communicate and cooperate. i think we do have to start at

that very personal level. it's not, you know, 50% divorce rate, you know? it's not happening very much there. and the conversation, if we can brick it to that -- 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 top down we'll begin to have some civility. and maybe, you know, that's a place to start. >> you should bring mary matalin and james carville here. [laughter] they've written and talked about this subject quite a lot. but i agree with you, because, you know, it may well be that -- well, you need, you need a transactional approach pursued by government from the top down, but you also need a transformational approach. and that has to do with changing the way individuals perceive their circumstances. my wife lindsay's on the board of seeds of peace which is a

remarkable -- >> the board of? >> seeds of peace, which brings young israelis and palestinians, indians and pakistanis to a summer experience in maine with follow-up in their respective regions, 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, they're openly weeping because they know that they're going to, they're heading back from -- they saw the future, and now they're headed back to the past. no, this is extremely important. it's just hard to imagine how -- it really is a question of politics beginning at home, frankly. >> yeah. >> let's 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 cop sultan to the clinton -- consultant to the clinton administration, was in

the roosevelt room 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. one of his staff said, mr. president, when would you like to have been president? and clinton said i would have loved to have been president at the end of the cold war when i could have worked with -- at the end of the second world war when i could have worked with stalin to prevent the cold war. so your premise is also exists in the white house with presidents who understand that they cannot, examples of whatever cannot allow them to become great presidents. >> that's a fascinating story. bill clinton has revealed some of that in a comment that he made publicly, his lamenting that he didn't live in more tumultuous times. but the story you tell about the staff inquiry basically asked

him, well, what period would you want to live in, is new, and i think 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 really hard to imagine, imagine this. i mean, we briefed president clinton a couple times before the camp david summit in july of 2000, a summit which was almost -- we all knew, well, some of us 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. i mean, he wanted it. by then the two middle eastern leaders with whom he was closest, king hussein and prime minister abine, were both dead,

and he felt the sense of obligation. and you could see it even there. so i really appreciate that. it drives the fundamental point that even presidents understand or come to understand that it is the times they inherit that really, it's that old biblical expression come atth the hour, cometh the man. and i think that's right, that the hour needs to be right for what i'm arguing. the question is, what happens -- you don't want that kind of dramatic, traumatic hour the come. we need to learn how to succeed in nonheroic and noncrisis environments in an effort to preempt them. ask that's not going to be -- and that's not going to be easy. >> one last question. >> is this getting through all

right? >> yes. >> listening to you, i've been fascinated by everything you've said, and i appreciate your being here today. but i want to ask about one aspect, and that is the selection by the president of their cabinet ministers has a critical point in whether or not they're going to be great or whether they're not. and i look at people like lincoln, for example, was great because he had the capacity to hire general grant who could win ballots each though he was an alcoholic -- even though he was an alcoholic. and he's a good example of the other good cabinet leaders that people have had over the ages. kennedy can, for example, when the cuban missile crisis came, he picked on a guy who had been a former ambassador to russia to give him the advice that 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, they have 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 guy was speaking, and he knew how to respond. this is true of so many things in our history, it's like business. you've got to have people working under you who are capable for answering the problems you need. johnson, for example, in his case he did great for civil rights, civil liberties, but he failed because he became a general in the army, and that was one of his great failures. >> part of capacity is knowing who to pick and how to rely on them, and it's no quince department, you could argue, that the three greatest presidents -- washington, lincoln and fdr -- assembled most remarkable cabinets. you could not, you can't top

washington's cabinet. alexander hamilton was never president, but that's an extraordinary cabinet with jefferson and hamilton and madison in congress helping him. lincoln's team of rivals in the end served him well because he knew and understood, as doris kerns goodwin points out, how to manage and use them to the best of their abilities and his. and fdr, um, 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 as 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 lend-lease which is extraordinary when you think about it. it was fdr's idea.

and, but again, employed the right people, understood how to use people and motivate them. so part of capacity, it's one of the three cs, crisis, character and capacity, knowing who to pick and how to use them. >> aaron, thank you again. let me remind everyone, let's let him dash to the back as soon as we can. thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> is there a nonfiction author or book you'd like to see featured on booktv? send us an e-mail to booktv@c-span.org, tweet us @booktv or post on our wall, facebook.com/booktv.

>> eric lichtblau is a pulitzer prize winner and also a reporter for "the new york times." his most recent book is called "the nazis next door: how america became a safe haven for hitler's men." mr. lichtblau, how many nazis came to america after world war ii? >> guest: thousands, probably as many as 10,000 or more under our very noses. you know, a lot of them snuck in on their own with very little difficulty because it was so easy to disguise themselves as farmers or.o.w.s or civil wan workers. but -- civilian workers. but then there were thousands who were essentially invited in either as scientists, you know, the rocket engineers and doctors we brought in to keep pace with the soviets, and then there were hundreds of spies, of cia spies who were nazis and were used as cold war assets in europe and latin america, in the middle east and right here in america. >> host: there's been a few high

profile cases of nazis being kicked out of the country or tried to get out of the country. how many have been discovered? >> guest: it's a tiny fraction. there have been about 130 who were prosecuted, but unfortunately, the government didn't really start looking at these cases until the 1980s from the end of the war in 1945 through the '70s, there was virtually no scrutiny. you were, basically, hiding in plain sight. and it was only in 190 that the justice department created a whole new unit to go after these guys. about 130 of them, some were stripped of their citizenship and allowed to die here because they were in failing health, others were actually deported, sent back to europe and elsewhere. so it's a small fraction of the total. most of them lived and died here with no attention. >> host: where did you, how did you research this book? >> guest: you know, i spoke to many, many current and former government officials, probably

about 150 officials who i interviewed for the book. i did freedom of information act requests, and i also went through thousands of pages of declassified war crimes files at the national archives. that was probably the single most important archive. there are a bunch of files beginning in around 2000 that were declassified, and these show really the cia's relationship with a lot of these nazis, nazi collaborators in jaw-dropping detail. the knowledge by the cia and other intelligence agencies that they were dealing with known nazi figures, but were using them as spies anyway. >> host: did you ever have the chance to actually talk or interview some of the nazis? >> guest: i did. there's one guy who still is living up in queens. i spoke to him a couple of months ago. he was a concentration camp guard. the united states is still trying to can kick him out of the country, waiting for a country that will take him back. yeah, there are relatively few who are still alive in the u.s. there are probably a hundred or two hundred in europe and in

germany. the ones who are still alive are, you know, in their late 80s, early 90s. the more senior guys in the nazi regime have died already because they were already in their 30s or 40s at the end of the war, and they've died, you know, within the last 20 years. >> host: if you would like to see eric lichtblau talk in a longer segment about "the nazis next door," go to booktv.org and type in his last name in the search function. >> booktv continues with allen west. he talks about the importance of preserving the core values that he was raised on, family, faith, tradition, service, honor, fiscal responsibility, courage and freedom. lieutenant colonel west says that these values are under attack by the far left and the obama administration. this is about an hour. [applause] >> thanks so much, katrina. it really is an honor and a pleasure to be here with you all

at liberty university. there's only one thing that i'm kind of upset about, someone did not pay the heating bill up here, okay? this morning when i woke up at 5:00, i went for a nice little run, and i had a t-shirt and shorts on. and when i got off the airplane here, i was looking for some long johns. but it is beautiful here in the blue ridge mountains. there's something about liberty university, you can see it on, you know, video, or you can look at it on pictures, but being here is an incredible experience, and i want to thank each and every one of you for taking time out of your busy schedules to allow me to share some thoughts, perspectives and insights about what i think is an incredible institution that was started in 1971. and the singular mission of this institution is so important. but then when you think about what is happening here today and this week, it's freedom week. and freedom week reminds me of a scripture that comes from john,

chapter eight, verse 36. and it says: so if the son makes you free, you will be free, indeed. and liberty university that motto, and understand, i mean, a university that is called liberty, that's incredible. but your motto that says "training champions for christ," that is something that is very noble and an important mission statement for where we are in this country. but when i think about that mission statement, it's just the same as a mission statement if you will go to basic training or when i went to the officers basic course for field artillery. it is there to train you, to prepare you, it is there to get you ready to go out for subsequent missions. it's just the same as you think about that placard that is at the university of notre dame that says "play like champions today."

so i want to talk to you not about you being trained to be a champion for christ, i want to talk to you about being a champion for christ. but not just being a champion for christ, but also being the champion for your country. because i really and truthfully believe that the two are connected. and if we don't continue to understand that connectivity between being a christian and being an american, then i think we're going the lose this great blessing of liberty that you share as the name of your school. so just as a warrior once they finish their training they must go out on the battlefield, each and every one of you here that are students at this great university, you will go out to an incredible battlefield that we call the united states of america. and consider the title that you have at this institution, the title "liberty" is the second of the three inalienable rights

that are guaranteed to you not by man, but by our creator, those three unalienable rights that are in the declaration of independence that was written by an incredible son of virginia, a man by the name of thomas jefferson. and you should be proud that you attend a university that is named after one of the three inalienable rights that come from our creator. so i want to start by going through the bible, because there's no way that i would come here to liberty university and not bring the sword of the spirit, which is the word of god. because that is going to really be the thing that prepares you to go out and be a champion for christ and for this country. so i want to start with one of my favorite scriptures. it's joshua chapter one, verses 5-9. and it says, no man will be able to stand before you all the days of your life. just as i have been with moses, i will be with you.

i will not fail you, nor forsake you. be strong and courageous, for you shall give this people possession of the land which i spore no their -- swore to their fathers to give them. only be strong and very courageous. be careful to do according to all the law which moses, my servant, demanded -- commanded you so that you may have success wherever you go. this book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate it on it day and night so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. for then you will make your way prosperous. and then you will have success. have i not commanded you be strong and courageous? do not shrivel or be dismayed for the lord your god is with you wherever you go. the first two important points about being a champion for christ and for country is, number one, we especially the. competence. because here in this book you have all of the great precepts,

all of the -- you know, this is the greatest leadership manual that has ever been written in the world. anything that you come up against in life, you can find an answer to it here. and here, for those of you in rotc, one of the most important things that will happen in your life is when you accept the mantle of leadership, the command of a unit. and that's exactly what was happening here for joshua. moses, god's servant, had passed away. and all of a sudden god had turned over to joshua and said, tag, you're it. you're in charge. and you must take these people across the jordan river and give them the land that i said they would possess. and you can just imagine joshua, not exactly the most eloquent of men, the incredible responsibility he had. for what god told him was or very simple: this book of the law that i have given to moses, do not turn from it to the left

or to the right. but i would also tell you inning a champion not just for christ, but also for your country there's another book that you must not turn from to your left or to your right. that's the declaration of independence. that's the united states constitution. because what i find happening in these united states of america is when people don't understand what the rule of law means, they're easily swayed. when you find out that people don't understand that your first amendment right says freedom of religion and the free exercise thereof, then you have organizations such as the freedom from religion foundation that can start to go out and attack the very basis of who we are, a judeo-christian faith heritage. notice i did not say "relidge," i said "heritage." i'll give you a great example. one of the incredible traditions of university of tennessee football is before every home

game there is a local minister that delivers prayer. this organization from wisconsin actually wrote a letter to my university and told them to cease and desist of offering prayer before a football game. now, some of us, you know, who have a little snow on our heads, we remember when we used to have prayer in schools. i remember playing high school at henry grady in atlanta, georgia, and a local minister would come out and give prayer before each football game. i never remember any kid getting carted off of that field with a tragic injury because that pastor would stand up and pray for both. but, see, if we have people that all of a sudden tell us about this thing called separation of church and state, we're not rooted in the word here, we're not rooted in the words here, then all the we allow people to start to separate us from our christian heritage. when you talk about separation of church and state, you need to ask where you find that.

do you find it in the declaration of independence? do you find it written in the federalist papers? do you find it in the united states constitution? no. it was simply a concept that was written in a letter by thomas jefferson to the canbury -- danbury baptist convention that said here in the united states of america we would not have an established religion, we would not have a head of state who was also the head of church, which is what they had in england. we never meant for it to be for us not to expression ourselves in prayer. that's why it says freedom of religion and the free exercise thereof. but if you're not competent, if you turn away and not meditate on these things day and night as god told joshua and as i'm trying to tell you here as you get the opportunity to do here at liberty university, then you're not going to be prepared to go out and be truly champions of christ and country.

and the other important thing about being a champion is courage. if you listen to those short scripture, in 5-9 how many times did god tell joshua to be strong and of good courage? you're not called as christians to be scared. now, if you want to be scared, then you're not following the example of the person who went to the cross. because if he was scared, he would not have done it. that's truly what you are training to be here, training to be champions for christ and champions of this country. it means that you have to develop an intense level of competence, and you must be courageous. but it's not just that. it means also developing an incredible sense of boldness and, one of my favorite scriptures when you talk about boldness, it is found in isaiah 54, verse 17.

where it reads very simply: no weapon formed against you will prosper, and every tongue that accuses you in judgment you will condemn. because this is the heritage of the service of the lord, and their vindication is from me, declares the lord. now, i can tell you if you know about my history, you can go and google surgery my name, and -- search my name, and you will see nice little things said about me. but every tongue that rises to condemn is not going to happen. see, that's the type of boldness that you have to have. because if you're competent, if you have courage, then you should have boldness. as a matter of fact, it was alexander the great, the man who conquered the known world before he was 33 years of age, said very simply: fortune favors the bold. and think about where you are right now. freedom week.

being trained as a champion at a university called liberty. and that happened to somebody in -- because somebody in 1971 had a bold vision. you think about what liberty started as in 1971 and where liberty university is today. you have an incredible honor and privilege to be sitting and studying on this campus. something that there are children all over the this country that would love to be able to have and to share. and you must be bold in proclaiming it just the same as the perp was bold in establishing it. or else. and i can tell you, identify been to speak at depaul university, northwest university, cornell university, marquette university. do you know the reason why this is special to me tonight? because i don't have to worry about someone sitting out there just being there to heckle. because you are here on campus because there's something special about you, there's

something within you that is different. you are here because of ap incredible boldness that you have. and in a country where all of a sudden people are saying young people don't have values, young people don't believe in this church stuff and this christ stuff. show them through your competence, through your courage and through your boldness that they are wrong. but being a champion for christ and country, it does not just end with that coirnlg, that competence -- that courage, that competence and that boldness. there's also something else you need to have, and that something else is called perseverance. when i think about perseverance, i go to the book of john. and in the book of john, i read these words at 16 and 33: these things i have spoken to you so that in me you may have peace.

in the world you will have tribulation, but take courage. i have overcome the world. think about how you're sitting here right now. all dressed up, looking nice, beautiful campus. probably going to go out, maybe have some pizza or tacos, chili, whatever. and even e though it's cold outside, you're going to go to a place, a room that's warm. you have peace. think about your christian brothers and sisters in mosul in iraq. someone cake and knocked on the door and -- came and knocked on the door and gave them three choices; you convert, you submit or you die. the oldest christian communities and civilizations being driven out. think about how just a couple of weeks ago a young pakistani

couple, christians, someone said that they had burned pages out of a quran. a mob attacks them. the why have, who was pregnant -- the wife, who was pregnant, they're both thrown into a can kiln and set on fire. look up the young lady, pakistani-christian girl by name of julie aftab who when was confronted and told to convert, she said i'll never give up my lord and savior jesus christ, to wit some gentlemen went away and came back. they threw acid on her, and they poured acid down her throat. when she went to the hospital to be treated, there was rumors put out that she had spoken against the prophet muhammad, and she had spoken against islam. she was shot in the hospital, and the doctors we fused -- refused to treat her. but see, thank god that there were people that have that same

light that you have here that found young julie and brought her back to the united states of america where she's thriving. she's earned her degree from a school down in houston, texas, and she's about to get married. see, that's what perseverance is. you can have the competence, you can have the courage, you can have the bold withnd, but if you don't have the perseverance, you're not going to be a champion for christ and country. because think about this faith that you have accepted, the christian faith that has been so persecuted throughout history and still today it is being persecuted. but yet somehow this faith continues on. yet somehow another generation steps up to say that i will follow the man who went to the cross on cavalry, who died for my sins.

the ultimate story of service and sacrifice and commitment. it is that possessor veerps that you will need not just -- perseverance that you will need not just as you're being trained as a champion for christ, but to go out and truly be a champion for christ and for country. but even with that perseverance there's something else that you need, and god recognized that you need it. and paul recognized that you need it. and he wrote about it. and that's called assurance. because even with perseverance you still have to believe that there's an assurance that is there. so when you turn over to romans chapter eight -- and i'll read these two verses -- verse 31, what then shall we say to these things if god is for us, who is against us? and in verse 37 it says, but in all these things we

overwhelmingly conquer through him who loved us. you're more than a conqueror. so even if you have the perseverance, even if you have the boldness, even if you have the courage, even if you have the competence, you have the assurance that if you step out there, there is nothing that will be able to stand up against you. and that is really something that is the essence of who we are in the united states of america. this country was started at a time when 13 ragtag little colonies took on the greatest power that the world knew at that time. because why? they believed in one simple thing, the title of your university. in liberty. they believed in freedom. they believed it was worth fighting for, they believed in creating something that the world had never known. and so when you look at those 56

men who signed that declaration of independence, those 56 men who basically signed their own death warrant, they asked for divine providence because they were willing to sacrifice their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor much the same as the person that we worship as christians, sacrificed his life. he gave away the fortune of being the son of god, and he left his sacred honor on the cross so that all of us can sit here. being a champion for christ is also being a champion for this country. that doesn't mean that we disavow or disregard anyone else. we just understand that there's a different relationship between the christian life and the life, as i said, of service, sacrifice and commitment. we understand what it means to

persevere. we understand the assurance that i'm sure the founding fathers had. there was a young laidty that i met -- lady that i met earlier today from yorktown, virginia. can you imagine the euphoria more that ragtag bunch called the revolutionary army when the british at yorktown surrendered? the assurance that they had, and they got to see that incredible day. competence, courage, boldnd, possessor convenience -- boldness, perseverance, assurance. but what is the most important thing as you leave here, which you will to one day, in being a champion for christ and country? it's confidence. and confidence comes in one simple verse which is my favorite verse out of the bible. philippians 4:13, i can do all things through christ jesus who strengthens me.

when paul wrote that, understand he was chained in a roman prison, soon to be executed. what manner of person chained in a prison could write that he could do all things through christ jesus when strengthens him? a person that was a champion. and that's what you have as your promise, that is what you have as the confidence for you to go out. because paul didn't say i can do a few things. paul didn't say i can do a couple of things. paul said that i can do all this things. and as you go out to be the champions of christ and country, then we can do all things. we can restore our economy, get americans back to work. someone here will finally come up with the means by which we can finally reduce our debt, reduce our deficit spending. look at america and all the energy resources that she has.

we can produce and consume and export because we can do all things. and that is the blessing of what liberty university teaches you. america and 238 years has done all things. now, some people will say america is not exceptional, some people say america has not done great things. i've been to 13 different countries, i've been in e three different combat zones, and what you have here in the united states of america is unique and unlike any other place. i was born in the inner city of atlanta, georgia. and look at where i stand tonight. look at what i've been able to do and achieve. it's because in america you can do all things. in america you have an equality of opportunity that says no matter where you've come from, no matter where you are born that does not determine your end station and your end achievement

in life. that's what it says in that bible. that i can do all things through christ who strengthens me. so if you're going to be a champion for christ, for country, you have that a confidence. you have that confidence that you can go out and be great nation. and so when you think about being a great nation, it is all about the individual. christianity's about personal salvation. it's not about collective salvation. the strength of america is in the indomitable individual spirit. going back to the inalienable rights that you have with life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. but if you're not careful, if you don't want to go out and be a champion for christ and country, then you will not think about a pursuit of happiness,

you will believe that government can guarantee your happiness. what happens when government says they can guarantee your happiness? you just remove god with the big g who gives you the pursuit of happiness and replace it with government with the little g who will try to trick you into believing they can guarantee your happiness. that's what happens when you're not a champion of of christ and country. so your challenge is very are simple. competence, courage, boldness, perseverance, assurance and, lastly, confidence. those are the qualities that you must take from liberty university where you have been trained to be a champion for christ. doesn't mean a hill of beans if you go out there and you're not going to live up to that training to be that champion. the mascot of this university is what? the flames.

you ever thought about that? not the tigers, not the volunteers, it's not the nittany lions, it's not the fighting irish, it's the flame. and why is that so important? because it says back here in matthew, chapter six -- chapter five, 14-16: you are the light of the world, a city set on a hill, liberty mount. nor does anyone light a lamp or put it on the lamp stand and it gives light to all who are in the house. to a country. let your light shine before men in such a good way that they may see your good works. and glorify your father who is

in heaven. there's a reason why you attend a school called liberty. there's a reason why your mascot is the flame, because it was the flame that came down on the day of pentacost. it was the flame that ronald reagan talked about as america, the shining city that sets upon a hill. that's why we need you to go out and be champions for christ and country. because the flame that you are being trained to carry here will mean nothing if when you leave this institution, you take it and you put it out. that's not the purpose of you attending here. the purpose for you attending here is that you will be the next generation, the beacon of liberty, the beacon of freedom, the beacon of democracy. on september the 17th, 1787, the

today that our united states constitution -- the day that our united states constitution was signed in philadelphia, benjamin franklin walked out of constitution hall. he was met by a woman by the name of mrs. powell. well known philadelphia socialite. mrs. powell, a very bold woman, came up and said, well, dr. franklin, what is it that we have? a republic or a monarchy? franklin replied, a republic if you can keep it. you have a challenge, students of liberty university. there are two lights. there's a flame that you must ensure continues on. the flame of pentacost and the beacon that is the united states of america. you must guard it or else as someone talked about earlier, it can be lost in subsequent

generations. i ask you tonight i'm 53 years of age. one day i'm going to be old, i'm going to wear bermuda shorts with black socks and dress shoes. [laughter] i will probably be eating tapioca and living in some high-rise place that you guys will walk by or drive by and say look at those old people. but the thing is this: i am passing on to you that mantle, that flame, that beacon. i'm challenging you to go forth and be a champion for christ and for this country. god bless you all and thank you. [applause]

>> we're going to start a q&a session now, so anyone who has questions feel free to come up to the mics at the front of the auditorium, please. state your name and what year you are. >> chad hikingen bottle, i'm a sophomore. lieutenant colonel west, you've hit on a lot of major points that make america unique for sure including the rule of law and these things that really this nation, of course, was founded on so that we could abide by. i'm actually curious, though, as to is the situation in the middle east. obviously -- and you were in that region around this time back in 2003 when we were able to disable saddam hue same's regime -- hussein's regime. of course, it was a military victory, however, since then there's been much unrest, and it certainly has not turned into a blossoming democracy of freedom at this stage. so i'm curious, what is it that

we can do to alter our strategy, or what is the, that piece of infrastructure or ethic that we must, that we can change in our strategy or that we can add to those countries in which we are putting our intervention into so that they can realize the same sort of democratic freedom that we have or that they can maintain that sort of government? >> you know, there's a great book out there written by a gentleman by the name of walid phares, and it's called the lost spring. and it really talks about how the arab spring came along, and we incredibly blew it because we did not engage with the young people, the secular movements in the middle east that were ready to step up and see those type of liberties and freedoms there. but, you know, when you talk about, you know, what are the two most important things that they understand in the middle east? it comes down to two words, strength and might. they understand the strongest tribe. and when you don't show strength, then they see weakness with compromise, appeasement, negotiations, things of that

nature. so you have to, first of all, show yourself in a tom -- dominant power because that's what their culture understands. and then from that point you start to look at how you can institute some type of institutional changes. you're talking about centuries-old civilizations that have been run by strong men. i think what has happened is we have politicized our national security strategy. you can't politicize national security strategy. and when you stand up and you say that we're going to go in this direction because i believe this is what i was elected for, you forget one simple thing about military operations; the enemy always has a vote. and to this point, i have not seen any rad call the islamist group be on the uss missouri signing a statement of surrender. they're still out there. and it was interesting because there was a saying over there in the middle east,