blue line. they are the ones. if he is corrupt with you and somehow you don't like him, again, i blame him for that. if he sees europe set and that is how the confrontation started. i want the people who read this book to know that there are people willing to do that in the least you can do is give them the respect they deserve. ..

former deputy secretary of the department of health and human services mingled with guests indicates brief remarks about his book. >> nice to meet you. thanks for coming. i did a lot of disaster work for the white house. cnn was calling me to talk about hurricane matthew. there was the flooding in indiana, and then zika.

you are never going to get bored when you write about this stuff. >> there was a great deepwater horizon movement. i can fix this thing. you guys let me do it. why don't you let me fix the way you do white house dinner parties? the state dinners, you have -- never works.

>> the character in die hard, did you receive the movie die hard? thinks he can negotiate with terrorists. i know business. instead of a gun, i use a fountain pen. i'm really into diehard your when diehard three came out mentioned both donald trump and hillary clinton. there's one point where mclean is driving it gets cut off by someone in these who do you think you are, hillary clinton? shockingly sexist but also this assumption hillary clinton would

be cutting someone off. the trump thing, governmental credibility. at one point the cops are saying everything you say, don't worry about it, and one of the kind of -- [inaudible] >> when trump is in the first debate and talking about his view of cyber terrorism and he says some fat guy sitting in the basement, he was talking about diehard for.

>> it was a sort of a badly timed book. it came out -- his name doesn't appear once. >> my book actually does it mention hillary clinton or trump at all. i really loved your book when you talk about sushi.

[inaudible conversations] >> there's a whole areas commercial where verizon or somebody, they chose the slightly older couple and their grandchildren or young teenagers are coming to visit and the grandparents -- the american flag and the whole thing. grandma, grandpa, and they hand them their devices and say none of these work.

>> thank you for coming. >> how is bob doing? everybody good? [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

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>> can you get everyone from the front room and bring them this way? >> thank you all for coming. i want to thank our cohost we have kathy, and charlie, but where is lisa? >> florida. >> is pete hear?

thank you all. we are here to toast tevi troy spoke. another remarkable piece and important contribution to history and everything that we are supposed to watch and admire in a presidential individual, candidate, you know, and so. iunknown tevi for just a couple of years and he is one of the most brilliant individuals studied, airtight, charming, moral, you know, right dad. and tell us about the book. please, tell us about the book and then we will do a little q q&a. >> thank you all for coming, julia for hosting. julianne is right. we have known each other for about two decades. we used to be on the same party circuit in d.c. in the '90s. before she became a super party hostess that she is now, to be

celebrated for the book i wrote. i remember in the 1990s we knew each other again mainly from this party circuit, and she was working for senator ashcroft and heard senator ashcroft had some positions available. so i center my resume. this was the '90s. i set it by fax. she called me up almost immediately after and she said something to the effect, i might paraphrase but holy crap, you have a ph.d? [laughter] based on that reaction i got the job in senator ashcroft office and ended up in the bush administration. it was a that combination of having a ph.d but also working in politics that led me to write this book, this book about presidents and disasters. while i was in the bush administration i was there during 9/11, the department of labor. i was at the white house during katrina in 2005.

i worked on the flu plan that the bush administration workout throughout the 2000 that ended up being deployed by the obama administration in 2009. so i had a lot of experience. i also have a lot of doubts about presidential history for previous books and also my book about pop culture and the presidency. i have a good friend who said if you want to write a post to write a post about what was right about disasters disasters? you know a lot about disasters. i did that and then i decided to marriage up with a presidential history book. i came up with this concept for the book and decided to look back in time and see what presidents have done over time to deal with disasters. i found out something very interesting that it was not always the case that it was expected that the president should have to deal with disasters. it wasn't seen as their constitutional role or responsibility. and moreover, because of

non-modern communication, or the lack of, presidents might not even know about disasters when they happened in the immediate period after were. site tell a story in the book about 1811 there's an earthquake in mr. and president madison doesn't know about it for six weeks. i think about it and a couple years ago i was in washington state, and there was an earthquake in washington, d.c. over here. some of you remember this earthquake that happened to be on twitter. i don't want to see him on all the time, yes maybe i am. i knew in 30 seconds there was an earthquake. it just struck me how different the immediacy of communication destiny. so madison does nothing about it because he can't. even once you start out a development of communications technologies that move information around a little faster than just the telegraph, you still don't have the sense of president needs to get involved in everything. i tell the story of the johnstown flood in 1889.

2000 people died in the flood, terrible, terrible flood and it was the largest loss of life on american soil until 9/11. president harris and, benjamin harrison, not his grandfather william henry harrison but he said that telegraphic message and they say this terrible disasters happen, please send resources. president harris and response with the telegraph, a message back and the message said, i paraphrase but you get exact tht text in the book which by the way is for sale up front, the message is in effect i'm sorry about your tragedy, not a presidential responsibility it's up to the governor to deal with. imagined it into president had said something in response, the denunciations, the lawsuits, the protest. it would be outrageous. it's just a very, very different time. president harris and to be fair does do something in response to

this disaster. he since a $300 personal -- about $7500 in today's dollars so a significant donation. but still he's not giving up billions of federal dollars. he's giving out his own personal money and just starting red cross. some of you might say he was a republican. the democrats would've been different. but now, grover cleveland who was the president of both preceded and succeeded harris and the own time in american history that happened, he is the president during a drought in texas. congress appropriated funds to deal with this drought, and cleveland the does the funding. why? he writes that veto message, theater messages were frowned upon in the bush years, overcame in the obama years. in the message he says that it

is not the constitutional role of the federal government to be dealing with these kind of local disasters. act in a very different mindset. over the course of the 20th century these things changed, and the change for two reasons. one i've already suggested which is the committee patience, but also the growth of government. in 1918, there's another disaster, the 1918 flu. this is a terrible tragedy, 675,000 americans die, woodrow wilson is the white house and in response to this tragedy wilson does nothing. really nothing. when more americans die and died in world war ii. whenever one of 16,000 americans died in the military during this flu and six times as many are dying as a result of this flu and wilson's racket is just strangely silent the the one thing he does is he considers at the behest of his personal doctor, thinking of stopping the

troop transports are taking american serviceman across to europe and spreading the disease amongst themselves in the process but also spread it across europe. and was called the spanish flu but it started almost certainly in america. these troop transports are spreading the disease and is asked to stop in and he needs within the army at the time and that of the armistice that's actually not possible. is essential to operations in europe. one month before hostilities ended in world war i. and yet wilson goes along with this and it's not stop the troop transport. here we have a sense of the presidential not involve is actually a problem. a terrible thing is happening and the government is not really doing anything about it. in 1927 is really the watermark, the time when you start to see this change, the terrible mississippi flood, between 250 and 1000 americans die in this

flood. president coolidge is in the white house. he does have his conception of limited government ethics the federal government should be to involve any worse but the constitutional president of getting involved also under outside pressure. and, in fact, will rogers of the comedian tells of this joke that colleges low response to this disaster is in the hopes that most of the people died in the meantime so we will not have to do anything about it. not exactly quite as sharp as a late-night comedians would you today but it's not that dissimilar from a joke jay leno made about the katrina disaster when he said bush is i listening troops to the gulf because he found that there's oil in louisiana. so did the same kind of sense of the joke, although i think it had sharper comedy writers in the more moderate air. there's this outside pressure and also the internal pressure in the form of the secretary of commerce, herbert hoover, who

was nicknamed this negative commerce and undersecretary everybody else because you like to get in everybody's business. so much so coolidge found hoover under way. he said that man has given me nothing but unsolicited advice for six years. all of it bad. so you've got pressure on the white house plus an unknowing habit secretaries chomping at the bit and coolidge said go down to the gulf and distance them down to the mississippi area, and by all accounts hoover does a great job. he helped direct resources, brings in rescuers indicates people rescued. he helped develop supply lines and get supplies to people. hoover was well practiced in this. he helped bring food to the starving people in europe in the aftermath of world war i. he had anything, he was that as the master of emergency. he was a guy who really not a new with disaster. he takes his reputation and a sense of being a national hero

to the white house himself as he is elected in 1928 and he becomes the president. we all know how the story ends. because he doesn't get to keep a great reputation. she's not known as the master of emergencies today. he's known as the boob who are not the great depression happened and did not do anything about it. in part because franklin delano roosevelt does a brilliant job of making sure that all this is tagged on hoover's head. what he becomes president he doesn't discuss matters with hoover hoover reaches out and says can we talk about various policies and work together in the last five months transition, back in from november to march. in that appeared he would have nothing to do with hoover. he's not only active in building the response to the depression in the form of the new deal buddies also very good in committee kidding. he asked a famous fireside chat with you things that really carefully.

he doesn't just go on willy-nilly. it only went on the radio two or three times a year in his fireside charge. he carefully marshaled this research. he would cross of any five or $10 word that his speechwriters try to put in the remarks and even used a special paper that didn't russell so when you switched pages that would make so people would think he was speaking off-the-cuff. so roosevelt really is a model for how did you get to the american people in the time of the disaster and to give them appropriate kudos. roosevelt also presides over a large growth in the federal government, and expansion of federal responsibility. the great depression and also world war ii period at the end of world war ii we have a federal government that is much bigger, much more involving many other things. into view of what president should be doing changes. in the 50s we have the beginning of what others presidential disaster

declarations. interestingly i found the number of presidential declarations have steadily increased over time making one wonder if there's a political element or if we just got much more dangerous. i've also found that the number of presidential disaster declarations spike injures that coincide with the summer olympics or some other event that happens every four years in terms of the presidential election. you do see these spikes of disaster declarations in a presidential election. in 1969, and hurricane camille, richard nixon or republican in the white house and he said, he doesn't send his secretary down but he says the vice president to go down and report. spiro agnew comes back and he says one of the problems with hurricane camille is people just couldn't gauge how big a problem the hurricane was. they don't know what to do about the situation. nixon directs the bureaucracy to look into this, and asked today

how we know that like patty is a category three storm, this system of hurricanes comes out of nixon's directive bureaucracy. i'll just mention two other disasters quickly. >> what do you think of, based on sort of your studies and what you look back, what would be the best response in the event it is really devastating, this category for those coming in? >> actually let me just answer by making, one is 1992, hurricane andrew, george h. w. bush is in the white house as the slow response. outpacing as a presidential responsibility. if the president doesn't get involved but seeing as a problem. presidential not involvement is not an option anymore. but his son president george w. bush becomes president after the 2000 election and he takes this lesson. in his first term he gets great credit from the media for being really good at dealing with whether or disasters.

in fact, there's even some cynical reporters who write easily to deal with is whether born disasters because of the lesson from his father and that's what he so focused on whether born disasters. after his election 2005 katrina happened and he no longer has that reputation as being good at dealing with those disasters. when they needed it didn't work out so was the flyover. he was flying back to washington and they veered around new orleans and you looked down at that picture, the infamous picture taken of him was really a disasters picture from a pr perspective. >> why was it so bad? i've never understood why, he was looking at them that they want the plane to land and sea everything? >> i'll tell you, it's a good question, so the problem with the president going to disaster area is that you take