good evening, everybody. i'm part of the event staff at politics and prose. before we begin i'd like to go over a few quick announcements splease silence your cell phones and other noise making devices not only is it courteous to the

author but we are also on c-span tonight so if you do not want to be the person whose phone goes off on c-span. during the question and answer portion in the interest of the video and audio recording if you could come up to the microphone over here it's right here that way we can all hear your questions and engage in a nice discussion afterwards. last once everything is done if you could fold up your chairs and place them against something solid i'm pleased to introduce the founder and ceo at alphabet inc. "new york times" best-selling co-author with eric schmidt of the new digital age and has written several books on his own including the children of jihad. one of the great lessons of american politics that i've

learned is the tale of two brothers. the vice president isn't relegated to obscurity, namely when the president com, the pres president dies. in his newest best-selling book accidental president, he examines the legacies of these eight men john tyler, millard fillmore, andrew johnson, chester arthur, theodore roosevelt, calvin coolidge, perry truman and lyndon johnson who ascended because of these unfortunate circumstances. becoming president under these circumstances is a thankless task and many of these men have disappointed rather than reassured over several have exceeded expectations. he delves into the implications of the system of the secession and argues that the limited reading of the constitution one of which any americans take for

granted may not be the only way to handle succession. walter isaacson author of leonardo da vinci among others rights to episodes in our history and reveals some lesser-known leaders to truman and lyndon johnson. we learn why america is a resilient nation and the constitution a living document, lessons very powerful for today. please join me in welcoming gerry cohen -- jared cohen. [applause] >> thank you for having me. i can't think of a better place to give a talk about this book and its incredible bookstore. when i lived in dc it was my favorite place to be and i haven't been here in some time. i love the backdrop of the books tonight. the place i want to start is why i wrote this book.

four years working in the foreign-policy. people ask me why and when i tell them i'm writing a book over the past five and a half years they say it's about cyber war, no, it's about foreign policy, no. to transform me into a precocious child they didn't realize they would have to have eight different conversations with me about death. it was bad enough they didn't know who mckinley was in this cartoonlike pictures when you are any year old you have to deal with these heavy topics and my parents just didn't quite figure out what they've gotten themselves into.

the interest sustained over time and whe when oliver stone came t with his film about kennedy's assassination, i decided i was going to solve the kennedy assassinations away and ask one of the rooms in the house and i turned ithey turned it into they room. i put pictures and xerox copies of the footage all across the walls and have the conspiracy theories none of which i remember. so the memorabilia and i have a strange sub collection of presidential locks of hair this has been of interest my entire life. i spent all day talking about innovation and the future and this sort of growing each to want to dig into the past.

i needed a nesting project and i'm finally going to resurrect this interes interest and writek about the eight times in history a president who died in office in our history was transformed. in addition to being something i'm deeply passionate about, it resonates with me on so many different levels because we are at a time everybody is looking at leadership qualities that we have a fascination with politics and history but our history is also anchored around transitions that happen every ten to 20 years. most people are familiar with one or two presidents who died in office and most are surprised that there were eight. so, what i'm going to do today, i can't go through every single one of them but i'm going to talk about the very first time it happened. i'm going to share with you what was the biggest catastrophe of the transition and i will share with you who i think was the biggest and most unaccepted

success an and body and then onn talk you through the close calls. in addition to those who died in office had another 19 who nearly died in office of the 19 that nearly died in office for u.s. aid that died in office, six of those eight who ascended to the presidency upon the death of their predecessor also nearly died in office mostly through assassination attempts so we will get into that as well. let's go back to the framers of the constitution who didn't want a vice president who didn't think much about the vice presidency. they viewed it as a mechanism and so naturally it isn't something they thought about. they had given thought to the succession but if you look at article to, what it says is in the event of the resignation of the president, the inability to discharge duties of the said office, the shells evolved on the vice president. the constitution is clear that in the case of a vacancy vice

president discharges those duties into the constitution isn't clear about whether the vice president becomes president. so, 1840, the famous catchphrase propose william henry harrison and famous general into the white house. they are so happy they finally got a president and he died 30 days later. despite the fact history tells us he died of them on that it was later proven that but we will save that for another lecture. john tyler who was on the ticket was basically a democrat because they needed to win virginia and somebody that had given to the states rights skips town after the inauguration because he's prepared to accept the realities of how irrelevant the vice president is. so, when a messenger shows up at his house in the middle of the

night delivering the telegram that the president is dead, john tyler who has studied understand the fight that is about to ensue and he knows the cabinet is going to disagree so he races back in th a very dramatic fashn in a combination of horse and carriage, boat and train and he proceeds to get into a fight with the cabinet and then spends the first three months arguing with congress about whether he's acting as president. even though they address mail to him as president and acting president which he also returns on opened but he sets the precedent. what's interesting is you don't have a mechanism for replacing the vice president of the united states until the 25th amendment is ratified. so, you have john tyler as the first accidental president and

that now carries all the way through lbj. he becomes president upon the death of john f. kennedy based on the precedent set by john tyler in 1841. so, we've never had a situation where a president has died in office and the 25th amendment has made him president. that only happens with nixon and ford and i'm sure during the session someone will ask me why i didn't include mixing in a separatmix them in aseparate che point i will beat them to the punch and answer the question. the reason is very important. john tyler is a disaster for the party because again, he's basically a democrat. he doesn't subscribe to the agenda at all. like most of the accidental presidents that came after him, he had a completely different set of policy views than his predecessor and takes the country in a different direction. like all of the eight accidental presidency was ostracized and had no relationship with the

predecessor and it didn't have a good sense of what was happening in the administration that he was part of. it means for him the administration was only 30 days. so, tyler as he sorted subverts the agenda with the vetoing of the two national banks ends up getting excommunicated from the party. so, henry clay needs the charge to kick john tyler out of the party, so the nation's first accidental president become president without a party. he'd like all accidental presidents becomes obsessed with the idea of i'm determined not to be an accident i needed to win in my own right so the only path for him to win in 1844 is since he can't run as a win against the democrats don't want him anyway because they ar theyd at him for running is to change the political discourse and covertly annex texas. we look at "-begin-quotes at at this and the erratic behavior of the current president and i would remind you that john tyler in a moment of political rage and impulsiveness decided to annex texas which precipitated war with mexico and brought us

one step closer to the civil war. going back to the vacancy and vice presidency, this is important because on february 28, 1844, john tyler is sailing on the potomac on board of the uss princeton and it's a scowl on the potomac on boar bot the state-of-the-art nautical wonder designed to separate american naval prowess and the fact that he was on the verge of texas is annexation. so, they fired the state-of-the-art gun called the peacemaker and thepiece bigger t vernon in tribute to the great george washington and the gun explodes and kills the secretary of state, the secretary of the navy, kills multiple ambassadors and ministers and john tyler's favorite slave whose mother was compensated $200. it kills a number of senators os and congress and it would have killed john tyler had he not been downstairs flirting with a woman half his age who he was desperately in love with as a widower president but was more interested in the captain's son. as they heard the explosion they came up to the desk.

her name is julia gardiner and she saw that among the dead was her father new york state senator laying on the ground. john tyler picks her up and carried her down the plank. she's startled and wakes up and doesn't realize that it's the president carrying her and you read about this in a letter that she later writes. john tyler writes that had she not them off again they both would have died and he ends up marrying her and they have eight children together on top of the seven that he already had. in fact, he was born during the administration george washington had two grandsons who are still alive. how is that possible? he fathered a child in his 70s and defend that child fathered two children in his 70s who are now in their mid-and late '90s so that is the story of john tyler's offspring fun fact use it as a cocktail party. but had he died in that explosion or had he died falling off of the plank, the nation's first accidental president would

have been dead, and i believe very strongly that the precedent that was already controversial and already hotly contested would have been very unlikely to hold, and what that means is that millard fillmore who i am sure you spend a lot of time thinking about, andrew johnson, chester arthur, teddy roosevelt, calvin coolidge, harry truman and lyndon johnson very well could have ascended to the role of the acting president instead of the president. so, that is the story of the first accidental president and what happened to. now, what i want to do is juxtapose i think is th what i e biggest catastrophe which i think what is the biggest success story of an accidental president. i almost tempted to say exactly more left wing to the presidential succession and despite the fact the founding fathers gave a guide but nothing close to a blueprint i am tempted to say you know what, we navigated through pretty well and we got pretty lucky. it's a remarkable story, and i

could almost say that except for the fact that when abraham abram lincoln dieabrahamlincoln died w johnson and we were supposed to get abraham lincoln's vision of reconstruction. instead, john wilkes booth gives us and wer we're johnson. a man born a racist, died a racist, the last president to own slaves, a man who didn't emancipate his own slaves until seven months after the proclamation, and a man who as president ended up resurrecting almost every old element of the confederacy giving away for the buck coats which paved the way for the jim crow law which of course gave us segregation. if i look at the story of post-civil war america to me it could be described in some respects as a story of two presidential assassinations beginning with abraham lincoln and ending with james garfield which i will come back to. when i set out to write the chapter about lincoln and andrew johnson you think to yourself what can i write the great scholars haven't written about

that seminal moment in history and i decided i wante what i wao do this vindicate the one statement in lincoln's record which is putting into drums in a heartbeat away from the president. back then the president didn't chooschoose a running mate but s is such an important moment and lincoln was so certain he was going to lose in 1864 that he engaged in a massive intrigue outside of his circle to move hannibal off the ticket and replace them with andrew johnson. now, if you would have to andrew johnson was in 1864 versus two andrew johnson was later as president, it is a remarkable contrast and you feel some degree of at the lincoln having made such a bad position because andrew johnson at the time, you know, he was one of the poorest man ever to rise to the presidency. he owes everything he has to the union and despite his sentiment and despite his beliefs, he cared more about the end and anything else. then anything else. when the first shots were fired in for december, all he cared about his breaking the

confederacy's to rewrite the union. the great way was to punish every trader in brutal fashion enforceable rights upon them. so, you know, johnson is the only southern senator to stay loyal to the union. he gives up a seat in the senate to take a very dangerous job at a military governor of tennessee. and in 1864, his rhetoric on civil rights is more forward leaning than even abraham lincoln. his rhetoric on the punishment is even more forward leaning and progressive abraham lincoln. and he is so feared by the south because he looked like such a radical republican despite being a war democrat from a border state that the south is so much were terrified about the idea of andrew johnson as presiden is pd abraham lincoln. and when jefferson davis is accused of plotting to kill abraham lincoln, he reminds people that that would be insane because, you know, anybody that hears or listens to andrew johnson knows that that would be a far worse situation for the south.

south. malcolm andrew johnson has the e worst state view of any vice president in history. he's completely hammered while being sworn in and giving his inaugural address. he's supposed to speak for the second and maybe a minute at most and then put his hand on the bible and be sworn in. instead, it turns into a seven minute drunken tirade in which he criticizes every member of the cabinet, he pauses when he can't remember the name of the secretary of the medium has to ask somebody. poor abraham lincoln has his head buried in shame and he proceeds to slaughter all over the bible and is too drunk to sparspare him the senators askse equivalent of an intern to do it, and i'm not sure legally that you can do that. so then abraha abraham lincoln d side-by-side with him outside right before lincoln gives arguably one of the best beaches of his career and lincoln plainsong frederick douglass and douglas in his autobiography describes a man's eyes glazed

over sort of stumbling with hatred and when you realize he's describing a drunk person, but that you don't realize andrew johnson is drunk but he goes to conclusions, one from he's no fan of my race and we should thank the heavens he isn't president of the united states and of course six weeks later of course when dennis killed from andrew johnson becomes president, his views are not trans warmed when he becomes president his views were transformed when the civil war is over and all of a sudden, you know, the best thing from his perspective for the union is to get the southern elected officials reintegrated back into congress and let the states deal with civil rights and so forth. he goes back to what he thinks are the best tactics. what is interesting about johnson is of course, he has a plot to kill him not just link in the andrew johnson, secretary of state and many others. the first time the cabinet sees andrew johnson after the drunken tirade is when he shows up at the peterson house and he's told it one of the cabinet members

that he's making mary todd lincoln uncomfortabl uncomfortas to leave. everybody knows lincoln is about to die and enter johnson is going to be president and by all accounts he should have been treated as president of the comment that he was asked to leave because he was making the first lady uncomfortable. the reason i say the story is to assassinations is because it isn't until the controversial election of 1876 but you have the end to reconstruction so thathat's when you really starto get jim crow and some of the active segregation laws. then fast-forward to the fast fn convention of 1880 and it's a duel between th the uss grand gg for them on consecutive third firm and james brand. everybody, all the delegates get tired of it and on the ballot someone shouts out james garfield's name, he was there at the campaign chief for somebody that was running like third or fourth in the delegate count. and all of a sudden there is a momentum builds for garfield and eventually he gets the nomination. he jumps up on the stage and says i protest. how can you give the nomination

to a man that doesn't seek it. he ends up with it anyway. he then has thrown onto the ticket a man that embodies all elements of the system, chester arthur. but garfield was a man who is completely detached from the party politics and who made a pledge he was somebody that was born in a log cabin, hid runaway slaves as a child and his big issues for universal education and universal suffrage. for the spoils system and creation of the modern civil service. and we are supposed to get that vision before, four months into the presidency. he's a shot by an office speaker that went with chester arthur writes in his letter a declaration that he killed garfield so that arthur could be president if h and he expected e rewarded as the general. and obviously that didn't happen. arthur ends up having a somewhat respectable presidents in part because a mentally ill woman on the upper east side of manhattan started snail mail trolling him

with these long letters telling him how lonesome he was. but there was still hope for him, she described him in manners reminiscent of the worst characters in the court of king henry viii and kept telling him there's still hope. so then she shows up at house on the upper east side. we know as early as 1881, that you control the president and the president might show up at your house. so, the meeting has profound impact on him. it's not the sole reason he becomes one of these reasons a man that embodies the system ends up signing a pendleton act creates the modern-day civil service, but arthur is a pretty mediocre man who didn't like working. his aides used to walk around with a basket of important looking documents because he literally didn't work and they were embarrassed to tell people, so they literally would create a façade of important stuff going on. but, you know, so he didn't push for the civil rights agenda that we would have gotten with garfield. malcolnow, the one that is the t

unexpected and i would say the biggest success is very true men, as the reason this is because in 1944, all the democratic party bosses knew paw that fdr was a dying man. you need look no further than the fact they couldn't fathom the idea of henry wallace b. the vice president for sending to the presidency because they thought he was too liberal or they thought he was a soviet sympathizer or both. but they cared enough to recognize this great business of his health enough to take essentially a politician from missouri who haven't thought much about the world, who was kind of a local machine director and threw him on the ticket without thinking about whether he could govern or lead but he was the best shot at making sure wallace wasn't on the ticket and fdr didn't really care as long as whoever was thrown on the ticket with him didn't prevent him from winning the election. deep down, he probably knew he was going to die. i think the question was time. he thought he could power through, when the war and

defended before his term he could resign and be the first secretary-general of the united nations. during his 82 days as vice president, he meets with fdr twice. he doesn't get a single intelligence briefing. he doesn't need a single foreign leader, isn't briefed on the atomic bomb from isn't right into the happenings of the war. he's basically out socializing. 1945 fdr takes his last breath, truman inherits probably one of the most overwhelming portfolios of the crisis of any president in history with less preparation than any president in history, the battle of okinawa is literally at its height, one of the fiercest military battles of all time. he gets briefed on the manhattan project and has to figure out what is he going to do with this destructive weapon that may or may not work. stalin as reagan again on every one of the promises. churchill is complex. hwas complex.he doesn't know whf the countries were to be a piece in this first several days in the bathroom literally getting smart on what's been happening in the war. he has to deal with the reality

that he might have to move a million men from the year ago european to the pacific theater. there is a battle between the army and navy that threatens the entire effort and get in the first four months he makes some of the most important decisions in the history of our republic, decisions that win the war that shaped the postwar order and i argue that it's a combination of truman stepping up to the job and men like dean acheson and george marshall deciding the fate of the world rests on truman being successful in as much as they may miss the great fdr, there isn't enough time or they don't have the luxury of acting on the shock. they decide to make him successful so to his credit though, he also has to listen to them. not all presidents listen. fillmore takes the oath of office after zachary tyler dies and fires the cabinet and then they are left without cabinets for some time. at the moment isn't the first time that we have had a lot of vacancies in the cabinet. so, when they told truman you

focus on europe, he listens to them. now, we are going to move to questions shortly but i do want to talk little bit about the close call because to me it is fascinating. i found myself overwhelmingly frustrated writing this book because i don't understand why we didn't get the importance of figuring out the presidential succession and why we never treated with any degree of seriousness, so it takes three presidents to be assassinated for us to decide that it's a good idea to protect the president. we used to literally just what the president he overrun with speakers and people who may or may not have been mentally ill and anybody had access to the president. and even by the time that we start to sort of protect the president, we don't really do it professionally. they basically use perception of the president as an opportunity for their buddies from home. now personally if i were the targets i wouldn't want my buddies from home protecting me as much as i think they like me i do not think that they would

take a bullet for me. but the other thing that frustrated me is the very first close call with madison who was basically on his deathbed as president and dolly madison catches wind at th of the beging succession proceedings on what to do in the senate, talking about what happens with the vice president and she writes the note exaggerating her husband's recovery and he does eventually make a recovery that james madison was instrumental in writing the constitution and nobody bothered to ask him what do you mean when you say they shall divulge on the president, then andrew jackson is a shot at point blank by a man that believes he's the king of england. the gun is literally touching him this and he has been shot. he's been chalked and there was a one and 25,000 chance of malfunctioning and he realizes it didn't work and then he proceeded to beat the assailant with his cane. some of the founding fathers were still alive. nobody bothered to ask them what do they mean by diebold to the vice president. by the time william henry harrison drops dead in 1841, the

last founding father, james madison has been dead for four years and there is nobody to ask. i coded a sort of go through close call after close call but i will tell you just may be three of my favorite stories. one is me just kind of constitutionally peeking out for a minute, some of the constitution said in 1865 when lincoln was assassinated is that you know, if there is a double vacancy and the vice president prpro tempore incident as an acting president and the secretary of state has the constitutional authority to make that happen and call a special election for the following november. so, you go back to the evening april 141855, lincoln is shot from andrew johnson would have been murdered had they not decided to get drunk at a bar nearby, and another part of the murder conspiracy went into go kill william seward was the secretary of state. he was in his bed and is stabbed

repeatedly said he almost dies. then what happens there is no secretary of state to make the president pro tem the acting president and called a special election. shockingly the constitution is pretty clear about this than the assistant secretary of state has the authority to do this. so who is the assistant secretary at the time, frederick seward, the son of frederick was bludgeoned to death by the handle of the gun and on the assessment away into his bedroom to stab him. so, had the murder conspiracy born fruition you could have had a situation where there was no president, no vice president, and there was no secretary of state or assistant secretary of state with the constitutional authority to make the president pro tem the acting president or call a special election. and iand if it sounds that wild conspiracy theories but it actually almost happened. now the most interesting close calls i will tell you quickly before we go to the questions and answers i want to call you u the story of the woman of the purse and how she saved the new deal. deal. deal. if they arfdr president-elect an

miami on board a ship called the normal hall which has been the private yacht and gives this first speech at a park in miami sitting on the back of a buick in his three-part motorcade delivers the speech an ended and immigrant named giuseppe fires 15 shots at him, the bullets thabulletswould have hit fdr e a 100-pound woman was standing right next to the assailant and sold them off the 32 caliber, moved her purse from alarm to another and smacked the gun with enough force to be able to thwarthwart his aim into the bus killed four people including the mayor of chicago who was visiting the disparate fdr's life and saved the new deal. more remarkably, what happened to president-elect dies in office. interestingly the amendment was ratified nine days before and among other things the amendment says that if there is a vacancy in the president elect the vice president elect takes the oath of office on the inauguration day. then the last close call i will tell you about before we go to question and answer is the

suicide bomber who nearly killed jfk and president elect. so we remembered obviously kennedy's assassination but how many of you by show of hands know that he was nearly killed by a suicide bomber before he ever took the oath of office? shockingly, none of you. a disgruntled postal worker named richard stuffed his buick to blow up a block outside of kennedy's home in west palm beach. and ended up he was ready to do it but then he caught a glimpse of john john standing right next to kennedy and decided he would do it later so he follows kennedy to church the next day, fills up his pants with the same amount of dynamite standing 4 feet from jfk president elect outside with his hand in his pocket and on the trigger ready to pull it. had he done that, he would havee blown up himself, kennedy, a number of people in church but he caught a glimpse of children and decided he would wait another day to do it. so, the book is filled with these of crazy stories and you

would think that writing a book about a president dying in office and 19 who almost died you would be left with a feeling like the deep melancholy, but strangely i ended up feeling kind of optimistic about it. one night while our history is crazy and if you look at the current political moments right now, you know, the book is anchoreanchored about these aroe transitions but it covers the vast american history. and you know, you look at how nasty congress is today. in 1850, a senator pulling a gun on another senator is pretty nasty. today maybe they will message each other, calling each other liars but it doesn't get much worse than that other than the onone body slammed somebody butt doesn't compare to what we saw in the 1850s. i told you the example of the repulsively annexing texas in terms of constitutional crisis, if you look at the history of presidential succession, probably one of the most sustained old and abilities that we have had in our republic so,

it's not bad like everybody else i don't forget today with some concern, but it is helpful to get a good dose of history when reflecting on the president and i will tell you i just loved the five and a half years spending my day focused on the future and innovation in all of my evenings kind of digging into the past and the contrast between the two is so exciting. you get really obsessed with it. i got stuck on the garfield and arthur chapter when my wife was pregnant with our second daughter into soap her middle name is garfield. [laughter] and with that i will take your questions. [applause] fun story, that's for sure. i'm wondering why the supreme court didn't get more involved in many of these things in particular the type n. 41 or really at any point prior to the

point when the amendment kind of makes things clear. constitutional interpretation seems to be an issue. why is that? >> it's a great question. in the case of tyler, they actually tried to seek out the inside of the chief justice, but the chief justice hated henry clay and hated tyler said he didn't want to get involved because he was going to make one of his enemies happy one way or another and so he abdicated for the responsibility. it's in the book. [laughter] if the constitution is clear that the duties and powers of the president evolved to the vice president regardless what you call it, can you spin out on what is really at stake whether he is called the acting president or the president if he has all the same powers?

i understand there's a different image, but it seems a little of femoral and people perceive it is different. >> i think that the reason it was so important. i can answer this by talking about why it was so important to tyler. none of the others to grapple with us and it wasn't an issue at all by the time to provide an office and ascended to the presidency comes out what that means is people accepted the tyler precedent even just a ten year period. having read a lot about what he was thinking at the time and a lot of the documents from the era, the conclusion i came to was kind of twofold. first was that doesn't position you very well to be kind of an incumbent and a likely person to win the next election and as they mentioned they all become obsessed with winning in their own right so the idea of being president versus being inactive president puts you in a different position for the

election of 1844. but the other issue is the constitution talks a lot about special elections in the context of acting presidents. and i think tyler was worried if he accepted the reality of being inactive president and the assumption would be that special election called the following november. >> everybody should always take the tour around lafayette square on halloween because it reenacts vividly the offense of april, 1865. is it still true that no one has ever served two terms as vice president and been elected president next >> george h. w. bush served two terms as reagan's vice president and he ended up eating elected, so that would be the one. and martin van buren served as the vice prez didn't before. the vice presidencbut the vice a

pass to the presidency. just look at it throughout history. so the other thing you mentioned there is another interesting twist and piece of this, and johnson a month after ascending to the presidency is on his deathbed and nearly dead and fosters the president pr pro tef southwest sort of trying to make nice with the various native american groups and mr. president pro tem you need to push back, the president is dying and he basically ignores it and goes on the next leg of the journey. journey. they telegrajourney. they telegram him again as a sign we won't come back to washington. we need you to at least stay near a telegraph office. so, that happened. [laughter] laughter >> there's another vice president-elect and became a very formidable president and

thawas theodore roosevelt in his own right. did you agree with that? >> theodore roosevelt is the only one who would have likely become president anyway. there are three reasons people become vice president in the history that i write about. one is they are available because nobody wants the job or number two, to win the state or the constituency or number three as punishment. he was a complete pain in theire whatever i can't say on c-span. so going to the political equivalent he dies in office and what's interesting here is the only president in history that enjoyed close and intimate relationships with the president because he did a lot of his

financial planning. it comes from mark hanna who is a confidant and when he ends up as vice president the only vote against him as a delegate he said to mckinley your only responsibility the next four years is to live and o of course he's shot and killed in september of 1901. the interesting part of the story whenever i talk about the accidental presidents that have died in office, people love to say that teddy roosevelt story when he shot and it penetrates the skin and he looks at it and it declares i'm an expert taxidermist and i can survive an

hour and then he gets disputed as to the hospital but he wasn't a president when that happened. that's when he came back in 1912 to try to torpedo william howard taft but he nearly does die in office so a year almost to the day after he is in us to the presidency he is campaigning for the midterms and a trolley slams into his carriage and killed his driver, his bodyguard who was the first member of the secret service ever killed in the line of duty and it would have told teddy roosevelt as well but for a few inches of luck. he flies about 38, lands facedown, his glasses were broken, he ends up having to get emergency surgery but not before threatening the driver. and he has a bit wheelchair.

declared he is running for president. what are the chances that two-term president is becoming vice president? >> there is no upside in making predictions.

yet we are still treating this like a political gimmick. so i think the dange danger is e think about the vice presidency is the seriousness of and recklessness with which we choose vice presidents is obfuscated by the fact that the last few among whether you like them or not are certainly capable of leading the republic. so we don't pay a lot of attention to the recklessness it's a terrible idea to choose who they run with because i'm against the ropes and i need to ten points in the polls in this particular week into this particular chapter of the campaign which should have absolutely nothing to do with whether somebody can leave in a crisis. >> i cannot believe that roosevelt was not told them himt

the manhattan project. >> he didn't think that the vice president. he was just trying to pummel through a. he was either in georgia springs recovering or he was traveling. i did the interviews i could afford this book and boasts chapters of history. taylor's grandsons are very useful for the stories and anecdotes. but i asked george h. w. bush this question because i did a number of interviews with him before he died an in a number of others and they all had the same comment about the vice presidency which is i asked them about it in the context of fdr. it was quite amusing. you don't want to look at who is

to take over for you. the if i am a revisionist i would say i got tired. there was a decision at the beginning i was captivated by my entire life was this idea how do they leave something that is in tears when everybody misses their predecessor. the idea of death in office comes with a sense of deep rival. you are depriving the voters of person that they choose another person they chose and they have to deal with the reality of the country in morning. they have an obligation to continue at least paying homage to some elements of the policies where if you look at mix in

reciting, ford was under no obligation by any stretch of the imagination so it really feels different to me. i talk about the transition in the context of the discussions towards the end of the book about the amendment. the first time it's put into practice is when richard nixon has replaced spiro agnew the interesting thing is you would think that the 25th amendment would have been put into practice when reagan was shot in 1981 but it wasn't because james baker and others would've said the president of the determination of the cabinet was unfit for office. there is no evidence that they reflected back on james garfield being there for etds or woodrow wilson, but i do wonder sometimes what goes into the

back of their mind. it's the only time the 25th amendment has ever the inability to the top of the elevator door hit them on the top of the head, he went back upstairs, had to get stitches, came back downstairs and they fired more shots at him. luckily the secret service agent between the assassin and the

trigger but the punchline was a really bad day for the president. [laughter] this is kind of apropos of the question of what you just said about ford. the question is what is the process for the selection or the appointment of the vice president of the accidental president? >> we also ended up with nelson rockefeller, which was an accidental vice president i guess you could say. ..

>> it's the same process whether the vice president is somebody ends up the accidental president that process for replacing the vice president as if there was a president based on the ballot box if not i can also tell more stories. [laughter] they are endlessly incredible my favorite line - - my favorite from the book most of the accidental presidents never really spent much time thinking about it and

expecting that to be irrelevant he spent his entire life thinking about it so when mckinley dies he can hardly contain his enthusiasm but he is conflicted with an amazing quote is a terrible thing to come into the presidency this way but it would be far worse to be morbid about it. [laughter] >> i think truman but are there any others vice president ascension to the presidency because as you made the point if anybody tried to fulfill the aspirations. >> the best example is calvin

coolidge because that transition is that comparison with our present day moment if you look at warren harding the most scandalous administration in history that teapot dome scandal scandal at the veterans bureau and the attorney general and justice department complicit from fight fixing stock manipulation and murders within the ranks a very corrupt attorney general. harding die is enormously popular and coolidge is still the only accidental president to ascend to be for the election of 1924. and then to terrify the scandals will break out on the watch and that they will lose and power will be handed over to the democrats so he has a

very self reflective moment to notice he is quite boring there are many stories of coolidge and significance when the hotel is on fire he's told he needs to evacuate he said i'm the vice president and they said okay you can stay. [laughter] then they turn around and they said vice president of what he said the united states we said sorry we thought you meant the vice president of the hotel. [laughter] so was interested about coolidge he has an interesting strategy he knows is boring and insignificant and call him silent cal he so boring he couldn't possibly be relevant to be complicit in any of the scandals and it works. he got more engagement with the public than any president before him because he got broadcast radio it goes into people's living rooms the way

no president had before. but to answer your question i'm not sure he needed to do that because the economy was booming to such a scale that americans were economically drunk of eskimo pies and consumer products and tabloids and they didn't care that the president was harding or coolidge or hoover until the economy completely crumbled. and to the extent you had a vice president continue vice president as usual coolidge is probably the best example. >> which vice president exercise the undue interest of policy the president may has well then absent or nonexistent crack. >> teddy roosevelt was the most annoying. mckinley couldn't control him as secretary of state they couldn't control him as vice president. there's a great story as assistant secretary of the navy, not state but the

secretary of the navy took a break to get the equivalent of a spot treatment was so worried about teddy roosevelt would do in six hours he instructs him not to take the country to war. [laughter] while he's getting that treatment roosevelt mobilizes the country for war in six hours. the beginning with teddy roosevelt the accidental president gets elected in their own right prick or not before them. and then to have three more elections and post 1900 than in the period before. and to the fact that foreign-policy plays a more pronounced role in the vice president that exerted the most and if you look they

announce foreign-policy roles. tell another story? [laughter] i can pull from the reservoir. i will share a personal story about the writing process because it was tricky because i had a day job also but i really wanted to do this to get my hands on proper archival research every time i went to write a new chapter i went to the same emotional period of volatility i determined i couldn't do it there is nothing new to write and i felt the challenge was daunting. so i decided with each chapter to approach it like i was playing the accidental president in a place i would

read the assessments of their personality and read their letters and get in their head i really got stuck in andrew johnson's head and it was an experiment - - disturbing experience. [laughter] i don't like him you counter disagreement in the scholarship or in the history if you can get yourself to imagine what it would be like to be that particular person you can form an opinion so that was a fun process like playing the accidental president in the play for the duration of writing it. >> andrew johnson was one of the hardest president to be impeached they tried several times. why was congress so reluctant

to impeach him quick. >> that's a great question and ultimately he does and with andrew johnson when people talk about what a catastrophe he was they point to the fact he was impeach there's many reasons to critique andrew johnson the irony is what he was impeach for was the violation of tenure of office act that was deemed unconstitutional it trivializes the catastrophe instead we should focus on the fact when he talks about north carolina statehood he gives amnesty to every single trader and allows the vice president of the confederacy to be reelected into congress those are reasons to criticize johnson in terms of impeachment i think what is interesting impeachment historically has been used as

a political tool only time that you have proceedings that if allowed to play out would be impeachment dad is nixon and it doesn't take a political flavor but the first is against john tyler and politically motivated johnson is politically motivated by radical republicans when johnson ascended to the presidency he thought he was one of them because his rhetoric on civil rights when the war ended and found out he was nothing like them so they are trying to get him on a technicality. the difficulty in impeaching him in some respects reflected a lack of comfort and the house of representatives that the time with impeachment

taking on a political flavor of course he narrowly escapes conviction by a single vote. >> with lbj he is mind you go to write it and you think what can i write that robert caro has not written? [laughter] this is what's amazing about history there is plenty to write about their still unsolved mysteries that what i focus on with lbj is i really believed he would have to resign as vice president or be kicked off after kennedy was assassinated because he was engulfed in a massive scandal with an eight of his in the senate and under investigation and what i learned talking to tom brokaw who remembered that. quite well cvs in time life had the goods on lbj with a

full dossier and ready to go public and when kennedy was assassinated they made a deliberate decision to put it back in the box. you couldn't have kennedy assassinated, scandal break at the height of the cold war the new president has to resign. there is no 25th amendment so they flip the speaker and the president pro tem then the secretary of state would have to schedule a special election. so this is an interesting ethical question in the context of history. i should know the name but i don't so the country has been to this dramatic transition but also we know how bobby

kennedy hated lbj but was very clear to the kennedys with that final trip to texas that lbj didn't have this way in texas he thought he did even if he wouldn't resign they would have found a way to rotate him off the ticket. the conventional wisdom of if kennedy's not assassinated you don't get the civil rights act of 64 but also you don't get vietnam i don't subscribe to that view i subscribe i do not thank you wouldn't get the civil rights act because i think the kennedys were prepared to pay lip service but not electoral risk. it's hard to speculate after if they had even won reelection and that is a big if. but with vietnam the guardians of the reputation with sausage

or has reconstructed a narrative that correctly saddles lbj with culpability and responsibility for vietnam he gives him too much responsibility he doubles the number of advisers and foreign assistance budget and turns the other way for the support for a coup against the vietnamese president and often times people will point to the advisors coming home which was later proven to be a normal troop rotation for quite don't think he was proposed to go down that same path but everybody was scared of the big red arrow and may have found themselves going down the same slippery slope people i interviewed arc incredibly divided maybe yes may be no semi personal view is there with some form of escalation under kennedy as wel well.

>> can you comment on cheney as vice president crack. >> if you look at his background one of the most extraordinary records of any man ascended to the vice presidency has before and after is a very different narrative no different - - no doubt one of the most influential vice presidents in history in the first term but i also think you see the limits by evaluating his second term. >> thank you. [applause] >> we have copies of the book available behind the register just for my assigning line and for the pure chairs.

thank you. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> thank you. welcome. good afternoon britt and catherine, president of the massachusetts historical society and i am so happy you could be here with us today as we welcome to celebrated historians as they present their co-authored book, and one. "the problem of democracy"