through our social media scene. as a public service, brought to you by your television provider. >> accidental president, jared, looks at the a face president who became president due to the death of their predecessors. he shared their true life stories at politics and prose bookstore in washington dc. >> what i want to do is juxtapose what i think is the biggest catastrophe with the biggest success story of an accidental president. i'm almost him to to say that despite the fact that we more or less wings presidential succession and the fact that the founding fathers gave us a guide but nothing close to a

blueprint, we navigated pretty well, it is a remarkable story. i can almost say that except when abraham lincoln died, we were supposed to get abraham lincoln's vision of reconstruction but instead the bullet of john wilkes move gives us johnson was a man born racist, died a racist, the last president to own slaves, a man who didn't anticipate his own slaves until 7 months after the emancipation proclamation, a man who has president ended up resurrecting every moment of the confederacy paving way for the jim crow laws which gave us segregation. if i look at the story of civil rights and post-civil war america it can be described as a story of two presidential assassinations beginning with abraham lincoln and ending with james garfield. when i set out to write the chapter about andrew johnson

you think what can i write that great scholars haven't written about this sort of seminal moment in history and i decided to vindicate the one stanley can's record which is putting andrew johnson a heartbeat away from the president. back in the vice -- the president didn't choose the runway but this is an important moment in lincoln was a service he would lose the election in 1864 that he engaged in massive intrigue outside the circle to move hannibal hamlin off the ticket and replace him with andrew johnson. if you look at andrew johnson in 1864 versus later as president it is a remarkable contrast and you feel some degree of empathy for lincoln having made such a bad decision because andrew johnson at the time was one of the poorest men ever to rise to the presidency, he owed everything he had to the union and despite his racist sentiment and believes he cared more about the union than anything else a when the

first shots were fired on fort sumter all he cared about was breaking the confederacy to reunite the union. the best way to break the confederacy was published every trader in brutal fashion and for civil rights upon them. he gives up the bombproof seat to take a dangerous job as military governor of tennessee and in 1864 his rhetoric on civil rights is more forward leaning than even abraham lincoln, his rhetoric on punishment of traders more forward leaning and aggressive the neighborhood lincoln and so feared by the south because he seems like such a radical republican despite being a war democrat from a border state that the south is so much more terrified about the idea of andrew johnson as president the neighborhood lincoln and when jefferson davis is accused of plotting to kill abraham lincoln he reminds people that that would be insane because

anybody, andrew johnson would know that was a far worse situation for the south. andrew johnson has the worst debut of any vice president in history, completely hammered while being sworn in and giving his inaugural address. he is supposed to speak for 30 seconds, a minute at most and put his hand on the bible and be sworn in. instead it turned into a 17 minute drunken tirade in which he criticizes every member of the cabinet, posits when he can't remember the name of the secretary of navy and has to ask somebody, a bramley can's head is buried in his hand in shame. he proceeds to slobber all over the bible and too drunk to swear in the new senators so he asked some poor equable and of an intern to do it. i'm not sure legally you can do that so abraham lincoln walk side-by-side outside before lincoln gives one of the best speeches of his career and lincoln points out frederick douglass who at the time is the first -- most famous ex-slave in the country and the

autobiography describes a man, eyes glazed over, stumbling with hatred and he is describing a drunk person but doesn't realize andrew johnson is drunk but draws the conclusion that is no friend of my race and we should thank the heavens that he's not president of the united states. six weeks later lincoln is killed, andrew johnson becomes president, his views are not transformed when he becomes president, his views are transformed when the civil war is over and all of a sudden the best thing from his perspective for the union is to get elected officials reintegrated back into congress, let the states deal with civil rights, back to what he thinks are the best tactics. what is interesting about johnson is the plot to kill not just lincoln but andrew johnson, secretary of state seward and a number of others.

the first time the cabinet sees andrew johnson after the drunken tirade is when he shows up at the peterson house and is told by one of the cabinet members that he's making mary todd lincoln uncomfortable and needs to leave. everybody knows lincoln is about to die and johnson is going to be president and by all accounts he should have been treated as president at that moment that he was asked to leave because he was making the first lady uncomfortable. the reason i say it is the story of two assassinations, it is not until the controversial election of 1876 that you have a end to reconstruction so that is when you get jim crow and the active segregation laws. fast forward to the republican convention of 1880 and between the us is great going for a nonconsecutive third term, everybody gets tired of it. and somebody running third of for the delegate count.

how can you give the nomination to a man who doesn't seek it? he ends with it anyway. he then has thrown under the ticket a man who embodies all islands of the system, chester arthur but garfield, a man who is detached from party politics, who made a pledge, born in a log cabin, his big issues were universal education and universal suffrage and a end to the spoil system and creation of modern civil servants. we were supposed to get that vision four months into his pregnant -- presidency, he is shot by a officer who worked with chester arthur who wrote in the letter declaration that he killed garfield so arthur could be president and expected to be rewarded as consul general in paris. arthur has a respectable presidency because the mentally

ill woman on the upper east side of manhattan started trolling him with these long letters telling him how loathsome he was but there was still hope for him. she described him in man is eerily reminiscent of the worst characters in the court of king henry viii but told him there is still hope and he gets in the presidential carriage and shows up on the upper east side so we know as early as 1881 that you control the president and the president might show up at your house. this meeting has profound impact on him, not the sole reason, why a man who embodied the spoil system is there was a modern-day civil service but are there was a mediocre man who didn't like working. 's aides used to walk around with a basket of important looking documents because you literally didn't work and they were embarrassed to tell people he didn't work. they create a façade of important stuff going on so he didn't push for the civil

rights agenda we would have gone with garfield. the one who is the most unexpected and biggest success is harry truman. the reason i say this is in 1944 all the democratic party bosses knew that fdr was a dying man. look no further than effective couldn't fathom the idea of henry wallace becoming vice president ascending to the presidency because they thought he was too liberal or soviet supervisor for both. they recognized the seriousness of fdr enough to take a provincial politician from missouri who hadn't thought much about the world who is a local machine character and through him on the ticket without thinking about whether he could govern, he was the best shot at making sure wallace wasn't on the ticket and fdr didn't 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. he thought he could power through, win the war, if the war ended before his term he could be the first secretary-general of the united nations. during truman's 82 days as vice president he meets with fdr twice, doesn't get a single intelligence briefing, doesn't meet a single foreign leader, is not briefed on the atomic bomb, has not read into the happenings of the war but is out socializing, april 12, 1945, fdr takes his last breath, truman inherits one of the most overwhelming portfolios of any president in history with less preparation than any president in history. the battle of okinawa is 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 to do with this destructive weapon that may or may not work, stalin is reneging on every one of his promises, churchill is complex, he doesn't know where a lot of countries are on a map, he spends the for several days in the map room getting smart on

what is happening with the war. he has to deal with the reality that he might have to move 1 million men from the european theater to the pacific theater, there's a massive bureaucratic battle between the army and navy threatens the entire war effort and in his first we form and he makes some of the most important decisions in the history of the republic, decisions that win the war, and shave the postwar order. it is a combination of truman stepping up to the job, men like george marshall deciding the fate of the world rests on harry truman being successful. as much as they miss the great fdr there is not enough time or they don't have the luxury of acting and the shock that harry truman is president, they decide to make him successful. to truman's credit truman has to listen to them. not all presidents listen. millard fillmore take the other vase and immediately fires the entire cabinet and is left without cabinet heads with her

current moment is not the first time we've had a lot of vacancies in the cabinet. from asia to macarthur, he came from them. we talk about the close call. 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 presidential succession and never treated it with any degree of seriousness we should take 3 presidents to be assassinated to decide it is a good idea to protect the president, we let the white house be overrun with office seekers and people who may or may not have been mentally ill and anybody had access to the president and the extent even by the time we start to protect the president we don't do it professionally, they use protection of the president as a patronage opportunity for their buddies from home.

i would not want my buddies from home protecting me. i do not think they would take a bullet for me. the other thing that frustrated me as the close call was james madison who is on his deathbed as president and dolly madison catches wind that they are beginning succession proceedings on what to do, talking about what happens with vice president gary and she writes a note exaggerating her husband's recovery. instrument when writing the constitution, nobody bothers to ask what do you mean when you said the same shall devolve on the vice president? andrew jackson sonnet point blank by a man who believes he is the king of england, the gun is literally touching him so they assume he has been shot, the gun at 125,000 chance of malfunctioning, he realizes the gun didn't work and proceeds to beat the assailants with his cane. some of the founding fathers were still alive, nobody

bothered to ask what did they mean by devolve to the vice president? by the time william henry harrison dropped dead in april of 1841 the last founding father, james madison, has been dead for four years and there is nobody to ask. i could go through close call after close call but i will tell you three of my favorite stories. one is the constitutionally geeking out for a minute. what the constitution said in 1865 when lincoln was assassinated, if there's a double vacancy, the president pro tem for ends up as an acting president of the secretary of state has constitutional authority to make that happen and have some special election the following november. back to the evening of 1865, andrew johnson would have been murdered had they not decided to get drunk at a bar nearby and another part of the lincoln murder conspiracy went into go

kill william seward, the secretary of state and seward was in his bed and stabs him repeatedly so seward almost died. what happens if there's no secretary of state to make the president pro tem the acting president and call a special election? shockingly the constitution is very clear about this, the assistant secretary of state has the ability to do this. the assistant secretary frederick seward, the son of william seward, nearly. and to death by the handle of a gun and a knife on the way to william seward's bedroom. at the lincoln murder conspiracy had fruition, you could had a situation with no president, no vice president and no secretary of state or assistant secretary of state with constitutional authority to make the president pro tem the acting president or call a special election. not a wild conspiracy theory, that almost happened. the most interesting close calls before we go to questions and answers, a woman in her

purse and how she saves the new deal. fdr is president-elect, arrives in miami abortion, norma hall which is vincent astor's private yacht and gives his first speech in miami, sitting on the back of a buick delivers the speech, and italian immigrant fires 5 shots in 15 seconds at him. the bullets would have hit fdr except the 100 pound woman standing next to the assailants, sign. 's 32 caliber, moved her purse from one arm to the other inspectors gun with enough force to be able to afford them, the political four people including the mayor of chicago who is visiting but saved the new deal. markedly what happens if the president-elect dies in office? the twentieth amendment was ratified 9 days before. among other things, and if there is a vacancy, the vice president-elect takes the oath

of office on inauguration day. the last call before questions and answers, the suicide bomber who nearly killed jfk, said kennedy's assassination, how many by show of hands know that he was nearly killed by suicide bomber before he ever took the oath of office? shockingly none of you. a disgruntled postal worker named richard pavlik stuffed is buick with enough dynamite to blow up a city block outside kennedy's home outside west palm beach and ended up ready to do it but caught a glimpse of john john standing next to kennedy and decided he would do it later. fills up his pants with the same amount of dynamite, standing four feet from jfk is president-elect, on the trigger any to pull it. he would have blown up himself, kennedy, caught a glimpse of some children but decided to wait another day to do it.

the book is filled with crazy stories. >> you can find out more about jared cohen's book "accidental presidents: 8 men who changed america" going to booktv.org and search the author's name or book title. television has changed since c-span began 41 years ago. .. c-span, , created by private industry, america's cable-television company, as a public service and brought to you today by your television provider.

>> coming up on c-span2 pamela paul editor of the "new york times" book review offers for thoughts on how to get children interest in reading books. >> you are watching a special edition of booktv airing during the week while members of congress are in the district due to the coronavirus pandemic. tonight, memoirs.

booktv, now and over the weekend on c-span2. >> this weekend on booktv saturday at 6 p.m. eastern, richard cordray, former director of the consumer financial protection bureau. >> it's about consumers and the problems they faced. it's about consumer finance and how it has changed and it is about the new consumer financial protection bureau and the role and importance of the work that it engages in to protect people across america. >> sunday at 12:30 p.m. eastern, h. r. mcmaster, former trump administration national security adviser. >> the united states and other free and open societies will do everything we can to protect ourselves against the efforts of the chinese communist party to subvert our free-market economic systems and our democratic form of government. >> and at 6:20 p.m., ruth gilmore, author and city

university of new york professor on mass incarceration in the u.s. >> the fact that most people leave prison, , do a little bitf analysis to see that we could be closing prisons already, and jails already, if we just cut by two weeks and three weeks and four weeks, much less years, the kinds of sentences people are serving. >> watch booktv this weekend on c-span2. >> good afternoon, everyone. sorry, were running a little bit behind today. on behalf of the american enterprise institute i i would like to welcome you to a conversation with pamela paul, the editor of new times book review about a recent book, "how to raise a reader." she co-authored with