with the wall street journal covering congress particularly in the presidency as well. managing editor, president editor-in-chief at cq, editor of the national interest, editor of the american conservative, presidential biographer and authors been argus on in-depth the appreciate your time birds >> thank you. >> and that concludes our program for today pre-thanks for being with us. >> shop for robert murray spoke in the all-new c-span shop. all of his books including his most recent, president mckinley are available for purchase. every purchase supports book tv. television for serious readers. visit c-span shop.org today to get your copies of robert mary's books. >> it is a book tvs monthly in-depth program with author and longtime editor-in-chief

and ceo robert mary. he's authored many presidential biographies and books about american political history including where they stand. the american presidents in the eyes of voters and historians. >> so robert mary, even though what's your a take on the evolution of congressman perch out there in washington state? i would have to say congress t is not what it used to be compared to what it is today. it's also a huge goal separating two large factions of american politics get a lot

of nasty politics. that's were experiencingf today. sue and whitey think that changed? think a lot of it has to do with the nature of issues. i think you'll find if you look at american history that in politics were the most intense throughouts our time, throughout our history when the issues facing americans or what i would call definitional. what's a connection to her past to our heritage those things. whether we knew it or not we are one of those periods today in terms of having, in my view a sort of elite driven large faction of america that is very interested in very significant transformational programs. and a large section of

americans trump voters generally, it's a very, very large segment part fluctuates depending on what's happening at a given time. who are not sure they went to go in thatt direction. and the issue that most crystallizes this, and does not get as much attention in these terms but it gets a lot of attention whatever comes up because everyone knows it's pretty emotional. and that is immigration. so you have trump attempting to tamp down the large numbers of people coming to our borders. and now we have a new president who assumes just the opposite. >> host: given that you're an editor of cq for a long time, while your do contain a fair amount of congressional history, the written about presidents pretty become a presidential biographer, why is that?

>> we live in a presidential system. and in our system reforms and new directions come through presidential leadership. that's the only way they really come, our history tells us. so if you really want to get to the know of what's happening in america in given time you got to look carefully at the presidency and the presidents right now course congress plays a huge role as it does now. but the residents, that's the largest power center. it's also the most concentrated power center. the first thing the presidential campaign because it's a ruckus and crazy and or movable feast. the second is covering congress because therefore to

35 power centers but he can't getca the story and afforded 35 separate power centers and are not doing her job very well. where is coming to the white house which is that is not very fun there's only one power center that is the oval office. and everybody else circulates around the ovallte office. so getting to the nub, giving to the heart of what's goingn on is much more difficult with regard to covering the white house. but that is a function of the fact that the white house isun such a point of concentrated power in american political p scene. back will i'm going to pause at a theory. and see if i am correct. two of your books, country of vast designs about james k polk in your most recent president mckinley, architect of the american sensory are both about semi unknown presidents. but you chose them because you wanted to concentrate on the expansion w of america and because they achieved so much

in her singular term. >> that's a significant part of it. i felt calm action my editor simon schuster was very interested in theer poke. and she asked me if i would be interested in pursuing that. and i said yeah i would. she was interested in mexican war and i'm not a military historian and i don't really want to be. and so i said yes absolutely. i love politics and at that was a time of intense politics. i looked into it for couple of weeks and back to her they proposal. and she bought into it very avidly. but polk was a very consequential president pres recognized as such by the presidential historians and has been for decades. but he is not. very well known and people did not recognize how consequential he was. did very well and i think it

resonated. you mentioned mckinley, so i thought i would do the something with mckinley because he also was a very consequentialam president. and unlike pulp, he did not enjoy the view of american historians that he deserved to be consequential, that he actually pulled off a lot of the big things that happened during his time. and i did not agree with that. i have studied him a bit. i thought that he knew he was doing most of the time but he was not a visionary, but he was a man of immense managerial capacity. and he knew how to make when he saw that landscape was shifting for he did that very, very effectively. and so i did the same thing with mckinley as i did with pulp. imc would say that book did not do as wellin terms of sales. and so i concluded the american people were not quite ready for my thesis that william mckinley was in fact the president who pulled us into the 20th century.

>> i did call him a one term president britt he was elected twice but shot within a couple of his election right customer expecting a shot in the fall of 1900. in 1901 he was elected in the fall of 1900 and sorry. >> the fact that both of these men served in congress, did that also appeal to you? sue echo yes. both of them were on ways and means committee. i think both of them were chairman of the ways and means committee price and cover the ways and means committee and the senate financece committee for the two budget committees for the wall street journal when i was a reporter. so i was very interested in that part of course polk was also speaker of the house, kinley ran for speaker at one point before he became chairman of ways and means and lost. so they both had very

successful congressional careers britt and that is always good to. i've always felt that congress is much more dramatic. you can really create drama with congressional debates you can bring to light the people who are engaged in those debates. and bring to light the crucial nature of the decision-making that was sort of face in country thaton time. so yes having congress play significant role with something in a kind of like the idea of respect back to president mckinley. is it fair to compare the election of 1896 to the election of 2020 and the fact that william mckinley ran a front porch campaign what williams jenny bryan was a dynamic speaker. he was out there he was

incredibly bombastic and he was the great populace probably the most accessible. populace i think there are some analogies there. i don't think that election had the same kind of electricity factors that we certainly experience in 2020. >> or was the country in 1896 as far as issues go? there were two big issues. one was the whole tariff issue that was very, very significant through much of our history. much like taxation is today, we did not haveuc income tax of the time. the tariffs were the large they also could be used fory protectionism to protect

industries from foreign competition. that was a c huge issue for decades in america. author of the entire 1800s. the other one was the issue that williams jennings bryant and that was currency. it was basically a monetary policy. it was a strong feeling because we have gone through a terrible recession in the 1890s leading up to the 1896 election. and farmers were particularly hard-hit they could not get liquidity. they could not get the money they needed to tide themselves over from the devastation of the recession, which was really kind of a depression. aside from the great depression probably the worst. so the farmers in the populace of williams jennings bryan said basically resolveai this thing by what's called the free coinage of silver. meeting we will expand the money supply by bringing silver into it as well as the

gold base. monetary policy. and williams jennings bryant was the great exponent of a free coinage of silver. and mckinley had actually had a certain amount of sympathy towards that view earlier in his career. now it's coming down to a dramatic sort of bipolar binary question. people,t of conservatives, economic conservatives free coinage of silver would debate the currency and lead to inflation. and mckinley ultimately adopted that position and bent down the populace free silver forces throughout his first term. when he ran again against williams jennings bryant the second time that issue no longer had the same residence. >> his right hand, mark haner

who was it? >> will mark haner has taken a lot of hits in history over the decades, over the century. it is actually quite a fascinating character britt i came to like him ainin lot. it was a rich he made a lot of money in industry, and a lot of industries in a time when there is entrepreneurialism and industrial age. he wanted to get in ohio into the white house. he initially settled on one of mckinley's he fixated on was very effective.

so he managed to play a very, very significant historical role in america during that period now he also came under huge fire because he was fair game for the hearst papers and other detractors who portrayed him as a cartoons would have them in this big overstuffed into a suit dollar signs all over it. look like he is kind of a ghoul part he hated that is terrible forri him. but he sustained it and suffered it to got his man into the white house. >> mckinley did not always follow mark haner, there's a lot of feeling at the time and a lot of suggestions, mckinley was a puppet m sitting on the lap of mark haner. historical record is not bear that out, mckinley was capable

on numerous sick patients would tell mark haner he was wrong and he would not go in that direction pays for back robert your book president mckinley you also talk about this was a period of some anarchy in america. and there is some domestic terrorism. switch it was a period of that. there was a lot of socialist movements and people who wondered about the capitalist system that was not unheard of at the time. and of course such an anarchist. who shot and killed, mckinley was fascinated in buffalo new york in the fall of 1901. there's also a lot of labor strikes in america during the 1890s and a lot of that had to do with the depression or

recession that i was talking about earlier. there was a lot of violence that attended that but not during mckinley's time very much and that was one of the reasons why he won reelection with a very, very large margin. it was pertinent to point out we have many two-term presidents during the second part or the last two thirds really of the 19th century. as a pretty significant deal because the tendency whose 2012 that roberts mary's books where they stand, where voters and historians what did arthur's lessons are senior have to do with your book

mr. merritt? >> the father of the great historian of our time, great historian and activist. with activism as you know. he worked for john kennedy inn the white house during kennedy's administration. but his father was a noted, highly noted harvard historian who in 1948 concocted the idea the rankings of the american presidents through the views so you have this whole by far

the most influential and highest circulation magazine in m the country he published these rankings. and itas was kind of electrifying for people in america. the article got a lotf of attention. so he did it again and 1962 and his son, sausage or junior did it, my good friend the late steve neal from chicago tribune did a poll. and then various other academics, had various kinds of methodologies to pull historians on this. whereas the historians of you nick contemporaneous judgment within presidential politics and the customers always c right

, because you have to pay attention to what the voters are saying. therefore one term president rejected by the american people after a term, has a few marks against him according to this thesis i was developing. as i was doing more and more writing about the presidency, raising it also on presidential politics and covering the white house. and so i tried to pull together the index of presidential performance. will add another element that did the president by any objective measure transform the landscapel of america set apart the new core.

never try to rank the presidents of the same way. and really that as an index for exploring how the presidency works, how presidents fail and succeed. and how you assess them in their performance in history. so that is how the book came about. it is intended to be kind of a romp. it's not too serious but at the same time it deals with serious topics and serious questions about how the presidency works. so i had a good time with that book. i have to say it was a fun project. >> will see spends also gotten into this rather scholarly parler game. we do and presidential historian survey as well put our most recent came out in 2017. we look at categories such as public persuasion, crisis leadership, economic management of moral authority international relations, administrative skills, relations with china, vision and setting an agenda or some

of the categories that we ask historians to judge on. guard list of who does the survey, the top three always seemed to be the top three, abraham lincoln, george washington, and franklin roosevelt. spent well they are. and i have endorsed that. there've been a couple of polls that have washington on top and blinken second period i think the link in washington, fdr, is the right ranking. what's alsot interesting is the general rankings tend to correspond with each other over t time. except in so far asof some presidents are not too highly ranked upon leaving office. and sometimes move up through the rankings. eisenhower be a good example,

reagan seems to be another significant example of that. the really interesting one to me, it's got a fair amount of tension in recents year is ... grant who is ranked very, very low in those early polls and 48, 62, and those early ones. and now he's making a very steady slow rise upward. very interesting aspect of this. because it reflects how not only do views change in terms of the rankings, but how views change in terms of the history of and. so that the major historians of the post- civil war. many decades for maybe 1880s maybe the 1960s developed the view that reconstruction and had bad effects on the country after

700 so they could bring the country back together. if you look in a man like william kindling for example, you see that yet you could argue he really wasn't very concerned about the plight of african-americans in the south as a jim crow era actually. he was up to sub out that wholeob situation. but there is an element of thinking wasn't so much policies to patronizing view

abolitionists in ohio and adopted it totally att age 18 is a military hero, courageous historian. during the time when historians were suggesting thehe reconstruction was kind of a blight during that period, grant was kept low in the polls. that has changed in recent decades with some historians looking very carefully at reconstruction seeing it has

been continued. we needed to do that in order to end the plight of african-americans in the jim crow era. reconstruction of the radical republicans so called in the congress. there were people who were suggesting andrew johnson was rather courageous. blinken appointed him southerners who hated what he

was doing was intellectually wide-ranging fellow kind of a stoller guy, and so that is why we can pull them up to be based presidential running mate i in 1864. it's a great man is quite famous pretty shut up totally jerome made us technical himself, which did not endear them to anyone in washington d.c. at that time paycheck as you write where they stand new vepolitical impulses, given that the fact that andrew jackson and woodrow wilson have both dropped in the polls in recent years haven't they?

>> one of the great woodrow wilson detractors. he was ranked very, very highly. prthese were the most disastrous terms, presidential terms in our history. he took us into the war in europe, he had no idea what he was doing. thought is t going to make the world safe for democracy. he made europe safe for the degradation of germany after theil war regarding the policy bird trolley. it was rather nefarious. andil civil liberties was really trampled upon during the war, he did not seem to care about that at all. and the economy went into a terrible recession at the end of his second term. i applaud a little bit for its

biggest app and jen's attitude toward african-americans as well put andrew jackson's trail o of tears both of those things have been significant and for reasons of people applying today's standards to different era. but yes, woodrow wilson was i think, it will be fair to say as overt a racist as we have had in the white house. in terms of jackson, as it was called in those days moving indian tribes westward so that westwards they could establish themselves in those territories.

it was a horrendous things for the indians. jackson was not a indian racist however. it's much more complex than that party actually adopted a youngan indian boy who found himself without a family, was an orphan during these terrible indian wars. and he raise them. so it's rather complex question in regard to jackson. sue asked if he were sitting on the princeton university board, mr. mayor, would you have voted to remove woodrow wilson's name the school of international relations? >> noise would not have. i know these things are going to happen going too look at our political figures in history. they did fine overtime. i am kind of inclined to look

good and bad. all part of how we g got here. those kind of passions are not something that i kind of enjoy. stuart thanks c-span2. this for joining us for in-depth on the tv of cspan2. james polk the mexican war and conquest of he american continent came out in 2009. where they stand, 2012.

and president mckinley, his moe recent book, ash ticketer of the american century came out in 2017. from 1997, to 2009, mr. merry served as president and editor in chief of cq and from 2016 to 2018 he was editor of the american conservative, and he was born in tacoma, washington, universities of washington school, and as he mentioned he spent many years with the "wall street journal" as well. we're talking about presidential history, presidential rankings, congress, it's all on the table. here are the numbers. (202)748-8200 in the roost and central timetones. (202)748-8201 in the mountain and pacific time zones. now, if you want to send a text you can do that also well. please include your first name and city. (202)748-8903.

that is for text-messages only. plus you can make a comment on our social media sites. facebook, twitter, instagram. @facebook -- i'm sorry --@booktv is our handle there. so you can make comments on social media as well. we'll scroll through all that information, so you'll be able to see it. mr. merry, in a sense you argue in where they stand that you can do a can't do a con tell brain yours ranking of a president. >> guest: i would adjust that just a little bit and say that i have -- suggest you really need a generation's historical perspective before you can makeday seventive judgment, and even that can fluctuate. . so, i say it's all part of the great parlor game, as you call it, and i like to think of it as a parlor game and that's all fair game.

certainly entitled to have our opinions. after all we live in a democracy. i we can't have an opinion but or presidents, past, present, future, then democracy kipped of falls apart, doesn't it? so, yes, have at it is my view. i end the introduction by saying this is a great game, want to play? but generally speaking, a little historical perspective. i mentioned eisenhower was really not very highly rated by the academics upon his leaving the presidency. particularly in arthur schlesinger sr.'s second poll in 1962, two years after he lefties. office. but that judgment -- left office about that judgment was very politically motivate. many historians felt the index, the example was franklin

roosevelt was an activest when an activist president was needed, one could, and i do. but eisenhower was not elected in that time. he was elected to be a very, very effective president who maintained america's position in the world and expanded it to the extent that you could and he was very effective. that is not reflected in the academic polls and he is ranked generally nine, ten, 1 , which i think is about right. >> host: let's take calls. hear from the viewers, jim's cal caliente, california go. ahead, judge. >> thank you for taking me call. mr.merry, first one thing that seems to come out with the pandemic has been that one thing you didn't mention but wilson, apparently he did a bad job of handling the spanish flu as well.

and also the presidential story you took my question from your previous discussion, the fact nat most of historians seem to be on the left and today when you see presidential historians on television, they tend to be on the left. tends i think to very influence them -- influence the rankings of presidents perhaps more than that should be the case, and another point would we talk about influential presidents. like him or not, donald trump has been incredibly influential in these four years in ways i think far more transformational than obama was. you're thoughts on that. thank you very much. >> host: that's jim in california. >> guest: yeah, jim, thank you for the question. i appreciate very much. wilson's handling of that pandemic is michigan i don't know very much about. i read a little bit out wilson over the years, and i certainly

followed our pandemic and the references to the spanish flu. but i don't -- i'm not in a position to make a judgment about how he handled that. we know it was a pretty serious matter, and it can't have helped him at all, especially in terms of adding it on to all the other thing i talked about with regard to his second term. and the sect question, i'm sorry, the second part? >> host: he talked about the fact that a lot of the professors that their in the surveys are liberal and that he talked about president trump being very consequential. >> guest: what's fascinating issue get into that in my book on the presidency and i talk about how there's no question that there's a certain liberal tilt in the academic world and has been since the time of arthur she is schlesinger's poll

in 1948. you three-quarter rankings of the polls and throwing in the fluctuation is talked about and then compare to a poll, for example, that's "wall street journal" commissioned, in which it very studiously sought to sort of allow for any partisan tilt, and the rankings came out very similar to the rankings of before. so while i think that the liberal tilt certainly affected the initial rankings with regard to eisenhower and reagan, particularly reagan, and there was a poll recording reagan that i thought was absolutely egregious in terms how simple minded and narrow moistured many of these academics were in terms of their observation about reagan, who i think was very consequential and very serious president, who had big impact on america. and yet nevertheless the polls

seemed to align largely and so that over time, i think that whatever critical biases exist, have kind of watched out through sort of more sane judgments. now, i've been watching what's going on in the academic world for a number of years now, and the extent to which the -- not just liberalism but far left liberalism has become almost monolithic point of view in the academy is a very, very significant and i would argue very disturbing development in american cultural history, and i'm wondering whether the future polls of academics are going to be influence and affect by that fact to such an extent they will no longer be very valuable. >> host: the presidentsal historian survey from c-span in

2017, barack obama was in the 12th position. that was just as his term was ending. >> guest: well that gets back to my view you need a generation. that's a lot of people -- just a passions of politics linger for a good number of years, and you want to get beyond those before you can have a really dispassionate judgment, and i think that was a problem. obama was not number 12 in terms of our history and won't be. he'll be down further from that, and they'll find a place where he resides and it won't be -- we have seen the same thing. you often see john kennedy very, very high. well, john kennedy was not a consequential president. might have been if he had a chance to be. his first term he accomplished some amazing things, and he knew where he wanted to take the country, and overall term he was not succeeding in terms of getting through congress, the

legislation he wanted to pass but might have. in which case he would have been re-elected and might have come down at a great president in along the lines of what lyndon johnson's accomplishments were, his highest accomplishments that buoy him up notwithstanding his disasters he in vietnam war. you need to step back and look at this stuff dispassionately and historical terms and that's not always easy to do. >> host: text message, could mr. merry comment about his point of view on proposed changes to the congressional filibuster. >> guest: oh, gosh. i've got very mixed feelings about the filibuster. i would be -- i'm uncomfortable with the idea we do away with the full bester and i have been very uncomfortable with what the filibuster has become. the idea of the filibuster

initially when it emerged in the 19th century was and it's not in the constitution, it was created by the senate itself as a check on the passions of the moment, and yet it was very, very seldom used. now, ultimately took on a bad odor because when it was used, in our century, our past century, i'm sorry, the 20th century it was used primarily to thwart civil rights legislation, and so it was something that liberals, being civil rights people who believe in civil rights-want he that legislation passed and didn't like the filibuster for obvious roaches and that led to reform. used to be two-thirds you needed two-thirds. and reform pushed forward by walter mondale, the later

presidential candidate for the party in 1984. wanted to get rid of the filibuster but knew that wouldn't be possible so they reformed it, and it was -- instead of two-thirds, which would be 67 votes in a full senate, became 60 votes irrespect of who was in the senate, what the attendance was at any given time. what happened was that the 60 votes became -- every please of legislation needed 60 votes to pass. that was not what the people of the senate, who divided the filibuster had in mind. supposed to be used for issues that were extremely passionate in people's minds, and to protect the minority from the majority, and so i have been watching this and thinking it's just not -- it's not functional to have the filibuster as a

routinized always in use impediment to majority rule. we know what the senate was supposed to be. supposed to cool off the passions that would generate in the country and often in the house, and that was good, but the filibuster has been abused, but if it gets done away with, then i think that would also tilt in the other direction in a deleterious way. so, i'm of two minds on it, and i would like to see some kind of dispassionate compromise reform month senators but i have no confidence in today's environment that could possibly yield an approach that would work or that could be brought about in today's climate.

let me -- the gentleman before also asked the question but donald trump, and i didn't want to ignore that question as well so if i could i'll just give a few minutes to that question. donald trump is a historically significant figure because he transformed the american debate in ways that many, many people wanted it transformed but didn't feel they had a voice and probably didn't have a voice. he was a presidential failure, however, because he wasn't able for reason is think we can all see and all have seen, he wasn't able to translate that pa the construction of any kind of a governing coalition so that he could build on his base and move the country in a reasonable way, reasonable manner, fashion, in a

new direction, and his personal flaws were so egregious and soing and i powerful that he was never going to be able to succeed at that. i'm proud to say i took on the r.i.p.es of the -- the reins of the americancresttive magazine when they didn't have an ed doctor and the asked me to do that and i did that right at the gotch the trump presidency and our magazine took seriously the trump constituency, didn't think they were demorable generally, but we never took trump seriously and predicterred his failure. that was all for people to see . on the other hand there were antitrumpers, some of them so passionate the their views that i think they kind of lost perspective on the other side. so anyway that's my view of trump and didn't mean to interrupt the flow here but go ahead and get to the next

person. >> host: no, that actually works because in the american conservative under your biline on january 62021 you wrote it looks like the country i going to survive the trump presidency fine and the liberal hysteria is beginning to look more and more joust landish and silly. >> guest: i wrote that before the siege over the capitol, and so i have to save i didn't anticipate there would be in such siege of the capitol and i was are hart broken to one-half that. i got a call from good friend who we covered congress years ago, and also it was happening and we adopt believe it and both remembered times, certain times in the capitol building where we'des and worked for years it and was is a say heartbreaking, and i think highly significant as a political event that is

going to have ramifications and repercussions well into the future. i think there's been an effort on the part of some democrats and liberals to put a significance on that -- those events that may go beyond what they actually happened but nevertheless it's still a very significant development, and it can be used politically, and will be, for a long time to come. >> host: next call from paschal in houston. go ahead, marshall. >> caller: good morning, gentlemen. thank you so much. i had actually three quick questions. mr. merry, can you talk but your writing and research process, and the advice to writers, and lastly, how do you get an agent? thank you so much. >> guest: well, let's see.

talking about my writing and my research, it begins -- depend on the kind of book. i've written three biographies which are large books. two more analytical books, one was noted sands of empire which was a kind of a -- i was quite disturbed by the iraq war. didn't think that was very smart play on the part of george w. bush the government and so i wrote a book attempting to explore the ideas that had emerged to drive american foreign policy in post-cold war era and i considered those ideas to be faulty and were driving us in policy directions that were going to be rather destructive. and i think i was right, and so i sat down and wrote that book.

and when you writing that kind of a book, it's much, much different from a major biography or piece of history, which i'm doing now, a bang on 1850s and the runup to civil war. but for that kind of a book you know what you want to say and so you go get the material to back up or to bolster what you want to say. but for a major piece of history or biography, you doesn't work that way. it's too big a project, too big a concept, and you have a spine, which is the life of your subject, but beyond that you have to figure out how to tell the story and what needs to be in the story so you have to cast a huge research net so you begin by reading all of the sort of secondary source material you can to get a sense of the life, the person, the times, the issues, the passions, and then

you sort of target certain aspects of the primary research, newspapers and letters and archives and those sort of things. and then slowly and you have to be sort of comfortable with the idea it's going to be slow. you slowly get a sense of what the narrative is, and then you -- at that point you can begin to target particular kinds of materials to bolster or illuminate or raise an example of the story you're telling. so that's number one. so, advice. i tell people, what's the most important part of the kind of history i do? it's narrative, narrative, narrative. it's story-telling. now, you can't let the story-telling thwart or pollute

the story, the history, the truth, of what actually happened put you have to take that truth and you have to mold it into a story so that people can sit down and read this. you're asking a lot of your reader to sit up to and take on a book of 500 pages or 40 pages or whatever. so -- 4 you have to reward themy making it easy for them to understand what is going onen, the story you're trying to tell. so that's the advice i would have. and then how to get archbishop agent if don't have advice for people how to get an agent. i had a friend who had an agent and he became my agent. then he retired and i got another agent. and i don't -- there's no formula i know of. >> host: i do want to note you worked for many of your books,

maybe all of you books with the editor alice mayhew at simon and schuster who works with several other author wed have featured on boost. >> guest: she had so many wonderful authors. i was privileged and honored to be among them. i loved alice. she was just amazing. her passion for american history was just stunning, and just buoyed you up and lift you up every time you would have lunch with her or talk to her on the phone. so, yeah, she is my editor for -- i tell the story pout that mitchell editor for my last four books. and i had written this alsop book, for a different publisher, and with a different agent actually, and then i indicated i wanted to write this booktv

that ended up being called sands of empire but a american foreign policy, and i didn't have foreign policy background when i was a report he ler he covered american politics, and then was editor and then later ceo of congressional quarterly and i was not known as an intellectual on foreign policy matters, and my new agent, wrote about five chapters in this book, my new agent send it around and we got a whole host of rejections. and i think the main reason was that most of the people said that merry doesn't have the background and the gravitas to pontificate on these things. he's nat foreign policy expert. so, my new agent said i'm thinking of sending it over to alice. well, i had on met alice a couple times so i didn't know

alice at all. but in publishing world in those days alice was al lit. if she said i'm go to send it to alice, arch knows who -- everybody knows who she was talking pout. said, fine. al lit took my thesis which was provocative thesis, and not one that you would have been reading about elsewhere, i don't think at that time, and she was kind of struck by it. she had me up to new york, and we talk about and she said i like this idea so i ended up doing it but she knew what i really loved was narrative history and that's what she loved. so, we tried to come up with some ideas of where to go next, and as i've always given her the full credit she was the one who said to me in a phone conversation we'll come up withsomething. what do you know but the mexican wart -- war and i said i know at bit about it.

i'd be interested in pursuing the politicked of it and that's huh we came up with that. it was her idea. then we did that one. did the presidency book and then me mckinley book together. >> host: when you say narrative history what do you moon by that? >> guest: well, i drive a distinction between narrative history and survey history. narrative history is a history that is designed to attempt to tell a story to the reader with characters and personalities and direct quote as much as possible so the narrative -- there's a certain narrative drive that emerge a survey history is what happened next and what did congress do when they passed this bill by so many votes. that's the narrative, too burt it's sort of embedded, sort of meshed in there into the story-telling. so that's when i say narrative

history that's what i'm talking post. doc it doris kearns goodwin, master story-tell jeer the lost art of letter writing. will that hurt historians in the future. >> guest: i think it will. i think it's going to make it tougher and tougher, and it's going to be so much material and wading through it to find on the web just a deluge, almost impossible to find what you're looking for. >> host: our kole here here at chops, mark defilippo is a very interested in history, and he had a question about your president mckinley book. mckinley was our last president with civil war military experience. how did that experience influence his approach and decisions while president? how did he compare to the other civil war presidents, their approach to the office and that's from mark. >> guest: well, mark, great

question. i think the civil war had a huge impact on mckinley but not how he was going to govern. i i think in terms of his view of himself. and his view of what he could become and who he was. he was just 18-year-old kid when the war broke out. the entered the war as a private and ended the war as a major, and it transformed him because he also became the sort of protege of president hayes, who later became president and who was elected to congress during the civil war but was mckinley's commanding officer. so mckinley developed a very powerful ambition to become president as the result of the war, he feelings about his worth and his capacity and also his closeness to rutherford b. hayes

and was elected to congress, mckinley was, the same year that rutherford b. hayes was elected to to presidency so as a young congressman he had ready access to the white house so he had a view of himself of bag map of potential mark of consequence, and developed those ambitions which never left him. hough did that affect how he handled the presidency? i'm not sure it did very much. largely because i think that termerment is a very -- temperment is very powerful and that's what guides most people in high executive positions in terms of how they operate in those positions and in mckinley's case, he was not a visionary but he was man who could really sort of gate good sense of what was happening around him. the political forces that were

swirling about. the different points of view. and figure out how to deflect and move those forces so that events would take place in the way he wanted them to take place and move the country in a direction he wanted to move it. i think that was a part of his temperment. i don't think he could have dutch it's different way even if he wanted to and i'm not sure his civil war experience had that much to do with it. i think there were five presidents that with civil war backgrounds. and if i'm not mistaken, and i guess i have to say i'm not really very well qualified to answer that particular question with regard to the other civil war presidents. it's a wonderful book with my colleague, james m. perry, about the civil war presidents and he goes into their civil war experiences as well as their presidential approaches and

their presidential records, and that book would offer much more insight into that question than i'm able to offer here. >> host: grant hayes mckinley, benjamin harrison and did grover cleveland have civil war experience? >> guest: i don't believe so. >> next call from michael in boston, massachusetts go ahead, michael. >> caller: pleasure to speak to this channel which is going source for someone who really loves history, and i've been enjoying it for a long time. i guess my comment is going to be as a descendent of the african-american, the people on this land who were statutory slaves for a couple centuries and have the good author mentioned were central to understanding all of our presidents and -- but the thing that i am, again, a little gassed about because it is about

anywherety. can see it always being about those people, and that the other people, the majority, white people eave always been set, regardless whether it was a democrat or the republican but the issue was about me and the thick always know but any ancestor iser is their contribution to building the nation, they built the little white house that you see. they fought in all the wars. all the wealth came off their backs. yet today the political establishment is more concerned with immigrants. these people have never been recompensed. andrew johnson is my worst president because he attacked recondition instruction with hate and of course the media was always central to whipping up the populist that time to lynch black people. so it was a betrayal of the colored troops that kept the nation together and i love

presidential history. the last president did not hurt me at awe. i'll put that way youch can't even speak about him out in. i don't have any hard feelings but the last one. this one has me absolutely enraged. that he would once again ignore my hard earned constitutional rights in favor of another group, regardless of the fact that it it's been shown that what he is doing hurts my people. so, as much as things change, they remain the same. >> host: that's michael in boston. mr. merry. >> guest: well, michael, i appreciate your heartfelt thoughts there. well, race is a fundmental part of any policy and certainly a significant part of the american story, the american history, the american struggle, and the american experiment. and so absolutely it is a

relatively new phenomenon really in which we have paid as much attention as we do now to the contributions of african-americans throughout our history in early times even to the extent they were enslaved. i'm doing some research now on the 1850s, also i note, and i'm looking a, for example, the history of the freed blacks in south carolina. south carolina was this state probably was the most embedded into the slave culture as any state in our history at any time in our history, and about 20% of the blacks in south carolina in the antibellum period were freed blacks who had a remarkable contribution to make and were extremely successful within the cop text of that culture, which is an amazing story to me .

i wish if understood it better and hope. to but so there's a those kinds of things and fighting the wars and including the civil war, lincoln very consciously and very brilliantly pulled that in as a means ultimately 0 of ending slavery. so, i appreciate the thought very much. >> host: robert merry in your book "where they stand" you make clear you are not a fan of jams buchanan. you mentioned you researching 1850s, and do you agree with him being on the bottom of every list? >> guest: um, yeah. i don't like him at all. he was the secretary of state to president polk, and so -- and president polk kept amazing diary throughout this presidency, four years, one-termer by choice. i'm not sure he would have been

reelected because he expended a huge amount of critical capital in fighting the mexicon are american war. james buchanan was his secretary of state. and we have a pretty good insight into how buchanan operated through james polk's diary. and he was a man of low character. you couldn't trust him with anything. all he cared about was himself. always maneuvering for hi open self-interest and brazenly so. but the thing about buie can nat that gets me most furious is that he lied to the american people in his inaugural address because the dred scott decision was coming up to the spike he announced to the american people upon assuming the presidency that he would accept the outcome, whatever it was, what he didn't tell was the lie of omission he already new thank you outcome because he had an

improper ex parte conversation with the chief justice, who told him exactly what the decision was going to be. and that is the action or somebody who is of very low character. so i really loathe the man, and i'm happy to put him at the bottom. i don't think harding deserves to be as low as he often is because if you look at the record, what was happening in the country during his presidency, all pretty good, including getting out of the will son recession in a zooming way, that he has never got 'credit for. -- gotten credit for. but i have to say george w. bush deserve s told be down there pretty low in those low registers because he presided over an awful war that was very destructive. the destabilized the entire region of the world in ways that we're still living with and

paying the price for. so he deserves to be pretty low in my view. >> host: should richard nixon be judged solely on watergate? >> guest: that's an interesting question i raise in my book on the presidencies. what due you do about a president that -- lynn john johnson is another example. probably even more powerful as an example but a nixon serves well, too, to raise the question. what about a president who accomplishes a great deal but then throws it away through one horrendous action or area of leadership, with nixon it would be watergate of. with johnson it would be vietnam, and of course johnson had tremendous accomplishments with regards to civil rights and the great society, et cetera. not all of which i agree with but i also understand that it was a presidential

accomplishment of the first order. i guess generally speaking that there needs to be a balance there, but i don't think you can bring nixon or johnson up into the up ever levels at owl or even up into the upper half when the perpetrated such horrendous ripping and tearing of the american social fabric through those actions. >> host: in the last presidential survey that c-span did in 2017, lyndon johnson was at number 10, richard nixon was at 28. kenneth in el cerrito, cal, you're on with historian and author, robertmer where. >> caller: my. my question has to do with the perception by historians truman. particularly whether his

decision to use the atomic bomb has changed over the years, and when i was in college he was seen as a pretty strong president, did a lot of wonderful things, integrating the military so on. hough is he standing these days and how has it changed? >> guest: harry is standing pretty well, and some people have the mistaken notion that truman entered the fray as it were after his presidency in term of the presidential historian polls, rather low and then made his way up. theft not exactly true. he almost immediately after his presidency ended, he was put very high, relatively high. in the near great category and remained in a near great category throughout all these decades and i think he deserved be in a incarcerate great

category but an interesting thing. when i talked earlier about the contemporaneous judgment of the electorate and also the judgment of historians, they tend to coincide. not always but generally speaking. but in -- but the electorate looks at the presidents in four-year increments because that's how they're invited to look at the presidency. every four yearous get a chance to either keep or keep the party incumbent party in power or turn to the next party. the american people had a very high opinion of truman after his first inherited term, which is lamb full four-year term. it was heroic term everything the accomplished. the truman doctrine the marshall plan so much else he did. saving europe. he really did save europe.

the berlin airlift, all those things occurred, and moving from a wartime a peacetime economy relatively smoothly. he did all that. in terms of the electorate, though, his second term was a disaster and his poll numbers at the end of his second term were as low as we have seen. think it was as low as 23%. approval rating. and he got us into a war he couldn't control and get out of in korea. the economy kind of sputtered a good part of that period of time. there was petty corruption involving some of his crop cronies from kansas city he kept around long after he should have scuttled them, and so his second term was nat success, but when historians look at president they look at hi overall accomplishments and truman's case it was extremely high, not

withstanding the second material and there were significant things that happened in his second term, including the creation of nato. so. i'm very partial to truman. like impersonally. love the story but him, all these former presidents of all out with their hands out and making huge amounts of money, createle foundations and truman got into his imperial, big chrysler car with his wife, bess, and got on the highway in and rode home, drove home. got a ticket long the way and paid it. that's a great man and washington, george washington tradition. that's not what we're seeing thieves days. >> host: harry truman in the c-span survey came in at number 6. you can find this survey and you

can see the moveddology and -- methodology and historianses. my guess is mr. merry. tated in the c-span surveys ale. that at c-span.org and look at presidential historians survey. next call is david in rockville, maryland go. ahead, david. >> caller: thank you taking my call. great show and great contribution that this station makes am question relates to the question, narrative history versus survey. history. we use the name others as the presidency ha gotten bigger and bigger there a lot of people in all these administrations. how much should the ranking of the president be focused mainly on the performance of the individual versus the performance of the administration?

and also recent presidents have had much, much bigger offices of the presidency and all the agencies that they control, has it been any shift in assessing administrations moving a. from just the individual, to the administration as a whole, and other people in the presidency, or does the president's name still serve as that kind of all-consuming figure head factor in terming which presidencies are better than others? >> guest: facinateing distinction and fascinating question. i think i would say that the president is responsible for the executive branch, and that in terms of the historical viewpoint regarding the president and their performances, i would say that the academics who conduct the polls and the academics who are involved in the polls, don't make much of a distinction between the presidents themselves and their

administrations or the executive branch, and they shouldn't really. if you think about it's bit. because they're responsible for what happens in the executive branch, and they rise and fall based on what the outcome is with regard to executive management and executive leadership. >> host: text for you, mr. merry, from eric massachusetts whattor opinion offed the presidency of calvin coolidge. believe his hand off policy was significant in stoking the roaring 20s and today our country is set up to repeat coming off the pandemic as we did in the early 20s. your thoughts. >> guest: well, i'm kind of partial to silent cal. i like him. i don't think he would have ban great leader in crisis times. know that and i can't know that, but he doesn't strike me as the

kind of person who would be that kind of a leader, but he presided over great times and he didn't do anything to harm it, so i think he gets credit for that. some people think herbert hoover, describe as one of great innocent bystanders in american presidential history because coolidge created what led to great depression if think presidents get credit and get the blame for what happens during their watch, and i think that's appropriate and the next guy has to take whatever the circumstances are and improve it and imagine it is a best he can. hoover signed the taft hardley tariff which was a disaster, so i probably if it were me -- my

book adapt have open rank offering rating but i would probably kick coolage up a few notches. >> host: another text from most. from your polk book i got the idea that james k. polk was almost an accidental president but with unusual live concrete goals. true or not. >> guest: very true. the first dark horse. james polk's career was in ellipse help looked lick he was basically a complete loser because he left the congress after 14 years, speaker of the house, gone back to tennessee to run for governor. he won, ran for governor and won. he had a two-year term. he ran for governor again, ahead of his presidential run in 1844, and he lost. he lost to a back woods, outdoor

kind of a comical character but the name of james jones, lean jimmy jones they called him. tall and lanky and he was funny and he was clever and made fun of polk, and polk took him sear you his and didn't know how to handle that so he lost. so polk ran again, ran against leap jimmy and as an incumbent, lean jim being the incumbent now and he lost again. so that was enough for polk's people in american politics, the democratic party to say this i guy is a loser and he doesn't really have much of a future anymore. he's a goner. well, he figured the best thing he could do to get back in the national arena would be to somehow get the vice presidential nomination for the direct part. everybody assumed that mart vein van buren who had been

president, wanted to be president again and lost in 1840, and that he was going to be in the nominee so polk tried to endear him to van buren but van buren and a halved he was -- signaled he was not interested in polk particularly. so he was still -- those are he days when vice presidential candidates -- the decision was not domain of the presidential candidate. so you could go to the convention and see if you can't get the nomination. so that's what he was going to do. but a big issue merged their annexation of texas and van buren opposed it and polk favored it and america favored it, and van van buren's opposition to the annexation of texas brought him down at the convention in spring of 1844 in baltimore, and polk emerged on the 11 them ballot in a very

raucous and very fascinating contested convention. so he did come out of nowhere in a way, calm out of dark horse -- came out of dark horse territory to get the nomination and then beat henry clay by 38,000 votes. something like that. very, very close election. but he won and so he had the four-year term. he said he wouldn't run for a second term when he get the nomination and the didn't. and, yes, he had very, very strong views what he wanted to accomplish and he accomplished it all. so in that sense he was very effective successful president. >> host: and you're watching booktv on c-span2. this is our monthly "in depth" program. this month it's author and presidential biographer, robert merry. (202)748-8200 for those in the east central time zoned. (202)748-8201 in the mountain and pacific time zones. and if you can't get through on

the phone lines and still want to make a comment you can do it by text, (202)748-8903, please include your first name and your city. and you can also make a comment on social media, we'll scroll through all that, and@booktves our handle on facebook, instagram or twitter. next call from suit sans in cambridge, massachusetts. hi, susan. >> caller: hi. thank you for taking my call. my comment is a question comment, is that in two areas. you seem to paint with a little bit too broad stroke. the first -- i'm an academic, has to do dwif liberals and academia. i'm a liberal. i've been in academia for 30 years, taught at boston university, hard verdict, cornell, and i started my career

at the university of pittsburgh. it is after overstatement to say the least that academia is ruled by liberals. there's a very -- i'm not speaking of history but you're comment wasn't limited to hate. it said academia has a liberal bent, and it's repeated so often, and in law, law professor, there's a very strong law in economics movement, very conservative, very powerful. and most law schools in the country. saming in in economicked. taught at yale's management school so i taught in economic areas. >> did you want to make a second point? and. >> thank you. okay, five. the second one was about the woodrow wilson center name. and i agree with you that they shouldn't change the name but you said, after that, that, well, you believe history should

be what it is. do you feel that way about the military base names after confederate generals? >> host: thank you, susan. >> guest: on the question of the military base name is don't have any objection to the head of steam, feeling that has emerge teed change the names. they were put in there much long after the civil war for other purposes. so i would stand on that particularly. i think an -- more interesting question is erasing john c. calhoun at yale. john c. calhoun was a very significant person in hour our history so i'm a little less comfortable with that. on the other question, i just -- i'm going to choose not tone game in that. i accept your points and i

appreciate them. >> host: brandon in larkspur, california, go ahead with your question or comment? >> caller: good morning. i have three questions and make them very brief. one of the things that bothers me the most about the u.s. presidency in terms another what's going on right now and i want know what you think is executive privilege. that's the first one in terms of, for example, i'm not picking on him, biden undoing the executive privileges of trump and trump changing the executive privileges of the last president. that type of thing. i would like the executive privilege to be limited or something changed because i think it's being abused. the second thing want to know is what is your thought about the electoral college? there's a lot of talk about it

being done away with and i don't thick have an understanding enough to decide one way or the other. and lastly, what is your idea or thought about the president in terms another what his intelligence is, there are sometimes things happening before the comp pen si for -- competent for a president to understand. one friend who happened to be a college professor kind of thinks that george w. bush was not a particularly competent president, the a lot of thing going on and not able to deal with them in an intellectual term. thank you very much. >> host: thank you brandon. >> guest: i think we're talking about executive action or executive -- executive privilege is a term of art that refers to the privilege of the president

to be secure in his political activities but executive action or executive order or what i think the caller i talk bought little and the caller is on to something. moving more' more to the idea that the president has a lot of leeway that goes beyond what congress may or may not do at any given time. and i think it's a disturbing trend, and it's a trend that's been sort of picking up steam for quite in time, and congress is not really a branch -- it is exercising powers in a meddling kind of way often but it doesn't really protect its powers often vis-a-vis the presidency when the president is attempting to encroach upon legislative authority and i'm uncomfortable with that. think it's gone too far and i think that the caller is very

right to raise that question0. then he question of the maybe not having the intellectual capacity to deal with all that comes at them at any given time and of course in ear era, a lot does. i don't know about that. i have written extensively about the intellectual imitation almost addition of donald trump -- limitation of donald trump since the beginning of his campaign, because while he rather billantly saw the surface of the debate that was not taking place in america that was leaving out a lot of americans and he ran on that successfully, he didn't have -- seem to have the even the vocabulary to get beneath the surface which yaw have to do to explain to american people in a way that

can bring newcombeest to your hold. what was at stake, what was going on and that limitation i think was huge in terms of making it impossible for him to pull together a governing coalition that would be legitimate for america going forward. i tend not to get into the question of whether these people have the intellectual capacity. i don't know -- i don't know what capacity you have to have in order to make the right decisions or have good judgment or just basically good character. all those things come into may and it's very complex. i tend to look at the outcomes and the performance and i think that's what the american people do also. >> host: the electoral college was the third point. >> guest: the electoral college is of constitutional element of our system. as we have a federal system it's been eroded a huge amount in the

course of our history. but if the elector to college were to be done a. with, with a near popular vote, i believe it would be a disaster. >> host: robert merry, recently marjorie taylor frein was removed from her committees by the democrats evenshow the is a republican. liz cheney was kept in her position but censored by her home party. where is the republican party going after donald trump? ...

in the future, the question is what is the role of donald trump? and i think the republican party is not going to abandon the elements of what is attempting to do are not going away. the electoral outcome and what'sst happening. we can extricate himself from trumbull maintaining the certain elements of the trump outlook in its efforts to form a governing coalition be interested to watch as it plays out were in the throes

of that debate right now. not all is very savory. we'll see what happens. >> host: thirty minute slots are in-depth program today the next call cup for robert comes from marion california, hi nancy. >> caller: good morning what a great program for this is regarding president kennedy and the cuban missile crisis but all of the military advisers urged him to strike. i place in high you've know he did have some personal inadequacies. being a black eye placed into johnson last spread like to know what you think, you've been a great guest i've learned a lot, thank you. >> guest: thank you very much. well, identify place him last but is down there and deserves to be down there. candidate, what he did in the cuban missile crisis, it was a

tremendous performance in a very difficult situation. i think he deserves all of the credit. i think it also is a manifestation of greatness. i think there was, there were significant elements of greatness and john kennedy. all i'm saying about john kennedy is that he was cut down, killed, murdered in the streets in such a horrendous way. it was such a blow to american politics. we will never know he would not of profited much had he been able to live. i'm not taking the view he doesn't deserve for admiration he didn't really have a chance to demonstrate what he could

accomplish. it's all based on what happens in the electoral outcomes. we don't know whether he would have been able to pull his administration through his first term and away written about james k polk you've written about mckinley, james k polk comes into see spam and he comes at 16 is that accurate in your view? >> i would not argue with that. i might not put polk up a notch or two, i think the highest mckinley has been in any of the major polls i've seen, since 1948, was 12. i would don't feel like i would waste my time writing biographies of those guys that's where they are. subject what is been the effect over the years a

best-selling book i think right off the top of my head david mccullough you wrote about a book coming out on rover cleveland a two-volume biography on grover cleveland i'm pretty sure they got him a pulitzer prize. brought a lot of attention to grover cleveland. i sometimes laughing grover cleveland a little bit when the few things we know about him is that he served two nonconsecutive terms breezily when he did that. and both times he was not able to succeed himself he was

rejected for reelection for the second time the party rejected him. so, i call him the only two-time one term loser. it is not insignificant president. i'd put him in a middling position, not as high as he was in the 1948 initial pole by senior, and i think inspired had a lot to do that pitcher what about david mccullough's effect on john adams? >> will john adams was an interesting case. both of the atoms were one term presence rejected by the voters after one term. john adams was responsible for the tradition asked, which i think were pretty seriously flawed and dangerous.

and i don't think he was a particularly successful president. think he has been overrated. i think that maybe mccullough has contributed to that pretty was a great man. but i don't think he was a great president, and you can be both. you can be a great president i mean you can be a great man and not be a great president. so i think that mccullough might've had some impact in bullying john adams up. i don't think he deserves to be where he is very >> the next call for robert mary comes from jeremy and wellston, ohio. welcome jeremy. >> hi thanks for having me. i was just wondering what your opinion was on the three top conservative presidents being from such a republican state here in ohio, thank you? >> for those three top in your view? >> jeremy? jeremy is gone.

let's eat ohio there's eight from ohio, correct? i think william mckinley was one of them. b called them conservative. i mind is blanking, rutherford b hayes. >> was the only interested in the ohio presidents? are all presidents? see what he was the ohio presidents, grover cleveland, warren harding, my mind is going blank about four of them right there. >> guest: yeah not when to get them either. stuart and james garfield. it's because he mckinley was president he was more than that. he was a man prepared to move the country new directives, he did he change his views on tariffs dramatically will he was president. so i'm definitely put them in a category of being sort of a conservative. i think those terms by not

necessarily be all that helpful as we try to understand how these presidents operated in the context of their times. and i don't know who i would consider to be conservative presidents from ohio. sue and taft is yellow that makes six altogether. >> guest: taft is worth noting here briefly he was destroyed politically by teddy roosevelt his very, very previous good friend who'd fostered his career and basically selected him as his successor. and then wanted the presidency back, i am convinced. went after him in a way that destroyed his presidency. kind of a sad sort of thing because he is a very good man rated also i think very significant president for one term president not succeeded

by himself. sue and mike in louisville, kentucky. mike please go ahead. so either it's an honor to talk to britta really enjoyed your book about james k polk for its one of my favorite presidential biographies, just want to thank you for that. my question is all the one term presidents, who would you rank the highest i'd like to make the case for george h.w. bush where he handled the demise of the ussr in the fall of the berlin wall qualify them for be the best of the one terms but i was just curious of your opinion. had a quick second question. your book about the allsup's. i don't know anything about them for if you could give a quick summary of why the been interesting book to read. thank you. >> host: thank you mike. >> guest: take the all soft first.

let me take the one termers, i was a the most significant one term president was polk. and i think the historians pretty much a bolster that up. and george herbert walker bush, i know when i covered him i traveled with him a bit. and i think there is a reason why he lost to bill clinton after a one term. we had some great successes including the transition related to the breakdown of the soviet union was among them, as well as the gulf war who is not administered the economy think that hurt him badly. and so i tend to think when the american people reject the president after four years they do it for a reason or several reasons for a think in

case they did. i'm not this high on herbert walker bush or the bushes generally as a lot of my contemporary political analysts and journalists have been over the years. and, i'm sorry but joseph and stuart alpha. so to yeah, yeah. really welcome the opportunity for a lot of my books, books are like children have to love them all equally. it was my first book read think it be the one i am most proud of. i took these two journalists and who had a major role to play in american journalism and therefore american politics, american history and american foreign policy for about 1935 to 1975, four years. i use them as a window on what was happening in america. they were at all of the big events. it had things to say about everything that was happening in america consequence.

they both had fascinating work experiences. and they were crazy guys print they went everywhere, they were traveling all over the world for they got to the hot spots. and all of that presented an opportunity to sort of lay bare course of american politics over the course of those 40 years. and their relationship within the family, their connection to the old anglo-saxon establishment that was in decline because they came out of that they were related to the roosevelts. in fact their mother was -- that maternal grandmother was teddy roosevelt's sister. so they were very closely related. the roosevelts were in the white house it was cousin eleanor and cousin franklin. when joe was that young reported making his way in washington as a brewery fat,

squat, clever raconteur, he's over at the white house all the time. they fed him all kinds of stories but they're very close to the kidneys, joe especially bobby kennedy very close to john kennedy also incurred close to jackie. all of these people come into focus and all of the establishment people that created in thehe post world oral and we had a collar early from groton, massachusetts had gone to harvard and yale with. i think it's sort of a panoramic story of america over that. glad it was brought up. spoon are there joseph and stuart all softst today as columnist or journalist? >> no. because the firmament of american journal has grown

tremendously itself packed up. so nobody could get the same corner of the market of journalistic influence. the all sauce had in their day. walter would be another one scotty reston would be another example those are peoplehood real influence. i don't think anybody can get there now so many media the attention you really can't get sort of that kind ofll a handle that you are able to do in the all software particular good at it during their time. >> jerry from nebraska tax into you, pointing what the media's all out assault on the trump administration? this is a sensitive subject for me. i grew up in the media came to

washington as a young man to cover politics and american government. at that and hung out in congress waiting a lot of great, great friends. always been a conservative. my career was not devoted to conservative thinking what's after the congressional quarterly was sold. i was asked to become the t editor of the national interest magazine which is a foreign policy of the editor for a time when i was asked to fill in of the american conservative. i was conservative all of

those years but most of my friends were liberals. most of them also were not particularly p aggressive and i wasn't either. i sense in today's world technology is change things so dramatically that kind of sensibility is not as powerful as it used to be. a lot of newspapers a new organization and newspeople are rather openly tilting into one position or another. i think the antitrust fervor contributed significantly to that. i don't think it's going to go away. we had a. , i've spent a lot of time with that we've had a. when journalism was largely

political. unaligned with one party or another. and i think we are going back to that. there's some goodk journalism that was brought forth during that time during the pulp administration even to a lesser extent mckinley's. read a lot during the pull cara the person possible partisan was still offering a lot of information to its readers. thing is going to be harder to find sources that you trust in number two, to find sources that really want to give you the facts and not tilt them to their own point of view. >> kragen columbus, ohio good afternoon. >> good afternoon thank you very much it's ar: wonderful program, thank you y mr. murray.

what are your thoughts are good in the 1619 history curriculum it's now circulating through the secondary school systems, thank you. i've serious reservations about it speak out a little more actively with ellison others i would say they sublimate their views i wish they were more active wish there more active about it. >> thank you sir. mr. merritt. >> guest: i don't think it's very good history don't think it's a very good scholarship. i think it is simplistic. and therefore guess what i'm saying is i don't think it was a very significant or

well-founded contribution or effort atn contribution to american historical scholarship i'm kind of sorry they went ahead with that in the "new york times". and i think that theyt have been embarrassed in some regards to some of the more egregious things that were that.s part of but that's all part of our time. there's an awful lot going on these days that is attempting to rewrite our history. enough all this going to happen. i think iss particularly potent in today's world. i think that leads to lapses we e have seen in regard to the 6019 project. going every author appears on in-depth we ask his or her favorite books and what they are currently reading. here were mr. murray's responses, favorite books include decline of the west but oswald spengler, dread not by robert massie, war and peace by leo tolstoy, and the

remaking ofth world order by samuel p huntington. and finally colleen mccullough's six volume series of historical novels, decline of the roman empire etin cetera, et cetera. so historic, i went to start with colleen mccullough. when did those books come out? >> guest: i don't know. i would say the last two which i didn't know about the series until the last two, one is called caesar and >> october horse. >> guest: october horse which is about a gustus. those would come out probably around the end of the '90s or the beginning of our century. and so i read the caesar of always been interested in roman history and i did not know her particular issue is the acclaimed author of the

thornburg's. i read caesar and i was blown away. and then i realize this was part of the series, prospective pretty much recount the decline of the roman republic but should not be confused with the roman empire. that lesson arthritic years beyond the republic. but the republic was an amazing 467 year phenomenon of democratic governance that was an amazing >> achievement. but the last 100 years or so, 89 years or so for accumulation of crises innate downward ongoing downward spiral that ended with the end of the republic. she captures this by bringing these people all of the historical figure she's not making up figures. she's turning into fiction what actually happened with the characters who actually existed.

i have to say i think it's of literary achievement. so when oswald spengler decline of the west. >> one of the historians said that subsequence academics and intellectuals have not been able to figure out what to do about spengler, how to handleg him. and if you go back to the generation of what you might call the post war generation and henry kissinger and george kennan and people they were all people would read spengler. some of them have been really beguiled by spengler and i was two. i will say that the thing that gets me interested in spengler, he wrote the book decline of the west, two volumes. and he wrote it during world war one towards the very end of world war i.

and he pauses at the notion that history is not an on going progressive concept of progress of humankind from being backward and being increasingly enlightened and intelligent and sort of bitter in terms of our regard for the world, rather it is the story of the rise and fall of discrete and distinctnv civilizations that have sort of been born and emerged and floured and then declined. and he thought that the west had gone through many of those life stages and beginning into the phase of decline. i think that what has happened

in the 100 years or so since spengler was writing would indicate the west has been in decline, and that is become more and more progressive in terms of decline. you take that sense of history as discrete deliberations as opposed to sort of a one man kind of progress, it changes your whole regard in terms of what is happening in the world. it was that outlook. i studied him a lot and wrote about him an empire and a wrote a cover story the national interest and the result was my writings got the attention of some people in germany who have these conferences. i was invited to deliver a couple of papers at these things over the course of the last ten years or so on two occasions. and so there is a body of

thought. certainly a group of people who were sort of interested in the concept of history which informs their view of what's going on now. which leads me to it samuel huntington a clash of civilizations that you mentioned you started with a very influential magazine peace in foreign affairs. it's sort of influence by the view. i think this view has some merit spirit of always said and i wrote the canton justin whole because you can't digest that because it is to comment goes too far he makes too many broad stroke judgments and cepronouncements. for that, but if you are taken carefully and apply him

judiciously he has a lot to tell us birthing samuel huntington does too. through it robert mary's currently reading the nelson's current book those angry days, roosevelt lindbergh and america's fight over world war ii. actually that's not her most recent but that is the one he's reading right now from lynn olson who has appeared on this program as well. ted in warwick, rhode island hi. civic yes good afternoon, good afternoon. >> guest: good afternoon to you thank you. >> caller: thank you. i'm wondering, i read her and reading i should say the c-span book bryan lam's book regarding the ranking of the president, it has john f. kennedy at night and i'm wondering what you were opinion is of that what i consider a very high ranking.

>> host: thank you ted. >> i think i have probably covered it. that i am just say a great admirer of kennedy. you know, i never read pt 109, robert donovan book about kennedy's wartime experiences. but i have read robert carol's multivolume onon lyndon johnson. and carol makes an interesting point, johnson when he was in the senate with kennedy totally misjudged kennedy. and thought he was this rich kid who had everything handed to him. and did not know adversity and would know how to handle it if he had encountered it. and this was a time when johnson was figuring that kennedy was going to be his adversary for the democratic nomination in 1960.

he goes in and talks about kennedy's military cure was him and world war ii in the pacific on a pt votes. it is an amazing story. what he did and adversity to maintain his leadership and to maintain hisde survival. in survival of his people is just inspiring. and that is my view of kennedy. i think he was an inspiring person in a lot of ways and that's a reflection of it. i just go back to what i was saying before, i would love to be able to say john kay was a hugely consequential president that's how i judge get a huge impact on the direction of america. but, he did not have a chance to do that so i can't say that. so i am not denigrating kennedy at all. simply saying that i don't ayhave a sense of his being at a

high ranking for the simple reason thathe he never had a chance to prove what his ranking would be. >> host: january 11, 2021, a letter was written by historians and legal scholars saying that president trump has disqualified himself from continuing to serve out even his few remaining days as president as well as ever again holding office according to the constitution. what you think about these historians and legal scholars getting involved in thisse l process? >> well it's a free country. and anyone can express themselves, i am in favor of that. so not him too say something negative about them stepping forward. whether i agree with them is another. question. i tend to think the voters should be able to decide this things. and sometimes the powers that be have to get involved. i think it is an open question

whether sivan constitutional to have a senate trial, impeachment trial of a president who is no longer president. i guess as i say it's an open question, i'm not totally comfortable with it. i think what trump did in attempting to send a crowd up to congress to attempt to influence congress from his end of pennsylvania avenue, was definitely an impeachable offense. had i been in the house i would have voted to impeach. and had i been in the senate will p he was president, i would have voted to convict. so, i don't to disagree with those people in that sense but i may disagree with them in regards to what they're saying regarding the processes involved, but i'm not sure but the processes are advocating are some not sure i can speak

to that. suet robert mary's born 1946 in tacoma washington served in the army for three years including working in counterintelligence, masters degree from columbia university school of journalism, work for the denver post, the national observer, then for a long time with the wall street journal covering congress,al particularly in the presidency is welford managing editor at cq, president and editor-in-chief of cq for many years, editor of the national interest, editor of the american conservative, presidential biographer and authors been our guest on in-depth, we pushed your time. >> thankim you. and that concludes our program for today, thanks for being with us. shop for robert mary's books in the all-new c-span shop. all of his books including his most recent, president mckinley are available for purchase. and every purchase