booktv monthly program with author and longtime editor-in-chief and ceo congressional quarterly robert mary the author of several biographies and books about american political history including where they stand, the american presidents in the eyes of the voters and historians. >> ..

>>f if you put those two things together you will get a lot of turmoil and nasty politics and that so we are experiencing today. >> what you think that. changed? >> a lot of it has to do with the nature of issues. i think if you look at american history you will find that in politics it's always the most intense throughout our time or our history when the issues facing americans

were definitional the nature of america and where we are and where we are going and what's our connection to our pastor heritage. all those kinds of things so we are in one of those periods today in terms of in my view the elite driven large faction in america that's very interested in a transformational program and a large section of americans that the trump voters genuinely and a very largeer segment much like depending on what's going on at any time or not sure they want to go in that direction. the issue that most crystallizes this and it gets a lot of attention whenever it comes up is immigration. so trump tamped down the large numbers of people coming to

our borders and now we have a new president who was doing just the opposite. host: robert merry, given that you were the ceo and editor of cq for quite a long time you do have a lot of congressional history in your books, you have written about presidents and have become a presidential biographer. why is that? >> we live in a presidential system not a parliamentary system. and in our system new directions come through presidential leadership. that's the only way they can come as history tells us. so if you really want to get to the nub of what's happening in america at any given time you have to look carefully at the presidency and i presidents. now congress does play a huges role that's the largest power center.

ways tose cover washington for the wall street journal in my glorious use that i used to say that covering congress was the second most fun in journalism the first is the presidential campaign because it is so raucous and crazy. but the second is covering congress. there are 435 power centers if you can get a story out of 435 power centers you are not doing your job veryou well. the president has only one power center with the oval office. so getting to the heart of what is going on is much more difficult with regard to covering the white house but that's the function of the fact the white house was such a point of concentrated power.

host: i will pause with the theory that two of your books your most recent president mckinley is one that is about semi unknown presidents but you chose them because you wanted to concentrate on the expansion of america and because theyy achieved quite a bit in their singular term. >> that is a significant part of it. my editors simon & schuster was very interested in the pulp. and asked if i would be interested in pursuing that. i said yes i word. i'm not a military historian and don't want toto be.

i said absolutely i love politics. i looked into it for a couple of weeks i came back with a proposal and she biden to it.t. but polk was a very consequential president but he wasn't very well known and people didn't recognize how consequential he was. so it resonated with the book buying public. you mentioned mckinley. i thought i would do the same thing because also he was consequential president and unlike pork, he did not enjoyoy the view that he deserve to be consequential and actually pulled off the big things that happened during his time. i did not agree with that. i studied him a bit and thought he knew what he was doing most of the time not a visionary betterments

managerial capacity he knew how to make to work the landscapee shifting into that very effectively. so i did the same thing in the book didn't do as well and terms of sales i concluded the american people weren't quiteed ready for my thesis that mckinley was in fact the president to pull this into the 20th century. >> i did call him a one term president's he was elected outwice but shot within a couple months of the second term. >> he was shot in the fall of 1900 and in 19 oh one he was elected i'm sorry if all of 1900. host: the fact that both these men served in congress does

that also appeal to you? >> yes. both are on the ways and means committee. in the senate finance committee so i was very interested in that but of course pork was also speaker of the house and mckinley ran at one point before he became chairman of ways and means and lost. so they bothirnd had very successful careers in the congress. i always felt congress was much more dramatic you can create drama and for those to engage in those debates with the crucial nature of the this time.king at

so to have the congress play a significant role was something i like the idea. >> is it fair to compare the election of 1896 to the election of 2020 and that william mckinley one of fort —-dash front porch campaign while what william jennings bryan was a dynamic speaker being bombastic? >> he was incredibly bombastic probably the most successful true populist i do think there are some analogies there but doesn't have that same electricity for singularity factors that we certainly experienced in 2020.

>> and like taxation is today we didn't have an income tax at that time so tariffs were the large revenue generator in the nation. and then to protect their industries from foreign competition and that was a huge issue for decades. the other one is an issue that william jennings bryan was trying to write is currency basically a monetary policy there was a strong feeling because we had gone through a terrible recession and to get

the money that they needed and aside from the great depression so the farmers and populist said we saw this with the free coinage of silver to expand the money supply by bringing silver into it as well as the gold base with monetary policy. william jennings bryan was the great exponent but the free coinage of silver and mckinley had some sympathy towards that. and that was coming down to a dramatic bipolar binary question. and those conservatives that

itil would debase the currency and mckinley ultimately adopted that position then and now that populist forces throughout the first terms when he ran again the second time that issue no longer had the same residence. >> his right hand? who was he. >> he has taken a lot of fits in history that is actually a fascinating character. i came to like him a lot. he made a lot of money in industry at a time when there is a lot of entrepreneurial's in the industrial age. he is from ohio.

and then one of mckinley's rivals he had a following on - - a falling out. and he fixated on getting mckinley into the white house. and he managed to play a significant and historical role in america during the period. he also came under huge fire and those that portrayed him to be stuffed intoo a suit with dollar signs all over it. he hated and it was terrible for him. but he sustained and suffered

it because he knew what he was doing to get his man into the white house and i do have to add mckinley didn't always follow him. there was a lot of feeling at the time and with suggestion that mckinley was a puppet sitting on his lap. but the historical record does not bear that out. he was capable on numerous occasions. >> in your book with president mckinley this was a period of some anarchy in america with domestic terrorist. >> yes. there was a period of that. with the socialist movement

and people who wondered about the capitalist system that was not unheard of at that time and thereha were that in our guest. and then he was assassinated in buffalo new york in the fall 19 oh one. i will also say there was a lot of labor strikes duringng the 18 nineties. and a lot of violence and blood in the streets but not during mckinley's time. and the reason why he won reelection by a very large margin. it's important to point out we didn't have very many two-term presidents.

so mckinley was a two-term president that was a significant deal because the tendency was for the american people to have a president then turned to the nextn t part. host: the book where they stand. what did arthur'sav lessons your senior have to do with your book? >> the father of the great historian of our time. and with a strong liberal plaintiff you. with serious activism. and as a harvard historian.

and then to assess the standing looking at the rankings of the presidents through the views through the historians. so he sent out poll writing for life magazine at the time. that was the great american magazine at the time. the highestin circulation in the country. in publishing the's rankings it was electrifying. the article got a lot of attention so he did it again 1962. his son arthur's lessons your junior did it, the late steve neil chicago tribune and various academics or those methodologies.

with the interest in the idea where the historians view presidents is very significant. and that is an index for how presidents did. that with the voters were saying in the one term president rejected by the american people has a few marks against him according to this thesis i was developing doing more and more writing also based on my own experiences covering politics in the white house.

so i tried to pull together the views of the historians which is a significant index with the contemporaneous views of the electorate and then add another element and then to transform the critical landscape of america to put the country on a new course. i never tried to rank or rate the president in the same way i just use it as an index to explore how presidents fail and succeed and how we sick on —-dash rate them in history and that's how the book came about. it's not too serious. but at the same time deals with serious topics and seriousow questions how the presidency works. i had a good time with the book. it was a fun project.

host: c-span also got into this game we do a survey as well the most recent came out 2017am regardless of who does the survey, the top three always seem to be the top three lincoln, washington, franklin roosevelt. >> theynd are. i endorse that thoroughly. a couple of polls have washington on top in lincoln second but i think lincoln

washington fdr is the right ranking. in the general rankings correspond with each other over time significantly except insofar as some presidents are not too highly ranked upon leaving office and then sometimes we went up through the rankings. eisenhower would be an example and reagan is another. and another interesting e one to me is ulysses s grant who was ranked very low in 48 and 62 but now he's making a steady slow rise up word and an interesting aspect that only

do those views change with the rankings but in terms of the history of a given.ws c those post- civil war. historians fory many decades of thelo 18 eighties or the 19 sixties, developed the view that it was not a very good policy with bad deleterious effects upon the country. and that it was necessary for the country to and for the healing between north and south with a 700,000 casualties so that we can bring the country back together. if you bring back william mckinley then you can e see he wasn't't very concerned the plight of african-americans in thehe south as the jim crow era

was emerging and no question he was obtuse about the whole situation and there was an elementn of thinking with the nationalal level but with that political sensibility was that getting the country back together was the highest priority so he adopted a very patronizing view towards african-americans and their plight. h growing up in a home that was very abolitionist in ohio his mother was very firm in her views and really was a military hero.

so during that time historians are suggesting the reconstruction was a blight on american policy during the period and we need to do that to end the plight of african-americans in the jim crow era. and johnson was against those construction policies but it

was a simple view of things in was a solid guy.

>> that were they stand in history it is always subject to interpretations with new political impulses and that the fact that andrew jackson and woodrow wilson. >> he was ranked very highly. he took us into the war in europe and had no idea what he was doing and trying to make the world safer democracy he made europe safe for the degradation ofof germany and tilted in favor and god into the war with our policy regarding neutrality.

in a way that i was rather nefarious. and then we trampled upon and then the economy went into a terrible recession at the end of his second term. so yes every time he grows a notch. >> and attitude towards african-americans and andrew jackson's tear - - trail of tears? >> yes both of those things had impact significantly and it comes down for reasons people applying today's standards. but yes woodrow wilson was it's fair to say he was as overt a racist as we have in

the white house and so in terms of jackson he definitely favorite indian removal in those days indian tribes westward so the white settlers could establish themselves and it was horrendous but jackson was not an indian racist actually he adopted a young indian boy who found himself without a family and raise them. it's a rather complex question to regard to jackson. >> sitting on the princeton university board would you

have voted to remove his name from the international relations? >> no. i know these things would happen looking at the political figures in history over time, but i am inclined to look at our heritage, good

and bad to be regarded as all how we got here. and those passions are not something. >> thank you for joining us in depth this is the monthly program with one author his or her book this month author presidential biographer and longtime ceo of cqit

robert merry author of the five books taking on the role 1996 american foreign policy and the hazards of global ambition coming out in 2005 a country a vast design and where they stay in 2012 and president mckinley's recent book architect of the american century came out in 2017 from 1997 through 2009 serving as president and editor-in-chief of cq and from 2016 through 2018 editor of the american conservative and born in tacoma washington and as he mentioned he spent many years with the wall street journal as well. talking about presidential history and rankings congress it's all on the table here are the numbers.aies

in the sense you argue where they stand to do a contemporaneous ranking or judgment of the president is that a fair statement? >> i think i would adjust that a little bit and say that we need about a generations historical perspective as we talk about. it's allal part of the great game as you talk about it and that's all fair game and we are entitled to her opinions and then the democracy for democracy falls apart. and have added it is my view so generally speaking we need

a little historical perspective. let me give some examples. eisenhower was not very highly rated by the academics upon his leaving presidency arthur's lessons your senior second pole in 1862 and was very politically motivated that the index and the example was franklin roosevelt as an activist president. and then to be needed one could argue that eisenhower was not elected in that time. and he was a president who maintained america's position in the world to the extent that you could.

and very effective in that regard. now that's reflected in the academic polls and now is about 11 or 12 which i think is about right. host: california you are on with author robert merry. >>caller: first one of the things with the pandemic wilson did a bad job handling the spanish flu as well. you take my question in the previous discussion but the fact that historian seem to be on the left if there is any influence to influence the rankings and another point

like him or not donald trump has been incredibly influential in these four years in ways that i i think far more transformational than obama. your thoughts? >> thank you for the question i appreciate very much. wilson's handling of that pandemic is something i don't know very much about. i read a little bit of wilson over the years and certainly with the references to the spanish flu but i am not in a position to make a judgment how we handle that. it was a pretty serious matter and especially in terms of adding onlln to those with the

second term in the second question. >> he talked about a lot of the surveys are liberal and president trump being consequential. >> what is fascinating about that f and i talked about how there is no question there is a certain liberal tilt in the academic world that has been census passenger first pull in 48. but what's interesting comparing the rankings of those polls and those fluctuations that i talk about jo

and compare it to a pull the waste one - - the wall street journal commissioned that it sought to allow for and the rankings came out very similar to the rankings of before and while the liberal tilt certainly affected the initial rankings with regard to eisenhower and reagan in particularl and uphold regarding reagan that i thought in terms of how simpleminded and narrowminded they were about reagan that was a very consequential and serious president who had a big impact on americaetheol but nevertheless the goals seem to align largely so that over time, whatever critical biases exist have washed out through

those more seen judgments. i then watching what's going on in the academic world and a number of years now and to the extent not just liberalism that the far left that has become almost a monolithic point of view in the academy to be very significant and i would argue a very disturbing development in american cultural history. and i am wondering if the future polls of academics -s will

be influenced to such an extent they will no longer be valuable. >> and that historian survey from c-span barack obama was in the 12th position justice system was ended. >> it gets back to my view that you need a generation. just the passions of politics that linger for a good number of years before you can have a dispassionate judgment. obama was a number 12 in terms of history and won't be. and then find a place where he residesnedycot

a bad odor because when often we see john kennedy. he was not a consequential president. he might have been if he had a chance but is first-term he accomplished amazing things and knew where he wanted to take the country and was not succeeding getting through congress the legislation he wanted to pass and in which

case he would have been reelected as a great president along the lines of what johnson's accomplishments were and with the vietnam war eighties some time and to step back and look at dispassionately. that's not always easy. host: can you comment about your point of view on proposed changes to the congressional filibuster? >> i have very mixed feelings about the filibuster. i'm uncomfortable with the idea we do away with the filibuster while at the same time i been uncomfortable in recent years with what it has and very seldom used and with the civil rights legislation. so it was something that civil rights people who believe in civil rights they didn't like the filibuster for obviousry tn reasons and it used to be two thirds. you needed two thirds and then to push forward by walter mondale the democratic party in 1984 and wanted to get rid of the filibuster but he knew that wanted to be possible. so instead of two thirds which

is 67 votes became 60 irrespective of who was in the senate. and that was not people of the senate who devised the filibuster and those that were extremely passionate. protect the minority from the majority. i remember thinking it's not functional to have the filibustered and with that impediment to majority rule. this was supposed to cool off the passions generated and often in the house and that was good. but the filibuster had been abused that that also goes in

the other direction and deleterious ways. so i would like to see a dispassionate compromised reform among senators but i have no confidence in today's environment that could possibly yield an approach that would work for that would be brought about in today's climate. >> also asked a question about donald trump i don't want to ignore that. so i will just give a few minutes to that question. yes donald trump is a historically significant figure because he transform

the american debate in ways that many people wanted it transformed but didn't feel they had a voice.nt he was a presidential failure because he wasn't able for reasons we have seen to translate that into construction of a governing coalition to build on his base until the country in a reasonable manner or fashion in a new direction. and his personal flaws were so egregious and powerful and big he would never be able to succeed at that. and those they have an editor

and then they turned to me and they did that at the beginning of the trump presidency the magazine took seriously they didn't call them deplorable's. but wecy never took trump seriously so that's all for people to see. on the other hand the anti- troopers were so passionate in their views i think they lost perspective on the other side. that's my view and trump and i didn't mean to interrupt the flow but we can go to the next person. host: that works because of the american conservative and to your byline january 6, 2021, you wrote it looks like the country will change from the l presidency and the liberal hysteria is beginning to look more and more outlandish and silly. >> i wrote that before the siege on the capital.

i have to say i do not anticipate there would be such as siege and i was heartbroken to watch that. i got a call from a good friend al hunt as it was happening. and those times in the capital building and it was heartbreaking and highly significant as a political event to have ramifications well into the future. there has been an effort on the part of some democrats and liberals to put a significance on those events to go beyond what actually happened but nevertheless those significant developments.ct

and politically and will be for a time to come. host: the next call from houston. >>caller: good morning gentlemen. i have a quick question. can you talk about your writing and research process. d and how do you get an agent? thank you so much. >>. >> talk about my writing and researchs , it depends on the kind of book. i have written three biographies which are rathers, large.

with the sins of empire a polemical book i was quite disturbed around the iraq war. i didn't think that was a smart play on the part of george w. bush. and then to drive foreign-policy in the post-cold war era and those ideas we consider to be faulty and driving us in policy directions that would be rather destructive. so i sat down and wrote the book. w t when you write that book it is different from a major biography or a piece of history. and then you know what you want to say see you go get the materials to bolster what you want toofoaj say.

it's too good of our project in a concept. and then you have to figure out how to tell the story see have to cast a huge research net see begin reading those secondary sources to get a sense of the person in times and issues and passions and then to target certain aspects of primary research. and you have to be comfortable with the idea that it will be slow to get a sense of what the narrative is and then at that point you can begin to target particular materials to

bolster or illuminate. >> what's the most important part of history that i do? it is narrative and storytelling. you cannot let the storytelling in the truth that they don't happen but you have to mold that truth into a story so people can sit down and read.

and then to sit down and take on a book of 500 pages. you have to reward them in return to make it easy to understand what's going on in the story you are trying to tell.ic how to get an agent? that are really has advice on that. i had a friend who had an agent and he became my agent and then he retired and i got another one. host: but you worked with the same editor a simon & schuster that also works with several other authors featured here on booktv. >>ue she had so many wonderful authors. i was privileged and honored to be among them. i love dallas. she was amazing. her passion for american history was h stunning.

she is my editor for my last four books. i had written the book with a different publisher and a different agent and indicated i went to write this book but i didn't have a form policy background. but then i was editor and leaders ceo not known as an intellectual form policy matters and i wrote about five chapters in my new agent sent it around and we got a whole

host ofs rejections. and that it doesn't have the background or the gravitas for these things for the foreign policy expert. so one set i'm thinking of sending it over to alice i didn't know her at all. i said fine. she took my thesis which is provocative but she was struck

by a so we talked about it and she said i like this idea. and that's what she loved. and then to come up with some ideas of where to go next and i've always given her the full credit she said we will come up with something what you know about the mexican war? i said i know a little bit i'd be interested in pursuing the politics of that's how we did that and it was her idea.. host: when you say narrative history what do you mean? >> between narrative history and survey history it is designed to tell a story to the reader with characters and

personalities and direct quotations is much as possible and that drive that emerges but otherwise it is like what happened next what the congress would do passing was so many votes but it is embedded into the storytelling. that's what i'm talking about. >> doris kearns goodwin a master storyteller. host: the lost art of letter writing will that her historians in the future? >> yes i think it will.nk

that will make it tougher and tougher there will be so much material and wading through it on the web will be a day illusion almost impossible to find what you are looking for. host: our colleague here at c-spande had a question about your president mckinley book. mckinley was our last president was civil war experience how does that influences approach well president? how did he compare to the other civil war presidents in their approach?ari >> it had a huge impact on mckinley but not how he would govern but his of what he could become more who he was an 18 -year-oldas kid and it transformed him because to become the protégé because

rutherford hayes who later became president elected to congress during the civil war so he developed a very powerful ambitious to become president and the feelings about his worth and compassion and also his closeness to how he behaves and elected to congress the same year that rutherford b hayes wasas elected and those that had ready access to the white house. and then to develop those ambitions. >> how does that affect how he handled the presidency?

largely because temperament and those in high executive positions of how they operate but in mckinley's case he was not a visionary but a man to get a good sense of what was happening. and the different points of view and figure out to move those forces and to take place in the way they wanted them to take place in the direction he wanted to move them. that was a part of his temperament.

i'm not sure the civil war experience. and those civil war backgrounds. so i guess i have to say it with regard to the other civil war presidents. as well as the presidential approaches and records and that would offer much more insight than i could offer here. host: harrison and did cleveland have civil war experience?

>> i believe so. >> the next call from boston massachusetts. >> it's a pleasure especially for someone who really loves history. the african-american the statutory slaves and it word is essential to understand it is about the narratives i can see different narratives and the other people, the majority whether democrat or republican it was always about me but i also t know is the contribution they fought and all the wars.

. . . .

i appreciate your heartfelt thoughts. race is a fundamental part of any policy and a significant part of the american storyam and history and struggle and experiment, so absolutely. even to the extent that they were not enslaved. i'mea doing some research now on the 1850s as i note and i'm looking at for example the history in south carolina the

state that was probably the most embedded into the slave culture as any in the history and about 20% in south carolina in the antebellum period were free blacks who had a remarkable contributions to make within the context of that culture which is an amazing story to me. they pull that in as a means ultimately ending slavery so i appreciatete the thought very much. >> host: in your book you make it very clear that you were not a fan of james buchanan and you mentioned your research in the

1850s and do you agree with him being on the bottom of every list? >> guest: i don't like him at all. he was the secretary of state and president pull kept an amazing diary throughout the presidency although i'm not sure he would have been elected. he was a man of low character you couldn't trust him with anything all he cared about was himself. and f brazenly so but the thing that gets me the most furious is

that he liedd to the american people in his inaugural address because of the dred scott decision coming down the pike and announced he would accept the outcome. he already knew what the outcome was going to be because he had an improper conversation with the chief justice who told him exactly what the decision was going to be, and that's the action of somebody that is a very low character. i'm happy to put him at the bottom. i don't think harding deserves to be as low as he is because if you look at the record of what was happening, it was all pretty good including getting out of the wilson race recession that

he's never gotten credit for buh i have to say george w. bush deserves to be down there because he presided over an awful war that was destructive and destabilized the entire region of the world in ways that we are still living with and for paying the price for so he deserves to be pretty low in my view. >> host: should richard nixon be judged solely on watergate? >> that is an interesting question i raise in my book on the presidency. what do you do about a president that is even more powerful as an example but nixon serves well to raise this question what do you do about a president that accomplishes a great deal then throws it away to one horrendous

action. it's a great society not which i agree with but i also understand that it was a presidential accomplishment of the first order. i guess generally speaking there needs to be some kind of a balance there even up into the upper half. when they perpetrated such horrendous gripping and caring of the american social fabric through those actions.

>> host: in the last presidential survey that c-span did j in 2017, lyndon johnson ws at number ten and richard nixon was at 28. kenneth in california, you are on with historian c and author robert merry. >> caller: whether particularly the 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 that did a lot of wonderful things. how is he standing these days and how has it changed? >> he is standing pretty well.

in terms of the presidential historian in the polls it made its way up and that is not exactly true. after his presidency ended, he was relatively high in the category throughout all the decades and he deserves to be in that category. when i was talking about the electorate and the judgment of historians, they tend to coincide, not always, but generally speaking. but the electorate looks at the president in four year because that's how they've been invited to look at the presidency. every four years you get the chance to either keep the party in power were turned to the next

party. the american people have a high opinion after his first inherited term. and it was a heroic term. everything that he accomplished. he really did save europe it moved relatively smoothly. he did all that. in terms of the electorate, the second term was a disaster and he is members at the end of the second term were as low as we've seen i think it was 23% approval rating. he got us into a war he couldn't control and get us out of.

he had kept them around long after he should have scuttled them and so the second term really wasn't a success that they historians look at it as overall accomplishment notwithstanding the second term and there were some interesting things that happened including the creation of nato. i'm very partial. i love the story about him they are former presidents now out making huge amounts of money and creating foundations and doing all kinds of things. truman got into his chrysler

motorcar with his wife and got on the highway and drove home and got a ticket along the way and paid it. that's a great man in the george washington tradition that isn't what we are seeing these days. >> host: in the c-span survey it came in at number six, by the way you can find this survey and see the methodology in the story to participate. my guest mr. merry has participated in the surveys as well. but they are at c-span.org. look up presidential historian survey. next call for the offer guest is david in rockville maryland. go ahead. >> caller: thank you for taking my call and for the great contribution this station q mak.

we use the president's names in this metaphor for the administration its natural end the individuals matter. as the presidents had gotten bigger and bigger there are a lot of people. how should it be focused on the performance of the individual versus the performance of the administration and as recent presidents have had much bigger foffices of the presidency and all the agencies that they control has there been any shift in assessing the administration moving it away 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 figurehead factor in f determing which presidencies are better than others? >> fascinating distinguish and question.

the president is responsible for the executive branch and that in terms of the sort of historical viewpoint regarding the presidents and their performances i would say the academics that conducted and that are involved in the polls don't make much of a distinction between the presidents and the presidents themselves and their administrations or the executive branch and they shouldn't. if you think about it a bit because they are responsible for what happens inne the executive branch. they rise and fall based on what egthe outcome is with regards to executive management and executive leadership. >> host: text for you. this is from eric in massachusetts. what are your opinions i believe

the hands-off policy was very significant stoking the roaring 20s and today the country is set up to repeat coming off the pandemic as we did in the early 20s. your thoughts? >> guest: i'm kind of partial of this. i don't think he would have been a great leader in the crisis times. k he doesn't strike me as the kind of person who would be that kind of leader. some people think that he's been described as a great innocent bystander in the american presidential history because coolidge created all the situation that led to the great depression and then they take

whatever the circumstances are and ameliorate or improve it or manage it as best he can and i don't think that hoover did a good job of that. he signed the tariff that i think was a disaster so probably if it were me, my book didn't have my own ranking but if it were me i probably would kick coolidge up a few notches. >> host: i somehow got the idea that was almost an accidental president but with unusually concrete goals. true or not? >> he was the first dark horse and looked basically you was a

complete loser because he had left the congress after 14 years, speaker of the house, going back too tennessee to run for governor in the two-year term he ran for governor again prepared to the presidential run in 1844 and he lost to a backwoods outdoors kind of comical character by the name of james jones. he was funny and clever and poke took himself very seriously and he didn't knoww how to handle that, so he lost. they ran again as an incumbent and then he lost again. that was enough for the people in american politics and the democratic party which he was in

to say this guy is a loser and he doesn't have much of a future anymore. he's gone. the first thing he could do to get back into the national arena would be to somehow get the vice presidential nomination to the democratic party. everyone assumed mountain van buren wanted to be president again and lost in 1840 and that he was going to be the nominee and signaled so those are the days of the vice presidential candidates were not simply in the domain and the decision wasn't simply the domain of the presidential candidate, so you could go to the convention and get the nomination so that's what he was going to do.

but the big issue van buren opposed it and van buren's opposition to the annexation of texas brought him down at the baltimore convention in the spring of 1844 and whole emerged on thehe 11th ballot i think as the nominee in a very raucous and fascinating untested convention so he didn't come out of nowhere in a way. he came out of dark horse territory to get the nomination and then claimed by 30,000 votes,et talking like that in te close election but he wanted so he had the four-year term when he got the nomination and he didn't. he had strong views of what he wanted to accomplish and he

accomplished it all so he was a very successful president. >> host: you are watching booktv o on c-span2. author and presidential biographer robert merry. (202)748-8200 for those in the east and central time zones, 748-8201 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. if you can't get through on the phone lines and you still want to make a comment, you can do it by text, 748-8903. please include your first name and city and you can make a comment on social media and scroll through i that@booktv is the handle to remember if you are on facebook or instagram or twitter. twitter. next call from susan in massachusetts. >> thank you for taking my call. my comment is a question

comment. in two areas it was painted with broad strokes. but first, i am an academic and this has to do with the comment about liberals. ier am a liberal. i've been and the academia for 30 something years. i taught at boston university, harvard, yale, cornell and started at the university of pittsburgh. it's an overstatement to say the least that academia is ruled by liberals. it is repeated so often and there is a strong law in the movement, very conservative,

very powerful. same thing i taught at the management school. >> host: did you want to make a second point? >> guest: the woodrow wilson center name, i agree with you that they shouldn't change the name but he said after that you believe history should be what it is. >> host: robert merry. >> guest: i don't have any objection to the feeling that has emerged to change those names. they were put in there much longer after the civil war for ther other purposes.

so i wouldn't stand on that particularly. i think a more interesting question is erasing john c calhoun at yale. i'm a little bit less comfortable with that. i'm going to choose not to engage in that. i accept your points and appreciate that. >> host: brandon in california please go ahead with your question or comment. hello and good morning. i have three questions and i will make them brief. one of the things that bothers me the most about the u.s. presidency in terms of what going on right now and i want to know what you think about this is exactly the privilege so that is the first one.

changing the executive privileges of, you know, the last president, that type of thing. i would like the executive privilege to be limited or something changed because i think that it's being abused. the second thing i want to know is what is your thought about the electoral college, there's a lot of talk about this being done away with and having to decide one way or the other and lastly, what is your idea or thought about the president in terms are there sometimes things happening on the competency of the presidents to understand or intelligence that might understand them.

a college professor thinks george w.ge bush wasn't a particularlyly competent presidt meaning while things were going on he wasn't able to deal with them in that intellectual term. thank you very much. >> thank you, brandon. >> i think we are talking about executive action or executive privilege that refers to be secure in his political activities, but executive action or executive orders are what i think the caller is talking about and the caller is onto something. we are moving more and more to the idea that there is a lot of leeway that goes beyond what the congress may or may not do at any given time and i think that it's a disturbing trend.

for the presidency and the president is attempting to approach the legislative authority and i'm uncomfortable with that. i think it's gone too far and i think that the caller is right to raise that question. maybe not having the intellectual capacity to deal with what comes at them at any given time and a lot does. i would have to say i don't know about that. i've written extensively about the intellectual limitations of donald trump from the very beginning of his campaign because it was clear that while

he rather brilliantly solve the surface of the debate, it wasn't taking place in america. it was leaving out a lot of americans and he ran on that successfully. he didn't seem to have even the vocabulary that you need to have two explain to the american people in a way that can bring the newcomers to the fold. what was at stake, what was going on. and that limitation i think was huge in terms of making it impossible for him to put together the governing coalition that would be legitimate to america going forward.

basically good character all of those things come into play and it's very complex so i tend to p look at the outcomes and the performance. the electoral college element of the system as we have eroded and the huge amount in the course of our history but if it were to be doneeg away with with a mere popular vote, i believe that it would be a disaster marjorie greene was removed by the democrats even though she's a republican. liz cheney was kept in the position but centered by the home party. where's the republican party partygoing to go after donald t?

>> i think the question is when will the republican party be after donald trump because it doesn't -- it's not necessarily those who believe if you sort of pull together the trump viewpoint and outlook in its own household today and where that goes into the future. the question is what is the role of donald trump and i think the republican party isn't going to abandon if you will.

the question is can the republicanca party extricate itself from trump maintaining certain elements in the effort to forge a governing coalition and that is going to be interesting to play out because the republican party is in the throes of the debate right now and it isn't always savory so we will see what happens. >> host: 30 minutes left of the program today. the next call comes from nancy in california. >> caller: good morning. what a great program. this is regarding president kennedy and the cuban missile crisis. all the civilian urged to strike russia first except bobby kennedy. they estimate 8.5 million life plus the environmental fallout.

i placed him very high even though he did have some personal inadequacies and i would place andrew johnson last. i'd like to know what you think. you've been a great guest and i've learned a lot. thank you. >> he is down there and deserves to be down there. it was a tremendous performance in very difficult situations it's a manifestation of greatness and i think there were significant elements of greatness in john kennedy. he was cut down and killed, murdered on the streets of dallas in such a horrendous way but it was such a blow to american politics because we

will never know what jack kennedy would have been able to accomplish if he had been able to live. i am not taking the view that he doesn't deserve a great deal of historical admiration i am just saying he didn't have a chance to demonstrate what he could accomplish because it's based on what happens in the electoral outcomes and we don't know if he would have been able to pull the administration through. >> host: you've written about james capel and william mckinley. he comes in at 14 on the c-span historian survey and william mckinley at 16th. is that accurate in your view?

>> since 1948 it was 12, somewhere in there, between 16th and 12th so i would be comfortable with that and wouldn't feel like i wasted my time. but that's where they are. >> host: what's been the effect over the years of the best-selling book on presidential ratings right off the top of my head, david mcauliffe with truman and adams. you write about a book coming out on grover cleveland that changed perceptions. >> guest: the two-volume biography of grover cleveland that had i think gotten him a pulitzer prize and brought a lot of attention to grover cleveland. i sometimes kind of laughed a little bit because as we all

know, one of the few things we know about him is that he served two nonconsecutive terms and both times he wasn't able to succeed himself. the first time he ran on the democratic ticket and was rejected. the second time they rejected him. so, i call on the only to time, one term loser. but he was not an insignificant person. i don't think he was a wildly significant president and i would put him in a sort of middle position not as high as he was in the 1948 initial pull. and i think that this biography had a lot to do with that.

>> host: what about the effect on john adam. >> guest: they were both rejected by the voters after one term. john adams was responsible for the alien and sedition act that i think was pretty seriously flawed and dangerous and i don't think he was a particularly successful president, so i think he has been overrated and maybe he's contributed to that. it might have an impact and sort of -- >> host: next call comes from jeremy and whilst in ohio.

>> caller: thanks for having me. i was just wondering what your opinion was on the three top conservative presidents being from such a republican state in ohio. >> host: and who are those in your view? he is gone. there's eight from ohio, correct? william mckinley was one of them of course, but he called them conservative. my mind is blanking. >> guest: was he only interested in the ohio presidents -- >> host: grover cleveland, warren harding, i've got four of them -- >> guest: i'm not going to get them either.

james garfield of course. mckinley was a conservative president, but more than that. he was a man prepared to move the country in different directions and changed dramatically while president. so, i would put him in a category of being sort of a conservative. but those terms may not necessarily be that helpful as we try to understand how the presidents operated in the context of their times. and i don't know who i would consider the three conservative presidents from ohio. >> host: taft was the other so that makes six altogether. >> guest: he is worth noting because he was effective and he was destroyed politically by teddy roosevelt, his previous good friend who fostered his

career and basically selected him as his successor and wanted the presidency back and went after him in ways that destroyed his presidency. it was sort of a sad thing because he was a very good man. and also a very significant president for a one term president not succeeded by himself. >> host: mike in louisville, kentucky. go ahead. >> caller: it is an honor it. i really enjoyed your book about james capel. it was one of my favorite presidential biographies. i just want to thank you for that. my question is of all of the one term presidents, who would you rank the highest? i would like to make the case for george hw bush. i think the way that he handled the demise of the ussr and the fall qualify him to be the best

of the one term. i was curious of your opinion and i had a quick second question. i don't know anything about them so i wonder if you could give a summary on why that would be an interesting book to read. >> guest: let me take the one term. the most significant one term president was pull and i think the historians pretty much boasted that up. george herbert walker bush i covered and traveled with him a bit, and i think there is a reason why he lost after one term. while he had some great success including the transition related to the breakdown of the soviets

union among them as well as the gulf war, he wasn't a masterful administrator of the economy and i think that hurt him badly. i tend to think when the american people reject a president after four years they do it for a reason or several reasons and i think in that case they did. as a lot of my contemporary political analysts and journalists have done this over the years. >> host: joseph and stuart. >> guest: you have to love the books all equally, but this was my first book and it may be the one that i am the most proud of. i took these two journalists who

had a major role to play in american journalism and politics and history and american foreign policy from about 1935 to 75. i use them as a window of what was happening because they were at all of the events and had things to say about everything happening. they both had fascinating experiences. they went everywhere. they were traveling all over the world. they got to the hot spots and it presented an opportunity to sort of lay there in the course of american politics over the course of those four years. the relationship within the family and the connection to the old establishment as it was in decline, they were related to

the roosevelt, and their maternal grandmother was teddy roosevelt's sister so they were very closely related. when they were in the white house it was cousin eleanor and franklin. when joe was a young reporter making his way in washington as a rather clever representative and for they sent him all kinds of stories and they were very close to the kennedys, joe especially, very close to john kennedy but also with jackie. all of these people come into focus and all of the great people that established i know we had a call earlier they had gone to harvard and yale and i

think it's kind of a panoramic story over that period so i'm glad that it was brought up they've grown tremendously so nobody could get h the same corr on the market on the journalistic influence they hadd in their days. walter would be another example. those were people that had real influence and i don't think anybody can get there now because there are just so many people competing in the media for attention and you can't get

that kind of handle you were able to do if you were good enough and they were particularly good at it during their time. >> host: jerry from nebraska. what do you think about the thaa is all out attack on the trump administration. >> this is a sensitive subject for me because i grew up in the media and came to washington as a young man to cover politics and the american government. i traveled with my colleagues and got to know them and hung out in congress waiting for action to take place and develop among a a lot of great friends. i've always been a conservative but my career wasn't devoted to the thinkingmy or politics or commentary or polemics until

after the congressional quarterly was sold and i was asked to become the editor of thee interest magazine which isa policy journal that has ain sort of concerted guilt and later as i mentioned was the editor for a time it's not aggressive at all. it was fair objective journalism and i sensed that in today's world. that sensibility is not as powerful as it used to be and a lot of news organizations are

rather openly and i think that the fervor. we had a period that journalism was largely political. i'm doing that now in the 1850s and while partisan still using a lot of information i think will still manage to get it but it's going to be harder

and number two, to find sources that want to give you the facts and not told them to words your own point of view. >> host: crag in columbus, good afternoon. thank you very much it's a wonderful program. what are your thoughts or opinions regarding 1619 curriculum circulating through. >> host: what is your opinion? >> guest: well as a trained historian, i have serious reservations about it they would speak out aca little more.

>> guest: i don't think it's very good history or scholarship and i think it's simplistic therefore what i am saying is i don't think that it was a very well-founded contribution or effort to american historical scholarship. so i'm concerned and i think they've been embarrassed in some regards with some of the more egregious things that were said as a part of that. but it's all part of that time. that's always going to happen. i think it'ss particularly potet in today's world and leads to

the lapses we have seen with regards to the project. >> host: every author that appears, we ask him what were wher favorite book and what thy are currently reading. here weree the responses. dreadnought by war and peace by william tolstoy and the remaking of world order by samuel huntington, and now finally, the six volume series of the historical novel. decline of the roman empire, et cetera. so, historic i want to start when did those books come out? >> the last two, i didn't know until the last two. one is called caesar and then --

>> host: octoberse horse. >> guest: which is about augustus. those came out i would say probably around the end of the '90s, the beginning of the century. so i read this because i've always been interested and i didn't know. i knew that she was an acclaimed author of the thornburg's. so i read and i was blown away and then i realized that this was part of the series. and it goes back to be much to recount the decline of the republic. shouldn't beub confused with the roman empire that lasted another 300 years beyond the republic. it was an amazing 460 year phenomenon of democratic governance that was an amazing civic achievement but 89 years

or so were sort of an accumulation that ended with the republicanhe she captures this y bringing these people, all of the historical figures. she isn't making up figures. she's turning it into what actually happened with the characters that existed and it is a tour of literary achievement. >> oswald, decline of the west. >> guest: they haven't been able to figure out how to handle him and if you go back to the generation.

they already spangler and had been really dialed. he wrote the book decline of the west, two volumes and he wrote it during world war i, during the end of world war i and deposited the notion that history is not an ongoing progressive concept from being backward to being increasingly enlightened and intelligent and sort of better in terms of our regard for the world.

rather it's the story of the rise and fall with the distinct civilizations that have sort of been born and emerged and floured and then declined. he thought that the west had gone throughy those lifestages and was beginning to the phase a decline. what's happened in the hundred years or so since has indicated the west has been in decline and was more progressive in terms of thepr decline. when you take that as opposed to sort of a one man kind progress, it changes your whole regards i

wrote about them in the sense of empire and a cover story. so i was invited to deliver a couple of papers over the course of the last ten years or so so there is a body of thought and this concept informs their view of what's going on now which leads me to samuel huntington whose book the clash of civilizations that you mentioned and started with a very influential magazine piece foreign affairs is influenced by this view that has some merits.

ithe goes too far and makes a broad stroke judgment and pronouncement. >> host: currently reading lynn olson's latest book roosevelt, lindbergh and america's fight over world war ii. that is not the most recent but that is the one he's reading right now that has appeared on the program as well. ted in warwick rhode island. >> caller: good afternoon. good afternoon.

i am reading the c-span book regarding the ranking of the presidents. i'm wondering what your opinion that i consider to be high-ranking. i think i covered it but i would say i'm a great admirer. i had never read robert donovan's book about the experiences, but i have read the multi-volumes on lyndon johnson and there's the interesting point that when he is in the

senate with kennedy he totally misjudged kennedy and thought that he was this rich kid that had everything handed to him and didn't know diversity or how to handle it if he encountered it. and this was at the time that johnson was figuring kennedy was going to be his adversary for the democratic nomination in 1960. he goes in and talks about kennedy's military heroism in world war ii in the pacific and it's an amazing story what he did with the adversity to maintain the leadership and to maintain the survival of his people is just inspiring and that is my view i think that he was an inspiring person in a lot of ways and that is a reflection of it. but i would go back to what i

was saying before. i would love to go back and say that he was a hugely consequential president. that's how i view him if he has a huge impact on the direction ofti america. but he didn't have a chance to do that. i'm not denigrating him at all. i'm simply saying i don't have a sense of his being in a high ranking for the simple reason he never had a chance to prove what his ranking would be. >> host: a letter was written by historians and legal scholars saying that president trump disqualified himself from continuing to serve even the few remaining days as president as well as ever again holding office according to the constitution. what do you think about the historians and legal scholars getting involved in this process?

>> whether i agree is another question. i tend to think that they should be able to decide those things and sometimes the powers that be have to get involved. i think it's an open question whether it is even constitutional to have a senate trial for a president that is no longer president. buti i guess i say it's an open question. i am not totally comfortable with it, but i think that what trump did attempting to send the crowd to attempt to influence from his end of pennsylvania avenue was definitely an impeachable offense and had i

been in the house i would have voted to in ph and had i been in the senate while he was president, i would have voted to convict. so i don't disagree with the people in that sense but with regards to what they are saying regarding the processes involved but i am not sure that i know the process they are advocating are so i am not sure that i can speak to that. ..rs.

>> that concludes our program for today thank you for being with us