to be admired for the most part because you don't run unless you really believe in things and you're willing to put something on the line. and you have to admire that. it takes courage. >> let me say something, i think we're all picking up on partisan divisions and we're picking up on a, i would say, kind of tone or a frantic, frantic quality and so forth. at least in the early phase of the campaign. one thing that is different about politics today than some years ago and i think it's something that we've got to think about is that our parties are very evenly balanced. one reason that dwight eisenhower and lyndon johnson and richard nixon and john kennedy and dwight eisenhower and all of these people were able to collaborate in a way is because you had an undisputed

majority party in the 1950s and 1960s. undisputed majority party and, therefore, there's an incentive for the minority party to find common ground and the majority was so unwielding that the leader of the majority party had to reach out in passing the civil rights act of 1964, i think he got three-quarters. the republican house supported the bill divided the democratic caucus 50/50. because of the unwieldy size of the national majority. i think the incentives right now in our national politics, we're going through a phase here where the incentives are not to reach across the aisle, but mobilize your own people. bring your own people to the polls. we don't have an answer for that except that i think the american people over the last number of elections have really not rendered a clear-cut decision in the way so many of our elections

were decided back then. if you look at eisenhower in '52. this was a decisive victory. 60 is very narrow. lyndon johnson '64 huge landslide. '68 narrow, '72 huge landslide. in other words, we had decisive elections by comparison with the ones that we've had since '84. or '88, i guess. '92 is close, '96 relatively close. 2000, the closest of them all. 20 2004, very close for an incumbent president and 2008 an apparent majority, but immediately taken back by the republican gains. americans just haven't quite resolved the competing claims yet. that's what i think is going to happen this year. >> both your grandfather and your father became elder statesmen in their winter years. what council would they give members of the gop today? give on the state of the party?

>> well, be prepared to govern. i think this is, you know, this is the thing. it's one thing to run for office on a certain basis, it's the other, something happens. when you assume the responsibility for the direction of this great country. i think we've all experienced this. i feel the presence of the johnson white house in this building. we've been here many times and julie, same thing. i think we all had an experience where it actually occurred to us walking in the white house that people are, you know, that a great nation is really relying on the judgment of the administration and the people who are assembling in washington to do this. i think -- that's the direction that i think this campaign is going to take. i noticed in the debates that in substance, the republicans are talking about far more, far m e more, many more interesting

ideas are on the table now than were there five to six months ago. this process has brought forth ideas ask i think it's brought forth much more constructive approach to these ideas. we're discussing things in detail now in our political press that we were not even, that were simply ideological measures five, six months ago. i think this election is rounding into form. i think we're going to have a great debate. >> but i also think the american people really want to see bipartisan, more bipartisanship. just try. presidents trying to put people of the other party, perhaps, in positions of power as has happened in the past or whatever working together as the democrats and republicans did in the '50s and '60s more. i think, i think i'm sure we want to stand on our princippri.

when they go down party lines and no one is even allowed to veer off. i don't know. i just think that people, that most people i talk to and i must not be talking to the ones who want just the party everyone to fall into line. just want to get the sense that we have a lot of difficult problems out there and we have to solve them together. so, let's have some more creative ways to do it. >> that suggests a position of moderation, as well. i wonder, do you, too, have a favorite candidate in this race? >> not really, no. no, i just know, again, i really mean it when i say i'm impressed by the debate, by the knowledge of these candidates and these debates. and i am just wishing them well

and -- >> yes. well, every election we ever had is always the most important to date. but i think that this is, there is a special feeling about this election and i think we're all riveted. we're discussing, we're finding ways to discuss the future direction of the country. very interesting way. and i think that what we're looking for is some kind of verdict that will allow us to understand which year we're living in now. i think that when that happens and that did happen during the new deal. it accounts for much of our statesmanship in that period. i think that we, we understood the direction that our country was going in. we had had a sense for the relationship between the federal government and the private sector and for america's

responsibilities in the world. we had a consensus in this period and the consensus is something that grew out of a great national party, the democratic party winning in '32 or '33 for better or worse. i think what happened is that consensus has broken down and we'll forge one. we need it now. >> i'll invite my friend don carl back to the stage to ask some of the questions that the audience wrote out earlier this evening. don? >> well, we have some questions from the audience and to sort of connect with the concluding comments, we have one question. that asks if, david, you would care to speculate about how your grandfather, eisenhower, what he would think about the vast sums of money in politics today. >> well, i think it would be, geez, it's difficult. we haven't resolved that issue.

actually, political contributions were not really very regulated in that era, as far as i, as far as i know. i think the idea that we have to somehow regulate and control expenditures and presidential campaigns awareness of that developed during the eisenhower years. but i think it's difficult to try to imagine what an individual 40, 50 years ago would try to make of the circumstances that he's in now. i know that, in fact, i'll paraphrase a famous or i would say paraphrase a maxim that i live by. history is never a guide to the future, but history gives us confidence in the future. i don't think that what dwight eisenhower may have said or thought or said is in any way binding on america today.

but i think that the fact that his leadership generation overcame a the challenges of their time should give us confidences that we should overcome the challenges of our time. we are still the free nation that we were 50 years ago, we have an open process, ideas contend in this country and they all get a fair hearing and we can all vote. we're going to work on it. >> perhaps one of the most famous speeches that your grandfather ever made as president was his farewell address. warning the american people about the military, the power, the growing power of the military industrial complex. how does that speech look to you from your perspective today over the years? do you think he was misunderstood or do you think he didn't get it right? how has it played out? >> i think he was misunderstood. i think a lot of people thought he was suddenly challenging the

direction of national government and so forth in a basic way. in fact, what he was doing. this is the beauty of presidential libraries. i sent students to study how his speeches were crafted and put together and the eisenhower farewell and i can summarize this very quickly and tells an interesting story of the genesis of that idea. that speech underwent about 40 drafts. this was one of the best, most intricately planned speeches by a president and one of the greatest. and the first 13 or 14 drafts, i think, it's fair to say and i saw these drafts in the eisenhower library reflect the disappointment that the eisenhower white house felt about losing the narrow election of 1960. and, so, it's sort of kind of criticism of the incoming administration or staking out

positions that would give the republicans hope and somebody gets to the president and more or less says, you can't do that. your job is to make your success successor's job easier, not harder. so, the whole effort kind of palpably becomes something else. people begin to sort of take back and qualify this paragraph and that paragraph and then, finally, the entire focus of the eisenhower farewell shifts. no longer looking forward, but reflecting back on 50 years of service. the united states addressing the great riddle that faced the leadership of that time. and that is, how can the world grow as fast as we have since 1890? how can we develop as rapidly economically as we have since 1890? how can we reconcile this

technological process that we made with the horrors of the 20th century with the depression, with world war i with world war ii. is there something in contemporary life that places our political processes beyond our control? are we losing the ability to govern ourselves and to guide our country dount the right path. this is a question throughout the 1930s. the answer that we see today. and that is, there is no way of trying to instruct americans, 25 or 30 years from now what policies they should adopt or how big the pentagon ought to be. the main thing is that american democracy should always rely on its alert citizenry. that is people who care about

national politics and take a part in it and join in our national dialogue and our debate. i would say the internet is making that possible. i think there's a degree of participation in american politics which is the highest i've seen, at least over the last 20 years, perhaps higher earlier. but i think that was the, it was a timeless lesson derived from the experience of that leadership generation. and i don't think it necessarily applies to anything. but it does mean, i'll never forget in our government and our great institutions and i think he meant this is a military industrial complex. this is a governmental, nongovernmental complex. in the final analysis, american citizens must never be diverted from the idea that these institutions serve us.

ultimately, they are accountable to us. they answer to the ideals that spring from the beliefs of the american people and they're accountable to us. >> well, we have one -- time for one more question and it's for the two of you that we got from the audience here and i want to go to that and it says, do you have plans to write another book together? tell us a little bit about what you're doing now. >> we are going to write another book together. >> we have several. including one i promised her years ago. we were working on a book on the year 1968, which is a phenomenal book. not only has a working title and an outline, but it also exists in about 1,300 pages in draft. >> but, anyway, in other words,

we weren't -- that's why i'm co-editor or whatever and hel r helper. >> censor. >> but we enjoyed working together. it was really fun. we had a lot of laughs. >> yes, yes. we had a lot of laughs. >> we want to thank you for your hospitality here. >> thank you for bringing us to the lyndon johnson library. i tell my students every sumester and we have a program that sends people to libraries. >> this is a lively place. >> i am grateful to the staff here at the lyndon johnson library. i think this is as great a research experience that people can have in the united states. this is a terrific institution. we feel close to it because we feel close to this era and the people who are part of it and it has been a genuine pleasure to be received here tonight. thank you. >> thank you.

>> you are old friends of this library and you are very dear friends of this library. i want to thank you all for coming. i want to thank, david, julie, once again for coming. don, thank you so much. thank you. explaining the constitution and encouraging students to have an interest in america's founding can be difficult for many teachers. next, radio talk show host diane reem moderates the teaching of constitutional history. at this event from a day-long teach-in on america's founding at the university of oklahoma. this is a little over an hour.

you know, i think we should begin by thank aing david borin for this extraordinary day. as i understand it, he simply picks up the phone and says to david mccullough, and says, come out to the university of oklahoma. we need you to do this or any of these wonderful minds sitting here on this stage. as david has said our focus is teaching the u.s. constitutional

history in the 21st century. i love akhil's story having his 6-year-old learn the names of the presidents. we had our son do exactly the same thing. it's a great way to start. i also loved his idea of having each one of us go to wikipedia to look through the names of each of our presidents to learn one fact about each of those. i find myself thinking that we are faced with a group of constitutional scholars who adore what they do -- adore the constitution, all of its

inclusions, everything that was left out for most of us, at least i speak for myself. growing up in high school if somebody mentioned learning about the constitution, it was a big yawn. so we are now here in the 21st century where there is a great deal of talk of exporting democracy, exporting the sense of freedom that this country has developed over these 225 years and yet here we are learning today from scholars but perhaps

not knowing very much ourselves. to the interest in learning about the constitution. where have we as adults, where have professors, where have teachers somehow fallen dpoown the job and how can we in the 21st century make it something exciting? i'm going to start with a person you've not yet heard from but will hear from this evening at

dinner, and that's david mccollum. >> thank you very much. history is human. three words, and i sincerely believe that that is the essence of teaching history and of understanding history. and i also believe firmly that our teachers are the most important people in our society. they are doing the work -- >> me, too. >> so i do not blame our teachers, and i object to anything that is proposed or enacted or becomes acceptable

socially that makes the difficulties of teaching greater still. we should be doing everything we can to support our teachers and to give them our appreciation for what they do. i think that history and the love of history and understanding of history begins truly literally at home. i think p if there's a be probl with the education today in the country, it's with us. we, who are fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers. >> that's how you would -- >> if i were teaching a high school course in the constitution, i would begin by stressing that the very presence of george washington at the constitutional convention was a major reason for why it succeeded. yet, he said very little, why

was that? you have to understand that. the constitution center in philadelphia, which was a huge undertaking, is in very serious trouble. attendance is not good. they really are struggling. they made it kind of a huge electronic game show fair. i don't think that's the way to do it. it's about people. you have to understand those human beings, and i think that's true about teaching any aspect of history, american history or any history. >> pete. >> i'll pick up on that. david, that makes a lot of sense to me. the humanity of the founders and identifying with what they did. i'd say there are a couple of problems that explain the dire state of constitutional studies. one is they have been dominated

by lawyers, and we need to take it back from the lawyers. and i think akeel is going to agree with me. it also is something that we set aside when i was a boy and when many of you were in school as civics. this was the stuff that was so boring. it's because it wasn't part of our history. i think we need to take it back into history, and historians have their share of blame here, too, in that very few of us have focused on the founding. i blamed gordon wood for that, because his book was so great that nobody bothered to study the subject anymore. i think we have broken through, and there's actually a very lively constitutional scholarship that hasn't made it to the schools yet. i would just pick up on something akeel said earlier. the first thing to say is everybody knows we live in interconnected world now. we need to think about the

constitution in its own time in a world context, and that is what's happening geostrategically and geopolitically. he talks with a state of war. we need to recover a sense of the contingency and of the fail urz of the founders in order to make it come alive so that we can relate to our world in a way that we begin to understand they related to their world. so i think it's something that historians can do and that it takes the last generations for these things to trickle down. maybe the internet is going to make it faester. the new way of thinking globally about the generation of the founders and the challenges they faced broabroad and at home at with each other and in the larger world. the american revolution is a

50-year period of war in the world. that's what frames everything from 1765 through 1815 and we can say beyond the civil war. it's yet another episode in that history of wars. so i think you can make it compelling. kids love war. well, we began in war. it's in that context we can begin to recover, what these human beings did. they're great achievements and failures. >> i'll turn to kyle harper, who is director of the institute for american constitutional heritage. tell me your approach. one of the exciting thing is you're teaching adults and kids becoming adults. you're not touching them facts and asking them to memorize when an amendment was ratified. you're not teaching facts.

you're teaching them to become citizens ch citizens. if you embed practices of citizenship inside the classroom, you can not only achieve greater results in your teaching but you can excite them and engage them to take what they learn ntsd the classroom into their lives as citizens. to me that means creating situations for bait and civil discussions in way that make them realize the facts on the page actually influence and deeply impact their religious lives. whether it's religious freedom or privacy, these are issues with a history. history matters particularly when it comes to the constitution in a way that profoundly will shape the world that they live in. giving them a chance not to just learn that but to engage with that and to recognize -- to make it come alive because they realize that it shapes their lives and ask them to develop their voice is a way we can do in the 21st century. it isn't just lecturing at them, but it's asking them to develop

their voice as citizens inside the classroom and take it outside the classroom. >> akeel amar, do you begin by showing them what was left out? >> well, "them" -- >> can you hold that microphone in front. >> from my 6-year-old to my undergraduates to law students, different audiences out to meet ordinary folks. here's my multi-pronged approach, and it's very auto biographical. so my parents, when i was a young boy, take me to mount vernon and to the white house and to the congress, to the capitol hill and independence ha hall, and that just wowed me. my teachers had role play exercises where it's 1850 and

you're henry clay and you're daniel webster, and that was kind of cool. and he i read storybooks, history books, books of the stort that david mccullough writes for an ordinary audience that's accessible to ordinary people. then i get to college, and i read gordon wood's work. so here's now takes that -- autobiographical. that's how i got into this. i do think the national constitution center is a great public space and i really got to know gordon when he was the founder really of the academic board. >> so you start very young, but let's say you didn't have such parents. let's say you