president. >> he was in the boat of the progrezive -- >> i think both president eisenhower and nixon were moderate by today's standards. the gop has evolved considerably. what would they think of the current crop of gop candidates? >> that's what you call a loaded question. >> aren't they amazing in the sense that think of the pressure they are under with the dwalts. the ones who are still standing can get out there and answer complicated questions week after week. we have never put candidates through this before. >> the people have dropped out of this.

>> right. >> i mean, no. yes. some of them, yes. not all of them. i really don't -- here is -- seriously. >> i really think politicians are to be admired for the most part because you don't run unless you really believe in things and you are willing to put something on the line and you have got to admire that. >> they are all picking up on partisan divisions and picking up on what i would say a kind of a tone or a frantic quality one thing that is different about politics today than some years ago and i think it's something that we have got think about is that our parties are very evenly

balanced. one reason that sizen hour and johnson and nixon and john kennedy 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. they will reach out for minority support in passing the civil rights act. i think he got three quarters of the republican house supporting a bill that divided the democratic caucus 50/50 because of the size of the national majority. i think that the incentives right now we are going through the phase here. they are not to reach across the

aisle but to 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 have decided back then. huge landslide in 1964. we had decisive elections. very close for an incumbent president. immediately taken aback by the

popular republicans. americans just have not quite resolved the competing. >> both of your grandfather became elder statesmans in their winter needs. what council would they give members of the gop today given 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. when you assume responsibility for the direction of this great country. i think we have all experienced this. i feel a presence of the johnson white house in the building. you have been here many times. julie, same thing. i think we all had an experience where it occurred to us walking into the white house.

that's the campaign direction that this will take. many, many interesting ideas are on the stable now. brought forth ideas and i think it has brought forth much more constructive approach to these ideas. we are discussing things in detail now in our political press that we were not -- that were idealogical matters. i think this election is rounding in the form. i think we will have a great debate. >> i also think the american people really want to see bipartisanship working together

as the democrats or republicans did in the 50s and 60s more? i think sure we want to stand on our principles. it is disturbing when the party goes down party lines and no one is allowed to veer off. i don't know. it is like -- 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, just everyone to follow the line. just 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 things to do.

i am just wishing them well. >> yes. >> every election we have had has always been the most important to date. there is a special feeling about this election. i think we are all riveted. we are discussing and finding ways to discuss the future direction of the country. i think what we are looking for is some kind of verdict. i think that when that happens, and that did happen during the

new deal it accounts for much of our statesmanship in that period. the private sector. and for america's responsibilities in the world. we had a consensus in this period. i think what has happened is that consensus has broken down. >> we have questions in the audience.

>> as far as i know i looked at the idea that we have to somehow regulate and control expenditures. i think it is difficult to imagine what an individual would try to make of the circumstances he is now now.

but history gives us confidence in the future. it is not in anyway binding on american today. the fact that his leadership generation overcame the challenges in their time. ideas contend in this country and they all get a fair hearing and we can all vote. >> was his farewell address warning the american people about -- the growing power of

the military industrial complex. how does that speech look today? do you think he was misunderstand? do you think he didn't get it right? >> i think a lot of people thought that he was. >> this is the beauty of presidential libraries. i sent students to study jnson's speeches. this was one of the best planned speeches ever delivered and one of the greatest. the first 13 or 14 drafts, i think, it's fair to say.

so the whole effort to kind of in the drafts becomes something else begins to take back and qualify this paragraph. and the entire focus of the fair well shifts that is how can the

world grow as fast as we have sips 1890. how can we develop as rapidly economically as we have. how can we reconcile this matchless technology progress that we have head with the horrors of the 20th century. it is something in contemporary light that places our political processes beyond our control. how do you account for this? then i think his answer was the thans we see today.

and that is there is no way the main thing is that the american democracy will always rely on its alert citizenry. i would say the internet is making that possible. perhaps higher earlier. it was a timeless lesson. derived from the experience of that generation. i don't think it necessarily applies to anything. i think he meant this is a

military industrial complex. these institutions serve us. they spring from. >> we have one type of one more question. co-r do you have plans to write another book together and tell us a little bit about what you're doing now. >> we are going to write another book together. >> some years ago.

that book not only has a working title. it also exists in about 1300 pages of draft. >> but anyway, in other words -- in other words -- >> you get the point. >> we had a lot of laughs. >> thank you for your hospit hospitali hospitality. i told my students every semester -- >> this is a lively place. i think this is -- it is a

research experience that people can have. this is a terrific institution. >> i want to thank you all for coming. 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, moderating a discussion on the issues and challenges of teaching constitutional history.

at this event from a day long teaching on america's founding on the university of oklahoma. this is a little over an hour. >> i think we should begin by thanking david for this extraordinary day. as i understand it, he simply picks up the phone and gives it to david and says come out to the university of oklahoma. any of the wonderful minds sitting on the stage.

the t focus is on teaching the u.s. constitutional history hitting the 21st century. i love of having his sick hero learn the names of the 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 all of its inclusions and everything that was left out from 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, export iing 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. so i start with each of you asking you, considering the fact that you are so excited about your topic. what has happened to the interest in learning about the constitution? where have we as adults, where

have professors, where have teachers somehow fallen down on 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 mccoullough. [ applause ] >> 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 -- [ applause ] >> 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 if there's a problem with the education today in the country, it's with us. we, who are fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers. [ applause ] >> that's how you would --

>> if i were teaching a course, 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, and 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. and 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. >> well, 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. and it also is something that we set aside when i was a boy and when many of you were in school as viveks. and 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. now, i blame gordon wood for that because his book was so great that nobody bothered to study the subject anymore. so i think we've 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 that akeel said earlier. the first thing to say is everybody knows we live in an 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, geopolitically. war explains a lot. he talks about a state of war, that moment of origins. i think we need to recover a sense of the contingency and of the failures 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 faster. but i think the new way of

thinking globally about the generation of the founders and the challenges they faced abroad and at home with the threat of war 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. and it's in that context that i think we can begin to recover what these human beings did. they're great achievements and they're great failures. >> all right. i'll turn to kyle harper, who is director of the institute for american constitutional heritage. tell me your approach. >> well, i think one of the

exciting things about teaching college is that you're teaching adults and you're teaching kid was are becoming adults, and you're not just teaching them facts. you're not just asking them to memorize when an amendment was ratified. you're not teaching facts. you're actually also teaching them to become citizens. and i think if you embed practices of citizenship inside the classroom, that you can not only achieve greater results in your teaching but you can actually excite them and engage them to take what they learn inside the classroom into their lives as citizens. to me that means creating situations for debate and civil discussions in a way that make them realize the facts on the page actually influence and deeply impact their religious lives. so whether it's religious freedom or privacy, whatever it is, these are issues with a history and history actually matters particularly when it comes to the constitution in a way that profoundly will shape the world that they live in. so giving them a chance not just

to 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 that i think 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" -- there's so many -- from my -- >> can you hold that microphone in front. >> from my 6-year-old to my undergraduates to my law students, there are 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 mt.