tv programs at our website, c-span.org/history. a generation before president john f. kennedy, acting on behalf of a grateful nation, designated him an honorary american citizen, winston churchill paid his own heart-felt tribute to his transatlantic origins. appearing before a joint session of congress on the day after christmas 1941, he puckishly reserved i cannot help reflecting that if my father had been american and my mother british, instead of the other way around, i might have got here on my own. today outside the british embassy on massachusetts avenue churchill literally bestrides two nations, with one bronze foot plant on british soil and the other on american. this pleased the old man himself to no end.

had the statue was announced on his 89th birthday, the honorary american said i feel it will rest happily and securely on both feet. controversy arose over the sculptor william mcvay's depiction of the wartime minister, not because of his defiant stance and the right hand raise and the trademark "v" for victory salute. it was the other churchill icon, the cigar in his left hand, that offended some of the english-speaking union, the organization responsible for the sculptor. in the end authenticity and the cigar won out. unveiled a year after churchill's death in 1965, the figure seems even larger than its 9-foot dimensions would indicate. almost half a century on, winston churchill still manages to dominate his surroundings. >> by the way, i can not help but reflecting that if my father had been american and my mother british, instead of the other way around, i might have got here on my own. [ laughter ]

why do we study first ladies? that was the question posed and answered at a conference titled "america's first ladies, an enduring vision." the conference was the second of three planned at presidential libraries in texas and was convened at the george w. bush presidential center in dallas. over the next hour, a panel moderated by abc news correspondent cokie roberts considers the role and influence of first ladies throughout history. >> now as a student of the presidency, i've been in presidential libraries for most of my life, i continue to be fascinated with and impressed by our first ladies, and we have one of the best here with us already today, mrs. barbara bush will be here later, and how fortunate we and the whole nation have been to be blessed with her service. the same is so true when we remember the service of another incredible first lady from texas, lady bird johnson. looking back at history of the other first ladies, can you see

how the office has been molded by truly amazing women like dolly madison, julia grant and edith wilson and, of course, the modern first ladies represented and are now our 13 presidential libraries. volumes have been and will continue to be written about their influence on the nation and on the world, how they have been agents of change for the better. i know that today's conference and this series of conferences will add to our understanding and appreciation of the vital role of the first ladies. so i want to thank you again for joining us. as you heard earlier, the next conference in this series is november 15th at the johnson library, so make sure you join us there as well. i now want to introduce our first panel. it's titled "influence-makers, first ladies through american history" and our panelists include first catherine allgor, a noted historian at the university of california riverside whose books focus on some of my favorite first ladies, present company excluded.

her book on dolly madison was nominated for the prestigious george washington book prize, and she's currently working a biography of louisa adams. she's written "parlor politics" in which the ladies of washington helped build a city and a government. next we are fortunate, very fortunate to have on our panel allida black, executive editor of the fdr for freedom initiative. she served as professor of history and international affairs at george washington university and is founding editor and advisory board chair of the eleanor roosevelt's paper project. education, and we're so grateful she could be here today, and we hope you come back and join us often, allida. the same is the same for our third panelist, amity shlaes who serves as director of the george w. bush institution for

progress. she's also a syndicated columnist for bloomberg news and author of a forthcoming book on calvin coolidge that will be the definitive biography of that very definitive body and overlooked president, an economics history we're very lucky to have amity as part of our panel, and finally we have our moderator cokie roberts. cokie, as i'm sure you all know, is an internationally acclaimed journalist who has won so many awards, including three emmys, she's in the broadcasting and cable hall of fame and was cited by american radio and television as one of the 50 greatest women in the history broadcasting. she's the author of two works that are especially relevant to our topic today, "founding mothers" and "ladies of liberty." cokie, it's a real honor to have you here, and with that i'll turn the proceedings over to you. thank you, thank you so much. thank you. >> well, what a treat it is to be here. mrs. bush, so good to see you, and mrs. collins, an old, old friend, dee collins, from many years in washington, and these two women are out of a great tradition of the women who come

as the adjuncts, really dumb term, to the men who make them, often make trouble and the women make it better, and the -- the ad that anita read, i was thinking at the end where it says the united states is an equal opportunity employer, actually not until a guy has to do all of those things and then we'll see how it goes. but the truth is the people are really so ignorant about the roles of first ladies and the jobs the first ladies have done throughout our history. so our little panel here is designed to try to shed some light and reduce some of that degree of ignorance, because there's an idea, and allida is an expert on eleanor roosevelt, and there's this sense that before eleanor roosevelt, first

ladies was sitting around and tending to the tatting, you know, pouring tea. >> exactly. >> and that couldn't be further from the truth, and even since eleanor roosevelt, there's a sense of not really being clear on who was doing what, and so -- and mrs. bush, you always complained that when your husband was elected, people said to you are you going to be barbara bush or hillary clinton, and, you know, i'd like to be laura bush, which, of course, you are and have been wonderfully, but, you know, there's always that thing that goes on, too. in fact, i -- i read that bess truman realized coming in after eleanor roosevelt, she said i feel like elizabeth monroe coming in after dolly madison which was, you know, very historically accurate for her in a lot of ways, but cat, you don't mind if i call you your

nickname. >> absolutely. >> you and i have both written about, you've written much more at length, that period of the founding, and, you know, martha washington we know was active politically and in terms of policy. you know, lobbying for the veterans benefits for the revolutionary war veterans she had been to camp with for the eight long years of the revolution, and abigail adams probably gives -- is the rule-breaker in terms of bringing civility. she was kind of causing troubles of her own, but dolly madison, dolly madison was really a figure in american politics that people don't have a really good sense of. >> yes, and i have to say something nice about martha washington. >> it's easy to do. i liked martha. >> she's a very nice lady. >> mary washington, not so much. >> i think she wouldn't disagree if we sort of mentioned that she didn't have a taste for the

role, right? so she said she at some point felt like a priss for. >> state prisoner. >> state prisoner, but she acknowledged right away that there was something going on, that she understood that the american experiment was more than just politics or politics in a different way and she began right away even though she didn't care for it and would rather be home at mt. vernon, she wondered about protocol and in her own established different protocols. the founders understood it's not enough to have a constitution and a set of laws, we needed to remake life, life in an american way, and the ladies of that class talked about forming what they called american manners, and by manners they didn't mean

tea cups and what fork to use but a way of being and a way of treating each other she went some way towards that. as you graciously pointed out abigail adams not so much. more like a traditional, almost like a political partner to her husband. she was interested in ideas and politics, so it's not -- >> loved the sedition laws. >> sadly, we can point to her influence in policy in sedition laws. it's not really until dolly madison comes to washington in 1801 as the wife of james madison, secretary of state, that we begin to see a real political animal as first lady. she did have a taste for the job, and she establishes so many things that we now associate with the first lady, being the commander, if you will, of what we call the unofficial sphere of politics, the social sphere, the connection to the white house, the sort of role as the charismatic figure, and i must say i sympathize with everybody who followed her because everybody felt that onus of being like dolly madison. she just set so much up in place. >> and essentially remained

first lady, even after her successors came in. she ruled over washington for decades. >> yes. i was first drawn to dolly madison because she was so famous, and i didn't really understand that because i grew up in philadelphia so dolly madison ice cream, and i -- i watched those charlie brown christmas specials, dolly madison cakes and pies, and then -- >> i actually made a dolly madison cake on the martha stewart show, and martha stewart kept slapping my hand because i kept going to talk instead of making the cake. >> cokie, you have the most varied career. i cannot cop to baking anything, let me just say that right now, but i wondered about this fame that to discover indeed by the end of her life, we actually have photographs of her, because she lived long enough to be photographed, that she became this icon and relic of the republic. that's when i understood that first ladies have the capacity to personify, if they so choose, and this is a pattern in american women in politics, famous or not.

there's sort of two things. one is that there are women, real people, who actually do things, but then there's this also secondary capacity of being a personifying figure, charismatic figure, and i think many a first lady has come to becoming first lady, and realizing that this thing was sort of larger than life, and that was something that dolly figured out, so she bucks a figurehead for her husband's administration. now you know james is not terribly charismatic. >> no, and also very short. >> very short. he didn't have that personifying capacity, and she makes the white house into a symbol, and she fosters the attachment to the capital city, and all of this is happening in 1808. she doesn't know this, but in 1848 the british are going to burn the capital city, and all of this work that she put into helping the public identify with this how is that they called the white house under her term is going to pay off because it's going to give the surge of nationalism around the war. >> allida, you've written about

all of the first ladies for the white house historical society, and so picking up from dolly, did you see them sort of carrying this theme through? >> well, yes, but they made it their own in a different way, and i think that -- i have to say as an aside that i love cat, and this is the first time we've ever talked in public together instead of shooting e-mails back and forth and talking on the phone for hours. she's never heard me say this. >> thank you. >> i think that what you've done to set the tone for all of us is really remarkable work, and you haven't gotten enough credit for it. >> thank you. >> i mean -- >> i would say that -- that if i could tweak that a little bit and bring it in broad brush up to today is that what these

women have done have shown amazing courage because they are calm in times when the country is going crazy. i mean, there's just no other word for it, crazy. because there's intense eruption in partisan politics right after dolly, you know, but then we really are breaking into politics which is a jugular sport, you know, which i thought we had gotten rid of it, if i may be personal for a moment. >> at least we're not shooting each other. >> exactly. >> in that period they were. >> in that period they were caning each other in the halls of congress. they were pulling guns out and shooting at each other, and so if you were looking at whether it's, you know, a war with native americans or american indians, whether you're looking at the civil war, whether you're looking -- going counter-historically, whether you're looking at the war of 1812 or you've got huge economic depressions where the country is

literally falling apart and there is no cash, i mean, there's no common currencies between states. there's no sense of a union at all, and so what these women do, regardless of the period that they are in, you know, have done what you did so -- i don't know the adjective for. >> beautifully. >> it's too calm. i mean, what you did was you lifted us up, you know. >> right. >> i mean, you did. and that -- you can't write that in a job description, and you sure can't go into the role expecting that's going to be your job. nobody told eleanor roosevelt she was going to be in a foxhole. nobody told eleanor roosevelt she was going to fly in uninsulated military aircraft and spend five weeks on 17 islands in war time and have her

ear drums shattered and go deaf in one ear because she's -- you know, she's flying through shooting ballistic for that time missiles. i mean, you can't prepare for this. >> and once she did that, the -- the generals who had initially been very hesitant to have her do that saw what a huge difference she made in troop morale like martha did. >> absolutely. >> and said please come back. >> absolutely. and they went on record in both the press and in their memoirs saying it was their single biggest miscalculation of the war was to oppose her visit. and so i think you can't train for that. i mean, we can talk about policy. we can talk about politics, but the thing to me that is so remarkable about the women who have assumed this position is how much guts they have, how much brains they have and

stamina that is just beyond imagination and a willingness to rise above it and just do it. you know, there's no time for what my beloved pat summitt would call a pity party, you know, and i think that's it. >> amity, that sort of really gets to, you've got a book coming out on coolidge, and grace coolidge was quoted as saying you just do it, and, you know, of course, i think that's true about women in general. we put one foot in front of the other, but she -- she had not been part of her husband's political life. he had really excluded her from his political life, and suddenly he becomes vice president and she is in washington big time. >> yes, yes, that's right, cokie, and what do you just do when the war is not on, the rest of the time of being first lady when there's not a crisis. when i look at grace and the two

people i'll mention who came after her, mrs. hoover and maybe mrs. bush as well, you look what they did, what they did was education, very, very often, they turn to that. so you have someone in grace's case, she was the first first lady who graduated from a co-ed state school. she graduated from the university of vermont, and she actually had this bit of professional trade training to teach the deaf, so she was incredible. >> and when she started dating cal, one of her friends said to her, you taught the deaf to hear. maybe you can teach the mute to speak. >> right, and she had a marital challenge of an intensely internalized, introverted president, but remember, too, that the deaf and blind in that period were not as today.

people looked away. disabilities were negative. it was -- and she brought them into society. she brought them to the white house. helen keller came to the white house. that was a very important moment for the deaf and blind that the first lady would recognize them and integrate them, and she had a great personality so she could draw out anyone. she was the opposite of the president, and she made that her work. i was thinking, too, of mrs. hoover who loved reading and who enabled readers and did enabling of reading all her life. >> she was head of the girl scouts. >> she was head of the girl scouts so she's always thinking how to train up and lead out. she and president hoover translated "the race metallica" from latin and i think she contributed a lot of that, having gone over coolidge's college record, i know this at stanford, and she brought readers to the white house, and i was just reading a story, when

her back was out once and she had to lie down, and there were some new learners, adult lit have i people from the mountains who did not know how to read until adulthood who came to see her. and she was so sick, but she nonethelesssick. she nonetheless received them upstairs. she knew it was important for them to meet the first lady, even if the first lady wasn't doing too well. don't read trash. read the great works. she was always there with that in the background for president hoover, for these projects and with scouting. a lot of the presidents did scouting. it was wonderful. and i notice that with mrs. bush because i'm a reader, too. just observing the book festival and the literacy project and to have another librarian there. i think the first librarian was alabama gayle fillmore.

she had worked as a schoolteacher. the people who read the books or learn the things are better able to handle the miranda warnings. emergencies. >> many think they're going to do this and then life happens. and i want to come back to that and bit. but on the theme of education, even there it can be something different than you expect. so for instance with mrs. johnson, she was always interested in education. but with the great society and the war on poverty and all of that, people started coming forward saying that's what

really needed here is early childhood education. now we know we need really early childhood education. so she started head start, and it turned out to be not that easy. >> this was the one question. i love this and i never get to talk about it. >> i follow the instructions. but when ambassador boggs was find enough to let me interview her, we were talking about different policies. and i am passionate about education. so she started telling me the story of how head start actually got implemented. the program had been authorized. so it was spend the money or lose it. mrs. johnson called his mama and they called betty ford. and the three of them went to blare house. and they had phones put in blare house just for the three of

them. and they called every minister and every bus driver that they knew from campaign trails, because they had a week, a week, to get the program up and running. and so what they did is they said, okay, we'll use these buses, the churches and different schools will end us their buses. and that's how head start money first got spent, and the kids got to the classrooms. and there's a point of this. it's ingenuity. it's paying attention. and it's bipartisanship, and it's friendship, focusing on an area of expertise that's good for the country. it's a model we all should follow.

>> i had the great honor last summer of speaking at mrs. ford's funeral when she asked me what to do and told me what to say. because she wanted me to talk about that time when everybody was together. and dolly madison did that. she brought -- -- that's where everything happened. and so they had to show up. >> yeah, and i think at this moment as i'm listening to both of you. i'm sort of thinking in big themes because i'm a professor and there will be a test at the end of this. and i think to myself, why do we study first ladies. and we don't do it just because it's nice. and we don't do it just because they are there. we see things and we pay attention to things that we wouldn't if we just paid attention to the initial fear. legislation and debates, press

releases. so i'm seeing these stories so eleanor roosevelt is contributing to something called psychological politics, which are maybe the only politics that there are. and against. but that was only vocabulary of power. when it came time to legislate

miz this brand new nations. they wanted that aristocracy. john adams is arguing to call him my highness. in the end we called him president. but in the end we didn't. we call him mr. president. but his wife became lei di washington. and his wife became queen dolly or the presidentess. she answered the need for legitimacy and authority that we needed. >> but also. it was always a tug of which, which every first lady has gone through. you have to be elegant enough and glamorous enough. not just personally but as a style of the white house. so people look up to it and see a sense of royalty.

martha washington knew that. when she arrived in new york, as much as she loved her satins and silks, she arrived wearing homespu homespun. >> she also had lovely white gowns to signal the roman republic. she combined lavished outfits. pink satins and things that look suspiciously like a crown. tiara. some of them. but she had this down home quality sweetness. there wasn't a word for that in the early republic. these are people who thought one party should rule. unfortunately two groups of people fight this. they didn't have a sense of working together. it was going to be the hallmark

of democracy with two parties. dolly madison knew it would be to bring people together, make them behave and let them begin to see each other as people of good heart. not caricatures of evil. at the time washington didn't really exist. so we're in the boardinghouses with people who thought exactly like them. and so they didn't have the discussions with other people who might not be exactly like minded, except in social settings. >> dolly madison is famous for redecorating the white house. but what she did was really restructure it.

and it was. before there was no place in washington where everybody could meet, including the members of the government. >> in talking about this, i alluded to mrs. bush's situation. so education is what she thought she would be doing. she was on her way to capitol hill to brief the education committee. and all the sudden another set of issues come out. in this case, the women of afghanistan. the women of the world. >> you look at the situation and respond and you have to turn on a dime. that's the amazing thing. we watched mrs. bush do this. and identify with president bush that women were important to democracy in the middle east.