general douglas macarthur foundation who have been instrumental in helping with the financial side of things and with being -- various resourcing and things like that. couldn't have done it without you. all of our authors will be doing book signings in the book shop. the memorial and visitors center is open until 5:00. i just want to say once again, folks, thank you all for coming. i hope you enjoyed this event as much as i have. i hope you got a good sense of who we are and what we do. for all of you whether this is your first time or hundredth coming here we hope to see you again real soon. thanks everybody. thanks for a couple great days.

>> we've been live on american history tv from the world war i centennial symposium at the macarthur memorial in norfolk, virginia. we'll reair the day's events this evening at 8:00 eastern here on c-span 3. up next constitutional law professor michael gere hardt talks about his book the forgotten presidents and discusss 13 presidents least remembered by americans due in large part to their strict constitutional vision. the national constitution center hosted this event and it runs about an hour and 10 minutes. >> this book is spectacular. i was so excited to read it this book on the forgotten presidents. what michael has done is take a topic which seems like a parlor

game, these obscure presidents we don't remember well, and revealed that the constitution was at the center both of their failures, devotion to a particular constitutional vision but also that their failures laid the groundwork for the success of more powerful presidents. this is a constitution saturated book. it is so on mission, so fresh. it teaches us so much. i cannot wait to discuss it. let me introduce my friend michael gerhardt and remind you to turn off your cell phones and write your questions on the cards we will pass along which we will take a little bit into the conversation. michael gere hardt is the samuel ash distinguished professor of constitutional law and director of the university of north carolina center on law and government. he's the author of five books including the power of precedent. that is another wonderful book where michael really showed us how judicial precedence are as

central an interpretive method cxsgsufcxds ology for the supreme court as the more familiar methods including text and original understanding. the financial times has named "the forgotten presidents" as one of the best books of 2013 as it undoubtedly is. michael has advised congressional and white house officials on many constitutional issues including judicial nominations, impeachment, and the filibuster. he has participated in no fewer than five supreme court confirmation hearings and was in the historic hearing on the background and history of impeachment in conjunction with the consideration by the supreme court of the impeachment of president clinton. please join me in welcoming michael gerhardt. [ applause] >> it's such an honor to welcome you to the constitutional center, michael. let's begin by asking why you decided to write this book. >> a great question. let me say at the outset i

really appreciate the chance to be here. jeff would know as a fellow constitutional law professor, this is mecca for us. this is the greatest place to be. i'm sort of in awe of this place. i'm moving my office here later today. >> please do. >> this is something that obviously comes close to our heart. why this book as you well know and were just talking about, a lot of what i've doven over the years is not just write books which is an important -- important in doing research in constitutional law but i've also taken very seriously an opportunity to consult with particularly congressional leaders. in the course of that consulting work, and i've encountered a lot of questions of constitutional law. one thing i kept encountering is i looked at things like the conflicts between presidents and congress and how much of that work -- one doesn't

involve court but number two how much of it turns on history people don't know. a lot of what i ended up working on often times were things like who made the most recent appointments in the 19th century? a fairly interesting, significant question sometimes. and it turns out nobody knows the answer to that question until now. and i thought it would be interesting to bring all that work together and look at it from the perspective of what is the teacher of the constitution and the presidency. >> we do have a strong cell phone law and we will debate it tomorrow unless you turn off your cell phone. please. thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen. [ laughter] >> that is a very good reason to write this book. what you learned is tremendously useful, the debate over president obama's use of the appointment power is now informed by history you've uncovered here. you also have a great way to

identify a forgotten president. what does it take? >> take a poll of this room. >> exactly. >> there was actually a poll at my dinner table to see who remembered what. my kids are small so every president is forgotten for them. or unknown maybe is more accurate. >> you did say your son was quizzing you on truman's vice president. >> my son noah would like to quiz me on trivia about presidents. that's how i got trained to do the book. so i had to think a lot of different ways how do you measure what is a forgotten president? and so in the course of trying to figure out that question, i went through a lot of different possibilities and ended up seizing on a few. one of them was for example looking at the history books that are used in middle school and high school. turns out north carolina state has a wonderful library there with all the books used in school. and so we went and read every line of every history book, encoded them to figure out which presidents were mentioned the least.

we even have a chart on the back as to who comes out at the bottom of that. then we also looked at major research libraries. what books did they carry? what books don't they carry? again, we determined who is at the bottom? who's at the top? we came up with a ranking of presidents basically. who is the most remembered? i'll ask you that in a second. who is the least remembered? and it's pretty clear. each makes sense. >> we have amazing discussions just last week with jeffrey ward, the coauthor of the spectacular f.d.r. series and the author of my favorite presidential biography of a remembered president. is he the most remembered president? >> he is close. it turns out it's lincoln. but of course roosevelt is way near the top and maybe after this wonderful documentary he'll be back on top. so it's usually lincoln, roosevelt, and washington are the top three to some extent in that order though washington might end up being second. >> great.

what we have, 13 presidents with the distinction of being forgot ep although one appears twice and that is grover cleveland who is forgotten for separate reasons. >> doubley forgotten. >> i'd like to just go through them because they have such powerful constitutional legacies in turn. let's begin with martin van buren. >> yes. >> and he had a rather distinctive constitutional vision, which was associated with the jacksonian party. it was in sharp distinction to the w.i.g. constitutional vision. tell us what the jacksonian-w.i.g. vision was for. >> i'll try to keep you as awake as possible as i do this. >> no. it's interesting. >> as i listen to this it may be useful to think about how it may resonate with how we approach the constitution today. for the jacksonians i think there were a couple things very central. one was the idea of the president being the only elected official in our entire

system of government actually elected by all the people of the united states. if you think of one person being representative of all the people, jackson's approach was to say, it's going to be the president. i think most if not every president thinks that way today. in addition to that, jacksonians believe very strongly in small "d" democracy. of course they were also big "d" democrats. they brought into government the idea that the people should rule, have critical say about how government is run. those are central to the jacksonians. the w.i.g.'s were formed in part because they hated the jacksonians. that should be familiar to all of you. they especially hated jackson. they also felt that much of what i just said to you was completely false. they thought jackson was a dictator. they thought jackson was a tyrant. the idea that the president could be that powerful and that uniquely, attempting to consolidate a lot of power to

himself and claim some authority over the other branches, they thought that was wrong, corrupting, and they opposed that. the second thing they opposed was the idea of factions. they didn't like the y do that somehow the jacksonians could represent factions. an additional reason is they simply felt they wanted -- they formed themselves in part because they wanted to become a platform for henry clay. so he could then use that to defeat jackson and become president. so there was some self-interest of course as well. >> great. so tell us why jackson failed in defending or rather why van buren failed in defending the jacksonian view of executive power and in fighting congressional oversight. >> van buren comes into office of course right after jackson. he had been jackson's vice president and jackson's second term. so you can think of van buren as jackson's third term. the problem mostly was he wasn't jackson. so he couldn't bring to the job all of the different skills and

really sort of powerful personality that jackson had. so van buren came into office with the objective of trying to extend what jackson had done. that would include a strong presidency. it would also include sort of trying to force his will upon congress. and each of those things is very difficult because people generally dislike van buren. they thought of him as the shady, somewhat corrupt character. he didn't have the forceful personality of jackson. much of his life he was actually called the red fox. he had red hair and was supposed to be very crafty. they called him the red fox because they couldn't pin him down on what he thought and believed. so as president, suddenly he found himself having to believe things. having to take strong stands. for van buren that wasn't easy. he couldn't marshal a lot of support to do it. ultimately what happens is he gets his preferred legislation through congress. it's not very effective. he is trying to solve the nation's first depression. a pretty big problem. and he's doing it on the basis

of the jacksonian sort of philosophy, which was essentially the federal government didn't have much power to do this. so that's a quandary to be in. you got a massive depression. you don't think you can do much at the federal level. what they did is essentially pass a law that involves the creation of what is called an independent treasury, not the same thing as we have today and it didn't do much to relieve the depression and therefore he got voted out of office because he backed failed policies. >> so it's not a modern view of power. the jacksonians of van buren believed in a strong presidency but not a strong federal government. >> right. >> and the w.i.g.'s believed in a powerful congress. >> right. >> but also a constrained congress as well. >> right. and also they believed in a weak president. so in a sense they were very much the inverses of each other. so the w.i.g.'s would have preferred a very strong policy coming from congress and the

president simply to do what congress wanted. that's not going to work out either. but with van buren, you've got somebody who turns out to be, to believe in a very modest role for dealing with financial matters. and to some extent there are still folks that believe that. probably less than the democratic party, though. that was the case in the 19th century. with van buren, he ended up not being very innovative, either. because he was -- in those days the conservatives would have been the van buren crowd. just every solution for them was a very modest and small one. and when you're dealing with depression that's a hard road to take. >> one thing that comes powerfully in your book is that the more constitutionally minded the presidents are, the less politically effective they were. you have a quote of van buren saying the principle and the high duty to which my country

calls me is strict adherence to the constitution as it was designed by those who framed it. to what degree was he an originalist and what degree did that contribute to his failure? >> i think it contributes to some extent. he certainly believed of course what you just read. he believed that the federal government had very limited power. it's interesting. one of the patterns i found doing the book, which was interesting to me a great deal was how many historians dismissed these presidents as weak and ineffective. i don't think i see it that way. oftentimes i found them stronger and somewhat effective but mostly what i found is they would take fairly strong stands at political risks. so here is van buren taking a fairly strong stand. look, we've got limited federal power to deal with this. and then having to deal with the political con quenss of that. had he been much, let's say craftier or much more small "p" political he might have figured just figure out a way to appease everybody politically,

maybe that'll work and maybe not. he was willing to take the heat for doing something because of a constitutional principle which is i don't believe in federal power very much here. therefore when the federal problem persisted, the depression, he was going to be the person blamed for it, and he took the blame. >> great. okay. our next failed president is william henry harrison. not surprising he lasted a month? >> 31 days. >> a limited opportunity for tremendous success. you say, nevertheless, in those 31 days he contributed something important, which was a growing resistance to the w.i.g. notion of congressional supremacy and an understanding that the president actually had to take an independent stand. tell us about that achievement. >> well, maybe one thing everybody can think of as we go through this discussions who is the least remembered president so at the end we'll reveal who it is. and a great and strong candidate for that is william henry harrison. having been president for 31 days. he was the first candidate nominated for president, first

successful candidate nominated and he wins the presidency and therefore is the first w.i.g. president. the expectation is from henry clay and others that harrison would be very weak, that is to say somebody who oo do the bidding of the w.i.g. party. if harrison wanted something he would do it. from the day harrison is elected to the day of his inauguration is almost like a come call sort of es -- comical sort of escapade where clay is chasing harrison around the country trying to nail him down on certain appointments and certain policies and harrison is resisting which is an interesting response from somebody. when they do talk, harrison resists saying to clay, oh, i'll do what you want. by the time harrison is inaugurated, though he dies

very shortly thereafter, he is barely speaking to clay. two weeks into his presidency, clay leaves town. they're so alienated. now, that's again a very odd thing to expect from somebody who is a w.i.g. president and a w.i.g. -- the w.i.g. leader in congress was clay. they weren't talking to each other. harrison was beginning to realize the weak presidency was not going to work so much. at one point he even says to clay, look. i'm the president. you go to your end of the pennsylvania avenue and we'll keep it that way. clay wasn't happy about that. >> his grandfather had a similar moment when the cabinet tried to impose a choice on him, stood up and said, i'm the president. >> right. and so both william harrison and benjamin harrison are in the book and both are forgotten but both came into office thinking they'd be -- came into

office from parties that wanted weak presidents. they took a principled stand which was at least at the time being strong and strongly resisting congressional pressure, resisting being told what to do basically and saying, no, i'm going to protect the prerogatives of this office. for william henry harrison that meant i will determine my appointments, not congress. it also meant he would determine when to call special session of congress on the depression and when not. those were big issues in those days. harrison wanted to take the lead on them, which cut right at the heart of the w.i.g. philosophy which was to defer to congress. >> was the debate between jacksonians and the w.i.g.'s on constitutional issues similar to that between the tea party and man stream republican and democrats today? >> to some extent. i mean, you don't want to overstate the similarity, but i think to some extent especially if what you're talking about is trying to go back to first principle. if your first principles are for example for at least some tea party folks maybe let's go back to really limited federal government, that may mean no department of education, let's limit what we can do under the

commerce clause, and sort of draw back a good deal. that's to some extent where you find van buren. >> the strong conclusion of this book is the presidents who embrace that limited view of presidential and ultimately federal power failed. >> well, they failed, but again, not for -- it's not for a lack of principle. it is actually i think the book suggests they're failing because of a principle they're trying to defend. it's just not a popular principle. and it turns out sometimes the principle doesn't produce policy that is either effective or again popular. >> so the people want an energetic executive. >> that seems to be a theme that we run into time and time again. which is, well, people want to see things get done. so if there is a problem, they want to see it solved. sometimes they want the president to be part of that. and so one thing that these presidents have in common is they either don't solve the

problem or they defend some principles which turn out to be not properly within their party or within the more general electorate. >> great. let's turn now to tyler, john tyler, most famous as you said for resolving the question of whether the vice president becomes president on the death of the president and there was a dispute as you note over whether the phrase of the constitution that says that in the case of removal of the president from office or of his death the same shall devolve on the vice president and the question is whether "the same" refers to the office of the president and his duties. how was that resolved in the case of tyler? >> tyler stood his ground. tyler is not even in washington when harrison dies. that's how fast that happened. harrison basically gets sick on the day of his inauguration and he goes downhill from there. which by the way is also interesting because everything we said about harrison you have to think about the fact he's dying as this is going on. he's taking these rather strong stands at the same time his health is deteriorating.

he dies. tyler is at home. tyler figures, i better get to washington. he figures out on the way he is actually a good lawyer, out of william & mary which has produced other good lawyers like john marshall, and by the time he gets to washington he's got a plan. his plan is i'm going to take the oath of office and become president of the united states. we'd all listen to that and think, yeah. that makes sense. very few people he is encountering when he gets there think that way. his entire cabinet says to him, actually harrison's cabinet, you're not the president. you're the acting president. or you're the vice president acting as president. but you're not the president. tyler basically says, and he's got almost a speech he reads to the cabinet, but basically says to them, no. i am the president and if you don't like that, you can leave. they have this stare down. tyler prevails. but not long thereafter his entire cabinet except for one resigns in protest. because they don't like the fact that he's actually trying

to be president. not only he takes the oath but he tries to be president. the next four years he has some of the most active presidency of anybody in history. he is encountering resistance everywhere he turns. so his presidency is constitutionally quite rich. he's the first president for example where there is a formal attempt to impeach him. they try to get information from the president, house tries to get information from him on appointments and other things. so he writes these seminole documents resisting all of these different things congress is doing to push against him. by the way, i should mention at this point he is supposed to be a w.i.g. he's resisting congress at every turn. now you have two presidents in a row who are supposed to be w.i.g.'s neither of whom was very popular with the w.i.g.'s. tyler began his presidency as a friend of henry clay. you know where this is going. by the end of it, clay doesn't like him either. so the w.i.g.'s are getting very fed up with all of these

people supposed to be their person not becoming their person but instead taking a really strong stance oftentimes to consolidate presidential power. >> tyler you say fought more with congress than any previous president, more vetoes than jackson, more nominees rejected. was the core of the debate his strict constructionism and his notion that state sovereignty is the default rule? >> part of it was his flossie. not just philosophy but also something else. here the fact he is not really elected in his own right and tyler i should have said when he becomes harrison's vice president, had to leave his political party to do that. he had been in a big "d" democrat. he becomes harrison's vice president. then he becomes president. w.i.g.'s are thinking maybe he's one of us but they don't really trust him. that was actually quite

accurate. they end up not liking him either. he ends up alienating both parties. some of what's going on especially with the senate is they're not happy. tyler is not doing what they want, not giving them the patronage they want and he is trying to protect the president's prerogative to name the folks he would prefer. the people he is naming are not hacks at all but perfectly reputable oftentimes -- he makes nine nominations to fill two slots to the supreme court and gets only one confirmed. and all of those nominees by everybody's account are quite well qualified. it is very much a power struggle. he is losing in one respect in the sense that nominees are getting defeated. he is winning in the sense that other presidents are watching. other presidents are realizing he's defending our prerogative. >> we learned that fractious supreme court battles are

nothing new. >> right. >> the polarization seems mild when you see the venomous difficulty these guys have getting their nominees through. >> especially with tyler. dd tyler has all of these perfectly able, qualified nominees being rejected. what you see is that particularly in the 19th century, the senate is not shy about rejecting people or simply not having a hearing or a vote on somebody. tyler, and this is going to culminate later with zackary taylor who tries to create an innovation there called recess appointment, and it's creating more and more friction between congress and the president as things go on. another pattern worth talking about is that even if a president fails, it's important to understand how that affects the balance of power between congress and the president. so if tyler is doing something and congress is resisting, you can see that as an effort on

congress's part to retain its authority. congress is actually strengthening itself in opposition to the president. >> you give plenty of cases of examples where presidents litigate a position only to have their power weakened when robust. >> right. this happened with van buren with the famous amistad case. >> that is one of the early slave cases but van buren is trying to use that situation for the slaves that rebel on the ship and have them sent back eventually to cuba and maybe elsewhere. he tries to game the system and

loses at every level in that situation and is forced to abide by what the judges say and he does. that is remarkable in itself. van buren doesn't say i'm going to reject what the court says. at the end he says i guess if the courts say that i have to abide by it. that is an interesting precedent by itself and other presidents will end up following it. >> you say in the introduction some of the forgotten presidents very much influence the constitutional viewpoint of our greatest presidents. and you kind of give a pop quiz. you say who do you think most influenced lincoln? if you know, you say read no further. >> right. >> and the answer, shall we -- any guesses? >> excellent. zachary taylor. very good. [ audience comment inaudible] >> wherever we get our information is fine. i think you get a free presidents tie from the gift shop. though michael has all of the presidents who are going to have a version that blocks out the remembered presidents so

only the forgotten presidents. beautiful. so why was it that zachary taylor so influenced lincoln's constitutional -- >> zachary taylor influenced lincoln in a couple different respects. one we have to remember, lincoln began his political career as a whig. lincoln had a total of two years in congress. that's his experience with the federal government before he becomes president. but those two years turn out to be pretty central or critical because for one thing they're going to coincide late ear little bit with taylor. when taylor dies, lincoln is going to give the eulogy. lincoln really revered taylor first as a general. he had been a successful general in mexico. and one thing lincoln really loved about -- lincoln loved about taylor as general was he would always be able to figure out a way to win against the odds. and this is something you might want to think about. for lincoln later. he loved the idea that somehow

taylor was always able to figure out a way to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. he loved his way -- he loved his ability to improvise. his ability to sort of be behind enemy lines sometimes and figure out a way to prevail. so he talked about that in the eulogy. and then later when lincoln is about to become president he writes a letter to

lifpblg thinks that is a good thing. lastly the policy, taylor had only one policy as president. he was president for 15 months. he had literally only one policy. but it was a critical policy. it was he wanted two antislavery territories admitted to the union. one was new mexico. the other was california. and so he came into office and he said, here's what i demand. admit these as states one after the other. congress didn't want to do that. because it would have tipped the balance of power in favor of antislavery forces. congress at that point was perfectly balanced between the two. and taylor would have been happy to tip that balance. he demanded it be tipped. congress said no. and lincoln had to then respond by being innovative. lincoln loved all that. i think he really took a lot of lessons from that. >> you say lincoln was influenced by taylor's views -- >> right. after congress resists what

taylor wants and the senate doesn't act on any of his nominations -- does that sound familiar -- what happens then is taylor turns to his attorney general and says let's think about recess appointments. they do. he has the attorney general issue an opinion on recess appointments taking a very aggressive stance and actually makes over 400 of them. that's a record of course at the time. pretty much a record almost for all time. and lincoln sees that as a good thing. his attorney general is going to sign off on the very same philosophy. and it's a very robust view, which the supreme court is largely confirmed and that is that anything can count as a recess. any break in congress will count as a recess and a president can use that time to make an appointment. it doesn't work for president obama because the court is going to say that turns out not to have been a break. but otherwise, if there is a break, the president can use it to make a recess appointment and that's -- that viewpoint

really gets its most -- get its fullest articulation from taylor in the 19th century. >> it was fascinating to see how deep the conflict over recent appointments stretches into 19th century history. is the recent supreme court decision faithful to that history? >> i think it is, yeah. except for the fact that it's a judicial intervention. throughout the 19th century the court wasn't a player and was peripheral. people didn't take their disputes oftentimes to the court. sometimes but not often. >> there is one -- someone called out the greatest influence on lincoln buchanan and that was the greatest surprise that he did not appear in your book. we recently ran a blog post claiming buchanan was the worst president of all times and were subject to a denial of service attack by inflamed pro buchananites. basically there are some very enthusiastic buchanan partsans who attacked us and shut down our website in outrage against

this libelous claim. why was buchanan not -- >> i'm on your side. >> you're then going to be denied service as well. >> oh, well. ready to shut the program down. well, i think one reason why buchanan is not forgotten is that very thing. that is to say, there are people -- many people actually that do remember him by virtue of his being the worst president. so that -- this book is not about evaluating good or bad. >> yes. >> it is simply about evaluating impact. good or bad. or at least identifying that impact. for buchanan, there are a lot of people that think he was bad. a lot of those people by the way voted for lincoln. lincoln became president. so i think buchanan is not forgotten for a couple reasons. one, for historians looking back over the span of time he stands out as being really bad in office. the other is that lincoln's presidency is defined by what buchanan did. so much of what lincoln had to do early on was defined by

buchanan. if you're going to tell the story of lifpblg you're always going to talk about james buchanan. >> okay. however you can get it basically is worth while. >> right. >> fillmore destroyed the whigs, signed the fugitive slave act, and although lincoln relied on his actions to oppose secession basically his problem was signing the compromise of 1850 which included these five provisions? >> correct. fillmore has been taylor's vice president. so one thing taylor did do as the whig president, a whig president, is he put mr. whig then was millard filmore as his president. this made clay really happy and then clay died right after fillmore became president. so when taylor died, clay, though he was dying himself was really happy and he loved the fact that filmore was a whig, old friend of his, founded the whig party.

and so clay's last days in some respects were not so bad because he thought, okay. finally we have a really, genuine whig. the only problem is what happens next. so as you say, filmore then signs a very controversial piece of legislation into law. taylor would have refused. it's called the compromise of 1850 and included the fugitive slave act. very controversial law. one thing it required was states ended up housing fugitive slaves and had to take a role in returning them to their masters. and there were nine states in the northeast that said they weren't going to do it. they refused to comply with that federal law. does any of this sound familiar? some even threatened to secede. so fillmore and his secretary of state a very able lawyer named daniel webster, they

started putting together an argument for why every state in the country, everybody else for that matter, would have to comply with federal law. doesn't matter whether you agree or disagree. federal law applies everywhere and it applies everywhere the same. so it applies in the south n. the north, and northern states would have to comply with the federal law. if they don't, it's called treason. and the other problem is, they don't have the authority to secede. what fillmore just did was he just mapped out the basic philosophy that lincoln is going to take into office later. lincoln comes into office, southern states are trying to secede. lincoln is thinking, wait a minute. this is just like what fillmore said, what webster argued. we're going to use the same logic now to say you can't secede. and the other thing is, if it's federal law, people have to comply with it. everywhere. so this is for lincoln in his presidency. >> i remember vigorous debates with my dear friend and teacher during the first weeks of law

school and he said really it was unconstitutional at the time of the framing because james wilson said we the people of the united states not we the people of each of the several states were sovereign. your history suggests the story was more complicated in fact. >> well, i think he'll agree with this. i am pretty confident he does because we've talked about it. but i think that the story is more complicated but you come out at the same place. so there is this concept that we are the united states and it's indivisible. and that it's not a contract that people can come and go from or leave. and i think that's basically the theory that fillmore is trying to put forward, which is the states here are just almost like agents of the people. and it's really about the united states and the people that are all together or formed together in the united states and that, so we shouldn't read too much into the word "states" there. much more into the idea that

we're a union. and that union can't be threatened by people who are, who want to see it destroyed. >> that was the vision rejected by our next culprit, franklin pierce, who you said many people dismiss as one of america's most inept presidents. when his wife was told he was to be considered as a president she fainted and worried he'd start drinking again. and he did in fact. his problem, and nathanial hawthorne told pierce after he won, i pity you. indeed i do, from the bottom of my heart. pierce's problem was he was too much of a strict constructionist. he didn't quite endorse nullification and secession but certainly took states rights to bear logical -- >> he did. pierce was bad. so i suppose james buchanan can take some solace in the fact that pierce may actually have been a worse president than buchanan. so you might argue that would make him memorable and there are different reasons why i

think pierce gets forgotten. but pierce was somebody who i think was kind of backed into the presidency. he had been a lack luster member of congress. he left congress really because of his drinking problems. and then what happens is he gets drafted in a sense to become president because he's a very good looking guy and he's what they call a doe face, which was somebody from the north who would support slavery. so pierce figures, okay. i'm nominated as president. i win the presidency. what the heck? i'll become president. his wife obviously is not happy about it. she is going to be -- she'll be destroyed shortly. and pierce, too, will be almost destroyed. because on their way to washington, for his inauguration, their train derails. the worst thing that could possibly ever happen to a parent is going to happen. they have one son. his name is benji.

they're going to literally see him killed in front of their eyes in this accident. jane never, ever recovers. she barely speaks to him after that. she blames the death on pierce, himself. she keeps to herself in the white house. up there praying all the time. pierce is virtually destroyed if you read his inaugural address you see in the first line or two he references this great challenge and turmoil. and then pierce proceeds as president to try and find god and he oftentimes spends sunday in church. one time he doesn't turns out to be quite fatal. and he then tries to sort of find his own way as president. his best friend, the secretary of war, jefferson davis, together they fashion a strict construction view of the constitution, which is that the federal government does have power but its power ought to be used to support slavery. and it ought to be used to

support the things that the states or territories are doing that support slavery. that's what gets him into a problem. and it really focuses on kansas. we can talk about that if you'd like. >> kansas and bloody kansas and why he messed things up there. >> kansas became a focus of a lot of activities because kansas is one of those territories about to become a state. as it is about to become a state then suddenly its antislaferey and pro slavery forces are fighting for its soul trying to take it over. what happens is the pro slavery forces get control of part of the state. pierce decides to back them. and not the others. he uses all the power of the federal government to back the pro slavery forces in kansas to take over that entire jurisdiction, the entire state. and the only way he can do that is to send in federal forces.

and so the federal forces come in and they are literally going to go to war in kansas to try and ensure that it stays pro slavery. and that's why it becomes known as bleeding kansas. it is kind of a precursor to the civil war. pierce is remarkable because he doesn't hesitate to use federal power. this is not a weak president. he is very happy to be strong. he uses every federal power he can find to force slavery down the throat of the people of kansas. in fact, there was a famous cartoon done at the time that literally shows that. kind of a disgusting cartoon but that's what it shows. and the end result is that pierce is hated. in a lot of places. because he doesn't stand up, doesn't stand against slavery. and he ends up standing up for something that caused him a lot of -- cost him a lot of support elsewhere. the end result is he loses out the nomination of his party to his ambassador james buchanan. which is pretty remarkable.

it shows how far pierce had fallen. he spends the rest of his life defending what he did which doesn't help either. pierce is pilleried everywhere even where he went to college they removed his name. there is a debating society named for him. they took his name off the debating society. the law school used to be called franklin pierce in new hampshire. they took that name off, too. the university of new hampshire. so he is unremembered systematically. >> i think it might be justice suter that teaches at franklin pierce law school and they're using the name again so he has had a resurrection. >> oh, good for franklin pierce. we'll see how long that lasts. >> right. >> so there is a dramatic fissure in the book because we jump from franklin pierce to chester arthur and we don't have the civil war and its constitutional legacy. >> right. >> when we rejoin our lack luster list of presidents with the mutton chops, president

arthur, the main issue is civil service reform. >> right. >> he seems to actually do pretty well thoon. he's expected to be a stalwart and oppose civil service reform but surprises everyone by supporting it. >> right. he surprises everybody by doing a lot of things. so chester arthur would be a candidate to be the most forgotten president if we simply had a, if we describe what ought to be the characteristics of somebody like that.

that maybe if we had a civil servants we would have people that could become expert at government and not local hacks. interestingly enough, the president that solve the problem is arthur. he thinks that he is going to do the right thing and back this law, he pushes it to congress and signs it into law and this is the foundation for the modern civic service law. >> did conklin have a role in the assassination of president garfield? it is said that the assassin cried out that he is a stalwart conklin president. >> the call themselves the --

they called themselves the install works because they said they were faithful to the principles of the country. the man who shoots garfield by all accounts was insane and had been an applicant for federal office because he had an insane idea that he was qualified. he had tried to persuade people to appoint him to different things and they would not because they realized he was crazy. he thought if he got rid of garfield, arthur would appoint him to something. the best evidence we have is

that this is an insane individual. and he had a gun. >> ok, we have two chapters devoted to grover cleveland, who as we all -- he's not totally forgotten, because i learned about him in middle school as the veto president. >> you went to a good middle school. >> i had some great teachers. i remember a book showed him signing the vetoes. you told us the remark vetoes in the first term -- 400, then the second term. what with the different concessions of the two terms? tell us about his view of the constitution. >> so, what you have just described is how he was the first term. when cleveland comes to office of the first term, he is very much like van buren or more so. he would've been a good wig. his view was, i will try and not

abuse my powers. i believe congress should take the lead on things. i will not even get involved in congress. so, what that left him was only a couple of things. one was trying to make nominations. the other was veto. the reason he ends up casting so many vetoes is he felt that there was no authority in congress to give pensions to veterans of the civil war. and so, he kept vetoing those pensions. so it was a narrow view of what he thought congress should be doing in that regard. otherwise, he simply would sign what congress did. and cleveland also had a view that the president should only use veto powers for something that is clearly unconstitutional. so he set a record the first term. the second term, which then didn't directly follow the first, he comes in as a different person.

he comes in in the middle of a different depression. he takes the opposite view of the presidency. now he thinks, ok, the president has to be much more energetic. i have got to push things through congress. he threatens congress. he vetoes some laws, but he is a very different chief executive. it is the chief executive that woodrow wilson would later think is the only significant one in the last 25 years of the 19th century. wilson thinks there is nobody else significant, but cleveland was. actually what he is is the first modern president. >> what change cleveland's mind? >> i think the depression, his loss of his wife. all of these things come together. he is of the view and his second term, that we have got to do more to fix things. i've got ideas of what that is.

the president is a part of this process. i think i will be told less and maybe we will achieve more if congress does what i say. >> he was the first modern president. that pre-modern view that you could feed to civil war -- veto civil war pensions, could that be sustainable today? it would be so unpopular. could a president get away with that now? >> it did not make cleveland popular. which is one reason he is not reelected the first time. so, i think it becomes harder. i also think what happens more today, and this is probably what cleveland attempts to do, that is presidents try to work more with congress. people throughout the 19th century are still not sure to what extent president and congress should be working together and battling each other. and cleveland is slowly moving us toward a view that maybe things would work more efficiently if president and congress actually worked

together. there is a political party -- does introduce a huge problem in that respect. and cleveland also simply has a problem in that, the problem might not be the right word. he was actually somebody who was incredibly honest. he had tremendous integrity. he simply did not believe in bending his principles. he did not believe in doing something he thought was bad policy or not a good idea or something that smacked of patronage. so that made him harder to work with. >> he must not have liked the job so much. there is the story of how the young fdr is taken to meet cleveland. when cleveland puts his hand on his head and says i have one wish for you -- that you may never become president. >> that did not work out, either. >> harrison. benjamin harrison. the fact the president is forgotten does not mean they are bad. henry adams, who disliked

harrison personally, rank him among our best president. adams was no easy critic. he signed the sherman antitrust law. he created the federal circuit courts, the supreme court's. and he had four supreme court appointments. tell us about why he was so influential. >> this is remarkable for a man who most people actually personally disliked. but it was because he was actually somebody who would try to get laws through that he thought with the right laws to get done. he would have weekly meetings with members of congress -- had them over to the white house for dinner. he would try to work with congress to get these laws through. it was almost revolutionary at the time. he is getting a lot of what were then pretty progressive laws through. the sherman antitrust act, for example.

and the difficulty he has got is he just was such a difficult character. didn't like people. which is a real problem for a president. and so, that came through. it also came through to leaders of congress who hated him. the person that tries to run against him is his own secretary of state. so, there are a lot of problems he has got in the sense that he cannot keep his administration together. and while at the same time, he is getting a lot to congress. he is pretty successful, as you pointed out. he ended up reshaping the judiciary. creating the foundation for what we think of as the modern judiciary. he's also passed one of the most important laws in history. he also is there trying to serve back a pretty -- the commerce clause powers to write you made the economy. all these are pretty progressive things for the era. he cannot see them through to the end. >> taft. soon after he became chief

justice, which was his ambition, he told a friend he no longer remembered -- and he had this fascinating notion that he was the last of the presidents to conceive of the presidency as subservient to congress. and thinking of his role as judicial and constitutional. he thought it was his job to keep congress within its enumerated powers. tell us about why he was so unsuccessful as a presidential vision. >> right. he had a view, as you described, of congress, well, of the president as being restricted in its power. but his view also was every branch is restricted in its powers. so, he would stay within his bounds. congress should stay within its bounds. the judiciary within its

particular bounds. and taft, unlike others, was very, very committed to trying to stay within those boundaries. he was somebody just simply would not do anything that he thought was political for the sake of being political. he did not like going out and shaking hands. he did not like him and speeches. he did not like doing a lot of things that we think the president's liking to do. those are going to hurt him politically. substantively, he is going to get a lot done. he will get a variety of laws through. again, broadening more or less the extent to which the federal government is regulating economy. the foundations for modern economic regulations. he's going to completely revolutionize the to dish very through six appointments to the supreme court -- through six appointed to the supreme court. one term, six appointments. that is incredible. he is very deliberate about what all of those are. >> one of his delusions -- his deliberations was picking old guys. >> he said that the hardest thing he ever had to do was to pick somebody to be chief

justice because, he's thinking, that's my job. so he pick somebody named edward douglas white to become chief justice. white had been an associate justice appointed by cleveland. a pretty popular person among the other justices. but taft was not stupid. and taft notes along the way that white was older. later when taft was not present -- harding was president -- turns out that white died. who's first in line knocking on the door of harding but taft. i'm available. >> he cast far fewer vetoes then roosevelt and wrote his views like judicial opinion saying, i dissent. give us a more contrast. >> so, roosevelt -- there is a documentary which shows exuberant personality. somebody who was very much committed to trying to do what ever he thought was proper and right as president. so he was not constrained by anything. the office, the constitution did

not constrain him. the only thing that roosevelt thought could constrain and was whether or not the popular vote could support it. if he thought he had popular support, roosevelt would do it. so this is teddy roosevelt. energetic, a couple of -- accomplished and unbounded. almost the exact opposite of william howard taft. taft theses constrained by law. taft also thinks he is not somebody like roosevelt who had a steward theory of the president. instead, no, i'm going to stay within my bounce like a car, keep it in its lane. we are going to be very careful about how fast we go and where we go. >> now let's contrast taft with coolidge. coolidge inspires the meanest comment when dorothy parker

learned of his death, she said "how could they tell?" but you say that coolidge conceived of legislative powers in ways that right -- that resonate with modern conservatives. tell us more about that. >> so coolidge is somebody who by large was a successful president. he didn't like being president. but coolidge has a very, very well developed -- coolidge believes -- and this is not so much a quote but a associated within the government that governs best governs least. government staying out of the way of business. try and not -- so he would not support a lot of regulation of disney's but would prefer

government -- regulation of business but would prefer government to pull back. so he was not going to support an intrusive federal government in a lot of different areas of life. all of that ought to sound very familiar. but even then, coolidge did believe occasionally the federal government ought to do something. he is the first president to support regulation of broadcasting. he is the first president to support regulation of aviation. those become very common things. he does have an idea of the commerce clause as providing some degree of congressional regulation of areas, even though i think on a lot of things, like the department of education -- which you would never envisioned -- he would not have supported. so he is very conservative in the sense that he really wants to keep the federal government under budget.

he wants to keep the federal government limited in what it does. and he tried to be very consistent about all that. >> although he believes that the constitution restricts the power to wrigley the economy, he also believes and includes cultivating the moral character of americans. -- the economy, he also believes it includes cultivating the moral character of americans. >> while he did not believe in a lot of different kinds of departments, one department he proposes to congress is the department of moral edge -- moral character. we need to be able to worry about people's character. he things people's character is integral to the extent to which they can prosper under the constitution, which would allow them to acquire property and keep it. he sees all of that is integrated. he believes the constitution protects rather property. how do people acquire property? if they are good people, they will acquire things. he takes a lot of care.

he gives a lot of speeches about the importance of moral character. and does see a role of government. >> is that moral cultivation that distinguishes his vision from taft's? >> there are others. i think what coolidge -- yeah, the contras between -- the contrast between taft and coolidge was subtle. it is not dramatic. what coolidge does more than taft is he wants to pull it back more so than taft. taft did support some areas of conservation. the federal government enforcing what we might think of as environmental laws. coolidge would not have supported that. there are a lot of areas where taft that the government should go that coolidge would have pulled back on.

there is the second thing -- he thought government did have a role in cultivating character, which taft did not agree with at all. lastly, i think he would've agreed with taft's views on construction. he would support the idea that the courts should be strongly protective of private property. also, very supportive of a constrained federal government. in those regards, they had a lot in common. >> great. we leap from coolidge to a far more recent president and that is jimmy carter. well, i'll ask you right away. why carter? >> i get in trouble for it. that's why. post people do not care that much about forgotten presidents. i think carter is forgotten for a few different reasons. even if people do remember him as president, they do not remember what he did. that is pretty remarkable for a time period, it's remarkable that a president pretty much existed when most of us were alive.

and so, the very fact that he is forgotten for much of what he has done is one reason. i think that a second is that i think he is forgotten in a more objective sense. so if you look at history books and other things, he rates really low on the extent to which he is mentioned. remember those quite sure we talked about in the beginning. he ends up being really low on a lot of those criteria. he is also sandwiched between two other presidents who are going to be more remembered. one of which is ford associated with nixon. the other is reagan. all of that diminishes carter. the more he is diminished, the more likely he is forgotten. one of carter's problems is that his constitutional vision was modeled. he was not a supporter of roe v wade. >> he was critical of roe v wade, though maybe not energetically so. he did not come out a lot and

criticize it, but he did not personally support it. he did not personally get involved. that alienated him from some parts of the democratic party as time went on. and it also meant that he was, he had brought into the democratic party something he could not keep there. a lot of christian conservatives supported him for president to begin with. but as he was trying to keep their support and maintain his position, the democratic party itself was moving in a different direction. that meant ultimately he was going to lose support. >> an anti-roe, pro affirmative-action democrat is going to have a challenge that >> exactly right. he was very much pro-affirmative action. his president coincided with the case.

he ends up not wanted to follow the road. look, we do not have to comply with that. he tried to figure out a way for the presidency to support affirmative action. >> i have so many constitutional questions coming out of this book. the most urgent one i have is why is it that constitutional debate was so central to all the early presidencies you describe all the way through coolidge, where presidents are making arguments in the vetoing bills, and that just stops? and carter relies more on the supreme court. why? >> that is a great question. i can give you an estimate of an answer. it is hard to know what the right answer is. i think there are a few things. one of them is i think it stops because the media is going to become a much bigger factor in people's lives, particular president lives. much of what they do, everything they do, everything they say is now going to get covered much more copiously. i think that has caused presidents to be more circumspect about what they have to say. much of what characterizes those early president is they were less circumspect. they did not mind calling people

on the carpet. in taft's case, he would have probably not want to go on tv at all. some of these folks probably would not have been elected because they were not very media -- they would not have come off very well in the media. the 20 47 coverage of it all -- the 24/7 coverage of it all makes circumspection more likely. the second factor is the very way people become president, gets nominated by their parties, is different now. so it is much more, the parties have much fuller vetting of people. and that also tends to sort of knock out folks with more extreme views. some of these folks have extreme views early on. over time, what you see is a process that tends to cut out people who have extreme views and more, find folks that are closer to the center. i think those are all factors that play into this. >> along with me, our audience recited our congressional mandate to disseminate information on the constitution on a nonpartisan basis. so, but i do detect a theme in this book which is that president to have adopted a radically limited vision of both presidential and congressional power have failed. >> i think that's true.

i think that is also nonpartisan. so, i think it is true -- again, for a variety of reasons. our system of government, the very constitution itself has set up a system in which the branches that acquire power are reluctant to give it up. one thing you can see is a constant is as each branch gains power, you do not want to see any of the three branches wanting to give it up. so a president that tries to attack that, or work against that, if they end up having one or more branches working against him. not to mention the political party as well. and that becomes a real problem over time. so, you do not see presidents, for example to this day, saying, well, i am not going to use all that power. some other president acquired before me.

www.c-span.org the same thing is true for congress. congress enacts certain kinds of laws. the supreme court itself. it may be different. certain outcomes may be different, but i do not see the supreme court which has acquired broader judicial view, let's give it up. instead, it continues to use that power. that basic dynamic that the

branches have to keep what they have acquired works against some of this. >> could you imagine a constitution was president being collected today, a president mike or president ted cruz? could they be elected, and if so, would they succeed? >> it is possible they can get elected. i think they would find it very hard to do what they set out to do. and part of that is because of the constitution. the other thing we have not mentioned is that sometimes to do radical things, even to cut back, requires using the institutions that are set up. if you want to cut back -- for example, a limiting the department of education -- you

would have to get that through congress. i'm not so confident you would be able to. you have things like the filibuster in the senate. other things going on in the house. would that be possible? i think you can get some things done. what you find is that moving in any particular direction in an extreme way is very difficult, given the very structures we have got that are set up to stop those kinds of movements. >> i think we have time for just one question but it is an excellent one. can you compare congress's struggle with tyler with congress'struggle with obama? and how would you advise obama in light of tyler and other presence? >> and i have got how many minutes? i think there is a limited analogy to draw. tyler was unpopular because he was not elected. he had been a vice president who had become president. but he was already unpopular before that point because he had essentially dissed both political parties. he left the democratic party to run with the wig harrison. as president, he is not doing what the wig party wants.

he is a man without a party as he is president. that sets up a lot of friction already. with obama, i think the friction results from different things. i think the friction results in part from racism. i think some of it results because he is a democrat. some of the policies he has enacted. so that friction generates from sources that are different than tyler. how you get rid of that friction would be different as well. tyler could never join a party. with obama, what i advise is that you have two years left, you need to get out of the office more.

i think going up to capitol hill and meeting with folks is not a bad idea. even if you cannot reach deals with them, putting a spotlight on your attempt to do that would be very effective, because either it will look like people do not want to work with you, or they will try and come up with something. so i would suggest trying to do more openly to find common ground with people whether it is in the house or the senate. and of course, he is trying to use executive orders more. but i think that has limited utility. because it only depends on the extent to which the next president wants to extend them. and it works in the short term. but i think -- of course, the other thing which those of you who read the national enquirer know, is i think he has got to tell a story more. he is a remarkable speaker. he hasn't used that gift enough to rally support for things while he is trying to get stuff to congress and trying to rally congress to his side. i think remarkable gift has to

be used more. >> i cannot resist this final question. if it is not up to the president to strictly construe the constitution to enforce limits on federal power, and it is not up to congress, does that just leave the courts? >> no, we have still got states that can do things. one thing is to consider is what initiatives states can employ. there are a lot of things the federal government cannot do or has limited ability to do. that means it is left to the states. you really can take a lot of initiative there. i am never a fan of having the courts take much the lead on any of this. i am not a big fan of big scope of judicial review. but i think what also needs to be considered are what are innovative ways we can deal with things. so i think, van buren tried that. his innovation was not very

effective. the other thing to think about is what you want to get done. i think sometimes to be successful you have to lower your sights. so sometimes you can get incremental things through. and sometimes the boulder you are, the less successful you might be because boldness is not received very well given the structure of congress. that may be finding common ground in different places, you can figure out solutions even within congress. i want to remain an optimist because i believe in the constitution like you do. and i think that the constitution endures. that is a great thing to think about. think about the different ways it provides opportunities -- and of course, we left out the equation the most import and that is the american people. the american people have a lot to say about all of this. and what do thhi