national political reporter .overing the trump presidency caitlin owens, and mike allen, cofounder and executive editor. watch washington journal spotlight like monday morning starting at 8:00 am eastern on c-span. >> president john f. kennedy was born 100 years ago on may 29, 1917. next, the national archives jose -- hosts a conversation with his nephew stephen kennedy smith and joseph brinkley -- douglas brinkley. they reflect on his life and legacy, his administration's new frontier policy and his conception of his american identity. this is just over an hour. >> when john f. kennedy was

born, the second of nine children, the young 20th century was not that different from the late 19th century. automobiles, airplanes, and motion pictures were novelties and civil war veterans were needed for reunions. the united states had just entered world war i. jack kennedy's lifetime saw some of the most extraordinarily rapid changes in american life. his generation was a new generations of americans unable to witness or permit the undoing of human rights. today's guests are president kennedy's nephew, stephen kennedy smith, and historian douglas brinkley, brought together some of president kennedy's speeches and some that still resonate today. throughout the centennial year, organizations and individuals

across the country will observe this milestone anniversary and reflect on kennedy's legacy. the john f. kennedy presidential library in boston has taken leave of a major evidence vision -- major exhibition that will open on june 6. there is installed a special display of stairs about president kennedy's creation of the peace corps. hanging outside my office is a letter i wrote to jfk asking for information about the proposed peace corps. i never got a response. to find out more about these jfk centennial activities, check the jfk centennial website, jfk

centennial.org. today we are privileged to hear from president kennedy's own nephew, stephen kennedy smith and historian doug wrinkly about -- a brinkley -- doug brinkley about president kennedy. he is a board member of a john f. kennedy library and served on the staff of the senate judiciary and foreign relations committee and a three-time recipient for the dan ford award at harvard law school. douglas brinkley is a professor of history. he is the author of a number of best-selling books. brinkley has also written books on theodore roosevelt, jimmy carter, and ronald reagan and has often appeared on our stage. nice to have him back. susan swain is president and

co-ceo of c-span. she helped launch the washington journal, book tv, and has been in the numerous c-span tv's. she has also been recognized by her industry as a cable tv pioneer. please welcome stephen kennedy smith, douglas brinkley, and susan swain. [applause] susan: good afternoon and thank you for being here.

i should also add that for almost 25 years he has been working with c-span on a number of presidential historical projects, most recently our third survey of presidential leadership. i'm looking forward to learning more about your scholarship on your uncle. would you raise your hand if you were born after 1960? for you, john f. kennedy is entirely a historical figure. great. that gives us a sense of perspective as we start. i want to start with you, doug brinkley, because for the past two weeks, all the folks in this room and those watching us on video have been bombarded with

100 day marker stories for our current president. was there a 100 day metric? douglas: there was. it is wonderful to be back at the national archives. it is one of the great institutions in america. the 100 days came out of franklin roosevelt's remarkable period. we used to do presidential inaugurations in march, not january. in march of 1933 fdr would have gave his famous we have nothing to fear but fear it self address and then went into a frenzy -- some people call it the alphabet soup of the new deal -- of doing programs to stimulate american pride and work way out of the depression. he did the civilian conservation corps in the first 100 days. it was such a successful first 100 days that people would try to say how did yours stack up. truman and ike did not play ball on that thing, although truman knew he had to get us out of the

korean war quickly. he did eventually solve it post 100 days of june of 1953. kennedy started playing as a democrat and catcher he -- and capturing the new frontier bottled off the new deal. let's talk about the spirit and not get into the policy weeds because we don't want to be compared to fdr too closely. when john kennedy entered office he had an 83% approval rating, john kennedy. that was after the bay of pigs. many historians thought it was a fiasco. kennedy took line for it, failed exercise in cuba. why?

why did he have such a high? because he reached across the aisle. he launched the peace corps in 1961. he started the alliance for rock dress. he engaged in the space race. alan shepard came in during the first day of kennedy's administration when the space race was on. by may 25, 1961, that is when john f. kennedy went to a joint session of congress and said we are going to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade and started chasing the moonshot. let's do something that is a big american can-do project. susan: additional comments from you because it was a close election that brought kennedy into office. how did he manage in that short

period of time to turn around public perception after a hard-fought election? stephen: kennedy's average approval rating was 70% and i think the reason is because he gave americans the framework for understanding the country and the world. if you look at the new frontier speech, you know we need to have a new frontier in the country of innovation, imagination, and decision. we talk about pioneers not being prisoners of their conscience. he gave people a story to understand their conscience and the world. the philosophy he had was unifying for people and the

absence loss of it, i said in the introduction of the book you have spasmodic impulses. the other interesting thing about resident kennedy, he was a decorated combat veteran. he did believe in strong military. he had a much stronger conception about what american identity really was. he'd through this conception from american history and his reading of greek history, roman history, and his idea that all civilizations have great arts , the romans built the roads. the greeks had great architecture. he wanted america to have that kind of society. he conceived of the space

program. he wanted america to be a just society. so he conceives of the civil rights program. susan: one of the things that is always interesting about doing programs at the national archives is they are meant to be interactive. at the 45 minute mark, if you have questions you are thinking about there are microphones at the end of each staircases. it will be interesting to see your questions comparing to the times we live in right now. ronald reagan is the only other modern president who has been granted an official centennial celebration. can you talk about the background?

stephen: two of our book contributors are john mccain and henry kissinger, who are both republicans. john mccain was sponsor of the legislation. we had a reception last night at the smithsonian based on the exhibit. one of the remarkable things about jfk was he appointed republicans to his cabinet. he was someone who reached out across the aisle he was not always beloved by liberals in his own party because he was nonideological and pragmatic about how he thought about making decision. president mccain -- senator mccain spoke last night. he was stationed on an aircraft carrier during the cuban missile

crisis and he listened to president kennedy give his speech to the nation about the cuban missile crisis where he said we would never back down a -- necessarily from confrontation where freedom was at stake. he has inspired nancy pelosi. she told me last night she was inspired to go into public life by president kennedy. susan: there is a big kick off at the kennedy library this coming sunday and many events around the country. stephen: president obama will be there and vice president biden. susan: people are looking at the book as the reason we are gathering here today. it is a different kind of concept. it is both photographs and essays. how did you begin to

collaborate? douglas: this is stephen's project from the heart. he reckoned eyes that john f. kennedy that she recognized that john f. kennedy was having his 100 birthday and we needed to do the right thing. it was his book where he started unseating the idea -- conceiving the idea. building a narrative around the speeches of john f. kennedy and getting a who's who of americans to contribute to this. people like jimmy carter or the dalai lama for senator mccain, dave edgar's, the great novelist. there is a slew of incredible people. there is a guy named lawrence schiller worked with norman mailer. yes worked many years for magazines and how to do photos and layouts properly. it became a bit of a team. this is stephen's passion.

we have never had any problems working together. it has great fun. you would be amazed at the contributors. just a minute ago we talked about barack obama and things we were not able to use for ethical reasons because he was still a sitting president. everyone asked, sign me up. he was the magician that made all of this happen. susan: we are showing one of the photographs behind us now. how did the photographs come together? stephen: we had a team of five people who were working on this. we had folks at the kennedy library helping us and i actually, lawrence schiller worked on us on the photo collection. i sought previously on ja k -- i saw it previously on jfk that i wanted him to work on this with us.

we have over 500 photos in here, many of them never seen before. this is america's great era of photojournalism. these guys are the rolling stones and the beatles of photography. andre dumas. some of them are still alive. some of the photos are just stunning. douglas: historians participant -- historians participate in this as well. david mccullough and robert

dowling have written the best civil volume on kennedy's presences the -- kennedy's presidency to date. susan: we will have copies available after so you can look at them. they are shorts and essays punctuated by that. we work through the arc of john kennedy's life. stephen: we also have conan o'brien for those of you born later than me. he wrote a fantastic essay on jfk's sense of humor. he said abraham lincoln and john f. kennedy are the two funniest president.

susan: i had a question about humor in politics. when you read through the essays again and again, including conan o'brien's essay, it is the thought of easy wit as an aspect of john kennedy's personality in his public life he's being reinforced. how important to a successful presidency is a sense of humor and do we still have it today? [laughter] douglas: in a sense we still do. the president is the butt of all national satire. kennedy was a funny guy. he was a prankster. he saw the absurdity of life. he was a leader of the misbehaved gang in prep school. somewhat that way when he was at harvard. when he was in the navy during world war ii, the men loved him because of his sense of humor and when he started running for politics in massachusetts in

1946, running for congress and getting elected, humor was a big part. he would have such a quick with that he would remember two or three things that he said. it became one of his hallmarks. he had the amazing village he -- amazing ability to be self-deprecating. i think successful presidents use whom are provide with communications to create an image. theodore roosevelt was fantastic in this. people would crowd around him and he would story tell and laugh. fdr used to tell cornball jokes, to be honest. tr was quick and ready and fdr was corny or, his humor. ronald reagan, in a book, he would put them in file cabinets. if he had to give a speech to the coal on his club, he would go into the files and pull -- to

the kiwanis club, he would go to the files and plot note cards and say put the joke there. i bet everyone here has seen conferences. helen thomas famously, they would get into a whole thing. people would leave a jfk press conference laughing even though they were dealing often with serious points. if you took the humor and charm away from jeff kennedy -- jack kennedy, it would be different. they were part of his essence. stephen: one thing they asked him when he got into office whether he was surprised by anything, he said the only thing i was surprised by was things were just as bad as i said they were. [laughter]

susan: which is a similar message we are getting out of our current resident, if you think about it, the way things are communicated that might have more effectiveness in the public sphere. i wanted to talk about the concept of the new frontier. he referenced fdr and the new deal. the president's framing their message -- we went through a campaign where make america great again was a regular campaign for the trump administration and it was successful. how long have presidents put marketing taglines on their

governing principles and how does it work with the public? douglas: it works really well and it is a staple of american policies in the 19th century until today. william henry harrison running in 1840. keep the ball rolling. we use that phrase now. they would use a large ball of twine and roll it all the way from ohio to washington to keep the ball rolling from william henry harrison. the log cabin egos. one can go a -- cabin ethos. one can go on and on. theodore roosevelt with the square deal started it off. he started preaching new nationalism later in life and fdr picked up from his cousin. he called him uncle theodore even though he was a fifth cousin. you got the new deal and it worked. everyone talks about it now. where is the new new deal? president since then have tried to find a model. kennedy was keen on doing so. truman did the fair deal. he did not want to do the new deal. presidents are looking for

change. the frontier is space, the frontier is oceans, science, technology, and it worked. i thought it was a great slogan. people that loved kennedy defined themselves as new frontiersman. a whole group of senators can be determined if they were part of the new frontier team, like frank anderson in new mexico. when that phrase became the cornerstone of the democratic convention in 1960 when john f. kennedy, who took the nomination in los angeles he beat out hubert humphrey. he beat out lyndon johnson. he had be out stevenson.

he ran for years trying to get the nomination. the term new frontiers stuck and it still has a lot of credence to it because it captures there is something different going on in the early 1960's. it is time the new generation was coming in, replacing people like general eisenhower. susan: i was looking if i could find it. in your introduction, you talk about john kennedy's skillful use of narrative and politics. explain what that concept is. stephen: i think every president does try to capture the zeitgeist of the nation and also tries to direct that in a direction they feel they want to go. i think in kennedy's case you have the largest generation of americans ever born after world

ii. they were coming onto the scene. he obviously had served in combat himself. you have really the rise of globalization. you have the rise of mass technology. he and his advisers or reading books like "the lonely crowd" and other books. how do we organize this in a way that is good for the nation? how do we cope with our rise as the preeminent power? if you look at his life that 1963, it spans his life as america as a national power. at the time he is killed we are probably at the height of our popularity in the world. he has to galvanize people who really want to do something for their country.

the quality of youth is they want to make their mark. david mccullers left his job in random house and went to washington with a young family with no idea what he wanted to do because he wanted to work for jack kennedy. he ended up in the u.s. information agency. he had that narrative of the young generation rising. he also had the narrative that free society is more aligned with fundamental free interest then totalitarian communist societies. i think he was right about that. and megan shared that viewpoint kennedy went to

and gave his berlin speech and reagan went again when the berlin wall was eventually torn down. he had both of those narratives going, national energy and national anti-communism and the third narrative he had was he went to independence hall and gave a speech called "the age of independence. he said the age of independence was the revolution of 1787, the revolution of interdependence when we formed the constitution and became a national society. we have to build global institutions like the european union and others that will lead to better cooperation and prosperity for everyone. in that sense, if you look at his inaugural and trump's inaugural, let us form an alliance, north, south, east, and west against the common

enemies of man. tyranny, disease, war itself. trump's inaugural, america first, america great. that is the difference between jfk and donald trump. he believed in a strong national power but he understood we are interdependent. susan: he refers to books the president and his advisers were reading together. i know barack obama was quite a reader. george w. bush does not get as much credit for it but he was quite a reader of history and politics books in the white house. how important is it for a president to be well read? douglas: i think it is essential and most presidents are exceedingly well read in presidential history. harry truman ranks high on our c-span poll as one of the great presidents. did not have a college degree but he would read biography and deep into american history. hundreds of biographies of

everyone from sam houston to abraham lincoln, robert e. lee and robert fulton. he had such a breadth of american history. that is why truman would love the painter thomas hart benton who would do portraits and murals of american history, and that is someone without a college degree. john f. kennedy read "guns of august," which was a warning about how big war can happen by a strange little event that seemed minor. a chain event can lead to something horrific. the behavior of the kaiser wilhelm, the fecklessness that took over europe. that was important for the kennedy years. he read that at the time of something like the cuban missile crisis. being a reader mattered.

i recently found out in 1962 rachel carson published the book "silent spring," which gave birth to the environmental movement and kennedy read her articles in new york and at a press conference was asked and said i'm going to get in investigation, and he started backing racial carson's attacks on pesticides. previously he read her books or at least two of the three of the sea trilogy about the oceans she wrote in the 1950's. rachel carson went to jackie kennedy at georgetown and new frontier people talked about look. when kennedy comes in he has robert frost do the inaugural, start honoring carl sandburg. these were not poets sneaking in. barack obama tried to continue that. he would have a group of

historians meet quite frequently, a number of times at the white house, to talk history with president obama. george w. bush reads particularly deeply in texas history. he said his favorites were about the kings ranch. george w. bush gave a lincoln reader to barack obama. stephen: the president of harvard also roast about it in the book. -- wrote about it in the book. the speech was called "the politician and the intellectual." he said the nation's first

politicians were also be nation's great writers and scholars. books where their tools -- were their tools, not their enemies. this is his view of the importance of learning and reason in american politics. he was a historian himself. he read a good deal of the adams papers. he won a pulitzer prize for history. in reading -- susan: let's talk about the press. john f. kennedy came into the white house at the dawning of the age of television and he had a press corps that is very different from the press corps the president states today and a news cycle that is different. what was his relationship with the press? how does he use the news media to his advantage? douglas: he was a journalist, as we mentioned.

after world war ii he wanted to be a journalist. you can look up his old articles. he covered the u.n. creation and the san francisco conference. appeared in papers all over the country. he was at potsdam writing articles. john f. kennedy had this great love of books. television is a game changer for politics. in 1952 cbs news decided to cover the convention. that used to be smoke-filled. now it started becoming infomercials for the parties. you had to be telegenic. that became a new phrase. my research on walter cronkite, i was astounded to learn that cronkite was looking to make extra cash on the side for cbs and gave a quick seminar on how to look and sound on tv. sam rayburn and john kennedy took his course.

you know who didn't? richard nixon. kennedy started realizing it is a medium that may be donald trump recognized the same in twitter. by the time we cut to the debates in 1960 -- that was the first time we had a presidential debate in the united states. susan swain did the lincoln douglas debates on c-span. it got televised and people that listened to richard nixon on radio thought he won the debates. people that watched on tv said john f. kennedy won. once he came on, cbs and nbc recognized -- cnn is covering

trump all the time. the network said let's cover john f. kennedy. they started going to hyannis for it. they started covering alan shepard, john glenn, must watch tv events during the kennedy years and press conferences became a big deal. the combination of using the medium of television and photography helps set the tone for john f. kennedy. i would give him an a plus on relations with the pass and -- with the press and how to use television to advance your policy concerns. susan: i have some issues that were very much a part of the administration that i would like you to talk generally about. one of them is vietnam. >> i have on my wall at home a note that jackie gave me after president kennedy was killed from his desk. all it says on it is vietnam,

vietnam, vietnam. this is something he was thinking about. george packer, who wrote a great book on iraq, wrote about president kevin he -- president kennedy in vietnam and he cites a book that won the pulitzer prize about vietnam. i have had lunch with him to talk about this issue. i think a majority of scholars think that kennedy would have withdrawn from vietnam after 1964 and that is what packers says. in reality you can never know what the future will hold. arthur celestine jerk, who was a friend of our family, --

arthur's lessons are -- arthur slessinger, close friend of our family, felt the same way. i believe that ted kennedy print president he would have done it differently than johnson. it would have been a demoralizing experience for america. that is one of the great tragedies of losing jfk. he was a person unbelievably knowledgeable about foreign policy. most of his great speeches are about foreign policy. he traveled before the war and saw hitler's and churchill speak. this was a person who really understood where the world was going. i think he would have handled the situation quite differently. douglas: we will never know. what we know is cronkite interviewed right before jfk's assassination, cronkite interviewed kennedy at his home and kennedy was intimating that

he would not get roped into a prolonged war. people that agree with what stephen just said will point to that cronkite interview. there is some documentation that we were going to no matter what. we don't know. 1964 would have been an election year. how would vietnam have laid out in that election? we know what johnson did in 1964. he wanted to show anti-cold war credentials heading into the election, even though it looked like he was going to have a landslide victory over perry goldwater. he did not want to seem weak. -- landslide victory over barry goldwater. he did not want to seem weak. there are new tapes coming out. the kennedy libraries are still bringing out new tapes dealing

with vietnam. i think it is a story that will evolve. i am curious to see how can burn -- how ken burns deals with it in his vietnam war series. he was in a piece mode at the time. he was meeting with khrushchev privately and asking how we can get global peace. to do a one offer in vietnam he was trying to do this grand -- he had put forward not testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere. susan: let's talk about russia. we referenced the cuban missile crisis which framed the early part of his presidency and here we are worried about the u.s.-russian relationship again. what can you say about the

approach the kennedy administration took towards the russians? stephen: i think what is interesting about the speeches and history, what is interesting about kennedy as the presidency goes on he learns from his mistakes. he starts off as a fervent cold warrior. he comes to the edge of the nuclear abyss, potentially 50,000,000-100,000,000 people killed and he skillfully gets out of that situation by offering the russians an opportunity to back down without losing face. when he gives the american university speech, he says explicitly, and i think this is more relevant to north korea,

never put your adversary in a position where they have to face a humiliating retreat or confrontation. on the one hand he became less of a fervent cold warrior, more of an advocate for peace. on civil rights, he was tepid on civil rights at first that when he came down to it, he and robert kennedy made the decision that even if it cost them a lay auction, he would give the address. when he gave the address his popularity went down 30 points. democrats have not won the south since that address the thing relevant with jfk as he always kept the option for dialogue open. he never was naive about the intentions of the russians. he didn't characterize them in ways that were very positive, although he did always characterize the russian people in a positive way. i think that he had to balance idealism without illusions.

you have to deal with them, but don'ta characterize the russian leaderz in ways that are overly complementary. douglas: the national archives have new tapes coming up. we have russian document archives opening up that was shed new life on the u.s.-russia relations. the 1960 election. herb gillman is writing a book on kennedy and nixon and he has a more favorable view of nixon but he does have impeccable scholarship. it is a fluid feel and kennedy studies right now, particularly when cold war countries come into play. we see what was happening from outside of the borders. susan: we have five or six minutes for our conversation and then time for questions.

you can make your way over to the microphones. we've got a photograph from look magazine if we can get it on the screen. it includes you, stephen smith. my question when i look at that is since the assassination there has been so much mythology in this country about john f. kennedy. what can you tell us about the personal john kennedy that is different for larger then or more important than the public image mythology? stephen: i was only six when my uncle -- >> where were you, by the way? stephen: that is me in the front seat. if you look closely, i looked concerned. i am concerned because we are headed for a large hill at a high rate of speed in a small, overloaded golf cart driven by a guy who wrecked his pt boat. [laughter] [laughter]

stephen: we would all get on the golf cart and we would drive for this hill. he would come down also out of what we called the whirly bird, those two marine choppers and land on the lawn and he would come out and we would run over to meet him. he got a big kick out of that and i think he got a big kick out of running around on the golf cart and scaring everyone to death. i have great memories of my uncle. caroline and i were very close. we went to treating and the white house. my mother and jackie would go trick-or-treating in georgetown while she was first lady. they would put tags over their heads with little eyes. i had pictures. we could have shown one but it is a little scary. [laughter] stephen: he was very much with children like he was with

adults. engaging, warm, fun, funny. you get a sense of a person as a child. i have some wonderful letters on my wall. one of them is a letter he wrote to my grandfather about essentially how he enrolled in the military even though he was physically unfit to do so because he wanted to fight in combat. they have to communicate to each other about his health condition in ways that the sensors would not understand because he did not want them to know he was not doing well. they made up a name for him and would write letters under that alias. i have one of those letters on my wall. it shows you the ethic of that generation of 19 million ameren students who went to war together. whether they were mechanics or barbers, that is what we are missing in america right now.

we need to create a program of national service that gets us all together as a nation in the same way that kennedy did. susan: last question before we go to our audience questions. you know i have a particular interest in first ladies. could you talk about the jfk, jacqueline kennedy onassis relationship? what role she played in politics? melania trump is criticized for not spending time in the white house. jackie kennedy spent a lot of time away from the white house, concerned about her children. if you go to middleburg, there is a plaque about how much time she spent on the farm. douglas: yes. melania trump staying in her -- staying in new york raising her child is honorable. i don't have any qualms with her.

jackie kennedy creation a huge impression on her country. her fluency in language. when she went to france she spoke french and charles de gaulle and all the leaders almost wanted to meet her more than her husband. she was popular in europe. she had a great sense of fashion. at the inaugural we saw lie in trump almostania consciously dressing in a jackie look. she was a mother and she had what was raising to -- two little children. they had a miscarriage before and she wanted to raise those children right. it is like what the obamas did with theirs.

beyond that she had a sense of rapport. she loved modern writers. i read her correspondence with john steinbeck. steinbeck broke jackie a most heartbreaking letter that her husband would live on. he was talking about king arthur in european history, what a hero means, and why a hero in history is bigger than a politician. writers loved her, artists love to her, the country loved her. she created a modern first lady by what she wanted to do. much more visible than best truman or maybe eisenhower -- or mamie eisenhower. >> the speechwriter for kennedy spoke at the national archives once and he was quick to know that president kennedy's speeches were kennedy's

speeches, not his speeches. what you know about the process they worked together in coming up with the speeches? stephen: dick goodwin was also speechwriter for president kennedy and he worked on the city on the hill speech that famously jfk said we will be judged by the answer to for question. were we men of judgment? were we men of integrity? were we men of dedication? what's the last one, doug? [laughter] stephen: dick described the process and basically jfk asked him to look at lincoln's second inaugural. they talked about the ideas that president kennedy wanted in his speech. he would come up with a draft and president kennedy would mark

up the draft and then come back with another draft and frequently kennedy would mark that one up as well. i think it was a collaborative process. no president could write all of his speeches and president kennedy had some gifted people. dick goodwin, ted sorensen. i did what that quote from ted sorensen in the introduction. kennedy was incredibly well read and ted had an obscure knowledge of history. it became well-known after reagan later quoted it, but it was kennedy who surfaced that and directed goodwin to read it and come back with a draft. susan: one of the points in the book which escaped my knowledge was that jack kennedy as a younger man was not a good speech maker and it was a skill he had to learn to apply to

himself, which is interesting when we see the soaring rhetoric carved into building. >> the issue of his catholicism is dealt with but my mother had a bugaboo with jack because he appointed his brother as attorney general. the current president has read a five -- has redefined nepotism, but how big of an issue was this during kennedy's day? stephen: i remember he said to robert kennedy when they were walking out, stop smiling, bobby. you'll look happy. i think it is a legitimate issue. fortunately robert kennedy was fairly well-qualified. he served on the rackets committee in the senate. he had run a presidential

campaign. there are legitimate concerns about appointing relatives to office. i think partially what should be considered is how qualified are these people, anyway, to be assigned what they are doing? if someone is well qualified for the job they shouldn't necessarily not be able to do it. susan: didn't congress change the law? douglas: they did an anti-nepotism law after robert kennedy. robert kennedy did a remarkable job as attorney general, but the danger is when you were in a meeting room people are afraid to maybe criticize or yell at -- i can imagine now with donald trump, no one will want to yell at ivanka. on the ivanka issue, i am perfectly fine if they feel working with jared kushner they are part of the circle. i don't have too big of problems with it. that said we need to keep our

eye on the nepotism law so it does not get shattered. >> thank you for being here and thank you for sharing the division of john f. kennedy and especially this particular month. my interest is seemingly so many writers have written about president kennedy as a liberal and certainly when he first came on the scene, when he announced in 1946 his july 4th speech, he was very much a conservative. that seemingly has been lost. even the first few years of his presidency he was much more of a conservative than richard nixon was. certainly if you put that on a continuum, nixon is more of a liberal than kennedy is. i am curious as to how you would respond to today's president

with respect to foreign policy as well as tax reform. certainly one of the issues the present occupant of the white house is looking at is tax reform and president kennedy's version of tax reform. stephen: president kennedy, at the time that he cut taxes, the highest marginal tax rate was for people over $440,000 year. it was 41%. he cut it to 67%. the idea that a tax cut now is equivalent to that is ridiculous. secondly, i think what is useful for the democratic party to consider from jfk is that he put civic identity first. our family were irish catholics, but we were americans first and he thought about himself and his family as americans and i think the democratic party's overemphasized social category

as identity in group politics. it is perceived that way by a lot of people and i think jfk was a centrist democrat. he appointed republicans to his cabinet as i mentioned. i think if the democratic party wants to win another election, they can take a page from john f. kennedy's book and think about how they could be more pragmatic and inclusive of a larger message. douglas: george bundy, national security adviser, was a republican and worked for henry stinson. robert mcnamara cut, while a democrat, was a conservative person in many ways. we sometimes mistake of the jfk years as a bastion of liberalism and that might because ted

kennedy had such a long, liberal career that people morphed all kennedy thinking into one but jack kennedy had a brand of leadership and american identity that was slightly different than ted kennedy. look at arthur schlessinger's book. it is what it means to be a centrist american and you will get close to john f. kennedy's philosophical thinking on this is. stephen: he gave a speech called "definition of a liberal." he said liberalism is a believe in the possibility of society to improve itself. that is why he was pro-government, because he thought we could accomplish things together.

that versus conservatism, which tries to protect what has already been established. in that sense he was a true liberal. he did believe government could be affected. that was the primary -- could be effective. that was the primary concept he had. he suggested medicare. he made changes to make america a more diverse country. he was not dogmatically, programmatically liberal. >> when i was five or six i was privileged with a family to watch the fireworks from white house lawn on the fourth of july. my father was space advisor at the president's science advisory community. jfk versus the national security state or cia, which i believe he wanted to rein in from the

internal affairs of other countries. truman, a month after the assassination, wrote an op-ed piece saying limit cia operations. what would jfk to have done in that respect? concerning the monetary system, as andrew jackson and did the second bank of the u.s., jfk began to circulate a treasury note redeemable in silver which arguably began to undermine the expansion of the federal reserve which has become the enabler of

the pax americana that eisenhower wrote a guest and i think kennedy wrote against. susan: thank you. stephen: thank you for your service. did you work in the space world? your father did. >> [inaudible] stephen: you did not hear. his father has a crater on the moon. the cia in the 1950's would do a lot of, under allen dulles' leadership, made democrats skeptical. this was an era when in guatemala we dealt with the coup, iran, covert operations, including assassination, as a mode of american cold war policy. when kennedy inherited the bay of pigs plan, that was allen dulles' cia vision of returning

cubans from florida that were trained to throw a coup in fidel castro's cuba. it failed. kennedy got a lot of egg on his face for that and he was following a cia program to fruition and he learned from that to have skepticism of the cia and its power and how to rein it in and limit it and also at times of the u.s. armed forces.