write about that, i noticed how so many of those words are two syllables. they are either two syllable words or two syllable phrases. strive on. finish. bind up. care for. do all. achieve. cherish. and it struck me this paragraph is like walking, it is as simple as walking, and it is as hard as walking when you have walked so far, and you have so far still yet to go. thank you. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

>> we continue with a sit-down conversation with "national review" senior editor richard brookhiser. he discusses his career, his favorite founding fathers, and his inspiration for the book of "founder's son: the life of abraham lincoln." this is about 50 minutes. [applause] remarkable. we will have a 45 minute q and a. afterwards there are copies of ookhiser's books in the lobby. you have one of the best dinner conversation icebreakers in history. and that is that ronald reagan

famously laughed at your joke, and margaret thatcher retold your joke. tell.l her it -- do host: this happened when the national review opened its first aftergton office, reagan's first inauguration. bill buckley and bennett bennett personal friend of ronald reagan's for many years, and vice versa. he had supported his first run for president in 1976, and again in 1980, so he was kind enough to come to the opening of our washington office. he gave a few remarks and bill give a few remarks, but before that each of the senior editors got a moment to speak. and you know, we are a new york magazine, we had been in new and in new1955, york, some people have said it is a snobbish city. i don't know why they say that. and certainly we respect

washington. >> from palm beach we say the same thing. host: and we can certainly stash richard: and we can certainly feel that with washington dc. and it's not that way, it has come up in the world, lots of the enemy's restaurants, lots of afghan restaurants. lose a country, gain a restaurant. [laughter] and i know reagan laughed at it. he and bill buckley were behind photographer, a great photographer who took a lot of photographs for us, he snapped the shot which i have of reagan and bill cracking up as i make as little joke. and then years later, when margaret thatcher was in washington for some, maybe was the heritage foundation, some bigwig meeting. and i had never met her and i

was just sitting in the audience. and then she said, things were so dad in the 1970's that there was a cynical joke, lose a country, gain a restaurant. i said, wait i said that. there was the successor to the national review agreed he had been at the washington office, he said that and repeated it because he was very close to her. mind and shein her kind of alternate. she got the punch line. you mentioned bill buckley. interesting youtionship, i think describe it as tumultuous.

would you care to expand on them for us? more important event of ball to us. he is a lovely man. talent, but i think the most remarkable thing about him was how generous he was to other people. talentalways looking for , he looked for men older than he was when he started the national review. writers and he -- ys he look for it in younger people. he hired one who became the daily book editor for the new york times. boss, hehis first

hired this 19-year-old dropout from harvard. like the way his stories were written, he came down to new york and hired him. the same story with gary, he dropped out of seminary. the national review was the only one that answered. other people,. crow, always feeling shiny objects. those birds, he did not hide them in a nest, he displayed them. thisnted to show the world collection he had. he just took pleasure in that.

not all talented people do that. some of us are real selfish, some of us are average people. bill really wanted to spread it around. i think that is also related to how he ran his television show. engagement with people, most people he disagreed with. that is why they were on the show. sometimes she really was going after them. even if he was being very contentious, he was polite, he would think there was something there that they had to say. even if it is wrong, we have to understand what it is, we have to address it. that was bill. my relationship, i was one of his many discoveries.

i had sent an article when i was a freshman in high school. my olderletter to brother, i was six years older than he was, he was off to college. been antiwar demonstrations at my high school in the fall of 1969. there was supposed to be a teaching event on college campuses. i said let's do the same thing, we will cut class and have a demonstration. i thought this was a pain our our elders.ing i does rep. russell: fagan wrote a letter to my brother in college. he wrote back, he said that was a really funny letter. my father said why don't you submit to the national review?

no one in my family knew anything about journalism, we did know how it works. i sent it off, i rewrote it a little. months passed, i did not hear a thing. that is whatll magazine stupid bit thrown away and they don't tell you. from thet a letter assistant managing editor who said i just cleaned my desk, that is how magazines work. i have just been my desk and i found your article, i like it. the managing editor liked it, we want to publish it. i was thrilled. this was before my 50th birthday. it came out the day after my 15th birthday.

hadas the cover story, they not told me that is windows going to be. that was the second surprise. the third surprise, i got a check. what did i know? i thought it costed money to print magazines, maybe they will ask me for money. for $180.eck i thought this was great. i was seduced from my lifeline like that. in college, i got to meet bill and i was an intern there. then i went to work there. , he took very early on me to lunch and said i have decided when i step down you will succeed me. then you will own the entire magazine. after telling my wife this i was

flabbergasted. are going to, you become a senior editor, the managing editor, then you will become the editor in chief. editor,ame the managing i did that for two years. after into my desk looking at some envelopes, there was a letter from bell. he decided that i can't succeed him, i did not have the ability. he said you are a writer, that is what you should be doing. you don't have executive ability. i told my wife this, this was the second surprise. that was kind of rocky for a wild. -- a while.

out.rked it if you want to know about the s, i wrote a book about this. it tells the story, but it also of why he was so important to me. abraham lincoln i was looking for certain followers. >> he was one of those influential father figures for you? >> sure. has anyone seen firing line? google allenan ginsberg, there is a clip of him , sitting there was some object on his lap, it is hard to see what it is. he asks if he may sing a song for krishna.

bill said go ahead. he starts playing this thing and he sings a harry krishna chant. voice is a good, but it was very passionate. bill said that was the most unhurried harry krishna i have ever heard. him sing is he let this. -- didn'tberg did it get on public television a lot in that time. once, after man saidtalk in new york, he are you still in touch with bill? he said thank him for me. he was the only place where you voices from the left

on television. that was interesting. what would bill buckley have to say about our politics today? time thathere is no has ever been peaceful. politics,t crazy obviously the run-up to the civil war. there was also the founding fathers, they were unbalanced. thoughtr hamilton should haverson been fed to the guillotine. thomas jefferson thought alexander hamilton was a british a man who spent the war fighting against britain. that is what jefferson thought,

all of his followers thought the same. them itwith them, for was the fact that it was also new. are mentionedies nowhere in the constitution, they all said parties are a bad thing. parties would be a bad thing. party, ielong to a never have, they almost immediately began to set up a two-party system. there weren't comfortable with what they had done. it made them anxious. there was this contention, then there is the exciting -- anxiety that they are doing this. four months after washington's , july 1789,ration that begin a 20 year world for.

the first 25 years of america was this constitution, little country where the two superpowers of the world are duking it out. it is not just to kings going at it. is the old order versus the new revolutionary power. that infects our politics. , wething about guillotines borrow that from the french revolution. useerson supporters would guillotines and cartoons. guillotinedver here. it was a symbol that we borrowed. it was very effective. bill had seen that. you just have to be wise enough

to know that is what politics can be like. forget they were airing their grievances in the press, just like us. jefferson and hamilton had reporters in their pockets. it was just as bipartisan and better. -- better. hamilton'sr newspaper is still around. it is the new york post. >> the new york observer, almost is thereor magazine -- a story you look back on as one of your favorites or one of your best works? >> one of my best stories?

one story that never got -- he knew there was some interesting stuff happening in canadian politics. he had been at the new york observer. he said go to canada and bright this story, so i went to come go?, montreal, where did i what is the town of alberta? i would to edmonton. i would to british columbia, i got shingles in canada. i was misdiagnosed by a doctor. andlked to all these people i wrote this story, i thought i did a good job. the reason they did not run it was the same reason he asked me to read it, it was canadian. he said if i run this thing at will fail.

nothing happened there but it was fun. probably the most fun was going to cuba in 1984 with jesse jackson. jackson was his first run for president, the primaries were over, he wanted to show you have foreign policy. he went to several countries including cuba. when i saw jesse jackson was going to cuba, i had to go. author who went to cuba was john leonard, he was sent there as a kid, castro had just taken over. there was a journalist who had been anti-castro, he had been thrown in jail. bill sent him down to see what

had happened to the sky. john went down, one morning he got a call on the embassy which said leaf today. -- leave today. he was the preceding reporter in cuba. i went on this trip. castro came down the aisle of our airplane, he shook everybody's hand. the chilling moment that i saw, there was going to be a welcome to jackson after the airplane landed. we went off of the back of the , and then checks and castro would treat him. there was a crowd of people to welcome this visitor from the united states. they were absolutely silent.

when jackson appeared, you saw these leaders step forward into the crowd and they started clapping. castro shook his hand, and that it was absolutely silent. that reflectedof the whole thing. which is still going on. is still the same family since 1975. >> when did you know you wanted to be a writer? >> before that. i have been writing little stories and things. it took this form, it took the form of journalism. as a kid i thought i wanted to be a novelist. that never happened, i never

pursued that. it became journalism, and then history which is like journalism. aboutabout events, it is largely public events in the world. figuring out what is going on. i think being a journalist was good preparation to being a historian. you are used to politics. you have seen it yourself, you have seen a setback. you have seen it in real life. jefferson or when these great men -- they are politicians. the same stuff has always gone on. you recognize it.

this is the way it is. here they are doing it now. if you weren't a writer, which you be a novelist -- would you be a novelist? >> i don't know. for a radiog station somewhere. i just finished a book on john marshall. what other intellectual forces shape your view of journalism in history? well, one journal whose writing i admired was a friend of bills.

his style got more and more ornate as the years passed. its best it was very good and capable. he covered bills announcement when he ran for mayor of new york in 1965. at one pointends, he said he treated journalists like a resident commissioner reedy the 39 articles of the anglican establishment to conscripted zulus. it doesn't get better than that.

last weekend i was in new haven, connecticut. i went to yale for undergrad. one of the reasons i wrote about last weekendwashington was somew at yale. i would to see it again. they own john trumbull's paintings of the revolutionary war. he grew up in new haven, connecticut, his father was governor, his brother also became governor. it is a very political family. he never went to jail, he went to harvard instead. he wanted to be a painter, his father did not like this idea. record i want to america's history as athenian artists did. his father said you are forgetting that connecticut is not athens. he became a painter anyway. he went to england, he studied with benjamin west.

war and he maye have done some spiting while he was in london. he went to london after his war service. the war was still going on. they were more relaxed about letting foreign nationals over there. ofn he did these paintings the revolution after the war. if you see them, it is , his message is the central figure in this story and it is george washington. there are 80 small paintings, washington is in four of them. he is in the center of everyone. focused on him. there is a full-scale painting of washington on the battle of trent. the bridge think they have cornered him, they are going to

to fight their lines that battle at princeton. it is a terrific painting. he got washington to pose, maybe he asked them to think about the battle of trenton. that in thely see painting. i had taken a history class, a lot of this is based on reading. we talk about the eloquent guys, washington is not eloquent. he is a man of action. photographs, any we do have these paintings. washington was probably the

least eloquent but visually he was a master of drama and theatrics. his imposing size, the way he dressed himself, it is difficult to understand washington without the visual, without understanding the charisma of his actions. there is that front row seat to history. him on horseback probably. they have all seen him. he was an active presence to all the soldiers. they tell their families what they saw in the war.

as president he wanted to make sure to go to every state. they talk about six degrees of separation and connecting people by one person. sex was the maximum number you needed. i think for washington it is much lower. , and thest so present war had drunk people from georgia to new hampshire. trumbull who unmasks the true washington, if you were to ack a time machine and take time to go back to me george washington. would you discover anything about him? >> i would want to see him. i would want to have that experience myself.

his cards veryed close to the best. closer the older he gets. , he isly, as president the most famous man in the country. anything he says could be policy. people are listening. -- noe he has most small smalltalk, he would just sit. he would sit and look. are accounts of the dinner parties that he threw well president, hehile would make sure to invite everyone from congress. people who went to these were

just bored to death. there was a gutter from pennsylvania who kept a diary, he said washington sat there and he was playing with a fork. a joke was told at one point and everything was quiet. it was because washington did not want to say anything. if it altered to silence, that was fine with him. lincoln would not be silent, he would tell stories. in an opposite way, i think lincoln would be just as difficult, could you find anything about lincoln or would it be just stories? think it you out of the room, right? biographerss first was one of his longest law

partners. he was nine years younger. on about lincoln. he was observant and smart. he watches the sky he is working with. he is not only the leader of the republican party when he becomes president and that he is murdered. he decided he had to write what he knows. he thinks let me just tired absolute sense about his life. he realizes he knows nothing about lincoln this been with him every day. he embarked on what we would now call oral history. he talked to people in kentucky and indiana, he gets them to write letters.

most moving one, he interviewed his stepmother. she was still alive. she was an old lady. he records the interview, he has a note that says, i am too late. she has lost it. her, hedown next to must have been a good interviewer, he starts talking about the old days, he gets her relaxed and she begins to remember to talk. she has this fascinating interview, that is how she describes how abraham lincoln read. she tries to defend her husband. his father would not make him do himore, maybe she protected a little bit.

wasn't think his father brutal, certainly not too intrusive. you had taken the crops in. one point,at abraham's mind and her were alike. think, you really did a good job. we really know you a lot. country bysave the getting this stepson and encouraging him. something inize him immediately. >> he just wants to be a

subsistence farmer, that is his goal in life. there is correspondence between having abraham. he is living with thomas lincoln, they keep asking him for money. , heoln sends it to him writes occasionally. why are you just scratching , it is a really rough phrase. what kind of a life is this? it is the life lincoln rejected. he wanted to make something of himself. he wanted to get into politics. he was thinking has step brother and father, what kind of a life of a leading? it is painful correspondence to read. i think for him it was envy.

he didn't want anyone to be closer to lincoln than he was. he also hated children. i am sure that they did. lincoln as a father just let them do whatever grade he wanted -- he wouldposite just let them do whatever. he wanted to do the opposite. they all died young, some of them very on. i will say this. in the four following

situations and you can make one call to a founding father, i know the one you will call. broketuation is you are and you need $10,000 right away. you have just been taken to the emergency room, you have just been arrested, or somebody has just canceled for dinner and you need a replacement. tonight. situations you would call covered her chorus -- governor morris. he is the draftsman of the constitution. he is on the committee of style. those five men gave him the job of taking all the resolutions

and polishing them and putting them into the final form. he did a brilliant job. he also wrote the preamble of his own. that is entirely his. the second half of his life, he stayed in paris for the next 40 years. tobecomes minister to france follow jefferson who goes back in 1789. he sees the beginning of the french revolution. he sees the dissent into the reign of terror. e writes a diary while he is there. why would you call the sky, he -- call this guy, he was a very good friend, he was medically knowledgeable.

when he was a boy he burned most of the flesh off one of his arms. man, he had one of his legs cut off. town,n doctor was out of they consulted these other doctors, they said we have to take it off at the knee. back,is own doctor came they said i don't know if you had to do that. that never slowed him down. he was active his whole life, he danced, he flirted, he was a ladies man. that is why he would be good at dinner, just don't see 10 next to your wife -- september the your wife. >> i always thought if i was

having a dinner party from , i think benjamin franklin is my phone call. do you have any insight for us? >>, i think benjamin franklin is my phone call. ben franklin, i thought of doing a book on him. , i of the reasons i didn't think there are so many excellent books already. there was 115 years ago that was brilliant. is about one angle of his life. book i have written about the founding fathers was written in the 1930's. it is a terrific book. i read all of those, i thought what am i going to add?

the other thing about franklin, a great historian who passed a few years ago, said the trouble with franklin was he lied all the time. that is harsh but i know what he means. forget lincoln and his stories. franklin was always keeping people away, he does that with funny stories. he does that with his interest in science. abouts that was stories his past and politics. out --d scope ul, figure you out, figure you out, he would deal that franklin.

one of the smartest things i , notread about franklin such a great book but the first paragraph was brilliant. he said benjamin franklin was a , that is a very rare and lonely thing. doing wasent his life entertaining the people around him. he would give exhibitions of swimming, he would devise arithmetic that would all work out. it was to keep you amused and off his back and out of his mind. he was interested in what he was interested in. i think this made it very hard to be his son.

that was a disaster but strained at best relationship. these are very difficult man to understand. they are so very complicated men. earlier -- how do you pick these great topics for your books? my wife told me to write one book. i thought it was a great idea. she said why don't you do a book -- this was after the governor morris book. it did not sell all. interestedr was not in another biography. i was wandering around. she said why don't you do a book , what with the founders do

--what the founders do? she said for them in a contemporary scene. -- put them in a contemporary scene. i thought that was brilliant. in the past, many things are different. something sartre so different. -- aren't so different. through isthing i go , therei was in college was the communist spy. he told lincoln to get down. one term in served congress, one of his fellow

congressmen was john quincy non.s who had heard the can it is a lot further to show a man we are not that old. , we still haveen the constitution we had in 1789. how many governments has france gone through? country rather young with old institutions. that is why i agree to the idea so quickly. the other ideas, i have thought of myself. the lincoln book and the one i am finishing.

he was a freshman when i was a senior. now on track at yale law school. i have always stood clear of lincoln. just one million books about lincoln. come at himcould from the founding. intelligent biographers have written about it. let me go the other way. after that book came out, he said you should do john marshall. int is going to be out

october. if he thinks about a third book, i will have to give him a percentage. i thought i was being very clever title in the book affairs of state. it should have been 50 shades of grey straight. it would have sold a lot better. they would have thought it was in the series. when they put this together, the sad state of history education, where do you see in the state of history education, and what can be done to study the past? >> there are some hopeful things.

there is an institute in new york city that is doing terrific work. success of books -- , this shows books there is an appetite for it. i would work with those positive things. in a way, i think it is heading to a nest of good look at the economic level. the founders were taught and a good track for many years.

they really took the founders seriously as they took themselves. they were influential. they had a lot of students who became professors. set them on the course that has ended at the end -- at the academic level. those books are still out there. you fight with what you have. are in a resurgence of biographers. i would put our guests and this serious clearly above that. one of the great tools for is done in aory way that is very appealing to the audience. of have the great honor

charity that famous hamilton. how did you approach this difficult task of capturing hamilton in an exhibit? didn't -- it couldn't have happened without james. he runs the gilder lerman institute, a great guy, a great colleague. a great man to work with. advice from a firm that does exhibitions and so on. they helped us realize the kind of story that in that submission is. a book is a story, a movie as a story, an exhibition is also a

story. people are going to get much less out of it. if less -- unless they are arranged in a way that tells a story. societyyork historical had all of the stuff. we were able to get wonderful loans from elsewhere. i remember we got the bust of thomas jefferson. alwaysfirst room i thought of jefferson's head. it was full of portraits and the people in his life. some people he had been intimate for, some people he knew certain moments paid some of these were great paintings, some of them were mediocre. it was just a jumble. bust, ihe straight

remember taking my way through that room. she looked at mr. jefferson and said i don't trust the sky. -- the sky. >> i could sit here all day. we are out of time. asked, what with the founders do, that is what our mission is. with oneuld leave us one of theat is great takeaways relevant to us today? >> they would say you have to do what we did. we had our principles which we stated. we devised the best system of government we could think of. it is not a perpetual motion machine.

you havet there were to take care of this. patriotic goe as do it. we are in charge of continuing that. >> the declaration of independence was not something you can read. i would like to thank richard rukeyser. thank you.

[applause] there are books in the lobby. thank you to our friends at c-span. >> interested in american history tv? visit our website. you can view our tv schedule, programs andng watch college lectures, archival films and more. american history tv, and c-span.org/history. >> behind me and the shawnee milling company. it is one of two locally owned businesses that have been open for 100 years. come with us as we visit these two companies and learn about their history and whether commitment to shawnee remain strong. >> it has very interesting history.