but you look a hell of a lot like that son of a bitch, harry truman. [ laughter ] apparently grandpa just smiled at him and said, i am that son of a bitch. thank you, ladies and gentlemen. [ applause ] the white house historical association is holding a presidential site summit in washington, d.c. representatives of presidential sites from around the country and decendents of presidents from james monroe to gerald ford are meeting to exchange ideas. >> and consistent with our back to the white house theme, the nays sent nation still testing the ideal collective that could be impervious to executive divide, the executive mansion is a visible and tangible monument

to the ultimate recognition of such an america. a country that had seen its way through the darkest of extensional threats to emerge, scathed and battered, but nonetheless intact. the sense of permanency represented in our presidential sites and imbuyed by all who work in them and all who visit them daily is an essential feature of our future as it has been of our past. for as much as it is a story of success, america is even more so a story of struggle, and against this mail u and our need to remain anchored, it is an assemblage of great presidential sites that allows us to experience this stirring story of perseverance, sacrifice and success in the modern era. and in this way, we enable the american people to remain connected to our common past and in doing so, build a bridge to

ensuing generations whose own stories will continue to strengthen the fabric that binds us together. one by one. perhaps even inspiring them to continually renew the promise that is the united states. if the past is prologue, however replete with victories and setbacks that characterize our journey, or any journey worth taking, the future of this great nation holds boundless promise to remain foundationally strong, rich in character, entirely unique, beautiful in its design and above all things, enduring. with this in mind, it's no hyperbole to suggest that the collective stories of our presidential sites, each with its own colorful legacy, at times controversial episodes and penchant for boldness is perhaps, in all reality, the story of america itself. and to further enlighten us in this regard, please join me in

welcoming this extraordinary panel this morning that we have assembled. and we are going to introduce each of them to you. but this session is presidential history and memory, and so these panelists whose experience and expertise have distinguished each of them as integral to illuminating and helping us to better understand, through a myriad of lenses, the presidency in that moment and over time. so first let me introduce our moderator. it's great pleasure for me to have susan swain join me here on the panel. she's the co ceo of c-span and she's going to moderate today's panel. joining her on stage is our panelists. barbara peri, director of presidential studies at the university of virginia at the miller center. jeffrey angle, the director of the center for presidential history at southern methodist university. richard norton smith,

presidential historian and author. jeffrey rosen, president and ceo of the national constitution center. cokie roberts, journalist at pbs and national public radio. mark uptagrove, ceo and president of the lyndon johnson foundation. so please join me in welcoming our guests here today. [ applause ] and susan, i'll turn it over to you. >> thank you, very much. good morning, everyone. it's delightful to be with you. and welcome to my panel of shrinking violets. we've been given a task this morning to talk about presidential mismaking and disruptions to the factual history that all of us in this room and whatever capacity we are in strive to tell.

and we had a really lively organizing conference call and then some wonderful back and forth e-mails. and my job was to try to organize all of that for the next hour and a half. so what i've done -- so for this morning is to think about the tech age and how we always hear about disruptions. disrupters. and so what i've done is organize our discussion and their thoughts into six disrupters of presidential history. and we're going to spend the time on each one of those. they are popular culture, current events and societal trends, research, constituent groups, digital technology and funding. so we're going to start off with popular culture. and on that call, jeff rosen, you were talking about how you have so many wonderful academic programs at the national constitution center. and bring in so many scholars. but yet the most successful traffic builder you had, had nothing to do with that. >> yes.

and it's called "hamilton"! there are -- the centerpiece of our experience is signers' hall. and there we have bronze statues of the 42 signers of the constitution. 39 signed and three refused. and in the front of the room are washington and madison. and i really think we need a rap musical for james madison. ♪ reason versus passion, the american way ♪ ♪ the american clion >> next to washington is hamilton, and the kids rush to this small, proud creature who was in the room when it happened and has set the whole constitutional world on fire ask. we discovered that putting the name hamilton next to a picture of hamilton on the front of the constitution center, that's a great way to bring people into the building. very simple pt barnum-like

approach, but it's extremely effective. the challenge of this is that it's harder to bring to life the really significant but less dramatically compelling framers. so also in signers' hall, we have the most important framer, arguably from the philosophical perspective, james wilson, who came up with the idea that we the people of the united states as a whole are sovereign, rather than we the people of the individual states. but he had a really sad story. he ended up as a supreme court justice in debt and pursued by his creditors. and in the movie, "1776," which all of us -- i see a lot of heads nodding. all of us presidential historian junkies may have been kindled on this great experience. wilson was maligned, presented as this foolish character, because it's too difficult to tell his real story. whereas roger sherman gets a great song mostly because his state rhymes. i don't know a partisan -- i'm just a simple cobbler.

i did a quick look at the history of movies and books about presidents. and unsurprisingly, the dramatic ones do better. there are a lot more lincoln plays and movies in the 20th century than washington, because lincoln is such an incredibly compelling human character. and washington is almost too good to be true, as henry adams said. so broadly, what we're doing at the constitution center is using live theater and digital experiences to try to tap the hamilton magic by telling stories. we have this great show, "freedom rising," with a live actor telling the story of america, which tells the story of the presidents. but nowadays, we have found often the stories of lesser-known founding figures are really compelling and help people connect. so we just -- we have this great "we the people" podcast i want you all to listen to. every week i call up the top liberal and conservative scholars in america to debate the constitutional issue of the week. and it's this elevating, thrilling educational experience for all of us.

ask we just finished four weeks of figures of reconstruction, frederick douglass, john bingham, who wrote the 14th amendment and callie house, the african-american seamstress who advocated for labor rights and telling those stories on the podcast and this exhibit and creating the civil war was a great way to connect. so telling the stories is crucial and if we can do that james madison musical, we'll be in great shape. >> you can definitely do governor mars who wrote the "we the people" in the beginning. he has a sexy story. >> amazing story. it's c-span so i will -- he has a wooden leg and the story was that he jumped out of a window after a carriage accident after assignation. >> husband came home. >> well, he lost his leg, and i think it was john adams who said, i wish he had lost another appendage. [ laughter ] >> he was searching for the original more perfect union. >> see, we've got the beginning

of the morris musical right here. >> and then he married nancy randolph who was accused of murder. so it was quite a -- he was quite a character. you could definitely do something with him. >> so, mark, let's talk about the many modern depictions of lbj and movies. since we're on the movie theme right now. how does the librarian foundation respond, if at all, especially when they stray from the research. >> there's three dramatic depictions of lbj in recent years. a film by rob reiner called lbj, with woody harrelson playing lbj, with very poor prosthetics. did a fantastic job. bryan cranston took robert schenn kins' play all the way to the small screen for an hbo production. and did a marvelous job.

and ava duevarney did this story of selma which included lbj. the first two were pretty good, and they helped us. to your point, jeff, about hamilton shedding new light on the constitution, bringing new interest to your institution, those productions did that for lbj. and we have woody and brian come the library to study the role, and they were very -- i was really impressed with how much they immersed themselves into trying to understand lbj. i marvelled at how curious they were. they wanted to know every facet of this very complicated personality. i will tell you that i had a problem personally with "selma," because it told the story about lbj's involvement in civil rights in the wrong way. it showed him as an

obstructionist on civil rights. in politico, they contested this version of events. it's funny. the news cycle today is 24 hours on a good day. it's become even less during the trump era. but that story seemed to continue on and on and on as a run up to the oscars. we had "entertainment tonight" calling the library. i was like, don't you have a kardashian to chase? it became a big story. so -- and that launch to debate about how we need -- you know, the responsibility the film maker has in capturing the reality of the subject. in telling an accurate story. but i think these -- the dramatic productions help us enormously. lb -- i think about this. lbj is to my kids what calvin coolidge would have been to me. and that's a long time to go back. so if you have story-tellers

telling the story of your president or any president, for that matter, in a modern way, a way that makes them accessible, a way that makes them relatable, that just helps us to do our jobs. >> barbara, perhaps no modern president has been treated more frequently in movies than john f. kennedy. so with the volume of material, does the library and the foundation, do they respond, or does it have any extra traction for you when he's the subject of yet another film? >> so you're absolutely right. there is an endless fascination with president kennedy and his family. i participated in a cnn documentary, some of you may have seen. they're doing a series on american political dynasties for cnn. and mark and i were just talking ahead of time that we participated in one on the bush family. that's going to follow the one on the kennedys. the one on the kennedys was shown in the spring. and it is a case that you do

your best. you said, how long did they interview for the bushes and it was five to eight hours. so you sit over a day's time and it's a bit stressful to be in front of the camera and have the makeup going. but you do your best as a historian. in my case as a political scientist, to take the topic that i was assigned for today was the information that you can find in the archives at the kennedy library. the information that's in the oral histories in this case at the kennedy library. and the other thing that the miller center does, uva, where i am, in addition to doing more modern presidents in terms of their oral histories, is also to go back through the tapes. so the recording. so the lyndon johnson tapes, the nixon tapes, the kennedy tapes. and those are just a wealth of information that we can use when we're doing these documentaries. and you hope that they also come out in things like -- some of you might have seen the movie that was done in the early 20200 2000s, "13 days," about the

cuban missile crisis. i did an entire teacher institute on presidents and war. i taught one for the second time on president kennedy in boston. and as a sort of lighter fare at the end of the day, while it's the cuban missile crisis, at least it's the popular treatment of the cuban missile crisis. the way we use that for teachers is to say let's turn to the documentary information, let's turn to the oral histories, let's turn to the recordings that president kennedy was making in real-time of the cuban missile crisis discussions that were going on behind the scenes. and then we compare that to how hollywood treats the subject. and i find that that's a very rich way for teachers to learn about it and then take it back to their classrooms across the country. >> moving from movies to books, we've all seen how a single book can greatly change the reputation of a president. >> talk to the folks at the adams' historic site in quincy,

who will tell you the tidal wave of interest that washed over them. i mean, they literally -- this is not a house that was built to accommodate the number of people who had read his book and wanted vicariously to relive the experience by being in the -- anyway, i'm sorry. >> so when this happens, and you've worked at so many different presidential sites. how can a site capitalize on that, even if it's not your president? is that possible? heightened interest in the presidency overall? >> you have to remember, most of the presidents i was dealing with, we were more in the mode of apologizing. [ laughter ] than advocating. i once got -- you know this story. i got a letter from my counterpart at the james buchanan foundation, who took me to task as the director of the herbert hoover presidential library for saying something i

guess unflattering to his name sake. >> easy to do. [ laughter ] >> and i thought -- but, actually, that's an interesting -- to sort of flip the question inside out. the wonderful thing is, with hoover, there is such untapped -- everyone who comes to the library over and over and over again, we redid it when i was there. and we tell the story. and people don't know the story. they know the cliche. they know the depression. they don't know, this was a man who fed a billion people in 50 countries who saved more people from starvation than hitler, stalin and mao together, eliminated. this is a man who overseas -- if you go to europe, belgium or even the former soviet union, you know, he is -- he's -- there's a totally different hoover. so when you have this vast

reserves -- and i don't mean as simple as advocacy. i joke about it. we're not apologists. we're not, frankly -- we're not the herbert hoover chamber of commerce. i mean, to have any credibility -- and i obviously would be interested to hear my colleagues. but whatever it is, whether it's a book or a film or a tour or redoing a museum exhibit, the point is to be as rigorous in your scholarship without surrendering popular appeal. the deadliest words in the english language are either/or. ask this moti and this notion that you can be scholarly or popular, but you can't be both. the fact is, people come to our sites -- first of all, everyone walks through the door. you credit with having sufficient intellectual curiosity to want to know something. they made the effort to be there. secondly, it's like any good

story-telling exercise. it just so happens in the hoover story, it's a roller coaster. there are higher highs and there are lower lows. and there's extraordina extraordinary .yancey and humor. all of those, it seems to me, you have an obligation to our ultimately constituency. we're talking about constituencies. and those are the people who don't have a phd next to their name, but who have something just as good. they have historical curiosity. and they may be school kids, they may be scholar, they may be researchers. they may be docents or volunteers. but they're enthusiasts and they're curious. and that's all you need, as far as i'm concerned, to be admitted. >> jeffrey, let me get you in on this before we move to our next topic. when i was thinking about the work you've done with the bush

family, we've got a situation where the archives are not greatly open for george w. bush, and there have been lots of popular culture treatments, many of them critical of the president. so how do historians not let popular culture establish a view that may, in fact, end up being different from what those who have worked in the administration and those who will untap the historical record eventually are able to tell? >> actually, as a historian, i think that would be marvelous. every time that we get the public perception of a president doing a., b. or c. and then we go in and get the records eventually and find out, no, that's actually entirely the way the story didn't happen. that can sell books. that can change the narrative. and that can make great historical discussion. the problem, of course, is getting access to those records. i mean, our national archive system, frankly, is -- let's say not as expeditious as historians would like. how is that for polite?

in getting documents available. and so you asked about george w. bush. we are just now feeling comfortable with the record system we have for the george h.w. bush system. and that was only because we invested -- i say we at texas a&m when i was there, invested a great deal of money and a great deal of effort in essentially filling out the forms that were necessary to get the documents that we have. so as an example, we now have every single phone conversation that president bush senior had with a foreign leader during his time in office. which is quite remarkable, i have to say. and, by the way, i encourage you to read them. they're online. they are quite remarkable. it's amazing to see a president who is able to speak with an african leader and then asian leader and latin-american leader with no aides giving him notes in between. it's really quite astounding and something i encourage us to think about. so when we have the popular perception, i think our job as historians is to try to move

things along so that the new information can essentially help round out the public perception. because i've got to tell you one other thing. having just written a book on george h.w. bush, people would constantly ask, what did you discover that's new? what's really shocking? and there were some interesting new things. but i have to tell you, the general story of what happened during those years was pretty darn right. which is to say, there are thousands of journalists in this city who are working every day to find out what an administration is doing. and they do a really good job. so what we do as historians, i think, is to go behind the curtain, say what the journalists couldn't, but their narrative actually is quite good. >> let me move on to topic two, which is very similar, which is societal trends and current events. and cokie, i'm going to start with you and ask all my panelists to jump in on this. hyper partisanship is a fact of our modern age. and with your long -- we go through cycles, we're in one of

those now. but as a historical story-teller, how has the hyper partisanship of the current age affected your ability to connect with readers, to tell those stories and has it changed your narrative at all? >> well, it changes the narrative only in that you're constantly saying it didn't used to be this way. and -- but the fact is, it does affect not so much how you tell the story, but how the story is received. because people have gone off, as we well know, in their camps. and so they agree or disagree and decide only to listen to or watch the things they agree or drin disagree with. and it becomes very difficult to just have a straight story. i mean, as -- you know, journalists really do try to do that every day, all day. and particularly now with being

under attack, as fake news that becomes a bigger problem, because people really believe that. and do have a sense that they can't trust anything they read or hear. so that becomes a bigger problem. i think the burden, which is a good one on us, is to really make sure you're getting it right. because you don't want to give any ammunition to the people who think that you are making it up. and so -- and i think that's a good burden. we should have always been getting it right. but there's more pressure to do that. i have to say that the miller center makes a huge difference. it really does. that's the place where you can go, and i do a lot of history in my pieces. and as well as the books, obviously. but the -- that's the place you can go to get the straight stuff. and to really know what the

presidents were up to. and listening to the tapes, which is just plain fun. eavesdropping. and, you know -- i mean, it's fun enough to read dolley madison's mail. but to listen to the tapes is really instructive. and with the cuban missile crisis, for instance, which you hear on those tapes, is the evolution of john kennedy as president. and all of the people who were in the room with him who thought he was joe kennedy's kid and been in the senate for 15 minutes and didn't know anything. suddenly developed a respect for him. and you can hear that evolving over those 13 days. it's fascinating. and so i think that just constantly going back to the sources, constantly making sure you're getting it right, but understanding that there are going to be a whole bunch of people who just simply don't believe it. >> it's a special opportunity in a polarized time to encourage

people to rise above their political biases. and susan, c-span and the constitution center have this wonderful collaboration. we have this joint mission, private nonprofits with a congressional mandate to be nonpartisan. and i think our experience on our landmark supreme court cases series, bringing together the top liberal and conservative scholars to debate not the political issues in the case, but the constitutional issues, is the most elevating project that i've been involved in. and broadly, that's what the constitution center tries to do in all of our discussions. i'm a law professor, a common law geek. and i began every discussion by saying, let's set aside our political views. we're all going to disagree here about politics. but converge around what we agree and disagree about the constitution. so the question is not, is gun control a good or bad idea. it's does the constitution allow it or prohibit it? and then you invite people to open themselves up to the possibility that their

constitutional conclusions by diverge from their political ones. they might think that gun control is a great idea. but the second amendment prohibits it or it's a terrible idea. but the second amendment allows it. i have my law school classmate, john mcconnell -- that's what we were taught to do in law school. and our mission at the constitution center is to bring this method of constitutional analysis to all citizens. and to think about the presidents in similar terms. so, for example, for people who are bashing the current president about his use of executive orders on our podcast, we'll say. but his predecessor used just as many executive orders. the imperial presidency -- or presidential tweets. president obama was the first tweeting president. once you view the office of the presidency in constitutional rather than purely political terms, it's a tremendous opportunity for historical and constitutional education and it's what gives me great confidence that in the end, as historians and teachers, we can -- this is all of our mission, it's our obligation,

ladies and gentlemen. we've got to elevate the country above partisanship, because we're not going to get out of it. you know that the causes of it are geographic, self-sorting and virtual filter bubbles and echo chambers. that's an intractable problem. that makes our mission all the more urgent to lift people above their partisan disagreements to converge around the history and constitutional ideals. >> but, you know, susan, there are moments, right? and it's not just movies or books or whatever. there are moments. and we're living through one right now with the death of john mccain. where we have really had a lesson over the last few days and will continue to through saturday of what it is to rise above partisanship. and to put country first. and those -- you know, in his posthumous words, how anybody could read them, i don't know. because they were so moving. but those are moments in our

history and when people are paying attention. and i think that we all have to take advantage of this moment, which is exactly what john mccain would want us to do. >> it helps -- it helps when you have a president exert more authority to reinforce that moment. and i have to say, walking past the white house yesterday and seeing that flag at full mast was a moment for me, a sad one. if i may just comment on the question about the fourth state, susan. the -- there's always been friction between the press and the president. there should be. >> that's right. >> that's what democracies are about. we're about friction. lbj said that if i walked across the potomac river, the headline in the next day's ""washington post" would be "president can't swim." [ laughter ] but the difference is that if you look at nixon, probably in

my lifetime, the greatest friction between a president and the media was with richard nixon. but -- and he had his henchman, spiro agnew, rely taally take o press. what do we remember about the phrase he invoked? name and addressering anyway bombs of negativism. pretty light stuff in 2018. you have a president calling the media the enemy of the people. and i think that that certainly, like the flag being at full mast, crosses a line. but i will agree with cokie. i think the president hs has go better. i say we -- i do a little journalism, as well. but i think we are thinking very seriously about what we are putting into print, knowing it's going to be scrutinized. knowing that we're going to have people on the other side of what we are saying criticizing everything that we do. and i think that -- my hat's off

to the journalism world. because i think that reporting is sharper, it's better, it's more factually based, and i'm -- i marvel at the reservations that -- how reserved journalists have been in this climate, in this very hostile climate. >> richard, you are knee-deep -- welcome. in spiro agnew right now. >> please, i wouldn't put it quite like that. [ laughter ] >> you're well into your research about -- >> about gerald ford. okay. >> but my point is, speaking up on jeffrey rosen's comments about moments and turning them into teaching moments. so if you have a period of time where there's antagonism with the press or use of executive orders, can we historically use them as teaching moments? >> you know, it's interesting. one of the wonderful un acknowledged privileges of being

an historian is the option of living in the past. i'm doing that right now. actually, you know, it's funny. i look at this a little differently. and that is the relationship between journalists and historians. and it's sort of like in oklahoma, the musical, the song with the farmers and the cowboys should be friends. and i think -- i'm not sure -- ironically, some of our best historians are journalists. maybe vice versa. there's reason, though, that it's said that journalists write the first draft of history. the classic example in modern times is dwight eisenhower, who at the first poll of presidential historians after he left office, he finished below chester arthur. that doesn't happen any more. and so it raises the question, what did we get wrong?

what we know we got wrong -- i wanted us to get it wrong. dwight eisenhower, along with george washington, was one of maybe the only men in our history for whom the presidency was a demotion. you know? that wonderful story that -- involving milton, ike's brother, university of pennsylvania. and they were getting ready -- he persuaded ike to come give the commencement address. and it was outdoors and the weather was threatening, and they were making small talk. and milton, you know, said just to kill the time, god, do you think it's going to rain? and ike said, milton, i haven't worried about the weather since june 6, 1945. [ laughter ] >> puts things in perspective. >> puts it -- that's perspective. and we're all in the perspective business. >> right. >> the difference is historians

have tools and materials that in some ways are denied to journalists. we are utterly dependent on journalists for what we do, but we also have the advantage of time. it takes time, particularly we're polarizing presidents. it takes time for passions to cool. for papers to become available. and above all, for us to examine -- how many -- a dozen american presidents have had to deal with the middle east. you can compare them. so instead of having -- how many of us have gotten called by journalists wanting -- what's history going to say about the incumbent? you know, and you -- you know -- well, ask me in 20 years. >> right, give it time. >> that sort of thing. >> also, they do tend to give it -- as mentioned earlier, too much time. i -- when i was researching my first history book, i called historical society that should go unnamed, and i said, you have

the papers of so-and-so. do you have his wife's papers? and they said, oh, you know, we haven't come anywhere near finishing going through his papers. it's been 200 years! [ laughter ] and honestly, as a journalist, that's just -- >> but that drives home a really central point which i think is particularly important for people in this room. that, yes, it takes time, yes, it takes patience. it also takes a lot of resources. it takes a lot of energy and effort. and, at least for modern presidents, contemporary presidents, presidents shall i say who are still alive, it takes their enthusiastic embrace of the scrutiny of history. why did eisenhower go from being one of the least-respected presidents to one of the best? there's a single answer. we got access to the records. once we saw what was really going on, we realized what a master he was at everything that he touched within the oval office and how everything within his government went through him.

we didn't have that sense before we were able to see the documents. in fact, i would even posit that every president that we have gotten access to the documents over the course of the researching and the investigation, the public's estimation of that president has gone up. >> yeah. >> which is to say, if i was running a -- the campaign for an ex president's prestige, the first thing i would do is open up everything i could. because the more people realize the complexity and the difficulty and the nuance that the presidents have to deal with, the more impressed they become. so we can be in a sense the gateway to understanding the better sense of the president. but only if we have the access and the enthusiastic support of those who control those documents. >> ronald reagan wanted to open every single document immediately dealing with u.s./soviet relations. i mean, he had that folk wisdom.

he understood instinctively, this is important. and guess what, this is going to make me look pretty good. >> well, and lady bird was the hero on the johnson tapes. you know, she had a lot of opposition of people not knowing -- because she didn't know what was on those tapes. anything could have been on those tapes. and -- >> and sometimes was. [ laughter ] >> and she just said, open them up. >> barbara, we're coming to you next as we're morphing into research. but you want to comment on this section, too. >> yes. this would serve as a segue be i think, to that point. susan had asked me to think about the place of documents versus oral histories, for example. and speaking of lady bird, she did a tremendous oral history with the johnson library that oxford university press, which has a long and venerable history of publishing oral histories, has published that oral history.

with some light touches of analysis along with it. because of the miller center, we've done every presidential administration's oral history, starting with jimmy carter and even starting a little bit with gerald ford and a group oral history we did back in the late '70s, as soon as he had left office. ted kennedy came calling and said he would like the miller center to do his oral history. so i've just been finishing the touches of a manuscript for that for oxford. so to jeff's point about -- it certainly does take time and resources for these papers to come out. we haven't mentioned the security issues. and so all of these papers have to be run through security protocols to make sure that -- there are still kennedy documents that are not out yet for national security reasons. so it takes that time. it takes the processing time to do. and so how we view oral history in working with usually the top 100 to 150 plemembers of an

administration, and we always hope the president and first lady themselves. but we view that as filling in a gap, because we can usually get through those in about ten years, which seems at the time to take a while. but compared to 200 years of waiting for these papers to come out or in the case of others, maybe 10, 15, 20 years. now, we do know that there's -- sometimes we call them document fetishes among the historians. they say, oh, who is going to believe an oral history. that's just going to be someone telling his or her version. and, you know -- sort of shading the truth. again, i mean this as a mosaic or puzzle. you're looking for as many pieces as possible to complete the picture. so i see these oral histories falling into place as part of the pieces of the puzzle. and you take the documents that come out at various times, and you can begin to put that piece of the puzzle together and come up with the full picture, you hope. >> but, i think that's exactly right. it is the full picture and trying to get the mosaic is right. we have an oral history project,

as well, which we learned very much from the miller center, which is really the gold standard in this field. and we do two things, i think, that are -- one thing in particular, that's a little bit different, which is we allow -- we mandate, actually, that all of our oral histories be videotaped. because then you can see what the person is saying. by the way, you have a better sense that the transcript is actually accurate if you can check it yourself. and people can't go back and edit what they said, because we have the video. now, i'll tell you, there's a very -- there are a few exceptions of this. for example, vice president cheney refused to let us videotape his interview that we did for our surge project. and i tried to implore him on the necessity of these videos. and i said, mr. vice president, you have to understand, you know, your facial expressions will help tell the story to future generations. they want to see the twinkle in your eye. and he looked at me and said, my eyes don't twinkle. [ laughter ] now, of course -- at that point,

i had to concede his point. but i think what's really critical as well, and this is where i think the oral histories are wonderful. i think oral histories are by and large, terrible. and i run an oral history project. they're by and large terrible if you're trying to get any particular detail. if i ask people in this room, what did you have for lunch today, about 40% of you will get it wrong and about 30% of you can't remember if you had yesterday. but at some point in our conversation, at some point in our oral histories, every single former policy maker will say, you know what really matters? that one line is worth the three hour of the interview. because that gets us a real sense of what they think upon reflection is important. but, again, that is only available when we have the enthusiastic support of administrations. >> also, you've seen a change, tremendously, though. they've gotten so much better. i mean, the kennedy ones are really bad.

and as you see the -- all of you progress in ways of interviewing people, it's just improved dramatically. >> and moreover, the historians' perspective, i think is get the details, what's the true story, as we have been talking about trying to reach. as a political scientist, and my colleague, russell reilly and i who co chair the oral history program, we are looking for institutional information. how does the presidency operate? how does the bureaucracy operate? how does the presidency operate with congress? and so we're looking for institutional issues, we're looking for decision-making processes. how did these people go about making decisions, in addition to trying to find the tick tock, as they say here in washington. >> i think c-span is a oral history in progress all day, every day. and is providing a tremendous service. >> absolutely.

>> for the older presidents, the oral histories take different forms. i've just finished a biography of that underappreciated constitutional hero, william howard taft. and his main oral history was archie butte, who was his chief aide and also served theodore roosevelt, and butte's diaries which are invaluable in giving a thin-skinned tendency to lash out at those who are disloyal. but to really capture the essence of the man, i just read his papers. they're in eight volumes, they're really -- it takes a while, but you read them and you have suddenly through his eyes this sense of our most judicial president and presidential chief justice, who views every decision through constitutional terms and thinks that the president can only do what the constitution explicitly allows, unlike roosevelt who thinks he can do anything the constitution does and forbid. so the combination was useful. i should say on the documents, too, for the -- at the constitution center, text is sacred. and it's incredibly wonderful as

a teaching tool. so we just started an exhibit with the five rarest original drafts of the constitution. they have never been put in the same place before, ever. james wilson's handwritten drafts lent by the pennsylvania historical society. in addition to the documents, we put the text online. go to americantreasures.org, whatever, google it. and you can see the evolution of the office of the presidency from an -- a six-year term elected by the legislature to the four-year term to the possibility of renewal. the evolution of the preamble from "we the people of the states of" new hampshire, rhode island and providence plantation and so forth to "we the people of the united states" signifying james wilson, that maligned hero, his belief that the whole people were sovereign. so just putting the text -- there's one other really cool thing that you can find online. at the interactive constitution of the constitution center. you can click on the first amendment, for example, and see the documentary sources and the

revolutionary -- or state constitutions. so madison didn't make up the bill of rights. he cut and pasted from the massachusetts constitution of 1780 or the virginia 1776, and seeing the evolution of the text throughout the convention is just a great way of defusing the partisan passion. you say to students, you see that two states, virginia and pennsylvania, recognized the right to bear arms as a right of citizens not to be disarmed in their militias -- sorry, two states so yaw it as a right of f defense for purposes of hunting game. and the others

didn't have vivid sense of being there. >> the other part, they don't put themselves in the story. barbara knows well, people inflate their own importance. and you have to keep that in check. as you read these things, or if you do these -- as you do these interviews, you have to -- you have to factor that in. >> right. the sleshinger interview of jackie kennedy, where he keeps trying to get her to say what he thinks. >> i did a marvelously good job. >> but -- and also has no interest in what she thinks. he's only interested in the president. and not in her. but part of the reason for that, though, is that as journalists, we tend to know the story ahead of time. and have done the research on

it. so that you know what to ask. because way too often these oral histories are sort of -- well, tell me about your time with the president, you know. and what you have to say is, october 13th, 1962. what happened that day? you know. and remind them. >> let me pick up on that comment about jackie kennedy, cokie. because so much of your scholarship has been on women's role in american history. and i am wondering, harkening back to current events. with the increased interest in women's history, with the #metoo movement and the recent couple years, has there been more material available for you? have the libraries been open to look more at the role of first ladies in american history? >> yes. >> and others? >> yes. the role of women is suddenly noticed. you know, half of the population. but the -- so it's definitely

gotten better. it's got a long way to go. but it definitely has gotten better. and there is particular interest -- the places -- since we're talking about sites, the places that are best about this, frankly, are the historic homes. mt. vernon or mt. pellier. abigail with four kids and soldiers and all of that. it's about the size of the stage. and writing these remarkable letters at night by candlelight after the whole, long, miserable day. but the -- they do care about the families. so you get more of the women's story from those sites than you do from other sites. >> before i leave this topic, i want to understand what the future looks like with the digital age. first in the preservation of history in an age of presidential tweets, social

media and electronic communication, and what the future historians will have to access. the second thing that crossed my mind about this is really the role of research librarians as artificial intelligence librari artificial intelligence becomes smarter what role will those folks have in the future of telling presidential history? what are anyone's thoughts on the future preservation? >> well, i'll tell you we are working with the obama foundation as we look to have a piece of the oral history there. you might have seen a tweet that went out for president obama's birthday this summer that announced a really different kind of oral history, a grassroots, ground-up oral history that they are doing for obama which is not going to be called a library. it will be called the obama presidential center. to your point, they will not have hard copies of documents and archives.

rather, they will all be digitized. that's one difference there. just taking advantage of the process of digitization and not attempting to have the hard copy documents. as someone who regretted the leaving of card catalogs in the library because i liked to stand and go through the cards. so don't come to me about this. i appreciate that this will be a different approach and probably in the end, even a better approach. for doing this ground-up oral history, they have spread the word to say to people they want to focus on the 2008 historic election of barack obama. send us your memories. take out your iphone and record your memories. go to your neighbors, your friends and your family. record their memories. they're going to start from the ground up. we hope to do what's called top down obviously and talk to key members of the administration. i think that's going to be one

distinction in how presidential libraries look and feel and operate. >> crowdsourcing is really the future. it's going to be difficult. again, what's true? when i was working on the civil war book and was talking to the people at princeton who have a lot of papers they were saying all those reenacters, those people learn everything about their character. if we could crowd source what they have and bring it together, you 'd have a completely different civil war history. it would be fascinating. so i think that's very much where we are headed. it's very dicey. >> i think if you combine the fact that crowd sourcing can be key with the idea that we all know at this point that we are in separate political tribes of various stripes, what we need to find is some way to get the tribes organized so the crowds at least know what's true and

what's not. this is true for historians and historic libraries to be the arbiters of what is and what's not fact. you cannot say john kennedy won the revolutionary war. somebody has to stand up and say, ai'm sorry, no, that's not right. >> everyone knows it was lyndon johnson. >> what was amazing is he walked across the delaware to do it. so one of the things that's wonderful about these new resources obviously is the way we can get access for everyone. so your center, our center, every library here is trying to put more and more online. every citizen can go and see the raw material, not just the result, but the raw data, the raw oral history in this case. what concerns me in the future is that even with a sense of having historians be arbiters we

are seeing a segment of the population that refuses to be swayed by fact. in this what is truth moment, i am concerned. i'll give you a moment. i am concerned about what happens. they'll give you a theoretical question. pulled out of thin air. suppose there are impeachment hearings. just suppose. it's hypothetical. we see a tremendous amount of evidence for whatever the crime that a president might have committed, high crime, that's similar to what occurred for richard nixon which is to say we see evidence that appears irrefutable. we hear their voices. we hear john kennedy or nixon. we know the voices tell us something that's actually in the record. at this point in the 21st century i'm concerned 40% of the population will say that's doctored. >> right. >> that's not true. >> mm-hmm. >> it may be enough to get

prosecutors and experts in order to say actually verify this is true. but having someone sway public opinion, especially in something that will enter the political realm is a dicey question in the 21st century. >> we won't solve the problem of fake news which is a serious one. one thing we can do as conveners is to bring together trusted organizations from both sides. so the most important thing the constitution center has done is bring together the federalist society which is the libertarian organization and the american organization to cosponsor an interactive constitution. i dramatically pull out my iphone and ask you to download it now. we're talking. after the show. it's got 18 million hits since three years ago when it launched. it convenes the top liberal and conservative scholars to describe what they agree about

and disagree about. you can click on the first amendment or the second amendment or the export clause and see what they agree like a unanimous supreme court majority opinion. separate statements about areas of disagreement like a concurrence or dissent. it's the most exciting thing i have experienced as a constitutional wonk. i teach this stuff and i don't know. it's the interactive constitution in the app store. i'm doing plugs here. but the college board agreed to work with us to create a two-week course on the first amendment they'll require of all a.p. students. the goal is to bring it to every citizen in america. i think what it shows is an incredibly exciting substantive civic project. the federalist society and american constitutional society

love working together. this was another extraordinary thing. they were able to agree on the thousand-word statements quickly. only a couple of cases did they have a lot of back and forth. it turns out there is more about the constitution that unites than divides us. we have a great role to play. >> quick comment? >> quick comment. this issue about information and access, there is a faustian bargain being made here. i'm a troglodyte still trying to program my dvd. but the older presidential libraries had it right. fdr was absolutely right. he understood whether you were a researcher or what museum people call a grazer, a casual visitor, the fact of the matter is whether you set foot in the archives or just a museum or just the estate, it was all an

exhibit. it was all research. you can't understand franklin roosevelt without going to hyde park. >> mm-hmm. >> that would apply to so many sites. you can provide access, i suppose, to more people than ever before. you can provide a certain amount of information. but to go back to what i said earlier, there is no substitute for being there. i wonder whether we are sacrificing that personal experience in the name of convenience. >> my fourth disruptor is constituents. you're the lead on that. this being covered by c-span and my inclination. i have reserved 15 minutes at the end for your questions. i hope you have been thinking of things to follow up on. there will be mimicrophones. please do. interactivity is interesting for all of us.

constituencies. i was thinking about presidents themts or presidential families, decentury -- themselves or presidential families, cabinet members, local and state historical societies, communities with economic interests, universities who have an interest in their institution being involved academically. that's a lot of people pulling you in a lot of different directions when running an institution. you have had so much experience. >> i ran five presidential libraries in 17 years which tells you right away i couldn't keep a job. >> neither could the president. >> something about those many influences that are pulling on you. appropriately, you have -- you have a new library. it's different from an older library. you have a living older

president. you are an employee of the national archives but you work for the president. or the first lady. or subsequent generations of the family. invariably i have to say my experience, the families in then absolutely essential to building on the initial enthusiasm. there is no such thing as a permanent exhibit. all of the libraries -- the johnson library. are you on your fourth permanent exhibit since 1971? well, the ford is on its third permanent exhibit. in any event, my last job, you'll understand why, was in springfield, illinois. the constituency was a state. it was the lincoln fraternity which is the least fraternal organization you will ever want to run into. it was the people's. it was lincoln lovers the world

over. ultimately it was the state of illinois. the valuable lesson was success in illinois government consists of getting out of town before the indictments. >> not just in springfield. >> it's a bipartisan sentiment. individuals, we can never forget in the end it's passionate, enthusiastic. people who are docents, donors. in the case of springfield there is a woman named joyce salini who single handedly manualed an abraham lincoln presidential library as an outgrowth of the historical library. she had lots of help and the state became involved. the government system came in. if it had not been for one person, the lincoln presidential library would not exist. now, the problem with that and

frankly they and they are experiencing it now, they did it backwards. when you build a presidential library, the president, his friends, supporters, they all get together and create a foundation. they raise the money. they build the building. they create an endowment so you can program that institution long after they are gone. and the paradoxical, ironical result of the grassroots enthusiasm in and around springfield that created the lincoln library was they built the library first and only then created a foundation. that's a model that i don't think even they would recommend for the future. >> but you had that in places like mount vernon. >> jim reese. >> right. >> one person. >> well, before that ms. cunningham. >> yes, of course. absolutely.

so you had this falling apart place. they were able to bring it together and make it what it is today because of a couple of people. >> so the johnson daughters are very much involved in the foundation and storytelling to this day. someone on our call talked about the beliefs when former cabinet members and family members have an active role. how do you balance that passion that comes from being a family member with storytelling and dealing with other constituencies. >> in the case of the johnson library, lbj set the tone. when the institution was inaugurated in 1971 he said it's all here, the story of our time with the barkoff for friend and foe alike. he didn't want to direct

history. richard, you mentioned that somebody wanted to open the records -- i'm sorry. maybe it was jeffrey. wanted to open the records as soon as possible. >> on russia. >> right. >> lbj wanted the records on vietnam opened as soon as possible. he was confident he was doing what was right. he wanted the american people to be exposed to the story. so the good news about the johnsons and i think what makes the lbj library a solid institution is they have never been heavy-handed about the story we're telling. >> unlike the kennedy library. >> it can be different for the different institutions. there is a great story. richard nixon attended the 1961 inaugural of john f. kennedy who beat him for the presidency in

the election in 1960. as he was walking out he ran into one of kennedy's speech writers, ted sorenson and nixon said i wish i had said those things. ted said, ask not what you can do for your country? nixon said, no, the part where it's i do solemnly swear. every man who takes the office wants to put his stamp on the presidency. his unique stamp. the institutions that bear their names after they leave office also are all unique institutions. the families, too, are unique in the stamp they want to make. it's best when we are not heavy handed. when we let people tell the story as it was. generally speaking that reflects well on the principal.

>> any thoughts on this? >> i'm going to speak as a constituency of one as an individual who grew up in louisville, kentucky, and was taken at probably age 5 to the birthplace of lincoln. as i sat last night listening to the beautiful concert sitting in front of the lincoln memorial and there is a miniature version of the lincoln memorial in which they have a log cabin. it was said one of the ideas for the lincoln memorial was to build a giant log cabin there. i remember as a child of 5 not being able to comprehend that wasn't the actual cabin in which lincoln was born. in terms of sites and places i remember seeing a tree they said this tree we know is so old it was here when lincoln was born. that was so meaningful to me. it goes from there to my first trip to hyde park eight years

ago. i love fdr. i loved seeing the library and the museum. i loved going through the home. i loved going to see eleanor's home. as we rounded a corner and went to the bedroom the ranger said this is where fdr was born. i burst into tears. i didn't even know why. i realize as i look back it was because my parents and my grandparents and aunts and uncles said to me as i grew up fdr saved us. fdr saved us. my dad's family lost their home in the great depression. i think my friends were ready to call security. my mascara was rolling down my face. it just says to those of you in these sites no matter where we are a child coming through or a scholar as an adult, they are so meaningful. as you say, i don't think you can know the presidents without going to the sites and going to the libraries.

>> there was a comment made on our preplanning call about the town versus gown relationships. i'm going to ask jeffrey angle and jeffrey rosen both to talk about that. you have the city of philadelphia with interest in the constitution center. you have a board with high powered public officials on it. talk about managing those relationships in a meaningful way. same question for you. >> first, i think i have the best job in the world. i run an educational institution with no students and no faculty. next to that, the need to deal with and be accountable to an extraordinary board of patrio c patriotic philanthropists who are committed to the nonpartisan mission is an exercise in

personal relationships. in keeping people up to date and in understanding what their special passions are. the most important challenge a nonprofit has is fund raising. it's almost entirely privately funded. we have the inspiring congressional mandate but no congressional money which is a challenge. it's also inspiring but challenging. you think, well, everyone cares about the constitution. in a tribal, polarized world, if you are not going hard left or hard right or playing to the extremes but trying to bring together what's shared, there's a small but passionate group of people who were able to really support that. so the most important part of constituency relationships is having a clear sense of mission and never deviating from it. of course it's challenging in a polarized environment. to be able to talk directly and

relevantly about the constitutional issues in the news. to be relevant, able to talk about impeachment, treason, the foreign clause in a way that all sides feel fairly heard. bringing together both sides. only talking about the constitution, not about politics is crucial. it's also very important. small nuances of word choices are important. we are going through a branding exercise as many people do. talking about freedom versus liberty appeals to one side versus another. a quality or freedom. coming up with language that conveys what everyone can agree on is crucial. at least three things on independence mall. it's a center digitally and

online. america's town hall on c-span, in philadelphia and around the country. basically teaching. that's what all of the functions are. americans from 8 to 80, 9 to 90 speaking about the constitution in ways emp can understand. never talking down to people. inspiring them to reason and present them with the best arguments so they can stretch and grow and learn and be inspired to be lifelong learners. that's the special passion. i think the way to do it is not to micro target messages to individual constituencies to focus group a particular idea. but to spread the light of learning and reason as authentically as you can and be confident that people will respond. >> i think one of the most important things is one of the most obvious when we talk about town, gown, a presidential library, a board of trustees and

a historic site in private ownership. the most important thing is obvious which is a sense of trust. the people who are running the foundation need to trust the people running the organization who are trying to do the best job without a political agenda. people running the actual exhibit need to know that people who are on the board are there for a reason. they care passionately about this issue. it's quite fascinating to me that we have in our society, a great sense of misunderstanding and perhaps a mistrust immediately based upon occupation, based upon region. i'll give you a good example. i am a professor. you all know therefore i must be a communist. we laugh because that rhetoric and mantra is out there in american society. first of all, i like to take a step back and say, you know, if you think -- not you, the big you -- as a professor i spend my

time trying to in dodoctrinate students, i spend my time trying to get them to hand in papers. i wish. that would be wonderful. we need to have a real sense that individuals are trying to get the story out and frankly if you don't trust the people you're working with, you shouldn't be working with them. >> there's been a big change. it needs to go further. for a lot of institutions, particularly smaller historic societies which have valuable documents, there's been a sense that we are the priesthood. these things are just here for the chosen few who are worthy of reading them. and you dirty public people don't come in here and touch our beautiful things.

that's changing, but it needs to change more. >> i take the point about the dangers of micro programming, targeting, specific constituencies. on the other hand, i think, for example, you think of the african-american experience at a place like mount vernon or mo monticello which has been and is being transformed. i have not seen the sally hemmings quarters but i'm eager to see it. >> fascinating. >> it's remarkable that the institutions not grounded in veneration can find it within themselves to renew themselves to be contemporary in the best sense of the word. i tip my hat to organizations like the mount vernon ladies association and the thomas jefferson foundation. they are models in a lot of ways. >> montpelier did it, too, with

slave quarters. justice ginsburg said the constitution constantly is becoming more inclusive and telling the story in a way that gives voices to underrepresented groups and it's a great privilege. >> i have two more disruptors and 22 minutes. jeffrey, we have touched on it. it's digital technology. i chose you for this to pick up on the targeting by generations because you teach. i was just overnight reading a study based on scientific research that the digital generation are having brain changes about absorption of information and processing because of living their life on digital technology. they learn differently. their attention spans are different. you are serving constituencies, all of us are, that learn one way versus people that grew up

with traditional books and other accesses to information. how do you serve both? >> let me say two contradictory things. that's my job as a professor. the first is i could not agree more with the point that this internet thing is turning out poorly. in particular, in the way that our students are engaging information. there are legions of study that demonstrate when students have computers open and are typing notes they are not learning. why? every human being is programmed to go for stimuli and e-mail is more stimulating than the average professor. that's true. it's almost a campus-wide policy that you cannot use a computer in class. you have to write things down. when you are writing them, you are thinking about them in a way that's different from having your computer open. the difficulty is we are also as

presidential sites somewhat in the entertainment business. we want people to come through the door. people like stimuli and flashy things. the difficulty is trying to find a way to, again, get people to come through the door, but also be able to have them take the time and stop. when i think about the presidential sites, even books that we write. when i think about oral histories, cnn programs, what i try to ponder is what is the one thing that someone is going to take away? as you put it, people have historical interest. they have gotten through the door. what are they going to tell friends on monday morning they learned? or what will they say to their spouse and say, you know, i learned something interesting today. if you can focus on getting the one core idea through we can bring people in with the new technologies but still remember human beings are still primed to have memories that are selective. let's help them select the right

memories. >> your library does a great job with the decision room. they present to you -- there were actual decisions george w. bush had to make with arguments on both sides. then you decide. other people in the room can engage with strangers. it's fascinating. >> to sit in the back of the decision points theater and watch different crowds of different people choose different things. even among people staring at computers, somehow a sense of group think develops. so we actually have people who will in one session say, yes, invade iraq. ten minutes later the next group, don't invade iraq. the next group, invade iraq. that reinforces the idea that the more people think about the problems of the president the more they come to understand that presidential problems are

big. nothing comes to the president's desk unless others haven't been able to solve it. >> the organizing principle for the president's memoir, you have multi platform, communicating with different audiences with the same theme. >> let me complicate things further. going back to the town and gown issue, i want to be clear. i'm not taking credit for decision points theater. i don't work for the bush library. i work for the university that's partnered with the bush library on our campus. the reason i make the distinction is important to my life at least. it shows you have to have people promoting a message and people who still have the scholarly distance, if you will, to evaluate the message. they can work together, but they need to remember they have different jobs. the most important thing about having this job is tenure. i encourage you all to go to the

boards and ensure you will not be fired for telling the truth. >> we are going to invite -- we have 15 minutes left. anybody who has a question should start getting in line and we'll get to them. get a thuought on this. >> use technology to slow down deliberation rather than speed it up. the constitutional system is designed on the thought that in large face-to-face assembly, reason triumphs. the constitution is designed to not allow mobs or majorities to form quickly so the slow voice of reason prevails. that's why tweets are so unmadisonian. tweets based on passion travel farther and faster than arguments based on reason. podcasts are a madisonian dream. an hour of arguments which people can listen to in the car

or while jogging gets a tremendous response and tremendously spreads the light. technology is a thrill. what an astonishing world where online you can have access to the original records of the convention, to the c-span programs. we have to inspire citizens to have discipline to listen to podcasts rather than watching cat videos or whatever we all do when we are not elevating ourselves. it is an opportunity and a challenge. i have confidence that we can do it. >> i was just going to say we have to remember when we were talking about fake up ins when the country began all the media that were available were part of the newspapers. we had to overcome that. >> and the fact that they did the first amendment given what the press was like is remarkable. >> exactly right. >> this notion of fake news is

ridiculous, by the way. you could say we have had fake news throughout the course of history. there is nothing but fake news if our environment is steeped in fake news today. >> abigail adams called it the "scarility" of the press. >> it has to travel more slowly. >> madison is excited about newspapers because he thinks a new class of enlightened journalists will use the newspapers to allow reason to spread slowly over the land. you get the advantage of an extended republic and a large republic. mobs can't form quickly. the slow growth of reason will allow listen to triumph. that's the challenge of fast media that travels quickly. >> thomas jefferson said the only truthful thing in the newspapers were the advertisements.

>> far be it for me to step on jefferson's words. funding in the future. the announcement by the obama folks that they are abandoning what's now become a traditional model of the 13 big presidential libraries with narrow administration of documents, minimum level of foundation work, they are going forward with their own. the documents will be managed. i'm talking to people who know this. the obama library will be actually a visitor center telling the obama story and the records will be separately managed by the national archives and records administration. what does it mean for the future? is it a challenge to the entire structure that's been built up? how do you see it playing out? >> it means the paradigm changed. i think i are re presidential l evolved through time.

if you look at the hoover library, it is a very modest structure. particularly when you compare it to the george w. bush presidential center. they have evolved through times. they have gotten far more ambitious. the reason this changes things so much is that the obama folks said, yeah, national archives, you take the records. you deal with the records and we'll control the story. we'll take the institution and tell the story. we are going to determine how it runs without your partnership. i think that's going to change. i can't see trump dhaechanging . when trump builds his library perhaps on the boardwalk of atlantic city -- i'm joking. >> maybe. >> it could be. >> people believe you on that one. that's well within the range of possibility. >> i think he's going to want to control his story. he's probably certainly willing to put money into it. i think we have seen change. >> consider the dangers inherent

in this. fdr just as he invented the modern presidency invented the presidential library. it was his notion there be relationships between historical research in one part of the building and popular history, for lack of a better word, in the museum. the two interact. as we have seen with presidents like harry truman, dwight eisenhower, that contributes to the evolution of how sclars aho and the public see the library. if you take away the scholarly function it's no longer a library. it might be yufls and i suspect it would be a success but it is not a presidential library. >> it might be financially unsustainable. because they are so big, so ambitious, can you ask the federal government to fund those

institutions? that's a fair question. >> there is a back story here. the fact is there are people in the national archives who never particularly liked the presidential libraries. over time, foes of the libraries on capitol hill have increased steadily the amount of the endowment. now no longer does the foundation not only have to build the building, they now have to provide an endowment sufficient to cover 60% of all operating costs. can you think of another cultural institution in america that operates under that formula. it's as if they are punishing the institutions that are envied the world over. people come to this country from other countries all the time to look at the presidential libraries and see if they can, in some way, reproduce it. it was a stroke of genius on fdr's part. unfortunately it is being

endone. >> -- undone. >> you're up, sir. >> i work for the national parks service on the national mall. we are working on a major renovation of the lincoln memorial to create a visitor experience to tell not the story of lincoln but his legacy, why he was memorialized and how the site significance changed over time. we have the eisenhower memorial being constructed in d.c. i'm curious about your thoughts about the opportunities and maybe more importantly the dangers inherent in memoriali memorializing a president as it pertains to preserving the authenticity of the president's story, legacy and maybe most importantly their humanity. >> i'm going to ask you to pick a panelist. who would you like to respond to that? >> how about cokie?

>> first i want to say what a great job the parks service does. it is terrific. what you have done online historically is valuable for those of us who write history. it is not all rose glasses. it's truth. you keep doing that more. the education of your rangers and other people is just phenomenally good. thank you. the parks service has been under tremendous financial pressure the last several years. that's really -- you are doing it under difficult circumstances. >> one other panelist have a comment for the questioner and i will move on? anyone else? >> well, memorializing presidents, we are going to do it. so just do it right. >> let's be open to recognizing

the interpretations that change over time. hopefully not quickly or profoundly. the sensibility of 2018 is not the sensibility of 1865. >> except for james buchanan. >> we'll get in trouble for that. >> as in pennsylvania, and i'm happy. >> sir, you're up. >> my name is michael lynch. i work for the lincoln library and museum in eastern tennessee, not the one in springfield. i guess this question is primarily directed to dr. smith. presidential librarians and some museums and other sites have a broad mandate. we are charged with a cradle to grave approach that requires a person within their historical context, the decisions they made, the way they affect institutions and looking at them as people.

their private lives, domestic lives, relationships, hobbies. how do we balance the subjects and should we balance them? do you think we should privilege one over the other? >> internally, we balance them if we were to have credibility. there is a curious thing at work here. there is a passion for your subject with the detachment that's required in telling the story. at the hoover library, for example. hoover somehow was involved or caused the great depression. we create an exhibit at the end of the gallery where you vote on how you think hoover did. however you vote, you see a two-minute video showing you the other side. that's one concrete example of balance. in a broader sense, the fact is people go to presidential libraries, overwhelmingly not to learn about the finer points of

the caribbean initiative, but to have an encounter with ronald and nancy reagan. don't condescend to that. the wonderful thing is if you do it right, tell the story properly, if you pull people in both emotionally and intellectually which is what any good exhibit or story does, the fact is the ultimate test, the question that i would ask of any museum -- if you want to know the measure of success and that's when you walk out the door, do you walk out wanting to know more? >> i hope we have done that today, too. you're up next. >> hello. first of all, this session has been absolutely incredible. i could not be -- i just -- you mentioned earlier about your feeling when you were at hyde park. that's how i feel now.

i have always had such a love of history. like all of you. cokie, you, nancy dickerson, barbara walters, all through the '60s helped me develop my interest in the government, news, journalism, getting stories right, attention to detail. thank you for that. >> thank you. thank you for citing my age. >> in saying that, i'm not sure if i said my name. did i? >> no. >> my name is anne marie brazunas and my husband and i are here visiting from valley for forge. it is close to the, p park.

cokie, you alluded to the fact that when you are interviewing someone, you have the answer. you have done the research. you have an idea of what to expect. in all the interviews you have done, have you ever had an experience where you asked the question and the answer that you received was quite different from what you expected? >> oh, sure. all the time. you still need to know the topic. it's kind of like saying to your old uncle tell me the one about. and then you get the best from somebody because you know he tells a good story about the one about. often why you're on that train of questioning, you don't go in knowing everything. you wouldn't be interviewing him except you get the voice on tape. you learned a tremendous amount in the interviews. you're often surprised and sometimes unpleasantly so. you're up, sir. welcome. >> hello.

i'm the director of the george w. bush childhood home in midland, texas. we want to talk about the bush family during ten years or so in west texas. my question is for jeffrey engel. you brought it up in your discussion. anybody else that would like to chime in has a small organization not owned, operated, funded by any branch of government. in other words, we are trying to be self-sufficient. we have a need to reach out obviously through social media, get more interest and visitors around the world. although we have seen them from pretty much every cry in the world in the 13 years we have been open. >> interesting. you mentioned that tours such as what we give, we want people to interact with us. stay away from social media during that period. how do you recommend us joining

the need for having that social media interaction and the need for keeping people away from social media during that interaction. >> first of all, i recommend you do what i do. you will fail the course. that's a difficult question. let me give you one practical suggestion that leaps to mind. make your exhibits not have wifi. if you can seal them off in some way which i don't know if that's even legal these days, jeff. i think the real key is to get people to try to focus. you mentioned the docent who is are the key. they have the opportunity to continually remind people why they are there. they're not there just to look at something before they look at their e-mail. they are there because they made the decision to reinforce their enthusiasm for having come. this is why it's important that you are here is a good line.

>> we are -- we have two minutes. i will presume it's over to run over for the last three questioners. go ahead, please. >> i'm visiting from long island. i have been a presidential history buff since i can remember my entire life. my question is primarily for the lyndon johnson foundation. because at the time when johnson was in politics he was a hard-core democrat. probably if you can compare his presidency, the most progressive president until barack obama. you know when he retired, the state was pretty much solid blue democratic state. he's pretty much republican and as conservative as can be. my question is how difficult is

it to promote someone's legacy in a political climate that's changed profoundly since the time they had existed. >> one of the reasons texas is now a red state as opposed to a blue state is because of lyndon johnson. because of the sweeping civil rights because of the 1960s. there is a great story about lbj. one of my favorites. he's talking to richard russell. he's in the news because there is talk about renaming the senate building the mccain senate building. richard russell was a mentor and a friend to lbj and helped him ascend the ranks in the senate. lbj knew when he was endeavoring to pass the civil rights act of 1964 which would get rid of jim crowe laws and the false promise

of separate but equal facilities he would have to run over richard russell, his old friend and mentor. out of respect he calls him into the office and says, you know, i'm going to have to run over you on this. we're going to pass civil rights legislation that means something to this country. i warn you, just be prepared. russell says, mr. president, i believe you can do that. if you do you will lose the southern states to the republicans and you will risk losing the presidency later this year. he says, dick, if that's the price for the bill, i will gladly pay it. i think that shows why texas has changed to red as did the deep southern states. they remained red to this day. that story also illustrates why

we are relevant today. the inherent drama in that story. you get swept up in the story and in the times. if we continue to tell that story, if we continue to show the lasting legacy of lyndon johnson -- and that's easy to do -- we'll continue to be a relevant, engaging institution. >> there are also a bunch of yankees. i did a story in texas in 1980 which was the year it turned forever. it was a bunch of people from new jersey and ohio. they had basically never heard of the texas democratic party. they were for ronald reagan. >> yeah. >> the last two questions. you're up, please. >> hi. my name is kate morgan. i'm one of 15 student scholars. i'm from american university in d.c. >> wonderful. >> i was wondering if we could kind of pivot back to the topic of technology, specifically in regards to twitter and tweets.

just kind of going more -- >> you said something about the shift in paradigm. >> sure. in terms of the presidential library model. i'd love to hear -- if you don't mind, i would like barbara's thoughts on it. >> great question. i have thought a lot about this for the president's tweets. i view it in several ways.

if we walk into the miller center library at uva, we have all of the presidential papers. we have volumes and volumes of presidential papers. these would include speeches and proclamations and statements in the rose garden and that sort of thing. i view them in that way when putting on my objective scholarly hat in terms of a president's tweet starting with president obama. my next thought is looking at paradigm shifts, the statement we are using about how new technology affected how presidents relate to the public. with fdr and radio particularly and fireside chats, president kennedy and the televised news conference with the rise of television. in both of those instances, the president sees those moments and perfected the use of the media and the medium to reach the american people. now to jeff rose 's points about a constitutional structure i'm calling this period we are living in a tweetocracy.

when you take the expansion of voting rights to universal suffrage where everyone 18 years and older can technically vote and you layer upon that social media, facebook, twitter. aside from potential russian meddling it's different from what madison envisioned when talking about the extent and structure of the government. you have presidents directly relating to the people. so the term social media is a misnomer in a way. medium indicates something between the people and the government. that's been removed. to your point, i think you must be asking as well what about all the other tweets? what about the people responding to this president or the other night when i heard john mccain had died i tweeted out under my account a clip from a statement that i heard senator mccain make at the smithsonian april a year

ago at a john f. kennedy exhibit in which he talked about being on the u.s.s. enterprise in the midst of the cuban missile crisis as a new fighter pilot thinking he might be going into combat for the first time. it turned out there was no combat. but he remembered listening to kennedy as mccain was on the ship steaming towards cuba and not knowing what. he said, i remember hearing the voice and i remember thinking, this was the man for the job. i remember thinking that night, here is a republican speaking so highly of a democratic president and what those men had in common -- john mccain and john kennedy where they were navy combat veterans who almost lost their lives in the service of their country. i hope someone comes upon the tweet i sent out. to your point, i don't know the answer to how do we save all of them? do we save all of them? are we selective and in what way, using what criteria?

>> the library of congress started and gave up on the project. we are intruding on your coffee hour. we have one last question. thank you so much. >> thank you. i'm from the hoover presidential library. we are usually forgotten. thank you for talking about us so much. >> you're remembered in the wrong way. >> my question is for cokie. i worked on a first lady exhibit and used your books with children and adults which was wonderful. i was discouraged when we started working on the exhibit to here when it comes to first ladies there are two things that sell -- fashion and food. >> you're talking about the exhibit at the american history museum? >> we did one at the hoover library independently. we fell into the trap and displayed first lady dresses. it was very well received and people showed up. my question is how can we as

historians and journalists and people preserving the stories interweave the narrative of first ladies and judging them by who they were and what they did instead of what they wore and what they cooked. >> it's fine to show the dresses. they're interesting. i like to see the dresses. but the problem is when the dresses are the story. it is fascinating. particularly the shoes. they're really little. i'm very disappointed with what they did at the american history museum here. they had a better exhibit in the old structure. it was about their policy. for martha washington on, first ladies had policies. the thing to do is make it very

clear. what was her name? mrs. hoover. >> lou hoover. >> she was phenomenal. everything she did from the girl scouts on was just remarkable. so i think tell her story. her clothes can be there. her story and her influence were tremendous. that's the thing to do. make sure everybody understands she wasn't just walking around in the dress. she was also doing something significant. that's true of all of them. >> i just reviewed a brand new book by the university of kansas which has an entire series starting with mrs. mckinney on modern first ladies all done from a scholarly perspective. it gives you more than the food and fashions. i just reviewed a book by a young scholar called jill abraham hunter. it traces for modern first ladies starting with mrs. hoover

the relationship between first ladies and american history and particularly feminist history. so i think that's the way to do it as well. >> thank you for your attention and your great questions. please join me in thanking the panel. [ applause ] >> thank you very much to our panel. we have had a ten-minute break. we need to convene at 11:00 for the next panel, fostering leadership through education technology. it's a terrific group of people you'll really want to hear. thank you.

our live coverage from the white house historical association's presidential site summit continues sites summit begins at 12:30 p.m. eastern with former white house executive pastry chef roland mesnier who talks about serving five presidents over a quarter century. and we'll have more tomorrow when the former press secretary joins the panel sdiscussion wit white house correspondent. and jon meacham talks to pbs about thomas jefferson and franklin d. roosevelt. live coverage with representatives from presidential sites across the country begins wednesday morning at 9:00 eastern. and if you miss any of this week's american history tv programs, you can find them any time online in the c-span video library at cspan.org. american history tv weekdays

will continue until labor day. our look at the presidency will continue tomorrow with how presidents have dealt with the media and press coverage. and thursday we turn to our oral history series with conversations with women who were members of congress. then on friday, we show discussions on world war i and the great war, including a look at soldiers in the western front and how the u.s. dealt with shell-shock. restoration at thomas jefferson's monticello is uncovering the story of sally hemmings and other slaves who lived, worked and died at the third president's plantation. up next from american history tv's american artifacts, a behind-the-scenes look at the restoration work and we hear the stories that have been revealed. this is an hour and 45 minutes. >> so if you had visited on