updates from governors and state officials, track the spread throughout the u.s. and the world with interactive maps, watch on-demand anytime, unfiltered, at c-span.org/coronavirus. >> next, on american history tv, a conversation about c-span's book "the president's." noted historians rank america's best and worst chief executives. this program, from washington, d.c.'s museum, includes book contributors kenneth ackerman and david o stewart, who had written about james garfield and andrew johnson, respectively. [chatter]

[applause] >> good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the newseum's night tv studio and another addition of inside media. i am the director of programs here at the museum. as the 2020 residential election rapidly starts to invade our daily newspaper, and with joe biden's announcement fueling the fire this week, what better time to look back at the history of the presidency and to examine the character and dignity of the men who has held office? we dive in deep to that topic today as we discussed the new c-span book, "the presidents," ranking america's best and worst

chief executives. the title tells it all and just a moment, you will hear from susan swain, the co-ceo of c-span who will discuss how the book came together. based on its historians survey of presidential leadership. following susan's presentation, i have the distinct privilege of speaking with brian lamb, founding ceo and chairman of c-span, who over the course of many years conducted the interviews with presidential historians that make up the content of the book. in addition, we are joined today by historians ackerman and stewart, who both contribute to the book. so at this time, please welcome susan swain. [applause] susan: good saturday afternoon. nice to see you. we have a long, long friendship and relationship with the newseum and freedom for journalists who run it, who is

almost as old as c-span. it's a delight to be here with them and you this afternoon to talk about the project c-span took on about a year and a half ago. this year is c-span's 40th anniversary. we started in 1979 with live coverage of the house of representatives. thank you. [applause] susan: so about a year end a half ago, i went to brian lamb's office and said, i have this great idea for our 40th anniversary. we have done already the nine books of collected works of interviews and the most recent actually in 2015, a collection of biographies of the first ladies, and it felt like if we were going to do anything special for our 40th anniversary, we ought to at -- add "the presidents" to our bookshelf and collection. the idea was to use two resources when we were putting this together. so we took the idea to our longtime publishers at public affairs press in new york, who specialize in nonfiction books,

started by a journalist from the washington post. the idea was to merge two significant resources. first, one collection of brian lamb's 30 years of interviews for his sunday night programs. and among those hundreds and hundreds of hours are some of the top presidential historians alive today, and the books they have done, spending often years of their lives. that was one idea, to use the basis of his interviews for the collection. the second was to merge that with the resource for the past 20 years. and that is history and survey -- historians survey of the presidential leadership. back in 1999, we spent an entire year on the road visiting historic sites associated with every single president. it was an enormous project. we were live on location from almost 39 sites at that time. doing a production, sometimes indoors, sometimes in houses

that were over 200 years old, to tell the stories of the presidents. these three historians who had become dear friends over the years, douglas brinkley, richard norton smith, who has been on cbs and frequently c-span. he started five presidential libraries over the course of his career and is currently currently living in grand rapids, michigan working on the biography of gerald r. ford. and edna green medford, who is here in washington d.c., howard university, she is currently the dean of the department and she's a specialist in reconstruction era of american history. we went to them at the end of our year-long project and we said, we spent all this time amassing all of these really anecdotal stories about the presidents. it would be nice to put a capper on all of this with something a little more scientific. we devised the idea of doing a survey of historians. then the question was, how would we measure them? lots of really interesting and

intellectual debates ensued and we decided on 10 qualities of presidential leadership that would be the metrics for the the presidents. and here they are. first is public persuasion. the next one, crisis leadership. third, economic management. the fourth, moral authority. the next, international relations. the next, administrative skills, which would include the selection of your candidate, the -- excuse me, your cabinet, the running of the departments, etc.. the next is relations with congress. the next, vision, setting an agenda. somehow i always remembered george h.w. bush talking about that vision thing when he was in office. the next and ninth is pursued equal justice for all. a category that really did a number of our founding fathers in. and the final was performance within the context of their times. the idea with this is it's very difficult for us to take our

21st century eyes and judge back, but we were asking the historians that did the rating to say take into account the circumstances of society at that time and try to give them some credit for doing the best they might have been able to do in the circumstances surrounding them. so those 10 metrics went out to 100 historians and professional observers of the presidency. we really tried to mix demographically and politically the people who took the survey, so it could be as broad as possible. as i mentioned, we did the first one in 2000 and it was such a success, we decided that would be the time bill clinton was leaving the presidency, that when george w. bush left, we would do it again. did it again in 2017 when barack obama left office. we now have three very extensive surveys of historians. so, over the course of that time, who was up and who is

down? this is over 20 years. first is andrew jackson. guess what? he is down. maybe our historians can tell us a little bit more about why that has happened. woodrow wilson also down, from six to 11th place. another one down, rutherford b hayes. i keep telling people i have a bit of a soft spot in my heart for rutherford b hayes and lucy hayes. i'd like to hear more about why the historians are bringing him down as the years go by. grover cleveland, the only president to be elected in a popular vote three times and actually served two nonconsecutive terms, went from 17th place over 20 years to 23rd. but there were also some that went up. dwight eisenhower made it into the top five. he started out 20 years ago in ninth place and interesting to think about what we are observing about the presidency and what work we have learned over 20 years about how we conducted an people are rating him higher. bill clinton started out as 21st place.

remember, it was in 2000, right after the impeachment. then by the time he did the survey, eight years later, he moved to 15 and he has stayed in 15th in this last survey as well. ulysses s grant. this is an interesting one. 33rd place to 22nd. i'm sure we will learn more from our historians perspectives about why he is rising up in their estimation. you might also remember there has been a big grant biography published. there is an interesting impact of successful biographies on the view we have of presidents. think about harry truman and the on theof that biography public perception of harry truman. ok, so now we're going to go to the 2017 survey, which is the organizing principles for our book of collected reviews. -- collected interviews. what we did, rather than arranging them chronologically, we put them in order of how they fared in our survey. so, let's look at the top five.

as we mentioned -- sorry, first , the modern presidents. ronald reagan is the only one in 2017 that made it into the top 10. next up, george w. bush. 20th spot. it will be interesting when we do the next survey at the end of the trump presidency if whether george w. bush moves up at all. he passed away. we had three days of celebration in this country of presidency and reminders of the things he accomplished. that has an impact on our historians, too. bill clinton we just talked about in 15th place. george w. bush, 33rd. the first time we had him right after he left office, he was one point lower. we added another president so he moved up one. but he is pretty close to the bottom 10. not only -- certainly the

reaction to 9/11 is an important part, but the economic crisis, the wars that ensued, his response to hurricane katrina, are all things that over time, we will see how historians rate his presidency. finally, barack obama, his debut in the survey, he came in 12th place. not a bad place to start. just a couple more of these. here are the top five in 2017. dwight eisenhower, as we talked topre, making it into the five for the first time. theodore roosevelt in fourth place in this survey. that's fairly common throughout not only ours, but also other surveys that are done. you will not be surprised to know the next one in line is franklin roosevelt, who is frequently number one, two, or three. the fdr biography we chose to highlight in our book is good ones no ordinary time. anybody read that? terrific. the one on theodore roosevelt is "wilderness warriors." it's all about his role as a

conservation president. for george washington, we chose s biography. he won a pulitzer prize for it. george washington came in second place and 868 points out of a possible 1000. his lowest score and i referenced this before, 13th place among the presidents for pursued equal justice for all. we were down on our publication date at mount vernon and i'm sure many of you have been down there. they've been doing a really terrific job over the past couple of decades of telling the whole story of this place that -- of the slaves that contributed to the operations at mount vernon as people worked their way through the museum. and finally, number one in our survey, no surprise because it seems to be number one in every survey everyone does is abraham lincoln. he received 907 points out of a possible 1000. he is ranked one or two in all most every single one of them. his lowest score is fourth-place and that is relations with congress.

our featured biographer, he's written -- is it 52 books? 53 books about our 16th president. the one we chose is "a snapshot in time," chapter that which you will find about what abraham lincoln did between election day and watch when he was sworn in, how he organized himself to get to washington, which he had only been in a short time as a one term congressman, how he went through the process of selecting his cabinet. there is a wonderful human story in this book. we did nothing to help presidents financially, so he had to finance his way to washington, and we tell this story. he had a yard sale in springfield, illinois. he could not bear to sell the family dog, so he gave it away. let us do the fun ones, the bottom five. [laughter] an: 39th place, john tyler

from tidewater, virginia. our featured biographer does argue that john tyler's contribution is he established presidential succession. he declared himself president and therefore, everyone treated him as such even though it was not established at the time. he got some pretty low scores. his highest score, 28 in international relationships. that is his highest. next one, warren harding. we have learned a lot about warren harding in the last few years. he was quite an ardent letter writer to women he fancied. our biographer featured in the book, john dean, the very same john dean of watergate fame, he knows a thing or two about presidential scandals. he argues because he had access to more of harding's papers that he deserves a second look. we'll let you decide. the historians in the survey gave him only 360 points altogether out of 1000. his highest, 33, was in equal justice for all. that category keeps coming back

and i was talking with jack farrell before about how we look at presidents and we're having an important conversation in this country about demographics and racial relations so it certainly appears in these presidential ratings. alright, next up, one of our featured presidents today, andrew johnson. oh, i skipped pearce. sorry, new hampshire. 41, pierce. peter wallner, he got 315 points, and terrific story in there about the difficulty of him coming to washington. if you have never heard it, they had lost two of their three sons already at a very young age. their third son was on the train with them as they were making their way after winning the election to washington. the train actually had a horrific accident and the son was thrown from the train and killed. and the president-elect carried

his dead son's body back to the train. his wife barely ever recovered from that and spent much of the administration on the residence floor of the white house writing letters to her dead son. it certainly occupied the president's own psyche and he had a difficult time organizing his cabinet in the beginning. plus, we were on the march to war. so, it was a challenging time. ok, there is andrew johnson now in place. 42nd out of the three we measured. his highest points was 37thplace in economic management. 275 points out of a possible 1000. but here we go, dead last, guess who it is. yep, james buchanan. i'm a pennsylvanian so this one pains me a little bit. he's so bad that he is 30 points below andrew johnson, and all of these folks are below harrison, who died after one month in office. so, think about that. [laughter] it's a bit of a negative

net negative- presidency if you think about it. the buchanan biography, i love the name of it. "worst. president. ever." so, there's lots, lots more about these ratings on our site we created, which is c-span.org/thepresidents. you will find a complete video and all the books. we also have links to historic facts, so if you're reading the book and you don't know about a particular war or economic panic, we've got a link there. and if you want to learn more, you have an easy opportunity to do that. so please do find it. one last note, we did not break the -- rate to the incumbent. i want to make that clear. we hope all of you, as you're thinking about what we want out of a leader will look to these

attributes, judging the democrats going for it and the incumbent in office. they are a great conversation starter and a great way for you to think, what do i expect about the person who leads this country? i will turn it over to the terrific panel. here are the two presidents being featured today. andrew johnson, who we mentioned before. his highest category, number 37 in economic management. his lowest category, not surprising, impeached president. relations with congress. he's in 43rd spot. and as i mentioned, 275 out of 1000. james garfield, and this is so interesting because he was in office for six and a half months. rates high by comparison. his highest is pursuit to equal -- pursued equal justice for all. 20th place among presidents. so right in the middle. lowest category in international relations, which he came into office with virtually no experience in. 36th.in 481 out of 1000, nearly double what andrew johnson got. and again, he was only in office for six and half months.

so, lots and lots to talk about about why these ratings have happened. with that, thank you for learning more about our book and i will turn it over to our panel. [applause] >> thank you for the presentation. my role is just to get the conversation rolling. we want to hear from all of you. we have two microphones set up midway back in the studio. when i'm ready to go to questions, i will ask you to stand. let me introduce our panel again. to my right, ken ackerman has been a writer and attorney in washington, d.c. since the 1970's. he is a longtime veteran of senior positions in both government and private law. as a writer, kenneth authored five books. including the political murder of james a garfield. garfield ranks 29th on the survey. when not writing, ken practices

law in washington. david stewart, to his right, spent many years as a trial and appellate lawyer, arguing before juries, the u.s. senate, and the -- u.s. supreme court before becoming best-selling writing history and historical fiction. his writings have explored the constitution, james madison, and the western expedition and treason trial of aaron burr. he is also the author of "impeached: trial of president andrew johnson." and the fight for lincoln's legacy. andrew johnson, second to last in the list. finally we are joined by brian lamb, c-span's founding ceo and chairman and longtime on camera interviewer. his 40 years of c-span has been the basis for nine books with public affairs including "the presidents." i should note brian has visited every presidential brave site -- gravesite as well as every vice presidential gravesite. i think we will have to ask him about that in the course of this interview. please join me in welcoming our panel. [applause]

first, a question for our historians. ken, along with your biography of garfield, you have written about abraham lincoln. you have a day job as a practicing lawyer. what draws you to chronicling presidents and history in general? >> i've been writing history since the 1980's. what drew me to james garfield was when i was a young lawyer, i was working for the senate governmental affairs committee in the 1970's. i was working for senator chuck percy from illinois. and as a junior lawyer, i was assigned to work on a bill that became the civil service reform act of 1970. that was the project that was put on my desk. during the course of the year, writing that, working on that bill, every speech, every memo, every report started with almost the exact same sentence. this is the most important update of the civil service law

since president james garfield was shot by a disappointed office seeker in 1881 salting in the pendleton act. i must've written that sentence at least 100 times. i always assumed it was true. then some years later, i started researching. i had an idea for a book to write about a political convention back when political nominating conventions were the super bowl of politics. that's where parties came together, all the factions. they had it out and they picked a nominee. we haven't had a multi-ballot convention in america since the early 1950's. but in the 1800's, early 1900's, these were the great events. some of them went for dozens and dozens of ballots. the convention that caught my eye was the republican convention of 1880. 36 ballots, the longest ever on the republican side, which was

dominated by a very ugly fight between two sides of the republican party at the time. a group called the stalwarts and -- supporting ulysses grant for a third term and a group called the half breeds supporting james gillespie blaine, known as the continental liar from the state of maine. a very controversial figure. james garfield was not a nominee. he was not a candidate. he came to the convention as a campaign manager of somebody else. he ended up getting nominated. and in order to get him elected, deal wasthe party, a made at that convention where he would be the nominee. he was nominated with the support of james blaine and his faction. his vice president was a follower of the opposite faction, the stalwarts. named chester alan arthur. that deal created a chain of

stalemate from the convention carried over into his presidency and resulted in him being shot in the back four months into his term. and that connection, to me, made a damn good story. that's what got me started. >> i will ask you another question about garfield, but david, i want to ask you the same question. you are not a practicing lawyer anymore. what was your pull into history? you have written about madison and thomas jefferson as well as aaron burr. >> my first book is about the writing of the constitution. historyave always loved because the best stories are there. fiction writers come up with great stories. i write fiction and try to do that, but you really can't beat real life for zaniness. and i will simply allude to our current situation. [laughter]

and after writing about the constitution, i was looking for another occasion where the constitution mattered or made a difference. and i thought the impeachment trial of andrew johnson was a time when really, after the civil war, the nations whether it would stay together, whether we would have a second civil war really turned on how the constitution was applied in an impeachment proceeding, and it was an event that riveted the nation for a hard time. it was a hard book at some level because of andrew johnson. he's not a very sweet guy. wasn't a sweet guy. he's a difficult person to live with as a historian. and he's earned his spot at number 42. [laughter] so, i had to find other people to sort of root for. but it has proved to be an enduring interest. >> i'll ask you both this question and brian, feel free to weigh in here.

but why do you think a survey of the presidents as presented in this book, is valuable? >> well, to me, reading the survey the last few days preparing to be here today, i thought it was very striking. that jumped out at me was the way the modern presidents are treated. the 12 presidents since world war ii, 12 out of 43, so that's barely one in four. those are represented very heavily at the top tier. five out of the top 10 are modern presidents. seven out of top 15 are modern presidents. with that, our country is so lucky we have had a string of such great people the last few years. [laughter] there they were. when i first saw that, i

wondered whether it was just a bias built in, that we tend to overestimate, exaggerate the good and bad about people from our lifetime, people we get to know by seeing them on tv every it really represented something more. it represented how the presidency has changed. that modern presidents are much more consequential than early presidents in this sense. none of the 32 presidents who served before the first world evere post world war era had to deal with thermonuclear war and millions of people being killed by nuclear exchange in a couple of hours. none of them had to deal with the united states as a global power and having to deal with international relations at a level we do now. yes, there have been newspapers and publicity, and often negative publicity going back to

the time of john adams, but the modern presidents have had to deal with television age. which has put their face in our households every single day, and it results in the public knowing them in a very different way. as a result, they really are more consequential. how someone like james garfield or teddy roosevelt or rutherford hayes would stack up and -- if they were challenged the way the modern presidents are is something we do not know. it is a very interesting thing to think about. but they weren't. it was a different era. and that really jumped out at me. >> david. >> i think in a lot of ways, the surveys are a mirror of our times as much as they are reflection of what's before. so, you see a lot of sensitivity toward issues of race and inclusion.

andrew johnson was a virulent racist. arthur/and or junior did the scst survey in -- arthur did the firstr survey in 1948. johnson was 19 out of 33. he was doing ok. since people have become much more conscious of his racist policies, the way he really abandoned the free slaves after the civil war, he's dropped like a rock. i think appropriately. andrew jackson, who was terrific significant president has taken a lot of heat for both his actions and slaveholder and a slave trader, but also as his actions toward the indian tribes where he was really quite ferocious as a military figure and then sending them off to the west and taking their lands. about who we alot

are and it runs the risk. ken has written a nice story. right. so sure it is self-obsessed. changed the country. they are being forgotten and going away. that is a problem that our memories are not as good as they should be. need to preach the sermon a little to keep the stories alive. >> i am wondering, seeing them altogether, did anything surprise you or stand out as you read it as one book?

>> yes, i would say the most important thing putting them altogether i learned was how much i had forgotten in the time since the interview. [laughter] and the beauty of this is that you can go back and read what they had to say, some of what they had to say. as susan said, it allows you to go on and listen to the interviews. i listened to both the interviews i have done for these gentlemen in preparation and they were fantastic. not because of me but because of them. some people will look at this book as a book of presidents. i look at it as a book of presidents but just as importantly the fabulous historians we don't get enough credit to because they spent weeks and months and years going over all of the little details. if we didn't have historians, we would not have this information. it is driving me crazy talking, because i want to talk to these guys.

john: your chapter is on garfield. you said that his assassination was one of the more misunderstood events in american history. tell us why. >> a couple of things. first this. charles guiteau is the one who shot james garfield. arguably he was killed by the doctors. he was hit by two bullets. the one in the arm, the other in the back. there were a lot of people particularly in the era just after the civil war that have gunshot wounds and lived to tell the story. but garfield in fact died of infection and blood poisoning, caused by his doctors examining his wound without washing their hands and without cleaning their instruments. the germ theory existed, but it was still a new idea from france.

it had not been totally adopted. but most doctors on the western frontier, from the civil war, dealt with gunshot wounds. they knew that you don't examine the gunshot wound with your unwashed hands. there was direct testimony about at the time. even by the standards of the time, it should not have happened. the other thing that i will just mention briefly, the garfield assassination was different from the others in the purpose of the assassination. john wilkes booth shot abraham lincoln in order to kill abraham lincoln. lee harvey oswald shot john kennedy in order to kill john kennedy. the other man killed william mckinley in order to kill william mckinley. what charles guiteau was trying to do, he had nothing personal against james garfield.

he liked the man. he had met his wife. what he was trying to do was reverse the election of 1880. it would not so much trying to get garfield out of office as to put someone else in office. he was trying to make chester alan arthur and his circle of friends the president and the ruling circle in the united states. it was a regime change. and that's a very scary thought when you think about it. and he was successful in doing it. john: and getting back to andrew johnson, i am going to steal a question that susan asked earlier at the event. abraham lincoln is of course number one. james buchanan, who preceeded, and andrew johnson, who came after, are consistently ranked to the last. >> he is historical kryptonite and you don't want to be close

to him. he had the greatest challenges of any president i think. did such a wonderful job, it's hard to look good next to that. but both buchanan and johnson were cosmically unsuccessful. you know, buchanan slid into war and did nothing to stop it. and johnson remade the nation after the war, you know. historical reputation is a fascinating thing. first half of the 20th century, he was celebrated for bringing the south back into the union and knitting the wounds of war back together. and healing of the country. and then finally around the 1950's people started saying there was a part of the country he did not heal very well, and that awareness has grown and has caused him to decline. it is worth noting, and i think it's not the sort of thing the

sort of thing this sort of survey can correct for, it was a really hard set of problems that they have to deal with. civil war is tough. we had 700,000 americans killed during the war. comparable casualties today would be 7 million. people hated. andrew johnson had a hard job. he did it poorly, but it was a really hard job. john: as susan explained, there were 10 leadership qualities that the survey is based on. i am wondering as we sit here in the newseum, if there was a category of relation with the press. who had ranked near the top? they had interviewed some of the historians. >> there are stories about each president and how they related to the media.

one of my favorites is calvin coolidge. it was during his time that radio came into being, and he did 22 speeches into the radio microphone. for people who remember his image, it was not terrific for television, but it was terrific for radio. it was during the time that he was on radio, the audience built, it grew. just like how c-span started out with 3 million homes and then we went up 100 million homes. he's started out with very few radio stations and went up to several hundred more. those stories exist with each president. john: right, right. any thoughts on press relations, presidents that you know of? >> i think kennedy was brilliant at it. he charmed everybody, but he

charmed the press too. i do think of franklin roosevelt. he would have the whole white house press corps into his office once a week. just sit at his desk and field questions and -- he knew how not to answer. when you spend that much face time with the president, it's a very effective in getting them to pull their punches. >> this is where i will be very curious to see how our current president is. when the next c-span poll comes around. i agree kennedy and fdr check out on the other side of the equation. nixon sticks out on the negative side, but the current president has made this a signature issue. it would be very interesting how that works out. >> is it too early to think of where president trump might fall? >> i'm hoping johnson bumps up a little bit.

[laughter] [applause] >> i will let that stand. [laughter] john: david, you touched on and susan spoke about ups and downs by jackson. talk about -- i know grant who went up by 11 -- 11 points. david: just a couple and i'm picking on them. i don't mean to, but some relatively current presidents who just seem to me higher than i would've expected. one is john kennedy. number eight. he was president for 2.5 years. hard-pressed to point to a lot of achievements and some problems. he did not do a great job on civil rights. lyndon johnson really cleaned that up. and wanted to mention eisenhower as number five. again it's hard to point to some massively wonderful thing that happened, that makes us delighted that he was president. it seems a surprise to me.

>> well, with eisenhower i would point to the massively terrible thing that did not happen. eisenhower faced the toughest period of the cold war when we were at loggerheads with russia. nuclear weapons were proliferating. russia was at its most assertive. stalin was still in power when eisenhower became president. and the fact that eisenhower kept the peace so effectively, he resisted the temptation and the recommendations of his general to intervene in vietnam. the fact that he kept the peace in a very quiet way, a very calm way during the eight years justifies that one. one at the top and one at the bottom. the one at the bottom, i always thought that warren harding gets a raw deal in these.

yes, warren harding brought us the teapot dome scandal which was a hydra headed scandal. the teapot dome itself was under the interior department. it pales in comparison with the justice department. yes, that's bad. but on the other side warren harding became president in 1921. he stabilized the national economy. he calmed the country down from its anti-red, anti-immigrant period. he is the one who pardoned eugene debs as an effort towards

goodwill. he did not get any war at all. the actual teapot dome scandal generally affected other people. did not directly reflect on him. so i would not argue that he belongs in the top two thirds. however fourth from the last compared to some of the others, i would quibble with that. on the upside i have this thing with lyndon johnson. and the reason is this. yes, his record on civil rights, his record on domestic policy, the creation of the great society, these are all extremely positive things that would put him in the upper tier. however this is where a president in our lifetime, the way we react to him, might be said with the fact. my very first involvement in high school was working as a volunteer for the campaign of eugene mccarthy. vietnam is something that hung over the country for many, many

years, and of the five presidents who arguably had fingerprints on the vietnam war going back to eisenhower and going through nixon, lyndon johnson was the one most directly as possible for getting the country involved in a military quagmire on a very large scale. to me, that is not a small thing. i note in the c-span survey, you note that lyndon johnson got extremely high marks for bringing equal justice to people and so on. but on foreign affairs, he is one of the bottom couple. the disparity is very start. to me because of that i was very surprised to see him in the top 10. >> john, if i might just flag one issue for the next survey. we've have the cycle of realizing that racial issues should be part of this. looking at treatment of the

indian tribes. i wonder if now it is going to be a focus on presidential womanizing. there are in fact some pretty tawdry stories. now are we going to make distinctions between presidents who had stable extramarital relationships or serial abuses extramarital relationships? because we have got them both. i, you know, it's gonna be interesting. question number 11. john: i would love to hear from the audience. we have microphones on both sides. c-span is here with tv. -- book tv. you'll be on c-span asking a question. as people line up for questions, brian and susan both mentioned that harold holzer has written

53 books about lincoln. are there presidents that we need to learn a lot more about, and are there any you want to tackle? >> i am writing about george washington. we want to learn about him. [laughter] i'm focusing on the earlier years which are not as well understood. with all of the characters, a friend uses the phrase so much information that is hiding in plain sight. that is known to the people who know this stuff, but most people don't know it. that is part of the job, to help people understand that. >> i have been straying far a field since garfield. my last book was called trotsky in new york, 1970, about trotsky and the months he spent in new york before the russian revolution. on a rating of the commissars, i would certainly rate trotsky in the top three.

[laughter] john: any q and a's that you would welcome? brian: these three men -- these two men have already written so much, that if we could continue this until 5:00 this afternoon -- i would love to hear you tell again this story of guiteau and lafayette park and the fact that garfield was shot half a block from here. that story about lafayette park, i can't get it out of my head. john: james garfield was shot in july 1881. guiteau the assassin was stuck for several weeks. he had made the decision to remove garfield. again it was a regime change as opposed to a vindictive assassination. so he, one of the things he would do, he would read in the newspapers what was going on with the president.

the president's schedule. the secret service existed, but it was still in the james west artemis gordon period, if you like that tv show. it did not protect the president. so what guiteau would do is he would go to lafayette park. over across the street from the white house. he would sit down on a bench where he could get a good look at things. he would watch all of the comings and goings. he could see who was going in and who was going out. he had his gun with him. at that point james garfield as president thought nothing of going outside alone at night. walking a few blocks on his own.

james blaine, his friend and secretary of state, lived i believe at 15th and i street. one night shortly before the murder, james garfield wanted to talk to blaine. so he went outside. he crossed the street. he was alone. guiteau saw him and he followed him with the gun. thinking he very well might shoot him that night. then he thought he would wait outside until garfield left. maybe catch them going back to the white house and shoot him there. luckily for garfield, blaine, who was a very good friend of his, decided he would join garfield back for the walk back to the white house. when guiteau saw blaine with garfield, she decided to put it off and not shoot him that night. he would wait about a week or two later. the shooting took place literally across the street from where we are sitting. when you go outside the door,

you will see the national museum of art across constitution avenue. in 1881 the potomac and baltimore railroad stations the shooting took place in the front foyer. the reception area of the train station, what would literally be in the middle of constitution avenue. we have been trying for several years to get a marker on that spot. the national park service came through and put up a marker on the mall about 100 yards away. the bureaucracy are putting a marker in the middle of a street in washington, dc is prodigious and still in progress. >> i will ask you to keep it

quick. >> so you mentioned the maybe implicit weight we give to modern presidents. but i also wonder about the point system itself, because i see reagan in the top 10. and i think particularly of the failure to respond in the 1980's as something that i assume falls with an equal justice to all. i wonder if that is a category that ought to have more points. i'm curious about whether and how that type of calculation comes in both the people that organized the book and the history into participate in the survey. brian: i would just say in any of the categories, any of the points systems, you can find yourself running around chasing your tail for hours and never have a perfect survey. we don't think this is a perfect survey. this is a way frankly to talk about this kind of stuff. we have nothing to do with how it came out. we did try to balance out the kind of people, the 100 people

we invited, unlike some of the other surveys where they only pick left of center scientists from major universities. that is the way arthur/and or did it years ago. there is a balance to it. who did this, by going on our website, finding the whole story on the presidents and you will be able to find out who they are. i don't have an answer to satisfy you on that because this stuff is not perfect. >> thank you. >> that side of the room. >> question about chester a. arthur. the question about kennedy and lbj, i thought so much of chester a. arthur moving ahead with civil service reform and having a change of heart and morality, once garfield was assassinated. >> we had a conversation about this today. you should have been there. [laughter] >> the food was really good too.

[laughter] >> chester alan arthur is actually an underappreciated president in my mind and i think david would agree with that. chester, as i mentioned, chester a. arthur was chosen to be vice president because he represented the rival group within the republican party opposed to james garfield. he was traditionally under the thumb of a new york political [indiscernible] guiteau, when he shot garfield, he said publicly in writing several times he said, i am a stalwart and arthur will be president. in the morning after the shooting, when arthur showed up at the 5th avenue hotel in new york city, there were death threats against him. many people thought there was something to it. he might have been involved. he was not, but these people thought that. chester a. arthur did a lot of

soul-searching in the weeks between the shooting and when he became president. giving credit where it is due, he recognized the problem created by the very harsh partisanship that led up to the shooting. when he became president, he refused to go along with this notion of regime change. conquering shortly came to him and asked him to follow through on reversing some of garfield's political positions. arthur refused to do it. he also surprised many of his old friends when he signed the civil service reform act. he was elected -- excuse me. his faction stood for patronage. but he signed the civil service reform act. he ran one of the less corrupt agencies of that era. good showed up for chester alan

arthur. >> i recommend the biography by greenberger. >> i always heard there was a plaque to garfield in the bno railroad station. it was then offered to the national gallery who did not want it because it was not artistic. >> right. >> when it comes to the question of womanizing and whatever, there is the category of moral authority. what is in that category, and does that handle things david was concerned about? >> i was wondering about that. it is in there. [laughter] >> it's again an opportunity for these people that we asked to do the survey to put a face on it. that they believe in it and all that, what moral authority is, again to not try to make this a perfect survey. can i jump in? i want to ask a question of mr. stewart when it gets to the impeachment of andrew johnson.

should he had been convicted? you say he missed it by one vote, but should he had been convicted after he was impeached? >> i thought he was, he deserved to be impeached and removed from office. yes. he was a catastrophic president, and i think it would've been an excellent thing for the political system to introduce the notion of you could get thrown out of office. presidents now seem to survive impeachment.

we talk about impeaching them as soon as they take office. if somebody had actually gotten tossed, it would have been awfully good. >> we visited philadelphia last weekend. the constitutional busy and that is there. i am wondering if there is examples in your research about the contention between president and congress to inform us for what is going to be happening over the next couple of years, let's say. >> impeachment is sort of an ultimate confrontation between congress and the president. congress is trying to decapitate the executive branch. it is a compelling drama. it is also a massive distraction from anything the political system, or the government, might do for the people. i think that is something that needs to weigh more heavily than it does. there is an obsession today with how polarized we are. and it is very polarized time. and it is expressed in congress. and there are all these mechanisms, gerrymandering and what have you, to exacerbate it. but we've have a lot of

polarized times. researching right now in the 1790's when frankly there were riots in the streets. people opposed the president in washington. people were killing each other. that was pretty bad. the civil rights era, the vietnam era that ken referred to, which a lot of us in this room remember, was terribly polarized. the system has survived all of these. it does require people observing some basic rules. and that is something it feels like right now is up for grabs a little bit which would be a shame. it had been a couple of centuries now. so some rules actually help.

>> i wanted to -- david's point, but i wanted to add one other thing to it. we have had a number of times in our country when relations between residents and congress have been very poor. but there is one way in which this period is different. the book we are talking about is rating the presidents. it would be interesting if there were a parallel book called rating the congresses. the senate and the house have reached a point on the word dysfunction is thrown out a lot, but there is something very real behind it. our congress is no longer able to manage the basic functions of appropriating money to run the government on a regular basis year in and year out. the fact that process doesn't work, the fact that congress no longer views itself with the

power to declare war -- our country has had troops overseas for almost 20 years steady now. and congress has not issued an authorization since shortly after 9/11. and a resolution shortly before the invasion of iraq. many members of congress had called for congress to reassert its control over war. but congress has refused to do so. the mind of congress to me is a very important part of that equation and is different from the prior period. brian: everybody ought to know that ken worked for patrick leahy, and this man clerked for three different judges and was also in defense of nixon. who was impeached in the senate as a judge.

>> my question is about lyndon johnson. primarily related with congress. -- what that have on the survey -- impact that has on the survey. >> i think it had a very important impact on it. the facts that he had served as majority leader gave him an understanding of how the senate operated.