>> next on american history tv, a conversation about c-span's noted"the presidents, 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 edition of inside media. i am the director of programs here at the museum. as the 2020 residential election rapidly starts to invade our daily newsfeed, 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 have held the office? we dive in deep to that topic today, as we discuss the new c-span book, "the presidents," noted historians rank america's best and worst chief executives. the title tells it all and just a moment, you will be hearing from susan swain, the co-ceo of , who will discuss how the book came together based on its historians survey of 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 ken ackerman and david stewart, who both contributed to the book. so at this time, please welcome susan swain. [applause] susan: good saturday afternoon. hello and nice to see you. we have a long, long friendship and relationship with the newseum and the freedom forum, and the journalists who run it, that is almost as old as c-span. so it is nice to be best so it is 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]

so, about a year and a half ago, i went to brian lamb's office and said, i have this great idea for a project for our 40th anniversary. we have done already the nine books of collected works of interviews. the most recent one was 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 add "the presidents" to our bookshelf and collection. the idea was to actually 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 the 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. -- at that point, doing a big production, sometimes indoors, sometimes in houses that were over 200 years old, to tell the stories of the presidents. these three historians who have become dear friends of our network over the years douglas , brinkley, richard norton on pbsho has often been

and frequently on c-span, he has started five presidential libraries over the course of his career and is currently currently living in grand rapids, michigan working on the definitive viagra fee of gerald r. ford. and edna green medford, who is here in washington d.c., howard pat howard university. she is currently the dean of the humanities department, and she is a specialist in the 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 kind of anecdotal stories about the presidents. so 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 presidential historians. then the question was, how would we measure them? lots of really interesting and intellectual debate 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 cabinet, theyour 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. ninth, isnd the 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, it is 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. and then we 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 are some who have gone up. dwight eisenhower made it into the top five. he started out 20 years ago in ninth place. interesting to think about what we are observing about that presidency and what work we have learned over 20 years about how areonducted it that people rating him higher. bill clinton. bill clinton started out as 21st place. remember, it was in 2000, right after the impeachment. then by the time we did the --vey can eight years later, we 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. 11 points he has moved up. and i am sure we will learn more from our historians' tips about rising up insin 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 that we have in society of residence. think of henry maccallum and harry truman, and the impact of that biography on the 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 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. 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 or not george h.w. bush moves up at all. he passed away. we had three days of celebration in this country of his presidency and the reminders of the things he accomplished. that has an impact, because historians are people 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. certainly the reaction to 9/11 is an important part, but the economic crisis, the wars that ensued after 9/11, his response to hurricane katrina are all , things that over time, we will see how historians rate his presidency. and finally barack obama, his , debut in the survey, he came in in 12th place.

not a bad place to start. just a couple more of these. so, here are the top five in dwight eisenhower, as we talked 2017. about before, making it into the top 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 won't be surprised to know the next one in line is franklin roosevelt, who is frequently at number one, two, or three. the fdr biography we chose to highlight in our book is doris kearns goodwin's "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 ron chernow's biography. he won the pulitzer prize for it. george washington came in second place in hours, 868 points out -- second place in ours 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 to mount vernon. they have been doing a terrific job in the past couple of decades of telling the whole story of the slaves who 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 he 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 and two in almost every single one of them. his lowest score is fourth-place and that is relations with congress. our featured biographer is harold holzer, he has written -- is it 52 books he has done? 53 books about our 16th president. the one we chose for the book is "a snapshot in time," chapter

in 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 as a one termme 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 through howard holzer. he had a yard sale in springfield, illinois, to sell his belongings. he could not bear to sell the family dog, so he gave it away. to someone who was interested in taking it on. ok. let us do the fun ones, the bottom five. [laughter] 39th place, john tyler from tidewater, virginia. our featured biographer is , who 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, 28th in international relations. that is his highest. next one, warren harding. we have learned a lot about warren harding in the past few years. he was quite an ardent letter writer to women he fancied. a biographer featured in the book, john dean, the very same john dean of watergate fame, who 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 will 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. i was talking with jack farrell before about how we look at ,residents through our own eyes and we are having an important conversation in this country about demographics and racial relations.

it certainly appears in these presidential ratings. alright, next up, one of our featured presidents today, andrew johnson. [chatter] oh, i skipped pierce. sorry, new hampshire. 41, pierce. [laughter] 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 -- out of the 43 we have measured. his highest points was 37thplace in economic management. two hundred 75 points out of a possible 1000. dead last, guess who it is? yes. james buchanan. i am a pennsylvanian, so this pains me a little bit. one 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 is a bit of a net negative presidency if you think about it. the buchanan biography, i love the name of it. "worst. president. ever." [laughter] so, there's lots, lots more about these ratings on our site

that we created, which is c-span.org/thepresidents. he will find the complete video of every one of the interviews we used for the chapters in the box, lots more about everyone of their individual ratings and categories, and we also have links to historic facts so that if you are 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 rate the incumbent. i want to make that very clear. we hope that all of you, as you are thinking about what we want out of a leader will look to 10 attributes, judging the democrats who are vying for it and judging the incumbent in office. they are a great conversation starter and a great way for you expect ofwhat do i 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 category is 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. he is in 36th. his score 481 out of 1000, , nearly double what andrew johnson got, and he was, again, 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, "the presidents," and i will turn it over to our panel. [applause]

>> thank you so much, susan, 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. so when i am ready to go to questions, i will ask you to please 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 major books on americana, : theding "dark horse surprise election and political murder of james garfield." as you just heard garfield ranks , 29th on the survey. when not writing, ken practices law in washington, specializing in agricultural risk management. 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 a best-selling writer of history and historical fiction. his histories have explored the writings of 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, of course 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. c-spanyears of interviews have been the basis for nine books with public affairs including "the presidents." i should note brian has visited every presidential gravesite, as well as every vice presidential gravesite in the country. 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 also have a day job as a practicing lawyer. what draws you to chronicling presidents and history in general?

ken: i have been writing history since the what drew me 1980's. to james garfield was when i was a young lawyer in washington, i was working for what was 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. -- of 1978, that was the project that was what are my desk. during the course of a year working on that bill, every speech, every memo, every report stuttered with almost the exact same sentence, "this is the most important update of the civil service laws since president james garfield was shot by a disappointed office seeker in 1891 resulting in the pendleton act of 1893." i must have written about

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. and 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 factional fight between two sides of the republican party at the time. a group called the stalwarts, 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. [laughter] 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, reach within the party, a deal was made at the 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 events that, the 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? and specifically the presidents? you have written about madison and thomas jefferson as well as aaron burr. >> my first book is about the writing of the constitution. i just have always loved history, because the best stories are there. fiction writers come up with great stories. and try to don that, but you really can't beat anyness, and iz will simply allude to our current situation. [laughter] about theing constitution, was looking for another occasion where the constitution mattered. and 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 condition was applied in an impeachment proceeding, and it was an event that riveted the nation for a hard time. -- for a long time. it was a hard look at some level because of andrew johnson. guy, basha very sweet wasn't a sweet guys. difficult person to live with as a historian, and he has earned his out at number 42. [laughter] so, i had to find other people to sort of root for. but it has proved to be an 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 over very closely

preparing to be here today, i , thought it was very striking. what it tells you about the country in our history. the pattern that jumped out at me, what i thought, was the way that 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 day.

but thinking about it, it really represented something more. it represented how the presidency has changed. that modern presidents are in fact much more consequential than early presidents in this sense. none of the 32 presidents who served before the first world war era ever had to deal with thermonuclear war and the prospect of people being killed by a 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 in the level we do now. yes, there have always 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 as a result -- and has resulted

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 if they were challenged the way modern presidents are is something we don't 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, on the importance? >> i think, in a lot of ways, these surveys are a mirror of our times as much as they are reflection of what went before. so, you see a lot of sensitivity toward issues of race and inclusion. andrew johnson was a virulent racist. he started out. arthur's messengers senior did the first -- arthur slough sr. didger

the first survey in johnson was 1948. 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 a terrifically significant president, has taken a lot of heat for both his actions as a slave holder and is a slave , but also his actions toward the indian tribes, where he was really quite ferocious as a military figure, then sending them off to the west and taking their lands. so it tells us a lot about who we are or who we think we are or want to be. risk think it runs the --ken has created a nice story for why we have so many modern presidents that is right. i am not so sure it is right. i think it also reflects that we are pretty self obsessed and

that residents like andrew jackson, who are incredibly important, really changed the country. james k. polk acquired 40% of our landmass. they are forgotten and going away. and i think that is a problem we have that our memories are not as good as they should be. and it is a reminder for those of us who write history that we -- help keep these stories alive. you have conducted the interviews that appear in this book. seeing them altogether, did anything surprise you or stand out? say the mostld important thing that i learned is how much i had forgotten in the time since the interview. the beauty of this is that you

can go back and read 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 years going over all of the little details. if we didn't have historians, we would not have this information. sitting here talking is driving me crazy because i want to talk to these guys. yourt's get back to chapters 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 man who shot james garfield. arguably he was killed by the doctors. he was hit by two bullets. one grazed his arm, the other hit him 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, doctors who dealt with gunshot

wounds 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 shot 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. he was 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 at an earlier event. lincoln of course is ranked the number one president. james buchanan, who preceeded, and andrew johnson, who came after, are consistently ranked the last two. how do you explain that? is historical kryptonite and you don't want to be close to him. he had the greatest challenges of any president i think. he 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.

it was tragic. 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 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 to set of problems these guys had 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 ok 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 ck 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 positive side of the equation. nixon sticks out on the negative side, but the current president has made this a signature issue. it will be very interesting how that works out. john: is it too early to think of where president trump might fall? >> i'm hoping johnson bumps up a little bit. [laughter] [applause] john: i will let that stand. [laughter] john: david, you touched on and susan spoke about ups and downs by jackson.

talk to us about some more surprises. 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. it would be a little 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 's 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. i have 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 polls. 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 next to the scandals that were going on 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 a pre-existing 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 responsible 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 stark. 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 had 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 abusive 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 of the studio. please start lining up. c-span is here with 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 tangle -- tackle? >> i am writing about george washington. we want to learn about him. [laughter] i'm focusing on the earlier years which are not 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, 1917, about leon 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 or presidents that you would like to learn more brian: 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. briefly, 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, that was not its job yet. 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 and 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. it was at night. he was alone. guiteau saw him and he followed thinking he gun very well might shoot him that night. he followed him all the way to his house. house,him go inside the

then he thought he would wait outside until garfield left and 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 because there were a few things they wanted to talk about. when guiteau saw blaine with garfield, he 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. at that point, in 1881 the potomac and baltimore railroad station sat in the middle of what now is the street. 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. john: we have a lot of questions so 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 to the aids crisis in the 80'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 for 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 forever 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 had 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 political scientists from major universities. that's the way it was done 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. that's a good question. 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. i'm wondering what your thought was on that. we were talking about this before coming here today. you should have been there. [laughter] it was a great conversation. 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. someone 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. yet he was the one who signed the civil service reform act. he ran one of the noticeably last -- less corrupt presidencies 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. when it was turned down, 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. 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 week and the constitution museum was 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 raises the stakes and 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 had 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.

the civil war -- 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 has 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 presidents 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 as empowered 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 have 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. we have a lot of talent right here. my question relates to the survey and lyndon johnson. primarily, the relationship with congress. i wonder if there was any significance given to the fact that he served in both houses and he served the majority

leader and what impact that had on the survey. verythink it had a important impact on it. the fact that the majority leader gave him an understanding of how the senate operated, gave him an opera standing -- understanding of how to get a bill through congress. there would not have been a civil rights bill in 1964 unless lyndon johnson had an understanding of how you get around the filibuster, how you feel about coalition, how you lean on members and force people to vote your way, how you reach out to the other side, all of those canticle political things he knew how to do -- mechanical because he had that experience on capitol hill. vietnam came to dominate his presidency and he had to deal with growing resistance among senators of his own party, william fulbright

ands to mind, over vietnam his inability to bridge that gap. recommend if you have not taken the time, we have this on our website, since our radio station has been in business we have run thousands of interviews, not interviews, oval office conversations of lyndon johnson that were recorded by lyndon johnson that are the greatest civics lesson you can ever imagine and you can see very clearly why he had this relationship with congress. he could talk to everybody in congress about everything, about their family, about -- i will go there for -- i will not go that far. it is fantastic. how did you decide where to rank william henry harrison?

wasn't he in office for 30 days? >> it's hard for the president who came below him. relations with congress and foreign affairs, -- >> that is a question that will have to remain unanswered. i have no idea why these to people -- why these people would put him where they put him. question because there are a lot of other questions that can be asked and not answer if you study the survey closely. it, it wascomment on a lot easier to think through the top five and the bottom five then to try to figure out who rank 37th and who rank 38th. the middle ones really required research and thinking to figure out who would go with whom.

with someone like william henry harrison, he has no track record at all so you don't know what he was going to do. we do know a little bit about butlife and his leanings yes, it is conjecture. >> someone who was born and raised in indiana, i suppose it could be because of the -- because of him being the governor of indiana territory. really great is a chapter in this book. we have two more questions. >> hi. can you hear me? first of all, i am a c-span junkie and he is my hero. -- brian lamb is my hero. can we perhaps look back in history through the lens of our modern-day and rank some of the

presidents from the past with a skewed perspective? we are talking a lot nowadays of social justice and how we treat each other which is fine. it seems like you have to take the presidents within the context of their times. is that something that we could have a broader discussion about? that is a very important point. it is something that everyone who dissipate abated had to wrestle with. how do you rank someone, take andrew johnson. andrew jackson for many years after he lived was considered an important progressive and that it was under andrew jackson that the franchise and the right to vote was expanded dramatically. he established the power of the presidency through his veto of

the national bank. he established the democratic party as the party against big business. he established a number of things which were considered progressive and that was the way he was ranked up until the last 20 or 30 years. but you cannot overlook the other side of the coin. i don't think it is a bad thing that modern historians and analysts are more sensitive to that bad side of the coin. the fact that his record on race was so poor. the fact that his treatment of indians and native americans was our standards,y but even the standards of the extremely it was cruel and hardhearted. it is something that we struggle with but it is certainly there and something that cannot be ignored. >> david stewart wrote a book called the summer of 1787 that i

would highly recommend to you. it has so many interesting statistics. i would ask him if that crowd came back, what would they think of all of this? >> they would be amazed that it lasted this long. some of them thought it would be great if the country lasted another 50 years. they would be delirious about that. they would not be able to recognize the government. it is so gigantic. it plays such a large role in we expect to do so much. office,hington took there were about 500 soldiers and 30 clerks. that was the whole thing. beit would largely unrecognizable in a lot of ways. i think they would be tickled that it was still here. >> they knew it would have to

change. put the amendment process in there for a reason. john: i want to remind everyone that we are selling copies of the book outside the studio and i am sure historians will be happy to sign copies. go ahead. the 10 itemsd to in terms of ranking presidents, tot do you think of this, have the ability to learn from mistakes and the ability to grow in office. for cap, talking about kennedy and his position on civil rights -- for example. he saw civil rights as a political issue, having to navigate between the conservatives and northern liberals. i think two and half years later he saw civil rights as a moral imperative. that something he learned in office. i think the bay of pigs fiasco

greatly helped kennedy in dealing with the cuban missile crisis. one more thing, i have a history at brooklyn college that would take issue with any higher ranking you would get to warren harding. -- give to warren harding. he said he looked like a president and from that point on, that is where the emblems ended. sorry to interrupt you. [laughter] >> are you done? >> yes. [laughter] >> although i admire the effort to have 10 categories and try to get people to think in a disciplined way and not just react reflexively about the presidents, something gets lost in that process in terms of the overall impact of the presidents. we start slicing and dicing these different categories. for example, i was glad to hear what administrative skills was supposed to mean but i was not sure when i read it.

something we all need to bring to this is to think about what we can figure out about the significance of the presidents and the times that they had to live with and figure out how to deal with. about where presidents are ranked, the books that historians write have a great deal of impact. we were talking about eisenhower and the stephen ambrose book. i read a book by evan thomas that came out recently that gave great credit. of his leadership during the cold war was greatly underrated. i did not know that. i learned that from reading that book so that elevated my opinion. someone wrote a book about calvin coolidge. i forgot her name. us on ourl be with

next event in new york city. coolidgenion of calvin rose also. with that same history at work reason calvine coolidge -- he had nothing to say. credit wheregave another politicians would not shut up, but he had nothing to say. i think i would have flunked the course with that professor. to you aecommend series on warren harding. the other point very briefly, we talked about the 10 standards, categories used to judge presidents. one thing that has always struck me about it is that one of the books i wrote was the biography

of tammany hall. i learned a lot about that old machine politics. from 100 years ago about political bosses was that the number one way you judge a politician is are they loyal to their friends. loyalty to your friends is the number one trait. one of them put it right up to the gates of state prison, loyal to your friends. [laughter] that used to be the standard among political professionals. .t is not one of the 10 anymore arguably, it should not be, but i have always wondered if perhaps we lose something by not having that is one of the standards given that it is central to the way politics has worked for many years. >> in our audience is john aloysius sitting right here. he should know that because he really relating book on richard nixon and is working on one on

ted kennedy. there is an enormous amount of talent in this room. you oneian, let me ask more question. it is the 40th anniversary of eastbound. 40th anniversary of c-span. an industry that financed his vent over -- financed this spent over $1 billion. that watch it. if we do not have a public that reacts an hour shows are stimulating and somewhat balanced, we would not be here today. so those two things. john: the book is the presidents. i want to thank them for joining us and thank you all for joining us and your great questions. thank you. [applause] >> you can also join us for a

book signing. thank you. [laughter] >> those 19th-century presidents had the face for radio. ♪

announcer: american history tv social media. follow us at eastbound history. c-span history. next, sarah milo talks about her book, the cigarette: a political history. it talks about civil rights and environmental issues. this video is courtesy of the national archives. it can be found on the national archives youtube channel. guest explores e