million things. >> sunday night at coyote eastern on can's "q & a". >> and we continued the conversation on c-span's book "the presidents" noted historians rank america's best and worst chief executives, which was published last year. we'll hear from historians and book contributor kevin ackerman and david o. stewart. [ applause ] well, good afternoon, ladies

and gentlemen, and welcome to the museum's night tv studio, and another edition of "inside media." i'm john maynard, senior director of programs here at the museum. as the 2020 presidential election rapidly starts to invade our daily news feed, and with joe biden's announcement fueling the fire this week, what better time to look back at history of the presidency and to examine the character and the 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 president's." note the historians rank america's best and worst chief executives. the title tells it all and in just a moment you'll be hearing from susan swain, 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, the founding ceo and chairman of c-span, who over the course of many years conducted the interviews with presidential histories that make up content of the book. in addition, we are joined by historians ken ackerman and david stewart, who both contributed to the book. so at this time, please welcome susan swain. [ applause ] >> good saturday afternoon, everybody. hello and nice to see you. we have a long, long friendship and relationship with the museum and the freedom forum and the journalists who run it. that's almost as old as c-span. so it's a delight to be here with them and with you this afternoon. to talk about a project that 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. [ applause ]

>> thank you. so about a year and a half ago, i went down to brian lamb's office and i said, i've got this great idea for a project for our 40th anniversary. we have done already nine books of collected works of interviews, and the most recent one was actually in 2015 which was 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 really ought to add the presidents to our book shelf and our collection. but the idea was actually 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 most named peter osnos. the idea was to merge, as i said, two significant resources. first, one collection of brian lamb's 30 years of interviews for his sunday night program. and among those, really hundreds and hundreds of hours are some

of the top presidential historians alive today, and the books that they've done, spending often years of their lives. so that was one idea, was to use the basis of his interviews for the collection. the second was to merge that with the resource that we've been doing for the past 20 years. and that is the historian survey of 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 point, doing a big production sometimes indoors, sometimes in houses that were 200 years old, to tell the stories of the presidents. these three historians who have become dear friends of our network over the years. dougla douglas brinkley, you might see him often all television. richard norton smith, he has

started five presidential libraries over the course of his career and currently living in grand rapids, michigan, working on the definitive biography of gerald r. ford. and edna greene medford here in washington, d.c. at howard university. she's currently the dean of the humanities department and a specialist in the reconstructionist era of american history. we went to them at the end of your year-long project and said we spent this time amassing anecdotal stories about the president. it would be nice to put a capper on this with something a little more scientific. we devised the idea of doing a survey of presidential historians. then the question was, well, how would we measure them? lots of really interesting intellectual debate ensued and we decide on ten qualities of presidential leadership that would be the metrics for 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 neck, administrative skills, which would include the section of your cabinet -- excuse me, the cabinet, running of the departments, et cetera. the next is relations with congress. the next, vision, setting an agenda. sometimes i always remember george herbert walker bush talking about that vigorous thing when he was in office. next is pursued and equal justice for all. and the final and 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 sishs of society at that time, and try to give them some credit for doing the best that they might have been able to do in the circumstances surrounding them.

so those ten 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 would be as broad as possible. we did the first one in 2000 and it was sew successful, that was the time when bill clinton was leaving the presidency, when george w. bush left, we would do it again. then we did again in 2017 when barack obama left office. so we now have three very extensive surveys of historians. excuse me. so over the course of that time, who is up and who is down? this is over the 20 years. first, andrew jackson. guess what? he's down. and maybe our historians can tell us a little bit more about why that's happened. woodrow wilson also down from 6th to 11th place. another one who's down,

rutherford b. hayes. i keep telling people, i have a little bit of a soft spot in my heart for rutherford b. hayes and lucy hayes and i'd like to mare more why the historians are bringing him down as the years go by. grover cleveland, the only president to be elected in the popular vote three times and actually serve two nonconsecutive terms. went for 17th place over the 20 years to 23rd. but there are some who have gone up. dwight eisenhower made it in the top five. he started out 20 years ago in ninth place. interesting to think about what we're observing about that presidency and what more we have learned over the 20 years that he ducted it that people are rating him higher. >> bill clinton. bill clinton started out at 21st place, remember, it was in 2000 right after the impeachment. then by the time we did the survey eight years later, he moved to 15th and stay in 15th in the last survey as well.

okay, ulysses s. grant. he moved up a little bit and i'm sure we'll learn from our historians why he's raising up. a great big grant biography recently published. an interesting impact of big successful biographies on the view we have of harry truman. we're going to go to 2017 survey, which is the organizing principle of our book of collective interviews. we put them in order -- excuse me -- of how they fared in our survey. so, let's look at the top five. as we mentioned in the identify sorry. one first. the modern presidents. let's see how they did. ronald reagan is the only one in 2017 that made into the top ten. next up, george w. bush.

20th spot. it will be interesting to see whether or not george herbert walker bush moves up at all. he passed away. we had three days of celebration in this country and reminder of the things he accomplished. that has an impact because historians are people, too. interesting to see if it affects his ratings. bill clinton in 15th place, george w. bush. 3rd. the first time we had him after he left office he was one point lower. added another point so he moved up well. pretty close to the bottom ten. not only certain the reaction to 9/11 is an important part, but the economic crisis, the war that ensued after 9/11 and his response to hurricane katrina are all things that over time we'll see how historians rate his presidency. and finally, barack obama, his debut in the survey and in came in in 12th place. not a bad place to start.

just a couple more of these. so top theodore roosevelt in fourth place in the survey. that's fairly common not only throughout ours but also other surveys that are done. you won't be surprised to know the next one in line is franklin roosevelt. frequently number one, two or three. the fdr biography that we chose to highlight in our book is doris kearns goodwin's "no ordinary time." anyone read that in the audience? it's a good one. the one on theodore roosevelt is by douglas brinkley and called -- george washington came in second place in ours. 868 points out of a possible 1,000. his lowest score, and i

reference this before, is 13th place among presidents for pursued equal justice for all. we were down at mount vernon on our publication date. i'm sure many of you have been down to mount vernon. they've been doing a really terrific jobs over the past couple of decades of telling the slaves who contributed to mount vernon and worked their way through the museum. no surprise, seems to be number one in every survey extra everyone does. he received 907 points out of a possible 100. he's ranked one and two in almost single one of them. his lowest score is on fourth place is that's relations with congress. 53 books about our 16th president. one that we chose was a snapshot in time to find out about what

abraham lincoln did between election day and march when he was sworn in to-to-get to washington, which he had only been in for a shore time >> he had to finance his way to washington. we tell this story. he had a yard sail in springfield, illinois to sell his belongings. he couldn't bear to sell the family dog so he gave it away to somebody who was interested in taking it on. okay. so let's do the fun ones. the bottom five. 39th place. john tyler from tidewater, virginia. our featured biographer argues he established presidential succession. he declared himself president and therefore everyone treated him as such, even though was not

established that way at the time in the constitution. he got some pretty low scores. highest score. 28. that's hi ooift in okay. warren harding, he was quite an ardent letter-writer tore women he fansied. now, our biographer featured in the book, john dean, yes the very sime john dean who knows a few things about presidential scandals. he argued because he got access to more of harding's papers that he deserves a second look. we'll let you decide. the historians and the survey gave him only 366 points out of 1,000. the highest was in no judgement for all. we're having an important conversation in this country about demographics and racial relations, oh it certainly

appears in these presidential ratings. all right? next up, one of our featured prpts today, andrew johnson -- oh, i skipped pierce. sorry, new hampshire. 41, franklin pier. peter wallener, he got 315 points. terrific story of the difficulty of him coming to washington. you hadn't heard, they lost two of their three sons at a very young age. their third son was on the train with them after they were making train to washington. train had a terrific accident and the son was thrown from the train and killed. the husband carried their bodies back to the train. his wife rarely recover from that and spent many days on the white house floor writing to her said donson. it certainly affect president's

psyche and he had a difficult time organizing his cabinet in the beginning. so it was a march war. his highest point was 37th place in economic management. 275 points out post possible 1,000. 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 fwbad that he is 30 pois below andrew johnson, and all of these folks are below harrison who died after one men in office. so think about that. it's a negative presidency, if you think about it. the buchanan biography, i love the name of it. worst, period, president, period, ever.

so there's lots lots more about all of these ratings on our site that we created which is c-span.org/thepresidents. you'll find complete video of every one of the interviews we used for chapters of the book. lots more about individual ratings and categories, and we also have links to historic facts, so if you're reading the book and you don't know about a particular war or an economic panic, we've got a link there. if you want to learn more, you 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 we're thinking about what we want out of our leader these ten attributes judging the democrats vying for it. what do i expect out of the person who leads this country? so with that, i'm going to turn it over to this terrific panel. here are the two presidents

being mentioned before, andrew john somebody, hi highest category, number 37. as i mentioned, 275 out of 1,000. james garfield, and this is so interesting because he was in office for 6 1/2 months. yeah, rates high by comparison. his highest category is pursued equal justice for all. he was in 20th place among the presidents, so right in the middle. and lowest category in international relations he came into office with virtually no experience and he's in 36th there. 481 out of 1,000 fully doubled what andrew johnson got and, again, he was only in office for 6 1/2 months. so lots and lots to talk about with why thee ratings happened. so with that, thank you for learning more about our book "the presidents" and i'm going to turn it over to our wonderful panel. [ applause ] >> thank you so much, susan. great presentation.

i'm -- my role here is just to get the conversation rolling and we want to hear, of course, from all of you. we have two microphones set up sort of midway back in the studio. so when i'm ready to go to questions, i will ask you to please stand. let me introduce our panel setu. let me introduce our panel again. ken acerman has been an attorney and a long-term veteran of seniors physicians in both government and private law. he's authored five major books on americana including "dark horse" and garfield ranks 29th on the survey. whatnot writing ken practices law in washington specializing in agriculture risk management. it to his right he spent many years as a trial and appellate lawyer 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's also the author of "impeached, the trial of president andrew johnson." andrew johnson of course second to last in the list. and we're ginned by c-span founding ceo and chairman and long time on camera interviewer. his 40 years of c-span interviews have been the basis of nine books for public affairs including of course "the presidents." i should note brian has visited every presidential grave sight as well as every vice presidential grave site in the country. with so please join me in welcoming our panel. first a question for our historians. ken along with your biography of garfield you've written about abraham lincoln and also have a day job as a practicing lawyer. what draws you to history in

general? >> i've been writing history since the 1980s. i was a young lawyer in washington. i was working for what was then the senate governmental affairs committee back in the 1970s. 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 1978. that was the project that was put on my desk during the course of the year writing 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 laws since president james garfield was shot by a disappointed office seeker in 1881 resulting in the pentdleton act of 1883. i must have written that

sentence at least a hundred times and as a result i assumed it was true. and 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 multiballot convention in america since the early 1950s. but in the 1800s, early 1900s, 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 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 known as the half breeds. a very controversial figure. james garfield was not a nominee. he was not a candidate. he came to the cop vention as a campaign manager of somebody else he ended up getting nominated and in order to get him elected a deal was 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 allen arthur. that deal created a chain of events that the stalemate from the convention carried over in 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 and that's what we got me started. >> i want to ask the same question about -- you're actually not a practicing lawyer anymore but what was your pull into history and you've written about"9] thomas jefferson. >> my first booktbñ was about writing the constitution and i always loved history 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'll simply allude to our current situation. and after writing about the constitution i was looking for another occasion where the constitution mattered, where it made a difference and i thought the impeachment trial of andrew johnson was a time really after the civil war the nation's --

whether it would stay together, whether we would have a second civil war really turned on how the kauntsitution was applied in an impeachment proceeding, and it was an event that riveted the nation for a long 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 in number 42. 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, 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 the last few days preparing to be here today i thought it was very

striking what it tells you about the country and our history. the pattern that jumped out at me when i saw it was the way the modern presidents are treated. the 12 presidents who served since world war ii, 12 out of 43, so that's barely 1 in 4, those are represented very heavily at the top tier. 5 out of the top 10 are modern presents. 7 out of the top 15 are modern presidents. we're so lucky we had a string of such great people in the last few years, but they're they were. i kind of wondered if it was just a bias built in we tend to overestimate, exaggerate the good and bad about people from our lifetime, people woo 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 change that modern presidents are in fact much more consequential than early presidents in this sense. none of the 32 presidents who served before the post-world war era ever had to deal with thermo nuclear war and the prospect of millions of people being killed by an 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 on 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 the television age which have put their face in our households every single day and has resulted in the public knowing them in a 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 the modern presidents are is something we don't know. it's a very interesting thing to think about, but they weren't. it was a different era, that really jumped out at me when i saw the list. >> david, on the importance? >> i think in a lot of ways these surveys are a mirror of our times as much as they are a renekz of what went before so you see a lot of sensitivity towards issues of race and inclusion. andrew johnson was a virulent racist. he started out and the first survey in 1948. johnson was 19 out of 43. he was doing okay. since people have become much

more conscious of racist policies he's dropped like a rock and i think appropriately. andrew jackson who was a significant president has taken a lot of heat for both his actions a slaveholder and slave trader but also his actions towards indian tribes where he was really quite ferocious as a military figure and sending them off to the west and taking their lands. so it tells us who we are or who we think we are or want to be. and i think it runs the risk. it created a nice story for why we have so many presidents that it's right. i'm not sure it's right. i think it reflects we're pretty self-obsessed and presidents like andrew jackson who were

incredibly important, really changed the country or james k. polk who acquired 70% of land mass are being forgotten and are going away. and i think that's a problem we have our memories and not as good as they should be, and it's a reminder to those of us who write history we need to sort of preach the sermon a little and help keep these stories alive. >> brian, you conducted all the interviews that appear in this book. i'm wondering seeing them all together did anything surprise you or stand out as you kind of read it as one book? >> yes, i would say the most important thing i learned putting them all together was how much i'd forgotten in the time since the interview. 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. and our archive allows you to go on and listen to the interviews. they were fantastic. not because of me but because of them. some people will look at this book as a book of presidents. just as importantly the fabulous historians that we don't give enough credit to because they spend weeks and years going over all the little details, and if we didn't have historians we wouldn't have this kind of information. so i would frankly sitting here -- talking is driving me crazy right now. listen to these two guys because they've got stories to tell. >> from the book notes interview that you did you said that his assassination was one of the more misunderstood events in american history. tell us why.

>> well, a couple of things. first, this. charles cutow 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 that era. this is just after the civil war. a lot of people had gotten shot wounds and lived to tell the story. by garfield in fact died of infection and blood pizenning caused by his doctors examining his wound without washing their hands and cleaning their instruments. the germ theory existed but it was still a new idea from france. it hadn't been totally adopted. but most doctors on the western frontier from the civil war, doctors who dealt with gunshot wounds knew you don't examine a

wound with your unwashed hands. there is direct testimony of that at the time so even by the standards of the time it should not have happened. the other thing i'll mention briefly the garfield assassination was different from the others in the purpose of the assassination. john wilkes booth -- what charles 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.

it was a regime change. and that's a very scary thought when you think about it, and he was successful in doing it. >> and getting back to andrew johnson i'm going to steal a question susan asked earlier this week. abraham lincoln, of course, is ranked the number one president. james buchanan who preceded him and andrew johnson who came after him are ranked the last two. how do you explain that? >> well, lincoln is sort of historical kryptonite. you don't want to be close to him because he had the greatest challenges of any president i think and did such a wonderful job. it's hard to look good next to that. but both buchanan and johnson were cosmically unsuccessful. buchanan slid into war and almost did nothing to stop it.

it was tragic. and johnson remaid the nation after the war and historical reputation is fascinating thing. he was celebrated for having bought the south successfully back into the union and healing the country and finally around 1950s people started saying, well, actually there's a part of the country he didn't heal well, and that awareness has grown and has caused him to decline. but it was a really hard set of problems these guys had to deal with. civil war is tough.

we had 700,000 americans killed during it war. comparable casualties today would be 7 million. people hated. andrew johnson had a hard job. now, he did it poorly but it was a really hard job. >> as susan explained there are ten leadership qualities that the survey is based on. i'm wondering as we sit here if there was a category of relations with the press. who would rank near the top or bottom? and let me get your thoughts because you have interviewed so many historians. >> i'll be very quick. 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. and for people who remember his

image it wouldn't have been terrific for television, but it was okay for radio. and it was during the time he was on radio the audience built and it grew just leak c-span started out with 3 million home and we went up to 100 million, he started out with very few radio stations and went up to several hundred more. and those stories exist in each -- with each president. >> any thoughts on press relations? -- >> i think kennedy was brilliant at it. he charmed everybody, but he charmed the press, too. and i do think of franklin roosevelt, too, because he would have the whole white house press corp in his office once a week and just sit at his desk and field questions and duck questions. he knew how not to answer. but, you know, when you spend that much face time with the president it's very effective in getting them to pull their

punches. >> well, this is one i'll be very curious to see how our current president fares when the next c-span poll comes around. i agree kennedy and fdr certainly stick out on the positive side of the equation, probably nixon would stick out on the negative side of the equation, but the current president has made this a signature issue, so it will be interesting how that works out. >> is it too early to think about where president trump might fall on the survey? >> i'm hoping johnson bumps up a little bit. [ laughter ] >> i'll let that stand. david you touched on you touched on jackson. tell us more surprises by seeing who have gone up. i know grant who went up, gee,

11 points and any others. >> well, just a couple and i'm picking on them and i don't mean to, but some relatively current presidents who just seem to me higher than i would have expected one is john kennedy, number 8. he was president for 2 1/2 years. would be a little hard-pressed to point to a lot of achievements and, you know, some problems. he didn't do a great job on civil rights. linden johnson really cleaned that up. and one that susan mentioned, eisenhower is number 5, again, it's hard to point to some massively wonderful thing that happened. it makes us delighted he was president. it seems a surprise to me. with eisenhower i would point to the massively terrible thing. eisenhower fals

eisenhower faced the toughest period of the cold war when we were at logger heads with russia, nuclear war heads our proliferating, stalin was still in power when eisenhower became president. and the fact eisenhower kept the peace so effectively, he resisted the temptation and the recommendations of his general to intervene in vietnam. the fact he kept the piece in a very quiet way, a very calm way during that 8 years to me justifies that one. on the one at the bottom i always thought warren harding got the raw deal. yes, warren harding brought us the which was a high scandal. it was under the interior department always pales next to

the scandals that were going on in the justice department under warren harding. so, yes, that's bad. but on the other side warren harding became president in 1921 and he stabilized the national economy. he calmed the country down from an anti-red, anti-immigrant period. he is the one that an important effort towards good will and the actual teapot dome scandals actually affected other people, did not reflect on him. so i would not argue he belongs in the top two thirds. b however, from the last compared to some of the others i would quibble with that. on the upside, i have a problem with linden johnson, and the reason is this. yes, his record on civil rights,

his record on policy, the creation of the great society, these are all extremely positive things that would put him in the upper tier. however, this perhaps is where a president in our lifetime and the way we react to him might be -- my very first involvement in politics when i was a junior in high school was working as a volunteer for the campaign of eugene mcarthur. vietnam is something that hung over the country for many, many years. and of the five presidents arguably who had fingerprints on the vietnam war, i'm going back to eisenhower, to nixon, linden johnson was the one most directly responsible for getting the country involved in a milita military quagmire on a very large scale. and to me that's not a small thing. and i note in the c-span

survey -- you note that linden 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. and the disparity is very stark. and to me because of that i was very surprised to see him in the top 10. >> if i might flag one issue for the next survey. you know, we've had this cycle of realizing racial issues should be part of this. i wonder if now it's going to be the focus of presidential womanizing. there are, in fact, some pretty tawdry stories.

are we going to make distinctions between presidents who is stable extra marital relationships and serial abuse extra marital relationships. it's going to be interesting. >> i'd love to hear from the audience. you'll be on c-span jourg question. as people line up for questions, susan mentioned harold has written 53 books about lincoln. are there presidents we need to learn about and are there any you want to tackle in the years to come. >> i'm wrat a writing one about george washington so we want to learn about him and i'm focusing on his earlier years which i think are not well understood. with all these characters a

friend uses the phrase with so much information hiding in plain sight that's known to the people who know this stuff, but most people don't know it, and that's part of the job is to help people understand that. >> just briefly i've been straying far since my garfield book. my last book was something call called trotsky in new york about leon trotsky and the months he spent just before the russian revolution. and i would say on the rating i would certainly rate trotsky in the top three. >> brian, any q&as you would welcome of presidents you'd like to learn about? >> of course these two men have already written so much that we could just continue this until 5:00 this afternoon. i'd love to hear you tell, again, the story of -- and

lafayette park and the fact garfield was shot half a block from here. and that story about lafayette park i can't get it out of my happened. >> what brian is alluding to james garfield was shot in july 1881. charles, the assassin was stalk him for several weeks. he'd made the decision to remove garfield. again, it was a regime change as opposed to vindictive assassination. 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 period for those of you who like that tv show. it did not protect the president. that was not his job yet. what he would do is go to

lafayette park across the street from the white house and sit down on a bench where he could get a good look at things, and he would watch all the comings and goings. he could see who was coming in, going out, and he had his gun with him. and 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 at i believe was 15th and "i" street just a few blocks away. one night shortly before the murder james garfield wanted to talk to blaine, so he went outside, crossed the street. it was at night and he was alone. catow saw him and followed him with his gun thinking he might very well shoot him that night. he followed garfield all the way to james blaine's house, he saw him go inside blaine's house

then he thought he'd wait outside until garfield left and catch him 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 for the walk back to the white house just because there were a few things they wanted talk about that night. when catow saw blaine with garfield they decided to put it off. what they ended up doing was wait about a week or two later. the shooting took place literally across the street from where we're sitting. when you go outside the front door of the museum building you'll see in front of you the national museum of art across constitution avenue. at that point, 1881, the potomac and baltimore railroad station sat in the middle of what's now the street. the shooting took place in the front foyer, the front resepgds area of the train station.

what today 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 a hundred yards away. the bureaucracy of putting a marker then middle of the street in washington, d.c. is prodigious and is still in progress. >> we've got a lot of questions so i'm going to ask you guys to keep it quick. we'll start on this side. >> so you mentioned the maybe implicit weight we give to modern presidents. but i also wonder about the -- the point system itself because i see reagan in the top ten, and i think particularly of his failure to sbrespond to the aid crisis in the '80s. as something that i assume falls within equal juris for all and i wonder if that's a category that ought to have more than 10

points for instance as compared to some of the others. i'm curious about whether and how that type of calculation comes in for both the people who organize the book and the historians who participate in the survey. >> i would just say in any of these categories in any of the point systems you could find yourself running around chasing your tail forever and never have a perfect survey, we don't think this is perfect survey at all. this is just a way, frankly, to talk about this kind of stuff. we don't put -- i mean, we had nothing to do with how it came out. we did try to balance out the kind of people, the 100 people that we invited unlike some of the other surveys where they only pick leftist center political scientists from major universities and that's the way author senior did it years ago and you can find a balance of this by going on our website and you'll be able to find out who

they are, but it's a good question that i don't have an answer i'm sure would satisfy you on that because this stuff is not perfect. >> i have a question about chester a arthur, when there's a reference to kennedy not moving ahead in civil rights and lbj was able to chester arthur moving ahead with service reform kind of having a change of heart and morality once garfield was assassinated so i'm wondering what your thought was on that in your research. >> actually david and i were talking about this before coming here today. >> you should have been there. it was a great conversation. next question. chester allen arthur is actually an under-appreciated president in my mind. chester allen arthur was chosen

to be vooipts because he represented the rival group in the republican party as opposed to james garfield. he was traditionally under the thumb of a new york -- catogh when he shot garfield he said i am a stalwart and arthur will be president. and the warning after the shooting when arthur and they showed up at the fifth 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 wasn't but people thought that. chester allen arthur did a lot of soul-searching in the weeks between the shooting and when he became president. and giving credit where due he really recognized the problem created by the very harsh partisanship that led up to the

shooting. and when he became president he refused to go along with this notion of regime change. roscoe shortly after arthur became president came to him and asked him to follow through on reversing some of garfield's political positions. and arthur refused to do it. he also surprised many of his old friends with the civil service reform act. his faction -- excuse me, his faction stood for patronage and yet he was the one who signed the civil service reform act. and he ran one of the notably less corrupt presidencies of that era. so, yes, good shout out for chester allen arthur. >> i recommend the biography of chester arthur by scott greenberger featured in the book called the accidental presidents. >> i always heard there was a plaque to garfield in the

railroad station when it was torn down by shepherd, the plaque was then in the national gallery who didn't want it because it wasn't artistic. when it comes to the question of womanizing or whatever there's that category of moral authority. what's in that category, and does that handle things david was concerned about? >> i was wondering about that one. >> it's again an opportunity for the people we ask to do this survey to put a face on it they believe on what moral authority is. again, do not try to make this a perfect survey. can i jump in very quickly because i want to ask a question of mr. stewart when it gets to the impeachment of andrew johnson. should he have 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 have 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 start talking about impeaching them as soon as they take office. and i think ifman had actually gotten tossed it would have been awfully good. >> we visited philadelphia last week and the constitution museum that's there. so i'm wondering if there's some examples in your research about the contention between the president and congress. >> impeachment is sort of an

ultimate confrontation between congress and the president. frankly, congress is trying to decapitate the executive branch, so it raises the stakes, and it is a compelling drama. it's also a massive distraction from anything the political system might or the government might do for the people. and i think that's something that needs to weigh more heavily and it does. there is an obsession today how polarized we are it is a polarized time and there are all these mechanisms gerrymandering and what have you that exacerbate it. but we've had a lot of polarized times. researching right now the 1790s and quite frankly there were riots in the streets.

the civil war, people were killing each other. that was pretty bad. and, you know, the civil rights era and the vietnam era ken referred to which a lot of us in this room was terribly polarized. so the system has survived all of these. it does require people observing some basic rules, and that's something it feels like right now maybe 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 ditto david's point. but one other thing to it. we have had a number of periods in our country when relations between presidents and congress have been very poor.

but there's one way in which this period is different. the book we're talking about is rating the pre-s. it would be interesting if there was a parallel book called rating the congresses. arguably the congress today, both the senate and the house have reached a point -- the word dysfunction is thrown out quite a lot, but there's something very real behind it. the fact 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 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 demise of congress to me is a very important part and it's something different from these prior periods. >> john, can i say everybody ought to know ken worked for patrick leahy, the longest serving member of the senate also and this man clerked for three different judges including justice louis powell and also was the defense of walter nixon. >> the other nixon. >> who was impeached and convicted in the senate as a federal judge, so we've got a lot of talent right here. >> my question relates to the survey and linden johnson. primarily the relationship with congress. i think and wonder if any significance is given to the fact of course he served in both houses and he of course had been in the majority leader of the senate and what impact that had

on the survey. >> i think it had a very important impact on it. the fact he had served as majority leader gave him an understanding how particularly the senate operated. it gave him an understanding how to get a difficult bill thru congress. arguably there would not have been a civil rights bill in 1964 unless linden johnson had an understanding how you cleared the decks in the senate, how you get around a filibuster, build a coalition, lean on members, force people to vote your way, reach out to leadorns the other side. all of those mechanical political thing heez knew how to do because he had that experience on capitol hill. where it broke down was later when vietnam came to dominate his presidency and he had to deal with growing resistance among senators even of his own

party. william full-bright comes to mind in vietnam and his inability to bridge that gap. >> i recommend to you if you haven't taken the time we have this on our website, since our radio station has been in business for over 20 years we have run thousands of interviews -- not interviews. oval office conversations of linden johnson that were recorded by linden johnson that are the greatest civics lesson you could ever imagine, and you can see there very clearly why he had this top relationship with congress. he could talk to everybody in congress about everything about their family, about their -- i won't go that far. anyway, it's fantastic if you have never listened. >> highly entertaining at times. >> how did you decide where to rank william henry harrison? like wasn't he in office for

30 -- >> it's hard on the presidents who came in below him. >> but how do you rank things with relations with congress, foreign affairs? >> that's a question that will have to remain unanswered. i have no idea why these 100 people would put him where they put him, it's probably their dislike for the ones below him. a good question, though, because there are a lot of other questions that can be asked and not answered if you study this survey closely. >> a quick comment on it. it was a lot easier to think through the top five than the bottom five at least to me that try to figure out who ranked 37th and 38th. the middle ones really required some research and some thinking to figure out who would go with

whom. with someone like william hairy harrison, no, he has no track record at all so you don't know what he's going to do. but you do know a little bit about his life and leanings. but it's conjecture. >> as someone born and raised in indiana i suppose it might be because he was the governor of the indiana territories is the only thing i can think of. >> would that factor into the presidential ranking, though? >> in his chapter historian ronald shafer, that's a really great chapter to read in this book. we have two more questions. >> hi. can you hear me? >> yes. >> first of all i'm a c-span junky and brian lamb is my hero. secondly i want to know that -- can we perhaps look back in history through the lens of our modern day and rank some of the

prep pre presidents from the past through skewed eyes or perspective. we're talking a lot nowadays of social justice and how we treat each other which is fine, but it seems like you have to take the presidents within the context of their times. is that something that, you know, we could have a broader discussion about? >> i think that's a very important point and it's something i think everyone who participated in the poll had to wrestle with. how do you rank someone -- take andrew jackson, for instance. andrew jackson for many years up until he lived after the arthur slesinger period was considered a progressive and it was under andrew jackson the franchise, 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, you know, a number of things which for many years were considered progressive and that was the way he was ranked up until probably the last 20, 30 years. but you can't overlook the other side of the coin. i don't think it's a bad thing that modern historians and modern analysts are more sensitive to that bad side of the coin. the fact that his record on race was so poor, the fact his treatment of indians, native-americans was not just poor by our standards but even by the standards of the time it was extremely cruel. see it's something we have to struggle with but it's certainly there, certainly something that can't be ignored. >> david stewart wrote a book i

would highly recommend to you. it's got so many interesting statistics, but i would ask him if that crowd came back today 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. so they would be delirious about that. they mind not be able to recognize the government. it is so gigantic. it plays such a large role, and we expect it to do so much. when washington took office there were about 500 soldiers and maybe 30 clerks. that was the whole thing. so it would largely be unrecognizable in a lot of ways. i think they'd be tickled, though, it was still here. they knew it would have to

change. they put the amendment in there for a reason. >> i want to remind everyone we are selling copies of the book outside the studio right here, and i'm sure our historians and brian will be happy to sign copies. go ahead. >> i would add to it ten items in terms of ranking presidents and what would you think of this -- but also i'd have ability to learn from mistakes and actually ability to grow in office. and i'm just -- what i had read, for example, talking about kennedy and his position on civil rights i think when kennedy assumed office he saw civil rights as a thorny political issue having to navigate between the conservatives and the northern liberals. but i think that 2 1/2 years later kennedy saw civil rights as a moral imperative, and i think that's what we learned ipoffice. and i think the bay of pigs

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

so i think that's 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. >> i think you're talking about where presidents are ranked. books that historians write have a great deal of impact on where those pre-s -- we're talking about eisenhower and the steven ambros book, and i wrote a book by evanatom s that came out recently that gave ike great credit because of his leadership during the cold war that was greatly underrated. i learned i didn't really know that, learned that from reading that book so that elevated my opinion. and some author wrote a book about calvin coolidge and i've forgotten her name.

>> emily. she'll be with us on our next event up in new york city. >> and my opinion of calvin coolidge rose also. that same history professor at brooklyn college had said calvin coolidge, the reason why he was known as silent cal is because he had nothing to say, but he said he gave credit because a lot of other politicians had nothing to say. >> i think, ken you had one last point. >> first, i think i would have flunked the course with that professor. i recognize my view on warren harding is probably a minority view, but i would recommend the book to you. very briefly we talk about the ten standards, the ten categories used to judge presidents. one thing that's always struck me about it is that one of the books i wrote was a biography so

i've learned about all politics and old machine politics. and the expression 100 years ago or 150 years ago among the political bosses is the number one way you judge a politician is are they loyal to their friends, loyalty to your friends the number one trait. as one of them put it right up to the gates of state prison loyalty to your friends. that used to be the standard among political professionals. it's not one of the ten anymore. arguably it shouldn't be, but i have always wondered if perhaps we lose something by not having that as one of the standards given that it was so central to the politics that worked for many years. >> john, let me just say in our audience today is john -- sitting right over here. he wrote a stimulating book on richard nixon recently and is working on one on ted kennedy,

so there's an enormous amount of talent in this room. >> if i may, let me ask you one last question. it is the 40th anniversary of c-span. it's not only endured but expanded in terms of networks and the digital space. >> one, an industry that financed this spent over a billion dollars in the last 40 years on this public service that has no advertising or stars or ratings or anything hike that. and two, the public if we didn't have a public that reacts and the shows are stimulating and different and somewhat balanced we hope we wouldn't be here today. >> well theback is "the presidents." thank you all for joining us and your great questions.

thank you. [ applause ] selling books outside and you can also join us for a book signing. thank you.

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>> c-span has unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court and public policy events. from the presidential primaries through the impeachment process. and now the federal response to the coronavirus. you can watch all of c-span's public affairs programming on television, online or listen on our free radio app and be part of the national conversation through c-span's daily washington journal program or through our social media feeds. c-span, created by america's cable television companies as a public service and brought to you today by your television provider. >> next on "the presidency," a discussion at philadelphia's national constitution center with three contributors to c-span's book "the presidents." noted historianess rank americas