historians richard norton smith and douglas brinkley. also, the british leader debate with gordon brown, david cameron, and liberal democrat nick clegg. . >> richard norton smith, a historian of rights in the april

edition of the american historical association magazine, "the writing seems to be in crisis. historical -- start with that. >> i would say that the bad thing is there are not more gordon wouldn't'ods. they're interested in writing for more than their peers pretty to think about others in the past, if you look at the new york times best-seller list, you would have found distinguished academics who were interested in reaching what used to be called

the generally educated reader. i think we live in a niche society between academics and i think it has become more specialized. the interesting thing is who are we reading course, we are reading david mcauliffe, doris kerns goodwin, the brinkley. there are some academics that are waiting for a general audience, but clearly the trend has been toward specialization. early in the 20th-century, he was a humanist and political scientist ben political scientist talked about politics. he said that the graduate student at came to harvard, the mythical graduate student that arrived to study the paleozoic cockroach, academic specialization was a problem a century ago and it has become

even greater today. >> doug britain? >> i am going to dissent slightly from gordon woods. i think it has a huge amount of importance. i am writing on alaska. i do not know how i could write that book if they did not do a book about the pipeline and mount mckinley. not a lot of readers are going to read about an invasion by the japanese. the university press can offer and information that i need to write and more popular book. i think that the problem is money in that these university presses need to be subsidized and they are not being subsidized. bei am a huge fan of the university press. i think academic writing is essential to popular writing because we are footnoting those books all the time. >> you are not new comers but we

do this periodically. in order for those who may have never seen either one of you on this network, we will go back to you that i met both of you on the program. let's pick up doug brinkley in april of 1983 and what he looked like and what he had to say. >> graceland, weicker is len? >> graceland, graceland, you have to go to graceland. it is the most popular home in the united states after the white house. elvis was not a joke. i am an admirer of elvis presley. i think that people that mock elvis and make jokes about elvis do not understand a was present and did not know anything about him. -- -- it does not understand at the elvis presley and did not know anything about him.

in the 1950's, elvis wasn't unconscious revolutionary. ellis was able to not listen to what people told him and play race records as they were called back then. he could absorb black music and absorbent gospel music and blues and country western. he sponged up all of the american music forms. >> 17 years ago, elvis is the centerpiece of a big event at the museum. >> i am staying here at hotel george and the hall lobby is elvis. it is about popular culture in general. i think that a lot of times, in the united states, academics feel that they can deal with what is around them as being important someone such as bob dylan 100 years from now. there will be hundreds of

university press books on bob dylan. when your very close to it, is more like something you would read in the tabloids. there is a lot of serious work doing -- being done on marlon brando's acting. and the warhol, for example, there are now museums ports and the warhol. we have a lot of geniuses in our midst in america. we just do not pay that much academic scholarly attention to them because they seem to close bouras. >> are you as interested in pop culture? >> no, i am not as interested. i have great regard. i think that pop culture is a legitimate source of history in the making. it is a mirror that is held up to was. i would be more nostalgic.

remember the day that elvis died was the day that journalism changed in america. that evening, famously, walter cronkite did not lead the evening news with the death of elvis presley. i think that the other networks did. cronkite was the only one. a purist that the traditional view that this is not news. clearly the trend cents. >> back then, you had a magic bus that went around the united states with kids in it and you took it to many spots. >> i went to the university of new orleans and continued the majic bus program. we took students on these semester's across america where

we would go to nebraska or california and walk martin luther king's path in atlanta. i started doing civil rights bus tours, taking kids on civil rights to workers. i participated in others in this year. i would with john lewis on a pilgrimage. i spoke on rosa parks in a gun reported -- i became the guest speaker in new orleans. the first black mayor is reflecting on race in the war ends. i then went and taught at tulane university and now i am a professor at rice university in houston. i live in austin, so i'd divide

my time between austin and houston. i have three kids would stick up a lot of my time i am able to take into historic sites that my parents took me to when i was young. >> do they resist? what's a little bit. we tend to go more like a dinosaur park and things like this. we were just in waco, texas and took a tour of the dr. pepper factory. we went to houston and try to go to the history museum as well as some of the natural history museum's. i plan on taking into all these places. this weekend, in washington, we are doing an outdoor festival with the white house where they are trying to look at new historic sites to save like ronald reagan's birth place. there is always a need to put new sites in the system. >> let's go back to february of

1993. i am going to use the second cut on richard norton smith. it connects into what was said here. let's hear what he has to say. >> somebody told me that they thought you had visited every grade of every former president? >> yes, i have. i am one of the americans that can say that. sometimes it is an embarrassing hobby. i contracted heatstroke one day by visiting the tennessee state capital. i would not buy as yours to do this. i almost got arrested one night about 7:00 p.m. at night trying to find grover cleveland in a cemetery in princeton, new jersey. >> you have almost transferred to being a yearly bus user. by the way, grover cleveland is not worth getting arrested and over. >> democrats demonstrate and

republicans in corporate. for a number of years, i was taking tours of my own, basically presidential tours. we are doing another one this fall in october. we will be in new york, the hudson valley, new england and it will be 11 presidents in nine days. it is great fun. it has almost become a travel club. we have half the bus full already and some of these were on previous trips. you know what it is like did you bring a bunch of people together who have an interest in or passion for a subject and there is really nothing left. they form bonds.

it is almost a club. >> we have some fun on an airplane and there was a beautiful couple of pages that said there was nothing like the home of the bus at night when your with fellow people that create the kind of a serial cast. i have always felt that it wasn't just the sight on the bus, but the people, the community that developed as you move around. >> i was standing right there when he was arrested and remember being carried out to the event. >> what was your job? what i was a public affairs officer in the navy. the troops were lined up out there. .

he was not being cooperative. let's move on. but this president in context of history. not if you like him but in the context of history. richard norton smith, where is this president? >> it is early. first of all, i would point out that he exists in a unique political culture. four of the past five american presidents were polarizing. that tells you more about us and the culture than it does about them. it is another way of saying that the founders created a system that makes it difficult to do great things, especially fast. there are reasons that we have not have health care reform of this magnitude since theodore roosevelt.

for this president to achieve that, whatever you think of the bill itself, in this culture, it is a historic accomplishment. even more so, i think we are caught up in euphoria surrounding the election and the inauguration day, no one who was there will ever forget that. the notion that we had become a center left country overnight rather than a center-right country has been tested and i think it has been disproved which makes obama's achievement even greater. but i agree with what he says. i think that barack obama is an incredible american figure. my son memorizes to presidents and the election of barack obama jobs out at you.

jonathan alter of newsweek has a book coming out on the first year of president obama. he sputtered a lot and he did the big bailout. we are not sure where that is more to end up. with the health care, having a year of a slug fest like he had, if he had not passed that health care like he did, i think his presidency may have been one term. >> he did pass it, and i think he seems to be on quite a role. he is in-like. -- zen-like. >> if you listen to talk radio, this is daily anti-obama.

>> some of that is the evolution of the culture. 30 years ago, part of that consensus was because of the cold war. we were a more civil society. when you had that -- >think about what is different about this. this of ford's character assassins anonymity. you have a general coarsening of the culture which is reflected in and exacerbated by cable-tv.

it is all about conflict, about stoking conflict, and it is not surprising -- like >> >> it didn't he played the same role that talk radio did? >> gibril lot of extreme right people. franklin roosevelt was thought to be a communist, a socialist. i do think that what richard is saying is that we had a watershed mark in the '60s. once the new deal, in the '60s, mark hatfield, we do not have that now. as ronald reagan said in his diaries, we are trying to roll

back the great society. from 1980, when conservatism got serious, they had control of the white house. they felt very in power. meanwhile, we have had some very difficult elections. look at 2000. democrats never believed that george bush had won. there was the swift boat think it it has become a rip and tear atmosphere. i do not think it is to make to american history. we are experiencing it in a very visceral way right now. >> the fact of the matter is, the french was clearly understood. today, you have television networks that are not only covering the french, but sponsoring debt, bringing it

into the mainstream. the sideshow is crowding out the main tent. the media moderates find it very difficult. see how many people are voicing the need for consensus, for finding ways to bridge our differences, rather than exporting our differences. >> let me throw this in. 390 million people in the united states and 3 million people watch the top rated cable news show, bill o'reilly. but i think we are ripe for a third-party run right now. ross perot got 12% or was it 18%? i think it is wide open. people are tired of the

democratic and republican parties. having a credible third party is another question. someone like ron paul might do it, but he is kind of an eye duck himself. theodore roosevelt did it in 1912 with the bull moose party and split the republican party int two. >> ross perot put the budget deficit on the map. ross perot made it possible for bill clinton not to address that issue with historical significance. the one person out there who is in a position to do that would be mayor bloomberg of new york. >> alright, we will switch subjects. this is a stream of consciousness hour. what is the best historical book of history that you have read recently?

i would say that i have reread "the best and brightest." i don't just look at the kennedy administration in vietnam, but stylistically. i think he was the best writer of history since 1945. i also read his book, "the powers that be." his ability to be a journalist and historian and had a bit of a novelist flair and a seamless fashion seems to me that he is a well-known person. he was a genius at this creative nonfiction narrative about america. you get a real slice of the country. >>8 karr ran him off the side of the road and he was killed.

>> i would say that cornelius vanderbilt, who won a prize. he did a book on jesse james. the vanderbilt book is a classic. what a great movie does or what a great play does, is for a while, it takes you into another world with complete credibility. in this case, it is a perfect blend. vanderbilt is a fascinating, larger than life deservedly controversial figure. it is not just the life and times, you understand the evolution of this country you understand -- of this country. you understand capitalism in

politics. vanderbilt's lifespans the 19th century and i cannot imagine anyone telling a better. >> the pulitzer winners have just been announced, and in that category of auto biography, number three is a biography of woodrow wilson. >> he is a friend of mine. he is a really fine writer. he had great access to the cheever cuts. he was probably influenced more by recent great novelist. we needed a cheever biography. this book really delivers. it could have won the pulitzer.

cooper replaced arthur link who did these multiple volumes of the woodrow wilson at princeton. he compared theodore roosevelt and woodrow wilson and it is a classic. this is the best single volume biography of woodrow wilson. > i was one of three finaliss for the do we. i was 47 -- that was 27 years ago. >> we started out talking about elvis presley. the trauma winner this year for the pulitzer was something called "next to normal." that is an extraordinary show.

i am seeing a tomorrow night. it reinvents the broadway musical. it does so in a way that is not provoking to the extreme and is entertaining. it is about a family that is struggling to stay together while the mother is coming apart at the seams. it is a story of her mental illness. she is unable to come to terms with the death of her son who is a character in the show. you learn that this boy is dead and has been for a long time. >> where does probably fit in the culture? are you can a broadway? >> not as much as richard. i was a big fan of sam shepard. they still blow me away.

he is one of the people that we talk about that lives in our midst, but i think he is of the caliber of eugene o'neill. he is a symbol. he mixes western folklore with science fiction with domestic banks and with a sparse american landscape. these are just phenomenal plays. any time that i see any of the shepard plays being presented, whether it is an new york or elsewhere, i will see it. >> where does he fit in history? >> i am a huge on him. >> ihe did a broadway show calld "the assassins." >> talk about pushing the envelope.

he has been doing that for 50 years. he won a pulitzer for one play. it is a show about the artist and what should about the artist. >> what impact does broadway or these pulitzers have on the society in the realm of history? >> broadway is much important to culture today than it was years ago you had marlon brando appearing on broadway. it is a different culture. ironically, it is more profitable. >> i think you're starting to get hollywood stars getting their big moment on broadway. i think that broadway has become revitalized.

the theater district has been cleaned up. a lot of our best actors and actresses are now starting in place. >> the soundtrack for my fair lady set records. it was on the best-seller list for the year. music on the radio was coming from broadway. that is no longer the case. >> there is a broadway play called "million dollar quartet." hank williams, where does he fit in? >> there is a polish honor of music based on hank williams witches out what country -- out law -- which is outlawed country. hank williams was an incredible song writer.

he died at freezing in the back of a car in ohio. if you go to alabama, there is a hank williams museum. there are statues of him. it is the same with jimmie rodgers. country music was so much part of the american grain that you could not think of that. >> there are two sides, here. the broadway musical is a unique contribution to the world, but country music is at least if not more distinctly american. >> i want to play for you an audio tape. you will recognize the voice. you will understand that this has never been played before.

it was released just recently. this is from october of 1968. you have to keep that in mind. >> i hope i'm not interrupting your dinner. >> no, we finished some time ago. >> i just learned that our folks have been looking at these libraries. is there no way in the world that we could reconstitute it as nearly as possible in the president's office? >> well, we had not thought of it. it is possible. >> i need to build off to decide and say that this is how the president's office looks, and here is his desk, and a year is his chair, and here is his fdr

picture and this is where all these people sat. that is the most attractive thing they tell me to the people is where truman sat in this office. ladybird said that they just ought to be. we should have thought of it. now, we have a cannot do philosophy. maybe we do not to have -- do not have to have the high ceiling. maybe we would use different dimensions. it seems to me -- >> that was october 10, 1968. he was talking to gordon, a famous architect. a this is right before he leaves office. you have been to a lot of

libraries. how important is something like the oval office? >> the presidential libraries are essential. it gets people out of washington to do research. i just recently spoke at the kennedy library. you get to see the view of the hill that ronald reagan loved and would go horseback riding on. you see air force one, which they have there. the carter library, they have an old office. it helps people have a sense of pride that a president came from their particular state. >> what about -- what is your favorite library? >> that is like asking who's your favorite child. i will tell you the model. i wish there was a way that we could go back to the original

model where the library was a relatively modest in size, was put in the middle of a corn field in iowa or down the street from hillary truman's home in delaware or on franklin roosevelt estate in hyde park. the fact that these grew out of the surroundings that produced the president and their character and world outlook. hyde park is part of the exhibit. independence is part of the exhibit. i think we need to align these institutions with universities. >> what is the george w. bush library or to look like?

>> i have to tell you, i am impressed. the got a great architect. i thought they were going to try to out-clinton clinton. but they have done is exactly the opposite. that they created a building that absolutely fits into the existing smu campus. it does not call attention to itself. it is not monumental. my sense is that that carries on inside. it is a museum about the presidency and what it is like to be president and the decision making process that goes on as opposed to a very * pacific personalized tom -- time a specific scene.

but i like all of the library's print in austin, we have the lyndon johnson library. that is right in the middle of the campus. >> have to see the oval office that he was talking about? >> i have. it is almost like going to graceland. people could practically steady his toenails, he was back into it. one thing about george w. bush, but library will be at smu and they are doing and north -- a good job. it is really the ranch in crawford that people associate with the bush presidency. i asked what would happen to the ranch. would that become property of the national parks service? sunday, -- sunday, barack obama will have to have the interior

department come and say that the one you're chicago home. -- they want or chicago home. there is a house where there is a plaque that says that jimmy carter was conceived in this house. people go crazy over this presidential experiences, down to what kind of could the president a and where they went to church. johnson is not that far-fetched in that case when he says that people are to want to know where somebody said. >> what about -- the numbers of people that go there are not great. what about the people that research there? >> many of these institutions -- as a culture, family and i get in a station wagon and set off for two weeks in the summer to visit all of these sites in

the way that they used to. i think that there is a formula that i think has gotten rather stale. how many times can you visit the oval office? i think it is incumbent on the planners of future presidential libraries to find ways to reinvent -- >> how many people go to presidential libraries? >> you would be surprised. there are some people to go to all the president's grades. >> there has been a proliferation of libraries. what happens, and this happens in any biographical site, as the generation passes away, it is not surprising that the numbers should decline. that is the case with other presidential libraries. >> it is wonderful to see busloads of young people that live in an area of a presidential library in is almost a mandatory trip.

>> you both are teaching and writing books. let's catch up on all that. what are you teaching and where? >> i am a professor of history at rice university and i work in the baker institute at rice and i do 3 class is. i do the history of the cold war, a history of the presidency and conservation history. rice is one of the best schools in the country. we have not been as hit as badly as the rest of the country. but i am working on the wilderness kingdom. the end of it is about the arctic refuge and the five to save wild alaska. i am looking at efforts to save the not mckinley -- to say about

mckinley. -- to save not mckinley. --mount mckinley. there is the great caribou herd. there is the whole aleutian island chain. they were going to test one in alaska, but it has been preserved and saved and it is probably our single most wildlife which state is alaska. >> when will it come out? >> the following year. i have been working on it a long time. i am the historian for cbs news. i have access in those ways. >> can you tell us something about walter cronkite that we do not know? >> that he did not stand at romero and edward r. murrow could not stand him.

he thought that walter was not an intellectual, that the intellectuals were charles collingwood and the philosopher from minnesota. cronkite was more of a gun issue -- gum shoe reporter. >> what are you teaching? >> i am teaching an undergraduate course on the presidency. it is a very unusual university in that it is very collegial. it is very entrepreneurial. those are not traits that one university associates with the academy. >> what are you writing? >> i am still writing for the past 10 years, paid biography of

nelson rockefeller. >> in 1993, doug brinkley, you talked about communicating. this shows the difference between then and now. let's watch. >> one of the things is that these are adults. but they may be young people, but to me, at 21 years old, they are an adult. they have to call home and their parents have an itinerary and they know how to reach us. that was it. people would make their own phone calls. i was not responsible for that. they would have to pay for it themselves. >> what has technology done? >> i miss the pay phone. i am more old-fashioned. we had a pocketful of quarters and we used to jam them in. i do not think i would want to do majic us with today's

technology. it starts being about themselves and not history. it leads to a kind of youth gnosticism, i think that we have not seen the downside of technology. i am about books, used books, something tangible that you can touch. i cannot stand -- i am not big on kindle. i do not want to read a book on a computer screen. >> this is a book that we have had out for a long time. this is the fourth edition. it is called "who's buried in grant's tomb?" we have a clip about you talking about your life before 1993 when you broke the book on george washington.

let's watch that. >> i graduated in 1975 with a government decree. it was more or less worthless. but what did you do then? >> i was a free-lance writer. >> during what administration? >> during the ford administration. i am ashamed to say that i wrote a piece about the experience for the washington post. it was intended to be a tumor -- a humorous peace. here we were, all of these kids that were there because we knew people who knew people, and there was not a whole lot of substance. it was a somewhat comical situation. >> the white house intern ship is back. >> i often said that if bill clinton had only read my article, that history would be very different.

subsequent presidents brought it back and the rest is history. >> should there be internships? >> i think it should it is different from what this program was. these were a bunch of political will connected kids that were given legwork. >> what is the best training for someone who thinks they want to be like either one of you, a historian? >> major in history and go for a master's and maybe a doctorate. right all the time. reade hell good people right. you can learn to write well by reading tom wolfe as much as you can as well as reading academic dissertations. >> thomas will for tom wolfe? >> pommells look today.

-- thomas wolfe or tom wolfe? >> tom wolfe of today. >> she wanted to write history as literature. she did not want to write exclusively. >> who is the best writer of history? who would choose a route the best? >> frances parkman broke beautifully -- wrote beautifully. i think that david mcauliffe is one of the better historians of today. >> i would add nimitz as a distinguished academic. he wrote eight volumes about the civil war which is still unmatched for both academic

rigor and readability. >> oral histories, here is an excerpt from what you have done. it is bob dole talking about george mcgovern. we'll let you talk about what role they play. >> he had a very compassionate attitude. how else could you explain mcgovern? i used to rail against mcgovern and i cannot do that because i have such respect for him. it is a beautiful friendship. i sat down after the bill announcement when we had that big dinner. we had a late-night snack and george mcgovern came in and we sat down and talked for about an hour and a half. i just came to see that bob had

more influence on him than he had on bob. >> where did you do it were to mark what we did it about three years ago. we missed jack kemp. he was a happy warrior. he was a man about ideas, principals. >> you did not have to agree with them, but he believed politics was supposed to be about ideas and not character assassination or trivial tactics of the moment. we could use more people like him. >> what is this project about? >> it was an oral history project. he did not want to be a biographical project, he wanted it to be about policy. he wanted them to explain that it was a huge lack of knowledge

about how it works. many congressional studies develop themselves -- to buy >> you are doing work for the foundation? >> for people who knew president and mrs. for? >> how is it set up? do you release it right away? >> no, everyone has their own approach to this. you want people to feel comfortable. there is a debate about whether you should use a camera or not. if you were comfortable with the interviewer, and the subject, with the four project, all of these are being videotaped and they will be held by the foundation which is a private organization that sponsored

this. none of them will be released before 2013. they may wind up on the web. eventually, they will be in the white house where everyone has access to them. >> tell us something we do not know. >> gerald ford is a more complicated figure. we had a board of a conversation with lee hamilton. he said that gerald ford was very ambitious, but he concealed it. this town is full of people who do not conceal it. one of the secrets to his success and why he was so liked, was this shrewd attempt on ford's part but not to come

across that way. >> i remember you doing to eight hours with neil armstrong. >> we did a long interview with mr. armstrong at johnson space center right after 9/11. he flew his own plane in from cincinnati where he has a farm and he was turning 70 and agreed to do one nasa world history interview and the late steve ambrose and i got to do when we had that marvelous opportunity to talk to him. neil armstrong and john glenn, i love john glenn, they were both boyhood heroes of mind. we would do world war two oral histories and i like talking to soldiers a lot because it is hard to understand battle from one general perspective, but if you can get a sampling of 60 people, for example, i just got back from haiti and it was our

first ranger. if you hear the stories of differed soldiers and what they encountered after the earthquake with the death of the devastation and the famine and the amputations and the toll gate madison, to just start talking to all the soldiers, there is only one way to do this. you are talking to all these guys to capture what it was like when the 82nd airborne first arrived and saw the devastation. there were 200,000 people killed. >> where does all this material go and who listens to it? is there a chance that no one does? >> the presidential libraries at a staff of paid historians that would go out and collect all of these memories. if you go to the johnson library or the hoover library, you will find very large collections supplementing the written

record. a lot of stuff is like to put on paper it becomes available to scholars. >> it is a sense of purpose. you do long form interviews and get a transcript of that and it becomes indictable history. the c-span archive is an oral history. people will see every time he was on and people will be foot noting that in their paper. there is a boat coming out by arthur schlesinger jr.'s book about kennedy. it is becoming a book in its own right. i wrote a book that was a long it your view about all of these guys. they started forming buds of oil

heat -- oral history. >> this will be painful, but i want to do it for a couple of reasons. i think you know what i am talking about. this is about one in 11 seconds. >> for the last couple of years, he worked for me at rice university in houston. he was my dartmouth and yale combined. he got so engaged in history and current events that he was literally ablaze about life. he enjoyed books and learning and together, we discovered birds for the first time. we were doing research on the audubon society 100 years ago and that very minute mind that he had, we would walk from the

university and look at the animals because we needed to understand it for the work that we were doing. we went to the presidential campaign together. i tried to be a historian and he would constantly where his obama t-shirt and a wrap me out to everybody. >> that was at the national cathedral and that was forced on weeks -- that was forced don't weeks -- for stone weeks. >> he was my personal assistant and graduated from the university of delaware. his father was a longtime washington post writer. he introduced me to his son.

i hired him when i was working on my book. he was my right and left hand. we became great friends. our lives became interspersed and then, tragically, on the way to a party of mine, a truck hit him and his brother and crushed them like an accordion and both he and his brother died. it was quite tragic. we had a memorial service in washington cathedral and that clip that you ran as part of the eulogy. i am dedicating my book that i am working on right now to him. >> do you use assistancts? >> i do not know how to use assistants.

i think that there is a healthy subjectivity in the research process. i do not know how you subcontract that. >> that is not what stone's job was. he would go get library books and he was running that kind of stuff. when you're doing the actual research, you just have to do that yourself that is because -- yourself. that is because i will spot something that nobody else will see. >> i have the document, here.

the two were that you're going to take october 9-17. york 12 tour of the presidential sites? >> multiple sites. for tells us it's everybody dollars a person? >> this is not the bus tour of students -- >> if somebody wants to participate? >> blake ken googled presidentsandpatriots.com or they can call 202-61-7250. >> what is one of your paper places to go back to? >> i like where i was going,

atlanta. because i have seen that city grows so much -- grow so much. just to see that city grow and grow, i get very moved about the whole civil rights story about martin luther king. of going to some of the southern restaurants that are still around from that movement arab. there is nothing like going to these sites -- from the movement era. there is nothing like going to the sites. >> my first president was in plymouth notch, vt.. calvin coolidge was going there. the whole village is a museum.

it is a wonderful way to step back in time and experience a very different america. coolidge is a much more interesting character that he has often been portrayed. one of the most interesting things is that post rated, we are rediscovering the fact that there is an alternative to the new deal model president. >> you are a boston native. >> a little town of 4000 people. >> an undergraduate degree and ph.d. from georgetown? going in atlanta but grew up in ohio. -- a going in atlanta, but grew up in ohio. -- born in atlanta, but grew up in ohio. >> id e-mail from people