questions with david cameron followed by an appearance by the prime minister before a joint meeting on national security. ♪ "q&a," authorn and historian robert dallek discusses his latest disc horrible -- historical narrative titled "camelot's court: inside the kennedy white house." >> robert dallek, in your recent book, "camelot's court: inside the kennedy white house," the last paragraph of your entire book -- i cannot resist saying, thank you to president obama

what is your insight into president barack obama because of four dinners with them? >> he is a highly intelligent man. he is keenly interested in history and the way in which the presidential institution has evolved. what he could take away from past presidential performances to make his a more compelling and more successful administration. i wish we had some extraordinary answers to provide him, but of course the nature of history is that it is an imperfect humanistic enterprise. he understood this. we talked a great variety of

things in those interviews, in those dinners. roughly 12 historians. i wasn't the only one there. ,ome of his principal aides including one of his principal speechwriters. for me it was a fascinating experience to be able to sit right next to the president at dinner and have this kind of exchange with him. anmany ways, it felt like academic seminar. he is someone who has been a .rofessor of law it was like being in a seminar with a bunch of colleagues. >> did you leave there writing things down after you were there to remind yourself? can you give us an example? when done with this -- i think we will have more

dinners with him. one of my colleagues and i talked a little bit about writing a piece called "dinners with obama." i think it will be a very positive piece because he listens. he wasn't intent on giving us instruction or lobbying us for anything in particular. dinner hethe first wanted to know how presidents achieved the transformative presidency. how did franklin roosevelt do it? theodore roosevelt, woodrow wilson, ronald reagan with his revolution. at the second dinner, because this was in 2010, he was slipping somewhat in the polls and did not have the continuing hold of the public's imagination. that is not unusual.

once presidents are there for a while, their limitations are going to be evidenced. reconnectabout how to to the public. i told him the anecdote about how after franklin roosevelt died, his body was being georgia to hyde park where he was buried. some man stood by the well read tracks -- railroad tracks and summit said, do you know the president? he said no, but he knew me. i related that to the president. he nodded, he understood that making that kind of connection to ordinary folks was essential for presidential success. inthe third dinner, it was 2011, we talked about the coming election. he was a little more verbal at that point. essentially he said he wasn't concerned about any of the republicans he was facing.

he said, this fellow romney has twisted himself into a pretzel. then, he talked about the fact that his opponent in the election was the economy. that is what he saw. the last time we had dinner with him was in january of 2013. almost a year ago, just a year ago now. he was very upbeat. he had just one bank reelection. -- won reelection. he talked about his state of the union message, his inaugural speech, his addresses. we talked about the issue of the second term curse. given how many difficulties he has struggled with during the course of 2013, one could say

there it is again. i don't believe in curses. i don't believe in jinxes or anything like that. i think it is just inevitable when a president is in his second term, he is going to have a more difficult time than at the start of the first term. presidents come to office initially on a wave of enthusiasm, excitement. even if they only one bank by the narrowest -- won by the narrowest of margins. sliver andy won by a yet very quickly, he gained a kind of popularity. term, start of his second people see the fact that a president doesn't walk on water. he is not a miracle worker as some people like to think. hims more difficult for especially is he -- if he is dealing with an opposition in

congress. >> the subtitle of this book that you just wrote, inside the kennedy white house, you talk about the individuals there. there are still people that we are talking about today -- everybody knows their name, i wonder if there is anybody in this administration who will be talked about 50 years from now. >> that is an interesting question. i think valerie jarrett -- after all she has been there for five years and there is every reason to believe she is going to be there for another three years. think some historian is going to want to get her papers, interviews with her if possible, since she among all the insiders at the white house probably has been closer to president obama than any other advisor. i think she is certainly one name that will register on

historians. >> here is a fellow you write about in your book. he was here for book notes. let's watch it. >> john kennedy intended to write his own history of his presidency. once, he would refer to me. he would say to me, he would refer to that book we are going to write. i would say to him, the book you are going to write. i didn't have any intention of hanging around in his life forever. when he was suddenly gone and could not write that book, i felt i had some obligation. >> how did he fit in the kennedy white house? >> he was of course the president's wordsmith. he was a brilliant speechwriter. he and kennedy had a kind of symbiotic relationship. i don't mean they were friends. i don't mean they socialized. said they didn't have

that kind of relationship but there was a kind of intellectual exchange between them and a kind understanding of where this president wanted to go in his administration and what he wanted to say. sorensen had the gift of being able to translate that into language that is memorable. kennedy's some of speeches are going to last, are going to be remembered. when i find -- what i find so interesting is that with john kennedy, a recent poll asked people to assess the last nine presidents from kennedy to george w. bush. kennedy came out on top with 85%. memory of hiscent assassination, the commemoration, 90% approval rating. the only one close to him was ronald reagan.

the question any historian has to ask is, why is this is the case? he was there for only 1000 days. it was the seventh briefest presidency in american history. the answer, i think, is on the one hand people don't much like his successors. johnson was vietnam, nixon was watergate. ford's truncated presidency. jimmy carter's presidency which people see as essentially a failure. the only one is reagan. bushes don't register. >> what about clinton? >> yes, but he had the monica affair. the only president in the country's history to have been sort of a black mark against his record. kennedy, of course dying so young at the age of 46, having only been there for 1000 days, it is a blank slate on which you can write anything.

and he was so young. the country identifies with that. , to have a sense of loss this day i think, over his assassination. he gives people hope. what they remember are his words. ask not what your country can do for you. ask what you can do for your country. his famous piece speech at american university in june of 1963 in which he said, we need to think anew about the soviet union. he and chris show -- chris jeff schev had come out of the cuban missile crisis terrified by that experience. kennedy wantede, to move toward some kind of detente with the soviet union. kruschev was receptive to that.

that is a you got the treaty signed in the summer of 1963. it happened very quickly. they had been hassling over that for years. suddenly it occurred. it was a spinoff i think from that cuban missile crisis, the terror they faced over that. i think if kennedy had lived, we would have seen a detente with the soviet union then it came about with richard nixon. >> you spend a lot of time talking about the individuals around him, people like mr. sorensen,. here was the view of jackie kennedy in march to june when they did these interviews with arthur schlesinger. in 1964, here is what she said. >> i know one thing about the legislative branch that larry o'brien told me. him. couldn't stand -- night he was telling me

they were jealous of the sorenson's and he said larry would prepare an agenda for the breakfast. just before they were about to start, ted would ask to see it. he would change one or two sentences. they would pass it all around that way. you will see that heavy hand of .ed sorensen in more places he wanted his imprint on so many things. i told you about the profiles. larry o'brien, everyone. >> he is a little better in the white house, isn't he? such a petty thing to do. >> someone said he loved himself and finally he loved one other person which was jack. i can remember when he first targeted -- started to try to speak like him or dared to call

him jack. the civilizedted side of jack. he knew he wasn't quite that way in the beginning. it was almost a resentment. he was mixed up in his own inferiority complex. i never saw him very much in the white house. >> quite critical. said he was in love with himself. courage,t profiles in only interested in himself. is that fair? >> i think it is an exaggeration. there is no question that ted sorensen was a keeper of the flame. after my personal experience with them, after i revealed the

kennedy medical records, he was the one who signed off. there was a three-man committee that controlled the medical records. two of the members signed off. sorensen -- i went to see him in new york. i met with him in his residence. i persuaded him to let me have access to the records. he didn't know what was in there. , thethe records came out new york times ran a front-page story about my findings. the atlantic magazine published an article out of my book on kennedy's medical history. sorensen was angry. he wouldould see me -- say, there was no cover-up. of course there was. they were hiding from the public the extent of kennedy's medical history and the difficulties. if people knew how many medical health problems kennedy had, i don't think he would have been elected in 1960.

however unfair that may be. i said his medical records down alongside the cuban medical price -- cuban missile crisis. there were no concessions to his medical difficulties during that crisis. there were medications that i think how can get through it without stumbles. to get back to your point about was a somewhat prickly character. very defensive about kennedy as if he were the keeper of the flame. i don't know why jacqueline kennedy was so critical of him. i think she was overly critical in the sense that sorensen was a total loyalist and he served kennedy's needs and desires and

degree and itnth wasn't as if he stole funding from kennedy. having't make claims to published profiles of courage. >> did he or did he not write profiles of courage? >> that is a complicated story. he did write part of it. there were others who contributed. becauserch told me kennedy would listen to the tapes, the transcripts of the chapters, he would edit them. it would be unfair to say that kennedy was the author, sole author of profiles of courage. on the other hand, it would be unfair to say that he didn't have anything to do with it or had a ghostwriter. he was vitally involved. it was a combined effort, so to speak. kennedy was a bit maybes of sorensen,

trying to take too much thunder or too much credit. relationshipslex that spring up in these white houses. >> you write on page two, health problems including addison's disease, a possible fatal malfunctioning of the adrenal glands, chronic back pain that had led to major unsuccessful ,urgeries, spastic colitis urethritis and allergies had added greatly to the normal strains of the nationwide campaign. you say in this book that ted kennedy found out about his brother's health problems in your book. >> not all of them. i think he knew that his brother had a medical history and had health problems but i don't think he knew the full extent. he was very admiring of my biography and told me so. arthur schlesinger was as well.

he says he thinks it was the best i ever feel kennedy. what both of them concluded was that my description of kennedy's health problems and enhanced rather than undermined his public standing, his reputation in history. above hisaged to rise health difficulties and be an effective president was a very impressive achievement. they would take it with that. ted did not know the full extent of his brother's health problems. it is the measure of how much they hated him, how much joe kennedy, bobby kennedy, the president himself, jackie, they were the ones who knew. it was largely hidden from the world. >> here is another person who gets lots of mention in your book, george ball.

tired.ppose i was i had been there too long. it was a very exhausting job. himselfrusk destroyed by staying there for the balance of the johnson term -- i wanted to get out. it was not just vietnam. vietnam contributed. it wasn't that i wasn't getting but ire in my focus, couldn't get the president and the people around him interested in any other part of the world. >> outspoken critic of vietnam although you say in your book that in the early times, he was backing what they wanted to do in vietnam. can you explain that? >> he was a loyalist. >> what did he do? >> he was undersecretary of state and he replaced chester

bowles, who kennedy didn't like having around at all. he was trying very hard to get rid of him. himlly, had to sort of send on a mission around the world, make him a kind of international : all around the world. going all around the world. he replaced them with george ball. george ball was more of a team player. wasnd the scenes, ball candid with kennedy about vietnam in particular. he told him at one point, mr. president if you put 200,000, 300,000 ground troops in those jungles, you will never hear from them again. kennedy said to george, you're crazy. -- we willbelieve, never know exactly what kennedy would have done about vietnam. on the other hand, when ball was sort of told to defend the

administration, that was his job. sort of like a vice president. you don't go out and give speeches that are in contradiction with what a president is saying. so he pretty much defended. behind the scenes, he was candid with kennedy and was one of those who was a very early critic, along with george kennan , they want -- i don't think donedy ever would have what lyndon johnson did in vietnam. i don't think he would have put 545,000 troops. >> here is an audio recording of john kennedy right before he was assassinated talking about the coup, the president of south vietnam. listen to this and interpret this. >> monday, november 4, 1963.

over the weekend, the 2 -- coup of saigon took place.

>> what did the united states do in relationship to this? >> there is no question that they facilitated the coup. here,y's recollections what is omitted is a discussion of the fact that he was assassinated. the generals in vietnam said, he committed suicide. kennedy didn't believe that for a moment. he was a good catholic and kennedy said he never would have

done that. i think kennedy felt a certain amount of guilt over the fact that he was assassinated. he said privately, whatever his failings, he had led his country for quite a few years and done constructive things and was a bullard -- bulwark against a communist takeover. he was reflecting on his own inclinations about having allowed such a coup to take place. also, the concern now that the united states was going to have to take greater responsibility for vietnam than it had taken in the past. kennedy was keen to get out of there. he had a conversation with my stol before- mike far he went to dallas texas. turned, he wanted a full-scale review of

vietnam including the possibility of getting out. i don't know what he would have done. i don't think he himself knew what he would have done. i love the anecdote that when he first became elected, arthur schlesinger, bobby kennedy asked off their -- asked arthur if you would like to be an ambassador. arthur said no, i would like to be at the white house. a few days later, he saw the president-elect. schlesinger said, what will i be doing that? kennedy said, i don't know. i don't even know what i will be doing there. we will both be busy more than eight hours a day. he understood that being president was not a set piece of hair. it evolved. he grew in that office. that was his greatest strength. >> i want to read back to you what you wrote in chapter eight. after 18 months of interactions

with his counselors, kennedy >> rostow was under bundy. rostow became national security advisor. -- >> that is a strong indictment, it seems to me. >> he was someone who grew in the office. he was badly burned by the cuban

bay of pigs experience. he had listened to the experts. staff., joint chiefs of he said, when he went to see de gaulle in france, de gaulle said to him, you should surround yourself with the smartest possible people. listen to them, hear what i have sayay -- what they have to but at the end of the day, you have to make up your own mind. kennedy remembered what harry truman had said. the buck stops here. after that bay of pigs, he was determined to make up his own mind. hear what these experts had to say but at the end of the day, he was going to make the judgment. he was the responsible party. you see that, that was abundantly clear when you listen

and read the transcripts of all those tapes during the cuban missile crisis. he was his own man. he was the one taking his own mind. wanted tochiefs, they bomb, invade. he didn't want to do it. you think he really like maxwell taylor or didn't? i know you say he didn't like the chiefs at all. >> he was very critical of the chiefs. >> they all seemed to hate the military. >> taylor began with a kind of cachet because he was kennedy's guy. kennedy made him chairman of the joint chiefs. i think over time, the fact that taylor so much reflected what the joint chiefs were saying during the cuban missile crisis and subsequently about cuba as well, kennedy i think became skeptical of him. i don't know that he would have

lasted that much longer. the anecdote, after the missile crisis was ending, kennedy held the joint chiefs at arms length. he brings them in and they say to him, you have been had. kruschev is hiding the missiles in caves. the white house leaks this. kruschev wrote kennedy a mosaic, i don't live in the caveman age. the joint chiefs, they talk about the need for planned bombing and invasion. kennedy says, go ahead, make plans. you never know what is going to happen. plan was to drop a nuclear weapon on cuba. he thought this was crazy. they said, the collateral damage could be contained. what it would have done to the south" lorna, let alone cuba --

south coast of florida, let alone cuba, it would have turned it into a pile of rubble. one has to recall that the joint chiefs, they came out of world war ii. they remembered fighting hitler, mussolini, the japanese military who fought to the bitter end. their attitude was, bomb them back to the stone age which is what they did in germany and hero shema,, neither psyche -- hiroshima, nagasaki. this was their attitude. they said listen, what is all this concern about nuclear weapons? if at the end of the war with the soviet union there are three americans left and to soviets, we have won. >> what do you make then of bobby kennedy had 11 children. one of his children is named

matthew, maxwell, taylor, kennedy -- matthew maxwell taylor kennedy. >> he had a great regard for maxwell taylor. he was a revered military figure and someone who they admired. he had resigned from his military position during the eisenhower presidency because he disagreed with the eisenhower idea of massive retaliation. he was the one who spoke for the idea of building up ground anyes to combat or counter soviet threat in europe. that is why they brought him in to the white house. he had this opposing view to the idea of massive retaliation. they appreciated that. over time, i think the fact that he was reflecting -- he was in a

difficult position. was he going to come to the white house and say, the gene think -- joint chiefs, i -- not that he reflected what they were saying. >> another man like a lot of attention is robert mcnamara. this was recorded in 1996 on both notes. i know he went on to serve lyndon johnson. let's listen to this and put him in perspective. , i said it would be a long war. what should i say to the enemy, we are losing? by the way, my report to the said in the i summer of 65 to him, there is only a one in three chance that we can win. that was my report.

should i have said that publicly? what do you think? what does your audience think? this is a terrible dilemma. so -- i want to tell you that i was in a very -- i felt like saying i was right. we were winning then and as i suggested, some people think we were winning. that was baloney. >> your book is full of american leaders and generals going to vietnam and coming back and saying we are winning. ,o one came back ever and said we are not winning. what do you think of that? >> i knew mcnamara a little bit. i interviewed him a couple times. the first time i began by asking about vietnam. he said, i am not going to talk about that. this was in 1998.

within 15 minutes, all he could talk about was the amount. he was profoundly conflicted about vietnam. during the kennedy presidency, he was an advocate of exercising muscle in vietnam. journalists like david halberstam raised questions with him. he was dismissive of them. even contemptuous. sure, he eventually came to the was aition that this military know-when situation in vietnam -- no-win situation in vietnam that he had been so adamant about leaving us into that war. that is what agitated him so much. where he says, you think i could say in public that we only had a one in three chance of winning? eventually gote

out of the johnson administration. sort of having a nervous collapse over his struggle over vietnam. they sent him off to be president of the world bank. here was a man profoundly conflicted. over time, he was one of the architects of expansion. rostow became johnson's national security advisor. during the kennedy presidency, he was talking about bombing and putting ground troops in. he never gave up on that war. i knew rostow as well. his attitude was, we saved the other southeast asian countries. we gave them time to develop. that was his rationale.

>> page 329, there is a juxtaposition in one long paragraph. it gets back to the image of the president and whether or not if we had known he was that sick, would he have been elected? this is another one of these that if we had done this, what would we have thought? jackie kennedy reflected

mimi beardsley was who? >> she was a 19, 20-year-old intern who kennedy began having an affair with in the summer of 1962. he had a sustained affair with her to the end of his life. he saw him the week before went off to texas. she claims in her book that he said, i wish i could take you with me to dallas. of course he couldn't because jackie kennedy was going on the trip with him. he had this relationship with were vitallythey tied to one another. in a way, it was a really curious business. there was something bizarre

almost about this. after all, he was a 45-year-old man. president of the united states. he had relationships with women galore. thisid he have to seduce 19, 20-year-old kid? she doesn't complain in the book about this. her book. she wrote me a note saying she thanked me for having brought this information forward in my first book in 2003. she had carried this as a secret. her book is called "once upon a sacred." et." secr she said also that was how she met her second husband. because of the story coming out. we corresponded. a very nice, intelligent woman. >> how did you find the story in

2003? in the kennedy library and old history by a woman named barbara who was the deputy press secretary at the kennedy white house. i happened to meet her at a cocktail party in washington. i said, barbara, i have just read your oral history and there are 17 blacked out pages. she agreed to let me in. them, this is what she revealed. kennedy had this affair with this 20-year-old. , all i had was 38 words, two lines in my biography in 2003 about this issue. making a bignt on deal out of this. it interested me because i had interviewed a number of

journalists for that biography and i asked them, did you know about kennedy's womanizing? they said, yes. why didn't you write about it? you didn't do it in the 1960's. you didn't intrude on a president's private life in that way. it was hidden from the public. when i brought this forward, the press got all into this. held meyork daily news up and said, who is this woman? i didn't know who she was. barbara didn't wanted to tell me. i trusted what barbara was telling me and i didn't want to know. i said, this one must be in her 60's. leave her alone. they found out who she was, good investigative journalists i guess. was sort of all over the place. the new york daily news for three days in a row ran front-page stories about kennedy's monica.

the first day they have the story on page three, they had a picture of monica lewinsky and of may. i said to my wife, i never even met the woman. [laughter] >> here is the nbc interview with mimi beardsley a couple of years ago. room that we went into was the bedroom, jackie kennedy's bedroom. i learned later that it was mrs. kennedy's bedroom. it was blue, pale blue i remember. i felt the president getting closer and closer to me. looked me right in the eyes. he then put his hands on my shoulders and guided me down to the edge of the bed. i think he may have even said to me, does this feel right? is this ok? i don't really think i knew what he was talking about.

is what ok? i didn't know what was about to happen. what did happen was, i lost my virginity. then i think i went a little bit into shock. she write the book, do you think? all the details about their relationship over an 18 month period, she flew out of the country, available to him at the end of the day -- >> it is so interesting. booki first published my and the story came out about her , the new york daily news revealed her name and who she was, i heard on the grapevine that a publisher offered her $1 million to write her book, a memoir. it wasn't until eight years later that she finally did it. i never asked her. maybe she needed the money. i suspect they were still willing to pay her because it was very much a tell all book.

revealsthe details she are somewhat shocking. >> go back to -- when i read the two paragraphs, jackie kennedy has great fears about her husband. she wants to keep the children and herself around him in case they die. 27 next page, on october during the cuba missile crisis, he is going upstairs to her bedroom, jackie kennedy's bed and bedding down this 19-year-old. does this truly not matter? two ways you can look at this. on one hand, does it have an impact on his conduct in the presidency? as far as i can tell, no. was he going to be found out, impeached? press2, as i said, the

did not write about a president's private life in that way. it says something about the man's character, about his personality, about the fact that there was some kind of deep neediness that this man had. he had to seduce his 20-year-old young woman. it is not just that, but her description of some of the things that went on. oral sex, that he encouraged her to give oral sex. to dave powers and his brother. she resisted. he suggested that she perform oral sex on ted kennedy. but with dave powers, she did it. she said kennedy watched. what word can you apply to it? perverse? >> here is arthur schlesinger

who wrote the book "1000 days." right after the presidency, he was a historian. here is what he said he knew about this. >> the recurring their recent study that everyone in washington knew about the parade mbos in the white house and they covered it up because rulesike kennedy or the affected the kind of inquiry. ben bradley was jack kennedy's closest friend in the press, head of the newsweek bureau. been bradley writes that he did not know about these things. i certainly was not aware of any waywardness which would interfere with the conduct. >> do you believe that? >> the journalists i talked to

including bob novak said they suspected, they had clues, they thought there were lots of women coming and going from the white house. biography, my first a journalist told me the story that when kennedy was on the campaign trail in 1960, he was in northern california, a bunch of girls from the local college, kennedy pointed to one of them and his aide went up to this woman and said, the senator would like to see you in his hotel room. she went up there and the story the journalist told me, how he knows this i don't know, maybe this young woman told him. thatournalist told me kennedy said to this young woman , we have 15 minutes. what happened after that? the journalist didn't say. the point is, sure, they knew,

they suspected. that the important point whether it is this president or any president, whether or not it had an impact on the presidency? is that the only thing we have to worry about? >> i think that certainly is a central proposition. this is between him and his wife as to what their relationship is like and whether the president is a philanderer or not. in this day and age, it seems to me that it would be madness for a president to try and do this. it is a different world from what it was in the 1960's. they would be -- it would be brought forward, all over the press, all over the television. it would probably destroy the presidency. theas a different time in 1960's. i am not justifying it.

i think that it was terribly excessive. what he did with this young woman. on the other hand, i am also someone -- i am not a puritan and i am not saying he should have just been loyal to jackie. that was between them. she knew about this. she knew he was a philanderer. there was the anecdote that they were in canada, in a receiving line, and there was a military aide standing next to them. , it isd to him in french not enough i come to canada and stand in line and one of these earls was in hand to shake -- in line to shake her hand. she was furious about the situation. who can blame her? , secretary of state, you have this quote. he had been a cautious man.

he described his luncheon is trying to "keep the group from moving too far or too fast." bobby kennedy described him as "playing the role of the dumb dodo for this reason." >> he didn't really think he was -- hisdodo but he saw personality was such that he was very deferential to the president on making foreign policy. i think there is a mixed assessment in the sense that this is what kennedy wanted. he didn't want a secretary of state who was going to compete with him on the making of foreign policy. the kennedy administration was a foreign policy administration. kennedy was not that interested initially in the mastech affairs. he was dragged -- domestic affairs.

he was dragged into its civil rights. it was courageous of him to put that civil rights bill before congress in 1963 because it could have jeopardized his reelection. since he knew he was going to be alienating southern states. they put him across in 1960. he didn't know he was going to write -- run against goldwater. it was courageous of him to do that. he grew, he involved in that office. he was very much a foreign policy president. i don't think he wanted a secretary of state who was going to be aggressive about challenging what he wanted to do. what kennedy complained about was that rusk didn't have ideas. he was not someone who came forward with suggestions that kennedy might have used. he had little imagination in dealing with foreign policy. that was i think a legitimate complaint. >> your first trip here was in

1991 when you wrote a book on lyndon johnson. here you are in 1991. haveme of the things i already found about his presidency is that he was trying to use the fbi to get certain journalists to work against paul newman, the movie actor who was advocating johnson's impeachment in 1967 over vietnam. johnson was trying to get the fbi to go after paul newman to see what they could find. he was, could be ruthless. he could have been impeached. >> how many books on lyndon johnson? >> two volumes. compressed one volume. , lone starumes and 1998 was the second

volume. >> i am not sure you're allowed to ask these kind of questions. what is the difference between your take on lyndon johnson and roberts? attempt at my johnson work was to stress balance. i feel that way still about johnson. johnson has only a 49% approval rating. he is third from the bottom. coming up now to the anniversary of the war on poverty, the great society, johnson did some extraordinarily constructive things for this country. sure we didn't abolish poverty as he won did too but he certainly eased the plight of people and took another step forward from where the new deal was in humanizing the american industrial system. i think that is to be admired.

he was ruined by vietnam. that is the shadow that continues to hang over his reputation. what they are going to say about the johnson presidency. he is just reaching that point in writing about the johnson presidency. i think caro has evolved in time over his picture of johnson. in the beginning, there was some very critical writing about johnson, particularly when he ran against stevenson in that 1948 senate campaign. -- i don'thas become know what word to use, receptive or gentle in his criticism? his volumes are beautifully written. engaged a model of how a general audience. i will be curious to see what

his presidential volumes turn out to be. >> brooklyn mutt to the university of illinois to get your undergraduate degree in history, phd and masters from columbia. i wrote down the places you have taught in your life. boston university, columbia, oxford, ucla, how many years? >> 30 years. >> caltech, university of texas, dartmouth, now teaching at stanford? >> i teach for stanford university in washington, a court on the presidency seminar. i looked at that picture. who is that handsome young fellow you had on camera? >> 23 years ago. what is your son do? >> he has earned a bachelors inree from berkeley, phd modern american political history from columbia. for twoe a speechwriter

and a half years. currently he is a full-time faculty member for the university of california and washington. they have a big washington center on rhode island avenue. he teaches full-time for them. he published an excellent book on ronald reagan and he is finishing a book on franklin roosevelt's civil defense. >> where did you meet jerry? vexing california. have you been married to her? >> it will be 49 years. >> what did you do -- what did she do when you met her? >> she became a health policy analyst. she headed a nonprofit in los angeles in which medicare and medicaid -- when we moved to

washington, she had a job offer. she worked for something called families usa. she went to an institute at georgetown where they did health policy analysis. she had a long career in health policy. >> you have written 14 major works including the one we have been talking about. of all those, one on harry nixon, kissinger, lbj, john f. kennedy, franklin roosevelt and then the book on william.. -- william dodd. which one of these did you have the most fun writing? >> may be the most fun was kennedy because i did get into such interesting and startling new information. franklin roosevelt, i found that fascinating. he is a fascinating character.

i am now going to go back to fdr. i have been invited by the viking pentland press do write a bigenguin press to write a volume on fdr. i am 79 years old. my health is good. have told my doctor, keep me going for another four or five years so i can get this book done. >> when do you intend on having it finished? >> i hope it will take no more than four or five years. >> which of these books was the hardest to write? >> the early ones, the first book on dodd was my doctoral thesis. i didn't know if i could write a book. i was a novice. doing the big fdr book, if i were going back to that original fdr book which i did on his foreign policy, i would have done it in somewhat different ways. >> all these books still in

print. >> yes. >> if you read -- would you learn something in addition if you read your dissertation on william dodd? >> absolutely. his book only takes the ambassadorship through the first year and a half. mine goes through the whole ambassadorship. he has a great deal about the daughter who was more interesting than the father and i didn't focus on the daughter. >> we have been talking about a book called "camelot's court: inside the kennedy white house." our guest has been robert dallek. we thank you very much for joining us. >> my pleasure to be with you again. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q-and -a.org.

q&a programs are also available as c-span podcasts. >> and a few moments, david cameron will take questions from members of the house of commons. he talks about national security issues at the joint committee on national security strategy. at 11:00 p.m., and another chance to see q&a. in, itill win in the allows sip's to innovate and bring new services and new pricing, business models to consumers. it is the main beneficiary. >> the big corporations one out in this decision. and ou