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presidential libraries with a man who knows his way around the world of libraries and museums, edward rothstein, wall street journal critic at large. he has reviewed many. good morning to you. explain first why we have presidential libraries. what purpose do they serve? guest: good morning, and thanks for having me on. presidential libraries, in essence, they were developed almost accidentally. or they were not ever envisioned

-- for a variety of reasons decided his papers on one of the most important and influential sort of presidential wins in the 20th century had decided his papers would be of some value to scholars. and then he established his home as a home for the fdr presidential library. which became more important as world war ii became another major events. in the history of the u.s. and the world. but the papers were of major historical significance. they shaped the world of the late 20th century.

deciding these papers would be completely open and have a specific place to be seen. and for a while, fdr actually worked in his presidential library. his office can still be seen there, behind plexiglas now. so this was a very unusual thing. there may have been other reasons involved. something like in england, where you have this tremendous estates. donated to the national trust. this is a little bit different in that the library is run by a private foundation.

connected to fdr and his family. but it was extremely influential as an example. the next one to arise was truman's in 1950. he had a much shorter lifespan as a president. but also in the late 1940's as domestic policies were shifting in major ways. international relations had been completely overturned. i think truman was reluctant, he thought this should be a place where the public can come and see -- and learn something

about the history of the presidency and its importance. these sort of examples set up an expectation that this will continue. but presidential libraries were not set up legally until 1955. when the presidential libraries act was passed establishing them. there is a very strange character that they have. there were private institutions. and this went on until very recently. completely funded and established from private sources. by the time -- as they evolved

-- host: i think we are having a little bit of trouble with his zoom feed. as we got him back -- get him back, asking you about your favorite presidential library. what do you like, what don't you like? what makes a good presidential library? they are split regionally in the segment. 15 presidential libraries. those libraries are library, harry truman, eisenhower, john f. kennedy's library, lyndon johnson, richard nixon, gerald

ford, jimmy carter, donald ragan, george bush, william jefferson, barack obama, and the donald j. trump presidential library has a site online that you can go visit. not a physical building it. the obama presidential library being built as well. we talked about the truman library being the second one that rusting was talking about. are you back with us? guest: i am. host: glad to have you back. guest: don't know what happened. host: that is all right. we have invited the viewers to call in. you've written about this topic before. the idea of ego versus truth when it comes to presidential libraries. i wonder your thoughts on whether the libraries and museums are monuments to the individuals, or are these places

for history and pure historical research? how should we look at these museums and libraries? guest: it's a very difficult and complicated issue. it is changing quite a bit. the basic fact is that the establishment of the museum was completely private sort of activity. its design. the kind of design was essentially created by the president and his foundation. the public aspect of this became one the documents related to the presidency were declared -- were considered public. were taken over by the national archives. so every presidential library until now has been partly

public. as a result, the shaping of the history, at least the initial history is entirely from the perspective of the president involved. so these are self predated monuments. they often are self-justifying. and one of the difficulties is that when they become a little bit more complicated as time passes. the fdr is essentially a museum where you will get different historical perspectives on the events during his presidency. similarly the truman library actually has extensive exhibits where you are asked to sort of examine the most controversial

issues that faced the truman administration and examine the sort of pros and cons and how you would react, and this actually includes a controversy over the dropping of the atomic bomb on japan. but in more recent libraries, the more they are explicitly just for the president. the clinton library, which opened in 2004, i believe, was at that time the most expensive and largest presidential library established. the exhibition is almost completely a justification of every act, decision made by the white house, and it becomes a little bit of a -- almost a -- you get the feeling of a campaign sort of atmosphere. there is no statistic -- no graph of a statistic that ever

goes down, unless it is something bad. but this is obviously not history. the nixon library was a very peculiar and interesting example in this respect, because the national archives took over the presidential documents, when president nixon declared his desire to take them, and presumably this was the immediate postwar decayed years, presumably -- post-watergate years, presumably to destroy some of the taped recordings that existed. whether or not that was fully the case, what happened is that the library ended up being established in the 1990's, as essentially an attempt to rehabilitate the image of richard nixon. it was only later, maybe 15, almost 20 years later, that there was an attempt to take a

larger historical view, but one director was actually fired for creating an exhibition about watergate at the nixon museum, and now, if you go to the nixon museum and presidential library, you will see a quite extensive and very interesting historical presentation of his presidency. in a sense, nixon's scars and flaws sort of become public knowledge, part of our understanding of this presidency. and now, they are integrated into the exhibition. but it is still -- i would not say, if you have a past -- had a detached objective, a historical museum presenting an exhibition about any of these presidencies, that you would get

what you see when you visit. host: i want to pause and bring in some calls. tell us about the presidential museums you have visited. what makes one successful or a -- or unsuccessful? cindy in hampton, new hampshire is up first. thanks for calling. you are on with edward rothstein. caller: yeah, hi. i have not been able to visit in -- to visit any libraries, but i would like to talk about, why can't we start thinking about having a national library, where it features all the presidents and whatever we have been able to document through history and have like a whole tour through all the presidencies? that would be cool to me, because i was always called a jfk baby, i was born in 1964, so after jfk was assassinated, there was a baby boom.

and then i was born in august, august 8, so on my birthday, when nixon resigned, i was like "he spoiled my birthday party." [laughs] i think i was eight. host: how do you think the presidents would feel about that idea you bring out, about having one museum of presidents, and them having to share the limelight with each other in this museum? caller: well, some of them would feel great, especially like jimmy carter, because he was like my favorite. i was going to bring him up because i had to write a report, i think i was in fourth or fifth grade, and it was a presidential election. and they said, who do you want, and i was reading all through and picked jimmy carter. so when i wrote the report and then he won, i thought, i elected him president. [laughs] host: edward rothstein, i will

let you jump in. guest: to a certain extent, the smithsonian and american history museum should be doing something like that, presenting american history in detail. but this does not completely eliminate the problem that i am talking about, because then you still have, especially today, and with intellectually-driven issues, you still have a situation where there is going to be controversies over assessments, importance, influence. that this is something that, even at the smithsonian, is a regular issue for debate and sometimes scandal. so in a way, it is a difficult problem, certainly a problem that these institutions have developed, essentially of self-created monuments. and one of the values of them is

that you get a certain sense of -- there is information and understanding about how a president wants to be conceived -- be perceived and what kind of legacy that president wants to be thought of having left behind. so that is kind of interesting in itself. but the problem of these institutions is not completely solved by having a sort of national museum either. because it depends very much on who the curator is and the various views, and you can get hybrid exhibitions that do not clarify much also. and i have seen exhibitions like this at the smithsonian and other museums. so it is a very difficult problem. i think there is an institutional issue that still has to be clarified, as far as the presidential museums are concerned, especially because they are partly public, partly private. and in the case for the plans

for the new obama presidential library, which will not actually be a library -- all the archives will be handled by the national archive and will not be stored at the library. in fact, it is essentially a private building, a set of buildings that will be built in chicago, and it sort of demonstrates president obama's vision of american history and community involvement. and he has cleared he wants to -- has declared that he wants to make a break from the tradition of presidential libraries. so, open about what it will become. but it will still be a tremendous institution devoted to the ideological points of a particular individual, and it is being built on public land. so again, this becomes a very complex situation. host: just about half an hour

left with edward rothstein. on twitter, easy enough to find, @edrothstein. you can find him on the wall street journal website and the new york times, his works on presidential museums and libraries. alan is at fort pierce, florida. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you, c-span. this is such a wonderful program. i like so many programs on c-span, and especially the ones about the presidents. a couple of comments. i think the portrait gallery is a wonderful place to see the portraits of the presidents. i was a little bit surprised that there was only one small photograph of julia dent grant in the portrait gallery, and i do not know why that is. i do not know if there are other portraits or pictures of her at the grand presidential library.

maybe mr. rothstein, you could talk about that? another comment, i have read so much about hyde park, and i would definitely like to get up there to see that. and most recently -- i live in florida, and to the south, in the palm beaches, where the kennedys used to spend some time in the winters, there is a place that is being restored in the lake worth lagoon that was a bunker that was built for kennedy, should there be any kind of problem or disaster, and now there is a group that is trying to restore the bunker on a place called peanut island there. if you could comment about some of this, i would appreciate it. host: thanks for the call. from fort pierce, florida. guest: it is interesting, truman had a secondary white house in key west, florida, which is

actually still there and gives tours. but i did not know about the kennedy situation. i wish i could help you about grant. i don't -- there is no library that i know of of grant. the libraries, the most for they have become -- most retroactive they have become is going back to hoover. i understand amity shlaes was talking about this a little while ago, you can visit calvin coolidge's home, but it is not a presidential library, in a sense. even with the access to materials that we are talking about here. i think it is a phenomenon in the post-world war ii era and has become more and more gargantuan, in the sort of presidential presentations. host: we have talked about the purpose and the collections themselves. i want to talk about who visits

these libraries and why. and to do that, this has been -- this is from the harry s. truman library and museum, a series of interviews that they put together and conducted with harry truman talking about his library and his work there. and on their website, you can find all of these audio interviews. but he was asked about the people who come to the harry s. truman library and museum. this is part of the conversation. [video clip] >> what kinds of people come to the library? >> all kinds, all kinds. mostly youngsters, who are interested in the history of the country. i usually have a room full of them down here once a week. and after they have been through, i talk to them and they can ask me questions. and the questions they ask, i always tell them, they are much

more intelligent than the press conference questions and newspapermen ask me, because the youngsters ask for information and the newspapermen are after headlines, and that is all. -- that is all right. >> are there other kinds of people who visit the library and who come see you? if so, would you tell us about some of them? >> oh, all kinds of people come here. and very often, officials of states, cities, and counties come. i always talk to them. >> like yesterday, for instance, the four semester general? >> yes, nearly always united states officials stop in, the postmaster general was here yesterday. i had the attorney general and several others here. oh, a great many people, the governors of various states come, and i always talk to them whenever they want me to.

host: from the harry s. truman library and museum, interviews available on the website. edward rothstein, interesting there that he goes to the kids and then the dignitaries, the two groups he focuses on in that question. guest: also great to listen to him because of the sort of ordinary man speaking to ordinary men and women. this is part of his persona, and it seems quite authentic. the fact he was actually doing work in the library while these tours were being given is quite different. now, things are different, but you do have organized school visits. i don't know when the library was first set up, what kind of memorabilia it had, but now no

presidential library is without a presidential limousine on display, a full-sized or nearly full-sized replica of the oval office it once was. -- as it once was. host: maybe even air force one, like at the reagan library. guest: right, which was not even reagan's, it had been used long before reagan. so, those aspects of the library, partly, it is something to increase visitor ship by -- it is this idea that you increase visitorship by having something for everybody. in that way, presidential libraries have become more like museums, seeking visitation statistics. but it also would measure internally and probably as far as reagan was concerned, some sense of the library.

-- the success of the library. the reagan library is really interesting. the time i visited there, the actual basic lifetime -- the basic narrative of the president's life, which is also a feature of the presidential library i have been to, is a beginning and a sort of lovely spanish colonial type house on a mountaintop. today, i visited, it was packed with tourists, and judging from license plates, other california residents. then at some point, you go into this amazing sort of huge hangar where air force one is, and it is an entirely different kind of place. so it is sort of bifurcated very strange. -- so it is sort of bifurcated, very strange. i do not know the statistics about tourism, but any time i

have been at a library, there have been people from out of town, who come specifically to see it. so that is certainly an aspect of it. and it makes certain places a sort of must-see, if you want to go see a presidential library. host: to the land of lincoln, jane is waiting. jane, good morning. you are on with edward rothstein. caller: good morning. i am a senior citizen, and my husband and i have visited over 50 presidential libraries, museums, and homes. we started in 2010, and my motivation was kind of simple. my husband was the president of a small company, and i wondered what it took to be a president. i was curious about that. so we started this venture, and

in 2010 -- i am looking at all my notes here, kept a log, looks like we started when we were on a golf trip in virginia, wilson's original home there. then we continued on. i think we were surprised about a few of these places, like in april, 2014, we visited harding's home, which was one of the best. i am looking at my different notes here. host: jane, you say -- caller: i have a lot of notes, because we were just so interested in the history of our country. we are old. we remember a lot of the presidents. and jimmy carter, we went down there. polk. host: do you mind me asking, you mentioned some of your favorites. of those 50, did you have a

least favorite, one you are not impressed by? caller: you know, i cannot say that. i cannot say that we weren't. we did not get to all of them, of course. i'm looking at -- i think the one we were most surprised about was poor old herbert hoover's site in iowa. he was more accomplished than we expected, and that was interesting. eisenhower in abilene, kansas, my gosh. the library and then the museum, and he is buried there. it is in the middle of nowhere. guest: they recently redid that one. it is excellent. yeah. host: jane, i was going to ask edward rothstein this question, but what is the one think that you found in 50 of these you have been to, libraries, museums, and presidential homes, what makes it a successful museum? what is one feature or aspect that makes it successful?

caller: i think when you get the human aspect of who these guys were, human beings, and the little touches. i remember one where we went to one place, i think it was taylor, and they had the scissors there, you could hear the scissors, a reenactment of that. but i think it would be wonderful if americans would pursue this. it would give us an appreciation of the job they have done. and incidentally, i think biden is going to be right up there with fdr, because he came into such a mess. and i really feel that, and i will not live to see his library and museum. and of course, obama is building something here in chicago, and we are only 60 miles from chicago. host: jane, thank you so much for calling in and sharing your notes with us. sounds like a good several years worth of work.

edward rothstein, to her comment and the question about what makes one of these libraries and museums successful? guest: that is really an interesting and important part, because the sort of narrative biography is part of these museums. you really do get, in many of them, a sense of this. in most cases, sort of ordinary persons who overcome tremendous adversity and ends up where he ended up. in the johnson library, you get a sense of this sort of hardscrabble life of the family, on a poorly performing farm. the eisenhower library has his family home on the premises. the nixon home, childhood home,

is only land where the nixon library is. but even aside from that, in the exhibitions themselves, you do get a sense of the person. this varies, the success of this varies, and there are exceptions. with fdr, with jfk, you have very different sort of childhood backgrounds to present. but it is really fascinating to see the sort of human material out of what so many presidents have had. host: frank out of new york, you are next. caller: hi, i just would like to ask if you know why grant's home -- grant's tomb wound up in new york city?

and also, do you know the site of where trump will be building his library? guest: i don't. host: i do not know if that has been announced yet. i know they have a website available with some documents on it, but i do not know if that has been announced yet. guest: as for the tomb, i confess i don't know. but i will look it up. host: you mentioned jfk a little while ago. we talked about your work at the wall street journal and before that at the new york times. i want to go back to a new york times piece you wrote about the jfk library and museum. the headline, recalling kennedy -- kennedy's death or life. the idea of at the jfk library, how much do they focus on the