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>> a conversation on this president's day on the topic of presidential libraries. a man who knows his world around libraries. critic at large of the wall street journal interviewed many of the 15 -- visited many of the 15 presidential libraries. explain first why we have presidential libraries. what purpose 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 as a part of the structure of succession of presidencies.

all presidential papers were considered the property of the presidents, you could pack up your trunk in the white house and take it all back home with you. the atmosphere changed actually in 1939 because fdr, for a variety of reasons, decided that his papers on the already one of the most important and influential sort of presidential rains in the 20th century -- reigns in the 20th century, decided his papers would be imported for scholars, and he established his home at hyde park, his estate, as a home for the fdr presidential library, which became even more important as world war ii became another

major event in the history of the united states and the world. but these paper were of major historical significance because they actually shaped the world in the late 20th century, and his domestic policies are still shaping the world of the 21st century. so this was a sort of quite unusual move, deciding that 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, but this was a very unusual thing. there may have been other reasons involved, and that could be something like in england

where you have these tremendous estates of great families who can no longer afford to keep them up or taxes were an issue, so they were donated to the national trust to make them public places. 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. and the next one to sort of arise was truman's in 1950. truman had a much shorter lifespan as a president, but also, in the late 1940's as the cold war was taking shape and the atom bomb became an issue and domestic policies were shifting and international relations were overturned, i

think truman was reluctant but his perspective was that this should be a place where the public can come and see and learn something about the history of the presidency and its importance, aside from the particular issues during his years in power. so these sort of examples set up an expectation that this would continue, but presidential libraries were not set up legally until 1955 when the presidential libraries act was passed establishing presidential libraries. but there is this very strange character that they have because

they are partly private institutions, they were, and this went on until very recently, completely funded and established by -- from private sources. by the time -- as they evolved, and i will skip over -- host: i think we are having a little bit of trouble with mr. rothstein's zoom feed. as we get him back, we are asking you to call in about your favorite presidential library. have you been to a library, and if so, what do you like and what don't you like? what is a good presidential library? phone lines are split regionally. (202) 748-8000 if you are in the eastern or central time zones. and (202) 748-8001 if you are in the mountain or pacific time zones.

15 presidential libraries now officially overseen by the office of presidential libraries , national archives administration, and those libraries, herbert hoover, franklin d roosevelt, harry truman, dwight eisenhower, john f. kennedy, lyndon johnson, richard nixon, gerald ford, jimmy carter, ronald reagan, george bush, william jefferson clinton, george w. bush, barack obama, and donald j. trump presidential library has a site online that you can go, not a physical building yet, and the obama presidential library is being built, as well. we talked about the truman library being the second one, which edward rothstein was talking about. i think we have you back, mr. rothstein. glad to have you back. guest: i do not know exactly what happened. host: that is quite all right. we will continue with the

discussion and have invited the viewers to call in. you have written about the idea of ego versus truth when it comes to presidential libraries. i wonder your thoughts on whether these libraries are monuments to the individual or are these places for history and pure historical research? how should we look at these museums and libraries? guest: it is a difficult and complicated issue, and it varies from library to library and is changing quite a bit with what we know about president obama's plan for his library. but the establishment of the museum was a completely private sort of activity. it's design, the kind of story it would tell was essentially created by the president and his foundation.

all documents and papers and objects related to the presidency were declared part of it, were considered public, taken over by the national archives. so every presidential library until now has been partly public, partly private. as a result, the shaping of the history, at least the initial shaping of the history presented in the library, was entirely from the perspective of the president involved. so these are self-created monuments. they often are self-justifying, and one of the difficulties is that when they become a little bit more complicated as the extended sort of first family passes, so right now the fdr library in hyde park, new york, is essentially a museum where

you will get quite a bit of different historical perspectives sort of on the events during his presidency. similarly, the truman library actually has extensive exhibits where you are asked to sort of examine some of 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 was almost completely a justification of every act, decision made by the

white house, and it becomes 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 it 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 that was actually fired for creating an exhibitionist -- 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. there is -- 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 objective, a historical museum presenting an exhibition, without 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 next -- 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 the 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, 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. they said, who do you want, and i was reading all through and picked jimmy carter. so when i wrote the report and 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. it 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 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 -- perceived and what kind of legacy that president wants to be thought of have been -- 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 news him either. -- national museum either. because it depends very much on the curators 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 demonstrate president obama's vision of american history and community involvement. and he has cleared 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 it becomes a very complex situation. host: about half an hour left with edward rothstein. on twitter, izzy enough to find, -- easy enough to find, @ed rothstein. you can find him on the wall street journal website and the new york time, 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 that 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, and 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 pnet island -- peanut island there. host: thanks for the call. guest: it is interesting, truman had a secondary white house in key west, florida, which is actually still there and give stores. 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 retroactive 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. 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 talk about the purpose and the collections themselves. i want to talk about who visits these libraries and why. to do that, this has been 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. on their website, you can find all of these audio interviews. 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 talked to them and they can ask me questions. and the questions they ask, i always tell them they are much more intelligent then the press conference questions and newspapermen ask me, because the youngsters ask for information and the newspapermen are after headlines, and that is all. >> 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, 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 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 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 was being given is quite different. how 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. 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 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 reagan library is really interesting. the time i visited there, the actual 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 it 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. 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. 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 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 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 hit -- interested in the history of our country. 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, when 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 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 they museum and he is buried there. it is in the middle of nowhere. guest: they recently redid that one. 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 its assessed --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. incidentally, i think biden is going to be right up there with fdr, because he came into such a

mess. 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 as part of these museums. you really do get, in many of them, a sense of this. in most cases, sort of ordinary persons who overcomes 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, a poorly performing form. 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, 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 wound up -- grant's tomb wound up in new york city? also, do you know the site 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 was some documents on it, but i do not know if that has been announced yet. caller: as to the tomb, i confess -- guest: as to the tomb, 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-- the headline,g kennedy's death or life." at the library, how much do they focus on the assassination and how much should a focus on that versus his life and work as president? guest: i don't know if anything has changed since i was there six or seven years ago. the permanent exhibition at the time had one that gallery about the assassination. there was no sort of attempt to cast a shadow backward from that event onto the narrative or presentation, which dealt with life in the white house, his own

life, and the accomplishments in his short presidency. there are actually some tremendous videos of him delivering speeches. as a rhetorician and speaker he was phenomenal. the assassination, it was a deliberate sort of decision, clearly, tune -- to omit the assassination part of the narrative and not give it as much importance as far as we understand the presidency of jfk. in my visit there i made a visit to a really terrific museum, six floor museum where, which is right housed in the book depository for oswald took the shots at the president's car as it went by. that is of course mainly focused

on the events around the assassination. i found it really interesting to combine the two visits. the thing about the jfk library i think is also that part of the intention was to create, i mean i think i thought of it as a sort of, a little bit of nostalgic utopianism about the jfk presidency. when you emerge from the exhibits, this tremendous atrium that looks out on boston harbor, you don't pay attention to the sort of individual in a sense. you are in all of this place and this institutional grandeur. that is the impression i think you were supposed to be left with.

in the jfk library as i remember it, the main exhibition, the intention was quite deliberate to say ok, in a sense we all know what happened. but we are taking a look at this time that came before it. this is what we are looking back on. host: just about five or 10 units left here with edward rothstein. if you want to call into talk about your favorite presidential museum or library and your questions about how or why these institutions developed, jodey on twitter a little while ago sent this, and your comments about the architecture of the jfk library fits into this as well. jody says that the clinton library was just six dollars and we took the chance to visit coming home from a rolling stones show and that it looked like a trailer house parked over the arkansas river to me. -- me." on the design of these museums and libraries and how they

changed from what we have seen of the original, the fdr, the hyde park home to more familiar ideas of what a library should look like to some of these more modern designs, mr. rothstein? guest: i think when president clinton was chided with that observation about the building, he actually referred to this idea of a trailer park. it is meant to be a sort of industrial building that sort of reclaims this little used area and in a sense reflect his views about development and it cantilevers out over a river and there is a metaphor about a bridge involved in the design that is in some sense, clinton wanted to say my administration

was an unfinished bridge where others have to complete the work. that's a generous spin on it. it actually is a fairly unattractive. but the action inside of the main exhibition in the clinton library, according to, it was president clinton's instructions, sort of echoes or recalls the library at trinity college, where president clinton had spent time. so, this is a very sort of wood paneling with immense stacks, which were actually accessible boxes for papers that went up to a very high ceiling. but the deliberate sort of contradiction between this yes, trailer park thing that is

suspended over the border to this evocation of the trinity library, in many ways it sort of gives a sort of interesting picture of, besides president clinton -- the sides of president clinton as well and how he presented himself. the architecture is not -- the designs that i have seen of the obama presidential establishment are even more immense than any i have seen yet in existence. i think the clinton library costs something like 106 he 5 million to build. trumans was much less than 10% of that. so, and i don't know the costs of -- i don't know the costs, it would be interesting to sort of compare how this has changed

over time, but there is definitely in a sort of sense of grandiosity and issue here. aside from the issue -- a problem, aside from the problem that is mostly self presentation . president trump, who is immensely practiced at self-promotion is one of the few presidents who has also been a builder. one can imagine from looking at other structures that have borne his name how he might want to conceive of a presidential library presentation. it's a very, i don't, i think that the structure is very problematic in many ways, both in terms of content and the idea that a president presents himself. i don't have a solution to this. i just think that as this phenomena has developed without any systematic examination of

all these different issues, but certainly developing these institutions that have been developing since 1940, let's say, no one has sort of stepped back to say wait a minute, let's think about what's going on here and what should be done. host: let me get one last call in. brenda has been waiting out of montgomery, alabama. go ahead. caller: i was wondering, they keep ringing all this stuff up against trump and they don't never do anything to him about it and when he was running he said well, if i got, if i shot somebody on fifth avenue in new york city they would not arrest me. they don't seem to know matter what he does. he's awful person and it seems to me an ordinary person if they do something, they put them in jail. why is he -- host: brenda, we are running short on time, do you have a question about presidential

libraries or museums? caller: i don't think trump should have one, everything he has ever built he is always going bankrupt. that's all i have to say about that. caller: -- guest: in a sense as the institution has developed, one can make such decisions about who is deserving and who isn't. should there be a presidential library given the short space of time that ford was running the country? i mean if there was some sort of overseeing curator, many different decisions would be made. we have a system that has evolved in a place where every president gets to do this, establishes a foundation, raises private funds that, incidentally, have in at least well-known case led to accusations of corruption. but these are partly public, partly private, and it's a very

complicated and difficult situation. host: edward rothstein is the critic at large for "the wall street journal," and on twitter you can give him a follow. do appreciate the time. gues seen.

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