. >> tour the white house private quarters with laura bush at 5:00 and lady byrd johnson at 8:00, nancy reagan reminisces about her husband at 8:30, and 11:30 the only first lady to run for president secretary of state hillary clinton. american history tv monday, presidents' day on c-span 3. >>> kathleen is the curator for american women's political history. when you were putting together this latest exhibit, how did you decide how the gowns would be placed? and what it would say about history and the role of these first ladies? >> well, partly based on what we thought was pretty and what hadn't been out. sometimes it's nice to be the curator. we also wanted an array of color and an array of different styles. it's not chronological. so we wanted to maximize the space in the case and really maximize the look of each style and the color of each dress against each other to make a more pleasing picture. and i think that putting things that are far apart in time next to each other as opposed to a slow progression, you really see the amazing difference between say lucy hayes, that dress with

actually and they're talking about going around harry byrd in the finance committee which is what they've been talking about for 11 months and lyndon johnson says "you can't go around harry byrd in the finance committee. he's 17 members, he's got nine votes." they said "how do you know?" he said "because harry byrd always has nine votes." (laughter) and johnson says "therefore, if you want your tax cut you have to give them what you want on the budget." and all of a sudden i think it's gardner akley says "all of a sudden it became clear. we give harry byrd what he wants and we get everything else." >> rose: how much of it was that he had succeeded and come to power after an assassinated president much beloved by the country at that time? >> he had all the momentum from kennedy. sympathy and grief behind him. what he also had... you forget when we talk abt eerience, we talk about lyndon johnson being senate majority leader. everyone forgets, he was a young congressman 31 and 32 years old. he was franklin roosevelt's protege. he used to have breakfast with roosevelt in... roosevelt would be sitting up in bed with the cloak around his shoulde

byrd has just become majority leader. howard baker told me the story that the first time he went on a foreign trip as a young senator, he criticized lyndon johnson while he was abroad. and he -- abe ribikoff of connecticut was on the trip with him and he quietly took howard aside and said, howard, i've always found we don't criticize the president when we're in a foreign country. doesn't matter who the president is. and baker said to me, the way he did it and the wisdom of what he said meant a great deal to me. baker took in the lessan but they became very, very close friends, and in the book there are times when you will see baker and ribikoff collaborating to get things done. it didn't matter that one was a democrat and one was a republican. >> so the sense of a senate past unions a -- bastion is a body trying to work for important national goals in a bypass -- bipartisan way, people think does not exist today. talk about that and the contrast between what people perceive today. >> i think the bipartisanship was really deep in the dna of that senate. we were always -- at the staff level we were always told, if we came up with an idea -- i was