blaine said, should we name chester arthur to be acting president? and they all felt this was a bad idea, and so they didn't. and arthur stayed in new york. so, basically, things just sort of continued. no one was really running the country. and we really didn't deal with the incapacity of the president until the 22nd amendment. woodrow wilson incapacitated towards the last year of his life and mrs. wilson is almost a surrogate president. almost no one was running the country. it's an excellent question that doesn't have a really good answer. diana? >> a couple things. why wasn't he taken to a hospital? and also, what is the story about chester arthur? i mean, what were his credentials? where did he go to college, and why did he -- >> wow. okay, the answer to the first is dr. bliss did not want him to go to a hospital. bliss felt that he would get better care in the white house, and also he was fearful that if he was in the hospital, he, bliss, would lose control of the case. and so he felt what better than to make the white house a hospital with one

long or short form for chester arthur.hey just put his name in the family bible and said he was born in vermont and i guess that was good good enough in 1880 to qualify him to hold the office of vice president and president. grover cleveland who was elected four years after garfield in 1884 always fascinated me just for the plain fact that -- and this is what everybody knows, grover served two nonconsecutive terms. he was elected in 1884 and lost reelection in 1888 and came back four years later and won the white house back which is a unique achievement in american politics in the american presidency, so the guy had to be a pretty good politician and of course, he screwed up the numbering for the presidents. he's number 22 and 24. a little aside when president trump gave his inaugural address in 2009, he said 44 people have now taken this oath of office and i was at a party with friends and i said, no, 43 because grover gets counted twice. shut up. nobody wants to hear about grover cleveland right now. [ laughter ] my frie

i don't know what you do with chester arthur. the rumors at the time were that chester arthur had been born in canada. his father was an irishman, his mother was a canadian from quebec. they emigrated to vermont. the story went when she was pregnant and ready to give birth, she went back home to quebec and had the baby there, which if true would mean arthur was not an american citizen. because neither of his parents were and he wasn't born in the u.s. i'll point out right now, no, we do not have the birth certificate, long or short form for chester arthur. they just put his name in the family bible and said he was born in vermont. i guess that was good enough to qualify him to hold the office of vice president and president. grover cleveland, who was elected four years after garfield in 1884, always fascinated me just for the fact that, and this is what everybody knows. grover served two nonconsecutive terms. he was elected in 1884. lost re-election in 1888 and came back four years later and won the white house back, which is a u

supposed to get that vision but four months later he is shot by an office seeker who had met with chester arthur who writes in his letter of declaration that he killed garfield so that arthur could be president he expected to be rewarded as consul general in paris and obviously that didn't , happen. arthur ends up having a somewhat respectable presidency in part because a mentally ill woman on the upper east side of manhattan starter snail mail trolling him with long letters telling him how loathesome he was. but that there was still hope for him. she described him in manners -- eerily reminiscent of the worst characters in the court of king henry 8th but kept telling him there's still hope and he shows up at her house on the upper east side. so we know as early as that you 1881 control the president, and the president might show up at your house. this meeting has profound impacts on him. the man benefited from the spoil system is up signing the pendleton act which creates the civil service. he did not work and they were embarrassed to tell people he did not work so they would create a faÇade of

his competitor, chester arthur, was not a reformer but had been a loyal number of the new york machine. it may have been garfield symbolic martyrdom on the altar of federal employee that so change the political climate. in retrospect, at the time of garfield's death it was a tragedy of unfulfilled potential. the washington post tribute was glowing. and mentioned his tribute to his mother. this is abraham garfield's letter about the council of fine arts. this is kind of symbolic of the way people pictured it. abraham lincoln, welcoming garfield into heaven. (inaudible) i got that picture in the library of conference and it was not really clear where it appeared. it was in the popular press. the garfield family collected and preserved their family papers. along with the family at home, national historic site has most over the decades the library of congress continued a long to acquire the papers and now houses papers for the president, the first lady in the,. charles moore, former acting head of library of congress's manuscript division, in charge of those efforts, wrote in 1940 to abram

he was nestled between chester a. arthur, a figure who -- i don't know if we're going to have a book talk on chester a. arthur, we might get there, but there are a lot of other guys we probably want to hear about first, and johnson, who is seen as the worst president we've ever had. go figure. that's the position they put ike in in 1962. during the camelot years, the camelot clan used eisenhower as a foil to put glory on the young john kennedy. it's harder than it looks. my students would all get this. wouldn't you, if you were kennedy's advance man, use ike as the sort of counterpoint. on the one hand, in 1954, eisenhower and mamie playing scrabble. i think that looks very pleasant and very lovely, but they had to work with this guy. naturally there was a sharp contrast. it worked against eisenhower's memory and against the oppression that was given to the public. by the time of his death on march 28th, 1969, at the age of 78, the press seemed uninterested in ike. there was an obituary in "time" magazine that concluded that

often, he's below such undistinguished or failed presidents as chester arthur, who was a caretaker president. pretty good one, given his background with the machine of new york, but nevertheless, a caretaker president. martin van buren, who was a failed president. he presided over a terrible recession, depression, that he couldn't control. rutherford hayes, who became president on the basis of one of the great election scandals of our history. grover cleveland, who as we all know, was the only president who served two non consecutive terms. he was rejected by either his party or the voters after each. thus making him the only two-time one-term president in our history. and john quincy adams, who was swept away in a populous wave at the behest of andrew jackson. so, the mystery deepens. i'm going to urge you not to just tick off bullet poins, but the political drama. he led us into a war with spain in 19 1898. it ended up being a huge success. it was a three-month war. we destroy ed the spanish empir essentially. in the process, we destroyed two spanish fleets. the atlantic and the pacific fl

. >> besides him and chester arthur -- >> and ben harrison. was secretary of state under three presidents. >> what else did he do? >> he was in congress, he was speaker of the house, he was a very effective, iron-willed speaker. >> he changed some of the rules in the house. i'm not sure exactly which rules they are. it seems to me speaker of the house are always changing rules somewhat to their advantage. but a smart, capable guy but corrupt, probably. >> remember, this was the period after the civil war when congress was much more central, much more potent than it had been. the action against the executive had set in. to be a speaker of the house, to be a power of congress in the 1870s, 1880s meant a lot more than it perhaps would today. >> buie kmr. buchanan, do you h something to say? >> if he had run, how would things have changed? >> i think he would have been better than lincoln because he was assertive, he had intellectual heft. he had a lot of talent. and i think once he had actually achieved -- people are consumed by -- they lust afte

. >> besides being secretary of state for james garfield and chester arthur -- >> he was secretary of state under three presidents. >> what else did he do? >> he was a speaker of the he was congress, he was a very effective iron willed changer. >> he changed some of the rules in the house. the speakers are always changing the rules somewhat to their advantage. smart and capable guy but probably corrupt. >> this was after the civil war when congress was much more central, much more potent than it had been. their reaction against the strong executive said in. to be the speaker of the house, to be a power in congress meant a lot more power than it would today. >> do you have anything to say? >> what do you think would have happened if he won? i think he would be regarded as the best president between lincoln and tr. very interesting. >> he was assertive, he had intellectual heft. he had a lot of talent. i think that once he had actually achieved it -- people lust after the president's. this is a distorted malignancy that they suffer from. if they survive it and they win the office. i thi