miss shlaes. my wife and i had the great opportunity to go visit the coolidge presidential library in vermont. i encourage every person to go see that compound. we went in the middle of winter, but it was superb. we never realized what great beauty misses coolidge had and what a great trendsetter she was for that whole process. thank you both, for a wonderful job. thank you very much. host: thank you for the call. miss shlaes, anything you want to jump in, and i don't know her name off the top of my head, calvin coolidge's life. amity: grace coolidge was a beautiful woman. she did not look modern because she did not wear makeup, but she looked good in any color, and more importantly, where does that grace come from? she was a thoughtful spouse, she got a ba at the university of vermont which was rare for that period. this was the 1920's when women's suffrage is are just -- women's suffrage is just occurring. she trained as a teacher of the deaf. that was a factor because calvin was a silent man, a

miss shlaes.y wife and i had the great opportunity to go visit the coolidge presidential library in vermont. i encourage every person to go see that compound. we went in the middle of winter, but it was superb. we never realized what great beauty misses coolidge had and what a great trendsetter she was for that whole process. thank you both, for a wonderful job. thank you very much. host: thank you for the call. miss shlaes, anything you want to jump in, and i don't know her name off the top of my head, calvin coolidge's life. amity: grace coolidge was a beautiful woman. she did not look modern because she did not wear makeup, but she looked good in any color, and more importantly, where does that grace come from? she was a thoughtful spouse, she got a ba at the university of vermont which was rare for that period. this was the 1920's when women's suffrage is are just -- women's suffrage is just occurring. she trained as a teacher of the deaf. that was a factor because calvin was a silent man, an

amity shlaes about to run out of time. we are going to spend some time talking about presidential libraries but wanted to give you the final minute or two here for any other thoughts on presidential libraries before we dive into that conversation. guest: well, they are precious institutions. we need them. one of the wonderful things about now is that any man or woman can research and find out for him or herself. the younger generation of historians has a distinctive advantage against older historians because of the access to data at home through proquest or at presidential libraries. one of the things i had the honor to experience was watching president bush 43, george w. bush, build his library in dallas. there is an exhibit there about the tough decisions president bush had to make and it was packed from the day it opened. that is because americans are curious and they have a right to know and learn. that is what libraries do. at coolidge, we do not take money. we take virtual money. we are putting anything he ever wrote

i understand amity shlaes was talking about this a little while ago, you can visit calvin coolidge'some, 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 a

i'm amity shlaes from the coolidge foundation. welcome to the live audience.come to our c-span viewers. you know, here we are pretty close to wall street in wall street, and wall street and markets these days are out of fashion. when we speak about capitalism and markets and business, we often stop and apologize. right? and part of this is because younger people don't really know much about markets or wall street except cartoons. right? the markets are so valuable. they are a gift to us. and we think of them as a gift. but if we go way over to the left, away from wall street, socialists think of the markets as a gift, too, because their logical proposition is given, colon, a 20 or a $30 trillion economy we will spend the money thus and thus and redistribute it. the market, the money, is wealth s assumed by everyone. but markets are like souls. the economy is like a soul. they are like humans, and they can make a choice a. market can choose to come back, or it can choose to stay away. and that -- that problem, the fragility of markets, the decision to stay away

i'm amity shlaes from the coolidge foundation. welcome to the live audience.come to our c-span viewers. you know, here we are pretty close to wall street in wall street, and wall street and markets these days are out of fashion. when we speak about

what is the likelihood this actually happens and the shlaes terminated? >> unclear.nald trump is planning to sell his lease with the federal government to operate the hotel which is as understand been losing money. trump's company reportedly reached a deal to set lease to a miami investment firm for $375 million. a sum that could net trump $100 million profit. so even though he lost around $70 million as you said, he could end up ahead. so now the house oversight democrats are urging the biden administration cancel the trump organization's lease and they cite the grave damage this inappropriate lease has done to presidential ethics and integrity in government contracting. they say this is justified after trump's accounting firm dumped him saying that decade of financial statements can't be relied on as accurate and that provision in the lease allows this. but of course there will be litigation over this, it will be contested in court. so farther general services administration has given no indication that it would do this. as for the criminal investigations, the alle

. >> amity shlaes on the forgotten man. >> i'm going to fast, low on the economy, higher on foreign-policy. >> host: is 202748 8000 for republicans, if you want to join. democrats202-748-8000, independence202-748-8000 two . coming back to you , in light of the discussion about abraham lincoln, being so high on our list bracketed by the president who are the lowest on our list, is that surprising to you that the best president falls between the two worst? >> not in the least, these are all mid-19th century presidents . the three at the bottom list are presidents who were faced with a crisis and did not manage it well. pierce danced by as the country is unraveling. he's perhaps could have done something. he did not, he's the person who's there in the middle of this whole debate over the expansion of slavery. and in the 1850s, he allows nebraska act is passed. pierce doesn't really attempt to challenge that. you've got buchanan you is sitting by. and as the country gets closer to war. he doesn't do anything to stop it. you have lincoln coming in and he has a decision. he can either allow the

amity shlaes joins us as well. douglas brinkley, beginning with you. why do we do this and how do we do this? douglas: for starters, today is presidents' day and if we don't open it up to a discussion of the presidents, w