 Good evening. I'm Larry Temple and as chairman of the OBJ Foundation it is my distinct privilege to welcome all of you to the Harry J. Middleton lecture. The Harry Middleton lecture was created by Lady Bird Johnson to honor the first and legendary director of the OBJ Library. Harry Middleton who just died recently after an impactful 95-year life left a rich legacy at this OBJ Presidential Library. So it is appropriate at the outset tonight to recall the man for whom the lecture is named. At the time of the dedication of the library, LBJ famously said, it is all here the story of our time with the mark off. LBJ's aspiration for the library was for it to be transparent and accessible to scholars. Harry Middleton made that aspiration a reality. Historians, scholars, and researchers all uniformly acclaimed the LBJ library is the most open and accessible of the 14 presidential libraries. Harry Middleton set that pattern and set that precedent. Harry's boldest and probably most enduring action as director of the LBJ library related to the LBJ secret telephone tapes. As everyone now knows, LBJ taped many but not all of the telephone conversations he had in the White House. His instruction was that the telephone tapes were not to be publicly released for 50 years after his death in 1973. President Johnson was not at all concerned about his own reputation, but wanted to avoid embarrassment for any person alive who might have been mentioned on those telephone tapes. Under that instruction, the world would not have known the substance, persuasiveness, and often colorful language of LBJ's conversations until 2023. However, in 1993, consistent with President Johnson's charge to make everything at the library as open and as accessible as possible, Harry concluded that it was timely and appropriate to override President Johnson's 50-year restriction and open and release the tapes. He sought the support of Lady Bird Johnson, which was readily and quickly given. The opening of the tapes gave the world a glimpse and insight on the real Lyndon Johnson, the Lyndon Johnson that all of us knew and loved. You can hear him persuade members of Congress to support his programs. You can hear him agonize over the Vietnam War. You can hear the funny stories of this master storyteller. The telephone tapes give the listener a contemporaneous, behind-the-scenes look at one of the most consequential presidents of all time. It is no wonder that Texas Monthly profiled Harry Middleton as the man who saved LBJ. Harry was first, foremost, and always a writer, and what an elegant writer he was. Harry wrote three books, one on LBJ, one on Lady Bird Johnson, and a very funny novel. This great presidential library bears the name of Lyndon Johnson, but Harry Middleton's DNA is all over this library. It is the place that Harry built. When Harry retired after 30 years as library director, he was widely acclaimed as the gold standard of library directors. He still holds that title. Michael Beschloss called him the Joe DiMaggio of presidential library directors. This Harry Middleton lecture has brought to the library such luminaries as Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, President Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Tom Brokaw, and many, many other notables. Michael Beschloss is the right one to headline the Harry Middleton lecture tonight. Michael and Harry were very close friends, and Harry told me before his death he was delighted and honored that Michael would come. Harry had looked forward to being here tonight. Michael Beschloss has been labeled by Newsweek as the nation's leading presidential historian, and it would be hard to find anyone who would disagree. He has written nine books on the American presidency and American presidents. He is NBC's news presidential historian and is frequently seen on PBS and other channels as well. The number of American presidents about whom Michael has researched and written puts a reader in awe. In just one book, Presidential Courage, and I hope some of you bought that book out front today. I don't get a commission, but I hope you bought the book because you'll love it. But in that one book, Michael provides expert and unique insights about George Washington, John Adams, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan. In other books, he has written about presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and John Kennedy. At this library, we are particularly captivated by the two books that Michael wrote regarding the LBJ telephone tapes. Taking charge of the book covers the period from 1963 through the 1964 election. Reaching glory covers the last part of 1964 and all of 1965. Michael Beschloss very effectively and cleverly uses President Johnson's own conversations to tell the story of those periods in a very compelling way. And again, I can tell you those are two masterful books. And if you ever get a chance to listen to them and books on tape, you not only hear Michael set the setting of the various telephone conversations, but then you hear the actual conversations by President Johnson. All I can say about Michael Beschloss is what an historian, what a writer. He has no peer on the public stage today. Moreover, even though he is a man of political accomplishment, Michael Beschloss has no ego. He is a modest man. What you think you see on television is exactly who and what he is. He is a great man who is also a good man. And that combination does not always go together. Michael Beschloss gave us valuable and beneficial counsel when we did the renovation of the exhibits at the library four years ago. The LBJ library does not have a better friend than Michael, so it is a treat to welcome him to the stage tonight. The conversation with Michael tonight will be conducted by our friend Mark Upegrow, who truly needs no introduction in this forum, although he retired to take on a new assignment at the Medal of Honor Museum last week. We have recruited Mark to continue to lead the premier conversations on this stage. So please welcome our star guest, Michael Beschloss, and Mark Upegrow. Am I allowed to say something? Oh, yeah, by all means. Just to begin with, I wanted to thank Larry Temple for that two kind introduction. I'll speak for both Mark and me with two kind about both of us. But not only did he serve President Johnson nobly, but also and this is not always true of people who work for a president. In fact, I would say it's pretty rare among people who work for a president. He not only worked for him nobly, but also understood him. And over the last couple of decades, when I have been deep in Lyndon Johnson studies, Larry has been just about the top of the list where I'm not understanding something I have bothered Larry almost like a fellow historian who's not only studied the Johnson literature, but also saw what he saw in the 1960s and 1970s. And anyway, all I can say is thank you, Larry, not only for your public service, but also your working. Another one who served Lyndon Johnson so well is the man whose lecture you come under the auspices of tonight, Harry Middleton, who you knew very well, just as you know, 40 years. Since you were 22 years old. Talk about that relationship and how that came to be, Michael. Well, actually, I first met Harry Middleton the prehistoric year of 1977. I had just gotten out of college and I had written a thesis on the relationship between Joseph Kennedy Sr. and Franklin Roosevelt. And I was coming down here to use the Drew Pearson papers. Pearson was a famous journalist, a muck raking journalist and columnist in Middleton. And I had been at Williams College and studied under the great political scientist and historian James McGregor Burns, who wrote on Franklin Roosevelt and others. And so he said, you're going down to the Johnson library. Be sure you call up my friend Harry Middleton, the director of the library. And I said, yeah, Jim, I'm 22 years old. I'm just out of college. I'm writing my thesis, which maybe will be published, but probably won't be. I'm sure Mr. Middleton has a lot more to do than waste his time talking to me. He said, no, you know, he'd be delighted. Call him up. So I called him up and I came down here and, you know, he was kind enough. He gave me lunch. A few of you will remember the Villa Capri, not far from here. The epitome of Austin sophistication. Remember they had a big all you can eat buffet, which we both enjoyed. And so our friendship really began. And I would see Harry from time to time when he came up to Washington and occasionally I'd come down to Austin. And at least in my life, one of the pivotal moments was in the spring of 1994, we were having dinner in Washington. There's a restaurant no longer there called the Jockey Club, which was an elegant restaurant, particularly famous during the Kennedy period. And so Harry was nice enough to have my wife and myself to dinner along with another great Johnson icon, Harry McPherson, who also was a key member of the Johnson staff, along with Larry Temple. So we were having dinner and Harry sort of dropped matter-of-factly. Well, you know, we've decided to open these telephone tapes of President Johnson. You know, he did record a few of his conversations. So I said, how many of these tapes are there? He said, oh, about 670 hours. And I said, well, you know, if that's the case, then these are really going to give us a window into Lyndon Johnson of a kind that we've never really had before. Because, you know, if you had, for instance, if you wanted a source, I didn't say this at the time, but I'd say it now, if you wanted a source on Dwight Eisenhower, for instance, you'd probably want his letters and maybe his diaries, because as it turns out to people's surprise, Eisenhower really wrote very well and confided a lot of his emotions and, you know, inner thinking to his diaries and to some extent to his letters. He used to write these long letters to a high school friend, sometimes 20 pages, which were, I think to some extent he knew that, you know, spending that much time, he wasn't doing it just for the high school friend. He knew the friend would save them. They'd go into the Eisenhower library so that people like me and Mark would have some idea of what was on Ike's mind. But with LBJ, I think Larry would agree, if you wanted a source on LBJ, it would not be his letters particularly, which were interesting but didn't really give you a window onto his soul. But if we were sitting here in 1977 and someone said, you know, what would you like, what kind of a source would you like on Lyndon Johnson that would show you the way he really was, I think even then I would have said, you know, if through some, you know, amazing coincidence he made tapes like those of Richard Nixon, which obviously were known in the late 1970s, that would show you a lot because, you know, when LBJ spoke in public he had a very strict idea of the way that a president should look and sound. And unfortunately at times it was sort of almost 19th century. And I think oftentimes he did not help himself because he had such a sense of decorum that was not his problem in private because in private he is incapable of saying and speaking an uninteresting sentence. I think we would both agree. And so the fact that there were tape recordings of his telephone conversations and some conversations that were in meetings and so on, you know, I felt even at that time this at least gave promise of the possibility of finding out what LBJ was really like, little did I know. But in any case I said to Harry, you know, if all this is what you're saying it is, you know, why don't I at least look into the possibility of doing at least one book on this. And it turned out to be three, two while published, one is still to come. So being a presidential historian and getting to listen to these tapes for the first time, it's kind of like being an archivist and going into King Tut's tomb. Yeah, sort of Detsy scrolls. So actually Claudia Anderson, who has been with the library, it was our supervisory archivist, and has been at the library since before there was a building. She's been here since 1969. Worked with Michael on. Absolutely. Is Claudia here? Could Claudia stand up? Could you stand up? Could we have a hand for Claudia? Claudia Anderson. Claudia has an MVP among American archivists and so central to the huge success of this library. So glad that she's here. So welcome, Claudia. Indeed. So when you're going through these tapes, you're the first historian to listen to them, what's going through your mind? Well, one is, you know, how can the first question, you know, honestly was how can it is he? Was this a case where, you know, I think any historian listening to a new source like this, you wanted to get some context for the source, you know, were these tapes that he basically made to look good for historians later on, or do they show him as he really was? And, you know, I think there are probably some conversations where he seems to be a little bit aware that a tape is being made. And, you know, it's almost a certain things he's saying to make sure that you know how strongly he felt about poverty, for instance, or about civil rights. But oftentimes, you know, once I began to listen to the tapes, I realized it the way that they were made. And, you know, if there was a conversation that he taped deliberately like that, oftentimes he would forget the tape recorder was there, and he'd hang up on that conversation, then get into something else, and oftentimes you'd hear him a little bit more candid. And I think the biggest question of all, I think I had a lot of questions to answer, but one of them, and you always, I'm sure you feel the same way, when you're looking at a president, you're always asking if a president gives wonderful speeches. For instance, like, you know, the Par excellence, I think with LBJ, the voting rights address to Congress, which was 52 years ago, I think next week, we shall overcome. And it was a wonderful speech, and he gave it emotively. But you always have to, as a scholar, ask the question, was this just a great speech written by a speechwriter, or is this, you know, does this really reflect the president's inner feelings and purposes? And in LBJ's case, and this is why I was saying earlier, sometimes in public, he was too formal for his own good, because he kept you from understanding how deeply he really did feel about poverty and civil rights and education, all the things that we now know about, and the tapes are a wonderful piece of evidence of that. What did you expect to hear in those tapes? Before you heard a single word that Lyndon Johnson said on tapes, what were you expecting? I had no idea. And one of the things that really testifies to Harry Middleton's character and also Lady Bird Johnson's character, I'm not sure everyone knows the process by which these tapes were open, but in the early night, well, to go back a little bit, I don't want to spend too much time on it, but President Johnson, when these tapes were made, in 1973, just before he passed, he talked to one of his aides, Mildred Stiegel, who was here and said, you know, the tapes are here in the library, they're sealed, most of them are untranscribed. I basically want them to be closed for 50 years, I think was the period he said, and in 50 years, whoever is the director of the Johnson Library at that point, should decide whether the tapes should be open, whether some of them should be open, or whether in that person's judgment they should be destroyed. So in the early 1990s, obviously, was much earlier than 50 years, but Harry and Mrs. Johnson began to talk about whether maybe we shouldn't wait 50 years, this is a time when people are beginning to feel very strongly about opening presidential materials, and maybe we should, make this opening earlier, and they decided to do it, and they did it, as I was saying, I had no idea what to expect, nor did they, because they did not go through these 670 hours and find out what was there, it could have been almost anything, so they did it not only with great courage, but also with confidence in their man, and they basically felt, this is my language, not theirs, but that the more people began to know Lyndon Johnson behind the scenes, even though some of the language would appall him that had ever been in public. For instance, there's a tape where he calls up the head of the Hagar Slacks Company, a few people are familiar with that one. Thank you, pretty familiar with that tape. I know this is a great Austin Johnson library crowd, but if I had to think of one tape that LBJ would be completely appalled to have in public, that comes pretty close to the gold standard, and actually when the first book came out, Mrs. Johnson was nice enough to give a dinner for my wife and myself at the Headlighters Club when the book came out, so I made the terrible mistake of saying Mrs. Johnson, were you happy with the way the book was received, and she, you know, she was always no nonsense, and I loved the fact that she was always so candid. She said, well, Michael, to be honest, I probably could have lived out the rest of my days more happily, not hearing you play the Hagar Slacks tape on television. She said, but she said, you should know, she said, that some of my grandchildren, that conversation, some of my grandchildren tell me that that's their favorite, so please explain that to me at the end of this evening. And the other thing, about a month after that, I got a letter from old Mr. Hagar, who was still alive in Dallas, offering me a free pair of custom-made Hagar Slacks, so who says there are no perks for historians? I take it you didn't give him your anatomical specifications in quite the colorful way that LBJ did. Yeah. And if I did, I would have known better than to make a tape of it. But one thing about this is that, you know, as you can hear, I do not come from Texas, I come from Illinois. And so, you know, the accents, you know, of the Texans, beginning with the president on the tapes, you know, I could pretty much decipher, in most cases, some of the expressions were lost on me, for instance, and I'll clean this up a little bit. When the president said that someone was so stupid, he couldn't find his rear end with both hands. Even I, coming from Illinois, understood what that meant. And there were some things like that, but others, you know, I sort of appointed a circle of Texas friends to help me decipher what I was hearing. And one stumped all of us. I think it's early 1965. He was talking, I think, to Hubert Humphrey. And this is very topical now, since we're dealing with health care in Washington. The president is talking to Hubert Humphrey, his vice president. He says, Hubert, that Medicare bill is going to go through Congress faster than a dose of salt through a widow woman. Well, I had no idea what this meant. You know, a dose of salt through a widow woman. I asked my Texas friends. One of them said, well, maybe, you know, widows cry and they need salt to replace their tears. It didn't sound right to me. So finally, I'd be giving lectures in Texas. And I would say, anyone who understands what this means, please see me at the end of the evening. And one evening, this very nice lady came up to me and said, son, you can see how long ago this was if I was son. She said, son, you know, you just don't realize that in Lyndon's boyhood, oftentimes ladies of a certain age used epsom salts as laxatives. So dose of salt through a widow woman would go pretty fast. And that's what he was saying. And I always felt if there was one thing I would have been just as happy not to know and learn what I became a historian. Maybe that was one of them. But anyway, it was a lot of fun to do. I certainly share Larry Temple sentiment that you are one of the preeminent historians, Michael. So you knew the story of Lyndon Johnson pretty well before you heard those tapes. What most I did particularly because remember, I was telling about that my first visit to the library in 1977. Well, aside from going in the Drew Pearson papers, I had a mission and the mission was this. Couple of days after President Kennedy died, I was living up in Illinois outside of Chicago. And I wrote a letter to Mr. President Johnson suggesting that President Kennedy suggesting, I think I said that President Johnson hire a large carving firm and have President Kennedy's head carved on Mount Rushmore. And I identified myself, Michael Beschloss, comma, seven years old, comma, Flossmore, Illinois comma, a suburb of Chicago. So I was even getting into those footnotes at an early age. But anyway, I sent that off and my friends said, the chance that you will get a reply to this are just about zero. And just before Christmas, I was at the skating rink and my mother came with a letter. The White House was on the outside of the envelope and I opened it. And it wasn't from President Johnson, but it was from Juanita Roberts, his eighth secretary, whom some of you certainly, Larry knew well, saying President Johnson asked me to thank you for your letter and appreciates your suggestion. So anyway, I wish I could say that I was in the habit of keeping Xerox copies of my correspondence at the age of seven, but I was not. So I came here and asked one of the archivists in the reading room, I'm sure you don't have this, this was a seven year old kid who wrote this letter to President Johnson, but is there any possibility this could be here in the library somewhere, probably in a big bag of unsorted mail if it was preserved? And 10 minutes later the cart rolled in and there was my letter. I mean, if you had any, no one here has any doubt about the excellence of the Johnson Library, but it sure was proven for me that day and I've got the copy of the letter and I've charged it ever since then. Well, we talked about Claudia Anderson earlier at a previous Harry Middleton lecture where we had Jimmy Carter in Michael's seat. He mentioned that he had written a letter, handwritten letter to President Johnson in 1972 and he said, I don't suppose you've thrown it out, but if it's here, I'd like to see it. And before he arrived at dinner, Claudia Anderson showed up with a copy of that letter. That's wonderful, and knowing Claudia, she probably had the letter in advance knowing that Carter was coming. Such is the excellence of Claudia Anderson. So Michael, what was the most surprising thing you heard on those telephone tapes? That's interesting. I think the most surprising thing was what I was saying before that he really was real, that he gave great speeches on poverty in public, he gave better speeches in private, gave great speeches on voting rights and civil rights, but the better speeches were when you hear him talking to Barton Luther King and dealing with Selma 52 years ago, because you know what's real and you hear what it's like and it has the sense that you're really there. Sometimes you hear gun smoke on TV in the background, you're really taken at the historical moment. And one of the best things about these tapes is a source and we will probably never have them again on a president for various reasons. People feel that it's not a great idea to tape, by our current day sensibilities, not a good idea to tape people without their knowledge, but an unbelievable source for an historian. I mean, one of them was, I had heard that there was a tape of the conversations on Air Force One the day that President Johnson and Jacqueline Kennedy flew back from Dallas on that horrible flight back to Washington and I think it had not yet been located. And I said to Harry, why don't you have the people in the library at least look around? Maybe the tape did not survive or maybe there wasn't a tape, but it would be worthwhile looking for it. And I think Claudie would probably know this. I think it was misfiled, but it was brought out and I think we were just about the first ones to hear it. And just the emotional experience, we had no idea what we were going to listen to. And you hear the screaming of the aircraft engines, Air Force One, you know what just happened, the assassination in Dallas, the plane is taking off. And as I remember, the first thing you hear is something like the President saying, the new President saying, I want to talk to Mrs. Kennedy. And by that, meaning Rose Kennedy up in Hyanna's port who had just been told of the death of her son. And I think the steward on the plane, little things tell you so much. The steward gets Mrs. Kennedy, Rose Kennedy, the President's mother on the line. And you can hear him just about to say, I have President Johnson for you. And he realizes that that's going to be horrible for her to hear those words. So immediately after the assassination, so I think he says, I have Mr. Johnson for you on the line. And you hear President Johnson come on the line and say, Mrs. Kennedy, we're grieving with you. And Mrs. Johnson gets on and says, the country was lucky to have your son as long as it did. For probably most of you in this room who were not alive in 1963, and for all of us who were not on that plane, just hearing that one tape and the sounds in the background, it takes you into the historical moment. And diaries help, letters help, memoirs help. Talking to wise figures like Larry Temple about his experiences, that sure helps. But it's not quite the same thing as being able to hear what it was like at that moment, the emotion and the voices. That's a source that we will probably never have again. Michael was among the historians that Barack Obama would regularly convene at the White House to get their perspective on history as he made history himself in the White House. And as I recall, he talked to you about the notion of recording some of his moments of his presidency. Obviously he shied away from it, but I believe after he came to this institution for the Civil Rights Summit, I think you had told me that came up during one of the dinners. Can you talk a little bit about that? About the tapes. He sure had, I think, read about them or maybe read the tapes and maybe and maybe listened to the tapes as well. But presidents sometimes meet with historians. I mean, the ones I remember in my case, I think pretty much Bill Clinton through Barack Obama. Bill Clinton would sometimes have a meeting with historians, sort of in a large group in the state dining room, you know, sort of a large four-sided table, table, you know, with a hole in the middle. And it was somewhat formal. George W. Bush would do it in the Oval Office and it was a little bit more informal. Barack Obama, what he did was he had a dinner with usually about the same group of historians about six or eight people, with some staff people about once a year, I think about six times in the presidency, maybe five times. And it was in the, what is called the family dining room, but it means the slightly smaller dining room on the state floor of the White House, not the big state dining room. And he talked for, you know, we were there for about three hours and he had a great gift for setting people at ease. But he was very conscious, as these other presidents were of, you know, how later historians are going to essentially be able to get into his head. And that's something that in my experience, presidents, when they think about history, that's one of the things they think about. And I had the very strong impression that, especially because Barack Obama is a writer and observer by nature, that I told my wife, I think after the first dinner, I would be astounded if he's not keeping a diary and probably a very detailed one. And indeed it has come out this week that he's writing a book and has now said it's based on a detailed journal that he made when he was president. So tapes number one source from my point of view, but if those aren't there, a detailed diary in which a president really levels with himself would be number two. So it's undoubtedly going to be a fascinating book. I want to come back to Barack Obama in a moment, but you mentioned John F. Kennedy a moment ago and you've written very eloquently on John F. Kennedy. Talk about the relationship between Kennedy and Johnson. How would you characterize that relationship? Yeah, hard to do in a sentence. One thing about it is I think we have to remember how radically it changed because in the late 1950s, John Kennedy to Lyndon Johnson, he liked him, he respected him, he thought he was intelligent, but he was basically a backbencher, he was not a great legislative accomplishment. And so to go from being what LBJ would have thought of as maybe a middling senator in the late 50s to suddenly the top man on the ticket in which Lyndon Johnson was vice president in 1960, it required enormous emotional adjustment and even more so for LBJ to be vice president for three years. He later on said, I detested every minute of it. I think that's not quite true, but it was very hard for him because to be number two and in an administration where President Kennedy respected him, hugely respected LBJ's intelligence and legislative skill, but from Kennedy's point of view, I think he knew that LBJ was so powerful and was so adept especially in dealing with Congress that Kennedy way overdid it in my point of view in sort of keeping LBJ on the periphery. I think he felt that if he decided to use this Ferrari in dealing with Congress on things like civil rights or maybe his tax cut bill, he thought that Johnson would be effective, but it would be hard for him to control. I think he was giving Johnson short shrift in that case because if you look at Johnson as vice president for nearly three years, he was consistently loyal. He didn't leak against Kennedy on background, although I think he disagreed with some of the decisions that were made. For someone of LBJ's commanding personality, he was an amazingly loyal and good vice president. One other thing, by the way, that just shows you historical sources, LBJ in his retirement, when he was talking to Harry and Bob Hardesty, Harry and Bob Hardesty were among the people who were helping LBJ write his memoirs. And in 1969 on the ranch, they taped, they didn't do this very often, but they taped one of their conversations with the president with the idea that they could use some of what he said in the book. And it was absolutely fascinating because LBJ was talking about his last meeting with John Kennedy. And they last met at the Rice Hotel on the 21st of November 1963 in JFK's hotel suite before he went downstairs to speak to, there was a Lulax meeting he dropped by and then a testimonial dinner for Albert Thomas, the longtime congressman from Houston. So anyway, LBJ and JFK met in their suite and LBJ was describing it. And the one thing he noticed was that JFK was dressing for dinner and he was startled by the fact that JFK was walking around in his dress shirt and his boxer shorts. And he said to Harry and Bob, that's so different. In Texas, we were taught to cover up the bottom part first. So if it had been me, I would have been wearing trousers and maybe nothing on top. Just fascinating when you think what's going through someone's mind and what they notice. Both, I think of that oftentimes when I'm putting on a shirt, shows you what psychiatrically happens to presidential historians. It's one of the hazards of the business for that question. Michael, John Kennedy and Linda Johnson are great examples of men who have grown with the presidency. They've expanded. Both, yeah. How does the presidency change a man? They usually do grow and it's something that you, there's no way of predicting how it's going to affect a president and there's no way for the person who is president to anticipate it. It's like LBJ says in his memoirs that his father told me, you will never understand what it is to be a father until you are one. And he compared that to becoming president because there are all sorts of things that there is no way that even an ex-president can tell a current president. And maybe that is even true in our own time. Does the study, and you've been with presidents and nurtured their knowledge of history. Does the study of history help them to grow? I think I can't see how a president can serve well without having a knowledge of history. I know what you're thinking and we'll get there. They're way ahead of us. Can you imagine living in a time when you say something as innocuous as president should know history and it has a different meaning in this period. But I would say this for the whole of presidential history and this is what I would say because and this is true of all of us in life and especially those who aspire to be leaders. I mean Truman once put it, not all readers will be leaders but all leaders have to be readers. And by that what he meant was that if you're a leader and especially if you're a president of the United States if you don't have some knowledge of what previous generations of citizens and presidents did where they succeeded and where they failed he couldn't understand how you could function as president and I feel the same way. And in Truman's case, I mean I always think it's a wonderful example because here you had Truman who was this curious, very intelligent little boy, thick glasses, his parents were poor, they said, no sports because we can't repair, we can't afford repairing your glasses. And so Truman said as a result, I read every book in the Independence Public Library which I always thought was an exaggeration until I got to Independence. It's not a big library so it probably is. And in Truman's case, his favorite book he always said was, had this horrible title, it was published 1895. The book was called Great Men and Famous Women, the premise that women could not hope to be great only famous. And the subtitle was From Nebuchadnezzar to Sarah Bernhardt. So let's see it covered a wide swath of his. But Truman said and he was absolutely right. When I was president he had all these decisions to make from ending World War II to dropping the bomb, MacArthur. He did not think probably about Sarah Bernhardt or Nebuchadnezzar but he thought of Lincoln and Andrew Jackson and those stories comforted him and gave him some understanding. There were always some parallels. So we don't need a president who knows the date of the Norman Conquest, and it would be nice. But the founders of this country always felt that it would be crucial for all of us Americans and especially our presidents to have some knowledge of history because otherwise if you don't know where earlier citizens and leaders succeeded and failed, how do you ever make progress? One of the quotes from Truman which we both love is the only thing new in the world is the history you don't know. Yeah, absolutely right. So let's take that to the red-headed elephant in the room. Put this president and this presidency in historical context. 40 days in? I'm the one who thinks it takes 40 years. Well fair enough. I can't do it in real time. But the one thing I would say is that in ways that we cannot predict it will look very different 40 years from now from the way it does today because things that look trivial at a time that a president serves, oftentimes 40 years later seem cardinally important. Oftentimes a tiny decision that he makes that he may barely be aware of because he's doing 10 things at once can turn out to change the country in a big way later on. And the opposite is often true as well. The case I always think of is Harry Truman went back to Missouri in 1953 with a Gallup poll approval rating of something like about 22%. And when I was new in this business I investigated the reasons. And a lot of people were angry about the Korean War which was unpopular. There was petty corruption in Truman's entourage. But a lot of people said I don't like Truman because he doesn't remind me of Franklin Roosevelt. I always remember the true story as told that 1952 Truman was asked what do you think of Richard Nixon? And Truman said I think Nixon is full of manure. And so that was published and so his aides went to Mrs. Truman and said couldn't you get the boss to speak more elegantly? And she said you have no idea how long it took for me to get him to use the word manure. But what is you know whether he said manure or not seemed really important in 1953. I would say with you know what is it 64 years hindsight more important is that this is the guy who developed the strategy that allowed a number of presidents including LBJ to win the Cold War. We know that now with 2020 hindsight. So I want to go back to Trump. Is there is there a an analogous president or at least an analogous historical? I've been trying. Andrew Jackson does it for him. It doesn't do it for me. He has a big portrait of sure. In fact I think maybe Larry can confirm this. LBJ had a portrait of Andrew Jackson. I think it's the same one that's been put back in the Oval Office by Donald Trump. I think we're whatever our political persuasion we can say that Donald Trump is no Lyndon Johnson or Andrew Jackson. Trump's argument are the people around him who have urged him to sort of emphasize a Jackson connection. I think the idea is that Jackson shook things up which Jackson sure did. But Jackson also went after the financial plutocracy of his country and destroyed the Bank of the United States which I think is not part of Donald Trump's agenda. So I think it's not a great parallel. But there's an unconventional presidency and I keep on looking for parallels and I keep on striking out. I think we all do. Is there any president who has been as loose with the facts as Donald Trump? I don't see that facetious but let's face it there are. There's a very Donald Trump uses the facts very liberally. Well we've never in history had a case where people say why are you taking the president so literally that's something I've never heard or well those are just his words. What else is there I mean what are we expected to I mean that that's a real problem right and you know contrasting it with Lyndon Johnson had this enormous sense of nuance was very conscious of the import of his words. Let me play the the bar room game that all historians play. Who do you think our most underrated president is? There probably really are not many because our brethren and sister and are so good at you know searching for underrated presidents and writing about them and upgrading them but maybe the best case of this happening maybe in the last 30 years is probably Dwight Eisenhower and it's fitting that I say this here because Lyndon Johnson although he disagreed with Dwight Eisenhower in a lot of ways hugely respected him and the two of them had a wonderful relationship of a kind that we rarely see anymore. A lot of what Dwight Eisenhower was able to do legislatively during the last six years of his presidency where Congress was dominated by Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn happened because he had a wonderful relationship with the Democratic Speaker and the Democratic leader of the Senate and one of the things that I think that LBJ would be so sorry about if he came back would be what Congress has turned into. I mean Congress from my point of view you were all very aware of how much conflict there is in Washington and that part really does go back to the founders the founders wanted conflict and fighting they felt that conflict brings the best policies the problem with the British monarchy was that there was no conflict because the British king or queen made the decisions themselves so they wanted to do it differently and they felt you know debate these issues and fight it out but the other half of the sentence was and this is where LBJ and Eisenhower come in the other part of this they also believed in compromise and negotiation and making deals you know compromise was not a dirty word to them nor was it to Lyndon Johnson or Dwight Eisenhower and if you look at the history of LBJ's civil rights act spring of 1964 that happened pre preeminently because of president Johnson but also because he had this wonderful friend Everett Dirksen the Republican leader from my home state of Illinois I used to watch him on TV as a kid he sounded to me like mr. Ed the talking horse and he's on these tapes he does sound like mr. Ed but LBJ was able to make deals with Everett Dirksen that were able to get Dirksen to support the bill hence get it through the Senate hence it became law. I ask you who the most underrated president in modern history is who's the most overrated overrated president I can't think of one who's overrated but but this is what I would say and I after saying this I'll never be let back into the state of Illinois these polls of historians that are taken which I think it's a great idea that the polls are done I have a little bit of a problem with them because at least in my case I wish I could pretend that I knew an equal amount about all 44 presidents that I could compare them perfectly so I I tend to sort of bow out but but the premise of usually Abraham Lincoln comes in a clear number one sure with George Washington number two Frank it was about three I would say if you had to do it I would at least say that Lincoln and Washington are tied and maybe even in some cases that George Washington was the greatest president of all because one of the biggest tributes to George Washington is the fact that those who wrote the Constitution doesn't say much about what a president should do you know it's very vague and one reason for that is that they knew those who wrote it that George Washington would be the first president and with every act of his during those the years that he was president he would define what a president should do and what he should be and in those days they thought of it in male terms for all those who followed and he sure did if George Washington had been a different kind of human being not only would that office be different but we might be living in a country that might be harsher and more authoritarian than it is today Washington simply you know the person who said that the greatest thing that George Washington did was give up the presidency after two terms rather than hold on to it forever so it becomes a dynastic hereditary office that changed the future of this country sure Michael you've written on presidential courage you signed your book earlier this evening what is a good example of recent and I'm not talking about the current administration but but since you've written the book of recent presidential courage that you might write about Mark is playing stump the other historian because of our system presidential courage gets a lot more difficult to practice and you know for rational reasons you know not only is Congress more difficult but for instance John Kennedy when he wrote profiles and courage he wrote and talked about it when the book came out about what happens to a senator like him if he cast a vote that people didn't like well he gets some calls from his supporters and donors he'd get some angry letters he might have to explain it when he ran for the senate again years later but that was about it compare that to 2017 if a senator for instance cast a vote that is unpopular you know the hounds of hell descend in about three seconds because you know your donors will be emailing you know that's the end of my relationship with you right you will find out instantly that your polls have gone south you know it's a lot rougher so in congress presidential courage is more difficult to practice and I think it also is in the presidency because uh to some extent for the same reasons people will instantly find out about an unpopular decision that a president makes because money is so important in the system you know it's very easy for people to cut off money to a president who does something that they do not like the penalties are much larger so since you're asking about modern presidents I think it's going to take a couple of decades to look backwards and see uh decisions that were more courageous at the time than we mortals on the outside understood right we will open up the microphones for questions from from you all and Michael I'll ask you let's go back to Barack Obama and uh I think we both know that it takes at least a generation for us to get at least a some semblance of objectivity as it relates to I think some historians think you can do it sooner but my feeling is that you know it takes at least a couple of decades to get the sources that show us what's going on in the inside and takes that long to get some hindsight and and the the book that we'll see from Barack Obama will be really the first draft in so many respects it'll be enormously helpful in in how we with great primary sources you know presumably we'll be getting to see big chunks of his diary only a year or two after he's left the presidency what are the hallmarks of his presidency what will be the things that we delve into as we assess his legacy well people would say that you know would ask me that like in the first year first two years of his presidency what will americans of the future uh say about healthcare and you know I've been in this business a while so I replied it depends on whether it works and whether it's repealed or whether it's changed and we're now seeing I think to some extent some of that process and you know what that program will look like and you know how much credit Barack Obama gets for whatever survives years from now I hope he does uh you'd have to look at some of his foreign policy decisions what the mid-east looks like what democracy looks like around the world that's why it's so difficult to do this in real time because usually historic you know for instance if we were as historians in 1961 talking about Dwight Eisenhower sure the majority of historians in 61 thought that Eisenhower was a great general you couldn't deny the the heroism and the accomplishment of of leading the forces on D-Day but that the two terms as president were sort of an afterthought and Eisenhower was to put it as politely as possible they would say not at his best but you wait a couple of decades you not only get into his diaries and find out how smart and to some extent manipulate if he was which was not a word that people would have used in 61 but also you realize that these were seven and a half years of peace and prosperity with a low inflation rate and moderate defense spending you know sure he should have done a lot more on civil rights in my view I think he should have fought Joe McCarthy war but with some hindsight you understood that Dwight Eisenhower was a much greater president so this is why I shy away from sure doing this in near to real time can I say one more worry about him about Harry before we get into questions uh another thing I didn't get to mention is that you know Harry Middleton we all know his accomplishments and I think we could have had this whole conversation just on Harry maybe someday should and will but two things I'd like to say number one is that Harry Middleton developed such respect with President Johnson Mrs Johnson that you know we historians as I think I've made it pretty clear we love to get primary sources out as widely and as quickly as possible we need that to do our work and in that Harry was our friend and partner and President Johnson Mrs Johnson respected him so much that when he would say to them I really think that you should open such and such and the tapes are the best example of this they would listen and he has deserves a lot of the credit the fact that this library has been so forward leaning and opening up archives quickly and wildly and the other thing is that oftentimes in history an accomplishment seems so effortless that it looks almost four ordained you know Harry was director of this library for decades most importantly he came here almost at the beginning and you know we all know now that this library is gold standard for the presidential library system and has been for decades but but that was not forwarding because if you think about it when the Johnson Library opened 1971 there were other libraries that existed Hoover Roosevelt Truman and Eisenhower but it was really a different animal because those were the buildings were small they were all in rural places they were not connected to a university and they didn't open at a time when the president being commemorated but was still extremely controversial as Lyndon Johnson of course was in 1971 so in a way Harry really set the template for the modern presidential library and I think if you look that that every presidential library that has followed it's very much followed in the footsteps not only of the Johnson Library but particularly of Harry so it's why I'm so enormously honored to be here in his name this evening and I'm so touched that members of the Middleton family are here could I bother them to stand up please well thank you so much let's take some questions super we'll start on the left side here yes sir I'm not sure I need the mic but I assume it's on um I want to go there's a great great speaking voice thank you I'm not sure that uh you'll be able how you'll be able to deal with this but I want to go to the classic elephant in the room thing our our current president has been alleged to be unstable and balanced maybe even sociopathic and there's been I've never heard any of that I watched and listened to a lot of discussion read some more about invocation of the 25th amendment and I don't have the exact words but of the heads of executive agencies some people would understand it to be the cabinet but I've also heard and that it's really not the cabinet per se it says any anybody designated by congress right as well as the cabinet and and you know I haven't done in-depth research on that but I'm one question is is the that list of people really clear that the positions is there a fixed 13 15 17 that the president would have to get a majority of there any doubt and secondly once that is in vote there's a procedure of back and forth that's possible if the president challenges it so so the the gentleman is referring to article four of the 25th amendment to the constitution which was enacted with Lyndon Johnson was president right Michael yeah and actually a really interesting history thank you sir and it and it came from the fact that when president Kennedy was assassinated there was no vice president for more than a year and it also I think came from the fact that the speaker of the house John McCormick was I think 72 years old when president Kennedy died and and looked like he was about 102 yeah and suffered an attack of vertigo and almost collapsed when he was told of the news that he was number two in line so it made people very nervous and so congress with the consent of the president came up with a system for filling a vacancy and also dealing with presidential disability because the the constitution was very ambiguous about this I mean for instance if a president goes into surgery and is under general anesthesia as I think president Johnson was I think when when he had his goldbladder operation for instance and he's out and is not able to function there was nothing in the under the constitution that would provide for that and so that's what the 25th amendment does the interesting question is whether it allows people to go and this is you know this has been suggested by people who are extremely eager to get Donald Trump out of office as soon as possible it's one reason for this huge new interest in the 25th amendment I mean we we scholars love to see interest in the constitution in history for whatever reason but it does provide for for instance president Reagan when he went into surgery he signed a document ceding power to vice president bush for the time he was under and it does provide if a president is sick physically or mentally that half of the cabinet plus the vice president can attest that the president is disabled and he's gone the interesting question that I'm not sure really appears in the legislative history of that amendment is that what happens if you have half of the cabinet plus one that wants to get rid of a president for political reasons and and therefore says you know I don't like his policies was and this is a sign of disability or if congress should designate another body to evict a president those are uncharted territories I think it's unlikely that we will see that but it does raise some interesting questions plus you have an interested party with the vice president the vice president is actively involved in this process is a party theoretically right and it's clearly a party of interest yeah so it's like Gerald Ford a couple of days before Richard Nixon resigned they had their last cabinet meeting and Gerald Ford said since I am a party of interest here I will no longer make any comment about whether president Nixon should resign or not but if I said to say there's a great deal of ambiguity around that yeah interesting question thank you sir uh next question please over here um I'm not saluting yes yeah over here thank you I've enjoyed your lecture so far how is social media going to change the job of the presidential historian oh great good question uh less than we would think uh the nice answer would be uh since we don't since presidents don't often write emotive long letters anymore and they don't often keep diaries Brock Obama's an exception and since they're sure are not tapes maybe social media will help fill in the gap it really won't because what we're all looking for mark and I is something that will show us what was on the president's mind when he was in the middle of a crisis or when he was trying to you know get an important bill passed and social media will not do that what social media will do is uh it's sort of like uh Claudia I think would describe this as public opinion mail letters that are sent to a president you know about a certain thing that he has done for instance uh John Kennedy marveled about the fact that in 1963 he got the most mail not about the nuclear test ban treaty and not about civil rights but about I think it was either a change in postal rates or a change in railroad rates sort of organized letter writing campaigns so in the future if mark and I are writing about a president I think what social media and presumably tweets are preserved and all the rest of this it'll show us what people were thinking at a given time and allow us to really get a cross section of what public opinion really was but let me pursue that Michael because great presidents master the the media of their age uh you had uh Jefferson mastered partisan newspapers here and uh Lincoln the written word and the fledgling art of photography he used so effectively Franklin Roosevelt radio Kennedy and Reagan television are you going to quote from some of Donald Trump's tweets well not yet but but I will ask you he has clearly mastered that that media he has used it as a vehicle to talk to his supporters directly correct how would you evaluate how would you rate Donald Trump as a communicator uh as a communicator and you know I guess tweets were a part of it if he were not as good a communicator he never would have gotten nominated for president right what he had been elected although I think if you're looking back on you know how Trump rose if you delete the apprentice it doesn't happen right because what that did was if he were just you know a New York real estate developer with views that many in the republican party liked he would not have gotten to first base it was the fact that he was someone who had been in people's living rooms for over a decade on a hit tv show I'm not suggesting a parallel with Ronald Reagan except for in one respect and that is that when Reagan ran for office in 1966 republican nomination for governor of california a lot of people said this is ridiculous he's an actor he's not going to you know get to first base and what they neglected was the fact that this is someone who had been on GE theater for years death valley days people liked him you know so for them this was not just some inexperienced actor it was someone that they liked well enough to tune in every single week and the same thing was true with Donald Trump he was not a stranger right right and a lot of that was communication of course yes sir don in your opinion are there any ex presidents who have had as influential of an ex presidency is say a jimmy carter and bill clinton in the past because in my lifetime that's kind of the gold standard of what an ex president should be sure her word Hoover did and in a way he sort of you know set the pattern for an ex president who can be maybe not as effective as he was as president but but still get a lot of things done and that was because Hoover lived from 1933 till 1964 and given more limited longevity in those days for him to live for 31 more years he had the capacity to do it and also the ability and motive let me follow up and just ask Michael what what do you think that Barack Obama will do with his post presidency I think from what he said and this is sort of the Carter pattern which is that you have a a center that helps you to you know pursue some of the political ideals that you tried to pursue when you were president and you will also have a presidential library I think like Jimmy Carter I think Barack Obama is glad to have a presidential library I think he's going to spend a lot more of his energy on the center and that was very much true of Jimmy Carter people were surprised and to this day are you know he likes the library tries to help it but his heart is really in you know going after Guinea worm in Africa and do all doing all the things he's done right last question yes ma'am oh sir yes I'm sorry um I'm androgynous this evening no no I saw the woman behind you I thought that I thought you would already ask the question I apologize these are very these are very bright lights here as I as I understand that the purpose of the electoral college was to provide some kind of insulation between the body politic and you know the the elitist decision-making process you you alluded earlier to the fact that you know now because of the democratization of tools and to some extent kind of the relativity of Facebook etc you you alluded to sort of how that's affected political races presidential races I'm curious you know with all of the pushback against elitism and sort of the erosion of any appreciation of of elitism I'm curious how you see that playing out as it relates to where political candidates are relative to where the country is which is to say do you expect that given all of the tools that we have in the kind of democratization of information do you expect that we're going to continue to see political candidates who are successful and that they're close to where we are as a country or do you think there's something that will allow political candidates to be a standard deviation away from ahead of kind of where the majority of us are and kind of pull the mean forward if that makes sense yeah it sure doesn't look as if that's the direction that we're going that there will be a sort of standard deviation away and I think this last campaign has proven it and maybe the electoral college is an interesting way to talk about that my own feeling is that I still would like there to be some kind of electoral college vote I'm I mean I understand what the origins were you know as you were saying not to put the choice of a president entirely in the hands of the public it was also to give the south undue weight as a compromise to get this system passed with southern delegates I'm a little bit worried if you abolish the electoral college that you basically will then have candidates raising a lot of money campaigning from tv studios in new york and la and ignoring small states ignoring minority groups ignoring you know small interests which is another reason why the electoral college was devised but that still leaves you with the problem of you know a president now in office who lost the popular vote by three million votes or more and I think one way to at least fix it to some extent is you know each state can decide how to apportion its electoral votes you don't have to do it win or take all and many states have begun to you know get away from that you can do it by congressional district you can do it proportionally you know you can find some equations so if you find some kind of hybrid I think you can still get the best of the electoral college and fix the problems that was devised to fix but at the same time not have what I think is this awful situation that we had in 2000 and also 2016 where the person who is president did not win the popular vote and in this case buy a real long shot thank you we have I think we have one more gentleman lining up why don't we just take that question yes sir oh yes ma'am good yes I thought you were getting up to the mic which is why I said ma'am early good to see you back okay um there have been proposals both from the left and from the right sanford leavenson on the left and randy barnett on the right uh regarding a uh convention of the states to amend the constitution and I think that's actually one of the priority items for our governor um this year the legislature um and some of these proposals speak to the presidency or amending that portion of the constitution dealing with the presidency do you have any thoughts uh about any based on what you have seen any changes to the constitution uh relative to the presidency uh that might warrant some sort of examination sure I mean first are you asking would I favor a constitutional convention to start over uh that that wasn't the question but that would be an interesting one no no uh and it's not because the constitution is perfect but if you open this right now uh I shudder to some degree at what we might get I love the constitution and I love the process by which we amend it incrementally by amendment and if you're asking me for you know one thing I'd like to amend it would be uh the role of money in our political system in many ways I think has almost destroyed it in a way that the founders would not approve of and I think an amendment would bring our system a little bit more in uh synchronicity with what they might have hoped we began this evening rightfully with Harry Middleton and I'll end it with Harry Middleton uh Larry Harry and several others uh had a had a dinner with Harry uh some years back maybe a few years back when we were talking about speakers that that we would bring to the Harry Middleton lecture and there were certain people who had votes uh and Harry just had influence and so we began banding about the the names of folks that we would bring to the Harry Middleton lecture and uh we had already brought Gorbachev uh and Jimmy Carter and Sandra Day O'Connor and this illustrious group and Harry said I want a writer and we would go on and we'd talk about other folks and he'd see we'd stand say I want a writer and he said that maybe seven more times and finally Larry Temple leaned over and said I think he wants a writer but I would add to that he didn't want just a writer uh any writer he wanted the writer to my right he mentioned Michael Beschloss specifically so I know he would be delighted that you were here tonight Michael thanks so much for being with us thank you but I say one word should I say I don't want to take away Mark's last word but I I'm so sorry that that Harry is not here in a larger sense I believe he is I feel his aura I love the man and one memory I do have were you here for his going away dinner when he retired you might remember it was an attempt right on on the plaza and there was enormous rainstorm that night and just when he I think when he came into the tent there was this enormous boom of thunder and I said that was lbj registering his disapproval that Harry was leaving thank you all for being here