An Evening With Michael Beschloss

good evening good evening welcome back I thank you for your flexibility as we rescheduled this program and we're delighted to see you all here thank you for coming this caps off what I think has been a phenomenal year for the Friends of the LBJ library thanks to you for making it a great year we've featured everything this year from the premiere of Hulu's new drama series the looming tower based on Lawrence Wright's award-winning book we had Jake Tapper from CNN here look back at the pivotal year 1968 with Bill Moyers Tom Johnson Linda Johnson Robb and the person who would become the new director of the LBJ library Kyle Longley we had olympic fencer hip to Haj Mohammed best-selling author and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin former CIA director John Brennan and almost former California Governor Jerry Brown and we cap off the year with the incomparable Michael Beschloss who will talk about his book presidents of war if you are not a friends member we would love to have you join our ranks we've just as we had a great lineup this year we're working on a great lineup for 2019 and I can tell you that sometimes it's hard for us to know in advance who's going to be here we're very opportunistic and we try to get folks to come but sometimes it's last minute so we can't always know who's going to be here but but I can promise you that we're working on some very big names who will be worth your time among others next year we have coming Darren Walker the president of the Ford Foundation who will be here with Nancy keen a professor from the Harvard Business School and they'll talk about character in leadership we also will have the preview of a new PBS documentary on going to the moon the space race of the 1960's that'll be in May so there's some wonderful things afoot for next year I want to thank our sponsors as always for helping to make our air year terrific and and they include st. Davids healthcare the Moody Foundation the Ford Foundation and Tito's handmade vodka you guys love the vodka introducing our special guest tonight is the chairman of the LBJ foundation Larry temple so ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming Larry temple before introducing our guest tonight I wanted to acknowledge the passing and paid tribute to President George HW Bush there always was a personal friendship as well as mutual respect between George HW and Barbara Bush on the one hand and Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson on the other hand over the strong opposition of his own party in Texas congressman George HW Bush courageously voted for LBJ's Fair Housing Act in 1968 the last critical part of President Johnson's civil rights legislation when asked why he cast that controversial vote congressman Bush said well it was just the right thing to do when Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson left Washington to return to Texas on January 20 1969 just a few hours after the inauguration of President Nixon every Republican except one was downtown celebrating the new president the one exception was congressman George HW Bush who was at Andrews Air Force Base saying goodbye to the Johnsons you'll see a photograph of that goodbye being shown on the wall behind me when asked why he had come to Andrew instead of attending the inaugural parade for Richard Nixon congressman Bush said well he's my friend and my president and he's leaving town I didn't want him to leave town without my being here and paying my respect to him now how is that for grace civility decency and friendship [Applause] [Music] the highest award that the LBJ foundation gives is this liberty and justice for all award we give it to individuals who in their own time and in their own way who have carried on the legacy of Lyndon Johnson to open the doors of opportunity for all of our citizens to enjoy the privileges and protections that this great country offers in 2013 we gave that award to President George HW Bush in recognition at least in part for his leadership in the passage of the Americans with Disability Act I think you're viewing there on the wall behind me a photograph of that award that was presented to President Bush to recognize a meaningful impactful and truly remarkable life I want to ask for a round of applause to pay tribute to President George HW Bush [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you now on to tonight's program Michael Beschloss has been proclaimed by Newsweek as quote the nation's leading presidential historian close quote and it would be hard to find anyone who disagrees he has written 10 books on American presidents he is NBC News presidential historian and is frequently seen on PBS and other channels the number of presidents about who Michael has researched and written puts a reader in all in just one book presidential courage Michael Beschloss provides expert and unique insights on the lives and legacies listen to this George Washington John Adams Andrew Jackson Abraham Lincoln Theodore Roosevelt Franklin Roosevelt Harry Truman John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan in his latest and current book presidents of war and he will talk about that tonight Michael chronicles the wartime roles at presidents Thomas Jefferson James Madison James Polk Abraham Lincoln William McKinley Woodrow Wilson Franklin Roosevelt Harry Truman Lyndon Johnson Richard Nixon George HW Bush and George W Bush Michael Beschloss invested ten years to complete his research and writing of this compelling book he's also written other books about presidents Franklin Roosevelt Harry Truman Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy now just think for a minute what Michael Beschloss has done we've had 45 presidents in the history of this country Michael Beschloss has written books on 19 of those presidents almost half of the total presidents he's written public articles on even more at this library we are particularly captivated by his two books on the LBJ telephone tapes taking charge covers the period from 1963 through the election nineteen sixty-four reaching for glory covers the last part of 1964 in all of 1965 if you've not read those books I would encourage you to do so because Michael Beschloss uses President Johnson's own conversations to tell the story of those periods in a very compelling way all I can say about Michael Beschloss is what a historian what a writer he has no peer on the public stage today moreover as I've known him for over thirty years and I can say without a doubt in addition to being a man a prolific accomplishment he has no ego he is modest some is a modest man what you think you see on television is what he really is he's a great man but he's also a good man and that combination doesn't always go together Michael Beschloss gives us valuable and beneficial counsel here at the library on all occasions he gave us great help when we renovated the exhibit a few years ago so it's a treat to welcome him back to the stage tonight so please welcome our guest star Michael Beschloss and mark Updegrove you will conduct the conversation with him tonight Michael [Music] well Michael welcome back thank you after hearing what Larry said I should probably leave now because your opinion of me is only gonna go net and down the more I speak thank you all for being here and especially since we had to redo the night thank you especially well we had to redo to the night of course because of the passing of George HW Bush who Larry just paid tribute to I thought why don't we start but just how should we remember Michael covered the funerals of President Bush in Washington and and in Houston for NBC how should we remember George Bush well I think it's a really good example of I think you'd agree with this about everyone able to hear by the way in the back in the very back say a couple of hands I can't improve the content but at least I can improve the volume if it's necessary from me I think it's a very good example of the way that history is supposed to work because you know mark and I will always say that presidents do not look the same way 30 years or more after they serve as they do at the time while they're sitting in the White House and I think George HW Bush is a great example of that because anyone here who can remember 1993 when he left the White House there were a lot of people writing he must not have been a very good president because he couldn't even manage to get reelected this is not me talking this is you know journalists and others of the time or mismanaged the economy or yes he helped to end the Cold War but who cares about that anymore you know this is what really was set at the time and here we are 25 years later and because of some information that's come out since 1993 but more importantly because the passage of time we see him in a very different way above all in my view that this was the guy who not only presided over the Cold War but helped it to end in a way that any other president from Harry Truman on would have only dropped off they never dreamt that it would end so quickly and without firing a shot and without George Bush's enormous ability to build relationships of trust as you did with Mikhail Gorbachev that might not have happened if almost anyone else had been president and and Larry mentioned your humility but but George Herbert Walker Bush is humility really came into play in the peaceful resolution to the Cold War sure about that because and Larry was nice enough to mention all these books I wrote I actually wrote a book with stroke tall but on the end of the Cold War and we interviewed a lot of the bush people and some of those around gorbachev in the early 90s and had almost anyone else been president they would have given in to the advice of White House aides who said you know they just opened the Berlin wall or East your your Eastern Europe has fled the Soviet Union or Germany has reunified within NATO the president should take a victory lap they had to go to the Berlin Wall and say this is a triumph for the United States Bush diplomatic aleinu that that would scare Gorbachev away from making any other concessions and also it just was not in his nature to crow it amazes me Michael that when he left the White House in 1993 he lamented that Americans didn't know his heartbeat right and when we celebrated his life last week it was really all about heartbeat and I think almost more than any single accomplishment of his presidency who will be remembered for his character yeah I think he will be remembered for his character at a time that presidential character was sort of taken for granted yeah but but nowadays you know you will now look at bush and see him as someone that you want your children to emulate and that's one thing and but the other thing that just drives you crazy is that you're right he didn't have the ability to tout his own accomplishments had it been a little bit better than that at that for instance in 1992 when he was running he might have explained that yes we've been through a recession but the economy is getting better and oddly enough his virtue was also his flaw which was because he was modest and because I'm sure you heard this at least 90 times during the coverage of you know George Bush during this week his mother always told him don't talk about yourself and so as a result it was extremely hard for him to during a campaign talk about the accomplishments that really did deserve to be praised and you write an awful lot about presidential character in presidents of war and we'll talk about that but we've been trying to get you here for a good long time because a lot of us have been anticipating this book and you have a lot of many fans as you can see here in this so this was a decade in the making right you all took a real risk inviting me here I mean I spent 10 years writing the 750 page book who knows how long I might speak tonight you may be here at 2:00 a.m. and I'll still be going I promised not said all I had to say in the book so if it's a filibuster we have we have we're going to invoke cloture no in fact before we go on can I tell one more Bush story which I think people don't know Barbara Bush once told me those of you who know the last full day before Lyndon Johnson became president was November 21st 1963 and President Kennedy and President Johnson were together in Texas they were in San Antonio first and then they flew to Houston and they went to the rice hotel they spoke at a President Kennedy spoke at a testimonial dinner but Barbara Bush told me that when JFK and Jackie and the Johnsons came from the airport to Houston to the Rice hotel she was there in the crowd cheering and it tells you so much about how things have changed because not only was she a Republican she was you know no Kennedy supporter particularly although you know she liked them personally but this was November of 63 her husband George was going to run for the Senate in Texas as a Republican in 1964 against Ralph Yarborough right so if you can just think how different things were in those days she didn't do it because she was going to be photographed because I don't think she was and I actually after she told me that I looked to see if there was any historical reference to that and I wasn't able to find one but the wife of the Republican candidate going to cheer the Democratic president who was running for re-election and as she told me she said it's just the way things were done in those days how different we have cut become and I really hope that those days come back again yeah sorry sorry for the detour not at all so Michael what what what made you want to write presidents of war well it's about the book is about eight or nine presidents who waged major Wars in American history and I was really curious and this is four years before I actually came to write it what did they have in common because they had this one experience that no one else has ever had which is to send large America numbers of Americans into harm's way and a major war and it turned out there were a number of things they had in common one was every single one of them became more religious Lyndon Johnson who those here who knew him Larry and a few others I think you would probably agree with me that he was disciples of Christ he certainly went to church he didn't talk about it as a large force in his life but I remember talking to Lady Bird Johnson late in her life and she said that during the late years of the Vietnam War LBJ was so tortured by the experience that he found comfort in religion she thought for the first time in a really notable way and she he went with Lucy to the Catholic Church that she went to in Southwest Washington and mrs. Johnson said during those days it would not have surprised me a bit if Lyndon had become a Catholic because this person who she saw as someone who would did not have deep spiritual belief she felt suddenly felt that having this experience of waging a war with major casualties and trauma and all the division in this country that we know that there was this was something that he looked looked to to comfort himself Abraham Lincoln when he was a young man was thought of as a scoffer at religion perhaps an agnostic some thought an atheist and when he was a war president late in the Civil War friend from Illinois came and found in reading the Bible and was astounded and Lincoln said I can't imagine that any president would go through this horrible experience without finding some comfort in religion so they become more religious they all have empathy anyone who listens to those tapes of LBJ waiting for a plane to return from North Vietnam from a bombing run know the kind of empathy he had that as the war went on and as the casualties rose it was such torture for him Abraham Lincoln never wanted to get too distant from the deaths of the soldiers same thing with LBJ in Lincoln's case there were so many people getting killed that Lincoln's people came to him and said we've got to build a new National Cemetery where do you want it and Lincoln said build it near my summer home because I want all the time to see those Union graves being dug it's going to be intensely painful to me but I want to see the consequences of these terrible decisions that I'm making he said to another friend can you imagine that I who cannot stand to watch a chicken being slaughtered I'm responsible for generating oceans of blood so empathy is another thing they had in common another thing is that every single one of them was married to a strong woman who made the difference someday I hope to come back and talk about a president who was married to a strong man who made all the difference maybe someday maybe not a war president but a president of some kind but anyone who thinks that Lady Bird Johnson did not have a lot to do with Lyndon Johnson's leadership in the 1960s has a very big misapprehension she used to talk about these years she once said to me first two years of Linden's presidency were wine and roses and the rest of those years were pure hell because of Vietnam she talked of being on a train between New York and Washington and seeing another train going by and she saw was carrying cargo and then with the shudders she realized it was coffins of young men coming back from Vietnam late Eleanor Roosevelt Arbor a lot of people were saying to FDR for security reasons you got to send the japanese-americans to internment camps and she said absolutely not and then one day he did it and she was so angry that some of the people who knew her felt that the marriage never quite quite was the same after that and you will know that much of World War two she kept her distance from him even though he was very lonely and asking her to spend more time at home so those are the few of a few of the things that they had biographically in common but the other thing is that two hundred years that was a time where at the beginning founders wrote the Constitution and they wanted Wars to be declared by Congress still ISM the Constitution last I checked but over two hundred years and the experience of all these eight or nine presidents it now has come to the to be the case that any president can get us involved in a major war almost single-handedly almost overnight last time Congress declared a war anyone know or want to raise a hand what year Matt Matt let me let me now read your let this is from the preface okay I'll just not not to preserve the suspense 1940 right this is a cup of war since then so you and you reveal that answer in the present read what michael has written as a predicate to the book I hope you don't find that I got the date wrong mark no you pass all right with the chief when Ronald Reagan's autobiography came out do you think maybe he wrote three words of it so he went to the publisher there were sales people there and he held it up for photographers and said I hear it's a great book I might even read it sometime I did write this one and among the things you wrote includes this passage from the preface with the too frequent acquiescence of Congress chief executives have seized for themselves the power to launch large conflicts almost on their own authority it is telling that the last time a president asked Congress to declare war was 1942 were the founders to come back they would probably be astonished and chagrined to discover that in spite of their ardent strivings the life or death of much of the human race has now come to depend on the character of the single person who happens to be the president of the United States and what did you want to write again have a nice evening but what what becomes very clear is the executive branch throughout the course of our history gets stronger and stronger and with it the power of the President of the United States and Congress seems to willingly capitulate willingly cede power to the president how has that why has that happened well one reason is going all the way back to James Madison presidents have a habit of saying you criticize my war leadership you're criticizing the soldiers in battle and that's a pretty big restraint on members of Congress so they don't want to seem to be criticizing soldiers and the other thing is that when we are at war in general there is a feeling and that to criticize the president you know may in some ways restrain they constrain the war effort and I think it's exactly the opposite because the founders of this country they wanted us to criticize criticism and protest to my mind are the highest forms of patriotism Benjamin Franklin said our critic is our friend and the reason was because no one criticized the British King and they and our founders wanted to create a country that was different from that the whole idea was that if you had a president if you had members of Congress we would all be criticizing them all the time that would make them better presidents and better members of Congress and so you know that you're expressing yourself as a as a citizen that way so for congressional leaders to restrain themselves especially in wartime is not a great thing and I should say if I were a president I would hate to be criticized I'd hate to be criticized by my congressional leaders I would hate to be criticized by the press but it's part of what makes us great as a system so it is the weakening of Congress irrevocable or do you envision a time when Congress becomes more robust because I think they have to become more robust and it goes back I mean it really goes back this book starts with James Madison but second president I deal with is James Polk who has a little Texas history and Polk in the the late 1840s he wanted a war with Mexico you all know and the problem was there wasn't an imminent reason for a war with Mexico so Polk created a border skirmish Texas border the contested Texas border with Mexico using Zachary Taylor's troops there was a minor skirmish the Mexicans were provoked they fired back and so Polk while telling untruths to his Secretary of State and leaders of Congress poke went to Congress and said I need a major war against Mexico in response to the skirmish what this was actually about was that Pope wanted about nearly a million square miles of Mexican territory to be added to the United States so we could become a continental nation from Atlantic to Pacific wonderful aim but he should have told the truth about it right and also the not so wonderful part of it as the one he wanted most or all this to be slave territory he was a slave holder but the point is that what it did was you know it gave Polk the incentive to go to Congress and do this and that licensed others you know that led to William McKinley the sinking of the Maine right and the Maine was sunk by it would be nice to think that it was feigned but it was actually a boiler accident but you can't go to war against boilers so he went to Spain and so the point is that you know there is a history of this that you know Congress should be a little bit more firm in resisting you you start as you mentioned with the war of 1812 and you write as the war of 1812 receded into history it would have been healthier had Americans viewed it as a cautionary tale right which should have made them sceptile skeptical of future presidents who called them to battle we did not heed that tale well that's it because what was the most unpopular war in our history it was not Vietnam it was the war of 1812 New England almost seceded over it almost half the Congress was against it at the beginning it was a war that was waged not for our immediate defense which is what the founders had told us we had to do but it had two big war aims one was stop the British from bothering our ships the other was conquer Canada anyone been to Canada lately think it's still independent at least last I checked so we didn't even fulfill our or aims and so since we didn't guess who was the first president to lose the war a war was not Richard Nixon it was James Madison but because Madison was able to spin 1812 into a victory because of these wonderful scenes you know don't give up the ship and Andrew Jackson at New Orleans and the star-spangled banner I mean I'm a part of this cover of my book has the star-spangled banner well there it is it's hard to see but you see some flame here that's the Rockets red glare there so I'm helping with this myth too I mean that was a victory but people think that because of all this that 1812 was a glorious moment as it was it was a defeat wildly unpopular and the problem is that when we do not remember moments in our history that should be cautionary tales where things did not go so well we repeat the same mistakes and one of those who thought that 1812 was one of the biggest moments in our history was James Polk I was surprised at the portrait that you render of James Madison our the the the father of our Constitution talked about him as a commander in chief the short version is great founder bad war president everyone kind of go off to dinner now you know wonderful scholar but an extremely weak man and he was pushed to go to war against England and he did not have the strength to resist it and he also liked being a war president he had this little bike horn hat with a feather and he had a gleaming a silver sword at his side there are a lot of presidents who want to go to war because they think it will enhance their image not a very good thing the the I'm going to talk about several of the the people that you cover in this book but the one who is indisputably great is Abraham Lincoln and you write of Lincoln to wage the most momentous war that Americans had ever fought under any chief executive Abraham Lincoln had made himself by far the most powerful president that the people of the union had ever seen convinced that the entire Democratic venture was in danger he grabbed for himself unprecedented authority that made him look like a despot but the crucial fact is that he did so within the democratic process and Congress and courts for the most part affirmed him yeah all true and nor did he show a lust for power this was someone who never did this because he wanted to be a powerful figure and he suspended habeas corpus he declared martial law he did other things that in any other circumstance we would find horrible but he felt that the Union was in danger and if it took those things to do it you know he would do them and wait for the courts to rule one way or the other and the same thing with the Congress and may have been necessary to save the Union Lincoln always said you know when I did martial law when I did habeas corpus I did not intend this to be a precedent for later presidents but that's a problem because they always take it as a president and example of that if you read the memoirs of Richard Nixon he's talking about some of his excesses during the Vietnam War violations of civil liberties and he literally goes on to write Lincoln was a war president I was a war president and so you know when a president does something like this even Lincoln you have to always keep in mind that you may be opening in the way for abuses of power later on he changes and he grows in office yes what are the inflection points of his presidency the main thing is when Lincoln became president you know he was trying to keep the border states where they should be and he was trying not to inflame people who did not have his own feelings about slavery so he talked about the reason for the Civil War almost in legal terms I was warned he defend the Constitution and this is a this is an illegal you know insurrection against the Union have to correct and it wasn't working and even he knew that it wasn't so after about a year and a half it's like the moment and The Wizard of Oz that goes from black and white to color Lincoln starts really saying what's in his heart and he it started you know junks all this stuff but he says this is really a war against the evil of slavery and once he begins to talk about the Civil War in moral terms not only is it a release for him and he becomes a more effective leader but also the war effort by the North takes on the texture of a crusade so actually it was a war measure that turned out to be the right thing to do helped to win the war was there a catalyst in in him bowing to his his moral instincts yeah it was that the legalistic approach was not working that by then he had the luxury of being able to talk about morality but also he realized he once said I'm gonna go down in history not as the leader of a successful army but as the liberator of a race and that was in him in night in 1864 he was told he was going to lose the election unless he canceled the Emancipation Proclamation which he thought of doing because he wanted to win and finally decided to stick with it but Lincoln had the quality that alas HW Bush did not have Lincoln was able to explain unpopular decisions so he said to northern Americans you may worry about the Emancipation maybe it's you think it's extending the war but when I declared it about a hundred thousand African Americans came from the South the north are working hard in our union war effort if I cancelled it they might go back or they might stop working and we would lose that's the quality he had helped us to win the war and just as he's battling the Confederate states he's also battling his own demons you right Lincoln's strength amid his own trial by fire was all the more admirable in light of his tendency toward depression talk about how that came to be Michael yes he suffered deeply from depression and if you have a disposition toward depression what do you think the effect is of making decisions that kill hundreds of thousands of young men and that was with him every day of his presidency during the war and one of the most poignant thing is things is the last day of his life he and Mary go for a carriage ride and he says to her the war is over we now have to be happier and that evening he was assassinated like it is so storied what is the greatest misconception that we have of him that this was not a politician that this was some holy figure and I come from Illinois so I'm this is my homeboy so I'm fact I've told the story before but I got into this line of work because I was taken to the Lincoln Sites in Springfield when I was about seven and shown where Lincoln read to his children and I asked the guide when Lincoln's children misbehave did he spank them and he said no Lincoln didn't believe in discipline let those brats run wild through this house and at that moment Linc Lincoln became my man I began reading about Lincoln and other presidents and literally that that's why I'm doing this so I've got an investment in Lincoln but the reason he was a great president was because he understood the system he understood politics and more than anything else he understood history Harry Truman once said I can't understand how anyone could be president without being interested in history he he once said he said that not every reader will be a leader but every leader must be a reader and in Truman's case and it was also true of Lincoln Truman said you know I had to make all these tough decisions firing MacArthur and using atomic weapons in Japan and so on and the book that influenced him more than any other was a book that he had read as a young man had the horrible title was published I think 1895 was called great men and famous women the premise that women had no hope of being great only famous subtitle title was from Nebuchadnezzar to Sarah Bernhardt so covered this wide swath of human experience but the point is that he felt that that was an indispensable element of his leadership the same thing with Lincoln Lincoln had maybe a year and a half of formal education and even that is a generous estimate so that when he became president and had to be an active commander-in-chief he sent to the Library of Congress four books on military history and read the the I'm gonna skip ahead to Woodrow Wilson for a moment and just as I was surprised at the portrait of James Madison I was a little surprised by the portrait of Woodrow Wilson are there any Wilson descendants in the hall this for my own protection any members of the Wilson anti-defamation league I think we're cool though I have there's this there's one delicious anecdote in the book that I had never read before but after King George met Woodrow Wilson at Buckingham Palace he tells an aide I could not bear him an entirely cold Academical professor an odious man was that me saying that or was that the king I was going to say your portrait of Wilson is not much different than that IKEA origins I do not warm much to Woodrow Wilson number one he was a ranked racist and he was not a man of his time his predecessors Taft and TR and Harding his successor were much more progressive on civil rights and race relations and the role of the right of every American to have equal opportunity and that's something that I'm amazed that Wilson's reputation has survived as long as it has with that being a central feature of his leadership love his progressive reforms during the first term to my mind fairly dreadful war president a couple reasons one is he did very little to explain to Americans why they were at war in Europe I mean you know if you have Woodrow Wilson there are a lot of things you're not getting at least you think you're going to be getting eloquent speeches he spent most of that time holed up in the White House 1916 was reelected on the basis of a lie what was his reelection slogan in 1916 anyone kept us out of war exactly well he knew privately that if he was reelected he was going to be taking us into a war in about three days nonetheless this academic who had written for decades about the importance of honesty and integrity in public life is perfectly happy to use a lie to get reelected and it's even worse because 1916 Wilson was barely reelected by the votes of California and more specifically by the votes of women in California women could vote in California 1916 and they did surveys of the women why were they for Wilson well we love Wilson because his slogan tells us that he will keep us out of war and we love peace so these idealistic women voters gave Woodrow Wilson his second term on the basis of a lie so there's an element of hypocrisy there that find hard to live with and the other thing is that you have to rate a president in terms of results and we lost a hundred sixteen thousand Americans in World War one ferocious casualty rate more than the Civil War but at the end of our involvement World War one after the victory which was a hundred years ago last month Wilson said the reason for this is to make the world safe for democracy and we'll do it with a world organization called the League of Nations and the United States will be the cornerstone at which point he went off to Europe for about six months so just in terms of political malpractice if you're at the end of a war and you want Americans and particularly the Senate to accept the League of Nations and there's justifiable worry about the fact that if we join this world organization maybe we will lose control over our own armed forces you know the League of Nations will make those decisions the president should be there at the front of the debate saying this is why it's a good thing for the country instead Wilson was so self-obsessed a friend who was a Wilson scholar read my book and manuscript and one of his comments in the margin was would you at least mind taking out the words conceded and messianic you say which way I'm going he thought only he could negotiate at Paris that no one else was up to his brilliant skills and so he's in Paris for six months primitive communications instead the debate over the League of Nations is overwhelmed by its enemies beginning with Henry Cabot Lodge so that by the time Wilson got back no American involvement in the League of Nations which leads to the rise of World War two a settlement that leads to the rise of Adolf Hitler and then finally in the late 1930s when FDR was trying desperately to get Americans to rearm so that if we had to get involved in a war against Hitler and japanese we would be prepared yet guess what was his biggest obstacle woodrow wilson people say we're afraid that you're another wilson who's going to drag us into another war were over a hundred thousand americans are gonna die for nothing a war that didn't achieve what wilson promised we're only lucky that roosevelt was able able to overcome the legacy of woodrow wilson and Riaan rearm in the nick of time so no i'm not a huge fan of woodrow wilson and i apologize to any family members who were here talk about his he suffers a stroke a stroke talk about those very dark days in the White House where his wife has to take up the mantle of the presidency of the United States she did and she was a strong woman and we are mainly lucky that she did but one reason that she did was that Wilson who was conscious and basically alert was so unwilling to share power that when his Secretary of State and vice-president dared to convene the cabinet in the absence of the great man who was lying in bed upstairs he fired the Secretary of State couldn't fire his vice president would have done that too but the point is that there was a monumental egoism here that I think flawed it was a war president yeah let me move on to to Franklin Roosevelt who gets a significantly better rating from Michael Beschloss this opposite end of the scale this is a passage from the book the 32nd president deserves the verdict of the New York Times rendered the morning after his death that quote men will thank God on their knees a hundred years from now that Franklin D Roosevelt was in the White House on it is difficult to imagine any other American leader of that generation guiding with such success a resistant nation toward intervention and ultimate victory in this most momentous of all history's Wars as well as taking Americans into a post-war assembly that would strive to and for the piece why was Franklin Roosevelt such an effective commander in chief well one reason was because he had almost seen it all before because Roosevelt was Wilson's assistant secretary of the Navy so he watched Wilson very closely watched his mistakes and in case there were mistakes that FDR young FDR did not notice FDR was in constant touch with his distant cousin his wife's uncle Theodore Roosevelt who was still alive hated Wilson and basically all the time was whispering it into FDR's ear he's doing this wrong he's doing that wrong when you're president Franklin don't do it this way so the result was that when when World War two began in 1939 Roosevelt meets with his cabinet and I quote from this in the book he says I have this strange feeling as if I've been through it all before and he really had so that really helped the other thing that that Roosevelt was always aware of and this is a theme of the book is that in America any president but particularly a president of war has to be a moral leader you know Lincoln was a great civil war president because that was a moral cause and FDR understood the same thing and just in case he didn't remember that guess what book he was reading in 1940 just pure luck it's reading Carl Sandburg's account of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War which made the point that if you're running a war you'd better be a war leader don't know how much Roosevelt was influenced by that but beginning of 1941 Roosevelt gives his State of the Union and what is he talking about he's saying that at the end of the war that is now happening we must fight for the Four Freedoms you know a moral cause what keeps him going this is a president who sees us through the Great Depression the worst economic disaster in our history and the goes headlong into the most momentous war in our history so what what keeps franklin roosevelt going during there was very dark times he was a leader and he was perfectly suited for that kind the time was perfectly suited for that for his kind of activist leadership I often think what if Roosevelt had been present during the 1920s a time when Americans didn't want a strong president they didn't want a strong foreign policy around the world they didn't want a strong government getting involved in the private economy you know Roosevelt would have been so frustrated he probably would have gotten into a fight with Congress that might have been so enormous that it might have led to a constitutional confrontation you know there is something to the idea that the leader has to sort of fit the time and this is someone who was basically a sort of build for crisis and he had two of the greatest crises of course in American history depression and Global War I want to go back to something that you talked about earlier which is the the incarceration of Japanese Americans what one of the two big flaws in his war leadership the other being in my view I think that Roosevelt could have done more to thwart the Holocaust so talk talk about both let's let's start with the incarceration and and I was fascinated cuz I I didn't realize I want to you mentioned Eleanor Roosevelt's objection to this policy and you write Eleanor Roosevelt was shocked by her husband's decision just before Pearl Harbor she had assured Americans by radio that no law-abiding aliens of any nationality would be discriminated against by the government you right then when the president decided to exile japanese-americans she was caught by surprised and she was appalled so you have this great moral figure and he makes this decision why why did he make the decision to intern japanese-americans if if Roosevelt were here I don't agree with this argument but this is the argument he would make he said you know he would say he had to operate assuming the worst case and the worst case even it was only rumor was that there might be agents among japanese-americans and so he would say he took the most extreme position possible I believe that there were people at the time who felt strongly about civil liberties who realized that you know that was a bridge too far that was too much you're giving up too much of what America should be even if there are people saying that this will be more of a defense against possible internal enemies and by the laws of history it was a horrible mistake and it was it was an atrocity for him to have done that a blot on his war leadership and the same I wrote a another book on this called the Conqueror is about 15 years ago about the fact that I felt that Roosevelt could have done more about the Holocaust learned about it much earlier in World War two than was thought to be at the time could have spoken against it and particularly in 1944 could have done things like bombing the rail lines and the camps which Winston Churchill was in favor of so if you're looking at this in terms of moral leadership the most important thing to know is that FDR got the United States involved in World War two and helped to win that's a huge moral statement but these these are things that could have made him a better war leader and moral leader we sit in the analytic Johnson Presidential Library talk about what is your assessment of Lyndon Johnson as a commander-in-chief in the Vietnam War well I think I'd start the wall I think was the Wall Street Journal wrote about my book saying that I write about LBJ with a frustrated sympathy and I think that about does it sympathy for the situation that he was in which is I mean almost unbelievable for any commander-in-chief and you listen to LBJ on the tapes a couple of moments one is spring of 1964 he he says for instance you know what is Vietnam needed to me what it is what does it mean to this country people in this country don't even know where it is you know why are people calling on me to make that kind of commitment and he's talking to the great Richard Russell the senator from Georgia chairman of the Armed Services Committee mr. defense his mentor in the Senate and otherwise and Russell says to LBJ spring of 1964 I think you ought to get out of there if you get involved in this war in Vietnam deeply this is my language it's not verbatim he says it'll take ten years it'll kill 50,000 Americans and we will not win it's gonna be like Korea and I heard that at the time when I was listening to that for the first time and made me wish that I could go back through time and say listen to your mentor he's got it right you know he's really predicting what might happen it was something he felt he could not do so that's one moment another is August of 1964 the time of the Gulf of Tonkin right again you know you look at history it has so much to do sometimes the accident of the calendar that was the month that he was first month he was running for a full month against Barry Goldwater who was charging him with being too soft in foreign policy particularly on Vietnam so he's called by Robert McNamara who says there's a report of an attack on American ship and the Gulf of Tonkin and he feels compelled to respond with an attack on the north and ask Congress for a Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which both he and Richard Nixon use to wage the Vietnam War for the next nine years and then 1965 you know your LBJ and one thing I love about the new version of the museum in this library is it's so oriented toward the difficult decisions that he had to make in the history of the presidency I can't think of a more difficult one than the one about to describe your LBJ it's the beginning of 1965 you've got this unbelievably large majority in the House and the Senate as a result of the landslide of 1964 and you LBJ think that you've got about six months to pass things like Medicare voting rights aid to education you know the whole corn you know all the foundation stones of the Great Society he felt that he had about six months to pass these at the Congress right after that would get rebellious and tired so just at the beginning of these six months in January of 1965 as fate would have it he has to decide do you escalate in Vietnam or do you not from his point of view if you do not escalate in Vietnam you're gonna be torn apart by the Republican Party who's gonna say that you were soft on communism and this weakness which discredit you as a leader voters should also think that it discredits these other crazy programs of yours like Medicare and educate education and voting rights and so on so he was in a an extreme vice the other thing he had was he had a Secretary of Defense who like Woodrow Wilson is not my favorite Robert McNamara who again it's one of the misfortunes in American history I believe that McNamara was his Secretary of Defense at the beginning of 1965 one thing that John Connally recommended to LBJ that he do that LBJ did not take his advice and always regretted it was John Connally you know his great I'd say Larry on and off friend but maybe I mostly on wouldn't you say and confident they loved each other for decades thought but mainly loved each other like a little brother right yeah are almost like two scorpions sometimes not or not that not that either them ever had scorpion light qualities but the thing is that Connelly in 1964 sat LBJ gracious thing that you did keeping on the kennedy staff and cabinet you had to do it after the assassination but after you're reelected with a landslide it's now the Johnson presidency you should fire them all and you should hire people who are loyal unquestionably unquestionably to you LBJ did not do it and he told a number of people I've talked to at the end of his life it's one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made so at the beginning of 1965 it's on these tapes McNamara is telling LBJ LBJ had enormous I believe unwarranted but an enormous respect for McNamara who was saying you must go deeply into Vietnam I was President Kennedy's defense secretary he would have you don't do this you're going to be betraying the Kennedy legacy also with the subtle threat that if he does not escalate guess who's going to be running around quietly telling everyone that LBJ is letting JFK down which is not something you'd want to do a year after the assassination and plus there's a seto treaty and so forth so he's getting to my mind bad advice which is which is wildly ironic because Robert McNamara stood on this this very stage and said that John F Kennedy would have waged the war differently this is why I am the opposite of a Robert McNamara fan he's in the Woodrow Wilson camera yeah I guess on my my dislike ohmmeter I think McNamara and Wilson would be both right up there and the other thing all right I wouldn't have gone on as long as you're opening the door to this anyone read McNamara's book in which he makes that statement you know JFK by that as the Dove who never would have escalated in via problem with mcnamara is that he didn't realize that when he published that book that LBJ had taped so many of their conversations in private and so the result is you listened to mcnamara talking to johnson he's saying you have to escalate and get in one of the reasons why the brilliant lyndon baines johnson taped his conversations was because he was afraid that people with whom he dealt would later on claimed that they gave him different advice from the advice that they gave him so thank god for that and you can see what McNamara's role was here another thing he said when that book came out was we were all to blame for vietnam i was 7 years old i was not to blame when i was brought up by my parents they told me to take personal responsibility for my decisions I think he got different advice perhaps in his household so in any case I'm trying to reconstruct the situation that LBJ was in and so LBJ who is this deeply sensitive human being who had been director of the National Youth administration in 1935 here in Texas that's what he loved he loved you young people right suddenly he has been turned into their executioner and if you asked me why LBJ was so tortured by the experience of being a war leader as Lady Bird described to me I would say one reason is the number of young Americans he was putting in harm's way but even more than that the fact that he knew what had led to this and he knew that from the beginning and we know this from the tapes that it was very likely a war that could never be won so if you ask me why he was suffering and this only speaks well for him he was suffering because there weren't so many boys dying but he was suffering even more because he knew that they were dying in a cause that be very hard to win why does he stay the course there's thunderous pressure for him to get out and there's great speculation about why he stays in why in your view to ask you this I think two reasons I think he began to personalize it as you get to 66 and 67 the people in the Senate who were attacking him it was almost you know I'm just going to show them that we're gonna pull this through and Ne Win but the other thing it was Robert McNamara's doctrine of graduated response which was you begin with a small force if that doesn't work you escalate it you keep on pressure on the North Vietnamese and at some point mathematically you'll reach the point where the north of the were the North Vietnamese cave McNamara did not realize that mathematics don't necessarily explain the Vietnamese people who for centuries had been expert at you know defying conquerors who tried to take over their country but the one lovely story is one that when my book came out it was on the front page of the sunday New York Times largely thanked thanks to two people one is our friend Larry temple who advised me I think we can give Larry another hand for that because it really does remind us of the great side of LBJ as a war leader and the other was all of our friend Tom Johnson who was also a young close aide to LBJ in 1968 and what the story was is we found the final sort of pieces of this it had been known that william westmoreland the commander in Vietnam was thinking of asking for nuclear tactical nuclear weapons which he writes about in his memoirs over later years more and more documents came open including ones in the Johnson library that we talked about a couple years ago but if you look at the documents as is often the case they don't tell the full story because what the documents show is that Westmoreland in 1968 asked for the possibility of considering moving nuclear weapons to South Vietnam and using them if necessary to avert defeat and another document comes back from Washington saying no don't do that fine what we didn't have was the involvement of the president here and there's a reason for that LBJ did not want it known that he was the one turning this down it was an election year he didn't want Republicans on the hill saying LBJ is turning down the advice of his commanders who want to win in Vietnam what's wrong with him so the only person who could supply a first-hand recollection of LBJ's role in this was Tom Johnson who spoke with me and spoke with David Sanger who was writing this piece for the sunday New York Times about this and so it becomes not a story of cables going back and forth in a bureaucracy but the role of what a president did and what LBJ did according to Tom totally in character says I won't quote the profanity that LBJ used in response to this idea of using nuclear weapons in Vietnam but he basically said you know I've been spending for years trying to keep this war from becoming nuclear I wanted to keep Russia and China out you know if we bring in nuclear weapons that's going to become a war with Russia and China who also have nuclear weapons this could wind up killing a hundred million people I feel strongly about what since taken Vietnam but not to the point of risking the lives of hundred million people and incinerating the hemisphere and so the result was that we avoided that fate and so two things number one we oftentimes hear people saying you know why don't we leave leave war to the generals that's why we don't nothing wrong with Westmoreland I mean his job as commander was to win the Vietnam War if possible within the framework of the assignment and the means that he had been given but the job of the President of the United States Lyndon Johnson was yes if possible win the war in Vietnam but also make sure that you don't kill a hundred million people and that is why it is crucial that we always have an America president of wisdom and judgment and experience and a sense of history always and as we want to that end in the in the books epilogue you write the founders hope that all future presidents would be people of suggesting self-restraint honesty experience character and profound respect for democratic ideals as they look forward in our history on balance would they be pleased with the commanders-in-chief who would would would occupy the White House or would they be disappointed I think for the most part they'd be happy with the presence that we have chosen most of them but one thing that they really worried about and I think this is something to keep in mind and you know I'm not in politics I mean I am a registered independent this is not a a current events comment this book I started 10 years ago it's the same thing I'd be saying you know whatever the current situation is but one thing always to be aware of and worry about and really sleep with one eye open is that anyone who worries about presidents meddling with our democratic institutions or violating our civil liberties or abusing power war time as the time that it really happens Woodrow Wilson my sweetheart Woodrow Wilson passed something called the Espionage Act and the Espionage Act was used to go after journalists or anyone else who criticized him still enforced presidents can use it today presidents can declare martial law at war time there is a very big temptation for modern presidents to get involved in Wars because it gives it more power than they otherwise might have I mean if God forbid there's a cyber attack or a Russian missile comes over the North Pole did anyone for instance get on your iPhone a couple weeks ago a little bit more than that a presidential alert announcement it's benign today but someday we may have a president who uses that and modern communications in ways that are not so benign so what it comes to is you know just to close this famously in Philadelphia in 1787 Benjamin Franklin was asked what kind of a system have you given us and he said a republic if you can keep it it's our job always with every president to always keep a vigilant eye on every president to make sure that they do not abuse power in a way that may jeopardize our democracy and that is one of the jobs of all of us as citizens it sure is important for us to vote I come from Chicago were urged to vote more than once on election day so we early talked that early and often we take that very seriously but the other thing I come back to is what Franklin also said about that our critic is our friend right all of us must always criticize always protest presidents and everyone in office because that's the only way we keep our democracy it is a testament to it is a testament to Michaels skill as an author that the book is 750 pages and into my mind it's too short the New York Times calls I want to doubt the graciousness of markup to grow the New York Times calls presidents of war a superb an important book superbly rendered I want to thank our guest Michael Beschloss thanks very much one word from our guest sorry police and if I could say number one thank you to all of you for coming when we had to reschedule the evening all of us really appreciate the fact that you're kind enough to be here since we were not able to do it last last week and the other thing is if I could thank my interlocutor the great mark Updegrove just wonderful thank you so much [Applause]

Channel: TheLBJLibrary

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Keywords: michael beschloss, historian, mark updegrove, lbj library, austin, presidential library, museum, archive, friends of the lbj library

Id: V3fu9UZvGvs

Length: 72min 10sec (4330 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 12 2018