Jon Meacham: "Thomas Jefferson - The Art of Power"

I am going to introduce to you now very briefly and not doing her justice Susan Ford bales who will introduce our speaker today susan is of course a trustee of the Gerald Art for historical legacy trust and the Ford Presidential Foundation she's a board member of the Rosalynn Carter fellowship for mental health Betty Ford's Alpine Gardens foundation the Bosque School in New Mexico she has so many achievements and locations of contributions to our society that I could really go on and on but for now we are going to ask her to be the introducer so would you please come to the stage and help me welcome Susan Ford bales good afternoon Thank You Gayle for pinch-hitting for Tom I hope he feels better before tomorrow that's for sure he's got a big day and so do I so anyway good afternoon I'm always delighted to be back in Grand Rapids but most of all to introduce our special guest at times like this my thoughts always turned to dad what would he think of our speakers body of work and how would dad welcome our guest one of John's prior speeches provides at least one answer in October of 2010 John gave a magnificent lecture lecture at the Danforth Center in st. Louis and in that address he spoke about the horrible divisions and bitterness in our nation's politics and in our public discourse and in many and religious face without sugarcoating any of our current challenges nevertheless John spoke of hope quote it would be wrong to give up hope that things can get better our conversations more civil our culture more tolerant and our politics less hateful the simple acts of reading of contemplation and discovery of writing poems and finding cures and creating symphonies is for the religious and act of piety and of Thanksgiving for this secular such things may be about the wonders of nature or perhaps a rationality or of logic so be it in either case America's story is about moving forward through the darkness searching for light end quote John President Gerald R Ford would have agreed with every syllable of your expressed hope every single one so this year John has once again turned his considerable and unique talents toward the presidency this time one of dads most distinguished predecessors his newest book Thomas Jefferson the art of power is an exceptional biography and john vividly and candidly presents the personal life and leadership skills the good and yes the uncomfortable ones of America's most accomplished politicians and founding fathers so it is with personal pride that I introduce the gifted thinker and most definitely one of America's most outstanding presidential historians I do so knowing that if Dad were with us today he would join me and warmly welcoming our guests to this very special place called Grand Rapids ladies and gentlemen mr. Jon Meacham thank you so much dr. Bailes unless they revote it or something afternoon it's all downhill from here that was wonderfully gracious one of the great pleasures of my journalistic life I'm now a recovering journalist I have my 30-day chip we have support group meetings was getting to was being blessed with the company being able being the company of president mrs. Ford on a number of occasions in the late 1990s an early part of the 2000s he was President Ford was incredibly generous in talking to me at various points some anniversaries we had a conversation on the about the fall of Saigon and I did his remembrance of that incredible moment and he wonderful with with characteristic generosity he wrote me a note which I keep on my desk actually which refers to that as that saddest of days and not many presidents who preside over controversial moments are actually candid about the content of those moments there are not many presidents who would say would openly refer to something as in acknowledging its human and emotional content and Gerald Ford was unquestionably in a very small small class of American presidents who called them as he saw them and saw them write a heck of a lot more often than he didn't and so we honor his service and the legacy that you all are so wonderfully continuing here and I just got to say it boy could we use him right now it's it's really remarkable I've been asked I've been out for three or four weeks now talking about Jefferson and one of the first question to questions you get right off one is people say well a lots been written about Jefferson and I say well hey I was misinformed this isn't the first book it's like Rick in Casablanca and the second question is what can we learn now well what would he do about the fiscal cliff he said well you can't really rip him out of context but I said you know not too long ago you know in an era you know President Johnson for all his manifold outsized characteristics shall we say you know one thing about politicians is they're all like us only more so but not that long ago a single man rose to the presidency because of his capacity to act in a principally principled pragmatic way I mean the the rise of Gerald Ford to the presidency is a remarkably American story of the centrality of the virtues of acknowledging that you might not have a monopoly on truth and to take in what I love about President Ford is he is a master legislator was master at pushing us through the helping us lead us through the Cold War and the most remarkable economic expansion in history remember the building of the American middle-class after 1945 was the single greatest moment of the spread of opportunity and the creation of wealth for the broadest number of people in croute including the spread of Liberty with the civil rights movement really that the world's ever known even after Gutenberg it took a long time that was a burst of creativity and Gerald Ford and his generation were right right the middle of it and pilots of it but sometimes you have to do things that aren't all that necessarily popular compromise often gets you through and maximizes your popularity but what President Ford did when he truly ended the long national nightmare in September of 1974 with the pardon that I think unquestionably cost him his job incentives in 1976 was one of the two great moments of utter political courage in the last quarter century the other I believe was George HW Bush who broke his no new taxes pledge and memorably said it's no longer read my lips it's read my hips as only he could do read my hips and he knew then he said in his diary that day that he had probably lost reelection Gerald Ford with the pardon of his predecessor and the attempt to start a new chapter in American life George HW Bush in an attempt to impose a fiscal discipline that did not last and that we are the consequences of which we are living with right now also did that and lost his job and I wish we had more people now who were willing to make those kind of existential choices and so it is with enormous humility and gratitude that I am here today I always start in talking about Thomas Jefferson by pointing out that there are some things that are perennial in in life and partisanship is one of them so I want you to put yourselves if you can in New York in 1790 Thomas Jefferson has just returned from France as the American minister he has become the first secretary of state he's moved to the capital of the new nation in New York he could not find rooms as he put it on the Broadway so he had to take rooms Maiden Lane and he immediately goes to war with Alexander Hamilton and they are as Jefferson put it daily pitted in the cabinet as two constantly at each other's throats debating fundamental questions and not so fundamental questions again politics doesn't change that much he Jefferson used to be driven crazy because Hamilton had a separate channel to the British diplomats and you know for those of us this may be true in some of your lives that it's the smallest of bureaucratic annoyances that loom largest even at the creation of the country basically people were throwing fits about not being the first to know something in a chain of command so they're debating fundamental things they're debating little things it's driving George Washington crazy so Washington writes them both a letter asked him to knock it off that's a technical historical term I don't wanna get too fancy here at lunch time I was just once a I was in Los Angeles last week and Bill Maher the very moderate political commentator was interviewing me at the LA library and it was fine I like doing Marsh show partly because it's filmed in the prices right studio and so you're there like that big wheel is over there and the Gulf and you know it's kind of fun it's literally called the Bob Barker studio so so we were we were he was late and so I told the group well he's clearly acquired practice so but I started his sentence with the word well historiographical e-bill and he said please don't ever do that again this is even for you that's too dorky which I insist on taking as a compliment but historiographical speaking Washington writes a letter and to Hamilton and to Jefferson and he says this how unfortunate it is that whilst we are beset on all sides with insidious friends and avowed enemies that we are being torn by internal dissensions that are tearing and harrowing our vitals tearing and harrowing our vitals there are a couple of things about that phrase it's very vivid it's tactile it clearly shows that Washington cared deeply about what was going on it's also memorable not a lot of phrases that George Washington ever uttered were memorable so it's a unique thing there here's how well it worked Jefferson wrote back about the illegitimate son of Nevis Alexander Hamilton I will not suffer the slanders of a man whose history from the moment at which history can stoop to notice him is a tissue of machinations against the liberty of the country which has not only received him and given him bread but heaped its honors upon his head so that dr. Phil moment didn't quite work out Hamilton wrote back saying that Jefferson was a fanatic in politics and an atheist in religion and in that era in that moment a anonymous letter writer wrote to Jefferson I think you ought to get a damn kicking you redheaded son of a so I know a lot of people want to think that Karl Rove started all this I know that Karl Rove wants to think Karl Rove started all this it's been with us forever partisanship is a perennial force in the democratic experiment Jefferson shared briefly the founders vision that there would be an amalgamation of parties by the time he had been president for about two or three years he gave that up saying that men had divided themselves into parties by differences of opinion over whether the interests of the many or the interests of nobles should predominate since those questions convulsed Greece and Rome so Jefferson looked all the way back and saw this as a perpetual issue it could be managed it could be ameliorated that's what Gerald Ford did that's what George HW Bush did it's what Dwight Eisenhower did but it could not be done away with because if we don't have conflict that breaks along partisan lines that means we're in an absolutist society and the central work of Thomas Jefferson's life and the ongoing work of everybody in this room is to continue to ensure the survival and success of a Republican sorry lower case our experiment in self-government and we forget sometimes how remarkably new that idea was at the time of the American Founding I want to be clear I don't think the founding should be used as a historical antidepressant I don't think that because nothing can happen now we should look back and just think oh if only we could be like them because you know what we're a lot more like them and they're more a lot more like us than in either side would probably like to think they could what we have is a culture of contention and where greatness lies were political greatness lies is in the banking of the fires of that contention because you're never going to put that fire out because if you put that fire out that means we all agree which in your heart of hearts you know we never will all agree what it means is that we either have a king or an absolutist culture political culture that enforces the sense that we all agree so unless you want a monarchy or a hereditary aristocracy that totally agrees with you we have to live in a partisan world we have to find a way to manage it in a in a 60/40 kind of way and life at least my life and I suspect yours too is kind of about 60/40 sometimes there are moments where there is a hundred percent call President Ford's call in September of 1974 was one of those President Bush's in 1990 was one of those FDR's in 1940-41 was one of those Abraham Lincoln was one of those but those are the moments that are the exception to the rule and we are incredibly lucky when we have the right people in the right place to make those calls in those exceptional hours the greatest politicians the greatest presidents are the ones who can do both who can manage and govern in seemingly ordinary times by making the deals we have to make to keep the Republican experiment going and yet have the capacity when the crisis comes to make the hardest calls of all and the presidents we talked about in the presidents remember and want that one president who clearly his legacy clearly is so alive that he brings you here now in President Ford are those who can do both I here's a game to play in the car this is one of the reasons my children don't like to travel with me can he can you make a list of great American presidents who did not combine these two things a skill of articulating and ideal a vision of where the country should go and yet also had the capacity and the legislative and deal-making skill to bring that ideal closer to reality they're two very different skill sets visionaries are philosophers their preachers their professors due respect they're but they're not necessarily politicians politicians know how to trade horses they know how to trade bridges sometimes to nowhere they know how to they know how to make things work they're two different things a lot of really good legislative mechanics around a lot of good visionaries it's when you get someone who bridges those two human capacities and Thomas Jefferson I believe was the greatest such figure in the early republic at the time of the revolution and in the tumultuous years don't spend as much time with because I think the popular historical memory tends to go from 1776 to George Washington we might stop briefly at Andrew Jackson just for a moment if you I'd appreciate it if you would we tend to see hens have had a rough time recently in presidential stuff all the way and then you get to Lincoln and it doesn't help that Lincoln now looks like Daniel day-lewis that's not helping my guys the best thing that ever happened Abraham Lincoln was having Daniel day-lewis the but Jefferson was there managing those two skills and able to do that and so I want to talk about him as a politician for a minute and I want to think for a second about why is it that he resonates so people don't talk this way about John Adams or George Washington or even Alexander Hamilton I want to point out by the way just for the record that my guy didn't get shot in Jersey so there's that the critical question is what makes a historical figure endure and Jefferson a 19th century biographer once wrote if Jefferson is right then America is right if America is wrong then Jefferson is wrong now think about that for a second that's a hell of a burden to put on one person you don't hear it about Washington you don't hear it about Adams you don't hear about Hamilton or Madison but you do hear about Jefferson and so why my theory is that it's because we either consciously or intuitively understand the Thomas Jefferson represents the best of us and the worst of us he articulated a promise of human liberty in the middle of a revolutionary struggle that we continue to fight to fulfill and he was hopelessly hypocritical and failed miserably to bring that promise into full reality he was in other words a human being I believe that the characters the figures who resonate are not those whom we see bathed in a heroic light but those we see in daylight to continue this series of metaphors I believe that we learn more from people we try to look in the eye than if we look up at them uncritically or down on them self-righteously and what I tried to do in this book is to look Jefferson in the eye and here's what I saw I don't want to freak you out I just thought that I really thought I was staring at him there's a moment every bag of his life when you turn into Jack Nicholson in the shining and you run around with an axe wondering why you're doing this and it's okay to talk to your subjects that's when they talk back that you get in trouble but here's what I saw the best of Thomas Jefferson was that he did not believe the life of the mind and the political life of the nation should be separate he was coming of age at a time when century upon century upon century of the assumed authority of priests and princes was falling apart for millennia people were expected to accept what they were told on faith as revelation or as coming from a divinely ordained King the work of the Scientific Revolution the work of the European and Scottish enlightenment was to flip that round to take and work the Protestant Reformation as well to flip it around in a way that suddenly instead of the focus of existence being on those in authority the focus became on the individual that suddenly we were in charge of our own souls of our own destinies we could choose our own economic path we were not trapped by the circumstances of our birth that was the Enlightenment idea now unquestionably in that era we're talking about white people we're not we're not talking they were not broadening it to all women they were certainly not broadening it to slaves that was all part of the painful bloody but ultimately redemptive process which American history has as American history has unfolded but we can't judge them from our by our standards that's not fair so let's it's remarkable enough what they did in that moment and Jefferson believed that these ideas weren't just for a university they weren't just for William and Mary in Williamsburg where he was they weren't just for the University of Virginia which he created they weren't just for the salons of Paris where he was they weren't just for after the political session ended in Philadelphia or New York or Annapolis or Baltimore or Princeton where various Congress's net or Richmond they were for every day they were for every moment because the American experiment was about giving political manifestation to these ideas that if a people did not think for themselves a king or a dictator would soon step in and think for them history was full of this America was the exception not the rule no Republican survived look at Rome Jefferson said that men should be participators in politics not only on Election Day but every day and that those who did so would rather have their heart plucked from their living body plucked from their living body rather than submit to a Caesar or a Bonaparte it's a vision of a holistic vision of politics and public service you can't outsource the political life of a community or of a country it doesn't work and if in once you outsource it it tends toward an absolutism of the people who pay the most attention to it this was a fundamental Jeffersonian insight so he wanted to make a world where those ideas could go into action something else that was hugely important and very much resonates I think in the life of President Ford Jefferson believed intensely in the idea of sociability that you and I had to if not love each other I don't want to get too weird we had to like each other we had to believe that our fates were linked because if we didn't think that then why would I pay taxes for your kids to go to school why would you pay taxes to take care of my health care why would any of us give money to guarantee the equality of opportunity for someone who needed it if we had already taken advantage of it how do you make a democracy work if we don't see that that a rising tide would lift all of us the great American promise is of human equality but it's also of equality of opportunity and you only are going to support someone else's equality of opportunity if you believe if you like them if you believe in them if you see a common human bond and this isn't some sort of fourth-of-july thing you know this this is deadly pragmatic political business Jefferson totally believed in it in a very specific level he believed in it in Washington every night during the congressional session he had congressman down to dinner every night he would write his daughters beforehand saying I'm about to become an unpunctual correspondent because I'm he was about to go into this zone but he believed that if other lawmakers other stakeholders as we've called him now in the system if they heard his program from him if they came to like him a little bit then they might on the margins support him and politics is decided on the margins it worked in many ways John Quincy Adams said that there were many critics of the Jefferson administration who had been silenced because the doors of the president's house had been so Oh to them there's a wonderful story about a federalist senator from New Hampshire who came down to Washington in 1803 believing that Jefferson was the devil incarnate because you had to believe that as an article of citizenship in New England in those days it's a little like just quickly that the same held true for Andrew Jackson it is said that in the middle of the 19th century a New England sunday-school teacher asked who disobeyed God and conceded to the felt gave in to the Serpent and the school child immediately said Andrew Jackson so they've had some problems we need to work with them on it the senator came down from New Hampshire hating Jefferson spent six years doing this round of dinners and being with Jefferson by the end of it they're exchanging pecan recipes they're handing each other seeds they're talking about how their grandchildren will swing from the limbs of trees built by this great relationship it's it's sociability it was Jefferson making himself not a distant character but a real figure in the life of that political culture and it's not just about the political culture but it's about all of our communities all of what Edmund Burke called the little platoons we have to be engaged if we want all of this to work because otherwise history tells us it's not and that's not a homily it's just a historical reading of what's happened in the long history of the world now let's talk about the worst you can't have it both ways if you're me and believe that Thomas Jefferson who was in office from 1769 until 1809 more or less constantly and who from 1800 to 1840 either was himself president of the United States or a self-described Jeffersonian held the office for 36 of those years an unmatched dynasty in American life Jackson didn't do it Lincoln didn't do it FDR didn't do it Reagan hasn't done it you can't have that and not hold him to account for not managing and marshalling those political skills to do something about the great American original sin of slavery Thomas Jefferson's life was totally made possible by slavery his first memory as a child was of being handed up on a pillow to a slave on horseback to be taken on a family journey one of the last things we know that happened to him is he was in his alcove bed in Monticello I'm sure many of you have seen and he was uncomfortable and he's trying to signal to his white family what he wants done and no one understands except an enslaved Butler who comes over fixes the pillow and he's comfortable again from the beginning to the end of his life slavery made him possible as a young man he tried to reform the institution as a trial lawyer a young law maker and is a member of the Confederation Congress he lost each time publicly and clearly and there are two things I think we all know that politicians don't like and that's losing publicly it clearly in 1784 in his most significant moment he tried to prohibit slavery in the Northwest Territories in his version of the Northwest Ordinance by the way don't you love a life where at noon on a Friday you're talking about the Northwest Ordinance that's why I think you'll play that car game he lost by a single vote in the Confederation Congress he said in a one-in predictably wonderful Jeffersonian way no one ever spoke in better needlepoint pillow phrases than Thomas Jefferson he wrote that heaven itself in that moment was silent but but for the lack of one voice the fate of millions still unborn hung in the balance it's a goosebumped kind of quote visitor but that was 1784 he had another twenty-five thirty years of active political power and he never returned to the issue he just couldn't do it he did not see a politically viable way forward now were there the voices of abolition and emancipation that rose and the swelling chorus that and the in the 1830s 40s 50s no again we cannot judge them totally by the standards of our time but if he tried early in his life to do something about it nothing had changed when it was later in his life and so we can't let him off the hook he's on it and he's staying there he is therefore an amazing hypocrite he's also a human being and I believe we have to take him all in all again if we want only to learn from Saints it's going to be a very short class so Arthur Schlesinger used to say that self-righteousness in retrospect is easy also cheap and I agree with that and I think that the moral utility of history if you will is that we should look back note the sins omissions and failures of the past and try to apply them to our own time that is what is unfolding now we're a moral contingent is making a case for reform of a public policy that is being resisted by a mainstream of Americans for reasons of economic political or cultural convenience I can think of about six right offhand and I bet you can too so we can feel superior to Thomas Jefferson that's fine but I would urge all of us to try to use that experience not simply to make ourselves feel better about ourselves but to see can we do something about we can control in order that 40 years from now posterity will not look back on us and say how exactly was it that you let X happen I can do it in my native region right now 40 years ago in the life of my grandfather who was born the same year as President Ford served in the Pacific as well he was a judge and Tennessee lawyer but he lived through a period where until 1965 African Americans were being asked at polling places to tell white poll workers how many flakes of soap were in a box of detergent or they wouldn't be allowed to vote 40 years ago so I think if anything should check our self-righteousness it's that and you know that and we know between whether it's inequality the the worrisome I think trend toward the failure of more of the future of the equality of opportunity in this country that was so prevalent after World War two I think we all know that that's in trouble I'm not suggesting there's all one government solution or all one private-sector solution Gerald Ford wouldn't say there was all one or all the other it's always a combination of both it's always a little bit of Jefferson a little bit of Hamilton as much as as much as those two would dislike that we have come through the storms when we have reached out and when we have we have become stronger the wider we've opened our arms and again this is not feel-good rhetoric this is a historical reading of moments of crisis and the American experience and how we've gotten through them I think because he had such a good box office we should give Lincoln the last word in 1859 Avram Lincoln was invited to deliver a Jefferson birthday address he couldn't do it but was reflecting on the Declaration of Independence all men are created equal and so reflecting on that phrase he wrote the following letter this is the year before he was elected president he said all honor to Jefferson to the man who amid the concrete pressures of a struggle for national independence of a single people had the coolness forecast and capacity the coolness forecast and capacity elevate phrase to embalm into a merely revolutionary document an abstract truth applicable to all men and at all times that today and in all coming days it should be a stumbling block an obstacle to the very signs of reappearing tyranny and oppression not a bad legacy thank you very much thank you I think we have a minute a couple questions yes sir it was to the gentleman's asking about the Adams Jefferson relationship they represented such different visions for the country they had this is my Fri don't blame this gentleman for my phrase they were the great frenemies of American life sometimes they loved each other sometimes they wanted to slit each other's throats I have some friends like that I'm sure you don't sure you're better people than I am and the relationship through through the years they were revolutionary colleagues they first met in 1775 in Philadelphia Jefferson had just come as a delegate to the Continental Congress he arrived with the reputation of a masterly pen he was known he'd written a document called a summary view of the rights of British America the year before which was an early statement of colonial strength printed by a woman in Williamsburg and it went went wide as we would say now went viral as we would say now so much so that Jefferson heard and war is a badge of pride that Parliament had put out a contract on him he was terribly disappointed later in life to find out that that wasn't true so he 1776 the Declaration comes up and Adams says Jefferson should write it and Jefferson says well why don't you write it Adams was eight years older I think and again all of life is politics this is a subcommittee hearing by the way the Declaration of Independence is the world's most famous subcommittee report that's what this is and so Adams says Massachusetts with a paraphrasing Massachusetts is seen as too much in the forefront they were to write they were the real firebrands about breaking away Virginia was a little more moderate Pennsylvania was a little more moderate and there were a couple of states that were unsure so Adams wanted a Virginian to write it for polite reasons and so Jefferson goes to that house Jacob crafts house he was a bricklayer sits in his little suite writes the document it's edited well actually Jefferson never wanted to admit that but it was there were some good fixes to it and there it went John Adams I think regretted that moment almost more than any other in his life because he didn't think the Declaration was gonna be quite as important as it was and he later just said I can you can almost feel the enamel coming off his teeth said the Declaration was a theatrical show and Jefferson ran off with all the glory of it so you know plus loss challenge I think the they were together in Europe as diplomats Jefferson had a wonderfully flirtatious kind of relationship with Abigail I would have been scared to death to flirt with that woman but um he also once wrote it's just popped back in my head he also once wrote Abigail's daughter Abigail and John's daughter whom he liked very much Nabi Nabi Adams who had asked for some girdles to be sent from Paris to London where the atoms were and and Jefferson wrote that he'd gotten a certain size because their M's as well as flows in human affairs so they were pretty close you know I don't know if the Nixons ever sent you anything but it's hard to imagine President Ford asking President Nixon to send mrs. Ford you know underwear I think it's safe to say maybe I'm wrong maybe they're all closer than I thought so there was a great intimacy and then in the 1790s they fall apart because Jefferson believes that Adams has joined this Hamilton Washington wing that attended more toward monarchy and they were V was vice president for John Adams ran against him for president no one except John McCain has had that many problems with a vice president there you go right it takes a minute at this distance in every she never disappoints and then in 1813 1814 they begin this remarkable epistolary relationship one of the great series of letters you just read them straight through 158 they're brilliant if anybody thinks they're the first draft of those letters I think you're wrong they knew we would be reading them they saw them as Ciceronian and they were they're wonderful and Adams is always trying to refight political battles Jefferson doesn't want to do it he says we I we we should not be like Priam of old putting on the armor of party and then they die on the same day weirdly and I have III wonder I'm torn on this do you think Adams would be upset to know that he got his headline got stepped on or would he be pleased that it was a double billing I don't know that's the third thing for your car ride home one more and I'll let y'all go yes sir yes it is indeed a date which will live in infamy but the Americas for FDR said but but the American people in their righteous might shall win through to absolute victory was the speech he delivered on the 8th as I had mentioned before my grandfather fought in the Pacific as did President Ford and many here I'm sure how many veterans are here yeah well thank you all we we stand on your shoulders we stand on the shoulders of your sacrifice and on those who did not come home and remarkable an extraordinary that the greatest global event it seems to name here's your fourth game sorry I once tried to think of word so what if you were if you want to do this what are the three or four largest events in human history one is the Passion of Jesus of Nazareth unquestionably whatever you believe for whatever tradition you come from that's how we tell time and so the power of the Christian story and the Christian institution is to my mind probably the most important event in terms of all of its implications and the second I think is the Second World War that for the United States began today in 1941 because at the end of that we suddenly had the power to end all of human life because of the splitting of the atom and so many many people in this room have lived through one of the most remarkable remarkable eras ever and it's it's an enormous privilege and burden all at once so I should say now I leave you with this so we one time I have to memory I'll end where I began with with President Ford I have two members two central memories of President Ford one is the first time I was ever taken into a voting booth was in 1976 with my father as he voted for Gerald R for Michigan in Tennessee and by total happenstance obviously I was in Vail with your parents for one of these historical interviews on the day in 1998 when my grandfather died I actually spent the morning with your parents went back to the hotel found out that my grandfather who sort of raised me had died and went back as he would have wanted I went back and finished the interview and I said it's been interesting morning since I saw you sir and President Ford told the story I'm sure he told a thousand times basically saying that if Harry Truman had not made the decision he made he would not be sitting there and my grandfather was in the same kind of position and I probably wouldn't be here either and so it's a reminder there was a man who had had the ultimate responsibility at the height of the Cold War controlling those elements that had been created during the Second World War but whose life had been spared by one of his predecessors courageous decisions and so all of this this is what's so wonderful about history is it's all right here it's contingent it's improvisational it's ennobling it's scary but it's what we have thank you all very much

Channel: Hauenstein Center

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Rating: 4.6778522 out of 5

Keywords: Thomas Jefferson, Jon Meacham, The Art of Power, Hauenstein Center, Grand Valley State University

Id: l5C4ZJeKmso

Length: 49min 6sec (2946 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 11 2012