One On One; Michael Beschloss

The the the the. Oh. Michael Beschloss is an award winning historian of the presidency the author of seven books including his most recent best selling work the Conquerors Roosevelt Truman and the destruction of Hitler's Germany. Newsweek is called Michael Beschloss the nation's leading presidential historian. He's a regular commentator on PBS as The News Hour With Jim Lehrer the contributor also to ABC television. We're talking to him in Chicago on the occasion of

his being named a laureate of the legal academy of Illinois. Michael congratulations on the I.Q. very much Jack. It's wonderful to sit down and finally have a chance to talk to you know Same here well. Your interest in the presidency began early in life. What would your first memories of the office. Well really as a small kid in a lot of it was growing up here in Illinois because in the early 1960s that was a time when presidents were very important John Kennedy even knew a child seem like the one person keeping the United States from being conquered by the Soviets and then later on I can remember when I was about nine and looking at the Chicago Tribune every morning and it seemed as if there was the same photograph on the front of the paper every morning which was Lyndon Johnson signing a piece of paper in a lot of white guys in suits behind him. And you know I thought it was the same picture and of course he was assigning a different bill every morning just about. And that was the time of the Great Society. The Voting Rights Act and so on. So if you were a child growing up at that time you think that presidents were pretty important people.

Did you have an early interest in history in general. Very much so and a lot of that again you know has to do with growing up around here I went to Springfield or New Salem when I was seven years old and saw the Lincoln side sound. My main memory is that I was taken to Lincoln's home at Eighth and Jackson streets in Springfield and the guy there showed me the chair that Lincoln sat in. And at the time I had a much more pressing question for the God I said what. What did Lincoln's what did Lincoln do to his children when they were naughty did he spank them and the guide said no Lincoln didn't believe in discipline just let the kids run wild with through the House and at that moment Lincoln was the man for me. I felt that Lincoln was someone I could understand. And that experience led me to read a lot of books about Lincoln child's books. And at that point read more generally about American history about American presidents and later on I found that someone could actually make a living writing these things. Who are your favorite historians. Probably at that point would have been people who wrote children's books but the first grown up book I read was a book by Arthur

Schlesinger on John Kennedy a thousand days and that was I was about 10 years old I may have been his youngest reader at the time and I'm afraid I didn't learn too much about arms control but what struck me was largely the style. I mean that's a book that begins it all began in the cold and then he goes to tell the story of Kennedy's presidency and about a thousand pages later he ends the book by saying it all ended as it began in the cold and sometimes writing can grab even a young reader and in this case gave me a sense of this is something that I'd like to do. I have I've heard about a story about you writing to President Johnson right after the assassination of JFK asking that his portrait be placed on Mt. Rushmore. That's one as they say in Texas that has the advantage of being true. I was living down in flossed Nora bought of Cook County near Park Forest and it was very much affected as a lot of kids and everyone was by John Kennedy's assassination I was nearly eight and so wrote a letter to President Johnson suggesting I

think what it says is that LBJ hire a large carving firm to carve Kennedy's had in Mount Rushmore you know a couple weeks later I got a letter from Johnson's secretary Juanita was Robert saying that the president had asked her to thank me for writing and I remember taking her letter down to the kids of this great skating rink and they all said must be forward she you know President Secretary would bother writing to an eight year old. And finally Years later I went to the LBJ Library in Texas my first trip and I said you know at that age I was exactly in the habit of keeping copies of my outgoing letters. But is there any chance you know they might have this child's letter that I had sent and they were so well organized they were able to pull it out about five minutes and there was one. It's about your academic training who are your main influences you've mentioned Slesinger a little bit and slicing her a bit earlier. Well one thing that was very helpful I went to some excellent public schools in flawless more until the eighth grade and that I have the opportunity then to go to a

boarding school in Massachusetts called Andover and the headmaster there was a guy named Ted Sizer who is a very big education therapist and at that point I wanted to go to Harvard which was sort of a fad in those days. And he said no if you go to Harvard you probably sit in the back of a big lecture hall and never meet a full professor because the place is too big. So he had me sent to Williams College in Massachusetts and told me who to study with and one of the people he named I did get to study with which was James MacGregor Burns the great political scientist who took me on almost as an apprentice. A lot of the Donald Trump sense but in the sense of you know sort of teaching me how to write and research and to a very great extent made my career possible. I'm going to jump forward a little bit your latest work is on the last days of Abraham Lincoln and growing up in Illinois where Lincoln is almost a state religion and an iconic figure to say the very least. How how did you approach the work as. By way of

framing the issues and looking at Lincoln is at this time in life the civil war is winding down. The colossal task of binding up the nation's wounds and knitting it back together lies ahead. Well you know there are some moments in history that I think everyone is haunted by even non Illinois ends and Lincoln's assassination is perhaps about as high as they get John Kennedy's assassination is another and haunted not only by the loss and the tragedy but maybe the sense that if that President Kennedy and of course you know much more so Abraham Lincoln had lived that the whole trajectory of American history might have been different. And so you sort of think what if it had been the case that Abraham Lincoln rather than Andrew Johnson was the one to preside over reconstruction what would that have done about the race issue in this country the reconciliation between North and South. I think our history would have been very different so you know it's something where there is a big historical impact. And also it's an absolutely haunting and fascinating story.

There's only so much we can do toward speculation toward that but how might reconstruction have been different. Well I think you can begin by saying that Lincoln had enormous political skills that Andrew Johnson did not have. That this is someone who has been able to deal with Congress and also felt that there was a need to finish the work of the Civil War which was not simply about saving the Union. So I think if you begin to look at it that way I think it could have been very possible that we would be living in a different country today. The new Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is coming along and Springfield is taking shape under the direction of Richard Norton Smith. This is an institution I think many people will feel is overdue. Yeah and I should say Richard Norton Smith is a great friend of mine and just an absolutely perfect choice. And you're absolutely right because Illinois has had this wonderful Lincoln collection and it was certainly well housed in the State Library. But oftentimes you know if it's not combined with a museum you know there are people who will just not come to see it. Other presidential libraries from Herbert Hoover all

through the president they all have these great museums that pull people in largely to see the museum and then they begin to get interested in the person himself or they began in some cases to do research and I'm certain that that will have the same effect here. Why does Lincoln remain such not. Legendary again almost iconic figure in our history. Well one is that in terms of difficulty probably did the most difficult thing that any president had to do which is to keep the Union together. But more than that I think one reason why he's really lodged almost into arseholes is that one of the most basic American ideas is that anyone cannot only become president but it doesn't matter if you want to you know a wonderful colleges I happen to have the privilege of doing or came from an elaborate family or wealth Lincoln had none of those things. You can literally out of the wilderness had a very tough father lost his mother at an early age lost his sister had only about a year and a half of anything that we would call an education but read his

eyes out. And I had you know a wonderful sense of character and the result of this was that not only was he a great president a great military leader but a philosopher a writer a poet an ethicist in many ways. And here in Illinois you know we have an example of someone who you know really I think embodies that oldest American idea. Your first book Kennedy and Roosevelt the uneasy alliance started as your senior thesis at Williams College and that's one of history's most interesting relationships. The two guys could have been much more different. It is in fact the first time I met Jimmy Carter he had read my book that I had written where as a senior thesis and when I was about 22 and he said you know Kennedy and Roosevelt they really hated each other didn't they and I said it was a lot of that. And here's a case where John Kennedy's father Joseph Kennedy had been an ambassador who worked for Franklin Roosevelt and couldn't have been more different you know Roosevelt someone of the great sense of public purpose and vision. And Kennedy who occasionally rose to the

occasion but was mainly a business man and sometimes working across purposes with FDR. That's right. And Roosevelt felt that by appointing someone like Kennedy as ambassador to London just before World War 2 that it would not be dangerous to have someone who was an isolationist and very much against what he stood for. At 22 that's a daunting daunting subject to tackle. Well and I'm afraid the book reads that way too like the book of a 22 year old. But I was very lucky to be able to get started that are really coming of age as you did in the Cold War. You know a number of your books have focused on on that period in our history. Eisenhower Khrushchev and the U-2 affair of the May Day book. Eisenhower wanted very much to work things out as best he could with Khrushchev to sort of make that the crowning achievement of his of his presidency his second term. And yet he ordered 1 more ill fated U-2 mission before the cemetery.

It's an example of how history can turn on a dime because if Dwight Eisenhower hadn't hadn't sat one U-2 spy plane into Russia on May Day 1968 there's a very good chance certainly not the Cold War would have ended but you could have had some kind of understanding between east and west so that the crises of the 1960's the Cuban missile crisis which almost cost all of us our lives might not have happened. And it's a big reminder you know we oftentimes look back at history and things that think that things were inevitable. And when you think about events like this you realize how fluke sometimes history can be no doubt. And of course this it's this that's the scene Kennedy comes on the scene. The Bay of Pigs operation has taken on a life of its own and for one reason or another he let it proceed. What kind of a relationship did Kennedy eventually come to achieve with Khrushchev two men from vastly different backgrounds very different but two men who shared one thing which proved to be important which was they

understood how much in history there is accident that can cause catastrophe. They didn't understand each other one of these misunderstandings led to Nikita Khrushchev sticking missiles in Cuba thinking that Kennedy would not mind Kennedy responded by taking the human race to the brink of near third world war that could have a nuclear war. After that experience after they solved it both Kennedy and Khrushchev said quite rightly the lesson we have to take away from this is that a misunderstanding like this next time it may spiral out of control. We can't let this happen again in taking charge. Your trilogy on Lyndon Johnson. You had a you had something that not very many historians have ever had access to a wonderful library of tapes that in which Johnson taped almost all of his telephone calls. And you get a much different kind of portrait of the man than the somewhat the somewhat wooden appearance of Johnson on

television. Well it lets you get into the background you know what for instance if we had had tapes of Abraham Lincoln on the day that he made decisions about Fort Sumpter or Franklin Roosevelt on the day of pro Harbor we amazingly have those with jobs and you know for an historian to have a cache like this suddenly opened. You know it's a treasure trove for us of the kind that usually we don't find because papers are usually open slowly. And the other thing is that you know you listen to Johnson in private you not only now know what he said but you hear the voice and the emotion and the noises in the background they really do take you into the historical moment. One of the Very well I guess the very first recording is taken from the radio transcripts or radio transmissions off of Air Force One getting ready to go back on the terrible flight from Dallas to Washington. Take us inside that for a moment. Well Johnson was on Air Force One had just been sworn in was flying back to Washington. And I was the first one I think to hear this tape in 35 years and they put it on the machine.

We didn't know what we'd be hearing and you hear aircraft engines screaming and people crying in the background. And Johnson calls Rose Kennedy John Kennedy's mother and one of these you know details that really you know take you into that moment. He's asked for Mrs. Kennedy and the operator is about to say to Mrs. Kennedy President Johnson is for you on the line. The operator knows that's just going to devastate her so the operator catches himself and says we have Mr. Johnson for you on the line. And then Johnson says Mrs. Kennedy we're grieving with you and Ladybird his wife says. Country was lucky to have her son as long as it did at that point Rose Kennedy was just overcome and has to get off understandably but for all of us who weren't on that plane and for those people who weren't alive in 1963 it gives you an unparalleled idea of what it must have been to be a new president just after John Kennedy's death. And this was a president who knew from the very beginning. I think most of contemporary history historians have thought that Johnson was wedded to the idea of

finishing the Vietnam conflict. But through your going back through the tapes in the transcripts a very different picture emerges of someone who wasn't completely sold on the things you know. You know Johnson is saying to his foreign policy ads what do I care about Vietnam. Most American people don't know where the place is. You know why is it necessary to do this. And he really agonizes as the time goes on and he's committing more and more troops to Vietnam and knowing in the end it's going to be a losing proposition. That's the downside of the downside as in 1965 I found that at the same time as he was beginning to send Americans in big numbers to Vietnam and saying go you know now the coonskin to the wall let's have a victory in private he is saying such things as I can't think of anything worse than losing this war. And I don't see any way that we can win and that I think leads to a very harsh judgment about Lyndon Johnson. This is someone who as he thought of himself would have liked to have been

remembered as a figure like FDR like or Lincolnesque in fact. Hope to expected too especially with what he did for civil rights and against poverty and for education but as I found as early as the summer of 1965 privately he was so convinced of the Vietnam War was a loser that for instance and I wrote about this I was able to get into Ladybird Johnson's diary. He tells her in the spring of night summer of 1965 on Vietnam I feel as if I'm in a plane that's crashing and I do not have a parachute. This is the same president as you said who who won some crucial victories like the Voting Rights Voting Rights Act the Civil Rights Act knowing what you know now about Lyndon Johnson from all you gathered from the conversations and the historical record and talking to people about him. If you had a chance to tell him give him some advice or advice about Vietnam what would you tell him. I would say trust your instincts don't be so impressed by a lot of Kennedy's foreign

policy people whom you inherited saying President Kennedy wanted to do it wanted to get into this war you should to instead trust your political instincts his political instincts were great because on the same tapes he's saying in private the Senate is not going to support this war for very long if we're not winning the capice is will go up in flames. The American people will turn against it. He was saying this in 1965 he knew exactly what was going to happen yet he didn't have someone say listen to what you're saying there's no reason for you to fight a war if what you're predicting is going to happen well. With with Johnson and the Civil Rights Act how was he able to call upon all of his years of savvy being the Senate majority leader and all to push that through at a time when the nation might not have been ready for it was it was a partly the Kennedy legacy since it was begun under Kennedy or how he began the Civil Rights Bill in 64 had been Kennedy's bill so he said pass this is a memorial to John Kennedy which happened by 65

Voting Rights which was really more important because it wasn't just integrating restaurants but to get it getting more African-Americans to vote that he felt was more important and that he had to use some other things which were tools that he had learned when he was a majority leader. One story is a terrible story but you know he used some ugly means for good ends. There was once a case I think this is actually during the civil rights bill passage where there was a white southern senator who was denouncing the Bill Johnson as the leader of the Senate had known that the man had a woman friend who was Black got the woman to call the senator off the floor and tell him to stop it which he did. While other examples of I wouldn't call that arm twisting necessarily but using the culture of the of Capitol Hill to end his his personal skills to advance an agenda. Best of all I remember as Everett Dirksen who of course was a senator from Illinois when I was a child Republican leader minority leader who I remember watching on television my brother and I

thought he sounded like Mr. Ed and you listen to the tapes he sounds exactly like Mr. Ed and a very great man. And Johnson called him up and essentially said as of I know you might have some doubts about the civil rights bill especially in southern Illinois I might cause you some problems people are worried about civil rights. But if you are for it it'll pass. And that way 100 years from now the schoolchildren of America will know only two names Abraham Lincoln and Everett Dirksen. And as the story is told Dirksen liked what he heard and that wasn't the only reason the support of the bill but he did it was crucial to its passage. In talking with people from Dirksen Sarah for example like Bob Michael the former former minority House leader from Pekin in Peoria Illinois he remembers going into Dirksen office after the end of business and having a drink with the guys and a both parties. And there was a sort of collegiality on Capitol Hill there that most people now say is so sadly missing.

What is that compare and contrast the two atmospheres from today's Capitol Hill and then Bob Michel may have been the last leader of Congress who can model that old culture he's a very fine man who can talk eloquently about this. That was a time where if you were a member of Congress and especially a leader you weren't expected to be raising money all the time and being on TV and running back to your state or you know campaigning for other candidates when you didn't have to do all those things you got to know the people especially across the aisle very well so that if you were a Lyndon Johnson a Democrat calling on Everett Dirksen a Republican to say let's get together for civil rights. There was a 20 or 30 year history of friendship. Nowadays a lot of these people don't know one another. And the stakes are so high in the and the fund raising can be such an onerous and practically year round business. Paul Simon the late Paul Simon talked about that as being one of the one of the things that really helped him make up his mind not to run again. Is there a better way to do this. Sure there is. One of them is to have much more draconian campaign financing laws so that a

presidential candidate for instance does not have to raise something like a hundred million dollars even before new years of the year that he or she is going to run. And I think another thing is at least on the presidential level is to have a much longer nominating process the one in 2004 took about three weeks to the time that John Kennedy Kerry had locked it up. And this is no comment about John Kerry pro or con. But I think would have been a better system if you had had six months so that candidates could come in and out and the voters would have more of a chance to know them. And when that happens I think the candidates are better too because they've been much through more through fire. But a lot of your party leaders will say we'd like to get this over quickly as possible so we can have more in our war chest to spend in the general election. I rest my case. But we talked to turn to the to the to the issue of presidential character. Could it be as Americans were just so obsessed with the question of character that when it comes to the presidency not every country in the world

with a democratic system or a parliamentary system has the sort of obsession. Sure. And the reason for that is that unlike them we require that one human being be both our chief of state and chief of government. If you've got a prime minister and a king or a queen the king or queen can be the one that said that embodies character and as a model for younger people. And the prime minister is free sometimes to make dirty polarising deals. Unfortunately we would require one person to do both of those things so that if you're a president and people have doubts about your character you're going to have less power to do the kind of things in Congress and elsewhere that you should. Could it be also though that characters easier to understand than going into all of the hundreds of policy papers and campaign party planks that you need to really seriously analyze their stands on the issues. I think that's part of it but if you look at elections I think rarely do people vote for someone who really does not share their views just because they hadn't done the Hume

homework at least on the major issues. I think a lot of it is this. You're looking for a president not only to you know follow your views on certain important issues but on the things that you're not aware of. You want someone who you feel comfortable with that you know this is someone who basically thinks like me has my values so that if it's an issue that I don't understand I can have confidence that he'll do roughly the right thing and that's what I think presidential character really is. So in the end presidential character does really matter. I think it does and that's one reason why people for instance when they're watching debates you know part of it is you know let's find out where the guy stands on taxes or on foreign policy. But part of it is a comfort factor so that you can know when he's making decisions that you don't hear about or that you don't know that much about their decisions that you'd feel comfortable with. I'd like to shift to the craft of writing and researching what's a typical day like for you when you're when you're working on a book like like I try

to write early in the morning and. Particularly before noon and do almost nothing else you do not talk on the telephone or you know do almost anything else if I can help it because at least that. That way I feel that if I am distracted later in the day I have earned my keep then you know I'm just not just a counterfeit person who has not gotten some work in under his belt that day. How much are you finished with Lincoln you know it's going to take a number of years and probably won't publish until around the time of the bicentennial of Lincoln 2009. I want to write another shorter book before then. Have there been any new revelations or insights that have come to terms of number of books like incomes and I think third after Jesus and Napoleon and he may be neck and neck with Napoleon the way things are going up not revelations in terms of finding out that the CIA was behind the plot or something like that but every time you study Lincoln and write about Lincoln believe it or not even this long afterwards there are sources that people have not seen before.

So I'm working very hard to find and use those. What is the most what's the most fascinating as we close what's the most fascinating and rewarding part of your job. I think probably trying to get under the surface and see things in new ways. And that's why writing about a president 30 years later really is satisfying because usually these presidents look like a very different people years later than they did to the people of the time. Michael Beschloss thank you very much. Thank you Jack. Pleasure. Congratulations again to the Lincoln award. Thank you. A VHS copy of today's program is available by setting a check or money order for 1995 to ws all you TV. Please include the date of broadcast a.

What did Lincoln do to his children when they were naughty did he spank them. The God said no like him didn't believe in discipline just let the kids run the walls of the through the House and at that moment like it was the man for me. I felt like I'm someone I could understand. Join us in the next one on one conversation with presidential historian Michael Beschloss only here on WSI you public television.