like us on facebook and follow us on twitter my name is jim hard anderson i'm the senior minister at westminster presbyterian church located on nicollet mall and beautiful downtown minneapolis and moderator of the forum it's my pleasure to introduce today's guest speakers michael duffy and nancy gibbs are co authors of the book the president's club inside the world's most exclusive fraternity michael duffy is an executive editor at time he joined the magazine  five as a pentagon correspondent and since then has covered congress white house politics and national affairs for the fastpass fifteen years he has appeared regularly on the p b s show washington week nan gibbs is the deputy managing editor of time she's the author of more than one hundred fifty time cover stories and has been named by the chicago tribune as one of the best ten best magazine writers in the country our speakers have collaborated on two books the two thousand and seven book seller bestseller the the preacher and the presidents billy graham in the white house and their new book and the topic of today's presentation the president's club inside the world's most exclusive paternity so much for bringing us to this beautiful sanctuary and to all of you to make this forum possible it's a particular pleasure for us to be here now when we're all collectively in the midst of our most important responsibility as citizens which is picking our next president michel and i've been traveling around the country for the last few months inviting people to think differently about the president and the presidency because it seems as though there is there are a few things we do that are more important but especially now where our ability to judge these candidates their principles their priorities their temperament what resources and responsibilities they bring to this role has never been more important when michael and i began the research for this book which was more than five years ago we were looking for a way to look at this office differently these are the most public individuals on the planet what happens when you look at them in private they are symbols the leader of the free world what happens when you look at them as human beings whose insecurities and obsessions and quirks and blind spots may have as much to do with how our history unfolds as anything that they tell us about in the course of campaigns they are the ultimate most powerful individuals what happens when you look at them in a group well there's really no group that you can consider other than a group of presidents and that's what we undertook to do and what surprised us must was that even though we have been writing about president one of the time for the last twenty five years they suddenly looked very different to us why was it we wondered that presidents of different parties seem to get along better than presidents of the same party presidents of different generations seem to have more to talk about then the fellow greatest generation president the fellow baby boomer president and how is it that the way they talk to one another in private sounds so different than the conversation that we hear o political leaders having particularly in the heat of the campaign where we are now in public and i understand that we went back to the beginning what we consider sort of the creation story of the presidents cup so i would take you back to nine five when harry truman has suddenly found himself president and facing as the war in europe came to an end perhaps the greatest potential humanitarian catastrophe of the century you had as many as  hundred million people in europe at risk of starvation because of the destruction that the warhead left and that problem how do you get food from countries that still had it like argentina to the countries that needed it like belgium where people were cutting the poisoned bowls out of tulips and boiling them for soup how being sold that problem his solution was to do something that was a hor to the loyalists of the roosevelt white house which was to secretly mail a letter to herbert hoover and ask him to come help now these are two presidents who had nothing in common personally or politically hoover of course had left office twelve years earlier the most hated man in america and any time anyone had suggested to roosevelt you know maybe hoover who knows something about humanitarian crises could be helpful roosevelt would say i am not jesus christ  not raising her to her from the dead harry truman didn't feel that way and he reached out to hoover hoover came to see him and the two men understood that whatever their differences the common purpose they shoot at that moment was far more important the next thing you knew truman had given hoover a plane a staff sent him around the world fifty five thousand miles twenty seven countries he met with seven kings and twenty prime ministers on the pope and over the course of the next two years those two men working together managed to stave off what could have been a complete humanitarian catastrophe and so it was this unlikely partnership showed what can happen when whatever differences money exist between two men who understand what the pressures of that office mean and whose desire to help one another i think greatly transcends their personal and political differences that was the starting point and so in one thousand fifty three as dwight eisenhower is to be inaugurated hoover goes over to greet truman on the platform at the inauguration he says you know i think we should form a former president club and truman says great you'll be the president i'll be the secretary and so they agree and then they were sort of joking and when michael and i first started it about the club we were that was our shorthand to talk about about you know the collection of presidents and what do they have to do with each other except the more we learned to the more we read the more we interviewed the senior staff and then ultimately interviewed the president former president themselves the more we understood that this is actually far more real than we thought and it may not be in the constitution and may not be in any political science treatise but by one nine hundred fifty seven by an act of congress the president's club had office space and mailing rights and a pension when lyndon johnson came to office he had a secret service protection the use of white house planes and helicopters when richard nixon came into office he provided a clubhouse there unmarked townhouse on lafayette square in washington across from the white house and only four men are eligible to check in to stay there and they have to call the white house to make reservations is a townhouse set aside only for the use of former presidents when they are in town i don't think any reporters have ever been inside until now but you walk in the door and the first thing you see is the rug with the presidential seal on it over the course of the years the club became more and more real and it is in the language that they use to talk to one another because it increasingly became clear that in the modern age in the age of global travel and communications presidents and former presidents are something like global celebrities and the ability that they have to help one another solve problems that really only a former president has the knowledge the stature and often the motivation to help with became clear so how did that work it worked in an extraordinary way when john f kennedy became president the youngest president in the century taking office from the oldest and what eisenhower had no particular respect or fondness for john f kennedy he referred to him during that campaign as a little boy blue he thought he was a rich playboy whose daddy woods by him in the office and yet just a few months into kennedy's administration in the spring of  sixty one when the bay of pigs invasion went so spectacularly wrong kennedy calls up eisenhower asks him can you come meet with me at camp david i need to talk to you and the two men walked the pa camp david and kennedy went through how that had gone so bad and what was he to do now and i somehow are on the one hand it was a quite a stern talking to about the mistakes kennedy had made and yet when the two men face the cameras in public later that day all eisenhower would say was i think it's important that we all support the president at this time and when a week later group of republican congressman came to see eisenhower at his farm in gettysburg and said great the honeymoon is over you know now is our chance to to put kennedy in his place eisenhower said i don't want any witch hunting i don't want you raking over the ashes we need to move forward it is very important that we support our president this is again not because eisenhower had any great fondness for kennedy's foreign policy or domestic policy or for that matter for lyndon johnson's but every time the president would call and johnson called eisenhower all the time eisenhower would quietly come to washington visit at the white house in one particularly important meeting about vietnam eisenhower ran the meeting and johnson turned to him at one point said you know you're the best chief of staff i've got again and again and again we saw that as the new president took office as a new president came to understand the weight of that office how difficult it was what kennedy said i could camp david he said you know no one understands how tough this job is until they've been in it for a few months and eisenhower said forgive me mr president i tried to tell you that a few months ago once they're learning curve takes hold they realize that there are very few people they can talk to who understand what it is like to carry that weight on their shoulders and there is very very few people they can talk to about how to manage it and the thing that i think has made the club such an important resource for them is that the instinct of the men who have been in the office is to believe that for america to be successful the president has to be six that for american peace and prosperity to be maintained our institutions of government have to be strong and so it is though the club acts as a kind of shadow secret service protecting the presidency itself protecting its prestige protecting its reputation protecting the president's ability to function particularly in foreign policy but also at home now lest i leave the impression that this is all sweetness and light like any fraternity there have been feuds and rivalries and some extraordinary acts of betrayal when trea and i think perhaps my favorite of the i think perhaps the most fascinating presidential pairings of great personalities that war over the highest possible stakes would be richard nixon and lyndon johnson and extraordinary because in their case they played one of the great political chess matches of all time great because it unfolded across five years two elections three continents the stakes could not have been higher and both sides cheated you'll remember what johnson wanted most in leaving office in one nine hundred sixty eight was to leave as a peace maker and bring this war that had so haunted his presidency to an end and richard nixon very successfully and the great thing is you can then you can listen to the their phone calls on the internet for those of you who are curious historians and you can hear how nixon would call johnson during that summer of one nine hundred sixty eight and assure him that  whatever point the war came to an end he nixon if he were elected would make sure that johnson receive the full measure of credit for resolving that war with honor and that of course johnson wanted to believe and so he did he lifted barely a finger to help his vice president hubert humphrey right up until the point with the election just days away johnson discovered that nixon's people were secretly undermining the peace talks and trying to make sure that there was not in fact a breakthrough before election day that would have tipped a very close race to humphrey now what does a president do it's one nine hundred sixty eight bobby kennedy had been assassinated martin luther king was assassinated in the streets of chicago turned into a war zone you're the president and through some very delicate electronic interception it's you have discovered that the leading candidate of the opposing party is committing what you were privately calling treason do you confront him publicly privately and ultimately both johnson and humphrey decided that the country couldn't stand what that would have meant and so the peace talks fall apart and nixon narrowly pulls out his victory and for the next four years richard nixon has no higher priority than keeping lyndon johnson happy because he knows what johnson knows hence the clubhouse and so what was particularly extraordinary is that four years later as nixon is now running for reelection as the watergate scandal is just starting to gather steam and then his nixon wins his landslide victory johnson is watching all of this from his ranch in texas and one day that january a call comes in from the white house in which johnson told you know this watergate investigation can you tell your friends in the senate that they need to back off or else we will reveal that you were legally wiretapping us back in  and how is it that we didn't know any of this at the time we didn't know any of this at the time because that christmas harry truman had died and two days after nixon was inaugurated in january lyndon johnson died and now there was no club and richard nixon was all alone and at that i turned the story over two  you can see why i brought her i wouldn't take this room alone anyway thank you for having us my story picks up in the mid seventies did the presidents who were mostly dead i did the ones who are alive i have more people to answer to now as a consequence if we saw in the first half of our story that presidents from different parties seem to get along better than president from the same party the second half of our story gives us some insight into why one of my favorite chapters in the book is called three men in a funeral and it begins in one thousand eight hundred one when ronald reagan sends richard nixon  all load up on a seven zero seven one night in october one thousand nine hundred one they all arrive at andrews for this flight within one minute of each other by prearrangement there's some confusion in ender's about which president gets out of his jet star first so they  wait they all eventually get out and then they aren't sure which one of the president's three of them is to get on the helicopter to ride to the white house first and they're standing in front of the helicopter trying to decide it's nixon who realizes carter should go first because carter is the most recent president which means he has  sort of rank they go down to see nixon i'm sorry they go down to see reagan vice presidents bush is bush is there they're simply now five men upstairs at the white house who or have dinner will be president kind of unusual certainly  they get back on to the helicopters fly back to andrews at this point they're calling each other mr president on the helicopter was president he was present present it's getting a little silly so finally gerald ford you know practical for midwest as wanted for this trip we just make it dick gerry and jimmy they all fly to cairo it's kind of an awkward trip having them town in the old seven or seven very noisy very crowded it was a weird trip you know there were half  of the alexander haig was on the flight can we kissinger was on the flight separately to tain or slots half the senate and it's a little awkward but on the way back something really interesting happened something that shapes the club for the next thirty five forty years richard nixon peels off of course to do a secret mission to saudi arabia and left on the way home are simply ford and carter who of course battled in one thousand nine hundred eighty six not easily not happily and have never really been close and yet on the way home at thirty five thousand feet they just kind of unilaterally at the same time disarm they realize they have more in common than they thought they both are coping with a fairly long post presidential life ahead of them each of them would be a case more than thirty years they both have to raise money for the library and it's a challenge for each man both left office before he really wanted and both don't really like ronald reagan they discover all of this on board and they have something to do something then it truly extraordinary happens they actually do a press conference on that plane and start talking out loud together and they realize when they start talking about the middle east on that flight their words together and made public are usually important it's in this moment they call for greater recognition of the what was then the p l o the palestinian liberation organization and it reverberates through washington with a really powerful impact but there's something else that takes place and that is ford and carter agreed to go help each other raise money and over the next twenty five years these two men who had been rivals and to some extent enemies do twenty five projects together over the next twenty five years their wives become close they agreed within a few years to eulogy of the other at the funeral of whoever dies first and honor that fell to carter in two thousand and six when gerald ford died and a relationship that was so strong and powerful that they became in some ways best friends and again because it shows that no matter what your differences are in age ideology you are bound together because you've been to an experience so few others can comprehend that in one thousand is would be a period that is marked by  sort of rebirth of the club both reagan and bush would turn to their predecessors mostly richard nixon for help but also gerald ford and then each president who followed in the one thousand years and afterward would turn to president carter for secret missions overseas  bush sent him to panama and nicaragua clinton sent him to north korea and haiti right eighty president bush the second century carter to north korea and so has president obama carter is a complicated character for all the presidents who followed on september seventh just a few weeks ago of this year jimmy carter became the longest living former president in american history thirty one years eight months twenty one days surpassing herbert hoover's record which was set in one thousand nine hundred sixty four this is a huge challenge for any man to sort of create a second career carter has done it with an astonishing amount of hard work and variety he also is a terribly complicated partner for everyone in the club presidents have found you can send jimmy carter overseas and he will mostly accomplish what you want to do in addition to some things you probably don't want him to do carter will tell you carter will say i'm a better former president and i was president which isn't surprising he's been doing one for seven times longer than the other but you also say he's a better former president the some of the other former presidents which isn't always that helpful not exactly club script on the other hand you know every club has to have a black sheep something to rally around and jimmy carter kind of performs that function i think the high watermark of the club has kept came in one thousand nine hundred three when bill clinton was inaugurated for at that moment there were five former living presidents only the second time in history not since abraham lincoln's inauguration the first time have there been five former presidents and every one of them was dying to get clinton's attention most of them were sending letters to please call me talk jimmy carter sent a series of messages saying i'd like to be sent places i'd like to be used clinton clinton mostly ignored carter for the first year clinton wanted to reach out to ronald reagan and big way you have the advice for me and reagan said well you got to you know first use camp david it's good for the heart and soul but also you know i've been watching you on the campaign trail and you know i got to say you really just don't know how to had been in the service both in fact and in the movie clinton said well show me and so the two men stood up in reagan's office in a way and practiced their salutes the club has many benefits but if those men all wanted clinton's attention or wanted to get to know him or want to see what he was made of as no one wanted clinton's attention quite like richard nixon he was practically standing on pennsylvania avenue waving his arms and call me call me call me first when clinton is inaugurated he writes a  eds could turn next year was his good copping bad cop in the present united states finally after about another back channel back room you know sort of the reveals is arranged clinton finally calls late at  night and over the next year and a half clinton and nixon actually become late night phone calls talking about russia and china and foreign policy and clinton just loves the advice he's getting from nixon he feels it's just somehow harder had it flint or smarter bark off and nixon is listening to clinton ask him questions and he's just like back in this zone clinton is asking him you know when did you get up and what did you eat and you know when jeffrey take naps and when did you go to bed and what did you read had in and and nixon remembers talking to eisenhower about this thirty years earlier and it's just like one giant you know great big moment for the two of them and and even to this day clinton is able to quote from some of the letters nixon sent him before dying and early one thousand nine hundred four and clearly one particular letter he sent to clinton after his last nixon's last trip to russia and when we interviewed president clinton in harlem last fall  nixon was able to quote from it and i said how i'm sorry clint was able to quote from it and i said how you are able to recall this and says oh i get that letter out every year and reread it so obviously a special relationship again across  parties the club has many inside are for our fraternity there are some forces of paternity that are and porton to keep in mind though that as we look at the club today you know there are it's interesting the club is made up of five men now if you  year very different men in all respects i think it's quite amazing that we have lived in an era where we've had a father and a son be in the club you can go to any bookstore or almost any website and find all kinds of deeply ferdie in theories about what happened between bush wanted bush to the son was you know making you know compensating for the flaws of the father of the sort of you can you can look these things up i think what's interesting about the father and son relationship and for our purposes in the club is that the father i think looked at george w bush's presidency and knew that he had many advisers and knew that when you're in the white house you know you have access to information other people don't have and i think the father thought you know my son has many advisers but he only has one dad and that's the role play and so what unfolded in not white house was a relationship between a father son much as you might expect and what was unexpected is that i think the son was more worried about how the father was feeling or as much as the father was worried about how the son was doing it so the son would call up the barbara bush would call her son and say you've got to call your father he won't turn off the television he's taking it all too personally and so he would he would call the father and say i'm fine don't worry i can i can handle this even in the worst of the most difficult days of the second bush presidency it was the son who was playing the role of comforter it's easier to understand these father son relationships inside the club because in addition to a genuine father and son we have the other sort of you know father and prodigal son relationship that's bush and clinton it was it was bush forty three the second bush who made that relationship happen most people think that the elder bush and clinton had just discovered that they liked each other  and by the way they just had lunch two weeks ago in kennebunkport but it was really the second bush president bush two who pushed that relationship and said when the both the tsunami in indonesia and the hurricane katrina hit during his second term he looked to both men to go to work and they were thrilled to do it but he's the one who made that happen the clinton and bush sr relationship is a genuine friendship again across generations across party it started through common cause but i think they have become people who two people who are both friends and allies and benefit the senior bush at the kennedy center a couple of years ago maybe two springs ago and so backstage there were many presidents there all of them i think except president obama and the bushes were there twenty seven or twenty eight bushes and  want to family picture as you anyone would do and so they all gathered backstage to take the picture and all the bushes are lined up and off the side of president clinton president carter and finally one of the bush sons i think it was neil said bill bill come on into the picture it's another twenty nine bushes in the picture i and it's a great picture you know the nickname for him in the family is brother from another mother i and when you get a nickname in the bush family you have really arrive current club is kind of interesting too we've seen a pretty big dose of it in the last couple of weeks president clinton and president obama are practically joined at the hip for the purposes of the president clinton a lot this is not this is not a relationship that has always been warm when president obama was running for office he wrote that book dreams from my father which was in no way  complimentary of bill clinton he said that he represented a kind of politics from the past a sort of grudge match from the sixty's that we thought he thought we could move past that conversation about olds to fashion politics and a new kind of politics moved front and center when hillary clinton ran against barack obama for the for the nomination bill clinton was right into that fight as well as practically the the whipping boy of that race  it's a big difference in philosophic in philosophy as well i think both men are rivals for history's favorite and the rivalry works like this which one of us is going to be more successful at pulling what is essentially a center right nation toward a more progressive agenda clinton had a theory of how to do it which was essentially govern from the middle obama's theory which didn't begin that way but is looking a little more that way felt different at the outset and they aren't in alignment about it even now but they have found a common cause reminding us again that it's sometimes harder for people of the of the same party to get along harder than just from members of different parties the entire club met  last on the two or three weeks before president obama was sworn in obama called president bush the second and said i'd like to get the gang kept the band together and in the white house before i come in and and they all got together for lunch five of them in a row bush senior clinton bush number two obama and president carter the lunch was not a conversation about the middle east or how to deal with congress or you know what to do about taxes and budget it was much more how do you live here happiest day married here how do you raise daughters here because so many of them had daughters and like all things  clubs it was really about how you do it and how you're coping and it's a reminder of two things one is no matter what their differences  overs and they don't get it and everybody knows what they are and they're probably a bunch of we'll never know those are even by comparison to most people scars bruises those are big and really can you talk to your kids and your wives and spouses about that not really so along comes this other group of men who've got just as big a scars and lots of bruises and and and regrets and with those guys you don't have to justify anything because they've got their own set and when we talk to the presidents about what binds the men who have such different backgrounds together that's what they say you know this is this is the one place where i don't have to do any defending or as jimmy carter said we always have sorrows and so the club is a place of sanctuary and in some respects redemption which is another thing we didn't expect to find when we started one last thought and then we'll take some questions when you see and sometimes we do those photographs and we end on a picture of the five of them in a row in the oval office with president bush in the final days of his presidency and of course when you see carter bush one clinton bush two and obama lined up you think whoa that's some group and when you think about it a little bit further you'll think you know that's that's a really remarkable group of men in that room i was reminded a few months ago when the french had an election and they threw out sarkozy and brought in france where a lot and the commentary from the the french newspapers and smart people were you know it's great to have a lot back because he's really more what we think about when we think about a french president he came from the right schools and he and see the different faces and think of the different backgrounds you realise there is no club an american would have all five of these guys in it which is why this is such a great country and why this is such a remarkable reflection of who we are there is no club in america that would have them and when you throw in ronald reagan and lyndon johnson and john f kennedy and richard nixon that's just an amazing group and an amazing reflection of a nation over a really long period of time and i think is people ask me all the time at the end of this process do you think differently about them and to quote one of the presidents i think better of all so stop there nancy and and i'm happy to take your question thank you michael duffy and nancy gibbs you are listening to the westminster town hall forum broadcast from westminster presbyterian church on nicollet mall in downtown minneapolis i'm jim hart anderson senior pastor at westminster church and moderator of the forum our speakers while the answers collect questions from the in house audience i invite you to join us at westminster for our next forum on thursday evening october twenty five at seven pm when musician michael feinstein will explore the gershwins preserving a president obama may have somehow learned the lesson of his predecessors because when he had a mission that he wanted president carter to undertake he first had him sign a promise that he would not talk to any reporters but  which carter largely honored except the fact that you know about it was probably about time and interestingly michael referred to the extraordinary actual father and son and virtual father and son relationship with the first president bush and the second president bush and bill clinton i almost would extend that even more remarkably to barack obama another president like clinton who never knew his father and our sense has been that while the relationship between president obama and his predecessors has largely been in most cases fairly fairly formal much of the time that there is real warmth that he feels towards the first president bush and the first president bush sort of acts now as the president of the president's club he's the one they all look to he's sort of the senior member they defer to his judgment they're always asked to do things together to support this or that cause and they typically they all check in with one another they e mail one another and they will defer to to george herbert down at his library and it was not again it was not about the president looking for strategic foreign policy advice it was about president bush stopping by the white house and just talking to president obama telling him jokes there's a great photograph from one such visit where the two men are basically just doubled over laughing and there aren't many people who are able to walk into the oval office and make a president laugh and president bush s like an oral exam question there is no right answer to this when you had to but the distrust tends to run from outside the white house toward in i think as as we as nancy hinted hoover did really believe the truman secret knows note to him asking to come to the white house for the first time in thirteen years was genuine he thought it was a trap when you read richard nixon's thirteen page letter to ronald reagan single spaced on the eve of his swearing in a century telling nixon and telling reagan exactly how to fill his cabinet with and right down to who should run the g s a and what he should eat you wonder ok on one hand he's obviously trying to get al haig to be secretary of state on the other hand this advice about when to nap and what to eat might be good so it's a mix  became much more complex and generally in general more sympathetic and so we were not looking to do a hatchet job and so in that sense i think we were very grateful at their willingness to help us tell this story and so we want to ok why are they helping us why did they agree to talk to us partly because michael spent three years convincing them to vote partly i think and they they know especially this work and and that he was honest and and worked together right but i also have heard don't i know i also think and this is complete guesswork that particularly now particularly given the conversation we're having collectively as a country maybe they wanted the story told because it does suggest that there is a different way that our leaders operate that there is a different kind of cooperation it's possible that there are actually people who have committed their lives and continue after they're out of office to commit their lives to a larger good and they have been more than a few occasions in the last year where i think many of us have come to wonder where is that impetus where is that power who is putting the country first and these stories that stretch across so many decades and so many administrations were again and again and again presidents put their own interest and their party's interest behind the interest of the office of the president with whom you spoke with constitutional amendment to make former presidents ex official members of the u s senate it's a great question of president bush when we talk to him by e mail by the way he's really good on e mail present but one said that he remembered that he had been told that harry truman suggested this in some semiofficial way fifty years ago and he thought that was just the craziest craziest idea he'd ever heard mostly they want to go away and have a normal life again in a big way with the adjustment in stripping is is more is more nuanced it's i've been drinking from a fire hose and now i have nothing to drink and  think they want some kind of middle way point you know president bush was particularly sensitive present bush sr about this and so he he sent almost regular newsletters to the club stamped secret or confidential which i'm sure made everyone feel really good mike and i were down at the johnson library last week which was you know all the presidential libraries are fascinating i highly recommend visiting if you ever get a chance and among other things we had dinner afterwards with lucy johnson who  is so much her father's daughter it is it is just incredible and and she told us the sort of drives you crazy when you finish the book she told us all the stories we didn't know including one about when she was complaining to her dad about why they had to go all the way out to independence missouri for the signing of the medicare bill so that harry truman could be there and she she just thought that her father of just putting his face in his hand and  knew i was in trouble least even without harry truman who understood had the conscience of the need for everyone to have access to health care this bill never would have happened and we need to go and we need to honor him for that he felt this so strongly this sense of continuity your role model in office your role model out of office he calls truman after his when j won his huge reelection in sixty four and those two presidents are talking he says to truman i want you to know that as long as i am in this office you are in it and all of its powers and all of its privileges are your too and your plane is waiting for you in your bedroom it's up stairs you were still part of it's an extraordinary thing that they understand all of the connection between them and the good that they can do for one another and they honor one another for the good that they did when they were in the office and i think as former presidents many of them have in some ways served even more nobley than they did when they were in office  question one of the sometimes high school students is the how has the dynamic of this club changed this is divided between parties has widened in recent years the main change over the years is instead of a one on one relationships like truman hoover it's now this multilateral you know five guy show and so their alliances and minor and major within the club which all serve to bind them across their differences and serve i think as at times not always as a helpful role model but the club is a more complicated place than it was in the fifty's and sixty's because there are more of them and i think they're going to be more of them going forward because i think they were obviously electing them earlier or and that sometimes throwing them out earlier so it will become a more complex and more interesting place and if i were going to just pick two to watch and i could watch any others i'd watch clinton and bush two very those guys are by polar opposites of the baby boom generation and they've become friends so look out worse worse she or any other woman to be elected it would probably make it a nicer place but i think the time you know obviously will come soon there are the differences amongst these numbers as we've pointed out are so vast that i think you know electing the first woman is as minor as a difference compared to the ideological personal spiritual philosophical differences that its members have brought to it before so i think she would slide right  well we didn't look for one there may be one and it would be really secret because we didn't stumble over it it's a vice presidents club is more secret than the presidents club that's a good story there doesn't appear to be a first ladies club we've been asked that any times and i think there is more of a kids club because it's the kind of weird you know experience of growing up in the bubble has been has been down the kids and i think particularly ones who were teenagers at the time too had in common but even for vice presidents i think the decisions and the intensity of the experience is probably a few notches below the kind of in intensity of wounds and scars that the presidents have but there will be some other smart author to come along and find in every period that we study there were often these undercurrents of public despair about the challenges the country faced the failures of leadership that has been at you know a recurring pessimism about our leaders leaders that coexists with an eternal optimism about our possibilities and so i tend to think that leaders rise to the occasion i think voters rise to the occasion i think americans are very very good at picking presidents and so i tend to think that the outcome whichever way it goes is going to elevate a man who will who will have the wind at his back because we as citizens want presidents to succeed because then we all